The Country Bears (2002) Disneys Weirdest Movie? Psychedelics Honey as a Drug Hidden Symbolism

➡ The text is a transcript from the Occult Disney Podcast, where the hosts discuss the Country Bears attraction and its related movie. They mention the attraction’s cult following, the movie’s reception, and the different versions of the Country Bear Jamboree show. They also discuss the closure of the attraction in Disneyland before the movie’s release, and its replacement with the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The hosts also touch on Disney’s portrayal of hillbillies and the American culture reflected in the Country Bears.
➡ The text discusses a Disney movie that heavily relied on practical effects and costumes, which was a significant investment but didn’t perform well at the box office. Despite its failure, the movie’s concept was incorporated into Disney theme parks, particularly in Florida and Tokyo, where it gained popularity. The text also mentions attempts to promote up-and-coming artists through the movie, which didn’t quite succeed. Lastly, it delves into the author’s personal thoughts on country music, its origins, and its influence on the movie’s soundtrack.
➡ The text discusses a movie featuring anthropomorphic bears who are musicians. The author compares the film to the documentary “Grizzly Man,” suggesting both works blur the line between humans and bears. The author also discusses the music in the film, the roles of various characters, and the societal implications of bears living among humans. The author concludes by questioning the representation of bears in the movie, suggesting they may be portrayed as lower-class citizens.
➡ The text discusses a movie featuring bears and an evil banker, who wants to destroy their music hall. The movie also explores various scenarios of how musicians’ careers can go wrong, from substance abuse to ego issues. Despite its low ratings and poor reception, the text suggests that the movie offers valuable lessons about the music industry. The movie also includes references to various music genres and bands, indicating a blend of country and psychedelic rock influences.
➡ The text is a conversation about a movie featuring a bear named Barry Barrington who was raised by a human family. Barry, feeling out of place, runs away to join a band called the Country Bears. The text discusses various scenes and plot points, including Barry’s struggle with his identity and the lack of resolution about his origins. The conversation also includes references to other bands and musicians, such as the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
➡ The text discusses a movie that was created by a writer from the show Animaniacs. The movie is filled with humor and cameos from various artists. The text also mentions a theory about the original War of the Worlds being funded by the Rockefeller foundation as an experiment on the public. The discussion also touches on other movies and shows like Kung Fu Panda, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Pinky in the Brain, and the influence they may have had on the movie.
➡ The text discusses the movie ‘Country Bears’ and its actors, particularly Daryl Mitchell and Diedrich Bader. Mitchell, who became paralyzed after a motorcycle accident, is known for his advocacy for paraplegic actors. Bader, recognized for his roles in various TV shows, plays two characters in the movie. The text also delves into the plot of the movie, the characters’ new lives, and the concept of neuro-linguistic programming. It ends with a discussion about the potential for different versions of the movie, like a hip hop bears movie.
➡ The text discusses a movie featuring Queen Latifah, Xzibit, and Wyclef Jean, where the idea of introducing hip-hop bears is considered. The text also discusses the character dynamics, particularly focusing on a human son who is seen as the voice of reason. The text also mentions the character of Barry Barrington, who believes he was kidnapped and raised by a family that wasn’t his own, drawing parallels to Walt Disney’s life. The text ends with a discussion about the characters in the movie and their counterparts in a ride, with a particular focus on Big Al, who is compared to Buddha.
➡ The text discusses a variety of topics, including the connection between a character from “Three’s Company” and “On the Saddle,” the kidnapping of a character named Ted, and the importance of a character named Big Al. It also explores the idea of anthropomorphizing bears, suggesting that it’s a way for humans to cope with the fact that bears are dangerous creatures. The text also mentions the use of honey as a drug in the context of Winnie the Pooh, and ends with a question about the reader’s “bear world.”
➡ The author is creating a new comic about the symbolism in Kubrick’s movies, which you can learn more about by signing up for the newsletter at kubrickcomic.com or paranoidamerican.com. They also host a podcast where they discuss movies, and suggest that the soundtrack of the Country Bears movie could be played with Grizzly Man for an interesting effect. Additionally, they promote Paranoid American’s unique sticker sheets, which feature cryptids, cults, and mysteries. Lastly, they express their thoughts and feelings through a rap, mentioning their struggles and achievements.

Barry should have killed Ted Betterhead and become the leader of the band. Is it Disney mind control? Is this MK Ultra Deluxe? I go Disney we go from wheel to wheel I go this day oh, hear me moving no more feel I go this ask her back to man I take a co Disney teacher go to everybody a co Disney wish upon a star A cold business. You know our dudes are far oh a con Disney a new bland Pinocchio dinner co Howdy, folks. Welcome to the one and only original Occult Disney Podcast Fe featuring a bit of Mickey Mouse, our film heritage of the past.

And right now I give you assorted assortment of conspiracies of chat and rambling. It’s the Occult Disney Podcast. Hit it, boys. Am I adopted? I think I did fumble a word or two there. What can you do? I was. I was spit gunning it. Is that term spit gunning? It is now. It is now. This is Matt here. It’s paranoid American over there. You keeping your hoe down, Hoenn? We’re spit gunning it over here. Okay, that sounds good. Maybe that’s like the what the Hwak2 thing from last year. I like that one because when you say it, it’s instantly dated.

It was like dated a it. So it’s just like funny now I’m still holding my hawk tool coins. I know that they’re gonna moon any day now. Yeah, yeah. You know, things go up, things go down. Just like the career of the Country Bears. That’s our focus today. Hence the insane introduction. Country Bear is another one of those attractions and I don’t know if movies, but one of those attractions that has like kind of a. A weird. Caught following. It’s a weirder caught following than say the Haunted Mansion. Caught following though, because it feels more like Disney adult furries, which sound.

There’s several things wrong with that phrase. The movie does have a small cult following and I found. I’m going to call them apologists. I found some Country Bears apologists online that unfortunately just grew up during the perfect time that this is what was being delivered to them. This was Disney’s flagship, you know, production that they were unleashing their new programming onto a new generation. So some kids grew up with this being there. I guess to me it would have been like Little Mermaid or Lion King. This was their Lion King counterpoint. I first saw this movie only about two years ago at age 44.

And I think I’m a country bear apologist. And do stress the apologist word. I do have things bad to Say about that movie. Speaking of the Disney adult furries, last time I went, they had the Country Bear merch. So the. The Sunbonnet Trio, not in the movie. What’s up with that? Sunbonnet Trio should be in the movie, but they were problematic. Yeah, Henry Bear, he’s in the movie, but he doesn’t look this cool and he doesn’t have a skunk on his head from the vacation ho down. So he also never looks like this in the show.

I bought the figure and then saw the show. He has the guitar, he has the skunk on his head, but he never has the guitar and the skunk on his head in the show. So. Fun fact. I actually didn’t realize until doing just a modicum of research for this episode that there’s multiple versions of the Country Bears jamboree, even within certain parks. Depending on what time of the year you go to the park, you might get a different version of the. Of the bears. Only Tokyo now, baby. Yeah, you get. In the summer, you get the vacation hoedown, which is maybe the best one because a bear makes love to an octopus in that one.

Yes. Well, it did start in America, but I think the octopus didn’t sing back in the American version. I think they added that for the Japanese version. There’s a regular show, which is fine. Then there’s a Christmas show, which I haven’t seen for some time because I don’t know, I’m. I’m not a big fan of Christmas themed things in general. Unless you like, you know, like Prometheus, where it’s a Christmas movie, like really hidden, you know, Like, I’m into that, but. Oh, you’re so Japanese. Like now. Now Die Hards a Christmas movie. Everybody knows that. You don’t have to say that.

But Prometheus is a Christmas movie, I think is still one that is. Oh, yeah, it is when you think about it. Yeah. I mean, there’s a Christmas tree in it. In fact, if. If I were to ever direct the movie, which I won’t, but if I did, I would just always make sure that there’s at least one scene that represents Christmas just so that you can always call it a Christmas movie. That’s what Shane Black does, by the way. Iron Man 3 Christmas movie every. I mean, I grew up with Gremlins being my Christmas movie. And that one you don’t really even have to stretch because it starts out during Christmas.

No, that’s. I. Yeah, that’s not a big stretch. Although. Yeah. I mean, it. Mogwai is A present, right? Yeah. He is a Christmas present. Yeah. Country Bear is not a Christmas movie. This is just a. This is kind of just like a. A vp. I. I can cite his name if you give me two seconds. Disney VP of Production Brigham Taylor just went to Disneyland and decided this should be a good movie, which is a weird choice because they made the movie and they shut down the ride in Disneyland before the movie came out. And it’s like one of the biggest things of anti synergy I’ve ever seen because this movie came out in 2002.

Disneyland’s version shut down, I think, in 2001. So it’s like, dude, one more year. Just like, have it come out with a movie. You know, See it might. Might catch on fire a little more. I don’t know. Is it not there now? Does Disneyland not have a country? No, no, no. Pooh. Pooh ate his soul. So it’s now the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which is not as good as a Tokyo ride. I mean, I’m sure it’s fine. It’s just depressing that, you know, the. The country bears are gone. Well, Disney country bears still. Right.

They have a new show, though. They have a show where it just started last year where they did refurb all the animatronics and now they just sing country tinged versions of like A Whole New World and Under the Sea and stuff. So they don’t do, like the hillbilly music anymore. Also a problem with this movie, which is mostly lacking in weird hillbilly music. That’s the most endearing part. I think that we’ve already discussed this a few times, but over all the different Disney movies we’ve watched, I do love how Disney treats hillbillies. They get this very special treatment.

And it seems like something that is very, like, American specific. I get the. The hillbilly and Appalachian culture comes out of, like, Germanic peoples and. But there’s something that’s so uniquely American about a dumb old hillbilly redneck that’s maybe a little bit dangerous, maybe running from the cops. But they’re jovial about it and you almost trust them. Like they’re. They’re the good kind of criminal that runs from the cops. Yeah. I wonder if that’s that vibe. Just in the past couple of weeks, like when I’m going to bed or whatever, I’ll put on like, YouTube and put on some weird genre movie from the 30s, like today.

Like last night, it was like, here’s a Wooden Ship horror film starring Bela Lugosi. I’m like, okay, that’s interesting. Did I fall asleep in 10 minutes? Yes, I did. But it’s just kind of like I want that vibe for a few minutes as I’m going to sleep. You know, am I going to finish that movie? Probably not. So. And there are evenings where you’re going like, I’m going to put on the weird hillbilly movie from the 30s or the Western. I guess that’s the fun thing about the studio system may have many problems, but you can kind of like dial the radio a little more in the studio system for a weird old film.

And I just have to mention this was a pure coincidence, but because I do another podcast called under the Docks where we do documentaries and we’re filming Werner Herzog month and the first one that we’re doing is Grizzly Man. So I saw Grizzly man last night and then I’m re watching Country Bears today and maybe I picked up more analogies than I should have. Oh yeah, I want to hear about those, of course. Oh, it’s under a doc, so you cannot do a bad lieutenant, Port of Call, New Orleans. Too bad. I’ll figure it a way to, you know, squeeze it into some podcast somewhere.

But yeah, you’re asking about this one. Disneyland. This one opened in. Well, I guess we’ll talk attraction first because most people, if you say Country Bear, they’re still thinking the attraction. They’re not thinking about this movie. And that’s the only reason we’re doing this movie is because we are doing like the summer attraction special of all these different Disney movies. And this one doesn’t even really have any animation at all. Right. Is this all practical effects and suits? And every time I saw it for like the third time last night and even then I’m like having trouble believing that.

I know that’s true. Which these are just. I feel like this is the height of weird practical effects. Like on set, weird practical effects, you say, hi, I may be one of the last nails in the coffin. Okay, you could. Well, that too. But I do think of this as one of the last practical, you know, big budget, somewhat big budget movies. Hold on, let’s check what the budget actually was. I don’t know how much those suits cost. As I was watching this, I was thinking no other company can afford to do something this crazy to have these huge bare practical suits and a bunch of actors running around in a feature length movie alongside musicians the entire time.

Like no one else could pull it out. Even if it were good, you wouldn’t even do it. Yeah. Oh, here we go. The budget. 35 million. That sounds about right for this kind of movie, I guess. Box office, 18 million. And when you consider you need to make like 70 million to break even, this is a. This is what they call a massive failure. But I’m hearing the little prices right, like, in the background right now. Yeah, really. But in terms of the attraction, this does actually go back to OG Disney. He was. When he was alive, he was planning to put this in Disney in Mineral King Ski Resort.

They were going to make it Disney’s Mineral King Ski Resort. And, like, the idea was, I guess you would go to various restaurants, and if you went to the tropical restaurant, the ski resort, there’d be a tropical bear band. And if you went to a. The barbecue place, the country bears would be there. And if you went to, you know, maybe there’s like a beach boy surfer version in a different room or something. That doesn’t happen. They don’t buy the ski resort. They don’t do that. So when they open Disney World, there’s like, hey, here’s this concept.

And they just take part of it. They just take the country part. Because obviously there were lots of different musical bears thinking, oh, you know, it’s Florida. You can second this or argue this, but they’re like country music in Florida. That’ll take. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Okay. Well, it took. It’s still somewhat popular, especially central northern Florida. I mean, the. The. The joke that maybe you only get if you have live in Florida, but south Florida is northeast coast. Like, south Florida is New York. And then the. The farther north you go in Florida, the. The more south you go.

Okay, that. I’ve never been to Miami, but that kind of makes sense when I think about it. I’ve been. Miami is Metropolis. You’re basically in New York with more Cubans and Cuban sandwiches. Right. But then the more that you go north, the more it feels like you’re headed into, like, southern Georgia, essentially. Yeah. It kind of makes Tampa, I guess, like you’re Richmond or something. I get it. Okay. But where is it going with it? Yeah, so it was pretty sick. Especially in the 70s. It was very successful. The Florida version only has one theater. So when they did in Disneyland, they’re like, oh, it’s so popular.

Let’s put it in two theaters. So they would have two theaters running concurrently. That’s what’s in Tokyo as well. Although, to my annoyance, I thought it’d be like one theater. And then people wait. No, it’s Both theaters at the same time. That’s why I was saying I had to wait longer for the Country Bears a few weeks ago than the big budget Bell ride. It was a non busy day. So the Bell ride was like a 2020. The Beauty and the Beast is like 20 minute wait. And then the Country Bears. I’m sitting there for like a little more than that because I got there right when they started the last show, I guess.

So it’s a hot day, so nice to sit inside for a bit. And this. Do they have the redneck quality in Japan and Disney? This is. It is in land, by the way, in, in Tokyo. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean I don’t, I’ve been in the Florida one, so I don’t think there’s any massive difference other than it’s the two theater one in Tokyo which seems to continue bringing in people. Their Tiki room may be going down soon. It seems their Country Bear theater is what’s weird because people are like, oh, people in Japan, like the Country Bears.

But I mean people are like kind of half heartedly clapping along to robots who don’t care. When I saw the show a few weeks ago, the vacation hoedown, I told you I got the merch, right? Because I was like, that’s exciting. There’s never merch. I got their summer merch, put it on my bag as I’m going around Disneyland. Never saw another person with a Country Bears on their bag. It was all, you know, Baymax or Donald Duck because they just had Quacky Duck. Quacky Duck, Duck City. So yeah, yeah. And I don’t know if the Country Bears are that popular.

They weren’t in Disneyland anyway. So they had two theaters and like, oh my God, that’s too much real estate. Nobody goes this thing in California. So it’s now the Winnie the Pooh ride. I mean, yeah, I guess. I wonder if it would be more popular if they were panda bears. Maybe. Yeah, I might have rethought of it for California if I was on that. But if I, if I was a Disney exec, I don’t know. I guess movie and theme park are two threads. So while they’re making the movie, the theme park doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

Is that’s what’s happening. It’s just one of the weirdest cases of anti synergy I’ve ever seen. Especially from like a major company like this, you know, here’s the movie ride closed. It does seem though that Disney might just be realizing that they’re investing in the future. Right? The same way that they, they did Fantasia and cast a spell they get the draw on decades later. Maybe this is a way of injecting country bears into more culture so they can bank on it later on, I guess. I don’t know. Because again, there are people that have affinity to the movie itself too.

Again, I’m one of them. I love Christopher Walken. I love the big dumb suits. I don’t generally like the music. That was where they did try to do synergy like the wrong way, you know, because they were like, let’s try and take people who are on our record label who are up and coming and put them in the movie. And they never. Every losing dog in the race, it seems like, because every time there was a new music video breakout, I was like, why have I never heard of this person before or now? And I had to keep pausing it and looking them up like, oh no.

Sure enough, they were a recording artist, but a lot of them just never became household names, I guess. Crystal R.E. peterson, known for 2001 single Supergirl, which was featured on the soundtrack for the Princess Diary. So. And that’s 2001. So they’re like, oh yeah, she popped in that. She’s going to pop in this. This movie’s going to, you know, make bank. Jennifer Page, that’s the kick it into the gear lady. Best known for international number one pop hit Crush and whatever. I mean, I don’t know who this is. So they’re trying to push these two. They do get some folks on like when, when we got the.

The Bear Love duet, that is Don Henley and Bonnie Rate. They do cut to the actual people sitting at a bar at one point. So if you’re a country fan, I guess that’s cool. I’m not a big country fan. I mean, I got a Johnny Cash box set here in an old school country box set of CDs. But I, I don’t usually go around listening to, to country music. Especially not. I don’t like modern country much at all. So you add a little David Allen co to the listening playlist? Yeah, sure, why not? Here’s the weird thing, as a musician though.

I can definitely play country music. Maybe it’s just because I’m from the Southeast, I don’t know. But I can definitely play country music. Like I can take a Telecaster and, you know, twang it out if you want. I mean, it’s not incredibly difficult. Maybe. Yeah, I can finger pick a guitar. I can definitely do it. That’s Kind of one of the interesting things. Well, country music, too. I mean, obviously, without getting into the whole evolution of where country music came from, but there are some classic country songs that were made on a single string guitar, like a one string guitar.

I forgot what you call those things. They got a funny little name to them, but you’ll just see someone stick a big, you know, metal pole down into, like, a can and put a string on it and then jam that thing. And in fact, I believe there’s a ZZ Top song called, like, One String Guitar where that takes the the forefront. Yeah, I know the Five Bear Rugs and the Ride have it. And that’s in my pocket, by the way. So you had a whole one string guitar. And you’re probably know that was a slide. Yeah.

Yes, that’s a slide. So I did sell the resonator a few months ago. Actually, watching this movie when, when I’d see the resonator, I was like, oh. Although I sold it for cooler. Well, not cool. I, I, I told you I was upgrading my Fenders from Mexican to Japanese. So it was part of that. So not too many. That was the thing that it was really fun to play. You’d actually put it, like, on a table, right? And like. Well, I would. That’s one way you play it. It’s really fun to play them. I’m like, this isn’t practical.

There’s, like, very few tracks. I’m gonna use this and, you know, because I don’t really make country music or just, like, roots blues, you know, like, so playing it fun. I’m like, I could still do this on an acoustic. It doesn’t, it doesn’t resonate as much. That’s true. But yeah, there was, I think, maybe like, a magical moment in time where mid-90s to early 2000s were a lot of white teenage musicians that were gonna be big into soul and blues and rhythm and blues, right? Like, in fact, the first girl that we see here, Katrina or whatever her name was, she.

She ends up has, like, a whole black backup band and, like, is doing, like, these really deep soul sister sor. And not in a critical way. Like, it sounds good, but also I was like, man, I remember when this was what was being pushed. I remember this. It was this. And it was the freaking swing jazz all over again. It was like, you know, zoot suit riot. That was what was getting pushed in the, in the late 90s. Oh, yeah, the swing thing too, right? White people were gonna take back swing and they were gonna take back soul.

Music. You know, when. When Jim Carrey and the Mask has to be cool. He goes full swing in 1994, right? Which was. I like the Mask, but not Son of the Mask. Don’t watch that movie. But I honestly, I like all the masks, even the Son of Mask. I don’t care. Oh, okay. I saw some of the Mask. My mother in law loved the Mask, so my father in law rented some of the masks for her and watched it and I was depressed for the rest of the day. You have to know what you’re getting into.

We saw it for lunch. No, I do the Bad Movie podcast or Good and Bad. But yeah, I do have to watch on the Mask again before too long, so. So did Country Bears make the Bad Movie podcast list? No, but this is the second time I’m doing it because we all get a birthday pick. And I actually chose the Country Bears as my birthday pick last year because I am a country bear apologist. I’ve been bitching about the music, but otherwise I like pretty much everything about this movie. I like the fact that Barry Barrington is stupid.

Christopher Walken. This is like. Or the. Or the character. The character is stupid. I like. This is, like, not ironically, possibly my favorite Christopher Walken role. My favorite Christopher Walken scene is him smashing bear hall after bear hall with his anvil. That might be my favorite Christopher Walken scene ever. So I love that music wise. I do love the opening scene where they’re doing their farewell show is like, you know, kind of Allman Brothers style, and they’re just like jumping at stage, diving the camera and they’re like terrifying bears. I love that. That’s tape. There was a quote from Christopher Walken where he was comparing the script to the country bears to Deer Hunter.

They both involve four petal animals. Quad. Quadrupedal animals. Why did I say four first? I don’t know. So there, there’s. You can compare something there. But maybe his character, I don’t know, he saw something. There’s another quote with him saying, this is the best script I’ve ever gotten. Which. That has to be a lie. That can’t be right. There’s no. I mean, even as a country bear apologist, this cannot be the best script you’ve ever come. I don’t know. Because when you’re reading the script, you don’t hear the music that they stick into it. So maybe sans music that some.

Something about this movie actually comes across. I don’t know. It’s a good experiment. Just cut all the music out and Rewatch it. It does come well. I think I can do that in my head because that’s kind of how I watch the movie. I mean, let’s. Let’s look into the songs here. Kick it into gear. I can remember what that sounds like right now. So. Okay, that’s good that I’m only in it for the honey. That’s the one with Brian Setzer and Steven Root as the bear. I don’t remember what it sounds like, but that one’s mildly entertaining.

We got to do it. Yeah, yeah. I think the crystal one, even though, I mean, one, she wasn’t terrible, but in the context of the movie, you’re like, what’s happening? And also, come play with me in the video. No, that’s too late. You’ve already done the track. What are we talking about here? It doesn’t matter if he has a harmonica. You know, some of. Some of those songs come at the weirdest points. So let me get into what my theory is on this movie first, because it might help fuel some of the other observations. I think that this movie does what Grizzly man was trying to do.

And in that it’s trying to break down this barrier that should exist between humans. Not intended. It’s meant to put. To break down the barrier so that we look at bears as if humans could intermingle with them. Which is, again, if you haven’t seen Grizzly Man’s documentary about a guy that moves out to Alaska and lives with bears pretty much full time. He goes every year, and then one year he. He stays for almost the entire year, and then he gets eaten viciously. And everyone kind of has this polarizing view on what. Whether he. What he did was right or wrong.

Timmy. Oh, my camera’s last name. But. But Timothy. I want to say Tread. I’m gonna call him Treadmill. I know it’s not Treadmill, but Timothy Treadmill. He ends up dying. And people either like man, he brought awareness to these bears and what a, you know, beautiful human being. And then a lot of other people saying he kind of deserved what he got, and he ruined this because he’s. He took one. One guy was in a museum and he’s talking about his. And his Eskimo ancestors and. Which might be a problematic word or whatever, his Eskimo ancestors.

And he’s talking about how for 7, 000 years people knew to separate themselves from bears, to stay far away from them, to not try and intermingle. And this one guy comes and breaks all that down in the course of A decade or two and sort of ruins that and, and starts to make bears feel like they’re being domesticated in a way that they don’t belong. And that’s exactly what the country bears does. They, they normalize bears living in human society and vice versa. Although it just seems to be the country bears and their entourage and Barry, those are the bears in this movie.

There’s like 2020 anamorphic, you know, walking and talking bears in the world or I don’t know, because it seems like everyone else is human. I, I thought that too the entire time. Except there’s a scene in the car wash and there’s a whole bunch of bears working in the background at the car wash that are clearly not musicians. But the, the human to bear ratio in this movie is wildly inconsistent. That makes you think that if you walked by and you saw a bear talking or playing guitar at all, you’d be like, oh my God, that’s what an anomaly, right? The fact that there’s a country bears group but there’s not a lot of other, like you would expect going around, that there would be differently sized cars and different like advertisements for bears and like as if it were an actual society that was intermingled.

You don’t, you don’t get that at all. It’s the weird thing that takes me out of this movie. Maybe that maybe bears are third class citizens in the society because other than the country bears and even. What’s his name? Ted. Ted Betterhead. Even him, they think, oh, he’s a rich bear now. But no, no, he’s just playing the wedding. Right? But there are rich bears out there. Or they were just shocked, you know, like, oh my God, you’re the first rich bear. Because, you know, we thought we were doing the best because we had this band.

Otherwise you’re just working at the car wash. I mean, I do think that that’s one of the weird plot holes. Another one that I was trying to wrap my head around is that Christopher Walken plays the evil banker and he just wants to smash this music hall that the bears play in and it’s over. I don’t know, $20,000. And I looked up the inflation rate, which is a little bit scary, but 20 grand in 2002 is about 36 grand in 20, 25. So they owe the banks to the worst number. They owe the banks, you know, 40 grand roughly.

And he is hell bent on not letting them pay the money back. He doesn’t want them to raise the money just so he can crush their House. But what, what bank incentive is he going on? He just has a fetish for destroying the bears environment. Does he represent like capitalism or something? And the. And the bears represent Russian communism. Well, remember the big plot twist at the end which shows the seeds of his discontent with. He was the arm fardist. Arm artist. Arm artist. Right. He’s. He was playing what, the 1812 Overture with his armpit. So.

And then the Country Bears won the talent show. So he has that gripe. He has that grievance against them, which is funny. I mean, I don’t. I mean, you could call that a plot hole because it’s so stupid, or you could just enjoy it because it’s so stupid. Either or. Yeah, I mean, he. He’s blaming the bears for winning over something that would have lost to any competition. But it’s. I guess it’s just pure coincidence that he ends up being the. The banker assigned to this particular case. Or as he spent his entire time working through the banking system just to enact revenge against the Country Bears.

I mean, you know, just. There’s not a whole lot I found in production here, of course. The Jim Henson, Crimson Shop, Creature Shop. Brian Henson. Doing it this time is making the bear suits, which are phenomenal. Every time I watch this movie, I’m like, come on, it’s CG and it’s not. So that’s cool. But the Country Bears only made $5.3 million in its opening weekend, ranking in sixth place behind Austin Powers and Gold. Member. Okay. Word of Perdition. Okay. Stuart Little two sound a little rough. Men in Black two. Oh, no. And K19, the Widowmaker. My worst date movie ever.

That is a true story. This one, I was doing environmental education. I was working at a. A camp in the Poconos. And there are these Russian girls there, and I was like, kind of dating one, so I took her to that one. I’m like, some of the. They speak in Russian in the movie, so, you know, maybe she’ll enjoy that. And then. And I’m thinking it’ll be like Crimson Tide or Red October. No, no, no. It’s a very grim movie about people dying of radiation sickness inside a submarine. There was some Russian spoken by Americans. We went on one or two more dates after that.

Sort of the Country Bears. And that was what ended it. I should have taken her Country Bears. Yeah, we should have seen the Country Bears instead. But I probably, well, didn’t know it existed. Obviously had no one knew it existed. That because they closed the ride down, nobody cared anymore. On Rotten Tomatoes Film received a rating of 29%. Okay. Metacritic, a little better. 37. There’s your inflation there. New York Times, two out of five. Yeah, nobody likes this. You do have to be an apologist for this movie, and you do have to be an apologist because mistakes were made.

But I. I do like the good parts. So this is definitely like, you know, the steak where you got to cut off the. There’s lots of gristle and fat. But the rest of it is kind of nice for me. I also really feel that every Disney movie, if you look into it enough, you can figure out what they were trying to teach kids or what. Whoever in the writer room was. Maybe not necessarily the Disney Corporation. They just want you to buy stuff and go and see more Country Bears things when you go to the park.

But I think by this and that, you did buy. Yeah, in the writer’s room. I think they’re trying to explain to kids, here’s how all your favorite musicians are gonna end up falling off. And they give you a scenario for pretty much every version. You’ve got the druggie that, you know, loses everything. This is. In this movie, Honey is representing both drugs and alcohol, I believe, because they’re talking like, you know, put the honey down or quit the honey and get back into this. And they go, and they see Queen Latifah, who works in a honey bar, which I guess is somewhere between the mixture of a dive bar and, like, a cannabis dispensary.

Yeah, that’s the vibe I got. Although I haven’t been in a cannabis dispensary because I haven’t been in the state since 2010. I’ve been in that dude’s apartment, you know, okay, so. So that’s one way that everything go wrong. There’s another one where a couple breaks up. There’s a version where a guy gets too big for his own ego, which is Ted, that ends up lying to everyone, and he ends up just becoming a wedding singer. You’ve got the ones that just straight up get bitter because they didn’t make money. You got the promoter that, like, screws everyone up.

Like, it actually spells out for children. Here’s what’s going to happen to your favorite music groups as you start growing up. And you’re like, man, how do. How do these great musicians break up? Well, if you’ve seen the Country Bears movie, you sort of have a template. This is also. Isn’t this, like, prime behind the Music Time? This is when VH1 is just, like, showing you five hours of behind the Music in a row. So I think that’s kind of like, on everyone’s minds at this point. I mean, even now, I could go back and watch it behind the Music, probably be pretty entertained.

They all have the same arc. They have to force it on some artists. But, you know, it usually works. It’s kind of evergreen until the artists themselves just lose all relevance. Yeah. So I do feel like the Country Bears is kind of like, following that template a little bit. There’s a scene at the end, just a very specific one, where betterhead comes back to Barry’s bedroom. I’m like, this is exactly the same scene that’s at the end of Almost Famous, which I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but I think. No, I think there’s a lot of homages in this movie to other movies.

There’s also a lot of crossover to sort of psych rock, like psychedelic rock. I don’t know how much of an expert you are on this particular. Extremely crossover. Okay. I used. Okay. I used to have it when we all blogged. I had a blog. And hey, people, go check it out if you want. It was a Dr. Schloose’s garage of psychedelic obscurities where I would review obscure psych albums from mostly this. Well, actually from any time, but, you know, mostly from 60s and 70s and some later stuff, too. So I was doing a little bit of a deep dive on this particular crossover where psychedelic rock meets kind of country music and this Lawrence White, Graham Parsons.

Graham Parsons, Yeah. Cosmic American music. See, that’s like, I told you, my fingers are. I’m a white guy that’s from the South. They just. It plays country music if I just don’t think about it. So. And Graham Parsons from Georgia. So I think sometimes I have a similar approach where I’m like, I have the skill set that actually is quite country, but I want to trip out, too. Maybe that’s part of the appeal of this movie, if you’re making the connection. But he grew up in Central Florida as well. Okay. And also I think it was Valdosta, Georgia, which is more like Florida, I think, than Atlanta, you know, so the Florida vibe is probably close to Grant Parsons vibes.

I mean, Tom Petty. Right. Speak. Speaking of bringing on musicians who didn’t play. What is it? I got my mind set on you. Which. Where he has two Beatles and three Beatles guitars in the videos. But I don’t think the Beatles played on the song. No, that’s a George Harrison song. Sorry. It’s A different, different time. But it’s a Tom Petty song that has model Beatles because, you know, I got a telecaster, YouTube, I was like, give me nostalgia to play my Telecaster, too. And that often comes up. Well, part of the point being is that a lot of the background posters we see and artists that they name drop, they talk about playing with Vanilla Fudge, which is a Long island psych band.

They talk about. Not a good one. But yes, yes, you would talk about it. Canned Heat and Dave Mason and so there. So clearly the Country Bears are not as much country as they are sort of Leonard Skynyrd. Ish. Canned Heat psych. Quasi. So like Allman Brothers, for sure. And honestly, the Allman Brothers is probably one of the better analogies here, especially for their final kind of giveaway concert. I had to go through Leonard Skynyrd because as a teenager, we go and smoke weed in a parking lot near my house, right? And I learned, like, not like a kilometer from my house or whatever.

And I later learned that that parking lot was the parking lot of what used to be a studio in which Lynyrd Skyny recorded, like, Sweet Hood, Alabama and Freebird. I’m like one. I was like, what? They record this, like a five minute walk from my house. That’s crazy. So that. Yeah, I don’t like Larry and Scared that much, to be perfectly honest. But I. I can play those songs, though. But I have had someone shout, play Freebird at a gig back when I used to be a gigging musician, so you probably have, too. I’ve heard that.

That’s my. It’s one of my favorite Bill Hicks skits, actually, is when he goes off on people for shouting free Bird. No, actually, I remember a drummer then. Kind of more of a Blues Brothers vibe than Country Bears. But, yeah, he booked us. And he was. The one time he booked a show for us and it turned out to be like a very rednecking bar. And someone screamed that. And I think, yeah, it was very much like my real life experience of, you know, the Blues Brothers. A country bar thing. Well, there might be a Western.

There might be a connection here, too, to the Grateful Dead. Right. Because those are also known as bears. And they also kind of go on these tours. Yeah, they’re not country, but they definitely do roots. You know, Working Man’s dad. You could kind of call that a country album. Sure. Right. But I mean, if you’re going on tour with Vanilla Fudge, I feel like you’re in the same ballpark, right, as Grateful Dead would Be who you might also see maybe playing alongside Vanilla Fudge. I. I think if you’re making this movie, though, you do are like, oh, we actually have to draw a line between the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Lynyrd Skynyrd makes the most sense. That’s what they mostly follow. Except that 75 of the band dies in the mid-70s. I was just thinking, man, that would have been like a more realistic. Is that half the. Like, they can’t get the full band together because half of them died in a plane crash. That would have given it just a little bit more gravitas. But then There is a 1991, I believe, same as the farewell show in this movie. But I think that’s when there’s a kind of Lynyrd Skinner reunion with, you know, the two guys that were still around and some other folks, right? So.

But then you don’t want to put like. Yeah, you don’t want to put like, half the bears or more died in a. In a plane crash in the. In the movie. So that. That would be. I mean, that would be a bummer. You know, Nobody wants that. Your favorite scene, I assume, the one where Christopher Walken is just smashing a model of the bears. I sometimes watch that scene on YouTube. Isolated. Okay. @ the very beginning of that scene, it pans out and it shows that he’s wearing these big floppy bunny sneakers, right? These, like, fuzzy funny bunny slippers.

He’s a maniac. And as he walks back to his desk, there’s this bronze owl that’s in this pose, like it’s about to freaking snatch up a rabbit. And I was. I was just trying to figure out what the symbolism was there. Like the. The owl symbolism and the rabbit symbolism, or is this just Christopher Walken just being crazy? I’m willing to go with Christopher Walken this. I just called him a maniac. So, yeah, that scene. I actually have a student, one of my most difficult students at the end of class for elementary students, they get a gold sticker, a blue sticker, or a red sticker.

He’s the only student that’s gotten the red sticker. But sometimes I’ll do a countdown, you know, okay, everyone chill out. And then he’ll be like, oh, no. Right? And he’s done this so many times. So a few weeks ago, I actually showed him the videos. Like, are you doing this? He’s like, no, I’ve never seen that before. I think his English, Mr. Bill. Huh? Mr. Bill. Is that what you’re showing him. Oh, no, no, I’m showing him Christopher Walken crushing country bear hanging. Oh, no, sorry, I added a little too much Mr. Bill stank because I was trying to do an eight year old child.

But okay, the Mr. Bill part was me trying to a kid. Otherwise I was like, are you trying to Christopher Walken the country Bears? Which turned out, although I think maybe he saw me doing it at some point and then started doing it for me. More sense than a. Still might be. Yeah. What Japanese 8 year old has seen the Country Bears and likes the Christopher Walken scene enough to quote it back to you? Yeah, so I might have, you know, it might be my own poison in this case. Him doing that is not the most annoying thing, by the way.

But then there’s a scene where there. Basically the entire premise of this movie. I don’t even know if this one necessarily needs a summary, but here’s the. Here’s the summary. 40 minutes in. Watch behind music. Barry Barrington. The dumbest name ever spelled B, E, A, R, Y. They have to spell it in the movie. The cops. Yeah, they even spell it out. They tell the police after he gets kidnapped because there’s got to be a Disney proxy in here. He technically runs away, but then I guess it’s kind of like a kidnapping, but he’s running away to.

People say it’s a kidnapping. I actually did kind of halfway through, think there isn’t one. But you can make your case. It’s fine. Okay. So the premise of the movie is that this human family, I’m gonna say, stole a bear from a national park when it was, you know, still a bear cub, raised it as if it were a human, lied to him, told him that he wasn’t adopted, that he was actually part of this human family. And then the brother starts teasing him and telling him, like, hey, you’re clearly not a human, you’re a bear.

Like you are adopted. This is not where you should be living. And he runs away and he finds the country bears because he. I mean, imagine that as he’s growing up, he looks up to these country bears because he kind of sees something in them that he relates to, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. Since you mentioned, he is like one of the dumbest protagonists in any Disney movie ever, including every princess with no agency. And he meets up with the country bears. They’re broken up. He helps them get the band back together.

They throw a concert, they beat the banker. Everyone lives happily ever after. Or at least long enough to overdose on drugs. Yeah, the script writes itself. Really? Yes, the script writes itself. There’s. You don’t have to think of a story. You just plug in the parts. But all the things you say, he’s the dumbest protagonist. He runs away. He leaves his. His runaway note with, like, claw marks on it, which I love. Also, the baby pictures are like, here’s my baby picture, which is a baby, and here’s yours. It shows, like, a ranger holding a baby bear upside down.

I’m like, I don’t know. That’s my kind of humor. For whatever reason, I don’t know if I’m expecting too much or maybe I missed part of this. But the real. If you were to boil down what’s the actual issue with this movie, or, like, what’s. What is the protagonist trying to get out of it is that he thinks that he might be adopted and he’s trying to figure out what actually happened to his parents and where he came from. And we never really get that resolution. I thought for sure there was going to be some insider joke where he was, like the love child of one of the bears when they were on tour and, you know, oh, my God, he’s my kid or something.

I. I would have bet money that there was going to be some kind of B plot like that. But instead, we don’t get any resolution. Right. The. The lie about him being not adopted and part of this human family never gets dispelled. No one ever actually sits him down and says, okay, Barry Barrington, actually, you’re a bear and not a human and we stole you from a park. Do you think he figured that out by the end? No, I don’t think he figured that out. I love that. Okay, that’s great. That. That does allow that almost famous scene at the end a little bit if he’s not like a love child.

So. So that. But that works out. But, yeah. Yeah, it’s almost like, yeah, no one thought to do that. You know, like, the script got three passes by some very funny people, and then they just, you know, made it. They spent the rest of their time making those suits. Animaniacs writer, I believe, is one of the people that was behind this movie. Okay. So, yeah, they’re. They’re very good jokes in this. I think at least they’re key to me. I might be dumb myself. Maybe I’m a Barry Barrington, you know, I think I’m Japanese. I really think so.

I guess getting married is a weirder reason to think that, but, no. And I also don’t think that we should, I guess, get a little more. Yeah, like, just all the cameos in here. Like. Yeah, you mentioned it was the Animaniacs person. Animaniacs, did you say? That’s Warner Brothers. Okay. They. They jump teams. Yeah. I believe that it was a writer on Animaniacs that was involved in this movie. I didn’t. I didn’t write anyone’s name down, of course. Why would I? But. But it had. It has comedic DNA in it. And I guess if you were to bring up all of the movies that include musicians in them, it’s still not bad compared to all the other movies with musicians in them.

And I guess this is topical because War of the Worlds with Ice Cube just came out recently, which set a new low bar for everybody. I have to watch that for the bad movie podcast, Birthday Choices. It comes out, it’s like, man, now we have to watch. No, the. The. Our co host is from the town that H.G. wells is from. He’s like, we have to do all the 2005 World War of the Worlds. He’s like, we’re doing the Tom Cruise one. There’s apparently, like, two others from 2005. And then I get. Yeah, I got a.

I got a DM a few days ago. Oh, we got to do another one. So I got a month to watch four War of the Worlds, including the Ice Cube one. I’d love. I would love to know, too, because I’ve heard, without a lot of substantiation, but some conspiracy theories that claimed the Rockefeller foundation actually funded money for the original War of the Worlds to be performed by Orson Welles, and that it was. It was a experiment on the public to see how they would react. So is Citizen Kane his reward? Like, if you do this for us, we’ll let you just have full control to make a movie.

Because that’s, like, the only time. That’s. That’s basically the only time someone has had that much control over a movie in Hollywood. Plus Kubrick. Okay. Plus Kubrick. Yes. We also might have done some favors for some. Some agencies. Yeah. So it’s kind of do a real solid for agency, and you can make your own movies. I don’t know. And that’s how you get country bears. Would you, again, I generally consider. Like, I like to think we went to the moon because I’m a space guy, but I also like to think of Kubrick faking the moon landing ethically.

If you fake the moon landing. But now you get to make, like, five just perfect movies. Is that ethically? Is that okay? What do you think? Oh, yeah, no, my ethics are. Are, you know, okay, I’ll take a moon landing to make the shining. 100%. 100%. Okay. I was curious where you’re still in that country bears probably not like who directed this. I don’t think that Peter Hastings did any favors for the CIA. Well, let’s see if he did. Let’s see what he made. Kung Fu Panda, Legends of Awesomeness. You mentioned Animaniacs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I guess they mean the animation. In that case, Pinky in the Brain. Okay. It’s still Animaniacs, but yeah. Oh, he’s Film wise. It’s just this and something animated called Dogman from this year. Okay. Huh. Captain Underpants. Yeah, he’s. He’s a kids movie maker. Okay. Got him. And I mean, you’re the one that really liked this movie. So does that come across the. What? What? The Animaniacs part. Animaniacs. Pinky in the Brain, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Does that come across? I guess. The jokes themselves I like. I love Pinky and the Brain jokes. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I was. I was slightly a few years older than you, so I did have some of the toys because they were cool, but I was like, no. I read the comic book. It’s dark. They all have red bandanas and that. And then of course, I played the hell out of the NES game where you can never make it through the water level. So the cartoon itself, I did not watch that much. I read more of the comic book, actually. Yeah, the animation is definitely. Yeah, it was like a hole in my. My kid because I had a chip on my shoulder as a 10 year old from the game and.

No, the original comic, I had this big thick omnibus of like all the Kevin and Eastman stuff. So, you know, black and white. It’s not in color. Colors for babies. Unless you read X Men. X Men’s in color. That’s fine. You know, you have your double standards as a child too. I. I also noticed Queen Latifah makes an appearance in this movie at the very end in the credits we get like, Wyclef Jean is in the credits. Exhibits in the credits exhibit even mentions that he sampled a baseline from the country bears and the guy sued him over it.

Ah, yeah, yeah, that’s. That’s a good one. Elton John’s the gardener again who owns the house. I guess they reuse that joke in the most recent Bill and Ted, don’t they? Speaking of Dave Grohl again, when He’s When Elton John says I hate bears and everyone laughs. Was that a gay joke? Yes, especially, yeah. Because famously everyone in Atlanta knew they had a penthouse apartment in Atlanta and spent a bunch of his time there. So he was, you know, usually in the brookhaven bar. Not usually, but he’s in the Brookhaven bars. Tower records. He would just go there an hour before opening and buy every new release.

He’d show up every week at the Atlanta tower records. And I do know people who were presiding over him as he would show up early at the tower records. There was some inside joke for people that are struggling musicians, I guess too, or like trying to be musicians, that when they go to a little cafe and the waitress is serving them and she recognizes the country bears. And I assume that you would. Right. Because again, the only place we see them is if you’re not working at a car wash, then you’re in the country bears or you’re working in a car wash.

Those are the two options. Or a sweatshop. We don’t see the sweatshops. We don’t. And we. And when she’s going to take their order, she mentioned she knows them and she sings a version of one of their songs and then she goes into a full blown song and dance. It turns into. That’s Buzzly Berkeley. See, there we go. That’s maybe that song I don’t hate. I don’t like, but I am like, that whole sequence is like Jennifer Page song. Yeah, yeah. That sequence here is general is truly impressive as they’re rolling this, like breaking apart the sets and rolling it around and then bringing it back together production wise, you’re like, that’s impressive.

It turn. It turns into a proper musical at that point. But it’s also weird because instead of ending when the song ends, you’d expect the camera to like maybe zoom in or pan out and then go to the next scene. The song just ends. And then she continues taking their order. I love that. That’s a. I mean that’s a good like kind of meta joke, you know? Well, and they kind of joke because it’s like, oh, yeah, you’ve wanted to be a musician. Well, it’s not a joke. That’s a joke. Like, right. That’s a. Hmm. He’s just taking their order now.

But yeah, I like that. I’m. Yeah. Again, somehow, I guess the sensibility of the scripted part of this movie is very keyed into my sensibilities. And then I do have a dumb love of the country bear. Not as Much as the Haunted Mansion. Haunted Mansion number one for me as far as, like, weird, dumb lore, but country bears number two, Tiki Room. I never quite. I mean, I’ll go, but it’s. I. I love the song as a kid, but I’ve never quite gotten into the. The Tiki Room depths. That one could have a movie, but it would need to be like, hypercube.

Yeah. Jungle Cruise. We’re gonna be doing that movie. Last time on the Jungle Cruise, there was a very good guy. Tour guide for the boat, of course, is on Japanese, but very emphatic Japanese. And, hey, I actually understood 60% of it. So my Japanese is getting better. After they go to the bar and they’re eating and they get their song and dance from the waitress and everything, the two bumbling cops come in, I guess point out that one of those cops is also the voice of one of the bears, which is hard to not hear. Oh, I thought you were about to say the depressing part of one of the cops.

Are you familiar with that? That during filming he got into a motorcycle accident, became paralyzed, and then. Advocate for paraplegic actors. Yeah. Daryl Mitchell. Officer Ham. So that is a little. If you know that watching this movie, it’s a touch of a bummer. Right? And then he was in Galaxy Quest, so he’s good in that. So he was a rapper in the late 80s, too, and something called Groove Be Chill or something like that. Okay, sure. Why not? I can be chill. And who is the other police officer? I recognize him from so many freaking things.

Yeah, hold on. Let’s see. Well, name is not standing up to me. Carl Dietrich Baker. Dietrich Bader. He’s been the Drew Carey show, which I never really watched. American Housewife, which I never saw outsourced. He’s in a bunch of TV shows I haven’t seen. So maybe you’ve seen some of these shows. No, no, I. I think that’s. That was the. Yeah. Diedrich Bader. So he’s the one that also not only plays one of the cops, but he plays Ted Betterhead in this movie. He plays one of the bears on top of that. Okay. Did he. Okay, I didn’t catch that at the end.

I believe Ted, the one that they find at the wedding that is lying about being this famous bear musician. He’s really just a wedding singer. That’s the exact same voice as the. The police officer. He doesn’t even change it. Okay, I’m an idiot because I didn’t notice that. Although, getting back to where I teach, we made These videos of kids songs, right. And I recorded all the music. You know, I sang and played, made the tracks. But I work at a different school, so I’m not in the video. So, you know, three and four and five year olds, they’re like, why aren’t you in the video? Because there’s all these teachers in the video.

I’m like, well, you’re hearing me. And they never understand that concept that everything you’re hearing is me, you’re just not seeing me. So I can’t get angry at them because I made the same mistake with the Country Bears. I didn’t make the connection. He’s kind of the perfect person to be in this movie because he tends to be a dumb yokel, redneck archetype. For example, he plays Jethro in the Beverly Hillbillies movie. He also plays in the movie Office Space. He’s the one that’s like, what would you do with a million dollars? And he says, two chicks at the same time, man.

Like, he’s, he’s kind of the blue collar construction worker archetype. So it would make sense that he not only has a role in this movie, he’s got two roles in this movie. Let’s see, who did I recognize? Stephen Tobolowski. He’s the guy who wants to sell you insurance and Groundhog Day and Memento. So he stands out. Sure. Also there, there’s a scene as they’re going through all the different band members because essentially the plot of the movie is they’re traveling all over the country and finding these different band members and their new walks of life and then convincing them to come back and join the band.

And one, they never left the Southeast. Well, okay. One of them is a marriage counselor and he’s giving counseling to. I want to say the lady was in SNL or on Mad TV or something, but that was one of the interesting scenes is because he just starts crying. He’s a marriage counselor that cries. And then that makes them feel better. It’s kind of the, the ultimate NLP trick is that you, you kind of build rapport by going through what they’re going through and then just turn it up a notch. Well, they do call him a genius or whatever on the way out.

Right. He’s good at what he does. They, they, they, they recognize the, the, the neuro linguistic programming. So I couldn’t get the letters out in the right order, so I just had to say the whole thing, NLP there. So you have to think about it and you can hear me Thinking about it when I say it. Also, this just a random tangent that I went down, but they make a blue hair joke in this movie because when they go to the wedding, there’s an old lady sitting down and eating or whatever, and all the bears immediately go to where the food’s at, just like a normal bear would.

And they sit. Two huge bears sit down on either side of this old lady, and they start complimenting her on her blue hair. And. And I’ve heard of old, older women called blue hairs before. And do you know why? I just had to look this up. And I. And I guess it makes sense. Do tell. In Japan, it’s purple hair. Like, because. Okay, same, same difference. Old ladies will simply dye their hair purple, and I still don’t know why. Okay, here’s the reason. Is because when you lose all the pigment in your hair, it basically will turn white.

But because of the elements and just other reasons, that white can very easily start to get stained and turn yellow. So now you’ve got, like, you know, like a heavy smoker with a white beard. You start seeing that yellow discoloration. So they make special shampoos and dyes that have a blue slash purple hue to them, which is supposed to counteract the yellow. But if you overdo it, then you go so far over the spectrum that now your hair looks purple or blue instead of looking yellow. But that’s the entire point, and that’s why they look purple or blue is this.

They’ve got, like, that special toothpaste that. That’s like a tooth whitener. And all it really does is just puts like a. Like a blue or a purple coating and it. And it kind of neutralizes the yellow. So Grandma’s not a hipster? No, not as cool. But honestly, as we age and we see old ladies with purple hair, it’ll probably be for a different reason because they went and dyed their hair purple. Sometimes you do wonder if Grandma’s trying to be a hipster. So let me just scroll through my notes here. Oh, here’s a weird thing. I didn’t notice this until I was watching it last night, but.

Or two nights ago, whatever it was. But they say they. They stole or whatever Barry from. From the National Park Service and then just sat him down in front of Barney the dinosaur. And that made him human. Yes. Okay, that. That was, again, funny joke. I like that. But then I was like, that’s an interesting thing to think about. Very MK Ultra. I would say that. Yeah, yeah, that’s why he stood out. Also, at the, towards the end when the human brother Dexter is trying to talk to the police and he’s like, look, my brother wasn’t kidnapped.

He’s with the Country Bears. They’re going on tour, they’re going to play music. The cops like, yeah, yeah, kid, whatever. We’ve seen this a million times. Like, we don’t have to listen to you. They’re kind of being Keystone Cops to like, like an annoying extent. But then, oh, this is the most keystone the cops get since what, the late 20s? Well, that this is when one of the cops tells Dexter, he’s like, listen, son, you can be sure that they’re keeping him in some creepy underground lair. And in, in my head I’m just thinking like, and I would know because I represent a Disney’s writer room.

And this is what happens when you keep them underground. Yeah, you keep them into these underground layers. And of course, like, this again is Disney speaking to a new generation of children. Just letting them know, hey, here’s how the world works. Here’s how your favorite artists are going to fall off. Here’s a euphemism for drugs, for bands breaking up over women. And by the way, there are people out there that will kidnap you and put you on an underground lair. And I mean, if, if you keep extrapolating like, okay, what happens after they kidnap me and put me in their underground lair? It gets really dark and I, and I guess just kudos to Disney for sort of being self aware enough to know that they’re helping perpetuate what kidnappers would do to children.

I also think this movie is probably just a little bit off of the mainline Disney because when they do pirates, they are like, you know, let’s make this work, let’s hire Johnny Depp, blah, blah, blah. At this point, I feel like this movie is kind of being made without too much oversight. Like there’s, I’m sure there’s corporate notes, but someone forgot that this was in production and they just kind of like, that’s why they closed the ride. Also, what you were talking about before, how the Country Bears originally was going to be part of a ski resort and there was going to be maybe surfer bears and country bears and who knows what other jazz cat bears.

I do. I really in my heart of hearts believe that there could have been, instead of a Country Bears movie, it could have been like a hip hop bears movie. They, they already had Queen Latifah and exhibit and Wycliffe Jean in this movie. And I don’t, I don’t see A reason why you couldn’t have thug rapper bears be just as cool as country bears. Yeah. You have to change the name and then wouldn’t fit the ride anymore. You do lose that synergy, which was the point. Let’s make a movie based on this ride that said with the.

The people they got on board. That would make a fair amount of sense. Or the Country Bears go hip hop. I don’t know that. That would be pretty raw. It would know in a good. In a good, almost destructive way. But the same way that if you had Beach Boy bears, then that also means in this. This bear musician universe, there’s like a Charles Manson bear, and there’s like a whole Brian Wilson, you know, like, going crazy bear. Well, he could marriage counsel people. By the way, was it Dexter? The. The other son was the human son.

Yeah. How. For. I’m gonna say 90s. I know this movie’s 2002, but let’s say, how do you rate him in the pantheon of 90s annoying, arrogant children? Oh, he’s not so bad. I. I put him, like, he’s on the better end. Yeah. He’s on the level of Derek from Bobby’s World. Okay. Because. Because he is often funny, which is not usually. That kid’s annoying. Right. So. But if you go back and you watch this movie, he is the only voice of reason. He’s the only one that goes to his brother in his room, and he’s like, look, dude, you can’t be this dumb.

Like, look at. Here’s a picture of my birth certificate. Here’s the chain, like the clamp that they had around your neck when they found you. Here’s a picture of me as a baby. Here’s a picture of you being held by a park ranger as a baby. I already told you, I thought that was hysterical. So they actually do manage to make it work pretty well. But they make it seem as though he’s being bad or that he’s being mean, but really, he’s telling this bear. He’s like, hey, dude, you need to go and be free. You shouldn’t be living like a human with us.

This is not your. Your nature. He’s a truth teller. He is a. He’s a truther, but he doesn’t get. He doesn’t get the respect. And I almost. I would almost give a good analogy for Sid from Toy Story, where he’s ultimately doing something altruistic, but it’s not cohesive to selling more movie tickets or park tickets. So therefore, he gets turned into a villain. I just want to spit. Spit gun. I’ll use again through some. Why want to say that today? I don’t know. Some of my notes there and spit gun. Maybe. I just feel like it’s a good down hick term or something.

I don’t know. I love the walking line. Do you like the sound of punching wood? I do. I’m gonna have to find a place to use that in my everyday life. I. I really. I don’t understand what Christopher Walken was doing in this movie. I guess I’m coming around the surreal abstract aspect to it, but as it’s going through. Yeah, I don’t know. He threw me off. I. This is the first time that I think I’ve seen this movie. So I was not expect. When he keeps crushing this freaking bear house over and over again with this comically large anvil that just comes out of nowhere and then it shows.

He’s got a pile of these and he’s gonna keep doing it. Even after like the five or six times we see him do it. It’s like, oh, this is the rest of his afternoon. I just. I don’t understand it. It’s. I’m still trying to figure out what he was doing here. All because they beat him in a school music competition where he was trying to play music with his armpit. I think you just explained why it’s so great, at least in my terms. But something else. When Big Al’s putting up the destroy signs and I really wish Disney would actually use in the theme parks, you know, please be patient while we destroy the rivers of America.

Destroy. What does that mean from Barry? I also want to point out that the. The plot line for Barry Barrington is wildly close to Walt Disney’s storyline too. Right. Where he thought that he was being raised by a family that had kidnapped him from a young age and that he was adopted and that he wasn’t a. He was living in this foreign world with these foreign people. So there’s. There’s a interesting analogy with Barry Barrington and Walt Disney himself. I think this was the whole premise for the FBI enticing him to become special Agent in charge is that they were going to help him trace his actual family.

This is all based on Hollywood’s Dark Prince, which is the unauthorized Walt Disney biography. Of course. Barry took his own initiative. He just went. He wrote that note, scratch it up, and got out Dodge, you know, And. And I would almost say is this retroactive Disney proxy. When you find out that you were kidnapped a long time ago and you’re just like. I guess he never really comes to terms with it, right? He. Even at the end of the movie, you don’t get a resolution in that. But it’s clearly something that’s eating away at him at like a.

Like a very profound level. So I wonder, is. Is this the Disney proxy just in a very subtle bear way? Well, as I said, I was watching a movie thinking, no. But I am thinking about the ride and how you adapt it, because there’s the baby bear who doesn’t really do anything. He just sits there holding a teddy bear, and he makes a noise as the bear rugs disappear. So there’s not much to do that on. So you do any. There’s nothing for that bear. And he’s the main character of this movie, basically. So you do have to concoct everything for Barry Barrington.

Is that Barry Barrington in the ride? I don’t know. I’m just saying that’s the only kid bear in the ride. Right. So I don’t think the name Barry Barrington didn’t come up when I was looking for the actual ride characters, so I know it was made specifically for this movie. No, that Tennessee Bears playing the one string thing. Baby Oscar. Okay, he’s got a different name. I mean, let’s see. Who are the five bear rugs? If he was kidnapped as a child, then really, Barry Barrington is his slave name. Right, like that. That’s the name that his white captors gave him, which makes more sense from this dumb family that they would call him Barry Barrington.

His name should be. Yeah, no, I’m looking. Yeah, they don’t. It is. Okay. Henry. We do have Henry. So Gomer, do we get Gomer? I don’t know if we could. Not by that name. We got a Zeke, right? We have a Zeke. We have one Z. We have a Zeb. Zed. Okay. Not Z. Okay, we got Zeb. Okay, but we don’t got Zeke. Brother Ted. Okay, we got Ted, but they better heads a. A name they added here. Big Fred, Tennessee Bear, Baby Oscar turns into Barry Barrington. Wendell is kind of here. Do you get Wendell by name? We don’t get Wendell by name.

Okay. He’s. He’s. He’s the one that falls in love with an octopus in the summer ride. The. The. The summer hoedown. Vacation hoedown. Romeo McGraw. Oh, yeah, yeah. We should get him Liver Lips McGraw. We should get him Liver Lips. That’s his real name. Okay. They renamed him two years ago, so it doesn’t count. Liver lips McGraw. Trixie’s here. We got Trixie, the only girl. I already bemoaned the fact that the Sunbonnet Trio is not here. Ernest the dude, the fiddle guy. We got a fiddle player. I don’t think they call him Ernest. So, no, no.

In this movie, that’s Tennessee, is the fiddle player. Teddy Barra. Teddy bear, I guess, right? Teddy bear. The swinging bear. She’s not here. That’s a crime. Big Al is here, which is. Is. That’s the most. That’s the easiest connect from the ride, I think. Big Al, the blood on the saddle guy in the ride. And then in the. For some reason, Japan, for summary things I’ve been working on the railroad, which is kind of weird, but whatever. But, yeah, he. Is he. Is he like a bear bodhisattva or something? Because he’s like an idiot, but he.

And he does dumb stuff, but then it makes things happen the correct way. He’s Buddha. Yeah, yeah. That’s what I’m getting at. He’s a living Buddha. Okay. That’s what I picked up from this movie. So Big Al, because he’s just depressing in the attraction, right? He’s singing him Blowing the Saddle. And even when they’re doing the. The Ballad of Davy Crockett at the end, you know, he’s still trying to play Blood on the Saddle. They say if you see Big Al on the road, you must kill him. Yeah. Oh, also, Blood on the Saddle by Tex Ritter, father of John Ritter.

The guy that did Blood on the Saddle is the father of the guy from Three’s Company. That’s wild. Well, not just Three’s Company. Also stay tuned. Oh, also State. Come on. There’s other things. The song gets stuck in my head a lot, so. Problem Child. Yeah, those. I don’t know what the theme to Stay Tuned or Problem Child is, but I’d certainly know the theme from Three’s Company. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see. I think I’m getting near the end of my notes. Stockholm syndrome kicks in quickly. Oh, yeah. They do actually kidnap Ted properly, don’t they? They do, yeah.

Because they don’t actually kidnap Barry. We keep saying kidnapped. Well, the parents, I guess, kidnapped. Or did the dark service just like, here, you want this bear? And they’re like, sure. Is that an adoption or is it bear napped? But yeah, yeah, bear napped. Okay. Sad. I sold my Dobro. I already said that. Oh, yeah, yeah. Ted makes all those points, like when they’re about to do the show, like, we need to rehearse. We need to get the Gear, blah, blah, blah. Five years later, they’re doing the show. None of that happened. Yeah, they don’t actually have to do any of that.

The promoter, like, all of that just kind of falls into place. Yeah. The promoter’s like, I didn’t do anything because the banker paid me. It doesn’t matter when’s out back. So that’s why I’m like, Big Al is like, you know, magical. Right. So none of this could happen without Big Al. Maybe. Although there might be a Field of Dreams aspect to this too. Like, if you build it, they will come. Because that’s kind of what happens in their middle. Middle of a big cornfield. Right. They build this thing to do this huge performance and show, and people just magically show up.

Oh, it just came to me now, and I thought it was last night. So I should throw this out as my final thoughts. Because I was thinking about Disney proxy watching us, and I was starting to think, is this a. Not inverted, but seeing it from the other side. Because in the Disney proxy, parent loses their parent, loses child loses their parent or whatever, and immediately meets a cute creature, which kind of saves. Helps them. Right. This is your new. Your new God here. We’re just starting with the cute creature. It’s like, he is the cute creature already.

So if he has a proxy, he’s already the cute creature. His parents are the villains in my mind, kind of. I guess. They’re so sweet baking villains, though. Mom is baked. I mean. But they did violate how many federal laws by stealing an actual bear and then raising it among mankind? I feel like that they violated God’s laws. I don’t know how many. See, I’m still wondering if we didn’t get so many of the details, or did I miss something? Because I do. How did they get Barry? We. Because we just see the park ranger holding him up.

Right? Correct. Yeah. At the very beginning picture. So you would think the park rangers, like, here’s your bear. So it seems like if. If the National Park Service is complicit, I still feel like that’s. This might be a quote unquote legit deal. I mean, you can traffic animals and nobody gets particularly pent up about it, usually unless you’re doing something horrible. I think the worst part of this movie is what, Again, what the grizzly man was trying to do, but in the worst way is that you’re normalizing bear and human interaction. And really, these two species should be completely separated from each other.

We shouldn’t be doing anything to foster a relationship between Bears and humans. Because as Werner Hersock says, bears have a immoral neutrality of nature like that. And Grizzly man, he’s living with them and he’s giving them names, and he’s kind of like anthropomorphizing them, just like we do in this movie, literally. Right? They’re anthropomorphic bears. They look all cuddly and everything, but really they are killing machines that will eat their own children. If they get hungry and there’s no promise of fish for a few days, they will literally tear apart their own children and consume them.

And I think that that needs to be better represented in country bears. It’s not for obvious reasons, but I. I feel that it. It does disservice to humanity. Okay, here, here we go. This is interesting. Unsolicited plug, I guess I. I told you why Japanese is being better. I’ve been paying for duolingo and doing that. So there’s unsolved. The point being some of the listening activities, it’s, you know, people sitting down a table, talking to a mic, and one of them is a bear. Falstaff. Right. And then you listen to humans have a conversation at the end.

He’s always like, you know, humans need to make plans and, and, and go to a restaurant, get their food. We just pluck out whatever’s from the water. So it’s always like humans are doing the complicated thing and bears just do this. I don’t know, it’s just an interesting, like, kind of modern. Right now. You go out and harvest and discover agriculture. I just eat my offspring. That’s what all you’re saying, the more hardcore version, like what you were saying just before, sounded like the stuff he says at the end of these listening activities without quite the gore level.

Right. But it’s basically the same thing. Right. So I just thought that’s interesting because that is, That’s a thing that is, you know, like kind of everyone kind of just like people that do it, they just kind of do it and they don’t talk to other people about it. And then suddenly everyone kind of starts knowing these characters, which is interesting from, from that, from the duolingo, because someone was referencing one of the characters on another podcast. I was listening. Oh, yeah, other people. Lots of people do interact with this, don’t they? So it’s a really like, kind of like, it’s just a one on one thing.

You in the, in the. In the IP and you don’t talk about with other people. But it actually is a pretty widespread thing. And Then it’s putting forth the point you just made. Like, why is a bear in the listening activity anyway? You know, you know, what it is is because we see another creature that can stand on two legs that’s roughly our size or larger. And the only way to not freak out and realize that there are absolute killing machines on this planet that would sever us limb from limb and not even think twice about it, that have no morals or ethics is that we have to anthropomorphize them and we have to pretend like we could train them into being these docile creatures, but they really do represent everything that we’re not in that case.

Right. So in the app, it’s like he’s sitting at a table, he’s got a fish, like, kind of like flopping on the table, but he’s got a mic, he’s got a recorder. And then everything is like, I can’t do anything that humans do, you know, Or. Or I do it differently and more violently and more primal. Except for play guitar. Oh, right, right. Do you have any other big points you want to throw out on the country bears today? I do think it represents country. Well, they hit some of the big points that you would expect from kind of backwoods rednecks country.

It’s got drug and alcohol abuse. It’s got a lady leaving her man and him potentially getting very depressed over that. It’s got car chases where they’re running away from the police and the police kind of getting hurt in the process and then like laughing at it. And it’s got Willie Nelson. So, I mean, it’s kind of. It hits all of the major. Willie Nelson helps. Yes. Hey, did you think that rich lady we were talking about earlier, the blue haired lady, looked a bit like Barbara Bush? 100%. Yeah. No, 100%. She looked like Barbara Bush in 2002.

Okay, weird thought. And my note is just, you want to talk about that? Because I didn’t have like a take, except that’s weird. Also, they’re playing country music on Fender Mustangs, which seemed a little weird. That doesn’t seem like a normal country guitar, but whatever. That’s me gear talking. So if I’m talking about that, that means I’ve made my points in there. That’s. That’s all I wanted. Yeah, I kind of felt like I needed to shout that out before, you know, podcast honey as a drug. That’s not a new concept, but I don’t know if you’ve ever brought that up in the context of Winnie the Pooh.

So now actually a drug addict who’s Honey Hunt is the ride in Tokyo. He’s. He’s lusting after that honey. He’s enraptured at the end of the ride. Look at a video of that one. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a view. As I was saying, I think a few days ago, you. You ride in the ride vehicle, and one of the ride vehicles just has, like, heffalumps in it. It’s fun, but it is a psychedelic honey dream as well. So, well, what’s going on in. In your bear world? Let’s see. Well, speaking of bears, I’ve been working on a new Kubrick comic, and you can actually sign up.

You’re gonna sign up for the newsletter and then you’ll get more in details about this as it comes out, but@kubrickcomic.com and it’s going to be breaking down Kubrick symbolism through all of his movies. I think this has been called Kubrickology. It’s going to talk about Kabbalah and it’s going to talk about Frasier’s Golden Bough, which is a topic that comes up very often in a lot of these Disney movies that we go over. So if you’re listening to this, you’ll probably really love this comic when it comes out. You can also just go to paranoidamerican.com and sign up for the newsletter there.

So Barry should have killed Ted Betterhead and become the leader of the band. I. That’s what happens in the sequel. It just hasn’t come out yet. As for me, I do a lot of podcasting. This is my second podcast of the Punch Punch Tree Bears. Country Bears. So if you go down to podcastio podcastius.org as you might see below, look for films and filth. Look for March 2024 and you can hear a very different conversation about this movie. I’m just saying that because I have no memory of what we said other than we talked about this movie.

So I feel like you could do that thing that’s synchronizing with what was it like Pink Floyd’s the Wall and wizard of Oz. You could probably take the soundtrack of the Country Bears and play it with Grizzly man and it syncs up. Ooh. Or just play them over the crappy songs in this movie, make you smile and snicker False threads and Secret Society. All of these and more on our sticker sheets. Explore the unique with Paranoid American sticker sheets, unearth tales of cryptids, cults and Mysteries through each sticker these won’t last long get yours now@paranoidamerican.com American stickers Cryptids Cult sanctuary Kill us kill us we got all your favorite conspiracies all I’ve ever been worn out of sticky sheets Now a North American sticker make you smile and snicker all these flags and secret society all of these and more on our sticker sheets what the heck are you waiting for? Discover the extraordinary with Paranoid American sticker sheets from cryptids in the night to cults out of sight each sticker is a unique find get yours now@paranoidamerican.com paranoid yo I scribbled my life away driven the right clothes page Will it enlight your brain give you the flight my plane paper the highs ablaze somewhat of an amazing feel when it’s real, the real you will engage it your favorite of course the lord of an arrangement I gave you the proper results to hit the pavement if they get emotional hate maybe your language a game how they playing it well without Lakers evade them whatever the cost they are to shapeshift snakes get decapitated Matt is the apex executioner flame you out nuclear bomb distributed at war rather gruesome for eyes to see max them out that I light my trees blow it off in the face you’re despising me for what though calculated and rather cutthroat Paranoid American must be all the blood spoke for real Lord give me your day away vacate they wait around to hate whatever they say man it’s not in the least bit we get heavy rotation when a beat hits so thank us you well fuck them for real you’re welcome they never had a deal you’re welcome man they lacking appeal you’re welcome yet they doing it still you’re welcome.
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