Episode Summary
On this episode, we’re talking about the 1995 classic Friday, starring Ice Cube and Chris Tucker. A film that’s still serving up laughs and quotables 30 years later. We get into what set Friday apart from the other so-called “hood” movies of the ’90s and early 2000s. While most leaned into violence and heavy drama, Friday took a different route, spotlighting the humor and everyday moments of life in the hood. Plus, we give a quick, spoiler-free review of One Of Them Days, a new release that share the same comedic DNA.
Transcript
Miguel: Welcome back to They Reminisce Over You, a podcast that takes a nostalgic look back at the best in movies, music, and TV from the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early 2000s. I'm Miguel.
Christina: And I'm Christina. And this week, we are discussing the impact of the movie Friday on us and the culture.
Miguel: One of my favorite movies of all time. So, are you ready to get into this?
Christina: I'm ready.
Miguel: What's that?
Christina: I changed it, I don't know. Let's do it.
Miguel: Okay. So, Friday came about after the success of films like Do The Right Thing and New Jack City and Boyz N The Hood. So, you know, you get movies like Juice or Trespass, Menace II Society, South Central, even the ones that are supposed to be like, a love story, like Jason's Lyric, always has to have this gritty, we're going to possibly die at any moment element. There could be drive-bys at any moment. We can't go outside. It has that feel to it. But Friday was different.
Christina: Yeah, Friday was different, even though there were some of those themes because it was still—because it was still set in South Central or what is called South LA now.
Miguel: Yes.
Christina: The difference was this was meant to be a comedy, though.
Miguel: Right.
Christina: There was some problems and there was a threat of death.
Miguel: There was.
Christina: But it was light hearted.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: It was still at the end of the day. You're like, nobody's going to die. It's meant to be silly.
Miguel: Yeah. Until Dub C showed up at the end shooting out of the van, there was no real threat of death, just a soft threat of possible death. And the fact that he was threatening to kill Smokey over $200 says a lot, too.
Christina: Right.
Miguel: But that kind of goes back to the movies I just said. Things could possibly go wrong in the hood, but they just portrayed it in a different way. It wasn't always drive-bys. You could go to the store and see a crackhead in there doing something silly or have a friend come by who's gotten beat up in front of your house. So, it was a lot.
Christina: This was more of like, community.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: And that community meant sometimes there may be some dangerous aspects of it, but there's also, you know, the cute girl down the street or like, an actual nuclear family. Not everybody's just like, in jail or, you know, don't know who their dad is. Like, he had two parents and a sister and just a very normal family structure. His daddy was a little odd.
Miguel: Yes, he was.
Christina: A normal family structure.
Miguel: And as someone who grew up like, five minutes away from where this movie was set, this is more closer to what we grew up with than Boyz N The Hood.
Christina: Because the other thing, too, is like, you see the different characters of people who live in communities like this. And even when, you know, these neighbors or whatever are annoying, at the same time, you feel that sense of community where, OK, the neighborhood crackhead is annoying, but you're going to give him two dollars to come wash your car.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: Or, you know, Stanley always yelling at them to get off their lawn, get off his lawn. But they still like, you know, it's like, it's community at the end of the day.
Miguel: Yeah, there wasn't a bunch of gangbangers like in Menace II Society. This was just average, everyday folks hanging out in the hood. And like I said, this is what it was like for me growing up in LA more than Menace II Society, which was probably ten minutes in the opposite direction.
Christina: Right.
Miguel: It was closer to this for us.
Christina: It made it more realistic. I mean, as you can confirm.
Miguel: I can confirm.
Christina: It felt more realistic.
Miguel: It did.
Christina: As someone who was just watching from a different place in the world. You're like, oh, there's like, you know, regular people that just live here.
Miguel: Yeah, I can honestly say that every character in this movie, I know. I don't know these particular characters, but I know characters just like them.
Christina: Yeah.
Miguel: So, let's get into the actual movie itself. Like we said, it was different than a lot of the other “hood” movies that had come out before this. This movie has its DNA in the Cheech and Chong movies from the 70s and 80s, where you just have two guys who smoke a lot of weed, who get into shenanigans and hijinks and have to figure a way out. For this movie, though, there's two main plot points. The first one, obviously, Craig gets fired on his day off from stealing boxes, allegedly, for allegedly stealing boxes from his job. It was UPS.
Christina: Yes.
Miguel: They didn't call it that, but it was UPS. He was caught on video stealing boxes.
Christina: “Someone” was caught on video stealing boxes.
Miguel: Yes. And the other plot point is Smokey, who's just a low level drug dealer in the hood selling—he's supposed to be selling weed, but he's actually smoking up all the weed he's supposed to sell for Big Worm. And Worm wants his money by the end of the day. That sets the movie in motion.
Christina: And the thing about it is it's very much a day about nothing almost at the same time.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: For the most part, the day is just kind of like what we were saying with just like, average people. It's just an average day. They're just sitting on the porch, just watching little things that happen with their neighbors and stuff. And the day kind of just passes.
Miguel: Yeah. Craig wakes up getting harassed by his dad, he's trying to get his mom to cook him some breakfast, he's arguing with his sister.
Christina: Everyone's leaving to go to work or school, and Smokey needs to go take a shit. His mom's not home and he forgot his key.
Miguel: Like just a bunch of random things just happen.
Christina: They go to the store to get some snacks and run into the neighborhood crackhead. It's just stuff.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: A day in the life.
Miguel: It's a literal Friday.
Christina: Yeah, it's not really until sort of the end of the day. And I guess that sort of makes sense because they're kind of just waiting until this timeline that they have at the end for something to happen.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: You know, the big fight and Big Worm comes by a little bit earlier, actually.
Miguel: He comes by twice.
Christina: Yes.
Miguel: Just to reinforce that he wants his $200. Either his $200 or the weed back. Either or. That's not much to ask.
Christina: It isn't.
Miguel: When you're fronting somebody some weed to sell for you. You either give me my money or give me the weed back.
Christina: And then you also see some Big Worm in his day job. His ice cream truck, but not selling any ice cream except taking the kids' money.
Miguel: Again, as someone who grew up in this area, ice cream trucks were known for that.
Christina: Just taking kids' money?
Miguel: I'm not going to say taking kids' money, but it's a front for you to drive around and distribute your wares.
Christina: You got two sets of wares.
Miguel: Under the guise of being an ice cream man. And speaking of Big Worm, what makes the movie for me isn't Craig and Smokey, even though they're funny and they're hilarious. It's the second and third level characters that make this movie what it is. So them coming across, like you said, Ezal at the store who's pretending that he slipped and the floor wasn't even wet.
Christina: Right.
Miguel: You got Deebo, who's the neighborhood bully coming around just scaring people all the time and jacking them for stuff. Craig's neighbor, Debbie, who's his sister's friend, who he's got a crush on, but he's scared to make a move because he's already got another crazy girlfriend, Joi.
Christina: Yes.
Miguel: Who else? Debbie's sister, Felisha.
Christina: Of course.
Miguel: Who's she's a little bit off. She's a little bit special, but she's a nice person still.
Christina: I think she's dealing with some mental and health issues.
Miguel: Yeah. She has—
Christina: Little addiction, little mental health.
Miguel: Yeah. So, yeah, the other characters is what made the movie for me.
Christina: I guess that's what made it also different.
Miguel: Right.
Christina: Where it's like, yeah, these characters are smaller characters, but they're important.
Miguel: Yes.
Christina: Because the whole point is like, this whole neighborhood, not just the story of the two main characters.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: And I guess for you, because you're saying—you were saying, like, this is what you grew up with, basically. So for you, it's like, relatable.
Miguel: It is like I said, this was a day in our lives. The only thing that was missing from this that we would do every day is going to play basketball. That's the only thing that we were missing.
Christina: Right.
Miguel: You got us lazing around doing nothing, hanging out at somebody's house, go to the store and get some snacks. You run into the neighborhood crackhead who's trying to sell you something that he "found” and I'm using air quotes with that. You just, random girls in the neighborhood, parents getting, “Chris come in the house!” and somebody little bad ass kid riding his bike, kicking trash cans over. So, this was what we were doing.
Christina: Kids getting called in and also getting sent out.
Miguel: Yeah. So, there was a lot of this going on with us.
Christina: Do you have like, a most memorable side character?
Miguel: There are so many, but the one that I'm going to go with, and it's because I never noticed this as many times as I've seen this movie, never noticed it until probably a year ago. When Joi, Craig's girlfriend, calls him, cussing him out about him being at the movies with some other chick, her cousins, nephews, sister, whatever she says, saw him at the movies with “some other bitch.” She's saying all of this with a dude laying right next to her in her bed.
Christina: Just fast asleep while she's yelling on the phone, there's music playing and he's just knocked out. So, we can only see him from the waist down because she's sitting in front of him, which is why it's hard to notice him to begin with.
Miguel: Yeah, he just blends in.
Christina: Yeah, it's like a pile of clothes or something.
Miguel: Yeah, so, I never noticed him until like, a year ago.
Christina: I don't even think I noticed him on my own. I'm pretty sure it was because I saw someone else say something about it, right?
Miguel: Yeah, I saw it on Twitter probably and just noticed that he was in the background the entire time. So, I think that's going to be my favorite side character.
Christina: What's funny about that scene is, I think that's what makes it so great, even though we didn't notice it for a billion years and not until someone else pointed out. But I found a website that posts all of the like original screenplays from different movies. So, in that scene, in the original screenplay, a guy was supposed to walk into the room as she's on the phone with him.
Miguel: Okay.
Christina: But that makes it even better that they chose to just have him sleeping behind her.
Miguel: He’s already there.
Christina: Because it's so subtle and that makes it even more ridiculous that she's got this man literally laid up in her bed and yelling at Craig for allegedly being out with “some other bitch.”
Miguel: Exactly.
Christina: It was hard for me to pick who's the most memorable side character because really when I was thinking about all the different side characters, aside from Debbie and Deebo, they all have these one-liner quotes that you just remember. So like, Ezal, “my neck, my back, my neck and my back.” Red, I really like Red with his, “my grandma gave me that chain” and that run that he did with his arms flailing. And of course, Joi, you know, I'm always quoting her.
Miguel: Yes.
Christina: So, she's definitely memorable. I guess maybe, I think it might have to be somewhere between Joi or Red.
Miguel: Okay.
Christina: But you know, I say they're all equally memorable because as you were saying a little bit earlier, the side characters made the movie.
Miguel: Yes.
Christina: So, yeah, I'm going to say either Joi or Red, just really based off on how often I quote them.
Miguel: Okay. Yeah, you do quote both of them a lot. Now that I think about it.
Christina: I do do the “my neck and my back” a lot.
Miguel: You do.
Christina: But I think between “my grandma gave me that chain” and “he gonna cry in the car.” That was Smokey saying that, but—
Miguel: It was about Red.
Christina: Yeah. And well, as this will lead into the next discussion with the favorite scenes with one of my favorite quotes from Joi. “Who the fuck is that bitch?”
Miguel: Yes.
Christina: So, that one is definitely my favorite scene because it's so perfect. She pulls up. They got “big booty hoes” playing in the background. She's walking very purposeful to Craig's house. Does that dramatic hair toss. Sees Nia Long's character come out. “Who the fuck is that bitch?” That scene is just perfect. And of course, before she even says that, she addresses Smokey by saying, “Fool!” The whole thing is just like, such a perfect setup. So, my second one is I'm going to say, well, pretty much goes back to what I just said before, when Deebo rolls up on them and all that stuff that happens. With three of them and DJ Pooh, him getting his chain snatched and crying and running to the car.
Miguel: “My Grandmama gave me that chain”
Christina: You can see his tears welling up in his eyes. And then the fact that he already has a black eye on top of this.
Miguel: Yes, from getting punched by Deebo two days before.
Christina: Because he was there to come clown Craig on top of it.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: And then ends up getting his chain snatched.
Miguel: And he's there clowning Craig for getting fired on his day off. “We watched the tape.”
Christina: “It looked like you from the back.”
Miguel: Yeah, my favorite scenes both involved the same person. And it's kind of a call back to the first time. So, when Felisha comes up and asked to borrow Smokey's car, she's just walking down the street and then just comes over and slides in between them and was like, “Smokey, let me borrow your car.” I watched a video with the actress, Angela Means, and she was saying that she wasn't originally supposed to sit between them. She just went to F. Gary Gray and was like, look, if you want to save a lot of time on filming, instead of doing like, my face, Craig's face, my face, Smokey's face, I'm just going to sit in the middle of them and we can just shoot it like that. And they didn't tell Ice Cube and Chris Tucker that she was going to do that. So she was like, their reactions when I come sit down is real. So she just walks in and like, “let me borrow your car.” “No, you can't borrow my car.” “Let me borrow a joint then.” And before she can even ask Craig for anything, he just hit her with the “Bye, Felisha.”
Christina: “I’m gon’ remember that.”
Miguel: So, she just gets up and walks away.
Christina: Yeah.
Miguel: And when she comes back, Craig is trying to get the money from Joi to pay off Big Worm and Felisha comes back and asks to borrow his VCR because she wants to dub The Mack.
Christina: I just like how she's like, yelling and whispering, “Craig!” And she claps her hands as if he didn't hear. Like, she can hear you. He's ignoring you. “Craig!”
Miguel: And then she goes scurrying off when Joi's like, “who the fuck is that bitch?”
Christina: Oops.
Miguel: Just takes off running.
Christina: Yeah. I didn't see the video, but I read an interview with her talking about that and why she wanted to also just sit between them because she wanted to show how Felisha does not understand personal space. She's totally oblivious to like, the situation around her and about personal space.
Miguel: “Let me borrow your car.”
Christina: She's like, yeah, Felisha wouldn't think there's anything weird about squeezing in between the two of them like that.
Miguel: At all. So, if you had to, which character would you want to hang out with?
Christina: Nia Long, Debbie.
Miguel: Well, there's there's a two-parter here. And which character would you not want to hang out with?
Christina: Well, this is an easy question, I think, because Debbie was the only one who was pretty normal.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: Like, she she was like the neighborhood cutie and like a nice person.
Miguel: Right. Yeah, that's my answer for that one, too.
Christina: Yeah, like, that was easy. Or Ice Cube's sister, Regina King. I kind of feel like maybe Joi in small doses, because it just seems like she might be hilarious. But at the same time, she's very volatile.
Miguel: Yes.
Christina: So, maybe in like, small doses or in group settings with Joi.
Miguel: No, no. Nope.
Christina: And mine, who I would not want to hang out with, I think Deebo is too obvious because he's like the neighborhood bully. I would say Smokey because even though he's funny, he's extremely obnoxious and he's very irresponsible.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: So, I think he would just be too much.
Miguel: Yeah. Mine to not hang out would definitely be Joi.
Christina: Yeah.
Miguel: Because you don't know what's going to happen with her.
Christina: Right. “I be forgetting.”
Miguel: She's just a ticking time bomb that you don't know if she's going to stab somebody, you don't know if she's going to shoot you, you don't know if she's going to cuss you out. Who knows?
Christina: I think that maybe if she, if you're a girl and she sees you as like one of her besties, you probably wouldn’t…Hmm. Would she be volatile?
Miguel: Yes.
Christina: Because it's definitely jealousy that she runs on.
Miguel: Yeah, she thrives off negativity.
Christina: So, I don't know.
Miguel: Yeah, I don't even think it's a male/female thing with her. She's just very on the edge all the time.
Christina: Yeah.
Miguel: And you never know when she's going to snap.
Christina: That's true.
Miguel: Whether it's cracking on Craig, she turns around, cracks on you. It don't matter.
Christina: Right.
Miguel: Anybody can get it. All right. I think that's a good time for us to take a quick break. But we'll be right back.
[break]
Miguel: Hi, kids. Do you like fun?
Christina: Yeah.
Miguel: And bookmarking a bunch of articles you'll probably never read. We're starting a monthly newsletter called Liner Notes. We'll be sharing what we're watching, what we're listening to, throwback YouTube videos, updates on our upcoming projects, random shit you may have missed on the Internet, you know, stuff like that. The link is in the show notes or you can go to troypodcast.com/newsletter. Do it. It's good for you.
Christina: It'll make your teeth white.
Miguel: And back to the show.
Miguel: OK, we are back and we're talking about the movie Friday. It did have a big influence on other stoner comedies that came out around the same time. Pineapple Express with Seth Rogen and James Franco, the Harold and Kumar movies, Half Baked, How High, Superbad. It was always a pairing of two or three people that get into some shenanigans, just like Craig and Smokey did. They get high and then they solve their problem. A recent movie that came out not too long ago that we just watched the other night that has the same energy as Friday. One Of Them Days, starring Keke Palmer and SZA.
Christina: Yes, although they didn't get high.
Miguel: Well, not to give too much away, SZA's character was doing a lot of weed in the movie. Early she was.
Christina: I completely forgot that.
Miguel: Yeah, when she first came home with her.
Christina: Oh, I guess it's not the focus of the movie. It's just a character thing.
Miguel: Yeah, it's an obvious homage to Friday. Like I said, don't want to give too much of it away since it is a new movie, but it's two friends, Dreux and Alyssa, who keep finding themselves in crazy situations in the span of one day.
Christina: Yeah, and every time they try to fix it, they end up digging themselves into a bigger hole.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: As the day goes on, it's like, oh, we could do this, and then something else pops up.
Miguel: Right. So, I think that one is a perfect, not reboot, but um…
Christina: Kind of like another—
Miguel: A reimagining of Friday for the current generation.
Christina: So, there are definitely some themes and formats of One Of Them Days that connect to Friday. And I'm going to try to keep this spoiler free. But basically, it's the same idea of like, a day in the life of two friends who have to solve some problems by the end of the day. And as the day goes on, just a lot of silly things happen as they're trying to solve this problem. And then there's a bit of that like, they have to reevaluate this friendship as they're trying to get out of these sticky situations together. The only thing that I would say is different is like, I don't consider this like, a stoner comedy.
Miguel: Yeah, it isn't. That's not the focus for this one.
Christina: And I think having like, two young women kind of just gives it a different feel too, even though it's, it's still the same overall. Like, it's not like only girls can watch this. Like, it's hilarious for anyone to watch.
Miguel: It's funny regardless of what people on Twitter or any social media says about women can't be funny. That's a lie.
Christina: Yeah, like, Keke Palmer is just hilarious. Like, I won't quote any of the things that she's she said in the movie because I don't want to ruin the joke.
Miguel: But if you know Keke Palmer, just apply anything you've seen her do, to this.
Christina: Yeah, like, I'm sure they let her improv. Yeah, because she was very Keke.
Miguel: Yes.
Christina: And the same thing where you kind of see like, the the neighborhood characters and stuff and how everyone kind of comes together and also you could feel the, the Issa Rae-ness of this production as well too.
Miguel: Right.
Christina: So, if you, you know, liked Insecure and Rap Sh!t, it kind of has that same feel as well.
Miguel: Yeah. And like I mentioned about Friday and the way I could relate to it because I grew up five minutes away from where that happened. This also I can relate to as well because it's similar and authentic in the same way because as you know, when we drive, we go to LA., we drive down La Brea going to my mama's house. And this is five minutes away from where she lives.
Christina: Right.
Miguel: So, I know that area as well. And this is very authentic to the LA experience in a different way than Friday was.
Christina: And the current LA.
Miguel: Yeah, the current LA experience. So, that I really liked about the movie and just the hijinks that they get into.
Christina: Yeah.
Miguel: Yeah. It’s, if you haven't seen it, definitely go see it.
Christina: Because I actually want to watch it again just to like, catch the little things I probably missed the first time around.
Miguel: Yeah. I'm sure there's a lot of things that I miss, but I was too busy looking at locations and some of the comments and things that they say. Like, yeah, that's true. Because, you know, one of my biggest things that I hate is when I see a movie or TV show and it's not supposed to be LA and I see a Metro bus go by or I see a phone number on a billboard. That bothers me. And when you see something in a movie supposed to be LA and they'll be in one neighborhood and then they turn a corner and they're on the opposite side of town, 45 minutes away.
Christina: Yeah.
Miguel: That bothers me. This movie, they really kept it within the neighborhood. They didn't get too far out of the neighborhood watching them walk places like, yeah, they could definitely walk there.
Christina: Yeah.
Miguel: So, it was really good in that sense. Authenticity is the best part about it for me.
Christina: Yeah. I just think it was, you know, if you are tired of watching Friday because it's been 30 years since that movie came out then you should check out One Of Them Days.
Miguel: Yes. Because in my mind, Friday is the only movie in the series that exists.
Christina: Yeah.
Miguel: Friday After Next and Next Friday aren't the same.
Christina: They're not, like—
Miguel: Like, they're funny.
Christina: They have their moments.
Miguel: But it doesn't have the soul of Friday.
Christina: It doesn't. It's very much, oh, this movie did well. Let's keep it going.
Miguel: Yeah. Even though we got some of the same characters, it doesn't have this, like I said, the soul and the heart of the original movie. So, I think that should be kept as a standalone. Hopefully, there won't be a sequel to One Of Them Days either. Just leave it as it is.
Christina: Yeah.
Miguel: You can put Keke and SZA in a different movie as different characters, which is what they should have done with Craig and Day-Day. That's just my opinion.
Christina: Sequels are hard, especially when you're trying to recreate something that was, could only happen once.
Miguel: Yeah.
Christina: You can't really recreate organic things.
Miguel: Exactly.
Christina: Yeah.Things that happen organically.
Miguel: So, that wraps up our attempt at a spoiler free review of One Of Them Days. With that said, do you have anything else that you would like to add to this about Friday?
Christina: I was trying to think of a quote to end it with that would be appropriate. But I just drew a blank, even though I'd be quoting it all the time. Now, when I need to, I can't think of anything.
Miguel: You got nothing.
Christina: “I don't think you're applying yourself, Smokey.”
Miguel: “All right. Big perm. I mean, Big Worm.” All right. Thank you again for listening to They Reminisce Over You. We try to do this every two weeks, so come on back. Listen to some more episodes. We'll be here for you. If you want to check out our newsletter, we drop one once a month. It's called Liner Notes. It's stuff that we're watching, stuff that we're reading, things that we're listening to, all sorts of fun things. You can sign up for that. It's free at troypodcast.com/newsletter. Also, we have a store, so, if you want to buy some merch, you want to get some tees, hoodies, caps, accessories, all that kind of stuff, you can check it out at teethang.com. The store is called Nuthin’ But A Tee Thang. T-E-E-T-H-A-N-G dot com.
On our website, we'll have a music playlist to accompany this episode, inspired by the Friday soundtrack and the movie itself. So, go ahead and check that out. We'll have some transcripts, links to some things that we mentioned in this episode, some of the videos we watched, some of the articles we read. So, you can check that out too. And that's pretty much all we have for this week. We'll be getting back with you in a couple of weeks. So, bye.
Christina: Bye.