201. 'Clean and Sober' (1988) With Very Special Guest Kathy Baker
Release Date: 09/20/2024
Full Cast And Crew
'Caddyshack', it turns out, is kind of a miracle of last-minute producer-led stitching together and salvaging, resulting in one of the more quotable films in comedy history. Hard to believe that at the time, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and Rodney Dangerfield were not yet the massive film stars they'd become as a result of this movie. This episode delves into the coke-fueled nonstop party that was this film's production, a production that would contribute to the untimely death of co-writer Doug Kenney on a cliff in Hawaii where he'd gone to dry out. Doug's death was...
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Don Simpson was one-half of one of the most successful production partnerships in Hollywood history. His reality-distortion-field helped bring about films like Flashdance, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, The Rock, Crimson Tide, and Days of Thunder, films that collectively grossed more than $3 billion dollars. Don Simpson's life is a cautionary tale with an ignominious ending forever ensconced in Hollywood history. His appetite for drugs, prostitutes, plastic surgery, black Levi's 501 jeans (worn once and discarded), wrecking Porsches, pharmacology, peanut butter, and pizza got the best of him at...
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Considering the versatile, endlessly watchable and iconic American actor Gene Hackman.
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HERE IT IS! Your most-anticipated episode of the year.
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Here's the third of my episodic trilogy about George Roy Hill's films 'Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid', 'The Sting', and, now: 1977's 'Slap Shot'.
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My deep dive into the films of Director George Roy Hill continues with the most iconic Western ever made: "Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid".
info_outlineActor Kathy Baker joins the podcast this week for a very special episode about her 1988 film 'Clean and Sober'.
Director Glenn Gordon Caron probably needed a stiff drink or 20 after coming off the tumultuous four-season run of 'Moonlighting' with its famously fractious co-stars. Instead he chose to direct one of the most underappreciated film gems of the 80's in 'Clean and Sober', co-produced by Ron Howard and starring Michael Keaton, Kathy Baker, Morgan Freeman, and M Emmet Walsh in the story of a commercial real estate broker spiralling into...and reluctantly out of...cocaine and alcohol addiction.
Incisively ritten by Tod Carroll, a National Lampoon writer with only two other film credits to date, 'Clean and Sober' was Keaton's first foray into a non-comedic film role, a fact that caused the studio some consternation at the time. Freeman and Baker were coming off of award-winning roles in 'Street Smart', a Golan-Globus production about a NYC journalist intertwined with a pimp and prostitute, and everyone in the cast of 'Clean and Sober' turned in absolutely phenomenal performances...even Oscar-worthy performances...yet the studio didn't really know how to market or release a film they considered hard-to-define and after only 3 weeks of a summetime release, the film was largely abandoned in the marketplace.
In this special episode of the Full Cast and Crew podcast, I talk with Kathy Baker about her indelible role as Charlie, her experiences making the film, and her approaches to acting and the collaborative nature of filmmaking.
Join us as we spend some well-deserved time giving 'Clean and Sober' its due as still the best film ever made about the tricky early days of sobriety and digging into Kathy's experiences making the film.