Top Secret! (with Ed Helms)

Unspooled

Paul Scheer & Amy Nicholson

Film Reviews, Tv & Film

4.5 • 5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2026

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Paul welcomes Ed Helms into the Unspooled booth for a deep dive into Top Secret!, the gloriously absurd 1984 comedy from ZAZ while Amy is away. Between stories about Meet Dave, Ed’s lost role as “Lieutenant Buttocks,” and a celebration of his history podcast SNAFU, the two make the case that Top Secret! may be even funnier than Airplane! or The Naked Gun — just harder to categorize. Listen to Ed’s podcast SNAFU here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/snafu-with-ed-helms/id1635374692 You can join the Unspooled conversation on Paul’s Discord at https://discord.gg/ZwtygZGTa6 Follow Paul and Amy on Letterboxd for more of their movie hot takes! https://letterboxd.com/paulscheer/ https://letterboxd.com/theamynicholson/ Paul’s book Joyful Recollections of Trauma is out now! Find it at https://www.harpercollins.com/products/joyful-recollections-of-trauma-paul-scheer Check out more of Paul's writing on his Substack https://substack.com/@paulscheer Episodic Art by Kim Troxall: https://www.unspooledart.com/ Learn more about the show at Unspooledpod.com, follow us on Twitter @unspooled and on Instagram @unspooledpod, and don’t forget to rate, review & subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or where you listen to podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The year
0:02.0	1984
0:03.3	But then one night
0:04.4	The secret police
0:05.2	broke into my house
0:06.3	They tore me from my family
0:07.8	ransacked my laboratory
0:09.3	And brought me to this dungeon
0:11.7	That sucks
0:13.5	The movie
0:14.6	Top Secret
0:16.0	Hey Hey everybody, welcome to Unspooled.
0:27.3	This is a podcast about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, mustsies, and in case you missed them.
0:33.0	We have covered the AFI top 100.
0:34.9	Now we are checking off movies from three major lists,
0:37.9	the Letterbox top 250 films with the most fans, the IMDB top 250, and the New York Times
0:42.8	1,000 essential films. And we'll also be chasing our own curiosity as well. But while Amy is away
0:49.8	and can, I have invited a very dear friend to come and talk about a movie that's number one on
0:55.6	his list. You might know our guest today. Oh my gosh, one of the best. He has been in hit shows
1:03.9	like The Office and the Hangover series. We were in a movie together called Family Switch,
1:08.5	but you should really get to know his podcast, Snafu, where he
1:13.1	unpacked stories of epic screw-ups throughout history and how these failures shaped our modern
	...

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