Ep. #420 - Madame Web, with Zhubin Parang

Elliott Kalan

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Madam Web.

[0:03] But this time of year, it's more like Maximum Fun Drive Web.

[0:09] I didn't even say Maximum properly.

[0:12] Ahead of time, I got confused about what I was doing.

[0:17] Madampsimum Fun?

[0:19] Madampsimum Fun Drive Web.

[0:21] Okay.

[0:30] Hey, everyone.

Dan McCoy

[0:45] Welcome to the Flophouse.

[0:46] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:47] I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:49] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[0:50] And before we introduce our very special guest for this episode, it's a total mystery to you unless you have read the description of the episode.

[0:56] The title, in fact.

[0:58] The title.

[0:59] I wanted to remind our listeners that it is Max Fun Drive.

[1:02] Air horn noise.

[1:04] Pew, pew, pew.

Zhubin Parang

[1:05] Thank you.

[1:06] Should I do the air horn noise?

[1:08] Is that why I'm here?

[1:09] Yeah.

[1:09] Yes, that's why you're here.

[1:10] You're the Michael Winslow of this episode.

[1:11] Bop, bop, bop, bop.

[1:12] Bop, bop, bop, bop.

[1:13] That's a different kind of horn.

[1:15] But it does have air.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17] From now through March 29th, this is the time of year when we celebrate Maximum Fun members and the money that they pledge in order to make it possible for us to do this show and feed our families.

[1:27] I'll be telling you more about Max Fun Drive and how to pledge and what bonus gifts you'll get from pledging later in the episode.

[1:33] But if you absolutely, positively cannot wait to get involved with The Drive, then pause this episode right now.

[1:40] Go to MaximumFun.org slash join.

[1:42] You can line up, sign up, and re-enlist today for as little as $5 a month as a supporter of us and the Maximum Fun family of podcasts.

[1:50] $5 a month means you're paying only $1.25 per episode.

[1:53] That's how much a comic book cost when I started collecting them in 1992.

[1:57] Speaking of comic books, we're going to talk about Madam Web today.

[2:00] So once you're done at MaximumFun.org slash join, come right back because we're about to introduce our special Madam Web-themed special guest.

[2:08] And that guest is, of course, Jumin Brang, co-EP of The Daily Show.

[2:13] Long-time listeners of The Flophouse will know him as Tanzer Silverview.

[2:17] Jumin, how does it feel to be yourself for once and not a character on the show?

Zhubin Parang

[2:21] Oh, it feels great.

[2:23] Thank you guys.

[2:24] I forgot how terrible it is to watch a bad movie.

[2:28] You only put good things in your eyes.

[2:30] It's also the first day of spring today, which is the Iranian New Year.

[2:33] So I really appreciate you guys making me take one of the most important days in my people's year to come talk about the worst movie I've seen in a very long time.

[2:42] Eating your beloved sour cherries.

[2:43] I could be eating sour cherries right now.

[2:45] I could be dancing around the sofa I have seen.

[2:47] I could be other cultural references.

Elliott Kalan

[2:50] I thought this was a Madam Web episode, not a Dune episode, okay?

[2:53] I don't know what all this stuff is about.

[2:55] Oh, wow.

Zhubin Parang

[2:56] Wow, that wasn't such a good movie.

[2:58] I'd be very offended by the racism.

Elliott Kalan

[3:00] Jumin, I mentioned that you are a Madam Web-themed guest.

[3:03] I don't have a fact to back that up.

[3:05] So can you rationalize why you are the guest on the Madam Web episode?

Zhubin Parang

[3:09] Yes.

[3:09] I would also prefer to be bitten to death by spiders than to have watched Madam Web.

Dan McCoy

[3:16] Well, let me just say the real reason is, of course, that because it is MaxFunDrive, we're pulling out the stops.

[3:22] This is our equivalent of May sweeps, and everyone has been clamoring for a main feed Jubin episode.

[3:29] Jubin, for a long time, has been sequestered to our bonus content.

[3:33] If you listen to this and you love Jubin and you're a $5 a month or more donor, you can listen to him do all our role-playing episodes that we did for bonus content.

[3:42] But we wanted to have him back on a normal episode after popular demand.

Elliott Kalan

[3:47] Finally have Jubin not as a sort of medieval nobleman or as a rich guy from the 30s or an arrogant dog.

Zhubin Parang

[3:55] Or a dog who kind of takes those same thematic character beats and stretches them way beyond the point of believability or humor.

Stuart Wellington

[4:03] Yeah.

Zhubin Parang

[4:05] That's why we're talking about Madam Web today, guys.

[4:07] I appreciate you guys cutting me in on 80% of these Maximum Fun profits.

[4:11] Any dollar you guys can raise, most of it will go to me, so I really appreciate it.

[4:15] You can take the boy out of Tanzer, but you can't take the Tanzer out of the boy.

Dan McCoy

[4:18] Yeah.

[4:19] Jubin, who started at The Daily Show at the same time as me and has risen to the highest highs through the ranks, and I have a podcast.

Zhubin Parang

[4:28] I am actually the role of Jon Stewart now at The Daily Show.

Dan McCoy

[4:31] Wow.

[4:31] He plays Jon Stewart.

[4:33] They didn't actually get him back.

[4:34] No, no.

[4:35] I just play him.

[4:36] They just cast a Mission Impossible star.

[4:37] He's in the makeup chair for hours before every episode.

[4:40] That's amazing.

[4:41] Oh, boy.

[4:42] What do we do on this podcast, Dan?

[4:43] Well, what we do is we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it, a movie that has been either critically or commercially dismissed.

[4:51] Go on.

[4:51] See whether we agree, basically.

[4:54] That's a good way of putting it.

[4:55] Uh-huh.

[4:56] And we watched Madam Web, a movie that may still be in theaters as of this.

[5:01] It is.

[5:02] Flophouse in the Isles.

Elliott Kalan

[5:03] It was just – as we're recording this, it was just released to streaming too, so I think it's available in both methods.

Zhubin Parang

[5:08] That's actually how I watched it on streaming because it allowed me to not just double time but quadruple time it.

[5:16] Come on.

[5:17] That's what I want.

[5:18] No, Jubin.

[5:19] So this is –

[5:19] I understand what you saw on that.

Elliott Kalan

[5:21] It still was not fast enough.

[5:22] We should kick you off of this.

[5:24] Jubin, for listeners who don't know, if you know Jubin, you know that he watches movies at double speed because he doesn't have the time for them.

[5:29] We call that Jubining.

[5:30] Yeah, Jubin.

[5:31] And it is – I find it appalling.

[5:33] It despays me as a film.

[5:34] Now, let me ask you.

[5:35] Who once said to me, Alien's not a good movie because there isn't music to tell me how to feel in some of the scenes.

[5:41] Yeah, yeah.

Zhubin Parang

[5:41] It is a very dull movie when she's just wandering around the halls of this spaceship.

[5:45] There's an alien.

[5:46] Like she's looking for a phone she dropped.

[5:48] It's not at all a scary –

[5:49] It's a cat.

[5:50] A furry phone, a cat.

Stuart Wellington

[5:51] Yeah, Jubin was like, under the skin is great when you Jubin it.

Elliott Kalan

[5:56] Just flies by.

Zhubin Parang

[5:57] It's like guys walking in and getting sucked into pits.

[6:00] Girl is going around and then gets burned to death.

[6:03] It's a pretty cool movie.

Elliott Kalan

[6:04] So glad I could watch Killers of the Flower Moon, a trim hour 50 minutes.

Zhubin Parang

[6:09] Would you say having watched Madame Web, though, Elliot, that some movies may be worth double, quadruple timing through?

Elliott Kalan

[6:16] I mean, all movies are worth quadruple timing through, right?

[6:19] Worth it.

[6:20] Worth it.

[6:21] Actually, to be honest, there have been times when I have fast-forwarded through movies, but they are usually like movies that are six or seven hours long.

[6:29] And where I'm like, oh, this is a long shot of something going on.

[6:32] But Madame Web, you want to soak it all up.

[6:35] There's a lot of – that's an experience that you want to enjoy at the speed.

[6:39] It's intended maybe even half speed.

[6:41] Every strand of that Web.

Zhubin Parang

[6:42] I will tell you there are certain action scenes that I had to slow down to normal time because the editing was so confusing that I had no idea who was where.

Stuart Wellington

[6:50] It was so confusing to watch it at double speed.

[6:54] He had to reduce himself to mere normal speed.

[6:56] To normal speed.

[6:57] So before we get further into –

Dan McCoy

[6:59] That's what I saw in the theaters where double speed was not an option.

[7:02] You couldn't yell at the projector.

Elliott Kalan

[7:03] Spin it faster.

[7:04] Spin the film through faster.

Zhubin Parang

[7:06] I bet everyone in the audience would have been like, yes, we're on the same side.

Stuart Wellington

[7:09] So, Dan, when you saw this, were you alone in the theater?

[7:12] Because I was alone and the person checking my ticket was like, one for Madame Web.

Dan McCoy

[7:18] Yes.

[7:19] It was a pretty empty theater because it was late in the Madame Web run, although not that late because it's still around, but pretty late.

[7:28] But there was a group of four guys who sat fairly next to me.

[7:32] I'm like, these guys are going to be a little too rowdy.

[7:34] They're going to be a little too like we're making fun of Madame Web.

[7:37] I'm like, look, I understand.

[7:39] This late in the run, everyone knows what Madame Web is.

[7:41] If you're going to see it for that reason, I get it.

[7:44] Chill out a little.

[7:45] Don't be annoying.

[7:46] They were mostly okay.

Zhubin Parang

[7:47] We have a mutual friend whose name I won't say because she's famously averse to any kind of publicity.

[7:52] Okay.

[7:52] But she went and saw it opening night with her husband and was saying the theater just had a blast laughing at the movie.

[7:59] I'm sure.

[7:59] And I feel like that was the only context to prove that.

Stuart Wellington

[8:01] I had a blast laughing at the movie, but let's talk about the movie, shall we?

Elliott Kalan

[8:05] Wait, I hate to delay it even more, Stuart, but one thing I want to say before we get into the movie is, so the writers of this movie, Matt Sazama and Brooke Sharpless, we have covered every single movie that they have had produced on our podcast.

[8:17] And when this movie was out, Matt's filmography was going around on Twitter being like, can you imagine being this guy?

[8:23] And I just want to say, he's someone I got to know a little bit on the picket line during the strike.

[8:28] We walked together a lot of times.

[8:29] He was very well, very, took it well that we had covered all of his movies on the podcast.

[8:38] I was like, oh, I did this bad movie podcast.

[8:39] And he goes, oh, you probably have done one of mine.

[8:41] I'm like, oh, probably not.

[8:41] And then we went through this.

[8:42] He just mentioned his filmography.

[8:43] I'm like, we did that one.

[8:44] We did that one.

[8:45] And he seemed like a really great guy.

[8:48] I really liked talking to him.

[8:48] And I think these guys are much more talented writers than the finished versions of these films would have it come out.

[8:56] So I want to give them – I want to ahead of time be like, don't blame them.

[9:00] Blame the director and the producers.

Dan McCoy

[9:02] This film clearly went through a Cuisinart before it arrived in theaters.

[9:07] Yes.

[9:08] It has been chopped and it should have.

Elliott Kalan

[9:10] And you look at Dakota Johnson's interviews and she's like, the script that I signed to do is not the script that we ended up making.

[9:16] So I imagine there was originally at some point a good version of this movie or at least a better version of the movie.

[9:20] But don't blame the writers.

[9:22] That's my rule always.

[9:23] Don't blame the writers.

[9:24] DBTW.

Zhubin Parang

[9:25] Also, just as a writer who has never had any movie that he's written made into a movie, I have nothing but respect for writers who have actually gone through that gauntlet.

[9:32] So yes, absolutely.

Stuart Wellington

[9:34] You didn't write Anatomy of a Fall?

Zhubin Parang

[9:36] I did.

[9:37] I did.

[9:38] But another movie with the exact same plot and characters was actually made.

Stuart Wellington

[9:42] Entitled, yeah.

[9:43] Entitled, yeah.

[9:43] It was called, what, The Staircase?

[9:45] Was that the miniseries?

[9:46] Okay.

Zhubin Parang

[9:47] Mine was just the sound effect that you make when you slip on a banana peel.

[9:51] Like zoop, boops.

[9:52] It was the story of that sound.

[9:53] It was, yeah.

[9:54] But it was a plot with this.

Elliott Kalan

[9:55] Slip on that banana peel again.

[9:56] Swoop.

[9:57] We've got something there.

Stuart Wellington

[9:59] Weirdly enough, also features 50 cents PIMP in the soundtrack.

[10:03] Okay.

[10:04] So, Madam Webb, we open in the Peruvian Amazon, 1973.

[10:12] We meet a pregnant naturalist who is searching for a spider.

Elliott Kalan

[10:18] Now, when you say naturalist, you mean like a scientist who studies nature, not a nudist.

Stuart Wellington

[10:22] Yes.

[10:23] I mean, I don't know what she does outside the context of this one scene.

[10:26] I think that's naturist is the word you're looking for there.

[10:28] Okay.

[10:28] Yeah.

[10:29] So, she is searching for a spider that she believes will cure a lot of diseases and problems and whatnot.

[10:37] She cites a local legend of Las Aranjas, men who have been bitten by this spider and have special spider powers.

Dan McCoy

[10:45] And I want to say that all of this early dialogue is doing heavy double duty as like exposition.

[10:53] Like the guy who's with her who like, spoiler alert, will become like villainous soon.

Stuart Wellington

[10:59] A guy named Ezekiel Sims, right?

[11:02] That's not a scary man name.

Dan McCoy

[11:04] Not an all evil name of Ezekiel Sims.

[11:06] Yeah.

[11:06] But he says things like, you know, like, oh, that is why you hired me to be your security.

[11:13] And I'm like, okay, well, thank you for clarifying your relationship to one another.

Zhubin Parang

[11:18] He's also, I mean, he's from the start so villainous that it calls into question the judgment of the mom who allowed him to be her security.

[11:25] It's very, it's so bad that when he pulls the gun out halfway through, it's like, well, you should have seen this coming, lady.

Stuart Wellington

[11:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[11:35] Every time he says anything, he starts like twiddling with his mustache.

[11:38] And you're like, oh, do you have to, is this a nervous tick?

Elliott Kalan

[11:43] I will say, it is not the best showcase for Tahar Rahim, the star of A Prophet, a movie that he's much better in.

Dan McCoy

[11:49] Well, especially since all of his dialogue appears to be 80-yard later on.

[11:54] Yes, that's true.

Elliott Kalan

[11:55] Well, I had, I was like, the whole time I was watching it, I was like, did they dub every single thing that he says?

[12:00] Like, it's, they might have, I don't know.

[12:02] It's great.

Stuart Wellington

[12:03] It's amazing.

[12:04] It adds to the, like, hallucinatory nature of this entire thing.

Dan McCoy

[12:07] I started just, like, watching characters' lips in this movie after a while to be like, was this the original line or did they change it?

[12:14] Like, there's a lot of stuff that's delivered back to camera.

[12:17] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[12:17] So, of course, she finds the spider.

[12:19] She's very excited.

[12:21] Her, uh, her security guard Sims, of course, turns the table, kills the entire team, steals, uh, he, like, steals some of her research, I think.

[12:29] Steals the spider and shoots her.

[12:31] She is then saved by these mystical, uh, mythical spider-men, Las Aranjas, who take her to a pool, have her bitten by a spider, and she gives birth.

[12:40] Boom.

[12:41] Madam Web, movie done.

Elliott Kalan

[12:43] They seem to speak English better than her, than Ezekiel does.

[12:47] Yeah.

[12:47] The guys who live in the Peruvian jungle and have spider powers.

Stuart Wellington

[12:50] You don't, you don't know all the abilities that the spiders give you, maybe.

[12:53] That's true.

Zhubin Parang

[12:54] This actually, let me ask you a question about this, because I, the entire time, uh, I, I was just wondering, what is the relationship with Madam Web and Spider-Man?

Dan McCoy

[13:03] Because I thought, well, Ellie, do you want to feel this one before we get too far into this?

[13:07] Because, uh, you were gonna maybe talk a little bit about the comics.

Elliott Kalan

[13:10] Here's the thing, in, in, uh, adapting Madam Web for the film, they have drastically changed the character in a way that, it's funny because there's two Madam Web's in the comics.

[13:20] There's the original one, who is an elderly lady who is blind, who is paralyzed, and she can see the future, because she can see along the web of life or whatever.

[13:29] And she would show up in the comics and basically annoy Spider-Man by hinting at things that were gonna happen, but not really tell him what was gonna happen.

[13:37] Yeah.

[13:37] And there was a great two-part story where the juggernaut, I don't remember why, wants to kill Madam Web, and Spider-Man is pulling out all the stops to try to stop him, and he's way more prevalent.

[13:46] It's a, it's one of the great two-issue Spider-Man stories.

[13:49] There's a second Madam Web, that Madam Web eventually goes away.

[13:52] There's a second Madam Web who is the character that, that Sidney Sweeney plays in this movie, but she kind of took over that role.

[14:00] Okay.

[14:00] She looks like the Dakota Johnson version of Madam Web that shows up at the end of the movie kicking some amazing sunglasses.

[14:07] Oh, wow.

[14:07] We'll get to that.

[14:08] But, so it's like they took the two versions of Madam Web and combined them while also jettisoning all the backstory of the actual Madam Web.

[14:16] So in the, in the comics, she is an ally of Spider-Man's, but also a, an irritating ally of Spider-Man's, because she'll be like, hmm, the, the web of life, the, I feel the strumming along the threads.

[14:26] You should know that danger is coming.

[14:28] And he's like, can you just tell me, like, can you just tell me what's going to happen?

[14:31] You know?

Dan McCoy

[14:31] Yeah.

[14:32] This, this sounds like, uh, I was, because I was watching a bad movie last night that Marina Sirtis showed up in.

[14:38] I was complaining about Counselor Troy on Star Trek, how she was supposed to be the empath on, on board, but she'd always just be like, he seems angry, Captain.

[14:47] Like, yeah, he's already threatening the Enterprise.

Elliott Kalan

[14:49] What are you doing here?

[14:51] The, the other thing about, uh, Madam Web is that in the comics, she looks, the original one looks just like Aunt May.

[14:57] And so when I first started reading it as a kid, I read the issues out of order.

[15:00] I'm like, oh, eventually they'll reveal that this is Aunt May.

[15:02] No, it's just another old lady.

[15:03] The same way that every old lady in the Archie comics looks like Miss Grundy, who also has the same face as Jughead.

[15:09] So they, it's, they, so it's weird that they're probably together.

[15:13] They probably have a relationship.

[15:14] But I guess people who are attracted to each other sometimes look like each other.

[15:17] That's the thing that makes them, creates the attraction.

[15:19] Yeah.

Zhubin Parang

[15:20] This movie, this movie felt like they, for trademark reasons, could not give Madam Web the Spider-Man powers.

[15:28] So they had to go very metaphorical with what a Web was.

[15:31] Yeah, I think a little bit.

Elliott Kalan

[15:32] They really extrapolate what, what the power of seeing the future can be.

[15:35] Such as when she, as we get, we'll get to it, splits into three energy beings to save people.

[15:40] Which is not a thing she can do in the comics, as far as I can remember.

Dan McCoy

[15:43] For trademark reasons, they can't have Spider-Man in the movie.

[15:46] This is, of course, one of the many of the Sony's Spider-Man, without Spider-Man, Spider-Verse.

[15:52] I'm going to, I'm going to tell, yeah.

[15:55] Spider-Man does appear in the movie.

[15:57] Spider-Man does appear in the movie.

[15:57] He does show up in baby form.

Dan McCoy

[15:57] He does show up in baby form.

[15:59] He's not Spider-Man yet, though.

Elliott Kalan

[15:59] Well, is Spider-Man Peter Parker or Spider-Man the Mask, Dan?

[16:02] This is the question we have to ask ourselves.

Dan McCoy

[16:04] Guys, it's weird.

[16:05] They don't even say the name, though.

[16:06] Like, that's like, I assume that's also for.

Elliott Kalan

[16:09] Well, why would they say the name?

[16:10] The character doesn't exist yet.

[16:11] You know, they've, you know.

[16:12] No, they don't say Peter.

[16:14] Like, they never say, like, they make a big deal about guessing the name and they never say it.

[16:17] And they say, and they, well, we'll get to, yeah, yeah, we'll say, we'll get to that stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[16:21] Okay, so it is New York, 2002.

[16:24] That's right.

[16:25] We're in a period piece, guys.

[16:27] One year before Stuart Wellington moves to Brooklyn.

[16:30] Characters make reference to this multiple times.

Elliott Kalan

[16:33] They're like, do you think in a year Stuart will be here?

Stuart Wellington

[16:35] Yeah.

[16:36] Things are about to pop off.

Zhubin Parang

[16:37] Because they're driving by apartments, they're like, Stuart's going to live there soon.

Stuart Wellington

[16:39] He's going to live there.

[16:40] So we meet Cassie and Ben, a pair of EMTs played by Dakota Johnson and Adam Scott.

Elliott Kalan

[16:47] Exactly the actors you want in a movie where they're going to provide a maximum emotion and maximum intensity.

[16:54] And I think they're both great in other things.

[16:57] But they are baffling casting as the two leads in a superhero film.

Zhubin Parang

[17:01] Yes.

[17:02] If this is a movie where the two of them are friends who just can't ever get together until the end.

[17:06] Now that is a movie that I would watch that.

[17:08] And that's that their relationship is kind of set up like that.

Stuart Wellington

[17:10] Yes.

[17:11] She's a bit of a commitment phobe because she comes from a foster family.

[17:17] She lost her mother, obviously, in the Amazon.

[17:19] Now that's Australian for beer family.

[17:21] Mm-hmm.

[17:22] And he is ex-military, which I don't know if I buy that from Adam Scott, but that's okay.

[17:28] Oh, wow.

Elliott Kalan

[17:29] There's a lot of different people in the military, Stu.

[17:31] They're not all folking jacked up.

Dan McCoy

[17:32] I saw him on a jet ski one time shooting piranhas out of the laundry.

[17:36] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[17:37] I rescind my comment.

[17:39] Alex, scrub it from the record.

[17:41] He does have two personalities in the same head.

[17:44] And often, being in the military, you kind of don't know who you are after a certain point.

[17:47] Yeah, sure.

Stuart Wellington

[17:48] That is true.

[17:49] They have a little bit of a flirty chemistry, as mentioned before.

[17:52] Cassie lives alone, although she does feed a stray cat milk every once in a while.

[17:56] And I'm like, don't do that.

[17:57] You're going to give a diarrhea.

[17:57] Stuart, does her New York apartment have exposed brick walls?

[18:01] Of course it does.

[18:02] She has a sick-ass apartment.

[18:03] It's a great apartment.

[18:05] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[18:05] That's why they had to set it 20 years ago so that it was conceivable that she could afford that apartment on her salary.

Dan McCoy

[18:11] We should mention that the earlier version of this script also was apparently set in the 90s, which makes a lot more sense in certain ways, particularly later on when she gets on a plane, even though she's a wanted criminal without any trouble.

[18:27] Yeah, that's true.

Elliott Kalan

[18:28] Right after 2001, that was hard to do.

[18:30] But Dan, if it was set in the 90s, they couldn't have so prominently displayed the song Toxic as they do later.

[18:36] Okay.

[18:36] That is also another question I had.

Zhubin Parang

[18:39] That is also a big question.

[18:41] Is this like Madame Webby Visions where she's seeing moments of the future?

Elliott Kalan

[18:44] Exactly, yeah.

Zhubin Parang

[18:45] Before we get furthermore, I also had no idea the entire time why this movie was set in 2003.

Elliott Kalan

[18:50] The only reason it is is so baby Spider-Man can be born.

[18:53] That's it.

[18:54] Yeah, I see that baby Spider-Man.

Zhubin Parang

[18:55] That's 10,000% the reason.

[18:57] That is the reason.

[18:58] Yeah.

[18:58] Well, the villain's superpower here seems very – it felt like it was copying enemy of the state.

[19:03] It felt like it was copying all of the NSA stuff.

[19:07] Well, let's continue this.

Stuart Wellington

[19:08] I mean, that's not really his superpower, but I mean, it's one of the resources he has at his disposal.

Elliott Kalan

[19:13] Yeah, his superpower is to – that the only thing that has aged about him in that 30 years is that his hair has gray tips now.

[19:21] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[19:21] Yeah, I mean, honestly, I look better than I did.

[19:25] And my hair has plenty of gray tips.

[19:27] Okay.

[19:28] On the course of her day, she crosses paths with three girls that are going to be important later on in the movie.

[19:34] Maddie, Anya, and Julia, played by two actresses who I don't particularly recognize and Sydney Sweeney, of course.

[19:42] They are going to be important later on.

[19:44] Okay.

[19:45] Cassie goes through a box of stuff that she got from her birth mother.

Elliott Kalan

[19:51] Not like a Dune pain test Gom Jabbar type box.

[19:55] I mean, in a way it is a pain test.

[19:57] I mean, an emotional pain test.

[19:58] Because she's going through memories.

[19:59] Sure.

[20:00] So she –

[20:01] An animal would light off its own hands not to relive these memories, but a human can relive them with sunlight therapy.

[20:07] Man, I guess fucking Tom Brokaw just showed up.

Stuart Wellington

[20:11] We – it includes – it also includes specifically her spider journal that she took with her down to the Amazon.

[20:19] So that's going to be important.

Zhubin Parang

[20:19] It never explains who boxed all that stuff up and gave it to her.

[20:22] It is the Spider-Man.

Elliott Kalan

[20:23] And it is what –

[20:24] The fact that she is born in a cave in the jungle and the midwives were all spider-powered men in a jungle and yet she has documents, paperwork that – like I don't – I always wonder if they – so did they fill out a birth certificate in the cave?

[20:38] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[20:39] And who held on to that box while she was a baby?

[20:42] And the way she goes through the box at this point in her life, you're like – she would have gone through that so many times as a child, right?

[20:50] It's not like – yeah, I think so.

[20:51] It's not like this would all – she would have committed it all to memory, but whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[20:53] It reminds – it's like the scene in Hereditary when she goes through her mom's stuff and there's just photo albums of her being a witch.

[20:59] And it's like, did you never go through your mom's stuff?

[21:01] Yeah.

[21:02] Man, that rules.

Stuart Wellington

[21:04] Okay.

[21:05] So the next day there's an accident on a bridge.

[21:09] She and – Cassie and Ben go to rescue the guy.

[21:13] And in the process, the car containing Cassie goes over the bridge and she goes underwater and is trapped, drowns, and then wakes up in the water and has this like vision quest, right?

[21:26] It features falling Pepsi letters.

Elliott Kalan

[21:29] Before she goes into – yes, before she goes into the water, they are pulling a guy from this car and then as if the car is a living creature that is trying to trap prey, it – when she gets too close to it, the door snaps shut and it falls backwards into the river.

[21:41] As if –

[21:42] Yeah.

[21:42] As if this is like – this is mimic and it's learned how to become the shape of a car as opposed to like a man in a hat and a coat.

[21:48] Like it's so funny the way it happens.

Dan McCoy

[21:50] And when she's underwater, this is where we see kind of like the webs coming out underwater from her, like the – like shattered, like – I'm looking for you for confirmation.

[22:02] Is this true?

[22:02] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[22:03] It's like energy, kind of energy lines.

[22:05] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[22:05] Trigger her power, I think.

[22:06] Like the windshield spider webs.

[22:09] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[22:09] There's a lot of stuff, as has been mentioned in many write-ups about this movie.

[22:13] There's a lot of unnecessarily on-the-nose web iconography or web design elements.

[22:19] And it's like the scene in High Anxiety where the guy goes, it's like I'm caught in some kind of web and there's a shadow of a web over him.

[22:25] It's like that for a whole movie.

Dan McCoy

[22:26] But I wanted to say like – sorry.

[22:29] I needed a refresher.

[22:30] Like I looked at the – I looked again this morning at stuff, but I saw this movie in theaters before I went away for a week.

[22:39] Before COVID, yeah.

[22:39] Yeah.

[22:41] Yeah.

[22:42] It was back in 2002.

[22:43] It was a really early cut.

[22:43] It was a special preview.

[22:44] Yeah, yeah.

[22:44] But I wanted to say like I actually – I like that web imagery.

[22:49] Like I like how sort of goofy it is.

[22:51] Like there's stuff in this movie that looks bad, bad, like the Spider-Man jumping from trees to trees holding her mom.

Elliott Kalan

[22:59] This looks at least like there was some thought put in it to it, some visual thought.

[23:03] But they go so far with it that it stops being a visual motif and it becomes like – the movie is elbowing you in the ribs constantly going, get it?

[23:11] Which is what I want out of this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[23:16] Subtlety I do not want from this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[23:18] If you're watching this movie the way that Madame Web will now be watched forever and not the way that it was originally intended, then yes, it's the right choice to make.

Zhubin Parang

[23:24] Okay, so –

[23:25] Her last name is Web.

[23:26] Let's not also forget that part.

[23:27] Wait a minute.

[23:28] What?

Stuart Wellington

[23:28] Hold on a second.

[23:30] Oh, I didn't even notice.

[23:31] You're right.

[23:32] Okay.

[23:33] But that's the thing.

[23:34] They don't even mention that her last name is Web until like halfway through the fucking movie.

[23:38] And I let out such a cackle in the empty theater.

[23:42] It's so great.

[23:43] I love it.

[23:44] Cassandra Web.

Elliott Kalan

[23:44] Okay.

[23:45] I mean, and that comes from the character.

[23:46] That's not a thing they invented.

[23:47] Like that's from the character.

Stuart Wellington

[23:48] But I feel like you can get away with that stuff.

[23:50] I'm not laughing at the movie.

[23:50] I'm laughing because it's a funny thing to wait to review.

Elliott Kalan

[23:53] It's like a –

[23:54] Oh, that's Madame Web.

[23:56] Oh.

[23:57] That's how she got her name.

[23:59] Because it is – it reminds me of the moment I love in Spider-Man 2 when J. Jonah Jameson goes,

[24:03] his name's Otto Octavius, ends up with eight arms.

[24:06] What's the odds?

Stuart Wellington

[24:07] Like they just kind of put a point on it when they do it in such a funny way.

[24:10] Oh, man.

[24:10] Best superhero movie of all time.

[24:12] Yeah, for sure.

[24:13] Okay.

[24:13] So Ben rescues her.

[24:14] Turns out she was legally dead for three minutes.

[24:17] I mean, I don't know, legally.

[24:18] I think I'm just saying that.

[24:20] Like it's not like a judge showed up and he's like, I'm going to –

[24:22] Is that how it works?

[24:24] Sorry.

[24:25] You're dead now legally.

[24:26] That means laws don't apply to you anymore.

[24:28] You can do whatever you want.

[24:29] She has moments of like deja vu in the conversation and that's where we're starting to see, oh,

[24:34] maybe she has powers.

[24:35] And then she also makes a comment, I just want to go home and watch Idol, which I love.

[24:40] Thank you.

[24:40] Thank you for being very specific about the time period.

[24:43] And that would have been like the second season of American Idol.

[24:46] That was a big season.

[24:47] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[24:48] She is – one thing that I do – I like about this character, but I can see how it would make

[24:52] other people laugh is how – this is the Dakota Johnson of it, I guess, that she's so totally

[24:56] blasé about everything.

[24:58] There's a scene earlier on where she has saved someone's life and a little kid is like,

[25:01] I drew a picture for you.

[25:02] And she's like, what do I do with this?

[25:04] Like what do I – where do I put this?

[25:05] Like I don't want this.

[25:06] I thought that was very funny.

Dan McCoy

[25:08] Adam Scott's like, just take it and throw it away later.

[25:10] She's like, I can't even fold it.

[25:12] It's cardboard.

Elliott Kalan

[25:13] I thought that was very funny, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[25:15] That was a funny moment.

Stuart Wellington

[25:16] She's such an inspired choice for this character.

[25:20] I unabashedly love Dakota Johnson performances.

[25:26] She's like one of my favorites working today.

[25:28] She's so like kind of airy and wispy and I do not understand what's going on.

[25:33] Like she is my dream flop house guest because it would either be the best or absolute worst

[25:38] episode.

[25:39] She would like destroy any attempt at having bits.

[25:43] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[25:43] Oh man, she's so –

[25:44] I described this movie to friends as a movie about a lady who doesn't want to hang out

[25:50] with three teenagers.

[25:51] Yeah.

[25:52] That's kind of it.

[25:52] That's what I enjoyed about it.

Stuart Wellington

[25:54] And it's kind of interesting that they cast Sydney Sweeney also in this movie who I think

[25:59] that's also kind of her vibe is this like I don't quite get it.

Zhubin Parang

[26:03] Although she does play Freak that well.

Elliott Kalan

[26:05] She's not playing that type of character.

[26:07] Although it opens –

Zhubin Parang

[26:08] Much to her discredit.

[26:10] I think –

[26:10] Not to her discredit but it does not fit her either.

Dan McCoy

[26:13] Yeah.

[26:15] It's bad casting where the character that they want her to play but the way it's played,

[26:20] there's scenes in here where it's just like I love it.

[26:22] It's like she and Dakota Johnson are in a contest to see who can put less energy into

[26:27] their line.

[26:28] It's great.

Zhubin Parang

[26:29] Okay.

[26:29] That's my thing about Dakota Johnson is she seems like she – every character is like

[26:34] a person who does not want to be in the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[26:36] And I feel like that's like –

[26:37] She is an actress who should have – she should be an actress from the 1970s.

[26:42] Like she should be making movies in the 1970s, maybe the 1980s, or maybe even the 1990s

[26:46] where it's like slacker movies.

[26:47] But she should be in movies that are about characters that cannot get the energy up to do things

[26:52] and are just kind of drifting.

[26:53] But they don't make a lot of those movies anymore.

[26:55] So instead she's going to play Madam Web, a character who's a superhero who can see the

[26:58] future.

Stuart Wellington

[26:59] Yeah.

[26:59] She has to wait by the phone for Luca to give her a call.

[27:02] Okay.

[27:02] So –

[27:03] Yeah.

[27:03] You're right.

[27:04] We cut across town to the opera where now a gray-haired Ezekiel Sims is attending an

[27:11] opera with a date.

Elliott Kalan

[27:12] Now, is he with her or is he picking her up at the opera?

[27:16] I thought he picked her up at the opera.

[27:17] I thought he picked her up at the opera.

[27:19] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[27:19] He's using his spider powers of future clairvoyance to be like, what's the best way to pick up

Elliott Kalan

[27:24] this?

[27:25] Yeah.

[27:25] The mystery method.

[27:26] In all the years that I attended the Metropolitan Opera with my dearly parted grandma, I never

[27:32] thought of picking up ladies while I was there.

[27:35] Maybe it was because I was with her that it never occurred to me, but it just didn't seem

[27:37] like the right location to do that.

Zhubin Parang

[27:39] He would be beating you to the punch, I assume, right?

[27:41] You'd look at a lady and be like, well, then your grandmother would be there already

[27:44] talking to her.

[27:45] Yeah.

[27:45] Exactly.

Stuart Wellington

[27:46] Yeah.

[27:46] Your grandma's the sigma now in the relationship.

[27:49] So he takes this woman back to his fancy high-rise apartment that does feature a

[27:54] spider tank that has that spider from before.

[27:57] That's an old ass fucking spider, right?

Elliott Kalan

[27:59] That spider's been around.

[28:00] I mean, I have to assume that that's a descendant of the original spider, right?

Zhubin Parang

[28:02] I mean, they're super spiders.

[28:04] Who knows?

[28:05] Yeah, maybe they last a long time.

[28:06] You're both right.

[28:07] It might just be that spider's been like a 40,000-year-old spider.

Elliott Kalan

[28:10] You know what it is?

[28:11] I bet that spider gives birth to a new spider and is reincarnated in that new spider.

[28:15] And so it's the same soul in a new body.

[28:17] Probably.

[28:17] Anyway, we explained it.

[28:18] You're welcome, movie.

[28:19] That's probably.

[28:19] So they have an unforgettable night of magic together.

Stuart Wellington

[28:23] Afterwards, while he sleeps, he has a dream where he is attacked by three spider women.

[28:29] Featuring different powers.

Elliott Kalan

[28:30] This is by three spiders who teach him the true meaning of webs.

[28:35] Spider of Christmas future, the spider of Christmas present, the spider of Christmas past.

[28:39] What day is it?

[28:40] It's Christmas Day, sir.

[28:41] Get me the biggest spider you can find.

[28:44] What?

Stuart Wellington

[28:44] The one as big as me?

Elliott Kalan

[28:47] So he's visited by these.

[28:48] Tiny Tim, here's a spider.

[28:50] What?

[28:51] Look, boss, you can't come to my house and give a spider to my kid.

[28:54] What are you doing?

[28:55] I'm sorry.

Zhubin Parang

[28:56] Where did you even find that?

[28:58] I do love the idea of a Christmas Carol where the ghosts all kick his ass in different life.

[29:03] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[29:04] Well, that was what was always so funny about a Christmas Carol to me is that, you know, they

[29:08] gave him the soft sell first.

[29:10] And then the bad cop comes in and he's like, oh, yeah?

[29:12] Well, look at this.

[29:13] You're going to die.

[29:15] Okay, well, that got through to me.

Elliott Kalan

[29:17] See, the issue that I have with that story is that now Avene's or Scrooge is like, now

[29:20] that I'm good, I'll never die.

[29:22] And so I assume the ghost of Christmas future has to show up and be like, no, no, no, hold

[29:25] on.

[29:25] Let's explain this guy.

[29:26] Let's bring more people at your funeral.

[29:27] To be clear, that was what I was trying to say.

[29:30] It all ends in the stone cold ground no matter what.

[29:33] This moment when you first see these three women in costume, this was one of the moments

[29:38] where I burst out laughing.

[29:39] It's great.

[29:39] I just couldn't handle it.

[29:41] It looks hilarious.

[29:43] It looks hilarious.

[29:44] And I will say this, the original costume for Sidney Sweeney's character.

[29:48] So she's playing the character.

[29:50] For some reason, they've named her Julia Cornwall.

[29:52] In the comics, she's Julia Carpenter.

[29:53] She is the second Spider-Woman.

[29:55] She has the costume that inspires Spider-Man's black costume.

[29:59] She's got a great costume in the comics.

[30:00] It's really fantastic.

[30:01] And the way they've done it here does not quite work.

[30:04] And they all look ridiculous in their costumes, all three of the Spider-Women.

[30:07] Unless, prove me wrong, guys.

[30:08] Do you think they look amazing?

Stuart Wellington

[30:10] I mean, I feel like it looks less ridiculous for Ezekiel.

[30:12] Because over the course of the dream, they beat him up and toss him out a window where he dies.

[30:17] So maybe for him, they're not that silly.

Elliott Kalan

[30:19] They're not that silly considering they are a life and death threat.

[30:22] But just the first moment you see them, it is very funny to me.

Stuart Wellington

[30:25] Yeah, there's the moment where you're like, are you – were they expecting this to be like a big crowd pleaser stand up and cheer thing?

Zhubin Parang

[30:32] That's the – my problem with it is that you barely saw them.

[30:36] Yeah.

[30:36] Except in these like very brief flashbacks.

[30:39] It felt so bad for Sydney Sweeney and her buddies that they had to like dress up on those costumes and do all this kind of choreography fight stuff for maybe I would say seven seconds of screen time.

[30:49] Maybe seven seconds.

[30:50] I know they were trying to set up like another movie, but this felt like a real – like they felt they were promising throughout the movie.

[30:56] Like, oh man, when they get those costumes.

[30:57] When they show up in costumes.

Elliott Kalan

[30:58] Well, that's the other thing about it, yeah, is it does promise that by the end of the movie you're going to see them in costume, which does not happen.

Dan McCoy

[31:04] We'll get to it, but that is one of the more baffling decisions to me at the end of this movie, the lack of – I mean, this movie literally gets to the fireworks factory, but the metaphorical fireworks factory is not reached.

Stuart Wellington

[31:16] Okay.

[31:17] So he wakes up from his death dream.

[31:19] He wakes up his date.

[31:21] He explains the situation that he's been having this reoccurring dream where he always dies.

[31:26] It haunts him.

[31:27] So his only recourse is to steal face recognition software from the NSA that no one else knows about.

[31:35] He's going to steal that information so that he can then murder these young women.

[31:39] He gets to buy a mammon.

[31:40] This is the moment where the date says, but wait, I work for the NSA.

[31:44] And then he, of course, gets her password and poisons her using his spider poison.

[31:49] This was a hilarious scene because I just love a scene where the villain explains his entire murder plan to a stranger.

Elliott Kalan

[31:55] And also when he looks over at her stuff, her ID badge is lying right there.

[32:00] I guess maybe it came out when she went for her gun or something, but it looks like she went – it looks like before they had sex, she laid down her clutch, took out her NSA ID, put it out, took out her other things, laid it out, and was like, okay, now that you know my background, I'm ready for us to have this post-opera sex.

Dan McCoy

[32:14] Well, on top of that, like, I mean, I don't – you know, it may surprise you to know that I'm not a super spy, but shouldn't someone who's in the NSA –

[32:22] You're still a very good spy, Dan.

[32:23] Maybe at a super level.

[32:24] Yeah, be like aware that there might be a honeypot situation going on.

[32:28] I don't know.

[32:29] Like, I think that this is a little –

[32:30] I thought he was aware of her being in the NSA.

Stuart Wellington

[32:34] Yeah, I feel like, of course he was.

Zhubin Parang

[32:36] No, no, no.

[32:36] I know.

[32:37] I'm saying that the woman should be a little more –

[32:40] No, I'm sorry.

[32:40] I thought she also was aware.

[32:42] Oh.

Elliott Kalan

[32:43] It's very unclear whether they have both double-tricked each other.

[32:47] Yes.

[32:48] But he seems to know it and she seems to know it too.

Zhubin Parang

[32:52] Okay.

[32:52] Which is strange.

[32:53] This is also – the dialogue in this movie is so bad.

[32:56] He gets up from his dream and turns to her and says, do you have any idea what it's like to die every night for 20 years?

[33:04] And, you know, to say that to a one-night stand, I would grab the sex, feels like –

[33:08] Washington feels like this is a lot for someone to tell you.

[33:12] I don't know.

[33:12] Don't overshare, buddy.

[33:13] It's just like you're going to be casual.

Elliott Kalan

[33:15] Opera's about big emotions.

[33:17] It's about huge things happening to people.

[33:19] So she might be into it.

[33:20] It's also, do you have any idea what it's like to die every night for 20 years?

[33:23] Yeah, a lot of people have dreams where they fall down and die.

[33:25] Like, a lot of people.

[33:27] It's not –

[33:27] Wow, look at the empathy on this guy.

[33:29] You wake up and you go, yeah, that was a bad dream.

[33:32] Anyway, let me move on.

[33:33] I feel like the idea that, well, I had this dream all the time.

[33:36] I guess it's a prophecy that I have to stop from happening.

[33:39] Yeah.

[33:39] Because as far as we know, he does not have fortune-telling powers the same way Madame

[33:42] Webb does, right?

[33:43] No, he does.

[33:43] Or does he?

Stuart Wellington

[33:44] Yeah, no, I think –

[33:45] I guess that was his fortune-telling powers.

[33:47] Yeah, that's how he made his money is that he –

[33:50] Oh, that's right.

Stuart Wellington

[33:50] He writes those fortunes in the cookies.

Elliott Kalan

[33:53] Oh.

[33:53] He's literally telling fortunes.

[33:55] That's why he's so rich.

[33:55] Yeah.

[33:55] Do you have any idea what it's like to have to come up with different ways to basically

[33:58] say nothing about somebody's future in seven words or less for years?

Zhubin Parang

[34:03] You'll have some smiles today.

[34:05] Is that something?

[34:06] We also see him having –

[34:07] I have to come up with all the lucky numbers.

Elliott Kalan

[34:08] That's the hardest part.

Dan McCoy

[34:10] We also see him having a vision, you know, like when he's trying to seduce the woman at

[34:14] the opera, he's like, okay, like there's a little forevision of like –

[34:18] Cool.

[34:19] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[34:19] Now that that adventure's over –

[34:20] You know what?

[34:21] I asked the stenographer to please remove my objections from the record.

Stuart Wellington

[34:25] Okay.

[34:26] So –

[34:26] It's a perfect movie.

[34:28] Later on, we're at a baby shower for Ben, her co-worker's sister.

[34:35] So just –

[34:36] That's a tangled web of relationship.

Elliott Kalan

[34:38] You guys are routinely invited to your co-worker's siblings' baby showers, right?

[34:43] I mean, I feel like they're pretty close though.

[34:45] It looks like they're friends.

[34:47] Cassie has no friends.

[34:48] So this is the –

[34:48] It makes sense.

[34:49] I mean, even if it was just like, look, you don't know my co-worker.

[34:51] Can I just invite her because she needs to get out of her house?

[34:53] Like she never goes anywhere.

[34:54] She doesn't like attachments.

[34:56] That's the thing.

[34:56] She doesn't like webs.

[34:57] And her sister is like, as long as she doesn't make it super awkward and weird every single

[35:01] moment to the baby shower.

[35:02] And he goes, I cannot promise that.

[35:04] I apologize.

[35:04] Uh-huh.

Stuart Wellington

[35:05] So, of course, for this relatively thankless small role, of course, they hire Emma Roberts to play

[35:10] the sister, the pregnant sister.

[35:12] Um, there's, you know, a little bit of banter.

[35:15] There's, uh, some good Pepsi product placement in this scene.

Dan McCoy

[35:18] Because she is not allowed to have a beer.

[35:20] Not allowed to have a beer.

[35:21] Because she died yesterday.

Stuart Wellington

[35:22] Uh-huh.

[35:22] And the only cure for dying yesterday, ice gold Pepsi.

[35:26] Pepsi.

[35:26] Yeah.

[35:26] Not Coke.

Elliott Kalan

[35:28] He goes, you were just born.

[35:29] So now you're part of the Pepsi generation since you just died and came back.

[35:32] So you need Pepsi now.

Zhubin Parang

[35:33] It's also such a sad, like, uh, advertiser for, like, Pepsi.

[35:36] If you are, if you are physically unable to have a beer at the price of, at the cost

[35:41] of death, you can have a Pepsi.

Elliott Kalan

[35:43] Yeah.

[35:43] What's really, what's really funny, which I didn't think about to know, there's so much

[35:46] Pepsi product placement.

[35:47] And the end climax takes place at a big Pepsi Cola sign.

[35:50] But that's a real sign.

[35:51] Like, that's a real landmark sign in Queens.

[35:54] So I wonder if people who are not from New York watch that and they're like, ugh, getting

[35:57] a little on the nose with the Pepsi product placement, huh?

[36:00] It's like, no, but that's the one real thing.

[36:02] That's the one.

[36:03] I mean, and I know, I know that Coke is the real thing, but still.

[36:06] Or maybe Diet Pepsi is the real thing.

[36:08] Which one was Ray Charles singing about?

[36:10] Well, that's the right one, baby.

[36:12] Oh, that's right.

[36:13] The right one.

[36:14] And so what's the real thing?

Stuart Wellington

[36:15] The real thing is an album by Faith No More.

Elliott Kalan

[36:18] Oh, that's what I'm thinking of.

[36:19] Yeah, yeah.

[36:19] That Ray Charles was on.

[36:21] Anyway.

[36:21] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[36:23] He's doing background vocals for Mike Patton.

Elliott Kalan

[36:25] He's like, Faith No More, you're a gospel group, right?

[36:28] Yeah, yeah, sure.

[36:29] Just Ray, just get in there.

[36:30] Yeah, it's going to be epic.

Stuart Wellington

[36:31] So they do some party games where Cassie, Dakota Johnson is perfect for this, where she's

[36:38] like, let me tell bummer stories about my mom who died in the Amazon.

Dan McCoy

[36:43] I got to say, this one's on Cassie because it's like, oh, you know, put down memories

[36:48] of your mom, good memories of your mom for the expectant mother.

[36:51] And she puts a blank piece of paper into the thing.

[36:54] Yeah, just don't put a paper in.

Elliott Kalan

[36:55] Just don't put it in, man.

[36:57] No one's going to notice.

[36:58] Yeah.

[36:59] Yeah.

[36:59] She's not used to going to baby showers.

[37:00] She doesn't know.

[37:01] She doesn't know how it works.

[37:02] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[37:02] Yeah.

[37:03] That's like when somebody's clearly upset and you're like, what's wrong?

[37:06] They're like, nothing.

Elliott Kalan

[37:08] And you're like, come on.

[37:08] Oh, you really want to talk about this.

[37:09] You want to talk about it.

[37:11] The only thing that would have been better if she wrote on the piece of paper, my mom

[37:14] died.

[37:15] That would have been the most amazing.

[37:16] And they're like, oh, whose is this?

[37:17] Cassie's like, mine.

[37:18] Let me tell you the story.

[37:19] She was studying spiders in the Amazon.

Dan McCoy

[37:21] Even that would be a better choice because like the person picking it out to read would

[37:26] be like, oh, okay.

[37:27] I'll fold this quietly and put it in my pocket rather than being like, what's this blank piece?

[37:30] She wants to talk about it.

[37:31] She wants to talk about it.

Elliott Kalan

[37:31] Look, I was just glad they weren't playing the game where they put different foods, you know,

[37:35] smear different foods on a diaper and they have to taste them and then guess what they are.

[37:39] That's the game I didn't want to see them play.

Stuart Wellington

[37:41] Elliot, in my culture, we eat our chocolate out of diapers, okay?

[37:45] I'm sorry.

Elliott Kalan

[37:46] Yeah.

[37:46] I forgot that's a tenet of your religion.

[37:47] That's fucked up when you bring it up on the podcast.

[37:49] I forgot that's your ethnic heritage as a gross person.

Zhubin Parang

[37:53] As a garbage pail kid.

[37:54] Yeah, as a garbage pail kid.

Elliott Kalan

[37:56] As a garbage pail kid.

Zhubin Parang

[37:57] This also is maybe too nitpicky because I just hate the dialogue so much.

[38:01] Go on.

[38:01] But when she says my mom died in childbirth, I get it.

[38:06] It's not like the most happy thing to say, but they all act as if she had just

[38:09] cursed the mother to dying in childbirth.

[38:13] They were all like, no, no, chase something.

Elliott Kalan

[38:15] She's bringing the evil eye down upon them.

[38:17] They all have to go, tu, tu, tu.

[38:18] They all have to get rid of it, yeah.

Zhubin Parang

[38:19] Yeah, yeah.

[38:20] They have to go throw incense around the whole house.

[38:23] It felt very much like this did not need to be reacted to the way it did.

[38:28] She's clearly like a weird person.

[38:29] Everyone could have been like, oh, that's so sad.

[38:31] Let's move on.

Elliott Kalan

[38:31] Yeah, yeah.

[38:32] Nobody in this movie really knows how to handle social interactions.

[38:35] Cassie is the least of it, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[38:37] During the party, she continues to have moments of deja vu similar to earlier.

[38:41] And then she, then there is a, the party is interrupted.

[38:46] There's a fire at the industrial fireworks factory at the docks.

[38:50] They have to rush down there.

[38:52] And during this-

[38:52] This is something that can't ever have existed.

[38:54] There's no way.

[38:55] There's no way.

[38:55] During this exciting sequence where people have been injured and she's like running around

[38:59] and helping them.

[39:00] She continues to have moments of deja vu where she even sees her coworker, O'Neal, played

[39:05] by Mike Epps, dying in an accident or dying and blood's all over her hands.

[39:10] There's a moment where, there's a moment where they're dragging a guy away and she's like,

[39:15] and she's like, oh, I think he's actually seriously injured.

[39:18] And Adam Scott's like, oh, internal injuries, good catch.

[39:21] It's great stuff.

[39:23] Like, I love it.

Elliott Kalan

[39:24] That's, that's the, that's the, the medical equivalent of on Studio 60, them glancing at

[39:28] a script and going, this is funny stuff.

[39:29] Like, how could either one of them know about that?

[39:31] But also, yeah, internal injuries, I assume are something they, they know that they should

[39:35] check for at least before they're moving people.

[39:37] But I, one thing I think they do handle well in this movie is those first deja vu flashbacks

[39:41] are genuinely disorienting when she has them and then snaps back.

[39:45] The way they edit them the first time around is generally confusing in a good way in that,

[39:49] and it gets across, I think, how hellish it would be to be living in life where you kind

[39:54] of don't know if you are in a, if you were in a prophecy moment or if you were in an actual

[39:58] moment, that they kind of dropped that eventually.

[40:01] She gets used to it pretty quickly.

[40:02] But I think that that's something that I was like, I just couldn't help think about like,

[40:05] yeah, that'd be terrible if you don't know whether you're living in a moment where you're

[40:08] seeing it.

Stuart Wellington

[40:08] Yeah.

[40:09] Superpower, more like super burden, right?

[40:12] Yes.

[40:12] Yeah, just like, just like in Millennium.

Elliott Kalan

[40:14] That's his power.

[40:15] That's his curse.

[40:15] Yeah, sure.

Stuart Wellington

[40:16] The Robbie Williams song, Millennium.

[40:19] So, of course, Mike Epps, O'Neill gets in a horrible car accident and dies.

[40:26] She rushes over to his butt like he's driving an ambulance away from the scene, immediately

[40:30] gets hit by a truck and killed.

Elliott Kalan

[40:32] There's something about sudden car accidents which are horrifying, but in movies,

[40:35] they're always funny.

[40:36] Can be funny.

[40:37] Because they just suddenly happen.

Stuart Wellington

[40:37] Yep.

[40:38] And she like rushes over to the body.

[40:40] Adam Scott immediately runs over and drags her away and he says, it's okay.

[40:44] Nothing you could have done.

[40:45] Which is amazing.

[40:47] Which is also amazing from a guy who I'm guessing was like a battlefield medic.

[40:52] Like he's like immediately like, no, yeah, he's dead.

[40:54] Don't worry about it.

[40:55] Leave him.

Elliott Kalan

[40:55] But also, I wish it had been even more on the nose.

[40:57] Like you couldn't have seen that coming in the future.

[40:59] It's not like you could see the future or anything like that.

Zhubin Parang

[41:01] If you had had a premonition a few seconds about that, I would have been so upset at you

[41:04] for not doing something about it.

[41:06] For not accepting it.

[41:06] But you did.

[41:06] Like arguing harder to get him out of the car.

[41:09] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[41:10] Of course, we know that's impossible.

[41:11] And so you are not at fault.

[41:12] There is no blame.

[41:13] And I will not judge you at all.

[41:15] But again, having said it, if we were in that hypothetical situation where you did get

[41:18] a sudden flash of the future and you knew he was in danger and you didn't stop him

[41:22] from getting that ambulance, I would never forgive you.

[41:24] Never.

[41:24] Oh, baby.

[41:24] Never.

[41:25] The blood on your hands.

[41:26] The blood on your hands, I hope, would never wash up.

[41:28] Now, the seas, Neptune's seas could not wash off the stain of you letting your friend die.

[41:33] But again, we know that that's not the case.

[41:34] That didn't happen.

[41:35] And so I should really get back to the people from the fireworks factory who were injured.

[41:38] I shouldn't be talking this long.

[41:39] I just want to make it clear that you are not at blame because you don't have those powers.

[41:43] We can talk about this more later.

Zhubin Parang

[41:45] It just dissolves to his funeral.

[41:46] And Adam Scott is continuing that as the eulogy.

[41:49] And again, if she had seen this.

Elliott Kalan

[41:51] He's comforting their coworker's wife.

[41:54] Like, again, I would blame Cassie and you should blame Cassie too if she was able to

[41:58] see the future.

[41:59] But we know that's impossible.

[42:00] She doesn't have that ability, so you should not blame her.

[42:03] But if she did, you would never forgive her.

[42:05] I would never forgive her.

[42:05] Of course that goes without saying.

Stuart Wellington

[42:06] The only people who have that ability are the Las Aranjas in the Peruvian Amazon.

Elliott Kalan

[42:11] You know, they're in the Peruvian jungle.

[42:12] Even if they had seen this happening, how would they get in touch with us?

[42:15] They don't have a phone in the Peruvian jungle.

[42:16] And she has no connection there, though we don't exactly know the story about-

[42:20] Could they have used Elon Musk's Starlink to talk to us?

[42:22] No, it doesn't exist yet.

[42:23] We've never heard of him.

[42:24] He has yet to become even a beloved famous person, let alone a monster that people now

[42:28] realize was always a monster.

[42:30] Anyway, back to the funeral.

[42:31] Already in progress.

[42:32] I'm sorry, Pastor.

[42:33] Continue with the service.

Stuart Wellington

[42:35] So, as you would imagine, Cassie is a little bit wrecked.

[42:39] She takes time off of work.

[42:40] She hides at home.

[42:42] Eats, you know, eats takeout.

[42:44] She hangs out with her cat.

[42:45] She learns, like, she continues to have these deja vu moments.

[42:49] And she actually learns that by following these visions, she can actually alter aspects of the future.

[42:54] She saves a bird from smashing into a window.

[42:56] She saves a bird from smashing into a window.

Elliott Kalan

[42:58] Just more evidence that she could have saved her co-worker.

[43:00] Exactly.

Stuart Wellington

[43:01] That is, yeah, I'm sure that's a small consolation there.

[43:05] She gets a message from Adam Scott that says, hey, meet me.

[43:10] You should come to the funeral.

[43:11] And she's like, you know what?

[43:12] I am going to do that.

[43:13] And she heads to Grand Central Station.

[43:15] Now, meanwhile, Ezekiel Sims needs to find these girls, right?

[43:20] He's bedeviled by these girls.

[43:22] So, who does he enlist?

[43:23] He enlists a girl herself, Sasha Mamet.

[43:26] Who will let me find girls?

Elliott Kalan

[43:28] A girl.

[43:28] A teacher or a girl.

Stuart Wellington

[43:30] Sasha Mamet.

[43:31] So, he gets her to show up to his high-rise apartment where she then lives for the rest of the movie.

[43:38] And she is a super hacker.

[43:41] And she is hacked into the NSA security camera feed.

Elliott Kalan

[43:44] Just like Neil Breen, she is hacked into government and corporate secrets.

[43:48] But she's on call 24 hours a day.

[43:51] She's always there sitting in that chair.

[43:53] In some ways, more like the actual Madam Webber from the comics who is constantly sitting in a chair just kind of plugged into things.

[43:59] But it's a good movie.

[44:00] Lots of echo.

[44:01] Wheels within wheels.

Zhubin Parang

[44:02] Her character does make me think that's what Shosh from Girls would have ended up becoming.

[44:06] Just a very put-upon, bullied-around girl who's like, I know I'm carrying out evil.

[44:12] But all I can do is just do the best job I can and get a little annoyed that he won't let me do the evil he wants me to do in a better way.

[44:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[44:21] She's like, I never should have left Japan.

[44:23] I should have stayed in Japan.

Stuart Wellington

[44:25] So Cassie goes to Grand Central Station.

[44:28] Weirdly enough, all three of the young women that are featured in the visions also are at Grand Central Station at the same time.

[44:36] Security camera picks them up.

Elliott Kalan

[44:38] We can only take this as an implicit approval of the attempts to make Grand Central Station into not just a transit hub, but also a meeting place, a retail center, a restaurant center.

[44:49] Clearly, urban revitalization has worked according to Madam Web in this one instance.

[44:54] That's the commentary.

[44:55] Yeah, that's a very subtext.

[44:57] Elliot says, thank you, Bloomberg.

[45:00] Thank you, Giuliani.

[45:01] They all stopped by the tycoon store to buy some ties because that is there still, I think, after many years.

[45:07] You don't have to go there just to travel.

[45:08] Oh, no, wait.

[45:08] I'm thinking of Penn Station.

[45:09] I'm sorry.

[45:09] I'm thinking of Penn Station, I think.

Zhubin Parang

[45:11] You don't have to go there just to travel.

[45:12] You can also go there to meet your destiny.

[45:14] It's a fun place.

[45:15] Yeah, yeah.

[45:16] And have some oysters.

[45:16] That's a good line.

Stuart Wellington

[45:18] So Ezekiel Sims costumes up and he heads to Grand Central Station to kill some girls.

[45:24] Okay, so Cassie gets on a train.

[45:27] She keeps having visions of the various three girls getting on the train and then getting murdered by a spider-suited Ezekiel Sims.

Elliott Kalan

[45:34] And also she keeps having visions of other people sitting on the train where they're going to say it and a guy asking her if it's the right train.

[45:40] And when he goes out and she goes, I hope not.

[45:42] And then he leaves.

[45:43] And I'm like, oh, this is the repercussion of your powers.

[45:45] That guy ended up on the wrong train, Cassie.

[45:48] Well, the moment –

Stuart Wellington

[45:49] And then later on –

[45:49] That is one of my favorite line readings is later on she runs into the same guy on a different train and he goes, am I on the right train?

[45:57] And she goes, I don't know, man.

[45:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[45:59] That was good.

[46:00] She's so bored and frustrated.

Dan McCoy

[46:03] Like I got bigger things going on.

Elliott Kalan

[46:05] And he's like, I only asked her if it was the right train twice.

[46:09] Now, if I had asked her three times, if she had heard me say it three times, like if she had precogged me saying it, I could understand why she'd be so upset.

[46:15] But I only asked her twice.

[46:17] This is – again, I'm mad at her.

[46:18] Again, I wouldn't be mad at her if she had precognitive abilities.

[46:21] But again, we know that's impossible.

[46:22] Oh, important disclaimer.

Zhubin Parang

[46:23] Yeah.

[46:23] That was the funniest joke in the whole movie to me.

[46:26] Like the liberal one.

[46:26] The fact that like – this guy like asked this girl if he was on the right train.

[46:30] She was like, no.

[46:31] He goes then sees her on that train.

[46:33] I was like, oh, okay.

[46:34] Yeah.

[46:34] That would be confusing to me.

[46:36] This guy is the most relatable guy in the movie.

[46:37] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[46:38] So she manages to convince these three girls to follow her because there is a Spider-Man chasing them.

[46:45] They eventually lose him.

[46:47] He ends up killing a whole bunch of cops.

[46:49] But in the process, she gets blamed for the attack on the cops and for kidnapping the girls.

[46:54] This seems –

[46:55] And then she steals a cab.

Elliott Kalan

[46:58] This – I could never quite understand why she was the one who ended up getting the full blame since – did this – because if the Spider-Killed –

[47:06] I guess was it like she was reported in and then Ezekiel killed everybody so there were no witnesses?

Dan McCoy

[47:11] Yeah, because like –

[47:12] It was –

[47:12] Yeah, Sidney Sweeney one time sort of like half-heartedly is like, I think this lady might be trying to kidnap us.

[47:18] And I feel like the cops that heard that died.

[47:21] So I'm not really sure why –

Elliott Kalan

[47:22] And there are cameras.

[47:23] As the movie is posited, there are cameras everywhere.

[47:25] So there should be footage of a man in a dark suit murdering police officers as these women all run away.

Stuart Wellington

[47:31] From what we were able to –

[47:32] You're forgetting there's a super hacker monitoring the feeds and probably manipulate them.

Elliott Kalan

[47:37] She probably used AI, which he has because he's still in the future and he programmed it.

[47:42] Used AI to create a video that showed Cassie killing cops and then stealing the girls, I guess, and inserted that in.

Zhubin Parang

[47:48] This is the problem with the movie where a scene will happen and the next scene will have to explain what the takeaway from the previous scene is.

[47:55] Yeah.

[47:56] Because they know like it doesn't quite make sense.

[47:58] So look, all you got to know is like I'm now thought of to be the one who's kidnapping you guys.

[48:02] And I made it worse by stealing a car too.

Stuart Wellington

[48:04] That's a genuine crime that I could do.

[48:06] She steals a cab.

[48:07] Now, don't worry.

[48:07] This is before they had tracking devices in cabs so they could easily track it.

Elliott Kalan

[48:11] Also, for some reason, the cab driver is being paid by his fare while standing outside the cab, which I've never seen.

[48:19] Did he help with luggage maybe?

[48:20] Like I've never seen that before.

[48:21] So the fact that she can get in the driveway.

Zhubin Parang

[48:23] People get out of a car to give her the opportunity to get in and steal the car.

[48:27] That's great.

[48:27] But never get out of the car.

Stuart Wellington

[48:29] Yeah.

[48:30] I mean, that's a valuable life lesson this guy just learned.

[48:32] You know, that one's on it.

Elliott Kalan

[48:33] Don't get out of your car.

[48:34] Don't leave it running, certainly.

[48:36] You know.

Stuart Wellington

[48:36] So we get to meet the girls.

[48:39] Julia, Maddie, and Anya.

[48:41] They're, you know, I don't know.

[48:43] There's not a lot going on there.

Dan McCoy

[48:44] The movie makes the most half-hearted attempts to like distinguish these girls from one another.

[48:50] Like there are like small things.

[48:52] I can see that they're just.

[48:53] Describe them.

[48:53] Give me some broad strokes, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[48:55] Yeah.

[48:55] Dan, tell us.

[48:56] Tell me about.

[48:56] Well, tell me about.

[48:57] Tell me about Sydney.

[48:58] Tell me about Julia.

Stuart Wellington

[49:00] Well.

Elliott Kalan

[49:01] She's like.

Dan McCoy

[49:02] She's an adult in like little kid drag.

[49:05] She's kind of like.

[49:05] Yeah.

[49:06] Sydney Sweeney.

[49:07] They tried to make into sort of like this geeky schoolgirl, which does not suit her talents that well.

Elliott Kalan

[49:13] I think it's very funny that they're like, she is just sex on toast.

[49:17] How do we make her seem less sexy?

[49:18] We'll put her in a schoolgirl outfit.

[49:20] That's what we'll do.

[49:20] There's no sexual implications of that.

Dan McCoy

[49:22] It definitely works.

[49:23] Like.

[49:24] But that's.

[49:26] Everyone seems so disaffected.

[49:27] Like there are just three disaffected teens.

[49:30] So there's Julia, who's a nerd.

Elliott Kalan

[49:33] There's Anya, who it turns out later.

[49:35] Her father was deported.

[49:37] Right.

[49:37] Or.

[49:38] Yeah.

[49:38] She's undocumented.

[49:38] And she's undocumented.

[49:39] Undocumented is her entire character trait.

[49:41] That is.

[49:41] And she lives in the same building as Cassie.

[49:44] But they don't.

[49:45] They didn't know each other for now.

[49:46] Yeah.

[49:46] And there's.

Dan McCoy

[49:46] She's kind of the quiet smart ass.

[49:48] The other one is the louder smart ass.

[49:49] Well.

Elliott Kalan

[49:49] You know that she's also smart because she has a shirt that says like science rules or something

[49:53] like that.

[49:54] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[49:54] Or math rocks.

[49:55] I love.

[49:56] I love nerds or something.

[49:57] Yeah.

[49:57] And Maddie is the rich girl who skateboards around and likes to pretend she's not rich because

[50:02] her parents are always away in China doing business stuff.

Zhubin Parang

[50:06] Yep.

[50:06] She also likes to eat is the big thing about her character.

[50:10] And she loves to eat food all the time.

[50:10] She's always talking about eating.

Stuart Wellington

[50:12] Teenagers, guys.

[50:13] Yeah.

[50:14] They're hungry.

[50:15] Even when they're late 20s actresses, they're still hungry all the time.

Elliott Kalan

[50:20] That's the other thing.

[50:21] Except for.

[50:22] They all seem to be semi-allergic to clothes that cover their belly buttons because all their

[50:26] shirts except for Sydney Sweeney is don't cover their midriffs and they change that.

Stuart Wellington

[50:30] Check out old man yelling at clouds over here.

Elliott Kalan

[50:31] Yeah.

[50:32] Doesn't understand the outfits of the teens.

[50:33] I'm just saying.

[50:33] If I wanted to see that many belly buttons, I'd watch belly.

[50:37] Are there a lot of belly buttons in belly?

[50:38] The movie Belly?

[50:40] Yeah.

[50:40] With DMX?

[50:42] R.I.P.

[50:43] Do you get to see DMX's belly button?

[50:44] I assume at some point, right?

Dan McCoy

[50:46] Elliot is so like, he doesn't understand.

[50:49] He got the album by the band Belly.

[50:52] He's like, where are the, I thought these were all belly buttons.

[50:54] And there's songs about bellies and belly buttons.

Elliott Kalan

[50:56] Yeah.

[50:56] I don't get it.

[50:56] Feed the tree?

[50:57] Yeah.

[50:57] Why are you feeding the tree?

[50:58] Feed me a belly button.

[51:00] I mean, Pinocchio is the one kid who doesn't have a belly button.

[51:03] Exactly.

[51:03] It's like hardcore in.

Dan McCoy

[51:05] Just, you know.

[51:06] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[51:06] Do you think Geppetto just took like a little awl or something and just kind of like dug

[51:09] a belly button out?

[51:10] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[51:10] I mean, you know, he didn't want Pinocchio to feel out of place.

[51:13] I don't want you to feel weird in the gym class when you're changing.

Elliott Kalan

[51:16] So I'll give you a belly button and a penis.

[51:18] Let's not go too far, Pinocchio.

[51:20] Come on.

Stuart Wellington

[51:22] Yeah.

[51:22] That's great.

[51:24] Thank you.

[51:25] So we get to meet the girls.

[51:28] Dakota Johnson does not want to hang out with him.

[51:30] But, you know, she kind of has to because she's implicated in their kidnapping.

[51:34] Yeah.

[51:35] And she wants to protect them.

[51:36] They go hide out in the woods.

[51:38] She leaves them there with the instructions, don't do dumb things.

[51:42] She then sneaks home, removes the plates from the cab.

[51:45] She sneaks home, reads the spider journal again, finally finds the photo of her mother with

[51:51] the Zekeel Sims.

[51:52] Yeah.

[51:53] She then tests her powers to try and see if she has spider powers.

[51:56] She can climb on walls.

[51:57] She cannot.

Elliott Kalan

[51:57] I like that moment.

[51:58] She decides to jump and try to stick to walls.

[52:00] And she falls down.

[52:01] She tells her cat, don't tell anybody, basically.

[52:03] Like, that never happened.

Stuart Wellington

[52:06] The girls do do dumb things.

[52:09] They go.

[52:09] Do do dumb things.

[52:10] They walk to a diner.

Elliott Kalan

[52:12] Stuart, you have no idea that the words you just said when you put together sound like

[52:16] poop.

[52:16] Oh, you're so embarrassed right now.

[52:17] You have no idea what shit you just stepped in.

[52:20] Literally.

[52:21] Metaphorically.

[52:22] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[52:22] When the podcast comes out, I'll be embarrassed.

[52:24] You'll listen to it and be like, I can't believe I said do do dumb things.

[52:27] Oh, man.

[52:28] Oh.

[52:28] Listeners, I want you to draw a picture of Stuart being embarrassed listening to the podcast

[52:32] later and send it to the podcast.

[52:34] Yes.

[52:36] Stink lines and embarrassment lines together.

Stuart Wellington

[52:38] And like, I'm trying so hard to look cool in front of my friend Jubin, but I just look

[52:42] like such an idiot.

[52:43] No, man.

[52:43] The sunglasses did it for me.

[52:45] Thank you.

[52:45] There's nothing else you can do.

Elliott Kalan

[52:46] Well, I just want to be kind of the Madam Web of this podcast.

Dan McCoy

[52:48] Yeah.

[52:48] I presume that this was some Madam Web cosplay.

[52:51] Yeah.

[52:51] Very low-key cosplay.

[52:53] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[52:53] Sure, yeah.

[52:54] I thought we were all going to be in the spirit wearing cool shades, but I guess I'm the

[52:57] only one.

[52:58] So the girls do do dumb things.

[52:59] They go to a diner.

[53:00] Oh, he said it again.

Elliott Kalan

[53:01] He said it again.

[53:02] Can you believe this?

[53:03] And on the Max Fun Drive episode.

[53:05] On that, of all cases.

[53:06] I know.

[53:10] Okay, everybody.

[53:11] Remember at the top of the show when I told you that I'd tell you more about Max Fun Drive?

[53:15] Well, now I'm telling you what I told you I'd tell you is finally being told.

[53:19] To you!

[53:20] The 12 days of Maximum Fun Drive is the most wonderful time of year when we celebrate the

[53:25] birth of our savior, Maxwell Fun, by inviting you to support our show.

[53:29] Dan, read the liturgy.

[53:31] It's all in there.

[53:32] Okay.

[53:32] By inviting you to support our show by going to maximumfund.org slash join and becoming

[53:37] a new member of the Maximum Fun Network or by boosting or upgrading your membership.

[53:42] Why do we need members?

[53:43] Okay, let's get down to this.

[53:44] Because your membership pledges are what pays for the shows you love.

[53:48] Our show and the other Max Fun shows are directly supported by our members.

[53:52] This is where the vast majority of the show's proceeds come from.

[53:55] And for Daniel McCoy and myself, it's now where most of our personal income comes from.

[53:59] When you pledge your money, it isn't going to some shadowy bureaucracy where nobody knows

[54:03] how it's spent.

[54:04] Your money isn't going to some faceless corporation that will funnel that money into buying Supreme

[54:08] Court justices.

[54:08] No, it's going directly to the creators of the shows you choose, which means Stuart, Dan,

[54:13] and me so that we can buy things like food, not Supreme Court justices.

[54:16] I would not buy one.

[54:17] I would not want to eat one.

[54:19] They probably don't taste good.

Dan McCoy

[54:20] Ali can feed his wife and kids.

[54:22] I can feed my wife and cats.

Stuart Wellington

[54:24] I can buy protein powder, fancy sunglasses, hair care products, miniatures.

[54:30] Maybe that's not helping as much.

[54:31] Trips to Australia.

[54:32] I think that is helping quite a bit, actually.

[54:33] I don't think it is.

Elliott Kalan

[54:34] I think people would be happy to spend money so that Stuart can keep looking as good as

[54:37] he does.

[54:38] Look, being supported by our members means this show can remain independent.

[54:42] Nobody controls what we say or tells us what to do.

[54:44] And trust me, trust me, as I slog through life, trying desperately to get permission to

[54:50] work in some way telling jokes or crafting stories, permission from television executives who

[54:54] themselves do not know how to tell jokes or craft stories.

[54:57] It is increasingly valuable to me that your support keeps this show free and easy, summer

[55:01] breezy.

[55:02] Thanks to you, just like the Addams Family, we can do what we want to do, say what we want

[55:06] to say, live how we want to live, and play how we want to play.

[55:09] We will not stop and smack a friend.

[55:11] What do they do?

[55:12] Slap a friend?

Dan McCoy

[55:12] Kick and they slap a friend, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[55:13] We won't kick or slap friends.

Dan McCoy

[55:15] What's our policy of re-dancing?

Elliott Kalan

[55:18] Sometimes.

[55:18] Can we dance how we want to dance?

[55:20] We can dance how we want to dance, sure.

[55:21] Okay, sure.

[55:22] Think about all the TV shows that you love that got canceled because some suit decided

[55:26] it wasn't pushing stock growth enough.

[55:27] Think of the fact that there's an entire Wile E. Coyote movie you will never see because

[55:32] some suit decided they just weren't going to let you.

[55:34] When you directly support the things you love, like this podcast, you keep that from happening.

[55:38] You keep that from happening to us, from ever being put in the situation where someone

[55:42] else can decide whether you're going to hear us or not.

[55:44] So by going to MaximumFun.org slash join and supporting our show, you are sending a message

[55:49] to the sludge factory that is modern media that the art you love is valued and will survive.

[55:55] So that's all to say.

[55:56] Will you please go to MaximumFun.org slash join right now and become a member of Maximum

[56:00] Fun.

[56:00] Will you help us for as little as $5 a month to keep independent, goofy nonsense like the

[56:05] Flophouse alive?

[56:06] If you can afford more than $5 a month, please consider pledging $10 a month.

[56:10] If you can afford more than that, well, look, I'm not going to tell you to give us less

[56:13] money than you want to give us.

[56:14] Give us as much as you want.

[56:16] Feel free to upgrade your membership to a higher level or boost your membership by a few extra

[56:20] dollars.

[56:20] But if $5 is all you can swing, then that is wonderful, incredibly appreciated by us.

[56:25] We'd be very thankful if you would go to MaximumFun.org slash join and support as a member right now.

[56:29] Right, Dan?

[56:30] Dan, thank the nice people.

[56:31] Show that we're thankful.

[56:32] All right.

Dan McCoy

[56:32] Thank you.

[56:33] Thank you all.

[56:34] Thank you.

[56:34] I mean, like, you know what?

[56:37] I don't want to get off message.

[56:39] I would like to send people to pledge money so we can continue the show.

[56:45] But also, if this is just not your year, that's also fine.

[56:49] Thank you for listening.

[56:50] Tell someone about the show.

[56:51] We appreciate you.

Elliott Kalan

[56:52] Thank you.

[56:53] That's enough thanking by telling people not to pledge.

[56:55] Dan, but I appreciate it.

[56:56] Okay.

[56:57] So I'm being a harder ass than Dan.

[57:00] I'm asking you right now as you're listening to this to go to MaximumFun.org slash join.

[57:04] You don't have to even pause the podcast.

[57:06] Keep listening while you do it because I'm going to tell you, once you're at MaximumFun.org slash join,

[57:10] you're going to choose what level of support you feel you can afford in exchange for the podcast you love.

[57:14] You'll click start a membership.

[57:15] You'll put in your credit card information.

[57:17] I'm sorry we no longer accept farm goods as barter.

[57:19] We did for a short amount of time, but I don't need that many eggs.

[57:22] You'll choose what podcast you want to contribute.

[57:24] I do.

[57:24] Yeah, Stuart needs a lot of eggs.

[57:25] He needs that protein.

[57:26] Stuart's a regular cool hand Luke.

[57:28] You'll choose what podcast you want to contribute to, and that's it.

[57:31] It's that easy.

[57:32] If you're already a member, it's even easier to upgrade your pledge level,

[57:34] or if you feel like you can't afford the full upgrade, but you still want to give us a little more,

[57:37] you can afford a little more, then boost it by adding a few extra bucks.

[57:40] This is especially great if you want to add a show to the ones you already support.

[57:44] A show like, say, The Flophouse, maybe?

[57:47] So once again, if you love The Flophouse, and I know I do, and you're not already a member, which I am,

[57:52] then would you please go to MaximumFun.org slash join and support us for as little as $5 a month.

[57:57] That's one less coffee a month.

[57:59] Help save us and help save yourself from an ulcer all at the same time.

[58:03] If you're already a member and you're feeling flush with cash this year,

[58:06] would you please go to MaximumFun.org slash join and upgrade or boost your membership?

[58:10] I'll be back with more Drive Talk later in the episode.

[58:11] That's enough for now.

[58:12] For now, let's get back to the hijinks.

[58:15] Boys, spin that web.

Stuart Wellington

[58:17] Yeah, so they decide to go to a diner, which at first seems like it's a long way away,

[58:21] but we later learn is very close to their campsite.

Elliott Kalan

[58:24] It's within, it's, that steps, if you were selling an apartment in the woods, you would say steps away from dining.

Dan McCoy

[58:30] Yeah.

[58:30] It steps away, but then later on when Dakota Johnson is trying to drive there, it takes her forever.

[58:35] Yeah.

Zhubin Parang

[58:36] She's not taking the direct route.

[58:37] Yeah.

[58:38] It also, yeah, I'm not sure they, when they go there, it's like daytime, but when they get there, it seems to be like 10 p.m.

[58:44] Yeah.

[58:44] It seems like very.

Elliott Kalan

[58:45] And it seems like it's going to be set up that it's going to be a real culture clash when they go to this diner, but it's not.

[58:50] Yeah, record scratch.

[58:51] And there's a bunch of like young, young handsome dudes that show up.

[58:55] It seems like this is the exact right diner for them to walk into.

[58:59] And, and, and, which one is it?

[59:02] Maddie just starts ordering food and she has so many plates of food around her and she goes, says to the waitress, keep it coming.

[59:06] And it's like, how much did you order?

[59:09] It's like, you have to order.

[59:10] I had to stop the movie.

Zhubin Parang

[59:13] That was such a upsetting line to me.

[59:15] It is, the woman, the, the server brings out like something like 15 full plates.

[59:20] Yeah.

[59:21] It's like an omicasta.

[59:23] But keep what coming?

[59:24] The French fries, the pancakes, like who, what is the server supposed to do with that?

[59:27] And she's not eating it fast.

Dan McCoy

[59:29] She's not like Jughead, just like gobbling it up.

Zhubin Parang

[59:31] No, she's like, keep it coming.

[59:31] One fry.

[59:32] One fry at a time.

[59:33] Two fry.

Dan McCoy

[59:34] Maybe this is a diner that advertises unlimited pancakes and she's trying to get up on the wall.

[59:39] Yeah.

[59:39] I mean, that would make sense.

Elliott Kalan

[59:42] The wall of pancake heroes.

[59:44] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[59:44] And then they, of course, make a scene.

[59:46] They start dancing on a table.

[59:47] A trucker sees them.

[59:49] Too toxic.

[59:50] Yeah.

[59:50] Okay.

[59:51] Elliot wants, Elliot is a little embarrassed that he didn't know the Britney Spears song from the Cat Person episode.

[59:57] So he's really fucking flashing this shit around.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:01] This is probably Britney Spears' best song.

[1:00:03] We can agree on that, right guys?

[1:00:04] Toxic?

[1:00:05] Yeah.

[1:00:05] It would have to be.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:07] It would have to.

[1:00:07] It's certainly the most Henry Mancini Britney Spears song.

[1:00:11] That's how I judge all my pop music.

[1:00:14] The thing that I do like about the way they use the song is it's diegetic music.

[1:00:18] It's coming.

[1:00:19] They're dancing to it.

[1:00:19] It's in the building.

[1:00:20] But then it becomes the music for a fight scene soundtrack.

[1:00:24] And I was just like, they are using every part of Toxic.

[1:00:26] They're not just letting it go.

[1:00:28] And also, this spider bite, it's toxic.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:31] Yeah.

[1:00:32] And it reminds me how great that fan edit of the fight scene from the second Star Wars movie that was set to Toxic.

[1:00:40] The throne room fight scene with Snoke and all that shit where they swapped in Toxic for whatever music was there.

[1:00:46] And you're like, wow, this really works.

[1:00:47] This is great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:48] This is a song with a lot of energy.

[1:00:49] Yeah, yeah.

[1:00:50] And they're dancing for a while on this table.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:54] In a diner, too.

[1:00:55] I'm surprised no one tells them to get down.

[1:00:58] Because, you know, I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but outside of Coyote Ugly, that's not typically a thing that's done.

[1:01:04] No.

[1:01:04] No, certainly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:04] I grew up in the land of diners, New Jersey.

[1:01:06] And if you got up on the table and started dancing, they would yell at you to get off the table.

[1:01:10] I'm sure.

[1:01:11] And they wouldn't do it nicely.

[1:01:12] This is New Jersey.

[1:01:12] People swear it went to babies, you know.

Zhubin Parang

[1:01:15] You're actually, when you say the vibe of the diner, it sort of had every diner vibe.

[1:01:19] It had, like, the dancing on table.

[1:01:21] They also had, like, the truckers reading the New York Post while they were drinking coffee vibe.

[1:01:25] It had every vibe was in that diner.

[1:01:26] Yeah.

[1:01:26] And there's a lot of neon and chrome.

[1:01:28] There's Howard the Duck in the corner.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:29] Well, that's, it made me, it was a throwback to the era, like you're saying, Stuart, of Howard the Duck, when every genre movie had a scene in a diner.

[1:01:36] Because it was like, can you believe these far out characters in a diner?

[1:01:40] Yeah, yeah.

[1:01:41] That's the least far out place.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:42] Yeah, they're talking to fucking Dexter Jetster or whatever his name is.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:46] Yeah, exactly.

[1:01:47] But at a certain point it became, yeah, I guess they all hang out at diners.

[1:01:49] I guess anytime an alien shows up or a monster, they go to a diner at some point.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:53] Superman's going to come in and kick the ass of someone who earlier in the movie was mean to him when he was Clark Kenton, had no powers.

[1:02:01] Yeah, I'm pretty petty about Superman.

[1:02:02] But you'd do it too, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:04] You'd do that too if you were Superman.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:05] Yeah, but you know, once you're Superman, you should know.

[1:02:08] You should like, just like the knowledge should be enough.

[1:02:10] And you do it just for Superman at all.

[1:02:11] Oh, you don't think you need to flex on him?

[1:02:12] You just get a gun too.

[1:02:13] So I could just get a gun.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:15] So a trucker sees.

[1:02:16] I mean, a gun makes any man a Superman.

[1:02:18] Yeah.

[1:02:18] Isn't this episode brought to you by the NRA?

[1:02:21] Making the world worse for many, many years.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:23] So a trucker sees the girls.

[1:02:25] He calls in a tip.

[1:02:26] Of course, that tip is then intercepted by Zosha Mamet, who passes it along to Ezekiel

[1:02:30] Sims, who calls off the police because he's going to handle it his style.

[1:02:34] Cassie gets to-

[1:02:35] Spider style.

[1:02:35] Let me get into my costume first.

[1:02:38] Cassie finds that the girls have abandoned the campsite.

[1:02:40] She gets in her car to drive to the diner.

[1:02:44] We see visions.

[1:02:45] We don't realize they're visions, but we see visions of Ezekiel Sims showing up at the

[1:02:50] diner and killing the girls, once again, set to toxic.

[1:02:54] And then, but it turns out those are visions.

[1:02:57] And then he is at the diner.

[1:02:59] And before he can do anything, Cassie crashes through the front of the diner in the cab and

[1:03:04] smashes him into a wall.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:05] One of two times, she will smash a vehicle, drive a vehicle through something to surprise

[1:03:10] him.

[1:03:10] It's like, it shouldn't work twice.

[1:03:12] I'm sorry, Ezekiel.

[1:03:13] You can see the future.

[1:03:13] Yeah.

[1:03:14] The second one's on him.

[1:03:15] Yeah.

[1:03:16] I'm not even sure of the mechanics of the second one, but we'll get to it.

[1:03:18] The second one is very surprising.

[1:03:20] Yeah.

[1:03:21] Yeah.

[1:03:21] Even this one, this diner seems to be made out of like balsa wood, you know, diners are

[1:03:25] a heavy construction restaurant.

[1:03:26] They're made out of chrome and metal, but this car just takes it out easy.

[1:03:29] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:29] In the process, Cassie gets poisoned a little bit, just a little bit, you know, as a treat

[1:03:33] and they escape.

[1:03:36] This is of course, shortly after here, this is where Sims is talking to his hacker and

[1:03:41] they're like, who is this strange woman who keeps showing up?

[1:03:43] And they're like, that's Cassandra Webb.

[1:03:45] And that's of course where audience, uh, insert audience laughter there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:49] Oh.

[1:03:50] And he goes, kind of ironic, huh?

[1:03:52] Her name's Webb and this whole thing's about spiders.

[1:03:54] Is there a connection you think?

[1:03:55] Anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:57] Uh, so they hide out at a motel.

[1:03:59] Um, Cassie goes-

[1:04:01] Who gave her the name Cassandra?

Dan McCoy

[1:04:03] The spider people?

[1:04:04] I assume the spider man, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:05] Or maybe one of her foster friends.

[1:04:06] Or maybe her mom with her dying breath, with her dying breath said Cassandra.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:09] They're all classics, uh, fans.

[1:04:11] They, they know that she'll have the gift of sight.

[1:04:13] So they're like-

[1:04:14] Because they have to call her Cassandra.

[1:04:15] I think it's really funny that she's Cassie mostly because Sydney Sweeney seems to have

[1:04:20] a lot of trouble with the name Cassie.

[1:04:22] She does not say it normal.

[1:04:23] She's always like, Cassie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:25] And that's, the thing, the reason why is because that's her character on Euphoria.

[1:04:29] Oh, really?

[1:04:29] Yeah.

[1:04:30] Is that right?

[1:04:30] Yeah.

[1:04:31] Oh, man.

[1:04:31] And there's a character named Maddie in Euphoria and there's a character named Maddie

[1:04:35] that's so confusing.

[1:04:36] Must have been tough.

[1:04:37] Euphoria?

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:38] No, no, no.

[1:04:39] Me-phoria.

[1:04:39] Anyway, continue.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:41] Man, Elliot's going to jail for that joke.

[1:04:43] Yep.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:44] Worth it.

[1:04:45] But I, but I understand the charge.

[1:04:46] It's a fair cop.

[1:04:46] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:47] Yeah.

[1:04:47] So, uh, Cassie leaves the girls to sleep.

[1:04:50] She goes back to the diner and she has this like vision conversation with, uh, Ezekiel

[1:04:55] Sims who explains his entire plan to her.

[1:04:58] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:59] This is real, uh, uh, Rey and Kylo stuff from Star Wars.

[1:05:03] Now they can, they can use Spider Force to talk to each other.

[1:05:05] Yeah.

[1:05:06] He does, he does, he's like, look, I knew your mom.

[1:05:08] We were close.

[1:05:09] I did kill her, but I shouldn't have any secrets from you.

[1:05:11] Let me tell you what I'm going to do.

[1:05:12] Yeah.

[1:05:13] Mm-hmm.

Zhubin Parang

[1:05:14] Uh, so.

[1:05:14] This is the movie running out of reasons, uh, to explain plot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:18] I mean, it's, it is, it is almost like Ezekiel is like, look, it's that time in the movie

[1:05:23] when you need to know what's going on.

[1:05:24] Yeah.

[1:05:25] Let me just tell you.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:26] We got a bridge.

[1:05:26] So they don't have a chat.

[1:05:27] Let's pull out some spider tea.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:30] So she goes back and teaches the girls CPR.

[1:05:32] That's going to come in handy later.

[1:05:34] Uh, she leaves the girls with, uh, her friend Ben.

[1:05:37] Uh, and the girls all explain.

[1:05:39] They're like, yeah, we can't go home because of these reasons.

[1:05:41] They're like, okay, whatever.

[1:05:42] It doesn't matter.

[1:05:43] Uh, let's just get this over with.

[1:05:44] Uh, she leaves them with Ben so that she can go to Peru.

[1:05:47] She uses her notes.

[1:05:48] This is the quickest trip to Peru anyone has ever taken.

[1:05:51] Yeah.

[1:05:51] She's going to nip down Peru.

[1:05:52] 30 minutes later, she's in Peru.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:54] It does make it seem like she, she, it takes her a day to go to Peru,

[1:05:57] get to the jungle, explore around and then come back.

[1:05:59] It's, it's crazy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:00] Yeah.

[1:06:01] Yeah.

[1:06:01] She, and she, uh, uses her mom's notes and maps to find, uh, the leader of Las Aranhas.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:06] Who's just hanging out.

[1:06:08] Like he's hanging out.

[1:06:08] He was really committed.

[1:06:10] He's like, you know, he told her mom when it's time and she comes back, I'll have answers

[1:06:15] for her.

[1:06:15] And he's just there wearing like a jaunty neckerchief, uh, being like, hey, I've been waiting for you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:20] I love the idea.

[1:06:21] He's like, when, when she's ready, we'll be here.

[1:06:23] We will not be proactive about this.

[1:06:25] We will not go to her and tell her anything.

[1:06:27] She's got to want it.

[1:06:28] We won't email her.

[1:06:29] She's got to come here.

[1:06:30] Yeah.

[1:06:31] So she is a.

[1:06:31] I will not MySpace friend her.

[1:06:33] That will not happen.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:34] That's actually, wow.

[1:06:35] Elliot's topical.

[1:06:36] Yeah.

[1:06:36] He's good.

[1:06:38] Early 2000s.

[1:06:39] Yeah.

[1:06:39] You're a professional writer.

[1:06:40] Um, so the leader of Las Aranjas.

[1:06:42] Hey Stuart, I didn't.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:43] Hey, I was there.

[1:06:44] I lived it, man.

[1:06:45] Yeah.

[1:06:45] Nope.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:46] Uh, okay.

[1:06:46] Tom was my friend.

[1:06:48] So he, uh, this, she has a vision quest where she, uh, sees her mother and she like sees

[1:06:56] what happened, but also she had been laboring this entire time under the belief that her

[1:07:01] mother, very pregnant, had decided to just go down to the Amazon for some reason because

[1:07:06] she hated her baby so much.

[1:07:08] But it turns out the reason why is because she knew her baby was being, was going to be

[1:07:14] born with a very specific, what, degenerative disease?

Dan McCoy

[1:07:17] It was a neuromuscular disorder.

[1:07:19] And she says the line like, but I don't have a neuromuscular disorder.

[1:07:23] Uh-huh.

[1:07:23] Perfect laugh line.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:23] Just for the case the dummies in the audience didn't put two and two together.

[1:07:26] Yeah.

[1:07:27] And her mother went down there because she believes that this spider bite is the only

[1:07:32] cure and that Western medicine wouldn't recognize magical spiders.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:36] So by going to Peru, she was not running from her unborn daughter, which you cannot do because

[1:07:40] she was in her belly.

[1:07:42] She went starring DMX.

[1:07:43] She would go anywhere that, that her mother goes, but she did it entirely to save her.

[1:07:48] Her mother did love her.

[1:07:49] She did.

[1:07:49] She didn't abandon her by dying.

Zhubin Parang

[1:07:51] What a revelation.

[1:07:51] Yeah.

[1:07:52] It's really also a terrible thing about the movie where we discover at that moment that

[1:07:56] that is, has been her deep burden.

[1:07:59] Yeah.

[1:07:59] And in a second later, it's resolved.

[1:08:02] Yeah.

[1:08:02] I don't know.

[1:08:03] Like the movie comes up with these deep emotional issues.

[1:08:06] And then it's like, and that's that.

[1:08:07] And now we've resolved it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:09] Yeah.

[1:08:09] You could have saved your friend.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:11] He's dead.

[1:08:12] Don't worry about it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:12] To be fair, this does feel like the kind of movie that they were at some points making

[1:08:16] up as they went along on set.

[1:08:17] So it's possible that they were like, oh, we should put this in here.

Zhubin Parang

[1:08:21] It was also another thing too about the, this, this, the Aranjas people that they are,

[1:08:27] this, the man who was like, who puts on this vision quest.

[1:08:31] Santiago.

[1:08:32] Santiago.

[1:08:33] Is that his name?

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:33] Yeah.

[1:08:34] According to Wikipedia, that's his name.

Zhubin Parang

[1:08:35] He is coded as this, you know, indigenous, wise, native man who with this, you know, communal,

[1:08:42] mystical touch will, will bring her to some kind of larger peace.

[1:08:45] And it's never explained.

[1:08:47] These people are just spider people.

[1:08:49] They, they, a spider bit them and they run around.

[1:08:51] It's, it feels so racist to me and be like, and also obviously they are wise beyond their

[1:08:55] years because they live in the jungle and can, and can teach her.

[1:08:58] At one point he tells her like, you have to see the future clearly before you can see the

[1:09:04] future clearly, you must heal the wounds of the past.

[1:09:07] It's like, what the hell is this guy doing saying that kind of stuff?

[1:09:10] Yeah.

[1:09:10] This guy, this, this, this, um, uh, attempt to, to find like a, um, a, uh, wise man among

[1:09:17] these people.

[1:09:18] Yeah.

[1:09:18] Like a Yoda figure.

[1:09:19] Very, very racist to me.

[1:09:21] And of course the Amazonians will be the, the, the spiritual minded people.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:25] You have to understand, you have to understand that people of color are just naturally closer

[1:09:31] to the mystic and supernatural worlds according to movies.

[1:09:34] It's like, there's always, there's the character in so many, in so many ghost movies where it's

[1:09:38] like, I don't know what to do.

[1:09:39] I guess I'll talk to the black or Haitian woman that is nearest to me.

[1:09:42] And they'll be like, all right, it's ghosts.

[1:09:44] Let me explain it to you.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:45] You know, if that's racist, then I guess it is.

[1:09:48] Yeah.

[1:09:48] A little confused by like, he's hanging out like dressed kind of like, I don't know,

[1:09:52] Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief here, you know?

[1:09:55] Like, so.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:56] He, actually, that's a good call.

[1:09:57] He does.

[1:09:57] He is dressed in To Catch a Thief with a neckerchief and everything.

[1:09:59] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:00] So like, this is his like secret identity when he's not a spider person, but then like,

[1:10:04] is he, he goes into the jungle to like do stuff?

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:08] I assume he lives in the jungle.

[1:10:10] When the tourists come around, he puts on the spider guy suit and crawls around on trees.

[1:10:14] When the tourists are not around, he's, it's the same way that I remember my dad

[1:10:17] years ago, he, he took a, a rafting trip through Costa Rica.

[1:10:20] And the thing that struck him the most was that everybody, everywhere they went was listening

[1:10:24] to Meat Loaf's Bad Outta Hell album.

[1:10:25] And he, he was like, it just wasn't what I expected from going into the jungle.

[1:10:28] And I'm like, yeah, well, they like music too, I guess.

[1:10:31] Yeah, it's a big album.

[1:10:32] It's a huge album.

[1:10:33] Why wouldn't they be listening to it?

[1:10:34] But yeah, I think this is just, he, he, he was like, Cassie, she's like family.

[1:10:38] I don't need to dress up in all this stuff.

[1:10:39] Like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to sell her any trinkets or anything like that.

[1:10:42] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:42] I'm not going to.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:43] So Cassie has her like, her live, laugh, love moment.

[1:10:47] She heads back to New York.

[1:10:48] Meanwhile.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:49] What would that be in spider terms?

[1:10:51] It's like spin.

[1:10:53] Spin.

[1:10:53] Stalk.

[1:10:54] Yeah.

[1:10:55] Inject with poison.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:56] I don't know.

[1:10:57] Swallow a fly.

[1:10:58] Yeah.

[1:10:58] Doubling down dozens of flies.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:00] Yeah.

[1:11:00] Spin stalks suck because they suck the innards out of their, out of their victims.

[1:11:03] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:03] Yeah.

[1:11:03] Yum.

[1:11:04] So meanwhile, Ben's, all the, all the girls are living.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:07] And she brings it home painted in three different fonts on a piece of driftwood.

[1:11:10] It's in her apartment.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:12] Yeah.

[1:11:12] I mean, you got to buy some art when you're on vacation.

[1:11:14] Yeah.

[1:11:15] Of course.

[1:11:15] You should see all the shit Dan brought back from the JoCo cruise.

[1:11:18] It's crazy.

[1:11:19] Yeah.

[1:11:20] Indigenous JoCo art.

[1:11:22] So.

[1:11:23] Yeah.

[1:11:25] Meanwhile, the girls are living with Ben and Ben's sister.

[1:11:30] And I guess Ben's sister who, Emma Roberts, whose water breaks.

[1:11:34] Uh-oh.

[1:11:34] They all got to go to the hospital.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:35] One of the girls says gross or ew or something, which was funny.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:39] They all load up into a car and they drive over.

[1:11:42] Unfortunately, on the drive, they get clocked by a security camera.

[1:11:45] So Ezekiel Sims knows where they're at.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:47] Now that raises a good question.

[1:11:48] Why are they bringing the girls with them to the hospital?

[1:11:51] These are teenagers.

[1:11:52] They could just leave them at home watching TV and it would be fine.

[1:11:56] Absolutely.

[1:11:57] Parties.

[1:11:57] Because they have to advance the plot in that direction.

[1:11:59] Absolutely.

[1:12:00] It makes no sense.

[1:12:01] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:02] Parties.

[1:12:02] I think they're worried about parties.

[1:12:03] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:03] They're worried about parties.

[1:12:04] They're like, we don't want a risky business situation breaking out here.

[1:12:07] Yep.

[1:12:07] Or weird science.

[1:12:09] Look, we leave to take her to the hospital.

[1:12:11] Next thing you know, you're creating people with a computer and there's barbarian bikers.

[1:12:15] Vernon Wells shows up.

[1:12:16] Yep.

[1:12:17] Yeah.

[1:12:17] They don't need that.

[1:12:18] Yeah.

Zhubin Parang

[1:12:18] Okay.

[1:12:18] Obviously, when they come back in two days, it's just like that Project X party has happened.

[1:12:22] They're like, you don't even know any of any teenagers in town.

[1:12:25] How did this happen?

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:27] So they get spotted by Sims who uses traffic light manipulation techniques to cause a traffic jam and he has them cornered.

[1:12:37] Cassie shows up.

[1:12:38] She goes over to Ben's house, sees a puddle of water on the ground and has a vision and knows exactly what's going on.

[1:12:45] So she steals an ambulance and she drives it through a building and then smashes it into Ezekiel's city.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:52] I was unclear as to the mechanics of this.

[1:12:54] Yeah.

[1:12:54] Like she smashes her ambulance out exactly the right place and it looks like she like just goes through like a billboard.

[1:13:00] Yeah.

[1:13:00] She goes through a billboard in what, Times Square, I think?

[1:13:02] Yeah.

[1:13:03] What?

[1:13:03] Yeah.

[1:13:04] How did she get up that place?

[1:13:04] What road is she on there?

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:06] So I'm assuming that this is like those buildings in cities in, I think like in parts of China where the levels are all over the place.

[1:13:15] And you can go in on – there's videos of this where you go in on the ground floor of a building and you go up a flight of stairs and suddenly you're on the 30th floor of the building on the other side.

[1:13:23] And you go down and then suddenly you're on the 100th floor of another building and then suddenly you're on the ground floor again.

[1:13:28] Wow.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:29] As a former inhabitant of New York, you're aware that this is not true.

[1:13:34] No, that's true.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:35] My experience in New York tells me that that's not the case.

[1:13:37] Well, the Chinatown area of New York has the same.

[1:13:39] And all the buildings just pop out of it.

Zhubin Parang

[1:13:41] Yeah.

[1:13:41] The Chinatown area of New York has these Chinese-style levels, so that's why.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:45] Yeah, where they've changed the geography of the island just for that part.

[1:13:49] Now, maybe it's – I mean maybe it was a – maybe giving them the – maybe it's a parking garage structure and she's able to go up a ramp and then come out.

[1:13:58] But we don't see any of that, I don't think.

[1:13:59] Yeah.

[1:14:00] She's just driving in one place and then suddenly she's driving out of a building through a billboard, which also implies that behind every billboard is just an open road space that you can go through.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:09] Yeah, yeah.

[1:14:10] Yeah, it's in case there's like a visiting basketball team that has to burst through it.

[1:14:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:14:15] Or the Roadrunners around.

[1:14:17] Thank you, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:18] Or the Roadrunners on a visiting basketball team as he was in two different movies.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:22] That's true.

[1:14:23] Space Jam and Hoosiers.

[1:14:25] Thanks for listing them.

[1:14:27] Do you got any more movies that the Roadrunner was in?

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:30] Where he plays basketball?

[1:14:31] Yeah.

[1:14:32] Blue Chips, right?

[1:14:34] Go on.

[1:14:35] And what was the other one?

[1:14:36] I think you're doing great.

[1:14:37] What's the other Roadrunner basketball movie that he's in?

[1:14:41] So he's taking up space and basketball is kind of his jam.

[1:14:45] Yep.

[1:14:46] But he's in Space Jam.

[1:14:48] So I think there's another one also that the Roadrunner plays basketball in.

[1:14:52] Okay.

[1:14:52] Thank you for taking us down the road.

[1:14:54] He got game.

[1:14:55] That's what Spike Lee's he got game.

[1:14:56] That's the one.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:58] So they escape in the ambulance.

[1:14:59] Oh, and Hoop Dreams.

[1:15:00] I forgot Hoop Dreams was also about the Roadrunner.

[1:15:01] Okay, man.

[1:15:01] Never stop him.

[1:15:02] Man, I got a real Roadrunner on my tail.

[1:15:06] So they escape in an ambulance.

[1:15:09] They make it to a fireworks factory where they immediately start setting a bunch of fires.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:13] The fireworks factory from earlier.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:16] That's why she knows about it, right?

[1:15:18] So that makes sense then.

[1:15:20] I have a big problem with this climax.

[1:15:23] I mean, for a number of reasons, but here's one problem.

[1:15:26] Cassie takes them there because she has had this vision.

[1:15:28] She's like, I know what I need to do to make this work.

[1:15:33] And then it doesn't happen.

[1:15:36] And so otherwise, you would never go to a fireworks factory and then set the fireworks factory on fire as they do as a strategy.

[1:15:44] Yeah.

[1:15:45] But she's doing it because she knows it's going to all work out, but it doesn't work the way she wants it to.

[1:15:50] So legally, we are telling you not to set a fireworks factory on fire.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:53] Dan, life is what happens while you're making plans.

[1:15:56] That's all I can say to Cassie.

[1:15:57] I guess so.

[1:15:58] Well, also, there's another unexpected.

[1:16:00] If the spider guy, they cut the spider, he goes, I wonder if I should tell her that every 20th vision is false just to test her.

[1:16:05] Eh, she'll figure it out.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:07] Well, that would certainly explain something else that's coming up.

[1:16:09] But anyway, we'll get to it.

[1:16:10] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:11] She knows she needs to involve that Pepsi Cola sign.

[1:16:13] She needs to involve that, you know.

[1:16:14] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:15] Yeah.

[1:16:15] The fireworks are sponsored by Pepsi.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:17] Yeah, again, contractually, they have to.

[1:16:19] I mean, if this movie was made in the 80s, she would get stronger by drinking Pepsi.

[1:16:23] Like every time she needed to power up, she would crack open a can of Pepsi and just chug it down.

[1:16:27] Yeah.

[1:16:28] Popeye style.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:28] Dan's looking at my notes.

[1:16:29] He's like, dear God, I hope this is almost done.

[1:16:32] So Sims follows them to the fireworks factory.

[1:16:35] Things start exploding everywhere.

[1:16:37] A firework rocket like flies into a brick wall and blows a giant hole through it.

[1:16:42] Yeah, what the fuck?

Zhubin Parang

[1:16:43] Again, so badly edited.

[1:16:44] Nothing is making sense.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:46] So they climb up to the roof.

[1:16:48] They're able to like avoid, they're able to like navigate all the explosions using Cassie's gift of foresight.

[1:16:54] At one point, Sims has climbed up on the roof with them and a rocket goes flying right at him and he bats it out of the way where it flies over and hits a nearby helicopter blowing it up.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:06] Again, these fireworks are astoundingly powerful.

[1:17:08] Yeah.

[1:17:09] Yeah.

[1:17:10] Yeah.

[1:17:10] They're all surface-to-air missiles.

[1:17:12] Let alone the fact that you should not have a fireworks warehouse in the middle of a heavily residential area as they do in this movie.

[1:17:18] But the fact that these fireworks are in a city and they're like, these are rockets.

[1:17:21] These are incredibly powerful.

[1:17:23] You know, you should be made.

[1:17:24] These are on their way to the Ukrainian front.

[1:17:26] These are not-

[1:17:27] I should have told her that the fireworks factory is now munitions waving.

[1:17:31] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:31] Yeah.

[1:17:32] There's a, you know, there's some fighting.

[1:17:34] At one point, all three of the girls are like hanging off of things for their life.

[1:17:39] And Sims is like, Madam Webb, you can't save all three.

[1:17:42] And then she like goes into a weird trance and then like ghost versions of herself connected by like weird umbilical cords like start to save all the girls.

[1:17:51] And then that like stops almost immediately.

[1:17:53] But that was pretty cool.

[1:17:54] I'm like, whoa, wow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:55] San Diego says, once you know the future and understand the web, one of your powers is that you'll be able to be in more than one place at the same time.

[1:18:02] Which seems metaphorical.

[1:18:03] Like she's going to know what's going on.

[1:18:04] Yes.

[1:18:05] But no, it means she can actually project herself to different places.

[1:18:08] Yeah, just as long as the ghost umbilical cords connect her.

[1:18:11] This is something that, it's one of the things where it's like, this power is a little too useful.

[1:18:16] Like if there was a sequel, they're going to have to dial this back.

[1:18:19] Luckily, there will never be a sequel.

[1:18:20] So they don't have to do that.

Zhubin Parang

[1:18:21] Oh, man.

[1:18:21] No, that's too bad.

[1:18:22] It's too bad because the last 20 minutes are setting up that sequel.

[1:18:25] Yeah.

[1:18:25] Very unfortunate.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:27] Sims falls and gets smushed and dies.

[1:18:29] Dakota Johnson falls in the water and then gets hit in the eyes with a rocket.

[1:18:33] Go on.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:34] Let us not get over.

[1:18:35] Like there's an exchange where she's like, turns out it was always me that was going to kill you.

[1:18:42] Like it was not these three girls.

[1:18:45] Yeah.

[1:18:45] And I'm like, what the fuck movie?

[1:18:48] Like you could, like maybe you could pull this, do this rug pull if you offer some clever reason.

[1:18:56] But we've been set up the whole time.

[1:18:58] Like this is a prophecy.

[1:18:59] This is how he's going to die.

[1:19:01] Like do a little bit more than just like, psych.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:04] Because Dan, here's I think what they were planning was I think she's going to turn out to be wrong.

[1:19:09] And there would be a future movie where Ezekiel comes back and we do see him fight the now costumed.

[1:19:14] Could be.

[1:19:15] Could be.

[1:19:15] But the way it happens in the movie, and again, because there will be no sequel to this, it does seem like that she's like, maybe she's like, she should have said like, dreams aren't prophecies, dumbass.

[1:19:26] And then she could have killed him.

[1:19:27] Like that might have done it.

[1:19:28] But also the fact that she is so, she's like had a vision of that big S from the Pepsi sign falling on him.

[1:19:34] So she keeps angling him towards the S and it's like, well, superhero shouldn't be trying to kill somebody.

[1:19:38] Like I understand setting a trap to catch him or whatever or knock him out.

[1:19:42] But the idea that she's like.

[1:19:42] That's what spiders do.

[1:19:43] I got to do this right or he won't die and I've got to kill this guy.

Zhubin Parang

[1:19:47] It's also, she's so cartoonishly looking at the S while she's backing him up into the S that I feel like he should be able to be like.

[1:19:53] The deadliest letter.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:55] She's like, wait, wait.

[1:19:55] Oh, okay.

[1:19:56] A little bit.

[1:19:57] No, no, no.

[1:19:57] Not that far.

[1:19:58] To the left.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:00] Starts making a beeping sound.

[1:20:02] Yeah.

[1:20:02] So he does get smushed.

[1:20:04] Brought to you by Pepsi.

[1:20:05] She falls into the water.

[1:20:07] A stray rocket flies underwater and explodes in her face, blinding her.

[1:20:13] She's saved by the girls.

[1:20:15] They use the CPR that she taught them earlier.

[1:20:17] Yeah.

[1:20:18] We, man, we're in the home stretch here.

[1:20:19] They apparently break her back, don't you?

[1:20:20] Peter Parker is born.

[1:20:23] They, she is in a hospital room and the girls are led into the room and she's like, they can come in and see me.

[1:20:29] They're all mine.

[1:20:30] They're my family.

[1:20:31] And you're like, what?

[1:20:32] That's a weird turn.

[1:20:34] We get a little bit of a flash forward.

[1:20:36] This is, this is my stand up and cheer moment.

[1:20:39] Yeah.

[1:20:39] Because we see her in this like mechanized wheelchair for some reason, wearing cool ass sunglasses.

[1:20:45] These sunglasses.

[1:20:46] And she's making this little smile like the, like the world's youngest grandma.

[1:20:50] And she's, it's so funny.

[1:20:53] Oh my gosh.

[1:20:54] We're talking about an actress who is like at least 75% eye acting.

[1:20:59] And they're like, let's put on some blue blockers so we don't see those, those eyes.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:03] This really feels like, I mean, I don't know what happened.

[1:21:06] Like this feels like reshoot number 12 and she is just so tired of it all to me.

[1:21:12] And she's doing this vision, like she's doing this version of herself where like, okay, now that she's in full Madam Web powers, even though, you know, she's been blinded and she's in this chair.

[1:21:23] Like she is totally at peace and she's like so blissed out.

[1:21:27] Yeah, she knows her role.

[1:21:29] But it's like the most sort of bored blissed out you can see.

[1:21:32] And these sunglasses, I swear to God, it's like they sent someone to the store and be like, pick the ones that will look the silliest.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:41] Well, there's, there's, there's, this is a, they do this stutter step, right?

[1:21:44] Like there's two, there's two, there's like, you see her in the wheelchair before you see her again with, are those the same glass sunglasses or are those sillier sunglasses?

[1:21:53] Yeah.

[1:21:53] The second time.

[1:21:54] Like they, it is, but it does feel like they, these do feel like reshoot scenes.

[1:21:58] And my guess is that, because I kept hearing, when this movie was in production, I kept hearing, this isn't going to be a superhero-y movie.

[1:22:03] This is going to be more of a suspense thriller.

[1:22:05] This is going to be more of a, like a, almost a 90s style suspense thriller.

[1:22:09] And my guess is that they were like, they had a, maybe a cut of it even.

[1:22:12] And they were like, uh, is she not going to ever look like the fucking character from the comics?

[1:22:16] Because we need that to happen.

[1:22:18] And so they had this first ending and they're like, is that good?

[1:22:21] She has these big sunglasses and she's in a wheelchair.

[1:22:22] And they're like, uh, no, put her in like a red leather jacket.

[1:22:26] What are you doing?

[1:22:26] You know?

[1:22:27] So Stuart, what happens?

[1:22:28] They're, they're arguing about the takeout food that they're going to eat, right?

[1:22:31] The girls come in.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:31] Uh, hey, why don't you, instead of queuing me up, why don't you answer your own prompt, Elliot?

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:36] I'm trying to, they're, okay.

[1:22:38] So they're, they're, cause I'm not entirely sure.

[1:22:40] So this scene is not a prophecy here, right?

[1:22:42] Or is it?

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:43] Like, it's like.

[1:22:44] So the girls show up, they have Chinese food.

[1:22:46] They're like, we, we got you this thing.

[1:22:48] And she's like, of course, you knew that it was my favorite or some shit.

[1:22:50] It's like all, like all these dumb ass lines about like, she can see the future.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:55] Yeah.

[1:22:55] And Maddie can't stop eating.

[1:22:57] You know, she's like.

[1:22:57] The girl loves to eat.

[1:22:58] She's like, gesundheit.

[1:22:59] And he goes, huh?

[1:23:01] Achoo.

[1:23:01] Oh, thanks.

[1:23:02] Like, it's now it's very.

[1:23:03] Yeah, it's so great.

[1:23:03] It's like the sitcom version of the, of the Madam Web movie.

[1:23:06] And then she, she flashes forward again to seeing them all in costume and her in her costume.

[1:23:12] And she have like a spider on her fingers.

[1:23:14] I'm trying to remember exactly how it is.

[1:23:15] But it all.

[1:23:16] Yeah.

[1:23:16] It's like, it's like suddenly it becomes the, like, this movie was like, all right, this

[1:23:20] is, this is kind of like a realistic suspense thriller with superhero elements.

[1:23:24] And then in the last couple minutes, they're like, fuck it.

[1:23:26] Let's just go crazy.

[1:23:27] Let's get, come on.

[1:23:28] Let's just, they're all in crazy costumes.

[1:23:30] They're all there.

[1:23:31] It looks like the direct to video Madam Web movie that would have come out in 1998.

[1:23:35] Like, let's just do this.

[1:23:36] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:37] Yeah.

[1:23:37] It's, it's a very silly little ending that I think adds a fun punch to what was a very

[1:23:44] silly movie.

[1:23:45] Thumbs up from Stewart.

[1:23:46] I think that's a very silly movie.

Zhubin Parang

[1:23:47] I like it so deeply insultingly that this movie said, you, now that you've seen 98 minutes

[1:23:55] of this, you, we will, the next movie we make, we'll have all the superhero costumes and fight

[1:24:01] scenes that we kept continuously teasing and promising throughout this movie.

[1:24:04] And never once delivered.

[1:24:05] And never once delivered.

[1:24:06] And nope, not until the, I've never seen a, I've never seen a superhero spend the entire

[1:24:11] movie figuring out how to use their powers.

[1:24:14] Usually the, the scene where they're like, oh, I get it.

[1:24:17] I can use them.

[1:24:18] It's like in the, the first 30 minutes.

[1:24:20] And then it's like a whole hour and a half of fun spider web slinging and, and, and,

[1:24:24] uh, bullet blocking.

[1:24:26] This one just slowly gets longer premonitions.

[1:24:29] Yeah.

[1:24:29] At the end of the movie, does anything actually happen regarding superpowers?

[1:24:32] It was, and then to be at the end of it, okay, next movie.

[1:24:35] Yeah.

[1:24:36] It feels a little bit long.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:38] We've laid the foundation, the very necessary foundation that these characters would not

[1:24:43] have worked without.

[1:24:44] Now that we've laid it, get ready.

[1:24:45] Because Madam Web 2, the Spider Girls is going to blow your mind with all the costumes, the

[1:24:51] characters, the powers.

[1:24:53] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:53] It feels like a, like an hour, like a feature length Kickstarter, like demo reel where they're

Zhubin Parang

[1:25:00] like, hey, if you back this project, you'll actually get these costumes maybe.

[1:25:04] It would be so funny if they made the sequel at the first sequel.

[1:25:06] It was like, okay, hold on.

[1:25:07] Let's four.

[1:25:08] 1993.

[1:25:09] All right.

[1:25:09] Let's just get, let's just resituate.

[1:25:11] This is all about Cassie as a kid.

[1:25:12] Another two hour.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:12] And all the girls are babies.

[1:25:14] Okay.

[1:25:15] Okay.

[1:25:17] Well, let's.

[1:25:17] Then they do a third movie and the first couple minutes they're all posing in the costumes

[1:25:20] and they're like, you know what?

[1:25:22] It'd be a lot easier if we didn't wear these costumes.

[1:25:23] We weren't restricted by all this rubber or whatever.

[1:25:25] We're just regular clothes.

[1:25:27] Yeah.

Zhubin Parang

[1:25:27] Let's cap off.

[1:25:28] Also, I got to finish grad school.

[1:25:30] I'm the nerd girl, remember?

Dan McCoy

[1:25:31] So let's two hours of that.

[1:25:33] Cap off our Madam Web discussion.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:35] None of us really had like a traumatic experience that forced us to have a reason to stop the

[1:25:39] crime.

[1:25:39] Like, so why are we doing this?

[1:25:41] Like, why are we doing this?

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:43] Just hanging out.

[1:25:44] Yeah.

[1:25:44] Our traumatic experience was watching our friend trick a guy into getting smushed.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:50] Cap off our discussion in the traditional way, which is, of course, final judgments, whether

[1:25:55] this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or movie kind of like.

[1:25:59] I'm going to say for me, it was a good, bad movie.

[1:26:02] It harkened back to the original Marvel film, Howard the Duck, in the sense that like the

[1:26:09] things that I enjoyed about it are inextricable from the things that are janky and weird about

[1:26:14] it.

[1:26:15] Like, there's some stuff in here that like, I really actually had fun with kind of Dakota

[1:26:21] Johnson's attitude, like the weird sort of hangout vibe of some of it.

[1:26:25] And I sort of enjoyed the feeling.

[1:26:27] Like, we've talked about it before.

[1:26:28] Now that superhero movies are the only thing that gets made, at least, although less now,

[1:26:33] at least you can see something that's a little different.

[1:26:37] Like, this harkens back to like an earlier day when people are like, I don't know what

[1:26:41] a superhero movie is to you.

[1:26:43] Maybe it can be this.

[1:26:45] So there's that strangeness, but I also laughed a lot at stuff that was just not working.

[1:26:51] That was my feeling.

[1:26:54] Elliot, what about you?

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:55] I also would call this a good, bad movie.

[1:26:56] I feel like we haven't quite gotten across the good, bad tone of it, which this does feel

[1:27:02] like a throwback movie, not necessarily in the way they intended, I think, but it feels

[1:27:05] like this is a 90s superhero movie.

[1:27:08] They don't know what superheroes are popular.

[1:27:10] They don't know what people like about superheroes.

[1:27:12] They don't know what makes them fun for fans.

[1:27:14] So they take the name and they're like, I guess we'll just apply it to a different kind

[1:27:18] of movie.

[1:27:18] Like, you know, for a recent live show, we watched the 90s Spawn movie.

[1:27:23] That episode is available only in the bonus content if you become a MaxFun member at

[1:27:25] maximumfun.org slash join.

[1:27:27] But this feels like more like that.

[1:27:29] This guy's a company man here.

[1:27:29] Where are you guys with these plugs?

[1:27:31] This man knows what he's doing.

[1:27:32] This feels more like that, where it's like some, the same way that years ago, I think

[1:27:37] it was Golan Globus wanted to make a Spider-Man movie and they thought that it was

[1:27:40] like Wolfman.

[1:27:41] So they kept wanting to make a movie about a kid who gets bitten by a spider.

[1:27:44] And is turning into a giant spider.

[1:27:46] And that never got made.

[1:27:47] But it feels like this sits in that universe much better than it does in the current Marvel

[1:27:50] universe.

[1:27:51] So yeah, I think it's a good bad movie.

[1:27:53] Go out and check it out.

[1:27:53] You'll have a great time.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:54] Jubin, I think you're raging the most.

[1:27:57] Let's go to you.

[1:27:58] I hate it.

[1:27:58] This is a bad movie.

Zhubin Parang

[1:27:59] I really want to get across how bad the dialogue was throughout this movie that made every scene

[1:28:06] so much more worse than fun.

[1:28:07] They had this, they had that very awful, worst type of Marvel.

[1:28:15] The worst thing to me about Marvel movies is this kind of quippy, snappy dialogue that characters

[1:28:21] always click into.

[1:28:22] Yeah.

[1:28:22] And they did that so bizarrely and jankily in scenes where like the girls were in the woods

[1:28:28] where they have just seen a very traumatic event and avoided being killed.

[1:28:31] They immediately snap into this kind of insulting like line.

[1:28:36] Let me guess.

[1:28:37] Your dad is a hedge fund owner and your mom runs a Met Gala.

[1:28:42] Well, let me tell you something.

[1:28:44] You are a dorky girl.

[1:28:46] And they're like, don't say that.

[1:28:46] Don't try to high five me.

[1:28:47] That's not cool.

[1:28:48] All this kind of.

[1:28:50] And then they'll switch into this.

[1:28:51] That sounds like teens to me.

[1:28:51] I don't know.

[1:28:51] Yeah, it sounds good.

[1:28:52] Oh, God.

[1:28:52] And then they'll switch into this like, all of a sudden they'll be like, you know, my mom

[1:28:56] is undocumented.

[1:28:58] That's why I'm here.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:59] Within an hour of meeting each other, they're like, we're sisters.

[1:29:02] We're in this together.

[1:29:03] All of us.

[1:29:04] At the end when they're like, Cassie, Cassie, oh no.

[1:29:07] It's like, well, you've known this woman for less than a day.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:10] You're saying it speaks to a certain emotional instability that it should be more troubling

[1:29:13] than endearing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:14] Or just an emotion.

[1:29:15] It speaks to an unrealistic emotional wavelength.

[1:29:19] Yeah, yeah.

Zhubin Parang

[1:29:20] Yes.

[1:29:20] And because they, the thing that Marvel cannot write characters that are funny because they

[1:29:27] do things in character.

[1:29:29] So they have to write characters that are always like half a foot out and try to make

[1:29:33] jokes.

[1:29:34] And I think the worst example of that was in that scene where that native wise man said

[1:29:38] that thing about the, you have to, you can't see clearly until you look back in the past.

[1:29:43] And Dakota Johnson said something like, that sounds like the worst therapy session I've ever

[1:29:47] been to.

[1:29:48] And that to me is like, Marvel, if you can just, if the characters can just be in this

[1:29:52] world and not constantly having to comment on this world, it would be a lot easier to have fun with it.

[1:29:58] Then if I have to sit there as Marvel like winks at me being like, hey, I know this is kind

[1:30:02] of weird.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:02] Of course, this is a different strain of Marvel.

[1:30:04] This is not the Marvel proper.

[1:30:07] Yeah.

[1:30:07] This is, this is like produced in conjunction with Marvel basically just because they co-own

[1:30:12] the property with Sony right now.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:15] But this to me feels like a lot of Marvel movies have this level of, everyone tries to be Tony

[1:30:19] Stark.

[1:30:20] I will say when, when Marvel movies do that well, I think it works very well.

[1:30:24] And that's the kind of thing that since the 1960s has differentiated Marvel as a world from

[1:30:29] say DC is that the characters always were like a slightly winkier, you know, it was, it was

[1:30:34] a little bit more like, can you believe this?

[1:30:36] But I agree that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:37] Yeah, yeah.

[1:30:37] Not super serious, like booster gold.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:40] Well, booster gold is many years later when DC had ingested some of that, but compared to

[1:30:44] the DC stories of the 1960s that were, which took themselves very seriously, the Marvel ones

[1:30:49] always had that Stanley like, well, folks, can you believe the web swing has gotten himself

[1:30:53] into trouble again this time?

[1:30:54] Oh boy, get ready.

[1:30:55] Actions are coming.

[1:30:56] You know, the, but, but.

Zhubin Parang

[1:30:58] I don't mind that in the situation though, but for the characters to be so meta and self

[1:31:03] aware.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:03] Well, I think a little bit of it goes a long way and they, and now there's too much of

[1:31:06] it even in the Marvel proper movies.

[1:31:08] But I was gonna say with Dan too, this, as Dan was saying, this is the Sony kind of

[1:31:11] like faux Marvel universe.

[1:31:13] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:14] This is the knockoffs that you get at the outlet.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:16] They still have the Spider-Man without Spider-Man version of the Marvel universe.

Zhubin Parang

[1:31:19] They nailed that annoying banter perfectly then.

[1:31:21] They, they really got that element of it.

[1:31:22] I will say the only part of the movie I liked was the, the credits, which had the Cranberries

[1:31:27] dream playing over it, which to me is like always the end credit song for a nineties action

[1:31:32] movie.

[1:31:32] It's kind of movie that, it's kind of song that plays when like Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames

[1:31:36] are like, we got through the bank, we did it, we did it.

[1:31:40] And I, I seen that play, I was like, oh yeah, this does feel like a late, late nineties,

[1:31:43] early two thousands movie.

[1:31:44] That was it.

[1:31:44] Bad, bad until the end credits.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:46] Let's close it out with some, I suspect positivity from Stuart.

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:49] Oh boy, man.

[1:31:50] I love this shit.

[1:31:51] You know, I watched two Venom movies and a Morbius movie and I suffered through them just

[1:31:56] so I could get Madame Web.

[1:31:57] Like it's so, uh, like it's not a, the kind of movie I would recommend to say a non-broken

[1:32:05] movie viewer.

[1:32:06] Yes.

[1:32:06] Um, but it is, I, there's so much joy in the like strangeness of it and how much of it

[1:32:12] doesn't work, but I don't know.

[1:32:13] I, I'm a big fan.

[1:32:15] I, uh, I think Madame Web is a solid good, bad movie.

[1:32:18] Oh wow.

[1:32:19] Check it out.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:20] This is, this is getting you excited for Craven, the next in the Spider-Man without Spider-Man

[1:32:24] universe.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:25] I mean, it's tough.

[1:32:25] I am not, uh, I mean, uh, who's, who's that, who's the hunk in that one?

[1:32:32] Who's the, who's the hard body?

[1:32:34] I don't know.

[1:32:34] Is it Logan Marshall Green?

[1:32:36] Is that, it's a three-namer.

[1:32:38] Oh, is it, is it him?

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:40] I don't know.

[1:32:41] No, it's Aaron Taylor Johnson.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:42] Another one.

[1:32:43] Yeah.

[1:32:43] Aaron Taylor Johnson.

[1:32:45] Yeah.

[1:32:45] But yeah, uh, hot heart and body.

[1:32:47] Uh, I'm not, I don't know.

[1:32:48] Like I don't, I don't, I'm not as intrigued by his range or lack thereof as I am.

[1:32:54] Like I'm not as excited about seeing him in a superhero movie as I was when I heard Dakota

[1:32:59] Johnson was going to have to appear concerned.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:02] But does it, but does it help you to know that Russell Crowe will be appearing as Nikolai

[1:33:06] Cravenoff, Craven's estranged father?

[1:33:08] Okay.

[1:33:09] I'm excited about that.

[1:33:09] Which means he has to do an accent.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:11] He has to do an accent.

[1:33:12] You see the trailer?

[1:33:12] He does have a, he does have an accent.

[1:33:14] Fuck yeah.

[1:33:15] Okay.

[1:33:15] I changed my mind.

[1:33:16] I'm excited for it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:22] Oh boy.

[1:33:22] We're having so much fun on the show today, aren't we, beloved listener?

[1:33:25] Yes.

[1:33:25] Well, the fun is only going to get more fun because I'm going to tell you more about all

[1:33:28] the great stuff you get when you go to maximumfun.org slash join.

[1:33:32] Oh, the maximum amount of fun.

[1:33:33] The maximum amount of fun.

[1:33:35] Extra strength fun.

[1:33:36] This is the maximum.

[1:33:37] If you have more fun than this, you will die.

[1:33:39] So don't worry.

[1:33:39] We figured it out.

[1:33:40] Don't have more fun than this.

[1:33:42] The maximum fun.

[1:33:42] Now don't think that when you support the Flophouse and maximum fun that all you get is the

[1:33:47] same podcast you're already listening to.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:49] Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[1:33:50] No, my sweet friends.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:51] No, no, no, no, no, no.

[1:33:52] We have made special things for members.

[1:33:54] Wondrous things.

[1:33:56] Precious things.

[1:33:57] It's called, it's called bonus content.

[1:34:00] And there's many hours of exclusive bonus content that only members can access.

[1:34:05] This year, we are adding a ton of bonus content.

[1:34:08] We've got the exclusive audio from our Los Angeles Spawn live show.

[1:34:11] Spawn, I say, sounding the most.

[1:34:13] Spawn.

[1:34:13] I come from New Jersey than I've ever sounded before.

[1:34:15] And we're doing a trilogy of episodes highlighting the work of Schlockmaster director Graydon Clark.

[1:34:20] We're doing, yes, joysticks featuring the greatest character in film, King Vidion.

[1:34:24] Lombada, the Forbidden Dance.

[1:34:25] And then what's the other one we're doing, Dan?

[1:34:26] Star Games?

Dan McCoy

[1:34:27] Star Games is what I was looking at.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:29] Okay.

[1:34:30] And I had forgotten it.

[1:34:31] I wasn't quite sure.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:32] It's got a clown on the cover in a little, like, phantom zone triangle.

[1:34:37] I'm intrigued.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:38] I'm there.

[1:34:39] These are whole Flophouse episodes you will only hear if you go to MaximumFun.org slash join and become a MaxFun member.

[1:34:46] And when you pledge your support by joining at MaximumFun.org slash join for as little as $5 a month, you don't just get access to the many hours of Flophouse bonus content, our role-playing games, our movie-length audio commentaries, and so forth.

[1:34:58] You also get access to all of the MaxFun bonus content from all of the shows.

[1:35:02] It's a lot of great stuff.

[1:35:03] It's like a whole hidden secret network of podcasts that you only get access to when you join the non-secret podcast network.

[1:35:11] You are going into the house of the Autark, and you're finding the hidden secret house inside of that house where the Autark actually lives.

[1:35:18] Yeah.

[1:35:18] But even that's not all of the great stuff you can get by joining or upgrading your pledge.

[1:35:22] $10 a month level means the $10 a month pins are back.

[1:35:26] Yes, all members at the $10 a month level can get this year's Flophouse pin is a beautiful rendition of acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog saying his famous catchphrase, I'm a bad widow boy.

[1:35:36] I love the way it came out.

[1:35:38] Werner looks like such a little stinker.

[1:35:39] It's beautiful.

[1:35:40] You're going to want this pin.

[1:35:41] You can get it for joining at $10 a month.

[1:35:43] And for each membership level, you'll see on the website, there's a new thing that you get at $20 a month.

[1:35:47] You get either a hat or a bandana, and the bandana somehow doubles as a chessboard.

[1:35:51] At $35 a month, you get the largest tote bag in human history.

[1:35:54] You could fit a dog inside of it.

[1:35:56] It's a huge tote bag.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:57] Or you could fit part of Jesse's thrift store purchases.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:02] My wife has a giant burlap bag of rice that someone turned into a tote bag.

[1:36:10] This is bigger than that bag.

[1:36:12] This is bigger.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:12] Yeah.

[1:36:12] It's enormous.

[1:36:13] Anyway, it goes all the way up to $200 a month where you can receive the fabled MaxFun treasure box.

[1:36:17] But that's the high levels.

[1:36:19] You don't have to worry about that if that's more than you can afford.

[1:36:21] But in addition, we've got a stretch goal, guys.

[1:36:24] A stretch goal means that if we reach a certain number of new or upgrading members—

[1:36:28] Thank you, Dan.

[1:36:29] Dan put some stretching in for the visual component of the podcast.

[1:36:32] Yeah.

[1:36:34] If we reach 2,000 new or upgrading members for this drive, we're going to bring back our famous raffles.

[1:36:41] That's right.

[1:36:42] We will pick from the names of members people to send out original Dan McCoy drawings.

[1:36:47] Are these going to be commissions, Dan?

[1:36:48] Are you going to ask them what they want and then give them what they want?

Dan McCoy

[1:36:51] Yeah, I will give them what they want within reason.

[1:36:53] Steer them toward Pregnant Sonic.

[1:36:55] I reserve a certain right of refusal, but pretty much, yeah, whatever.

[1:37:01] You heard him, folks.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:02] Pregnant Sonic.

[1:37:03] Ask him for it.

[1:37:04] So you can get from me, comic books from me, signed by me, some of my original books signed for you and sent to you.

[1:37:11] And Stuart, I think, has a package of Hinterlands and Minis merchandise.

[1:37:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:37:15] From his local book and bars.

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:16] I'll send along T-shirts from one of my two bars, Minis or Hinterlands.

[1:37:20] You just say which and tell me the size.

[1:37:22] And it flies through the mail into your mail slot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:27] That's how the mail works.

[1:37:29] Yep.

[1:37:29] I mean, there's some extra steps in there, I think.

[1:37:32] But Stuart's not going to be delivering them by drone.

[1:37:35] So please, keep in mind that you get additional great stuff, including no less than four new exclusive Flophouse episodes, by going to MaximumFun.org slash join and becoming a member for as little as $5 a month.

[1:37:49] Owning our own show.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:51] Knowing that we have an audience out there that enjoys our work, cares about it enough to contribute directly to keeping it alive is a truly wonderful, magical feeling.

[1:37:59] And now, as the industries that used to provide jobs and livelihoods for creative people seem to be going out of their way to smash themselves to pieces against the rocks of capitalism.

[1:38:08] It's even more important that shows like this have your support and the support of other listeners like you.

[1:38:14] Your support means we don't need to sell our souls to some enormous corporation.

[1:38:17] We don't have to twist ourselves into knots trying to guess what an algorithm thinks is funny.

[1:38:22] Your support means the Flophouse can stay the Flophouse with all of the idiocy that that entails.

[1:38:28] I know that I take a lot of pleasure and a lot of pride in being a MaxFun member myself.

[1:38:32] And in the other ways, I can directly support artists whose work is meaningful to me.

[1:38:35] It makes me proud that by supporting MaxFun as a member, I keep the show from being tucked behind a paywall or filled with tons and tons of advertisements.

[1:38:44] Just a little bit, a little bit of advertisements.

[1:38:45] It means it can be available for those who can't afford to pay that monthly fee.

[1:38:49] So please share that pride with me.

[1:38:50] Help keep our show alive by going to MaximumFun.org slash join and pledging your support for as little as $5 a month.

[1:38:57] That's one less king-sized Kit Kat at the movie theater per month.

[1:39:01] You can do without that for the show you love.

[1:39:04] Come on.

[1:39:04] MaximumFun.org slash join.

[1:39:07] I'll be back with more MaxFunDrive stuff later in the episode.

[1:39:10] But now, let's get back to the regular flop stuff.

[1:39:14] Dan, take it away.

Dan McCoy

[1:39:16] Let us move on to letters from listeners like you, the listeners.

[1:39:21] Hey, this one's from, who is it from?

[1:39:24] Nathan.

[1:39:25] Nathan, last name withheld.

[1:39:27] And Nathan writes,

[1:39:28] You mentioned Winnie the Pooh, and it reminded me that I've been wanting to share an experience I had with my kids several years ago.

[1:39:33] It started with me innocently deciding they could watch the Tigger movie.

[1:39:37] They like Winnie the Pooh, and though I didn't remember the plot details, I figured it would be 90 minutes of cheap entertainment.

[1:39:43] Smash cut to me giving a deadpan look to the invisible camera.

[1:39:46] As we finished the movie and two of my children are weeping because Tigger never found his family.

[1:39:51] I then tried to explain the trope of the, quote, inherently unique character looks for his family and finds that his friends are his real family.

[1:40:01] As my daughter angrily wailed to my wife in the other room, his friends was his family the whole time.

[1:40:08] It hit me that this was a flop-worthy story.

[1:40:11] Although the message that friends can be family is a great one, in that moment, I wish that for once, Tigger, Gonzo, or King Kong could just actually find their goddamn family.

[1:40:22] You've all answered many questions about movie tropes in the past.

[1:40:25] I guess the slight twist on this one, are there good movie tropes that you would be okay with never seeing again?

[1:40:32] Keep up the wall-to-wall flopping.

[1:40:35] Nathan, currently 68 miles east of Topeka, Kansas.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:39] Oh, and he didn't even give us his thoughts on it.

[1:40:41] All right, okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:40:42] I think the trailers for the new Godzilla X Kong movie, it looks like there's a bunch of Kongs in it.

[1:40:50] I think he's got his family.

[1:40:51] So he's got his family.

[1:40:51] There's a little kid Kong.

[1:40:52] And like a big evil one.

[1:40:55] I mean, we all know his real family, his real brother.

[1:40:58] That's Godzilla, baby.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:59] Yeah, that's why they're running from an explosion or something in the Riggs and Murtaugh style.

[1:41:03] Guys, I love it.

[1:41:04] I saw that trailer and I was like, I hope I can watch this in the right spirit of this is goofy nonsense.

Stuart Wellington

[1:41:10] You see Godzilla trucking and you're like, man, look at those thighs.

[1:41:14] Ooh, mama.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:15] The idea of Godzilla running or moving fast is such a change for the character.

[1:41:21] Hmm.

[1:41:22] But to answer the question, do you have one, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[1:41:24] Well, I don't have a great one.

[1:41:26] I was thinking of like, there's a trope that I enjoyed very much the first time I saw it in Raiders of the Lost Ark where like the character is held at gunpoint.

[1:41:39] You hear a gunshot, you think the character has been shot and it turns out it's someone else shooting the person who is threatening our hero.

[1:41:48] In that case, Karen Allen, of course, shooting the Nazi who or maybe the Sherpa just that the Nazis hired who want to.

[1:41:55] He can be both.

[1:41:56] He can be a Nazi Sherpa.

[1:41:57] And, you know, like, and that is, you know, it's Spielberg.

[1:42:01] It was the first time I saw that trope.

[1:42:02] It may predate him, but like that was like the best staged version of it that I've seen.

[1:42:09] And so it's not like I dislike it, but now it's just been done so much.

[1:42:13] I'm like, yeah, it's not.

[1:42:14] They didn't shoot the guy that's our hero.

[1:42:16] I get it.

[1:42:17] You know, like I'm not surprised that someone else is going to pop out of nowhere having shot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:22] I have a similar thing where, so I think the first time I saw this was in The Dark Knight when Joker gets captured, but he wanted to get captured.

[1:42:28] It's part of his plan.

[1:42:29] And then I saw, I think, seven movies or something in a row after that where the bad guy gets captured on purpose as part of his plan.

[1:42:35] And I was like, this no longer counts as like a twist when I expect it to come.

Stuart Wellington

[1:42:40] Like in Oppenheimer when Oppenheimer got captured and it was all part of his plan.

[1:42:45] Just so he could talk shit to Robert Downey Jr.

[1:42:48] Okay, whatever movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:49] But it feels like that to me.

[1:42:51] That's another one where I was like, the first time I saw it, I was like, oh, that's a good twist.

[1:42:54] And then it showed up in, which James Bond movie was it with Javier Bardem?

[1:43:01] But like.

[1:43:01] Skyfall?

[1:43:02] Skyfall.

[1:43:03] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:03] It was in the Star Trek Beyond.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:07] Beyond Benedict.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:08] It was not Star Trek, Into Darkness.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:10] Into Darkness.

[1:43:11] Yeah, it just shows into so many different movies.

[1:43:13] And I was like, all right.

[1:43:14] Okay, so this is the new thing du jour that all the movies do.

[1:43:17] And I quickly got very tired of it.

[1:43:19] So that's the one for me.

[1:43:20] I would be okay never seeing it again.

[1:43:21] But it is a fun idea the first time as a twist in a movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:43:25] Yeah, I mean, a trope where you have twins and they get involved in some kind of like erotic series of manipulations.

[1:43:34] Actually, no.

[1:43:35] I want to see a lot more of those.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:38] That's a trope I feel like you could do more of.

[1:43:40] Yeah, yeah.

[1:43:40] You could do more of, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:43:42] How about when like the quiet wimp turns out to be super tough?

[1:43:47] Or when the granny starts rapping.

[1:43:50] I love that.

[1:43:51] Ugh, that.

[1:43:51] You're right.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:52] That's one I hate too.

[1:43:53] The one where it's like.

[1:43:54] It's been gone for a while though.

[1:43:55] That person can do that, which goes at least as far back as the Errol Flynn Robin Hood when like Friar Tuck turns out to be really good fighting.

[1:44:02] Like it's, yeah, that I'm not a huge fan.

[1:44:04] Or like in the Bratz movie when the nerdy guy turns out to know martial arts.

[1:44:08] You know, like you don't need that stuff.

[1:44:10] It's enough of that.

[1:44:11] Yeah.

Zhubin Parang

[1:44:13] Boy, I couldn't.

[1:44:15] Actually, when I was thinking about this, I was trying to think like, what are tropes that I can like think of that I like?

[1:44:21] And maybe think like, actually, it would be nice if there was a rule that said that if you were to engage, if you were to write a trope in a movie, you had to very explicitly name the trope.

[1:44:32] So if there was like a Legend of Bagger Vance kind of situation, the white character would have to say like, oh, thank God, the magical Negro is here to help me out.

[1:44:40] But that would be a lot more helpful to be like, I know what I'm about to see now.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:43] It's like in every movie that's like Groundhog Day where they don't say, oh, it's like Groundhog Day.

[1:44:48] What's happening?

Zhubin Parang

[1:44:49] Yes, yeah.

[1:44:50] This is, yeah.

[1:44:50] You can see.

[1:44:51] Well, there'll be a twist later maybe, but mostly it's just going to be this.

[1:44:53] It's Groundhog Day.

[1:44:53] That would be nice.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:54] The one that came to mind just now is also this, and I don't know if this is a trope I like actually.

[1:45:01] This might be just something I'm tired of seeing where the character, heroes in the movie will be mowing down the cannon fodder of the villain, just destroying them.

[1:45:08] And then when it's time to kill the villain, they're like, no, because we're heroes.

[1:45:12] We don't do that.

[1:45:13] Like that, most recently I saw that in Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and I was like, oh, so you'll just kill everyone who works for the high evolutionary?

[1:45:19] But the high evolutionary, the bad guy who's causing all the trouble, you're a hero, so you can't touch him.

[1:45:24] Or in Rise of Skywalker where he's like, the emperor's like, Ray, if you kill me now, you'll become a bad guy.

[1:45:30] And she's like, oh, I guess I can't.

[1:45:31] I guess I'll just kill the thousands of child slaves that were forced to be in your army.

[1:45:36] Like, terrible.

Zhubin Parang

[1:45:38] Take out the bad guy.

[1:45:39] There's also that call to morality that the villain makes when they're like, but what kind of a hero are you after you've killed so many people in your quest?

[1:45:51] I'm always like, yeah, well, you sent those people.

[1:45:53] I didn't kill them, like, on my own.

[1:45:56] There was an army that I had to, like, shoot.

[1:45:57] Just hanging out.

[1:45:58] I'm like, you know what I feel like.

[1:46:00] Yeah, you sent them in my way.

[1:46:01] I'm not the bad guy here.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:03] Yeah, I guess I'd like to see a villain say, we're very different, you and I.

[1:46:06] We don't have a lot in common.

[1:46:08] We think different things and we act in different ways.

[1:46:10] In many ways, it makes sense that we'd be on opposing sides of this issue.

Stuart Wellington

[1:46:14] Though we both believe that we are right, in the end, you're probably more righteous.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:18] I'm the bad guy.

[1:46:19] It's certainly easier to make an argument for your side of the issue.

[1:46:25] You know what?

[1:46:26] You convinced me.

[1:46:27] I'm not going to be a bad guy anymore.

[1:46:28] And the hero's like, this worked out great.

[1:46:30] This is fantastic.

Zhubin Parang

[1:46:31] Oh, boy.

[1:46:31] I wish we had done this before I put you into the slowly descending into lava trap that

[1:46:36] I can't remember.

[1:46:37] Yeah.

[1:46:38] Classy hero move.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:42] This next is from John, last name withheld.

[1:46:44] John with no H.

[1:46:45] Maybe it's John Stewart.

[1:46:47] Who knows?

[1:46:47] Could be.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:48] Would be unlike him, but it's possible.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:50] Howdy, floppers.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:51] Yeah, that sounds like John.

[1:46:52] That does sound like John Stewart.

[1:46:53] Yeah, it's exactly what you always say.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:56] It's in his voice.

[1:46:58] Over the last few years, we've been hearing about Marvel fatigue.

[1:47:01] Tell me about it.

[1:47:02] In the last black luster response to several big budget blockbusters.

[1:47:05] And it has me thinking.

[1:47:06] BBB.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:06] Big budget blockbusters.

Dan McCoy

[1:47:09] In the 60s, there was a fatigue over big event movies, which led to a boom of smaller budget

[1:47:14] or independent movies like The Graduate and Easy Rider.

[1:47:16] This was coupled with more eyes on foreign fare like The Battle of Algiers, The Bicycle Thief,

[1:47:22] and Blow Up.

[1:47:23] In the 90s, this happened again with movies like Reservoir Dogs, Clerks, and Slacker, along

[1:47:27] with a boom for foreign movies like Chungking Express and John Woo films.

[1:47:31] My question is, do you think we're in line for another boom period in foreign or independent

[1:47:35] cinema with films like Everything Everywhere All at Once, X, Shiva Baby, and more gaining a lot

[1:47:42] of traction as independent films along with foreign films like Drive My Car, The Worst Person

[1:47:47] in the World, and Titane.

[1:47:49] I don't know that Titane was the monster hit that...

[1:47:51] No.

[1:47:52] I mean, there's a monster in it.

[1:47:53] It's a monster.

[1:47:53] There's a metal baby.

[1:47:55] I think there's a chance we could see another interesting time in films soon.

Stuart Wellington

[1:47:59] I also love mentioning Drive My Car and Titane in the same sentence.

[1:48:04] Very similar movies.

Elliott Kalan

[1:48:05] Very similar feelings they evoke.

[1:48:07] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:48:07] So what do you think?

[1:48:08] Is this possible or am I living in the film lover's bubble?

[1:48:11] Keep on flopping in the free world.

[1:48:13] I mean, anything's possible.

Elliott Kalan

[1:48:14] Everything's possible.

[1:48:15] I mean, so here's my thinking on this.

[1:48:17] I mean, there is a blow up in foreign stuff, but it's mostly in television.

[1:48:20] Foreign television has made inroads, thanks mainly to Netflix, into American homes in a

[1:48:26] way that it never has before.

[1:48:28] Non-English language television is now so much more prevalent and mainstream than it ever

[1:48:33] was in the American mainstream culture.

[1:48:35] That being said, it feels like the time should be right for a blow up in independent and small

[1:48:43] budget movies because the resources to make them are right there, especially with AI, which

[1:48:48] I do not like because it takes jobs away from people.

[1:48:50] But if you are a small budget independent filmmaker, I'm sure it's a godsend in many ways because

[1:48:54] you can do things you never could have done before.

[1:48:56] In theory, distribution through the internet or streaming sites should make it easier for

[1:49:00] these kinds of movies to reach people the way they did in the 90s through video or in

[1:49:05] kind of independent theaters and things like that in the 60s and 70s.

[1:49:10] But at the same time, I don't know.

[1:49:12] It feels like it is harder and harder to get people to watch that stuff in some ways.

[1:49:16] And I think as long as those main platforms are algorithmically driven and not driven by

[1:49:22] human curation, it's going to be harder for people to find or be directed to different

[1:49:27] type of stuff, indie stuff or original stuff.

[1:49:30] Maybe some foreign stuff, the foreign stuff that feels like things that are already being

[1:49:33] like as much as I enjoyed so much of RRR, I think that was partly a hit because it's

[1:49:38] the kind of movie that people are already watching.

[1:49:41] It's essentially a superhero movie, just kind of like a bigger and kind of slightly different

[1:49:45] superhero movie.

[1:49:46] And I think it's going to be harder for people to find those things because our outlets are

[1:49:51] so much harder to – the ways that we people find movies now are so controlled by programs

[1:49:58] designed to give them the same thing over and over again as opposed to the old days when

[1:50:01] you would look like in a newspaper listing and you might see other stuff or you'd watch

[1:50:06] a TV show like Siskel and Ebert and they'd introduce you to stuff.

[1:50:09] There's less of that now.

[1:50:10] It's less prevalent, which makes it difficult.

[1:50:12] So that's my theory on it.

[1:50:13] I hope I'm wrong.

Stuart Wellington

[1:50:14] I mean, I feel like you're – I feel like there's definitely like an explosion of like

[1:50:20] lower budget stuff.

[1:50:21] I think what we're not going to get is mid-budget stuff.

[1:50:25] I feel like mid-budget stuff has gone away forever.

[1:50:27] That's a great way to –

[1:50:28] And especially like – and like anything of any kind of a budget that's geared toward

[1:50:32] like drama, like I feel like so much of that type of stuff is being pushed toward television.

[1:50:38] Yeah.

[1:50:39] Like things that they could be like, can we just turn this into like an HBO like 10 episode

[1:50:44] series instead of a movie or whatever?

[1:50:48] It just makes so much more sense on the business side of things.

[1:50:51] But I don't know.

[1:50:52] I'm the least involved in the business out of the four of us.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:56] Yeah.

[1:50:56] I mean, I think that –

[1:50:57] I think in some ways Dan is the least involved in the business of the four of us.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:03] Bursts into tears.

[1:51:05] No, I think – I mean, I see what this letter writer is getting at.

[1:51:09] And I do think that lately like the stuff that has been bubbling to the surface a bit has

[1:51:15] been different stuff than we've seen for, you know, like at least the last eight years,

[1:51:23] say, before.

[1:51:24] Like it really was a period where only one type of blockbuster was dominant.

[1:51:31] And, you know, like now there's, you know, stuff that's, you know, big IP like – still

[1:51:39] big IP like Barbie or, of course, Oppenheimer, the biggest IP that there is.

[1:51:44] But I do think that what I've seen kind of getting attention now, like there is a turn away

[1:51:51] towards smaller, different films maybe.

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:55] Maybe.

[1:51:56] I don't know.

[1:51:56] I'd be curious if that's happening in the world you're plugged into or the world at

[1:52:01] large.

[1:52:01] Because I think that the issue is not that people aren't making those movies necessarily.

[1:52:05] And the issue is not that people don't want to see those movies.

[1:52:07] The issue is the corporate layer in between that needs to be convinced that there's a profitable

[1:52:14] reason to show those movies.

Dan McCoy

[1:52:15] I mean, like a lot of these movies do show up now on streaming.

[1:52:20] It's just that the problem is streaming is kind of a black hole that like you toss content

[1:52:27] into and unless something catches fire for a very specific reason, it may as well not

[1:52:34] exist.

[1:52:34] Yeah.

[1:52:35] Compared to like even in the old days, like if you put a small movie in an independent

[1:52:41] theater, you know, like it could get big reviews and become a hit that way.

[1:52:47] And that doesn't happen.

Stuart Wellington

[1:52:49] Yeah.

[1:52:49] Dan's still upset about the fate of Ricky Stenicki, you know, just disappearing into

[1:52:53] the Amazon hole.

[1:52:54] Just didn't get a chance.

Dan McCoy

[1:52:55] Just didn't get the chance to catch it on.

[1:52:59] Jubin, I know you love Ricky Stenicki.

[1:53:02] No, I didn't.

[1:53:02] The name was funny to me, so I left.

Stuart Wellington

[1:53:06] You're like, tell me more.

[1:53:07] I feel like that's the purpose of the name is for it to be funny and that's the title

[1:53:11] of the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:12] No, no.

[1:53:13] It's a very serious movie.

[1:53:14] Very serious.

[1:53:15] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:53:15] Hey, let's make some recommendations of movies that we've seen, we've enjoyed.

[1:53:21] Be positive about a thing.

[1:53:24] Well, I was super positive about Madam Web.

Stuart Wellington

[1:53:26] I think it rules.

[1:53:27] But I'm also going to recommend another movie that I saw.

[1:53:29] Do it.

[1:53:30] That's probably going to scratch a similar Madam Web style itch, or maybe not.

[1:53:33] I'm going to recommend a movie called Love Lies Bleeding.

[1:53:38] That's right.

[1:53:39] It is a little neo-noir set in the 80s and in the world of bodybuilding.

[1:53:47] You got Kristen Stewart.

[1:53:48] You got Ed Harris sporting the best haircut and the leatheriest face.

[1:53:53] You got Katie O'Brien sporting the hardest body I've ever seen.

[1:53:57] She looks incredible.

[1:53:58] It's like gross and super hot and like funny and weird.

[1:54:03] The movie.

[1:54:04] Her body's incredible.

[1:54:05] The way you said it made it sound like you were commenting on.

[1:54:07] It did sound like her body was gross.

[1:54:08] I mean, all bodies are gross.

[1:54:11] Yeah.

[1:54:11] But what a picture.

[1:54:13] It's like weird and funny and it's great to see this director who made Saint Maud kind of get to stretch her arms a little bit and like have a little bit more budget and still bring that kind of like dreamy sensibility to like a larger palette or a larger canvas.

[1:54:37] And the performances are a ton of fun.

[1:54:39] Yeah.

[1:54:40] Thumbs up.

[1:54:40] Love this thing.

[1:54:41] It was great.

[1:54:42] I was itching to go to the gym right after.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:45] I'm going to quickly recommend, for old time's sake, a movie I saw on the plane recently.

Stuart Wellington

[1:54:56] That was the plane you took to Detroit so you could masturbate yourself into a stupor at the Love Lies Bleeding screening?

[1:55:03] Did you guys see that like viral news story?

[1:55:05] Some guy like got drunk and jacked off and passed out at the theater.

[1:55:09] Yeah.

[1:55:10] That wasn't you is what you're saying.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:11] Not to my knowledge.

[1:55:14] I mean, if it was you, you wouldn't remember.

Elliott Kalan

[1:55:17] That's the thing.

[1:55:17] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:18] No.

[1:55:19] I watched Desperately Seeking Susan, a movie that I realized watching it on the plane like I had seen all of, but maybe just like in bits and pieces over the years.

[1:55:28] But I'm like, oh, I'd never seen it.

[1:55:29] But it was good to see it all in the correct order all at once.

[1:55:33] I enjoyed it.

[1:55:34] The Memento version of Desperately Seeking Susan.

[1:55:36] Yeah.

[1:55:36] It has a lot of the same sort of squares encounter downtown bohemian flavor as two of my personal favorites, After Hours and Something Wild.

[1:55:48] I feel like it doesn't have quite the screwball snap at the end that I wanted out of it, but it has like the vibe that I enjoy.

[1:55:56] But I also want to recommend now having recommended a movie so that Stuart doesn't make fun of me.

[1:56:02] I want to recommend the television program Deadlock, which Audrey and I recently watched all of.

[1:56:09] Yeah, it's great.

[1:56:09] An Australian show.

[1:56:11] It's on Amazon Prime right now.

[1:56:14] I feel like I've seen a little bit of buzz around it, but not as much as I think it deserves considering that I think it is both a genuinely funny comedy where like the comedy comes out of super well observed characters being well played.

[1:56:30] And also a genuine engaging mystery thriller where like it keeps you guessing up and something and you're actually excited to see the denouement, which is a hard thing to mix those two things together.

[1:56:46] And it's also a bunch of queer creators and that's a big part of the story as well.

[1:56:56] If that's something you're looking for in your media, I'd say check out.

[1:57:00] And it's set in Tasmania.

[1:57:03] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:57:04] Oh, so you know that a certain devil's going to show up, our old buddy Taz.

Dan McCoy

[1:57:10] Elliot, why don't we give the last recommendation to Jubin and why don't you go?

Elliott Kalan

[1:57:15] Okay, sure.

[1:57:16] I'm going to recommend a movie from 1983.

[1:57:21] Well, hold on one moment there, Elliot.

[1:57:25] I think it's – oh, I'm sorry.

[1:57:28] I didn't see you come here.

[1:57:29] NBC Newsman Tom Rokos here.

[1:57:31] I apologize, everybody.

[1:57:32] Oh, weird.

[1:57:32] Okay.

[1:57:34] Elliot, I was passing by the neighborhood as I often do while you're recording just in case I have an invitation to show up as I do now.

[1:57:43] I don't remember inviting you like even a vampire needs an invitation.

[1:57:47] Well, I'm worse than a vampire in many ways.

[1:57:50] I'm a newsman.

[1:57:51] And I couldn't help but hear that you mentioned a movie from 1983 even though this past weekend you saw a certain film called Dune Part 2.

[1:58:02] I had assumed when I saw you in the theater after hacking into the security cameras much like Ezekiel Sims in the film Madam Web that you would be recommending it on this episode.

[1:58:14] And yet I find that you're not recommending it.

[1:58:18] Is it – do you not like the film?

Zhubin Parang

[1:58:20] Because I found it transporting.

Elliott Kalan

[1:58:22] No, I did like it very much, but it's just – it's gotten – it's gotten enough attention.

[1:58:26] It's a huge movie.

[1:58:27] So I thought I'd recommend a smaller thing.

[1:58:28] Well, perhaps then I could just stay here and talk about Dune 2 for a couple hours.

[1:58:34] I don't think you can right now.

[1:58:35] I mean we're near the end of the episode.

[1:58:37] I've got a pretty open schedule.

[1:58:40] I'm retired now.

[1:58:40] Well, perhaps I could come back next week and talk about Dune Part 2.

[1:58:45] I don't know about next week.

[1:58:47] We're going to have Jamel Bowie on next week as our guest.

[1:58:48] We're going to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog 2 because he's our hedgehog correspondent.

[1:58:52] So I think we're kind of booked for next week.

Zhubin Parang

[1:58:54] Well, as I said, my calendar is quite open right now.

Elliott Kalan

[1:58:58] I have a few more screenings of Dune Part 2 penciled in.

[1:59:02] Perhaps I could appear the week after that and talk to you about Dune Part 2.

[1:59:07] I'm taking a hint.

[1:59:08] You know, if that's the way it has to be, then okay, if you want to come back in two weeks

[1:59:12] and you can talk to us about Dune Part 2, I just worry it won't be in the national zeitgeist

[1:59:18] the way it is right now.

[1:59:20] But I'll take that.

[1:59:21] It's always in my zeitgeist.

[1:59:23] You might say that I've never taken off the still suit.

[1:59:26] I'm still wearing it right now.

[1:59:28] Okay, well, if you could – again, I don't know how you got in my house.

[1:59:31] This is making me uncomfortable.

[1:59:32] But if you could come back in a couple weeks and we'll talk about it.

[1:59:34] I will.

[1:59:35] I will do that.

[1:59:37] I will.

[1:59:38] And he's backing away slowly now.

[1:59:39] Well, that was a nice break for the three of us.

[1:59:41] I can't believe you.

[1:59:42] That was – I apologize, everybody.

[1:59:44] Anyway, I'll recommend my movie quickly then.

[1:59:46] My movie is from 1983.

[1:59:47] It's called Testament.

[1:59:49] It's a drama film directed by Lynn Littman about a small town in the aftermath of a nuclear

[1:59:55] blast that happens close enough that they are experiencing the radiation poisoning from it,

[2:00:01] but not so close that there are explosions and things are on fire and stuff like that.

[2:00:05] And she is the mother of a suburban family.

[2:00:08] Her husband is played by – the main character is played by Jane Alexander.

[2:00:12] She was nominated for an Academy Award for this performance.

[2:00:15] And she's married to William Devane.

[2:00:17] William Devane goes off on a business trip.

[2:00:18] And there's an explosion of some kind, and it dawns on people that there's been a nuclear war,

[2:00:25] and now the town kind of has to make do on its own.

[2:00:28] And it's a very kind of quiet, sad movie that felt very real to me, both about the effects

[2:00:34] of that kind of thing, but also the feelings you go to when your family is in danger and

[2:00:38] you don't know what to do about it.

[2:00:39] But not in a, like, Halle Berry in an abducted kind of way, whatever that movie is called,

[2:00:45] but in a real way of, like –

[2:00:46] I think it was Kidnapped.

[2:00:47] Was it Kidnapped?

[2:00:48] Oh, Kidnapped.

[2:00:48] Was that it?

[2:00:48] Yeah.

[2:00:49] I can't remember.

[2:00:49] Just Kidnapped.

[2:00:50] There's – when there's something – there's a real threat to your family that is big

[2:00:54] and there's nothing you can do about it and how you accommodate yourself to that.

[2:00:59] And I found it to be – it was a movie that I saw.

[2:01:01] It was one of the movies that I've seen recently where it got the strongest kind of,

[2:01:04] like, real emotional response from me where I'm like, I'm genuinely crying at this movie.

[2:01:07] This movie is hitting me hard and it's doing it in a very quiet, calm way.

[2:01:12] And so I was very impressed by it.

[2:01:13] So that's called – and I'm a sucker for post-nuclear war, everybody dying from radiation

[2:01:17] sickness stuff.

[2:01:18] So to see one where I was like, oh, this is really getting me.

[2:01:20] Super genre.

[2:01:21] I love it.

[2:01:22] You know me.

[2:01:22] To see one that really was – felt like it was tugging my heartstrings in a very honest

[2:01:26] way was a big – was something I was very excited to see.

[2:01:30] So that's Testament from 1983.

Zhubin Parang

[2:01:32] That's also a very annoying movie trope where a nuclear bomb goes off and everyone dies.

[2:01:36] Yeah.

[2:01:37] I mean, come on.

[2:01:38] Get over it.

[2:01:38] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:01:40] Overdone.

[2:01:40] How about the one where it's a nuclear bomb goes off and no one cares?

[2:01:43] It's fine.

[2:01:44] And there's confetti inside.

[2:01:45] Nuclear confetti?

Dan McCoy

[2:01:47] And so, yeah.

[2:01:47] It was a party.

[2:01:48] Jib, do you have anything you want to recommend?

Zhubin Parang

[2:01:51] I – well, because it's Nooruz, I feel like I should recommend an Iranian movie, which I

[2:01:57] haven't seen any lately.

[2:01:58] I haven't seen any lately.

[2:01:59] But I have been playing Prince of Persia, The Lost Crown on PlayStation 5, which I would

[2:02:05] recommend.

[2:02:05] It's a very fun Metroidvania-style video game.

[2:02:09] Also, you can have the characters be voiced in Persian, which is great because I'm learning

[2:02:18] a lot of new Persian terms for like time crystals and things my aunts never taught me how to

[2:02:24] say in Persian.

[2:02:26] I would say if you want to go a little bit back, there's a very wonderful Iranian film

[2:02:29] called Hit the Road, which came out a couple of years ago by – I think – I forget his

[2:02:35] name, but he's the son of a famous writer called Jafar Panohi.

[2:02:39] And it's about a family taking a road trip, mostly seen through the eyes of like the young

[2:02:46] eight-year-old son who's on a trip with his mom and dad and like his older draft-age eligible

[2:02:52] brother.

[2:02:53] And as they're going on this road trip, the boy does not know what the purpose of the

[2:02:57] road trip is.

[2:02:57] But you sort of begin getting a sense of what the purpose of the road trip is and why the

[2:03:02] family is doing it.

[2:03:04] And it's a very – it's a perfectly Iranian movie in that it's a very sweet and fun story

[2:03:11] that has a very bittersweet theme behind it that becomes prevalent if you – as you

[2:03:19] watch.

[2:03:19] So I would recommend Hit the Road.

[2:03:21] I would recommend never watching any movie ever again after seeing Madame Web.

[2:03:28] Because I think that –

[2:03:29] It's a failed art form.

[2:03:30] The art form is gone.

[2:03:31] Yeah.

[2:03:32] I feel like it's sort of –

Elliott Kalan

[2:03:33] If this is what 100 years of film was leading to, then we could just shut the door.

[2:03:36] You know, it shouldn't have ever happened.

[2:03:38] Yeah.

[2:03:38] I don't know.

Zhubin Parang

[2:03:39] It's the kind of – the debates that Germans had after World War II were like, if this

[2:03:42] all led up to Hitler, what was the point of any of it?

[2:03:44] And I think that the exact same idea and stakes can be put on Madame Web.

[2:03:48] Good closing to an episode is bringing up Hitler again.

[2:03:50] I mean, that's the way I'm going to feel.

Elliott Kalan

[2:03:51] That's the way I'm going to feel.

[2:03:52] If Trump wins presidential election this year, I'm going to be like, okay, the American experiment

[2:03:56] failed.

[2:03:56] They were wrong.

[2:03:58] We should do it a different way.

Zhubin Parang

[2:03:59] It's time now for a higher American experiment.

[2:04:02] With Caesardom.

Elliott Kalan

[2:04:03] Were you saying that everyone gets high?

[2:04:05] That's the experiment?

Zhubin Parang

[2:04:06] Oh, man.

[2:04:07] I'm way ahead of you.

Elliott Kalan

[2:04:09] Has there ever been a whole country on weed?

[2:04:11] You see?

[2:04:12] Let's try it.

[2:04:13] Yeah.

[2:04:13] Let's do it, I guess.

Stuart Wellington

[2:04:15] Yeah.

[2:04:16] So that's Madame Web, guys.

[2:04:17] That's our Madame Web episode.

Dan McCoy

[2:04:18] We did it.

[2:04:19] I want to thank our producer, Alex Smith.

[2:04:22] He goes by the name Howell Doughty all over the internet.

[2:04:26] You can find his various other enterprises.

[2:04:29] Thank you for editing and making us sound good and all that stuff.

[2:04:33] I want to thank Jubin for, you know, normally Jubin doesn't have to do anything for an episode.

[2:04:43] And now we made him watch Madame Web.

[2:04:45] Please let me just play a rich dog again.

[2:04:48] In some ways, this was much less work than he normally has to do.

[2:04:51] In some ways, it was much more work than he normally has to do.

[2:04:53] Yeah, he seems to enjoy the other work more.

[2:04:55] But is there anything you want to plug, Jubin?

[2:04:57] Anything you want to say before we, you know, end this part of the episode?

Zhubin Parang

[2:05:03] No, watch the Daily Show.

[2:05:06] John Stewart on Mondays, our correspondents on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursdays.

[2:05:11] Like, yeah, keep on watching it.

[2:05:14] Subscribe to Cable again.

[2:05:15] I think a lot of the collapse of the television and film industries can be blamed on you, the viewer.

[2:05:21] Oh, wow.

Dan McCoy

[2:05:21] And the listener who stopped subscribing to Cable.

Zhubin Parang

[2:05:24] So please go back and pay those exorbitant rates again.

[2:05:26] We need it.

[2:05:27] All right.

[2:05:27] Well, thank you.

Elliott Kalan

[2:05:28] I feel like, Jubin, you managed to have this persona that is like lovably hostile.

[2:05:34] Like, can't help but being lovable even though you're saying mean things all the time and directly confrontational.

[2:05:39] I'm just being true.

[2:05:40] So much.

[2:05:46] Thank you so much, as Dan just said.

[2:05:48] And as the show comes to an end and we take down the old circus tent and hose the grease paint off the floors, I'd like to take one last time this episode.

Dan McCoy

[2:05:56] We used a lot of grease paint, Dan.

[2:05:57] It's all over the floors.

[2:05:58] How did I get down there?

[2:05:58] It's like the clowns falling all over the place.

Elliott Kalan

[2:06:02] They're doing the worm space planning.

[2:06:04] Yep, exactly.

[2:06:06] I'd like to take one last time this episode to talk about the MaxFun Drive.

[2:06:09] But I'm not just jumping straight to asking you for money.

[2:06:12] First, I want to thank you just the way that we were thanking Jubin for being here.

[2:06:16] I want to thank you for going to MaximumFun.org slash join and becoming a member of MaxFun while you were listening to this episode.

[2:06:22] Or thank you for already being a member of MaximumFun.org and upgrading or boosting your membership.

[2:06:28] Or thank you for already being a member and continuing to support us at the level you're already at.

[2:06:33] Or if you haven't already gone to MaximumFun.org slash join, then thank you for doing it right now.

[2:06:37] Before you forget.

[2:06:38] Right now.

[2:06:39] Now.

[2:06:40] Now.

[2:06:40] Go do it.

[2:06:41] Right now.

[2:06:42] But above all, even if you can't do all that, thank you, as Dan said earlier in the show, for listening.

[2:06:47] You know, Dan, Stuart, and I, we originally got into podcasting as kind of a hobby.

[2:06:52] And I know I've always been so grateful that it turned into a thing that brings some money into our lives.

[2:06:57] It was helpful during downtimes when we were having financial trouble.

[2:07:00] We've all had those at different points.

[2:07:01] And I hate to admit it, but this right now is just about the downest of downtimes.

[2:07:06] Television work is very hard to come by right now.

[2:07:08] Not just for us goofballs, but for most of our profession.

[2:07:11] But thanks to you and your support and your joining and upgrading and boosting, we can keep ourselves afloat during this time.

[2:07:16] I feel like we are extra grateful.

[2:07:18] Extra gratitudinally grateful.

[2:07:20] Or at least I am.

[2:07:20] For your support during this time.

[2:07:22] Speaking very honestly.

[2:07:23] I'm extra grateful.

[2:07:25] Don't try and take me.

[2:07:27] I'm the one.

[2:07:27] I'm the most grateful.

[2:07:28] Dan.

[2:07:29] I'm extra grateful.

[2:07:31] I'm grateful times infinity.

Dan McCoy

[2:07:34] Checkmate, I guess.

Elliott Kalan

[2:07:35] Yeah.

[2:07:35] There's always infinity plus one.

[2:07:37] Speaking very honestly and purely for myself, your support at MaximumFun.org slash join, even if you only join for $5 a month, is another brick in the wall between me and real financial trouble.

[2:07:47] That's a $5 brick that you're sticking in that wall.

[2:07:48] And I appreciate it.

[2:07:49] Your membership doesn't just keep the show going.

[2:07:51] It keeps me and my family going.

[2:07:53] So I really want to thank you for that.

[2:07:54] It means so much to me that this dumb show that also means so much to me also means enough to you for you to pledge your hard-earned $5 a month.

[2:08:02] And as Dan mentioned earlier, if you can't afford to join right now, we understand times are tough right now.

[2:08:06] For almost everyone who is not actively working to tear apart civilization or whose family is not already rich to begin with, those two categories overlap quite a bit right now.

[2:08:15] Thank you just for listening.

[2:08:17] If you can't join right now, how about recommending the show to someone?

[2:08:20] Maybe like a wealthy friend who likes to bankroll dumb movie podcasts, like if you know anyone like that.

[2:08:26] Or just recommend it to someone you think will enjoy it.

[2:08:28] But if you feel like you can afford it, please go to MaximumFund.org slash join and try out a membership for $5 a month.

[2:08:34] Drink in all that bonus content that's already there and eagerly await the bonus content that we'll be adding throughout the year.

[2:08:40] We need your support.

[2:08:41] We really appreciate that you're giving that support to us.

[2:08:43] And so now I'd like to close this episode with a little oration that I think we'll all find meaningful.

[2:08:51] You know, Dan and Stu, two score and three years ago, our floppers brought forth on this network a new podcast.

[2:08:58] Technically it wasn't on this network, but we joined eventually.

[2:09:00] Conceived in silliness and dedicated to the proposition that not all movies are created equal.

[2:09:05] Now we are engaged in a great max fund drive, testing whether that podcast or any podcast so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

[2:09:12] We are met in an episode of that drive.

[2:09:15] We have come to ask your support in going to MaximumFund.org slash join and contributing as little as $5 a month as a pledge for those who need to make a living so that this podcast might live.

[2:09:24] It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

[2:09:28] But in a larger sense, we cannot take the credit for this podcast.

[2:09:31] It is you, the generous supporters at all levels of membership, who by going to MaximumFund.org slash join have perpetuated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

[2:09:40] Whoever gives out podcasting awards will little note nor long remember what I say here, but it can never ignore what you did here.

[2:09:46] It is for us, the hosts rather, to be dedicated here to keep creating the series which you have thus far so nobly advanced.

[2:09:53] We must be dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from you honored members, we take increased devotion to that cause for which you went to MaximumFund.org slash join and gave at least $5 a month.

[2:10:03] That we here highly resolved that we will keep watching bad movies and then talking about them and then judging them in categories that often don't really apply that well to the movie we watched.

[2:10:13] They did this time, but not always.

[2:10:14] That thanks to your support at MaximumFund.org slash join, this podcast, Under Cage, shall somehow keep going on for another decade or more.

[2:10:23] And that a house of the flop, by the flop, and for the flop, shall not perish from this earth.

[2:10:30] Thank you.

[2:10:31] Thunderous applause.

[2:10:33] You guys also have, you guys sound like preschool parents too, actually.

Zhubin Parang

[2:10:42] Yeah.

[2:10:43] All the silent auctions and raffles.

[2:10:45] Yeah, tell me about it.

Stuart Wellington

[2:10:45] But our baby is a podcast that has gotten slightly less dumb over time.

Dan McCoy

[2:10:52] But I want it to continue to be exactly as much or more profitable.

[2:10:56] Just like a baby.

[2:10:58] Yep, yep.

[2:10:59] That I sold to the workhouse.

Elliott Kalan

[2:11:01] And here we go.

[2:11:02] For sale, one baby from Dan.

[2:11:04] That's a six-word story, yeah.

Zhubin Parang

[2:11:06] For sale, one baby for profit.

[2:11:11] Maximum Fun.

[2:11:12] A worker-owned network.

[2:11:13] Of artist-owned shows.

[2:11:15] Supported.

[2:11:16] Directly.

[2:11:17] By you.

Ep. #420 - Madame Web, with Zhubin Parang

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