Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content

Which classic Tom Hanks movie would you rather re-watch: A League of Their Own or Apollo 13? Normally, the co-hosts of the Born to Love podcast are the best of friends, but this week Ellie Kemper and Scott Eckert take a turn as rivals with Ellie arguing for A League of Their Own and Scott taking up for Apollo 13. Ellie says that A League of Their Own is a delightful ensemble film that offers laughs, tears, and even some American history while Scott points out that Apollo 13 includes both tragedy and triumph and was the role that changed the course of Tom Hanks’s career. Which film will Ronald Young Jr. choose to re-watch? His decision settles the debate at the end of the show.

Follow Ellie @elliekemper on Instagram and Scott @mescotteckert on Twitter.

Keep up with Ronald Young Jr. @OhitsBIGRON on X and Instagram. And stay up to date with us @LemonadaMedia on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors.

Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Scott Eckert, Ronald young Jr., Ellie Kemper

Ronald young Jr.  00:00

If you’re a child of the 80s and 90s, chances are you’re acquainted with the beloved film star, Tom Hanks, whether you first saw him in BIG or Joe Versus the Volcano or Dragnet or Splash or even Turner and Hooch, you were likely charmed by his presence and happy to have him on screen. But when you sit down on the couch and have to choose a quintessential Tom Hanks movie, what would you choose? What if your selections were narrowed to two of his beloved classics, which one are we gonna watch between A League of Their Own and Apollo 13, we decide once and for all, right here and right now on Pop Culture Debate Club. I’m Ronald Young Jr.

 

Ronald young Jr.  00:55

So let’s meet our panelists for the day, representing A League of Their Own. You may know her for her memorable roles on the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt the office and as the co host of the hit podcast, Born to Love, hello and welcome. Ellie Kemper.

 

Ellie Kemper  01:10

Hello, Ronald, thank you for having me. I’m so excited to win today’s debate and let everybody know why A League of Their Own is such a better movie than Apollo 13.

 

Ronald young Jr.  01:21

I love it. I’m glad you’re here, and I like that confidence. That’s perfect.

 

Ellie Kemper  01:25

Thank you. Oh yeah, that follows me wherever I go.

 

Ronald young Jr.  01:29

Also joining us, representing for Apollo 13 is a hilarious comedy writer who also currently co hosts the podcast, Born To Love with Ellie Kemper, let’s welcome Scott Eckert.

 

Scott Eckert  01:39

Thank you, Ronald. I’m excited. Ellie and I are normally partners. Now we are our arch rivals in this conversation. So I can’t wait to get into it.

 

Ronald young Jr.  01:51

Yeah, Arch Rivals. I love it. Let me. Let me ask y’all, Have y’all ever been in an argument before?

 

Scott Eckert  01:56

Well, the only thing that I can, that I can sort of vaguely remember, and Ellie, you may remember this is when we lived together. There was, there was some dispute about a cup of water that I had in the living room. And you, I think, wanted me to be cleaner about the water. And this was when I was, like, 22 years old. It might give you an insight into my personality and bias you against me, but, but you were like, clean up the water, wear a coaster, or put a coaster on or something, and then I proceeded to just pour the entire glass of water on the floor. Do you remember that, Ellie?

 

Ellie Kemper  02:28

Yes, such a just an act of just blatant defiance. I remember you doing that. You literally sound like my son right now, because he that’s something he might do, just to push some boundaries and.

 

Scott Eckert  02:44

But what’s really an argument? No

 

Ellie Kemper  02:47

More just you acting like a child.

 

Ronald young Jr.  02:50

Ellie, let me ask you, are you still upset about that glass of water?

 

Ellie Kemper  02:55

To be perfectly honest with you, I had forgotten about it, and probably because I buried it in my subconscious, because I was suppressing it now that Scott just like tore the top off that suppressed memory I remember. First of all, I remember it like it was yesterday, and second of all, I am, I’m I am furious. That is exactly the type of thing that would just make me crazy, because also, I remember his face while he was doing it. What do you think he was doing?

 

Scott Eckert  03:28

What was my face?

 

Ellie Kemper  03:29

Show me his face straight in the eye and going like this mouth open, grinning.

 

Ronald young Jr.  03:36

Oh my gosh, Scott, you’re a monster.

 

Ellie Kemper  03:39

Monster.

 

Scott Eckert  03:39

Demon face, a demon face.

 

Ellie Kemper  03:41

It was a demon face. I hope you can use the video for that to those of you who didn’t see the video. I was staring. I was smiling, grinning wildly with my mouth open like a demon.

 

Ronald young Jr.  03:54

Okay? With all of that being said, Are y’all ready to fight?

 

Ellie Kemper  03:58

Yes.

 

Scott Eckert  03:59

I’m ready.

 

Ronald young Jr.  04:04

We’re gonna get into it, but I think I want y’all to look at this a little bit differently, because for me, I don’t want to argue over whether one of these movies is better than the other, which I’m sure those elements will come into this debate, but I realize I haven’t seen either of these movies in a very long time. And so I want each of you, we’re all together, we’re on a couch, and I don’t know which movie to pick. And I want each of you to convince me that your movie is the Tom Hanks movie that we must watch tonight. I want you to think in that spirit rather than better, because I think better is a harder argument here. Does that make sense for both y’all?

 

Ellie Kemper  04:42

That makes perfect sense.

 

Scott Eckert  04:43

Sounds great to me.

 

Ronald young Jr.  04:44

Okay, well, in that case, let’s get to our opening arguments. Ellie Kemper, tell me why we should watch A League of Their Own.

 

Ellie Kemper  04:51

Tonight or this afternoon or this morning. We should watch A League of Their Own because it is light as air. It. Is an uplifting film by Penny Marshall, starring a parade of fantastic actors led, some might say, co led by Geena Davis and Tom Hanks, but I can’t even say it’s led by anyone, because everyone in this ensemble brings so much to the table of cinema. You have laughs, you have tears, you have a brilliant score by Hans Zimmer. I looked that up because I wasn’t sure who did the music and Hans Zimmer, who does everything well, has scored this gem of a movie. You will learn a little bit of history, also about women, once again, bailing out, picking up where the men couldn’t, because they were all fighting a war and and picking up their baseball bats and playing for America. So there’s a touch of feminism in there mixed up with this souffle. Maybe I should say meringue, since it’s so light, it’s under the category of comedy, but I would call it a a dramedy with laughs and feminism.

 

Ronald young Jr.  06:02

I love the expert navigation between meringue and souffle. That was That was wonderful. What great way to start off. Scott, why should we watch Apollo 13 instead?

 

Scott Eckert  06:14

Well, Apollo 13 is a movie where Tom Hanks is an astronaut on his way to the moon. And guess what? Houston, we have a problem. Something goes wrong on that, on that spaceship. And then all of NASA, all of America, really has to pull together to bring Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon, back to Earth safely. But that’s not all, because Tom Hanks has a loving wife. Tom Hanks has small children that are are waiting his return. So we’re cutting back and forth between Tom in the spaceship all the NASA engineers, including Ed Harris at Mission Control, trying to figure out how to save them. And of course, Tom Hanks is family tearfully waiting, hoping, praying for His return. That’s what the movie’s about, guys. But that just scrapes the surface, because it’s so much more. It’s about tragedy. It’s about triumph, no matter what time of day it is, like Ellie said, tonight, this afternoon, this morning, you are going to experience a roller coaster of emotion, the likes of which it’s hard to comprehend, right? There are laughs, yes, but there are also moments of fist pumping exhilaration. As spoiler alert, guys, America, it’s NASA’s finest hour. Is what it is. It is one of the most jaw breaking examples of practical filmmaking that you’ll see, because guess what, guys, there’s no gravity in space. In Apollo 13, they actually shot it without gravity, and we can get into this later, but the way that they did it is that Tom Hanks and the cast and the director, Ron Howard, went into an actual airplane, and they would nose dive for, I think, a minute and a half at a time or something, so that they were actually weightless. And they would shoot these scenes in 92nd chunks where there are weightless, they are actually weightless. It’s not visual trickery or CGI or so. So I don’t know if you like feeling things and being amazed. I would say, check out Apollo 13. Oh, PS, by the way, nine Academy Award nominations two wins and made three times as much money as league of their own. Not that anyone’s counting, not that anyone’s counting.

 

Ellie Kemper  08:49

As we all know, the Academy Awards always gets it right. I mean, right. I mean, I That’s sarcasm shots, Fauci academy that. I mean, you know what that? That’s just, I mean, that’s subjective. That’s, I don’t even know what to do with that. That’s a team’s opinion. Oh, yeah. Well, usually the usually the majority is right. I’m, well, I guess that’s democracy, but I’m not, I’m not condemning democracy here. What I’m condemning is the idea that, because it has some trophies, that somehow the movie we should watch today? No, no, but thank you. Thanks. It’s an interesting piece of trivia, Scott.

 

Scott Eckert  09:27

It’s if you want to just dismiss the academy, I’ve so hard for me to blame you. How many awards nominations did League of Their Wwn have?

 

Ellie Kemper  09:34

Just so funny this awards hungry rival of mine? I’m sorry. I’m distracted because I’m trying to look it up.

 

Scott Eckert  09:41

I understand I could see your Google face.

 

Ellie Kemper  09:43

See my Google face going on, and listen, I’m gonna not Google it just yet, because before I even look it up, it just goes to, like, tell you a lot about me as a movie watcher, I don’t like bother to look up how many awards it’s been nominated for or won, because the actual. Like award is me watching it well played. Thank you, League of Their Own.

 

Ronald young Jr.  10:06

Scott while she’s looking that up, let me ask you a question. Both movies are historical depictions of true events set during what may be considered not the most equitable times in in American history. And as you are about to force me to watch Apollo 13. Is there anything about this film? Reexamining through a 2024, lens that might be problematic for us?

 

Scott Eckert  10:29

I don’t know that there’s anything specifically problematic about the film. I think that there was, of course, something problematic about the fact that both NASA and baseball and League of Their Own were segregated. You know, there are not many people of color in Apollo 13, and there are also not very many people of color in A League of Their Own. Women, obviously, are the centerpiece of a league of their own, because it’s about, you know, women’s baseball league in Apollo 13, with the exception of Tom Hanks, his wife, Kathleen Quinlan, Academy Award, nominated, nominated performance. Yeah, there’s not very many women in in the film either, because at the time, you know, there were not very many women at NASA. So a movie like Hidden Figures more recent grapples with some of that legacy. But I think that the unfortunate truth is that as a historical story depicting the way things actually happened, in this particular case, there’s not as much diversity as we’d want or expect in 2024.

 

Ellie Kemper  11:32

Listen, I’m not a professional debater. I don’t know how to do this quickly, so I spent some of Scott’s time looking up my stats. So I only got the end of his argument, but there is not a lot of diversity in the film that I can think of, that I can really recall, and I do think it was accurately depicting how things were in the 1940s though not as ideal as they should have been.

 

Scott Eckert  12:04

I think that there is a moment where they doesn’t. Gina Davis catch a ball from an African American woman.

 

Ellie Kemper  12:10

And she has to take off her baseball.

 

Scott Eckert  12:14

So hard, yes.

 

Ellie Kemper  12:15

Yeah, yes. So there, yes. I don’t know what to call that a a an acknowledgement that things were separate, and not in a good way, because that if that woman had been on on the Rockford peaches, then they would have won the World Series, no problem. But, um, yes.

 

Ronald young Jr.  12:35

Ellie, I don’t mean to throw you at all you, but I would allow you to dunk on Scott right now to say, do you think one of these choices maybe is a little bit more diverse than the other?

 

Ellie Kemper  12:45

You know what? My movie features a lot of women, if that’s what,  if they’re if that, if that counts as diversity, if mine is a very feminist movie where the actual sort of fool, arguably the fool of the show is our beloved Tom Hanks. We love him. He can play a clown like nobody else, but he’s not. I mean, he’s drinking himself into a frenzy or into a stupor, I should say. And instead, we see all of these women picking up where the men couldn’t because they were fighting a war. But we see a lot of women sacrificing, you know, things in their own personal lives. But I would argue yes, given the two, if we’re looking for, oh, I want to show my my kids a movie featuring, oh, I guess three white men or do I want to do? I think that’s how many astronauts were in the rocket, right?

 

Scott Eckert  13:34

Well, yes. And then there’s dozens of white men back down in Mission Control. There’s an there’s an army of white men at NASA who helped save the day. Don’t just limit it to the three. Ellie, yes, they are exclusively white and exclusively men, and I’m a little bit ashamed about that. It’s true. On the other hand, what they do kicks ass, and they do it for all of America anyway.

 

Ellie Kemper  14:08

Yes, what is the test, Ronald, where you test, how much a woman talks.

 

Ronald young Jr.  14:12

The Bechdel Test?.

 

Ellie Kemper  14:13

The Bechdel I would, of course, pass that so, but I guess I win that argument.

 

Ronald young Jr.  14:19

We’ll be back with more Pop Culture Debate Club after this break.

 

Ronald young Jr.  14:38

Let’s get closer to the Tom Hanks of it all as that is the common link between these two. Which Tom Hanks film are we gonna watch tonight? Ellie, let me ask you, how important do you think is A League of Their Own to Tom Hanks’ career?

 

Ellie Kemper  14:51

I think you couldn’t have the Tom Hanks that we know today had you not had him in a league of their own. Because the thing with. His performance in that movie is that we got to see him out of control. He’s an alcoholic and he’s washed up, retired, whatever you want to call it. He’s the victim of a broken dream, and at the same time, he’s really funny in the movie. So we couldn’t have the Tom Hanks we do today, had we not seen him in the league of their own? Because we get to see him struggle and overcome the struggle.

 

Ronald young Jr.  15:27

So you’re arguing that we get a more complete picture of him through the performance than he does in A League of Their Own, which that makes sense to me.

 

Ellie Kemper  15:34

Thank you.

 

Ronald young Jr.  15:35

Scott. Tell me how important is Apollo 13 to I see you cracking your knuckles.

 

Scott Eckert  15:42

I was hoping, Ronald, that you would ask me something. Here’s the truth. Apollo, 13 is the it’s the ER, it’s the it’s the defining role that changes the course of Tom Hanks career and and literally defines all of his most successful roles since then, and that is that Tom Hanks is playing in every man who is hyper competent. We trust Him, we like him, and he is awesome at his job. So the next big role that he has following Apollo 13 is in Saving Private Ryan, where, who is he? He is just an everyman soldier fighting in World War Two, and he’s awesome. He’s the best, not in like an action hero kind of way, but just hyper competent. Gonna get the job done. Tom Hanks in Castaway, if you remember that where he stranded on the island? Same exact thing. Hyper competent FedEx guy ends up surviving on an island all by himself, if you go one by one by one, all of these roles, I think that the roles he’s been nominated for Oscars. He’s Bridge of Spies, Captain Phillips Sully, the Clint Eastwood movie where he plays the pilot that lands the plane. It’s like, okay, if there is a part for an age appropriate character who needs to be normal and relatable and awesome at his job, Hollywood knows exactly who to call and it’s Tom Hanks, and it’s because that’s the role that he plays in Apollo 13.

 

Ellie Kemper  17:21

Okay? Every character can I rebut?

 

Scott Eckert  17:28

Yeah, of course.

 

Ellie Kemper  17:29

Yes, every character you just described is the same character doing a different job.

 

Scott Eckert  17:39

It’s Tom Hanks. He’s pretending to be drunk in league of their own, and I enjoy that performance, but for the last 30 years, he’s been playing the guy that he plays, Jim Lovell.

 

Ellie Kemper  17:50

Yeah, do you know why?

 

Scott Eckert  17:51

In a puppy, because he’s awesome at it. It’s his best role. It’s what he’s it’s the singular thing that he’s best at doing on screen.

 

Ellie Kemper  17:58

I’m speaking my rebuttal is that sure you could what you just argued is that he laid the groundwork for the next 30 years of work for him in Apollo 13, as the every man who does his job. Well, okay, but two years earlier, when he’s Jimmy Dugan and he’s, you know, taking a two minute piss or whatever, the first time we meet him, that’s the guy who’s not good at his job. And I’ll say this, Scott, he knew exactly what he was doing in in saying yes to that part, because he was he knew, Okay, well, for the next 30 years, I want to be playing someone who’s good at his job, probably. So I’m going to take this opportunity to be someone who’s not so good, who’s who’s majorly flawed.

 

Ronald young Jr.  18:43

Working backwards. Scott, does it start from Apollo 13 that he’s the every man who’s good at his job? Or is it? Are you saying that that’s the genesis of that Tom Hanks quintessential like typecasting.

 

Scott Eckert  18:55

So what I’m saying is that prior to this, Tom Hanks was primarily a comedy guy, right? And he, all through the 80s, did comedies like big and then he makes this sort of interesting awards turn with, we mentioned them before, Forrest Gump and Philadelphia, right? And both of those performances, he’s playing characters who are not, especially Tom Hanks. Like Forrest Gump is like a cartoon of a southern idiot, right? And Philadelphia is obviously this very touching portrait of a man who’s dying of AIDS. And those are spectacular performances and whatnot. It isn’t until Apollo 13 that he finds his groove that he’s like, Oh no, no, no, no, no. I used to be the funny, sort of snarky guy who could do lots of cool stuff, like play a child or play a drunk baseball coach. And of course, I have range, because I’m a talented, you know, actor, but I am literally the best ever at playing every man who are good at their jobs. And he made that discovery in Apollo 13, so he’s done other things since then. I mean, obviously. Woody and Toy Story, all kinds of crazy stuff, since he’s not limited to only doing that, but that’s what he’s best at.

 

Ellie Kemper  20:06

Okay, Ronald. I mean, Scott and Ronald, listen, scrambled, I want to say something I don’t disagree with you. Is an opponent allowed to say that in a debate that you actually don’t disagree? Okay? I agree with you and Ronald, the question in terms of what impact did our respective Tom Hanks roles have on Tom Hanks’ career? I fully see the logic and what you’re saying, Scott, I guess what I’m saying is, what does that have to do with the movie we’re watching today?

 

Scott Eckert  20:37

Well, I’m just saying that it’s Tom Hanks at his absolute best. If you want to see Tom Hanks at his absolute best, one of the best actors ever, at his absolute best, check out Apollo 13.

 

Ellie Kemper  20:49

And I think I’m just saying that I’m with my niece. It’s Saturday afternoon. It’s raining outside. I think I’m gonna show her a movie where the guy is actually a little bit bad at his job. Yeah, an alcoholic. I’m gonna talk to my niece about alcoholism at length, and I think I’m gonna show her like this band of really strong women doing well, sorry.

 

Scott Eckert  21:16

I hear you. I wouldn’t fault you. That might be the right choice. I would say that you know, if I’m hanging out with my niece and I want to show a movie about overcoming impossible adversity through teamwork and brilliance, bravery, science, like, then I would, then I might check out Apollo 13.

 

Ellie Kemper  21:34

Uncle Scott, where are all the women astronauts I want to go to space.

 

Scott Eckert  21:39

My niece is gonna be like, Oh my gosh. Marilyn Lovell, that’s the most heart rending performance I’ve ever seen.

 

Ronald young Jr.  21:48

We’ll be back with more PCDC after this break.

 

Ronald young Jr.  22:06

Ellie, I want you to pick one scene from a league of their own, and using that scene convinced me that that’s the reason why we should watch A League of Their Own.

 

Ellie Kemper  22:15

I’m going to tell you this. And some people might think this is an interesting choice, but I don’t I think it’s the right choice. I’ve described this as light, as air, very buoyant, uplifting, joyful, sad, but sweet film. I don’t think I’ve talked about the story of the sisters, which is at its core. And you don’t have to have a sister or a brother or be an only child to understand this, to understand the bond with another person. Dottie and kit are two sisters at the core of this film, and kit is always trying to get the spotlight, and Dottie sort of effortlessly, has it all the time, okay, from her parents, from the world, from all of this, and kit’s just like classic little sister struggling to catch up. Okay? Arguably, she gets on the team. She gets in the league because of Dottie, okay? And not on her own merit, but because the scout wanted Dottie and agreed to let her sister tag along. Well, the scene I’m going to show you is the World Series at the end of the film, it turns out that kit starts playing for another team, so Dottie is on the Rockford peaches, and Hans Zimmer is scoring this scene with such anxiety and suspense and and your heart is racing. It’s sister against sister who is going to win in this world series. We know that Dottie is the star of the league, okay? She’s captured our hearts. She’s captured the hearts of America. At the time, her husband has just come home from war. What this is our hero, okay, but little scrappy kit is determined as all else to finally get some respect. It’s the finals of the World Series. Kit hits the ball. She is rounding the bases. Her coach is giving her the signal at third to stop. Stop. Don’t keep going. Guess who doesn’t listen to her coach kit? She keeps running. She knocks over her sister as she’s going into home base, like physically knocks her down, and Dottie, who had the ball in her mitt, dislodges the ball, the ball rolls out of the mitt and kit, has won the World Series for her entire team. But more than that, she has won it for herself, and at last, we see her claim a little bit of ownership of herself that she didn’t have. Of throughout the movie, and that’s the scene I’m going to show you. I’m going to show you the ball slowly rolling out of Dottie mitt and kit being hoisted up by her teammates as the MVP.

 

Ronald young Jr.  25:11

Wow, I Okay. I had forgotten about that scene. I have chills listening. Scott, you have your work cut out for you. What scene in Apollo 13 is the scene that sells me this movie.

 

Scott Eckert  25:25

It’s a scene that’s defined by the most quotable line of the film. I’ll have to set it up very briefly, right? The context for this is that it’s Apollo 13. If you remember, we walked on the moon during Apollo 11. So this is the third trip to the moon, and the truth is that the American public’s not so interested anymore, it seems like old news. But on the other hand, for Tom Hanks and all of the engineers at NASA, they are doing, or rather duplicating, the most difficult thing that has ever been done in the history of of the Earth, right? Going to the moon, it’s very complicated. It’s hard and and it’s all grounded in the fact that Tom Hanks is leaving his family in order to do this. And he explains early in the movie to his young son, who’s, I think, about seven, who’s terrified that his father is literally leaving the earth. And he asks Tom Hanks about some other astronauts who died in a previous Apollo mission. And Tom Hanks, in the way that an adult explains to his small children, tries to tell the boy, very simply, well, space is dangerous, and and there was some big accidents with that, you know, mission, and there was a problem with the door. They couldn’t open the door. These astronauts were basically trapped in and died because they couldn’t escape. And this little boy is like, did they fix it? And timing’s like, yes, of course. We fixed it. We fixed it. Cut to later in the film The Houston we have a problem scene. There’s some circuitry that goes haywire in the spaceship, and there’s an explosion, and the next thing you know, Tom Hanks  and Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon are literally spinning wildly, right? It’s one of the most intense moments in all of cinema. They are truly weightless. They are being battered around the spaceship, right? And and they’re freaking out. All of the alarms are going off back down in Mission Control, which is run by Ed Harris, right? The army of white men. They’re smoking their cigarettes and drinking their coffee. They couldn’t be more bored. And then all of a sudden, all of their lights go off, and that’s when Ed Harris is like, what the hell is going on? And Tom Hanks delivers his famous line, Houston, we have a problem right now. All of that is tremendously gripping, but it really lands. Oh man, when you cut back to Tom Hanks’ house and his wife played by what I just said, her name, Kathleen Quinlan, right? The one, yeah, yeah, she has to go and knock on her son’s door and tell him. And I believe the exact line is she goes, Well, honey, there’s a problem with daddy’s spaceship, and I have never seen a more terrified child in film when he looks up at her with the world’s biggest eyes and he says, is it the door? And it is heartbreaking.

 

Ronald young Jr.  28:35

Wow, okay, let me tell y’all. So normally at this point, I say, hey, give me a closing argument for your for your movies, but I want to let both of those scenes from both y’all serve as your closing arguments, because I’m ready to issue My ruling, and I want to be honest with y’all. So the way this normally works is like the debates are always 111, Ellie, you’re one, Scott, you’re one, and I’m in the middle at one. So both of y’all are voting one ways, and we want to get it want to get it to two one. And again, we’re saying, which movie do we want to watch right now? I want to be honest with you, at points of this argument, there were ties and there were points for both of y’all were ahead like there was. It went back and forth. It was very tight there for a while. But I want to kind of talk through some of the things that I’m thinking at one point, it became a referendum on Tom Hanks’ career, which I do think Scott pointed out very well. I think this is kind of what swayed me in the end, eventually, and I’m not gonna sit with side, but it did sway me in the end, which is true, Apollo 13 is kind of the push into the everyman Tom Hanks that we know in 95 that’s when he becomes his most Tom hanksiest, if you will. I was in the fifth grade, you know, I mean, so it’s like, if you go from Tom Hanks to Toy Story watching a movie that I don’t know if I should be watching in the fifth grade, but because there is, like, some intensity. I don’t know if it’s for children necessarily, but I’m watching that, but then I’m also hearing his voice. On the first Pixar film, the very first Pixar film, and from then on, you can look at his filmography down there, which Scott you already recited so well, which really works. However, when I think about his performance in A League of Their Own, and the fact that he did something very different, something that we weren’t used to seeing from Tom Hanks, not necessarily playing a villain, but playing a bit of an anti hero in a way that we normally don’t ever get to see him, and he starts off taking this Two Minute bathroom break in the beginning of this movie. That’s just that’s incredible. You know what to be. And I remember as a kid seeing that and being like, wow, that’s pretty cool. But the emotional part of this movie that really spoke to me was the relationship between these two sisters. I mean, in a lot of ways, Tom Hanks is not even the lead of this film. It’s really is centered around these women in this very specific way. So what it really comes down to is, what do I want to watch right now? Do I want to watch Tom Hanks in this every man action, kind of thriller set in space where no one can hear you scream or do I want to watch this kind of heartwarming story of two sisters in the World Series? And I think at the moment, while I think Scott, technically your argument was better, like you technically did tell me, like you’ve convinced me that Apollo 13 is the pivotal movie of Tom Hanks’ career. You did an excellent job of that. I really want to watch A League of Their Own. So for this debate, Ellie Kipper, you win.

 

Ellie Kemper  31:37

I’m gloating, and I shouldn’t, and I should I just this is not how I thought things would go. And I’m out of my mind.

 

Ronald young Jr.  31:45

I was convinced you were gonna lose.

 

Ellie Kemper  31:50

I think we all were, Ronald, did you think that before I said I thought I was gonna lose, or did you just go in thinking it? Because whichever way we all thought I was gonna lose.

 

Ronald young Jr.  31:59

I feel like there was a lack of confidence there, that I was starting to believe it. And then it like, as you started talking more, and I started remembering the film, like both of you. So to be clear, Scott, you not only convinced me that I want to see Apollo 13, which we’re going to watch right after we’re done watching A League of Their Own. We’re going to watch Apollo 13, but then we’re going to watch Saving Private Ryan. We’re going to watch Catch Me If You Can. We’re going to go down the Tom Hanks filmography, because you really pointed out something very important about his career. But it just wasn’t convincing enough for me to say I want to watch that right now.

 

Scott Eckert  32:31

I hear you Ronald League of Their Own. It’s a hard movie to say no to.

 

Ellie Kemper  32:35

There it’s just it. I’m so listen, I don’t want to gloat, and you didn’t ask me to speak, but I’m going I find myself speaking. Sure, go ahead. Yes, I don’t think any of us disagree. Scott, I knew you would deliver, and you did a hell of an argument. And on the technical side, you were just 11 out of 10. But for the movie we want to watch right now, I did win, and that’s because I think it was nice to see sort of Tom Hanks almost step aside and like, give, you know, give the spotlight to some pretty strong women.

 

Ronald young Jr.  33:11

Thank you for the accepted speech. Ellie, that’s a PCDC first. Scott Eckert, tell the people where they can find you.

 

Scott Eckert  33:21

Well, the best place to find me is on our podcast. Born to Love. Episodes come out every Tuesday. You can follow on your you know, whatever app you use to listen to podcasts, and we’d love for you to check out the show. You can also find me on Twitter, at @mescotteckert, but yeah, the podcast is really where it’s at.

 

Ronald young Jr.  33:40

Ellie Kemper, where can folks find you if they’re looking?

 

Ellie Kemper  33:43

If you’re looking, or even if you’re not looking, you can find me at @EllieKemper on Instagram, and I co host the Born to Love podcast with Scott Eckert right here. So you can find us there.

 

Ronald young Jr.  33:53

This has been a pleasure. Thank you both so much for being here.

 

Ellie Kemper  33:56

Ronald, thank you for having us.

 

Scott Eckert  33:58

Thank you. It’s been a delight, even if I lost

 

CREDITS  34:00

Thanks again to Ellie Kemper and Scott Eckert, there’s more Pop Culture Debate Club with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like Ellie and Scott recalling their first experience with Tom Hanks films and how the movie Big illustrates the millennial experience. Subscribe now at Apple podcasts. Pop Culture Debate Club is a production of Lemonada and the BBC.   It’s produced by Jamela Zarha Williams, Kryssy Pease,  Dani Matias and me, Ronald young Jr. Our mix is by Noah Smith. Rachel Neel is VP of new content. Our Senior Vice President of weekly content  and production is Steve Nelson. Commissioning editor for the BBC is Rhian Roberts. Executive Producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer.   Follow Pop Culture Debate Club, wherever you get your podcasts.