S00/E01 The Lost Episodes: The Money Pit

Before the team met Tom (aka Better is the Enemy), before “Alive or Dead,” before all the babies and weddings, we recorded in a conference room at work. We even had different intro music. We recorded “The Money Pit” and hoped we were ready to take it to the website. The audio is pretty bouncy and we had microphones in pencil cups on wool coasters.

Speaking of “wool,” Shelly Long and pre-Oscar Tom Hanks star along side some Hollywood favorites in this 1986 comedy…. emphasis on COMEDY. Ooo boy... so much comedy. Enjoy our origins and hang tight for some newness….

Meanwhile, here’s Jeff and Joelle in lock down. (thank you, Google closed captions!)

S04/ E06 The Tower

The Tower is the story of a smart office building that’s mad about Paul Reiser. This high Reiser is the latest in smart technology (beside Paul’s hair plugs) that really hates musicians (especially keyboard players).

When Die Hard meets Seinfeld that meets Robin Concord from Cheers in a sauna you have a feature film…a tv movie…a TV show…oh god we don’t know what this is!

We watched The Tower!

S02/ E12 Poltergeist

Our final episode for Season Two is 1982’s summer sleeper hit "Poltergeist." Many of the practical effects of this tale brought back terrifying childhood memories of boy-eating trees, self-opening closet doors, and a base fear of clowns.

starchitect, and “Poltergeist” virgin, Graham Taylor brings his real estate nerdery to the basement to dissect the possibility of re-developing land once housing hundreds, if not thousands, of consecrated, buried bodies… and deciphering how much money Steven was making off his real estate transactions. If the amount is as much as we projected, why does their home look like a room from a 1980's Grey Gardens?

Roberta was able to find the actual house where the movie was filmed and grab an aerial shot as well as a best guess of the basic floor plan used to create and customize the house in the late seventies.

Enjoy!

starchitect: Graham Taylor

Tract home floor plan. The "Poltergeist House" was probably customized off this inital plan but the basic element are there, though no indication where the portal to the other-side resides and if you can relocate it to a more user friendly area like the family room....

the house where the movie was filmed. the location is public record; the original owners still own the house as in it has never been sold.

S02/ E09 Two for the Road

 “Two for the Road” saw Albert Finney as the protagonist and love interest to the setting sun of Audrey Hepburn as flirty ingenue. He mumbles his way through all dialogue about… life? art? architecture? We couldn’t make it out… then he eats an apple. Double that with Hepburn’s scarecrow thin body and you have the recipe for the most BORING ten-year journey of a pair’s relationship.

Think of this movie like a fender-bender on I-84…. I mean no one really dies, and it’s kind of interesting to see how the cars are wrecked but… meh.

starchitect(s): Jeff Wolinski, Vince Galea, Roberta Pennington

S02/ E07 My Architect

PT Barnum is noted as saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Could it be an entire generation of architects were swindled by noted starchitect, Louis Kahn? He sure fit the bill of a con artist: self-assured, self-serving all while supporting secret families, mistresses, and skyrocketing personal and business debt.

Nathaniel Kahn, Louis’s youngest of his illegitimate brood, explores his father’s life through the lens of the architect’s work. But is it all it’s cracked up to be? Are we all just a bunch of suckers trying to hear what that mother f***ing brick is saying?!

starchitect: Joelle Wolinski

S02/ E06 Pacific Heights

Post “Batman,” Michael Keaton tested his menacing chops as the mysterious Carter Hayes, who turns out to be a misfit, well-to-do psychopath hell bent on making his landlords’ (Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine) lives a living nightmare.

Vince laments: I’d totally follow Melanie into the desert to get my sex robot back any day.

The starchitects team and guest Diony Lopez talk about the realities of being a landlord in San Francisco, something Diony, Jeff, and Vince have in common. Strangely, this movie isn’t too far off in its depiction of horrific tenants who will do anything to NOT pay rent and treat apartments like absolute garbage. Even the premise of having a monkey brother isn’t beyond fiction, as Vince shared the below picture with us….

starchitect: Diony Lopez

photographic evidence vince has monkey brothers....

S02/ E05 Fools Rush In

Project management. It’s a job definition most people, even those in the profession, can’t quite put their finger on. In her recent shift to project management, Roberta was able to offer some insight as to what Matthew Perry’s character was doing on the job site in “Fools Rush In.” Still, no one in the room could grasp the whole picture of scope of service… well, maybe Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing as Alex Whitman could. Could his job responsibilities BE any more vague?

Synopsis: An episode of “Friends” minus the other five. Selma Hayek is hot.

For the record: Project Managers plan, budget, oversee and document all aspects of a project. Project managers work closely with clients to make sure the scope and direction of each project is on schedule, within the planned budget and executed properly per outlined scope.

starchitect(s): Jeff Wolinski, Vince Galea, Roberta Pennington

S02/ E03 Road House

Hotly debated amongst the starchitects team, "Road House" has been on Roberta's mind for months after strong arming this film into Season Two. Roberta contends it's a movie about urban design as a small town bar owner wants to better his establishment, make a safer place for the townspeople to gather and unwind after a hard day of fighting off organized crime and shopping at the JC Penny's; the rest of the group considers it a ploy to get a Patrick Swayze movie into our rotation.

You decide.

starchitect: Russell Holzinger

S02/ E01 Earthquake

The starchitects team kicks off its second season after a holiday hiatus to talk about all that is wrong in the world of pre- and post-earthquake Los Angeles in the celebrity cluster f***k, “Earthquake.” All-star guest Eric Li returns to remind us no one will ever be calmed by hot coffee and sandwiches in an underground shelter/ mall, especially if that shelter/ mall is constructed of cardboard columns painted to look like brick.

Personally, I cannot get enough George Kennedy.

(Did you notice the new starchitects logo? It’s like we got a hair cut over winter break hoping you’d notice and finally ask us out to the Valentine’s Day dance. Well, suck it. We’re going to get drunk in the parking lot then throw rocks in the quarry until dawn.)

starchitect: Eric Li

S01/ E02 Death Wish

“Death Wish” teaches us when wronged to the point of breaking and seeking revenge, start with a sock full of quarters first, then go to firearms. Charles Bronson goes from a wooden work-a-holic architect whose smile looks painted on for the first fifteen minutes of the movie to gun toting vigilante when his wife is beaten to death and daughter is brutally raped. Oh ya, that’s Jeff Goldblum’s butt doing that. Yoiks.

Native Texan Josh Guerra, licensed architect, sits down with Roberta, Vince, and Jeff to decipher the complex back story of Paul Kersey and his use of an apparent Vulcan-like demeanor used in all stressful situations. We’re talking client meetings, his wife’s funeral, and beating a man with a sock full of quarters.

starchitect: Josh Guerra