4

Robert Blake Played The Conscience Of A Man Who Murdered His Wife

In David Lynch's 1997 film Lost Highway, Robert "Corpse Face" Blake plays a mysterious man called the Mystery Man, because sometimes you forget to go back through a draft and replace your placeholders.

October Films"Hello, PROTAGONIST."

The Mystery Man is generally considered to be an extension of the protagonist's psyche, and his purpose is to torment Bill Pullman, whose character killed his wife, and is overall pretty ripe for tormentin'.

So Blake is the terrifying, surreal conscience of a man who killed his spouse ... a performance that became all the more haunting when, in 2002, Blake was arrested and charged with murdering his wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley. Blake was eventually acquitted after a contentious trial, but was found liable for her wrongful death in a civil case brought by Bakley's children.

Feel free to read up on the affair and draw your own conclusions. We're not gonna pull a Lifetime movie here. We're just saying that Lost Highway takes on a whole new dimension when you know that its bizarre personification of guilt was played by a real guy stuck in a real unhappy marriage that ended really badly. Although honestly, that kind of recursive meta-commentary is the most Lynchian thing we can imagine.

3

Lance Armstrong Is The Inspirational Figure In DodgeBall

DodgeBall is a parody of underdog sports movies, so naturally they had to skewer the "distraught protagonist receives an inspirational speech at a key moment" scene. Here, Lance Armstrong warns Vince Vaughn about the dangers of quitting:

"Once I was thinking about quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung, and testicular cancer all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on my bike and won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I'm sure you have a good reason to quit," Armstrong says, before adding, "I'm sure this decision won't haunt you forever."

In 2004, the joke was that Vaughn's problems were trivial compared to the sacrifices made by actual athletes. But of course, today we know Armstrong best for his work as the world's fastest drug mule. The scene's original intention was to say "Don't quit, because people who've had it way worse than you have overcome greater odds." But looking back on it today, the implicit advice seems to be "Don't quit, because no matter how bad it gets, you can do all the drugs and win anyway."

2

The Brave Desert Warriors Who Helped James Bond

In the '80s, you could get any action movie made by pitching it as "a sexy hero shoots a bunch of commies." Even better if your protagonist teams up with a bunch of inspirational rebels who also hate communism. It's an anti-commie ensemble!

That's how we got The Living Daylights. During the climatic battle, Timothy "Your Weird Loser Uncle's Favorite James Bond" Dalton teams up with the Afghan mujahideen, who help Bond stop a rogue Soviet general's plans. In return, he assists them with a key victory against the Soviet invaders. They even help Bond put a bomb on an airplane, but let's move along, as there's probably nothing to read into in that particular plot point.

1

In Super Size Me, Jared Fogle Warns Children About His One And Only Vice: Food

Super Size Me is the questionably factual 2004 documentary that shocked the world by informing everyone that fast food is bad for you. Former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle even made an appearance to give an inspirational speech about his struggles with food. It worked well at the time. The movie was about how the food industry was killing us, and Fogle was a healthy success story, having overcome his obesity with a little help from his favorite food -- bread that always smells like olives.

Fogle said: "My big thing was never smoking, it was never drinking, obviously I wasn't doing drugs. My big vice ... was food."

Ah, yes. Food. Jared's biggest vice. Whenever someone mentions the name "Jared Fogle" today, we immediately think of food, his ultimate undoing. Obviously he wasn't doing drugs, because he's Subway's Jared, the man with one vice. And that vice, again, as we all know, is food.

This was 2004, well before Fogle was sentenced to 15 years in prison for possession of child pornography and paying underage girls for sex. That really changes this scene wherein a mother accompanied by her 14-year-old daughter tells Fogle: "You're a real inspiration to the kids. I appreciate that."

Samuel Goldwyn Films"Eat fresh."

But maybe Jared was aware of the irony at the time. Maybe he was daring us to catch him. Why else would he have appeared on VH1's Best Week Ever back in 2005 ... to talk about To Catch A Predator. He marveled: "These guys continue to fall for it. Every single time. There must be like a hundred million episodes of the show, and these guys still come out."

Please note that he's criticising how easily those men were caught, not their actions ...

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