It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and how it's shaped our thoughts on a current release.

I'm Tasha Robinson, here with Scott Tobias and Genevieve Kasky.

This week, Keith Phipps is out on tour as teen singing sensation, Keith Bravo.

But we're predicting that that phase of his career will fizzle and he'll be back to the table soon.

Here in the next picture show, we believe that no film exists in a vacuum and that all culture is more interesting in context. So every other week, we get together to talk over a classic film and consider how it relates to a current movie. This week, we're looking at the fine art of the straight-faced cinematic parody through a pair of films that sprung from popular TV shows. Genevieve, I need to take a break to brush my lustrous hair a thousand times, so everyone will pay more attention to me. Can you take over from here? Tasha, Tasha, Tasha! Back in 1969, ABC launched one of the last classic-era family sitcoms, The Brady Bunch, which was the story of a lovely lady, well, if you've heard the theme song, you know the drill. And if you don't, we'll get into it on the show. The Brady Bunch ran for five years and became an American staple that gave us a handful of tropes we're still seeing in sitcoms and series today. In a 1995, Betty Thomas directed a feature-length parody, the Brady Bunch movie, which flawlessly emulates

the original show's look and feel, mostly without winking at the audience about the comedy.

You can see a similar tone in the new film Baywatch, a big-screen action comedy version of the TV series Baywatch,

which launched in 1989 and kept David Hasselhoff on TV throughout the entirety of the 1990s.

Both the Brady Bunch movie and the Baywatch movie

are bringing TV to the movies, but they also both capture a similar self-aware tone that

mostly avoids the fourth wall, but is very aware of exactly where it's positioned.

Yeah, there's a really fine line between playing things straight and pretending to play them

straight just enough to make them into a joke. Both of these films straddle that line,

and they both play on a sense of cultural nostalgia that works no matter how well or poorly you know straight just enough to make them into a joke. Both of these films straddled that line,

and they both play on a sense of cultural nostalgia that works no matter how well or poorly you know the original material. We'll look at some of the broader jokes and some of the really

narrow, specific ones after this break.

It's 1995. The world we know has changed.

Put on your Sunday best, kids. We're going to see her.

But the Brady's never will.

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