351 – The War of the Roses

This Had Oscar Buzz

Joe and Chris

Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2025

⏱️ 104 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After a pair of successful adventure movies together with Robert Zemeckis, the trio of Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito got the band back together for one last time in 1989. With DeVito in the director’s chair and adapted from the Warren Adler novel, The War of the Roses follows the disintegration of one materialistic couple and the divorce battle that ensues. It’s an acidicly comedic satire that nevertheless became a holiday season hit, but failed to capture Oscar’s affection.

This episode, we talk about DeVito’s directorial career and the film’s muddled framing device. We also talk about the Oscar legacy of Driving Miss Daisy, Turner’s too brief period as a commanding leading lady, and Douglas’ emergence into serious leading man.

Topics also include Romancing the Stone‘s horniness, entering the paté business, the chandelier finale.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, wrong house.
0:12.8	No, the right house.
0:13.6	I didn't get that.
0:15.0	We want to talk to Marilyn Hack, Millen Hack and friends. I'm from Canada
0:26.7	I'm from Canada water
0:27.3	Dick Pooh. When I watch you eat
0:42.3	When I look at you lately
0:45.3	I just want to smash your face in
0:48.3	Smash my face
0:49.3	I want a divorce.
0:56.4	You can't have one.
0:58.7	When a couple starts keeping score, there is no winning.
1:02.2	It's only degrees of losing.
1:04.5	I am the one who found this house.
1:06.3	I bought everything with my money.
1:09.1	It's a lot easier to spend than is to make it, honeybund. You might not have made it if not for me, sweet cake. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that got into Oxford and Cambridge with Gobbits to Spare. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another,
1:27.8	it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we are here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host,
1:32.9	Joe Reed. I'm here, as always, with the chandelier from whom I am precariously dangling at all
1:38.2	times. Chris File. Hello, Chris. I thought you were going to talk about my pat-a business.
1:47.2	What do you call that?
1:48.8	Like, you're a patisserie if you're a bakery, right?
1:52.3	Right, a patisserie.
	...

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