BETTER OFF DEAD: JOHN CUSACK GOT SERIOUS AFTER THIS

 

Eye Luggage: Better Off Dead and go.

John Cusack: are we gonna address the elephant in the room?

Savage Steve Holland: come on, John, people are eating their lunch. let's not talk about the nauseous doom of the upcoming election.

Paula Abdul: yes, that's me in Coraline...

Eye: you got the perfect goth face to start with, Ms. Abdul.

Lana Del Rey: i write the perfect driving music, music about driving alone in your Pinto sedan across America's highways, from New York to L.A. along empty deserts, looking for love in dusty pool halls...

Lana Del Rey: my pussy tastes like...

Jen R: ginger ale. to power an Acura.

me: my man card simply says 1981 Silver Nissan Sentra.

Lana: that was the cutest car!!! like a pale VW Bug across Sedona...

E.G Daily: oh Steve.........you're so.........savage!!!

Savage Steve Holland: my name sounds like a wrestler. i'm Dutch but i'm rooting for England.

Savage Steve Holland: i remember it like it was yesterday. i was so proud to have accomplished my dream of doing a movie. at the premiere, on the red carpet...or was it a purple carpet? green carpet? anyway, John storms out of the theater and confronts me, spitting his spite in my face. we bump jaws.

Savage: John, my son, what ever is the problem?

John Cusack: you made me look like an IDOIT in there!!! what kind of script was that?!!! who wrote that, you or your third-grade son?!!!

Savage: i don't have a third-grade son. yet, maybe that was ME as a third-grader writing it but...

John: come on, man!!! i was destined for GREAT things. i was made for SERIOUS things. gravitas. excellence. musicianship. i'm the '80s James Dean.

Savage: okay but are you a writer?

John: no i'm an actor.

Savage: it is literally an actor's JOB to be an idiot.

Laertus: you know i gotta say, all in all, this is a pretty good movie. i mean the script is.........FUNNY. it's got some good stuff here. it's LEAN, it's as fucking SPARSE as it gets, but for what it is, it just kinda.........WORKS.

Ian Curtis: yes, because if there's anything suicide is, it's FUNNY.

Savage: you're gonna get a crash course very soon about the nature of my comedy. it's surrealist and absurdist.........don't call it pot humor or anything, this ain't Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Naked Gun. it's not anti-comedy, Tim Heidecker couldn't write a joke to save his life...get it? this is REAL COMEDY done on an incline, it upends expectations, it leaves you scratching your head that you didn't think of it, that the physical joke is a mental joke. wordplay on the silver screen.

John: why is the little brother in all '80s movies the smart one and the one who effortlessly gets all the women?

little brother: why don't they make the cereal boxes such that when you open a hole in the bag and let out all the cereal the cereal goes into another bag so there's no messy cleanup on the kitchen linoleum?

Honey Nut Cheerios Bee: i sucked the Honey Smacks Frog before he could lick me with his tongue.

Dig'em: don't fuck the Transformers.

Savage: yeah but the little brother always ends up dialing for pizza on the cord phone and a hooker knocks on the front door by mistake. i had to keep it clean, remember this was PG. it was almost G...

Dirg: can i borrow the little brother's book? my mom says i can't get a subscription to MAD Magazine...

John: it's like that book from Repo Man...

Ian Curtis: does it have to be Christmastime? 

mom: naturally as an '80s mom my only spark in life is TV dinners. getting the one with the vanilla brownie is like getting that rare Transformers Soundwave that only played Laserdisc.

Soundwave: only 1 was ever made. by Japan. by mistake.

dad to mom: why aren't you wild like this in bed? why don't you wear the reindeer suit to bed?...

Amanda Wyss: no, i am not Allison Mack...

Amanda Wyss: yeah see in the '80s boys would put up 100 photos of a woman on their wall and it wasn't stalking, it was their crush.

Amanda Wyss: but i HAVE to dump your ass after six months of commitment and deepening love where we said we'd be with each other forever. i mean, you're ugly.........actually you're kinda cute, you look like John Cusack...

David Ogden Stiers: i have the name of a DISTINGUISHED Actore!!! you didn't recognize me without my Falstaffian BEARD!!! Shakespeare in the Park? no no my good man, it's Shakespeare at the Hollywood Bowl!!! i'm conducting!!!

Howard Cosell: there are worse ways to learn English. if those two little Japanese boys in the car had learned English from Muhammad Ali...

Takahashi: ...

Less from Mr. Maldark's class: a Camaro on cinder blocks, i know the feeling. all cinder blocks come from prison.........no i have never gone to prison, that was Deen... 

Roy Stalin: you gotta admit, best last name ever for a villain.

paperboy: I WANT MY 2 DOLLARS!!! even at the car wash!!!

John in a Deadpool robe and morning coffee: here kid, it's a rare 2-dollar silver coin. use it to get your picture taken at Sears, send your picture into Nintendo of America in Redmond, Washington in a white envelope, you will be the inspiration for the Paperboy arcade cabinet...

paperboy: i'll never have to deliver papers again uh throw papers into windows again. what is my Bergmanian identity then? millions of dotted coupons don't make up for that.

Taylor Negron: look at that face of mine, i have the most LUXURIOUS face in Hollywood history. when my eyes stare at you, when my face burns into you, it's like it's coming from the waterfall of a French anime.

Ian Curtis: oh God. this scene. this scene's cutting a little too CLOSE to home.........closer.........it's the ending of Control (2007)...

Curtis Armstrong: i have a boxer's name, i should have been a boxer. Charles De Mar? why aren't i rich? why do i always play the kooky sidekick or the character with the cartoon voice, is it because of my face? these bugged-out eyes are natural, ask my mother. i ruined my teeth huffing so many paint cans i didn't have to go to the dentist anymore, which pleased my mother. Ian Curtis is my soul brother.

Charles: you know they really shouldn't put Cool Hwhip in these cans, it's addicting...

John: Charles, you are not in charge. that's not lemon Jell-O, that's pee snow.

Howard Cosell: when John jumps off the ski slope and tries to land it doing a reverse triple-jump down the mountain instead of skiing it, that was hilarious. that was Wide World of Sports on ABC. i thought this movie took place in Wisconsin...

Pig Burger: it's the same greasy fast-food joint from Fast Times at Ridgemont High!!!

Vincent Schiavelli: bingo. and i'm still a high-school teacher. holy shit i get to make it with a high-school student named Beth Truss here?!!!

Amanda Wyss: sigh.

Vincent: that didn't happen even at Ridgemont High!!!

Savage: as you can see, my cartoon is showing. i'm already showing you the stuff i'm REALLY passionate about: animations, drawings. and it's the '80s so i have to do Claymation...

Pee-wee Herman: tell me about it...

Monique Junot: how you say? what do you put in your tiny blue Los Angeles Dodgers helmet?

John: oh is that like a tampon for you French girls?

Monique: no, silly, you put ice cream. 

John: wait you speak English?

Monique: of course, silly, otherwise there's no movie. 

John: wait you're actually a fully-certified automobile mechanic?

Monique: of course, silly, all girls in the '80s watch Flashdance.

Super Mario in the back of his trash truck: but Americans have been throwing out this perfectly good Italian-Japanese boy since the '80s...

Monique: still want to die? still rushing to die?

John: no, not anymore. because of you. turns out humans need other humans. who knows, maybe i'll go to college and rush a fraternity.

Monique: that sounds like a terrible idea.

at the spaghetti diner at night for their romantic date.

John: random saxophone.

Savage: MERCY BUCKETS, hey you see that?!!! I came up with that, not Ted Lasso!!!

Dan Schneider: i'll make this brief, i know i know, everyone hates me now. my mom in this is a Hairspray reject. you have to consider this movie though, this movie was the NEXUS of everything that came after on the Nickelodeon channel. the network of people that came out of here that would BUILD that network up to its highest grounds!!!

Savage: Better Off Dead is a Nickelodeon movie...

John, smoldering: TOLD YOU. knew it.

Dan: me with my live-action, Savage with his cartoons, and E.G. Daily doing all those weirdly-sexual baby voices.

at the prom.

E.G. Daily: guys. come on, take a step back and realize who you've got here!!! a bunch of hapless nameless nobody high-schoolers like you get E.G. Daily to sing at their prom?!!! this was 1985, i was THIS CLOSE to becoming Madonna before Madonna became Madonna. these are good pop songs!!! chartable songs in real life...

Monique: this is how you say music video of Wham "Last Christmas"...

George Michael: perfect Christmas timing.

John: hey can you keep this between us? i don't want you blabbing it to the whole school.

principal: i understand, no one else will know of this. oh young man, do you want the school to furnish you with an official school ambulance at the foot of the mountain where you'll be skiing? K-12 Mountain means school.

K-12 Mountain: the town's highest peak. peaking in high school...

Savage: hey John, can you film the last scenes of the movie yourself? i'm gonna be busy entering my stuff at Spike and Mike's Animation Festival in Berkeley...

John: can we just get this over with? no, i'm not doing lightsabers with ski poles with Schneider, let me just tip him over and end-credits.

at Dodger Stadium.

Monique: but what would have happened to you if you hadn't met me?

John: this would have been a very short movie. random saxophone again. hey how'd they empty out Dodger Stadium like this? the Dodgers in the '80s were GOOD.

little brother on a rocket ship to outer space blowing a hole in the roof: i'm lonely here on Earth. i'm smarter than everyone here, this rocket will take me to the home planet of Pokemon where i can meet my badger kind...

Savage Steve Holland: i mean you gotta think about what could have been. the doom scenario of what would have happened to me. you could have had this movie, or you could have had nothing. this movie is based on my own life experience as a high-schooler who got dumped by his girlfriend. i tried to end it all many times but they all turned out comical like they do here. 5 years later the very girl who caused my attempts saw this movie of mine and apologized to me. now if THAT isn't the transformative power of art, i don't know what is!!! g'night folks. be well.