Weekend at Bernie's: Deep Thoughts About Exceptional Physical Comedy, Dubious Personal Morality, and Pop Culture Touchstones

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast

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What kind of a host invites you to his house for the weekend and dies on you?

Despite its status as a benchmark of late 80s pop culture, the film Weekend at Bernie's sounds like it should never have been greenlit. Two lowly young insurance employees find their boss dead of an apparent overdose at his beach house--and pretend he is still alive. The mafia boss who ordered Bernie's death sends the enforcer back to kill him again and again, and there's a love interest who has to be kept in the dark. Many shenanigans ensue. The storytelling is bonkers, the biology is suspect, and although the physical comedy is top-notch, the humor is remarkably juvenile.

Honestly, Weekend at Bernie's shouldn't work. But this stupid comedy is not only genuinely funny, but it gave us a pop culture shorthand we're still using nearly 40 years later. This is partially thanks to the chemistry and amazing physicality of the three lead actors who sold us on the idea that Bernie's death was a funny situation rather than a mental health nightmare. The film is still a pop culture product of its time, including the misogyny and homophobia that was par for the course in the 1980s, but it still offers more laughs than you'd expect from a one-joke movie.

Throw on your headphones and sunglasses, relax in a sun lounger, and take a listen! Just make sure you move every once in a while.

Mentioned in this episode:

Roger Ebert’s review of Weekend at Bernie’s

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our family as the Guy Girls.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find.

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챕터

1. Set Up And Cultural Shorthand (00:00:00)

2. Plot Recall And Political Meme (00:02:45)

3. Rewatch Aim And First Impressions (00:05:30)

4. Cast, Craft, And Writing Beats (00:07:45)

5. Beat-By-Beat Plot Walkthrough (00:11:30)

6. Party Scenes And Consent Ick (00:28:43)

7. Answering Machine And Fake Note (00:36:13)

8. Boat Gags And Chase Escalation (00:42:13)

9. Finale Chaos And Aftermath (00:48:43)