The Movies That Raised Us (Wouldn't Be Made Now)

Quinn Emmett: [00:00:00] We did 10 things I Hate About You, which is incredible still. Also the scene where she gets him out of class, out of detention is completely insane. We were like, children don't do this, where she just flashes her boobs at the teacher.

Welcome to Not Right Now, the podcast about parenting through all of this.

Claire Zulkey: We'll be talking about slash crashing out over topics like

Quinn Emmett: TikTok time limits, and the collapse of local news.

Claire Zulkey: Have you done your homework and have I remembered to ask you if you've done your homework? And other existential questions.

Quinn Emmett: It's not an advice show.

Claire Zulkey: It's a you're not alone and you're also not crazy for screaming in the shower kind of show. I'm Claire Zulkey from Evil Witches.

Quinn Emmett: And I'm Quinn Emmett from Important, Not Important.

Claire Zulkey: You can find details on anything we talk about in the show notes or at our website, not right now dot show.

Quinn Emmett: Dot show. And if you like what you hear today, please share it with a parent who needs it or who might laugh and tell their [00:01:00] kids to be quiet. And then drop us a nice little five star review.

Claire Zulkey: And reminder, you can send questions or feedback to questions at not right now dot show.

Quinn Emmett: Hello. Hello. Quick note. We have two guests today. Crazy. I know, we figured out how to make that happen. They are Mark Graham and Meghan Keane Graham, who are parents. They're married, at least when we recorded they were married and they've got two kids and they decided to make a podcast with them called Back In My Day where they present movies to their children and try to defend them and their children either pacify them or rip them apart on air. It is a delight. It's very sweet. I was hoping it's a bloodbath behind the scenes, maybe not, which is great for them. And it says a lot about my parenting. But anyways, really a delight to have them and so thankful they could join [00:02:00] us.

And as usual, Claire made me record this by myself, so you're welcome. Let's go talk to them.

Claire Zulkey: I'm just coming in hot. I don't even have time to talk about everyone I'm mad about today. But on Fridays, this has been a longstanding tradition where the kids get Nutella, just Nutella, Fridays just, I thought that would be cute. And no school tomorrow and my kids as a treat are gonna get to spend the night at a Double Tree in Skokie, Illinois for a friend's birthday party.

So, I came down this morning and I asked James what he wants for breakfast, which I already hate because he should have made his own breakfast, he’s a little baby man. And if you let him suffer the consequences, it affects everyone. 'cause I dunno if your guys' kids get so hungry that they punish the world around them. And so anyway, I said, asked James what he wants for breakfast, and he said, Nutella. And I said, well, it's Thursday, it's not Friday. And he said, but I'm not gonna be here tomorrow. And I said, we're not negotiating. You don't get Nutella just because you're gonna be spending the night at a hotel, a Double Tree, famous for their[00:03:00] cookies. And anyway, so that's just, that's just the tip of the iceberg. But that's just where I came in with, are you guys mad at anyone this morning or you guys are emotionally balanced?

Meghan Keane Graham: Do we have the same child? We have a lot of rules in our house that come from our 12-year-old around when we eat pizza, and what happens if we don't have pizza on Fridays and if an ice cream chance is missed. I think we've been hearing about that for the last two weeks because we offered to get him ice cream and then it's the middle of winter and we haven't gone so.

Claire Zulkey: The accounting really drives me crazy when they only remember like the one thing that you maybe promised and they don't deserve it whatsoever, but they're like you said, I could or because my brother got it, that means I also get it or I'm not enjoying the thing that I got. 'cause my brother also got it and he should always have less than me. Yeah. I want to, we have so many things to discuss, but like before we even get into your podcast, Quinn and I were talking about how cute it is and how nicely everyone gets along, and we want to like, hear from you [00:04:00] whether there's behind the scenes drama ever about people not participating nicely or, you know, arguing and you guys just edit that out.

Quinn Emmett: I believe I texted Claire. I hope it's a bloodbath behind the scenes.

Meghan Keane Graham: Well there, there tends to be a meltdown after it finishes. But we started the podcast because Mark found out that we could get an hour of free recording time at our local studio. It's paid for by tax dollars and we kind of film it through and then just publish it because we are cheap, but we almost ended the podcast before it started because the very first movie that Mark picked was a movie that Max had already seen, and he hated it.

Claire Zulkey: Oh, I love this.

Quinn Emmett: Which, which one?

Mark Graham: That pick was Hoosiers.

Quinn Emmett: Wait. I heard I'm very upset about the reactions to Hoosiers, but continue, I've got a lot to say.

Mark Graham: It's a, for those who are unfamiliar, it's a 1986 movie starring Gene Hackman. That's based on a true story about a real life high school [00:05:00] basketball team from a small town in Indiana who miraculously wins the state championship. And our oldest Max, who is twelve, is absolutely not a sports guy. So starting the podcast off with a sports movie, one of my favorite genres, certainly, as Megan mentioned earlier, did not go off on a good foot. But as always, Megan is our deescalation expert and is always good at handling those sorts of moments.

Meghan Keane Graham: Although it was a real power move to start with a movie that not only was Max's programmed to hate, but he’d already seen it. Like if he yet, he could have withheld his opinions for a while, but previously walked out when it was shown to him.

Claire Zulkey: Mark, did you do that on purpose to do that dad thing where you're like, I don't care about your feelings. I'm watching this movie and I'm gonna force you to talk about it? Or what was your thinking behind that?

Mark Graham: Well, the rationale for the decision came from the rubric or [00:06:00] thesis of our entire project. So, you know, our podcast is called Back In My Day. You can find it at back in my day pod dot com. And the thought basically went a little bit like this. So both Megan and I are huge movie fans and have been all of our lives.

Megan was a film critic in a past life. I currently run a website and entertainment brand that is all about watching stuff. It's called decider dot com, watching movies, watching TV shows. And so, as we learned that our town, thanks to our tax dollars, gives us an opportunity to get into a podcast studio, I started thinking about, well, what could a fun podcast be? And so, because I'm an editor and sort of, I've been, I make these assignments all the time, I felt kind of comfortable assigning work to my family for this. And again the thought of it is our son is 12. And what I thought would be a fun sort of overall shape for a podcast would be to go back to watch movies [00:07:00] from when I was 12 years old, and also from when Megan was 12 years old.

And because I'm, I can be a little let's say overly detail oriented, I wanted to line up perfectly. So we did our first podcast in November of 2025. And the movie Hoosiers came out in November of 1986 when I was 12 years old. So that was the best movie that came out in November, 1986 that I thought my kids might actually enjoy and could spawn some good conversation.

Claire Zulkey: Okay, now let's back up a little bit 'cause I do wanna hear, I've actually never seen Hoosiers, so I wanna go into detail a little more about how it was received. But talk a little bit about how you guys got the kids on board with doing this podcast. Because just sometimes, honestly, watching a whole movie, like T to B, like with the wait, T, top, yeah. With the kids is sort of an ordeal.

Quinn Emmett: What the fuck does that mean? What does that mean?

Claire Zulkey: Top to bottom.

Quinn Emmett: Okay,

Mark Graham: You know, everyone calls it that, T to B.

Quinn Emmett: Sure. [00:08:00] Yep.

Claire Zulkey: Top to bottom of the credits. Quinn's wife is a screenwriter by the way, so he has no reason not to know what that famous movie phrase is.

Quinn Emmett: Nobody tells me anything. Continue.

Claire Zulkey: But just watching a movie with the kids, can be kind of a lot of focus and concentration. And are you guys taking notes? You know, are you discussing as you go? Are you saving conversation for the podcast? Talk a little bit about the behind the scenes about how you guys make that work.

Meghan Keane Graham: We watch a lot of movies together and Mark has already loved showing them old school movies that may or may not be appropriate for them to watch at the age they're at or at the, I don't know, 2026 that we're all at. And so we've been watching 'em for a while.

So they were already kind of in the habit of watching movies with us and then it wasn't that hard to sell them on it. Mark originally wanted to do the podcast just with Max and I sort of, invited myself and Zach along so that it could be a family activity. 'cause the benefit to me is just that we [00:09:00] get to spend a whole Saturday together filming it and they are engaged and then we go out to dinner and there's usually a meltdown at that point. But it came together kind of organically from that. And we take notes. Zach is sort of the 9-year-old mascot of our show, and he's pretty good off the cuff. Max sometimes takes notes, sometimes takes it very seriously. Basically, if he likes the movie, then he has a lot to say about it.

Claire Zulkey: Are they famous at school? Do they, are there like their classmates impressed that they are on a podcast?

Meghan Keane Graham: They were pretty impressed. I remember after our first one came out, a bunch of middle schoolers swarmed the car at pickup and asked if they could be on our podcast. And then I asked Max if they had watched it and he said no.

Quinn Emmett: Perfect.

Meghan Keane Graham: They’re just excited about the idea of being on a podcast.

Quinn Emmett: Yep. Checks every box for middle schoolers. Awesome.

Mark Graham: Well, the podcast, you know, is 30 minutes long. And one thing that we're trying to do [00:10:00] with this is to try to keep our kids' attention spans from shrinking like everything else. You know, obviously our kids are addicted to YouTube, like I think every other kid in the world, but this is sort of a little bit of a respite from that where, you know, movies are 90 minutes or two hours long, trying to get that in.

But that's something that I think Megan and I had been relatively successful at doing, but I'm not sure some of our kids' friends' parents are sort of, in that same mode or mindset.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah. Have you guys, I mean, you guys haven't released that many episodes yet, but I'm curious how you choose the movies, but also whether you've had any, either for the podcast or just in general where in your mind you're like, this movie is a classic and then you watch it with your kids and you're like, oh, this doesn't hold up as well as it did.

Or, I only remember this one scene and the rest of it was so tedious. Like the first time we showed, we tried showing Paul the original Superman and he was way too young. I think he was like four, but we were like, Superman doesn't come on the screen for 45 minutes or something like that. There's like all this [00:11:00] back story.

So talk a little bit about your choosing and how things have aged so far with them and with yourselves.

Mark Graham: Well, I think conceptually, again I'm trying to loosen myself and loosen my rules in this thing a little bit, but originally I had a really hard and fast rule that this movie should come out, or the movies that Meghan and I picked should be at exactly the same age that Max is right now.

So, again, as I mentioned before, we did our first episode in November of 2025. So when I was 12 in November of 1986. So I looked at all of the movie releases, you know, we hit up Wikipedia to check out to see what was released that month. And I put together a list of movies for Megan to do the same. But as we're sort of learning as we go and trying to schedule episodes, we're starting to introduce some theme episodes.

Like we did a Christmas movies one with Gremlins, which did not come out when I was 12, but I was watching it when I was 12, certainly, and Home Alone, which also didn't come out with Meghan was 12. But again, sort of fits the [00:12:00] vibe.

Meghan Keane Graham: Yeah, I think I pretty quickly broke the rules because my first movie would've been like the Addams family, which was fine, but didn't really mean that much to me when I was 12. And then also Mark's family and my family had different ways of watching movies. So I didn't really go to the movies that often with my family.

I would watch a movie on VHS like years after it came out. I'm really curious of what happens when we get to the movies that I feel like had the most impact on me when I was younger, which feel like I sort of came to consciousness of the teen experience when I was 12 ish around that phase where movies just had, consistently had women having their tops blown off.

Quinn Emmett: Sure.

Meghan Keane Graham: So like the movies I remember the most were, you know, Weird Science. Do you remember that Scott Bayo movie Zapped?

And then the movie I watched the most, my entire childhood was probably Just One of the [00:13:00] Guys, which starred no one. It was about this girl who pretends to be a guy so that she could be taken seriously as a journalist in a neighboring school. We owned the VHS, which was just a girl topless with holding two football helmets in front of her.

Claire Zulkey: That's like Soul man. Like same level of problematic, you know, yeah. Oh no, that's amazing. Megan, you really manifested like your life with living with only guys.. Quinn, tell me a couple times that you watched movies with your kids that were like beloved to you, that they either absolutely got or they absolutely were like, what the fuck is this shit?

Quinn Emmett: Just to set the tone. I mean, I take everything personally, so, and I go into family movie night with inappropriately high expectations, not that the movie will hold up because of course it will, it's frozen in time. But that they will have the same, that it'll mean the same thing to them 30 [00:14:00] seconds into the credits, as it has built up for me over 30 years, basically, is essentially I want them to plug the Matrix in the back of their head and feel that way.

So I'll do things like, oh my God, ET is showing on a big screen. We're gonna, I'm gonna take you outta school and we're gonna go fucking see ET. And we go and we leave and I'm crying again. And he's like, yeah, it was good. And I'm like, what the fuck does that mean?

What is, it was good mean? Are you kidding me? And so we rinse and repeat for most of those. I'm generally not allowed now to pick most of the movies we watch because of things like that and reactions like that. But it, I mean, it's gone fine. So we did Ghostbusters recently. That was, it's a perfect movie. They were like, it's fucking weird. I was like, it is, it really is. Which is why the sequels are so complicated. They really loved Goonies. Because it's so good. Obviously Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back before he gets eaten.

What else? We haven't done the original Ninja Turtles movie, which is perfect by the way. Which I'm excited to do and I forgot about 'cause this [00:15:00] guy's so high up on a shelf. I have a few other ones. I have Marty Mcflys license. Over there. I've got Henry Jones Sr. And his briefcase that he uses to push, to make the birds fly away.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah.

Quinn Emmett: There's lots of others. To be clear, the only reason I have these in the office is 'cause I was told I was not allowed to keep these in the house anymore.

Claire Zulkey: Steve's mom sent us his old Star Wars figures, and they were like the little, the very little ones, and she put them in a diorama. And there was something like a sick day or a polar vortex or something like that. And to be clear, these were not mint condition, these were played with.

Quinn Emmett: As they should be.

Claire Zulkey: I opened up the dioramas for Paul to play with, and she was so, I think she was mad that we like, made them uns, like, but I was like, but you be here with this kid and like now they are in the bath whatever, but whatever.

Quinn Emmett: It's what they're for. What are we talking about?

Claire Zulkey: Being in the bath, like getting stuck in the drain. Anyway.

Quinn Emmett: I don't know. As usual, I go into things hoping and expecting that they'll be perfect and I'm completely let down when they're not. But we've had some [00:16:00] pretty good experiences.

Claire Zulkey: What is everyone’s ninja turtle that you most identify with, or is your favorite quickly?

Meghan Keane Graham: Oh.

Quinn Emmett: I took Raphael down from the shelf 'cause he also takes things personally and is too self serious about it all. And they're like, give it a break, bud. Have some fun. So.

Meghan Keane Graham: Which one's the scientist? Donatello? Yeah, I think that one.

Mark Graham: Donatello. Donatello is also my particular favorite, mainly because Zach, our 9-year-old, when he was four or five, I told him a joke and he repeated it for a year straight and it goes like this. What is the name of the Ninja turtle that farted? And the answer is Donasmello.

Claire Zulkey: Wow.

Mark Graham: So that one was a classic joke in our house. Mind's blown for years. And it's a little bit obviously of my sense of humor, but also my son Zach’s.

Claire Zulkey: That's amazing. That's a good one. I am, I feel like one of my character traits is that I always like the least popular [00:17:00] member of any group, so I like Leonardo. 'cause he has that big sister energy, and no one likes him.

Quinn Emmett: A hundred percent. What's that Taylor Swift song like Elder Sister, whatever the line is, that's Leonardo.

Meghan Keane Graham: I have that same thing. I think I like Jonathan from New Kids on the Block. Just 'cause he was like the one no one paid attention to.

Quinn Emmett: The one that nobody wanted, right?

Claire Zulkey: Simon from the Chipmunks.

Quinn Emmett: Our kids are 13, 12, and 11. And so Megan, you phrase this kind of how we eventually learned too, which is we don't, we try not to say things that are inappropriate anymore for them. We say they’re not, it’s not appropriate for you, for whatever. And then we just stopped caring. We took the kids on a Christmas trip, and I went to bed early one night and my wife showed them European Vacation, which if you haven’t watched in a long time, has an incredible number of boobs in it. And the B plot is around a sex tape. So I woke up in the morning to my children going holy shit, guess what Mom showed us last night. And that started the whole thing. So we’re just easing our way into those kind of things.

Meghan Keane Graham:  Yeah, that's definitely an interesting component to navigate. Especially because, I think our parenting or my parenting style was to be really concerned about the choices I was making with my oldest child.

And then to just decide that the younger one did everything at exactly the same time. 'Cause I got tired of waiting. And so we show movies to our 9-year-old that we would not have shown to our 12-year-old at that age probably. And he's a real fan of catch phrases and ridiculous things that happen in movies. And, it's gonna be interesting when we get to like the John Hughes of it all, like all of these things that are not exactly, would not be in movies made today. And generally I take the tack of, well let's talk about what's weird and, you know, if they're exposed to it, we can at least explain things to them. With a 9-year-old, he's a lot less interested in the explanations and he's a lot more interested in, you know, the catchphrases from Zoolander.

Quinn Emmett: Sure.

Mark Graham: Austin Powers.

Quinn Emmett: Have you guys done the Austin Powers with them?

Claire Zulkey: We just did that recently.

Mark Graham: Oh yeah.

Meghan Keane Graham: Yeah.

Quinn Emmett: Okay.

Claire Zulkey: They did not, it was an interesting rewatch, like some parts of it were slower than I remembered. And also if the kids don't know who James Bond or the [00:18:00] other references, like they just, it's just a weird guy basically. And they didn't like the, I was kind of worried about the whole dick, you know, where he's got a sausage up the whole time.

Quinn Emmett: Could you, which part?

Mark Graham: This is my Johnson.

Claire Zulkey: You know exactly what I'm talking about, right? It's Elizabeth Hurley holding a sausage.

Mark Graham: Oh yeah.

Quinn Emmett: Totally. Yep. Yep.

Meghan Keane Graham: And the penis pump. Or is that in Austin Powers 2?

Claire Zulkey: Yeah. Dr. Evil.

Mark Graham: Penis Pump has a running gag in all three movies.

Claire Zulkey: They like Dr. Evil way more, and I forgot that I was like, Dr. Evil's way funnier than Austin. Austin Powers is not really funny himself. Like he's just got weird teeth. You know, they also did not live through like the Mike Meyers era of anything he did was worthy of attention. But I don't know. How did your guys kids like that?

Meghan Keane Graham: Oh is our nine year old's favorite thing to talk about, favorite character of all movies, Alotti Vagina? Yes.

Claire Zulkey: Wow. He does like the catchphrases. That's amazing. My kids are kind of wimps, I have to say, like both of them. And so there's a [00:19:00] couple movies we haven't shown them, I haven't even shown them Ghostbusters yet because I know Ghostbusters isn't like inherently a scary movie, but the opening scene with the library ghost is scary. And I think Slimer can be scary. Yeah. And it's just not worth the sorting out yet with us. You know, and Goser all that stuff is like kind of scary. And even Ghostbusters two with the goo, I'm like, that is very social media. Like I know that's pre-social media, but I'm like, to me goo is the social media where you touch it and you start like getting awful all of a sudden.

Quinn Emmett: That's deep.

Claire Zulkey: So even though I have a lot of fond memories of Ghostbusters, well, you know, that's me. But a lot of the movies you guys mentioned, like we, when we showed the kids ET or I think Steve showed them, they were scared of ET and I made me remember that ET is very intense.

Quinn Emmett: Yeah. The hospital scene and everything. Yeah.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah, when he is all pale. Gremlins, Steve showed Paul Gremlins and Paul loved it. And I remember being so scared of it actually. And like it falls in [00:20:00] this place of like eighties funny horror. I thought Weird Science was scary too, actually. Like I think I was a wimp as well. I found Goonies scary.

Meghan Keane Graham: Well, it's really interesting though, seeing how the practical effects age over time as well, because Zach is really good about tapping out when things feel scary. So he left Gremlins when it got scary. But then he heard that they got drunk and were smoking cigarettes and he thought that was so cool that I think he may have like upped his, you know, tolerance for scares. We took Max before we started this, there's a series in our town called Video Vault where they show monthly eighties movies at the local theater. And the first one we took Max to was The Lost Boys. And he hadn't seen anything scary before, so it was kind of our test run. And at the end of it we're like, what'd you think? And he said it was just ketchup and glitter.

Claire Zulkey: The worms, the noodles that become worms.

Meghan Keane Graham: The [00:21:00] vampires. He wasn't scared of those. Yeah, the maggots, the maggot noodles. He was fine.

Claire Zulkey: Man Lost Boys is such a weird movie.

Mark Graham: It's a really interesting artifact of a time and, you know, one of my eventual goals with this podcast is, Claire, to address your point, to make my kids a little bit less of being fraidy cats. You know, I think when I was growing up in the late seventies and mid eighties, you know, sort of at the same time that our oldest is now, there was a lot less I guess or maybe more free range parenting, if you will.

We just had a lot more time to kill when people were not around. So, you know, whether it was flipping something on HBO or rewatching something from a VHS tape that we had picked up at the local video store, I feel like I got a lot of exposure into horror movies that were broadcast on TV first, like the creature feature kinds of movies around Halloween.

You know, you'd see edited versions on TV and [00:22:00] then as you got a little bit older or you had friends with older brothers and sisters, you could graduate up that level. But our kids like Gremlins is certainly the scariest thing that they have ever seen at this point. They won't even watch Jaws. That's something that hopefully will be on our list.

Quinn Emmett: We just did that recently, but only with my oldest.

Meghan Keane Graham: Oh, that scarred me for a decade.

Claire Zulkey: That's a winter time, not near the ocean for awhile, although you might still be scared of a bathtub and pool.

Quinn Emmett: I wrote a whole column on it because he asked to watch it for the first time while we were sitting on the beach where we go every year when he was, I think 11, and he was like, well, I've seen Jurassic Park and I've seen Star Wars and Storm Troopers and all that. And I was like, I know.

But this is designed to evoke something else, and it's something that theoretically could happen to you. You're not gonna get eaten by dinosaurs. You feel safe, even though it can feel scary, all these different things. I said, this is designed, I was like, also [00:23:00] it's about like capitalism and small town politics and all these different things.

I was like, but it's gory and it's real. And he's like, I know, but I'm ready to watch it. I was like, all right, we put it off. But I thought this whole thing about like how it's important to eventually show your kids like quote unquote important movies. You know, the difference between watching a bunch of Storm Troopers get mowed down versus like the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

Basically. I was like, those are not the same thing, I know you feel like they're the same thing. They are not. It is to get you as close to that as possible. And we did Jaws and he really liked it, but we haven't been back to the beach since, and I was like, you'll never feel the same. So just be ready and like you said, even in a pool, you're like, I can, this is a closed facility. All the water is clear. I know intellectually there's not a shark here, and yet you'll never feel totally safe.

Meghan Keane Graham: I was scared of there being a pool in the deep end, or a shark in the deep end of a pool for 10 years after watching that.

Claire Zulkey: In high school, the high school has a diving well with an observation like window underneath it. And my friend told me that's [00:24:00] where they keep the sharks, behind that glass. None of that makes any sense, but still you get that feeling. You never know. They might open the window and let the sharks out into the pool.

Yeah, my kids were scared of, Karate Kid was one of our first experiences showing a kid a movie that I had very sentimental feelings for that they reacted to in such a satisfying way. Like at the end, like when he wins, you know, they both, they both pumped their fists and I had such a, it made me feel so good, but they were very scared of the scene where Danny is overrun by the gang and they're all wearing skeleton costumes. And I think he left the room and then Sister Act was on. And that was one of those movies that we owned the VHS of. So I watched it so many times that I, you kind of lose track of what actually happens.

But I had forgotten that movie starts with a guy getting executed, like shot in the head. You don't see the, you don't see it happen, but you see a gun held to his head and our kids ran out of the room and refused to come back in. 'cause they said we had tricked [00:25:00] them into seeing a scary movie, but we had just completely forgotten all about that opening part, which is scary, but you just kind of like gloss over that kind of stuff, as adults.

And, you know, I don't know if that, if you guys have re seen that other parts of that with your kids where you forgot something scary happened or you didn't see, you kind of blocked something outta your memory like that.

Meghan Keane Graham: Well, I think Max is the one that kind of brought it to our attention. How awful things happen in every Disney movie. You know, someone gets killed.

Quinn Emmett: Mom dies every movie

Mark Graham: The guardrails are certainly different now than they were back in our day. And so again, I think that's part of why I am interested in doing this with our kids. You know, if you can experience something that's a little bit scary or maybe a little bit problematic and like Megan or I are sitting there, we can like foster that conversation with them.

It helps to build up a little bit of, I dunno, maybe like emotional scar tissue or something like that [00:26:00] so that you're a little bit less afraid of other stuff or just exposed to things that again are different now than they were back then.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah. I love, so you guys, your most recently released episode you did Three Amigos, which I did not watch actually. 'cause I feel like that's not geared towards girls and I hate to say that, but like, you know, when you just, when you're a certain age or certain movies that just aren't geared to you, and I do love Steve Martin, but I never watched that.

Also, I have an aversion to Chevy Chase in general. And then you did Father of the Bride, which was very, yeah. I was like you guys saying that Father the Bride is like responsible for the wedding industrial complex. I was like, that is actually incredibly insightful.

But tell me about how they responded to both those movies and compared to how you thought they would go for, because especially Father the Bride, you don't think of as a kid's movie per se. But talk a little bit about how you guys chose those and that experience with both of them.

Meghan Keane Graham: We're trying to stick to Mark's rules. And when he chose Three Amigos, I saw that [00:27:00] Father of the Bride was like in the scope of my range of rules and I hadn't really thought about it, but like that nineties, Steve Martin was my Steve Martin that I always associated with. I saw Parenthood, Father of the Bride. And then LA Story was another one that I saw pretty young, that I really loved. We just decided to do that and it was so fascinating because it's almost like a pre Nora Ephron movie in that she was involved with her husband on that one. And it's all gorgeous, but very lived in. And then you get to this kind of intense Nora Ephron later on, just like above and beyond insane kitchens and homes and views.

Mark Graham: Nancy Myers.

Meghan Keane Graham: Oh Nancy Myers. Sorry, sorry. My bad. Yeah. So it was really interesting to see that aspect of it. And the kids were so fascinated because in the movie [00:28:00] that gorgeous, perfect home that they live in compared to this insane mansion in a different part of town that the in-laws have. And the boys think that the main family is super rich to live in a house that big.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah.

Meghan Keane Graham: You know, it would, I mean, I guess maybe it was a more reasonable house then, but he was a super successful businessman also.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah. Yeah. And it was cool that he was a sneaker designer. Remember that being like such a cool moment when she lifted her wedding gown and she had her gym shoes on underneath it. 'cause he was like, I feel like he was supposed to be like a Nike exec, basically. That was a core memory of mine. That was a like a real, you know what a cool girl, although girl, literally girl, like the fact that she's 21.

Meghan Keane Graham: Oh my gosh, so young.

Mark Graham: Well, I think that's one of the cool things about our show here too, though, is, you know, Claire, you mentioned you weren't interested in watching Three Amigos. Definitely a very guy movie. You know, the women in that movie have barely any lines and barely anything to do other than just be a [00:29:00] plot device.

But I think that's been the fun balance that I've experienced so far, is that you know, I've been showing movies like Three Amigos, like all the Adam Sandler movies to the boys since they were really little. And one cool thing about this is Meghan is bringing more of a feminine energy and this sort of experience, like I would've never shown the kid's Father of the Bride, although I loved that movie and watched it 10,000 times in the nineties when it first came out. I hadn't seen it since then, and it's interesting to see how they react to more like of the maybe like romantic comedy type genres and exposing them into that, I think is cool and fun too.

Quinn Emmett: So I have a daughter. We're boy, girl, boy. and my wife has written romantic comedies. Like we, I love romantic comedies, but it's interesting, like my sort of initial list as you're alluding to, wasn't as necessarily as feminine as much as we love those, but we've really started to lean into some great ones. So we did Clueless last week, which is fucking incredible still.

We did 10 [00:30:00] things I Hate About You, which is incredible still. Also the scene where she gets him out of class, out of detention is completely insane. We were like, children don't do this, where she just flashes her boobs at the teacher. 10 things, 10 ways to get arrested. Princess Diaries is fucking great still. We haven't done any of the sequels to that.

But yeah, I mean, there's just some incredible stuff that's still out there that, again, it's really interesting to see how they'll react if not even appreciate it, you know, the love story parts of that, besides the squeamish stuff, that was an interesting test for us. So my wife, among the other things she's done, she's pretty incredible. She co-wrote the two Wicked movies that just came out, so much hard work. Just incredible.

Meghan Keane Graham: Now we can tell our kids we were on this podcast, because Max is a Wicked super fan.

Quinn Emmett: Well, I love it. Well, here's the thing. We, you know, loved the first one. They loved the whole thing. It was great. Obviously a little more appropriate for kids type of thing, where if you knew what was gonna happen in the second one, and eventually my wife ended up taking them to see the musical [00:31:00] so they'd be a little prepared for the second half, which is more complicated, right?

It is the find out part of fuck around and find out of that story for sure. But there's the sexy scene and there was always this question in the musical, it's even sexier.

Meghan Keane Graham: Sexier than a sex sweater?

Quinn Emmett: Oh yes. Sexier than the sex sweater. Nothing is better than listening to the fucking genius legend, Paul Taswell talk about how they designed the sex sweater and why it exists and how it makes her comfortable and safe, all this stuff.

You're like, fuck yeah, Paul. Anyways, we threw this hometown premiere for my wife, which is super fun. It was like 300, 400 people. We got two theaters. We decorated the whole place. All this. And my 13-year-old kept going could we just have a kids' theater? And I was like, no, that's a pain in the ass.

I'm not doing assigned seats, all these things. Until I eventually realized he was right, but not for why he thought he was right. I was like, oh, this benefits me because that scene's gonna come on and I don't have to fucking deal with it. I can enjoy this movie with adults. And we told everybody, kids theater, adult theater, if you wanna sit [00:32:00] with the kids, your kids are little.

I get it. Do whatever you want. The kids wanna sit with you, that's fine. But they gotta behave. This movie ended and these kids came out and I said, how did it go during that scene? And they're like, it was awful. Like children squealing and squirming and throwing things and it was exactly as expected.

And I was like, oh, that's so interesting. And it was so funny 'cause a week later. My daughter came up to us with this list of other movies she wanted to watch all classics again, some appropriate, let's do it, some not ready. And she goes, well, can I watch Dirty Dancing Now? And we're like, oh no, we can't do that yet. Fantastic. But you know.

Claire Zulkey: Not the whole abortion subplot.

Meghan Keane Graham: Well, Mark and I are actually trying to decide on Dirty Dancing 'cause the Video Vault series in our town is showing it.

Quinn Emmett: It's incredible. But.

Meghan Keane Graham: I think certain things just go over their heads and then certain things are worth kind of pausing and talking about.

Quinn Emmett: Totally.

Meghan Keane Graham: So I think Zach won't get a lot of it. Max might.

Claire Zulkey: Did you like it? I watched it [00:33:00] kind of later in life and I never clicked with Patrick Swayze, and so I did not love it the way other people did, although I appreciate it. We had Chris on from What Went Wrong, which is a great podcast where they talk about like the behind scenes of movies, and they did an episode on Dirty Dancing, which is really interesting about the casting and like what an asshole Patrick Swayze was to Jennifer Gray up until the end of it. But yeah, I didn't have big love for it. Did you, Meghan, as you got older?

Meghan Keane Graham: Oh, I loved it. And though since watching it as an adult, I definitely kind of associate with the dad now more. I hadn’t seen it in the last 10 years or so, but I was like, oh, you know what? It’s not that out of the blue to find out about this woman being pregnant and he thinks it's like the, with the information he's given, he acts pretty rationally, although he's sort of like the villain then sees the error of his ways later on. But he didn't have all the details.

Claire Zulkey: Interesting. I don't know. I can't, that's a hard one to say for [00:34:00] sure. That's yeah, I don't, have you guys shown them anything that you realized that while you were watching it with them, that they were like, you were like, this is above them, or we misjudged their interest level and something like this.

Mark Graham: I feel like Meghan would say that I do that to them all the time. But, you know, again, I think it's, I think it's important to give them a little bit of exposure into this world, again I think we should put that on the list. Meghan, can we commit to that now in public?

Quinn Emmett: Live!

Meghan Keane Graham: I think we already did. It's on the list.

Quinn Emmett: Done. The thing though is that the point you're making for again, better or worse, we were all exposed to this stuff with no rules. I think in one night on a sleepover, a buddy and I watched Alien, Bodyguard, and Beverly Hills Cop, and we were just like, checks every box. And we were in third grade or fucking something. But that's what we got from the video store.

Meghan Keane Graham: We did have a an awkward one with Wicked. Our oldest was such a super fan that my sister gifted him the book.

Quinn Emmett: Oh, the book is very different.

Meghan Keane Graham: And she gave it to him before [00:35:00] reading it. And so one night we were going to grab pizza and I ran outta the car to pick up pizza. And I came back in and he had been reading the book. And he said, mom I just wanna let you know that Wicked isn't, the book isn't really for kids, but it's okay. And I'm almost done. You have to let me finish it.

Quinn Emmett: This was one, by the way, this is one of those examples, and it's happened in the past where, you know, they changed the cover of the paperback to be the movie cover. And this was controversial for all the folks who worked on the movie. 'cause they're like, hold on a minute. These are really different.

And there's a lot of kids that are gonna see that pink dress on there and think great, I'll pick this up as my young adult reader. Yeah, it's a lot. But, sorry, I was just gonna say to your points, so my wife and I, you know, besides just her involvement in movies and us growing up on them, all that stuff, and all the VHSs, you know, we've really, we're real assholes about screen time.

And our kids have kind of started to just give up, which is great. But we realized eventually we needed to offer [00:36:00] alternatives. We can't just say no to everything. And so we've basically said if it's a movie, great. I don't care if here's the thing. They're gonna watch. Like they, they're very able to now go, oh, Eddie Murphy was incredible in Shrek and made the whole movie.

Now I can watch him in Beverly Hills Cop or 48 Hours or Raw. And I'm like, well, we're not gonna do Raw but what is that compared to fucking whatever they're gonna find on YouTube? Wouldn't I rather know? Well I know what they're gonna get out of this two hours of there's a subtle abortion part, you know, or Three Men and a Baby, which the B plot is like murder and cocaine, basically. Who, who cares? They're gonna find that in 30 seconds on whatever they find online. You know, I have found my daughter watching like Barbie seven, like struggling with her fourth child, you know, just a YouTube AI shit. And I'm like, Jesus Christ man. It's if it's able to be conceived, that shit's out there. So, sure. Great. Watch Beverly Hills Cop.

Meghan Keane Graham: Mark was an HBO household. Pretty fancy. [00:37:00] We did not have a lot of. Yeah, right. Like we didn't get those. I grew up on Rhonda Sheirs up all night movies just because my parents went to bed. It was a free for all. And watching like comedy standup shows you just go down your own rabbit holes, just, there were fewer things for us to watch then. But we were all kind of raised by TV and now thinking about what they can find online.

Quinn Emmett: But it was a little freeing to us when we thought about that. Oh we're trying to keep them from something that they've probably already seen or have talked to or experienced in some way. We know what it is and what's gonna happen, so, so why not, you know?

Claire Zulkey: Do you guys think, and I wanna hear what you guys have lined up for them coming up, but I was listening to How Did This Get Made? Another movie podcast.

Meghan Keane Graham: Yeah. I love that.

Claire Zulkey: They just watched Return to Oz and I dunno if you guys ever saw that movie.

Meghan Keane Graham: Yeah.

Claire Zulkey: And it was so dark and it made me think about how at least my age or my like era of childhood, there's so many really [00:38:00] dark kids movies. And I'm thinking of Neverending Story, especially.

Quinn Emmett: Willow. Fuck. Yeah.

Claire Zulkey: Willow. What else? I mean, Labyrinth, I feel like.

Mark Graham: Labyrinth for sure.

Quinn Emmett: Labyrinth is weird as shit.

Claire Zulkey: And I'm just like, why was that just a weird time of movies where we were expected to deal with these really heavy concepts? Or are movies dark in a different way that I just I'm not seeing, I'm just like, was that just us or was that like, is that still going on? Because I wouldn't show my kids Nverending Story. There's like too much like between the horse dying and the Nothing and the Wolf, like there was a lot of scary shit in that movie.

Mark Graham: It definitely feels like Hollywood has changed.

Meghan Keane Graham: Maybe it has to do partially with the rating system and like when that came into being, because there definitely, you know, were G movies that were specifically for kids, but a lot of the like movies that featured kids became kids movies, but they weren't necessarily made for kids the way they are now.[00:39:00] Shrek is made for kids and adults very purposely like those types of movies. But I don't think it was that sophisticated then. We hadn't gone that far.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah, and it's weird that like I feel like I was scared of certain movies. I remember some, we got shown Nightmare at Elm Street, like at a grade school sleepover, which was like way too scary for me. But you're watching these other movies that are like, what if there's no life after death? You know? And what happens if like you, your childhood ends, can you cross through? You know? Or what if we give you electric shock therapy? 'cause your imagination is too wild. Like these, the things we got served were, could be really intense on a lot of levels for sure.

Meghan Keane Graham: Oh my gosh, that's such a formative memory. My sister at her 13th, she had a 13th birthday sleepover and they watched Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th. And I still wanted to hang out with the big kids and they thought it would be really fun to cover my eyes, because my mom told them to watch out for me. So they said to cover my eyes during [00:40:00] the normal parts and let me watch the scary parts. So I only saw the violence.

Quinn Emmett: My brother and his friends showed me Cape Fear when I was eight.

Claire Zulkey: Oh God.

Quinn Emmett: That didn't go well.

Claire Zulkey: What happens in Cape Fear? I've never even seen it. It can't be good. Sounds scary.

Quinn Emmett: The quote unquote new one, the De Niro one. It's not fucking great. The scene that stuck out to me the most and I've re-watched it since, is when he is dressed as the maid in the kitchen, it's not great. It's not great.

Mark Graham: And he puts his finger into Juliette Lewis's mouth in a very sexual manner. That I definitely did not understand when I saw that movie in the movie theater with my parents 'cause they had seen the original Cape Fear and they're like, oh, this is gonna be a cool, weird, fun movie. And it was definitely more sexual than they were expecting. But that one really, that one goes to some very icky places for sure.

Claire Zulkey: I don't know how it shows, like shows up to kids nowadays, but I think some of that practical effect stuff like can be scarier than any kind [00:41:00] of CGI, like I'm thinking about Large Marge in Peewee, and that was like a personality test for my kids where I was like, this is a canonically scary thing coming up.

And I was like, you might wanna leave the room. And Paul stood there and took it, you know, whereas James listened to us. But I think about The Fly when she gives birth to that maggot and that’s still like seared in my head. And that kind of stuff really messes with you.

Oh. And Thriller. I haven't even showed the kids a Thriller video, even though that was like one of the coolest things to ever happen to us as a culture. But they can't, we're wimpy people in my family. I'm just realizing, like Quinn asked us recently, asked me recently, like what would happen if we were on Apollo 13, and I'm like, we'd all just like voluntarily kill ourselves rather than try to get through that, but tell me what you guys have coming up down the pipe. I just wanna, I'm just curious to hear like what you guys are gonna be watching with them that you have on the slate so far?

Meghan Keane Graham: Oh, for sure. Well, this month on Saturday we're filming our next episode, we're doing Olympics themed. And so, my pick is The Cutting Edge, which we just watched [00:42:00] the other night. Zach has been walking around saying toe pick since then. And Mark's doing Better Off Dead, so that's gonna be a fun one.

Mark Graham: Not exactly Olympic theme, but again also, you know, a super silly eighties comedy, a great performance from John Cusack, but a lot of adult references in that one for sure. I mean, the whole movie is about John Cusack's character wanting to commit suicide because he gets dumped by his girlfriend and all the different ways he attempts to do it, but then something goes wrong and he can't commit suicide.

That's the premise of the entire movie. And know again, when I was that age it flew over my head a lot, it didn't fly over Max's head when he first saw it. We actually went to a drive-in movie theater a couple years ago to see a Cusack double feature. But yeah, the Mahoning Drive-in, it's in Pennsylvania.

It was maybe about a two and a half, three hour drive for us, but we have a friend who does the [00:43:00] programming at that drive-in. So they had a John Cusack double feature with Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer. So our kids have seen this one. But again with Winter Olympic theme stuff there's a big skiing plot in that movie. If you guys don't remember that.

Claire Zulkey: Snorting the snow.

Mark Graham: Not Olympics, but winter sports. Exactly. Do you know the street value of this mountain? So again, I don't think they'll, they definitely don't understand that reference, and I know I didn't either, but I picked it up later. And that's been part of the fun for us, I think in this one too, is watching these movies that maybe we watched once or twice or maybe a bunch of times when we were younger, but watching them through new eyes and a new lens as parents. And it's just older people in the world who get more references. I know it's, that's been super enriching and super fun for me.

Claire Zulkey: Better Off Dead is such a deeply weird movie. Like it has that fever, isn't there, like an animated hamburger scene to the Van Halen song?

Mark Graham: Everybody wants some.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah, friends. You know, friends, [00:44:00] right? And this regarded cutting edge, Moira Kelly was like the most beautiful woman in the world to me.

I don't know where she's been, but it just was like, what a gorgeous human being. Like bookending that movie Chaplain that Steve recently re-watched and was like, that did not, was not great. But I like that you guys are not doing like the usual movies, like the typical Cusack films like I was thinking about one of my favorites is The Sure Thing.

And that's again I feel like a really problematic movie to, I dunno if I would show my kids that, like the whole premise is that you're gonna meet this woman who is guaranteed to fuck you sight unseen. That's wild to me. As a movie premise.

Meghan Keane Graham: I know, I feel like we should really figure out some sort of trigger warning for the movies that we pick because we have a lot of like family friends who listen to the podcast with their kids of all ages. And they might not have the same philosophy on showing movies to them.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah. I don't know about you, but regarding not including the rubric for your podcast. It makes me feel really good when I show the boys a movie that I meant a lot to me as a girl that they [00:45:00] responded to.

So like when they saw Clueless and loved it, that was extremely satisfying to me, especially the part, well, the thing that blew my mind about Clueless is that it was like such a joke that these kids all walk around with cell phones at the time. Like you were like, can you imagine? Like only in LA. And now you're like, that is normal.

That's not weird to them. They don't see that as a joke. But they responded really well to Legally Blonde which Paul was like kind of on the fence about at first, but he, I saw that he really did like it at the end. And I'm trying to remember if I showed them Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion or not, another one that aged way better than I thought it would age.

Meghan Keane Graham: Oh, interesting.

Claire Zulkey: What have you shown them that you like, again, I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm like, I'm a girl. I know you guys all forget about me. I know you're all Star Wars and you're, this is all your guys' house. And I'm just the lady who shows up sometimes, but sometimes I'm like, we're gonna watch Steel Magnolias at least the first half of it because you need to know, you know, and do you make them watch things like that?

Meghan Keane Graham: Well, it's [00:46:00] funny, so I grew up, I'm one of three girls, so there was only one guy in my household. And having two boys, I always wanted to have a daughter, but I kind of also want to raise nice boys. So one of the things I've always tried to do is raise them as if they're girls in a lot of ways in that my mom spent so much time like teaching us how to cook and how to prepare for being a wife and all these things.

And then there's so many men in the world that have no life skills because they just never got taught them. So in both like the things that I show them and what I want them to be able to do in life, I just think about what you need to do in life to be able to handle the world. And so we also are lucky because we have, you know, we have one really sporty kid and one theater kid. So it sort of opens up the aperture of their interests a little bit. And I just kind of show them things that I [00:47:00] like and sometimes they like it and sometimes they don't. So yeah, we just, we've seen a lot of things, we saw Clueless with them and that was definitely a big hit. We haven't seen Legally Blonde with them, have we?

Mark Graham: No we haven’t watched that one yet. But one of the cool learnings also that we've found out through this podcast is certainly we want to show them things that we think they'll like, but it's actually more interesting for the podcast that there is a little bit of conflict. Like our Hoosiers episode when Max hated it. I don't know. I think that was our best episode so far because we had such diverging opinions and I was like trying to win him over about why this is great and why it meant a lot to me. And he's just it was just really boring and slow. And why was that old man yelling at the high school kids all the time?

So, it's kind of fun when they actually don’t like it, even though that's definitely not my goal. I don't wanna show them something I think they're gonna hate, but it is fun if they don't have the same tastes.

Claire Zulkey: I think that's an issue with culture and I feel it myself right now, like where I haven't seen many of the Oscar movies because I am like, well those sound really [00:48:00] heavy or dark or complicated or long, and I don't have that in my, I don't wanna partake in that right now. Just like the way my head space.

And I'm like, but if this is back when we were kids and it was like only four movies. You saw those movies, you know, and you didn't like, that's what you saw. You weren't like, well Sinners, I don't wanna see a like a vampire movie or whatever like it was. And so the idea of sitting through something and thinking about it is probably something that's kind of lost a little bit like on us as well as kids for sure.

Meghan Keane Graham: I think I remember seeing Remains of the Day when I was 13 just because that was what was playing at our one movie Picture house. And it was the first and only movie I've ever been kicked out of because it was a bunch of 13-year-old girls who could not like, pay attention to that at all. I was like, that was not what we thought. But that's just you get what you get and you don't get upset.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah, my mom showed me and a friend at a sleepover, Gone With the Wind. Somehow she made it, like she convinced us to sit down and watch that, you know? And yeah, I know. And my parents will do that, or they would do that with the boys, have them over and show them like, [00:49:00] Chariots of Fire or something like that.

And I kind of was like, well, good. You know what? Good. Make them watch this. You're the grandparents, you're the old people, you know, force them to do this. I just like to kind of touch base a little bit about culture and how it's changed. Mark and I, the reason why Mark, do you remember how we first got to know each other or like our original sort of like how we became aware of each other?

'cause that is sort of an interesting. Well, it's interesting to me like where we kind of originally got to, like where we came to know each other in the culture, cultural zeitgeist?

Mark Graham: Yeah, we were both bloggers, Claire and got to know each other in the early aughts thanks to blogs. I was a big fan and still am of all the stuff you were doing over at Zulkey and I ran this site called one episode dot org and we met ourselves that way.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah, I mean, and it's such a, it was funny 'cause my son was he looked at my website, I forget why I showed it to him, but he was looking at it and he was like, you used to write every day a week for like, and I was like, yeah, for free, for years. And I, and he was like, that's cool. And I was like, [00:50:00] well, I guess I didn't do it.

I didn't get paid for it. But I always try to think, I always wonder whether the internet was more fun back then, or whether we just think that because we were younger. And I don't know, like Meghan, if you knew Mark when he was blogging in those days, like Quinn, what your internet presence was like back in the early aughts.

But I don't know. Is it just, does the world seem harder now because we're all older or has it all just gotten like more deeply darker and complicated and that's a fact?

Quinn Emmett: Yes.

Meghan Keane Graham: Well, it's funny, so I met after Whatevs was no longer running, but I had my own little blog called Swamp City when I lived in DC. And so funny because I was just talking about this with Emily Sunberg who runs a really popular newsletter right now. And people who are the youths now are also doing, you know, expressing themselves online, but they're getting paid for it.

Like none of us got paid for all of that work like that we did [00:51:00] which is wild. But I also, I remember when I met you, Claire, what you were, you lived in Chicago, but we ran into you on a street in Cobble Hill, and it was, I had just read An Off Year and Mark was like, oh yeah, I know Claire Zulkey. And you were this like author. I was like, oh, wow. and then little did I know that you would become like the creator of one of my like biggest online networks later on in life as a parent with Evil Witches.

Claire Zulkey: Well, it's a weird time of life. 'cause I think a lot about I mean, you guys, we all have kids about the same age, and I, and we're gonna talk to Emily Gold next week. So, it's hard not to think about wow, like things are so full of promise and we were cranking out like ideas and had time to invest in these ambitions.

And I always struggle with did I, are we giving up or am I giving up? Am I losing it? You know, because my kids require this, my school, their school requires this. My parents require this. Or is this, don't worry about it. Just fall asleep. [00:52:00] And you know, it was good. It was good while it lasted.

I don't know how you guys are in terms of comparing yourself now to where we were pre-kids and what we were doing creatively. That's a big meatball, but yeah.

Quinn Emmett: I texted my best friend yesterday. I think I'm going to use whatever is left of my ambition this year and see how long it lasts. And then dot dot dot, that's it. And he literally called. He was like, are you okay? I was like, why does that text seem out of the blue to you? That's the better question. So.

Mark Graham: You know, getting to the whole creative question of it all. That was part of the reason that I wanted to kick this project off in the first place. I've been in corporate media for 20 years and some change at this point. And you know, Claire, back when we met in the early aughts online first, and then eventually in real life. That was just a really great outlet for me to get a lot of stuff out there that wasn't, I was working a marketing job at the time and I started a blog and it allowed me to scooch into this cool, fun career. [00:53:00] But you know, I like my job and I like what I do, but it doesn't scratch that itch in the same way because it is so, again I work for a giant, huge multinational corporation, and there's so much focus on numbers and revenue and audience growth and all of the stuff that comes with it. This project, the Back In My Day that, you know, Meghan and I started with our kids, is we of course would like to build an audience for this thing, but it's definitely not a goal we have.

We're not monetizing our podcast. We're not looking to, you know, do tons of promotion for it. It's a fun thing for us to do together as a family and the organization and structure of it is just a real, I dunno, I found it really an important part of our last couple of months and I'm looking forward to continuing to do it for a really long time.

Again. 'cause it just scratches the itch that I don't get my day, from my nine to five, which is actually more like a nine to ten.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah, you are not looking to win a Golden Globe for Best Podcast, new category.

Mark Graham: Well, [00:54:00] maybe next year. Well, who knows?

Claire Zulkey: I think a lot about, we were talking about John Hughes and I don't even know when or where I would start with the kids or even if I would even try to show them John Hughes movies 'cause like it's hard to imagine one that would like.

Quinn Emmett: But Home Alone is the way in. It checks like every John Hughes box. It opens up the whole thing.

Claire Zulkey: I guess I think of him as the teenage movies. Like my personal favorite was 16 Candles, which is, you know, aged like milk in a lot of ways.

Meghan Keane Graham: We have that one on our list, so we'll see.

Quinn Emmett: Okay.

Claire Zulkey: I loved it. But also, there's so many parts of it that did not, you know, don't hold up. And then Breakfast Club, same thing. But I always think about Ally Sheedy going, when you grow up, your heart dies. And then Jud Neilson says, who cares? And I feel like both of them.

Quinn Emmett: Yeah, two. Those are the two wolves stuck inside me right now.

Claire Zulkey: Actually I feel like the principal more than, no, I feel like the janitor more than anyone else, like telling the principal get over yourself. You know, you [00:55:00] think you're hot shit. These kids don't look at us or see us as any kind of human being whatsoever.

And that's where I am right now is like, anyway, sorry not to get super fun and lighthearted and creative, one question and then I am, I will wrap up my millions of questions, but Max is 12, right? So do you guys have him, any kind of issue with him being like a snarky tween who like doesn't take it seriously or tries to be too cool or write things off or see not in that realm yet. I'm just curious where you are with tween kind of stuff.

Meghan Keane Graham: So he definitely has a lot more opinions, but I feel like the biggest difference in him the last two years has just been like the way you can visibly see hormones just like wreaking havoc on his brain. Like sometimes he just is desperate to pick a fight and will just say the most insane things and depending on when he catches one of us, we'll take the bait and get into it. But there, [00:56:00] whenever I can see it coming on, I kind of, I'm so happy because if you just completely ignore it, he'll sometimes have a fight with himself completely. Like the less you engage, the crazier he gets when he's like you could just see the struggle of you know, it's almost like Inside Out or Big Mouth.

You can see the hormone monster taking over. I remember last spring I sent him out into the streets going to school on his bike, like openly sobbing because I like gave him a water bottle but didn't put it in his backpack. And it was just like I'm not taking the bait on this one. You can just lose your mind on your own.

Quinn Emmett: Have you guys done Big Mouth with them?

Meghan Keane Graham: No.

Quinn Emmett: I was gonna say, 'cause I know when it first started, there were so many people who were like, it turns out this might be the best way to actually talk to my kids about sex, is like sitting next to them watching Big Mouth. I don't know how much that aged, 'cause obviously that was like 10 years ago, but I was like, I don't know. And then I watched one [00:57:00] episode again. I was like, Jesus. Like I, I dunno, man. Yeah.

Mark Graham: I have a very visceral reaction to that show. There's something about the way that the character's lips are drawn that really turns me off and I literally can't watch it. So I remember when it came out, I would just listen to it like it was a podcast and not watch it. I don't know. Ugh, gross lips. Ugh.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah, also Nick Kroll was in my class at Georgetown and I have a weird reaction where if someone is exactly my age and really successful, sometimes I can't like engage with it directly. You know, I'll do publicity, but I can't do Big Mouth for instance. But, Meghan, talk just a tiny bit about your deescalation tactics besides letting them fight amongst themselves.

Mark was saying that when there's a post pod meltdown that you can bring things down and maybe you have to deescalate Mark. I know Mark always seems very even keel to me, but boys can make their dads a little bit crazy sometimes. I've observed in my experience.

Meghan Keane Graham: Mark just like forgets how parenting works and picks fights with the boys [00:58:00] by deciding to tell them what to do, and then I have to figure out a way to make it more interesting. I think Hoosiers was a great example of this. He just got, he got everyone excited about doing a podcast and then he declared that Hoosiers was the movie and just decided we were watching it one night and it just blew up from there. And I think I finally got Max to watch it by letting him know he could tell the world how much he hated the movie and he didn't have to love it. and sometimes it just requires waiting a while because there's like this battle happening. It also happened last week when Mark decided the boys should take ice skating lessons and he texted me like, Mark is also like super busy and so we'll you know, during the day we interact through like Google Calendar and sometimes emails and he sent an email asking if the boys [00:59:00] should take ice skating lessons.

And I said, sure, but let's ask them if they wanna take ice skating lessons before you buy it. And he came home that night and I think there's just like a lot happening in his brain and then he just likes to cross things off his list. So we got home kind of late 'cause one of our kids had a show and then as he was putting them to bed, he said, oh guys, you're gonna do ice skating lessons. And when Max objected he said, I already bought them.

Quinn Emmett: That's incredible.

Claire Zulkey: Right at bedtime. Perfect.

Quinn Emmett: It's fucking incredible.

Claire Zulkey: No input.

Meghan Keane Graham: So there was like tears and screaming and he came downstairs and he's like you gonna fix that?

Quinn Emmett: God, I do that once a day. I feel like. Claire and I always talk, Claire and I always talk about drive by parenting, which is your kids are just for once, like minding their own business and you just walk in and throw a fucking grenade. And [01:00:00] it could be anything. It could be telling them that like their cereal is ultra processed and is gonna kill them while they're trying to enjoy their Raisin Bran or, you know, anything. But yeah, a hundred percent, the before bedtime. That's perfect. Just fuck the whole thing up,

Claire Zulkey: That’s a good one. Yeah.

Meghan Keane Graham: I read something when Max was pretty young. 'cause we were having, he's always been obsessed with screens and he really struggles, like he's the worst person after being on screens. And I've read somewhere that context switching is really hard for kids and you can't just pull away the thing that they're doing and expect them to join the world again. And so I definitely try and give them notice when things are happening and let them know when it's gonna happen and ease them into things. Mark takes a different approach. So with the ice skating, I just waited a day.

Claire Zulkey: Yeah.

Meghan Keane Graham: I was like, do we tell them we lied about buying these tickets? Or do we somehow mind trick them into doing it? And the mind tricking eventually happened.

Claire Zulkey: I [01:01:00] had, I empathize on both fronts. 'cause Quinn and I talk a lot about how it can be really hard not to expect your kids to care about and adhere to your to-do list. You know, like I'll have on my notebook, like they have to finish their school project, but they get home from school and they don't necessarily want, for some reason to dive right back into my to-do list so that I can stop sweating about it.

So, yeah, it's hard out there. Anyway, you guys, the podcast is so sweet and I love, you guys are great parents that you have this thing that you wanna do with them and they're doing it and you are engaging them with it. I don't know, Quinn, other questions or things to say that we didn't cover?

Quinn Emmett: No, I mean, I was hoping there was more drama, but I could tell from Hoosiers that it was starting off problematic, which is great. There's nothing better than and it seems like we're similar, just like coming at something with best intentions, but also a poison pill from the very fucking beginning, whether it's ice skating or the podcast, like I, oh man all the time.

I feel like the thing that my wife says most to me is basically just like, [01:02:00] why did you do that? I don't understand why you would just like, fucking, why would you do that? And I'm like, I don't know. I genuinely.

Meghan Keane Graham: We could do things the easy way or the hard way, and sometimes men just like the hard way.

Quinn Emmett: Just the hard way. No. So last thing I wanted to share, and you guys said you showed this to your kids So this is one of my favorite things. Can you read this? It says you ain't cool unless you pee your pants. It's Billy Madison. Okay.

Mark Graham: If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis.

Quinn Emmett: Miles Davis and his pants are peed and the action figure his pants are peed. But here's the thing. I mean, it came up, I can't remember when I got this, 2020, and you know, I was like, great, check the box, put it in the office, deliver it to the office.

Obviously it doesn't go home first. And then the more I looked at it, like I've got a little guy with just raging like anxiety issues and some depression and stuff like that. And this is like the best parenting moment ever. He was just basically I'm gonna take the hit for this kid and I'm gonna turn it around and just be like, yeah, [01:03:00] no, this is the thing to do.

And you show them that it's fine and you tell all the other kids like, yeah, fuck off. You think I'm the coolest guy? I also pee my pants. And they're like, fuck man. Everybody pees their pants and then all the kids in the movie start peeing their pants. It's amazing. So this is, that's my thank you to Billy Madison.

Meghan Keane Graham: He does sort of raise our kids, considering, I think you've shown them every single one of his movies.

Quinn Emmett: That's great. We haven't done 'em yet, so now I have permission to dive in, which I look forward to getting in trouble for.

Claire Zulkey: Wedding singer. Wedding singer aged really well and that was fun, it’s really, I think that might be my favorite Adam Sandler movie possibly. And that's my Drew Barrymore. It's really sweet. It's a nice, it's a good one. And yeah, recommend that one.

Mark Graham: Julia Gulia.

Quinn Emmett: Julia Gulia.

Claire Zulkey: Well, I love the podcast. I hope you guys get you know, all the ads and all the awards for it and also like kind of mad at you for showing us up, for doing something with your kids regularly. That's fun. And not just something that you have to do.

Quinn Emmett: All I could think about. All I tell ever tell Claire is how, like, how, and I was telling you Mark before we got on, like how cathartic this is for me [01:04:00] because it's one, it's not my other show with like fucking scientists and senators, but two, like my fucking kids aren't here. It's so nice to have a goddamn conversation, like without, it's so helpful.

So I'm like, it's so great that you guys are doing that, but also absolutely not. Am I gonna invite my kids to come? No, I need a safe place. Yeah. Church and state.

Claire Zulkey: Thank you guys for coming on the podcast. It was so fun to talk to you and we hope you guys are having a good time with it. It's a great show and love that you guys are hanging out with those kids. I think it'll hopefully, it'll tell other parents, prompt them to watch movies like that with their kids and have the same conversation.

Quinn Emmett: A hundred percent.

Claire Zulkey: It made me think we should do that more with ours. S

Quinn Emmett: And like movies can raise you. They can be fucking great. And just because the Internet's available, doesn't mean you can't show them awesome shit that makes 'em wanna watch more stuff. You know? There's some really great stuff. Is some of it still problematic? Sure. But whatever.

Mark Graham: Well, thank you Quinn. Thank you Claire, for having us on. I'm gonna get one more plugin just again, if you guys wanna check it out, you can find it at back in my day pod. [01:05:00] It's on Spotify, it's on Apple Podcasts. It's on all those places. But again we really appreciate you guys inviting us on. Claire. It's always great to see you again. We've known each other for, I've known you longer than I've known my wife, so it's great to see you and again, thanks so much. We're honored by this.