February 8, 2021 - Zach Harper on Nicolas Cage and the best bad movies

The Late Night Happy Hour with Andy and Brian Kamenetzky

He does great work as an NBA writer at The Athletic, where he also hosts the recently launched video series The Restricted Area, with Wosny Lambre. But Zach Harper is also a movie guy, hosting the incredibly fun Cinephobe podcast for the Count the Dings network, and that's where we keep things on the Late Night Happy Hour.

We start, as they tend to on Cinephobe, with a deep dive into Nicolas Cage, who might as well be the patron saint of that show, appearing 10 times in 71 total episodes. That's a lot. So how did this guy, who has legit acting chops, end up a cartoon character? Does he deserve all the crap his movies get these days? Can he ever re-legitimize himself, or is he too far gone?

What makes a "good" bad movie? Is Rotten Tomatoes too influential? Why is Deep Blue Sea amazing, while so many movies like it totally suck?

Finally, we cap things off with a hilarious exploration of John Travolta's career via his Rotten Tomatoes score, and it elicits some extreme emotions in Zach.