354 – Best in Show

This Had Oscar Buzz

Joe and Chris

Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 111 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Grab your half-butter-half-salt popcorn because this week, we’ve got something to make you howl! After the critically-hailed success of Waiting for Guffman, Christopher Guest returned with another improvisational comedy set in a world of deeply specific eccentrics played by an ensemble of geniuses. Best in Show is set in a world of competitive dog shows, with all the beloved pooches mirrored in their idiosyncratic owners. The film helped cement Guest’s brand of humor and earn an ever-expanding devoted fanbase, but Oscar was just out of reach.

This episode, we talk about how the film’s precursor run was more robust than you think and the Guest films’ increasing Oscar pedigree. We also talk about the film’s endless quotability, how Fred Willard became the performance to be singled out from the ensemble, and the bittersweetness that runs through Guest’s work.

Topics also include the 2000 Best Original Song race, lingering misunderstandings around improvisational vs. scripted, and Almost Famous.

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.
0:14.9	We want to talk to Marilyn Hack, Millen Hack and French. I'm from Canada water.
0:27.6	Dick Pooh.
0:29.6	Dick Pooh That goal is that best in show ribbon
0:44.2	Actually poodle means puddle
0:46.0	In German
0:47.1	You want your busy bee
0:48.2	Come get your busy bee
0:49.2	Got in her what's him
0:50.2	She doesn't get her door
0:51.0	She's going to flip out
0:52.3	It's not in here
0:52.9	You left it at the hotel Go to the hotel and get busy me. That's my favorite. The miniature schnauzer. You'd think they'd want to breed them bigger, wouldn't you like grapefruits or watermelon? Don't look at the fat. Losers or freaks. You look at me! He went after her like she's made out of ham.
1:13.5	Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that was sick and tired of everything when we called you last night from Glasgow.
1:21.0	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
1:28.4	or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died and we're here to perform the autopsy.
1:34.4	I am your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with the man. I can spend so much time talking
1:39.3	or not talking with Joe Reeves. Did you enjoy your snow peas?
1:47.0	That's maybe my favorite part of that whole thing.
1:49.6	We left snow peas and talking or not talking.
	...

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