Ep. #423 - Argylle

Elliott Kalan

[0:00] Hey, Floppers. This is Elliot talking.

[0:01] Before we get into this episode's classic Flophouse shenanigans,

[0:05] I wanted to make sure you knew about some upcoming live events we are very excited about.

[0:08] On April 27th at 7 p.m. Eastern, we are premiering online the professionally shot,

[0:13] professionally edited online video of our Speed 2 live show.

[0:17] Dan Stewart and I will be there watching the show with you,

[0:20] text chatting with the audience throughout the entire thing.

[0:23] Can't make it on the 27th?

[0:24] The video will be available to watch at your leisure through May 19th.

[0:28] To see the trailer and buy tickets, go to stagepilot.com slash flop dash house dash speed dash 2.

[0:36] If you want to see us in person and you live in England, remember that on the 24th of May,

[0:40] we'll be in Oxford doing our first and second ever UK live shows in one night.

[0:44] 7 p.m., we're talking The Avengers.

[0:46] 9 p.m., we're talking Spice World.

[0:48] Two shows, one night.

[0:49] For tickets and more information, go to flophousepodcast.com slash events.

[0:54] Now that's enough live show hype from me.

[0:56] Let's get to that patented flop house silliness.

[0:59] Take it away, peaches.

[1:01] On this episode, we discuss Argyle.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05] That's right.

[1:05] Join us on the high seas where Guile from Street Fighter gets press ganged onto a pirate ship.

[1:13] Argyle, they say.

Dan McCoy

[1:16] Not even a joke about the pattern.

[1:18] No, not at all.

[1:43] Hey everyone and welcome to the Flophouse.

[1:46] I'm Dan McCoy.

[1:47] I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:48] I'm Elliot Kalin and I'm so excited to tell you that if you're listening to this on the day we release it,

[1:53] you have a chance to chat with us later today, Saturday, April 27th,

[1:57] when we see you at the online premiere of our Speed 2 streaming event, the Flophouse Sink Speed 2.

[2:03] I'll tell you more about it later in the show, but that's at stagepilot.com slash speed.

[2:08] Today, we'll be chatting today while we watch it.

[2:11] If you're listening to this on the day it's released.

[2:14] If you're listening to this the next day, well, you're partly in luck, but I'll tell you more about that later.

Dan McCoy

[2:19] I mean, we'll see you in the sense that we'll see your usernames on the screen as we chat.

[2:24] We'll actually be seeing ourselves, which is sort of weird.

[2:26] We're going to log on to see our own faces as we had a conversation we had several months ago.

Elliott Kalan

[2:33] It'll be fun.

[2:33] Yeah, and that'll be weird for two of us, the two that don't routinely post videos of our own workouts online.

[2:39] Oh, wow.

[2:39] Wow.

[2:39] Then watch them later.

[2:40] Wow.

[2:41] Where is this coming from?

Stuart Wellington

[2:42] Elliot says that as if he doesn't masturbate while watching said video.

Dan McCoy

[2:48] Oh, I thought you were going to say.

Stuart Wellington

[2:49] I see the bookmarks.

[2:51] I know he's watching that shit.

[2:53] You see how much he's saved?

Dan McCoy

[2:54] Yeah.

[2:54] I thought you were going to keep it thematically consistent and say he masturbates the videos of himself.

[2:59] No.

[3:00] Why would I?

[3:00] No, that's me, baby.

Elliott Kalan

[3:01] There's great A beefcake coming my way.

[3:05] Stew beef.

[3:05] But Dan, what do we do on this podcast other than reveal that I masturbate to videos of stew?

Dan McCoy

[3:09] Mm-hmm.

[3:10] I have honestly forgot.

[3:12] Wait, we watch a bad movie, and then we talk about it.

[3:15] That's what we do.

[3:17] So, you know, it's now on Apple Plus streaming for all who subscribe.

[3:25] This podcast or the movie that-

Elliott Kalan

[3:27] Well, not this podcast.

Dan McCoy

[3:28] Unless you mirror it on your Apple TV, then I guess you could probably pretend that it's on Apple Plus.

[3:34] But no, the movie that we're talking about, the movie, it's new to streaming for not all, but many.

[3:42] And-

[3:42] It's undercutting the cell.

[3:45] Oh, my God.

Stuart Wellington

[3:46] Dan-

[3:47] My commitment to truth.

[3:48] Dan is the Gil.

[3:50] Gil is the car salesman on-

[3:51] Yes, from The Simpsons.

[3:52] Oh, God.

[3:53] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[3:53] Based on the kind of Jack Lem and Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross character.

[3:56] Dan is so under the impression that the streaming release of Argyle is the cultural event of the year.

[4:04] He's been talking about it for weeks leading up to this.

Dan McCoy

[4:07] Well, I know I've been excited.

[4:08] Well, it's a cultural event other than Madam Web thus far of the year for us, a bad movie podcast.

[4:15] Because I feel like this is the movie, the wide release movie in theaters that got the most sort of baffled and dismayed reactions and a lot of talk around it.

[4:26] There was enough, you know, and it was-

[4:29] There was a lot of talk beforehand about people lying that Taylor Swift wrote a book that it was based on for some reason.

[4:35] Like, that's how big the footprint was.

[4:37] I fucking forgot about that part.

Elliott Kalan

[4:39] Yeah.

[4:39] Weird stuff.

[4:40] That was good publicity work on the part of whoever publicized this, that they managed to connect it to the most famous person in the world who was otherwise unrelated to the movie in every single way.

[4:49] Not since Mark Millar told the artist of The Ultimates to make Nick Fury look like Samuel L. Jackson, thus creating the role for Samuel L. Jackson.

[5:00] Has there been such a successful marrying of a property and a famous person who is not related to that property in any way?

Dan McCoy

[5:06] And for old people, they snagged the new Beatles song for this.

[5:11] Like a year ahead of time, apparently, the guy heard the new Beatles song and was like, I'll have that, please.

Elliott Kalan

[5:17] Yeah, I was reading about it, how the director was hanging out with his friend, John Lennon's son, I guess, or something, and was like, oh, I've got a new song.

[5:26] Would you love to put it in your film?

[5:27] You know, and that's how it happened.

[5:30] So yeah, Argyle, is it possible for a movie to be a parody of itself?

Dan McCoy

[5:35] Well, I mean, I guess that's the Zen Cohen that Argyle asks us, you know?

[5:39] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[5:40] Zen Cohen is a Buddhist rabbi, a Zen Cohen.

[5:43] Yeah, that's a good joke.

Stuart Wellington

[5:45] That's not too far off from Matt Coff has that Tiger Shulman bit, the Jewish karate school.

Elliott Kalan

[5:53] Yeah.

[5:54] Check out his album, anyway.

[5:56] Sure.

[5:57] Should we talk about Argyle?

[5:59] Should I get into what happens in the movie Argyle?

Dan McCoy

[6:01] Yeah, please.

[6:02] Please explain it to me.

[6:03] Let's toss on some Argyle.

Elliott Kalan

[6:04] Get ready for some twists, some turns, and a movie named Argyle, which kind of explains

[6:11] the title, but kind of never explains the title.

Stuart Wellington

[6:14] And going into this, I assumed it was going to be like, kind of like a Romancing the Stone

[6:18] or The Lost City.

[6:21] But it then morphs into a long kiss goodnight, which I wasn't expecting.

[6:25] Very much so.

[6:26] Could I?

Dan McCoy

[6:27] Yes?

[6:27] I mean, since Stuart sort of spoiled it already.

[6:29] It's fine.

[6:30] We'll get to the full spoilers later on.

[6:33] But can I say that, like, I'd seen the trailer.

[6:36] I was thinking about Argyle.

[6:38] I was like, everyone does.

[6:40] All right.

[6:40] The dots are connected.

[6:41] Sure.

[6:42] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[6:42] Dan's, like, got his arms crossed behind his back, looking out as the waves crash.

[6:46] I was like, hmm.

Dan McCoy

[6:48] Yeah.

[6:48] In my head, I'm like, that meme from Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

[6:52] I'm connecting yarn all over the place.

[6:55] And I'm like, I go to my friend.

[6:57] I'll call her out because she doesn't listen to the show.

[6:59] Liz Babish.

[7:00] I said to Liz, I said, hey.

[7:03] Is this the twist behind Argyle?

[7:05] And is this also what's going on with this secondary character in Argyle?

[7:10] And she's like, yeah, you got it.

[7:12] And I'm like, and I felt so pleased.

Elliott Kalan

[7:13] So did she write Argyle?

[7:14] Why is she the person you went to for your Argyle information?

[7:16] Because she had seen it.

[7:17] Oh, I see.

[7:18] I had not.

[7:19] That important piece of information had been left out.

[7:21] I didn't know if you just accost your friends and asked them questions about Argyle.

Dan McCoy

[7:25] I believe I did mention it.

[7:27] That actually cracks up for Dan.

[7:28] If I hadn't in passing.

[7:30] But no, I was so pleased with myself for guessing it off of not having seen it.

[7:36] And Liz immediately deflated me by saying, congratulations, Dan.

[7:40] You've seen a lot of movies.

[7:42] Yeah.

[7:43] Yeah.

[7:43] But then watching this movie, I feel like it telegraphs everything way early.

[7:48] But we'll talk about it.

[7:49] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[7:50] Especially that final, the kind of finalist plot twist, which I feel like they telegraph multiple times throughout just in case the audience is a moron.

[7:58] But anyway, let's see what you're saying.

Stuart Wellington

[8:00] Oh, just speaking of seeing a lot of movies, this movie is directed by Matthew Vaughn, who has made a lot of movies.

[8:06] And I would argue as he continues to make movies, they get less good.

Elliott Kalan

[8:12] Well, certainly as he continues to make them, he has access to more money and bigger stars.

[8:16] And I think that has been a negative for him in terms of the quality of the films.

Stuart Wellington

[8:21] Because Layer Cake was his first one, right?

Dan McCoy

[8:24] I mean, it was definitely the one that got him attention.

[8:27] I don't know if it was his very first.

[8:28] Let me look.

[8:29] It was his first.

Elliott Kalan

[8:31] You look at a movie like Kick-Ass, which I did not particularly like.

[8:34] But that's a much better movie than this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[8:36] It has a genuinely great sequence where Nicolas Cage is putting on makeup and applying his fake mustache extensions.

[8:45] Yeah, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[8:46] Let me quick just run it down.

[8:48] We got Layer Cake.

[8:49] We got Stardust came next, which was pretty good.

[8:51] Okay, yeah, yeah.

[8:52] Kick-Ass, again, like Elliot, like I have problems with it, but it has a thing.

[8:58] X-Men First Class was a pretty good X-Men movie.

[9:00] I did like X-Men First Class.

Stuart Wellington

[9:02] I didn't particularly like it, but I did like the sequence where Magneto and Professor X are like wandering around looking for mutants.

[9:09] Yeah, yeah.

[9:10] I feel like it never gets better than that.

Dan McCoy

[9:12] But then he gets into the world of the King's Man.

[9:16] Oh, right.

[9:16] And I will admit having a certain fondness for the first movie, but that slid down.

[9:20] You just like that last joke, right?

Stuart Wellington

[9:22] You like the last joke about how by saving the world he gets to have anal sex afterwards or something.

Dan McCoy

[9:28] Thank you for letting people know.

[9:31] We got to shout it from the rooftops what the end of King's Man is.

Stuart Wellington

[9:36] I've only seen King's Man, the Golden Circle, without sound, played on a television at a strip club.

Elliott Kalan

[9:43] Oh, okay.

[9:44] Which again, I feel like it was intended.

[9:47] I mean, this is a movie that in many ways would work better as a series of images in the background somewhere than as a film with sound and story.

[9:57] But it's almost like entering the spy world is his version of James Cameron going underwater where he is fascinated by it.

[10:05] And I think he's overestimating the audience's interest in that subject matter.

[10:10] Yeah, I think we can all agree.

[10:12] Which is not to say that he's a filmmaker at the same level as James Cameron on a technical level.

[10:17] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[10:17] Yeah, thanks.

[10:18] I mean, this movie, I will say, for a while goes down easier than I thought just because it's so glossy.

[10:28] But then it piles on about 40 more minutes than it needs and at least one more plot turn than it needs.

[10:36] Yeah, this movie is long.

[10:37] This movie is very long.

Stuart Wellington

[10:39] Yeah, the glossiness is kind of like how my cousin used to smear his hot dogs with applesauce because he said it made it slide down his throat easier.

Elliott Kalan

[10:48] That's not how you should eat a hot dog.

Stuart Wellington

[10:50] He also did it with mac and cheese, which is wild because that should already be pretty slippery.

[10:56] It's already pretty lubed mac and cheese.

Elliott Kalan

[10:57] You don't have to put more lube on mac and cheese.

Stuart Wellington

[11:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[11:01] Who's eating the dusty mac and cheese?

Elliott Kalan

[11:02] Yeah, I mean, it depends on –

[11:04] Maybe he doesn't know that the cheese dust is supposed to be mixed with milk and maybe even butter to get it extra creamy.

[11:09] Oh, wow.

Dan McCoy

[11:10] If he's eating a lot at once, you know, I could see a clog forming.

[11:15] Yeah, that's true.

[11:16] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[11:17] You see that in sewer systems also, just big mac and cheese plugs there stopping up the sewage septic tanks.

[11:23] Okay, guys, let's talk about what happens in Argyle.

[11:25] So it's a Matthew Vaughn movie, and it's a glossy spy picture.

[11:29] And it opens up with a scene – I'll go through it in detail even though a lot of what happens in this scene is not exactly set up.

[11:37] But Henry Cavill, he goes to a dance club.

[11:40] He dances with a sexy blonde lady played by Dua Lipa.

[11:42] Dua Lipa, yeah.

[11:43] And he lifts her and does a dance called the Whirly Bird, which we will see performed two more times throughout the movie.

[11:50] We learn that he is Agent Argyle, and she's a villain.

[11:53] She's lured him into a den of killers, but he defeats them all off camera with the help of his tech sidekick, Kira, played by Academy Award winner, Aria DeBose, right?

[12:04] And bad guy blonde Dua Lipa, she shoots Kira, and then Argyle's spy boss, Richard E. Grant, is like, Argyle, you have to go chase her.

[12:12] It's the only time we see Richard E. Grant in the movie.

[12:14] I was so mad about it.

[12:16] Yeah.

[12:16] What a waste of Richard E. Grant.

[12:17] What a waste.

[12:17] And I literally just, right before watching this movie, finished reading his book, With Nails, which is his kind of – an adaptation of his diaries when he was making Withnall and Hudson Hawk and The Player and stuff like that.

[12:29] And I was like, I want to see more Richard E. Grant.

[12:30] I got a hunger for Grant.

[12:32] I want to – give me a Grant Grant.

[12:33] Grant me some more Grant.

[12:35] But that's always a cameo.

[12:36] Give me some Grantland.

[12:38] Exactly.

[12:41] He tells Argyle to chase her.

[12:43] They have a very CGI-y car motorcycle chase.

[12:46] Almost ludicrously CGI.

[12:48] It's just like Ronin, right, guys?

[12:51] If you took Ronin and it starred the Looney Tunes characters but with no jokes, that's kind of what it feels like.

Dan McCoy

[12:58] But, I mean, like the ludicrousness of this serves a point here.

[13:01] Yes.

[13:02] Later it does not.

[13:03] I kept expecting like, oh, and this is one of the big problems of the movie.

[13:07] Spoiler to my opinion of the film.

[13:10] But I kept – like you watch Romancing the Stone.

[13:13] Like it starts off with that like really like goofy segment of her book, which is heightened.

[13:18] And then it contrasts it with the real world, which is recognizably real.

[13:23] Like and it gets goofier later on.

[13:25] Which is the opposite of heightened, yeah.

[13:27] Yeah.

[13:27] It gets goofier later on but it still feels like normal – real people within this like who are having adventures that they're –

[13:34] but even they're like, how are we having these adventures?

[13:37] You know, this movie, I was like, oh, they're going to create a contrast.

[13:40] Yes, but everything in the real world is just as loopy and goofy and weightless.

Elliott Kalan

[13:45] It's a little bit like if in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the humans were also cartoons.

[13:49] Yes.

[13:49] So it's like, oh, an animated world where the humans are also cartoons here too.

[13:53] They're also animated.

[13:53] So they have this chase.

[13:55] An American agent, Wyatt, played by John Cena, he stops the baddie.

[13:58] In a moment – this moment I did like where he just grabs her off of her motorcycle.

[14:02] Yeah.

[14:03] And she reveals that their spy boss is actually working for the bad guys and Wyatt is like, we need to go off the grid.

[14:09] And we discover this is all a story being read out loud by writer Ellie Conway, Bryce Ellis Howard, at her book launch for her fourth Argyle spy novel.

Stuart Wellington

[14:20] And the way she does the book launch is she reads the final chapter, it seems.

Elliott Kalan

[14:25] So she reads the end of the book and then answers, I think, three questions and then that's the total event.

Stuart Wellington

[14:30] I got to point out, there's a moment where one of the fans that are book reading, who we later find out is an enemy spy.

[14:36] But he's like, yeah, your books are – like a lot of other famous spy authors like John le Carré were formerly spies.

[14:44] And like you're a lot like that.

[14:45] I'm like, have you never read a fucking John le Carré book?

Elliott Kalan

[14:49] Well, he says your books are so real.

[14:51] It's clear that real spies read them.

[14:53] And you're like, the thing we just saw was so deliberately over the top and heightened and like James Bond had goofiest.

[14:59] That being said, if the whole movie had been that first scene at that level, I think I would have enjoyed this movie more.

[15:07] Because as Dan was saying, instead of it being like that was her fantasy world, but here's what the real world of spies is like.

[15:13] The real world of spies is just as silly and crazy and goofy and nonsense as that one.

Stuart Wellington

[15:18] So I guess he is right though.

[15:20] I guess real spies are just like the crazy craft we just saw.

Elliott Kalan

[15:24] Actually, that would be a funny thing if in the world of this movie that is what real spy craft is.

[15:29] Is a lot of like quips and like glamorous dance-offs and things like that.

Dan McCoy

[15:34] I definitely also had a problem with this moment though.

[15:36] For the same reason, like this reason and another.

[15:38] I'm like, number one, were we supposed to just have seen a Le Carré style realistic spy story?

[15:45] It hurts that he mentions John Le Carré.

Elliott Kalan

[15:47] It really hurts that he says that.

Dan McCoy

[15:49] Tasty old men sitting in shabby rooms.

Stuart Wellington

[15:52] Slubby English guys just sitting around.

Elliott Kalan

[15:56] Have you ever seen the movie of the spy who came in from the cold with Richard Burton?

[16:01] If there is any movie that teaches you not to be a spy.

[16:04] It tells you like, don't do it.

[16:06] Don't ever do this job.

[16:07] Don't do it.

[16:08] It's that one.

[16:09] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[16:10] But there's that.

[16:11] And then also, this tips the hand right away.

[16:14] Not to me, of course.

[16:15] I have seen a lot of movies.

[16:16] I guess the twist.

[16:18] But I think that the screenwriter was like, oh, I'm having a little fun.

[16:22] This is some clever foreshadowing of like, they all turned.

[16:26] But he says like, they all turned out to be spies.

[16:29] He phrases it that way.

[16:31] And, you know, she is going to turn out to be a spy later in the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[16:35] Now, I don't know how much of this.

[16:37] Now, here's my theory on this movie.

[16:39] Yeah.

[16:39] It was once told to me by a friend of the show, John Hodgman, that he had been told that they had research.

[16:46] That the people who make like mystery TV shows had research showing audiences liked guessing the mystery before the characters.

[16:53] Yeah.

[16:53] They did not like to be surprised or shocked.

[16:56] They liked to know the twist.

[16:57] And this movie feels like that.

[16:59] It is telegraphing those twists so frequently.

[17:02] And in ways that you were like, is this like, are you?

[17:06] Like, this is a red herring, right?

[17:08] Because that can't be the real twist because you're basically telling me what it is.

[17:11] But I wonder if that's the idea behind it.

[17:13] It's like people like to be go, oh, I'm smarter than the characters in this one.

[17:19] I know what's going to happen.

[17:20] But it also makes the characters in this movie seem really dumb.

[17:23] Especially the main character who, for someone who's supposed to be a best-selling novelist,

[17:27] comes off as so kind of like inept at everything.

[17:32] But also writing.

[17:33] Anyway, the point is, she became a writer after an ice skating accident.

[17:37] This is one of the few details that seemed like a throwaway.

[17:41] And then later, I was like, oh, I guess they are going to do something with this.

[17:44] But everybody loves her.

[17:44] She's a huge best-selling author.

[17:46] The guy at the thing asked if she's a spy.

[17:48] That night, and someone else asked her out.

Stuart Wellington

[17:51] Do you guys think the – I feel like it would have played better, at least for me, if her spy novels were like middling.

[17:58] Like she wasn't that successful.

Elliott Kalan

[17:59] For sure, if she was an unsuccessful spy novelist and it turned out she had this diehard readership that were all real spies because she knows.

[18:07] But instead – but this movie doesn't do anything small.

[18:09] It does it all big.

[18:10] It's got to be as big as possible.

[18:12] If she's a writer, she's got to be the best-selling writer in the world.

[18:15] If she's – to the point where later on a fan of hers is live-streaming her sitting at a park bench because she's – I mean like if Stephen King was at a fucking park bench, do you think people would be like, I got to get this on camera?

[18:27] I got to live-stream it right now.

Dan McCoy

[18:29] No.

[18:29] I would take a surreptitious picture perhaps of Mr. King.

[18:34] I'm sorry.

[18:34] Maybe.

[18:34] Forgive me, Mr. King.

[18:36] I'm a fan.

[18:37] But I would not live-stream him because I don't think he's going to be doing anything particularly interesting.

Elliott Kalan

[18:40] No, maybe just kidding, Rowling.

[18:42] If she was sitting somewhere, I could see that happening, but they'd be like, oh, shit, we got to capture whatever she's going to say.

[18:46] It's going to be bonkers.

[18:48] She's going to say something terrible.

[18:49] Yeah, she's going to –

[18:50] Yeah.

[18:51] So that night – and someone at the reading asks her out on a date as a question from the audience, which is bad etiquette.

[18:58] Please don't do that if you're at a public event.

[19:00] But she goes, no, I've got a hot date.

[19:01] That night she's alone at home with her cat, Alfie.

[19:03] She's got to get to work finishing her next book, which is very funny because she's like, okay, time to get to work.

[19:08] And she has about five sentences left to write in the book.

[19:11] Like it's almost over.

Stuart Wellington

[19:13] Dan, you got thoughts on Alfie here?

Dan McCoy

[19:16] Alfie, I do want to say – what's it all about, Alfie?

[19:18] I'll tell you.

[19:19] It's about – mostly Alfie is played by CGI, but when Alfie is played by –

[19:24] That means cat, great, intelligence.

[19:27] Imaginary.

[19:27] Imaginary, yeah.

[19:30] But in the moments where there's a real cat, apparently that's Matthew Vaughn's wife's cat.

[19:35] And his wife is?

[19:36] I couldn't – I can't.

[19:37] Claudia Schiffer.

[19:39] Really?

Elliott Kalan

[19:39] Yes.

[19:40] And so I have to assume the cat's name is Claw, C-L-A-W-D-A Schiffer.

Dan McCoy

[19:44] So clearly I read that name because I know this fact.

[19:49] Okay.

[19:50] But my brain somehow – like I'm no longer 13 years old.

[19:54] Yes, you're more interested in cats if you're an old man.

Stuart Wellington

[19:56] Or maybe Dan's like, I just – I don't want to believe that Claudia Schiffer is with anyone else.

Elliott Kalan

[20:02] Dan, you are officially turning into the old man from Logan's Run who just has his cats around him and that's all he cares about when he talks to his cats.

[20:11] Sounds pretty good, guys.

[20:13] Yeah.

[20:13] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[20:13] So we got a fake cat going.

[20:15] Oh, and she – I like that when she writes, she's surrounded by little like cartoony statuettes of the characters from the books.

[20:23] They're not quite Funko Pops.

[20:24] They're more like little statues of like the Lupin III characters from the popular animated series.

Elliott Kalan

[20:30] Yeah, they're kind of like – they're almost kind of Bruce Timm style like figurines of Argyle and his gang.

Stuart Wellington

[20:36] And Argyle wears what?

[20:37] What kind of jacket is that?

[20:38] He's wearing like a weird like high –

[20:40] It's a Nehru jacket.

[20:41] Nehru jacket.

[20:42] And his hair.

[20:43] Explain his hair.

[20:44] A flat top which is not unlike Guile from Street Fighter.

Dan McCoy

[20:48] I don't know if I can explain his hair, but Audrey was very dismayed by it and one of the top Letterboxd reviews I saw was just like talking about what a crime the hair was.

[20:57] It looks terrible.

Elliott Kalan

[20:58] And I feel like it has – Henry Cavill has an interesting relationship with hair because he had that great mustache in Mission Impossible.

[21:05] Love it.

[21:05] And I was like this guy – but then this flat top haircut, it almost undoes how great that was.

[21:10] So it's like, hey, I guess you know what?

[21:12] Like any tool or any weapon, in the right hands, Henry Cavill's hair is a good for mankind.

[21:18] And in the wrong hands, it's a crime against mankind.

[21:20] You can't blame the hammer.

[21:23] Whether if the hammer –

[21:24] The hammer could build a house or it can beat up a bunch of guys in Old Boy.

[21:28] Hammer, don't hurt him.

[21:29] But it's not the hammer.

[21:30] It's the fault here.

[21:30] Yeah, it's true.

Dan McCoy

[21:32] Yeah.

[21:32] So anyway –

[21:33] Give him a mustache for safety.

[21:35] That's always, you know, that's the best.

[21:37] It'll be always good.

Elliott Kalan

[21:37] You can't go wrong with a Henry Cavill mustache.

[21:39] Here at Henry Cavill Mustaches, the only supplier.

[21:44] We take Henry Cavill's actual facial hair, meticulously re-glue it into a mustache you can wear.

[21:50] Now you're the bad guy in Rogue Nation or whichever one it was.

Dan McCoy

[21:53] Starring in Superman?

[21:54] Need it removed?

[21:55] Come on back down.

[21:57] Only use computers for that.

[21:58] I think it was Fallout, right?

[22:00] It was Fallout.

[22:00] It was not Rogue Nation.

Elliott Kalan

[22:01] It was Fallout.

[22:02] Thank you.

[22:02] Yeah.

[22:03] The subtitles of the Mission Impossible movies are unnecessary.

[22:07] They're so totally meaningless.

Dan McCoy

[22:10] I believe that you'll find that in Ghost Protocol there was a Ghost Protocol invoke.

[22:14] That's right.

[22:14] Yes, there was a Ghost Protocol.

[22:16] That's fair.

Elliott Kalan

[22:18] Got him.

[22:19] Was it any better than if they just called it Mission Impossible 4?

[22:22] I don't think so, but still.

Dan McCoy

[22:24] I mean, and certainly less clear than if they just called it Mission Impossible disavowed, which means the same thing.

[22:30] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[22:31] So she gets – anyway, the story she's finishing, she's finishing book five.

[22:36] Agent Argyle needs to find the master file to destroy his former bosses in the directorate who have gone evil.

[22:43] She just finishes the last few sentences.

[22:43] Just like a fucking John Le Carré book.

[22:45] Yeah.

[22:46] Yeah, all his spies needed master files on flash drives inside of silver bullets that were hidden somewhere.

[22:54] So she finishes the book and ends on a cliffhanger.

[22:57] The next day, her mom, Catherine O'Hara, always a pleasant thing to find in a movie.

Stuart Wellington

[23:01] There's a point later on where Catherine O'Hara is doing an English accent, and it's the most like Moira Rose she can do it.

[23:08] Yes, yes.

Dan McCoy

[23:09] We had the captions on because, again, I'm the sort of old man who's surrounded by cats.

[23:13] And the cats were covering your ears.

[23:15] Is that it?

[23:16] Like living earmuffs?

[23:17] When she switched, it said British accent in parentheses.

[23:20] And I'm like, oh, thank God it told me because I would not have – I'm like, what are you doing?

[23:24] Like I love you.

[23:25] You're great.

[23:26] But this is nothing that's accent.

Elliott Kalan

[23:28] I have no problem with her performance at all.

[23:31] That's great, yeah.

[23:31] I wish she had gone even more with it.

[23:33] Her mom is like, the book, I read it already.

[23:35] It's anticlimactic.

[23:36] It needs another chapter.

[23:37] Why don't I fly out and help you write it?

[23:39] And Ellie is understandably kind of like, I didn't really want my mom to just fly out out of nowhere.

[23:46] And so she decides she's going to write the other chapter herself, but she's got no inspiration.

[23:50] So what's she going to do?

[23:51] Take Alfie, put him in a backpack with a bubble window on it.

[23:55] This is the extent of her luggage apparently, and she's going to take a train to see her parents.

[23:59] Just a cat on my back.

[24:02] Doesn't need clothes, toiletries, just a cat.

[24:04] Like John Reacher.

[24:05] I mean if you use a cat the right way.

[24:07] Jack Reacher.

[24:07] No, John Reacher is Jack.

[24:09] That's what says on his birth certificate.

Dan McCoy

[24:10] Jack is his nickname.

[24:11] John Reacher.

[24:12] Where did I fucking get that?

[24:14] John Reacher.

[24:15] I know too many Johns in my life.

Elliott Kalan

[24:16] John's my father.

[24:17] Call me Jack.

[24:17] I love it.

[24:18] John Reacher is Jack Reacher's brother who is always like, yeah, got another postcard from Jack having some adventures, I guess.

[24:26] His brother got killed, Elliot.

Dan McCoy

[24:29] Yeah, dude.

[24:30] Come on.

[24:30] Have some fucking respect.

[24:32] Sorry.

Elliott Kalan

[24:33] It's his formative trauma.

[24:35] Then it's his other brother.

[24:36] Okay.

[24:37] Yeah.

[24:37] Sure.

[24:38] The one he doesn't talk about because there's no trauma there.

Dan McCoy

[24:39] See, the funny thing is I actually know about Jack Reacher, but I couldn't remember.

[24:43] Anyway.

[24:43] Yeah, let's move on.

Elliott Kalan

[24:44] Dan knows all about Jack Reacher.

[24:45] Come on.

[24:45] Yeah, yeah.

[24:46] He knows all about it.

Dan McCoy

[24:46] He reaches things because he's tall and big and curly.

Stuart Wellington

[24:49] That's where the name comes from.

[24:50] Hands the size of dinner plates.

[24:52] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[24:54] So how does he hold a dinner plate?

[24:55] Just in his palm?

[24:56] Oh, my God.

[24:57] Like a BFG?

[24:58] Yes.

[24:59] He, I mean, in a way, he is the BFG.

[25:03] How does he handle a gun if his hand is that big?

[25:05] Like how does he get his finger through the trigger gun?

[25:07] He just smushes the trigger gun.

[25:11] He just slaps the gun and bullets come out?

[25:14] Yeah.

[25:14] Like his bonds with a tube.

Stuart Wellington

[25:15] The bullets are so scared of him.

Dan McCoy

[25:17] Exactly.

[25:17] They're like, we can't get this guy mad at us.

[25:20] I see.

[25:20] That makes sense.

[25:21] We got to get out of here.

[25:22] Reacher's here.

Elliott Kalan

[25:23] Some kind of Jack creature.

[25:26] So she goes on the train.

[25:28] On the train, a guy hits on her.

[25:29] She says, oh, no, no.

[25:31] This receipt's taken.

[25:32] Then a slovenly bearded Sam Rockwell, one of these upper northwest hitchhiker types.

[25:38] Ugh, gross.

[25:39] He sits down, plops down to the chair across from him.

[25:41] He goes, hey, aren't you the famous author Ellie Conway?

[25:44] I'm a big fan of your books.

[25:45] He has her latest book, which is just called Argyle, even though it's the fourth book in

[25:49] the series.

[25:49] I don't know what the other ones were called, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[25:53] Introducing Argyle.

[25:54] More Argyle.

[25:56] Yet again, Argyle.

[25:57] And then Argyle.

[25:58] Still Argyle.

[25:59] Back to basics.

[26:00] Hey, what's that?

Elliott Kalan

[26:01] Hold on.

[26:01] Let me take a look.

[26:02] Dot, dot, dot.

[26:03] It's Argyle.

[26:05] Hey, look over there.

[26:06] Argyle.

Stuart Wellington

[26:09] And the fourth one's where Argyle goes into space, right?

Elliott Kalan

[26:14] It has to be, yeah.

[26:16] And he tells her, he goes, I'm a spy.

[26:18] Someone's trying to kill her.

[26:19] So in a minute, I'm going to start fighting, and then we're going to jump off this train.

[26:22] And you're going to have to hug me when I tell you.

[26:24] And an army of undercover assassins comes by, and he fights them off one by one.

[26:28] And she starts hallucinating that he is Agent Argyle doing all this.

[26:32] And they do this thing where you are her eye view as her eyelids close and then open again over the camera.

[26:38] And suddenly he's Argyle.

[26:40] And she's like, huh?

[26:41] What?

[26:41] She is acting in a way that from this moment on through much of the rest of the movie, Ellie Conway does not act like a human being so much as like a walking, I don't know, like a walking collection of plot things.

Dan McCoy

[26:54] Well, she also seems like she's maybe on some Klonopin or Xanax or something.

[26:59] It doesn't bring a lot.

Elliott Kalan

[27:00] They should have shown her, because we know she doesn't like to fly.

[27:03] Maybe she doesn't like trains either.

[27:04] They should have shown her taking a Xanax before she gets on because it does feel suddenly like she's drugged.

[27:08] And there's no explanation for that other than later on as we find out just the drugging of a human psyche in turmoil and fighting against itself.

Stuart Wellington

[27:17] And for somebody who's nervous about flying, she seems much more comfortable around dead bodies than I would expect a normal person to be.

[27:25] Yes.

[27:25] She processes that very fast.

[27:27] They kind of explain that.

[27:28] Also, so this technique where you're kind of seeing Sam Rockwell and then Henry Cavill back and forth, the first thing I thought is that's a lot of effort to make something unpleasant to watch.

[27:39] Like to shoot all these things multiple times.

[27:41] The other thing is I was like, are they trying to infer that she would prefer her spy to be the Henry Cavill type over Sam Rockwell?

[27:49] Because I'm like, I got to tell you right now, one of those two actors is more charming than the other.

Elliott Kalan

[27:54] Yes.

[27:54] One is more handsome than the other, I guess.

[27:58] But the other is more, well, this is, this is a, the movie is, it's messy in what it's doing.

[28:02] Later on, it turns out, I think that that's not what she is thinking.

[28:05] But at the moment, you're right.

[28:07] It's, I've, it felt like it's supposed to be, you're supposed to be contrasting super suave Henry Cavill with kind of like clumsy, graceless, kind of like gets hurt really badly Sam Rockwell.

[28:18] But what they're doing is not that different.

Stuart Wellington

[28:21] But Sam Rockwell, even when he's graceless, is like very charming.

[28:25] And he's also like, like he's a fucking dancer.

[28:28] Like, yes.

[28:29] No, there's no shade to Henry Cavill, my Warhammer for my Warhammer buddy.

[28:33] Like me and Henry Cavill, we can play Warhammer.

[28:35] No shade to you, buddy.

Dan McCoy

[28:36] Yeah, he's doing all the super spy fighting still.

[28:39] Like he, you know, he gets distracted every once in a while by like looking at her, making sure she's okay.

[28:43] And then someone gets it.

[28:44] But he's not like, like, yeah, he's not like doing like goofball shit.

[28:49] He's just doing like unflappable sort of like charming Sam Rockwell, which is very appealing.

Elliott Kalan

[28:56] The difference is he's not like running his fingers through his own hair to show how easy this all is.

[29:00] Although it is, the longer the movie goes on, the easier it gets for both of them to fight wave after wave of thugs.

[29:06] This is, I feel like this happens a lot in modern day action movies.

[29:09] Maybe I'm wrong.

[29:10] Maybe I'm watching the wrong ones.

[29:11] I feel like in old school action movies, the threats get bigger as the movie goes on.

[29:16] And the characters get beat up more and more.

[29:18] It gets harder and harder for them to do these things.

[29:21] You look at something like Die Hard and like it's getting harder.

[29:24] It's one of the best action movies, yep.

[29:25] Yes, whereas with, but why not compare it to the best?

[29:28] But then in Argyle, they just get, it just gets easier and easier as the movie goes on.

[29:32] Until by the end, we'll get to it.

[29:33] But they're like, they're just mowing down wave after wave of guys who don't even seem to have guns on them.

Dan McCoy

[29:38] Or, you know, they're so, you know, weak, you know.

[29:41] We just, I mean, again, an unfair comparison, but why not compare something good to something that doesn't work?

[29:48] We just finally saw the Dune 2.

[29:53] Danny, just watch out.

Elliott Kalan

[29:54] You say it three times, you know who's going to show up.

Dan McCoy

[29:58] And, you know, the end of that is a fight between two men.

[30:03] And it is like weighted with a lot of meaning from the rest of the story.

[30:09] But it is all the more powerful that it's just two people who are very good fighters who really want to win this fight.

Stuart Wellington

[30:14] I would argue that.

[30:15] I would argue that Paul Atreides is much more than a man at that point.

[30:18] I mean, he's fun.

Dan McCoy

[30:20] He's been literally engineered to be more than a man, but sure.

Elliott Kalan

[30:24] But you're right.

[30:25] When a fight between two people, I mean, there's no fighting scenes in this movie.

[30:30] And the fight scenes are very colorful.

[30:32] They're very action-packed.

[30:33] There's a lot of choreography.

[30:34] There are no scenes in it that are as exciting to me as Sean Connery and Robert Shaw fist fighting in a train compartment from Russia with Love.

[30:43] Like, there's nothing in here that's as exciting as that.

[30:45] And it's, I think, partly because everything feels so weightless in the movie.

[30:48] It makes sense when the Argyle scenes are weightless because they're like a fantasy.

[30:52] But everything's so – it's so cartoonish.

[30:55] It's so, you know, like there's no – there's no even sense of reality anyway.

[30:58] Anyway, I was wrong.

[31:00] There is a sense of reality because after this long fight scene, Sam Rockwell does parachute them out of the back of a train.

[31:05] And she feigns while holding on to him, which should mean that she drops to her death.

[31:10] Like, I don't –

Stuart Wellington

[31:11] No, he like wraps something – he puts a belt around her weight.

[31:14] Oh, did he?

[31:15] Okay, I missed that.

Elliott Kalan

[31:15] I missed the belt.

[31:16] She wakes up in a cabin where he has now shaved.

[31:19] Thank goodness.

[31:19] Now he's just regular Sam Rockwell, not bearded Sam Rockwell.

[31:22] And he tells her he is super spy Aiden Wilde and that her books are so –

[31:26] That's a dope name, by the way.

[31:28] Yeah, it's a great name.

[31:29] Again, this is the real – this is not the fantasy of Argyle.

[31:32] This is where real spies have real names like Aiden Wilde and they – that her books are so accurate that the real-life evil division, the real-life version of the directorate from the books, wants to catch her.

[31:43] And the division is run by director Ritter who is played by Bryan Cranston.

[31:46] And we see him.

[31:46] He's so mad at Rob Delaney, his underling, for losing Ellie that he just shoots him.

[31:51] He just murders him.

[31:52] And it's one of those things where it's like –

[31:54] He's fucking Skeletor.

[31:56] Yeah, or Darth Vader.

[31:58] If you work at an organization and if someone – you see a coworker mess up and they get killed, fire.

[32:04] Just quit.

[32:05] Leave that job.

[32:06] It's not worth it.

[32:06] Don't be in that job.

[32:08] And Wilde is allergic to cats.

[32:10] This is an allergy that comes and goes as the movie decides.

[32:14] There are times later when he's just hanging out with this cat with no reaction.

Stuart Wellington

[32:17] I would think that would give you sympathy for this character.

Elliott Kalan

[32:19] If they handled it in a way that was realistic, perhaps.

[32:23] But the allergy seems to turn on and off.

[32:25] But also it's one of those things where it just means he sniffles every now and then.

[32:28] Like it doesn't really play into anything.

[32:31] He explains – and he explains – this is the first of many info dumps that Sam Rockwell is tasked with performing in the movie.

[32:37] And he does a fine job of it mostly.

[32:39] He says that he had hired a hacker named Bucharin, an anarchist hacker whose anarchism is so cartoonishly displayed.

[32:48] It's so funny.

[32:48] Later on, we see a flashback to Bucharin's apartment and his walls are just covered with anarchist A symbols all over the place.

Stuart Wellington

[32:55] It's so cool.

Elliott Kalan

[32:56] It's ridiculous.

[32:57] Anyway, he hired this hacker, Bucharin, to steal the –

Stuart Wellington

[33:00] I wish I was that committed to branding.

Elliott Kalan

[33:05] But it's a little – I mean the – so my older son, he loves the L.A. Dodgers.

[33:11] All he talks about is the Dodgers.

[33:13] Most of his shirts are Dodgers shirts.

[33:14] He has some Dodgers stuff in his room.

[33:16] But it's not just that the walls are spray-painted with the Dodgers logo over and over again as if he wanted to make his own wallpaper out of the Dodgers.

[33:23] That's the energy of it.

Stuart Wellington

[33:24] Yeah, he's like the Joker but for the Dodgers.

[33:27] Yeah, exactly.

[33:28] I mean are you already prepared to do something like that for his inevitable Dodgers-themed apartment?

Elliott Kalan

[33:34] Oh, it's going to happen for sure.

[33:36] Yeah, I'll see if I can get Shohei Otani to show up.

[33:39] Maybe he can be the rabbi.

Stuart Wellington

[33:42] What's the Dodgers mascot?

[33:43] Is it like a baseball – a man with a baseball head?

[33:46] What is it – what's a –

Elliott Kalan

[33:47] I don't know that they have a mascot to be honest.

Stuart Wellington

[33:50] Then I have no interest in seeing one of their games.

[33:53] I need some kind of a cartoon character to keep her about.

Elliott Kalan

[33:56] You need some kind of a gritty or a Mr. Met.

[33:57] Yeah, or something.

[33:58] Some kind of a fanatic of some kind.

[34:01] So anyway, so Wilde is explaining, look, I hired Biccaron to steal the division's master file, which they easily organized and collated all the bad things they did and all the evidence for it into one master file.

[34:15] It was very helpful.

[34:16] He put it on a flash drive inside a silver bullet, but the hacker disappeared.

[34:20] And I want you to use your writer's intuition to find him.

[34:24] So they fly to London.

[34:25] She's afraid of flying, but he talks her through the takeoff.

Stuart Wellington

[34:27] Which, by the way, this is a dumb plan that makes more sense when the reveal is.

Elliott Kalan

[34:33] When they reveal stuff later, it does make more sense.

Dan McCoy

[34:35] No, this is what I was going to say.

[34:36] Like, the idea that she would be predictive in the way he wants her to be is ludicrous, but then, like, that's not actually what's going on.

Elliott Kalan

[34:44] But also, I would argue that's a better plot for the movie than the twist reveals.

[34:49] I think the idea of, like, somehow she's such a good writer that she can predict things that are going to happen is kind of more fun to me.

Dan McCoy

[34:57] I think you just pitched, like, a good, like, procedural show.

Elliott Kalan

[35:01] Yeah, I can see that.

[35:02] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[35:02] It's like castle, but predictive castle, you know?

Elliott Kalan

[35:05] Oh, like early edition castle?

[35:07] Yeah.

[35:08] If she's in a fight scene and she's like, how would I write this scene?

[35:11] Okay, I would make sure that this guy, that I would, like, that guy, I would give him, like, a weakness.

[35:16] Maybe he's got, like, a really bad, like, an Achilles heel that's not good.

[35:20] Kick him in the heel.

[35:21] That didn't work.

[35:22] Okay, maybe another thing.

[35:23] What if he has, like, a weak heart?

[35:25] So if I surprise him, blah, and the guy has a heart attack and dies.

[35:28] It's like, okay, yeah, I did it.

[35:29] Like, this is more fun to me.

[35:30] You did it again in predictive castle.

[35:31] You did it again.

[35:32] You predicted it.

[35:34] Like, that's more fun to me than what we get.

[35:36] But anyway, they go to London.

[35:37] They go to the Alfred Memorial, which is a real memorial.

[35:41] And that's where he was supposed to meet the hacker.

[35:44] He wants her to invent her next chapter right there in the hopes that it'll lead them to be Karen.

[35:49] And she envisions Argyle and his sidekick Wyatt finding a fancy phone chip, which leads them to a satellite relay, which helps them locate the hacker.

[35:57] And the Division is, meanwhile, watching all this through a closed-circuit TV camera because they got tipped off because one of Ellie's fans was live streaming that she is sitting at a park bench in a park.

[36:07] And so we're cutting between Ellie, the Division, and Argyle, who is a fictional character, all racing to see who can get the address for the hacker's apartment from the satellite relay.

[36:18] Yeah.

[36:18] They figure it out.

[36:19] Ellie didn't go to the apartment.

[36:21] It's empty, except for a little bit of furniture.

[36:23] It's empty.

[36:24] The walls have been cleaned of anarchist symbols.

[36:27] We'll see them later.

[36:28] And they find a hollow floor.

[36:30] How was it discovered?

[36:31] Because Sam Rockwell starts dancing.

Dan McCoy

[36:32] Well, also, before that, Ellie's like, oh, there's clues here.

[36:37] I can feel that this means something.

[36:38] And he's like, no, nothing.

[36:40] We got to go.

[36:40] And I'm like, what are you talking about?

[36:42] You're the one who brought her because of your belief that she has this information, and now you're immediately dismissing it.

Elliott Kalan

[36:48] Nothing in the scene makes sense.

[36:49] And the clues that she is finding don't mean anything.

[36:52] Like, they're not real.

[36:53] Like, they find the hiding place for the master file logbook purely by chance.

[36:58] But, yeah, why is he suddenly like, eh, this doesn't mean anything when this is his plan?

[37:03] She should be the one who's like, no, this is meaningless, and then finds something.

[37:07] Like, the scene is backwards.

[37:09] Like, they reverse this scene for some reason.

Dan McCoy

[37:11] Yeah.

[37:11] And also, I mean, I don't know when best to address this, but I'll just do it now for a pause.

[37:18] The allegations against you?

Elliott Kalan

[37:19] Yeah.

[37:22] You said it's all hokum?

[37:25] He actually said hokum pokum.

[37:27] I think he meant hocus pocus.

[37:29] Because he was referring to his favorite movie, of course.

Dan McCoy

[37:31] I am still aware of who Claudia Schiffer is.

[37:34] I don't just.

[37:35] No, I just don't get the whole MacGuffin angle of this thing where why, if this thing is lost,

[37:45] you know, is the division putting so much energy into, like, handling it the way they are?

[37:51] It's lost.

[37:52] It's lost.

[37:53] You're doing good, guys.

[37:55] Like, if anything, work to, like, kill the people who are still working against you, Rockwell, and we will meet later Sam Jackson.

[38:03] Like, that's a much easier task than finding this lost thing through a series of mental manipulations.

Elliott Kalan

[38:10] Here's what I'll say.

[38:11] Here's what I'll say.

[38:12] Just because it's lost doesn't, it's not really lost.

[38:14] It's being stored somewhere.

[38:16] Yeah.

[38:16] And they don't want somebody else to get it, which I understand.

[38:19] But also, it's one of those things, too, where you're like, well, if the good guys are looking for this thing, why don't you let them find it and then kill them and take it?

[38:27] Yeah.

[38:28] Rather than trying to kill them throughout.

[38:30] But I guess what they're really trying to do is they're trying to kill Sam Rockwell, but not necessarily.

[38:34] Ellie, as we'll find out later.

[38:35] I mean, the twist, none of the, the movie, I mean, the reason is because you've got to have action because it's an action movie.

[38:41] There's no real reason why anyone's doing anything.

[38:43] You've got to have action.

[38:44] There's no meaning behind life.

[38:45] Come on.

[38:46] It's just, we're just wasting time until the Grim Reaper taps.

[38:48] It's just a lot of action.

[38:49] Buddy, you're done.

[38:50] So, the, uh, just do it.

[38:52] Oh, man.

Elliott Kalan

[38:52] There's action until there's no more action anymore.

[38:54] Exactly.

[38:55] That's called entropy or action-tropy.

[38:57] Uh, so, uh, they find the hacker's code book or whatever.

[39:01] The division team shows up.

[39:02] There's another fight-em-up scene.

[39:04] Uh, Aiden Wilde, the hero of the movie, tells Ellie that when he shoots someone, he wants her to then crush their skulls with her foot to make sure they're really dead.

[39:13] Like, and like you're doing the twist.

[39:15] Yes.

[39:15] She has a lot of issues with this, understandably, because you are murdering someone who has already been taken out as a threat, you know.

[39:23] So, she can't bring herself to do it.

Dan McCoy

[39:25] So, if you're gonna do that, why do it in a way that gunks your foot all up, you know?

[39:29] Just take his gun and shoot him again, maybe, once he's been, I don't know.

[39:34] Yeah, I don't know.

[39:34] Like, if she's involved already, there's simpler ways.

Stuart Wellington

[39:38] Don't wear it, a Mario stomp these guys' heads to death.

[39:40] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[39:40] I mean, and of course, the reason is because later on, she is going to have to go through this again in a way that, uh, where it looks like she's gonna do it to, to the hero.

[39:50] Like, it's, there's, it's one of those things where it's like, why is this scene in here?

[39:54] So that it can set up a suspense scene later on.

[39:57] Yeah.

[39:58] But it doesn't really make sense why you would have it at all.

[39:59] That's how you do it.

[40:00] Yeah, it has a lot of that.

[40:01] That's how you do it, folks.

Stuart Wellington

[40:02] That's how you, that's, yeah, screenwriters.

[40:04] I hope you guys are taking notes.

Elliott Kalan

[40:06] One thing.

[40:07] One thing.

[40:07] If you need to know one thing, set up stuff so that it pays off later.

[40:10] But it's okay if the setup is meaningless and doesn't have to happen.

[40:14] One thing I.

[40:14] And if the payoff doesn't have to happen.

[40:16] It's just action.

[40:16] It's just action all the way down.

[40:17] Honestly, nothing has to happen.

[40:19] Nothing has to happen.

[40:20] You don't have to make movies.

[40:22] You don't have to.

Dan McCoy

[40:22] I just want to say that on this note, like one thing I always really admired about the Cornetto trilogy is like in all those movies, like so much that is set up in the first half gets an explicit payoff in the second half.

[40:35] But it all works on its own terms.

[40:37] Like you're never like this is a setup for something because it's always like funny the first time around.

[40:43] You know, and it makes sense.

Elliott Kalan

[40:44] Edgar Wright at his most stylistically driven is still more invested in character and reality than Matthew Vaughn at his most realistic, I feel like.

[40:55] You know, that's.

[40:56] Yeah.

[40:56] That's.

[40:57] They both do different things.

[40:58] I don't think it's going on a limb to say that Edgar Wright is a better filmmaker.

[41:02] Yeah, sure.

[41:03] But his movies will mean more to me and will last longer, you know.

[41:07] But anyway, that's that's neither here nor there because they've got to escape.

[41:11] They go up to the roof.

[41:12] They see a boat down there.

[41:13] That must have been Bucharan's escape boat to get Ellie to jump off the roof.

[41:17] Aiden just throws Alfie the cat off the roof to show that safe.

Stuart Wellington

[41:20] Which Ellie was like, you were probably you probably appreciate that.

[41:24] Was that your stand up and cheer moment?

[41:25] I know because then the cat survived.

Elliott Kalan

[41:28] That was the thing.

[41:28] The cat entered the speed force.

[41:29] No.

[41:31] When does this cat enter the speed force?

[41:33] That's what I want to stand up and cheer.

[41:34] Do you guys remember the scene in Kramer vs. Kramer when Kramer enters the speed force?

[41:38] Which one?

[41:41] You guys remember that scene in the Shawshank Redemption when Andy Dufresne,

[41:46] he's crawling through that two miles of muck and shit.

[41:49] And you're like, just enter the speed force, man.

[41:52] Why are you crawling through all that muck?

[41:54] Don't do it slow.

[41:55] Do it fast.

[41:56] Come on.

[41:57] Do you guys remember the scene in Rudy when Rudy enters the speed force?

[42:02] Man.

Stuart Wellington

[42:03] He would not ever have to sit on the bench if that bitch was in the speed force.

Elliott Kalan

[42:06] If he was in the speed force, he'd be the greatest athlete of all time.

Dan McCoy

[42:09] And yet we didn't stand up and cheer until The Flash did it.

[42:12] And that's what makes that movie the classic.

Elliott Kalan

[42:15] Nobody stood up and cheered until it happened.

[42:16] I mean, the dude flashed the word stand up and cheer in big red letters on the screen

[42:20] when he entered the speed force.

[42:23] But we did it.

[42:25] What a stand up and cheer.

[42:26] Do you think anyone in the history of anyone watching that movie ever stood up and cheered

[42:32] watching that movie?

Stuart Wellington

[42:33] Okay.

[42:34] Real talk, guys.

[42:35] We've had a lot of goofs.

[42:36] Yeah.

[42:36] Let's get real.

[42:37] Let's get truthful.

[42:38] When was the last time you stood up and cheered at a movie?

Dan McCoy

[42:42] I don't know.

[42:43] I mean, like…

[42:44] I've certainly cheered in movies.

[42:45] I don't think I've ever stood up.

[42:46] Yeah, I feel like the closest thing I can think of.

[42:49] I mean, I don't…

[42:49] I was sitting stock silent because that's the way I watch movies.

[42:55] No, I react to things.

[42:56] But the closest thing was the fucking Avengers when the hammer.

[43:03] You know?

[43:04] I feel like that may have been a stand up and cheer.

Elliott Kalan

[43:08] Captain America picked up the hammer.

[43:09] Oh, right, right.

[43:10] When Captain America took it.

[43:12] When he picked up Thor's hammer.

[43:13] Well, I mean, yes.

[43:14] I've been waiting for that moment for several movies.

[43:17] I knew it had to happen at some point.

[43:18] But you're saying somehow seeing this character that we have come to know and love over a series of films,

[43:25] showing that he was worthy to wield the power of a god, another character,

[43:30] was more of a stand up and cheer moment than seeing a character we had just met in that…

[43:34] Use his power.

[43:35] Use his power the way we expected him to.

[43:38] Yeah.

[43:39] But that's the magic of the movies, though.

[43:41] Even so, we stood up and cheered.

[43:44] Well, Ben, but actually, you don't need…

[43:45] But you also don't need…

[43:46] I'm sure that when Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star, I'm sure people stood up and cheered the first time they saw that.

[43:52] And they didn't know who Luke Skywalker was until the movie started.

[43:54] So you don't need a whole series to introduce someone to build up to it.

[43:57] That being said, when the character is called The Flash and his power is speed,

[44:01] him entering the speed force is not that…

[44:03] Yeah, it's not that exciting.

[44:04] Yeah.

[44:06] And the first time…

[44:07] To be honest, though.

[44:08] To be honest, though, I did.

[44:09] I stood up and cheered because I was like, I think the movie's almost over.

Dan McCoy

[44:12] Yeah, it isn't, though.

Elliott Kalan

[44:14] Spoiler alert.

[44:14] There's so plenty to go.

[44:15] I'm getting a hot dog.

[44:17] You cheered.

[44:19] Maybe it was like a stand-up and go-watch cheers moment.

[44:22] Was that what they were talking about?

[44:23] Yeah, that's what they're talking about.

[44:24] Yeah.

[44:25] Probably.

[44:25] So that night, they're at a hotel.

[44:28] Ellie is hallucinating that Argyle is talking to her, but he doesn't actually tell her very much of interest.

[44:33] And she goes, go away.

[44:34] And she overhears Aiden on the phone saying, ugh, I hate Ellie Conway.

[44:38] Someone should put a bullet in her head.

[44:40] I'll deliver her to you, and then I'm done.

[44:42] And that understandably sounds threatening.

[44:44] So she sneaks out, calls her mom, tells her mom to meet her in London.

[44:48] The next morning, I guess, Ellie goes to her mom's hotel room.

[44:50] I don't know how fast that plane is, but that was a fast flight.

[44:54] She hopped on the Concorde.

[44:56] In this world, the Concorde still exists.

[44:58] Yeah, I see.

[44:59] It makes sense.

[45:00] It's a world of super spies, of course.

[45:02] Why wouldn't a super fast, super loud plane that nobody really needs that badly?

[45:06] And so it went out of business.

[45:07] Why wouldn't it still be around?

[45:08] So, uh-oh, there's a knock on the door.

[45:11] She goes, mom, don't answer it.

[45:12] The door opens.

[45:12] It's director Ritter.

[45:14] And Ellie is shocked until she goes, dad.

[45:18] What?

[45:18] Her dad is the evil bad guy director?

[45:20] Twist.

[45:21] Didn't see that twist coming, did you, twisties?

[45:24] I mean.

[45:25] This movie is twisted.

Dan McCoy

[45:27] Yeah, it's pretty twisted.

[45:28] I remember you just said, you know, that's got to be her dad, right?

[45:31] Before it happened.

[45:32] But yeah, you know, it was a pretty good twist.

Elliott Kalan

[45:33] No, I mean, yes, it's, you know what's going to happen.

[45:35] But also, here's what I was hoping.

[45:37] I was like, okay, there's two ways I want this to go.

[45:41] Either he's a bad guy and Catherine O'Hara doesn't know it.

[45:46] Yeah.

[45:46] Or her dad is identical to director Ritter and they're going to get mixed up at some point.

[45:52] That's what I want to see.

[45:53] And I want to have to go on a date on the same night.

[45:57] This kind of bungling Colorado dad is just kind of, or Chicago dad, I guess they live in Chicago.

[46:02] This bumbling Chicago dad is just kind of like thrust into running an evil directorate.

[46:08] And he's like, oh, sure.

[46:09] Okay.

[46:10] Like, I would love to see that.

[46:11] That's not what happened.

Stuart Wellington

[46:12] Yeah, that's actually pretty good.

[46:13] I like that one.

Elliott Kalan

[46:13] He turns out to be Ellie's dad.

[46:15] She hands him the logbook.

[46:16] He starts flipping through it with noticeable glee on his face.

[46:20] But then Aiden bursts in.

[46:22] Oh no, he puts a gun to the dad's head.

[46:23] And the dad instantly drops his cover, reveals he's a bad guy.

[46:27] Ellie's mom puts a gun to Ellie's head and starts talking in as Dan saw from the captions, a British accent.

[46:33] And she's like, what's going on?

[46:35] And Wilde shoots Catherine O'Hara, knocks out the dad, and then drives off with Ellie.

[46:40] Just as Ellie's about to get in the car, she realizes she left Alfie the cat up in the hotel room.

[46:45] But he's like, you can come with me and learn some things, or you can go try to rescue that cat.

[46:49] She makes the wrong decision.

[46:50] She goes with him instead of going back to get her cat.

[46:52] That's not a heroic thing to do.

[46:54] If she was Sigourney fucking Weaver, she'd go back for that cat.

[46:58] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[46:58] It's also in direct opposition to the screenwriting rule that states that one does explicitly that thing.

Elliott Kalan

[47:04] Yeah, that you go back and save said cat.

Dan McCoy

[47:07] Yeah, that's what makes her an unlikable protagonist.

Elliott Kalan

[47:10] Well, and also like if there –

[47:11] That's the only thing.

[47:13] You've set up for me that there is one relationship that means more to her than anything else in the world, and that is this dumb cat, this dumb CGI cat.

[47:21] And then she's like, I guess I will leave the cat behind.

[47:23] Like, come on.

[47:24] What are you doing?

[47:25] Anyway, she hallucinates Argyle again and then passes out, I guess just for the sheer exhaustion of these last couple days.

[47:31] She wakes up.

[47:32] They are driving to the French countryside.

[47:34] I'm sure there's a way to drive from London to the French countryside.

[47:36] I don't know what it is.

[47:37] Maybe a ferry is involved at some point.

[47:39] I don't think there's a ferry across the channel.

[47:41] They have the channel now, right?

[47:42] There's a channel.

[47:42] The channel is a train.

[47:43] I don't know that you can drive a car through it, but maybe I'm wrong.

[47:47] Is it the same car?

[47:48] Dan's Googling it.

[47:49] Google it.

[47:49] Maybe I'm – again, I've never done it.

[47:52] I'm sure there's some way to do it.

Stuart Wellington

[47:53] There's spies, dude.

[47:54] Maybe their fucking car turns into a gondola.

[47:56] That's –

Elliott Kalan

[47:57] Which Roger Moore was that?

Stuart Wellington

[48:00] Moonraker where the pigeon does a triple take.

[48:05] I feel like Matthew Vaughn saw that scene and he's like, perfect.

[48:09] That's – I'm making a whole movie like that.

[48:10] I want my whole career to be like that.

Elliott Kalan

[48:13] They're driving to the French countryside.

[48:14] They get to an isolated vineyard.

Dan McCoy

[48:16] There's a channel tunnel that you can use for your car.

[48:19] Oh, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[48:19] So there is a driving tunnel.

[48:20] Okay.

[48:20] That's fine.

[48:21] Then please strike it from the record.

[48:24] My worries about how they drive there.

Stuart Wellington

[48:26] Yeah.

[48:26] Leave it in.

[48:27] Double it.

Elliott Kalan

[48:28] Leave it in.

[48:28] No, no.

[48:29] Yeah.

[48:29] Make it more.

[48:30] That's the trailer.

[48:31] She wakes up.

[48:32] She's a – they go to the vineyard of former CIA deputy director Alfred Alfie Solomon played

[48:38] by Samuel L. Jackson, Nick Fury himself.

[48:41] And he uses winemaking as a very on-the-nose metaphor to reveal that Ellie is actually about

[48:48] to meet the real Agent Argyle because Ellie, Dan, hold on to your fucking socks.

[48:53] You are going to blast right off your feet.

[48:55] You are going to flip over backwards with your feet in the air like this is a Bazooka Joe

[48:59] comic when you learn this stunning twist.

[49:01] Ellie is the real Agent Argyle.

[49:05] What?

[49:05] Or actually Agent R. Kyle.

[49:08] Rachel Kyle.

[49:09] Which they have to have found a better way to do that.

[49:11] It's the clumsiest way to get the name Argyle.

[49:13] I love it so much.

Stuart Wellington

[49:16] I got to hand it to Samuel L. Jackson.

[49:19] He really set up a pretty sweet deal to put in, what, two days of work, hanging out in an

[49:24] office, clapping, watching Lakers games?

[49:26] A lot of it.

Elliott Kalan

[49:27] I love that he's in his Vineyard Man Cave, which has a big screen that he uses either

[49:31] to track the world's evil spies or to watch basketball games.

[49:35] And all the walls have framed basketball jerseys on them.

[49:38] Like memorabilia shit.

[49:40] He just loves memorabilia.

[49:42] But yeah, she is actually a secret agent.

[49:44] Her books, they're not fiction.

[49:46] They're her processing her buried memories of being a spy.

[49:50] And Ellie's like, that can't be, but Aiden proves it in the only way to prove things in

[49:54] these movies.

[49:55] He fights her and unlocks her secret spy fighting skills.

[49:59] Why the previous times when people were genuinely trying to kill her, her fighting skills remained

[50:04] under lock and key?

[50:06] That's just the power of the human psyche.

[50:08] You know, that's the mind.

Dan McCoy

[50:09] No one threw a direct punch at her, which is, I guess, is the triggering event that needs

[50:13] to happen, I guess.

Stuart Wellington

[50:14] Yeah, I suppose that's it.

[50:15] It would have been kind of better if she was like, but what about all those other times

[50:21] when you killed all those guys?

[50:22] And Aiden's like, I didn't kill them.

[50:25] You killed them all.

[50:26] And we get a flashback of her murdering all these guys.

[50:29] Black and white.

Elliott Kalan

[50:29] It would have made like a blank look on her face.

[50:31] To be honest, again, I would have liked that kind of more, but it would have made more

[50:37] sense.

Stuart Wellington

[50:37] Yeah, it would have made like a look of horror on his face.

[50:38] He's like, what are you doing?

[50:39] You watched her upgrade her way through these dudes.

Elliott Kalan

[50:43] Yeah, you were always the most brutal of us, a beast, a monster.

[50:47] So guys, you were flabbergasted by this twist, right?

[50:50] Like you did not know how to handle it.

[50:52] Your minds were blown.

Dan McCoy

[50:52] I mean, again, I thought to myself beforehand, how would I write this movie based on this trailer?

[50:58] Oh, these are probably repressed memories.

[51:01] She's like been brainwashed.

Stuart Wellington

[51:03] I had to go all the way back to the beginning and start over because I'm like, I must have

[51:06] missed something.

[51:07] Yeah, there's got to be a little clues.

[51:08] Let me pick up the clues.

Elliott Kalan

[51:09] And guess what?

[51:11] I'm sure there are clues of a sort, but it's not like, I don't know.

[51:16] The only way to deduct this twist is to have seen movies before.

[51:19] But anyway, Alfie and the Division, or maybe not, just to guess it.

[51:24] Alfie and the Division, they're racing to decode this hacker logbook as Aiden does some more

[51:28] info dumping on Ellie.

[51:29] So guys, get ready for some info to be dumped on you.

[51:31] Okay.

[51:31] She was the agent who went to meet with Buchanan in his hilariously anarchist apartment.

[51:38] She ended up in a coma.

[51:41] She was found by the Division leaders who posed as her parents.

[51:44] They brainwashed her into believing that she was a writer who was injured in a skating accident

[51:49] so that she would then, and they gave her a journal that they said was hers full of story ideas

[51:54] for her to then write as novels so that she could write the novels that would lead them

[51:58] to the master file.

[51:59] Rather than, let's say, not giving her a cover story and asking her, where's the master file?

[52:08] They instead decided to take the clues that would lead people to the master file and put them into best-selling books

[52:14] that would be available around the world, probably in multiple languages, so that anyone could join in on the hunt.

Dan McCoy

[52:20] I don't think they knew they were going to take off this way, but I also had a problem with encouraging her to write,

[52:30] and then it turns into this storyline.

[52:35] I thought, if you're writing this, why not just make it like they are keeping an eye on her,

[52:42] they have this cover, they've given her this other identity,

[52:46] they're staying close to her in case something comes out,

[52:50] and then unbeknownst to them, lo and behold, she starts writing this story.

[52:55] That's just something that happens.

[52:57] It's so absurd to me that part of their plan is, oh, she's going to write her memories into these stories.

[53:04] And just to clarify before, it's not that important,

[53:08] but the reason she was in a coma was he had some sort of dead man switch, the hacker,

[53:12] and her thing blew up.

[53:13] We don't find that out until later.

[53:14] We don't know that until later.

Stuart Wellington

[53:15] What if there was a point where they were like,

[53:17] well, we want her to go through this process so we can figure it out,

[53:20] and then they started selling the books, and they're like,

[53:23] man, we're making some fucking money off these books.

[53:25] Yeah.

[53:26] Maybe we should just focus on publishing instead of being evil spies.

Elliott Kalan

[53:30] Yeah, well, it's one of those things where you look at James Bond movies,

[53:33] and I mean those are cartoons also, but you're like, you have so much advanced technology.

Stuart Wellington

[53:37] No, that's James Bond Jr.

Elliott Kalan

[53:40] Oh, sorry, sorry.

[53:40] Yeah, James Bond Jr. is the cartoon.

[53:41] Who is it?

Stuart Wellington

[53:42] His son is the weird thing.

Elliott Kalan

[53:44] No, no, but his dad was also named James Bond.

[53:46] It was like George Foreman's family where all the boys have the same name.

[53:50] But the idea that you have all this advanced technology, you should just do that.

[53:54] Just sell that instead of using it to hold gold for ransom or whatever,

[53:59] or start an undersea kingdom.

[54:01] But there's so many ways to be a bad person with a lot of money in the world that don't run afoul of the law.

[54:11] Yeah.

[54:11] You don't end up having a spy chasing after you and trying to shoot you.

[54:15] Do one of those evil people.

[54:16] Okay.

[54:16] So every now and then we get a piece of consumer electronics out of it.

[54:19] So that's the bargain.

[54:21] That's the devil's bargain we've made with the evil people of the world.

[54:25] Yeah.

[54:26] So it turns out the thing that happened in Greece at the beginning of the movie,

[54:30] that whole shootout with Argyle and Dua Lipa, and that happened.

[54:35] Aiden was the real life Wyatt.

[54:37] They did have an associate named Kira who got shot in Greece.

[54:40] And Ellie's like, oh, I was going to bring Kira back in book six.

[54:42] A fan sent me a crazy way to do it.

Stuart Wellington

[54:45] And she's like, I was going to include it into my book and risk litigation.

Dan McCoy

[54:51] Now that was the biggest problem I had, not the foreshadowing of who, of course, sent this to her.

[54:57] I know.

Stuart Wellington

[54:58] Charlene's like, that's going to happen.

[54:59] I'm like, but there's no way she could put that in her fucking book.

[55:03] Pause the movie.

Dan McCoy

[55:06] This is why you don't get unsolicited manuscripts.

Stuart Wellington

[55:09] And then I'm like stomping around the living room making a lot of hand motions like I'm fucking Sebastian Maniscalco.

[55:14] Really?

Elliott Kalan

[55:15] Sebastian Maniscalco is coming up a lot in the conversations today, even before the recording.

[55:19] Stuart's got Maniscalco on the brain.

[55:21] Maniscalco fever.

[55:23] Look, you can take the Maniscalco out of the man, but you can't take the man out of the Maniscalco.

Dan McCoy

[55:26] Our show today is sponsored by Maniscalco.

[55:29] The best way to shave your nether regions.

[55:32] No, no.

Elliott Kalan

[55:32] Actually, Dan, it's sponsored by Manischewitz, which is the only one that tastes like Sebastian Maniscalco.

[55:37] Okay.

[55:38] So Alfie cracks the code.

[55:40] It turns out, and there was no way that anyone was going to be able to guess this, that Ellie, that the master file was in the keeping of a known associate of Ellie's known as the keeper of secrets, a professional secret keeper.

[55:52] How could they have ever thought of that?

[55:54] How could they have cracked that, this amazing thing?

[55:57] Ellie is nervous, but Aiden's like, you're going to have to go with me on this mission to get it.

[56:01] They go to, as the Chiron tells us, Arabian Peninsula.

[56:05] No country, no city, nothing.

[56:07] We can say Chicago, but we cannot be any more specific than it's somewhere on the Arabian Peninsula.

[56:12] Yeah.

[56:12] Which felt racist to me in a way, and I'm not quite sure if it is or not.

[56:16] They show up dressed as glamorous spies.

[56:18] They go to luxurious oasis complex.

[56:21] Ellie is nervous, so what do you do when someone's nervous and you want them to just not worry about it anymore?

[56:25] You dance with them publicly, and you do the whirlybird move.

[56:29] And he reveals that they weren't just spy partners.

[56:32] They had a relationship.

[56:33] And this song that's playing, that was their song.

[56:35] That song, of course, is now and then a Beatles song that was not released until 2023.

[56:39] So I'm like, when is this movie taking place?

[56:42] Is it taking place 20 years in the future?

Stuart Wellington

[56:44] Yeah, yeah.

[56:45] I will say, you say they're dressed up like glamorous spies.

[56:49] I got to say, I'm not a huge fan of the dress that they put Bryce Dallas Howard in, the glamorous spy dress,

[56:56] because it feels like it both covers up her body entirely and also does nothing for her.

[57:02] So it's like, it should be something that empowers her more, I would argue, rather than covers her up and doesn't look particularly good on camera.

[57:11] Wow.

[57:11] I mean, that's Stuart's costume corner.

[57:14] That's my little, and I will say Sam Rockwell with a little frosted tips.

[57:19] Thumbs up.

[57:20] More of that, please.

[57:21] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[57:21] So there's a jeer and a cheer here.

[57:24] It is ridiculous that they dress up as Argyle and Lagrange, the bad guy lady from the beginning, to get into this thing.

[57:32] It's a, it's, I don't know, it's silly that they play those parts, especially because she should be dressed as Argyle.

[57:39] Like, he should be wearing some kind of spangly thing.

[57:43] Or not.

[57:44] Anyway, but they dance to their song now and then, a huge hit Beatles song everybody loves.

[57:48] It's everyone's favorite Beatles song since 2023 when it came out.

[57:52] Ellie meets with the Keeper of Secrets and-

Stuart Wellington

[57:54] Who, by the way, just, I gotta clarify, is not a greater demon of Slanash, which I was hoping for, but was disappointed by the omission.

Elliott Kalan

[58:02] No, no, it is a, just a woman who keeps secrets.

Dan McCoy

[58:05] Who is-

[58:06] Sophia Batea.

[58:08] Who's been in multiple Flophouse films.

[58:10] Yeah, we're gonna be seeing her soon.

Elliott Kalan

[58:12] We gotta date with Rebel Moon 2, right?

Dan McCoy

[58:14] Yeah, we gotta date with Rebel Moon 2 sometime.

[58:15] Oh, that's right.

Elliott Kalan

[58:15] I forgot that was her in the Rebel Moon series, yeah.

[58:18] You know, it's that old Rebel Moon shining down on us.

[58:23] So, Ellie meets with the Keeper of Secrets and she's, like, nervous.

[58:28] And she, and the Keeper of Secrets is like, how do I know you are still the same Agent R Kyle that I remember?

[58:34] And she hallucinates Agent Argyle saying, you don't need me anymore.

[58:39] You're all that you need.

[58:39] You can do it.

[58:40] And I'm like, well, Agent Argyle, have you done anything to help her up to this moment?

[58:44] Like, it feels like this is, this is what happens after she has hallucinated Agent Argyle, like, giving her tips, you know, or helping her through things.

[58:52] But, why not just doing all that?

Dan McCoy

[58:53] Like Dabney Coleman in Cloak and Dagger.

[58:56] Yes.

[58:57] Like Dabney fucking Coleman.

[58:57] Let's get Dabney Coleman in here.

Elliott Kalan

[58:59] Yeah, get Dabney Coleman.

[59:00] I mean, how many times do I have to say it?

[59:02] Get Dabney Coleman in here.

[59:03] If we're going to have a sexy spy character.

[59:05] Gary Coleman.

[59:05] That's not the Coleman I wanted.

[59:07] I said Dabney.

[59:09] I was clear about it.

Stuart Wellington

[59:10] If you're going to have a sexy spy, it better be Dabney Coleman.

Dan McCoy

[59:13] Yeah.

[59:14] The luxuriousness of that mustache.

Elliott Kalan

[59:16] Oh, man.

[59:17] Mustaches work.

[59:19] Let's just say it, guys.

[59:20] Whether it's on Henry Cavill or Dabney Coleman, mustaches work.

[59:24] Throw my fucking mustache again.

[59:26] Mustaches work.

[59:29] Taches is, of course, they publish art books, right?

[59:32] Anyway, so.

Dan McCoy

[59:33] Magnum P.I.

[59:34] The list goes on.

[59:35] Anyway.

[59:35] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[59:36] His name stands for mustaches are.

[59:37] Sam Elliott and fucking Roadhouse.

[59:39] Not.

[59:40] Wait.

[59:41] Mustaches are great, not ugly, man.

[59:45] Please introduce.

[59:46] Inform.

[59:48] Please inform.

[59:49] Please spread this information about mustaches.

[59:51] Brought to you by the Facial Hair Council.

[59:53] So she bluffs her way into getting the flash drive with the master file, which is just

[59:58] her being mean.

[59:59] The person's like, how do I know you're the real Agent Argyle?

[1:00:01] Prove it.

[1:00:02] And she's like, fuck you, you piece of shit.

[1:00:04] And she's like, yes, you are the real Agent Argyle.

[1:00:07] Good job.

[1:00:08] And she opens up the file and starts to read it just on the computer right there.

[1:00:12] She is shocked by something she sees.

[1:00:14] But we're not going to find out what it is until a few minutes later, unless you guess

[1:00:17] what it is, because it's the most obvious thing that it could be.

[1:00:20] Katherine Harris shows up alive.

[1:00:21] She reveals she was wearing a bulletproof vest over some tea.

[1:00:24] She reveals that Ellie was actually a bad guy, a devoted evil agent of the division.

[1:00:30] This is when we learn that she went to Karen's anarchist apartment, killed him, which set

[1:00:35] off a dead man's switch bomb, which put her in a coma.

[1:00:37] And then everyone who drank the tea passes out.

[1:00:40] This is, I think, the third time that Ellie has passed out and then woken up again in a

[1:00:44] new place.

[1:00:45] Oh, man.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:45] She should see a fucking doctor.

[1:00:47] That can't be good for you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:48] So if you want to see a movie where the main character is continuously roofied, go ahead.

[1:00:53] Go see Argyle.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:54] I guess that's a review.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:57] If you want to see a movie where a female lead is continuously passing out and waking up

[1:01:03] in situations she doesn't know how she got there, go ahead.

[1:01:05] Watch Argyle.

[1:01:06] No thanks.

[1:01:07] Wow.

[1:01:09] Ellie, it's a hero taking a stand.

[1:01:11] Don't like it.

[1:01:12] So Ellie wakes up at Division.

[1:01:13] She's at Division HQ.

[1:01:15] Director Ritter is destroying the flash drive.

[1:01:17] And he's like, we need you to tell us where Alfie is.

[1:01:20] And she doesn't know, but she figures she can get out of Aiden.

[1:01:23] And Ritter is like, if you give us our Alfie, we'll give you back your Alfie.

[1:01:26] He has the backpack with the cat in it.

[1:01:28] And she goes, I hate cats.

[1:01:30] And he just drops the backpack.

[1:01:32] That's how you know she's evil now.

[1:01:33] Aiden is getting beaten up for his info.

[1:01:35] And Ellie walks in and is like, why don't you just tell me?

[1:01:38] And he says no.

[1:01:38] So she shoots him.

[1:01:39] And then she uses her hacker skills to find Alfie.

[1:01:43] But meanwhile, Aiden, hold on.

[1:01:45] He's not really dead.

[1:01:47] And he beats up his interrogators and then shoots himself up full of adrenaline.

[1:01:50] So much that it has to kill him.

[1:01:53] It's in the biz.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:54] We call that a Hong Kong cocktail.

[1:01:56] Especially if it's.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:57] Oh, no.

[1:01:58] So he's got to keep his heart rate up or he'll die.

[1:01:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:00] Oh, no.

[1:02:01] He's got an injury near his heart.

[1:02:03] Maybe it would.

[1:02:05] This part really annoyed me.

[1:02:07] Like of all the like, quote unquote twists.

[1:02:09] I mean, like they don't wait that long to reveal what's really going on.

[1:02:13] But even so, it bothered me because you're not watching Argyle thinking like, oh, shoot.

[1:02:21] Like she really just killed Sam Rockwell.

[1:02:25] Like she turned to the.

[1:02:27] You know that this is going to be undone.

[1:02:29] So why even play it movie like we're fooled?

[1:02:35] Because twists, Dan.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:36] Because twists to action.

[1:02:37] It's meaningless.

[1:02:38] Come on.

[1:02:38] Have fun.

[1:02:38] You don't think there's a.

[1:02:40] You think they should stretch it out a little bit like him give final words.

[1:02:44] Maybe it's like a little bit of blood drips out of his mouth.

[1:02:47] I mean, I look.

[1:02:48] I'm just saying.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:49] You're saying why not cut out the middleman?

[1:02:51] Just have to rescue Sam Rockwell.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:52] I will give the movie the slight credit that it doesn't try and extend this long at all.

[1:03:00] Like he doesn't try and like really fool us.

[1:03:03] But if you're going to do it, I feel at this point, just like have them like exchange a wink.

[1:03:07] So like you, you know, like, I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:11] But Aiden doesn't know because she can't blow her cover.

[1:03:13] Yeah.

[1:03:13] But this is, this is up there with Chewbacca's death in Rise of Skywalker.

[1:03:17] Right.

[1:03:17] With the like, does this, you know, I know this is not going to, they undo it.

[1:03:21] You have to undo it really fast because nobody, everyone knows Chewbacca is not going to die off screen, killed by the hero accidentally.

[1:03:29] Although when it happened, I was like, movie, if this is for real, you have, I, okay, I'll give you some credit for that.

[1:03:35] You're a madman.

[1:03:36] I don't know where you're going.

[1:03:37] You give a shit.

[1:03:38] What happens?

[1:03:39] Like you're just so, you're insane.

[1:03:40] I look down.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:41] I'm like, should I, I guess I should buckle my seatbelt.

[1:03:44] I don't trust this guy.

[1:03:45] No one's safe.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:46] I wonder if, I wonder if the theater will give me a refund on the four fifths of my seat.

[1:03:51] I'm not using because I'm just sitting on the edge.

[1:03:54] So the, it turns out.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:56] You call a fucking usher over and explain that.

[1:03:58] Like, what are you saying?

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:59] And usher is like, yeah, yeah.

[1:04:02] Oh, wow.

[1:04:03] Elliot knows a fucking usher song?

[1:04:06] Just the one.

[1:04:07] That is fucking crazy.

[1:04:08] That's blowing my mind.

[1:04:12] So it doesn't surprise you more that usher is working as an usher at the movie theater?

[1:04:16] No, I'm more surprised that Elliot knows an usher song.

[1:04:20] He's doing research for what?

[1:04:21] His concept album about working at an usher.

[1:04:24] He's like, I've been at a wedding.

[1:04:26] I've been at a movie theater.

[1:04:28] Yeah.

[1:04:29] I spent a little bit of time as a toilet, but that's a flusher.

[1:04:32] That's a little different.

[1:04:34] And I spent a little bit of time as a candy with fruit juice in it, but that's a gusher.

[1:04:37] Also a mistake on my part.

[1:04:38] Just want to cover his bases.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:41] An actor prepares.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:43] An actor certainly does prepare.

[1:04:46] Especially if you're Usher, who's not really an actor.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:49] It's the name of a book.

[1:04:51] I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:51] I mean, what was the movie with the hustlers?

[1:04:56] I mean, he doesn't really act in that.

[1:04:58] He's just playing himself.

[1:04:59] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:00] But playing yourself when you're Usher is the role of a lifetime.

[1:05:06] Thanks, VH.

[1:05:07] I'm behind the music narrator.

[1:05:11] Usher thought things couldn't get any better, but he was wrong, and they did.

[1:05:18] The rise and rise of Usher.

[1:05:20] So anyway, we're going to find out Usher did something bad that we don't know about that people are going to be like, how can you make jokes about Usher?

[1:05:27] I don't know.

[1:05:28] I only know the one song.

[1:05:29] I watched his whole halftime show, and I still don't know any of his songs.

[1:05:32] Anyway, so he escapes the interrogation room.

[1:05:35] Ellie reveals to the bad guys, actually, I'm a good guy, and I just sent the master file to Alfie.

[1:05:40] And then an error message comes up on the screen that's like, file not sent.

[1:05:43] And she goes, uh, Usher.

[1:05:45] And she knocks out fake mom and dad.

[1:05:48] Which, by the way, why are they constantly knocking him out?

[1:05:52] Yeah.

[1:05:52] Yes, well, in movies, for some reason, there is nothing wrong with murdering low-level grunts, but there is some moral problem with killing the people at the top who are responsible.

[1:06:03] It's the same thing with Guardians of the Galaxy 3, where they're just mowing down people.

[1:06:07] And then when it's time to kill the high evolutionary, they're like, no, we won't do it because we're guardians of the galaxy.

[1:06:12] It's like, I don't know, man.

[1:06:13] If you're going to kill anybody, kill that one guy and leave everybody else alive.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:17] I still think they're supposed to have been using stun things.

[1:06:19] They talked about non-lethal force in that movie.

[1:06:21] In what, Guardians of the Galaxy?

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:22] So when Chris Pratt says, okay, Groot, kill them all, and they just start shooting people with blasters.

[1:06:27] That's the light.

[1:06:29] I don't know.

[1:06:30] When they're fighting those pig monsters, and they're just chopping their limbs off with swords, were those stun swords?

[1:06:39] And they can reattach their limbs later?

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:41] And Star-Lord's like, yeah, use the stun weapons, leave them on the ship that explodes in a few minutes.

[1:06:46] I will say.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:48] There's that, too.

[1:06:50] The only reason I am pushing back at all is, like, you've used this as an example a few times.

[1:06:55] And I'm like, well, even if it doesn't do it well, that is one of the few movies that tries to make some nod towards, hey, let's not just kill all of these faceless people for, you know, like, because they're minions of the bad guy.

[1:07:11] But then they do it.

[1:07:12] I know.

[1:07:14] It's the same.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:14] It's in Rise of Skywalker where it's like, you can't kill the emperor.

[1:07:17] That would be wrong.

[1:07:18] You're right.

[1:07:19] I guess I'll just murder all these child soldiers who were forced to fight for you.

[1:07:23] I'll just blow them up en masse.

[1:07:24] It's like movies.

[1:07:25] Check yourself, you know?

[1:07:27] Look at what you're doing.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:28] I mean, Argyle doesn't do this, but let me do a little Argyle strips doctoring.

[1:07:33] Strip doctoring.

[1:07:34] Ooh, strip doctoring.

[1:07:35] Take this shirt off.

[1:07:38] I'll just take off my sexoscope.

[1:07:41] No, like, you could have her not able to kill them because she has lived thinking that they're her mom and dad for a while.

[1:07:49] That's a good fix, yeah.

[1:07:51] Some emotional, you know, reason anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:53] Yeah, no, that makes sense.

[1:07:54] Even though she still has trouble doing that.

[1:07:57] Yeah.

[1:07:57] But she knocks them out.

[1:07:59] She apologized to her cat for saying that she hated it.

[1:08:01] She still loves it.

[1:08:02] She runs off to a weapons room where she is reunited with Aiden, and she tells him.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:06] I want a fucking weapons room.

[1:08:09] But I would have way cooler ones.

[1:08:11] I would have, like, all kinds of katanas and batlets.

[1:08:14] Yeah, definitely a scy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:15] Your weapons room is basically just the pawn shop from Pulp Fiction.

[1:08:19] Yes, thank you.

[1:08:20] There's, like, a baseball bat.

[1:08:21] There's a chainsaw.

[1:08:22] There's a katana.

[1:08:23] Or, you know what?

Dan McCoy

[1:08:24] The Kingsman movies have better weapons rooms than this one.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:27] I'd have a flying guillotine.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:29] Oh, that's amazing.

[1:08:30] Really?

[1:08:30] That's hard to – you've got to master that thing.

[1:08:32] That's hard to use.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:33] Yeah, I'll accidentally chop my hand off at least twice.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:36] Well, and also, like, you've got – that's the only number of times you can do it.

[1:08:38] Can't just do it at least.

[1:08:40] Yeah.

[1:08:41] It's a great trick.

[1:08:42] I can only do it twice.

[1:08:43] You've got to get it to land right over the other person's head.

[1:08:46] It's like a carnival game.

[1:08:47] Like, it's pretty hard to do.

[1:08:49] And it's not just that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:50] You have to do that, and then you have to wait for them to register their situation.

[1:08:55] Yes.

[1:08:55] Then you chop their head off.

[1:08:56] And the other thing is –

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:57] Yes, and you've got to pull so hard that it cuts through a human neck.

[1:08:59] That's hard to do.

[1:09:00] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:00] Like a carnival game, the loop is actually a little smaller than people's heads, most of them.

[1:09:04] So it's –

[1:09:05] Yes, it just bounces off their heads.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:06] You've got to find someone with a very small head.

[1:09:08] Yeah.

[1:09:09] Yeah.

[1:09:10] Or a baby.

[1:09:11] Anyway, so –

[1:09:12] I can totally do it to a baby.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:14] Don't do it to a baby unless it's baby Hitler.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:18] People say all the time –

[1:09:19] This is me saying the opposite of the same –

[1:09:21] No, similar.

[1:09:22] If people are like, oh, would you be able to kill baby Hitler because he's just a baby?

[1:09:25] I'd be like, yeah, you better believe I will.

[1:09:27] Let me –

[1:09:27] I'll dash its brains out.

[1:09:28] Come on.

[1:09:29] I know that baby's Hitler.

[1:09:31] You know?

[1:09:31] Do it.

[1:09:32] Fingerprint it first.

[1:09:33] Make sure it's baby Hitler.

[1:09:34] Yeah.

[1:09:35] Do all the –

[1:09:35] Make sure that baby Hitler didn't –

[1:09:37] He didn't use his sinister genius to switch places with a different baby,

[1:09:41] probably a Jewish baby because he's that evil.

[1:09:43] Yeah.

[1:09:43] Anyway, but yeah, I'll take out baby Hitler.

[1:09:46] Bring me your time machine.

[1:09:47] Anyway, she tells Leiden –

[1:09:49] This is Elliot's application.

[1:09:52] She was just pretending –

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:53] Elliot's application to the fucking Looper program.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:56] Yes.

[1:09:57] Reasons for applying.

[1:09:59] Yeah, fuck it.

[1:09:59] Want to kill baby Hitler.

[1:10:01] Change history.

[1:10:02] I'll do whatever.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:02] Specifically baby, though.

[1:10:04] Can't handle older men.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:07] Not grown-up Hitler.

[1:10:08] Too much of a challenge.

[1:10:10] There's all those stories where they're like, oh, we can't kill Hitler.

[1:10:14] What if someone worse shows up?

[1:10:16] And I'm always like, he's pretty bad.

[1:10:17] I don't know.

[1:10:18] Does it get worse?

[1:10:19] Let's risk it.

[1:10:20] Let's take the chance.

[1:10:21] Let's see what happens.

[1:10:22] What if there's someone who's –

[1:10:23] What if his replacement started a war that killed 50 million and three people?

Dan McCoy

[1:10:27] That's slightly worse.

[1:10:28] Let's treat ourselves.

[1:10:29] Let's just –

[1:10:30] You know what?

[1:10:30] Let's live dangerously and kill Hitler.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:34] Let's take those odds.

[1:10:35] Anyway, she reveals to Aiden, I'm not really bad.

[1:10:37] I shot you.

[1:10:38] But I shot you – he goes, you shot me through the heart.

[1:10:40] And she goes, no, I shot you through the vascular corridor, a two-inch passageway that allows a bullet to pass through the body while appearing to go through your heart harmlessly as long as the blood is spout.

[1:10:50] And she goes, this is the crazy storyline that was suggested to me by that fan about how I was going to bring Kira back.

[1:10:56] And it's like, movie – you don't have to keep telling me.

[1:10:58] I get it.

[1:10:58] Kira's going to come back because that's –

[1:11:00] It's fine.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:01] Just keep moving, movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:03] And so now we get to –

[1:11:04] It's in the name.

[1:11:07] Movie's got to keep moving.

[1:11:08] Keep moving.

[1:11:08] Come on.

[1:11:09] It's not a stoppie.

[1:11:11] No.

[1:11:12] It is a talkie.

[1:11:13] But this is where we get to the two scenes that really soured me on this movie.

[1:11:17] Up until this point, I was like, you know what, movie?

[1:11:20] I don't really like you, but whatever.

[1:11:22] I respect you.

[1:11:23] It's a check – well, not that either.

[1:11:25] It's a check your – you don't just check your brain at the door with this one.

[1:11:28] You check your whole nervous system.

[1:11:29] Check your circulatory system too.

[1:11:31] Check your endocrine system, the whole thing.

[1:11:33] But then they team up to fight their way to the server room where they can transmit the file to Alfie.

[1:11:38] And you get two action scenes in a row.

[1:11:41] One is this big kind of dance shooting scene where the two of them are dancing while shooting guys while they're flinging colored smoke grenades everywhere.

[1:11:48] And it's supposed to be big and bright and colorful and fun and silly.

[1:11:52] They're rediscovering their love for each other while they kill people.

[1:11:54] And the bad guys are such low-level threat.

[1:11:58] There is no threat whatsoever that I just – it just murdered to me.

[1:12:02] But anyway, Stuart, you were saying.

[1:12:03] Prove me wrong, Stuart.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:04] I will say that I feel like at least this scene is pretty colorful and visually –

[1:12:09] It's very colorful.

[1:12:10] I think it's colorful.

[1:12:11] I think it has a look that I don't feel is overdone.

[1:12:19] I agree.

[1:12:20] It's not like a particularly good action sequence.

[1:12:22] But I think as like a dance sequence, it's more fun than other parts of this movie.

[1:12:26] And it's like, well, yeah, sure.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:28] In the color section of the grading card, I'll give this scene an A.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:32] 10 out of 10 for sure.

[1:12:34] They use all the colors.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:35] I have some sympathy with what Elliot is saying because I feel like the older I get, the more this kind of like whimsical, gleeful murder of people on the screen bothers me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:45] When I was younger, I might have been more into it.

[1:12:47] The same way like when Sin City came out, I was like, this movie is cool.

[1:12:52] And now I think I don't know that I'd be able to watch it.

[1:12:54] It's just so grim.

[1:12:56] And not the fun kind of grim where it's like the grim adventures of Grim and Mandy or whatever it was in the cartoon where the Grim Reaper hangs out with those kids.

[1:13:04] But yeah, I think part of it is me getting older, having a family, living in a world where people are killed routinely by guns and it's not fun.

[1:13:13] So to see like them kind of dancing their way through shooting people, I just can't take the same enjoyment out of it that I could when I was young and didn't think about that stuff.

[1:13:21] But then – so I will say this sequence is better than the next one where they're in a room that's leaking oil because of all the shooting.

[1:13:28] And so they're like, we can't use our guns.

[1:13:30] So they have to fight with knives.

[1:13:32] The bad guys are slipping all over the place.

[1:13:34] They cannot stand up.

[1:13:35] Nellie goes, wait, was I really an ice skater?

[1:13:38] And Sam Rockwell is like, yeah, you were a great ice skater.

[1:13:40] So she takes two knives, somehow shoves them into the bottom of her boots and ice skates –

[1:13:44] Unnecessary.

[1:13:45] Ice skates through the oil just stabbing guys and just cutting their hamstrings and stuff.

[1:13:50] And these guys are – there's nothing – they are not a – they are so at her mercy because they're slipping and falling down.

[1:13:57] So it's like it's not – and she's kicking them with her boot, which has a blade in it.

[1:14:01] So she's slashing their faces open.

[1:14:03] Like it's – you don't see their faces get cut open.

[1:14:07] But you're like, there's a blade in the bottom of your boot.

[1:14:09] Don't kick anything.

[1:14:10] It's totally bloodless.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:10] I had a moral problem with the previous scene.

[1:14:12] But in this scene, that was replaced by just being annoyed.

[1:14:16] Like being like, those knives would make it harder to slip around on that oil floor.

[1:14:20] Just use your fucking shoes.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:22] I've seen the fucking transporter, which is the platonic ideal for an oil fight scene.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:29] And also it's a – I think there's a certain point where characters in a movie get so self-satisfied with what they're doing that it makes the movie feel smug.

[1:14:37] And this scene is where it happens for me.

[1:14:39] Like the – she is so proud of herself for doing this.

[1:14:44] And there is – and it is so not a challenge for her.

[1:14:46] And the bad guys are at such a disadvantage that it's like, okay, yeah, you're super cool.

[1:14:52] I don't know.

[1:14:52] I don't understand.

[1:14:53] Like I don't like you.

[1:14:54] I stopped liking the character at that point.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:56] This makes me think of like I went to see – hell, it's going to make fun of me.

[1:15:01] The fact that I saw this.

[1:15:02] Look, I was feeling down.

[1:15:05] Wanted a movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:05] You're like, look, I have – I didn't know what to do.

[1:15:08] I went to the – I went to the down to the Times Square subway station.

[1:15:11] I watched a rat fight.

[1:15:12] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:13] No, no.

[1:15:13] I went and saw the snuff movie from 8 Millimeter.

[1:15:16] I watched –

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:17] They were playing at Nighthawk.

[1:15:20] I have the season pass.

[1:15:21] It's a repertory screening.

[1:15:22] It's not that it was so –

Dan McCoy

[1:15:23] Gross.

[1:15:24] It's that I know Elliot will take umbrage to anyone having the spare time.

[1:15:28] But I saw The Equalizer 3 and the end –

[1:15:32] No, Dan, that's one of the essentials.

[1:15:35] You got to see it.

[1:15:35] At the end of this film –

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:37] It answers all the questions that The Equalizer 2 left unanswered.

[1:15:40] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:40] Fucking Mr. Equalizer, Denzel, is doing these – like it is shot and staged like a slasher movie where he is the killer hunting down these goons.

[1:15:53] Sounds great.

[1:15:54] I'm like, I have lost any sympathy with The Equalizer at this point.

[1:15:58] This feels grim and ugly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:59] When it gets too easy for the good guy to kill the bad guys, then they become the bad guy.

[1:16:04] Yeah.

[1:16:04] If it's done well, then the audience does feel that – is deliberately feeling uncomfortable because it's like you wanted this.

[1:16:11] You're getting it now.

[1:16:11] It's not pleasant.

[1:16:13] But while I was watching this, I'm like, I love the movie The Raid Redemption.

[1:16:17] What is different between that movie and this one?

[1:16:19] And the difference is that it is hard for those guys to get through that building.

[1:16:22] Like they are constantly in trouble.

[1:16:24] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:24] It's really difficult.

[1:16:25] That is a very accurate description of the movie The Raid.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:29] And when they're fighting – when it's two guys against –

[1:16:31] It's a tough time getting through a building.

[1:16:32] They do.

[1:16:33] It's getting from – some days it's just as hard to get from the second floor to the third floor.

[1:16:36] When it's two guys versus one guy in a fight, that one guy is a maniac and amazing.

[1:16:43] And that's why it takes two guys to do it.

[1:16:45] Like there is – I get no thrill out of seeing a super skilled assassin hero taking out guys who – the bad guys, they barely get a shot off in the last couple scenes in this movie.

[1:16:55] And they're just standing there with guns in their hands, not firing as the guys take them down.

[1:16:59] And it makes me – it's not fun.

[1:17:00] But if they were like, this is really difficult, and then they had to meet the challenge, I'd be like, oh, this is a fun movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:08] It takes a very – it takes a certain amount of skill and work to make a – like an ultimate badass character interesting.

[1:17:17] Yeah.

[1:17:18] See the Lone Wolf and Cub stories, for instance.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:21] Or like Wolverine.

[1:17:22] Like Wolverine at his worst is a character who's just so good at everything that he just mows through thousands of guys.

[1:17:27] At his best, he is a guy who is only capable of winning because he can absorb more pain than anybody else.

[1:17:34] And it's not that he's invulnerable.

[1:17:35] It's just that he – or maybe he's invulnerable, but it still hurts.

[1:17:38] And he looks worn out.

[1:17:39] It's hard for him.

[1:17:40] Like when a hero has to push themselves, it's cool.

[1:17:43] When a hero is just kind of sliding by like Agent Argyle does, Agent Argyle has more of a hard time than Agent Ellie does at this point.

[1:17:50] It's like – or Agent Arkyle, I should say.

[1:17:52] Anyway, we don't need to keep belaboring the point.

[1:17:54] The point is they get to the server room.

[1:17:56] They're going to upload this damn file finally.

[1:17:58] Ritter walks in.

[1:17:59] He's about to shoot them with his old-fashioned shotgun.

[1:18:02] But who steps in?

[1:18:03] The true hero of the story, I guess.

[1:18:05] Alfie the cat to claw the shit out of his face.

[1:18:08] And like – and before that, Ritter was like, it's a – you can't use this computer.

[1:18:12] There's a retinal scanner.

[1:18:13] It only works on my eyes.

[1:18:14] And then Alfie jumps at him, and Agent Argyle is like, oh, I better kill him before your cat destroys his eyes because we're going to need it.

[1:18:21] He shoots Agent Ritter, and he's like, oh, it's too bad.

[1:18:23] His eyes are pretty messed up.

[1:18:25] And I'm like, okay, so in this fun action movie, the villain's eyes have been clawed out by a cat.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:31] I kind of respect it.

[1:18:33] It's a little –

[1:18:33] Real fun.

[1:18:34] It's a little – like –

[1:18:35] I mean, it works in –

[1:18:36] I think I can use a little more edge in this movie.

[1:18:39] Yeah, it works in Event Horizon.

[1:18:41] It's like got a bunch of killing, but no –

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:43] Event Horizon Stewart is a horror movie, and that's a hugely freighted moment when he rips his own eyes out.

[1:18:48] It's not like – it's not a laugh line when he does that.

[1:18:52] Anyway.

[1:18:53] But it reminds me a little bit of that scene that I didn't like so much in Quantumania when MODOK dies.

[1:18:57] And they're like, oof, weird day today, huh?

[1:19:00] And it's like, well, you just saw someone you know die.

[1:19:02] Like this is – even if you don't like him, you know, take a moment.

[1:19:06] Anyway, they're like, okay, luckily there's another computer in this place that we can go use to upload this file.

[1:19:14] They go up on the deck of what turns out to be a giant oil tanker.

[1:19:17] That's where they've been all this time.

[1:19:19] And maybe it's because we watched Waterworld earlier this year, but I was not surprised or excited by the idea of them being on a giant oil tanker.

[1:19:26] Like, okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:27] It explains why there's all that fucking oil.

[1:19:29] Oh, yeah, the oil.

[1:19:29] It does explain all that oil.

[1:19:31] It does explain the oil.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:32] Oh.

[1:19:32] No, that's because it's an intricate puzzle box.

[1:19:35] Every piece fits just so.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:37] Couldn't have just been because they needed oil for some reason for all this machinery that's around.

[1:19:42] No, it couldn't be.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:43] Not an oil tanker.

[1:19:44] While the file is uploading to Alfie, Catherine O'Hara turns.

[1:19:47] She has a music box, and the music triggers Ellie's brainwashing.

[1:19:51] And she commands Ellie to kill Aiden.

[1:19:54] They fistfight for a while, and they're like pressing the button that pauses and unpauses the file transfer.

[1:19:58] Because that's how file transfers work, right?

[1:20:00] She just hit pause, and when you hit unpause, it just goes right back to where it started.

[1:20:04] I don't know.

[1:20:04] I'm pretty bad with that shit.

[1:20:05] That's not my experience with Google Drive.

[1:20:06] Yeah.

[1:20:06] I'm pretty bad with all that stuff.

[1:20:07] I'm like, why is it not working?

[1:20:09] And every that way, then you cut to Alfie and his man cave going, ooh, it stopped.

[1:20:14] And they're fighting, and finally Aiden is like, Ellie, I'm not going to fight you anymore.

[1:20:18] I know you're still in there.

[1:20:19] I'm going to do – or Rachel or whatever.

[1:20:21] I'm going to – you're going to do the right thing.

[1:20:23] She knocks him down.

[1:20:24] She's about to stomp on his skull as he taught her to do.

[1:20:28] And we, for some reason, have to feel – it feels like we need the – the movie feels the need to flash back to moments of their relationship and the moment when he taught her how to stomp skulls.

[1:20:37] It's like, yeah, I remember.

[1:20:38] I was watching this damn movie.

[1:20:39] I mean, it's a long movie.

[1:20:39] It's not that long that I'm forgetting things that happened.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:42] This really bugs me because the only – like, he stops fighting.

[1:20:46] He's like, you know, like you said, I know you're really in there.

[1:20:50] I'm not going to fight you.

[1:20:51] I don't want to hurt you.

[1:20:53] Like, that's a big part of it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:54] The only way to unleash you before was to fight you.

[1:20:55] Now, the only way to cure you is to not fight you.

[1:20:58] Yes.

[1:20:58] Symmetry.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:59] The only reason to do that would be is if she overcomes her programming.

[1:21:04] But she doesn't.

[1:21:06] The only reason that she survives or he survives is, you know, what's-her-face comes in.

[1:21:12] Kira.

[1:21:12] Yeah, and like smashes the –

[1:21:15] Bonks her on the head.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:16] A masked figure – Dan, you're revealing a twist.

[1:21:19] A masked figure hits Catherine O'Hara over the head with a wrench, probably fracturing her skull, killing her.

[1:21:24] And the music box stops, and she snaps out of it.

[1:21:27] Oh, no.

[1:21:28] And that masked figure, you guessed it, is Kira.

[1:21:31] It's Kira.

[1:21:32] Who reveals that she's the anonymous fan who sent the vascular Carter plot because that's what happened to her in Greece.

[1:21:38] We could have gotten to this after I was done with what I was saying.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:41] What are you saying, Dan?

[1:21:42] Yeah.

[1:21:42] No, I'm just saying that, like, narratively, like, why go down this road?

[1:21:48] Because, like, Sam Rockwell stops fighting, and I'm like, no, like, go down and get Catherine O'Hara.

[1:21:56] Get the thing.

[1:21:57] Like, he says he's going to do it earlier, but then he's just like, you know what?

[1:22:00] I'm just going to stand here and let you beat me up.

[1:22:02] And I'm like, okay, well, it's going to be her struggling to overcome her programming.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:07] I got a better version of this action sequence.

[1:22:10] Catherine O'Hara whips out a music box.

[1:22:12] That makes Ellie try and kill Sam Rockwell.

[1:22:13] Sam Rockwell then spends the whole fight trying to defend himself while also…

[1:22:18] By dancing.

[1:22:19] While also breaking the music box.

[1:22:21] And each time he does, Catherine O'Hara brings out another one.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:25] And that's the standard version of it would be he's trying to get to Catherine O'Hara, and Ellie keeps stopping him.

[1:22:31] And he can't get best for her.

[1:22:33] But I do like the idea that she has multiple music boxes.

[1:22:35] Yeah, she keeps whipping them out, and he's like, oh, another one.

[1:22:38] That would be amazing.

[1:22:39] Now, Dan, I think I've got the explanation for why they're doing it.

[1:22:42] I think it's because this movie is not well written.

[1:22:45] Oh, okay.

[1:22:45] Thanks.

[1:22:46] I think that's the – and I never want to blame the writer on a movie.

[1:22:48] I will always blame the director, and I will always blame executives who meddle with stuff.

[1:22:53] But I'm going to say that this movie is – it's a movie – it's a script that is free from reasons for things to happen or people to do things.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:02] But you know what?

[1:23:03] Then that could be the director and the producer's meddling.

[1:23:06] It could be the director.

[1:23:07] It could be the meddling.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:08] I guess we'll find out.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:09] By blaming the script, we aren't necessarily blaming the writer because it could –

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:12] If the same writer who wrote this when his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series that was announced a few years ago, and I guess it's probably not.

[1:23:19] I mean when that comes out, we'll know for sure whether it was him or the director.

[1:23:23] When he takes a truly beloved piece of literature for me and gives it the Argyle treatment.

[1:23:30] Anyway, but I never want to blame the writer because the writer ultimately doesn't get to make the final decisions.

[1:23:35] I will always blame the director or the executives because they're the ones who make those decisions.

[1:23:38] Anyway, the mass figure is Kira.

[1:23:40] She explains.

[1:23:41] She survived because of this vascular corridor.

[1:23:44] I didn't do the research to find out if it's a real thing or not.

[1:23:46] I don't care enough.

[1:23:47] She goes, when you didn't respond to my email, I decided to go undercover in the division and wait until the moment when I was needed.

[1:23:54] And it was like, there were like 400 moments you could have stepped in until this one.

[1:23:59] They finished transmitting the file to Alfie, and then they leave blowing up the tanker, killing, I have to assume, dozens if not hundreds of people who did not get to evacuate.

[1:24:08] They're all lying there unconscious in pools of oil as a tanker explodes around them.

[1:24:14] And we don't even get a moment to make us feel better at it, like in Waterworld when Carl Oldie Olsen goes, oh, thank God, as flame engulfs him.

[1:24:22] Yeah, such a good bit.

[1:24:24] What a great performance on his part.

[1:24:26] Anyway, Ellie then VOs that Argyle was now free.

[1:24:30] He had no more missions left.

[1:24:31] And we see she's reading from the final Argyle book to the same audience members who all showed up to this book release also.

[1:24:39] Maybe it's like a season pass.

[1:24:41] Yeah, super fans.

[1:24:42] And one of the people goes, people says, I have to know, what happens to the characters after the book?

[1:24:48] This sucks.

[1:24:49] This sucks real bad.

[1:24:50] And Ellie explains each of the characters' happy endings.

[1:24:53] Samuel Jackson gets a medal.

[1:24:55] Kira becomes the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or whatever.

[1:24:58] Why wasn't this in the book?

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:01] Why didn't she put it in the book?

[1:25:03] Is it because it sucks?

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:05] Maybe you could say this stuff happened after the book came out, after the book was written.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:09] There's an edict in writing to, you know, get in at the latest possible moment and get out at the earliest.

[1:25:15] Maybe she's like, this is unnecessary.

[1:25:17] Unless it's the movie Argyle doesn't learn from the book.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:21] I feel like usually spy novels don't have an epilogue that explains what happened to the characters later in life.

[1:25:26] That's more of a Victorian literature type thing, I guess.

[1:25:28] Or like an ending of Animal House, say.

[1:25:31] Yeah, exactly.

[1:25:33] But they each have happy endings and they're all there at the reading.

[1:25:36] Kira, Alfie, Alfie the cat, and Sam Rockwell, who has now remembered that he's allergic to Alfie the cat.

[1:25:42] But they're now living together.

[1:25:43] They're in love.

[1:25:44] Finally.

[1:25:45] They're in the cat.

[1:25:46] This is the dumbest of all the twists in the entire movie.

[1:25:50] Henry Cavill stands up.

[1:25:51] He's got a mullet and a southern accent.

[1:25:53] And she goes, I don't have a question, but I bet you've got two or three for me.

[1:25:56] And Ellie is shocked.

[1:25:58] Cut to credits.

[1:25:59] And it's like, wait a minute.

[1:26:00] So it's a twist that means nothing.

[1:26:04] But except, I guess, how are we supposed to take this twist?

[1:26:06] Guys, explain to me this twist.

[1:26:07] Because it's not like Argyle has a famous face.

[1:26:09] He's a character from the book.

[1:26:10] Well, that's what, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:11] Yeah, that's what I was just thinking about.

[1:26:13] Like, does he know how she envisions Argyle exactly?

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:19] Especially since we've established that she is Argyle.

[1:26:21] There's no Argyle.

[1:26:23] But I guess, and why does he have an accent?

[1:26:26] It literally feels like one of those things where they threw a twist in just to have something, but they didn't have an explanation for it.

[1:26:32] Like the end of Super Mario Brothers the movie where they're like, yeah, we didn't have a story for them to go back to.

[1:26:37] It's just a cliffhanger.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:39] The next scene.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:42] Are we going to go to the mid-credits scene?

Dan McCoy

[1:26:44] Well, then I'm just, I want to bring it up because there's some light on what's going on.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:48] Wait, first, Stuart, I want Stuart never sees the mid-credits scenes.

[1:26:51] Stuart, what do you think the mid-credits scene is for this movie?

[1:26:55] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:55] I can only assume it's Tom Hanks in a fat suit dancing to a rap song.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:03] Or Tom Cruise.

[1:27:05] A little left field.

[1:27:06] If only, Stuart, if only.

[1:27:08] So, Dan, what happens in the mid-credits scene?

[1:27:10] Tell me.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:11] Well, in the mid-credits scene, it's totally, we don't see any of our, the people we've come to love over the course of the movie Argyle.

[1:27:21] In fact, it says 20 years earlier.

[1:27:23] 20 years earlier.

[1:27:24] A young guy walks into a bar that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:28] Walks into the Kingsman pub.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:30] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:30] A little Easter egg for those Matthew Vaughn fans out there.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:32] Well, and he introduces himself.

[1:27:36] Like, he asks for, like, something with a twist or whatever.

[1:27:39] And, like, they give him a gun.

[1:27:41] He goes, oh, that's a twist.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:42] He says a bunch of code words.

[1:27:44] It's like, I want this drink, minus this, minus this, minus this.

[1:27:47] And they give him a gun.

[1:27:48] And he says, that's a twist.

[1:27:49] And they go, what's your name?

Dan McCoy

[1:27:50] And he goes, Aubrey Argyle.

[1:27:52] Where, again, as you mentioned, there is no one really named Argyle.

[1:27:57] Although we come out of this scene and it says Argyle, book one, the movie or something, a poster.

[1:28:04] Coming soon.

[1:28:05] Coming soon.

[1:28:06] So it's like, I guess this is the movie version of the book series within the universe.

[1:28:15] And it's tied to the Kingsman somehow.

[1:28:18] This is what I was going to say before with the ending of the thing where it's clearly setting something up.

[1:28:25] And Matthew Vaughn apparently had this idea like, oh, I'm going to have these three separate kind of, like, worlds of espionage.

[1:28:33] And eventually they're going to coalesce into sort of a Matthew Vaughn cinematic espionage universe.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:39] I love the look on Stuart's face as Dan is saying.

[1:28:41] It's just total lip snarled and disgust.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:44] The fact that Argyle was greeted as Argyle was, of course, we're not going to see the fruition of whatever the fuck all this is about.

[1:28:52] No.

[1:28:53] So it just lives on as total gibberish nonsense to confuse at the end of a movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:59] Yes.

[1:28:59] And I have one comment and two questions.

[1:29:02] And my comment is.

[1:29:04] This is like we're at an Argyle book event.

[1:29:07] Yeah.

[1:29:07] I did say, yeah.

[1:29:08] This is less of a question and more of a comment.

[1:29:10] How dare you?

[1:29:11] But what kind of chutzpah does it take to produce a movie like this and be like, by the way, this is going to be one of a series.

[1:29:19] Because people are going to care so much about the fictional world inside of this movie that they're going to want to see it.

[1:29:26] People didn't even want to see Lightyear, a movie based on a beloved series of movies.

[1:29:31] Nobody was like, oh, yeah, I want to see what the Buzz Lightyear story end universe is.

[1:29:35] The idea that you would do this is bonkers to me.

[1:29:37] So here are my questions.

[1:29:38] One, are we ever going to see any of these movies?

[1:29:43] And how do you feel about that?

[1:29:45] And two, knowing that we will probably never see these movies, what is your explanation for this?

[1:29:50] How do you think it would play out, this ending where a southern Henry Cavill shows up looking like her mind's eye imagining of the Argyle character?

Dan McCoy

[1:29:58] So I can only presume that this is part of some other memory that she has.

[1:30:03] And she has transposed his face onto – like that's the only thing that makes any sense to me.

[1:30:09] But how would he know that?

[1:30:11] Good question.

[1:30:12] He knows that she used to know him, but I don't know why he would introduce himself necessarily that way because like he doesn't know that she's recovered the memories of him.

[1:30:23] So –

[1:30:24] Also, it feels like a weird thing to do.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:26] Like why do it at a book launch?

[1:30:28] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:28] Why do it at a book event?

[1:30:29] Why not?

[1:30:30] But that's – we know already that she has reimagined Sam Rockwell as John Cena in her memory, in her imaginings of this book.

[1:30:38] Like so is it – so now – but we're supposed to believe that her description of Argyle is letter perfect to what the actual guy looks like?

Dan McCoy

[1:30:46] Well, he's got – you know, he's got different hair.

[1:30:48] He's a different bad hair.

[1:30:49] Yeah, he looks more Australian.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:50] He does have different hair.

[1:30:51] That hair on the back of his head is different.

[1:30:52] That's true.

[1:30:53] That is a big change.

[1:30:55] So, Stuart, how do you feel?

[1:30:56] Do you – are you a little – do you think we're going to get these Argyle movies and how do you feel about it if we're not going to?

[1:31:02] We're not going to get them.

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:03] Wasn't it one of the Kingsman movies where the like post-credits scene has like – who's the Russian wizard guy, Rasputin?

[1:31:14] Yeah, Rasputin shows –

[1:31:15] Rasputin's like introduces Hitler in like a Thanos-type moment.

[1:31:19] Yeah, that's right.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:20] Like it's a flashback though.

[1:31:22] And it's like – yeah, Rasputin's like we figured out the guy who's going to do all this stuff.

[1:31:26] And he's like, hello, my name is Adolf.

[1:31:30] Wink.

[1:31:30] And it's like kill that guy when he was a baby.

[1:31:33] What are you doing?

Dan McCoy

[1:31:34] Then guitar squeal.

[1:31:36] Yeah.

[1:31:37] You file out of the theater.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:39] And then he plays a song, my name's Adolf.

[1:31:39] Listen to me.

[1:31:40] Like it's all – it's like – well, I mean that's basically Listomania, isn't it?

[1:31:43] Where they're like rock and roll Nazis at the end.

[1:31:48] I mean rock and roll Nazis.

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:49] You were talking about hammers earlier.

[1:31:51] That's another situation with hammers where –

[1:31:53] Yeah, that's for sure.

[1:31:54] Look, don't blame the hammer.

[1:31:55] Blame the hand.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:56] There's a – yeah, this is – I feel like I can almost understand – when a DC movie ends with a mid-credit scene and you're like they're probably not going to pay this off.

[1:32:08] But I get it.

[1:32:08] These are preexisting characters that they have some reason for assuming people will want to see.

[1:32:13] When new characters that are made up for this movie are then teased at the end as if the audience is going to be like, what?

[1:32:21] We're finally going to get the Argyle story?

[1:32:24] Like I don't – what reaction are you hoping to get from the audience?

[1:32:27] Like I don't understand.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:28] Actually, when was the last time a movie went that all in on completely brand new characters that have no preexisting backstory and they just assumed people would love it and it actually worked?

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:40] And it's not based on a book or anything like that.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:43] Well, there's this movie Rebel Moon.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:45] We also probably –

[1:32:46] I mean to say Rebel Moon is not based on preexisting characters is stretching things a bit.

[1:32:51] Yeah.

[1:32:51] I mean so obviously Star Wars, right, is a big one.

[1:32:55] Is that – but that's –

[1:32:57] Yeah.

[1:32:57] I mean but even that's almost 50 years ago.

[1:32:59] Is there anything since then?

[1:33:01] Oh.

[1:33:02] Where a movie went all in and was like you saw these characters.

[1:33:05] They're new and you're going to love it.

[1:33:07] And they were like –

[1:33:07] And it actually worked.

[1:33:08] And the audience was like, yeah, it worked.

[1:33:09] It worked.

[1:33:10] I mean – and it's not based on anything.

[1:33:12] I want audience members to write in because I'm having trouble thinking of anything else.

[1:33:15] That's partly because there's so few original movies that are made now that are not based on something.

[1:33:21] No, wait.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:21] So are you – is the question like people like the act of going all in and assuming this or the fact that –

[1:33:29] or when – are you asking when it's actually successful?

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:32] My argument is that a movie that introduced brand new characters was also –

[1:33:38] in the course of the movie was like this is going to be a huge success.

[1:33:42] We are promising this huge universe.

[1:33:44] Yeah.

[1:33:44] There are definitely sequels and it actually paid off.

[1:33:48] No, I don't –

[1:33:49] Audiences liked it.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:50] I can't think of something like that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:54] That's true because even like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, it's not like they said we'll be back in.

[1:33:59] They used to say James Bond will return but like James Bond was already a successful series of novels.

[1:34:03] And the thing is like –

[1:34:05] Almost as successful as the Argyle books.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:06] I would argue that like Star Wars and Indiana Jones both kind of posit a larger world and it's one adventure for that character, one of many.

[1:34:14] And in both cases it worked.

[1:34:16] Yeah.

[1:34:17] But I don't think other things have –

[1:34:18] I don't know.

[1:34:19] That's the last time.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:20] Well, you can do that as long as you tell like a full story within that universe.

[1:34:24] But definitely the implication for both of those –

[1:34:26] You can't set up like –

[1:34:27] No, but the implication for both of those movies is –

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:29] But I can't think of other movies.

[1:34:30] Yeah, this is one adventure of a larger – that there could be a series of, you know.

[1:34:34] Because I think – because they're both wearing their influences from the serials of old on them, I guess.

[1:34:39] But yeah, when – the last time I've seen a movie that was a new movie with original characters, then Back to the Future, how it ended on a cliffhanger that said to be continued at the end.

[1:34:48] Right.

[1:34:48] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:48] But that wasn't even intended on happening.

[1:34:51] Like they just like – they're like, okay, well, let's do it.

[1:34:53] But like they kind of did that as a joke originally.

[1:34:56] You know, they were –

[1:34:57] Did they?

[1:34:57] But that's –

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:58] That's how I understand it.

[1:34:59] I mean, Dan, it may have started as a joke, but it sure didn't end as one.

[1:35:03] Back to the Future is one of the most beloved franchises in Hollywood history.

[1:35:06] Join me, won't you, as we look at Back to the Future in all its forms.

[1:35:09] I would love to.

[1:35:10] From the movies, to the cartoon show, to the comic books, to that's it.

[1:35:14] To the Broadway show?

[1:35:15] No, there's the fucking stage.

[1:35:16] Oh, to the Broadway show.

[1:35:17] That's right.

[1:35:17] That I saw because we got discount tickets.

[1:35:19] I forgot it was a Broadway show.

[1:35:20] Really?

[1:35:20] 88 gigawatts.

[1:35:21] That's what we need.

[1:35:23] 88 gigawatts.

[1:35:24] Give him some speed.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:25] How's – what's his name?

[1:35:26] Roger Bart.

[1:35:27] Yeah, how's Roger Bart.

[1:35:28] That is the main thing that makes that show watchable.

[1:35:33] I would say that the songs are all various degrees of awful and not –

[1:35:40] Oh, man, no.

[1:35:41] They don't do anything to advance the story.

[1:35:42] The only good songs are the songs that they steal from Huey Lewis to stick in there.

[1:35:47] Are there songs like –

[1:35:48] Did they steal them or did they pay him a licensing fee?

[1:35:50] I would assume.

[1:35:51] Yeah.

[1:35:52] I told Elliot this actually while we were on Troy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:54] If you're listening, if they stole those songs, you can sue them.

[1:35:56] You're going to be Huey Lewis and the Su's.

[1:35:58] The funny thing –

Dan McCoy

[1:35:59] I used this metaphor before I was talking to Elliot about this on tour, so I apologize.

[1:36:08] But no one else has heard it before, which is like –

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:10] Yeah, you don't even need to apologize to me.

[1:36:11] I'll hear it again.

[1:36:11] I don't remember it that well.

[1:36:13] This is a conversation we had in an airport.

[1:36:14] Another fucking straw man sitch.

[1:36:16] No, it's just –

[1:36:17] I better get out there in case anyone overheard me say this to Elliot in an airport in –

[1:36:22] Was it – we were in Portland at the time, I think?

[1:36:24] Yeah.

[1:36:25] Because then they might get mad that I'm reusing material.

[1:36:28] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:30] So a lot of what is fun about the show is seeing them recreate a show –

[1:36:37] recreate a movie that should absolutely not be on stage as a Broadway show.

[1:36:41] It should work on stage.

[1:36:42] It shouldn't – like there's just too much special effects stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:46] It's like that King Kong musical where everyone said if you're going to see it, see it for that giant puppet King Kong.

[1:36:51] Yeah.

[1:36:51] This is not a show that makes sense as a Broadway musical.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:53] I mean, you could do it by doing it like super like Michel Gondry style where it's like, oh, it's just like a car that someone holds and runs around with.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:01] Like that 39 Steps play from a bunch of years ago.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:05] But if you're going to do it Broadway style, it's ridiculous and you watch it and the fact that it comes as close to recreating the movie as it does is kind of amazing.

[1:37:17] But it's amazing in a way that's like if you saw someone who owned a duck and were like, that's a pretty good duck, but could you make that duck into a horse?

[1:37:26] And they're like, let me try.

[1:37:28] And they come back and it's like 75% of the way to a horse.

[1:37:31] And you're like amazed that they did it that well.

[1:37:34] I'm going to throw up thinking about this duck horse.

[1:37:36] This is not worth doing.

[1:37:39] Yeah.

[1:37:40] You know?

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:40] Yeah.

[1:37:41] Now I'm getting visions of like a Yorgos Lanthimos duck horse being plopped in front of me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:46] Yeah.

[1:37:47] It's a poor thing indeed.

[1:37:48] Yeah.

[1:37:49] Yeah.

[1:37:50] You almost did.

[1:37:50] I started thinking of some lyrics in my head for Crispin Glover's haunting ballad for it.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:56] He has a song that he sings while he is in the Peeping Tom tree.

[1:38:02] He has a big number.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:03] Why can't she see?

[1:38:05] She's my density.

[1:38:06] It don't make sense to me.

[1:38:08] That doesn't sound like that.

[1:38:09] I mean, it's possible.

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:11] Is there a song where Marty sings about how his mom wants to fuck him?

Dan McCoy

[1:38:17] I can't recall.

[1:38:18] It seems like a missed opportunity if not.

[1:38:20] But you know what?

[1:38:22] What do I do this time?

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:24] How do I deal with this situation?

Dan McCoy

[1:38:28] Don't want to commit a love crime.

[1:38:32] So what we normally do at this point.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:34] But Freud says I should do it.

[1:38:36] And then Sigmund Freud comes out and goes, no, no, Marty.

[1:38:39] You're misunderstanding.

[1:38:41] That's Roger Bart in Sigmund Freud.

[1:38:43] Sigmund Freud.

[1:38:44] If you're telling me Roger Bart can't do a funny Sigmund Freud, then you're a liar.

[1:38:49] He can do it.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:50] Yeah.

[1:38:50] It's like, it turns out that most of my theories are complete nonsense.

[1:38:54] They're just kind of made up.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:56] I was kind of taking my own neuroses and projecting them on other people.

Dan McCoy

[1:39:01] Anyway, this is the part of the show where normally we don't talk about Back to the Future of Sigmund Freud.

[1:39:06] But we do our final judgments whether the movie is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

[1:39:13] I'm going to say about Argyle.

[1:39:15] I'm going to say it is a bad, bad movie.

[1:39:17] However, on the steep curve of Flophouse movies.

[1:39:23] Of the Flophouse.

[1:39:24] Yeah.

[1:39:25] It did not make me as angry or bored as most movies do.

[1:39:31] Like, it is surprisingly watchable for how big a mess it is.

[1:39:36] Like, and so if you were like, you know what?

[1:39:39] I just want to see colors.

[1:39:40] I want to.

Elliott Kalan

[1:39:42] If you're high, basically.

[1:39:44] If you're high or you're a cat, turn on Argyle.

[1:39:46] Like, check my.

[1:39:48] Just jump.

[1:39:48] If you're a cat, jump off the couch onto the remote.

[1:39:51] Jump on the buttons until Argyle is selected.

[1:39:53] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:39:53] As Elliot said, if I want to check my whole nervous system at the door, it's, you know, it was a tiring week and you have Apple Plus already.

[1:40:02] I'm not going to say don't turn on Argyle.

[1:40:04] That's the highest recommendation I could give.

[1:40:07] Sam Rockwell is very charming in it, as he often is.

[1:40:12] But what do you say, Stuart?

Stuart Wellington

[1:40:14] Yeah, I mean, I think this is a bad, bad movie.

[1:40:16] I, I'll be slightly harsher than Dan because I think whatever charms the movie has, you can find elsewhere.

[1:40:23] There's just not very much to it.

[1:40:25] And it, it is such a mess.

[1:40:28] And the, there's, it's hard to find joy in the, like, violence of it.

[1:40:34] Like, it's just, it's just kind of, it's just not for me.

[1:40:36] No thanks.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:37] I feel, I wish that, I mean, I, I feel bad saying it's a bad, bad movie, even though I think it is.

[1:40:42] Because having said all that stuff earlier, it is kind of an original.

[1:40:47] It's not based on pre-existing IP, even though they kind of pretended it was when it first came out.

[1:40:52] But that's being said, it's so heavily about the James Bond type movie stuff that it's not really fully original.

[1:40:59] You know, it's not like.

[1:41:00] It is, Elliot.

Dan McCoy

[1:41:01] Elliot, as Stuart said, it's a Romancing the Stone that turns into a long kiss goodnight.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:05] Like, it's, it's pretty derivative still.

[1:41:08] It's original only in that it had, it does not use the names of pre-existing characters.

Stuart Wellington

[1:41:11] Yeah, and again, can I state, uh, Romancing the Stone fucking rocks.

[1:41:16] That movie's great.

[1:41:17] That's the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:17] It's like, this is, like Dan's saying, if you, if you've seen all the other movies and you're not, and you're not feeling up to paying attention to something too closely,

[1:41:25] I guess you could watch it, but there's so many better versions of this.

[1:41:28] And it's such a, it's such a glossy kind of mess.

[1:41:32] And sometimes a glossy mess can be a lot of fun just to see famous people doing silly things.

[1:41:36] Shoot them up.

[1:41:37] Shoot them up.

[1:41:38] Yeah.

[1:41:38] I mean, shoot them up is funny.

[1:41:40] Like shoot them up is genuinely a funny movie.

[1:41:41] Yeah, it's a good movie.

[1:41:41] But the, uh, but it's a, it's just, it wasn't very fun to me.

[1:41:45] I found it, you know, I was bored by it.

[1:41:47] And then by the end of it, I was kind of disgusted by the heroes because it's just nonstop slaughter.

[1:41:52] So here's how you do it.

[1:41:53] If you want to make a movie that I'm going to like, make those heroes have to pay for it.

[1:41:55] You know, make them work real hard and I don't know, do some other stuff than this one does.

[1:42:01] But I'm going to say a bad, bad.

[1:42:03] And I'm going to say, if you have Apple Plus, you're sick, you're tired.

[1:42:07] There's probably better stuff on there.

Stuart Wellington

[1:42:08] You're feeling sick and tired.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:10] You're feeling sick and tired.

[1:42:11] This is, this is, there's probably better movies on there.

[1:42:13] But if you watch all the other movies on there, this one isn't going to hurt you, I guess.

[1:42:16] Okay.

S4

[1:42:17] Hey, when you listen to podcasts, it really just comes down to whether or not you like the sound of everyone's voices.

[1:42:28] My voice is one of the sounds you'll hear on the podcast, Dr. Game Show.

[1:42:32] And this is the voice of co-host and fearless leader, Joe Firestone.

S5

[1:42:36] This is a podcast where we play games submitted by listeners and we play them with callers over Zoom we've never spoken to in our lives.

[1:42:44] So that is basically the concept of this show.

[1:42:47] Pretty chill.

S4

[1:42:48] So take it or leave it, bucko.

[1:42:50] And here's what some of the listeners have to say.

S5

[1:42:53] It's funny, wholesome, and it never fails to make me smile.

Stuart Wellington

[1:42:57] I just started listening and I'm already binging it.

[1:42:59] I haven't laughed this hard in ages.

[1:43:01] I wish I'd discovered it sooner.

S4

[1:43:02] You can find Dr. Game Show on MaximumFun.org.

S6

[1:43:06] The Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom.

S4

[1:43:09] Diablo 4.

[1:43:11] Final Fantasy 16.

S6

[1:43:12] Street Fighter 6.

[1:43:14] Baldur's Gate 3.

[1:43:15] Starfield.

[1:43:16] Spider-Man 2.

[1:43:17] Master Detective Archives Raincoat for Nintendo Switch.

[1:43:21] No, is that just me?

[1:43:23] It's a huge time for video games.

[1:43:26] You need somebody to tell you what's good, what's not so good, and what's amazing.

[1:43:31] I'm Jason Schreier.

[1:43:32] I'm Maddie Myers.

[1:43:33] And I'm Kirk Hamilton.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:35] We're the hosts of Triple Click, a video game podcast for anyone who likes games.

S6

[1:43:40] Find us at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1:43:44] Bye.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:47] But we got a couple of sponsors for the show that we want to share a few words about.

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Stuart Wellington

[1:44:49] Real Salvador Dali thing?

[1:44:50] Well, stuff comes out that, like, I don't know.

Dan McCoy

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Stuart Wellington

[1:45:14] Hey, everybody.

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[1:46:28] Are those terms and conditions?

[1:46:30] Is that the cool way you say terms and conditions?

[1:46:31] That's the cool way to do it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:33] That's how they say it in Australia.

[1:46:35] We got some live show stuff coming up we're very excited about.

[1:46:38] If you're listening to this episode today, April 27th, the day it gets released,

[1:46:43] then, as I mentioned earlier, this is the day we're premiering our latest streaming video show,

[1:46:48] The Flophouse Sink Speed 2.

[1:46:50] It operates like our Battlefield Earth show from last year, I think it was.

[1:46:54] Was that last year, guys?

[1:46:54] I can't remember.

[1:46:56] Time's a flash circle.

[1:46:57] Yeah.

[1:46:57] You buy a ticket, and it gets you the chance to stream the show as many times as you want,

[1:47:02] whenever you want, until May 19th, when the streaming window closes

[1:47:05] and The Flophouse Sink Speed 2 goes back in the Flophouse vault.

[1:47:09] We'll be watching along with you tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern.

[1:47:12] We'll be live chatting in the chat box.

[1:47:14] I can't wait to see the show again.

[1:47:15] It's a really fun show.

[1:47:16] I think you'll really enjoy it.

[1:47:17] Just go to stagepilot.com slash speed where you can see the trailer,

[1:47:21] you can buy tickets for the show, or for a Flophouse VIP experience.

[1:47:25] That's where we talk to you not through a chat box, just directly through your computer,

[1:47:28] like a regular Max Headroom.

Dan McCoy

[1:47:30] Yeah.

[1:47:30] It stands for very in-person over Zoom.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:35] Or you can buy exclusive merchandise that's only available during this streaming window.

[1:47:40] That's stagepilot.com slash speed for The Flophouse Sink Speed 2,

[1:47:44] our latest, greatest, newest online streaming video event.

[1:47:48] But next month, we've got another show, not on a computer.

[1:47:51] Instead, it's in the place where computers were invented, England.

[1:47:54] We'll be making our first ever British public appearance.

[1:47:57] Dan, did you not – you didn't stay for the part at the end of the invitation game

[1:48:00] where it says, today we call them computers.

[1:48:02] He's like, no, the good guys won.

[1:48:04] Time to go.

Dan McCoy

[1:48:06] I don't care what they call this now.

Elliott Kalan

[1:48:09] I care what they called it then.

[1:48:11] A computo box.

[1:48:13] So we'll be making our first ever public appearance in Britain as we do two shows in one night in Oxford, England,

[1:48:19] as part of the St. Audio Podcast Festival.

[1:48:22] We'll be there the night of May 24th or 24th May.

[1:48:26] It might be the way they say it there.

[1:48:28] I can never figure it out.

[1:48:29] We're doing two shows.

[1:48:30] At 7 p.m., we're talking The Avengers, the Uma Thurman, Ray Fines, Sean Connery movie based on the television show, The Avengers.

[1:48:39] And at 9 p.m., we'll be talking the official movie of England, Spice World, which is not so easy to find.

[1:48:44] We'll actually be appearing at a screening of the movie the night before.

[1:48:47] Right, guys?

Dan McCoy

[1:48:48] Yep.

[1:48:48] Also in Oxford.

Elliott Kalan

[1:48:49] Yes, also in Oxford.

[1:48:50] But if you can only come to one of those things, come to see us on the 24th when we talk about it.

[1:48:55] Yeah.

[1:48:56] We're doing all new shows, all new presentations, all new jokes, all new questions from the audience,

[1:49:01] which will be said in a new accent for us because we're used to answering questions from people with American accents.

[1:49:06] If you're anywhere within traveling distance of Oxford, England, take advantage of this opportunity

[1:49:10] because I don't know when we'll get the chance to perform in the UK again.

[1:49:13] After the things we say, oh, boy, we'll be banned from Britain.

[1:49:16] Oh, man.

[1:49:18] We're going to be run out like Benny Hill.

[1:49:21] For tickets and more information, just go to flophousepodcast.com slash events,

[1:49:25] then scroll down to the Oxford, England entry, and click on where it says more info.

[1:49:29] As I've said in previous episodes, don't click on where it says get tickets.

[1:49:32] That just takes you back to the events page.

[1:49:34] Go to more info, and that will take you to the real links to the ticket pages for those shows.

Dan McCoy

[1:49:39] Speaking of which, thank you for the deluge of offers to be our webmaster.

[1:49:45] I'm going to sift through them and get back to some people.

[1:49:48] Thank you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49:49] Great.

[1:49:50] So that's the Flophouse in Oxford, England, May 24th at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

[1:49:53] Two different shows.

[1:49:55] And guess what, guys?

[1:49:56] Guess what?

[1:49:57] What?

[1:49:57] We've got a different show coming up in a different England.

[1:50:00] Sorry, old England.

[1:50:01] We're also doing a show in New England.

[1:50:03] We're going to Baston, everybody.

[1:50:05] On July 26th, we'll be in Baston, Massachusetts at WBUR City Space, courtesy of WBUR Radio.

[1:50:13] We're going to be live there.

[1:50:14] It's Friday, July 26th.

[1:50:15] We don't know what movie we're covering yet, but I guarantee you it's going to be a bad one.

[1:50:19] It'll be a movie.

[1:50:21] It'll be a movie.

[1:50:21] It'll be bad.

[1:50:22] We'll talk about it.

[1:50:22] We haven't been to Boston in years.

[1:50:24] We're excited to be back in Beantown and dig into those famous Beantown beans.

[1:50:29] The last time we were in Boston was when we talked about Battle Angel Alita, right?

[1:50:34] And we learned about Dan's need for backstory.

Dan McCoy

[1:50:37] Yeah, two movies.

[1:50:38] Backstory Angel Alita.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:40] We did Battle Angel Alita, and we think we did Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

[1:50:42] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:50:43] Stuart did a presentation that almost murdered me by how much I was laughing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:48] It was so good.

Stuart Wellington

[1:50:50] And Godzilla, King of the Monsters, also, I think the climax happened in Boston, right?

[1:50:56] Did it?

[1:50:56] I think so, yeah.

[1:50:57] Did it?

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:58] Yeah, we talked about it on the episode.

[1:51:00] Hometown Hero.

[1:51:00] Well, we're not doing Godzilla.

[1:51:01] We're not doing Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

[1:51:03] We did it already.

[1:51:03] We're doing a different movie.

[1:51:04] He's not going back there?

[1:51:05] Okay.

[1:51:05] So, for tickets.

[1:51:06] He's going to go back there someday, Elliot.

[1:51:08] He will.

[1:51:09] There's not an entry, as I'm recording this yet, on the Flophouse Events page, because it's that new.

[1:51:13] For tickets, you can either go to wbur.org slash events slash 931089 slash the dash flop dash house dash live.

[1:51:23] To be honest, it might be easier to just Google the Flophouse and WBUR.

[1:51:27] It'll get you right there.

[1:51:27] You know what?

Dan McCoy

[1:51:28] This shows how little faith Elliot has in me actually doing this.

[1:51:32] He has already told me to put this on the events page.

[1:51:36] I did.

[1:51:37] I said I was putting it in my reminders.

[1:51:39] Theoretically, this does exist on the Flophouse page.

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:42] Dan, may I quote you?

[1:51:43] You did say you needed a reminder to check your reminder.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:47] You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:49] So, go to flophousepodcast.com slash events.

[1:51:52] And if it's not there, just Google the Flophouse and WBUR because that's where we'll be at, WBUR City Space.

[1:51:58] So, that's three great things.

[1:52:00] From April 27th to May 19th, you can go to stagepilot.com slash speed to see our Speed 2 show.

[1:52:05] If you're in Oxford on May 24th, see us in Oxford at the St. Audio Podcast Festival.

[1:52:10] And if you're in Boston on July 26th, come see us at WBUR City Space.

[1:52:15] It's a good amount of Flophouse.

[1:52:17] There's a lot of Flophouse in the world that you can see in person or through your computer.

[1:52:21] Very exciting.

[1:52:22] We're in the golden age of the Flophouse.

Dan McCoy

[1:52:25] Yeah, let's say that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:52:28] Just like the Golden Girls are in their golden age.

[1:52:31] Yeah, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:52:32] Just like Gold's Gym is the golden age of exercise.

Dan McCoy

[1:52:36] Oh, right.

[1:52:38] Hey.

[1:52:39] Howdy, partners.

[1:52:41] We get letters here at the Flophouse.

[1:52:41] Oh, Cowboy Dan is back.

[1:52:43] Oh.

[1:52:43] We're going to do a letters roundup.

[1:52:45] Well, we have them.

[1:52:46] I lassoed me some letters.

[1:52:48] Let's see.

[1:52:49] Maybe I pulled some of yours out of the old letters pile.

[1:52:52] Them, dar, letter pile.

[1:52:53] This one is from Bonnie, last name withheld, who writes, dear Peaches, while listening to

[1:53:00] your recent Roadhouse episode at work, I was delighted to hear the extended talk about

[1:53:04] the Miami Heat mascot, Bernie.

[1:53:07] That is because I work at a mascot company, and I'm actually one of the very few people who

[1:53:14] sew all of Bernie's costumes.

[1:53:16] It's amazing.

[1:53:17] While I cannot vouch for his problematic past actions.

[1:53:21] According to Wikipedia.

[1:53:22] I would like to thank three of my favorite podcasters for brightening up this Taylor's

[1:53:26] work day.

[1:53:28] My question is this.

[1:53:29] In the event that the smash success of the Five Nights at Freddy's movie spawns a mass

[1:53:34] interested in mascot-based horror movies, which iconic horror film would you choose to remake

[1:53:40] starring a goofy mascot version of its main villain?

[1:53:44] All the best.

[1:53:46] Bonnie, last name withheld.

[1:53:48] You got to go with something that's...

[1:53:52] That's genuinely weird, right?

[1:53:55] Because if it's already kind of a cute monster, like a gremlin or a...

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:00] Yeah, or a critter.

[1:54:01] But Freddy is also already kind of a mascot version of himself, so...

[1:54:05] Yeah.

[1:54:06] Not the Five Nights at Freddy's movie.

[1:54:07] The way he always wears the same outfit.

[1:54:09] Yeah.

[1:54:09] I mean, Frederick J. Kruger.

[1:54:10] Yeah.

[1:54:11] Uh-huh.

Stuart Wellington

[1:54:12] I was going to say something like, I don't know, like Reagan from The Exercise.

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:18] With a big oversized face.

[1:54:20] I mean, if it's a big mascot head, it'll be that much easier for it to spin around.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:24] Yeah.

[1:54:25] Oh, man.

[1:54:26] When someone, like, I don't know, hits a home run or grand slams, the head spins around.

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:31] See, I would say pinhead for a similar reason that...

[1:54:34] Yeah.

[1:54:34] It's like the head's already there.

[1:54:36] Make it a big, goofy head.

[1:54:37] Those pins will be huge, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[1:54:38] And, like, you don't want that just appearing in your room, like, covered in chains and shit.

[1:54:44] Not at all.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:46] And I want to do it sort of, like, conceptually.

[1:54:49] And let's do the thing, because it keeps shifting.

Stuart Wellington

[1:54:54] Oh, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:55] You get one version of the mascot that's, like, a dog with a bunch of spindly things.

[1:54:59] And then, by the end, I don't know.

[1:55:01] No, I love...

[1:55:01] Is McCready a mascot?

[1:55:03] Who knows?

Stuart Wellington

[1:55:03] Yeah, I love that super tense scene where they're testing everybody's blood.

[1:55:08] And he's, like, going down the line.

[1:55:10] And he gets to a guy who's now a mascot.

[1:55:12] And you're like, oh, shit.

[1:55:13] That's going to be it.

[1:55:14] Yeah, he gets to the...

[1:55:15] His blood is just yarn that shoots up.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:23] What a good scene.

[1:55:25] Yeah, great.

[1:55:27] This one...

[1:55:28] Do you guys remember when Mrs. Met joined our Antarctic research team?

[1:55:33] She always here.

[1:55:36] This is from Philip.

[1:55:38] Last name redacted from North Cackalacky.

[1:55:41] Okay.

[1:55:42] Which I read just because I like saying.

[1:55:44] North Cackalacky.

[1:55:46] Sure.

[1:55:46] Who would?

[1:55:47] And Philip writes,

[1:55:48] long-time listener, first-time letter writer.

[1:55:51] Adult Swim has recently been live-streaming episodes of Space Ghost, Coast to Coast on YouTube for the 30th anniversary.

[1:55:57] I was watching some yesterday while I was working.

Elliott Kalan

[1:55:59] Yep.

Dan McCoy

[1:56:00] It's been the perfect second-screen work-from-home show.

[1:56:04] Wow.

[1:56:05] Did I write this letter?

[1:56:06] I don't know.

[1:56:07] Watching the classic 60s Hanna-Barbera character slowly turn from late-night show spoof to some classic surrealist comedy nonsense.

[1:56:14] My question is, if you were given free reign over a forgotten property from yesteryear, how would you put your personal spin on it?

[1:56:23] Keep on flopping, and best wishes to you and yours.

[1:56:27] Philip, last name redacted.

[1:56:29] Huh.

[1:56:30] Huh.

[1:56:31] Huh.

Elliott Kalan

[1:56:33] Come on, writers.

[1:56:34] You guys are writers.

[1:56:35] Well, I'm going to be a real buzzkill answering this, so I don't know if you want me to go last.

[1:56:39] I just –

[1:56:41] Or I can be a buzzkill, and then you can go next and be a hero.

[1:56:44] Yeah, yeah.

[1:56:45] I like this.

[1:56:45] Yeah, just do it that way.

[1:56:46] I'm going to say – Philip, I can only assume you're Philip K. Dick writing in.

[1:56:50] Not the author, but someone whose last name is K. Dick.

[1:56:54] Philip, I think right now so much of entertainment is about taking old properties and putting new spins on them.

[1:57:01] It's something that I know I'm starting to get more requests to at least pitch those things and stuff like that, and I'm happy to do them for work.

[1:57:09] But something like this on the Flophouse where we're just having fun, keeping in mind that I just talked about Pinhead as a mascot, I think I'm going to try to take every opportunity I can to push original things and to not play into the idea of taking a forgotten property and putting a spin on it.

[1:57:24] Let's take properties that are so forgotten they didn't even exist before.

[1:57:28] They're just original things.

[1:57:30] And so I think that's what I'm going to focus on in this moment.

[1:57:33] Sorry that I'm not answering the question the way I wanted, but I'm trying to introduce more honesty into my life and less people-pleasing.

[1:57:39] So Dan, Stuart, you guys are great.

[1:57:42] I mean that sincerely.

Dan McCoy

[1:57:43] But what if there's a vision of – what was there a version of Steamboat Willie where he killed everyone?

[1:57:48] Oh, shit.

Elliott Kalan

[1:57:48] Wait a minute.

[1:57:49] Cormac McCarthy's on the podcast.

Stuart Wellington

[1:57:50] Hold on.

[1:57:51] Hold on.

Dan McCoy

[1:57:52] You know why he wears those white gloves everywhere?

[1:57:55] So he doesn't get fingerprints over all the people he kills.

[1:57:59] Man.

[1:58:00] What a twisted guy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:58:01] He comes in all sorts of quick.

[1:58:02] Cormac McCarthy just wandered in here.

Stuart Wellington

[1:58:04] Cormac Dan morphed into Cormac McCarthy so quick.

Elliott Kalan

[1:58:07] Yeah.

[1:58:07] Now, Cormac McDanthie, Cormac McQuathey, what if it was like the My Little Pony?

[1:58:15] What would you do with them?

Dan McCoy

[1:58:16] Oh, twisted.

[1:58:18] Those ponies are so little that what if they gallop up inside you and then they kill you from the inside?

Elliott Kalan

[1:58:24] Oh, that's pretty horrifying.

[1:58:26] Yeah, yeah.

[1:58:26] Okay, now what if it was the Cuddles, the Fabric Snuggles, the Fabric Snuggles?

Dan McCoy

[1:58:32] Well, you do.

[1:58:34] You shouldn't let a bear in your house, man.

[1:58:37] That's all I'm going to say about it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:58:39] Okay, but what if it was the Scrubbing Bubbles?

[1:58:42] What would you do with them?

Dan McCoy

[1:58:44] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1:58:45] Yeah, those bubbles are going to be like, you got to get clean.

[1:58:48] You got to get clean.

[1:58:50] Clean all of you.

[1:58:51] Clean the sin away.

[1:58:52] And it rubs you so hard that it kills you.

[1:58:55] Oh, wow.

[1:58:56] Okay, now what about Alf?

[1:58:58] Well, you can't do anything with Alf.

[1:58:59] Alf has had so many shots.

[1:59:02] So he's done.

Elliott Kalan

[1:59:03] That's it?

[1:59:04] He's just done?

Dan McCoy

[1:59:04] Yeah, well, I mean, it happens in show business sometimes.

[1:59:06] You only get so many chances that there's so many bites of that apple.

[1:59:11] Hey, I could keep doing this, but my answer is I don't have one.

[1:59:19] Yeah, yeah.

[1:59:20] My answer is.

Stuart Wellington

[1:59:20] I'm just going to say fucking gummy bears, dude.

[1:59:23] They rule.

[1:59:24] They're bouncing here and there and everywhere.

[1:59:25] They drink their gummy bear juice.

[1:59:27] Yeah, it's awesome.

Dan McCoy

[1:59:28] Magic and mystery is part of their history.

[1:59:30] Put me in charge.

[1:59:31] Along with the secret of gummy bear juice.

[1:59:34] Yeah, we're going to find out all their secrets.

Elliott Kalan

[1:59:35] Gummy bears fits into that classic category in my mind of shows that I watched regularly all the time and remember no episodes.

Dan McCoy

[1:59:43] Exactly, yep.

[1:59:44] The Duke wanted gummy bear juice.

[1:59:49] Yeah.

[1:59:49] Okay.

[1:59:49] So you get to get that bouncing power.

[1:59:52] I don't know.

[1:59:52] It does something else for humans, I guess, maybe.

Elliott Kalan

[1:59:54] Yeah, because what is the big strength about being able to bounce on your butt?

[1:59:59] Is that worth taking a magic juice for?

[2:00:00] You bounce on people.

Stuart Wellington

[2:00:01] Yeah, I would imagine there's like another thing.

[2:00:03] It's similar to like how Sauron wants his ring back and you're like, what, so he can be invisible?

[2:00:07] And it's like, no, I guess it does something else for him.

[2:00:09] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[2:00:10] Yeah, yeah.

[2:00:11] Something else for him.

[2:00:12] No, that was the, I mean, as a child, having read The Hobbit, but not knowing Lord of the Rings, where I learned about Lord of the Rings, that was like the big problem I had with it.

[2:00:22] I'm like, wait, this is the ring of power?

[2:00:25] This is like the most powerful, but it makes you invisible.

[2:00:28] Like, that's what else does it do?

Elliott Kalan

[2:00:30] You realize this was just part of Gollum's junk that he just kept in his cave?

[2:00:33] What do you mean?

Dan McCoy

[2:00:35] It's the most powerful thing.

Elliott Kalan

[2:00:37] Yeah, I don't have a good answer.

[2:00:38] You were like, isn't the most powerful thing friendship?

Dan McCoy

[2:00:41] Honestly, if it's a forgotten piece of media, unless it was a shitty one, let's just do it straight the first time.

[2:00:47] Let's do it normal rather than reimagining it.

Elliott Kalan

[2:00:50] So sorry for that.

[2:00:50] We totally, we took the, we took the, took the.

[2:00:53] Hey, there's some ideas in there.

[2:00:54] Sorry about that.

Dan McCoy

[2:00:55] Most of them came from Dirty Dan, but you know.

Elliott Kalan

[2:00:58] Dirty Dan.

[2:00:59] Dirty D. McC.

[2:01:00] Dirty D. McC.

[2:01:00] Had some interesting thoughts.

Dan McCoy

[2:01:02] Let's recommend movies.

[2:01:04] Movies that we think that people, you know, your time may be better served than watching Argyle, no matter what I may have said about turning up your brain.

[2:01:15] I'm going to quickly recommend two documentaries, both of which I enjoyed, but also both of which are sort of backdoor, you know, plugs for friends.

[2:01:26] The first one was I saw.

[2:01:28] You don't have to plug friends, dude.

Stuart Wellington

[2:01:29] It's a huge show.

[2:01:30] It's the biggest show in the world, Dan, still.

[2:01:32] And having rewatched some of it, it's pretty good.

[2:01:35] I get it.

[2:01:37] Good point.

Elliott Kalan

[2:01:38] The first one.

[2:01:39] The first one's called The Pallbearer.

[2:01:41] And it's like, Dan, that's not a documentary about David Schwimmer.

[2:01:43] That's just a movie that he's in.

Dan McCoy

[2:01:44] I saw a screening of I'm George Lucas, a Conor Ratliff story, which, of course, one of the people in the George Lucas talk show is Griffin Newman, our pal from over blank check, who guested on our recent Garbage Pail Kids live show that will show up in the feed at some point.

[2:02:03] Who knows?

[2:02:05] But I enjoyed this documentary for its own merits.

[2:02:11] Like, I think it's interesting on its own.

[2:02:13] It's about Conor Ratliff, the guy who does George Lucas and the George Lucas talk show and sort of, you know, his experience as an actor and someone doing this weird, like, niche show that's only ever going to get so big, kind of by its nature.

[2:02:32] But I have to admit that a lot of it was just sort of personal interest, too, for me, where I'm like, okay, well, this is a movie that's made up of, like, a bunch of people I have met over the years.

[2:02:43] And here are a bunch of comedy stages that I have performed on at different times.

[2:02:48] And I think that part of what's interesting about that, maybe for someone who is not me specifically, is, like, it is a very specific snapshot of a type of independent New York comedy show and what it's like to, you know, like, our show is not as complex as what the George Lucas talk show has become by any means.

[2:03:14] But it is sort of a similar vibe of what it's like to put on this sort of DIY, cheap-to-produce show that you can move from theater to theater.

[2:03:27] And if you're interested in comedy or seeing, like, a scene at a specific time, it's a lot of fun.

[2:03:36] And I also wanted to recommend, it's on the Criterion channel right now.

[2:03:42] I watched Turn Every Page, The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb.

[2:03:47] Twist.

[2:03:48] This is a backdoor plug for Elliot and his side project over at 99% Invisible doing the Power Broker read.

[2:03:58] They just talked to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the most recent episode.

[2:04:05] And it was really fun hearing her speak.

[2:04:08] But it's about, the movie is about Robert Caro's, sorry, Robert Caro's relationship with his editor, Robert Gottlieb, who is also a towering figure.

[2:04:25] Like, one of, like, he edited so many huge books and was the editor of The New Yorker.

[2:04:30] And it's interesting to see their working relationship, although you're kind of shielded.

[2:04:35] They're both very private.

[2:04:36] They don't want to actually let you in too much on the working relationship.

[2:04:39] But there's a lot about how committed these two people are at really caring about the work they do and what it is to work with an editor who's simpatico with what you're trying to do,

[2:04:55] even though they also argue incessantly about everything.

[2:05:00] The filmmaking, I think, was a little more boring to me than the actual people being highlighted.

[2:05:06] But they're both, or, you know, Gottlieb has passed, but they're like treasures of people who are interesting to watch.

[2:05:13] So those are my two recommendations.

Stuart Wellington

[2:05:17] Yeah, I guess I'm going to recommend another comedy.

[2:05:20] No, I'm just joking.

[2:05:21] I'm going to recommend The Zone of Interest, a harrowing story of the—

Elliott Kalan

[2:05:27] Oh, Stuart, after that intro, I'm not sure what's sincere or what's not sincere.

[2:05:32] I know.

Stuart Wellington

[2:05:33] Yeah, I'm going to recommend The Zone of Interest, a movie that has received a fair amount of notoriety, that also won an Academy Award.

Elliott Kalan

[2:05:43] Won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Stuart Wellington

[2:05:46] It's directed by Jonathan Glazer.

[2:05:48] It is a story about the kind of the mundanity of evil following the family of a commandant who runs Auschwitz.

[2:05:58] And it is a presentation of a Holocaust story that uses the horror of it as more of a backdrop.

[2:06:13] And it is a very well-crafted movie.

[2:06:15] And the sound design is really, in particular, is really fascinating.

[2:06:20] The way it allows the horrors of the camp to kind of like seep into this seemingly normal everyday life.

[2:06:31] And it keeps it from being just like a bulldozer of a blunt emotional instrument.

[2:06:37] But I thought it was really well done and really affecting.

[2:06:40] And yeah, a well-made movie that is very sad and gross at the same time.

Elliott Kalan

[2:06:46] I'm going to recommend a movie that is almost the exact opposite of that, I think.

[2:06:50] Which is—

[2:06:51] I was thinking about—

Dan McCoy

[2:06:53] The gold tickers of 1933.

Elliott Kalan

[2:06:56] If only.

[2:06:57] Cargyle is like trying to be like a goofy action comedy, right?

[2:07:01] And I was like, okay, well, what's kind of the goofiest action comedy that I can think of that still manages to have a lot of funny jokes but also has a lot of good action scenes but is itself also a mess?

[2:07:12] And the movie that came to mind was The Eagle Shooting Heroes.

[2:07:16] This is a Hong Kong movie from 1993 that was made basically to hide the fact that Wong Kar-wai's movie Ashes of Time had gone so far over budget that they were like,

[2:07:27] Oh, we made a second movie.

[2:07:28] That's why it costs so much.

[2:07:30] And they had a lot of the same actors playing very similar characters in this incredibly goofy, just like super goofy mess of an action comedy that is—

[2:07:40] There are things in it that just do not work, but there are things in it that work so well.

[2:07:45] And even the stuff that doesn't work, you're like, all right, well, this is literally a movie that is doing every possible thing that it could do.

[2:07:50] It is a movie that is made seemingly entirely without shame for anyone involved in it.

[2:07:57] And so the jokes go from being very funny parody jokes of kind of Chinese kind of historical adventure movies to the dumbest slapstick to the worst costume comedy to like some really, really good kung fu action scenes.

[2:08:13] And it's just like—it's a real messy platter of a movie, but I enjoyed watching it quite a bit.

[2:08:17] And it did for me what I think Argyle was trying to do, but failed to do for me.

Stuart Wellington

[2:08:22] Yeah, and that sounds like a lot of fun.

[2:08:24] And actually, that reminds me of a movie that is going to be the focus of next week's mini where we talk about Larry Cohen's The Ambulance, which has a similar sort of like reckless need to entertain.

Elliott Kalan

[2:08:39] Yes, yeah, that's—the eagle shooting heroes is very much like that where it's like the—it feels like you're watching a group of children just being like, what about this?

[2:08:47] What about this?

[2:08:49] Do you like this?

[2:08:51] And by the end of it, it's not a long movie, but you are like exhausted by the end of it.

[2:08:55] But even if you just watch the first, you know, 30 minutes, it's fun.

[2:09:01] So that's my recommendation for this week.

[2:09:03] Oh, great.

Dan McCoy

[2:09:05] Hey, here's something that I should say more often.

[2:09:10] You can find The Flophouse a lot of places now that are not the website formerly known as Twitter, which is increasingly unpleasant to be on.

[2:09:21] You can find us on Mastodon, on Blue Sky.

[2:09:26] There's a Threads for us.

[2:09:28] There's an Instagram.

Stuart Wellington

[2:09:30] This is a perfect chance for us to plug the brand new Discord.

Dan McCoy

[2:09:33] Yeah, a fan started Discord.

[2:09:35] Do you want to read what—

Stuart Wellington

[2:09:36] Yeah, it's really great.

[2:09:38] So, yeah, the Discord is The Flophouse Podcast.

[2:09:43] If you are a friend of The Flophouse, hey, isn't this podcast great?

[2:09:47] I'll bet you want to talk about it all the time.

[2:09:50] So why don't you join the new Discord over at the Flophouse—over on Discord, The Flophouse Podcast.

[2:09:56] You can share your thoughts on your favorite bad movies, show bits, even your latest happenings with our super-friendly community.

[2:10:03] The only thing that needs to be added is you.

[2:10:06] They also do movie watch-alongs.

[2:10:08] I think they recently did one on a Neil Breen movie, specifically Cade, The Tortured Crossing, which I believe was a—received multiple thumbs up from us here at The Flophouse.

[2:10:20] So why don't you go grab a chicken leg, a beer, or your sore knee and join us here at the Discord.

[2:10:26] Just look up—it's The Flophouse Podcast Discord.

[2:10:29] Why don't you go check it out?

[2:10:30] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[2:10:31] And, you know, as long as we're saying this, of course, we got to shout out the original group on Facebook, still going strong.

[2:10:38] There's a lot of people who hang out there.

[2:10:41] And we have a YouTube channel that has various videos, mostly sort of the shorter videos that we post on Instagram and such.

[2:10:49] But there are longer videos, like you can find the archive of—there were some charity live streams we did of longer shows.

[2:10:56] There's us doing the Boy Next Door screenplay reading.

Stuart Wellington

[2:11:02] Why don't we do more of those, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[2:11:04] I don't know.

[2:11:05] It was pretty fun.

[2:11:06] We should do more of those.

[2:11:07] Dan, why are you stopping us?

[2:11:08] Why are you underselling it to you?

[2:11:10] You're like, I guess it was pretty fun.

[2:11:12] No, I had a ball doing that, actually.

[2:11:14] But anyway, so that's all squared away, I guess.

[2:11:20] I want to say thank you to Alex Smith, our producer.

[2:11:24] He makes it sound good.

[2:11:25] You can find him under the name Howell Doughty in various places, probably a lot of the same places.

[2:11:31] Thank you to Maximum Fun over at MaximumFun.org.

[2:11:34] You can check out other great podcasts.

[2:11:37] And that's it for this time.

[2:11:39] For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[2:11:42] Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

[2:11:44] I'm Elliot Kalin.

Stuart Wellington

[2:11:46] Okay, bye.

[2:11:56] Let's get into this fucking thing.

Elliott Kalan

[2:11:58] Alex, don't use any of that material.

[2:12:00] It will either hurt our careers or be boring.

Dan McCoy

[2:12:03] You can use this part where we call the podcast that we do this fucking thing.

[2:12:08] Oh!

[2:12:09] Because it's self-deprecating.

[2:12:11] This dumb shit.

Stuart Wellington

[2:12:11] But like in a cool way, not a my therapist would be mad at me kind of way.

[2:12:16] Yeah, yeah.

[2:12:16] I mean, your therapist should get mad at you.

Elliott Kalan

[2:12:18] I feel like that's one of the main things therapists shouldn't do is get mad at the patient.

Dan McCoy

[2:12:23] Yeah, it should be sort of a radical.

[2:12:24] Don't minimize yourself is what he'd say.

[2:12:26] Why are you doing this?

[2:12:27] Don't do that.

[2:12:27] I see.

[2:12:27] No.

[2:12:28] It's interesting that you read your therapist's concern for you as anger, getting angry at you.

[2:12:34] Maybe this is a thing we should...

[2:12:35] Yeah, maybe this is what the episode is about today.

[2:12:37] We can get into this.

[2:12:38] Wow!

[2:12:38] Dan's bringing the heat.

[2:12:39] Okay, let's fucking peel this onion back.

[2:12:43] Maximum Fun.

[2:12:44] A worker-owned network.

[2:12:45] Of artist-owned shows.

[2:12:47] Supported.

[2:12:48] Directly.

[2:12:49] By you.

Ep. #423 - Argylle

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