Ep. #419 - Cat Person, with Hallie Haglund

Elliott Kalan

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss cat person.

[0:04] Not to be confused with cat people, which is multiple cat persons, or hat person, the story of Jamiroquai.

[0:15] I don't get that.

[0:16] I love Hallie's look.

Hallie Haglund

[0:18] You know, because Jamiroquai's got that big hat.

[0:21] Oh, hat people.

[0:22] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[0:23] You'll make more sense when you hear it later, when you listen to it on the podcast.

[0:26] Yeah.

[0:27] All right.

[0:30] Hey, everyone.

Dan McCoy

[0:51] Welcome to the Flophouse.

[0:52] I'm Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[0:53] My name is Elliot Kalin, and joining us today, we've got a very special guest.

Hallie Haglund

[0:59] Hi!

[1:00] It's Hallie Hagelin.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01] That's right.

[1:02] The star of the show is here.

[1:04] Stuart is not.

[1:05] Apparently, he had better things to do, and Hallie did not have better things to do.

[1:09] Empty schedule Hagelin, so they call her.

[1:12] That's not.

[1:12] Wow.

[1:13] She's doing us.

Hallie Haglund

[1:13] If you knew the backbends I've had to do to make this work into my schedule.

[1:19] Yeah, she's doing us a real favor.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20] Actually, I should say, she's doing us a real favor, and both of these two folks are doing

[1:24] me a real favor.

[1:25] For reasons that may come up later in the episode, I have to travel abruptly.

[1:30] And so Hallie and Dan are recording at night, on a Sunday night.

[1:34] Hallie had to rush to watch this movie during her family time, I assume.

[1:38] And they are really doing me a favor, so thank you.

Dan McCoy

[1:41] Hallie got to rush to watch this movie during her family time.

[1:45] Oh, sorry.

[1:47] You've got to take care of the kids.

Hallie Haglund

[1:49] Got to be done, folks.

[1:51] Sorry.

[1:51] I've got an important movie business.

Dan McCoy

[1:53] Now, Hallie, are you excited to be back?

[1:54] I call my husband Folks.

[1:55] Sorry.

[1:56] Folks.

Elliott Kalan

[1:57] Because you don't know his name.

[1:59] Yeah.

[2:00] So, Hallie, are you excited to be taking the reins as not a fourth co-host, but one of three.

[2:08] One of the three Klopsceteers.

Hallie Haglund

[2:11] I've done this before, Elliot.

[2:12] It's your first time stepping up to the plate.

[2:15] It has been.

[2:15] We'll see what happens.

Elliott Kalan

[2:16] Reaching the majors.

[2:18] It's been a long time.

Hallie Haglund

[2:19] No, I think it hasn't been that long.

[2:21] I've just been replacing you, so you don't remember.

Elliott Kalan

[2:25] Yeah.

[2:25] I don't know any of that.

[2:27] I wasn't there, so I don't know if it happened.

Hallie Haglund

[2:28] No, but it has been a while.

[2:29] So, Elliot doesn't listen to any episode.

[2:31] He's not on.

Dan McCoy

[2:33] Usually, you know, in the early days, we would have, you know, we were bad about scheduling

[2:38] ourselves until the last minute, and then we would often have a third-person replacement.

[2:43] In this case, we've, you know, it's been a while since we've had one of us duck out,

[2:46] but Stuart is off, you know, chasing kangaroos and kissing wallabies, I guess.

[2:53] That's what they do.

[2:54] He's busy.

Elliott Kalan

[2:55] And, Hallie, I think, yeah, last time, I think you filled in for me, like, when I had children

[2:59] and things like that.

[3:00] Oh, yeah.

Hallie Haglund

[3:01] No, it's since I've been in L.A., I think.

Elliott Kalan

[3:03] Yeah, so it was not anything as exciting as going to Australia.

[3:06] So, I guess maybe that's why I blocked it out of my mind.

[3:08] Yeah.

[3:08] Yeah, not as exciting.

[3:10] Yeah.

[3:11] Your second child.

[3:11] I'm happy to be here.

Hallie Haglund

[3:12] I hear, isn't there a thing about how koalas have, like, chlamydia or something?

[3:19] I only bring this up because you sexualized Australian animals in your short introduction.

[3:27] So, I wasn't, you know, I would never have gone there, but I hope he's careful.

Elliott Kalan

[3:34] No, that's true.

[3:34] And there's many reasons not to have sex with a koala.

[3:37] That's just one of them.

[3:38] Yeah.

[3:39] They can't give consent.

Dan McCoy

[3:40] That's another important one.

[3:42] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[3:42] They've always got their babies on their backs, which just makes it weird.

Dan McCoy

[3:46] Yeah, yes, inappropriate in many ways.

Elliott Kalan

[3:48] And that's why the Australian Tourism Board, they have their slogan, G'day, don't do it, mate.

[3:53] And it's got a picture of a sexy koala.

[3:56] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[3:57] So, speaking of sexy animals, Cat Person is a movie that we watched.

Elliott Kalan

[4:03] I mean, it's not, there's, I don't know if that's an animal, but, you know.

Dan McCoy

[4:08] Well, let's get into it.

[4:10] This is a movie that was based on.

[4:11] Well, what do we do on this podcast, Dan?

[4:13] Okay, hold on.

[4:14] Well, yeah, sure.

[4:15] Let me set it up for new listeners who are coming in confused.

[4:18] This is a weekly podcast.

Elliott Kalan

[4:20] We release an episode every week on a Saturday morning.

[4:22] Yeah.

[4:23] But what do we do on this weekly Saturday morning podcast?

[4:26] Aside from sell sugary cereals to kids.

Dan McCoy

[4:29] Well, two Saturdays in a month, we watch a bed.

Hallie Haglund

[4:32] After these messages.

[4:34] And then roll our heads.

[4:35] And our heads change.

Dan McCoy

[4:36] Our heads switch.

[4:37] We'll be right back.

[4:39] Okay.

[4:40] Yep.

[4:42] I guess, I guess people our age will remember that.

[4:47] But, yeah.

[4:49] Half the time, this is a podcast where we watch a bad movie, then we talk about it.

[4:52] And by say bad, we haven't watched it before the show most of the time.

[4:55] It is, has been decided upon either critically or commercially.

[5:00] This is not a film for us, the viewing public.

[5:02] And we judge it for you.

Elliott Kalan

[5:04] Sometimes it's just a movie that we think might be interesting to talk about.

[5:07] Yeah.

[5:08] So, we haven't seen the movie before we select them.

[5:11] Showing your hands a bit, fellas.

Dan McCoy

[5:14] No, not in this case.

[5:16] All right.

[5:17] We don't have to talk about the off weeks because that's not what this is.

[5:19] And this week, we watched a movie.

[5:21] And it was Cat Person.

[5:22] And it was based on a New Yorker short story that was probably the most talked about New Yorker short story since Shirley Jackson's The Lottery.

Elliott Kalan

[5:32] I think not since The Secret Life of Walter Mitty has a New Yorker short story been adapted to film so quickly, I think.

Dan McCoy

[5:39] Despite perhaps not being a natural fit for adaptation to film.

Elliott Kalan

[5:45] Which the third act of the film really points out, as we'll see.

Dan McCoy

[5:48] Yeah.

[5:49] We'll get into it.

[5:50] I think both Elliot and – well, I don't want to spoil that.

[5:52] We'll talk about it when we make our judgments.

[5:55] Let's talk about this movie.

[5:56] What happens?

[5:57] What is this whole thing?

Elliott Kalan

[5:58] Were either of you familiar with the story beforehand?

[6:01] Because I read this story when it was a new story.

[6:03] Did you do that?

[6:04] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[6:05] Yeah.

[6:05] It was all over the internet at the time.

[6:07] People were like, you got to read this story.

Elliott Kalan

[6:10] I mean, I read it in print in the pages of the New Yorker magazine.

[6:14] Wow.

Hallie Haglund

[6:14] As did I.

Elliott Kalan

[6:16] The way all New Yorker articles are meant to be read in pieces while on the toilet.

Hallie Haglund

[6:21] Exactly.

[6:21] Oh, no.

[6:22] I was on the subway.

[6:23] You know?

[6:24] It's just like –

[6:24] New York's toilet.

Dan McCoy

[6:25] I read it online despite having a subscription to the New Yorker that I cannot seem to shake.

[6:33] I don't know who's paying for it.

[6:35] I don't know how it happens.

[6:37] It gets delivered to my apartment weekly.

[6:40] And I toss it away because like while I enjoy the magazine, you know, to just have a subscription is inviting stacks of unread New Yorkers in a way that I cannot take.

[6:53] Wow.

Hallie Haglund

[6:54] That's cool.

[6:54] I can't believe I'm taking off my fanny pack, guys.

[6:57] It's ready.

Elliott Kalan

[6:57] We're ready.

[6:58] Oh, she's getting down to business.

[6:59] In case she sounds different, she's now fanny pack-less.

[7:04] Now, this might be the only – I'm a regular New Yorker reader, but I am about eight to nine months behind at any given time.

[7:10] I read them in order because why not?

[7:11] I'm a dork.

[7:12] But this is as good a time as any to use the thing that I can't use anywhere else, which is the Seinfeld spec episode that I dreamed a couple months ago.

[7:20] That was all about the New Yorker where Kramer starts getting a mysterious subscription to New Yorker at his apartment that he doesn't know how it got there, but he becomes enamored of the magazine.

[7:29] And he decides he's going to read it cover to cover every issue.

[7:32] And Elaine is like, yeah, but you've got to watch out for pileup.

[7:35] You're going to have to deal with pileup.

[7:36] He's like, what's pileup?

[7:37] You're never going to catch up.

[7:38] It's going to have pileup.

[7:39] And Kramer becomes – he's like, no, I'm going to defeat this pile.

[7:42] And so he has locked himself into his apartment until he finishes all these New Yorkers, and they keep coming, and he can't stop it.

[7:48] And meanwhile, Banya gets a Shouts and Murmurs in, and Jerry pretends it doesn't annoy him, but he's so angry that he has to write a Shouts and Murmurs, and he ends up stealing George's idea for Shouts and Murmurs.

[7:58] And I had an idea for a scene where Elaine runs into David Remnick at a party and suggests a New Yorker moratorium that they stop publishing the magazine for a year so everyone can catch up to it.

[8:09] And I woke up, and I was like, oh, it's too bad.

[8:13] The only show this works on went out the air years ago.

[8:16] It's a pretty good spec.

Hallie Haglund

[8:18] I mean, that's incredibly well-developed.

[8:21] I feel like you should just write it.

Elliott Kalan

[8:23] Maybe I'll just write it.

[8:24] Maybe I'll do it just for fun.

[8:25] But yeah, this is the kind of stuff I dream.

[8:26] I either have dreams that are someone is chasing me, or it's an entire story that I can then write down.

[8:32] So what's it going to be tonight?

[8:34] Let's find out.

Hallie Haglund

[8:35] I've been having all these dreams where I'm speaking to people in Portuguese, which is very weird.

Elliott Kalan

[8:41] I mean, they speak Portuguese.

[8:42] Does that make sense?

Hallie Haglund

[8:43] But not very well, especially now.

[8:47] It's like I'm trying to speak Spanish, and I keep speaking Portuguese, and I don't know where they're coming from.

Dan McCoy

[8:55] Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

[8:58] So we all had weird dreams.

Elliott Kalan

[9:00] No, but Dan, that's for the previous Mrs. McCoy to do.

[9:02] Oh, okay.

[9:04] So let's talk about – so Cat Person, essentially, I would describe the story, the original short story as – it's a depiction of a – it's a short story.

[9:11] It's a depiction of a moment in a young woman's life where she kind of gets – falls into a relationship with an awkward older guy.

[9:18] She mishandles it.

[9:19] He's weird.

[9:20] And it just – it ends on a sour note, you know.

[9:24] And as Dan said, it's not necessarily the most adaptable to a film story because the thing that – I liked that story.

[9:30] But the thing I found best about it was that it was like how kind of tenderly and delicately it handled a situation where two characters are awkward around each other and are doing – making bad decisions around each other.

[9:43] You know, don't know how to be the people they want to be.

[9:46] What did you guys think when you read it?

[9:47] I mean, did you like it?

[9:47] Did you not like it?

[9:49] Dan, I know it reminded you of the way you've been when you fall in love with older guys.

[9:53] Yeah.

[9:55] Oh, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[9:56] I mean, it is reminiscent – I mean, I think that any guy who reads it – any woman who reads it is like probably like, oh, this reminds me of bad things that happened to me.

[10:08] And any guy who reads it is like, shit, did I act like this at some point?

[10:12] I mean, like the thing about the story is he doesn't sort of reveal it.

[10:18] Like he's weird and, you know, you understand why his feelings are heard.

[10:24] But he doesn't reveal himself as like sort of bad until the end, which is kind of literally the punchline of the story in that it punches you in the stomach where he, you know, like he reveals that he can only deal with his like sadness over this relationship by lashing out and calling her a whore.

[10:43] And this movie is kind of weird.

[10:48] I mean, we'll get into it, but it is weird to me that it like reaches that moment.

[10:51] And then it like goes further in a way that like –

Elliott Kalan

[10:56] They're like, okay, we've hit the act two point of no return.

[10:59] Yeah.

[10:59] Time to get to act three.

Dan McCoy

[11:01] And they feel like they need to sort of like reset the ambiguity about it in a way that then leads the – like both of them to behave in wildly illegal fashions in a way that sort of – I don't know.

[11:15] Like they're trying to like spin out this like sort of balance past the point at which like the plates have fallen off the table, I feel like.

[11:23] But maybe we'll get into it more.

Elliott Kalan

[11:24] Let's get into it.

[11:25] Let's talk about it.

[11:26] Okay.

[11:26] No, wait, Hallie, what did you think?

[11:28] No, no.

[11:28] We don't need to – her experience is not relevant to this.

[11:31] No, Hallie, what did you think of that original story?

Hallie Haglund

[11:33] I liked it.

[11:34] I thought – I'm geared up for this conversation because I didn't actually – I think I kind of knew that this was like a bad movie in the sense that it would be an option for us to watch.

[11:48] But I don't really know why people defined it as a bad movie and I'm sure that I'll – well, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Elliott Kalan

[12:01] I know.

[12:01] I have some mixed feelings about this movie too.

[12:03] We'll have to get into it.

[12:04] But okay.

[12:05] Let's talk about the story.

Hallie Haglund

[12:06] So I like the – I'll just say I liked the story when I read it.

Elliott Kalan

[12:09] All right.

[12:10] The – we start with Margo.

[12:12] She's a young college student played by Amelia Jones from CODA.

[12:15] She works at a movie theater snack bar and she's hanging out at her snack bar.

[12:20] We hear the audio from a trailer for a horror movie.

[12:22] She's at a revival theater.

[12:23] A tall guy with a beard.

[12:25] Yes, it's Nicholas Braun from Succession.

[12:27] He comes up and orders red vines and she's kind of snarky about it and he does not respond.

[12:32] Cut to a night sky.

[12:34] In text, we get that old chestnut that Margaret Atwood quote about how men are afraid of women laughing at them and women are afraid of men killing them.

[12:40] And they wait until the last – they wait so long to put Margaret Atwood's name up as if the movie is considering claiming that as an original quote that they don't have to attribute to somebody.

Hallie Haglund

[12:48] I thought they were going – I didn't think they were going to put her name.

[12:52] That was fascinating.

Elliott Kalan

[12:53] It's almost like you can feel the person with the finger hovering over the button that says attribute quote to and he's like, all right.

[13:00] And then puts it.

[13:01] And I say he could be a she.

[13:03] I don't know.

[13:04] Margo is walking home that night.

[13:05] She meets a stray dog.

[13:06] She does the thing most people would do and try to bring it into her dorm, but her RA very reasonably, I think, stops her from bringing a stray dog into the dorm.

[13:15] Well, let's –

[13:15] This RA is presented as a real snob.

Hallie Haglund

[13:18] A real B-I-T-C-H.

Dan McCoy

[13:21] Exactly.

[13:22] Let's make it clear that in this case she's doing it because it's going to storm outside and like she just has like a soft heart for like – she's not going to keep this dog forever.

[13:30] She's just like –

[13:31] This dog seems very gentle.

Hallie Haglund

[13:33] It doesn't seem like it's going to cause a lot of trouble.

Dan McCoy

[13:36] I think this is your general anti-animal sentiment.

Elliott Kalan

[13:39] I'm not anti-animals.

[13:40] I just think when you're living in a place like a dorm, which is a communal setting, it would be different if it was an apartment building.

[13:45] Yeah.

[13:46] I think she's a hero for bringing this dog in from a storm.

[13:48] But in a communal place where you don't know if people are allergic to those animals, you don't know if this animal is going to run around peeing and pooping all over the place, that's for the students to do, to pee and poop all over the place.

[13:58] That's not for the dogs to do.

[13:59] Maybe this dog is really smart.

[14:00] That's called college.

[14:01] Maybe this is kind of like a goodwill hunting dog and the dog is going to turn out to be a super genius, make all the other students feel bad, ruin the grade curve.

[14:08] We don't know that.

[14:10] We do now because we watch the movie and we find out the secret of that dog.

[14:13] But anyway, that night, Margot wakes up to hear a woman crying for help outside her door.

[14:18] The dog has killed the RA.

[14:19] There's blood all over the walls.

[14:21] It's a nightmare.

[14:21] She wakes up from a nightmare.

[14:22] This is one of the first of many fantasy sequences in the movie.

[14:26] Guys, how did you feel about the fact that she's constantly going into fantasy fugue states like Brian Benben and Dream On, except instead of old TV clips, they're fantasies?

Dan McCoy

[14:34] I will say that there are points later on that take us inside her thinking that are fantasies that I found very effective.

[14:42] This sort of symbolic metaphorical dream stuff, I could do without.

Elliott Kalan

[14:50] Yeah, and it feels like it is a way to try to – the movie is constantly running with hints or themes of women in peril or women feeling like they're in danger.

[14:59] And it felt like it was a cheap way to get her to hear a woman crying out for help and for the audience to be like, oh, what's happening?

[15:06] I know this story and it's – I don't know.

Hallie Haglund

[15:10] So I think that this scenario made less sense than some of them, but I feel like when the intention behind them is motivated by like she's scared and she's like imagining how she could be threatened, then it makes a lot more sense than – I don't know.

[15:29] Honestly, I feel like I probably would have written this piece of shit, so like I'm very defensive of it.

Dan McCoy

[15:37] No, I agree with you though.

[15:38] Like there's stuff when she has fantasies of like how things could go wrong or there's stuff that's like her justifying maybe like her feelings for this man who – she's constructing a world that doesn't exist because she's supporting this romantic fantasy.

[15:56] Like both of those are effective.

[15:57] Here it's just like, okay, well, we just entered into the movie.

[16:01] What's going on?

[16:01] Why are you wasting time with a dog fantasy?

Elliott Kalan

[16:03] You could say it's a thematic foreshadowing of her bringing something innocent looking into her life and it maybe becoming a danger to her, except the danger as we'll see is it's hard to parse how much of that is actually real or not and how much of it she's feeding into.

[16:19] And so it's – anyway, it's very confusing.

[16:21] It was like if this was Tar, I'd be like, doesn't have to be a dream sequence.

[16:25] There's a killer dog.

[16:26] She just goes about her day.

[16:27] But the tone of this movie is a little different.

[16:29] So Margo's friend Taylor –

[16:31] So obsessed with tar.

[16:34] Look, not only is it a great movie, there are huge pits of it in the city we live in.

[16:39] Just lying there.

[16:40] You can scoop it out for free.

Dan McCoy

[16:43] You need the tar?

Elliott Kalan

[16:45] Take a mug.

[16:45] Bring your mug down to the pit.

[16:47] Just get yourself a cup of tar.

[16:49] Slurp it down.

[16:51] You know, gum up the works.

[16:54] You can really taste the dead mammoth.

[16:56] It's great.

[16:56] So Margo has a friend, Taylor.

[16:58] Her friend Taylor has a B-story runner, I guess, where she is mad at the co-moderator of her feminist online chat group because it turns out he's actually a guy who was using – who's pretending to be a woman in order to be an ally, but he didn't know how or something.

[17:12] And Margo goes to her biology class.

[17:14] She becomes so fixated on an ant colony, almost hypnotized by it, an ant colony case, that she's startled when Professor Isabella Rossellini taps her on the shoulder.

[17:23] And this is a character, doesn't need to be in the movie, totally pointless.

[17:29] I don't care.

[17:30] If Isabella Rossellini is in the movie, that's a net plus for me.

[17:32] I don't care what she's doing.

[17:33] I want her to be in every movie.

Hallie Haglund

[17:34] But why did she want to be in this movie?

[17:39] Cha-ching!

[17:40] Yeah, she must have gotten paid like 90% of the budget must have been getting Isabella Rossellini.

Elliott Kalan

[17:47] I mean, she also – most of her role is giving a speech about how ant queens choose their sexual partners, which she was going to give that speech anyway.

[17:53] I mean, she loves that.

Dan McCoy

[17:54] She does those videos about bugs having sex.

[17:58] She's so great.

[17:59] I think she's amazing.

[18:00] Those don't pay the bills.

[18:02] So she's like, oh, you're going to pay me to do it?

[18:05] But this is another case in which she's set up to be like – there's all this ant colony stuff about like –

Hallie Haglund

[18:10] Do you think she actually asked that to be written into the movie?

[18:14] Because I kept wondering like why does this archaeologist have an ant colony?

[18:18] That's a good point.

[18:19] That made no sense.

Elliott Kalan

[18:20] She seems to be either an archaeologist, an anthropologist, or an entomologist, or all three.

[18:24] She's a triple threat.

[18:26] They go, oh, Isabella Rossellini, she's a triple threat.

[18:28] Archaeologist, anthropologist, entomologist.

[18:30] She can do it all.

[18:31] If she's going to find a society of prehistoric cave ants that have tools, then her whole career makes sense.

[18:38] But you're right.

[18:38] It doesn't – she's just kind of a general college professor.

[18:41] She just kind of teaches everything.

Dan McCoy

[18:43] Yeah.

[18:44] I mean, well, and she's – all this ant stuff too, like ladled on top of the dog stuff that starts the movie.

[18:52] It's just like, you know, there's a lot of animal metaphors being tossed around.

Elliott Kalan

[18:57] And you're making a very good point.

[19:00] Choose your lane and stay in it.

[19:01] Are you an ant movie or a dog movie?

[19:03] I mean, your title says you're a cat movie.

[19:05] Yes, exactly.

[19:06] Thank you, Dan.

[19:08] It's so confusing.

[19:09] This kind of – oh, we don't have to choose what kind of movie we are with what kind of animal we deal with.

[19:14] This is the problem with Hollywood today.

[19:15] Thank you, Dan, for finally putting a name to it.

[19:19] So – and she also – they examine the bones from a female sacrificial victim, which it – this is a movie that so many of the details tie into this theme of the fear of women for men that at a certain point I was like, is there anything else going on in this world?

[19:34] Like it seems like everything is all about this.

[19:36] And I can't tell if that's good writing or bad writing.

[19:38] What do you think?

[19:39] Food for thought.

Hallie Haglund

[19:40] I mean, okay, so here's my thought.

[19:42] I thought like – I'm curious because I kept being like, oh, like I'm wondering if this film was like more on the nose than most films or if it's like this makes you guys more uncomfortable.

[19:59] And so it's like just as on the nose as most films, but it's like, oh, stop hitting with us over the head.

[20:07] Like women are afraid of men.

[20:08] And I'm like, yeah, we are, guys.

Dan McCoy

[20:11] I mean, that's completely possible because my reaction to the cat person's story was like, oh, this is good.

[20:20] I'm not sure why it's setting the world on fire.

[20:22] And I think that's because I am not on that side of it.

[20:27] So like it doesn't speak to me in the same way.

[20:30] So I could just not be a good audience for either the story or the movie.

[20:38] But the movie does seem a lot more muddled in what it's doing.

[20:42] And maybe we'll get into that as we go along.

Elliott Kalan

[20:44] So that night at the theater, Red Vines guy, we learned his name is Robert, comes back.

[20:49] He's snarky back to her.

[20:50] And she fantasizes about going into the theater and sitting next to him.

[20:53] But she doesn't really.

[20:54] She just kind of looks at him.

[20:55] And after the movie, he tells her to give her his number.

[20:58] And she does.

[21:00] Even though in the moment she's like, why am I doing this?

[21:02] And there's a montage of them texting back and forth with each other for days.

[21:06] It's lots of banter over text.

[21:08] It's so fun.

[21:09] They just love it.

[21:10] Taylor is like, stop texting so much.

[21:13] Don't get involved with him.

[21:14] But they're interrupted by their musical theater friends coming in to promote their production

[21:18] into the woods.

[21:19] And they start singing into the woods.

Dan McCoy

[21:21] Here you go, Elliot.

[21:22] This is something that has nothing to do with the theme of the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[21:24] Just a little bit into the woods.

[21:26] This has nothing to do with the theme of young women maturing through their encounter with

[21:30] older possible predators.

[21:31] Yeah, sure.

[21:32] And it was one of those things where I was like, you know what?

[21:35] This movie is really tapping into the frustration I felt going to a college that had a musical

[21:40] theater program where the musical theater students were constantly bursting into the songs from

[21:44] Into the Woods.

[21:45] And Rent.

[21:46] At the time, it was a lot of Rent, but also Into the Woods.

[21:48] So it was one of those things where I was like, is this good?

[21:52] Or is it bad?

[21:52] Or is it just that it's reminding me of a thing I don't like that I experienced?

Dan McCoy

[21:56] Elliot, I'd like to point out that in literally the previous episode, you burst into the song.

[22:01] The title song from Into the Woods.

[22:04] Yeah, yeah.

[22:04] But I did it in a fun way.

[22:05] Yeah.

[22:06] I mean, I guess you also got the lyrics a little bit wrong.

[22:09] So, you know, you proved your bona fides as not a theater nerd.

[22:13] Yeah, there you go.

Elliott Kalan

[22:14] I think it was something like,

[22:15] Into the woods, we're going into those woods.

[22:18] Hey, check out the woods.

[22:20] We're going into them.

[22:21] Into them.

Dan McCoy

[22:23] Into those woods.

[22:24] You just forgot that they also go out of the woods before they go home before dark.

Elliott Kalan

[22:29] They do into the woods and out of the woods and home before.

[22:31] Also, that's true.

[22:32] What about the ones who live in the woods?

[22:33] Like the sloths?

Dan McCoy

[22:37] There's not a lot known about them.

[22:39] Science still has to do a little work.

Elliott Kalan

[22:42] Unfortunately, Professor Isabella Rossellini has not done that work yet in her multifaceted career.

Hallie Haglund

[22:47] She's working from smallest to biggest.

Elliott Kalan

[22:50] She's like the Renfield of scientists.

[22:53] Yeah.

[22:53] So one night, Robert brings some snacks to Margo at the science lab because she says she's so hungry.

[22:59] I don't know if she's studying or if she has a job as a lab assistant.

Hallie Haglund

[23:02] Yeah, very unclear.

[23:04] Another unclear just like, we'll put you close to Isabella Rossellini.

Elliott Kalan

[23:08] Yeah.

[23:08] And they kind of talk awkwardly once he gets there.

[23:10] An aunt bites Margo and Robert smashes it really loudly.

[23:14] And she's kind of scared, but she shows him the storage room where the sacrificial bones are.

[23:18] No, she doesn't show him.

Hallie Haglund

[23:20] He just goes in.

[23:21] Oh, that's right.

[23:22] He just walks in.

[23:23] And then he says, what's this?

[23:26] Making her go in and look at what it is.

[23:29] Now, let me say one thing.

Elliott Kalan

[23:31] Going into a door and saying, what's this?

[23:32] Doesn't make you a creep unless Jack Skellington is a creep.

[23:36] Checkmate, Hallie.

[23:37] Went into a door, said, what's this?

[23:40] Everybody loved it.

[23:41] Yep.

Dan McCoy

[23:42] Years later, they're still selling stuff at Hot Topic commemorating the time that he went into a door and said, what's this?

[23:49] And said, what's this?

Elliott Kalan

[23:50] Now, what he did with that information, I don't totally approve of.

[23:53] Yeah.

[23:53] I don't totally approve of stealing Christmas and kidnapping Santa Claus.

Hallie Haglund

[23:57] Yeah.

[23:58] And I don't know.

[24:00] Did the lady who lost her arm really come out on top in that?

[24:05] What's her name again?

[24:06] The doll lady?

Dan McCoy

[24:08] Sally.

[24:09] Sally.

[24:09] Exactly.

[24:10] She could sew it back on, though.

[24:12] She's a doll lady.

[24:13] She shouldn't have to, Dan.

Hallie Haglund

[24:14] She shouldn't have to.

[24:15] No.

[24:15] I'm not referring to the arm.

[24:17] I'm referring to she just transferred her allegiance from the professor mad scientist to Jack Skellington, who never seemed particularly interested in her.

[24:29] That's true.

Dan McCoy

[24:29] He was not a good romantic interest.

Elliott Kalan

[24:32] No, but at the very end, I mean, he still calls her a friend, but still.

Dan McCoy

[24:36] Yeah.

[24:37] He's more taken up by his new Christmas hobby than he is any interest in her.

Elliott Kalan

[24:41] Ladies, if your man is more interested in stealing Christmas than in you, kick him to the curb.

[24:47] He is not the man for you.

[24:48] Yeah.

[24:49] Find a man who looks at you.

[24:50] Always a Santa.

[24:51] Always a Santa.

[24:52] Find a man who looks at you the way Jack Skellington looks at Christmas.

[24:55] That's what I'm saying, ladies.

[24:58] Someone man wants to unlock all your riddles.

[25:02] Anyway, so that's right.

[25:04] He just wanders into the room.

[25:05] Thank you for correcting me.

[25:06] And she goes in after him, and the door closes and locks, and she suspects him of closing the door to get her in there with him.

[25:12] She fantasizes that he attacks her, and she starts to panic, and he slams the door open so hard that it smashes the ant case, killing the ant colony.

[25:20] Professor Isabella Rossellini is as shattered as the ant case.

[25:24] We don't see her again for the rest of the movie, I think.

[25:27] I think she comes in a montage.

[25:28] She's dead.

[25:30] He killed her.

[25:31] And that night, she decided to join her aunts in the God Hill.

[25:35] So Robert walks her to her dorm, and she says, I'm leaving for a break, but I want you to keep texting me.

[25:41] And he kisses her on the forehead.

[25:44] And then there's another lots of texting back and forth montage.

[25:46] She takes the train home to her cartoonishly kind of type A wealthy family.

[25:51] And they're all curious about Robert.

[25:52] And her mom, Hope Davis, who, yes, I used to see on the subway all the time, tells her that finding a man means accepting discomfort and bullies her into performing a sexy duet of My Heart Belongs to Daddy at her stepdad's 60th birthday.

[26:06] It's just one of the strangest moments.

Hallie Haglund

[26:09] Definitely.

[26:11] Like, what?

Elliott Kalan

[26:12] And the thing, and what's especially bad is, I mean, it's all awkward.

[26:15] It's supposed to be awkward.

[26:16] It's not supposed to be like, yeah, that was a great performance.

[26:18] I loved it.

[26:19] You know, it's not singing in the rain where the songs are enjoyable to the audience.

[26:22] But that the audience at his party is, like, hooting and hollering and catcalling.

[26:26] Like, the whole thing is so uncomfortable.

[26:27] It's supposed to be, but still.

Dan McCoy

[26:29] Yeah.

[26:30] Look, it's effective.

[26:33] It's a little confusing to me because, so, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[26:38] Because she seems very sexy, right?

Dan McCoy

[26:42] Yeah.

[26:42] Yeah, that's just confusing.

[26:44] I'm confused by my arousal.

[26:46] Sorry.

[26:47] I shouldn't have said that.

[26:48] No, it's just, it's gross.

[26:50] It's like, it makes you, like, think about this, how baked into society this is.

[26:56] The idea is, like, oh, I'm going to sing a sexy song about how my heart belongs to daddy.

[27:01] She's literally singing it to her father.

[27:04] To her stepfather.

[27:05] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[27:05] And so that, about younger women and older men and all that, and the, how deeply that's

[27:09] baked in.

[27:09] Going back.

[27:10] Yes.

[27:10] Thousands of years.

Hallie Haglund

[27:11] No, no, no, no, no, no.

[27:12] Because this is, this is where I want to put my foot down.

[27:14] Because I do feel like, actually, this, like, taps into, like, a lot of really uncomfortable

[27:19] young women's experiences.

[27:21] Yeah, yeah.

[27:21] But, like, this seemed insane.

[27:24] Like, I do not believe that this would ever actually happen.

[27:28] That a mother would ask her daughter to perform this, like, sexy dance number for her stepfather.

[27:36] And that she would be, like, like, I wasn't actually joking that, like.

[27:41] I mean, I think Ellie just seemed.

[27:43] There was not enough, there was not enough performed discomfort in this scene to, like,

[27:48] make it make sense to me.

[27:49] I was like, what is going on?

Elliott Kalan

[27:51] I mean, once she agrees to do it, they put their all into it.

[27:54] She is like, you know what?

[27:55] In for a penny, in for a pound.

[27:56] I'm going to, I'm going to get every.

[27:58] She's like, she's like Don Draper's wife singing Zuby Zuby Zoo.

[28:01] Like, she just wants everybody to be hot and heavy in the room.

[28:04] I mean, I know that.

[28:05] Which seems like a strange choice.

Dan McCoy

[28:06] I know that Elliot has seen several videos, you know, predicated on a similar scenario happening.

Elliott Kalan

[28:13] I don't, which, I don't, I don't like where this is going to go.

[28:17] I don't want to know.

[28:18] No, not a fan.

[28:19] No, thank you.

[28:20] Anyway, so the, I'm not even sure which, I don't even want to know exactly what kind of videos you're pointing to.

Dan McCoy

[28:26] I'm implying things about your consumption of pornography.

[28:30] It's fine.

[28:30] Don't worry about it.

Elliott Kalan

[28:31] Dan, all, the only porn I care about is when Sonic and Knuckles are having a baby together.

Dan McCoy

[28:36] Mm-hmm.

[28:37] Because that's about the relationship they have.

[28:39] Yes, exactly.

[28:39] And about how they're going to care for that child.

[28:41] Yes.

[28:41] And it's an emotionally committed thing that you can put yourself in.

[28:44] You project yourself into Sonic.

[28:46] You project yourself into Knuckles.

[28:47] Thank you.

[28:47] You can feel cared for.

Elliott Kalan

[28:49] It's safe.

[28:50] Dan, the largest erogenous zone is the human heart.

[28:52] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[28:54] Oh, no, wait.

[28:55] Actually, it's.

[28:55] Don't touch it, though.

[28:57] Like, don't.

[28:57] No.

[28:57] Crack it open and try and, like.

Elliott Kalan

[28:59] Yeah, don't try to give someone a heart job.

[29:01] That's not okay.

[29:02] Yeah.

[29:02] No.

[29:04] Bad idea.

[29:05] The only heart job you should get is handing out valentines.

[29:08] Consensually.

[29:09] To people who have ordered the valentines ahead of time.

Hallie Haglund

[29:12] We're delivering heart transplants if you were, like, the helicopter driver.

[29:16] But don't let a dog eat that heart.

Elliott Kalan

[29:18] Oh, no, that's a bad move.

[29:20] Don't let.

[29:20] You shouldn't have a dog in your helicopter anyway.

[29:22] Let alone an Oregon transport helicopter.

[29:24] Yeah.

[29:26] So, after the party, she hangs out with her ex-boyfriend who reveals.

[29:30] Her high school boyfriend.

[29:31] Who reveals that he's actually asexual now.

[29:33] And that seems to kind of rile something up in her.

[29:36] And she texts Robert a sexy picture of herself in a nightie.

[29:40] And when he doesn't respond right away, she gets nervous.

[29:42] And texts him that she sent it as a mistake.

Hallie Haglund

[29:45] So weird that you used the word nightie.

Elliott Kalan

[29:49] What would you describe it as?

Hallie Haglund

[29:51] A nightgown?

Elliott Kalan

[29:52] Yeah, but like that.

[29:55] I was just trying to say it's fine.

Hallie Haglund

[29:56] She was wearing a nightie in panties, you guys.

Elliott Kalan

[29:59] He wants to say it in a cute way.

Dan McCoy

[30:01] Yeah.

[30:01] It's not just a nightgown.

[30:02] It's a nightie.

Elliott Kalan

[30:03] Yeah, yeah.

[30:04] Because she was wishing him a nightie night.

[30:06] Yeah.

[30:07] Specifically a nightie night Bugs.

[30:08] The only Bugs Bunny cartoon ever to win an Academy Award for some reason.

Dan McCoy

[30:13] Hallie's covering her face in dismay.

Elliott Kalan

[30:16] Oh, we haven't even gotten yet.

[30:17] There's a moment in this movie that's coming up very soon.

[30:20] We're getting to it very soon.

[30:21] Where I feel like this movie was really speaking for Hallie.

[30:23] And we'll get to that.

Dan McCoy

[30:24] Can I stop for a moment and say one thing that I like about this movie?

[30:28] Because this movie is an interesting one.

[30:30] Because it's...

[30:31] I'll tip my hand a little bit.

[30:33] It's not so much that I think that this movie is bad.

[30:36] It is an unusual adaptation of the source material.

[30:40] Which can be fine.

[30:42] I just had a hard time getting the source material out of my head while watching it.

[30:46] So my feelings about this are kind of all over the map.

[30:49] But I do think that the movie was good at a lot of things.

[30:53] And one of them was depicting how...

[30:55] You know, when you are dating in this day and age...

[31:01] Texting can allow you to sort of get yourself out in front of your skis.

[31:06] In a way that like...

[31:06] Yes, very true.

[31:07] Yeah.

Hallie Haglund

[31:07] Get your hopes up.

[31:09] Like...

[31:09] Yeah.

[31:11] Establish a like false familiarity.

[31:14] And like...

[31:16] Allow you to fantasize about like what this could be.

[31:21] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[31:22] And I think this movie is actually really good at that.

[31:24] Yeah.

[31:24] In a way that I haven't seen.

Elliott Kalan

[31:26] No, I agree.

[31:27] And in a way that doesn't feel...

[31:28] There's some things in the movie that feel a little false to me.

[31:30] But that does not.

[31:30] I feel like these two people would text these things.

[31:33] And they would get the incorrect impression.

[31:35] From them.

[31:36] And it's not like...

[31:37] Oh, you said this.

[31:38] But I thought you meant this.

[31:39] But you meant this.

[31:39] Just the incorrect impression of how compatible they are.

[31:42] Or how comfortable they are with each other.

Dan McCoy

[31:43] You know?

[31:44] I do think a lot of that comes from the original story.

[31:46] But the movie is effective in...

[31:48] In, you know...

[31:49] Adapting that part.

[31:50] In executing that.

Elliott Kalan

[31:51] Yeah.

[31:52] And so it takes him days to finally text her back.

[31:56] And he says, work has been busy.

[31:57] Taylor, her friend, is like, cut this relationship off.

[32:00] Get out of there.

[32:01] But Margot accepts...

[32:02] Should have said that.

Hallie Haglund

[32:02] She says, get your power back.

Elliott Kalan

[32:05] Oh, that's right.

[32:06] Get your power back.

Hallie Haglund

[32:07] So, not cut it off.

[32:09] But like, she's texting too much.

[32:13] Like, make him be the beta.

Elliott Kalan

[32:17] Make him the chaser rather than the chaste.

[32:21] And Margot accepts Robert's invitation to see Empire Strikes Back at the theater she works in.

[32:27] And she exclaims out loud, Star Wars is so boring.

[32:30] And I was like, did Hallie write this movie?

[32:32] Hallie, did you feel seen in that moment?

Hallie Haglund

[32:35] I felt so seen.

[32:36] I was literally like, this is a movie for women.

[32:42] I really felt like, oh my gosh.

[32:45] To be like, are you fucking kidding me?

[32:47] You're asking me to go see Star Wars.

[32:49] Not only are you asking me to go to my place of work.

[32:52] Not only are you like, texting me out of the blue.

[32:54] But like, you're asking me to go see Star Wars.

[32:56] And I am like, caught between pretending to like, give a shit.

[33:03] And also being like, really mad that you didn't realize that I wouldn't give a shit.

[33:08] Like, I thought that was an elegant choice.

Elliott Kalan

[33:11] Yeah, I think so too.

[33:12] And it just took me back to the moment in the Daily Show offices when you said,

[33:15] how much longer am I going to have to listen to you guys talk about fucking Star Wars?

[33:18] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[33:19] I think that was when Elliot and I were arguing about Jabba the Hutt.

[33:24] Probably.

[33:24] I understand the Star Wars exhaustion.

[33:27] And it speaks to a real thing out in the world.

[33:30] I mean, I know that there are also thousands, millions of women out there who love Star Wars.

Elliott Kalan

[33:35] But I think not necessarily Star Wars exhaustion so much as Star Wars indifference.

[33:39] Being forced to care about a thing or pretend to care about a thing.

[33:41] Like Hallie is saying, you do not care about it.

[33:43] You don't want to have to deal with it.

Dan McCoy

[33:44] But what about the Harrison Ford slander?

[33:47] How do you feel about that, Hallie?

Hallie Haglund

[33:49] I shouldn't slander him.

[33:51] Okay.

[33:52] It was just like, this has to be the most important person.

[33:54] And she was like, yeah, whatever.

[33:56] I mean, I have affection for regarding Henry.

Dan McCoy

[34:03] You have affection regarding Henry.

[34:07] Regarding Henry.

Hallie Haglund

[34:09] All to say, Harrison Ford is in a lot of different kinds of movies.

[34:13] And you don't have to pigeonhole him into, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[34:16] Sure.

[34:17] He's in Random Hearts.

[34:19] What Lies Beneath.

[34:20] It was funny to me, though, that later on.

[34:21] Six Days, Seven Nights.

[34:22] There's a scene later on where he's like, yeah, I think I have a DVD of Working Girl around here.

[34:25] So even his idea of a movie for women still has Harrison Ford in it.

[34:28] Yeah.

[34:29] That's pretty funny.

[34:30] He mentions that Harrison Ford is the.

Hallie Haglund

[34:32] Wait, you guys got that I was saying that he's in Regarding Henry, right?

[34:35] Yeah, no, yeah.

[34:35] No, I understand.

[34:36] Yeah, no, we got it.

Dan McCoy

[34:37] Yeah.

[34:37] We also were aware of that fact.

[34:39] Yeah, we got it.

[34:40] J.J. Abram scripted Regarding Henry.

Hallie Haglund

[34:42] Have you guys ever heard of movies?

[34:45] There's this thing that Harrison Ford is in.

Elliott Kalan

[34:48] I mean, what you just said, Hallie, I feel like it's the subtext of so many scenes in this movie is men saying to women, have you heard of movies?

[34:55] Yeah.

[34:55] And what they're really saying is, let me explain to you about the movie I think is a movie.

[35:00] And I don't care what you think.

[35:01] Robert's constantly being like, oh, you probably just like subtitled foreign movies about, you know, Rwanda or whatever.

[35:06] And it's like those, in his mind, those are the two types of movies.

[35:09] Empire Strikes Back and a subtitled movie that's super artsy about depressing things.

Hallie Haglund

[35:13] Also, the movie she said she watched the most was Spirited Away, and it's like, all right, that's pretty fucking nerdy, guy nerdy.

[35:23] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[35:23] That was a movie when, that was a moment when she was like, well, Spirited Away, and he's like, oh, yeah, I've heard of the director, but I haven't seen it.

[35:30] I remember the director.

[35:31] And it's like, he definitely saw that movie.

[35:32] He's definitely seen Miyazaki movies.

[35:34] There's no way he hasn't seen those.

[35:35] But he says, he's like, Harrison Ford is objectively the coolest guy, like the epitome of cool or something.

[35:42] And it's like, I like that as a moment of, he's so mature that his idea of what the coolest guy is is essentially like a fictional pirate, you know, like a fictional wisecrackin' pirate, you know?

[35:53] So the date is very awkward.

[35:54] They see Empire Strikes Back.

[35:55] His car is gross.

[35:56] She fantasizes about him murdering her again.

[36:00] In the movie, she keeps, maybe it's not a fantasizing, maybe it's a, she's catastrophizing, I don't know.

[36:05] In the movie, she keeps talking during the movie, and he just wants to watch the movie and is like very noncommittal.

[36:10] And I've definitely been that guy where a woman has watched a movie with me and started talking, and I've been like, yeah, yeah, but we're watching a movie.

[36:17] Like, let's talk after the movie.

[36:18] I've definitely been that kind of awkward guy.

[36:19] This is a point at which.

Hallie Haglund

[36:20] Even a movie that you've seen like that many times that you're on a first date with, it's like.

Elliott Kalan

[36:25] No, that's not the case.

[36:26] Yeah.

[36:26] It's always, it's, in those cases, it's been a movie I either haven't seen or a movie I haven't seen in a long time.

[36:31] If it's a movie, like, if I was, if I'm never going to be on a date with another woman again because my heart belongs to my wife.

[36:36] But if I was on a date with someone, we were watching Taking a Pelham 123.

[36:39] Yeah, we'd talk to that whole thing.

[36:40] I've seen that movie like 40 times.

[36:41] There you go.

Dan McCoy

[36:42] I mean, I understand, like, I understand the movie wants me to like look at him as an asshole in this scene and sympathize with her, which I totally would if they were watching it at home.

[36:53] But in this scene, I'm like, yeah, shut up.

[36:55] You're in a fucking movie theater.

[36:57] Stop, stop whispering through the whole thing.

Hallie Haglund

[37:00] I guess I'm defensive because I feel like she was already forced and not, she was not forced.

[37:06] No.

[37:07] This is, this is what I thought it did so well was like.

[37:11] Yeah.

[37:12] Like, pull the curtain back between, like, I really felt like her inner monologue was pretty accurate about, like, it's not like she has to go to this movie.

[37:22] It's not like she has to keep, but she keeps, like, it's, it's like a push and pull between, like, a fantasy of what this can turn out to be and a guilt with knowing that, like, this definitely isn't.

[37:35] And there's no, like, there's no vision of reality.

[37:39] It's just those two extremes.

Dan McCoy

[37:41] Yeah.

[37:42] Yeah.

[37:42] Well, also, and her coddling, like, his sensitivities in a lot of ways.

[37:47] That's the guilt.

[37:47] Yeah.

[37:48] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[37:48] And I think it's, there's something about, I think, I think you're right that, like, her inner thinking is so clear, but I wish the movie didn't have her, like, saying it all the time.

[37:57] I wish the movie would trust the audience to, like, feel those, I feel like the short story trusts the audience to feel and understand those feelings without stating them outright.

[38:05] And the movie kind of doesn't, doesn't trust the audience.

[38:08] But anyway, they go out for a drink, but she gets carded and she reveals she's only 20 and she starts to cry and feels dumb about it.

[38:14] And he kisses her ridiculously badly, just a very clumsy kisser.

[38:18] That was so funny.

[38:19] You guys didn't think that was very funny.

[38:20] No, that kiss I thought was very funny because it's like he's never even seen a kiss before.

[38:24] Like, he doesn't know what he's doing.

[38:25] And I'll tell you that, that guy, I have not been.

[38:28] When I started kissing, I knew what I was doing.

[38:30] Oh.

[38:31] Okay.

[38:31] Yeah.

[38:31] Come on.

[38:32] All right.

[38:33] Is that what Danielle told you?

Dan McCoy

[38:36] Yeah.

[38:37] I mean, I guess so.

[38:38] You're the best kissing I've ever kissed.

Elliott Kalan

[38:42] Are you in the band Kiss?

[38:43] Because you're so good at it.

[38:45] And they go to a second bar where Taylor tells, Taylor is talking to her over the phone in the bathroom.

[38:50] Because ladies always have to go to the bathroom in groups.

[38:52] Even if they're not with each other, they call each other on the phone.

[38:54] But anyway, and Taylor is like, don't go back to his house.

[38:57] End of this date.

[38:58] But Margot was like, but if I have sex with him, he'd be so grateful because he's such a dork.

[39:05] And she decides to go home with him.

Hallie Haglund

[39:07] No, but okay, okay, okay.

[39:08] No, but I think that like misframes it a little bit.

[39:11] Okay.

[39:11] Because I think we're supposed to draw context from the fact that like, she's just been told her, the person she lost her virginity to, the like, basically only serious relationship we know in her life is asexual, was just telling her like, it's not that I was disgusted having sex with you.

[39:30] I'm just disgusted about sex in general.

[39:32] And she is like, I think it's not just like, oh, he would feel like so grateful, so I should do it.

[39:39] It's also like, I think she wants to feel desired.

Elliott Kalan

[39:45] Yeah, I think that's true too.

[39:46] I think those are two sides of the same coin.

[39:47] I don't think they're necessarily different things.

[39:49] And she has a moment where the bathroom she's in, the wallpaper is just like lots of turn of the century women's faces.

[39:54] And she kisses one before she walks out.

[39:56] And I really liked that.

[39:57] That was the kind of small little moment that I thought the movie could have used more of.

Hallie Haglund

[40:00] And one of them looked exactly like Michael Jackson, right?

[40:03] I didn't notice that.

Elliott Kalan

[40:05] That one I didn't see, I have to admit.

Hallie Haglund

[40:06] All right, well, go back.

Elliott Kalan

[40:07] I didn't see that.

[40:08] I was watching it on a big enough screen.

[40:11] And they go home.

[40:13] He challenges her to name an Indiana Jones movie, which again is a very, that felt very real to me.

[40:19] And she imagines briefly that there's a torture chamber there.

[40:22] She's scared, but also, like you're saying, Hallie, I think you're right.

[40:24] She wants to be desired.

[40:25] She likes that feeling.

[40:27] But once she gets into a super nerdy bedroom.

[40:29] It's not like, okay.

Hallie Haglund

[40:31] But you're putting it like she likes that feeling.

[40:33] It's like she is vulnerable to that specifically in that moment.

[40:39] It's not just like women like to, I mean, women do like to do that.

[40:43] No, but I'm not saying that.

Elliott Kalan

[40:43] I'm saying just in this moment.

[40:45] I agree with you.

[40:45] I don't think it's, I'm not saying as, since Eve, she has, as with all women since Eve,

[40:50] they have, you know, they've longed to be, I'm not saying that.

Dan McCoy

[40:53] Let's not bring up fictional characters.

[40:56] Dan.

[40:56] Fictional.

[40:58] Fictional.

[40:58] Hello.

Elliott Kalan

[40:59] Excuse.

[41:00] No, actually.

Dan McCoy

[41:01] I'm just, I'm being provocative to get clicks.

Elliott Kalan

[41:06] Elliot brought up Eve and you'll never guess what Dan said next, you know.

[41:10] So they get into his nerdy bedroom and she has a conversation with herself.

[41:16] She's talking to her, to herself across the room in which they are like, what the hell are you doing here?

[41:21] Why are you doing this?

[41:22] You could leave at any moment.

[41:23] You could say no right now.

[41:24] And they're having this conversation while she's allowing Robert to have this kind of clumsy, ignorant sex with her.

[41:31] Someone who has minimal to no experience with an actual other human person, it seems like,

[41:36] and is doing what he thinks he's supposed to be doing based on the pornography he's seen.

[41:41] And yes, Hallie.

[41:42] Hallie Hadland, the flop house.

[41:44] Yeah.

Hallie Haglund

[41:44] I just want to say really quickly, you said his nerdy bedroom.

[41:49] Yes.

[41:49] And I think that.

Elliott Kalan

[41:52] He has a DVD of Minority Report.

Hallie Haglund

[41:54] No.

[41:54] Just laying out on a cabinet.

[41:55] But that's not what, that's not what like is offensive to this.

[41:59] And it was so, like I literally had flashbacks to like,

[42:03] like any experience in my life where I was young and in that situation.

[42:10] And it's not just like, oh, there's like the Minority Report DVD.

[42:16] It's that there's like a half drunk Slurpee.

[42:20] Yeah, that's pretty gross.

[42:21] And like three beer cans.

[42:22] And like you own this home.

[42:24] And it's like not exactly a mess, but it's like if I lived alone, I would never leave my home like this.

[42:32] Like there's something like very immature about the way he takes care of his space.

[42:37] Yes.

[42:37] It's not just nerdy.

[42:39] It's like.

[42:39] Yeah, you're right.

Dan McCoy

[42:41] Flashback to college age Dan, who was not aware of how often he should wash his sheets.

[42:46] Yeah.

[42:49] I mean, look, I'm being forthright.

[42:53] I'm being honest.

[42:54] Like there are certain things that like I should have known didn't really like sink in.

[43:00] Like didn't like know how to take care of myself in those ways.

[43:05] No, and I was too lazy to learn.

Elliott Kalan

[43:08] And it was only later in life.

[43:09] I definitely had at least one time where women came back to my apartment and were like, this place is a mess.

[43:15] Like we're very open saying the things that Margo does not say.

[43:17] They're like, this is a mess.

[43:18] You need to not leave papers all over the floor and things like that.

[43:21] And there wasn't like food all over, but I'd have, you know, like papers and books all over the place.

[43:25] And every, every surface.

[43:27] Chicken bones covering everything.

[43:29] Well, yeah, that's because I lived in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre house.

[43:31] That was Leatherface's stuff.

[43:33] That wasn't mine.

Hallie Haglund

[43:33] I thought you were the girl from Girl Interrupted who keeps all the chicken carcasses underneath her bed.

[43:40] Ugh, gross.

[43:41] Different reference.

[43:42] Yeah.

[43:43] Go ahead.

Elliott Kalan

[43:44] Anyway, but, but, or like every, I feel like when you're a, when you're a young man, often every open surface becomes a place to put a thing.

[43:51] So I get that.

[43:52] And when you walk into that room, you're like, this is, this is horrible.

[43:56] Like you, you live in a stye, you know, and you're right.

[43:58] This house is not so dirty that it's like, it's not like a serial killer's pit, you know, but it is, it does show someone who does not show care in what he's doing in the, in the home that he lives in.

[44:09] Especially when he thinks he might be bringing someone home with him, you know.

Hallie Haglund

[44:12] It's just like a very like textbook, like recognizable, like, like immature.

[44:20] Even when like at their kitchen.

[44:21] Yeah.

[44:22] Go ahead.

[44:22] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[44:22] It's like, there's, there's all those pictures that go around online where it's like some guys like, I got my perfect apartment set up and they have like a mattress on the floor without even a box spring.

[44:30] There's a big video game chair and a huge TV and that's their entire apartment.

[44:34] That's all the furnishings.

[44:35] And you're like, oh, okay.

[44:36] Like this is, I guess, yeah, this is what young guys do.

[44:38] Yeah, sure.

Dan McCoy

[44:39] Well, and this is, I mean, this is another place too, where I thought the movie was very effective and, and I, you know, discomforting in the sense that like they're having two different experiences in a way that like you can totally understand why he thinks everything's okay.

[45:00] Like you're, you're not like mad at him for it, but like she's having this whole other thing going on and you're like, shit, man.

[45:08] Like, like, like it makes you just like worry about life and be like, you know, like it shows you the importance of like constant active consent because she is totally like, like she's going through a thing with a thing kind of just because she sort of like decided maybe earlier that she wanted to.

[45:26] And now she doesn't know what she wants.

Elliott Kalan

[45:29] And on top of that, the total obliviousness on his part that he is not recognizing anything that's going on with her.

[45:34] You know, he's living out a fantasy that he is, he assumes is reality and is not.

Dan McCoy

[45:39] Is the same for her, you know, and like, and this is also fueled by her fantasy early on, earlier on where like we, one of the more effective things seeing inside of her brain, I think is like.

Elliott Kalan

[45:50] Is how there's four different people that each represent one part of her brain.

[45:53] There's the slob, there's the nerd, there's the, I don't know if there's other parts.

[45:58] There's the hippie lady.

[45:59] The jock, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[46:01] No, but, no, but she has this fantasy earlier on where like she's imagining him at his therapist talking about her and casting everything in a much more romantic way.

[46:14] And like, even in a way where she's like not necessarily wrong about things, like she's like, oh, you know, he wanted to share this movie with him, with me because it was important to him and it was romantic to him.

[46:25] You know, like, and she's not wrong about that, but she's also making all these kind of pre-excuses for him.

[46:31] Right.

[46:31] And it's a very effective thing, I thought.

Elliott Kalan

[46:34] So, eventually, so she goes, she has this experience, it's very unpleasant.

[46:38] She regrets the whole thing instantly.

[46:41] They do, they start to watch a DVD together in bed.

[46:43] It's like a European dubbed version of Working Girl, which is, and he reveals that he's 33 years old and that he was worried that when she went home for break, she would lose interest in him.

[46:54] And that maybe she'd like get back together with an old high school boyfriend and that the picture she sent him in her nightie, I'm saying it again, was meant maybe for this other guy.

[47:04] And that's why he got, he was very hurt by it because when she said that was a mistake to you, he thought, uh-oh, she's seeing someone else.

[47:10] But now he knows he should trust her.

[47:11] And it's funny because he is, there's a way that they could play this that would have been, I think, very funny where he's like, I know I can trust you.

[47:17] We're real.

[47:18] At the moment that she has decided in her head, I can never see this guy ever again.

[47:21] You know, this cannot happen again.

Dan McCoy

[47:23] Yeah, Elliot's imagining a version where she's tugging at her collar while this is happening.

Elliott Kalan

[47:27] Yeah, she's just like, go.

[47:29] Yeah.

[47:30] And she says, you should drive me home right now.

[47:32] And as soon as she walks in the door, he texts her to make more plans.

[47:36] And I have been the guy who wants to make plans again right away and annoys people like that.

[47:42] Not in a long time, again.

[47:43] Then I reached the stage where I was like, I'm never showing interest in anyone else ever again.

[47:47] And that backfired the same way.

[47:48] So it's hard.

[47:50] Relationships are hard.

Dan McCoy

[47:51] Let's dig into it, Elliot.

[47:52] Let's go through your whole dating life.

Elliott Kalan

[47:54] Anyway, so the year was 1994.

[47:58] So the next day, Taylor tells-

[48:00] You were 12.

[48:01] I was 12, but very mature for my age.

Dan McCoy

[48:05] A little movie called, what was going on in 94?

[48:08] Was that Speed?

[48:09] Far Stump.

[48:10] Shawshank Redemption.

Elliott Kalan

[48:11] A little movie called Shawshank Redemption came out and changed the way I thought about escaping from prison.

[48:17] So the next day, Taylor tells Margo, you've got to block him.

Dan McCoy

[48:20] Guys, good news.

[48:21] Speed was in 1994.

[48:23] I was right about that.

[48:23] So was Shawshank Redemption.

[48:25] Okay.

[48:26] Come on, Dan.

[48:26] I mean, I'll fact check it all.

[48:28] I'll fact check it all.

Dan McCoy

[48:29] Shawshank.

[48:31] 94.

[48:32] Forest.

[48:34] Yeah, 94.

[48:35] What a blockbuster year for movies.

Elliott Kalan

[48:37] I like that you said Forrest as if you forgot the Gump part of it.

[48:42] Remind me of your last name again.

[48:48] I was driving one of my sons to a doctor's appointment in Santa Clarita, and we drove by the corporate headquarters of the Andy Gump company, the porta potty company.

[48:59] And I was so excited.

[49:00] I was like, that's where their corporate headquarters are?

[49:02] And my son was not as excited that that's if I wanted to get into the porta potty business that I was so close to it.

[49:08] Just a long commute away.

[49:09] That's where they dump it all.

[49:12] Real Gump dump.

[49:15] I was like, don't you understand, kids?

[49:16] You can't spill dump without most of Gump.

Dan McCoy

[49:20] Oh, no.

[49:20] Elliot's disappeared.

Elliott Kalan

[49:22] No, no.

[49:22] I just bent down to get something up.

Dan McCoy

[49:23] It's okay, Dan.

[49:24] His virtual background took over for a second.

[49:25] Yeah, Dan doesn't have object permanence.

Elliott Kalan

[49:26] It's okay.

[49:27] So the next day, Taylor's like, block Margo.

[49:30] And she's like, he's suspicious.

[49:32] He told you he had cats.

[49:34] There were no cats at his house.

[49:35] Did you see that?

[49:36] Why would a man lie about having a cat?

[49:38] Because he wants to sound kind and gentle and loving and vulnerable.

[49:41] And Margo stops responding to Robert's texts and imagines him dying in a few different ways.

[49:45] And then he sends her a montage of Harrison Ford roughly kissing women in movies, which I thought was a funny catch that he's done that in a couple different movies.

[49:54] And Taylor takes the phone and runs into the bathroom and she texts him, I'm not interested in you.

[49:59] Please stop texting me.

[50:00] And he responds with an apology like, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I didn't know I made you upset.

[50:04] Now they're at a pretty tame birthday drinks party for their into the woods friend.

[50:10] And they see that Robert is at the bar in the place that they're in.

[50:13] And her friends surround her like a herd of elephants protecting a baby elephant from a predator so that he doesn't see her when they all leave.

[50:22] Which is a scene, this is one of many scenes that's in the story, basically, that this happens.

[50:26] But seeing it in person, and maybe you guys didn't feel this way, seeing it in person, it went from being realistic to a little silly to me.

Hallie Haglund

[50:33] I was trying to remember that because I did not go, I remember that she saw him at a bar in the story, but that was really the context.

Elliott Kalan

[50:42] I think they say something, I think she says something like they crowded around so that he wouldn't see me or something like that.

[50:46] I can't forget how she says it in the story.

[50:48] But here it's like they're all shuffling together in one big crowd out the door in a way that maybe, I was asking for that earlier scene to be funnier.

[50:55] Maybe they pre-understood my criticism and they were trying to give it to me.

[50:59] But that's the thing.

[51:00] I feel like this movie can't, it can't quite figure.

[51:03] In the same way, and it's, you know, it's a movie that's getting at similar things somewhat.

[51:07] In the same way that like Promising Young Woman, maybe we'll talk about this more later, I also had issues with how the tone was all over the place.

[51:13] This one I kind of felt that way too, in some ways.

[51:16] That the movie cannot decide, I think, how real or how funny or how big it wants to be.

[51:22] Did you guys feel that way or am I reading too much into it?

Dan McCoy

[51:24] I mean, I know that opinions vary on this movie.

[51:29] It's controversial.

[51:30] I thought the Promising Young Woman had a much stronger handle over its tone.

[51:37] I think that's true.

[51:38] The problem that I have with this movie is largely just like it's slippery in that way.

[51:44] Like there are things that are very goofy and then stuff that feels very, you know, like small and frightening.

[51:54] Anyway, Holly, what do you think?

Hallie Haglund

[51:56] So I feel like I'm not actually able to like depersonalize this because I think that, and you guys, as like people that I've worked with professionally who know things that I'm trying to write.

[52:15] Like I feel like these are like themes that I'm so interested in seeing in creative works.

[52:21] And also like you want to be playful with them, but you want to like bring their true weight to light.

[52:30] And so I'm constantly like when people comment about tone in specifically these two movies and in general with like works like these, I'm like, is it just because like people are really uncomfortable with this kind of, with these kinds of themes that like don't exist in movies because they haven't existed yet?

Elliott Kalan

[52:55] I mean, speaking for myself, it's not the themes.

[52:58] It's more that like, it's like I could see a version of this movie that is very extreme and is like didactic or like, you know, agitprop in the way that I feel like Promising Young Woman is a little bit more.

[53:08] Where Promising Young Woman is like, I'm going to make sure you understand this point.

[53:12] And this one has some of that.

[53:13] Or I could see a version of this that's like really, feels really real and like kind of beautiful in how awkward and uncomfortable the characters are in what's going on with them.

[53:23] And this one kind of, but like, but like, but like, okay.

Hallie Haglund

[53:25] So like, look at like Woody Allen.

[53:27] He's between all of that.

[53:30] Like it's, it's neither, it's like real themes that people in relationships, you know, like let's cancel whatever.

[53:37] But like real themes that like people in relationships can relate to, but also totally silly and like absurd.

[53:48] And so is it just that like, it's more from like,

[53:53] the woman's point of view, which like doesn't happen a ton.

[53:56] That is what makes like viewers feel uncomfortable with it.

Dan McCoy

[53:59] I mean, I will, I, I'm willing to.

Hallie Haglund

[54:03] I'm not, you know, go ahead.

Dan McCoy

[54:05] No, no, no.

[54:05] No, no, no, no.

[54:06] I don't think you're indicting.

[54:07] I just, I mean, I'm kind of willing to go with you on that because like, I generally think that if the movie entertains and if the movie has like something to say and is communicating it to me,

[54:25] I am less of a tone policeman than like, I think a lot of people who critique movies, like I like a movie that where the tone is kind of all over the place because I think that that's truer to life.

[54:38] I mean, this one, it might be that like some of it makes me uncomfortable that I, so I'm, you know, I don't know how to respond to it.

Elliott Kalan

[54:46] I think with me, it's more like the parts that are uncomfortable.

[54:48] I kind of wanted to be more uncomfortable.

[54:50] And it felt like there was, one of the issues I had with it was the soundtrack is nonstop.

[54:54] There's constantly pop songs on the soundtrack kind of underlining what's being done.

[54:59] And it was like, I want to see, and one of the things that, that did it for me in a good way in terms of the tone in that scene where they're in bed together and she's having the conversation with herself is that the music that's playing is music that he put on.

[55:12] And so it's part of the scene rather than the movie kind of like nudging me in the ribs about what's going on.

[55:17] There were a number of different scenes where I was like, I want to see this.

[55:20] This is going to be more uncomfortable and more powerful to me if the movie is not, it feels a little bit more real.

[55:25] So it feels a little bit less like it's, it's trying to soften what's going on by putting a soundtrack on that's kind of ironic, you know, or trying to, there's a moment where coming up where she's walking at night and she puts on her headphones and she's listening to this Britney Spears song that I had not heard before, but which is all about Britney Spears.

[55:44] It's Britney, bitch.

Hallie Haglund

[55:46] You haven't heard it's that.

Elliott Kalan

[55:48] Are you really that surprised that I hadn't heard that song?

[55:50] Come on.

Hallie Haglund

[55:51] People have swag that says it's Britney, bitch.

[55:55] That they wear out.

[55:56] Okay, go ahead.

Elliott Kalan

[55:57] I thought that was just what people were saying about her.

[55:58] I didn't know it was a song.

[55:59] But in that moment when she's listening to that song and she's feeling something listening to that song, I was like, this is a really powerful scene for me.

[56:08] This is really good because a song that she likes, that's why it's on her playlist.

[56:11] She's now, something about it, it is underlining the moment of fear and paranoia that she's in and the trepidation she's feeling.

[56:19] And I kind of wanted more stuff like that.

[56:21] And when you're saying like, what's the difference between this movie doing it and like Woody Allen doing it aside, you know, as like you said, setting aside of Woody Allen stuff, is that Woody Allen, not always, but for the most part in a movie like Annie Hall is just better at it.

[56:31] You know, like the jokes are funnier and the affecting moments feel more real in that one particular movie, you know.

[56:39] Fair enough.

Hallie Haglund

[56:40] I'm not comparing this to, these are complicated comparisons.

[56:45] Why not compare it to any movie?

[56:46] But I will say, I'm not willing to like be like, this is the female Annie Hall.

[56:52] But I will say.

Elliott Kalan

[56:54] Now who's this character?

[56:56] No.

[56:57] No, I like this character and who's like, this should call this like a manie hall because it's from a lady's point of view talking about a man.

Hallie Haglund

[57:02] But I think that like what you're, what's bumping you about this is like reiterating the theme of what she's struggling with, which is just like, I'm, I'm like, I feel like my job is to like make this guy comfortable.

[57:19] And like, I'm not the star of this.

[57:21] Like, I say as my husband brings me a martini.

Dan McCoy

[57:27] No.

[57:28] I could tell that was what was happening just off screen.

[57:31] I saw that look of like, I, maybe I texted for this.

[57:34] Who knows?

[57:34] No, I didn't.

Elliott Kalan

[57:35] I didn't.

[57:35] He just brought it.

[57:36] Oh, that's very nice.

[57:37] I'm blessed.

[57:37] Ladies, get yourself a man who brings you a martini in the middle of your podcast.

[57:41] Seriously.

[57:42] And looks at you the way Jack Skellington looks at Christmas.

Hallie Haglund

[57:44] No, but the point is that like, I think that like a big part of this is that like her self-consciousness is, and women's self-consciousness, or I won't speak for all women, but the part that I identified with is that like, it's really my responsibility to make this guy have a good time.

[58:06] It's not my, like, I'm not the star here.

[58:10] Like, like, why am I doing this?

[58:12] And that's like the, you know, her, her like inner monologue manifested as like the woman outside of her is being like, you can say no.

[58:22] Like, why are you doing this?

[58:23] Just like, stop doing this.

[58:24] You don't have to do this.

[58:26] And she's like, but he's, he's like here and I gave him all these reasons why it would be upsetting to him.

[58:34] And it's like all about like his experience.

[58:37] And so to be like, the music you're hearing is like backing up his experience, like makes sense.

Elliott Kalan

[58:44] No, no, no.

[58:45] But I think that's the, I think that scene, it works really well.

[58:47] And, you know.

Hallie Haglund

[58:48] Oh, I thought you were saying that you didn't like that.

Elliott Kalan

[58:50] No, no.

[58:50] The scene where he's playing the music.

[58:52] It's more like when they're, there's a part where they're going to his house and they're, and they're, it's like they're in the bar and there's a song playing as she picks him up.

[59:00] This is me being like super just pedantic.

[59:03] But the, there's a song, like there's a needle drop song when she walks out with him from the bar.

[59:08] Then they go to his house.

[59:09] There's another needle drop song as they're going into the house.

[59:12] And it was like, and this is something that I feel in a lot of movies is I'm like, let me live in this moment without the music.

[59:17] Like, let me live in this awkward moment of her about to go into his house.

[59:21] He thinks one thing.

[59:22] She thinks another thing.

[59:23] They're both, they're in the same moment.

[59:25] They're not, they're feeling different things.

[59:27] And there were just, there were times in the movie where I, where I just want something that I think the short story did really well, which is it kind of told you what was happening without telling you how to feel about it.

[59:36] And I feel like the movie is, is, it's a very delicate thing to do and a hard thing to do.

[59:40] And I feel like the movie is not as successful with that.

[59:42] And maybe the problem is that I keep, like Dan mentioned earlier with him, like I keep comparing it in my head to the story.

[59:47] And maybe that's the issue.

Dan McCoy

[59:48] The more we talk about it, the more I kind of don't mind the movie being pushy just in the sense that like, I don't know.

[59:55] It was effective at making me feel uncomfortable in making me like evaluate how many times like things in my relationship have, like I made them about me just because I'm used to like it being about me.

[1:00:10] And, you know, like I wince at the stuff where he's like, let me share this piece of art or media with you.

[1:00:20] Because like, I do think that it's something that is, you know, mostly associated with men, but happens with nerds of all genders.

[1:00:30] Where it's like, maybe we don't know how to express our emotions well.

[1:00:35] So we do it by forcing our stuff on other people and to just like, I don't know, to be forced to like sit in some of this.

[1:00:45] I don't know.

[1:00:45] Maybe I'm coming around to liking the movie a little bit more in retrospect.

[1:00:48] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:49] If this is about my birthday when I made you listen to that Japanese song.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:52] I loved that song, by the way.

[1:00:54] Yeah, I see you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:55] Yeah, you made a little movie off of it.

[1:00:56] I made a little video.

[1:00:57] It was really good.

[1:00:59] Anyway.

[1:01:00] Anyway, we'll keep talking about this.

[1:01:01] We should get through the rest of the plot of the movie.

[1:01:03] So Margot, she gets a text from him saying, I saw you at the bar.

[1:01:09] You're really pretty.

[1:01:09] I miss you.

[1:01:10] And she's instantly kind of paralyzed.

[1:01:12] And she and Taylor watch in horror as Robert keeps texting saying, I don't know what I did wrong.

[1:01:17] I really think you should tell me what I did wrong.

[1:01:18] I don't understand.

[1:01:19] Was that guy you were with your boyfriend?

[1:01:21] Are you having sex with him right now?

[1:01:22] Is that what's going on?

[1:01:23] And then finally he just says, whore at the end.

[1:01:25] And this is where the original short story ends.

[1:01:28] And it's rough.

[1:01:30] It's a powerful end to that story.

[1:01:32] But the movie keeps going.

[1:01:34] And Margot now is very worried that at any moment Robert might come up to her, might surprise her, might be following her.

[1:01:41] She sees him getting into his car outside of the theater and reports this to a cop played by Liza Colonzias from The Bear.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:47] And I was like, you should be in the kitchen.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:50] What are you doing?

[1:01:50] That's your place.

[1:01:51] You're succeeding there.

[1:01:53] You're excelling.

[1:01:54] And she's like, he didn't break any laws.

[1:01:56] I can't do anything about this.

[1:01:57] Okay, question.

Hallie Haglund

[1:01:58] In this moment.

[1:01:59] Did you guys think it was like a weird, I mean, it was clearly intentional.

[1:02:04] But like, I was like, I could believe this a lot more if it was like a male cop.

[1:02:10] When they chose to make it a female cop.

[1:02:12] But maybe they didn't want to make it cliche by making it a male cop.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:15] I think maybe there's something there about, I think you're right.

[1:02:18] They didn't want to be cliche or too obvious.

[1:02:20] And there's something there about maybe her having internalized the things that people say.

[1:02:24] Yeah.

[1:02:25] I don't know.

[1:02:25] Or just a cop message of like, don't think that just because a cop is like you in some way that they're your ally.

[1:02:31] You know, there's a lot going on there, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:34] Yeah.

[1:02:34] A lot of potential things.

[1:02:35] To me, it was sort of this idea of like, yeah, you would think that this cop would be more sympathetic.

[1:02:42] But she has sort of just, you know, been like jaded by being a police officer.

[1:02:48] And it's like kind of taken this line of like, whatever is the least resistance for me as a public servant.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:57] But the other thing is, when the movie is working well, and in this scene, it's a little, it's sometimes working well, sometimes not.

[1:03:03] When the movie is working well, it is riding the line of neither one of these characters is a villainous character.

[1:03:10] You know, when she says he hasn't broken the law, it's true.

[1:03:13] He has not broken the law.

[1:03:14] He would like, this is, he's an awkward, kind of weird, kind of a little creepy guy.

[1:03:19] And he was not pleasant to be around.

[1:03:21] And she found that out.

[1:03:23] She didn't treat him well.

[1:03:24] And he seemed, and he has not done anything.

[1:03:26] And so the, in these moments, I feel like the movie is doing a good job of balancing that thing of like, which the short story again does very well.

[1:03:34] Where it's like, neither of these people, this is not a hero and villain story.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:37] You know, it's not a, it's not an unblemished victim and predator story.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:42] It is two people who are constantly making mistakes in the way that they handle this situation.

[1:03:47] And so there was something, I wonder if that was part of it too.

[1:03:49] It's just that trying to get, continue that theme of like, he hasn't broken any laws.

[1:03:53] Like there's nothing that he's done that you can go to the police for.

[1:03:56] Yeah.

[1:03:56] He was a, he was a bad date and she saw him getting out of his car once, but he didn't, he hasn't talked to her since then.

[1:04:02] You know, aside from these being mean on text, you know.

[1:04:05] So it's the, I feel like the more I talk about this movie, the more I like it, but it's more because I like what the movie is trying to do than I think necessarily.

[1:04:12] Yeah.

[1:04:13] That it achieves it.

[1:04:14] You know, I think the aim of this movie is so good.

[1:04:16] And it's, it's like, it doesn't quite hit the bullseye instead it's in that like third circle outside of it, you know.

[1:04:24] But the, I mean, it's, I don't know, I don't know darts or archery or whatever.

[1:04:27] I don't know what that's called.

[1:04:28] But Taylor and Marco, they're like, we need to defend ourselves.

[1:04:31] The gentleman's circle.

[1:04:34] Taylor goes, Marco, you need to defend yourself.

[1:04:35] They go to this, this self-defense store and they buy a ton of mace and a tracking device.

[1:04:40] And to, in theory, put on his car so that they can always know where he is.

[1:04:44] I know that scene was very funny, by the way.

[1:04:47] The scene in the self-defense place is very funny.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:48] Yeah.

[1:04:49] Yeah.

[1:04:49] I love how the guy's like, immediately like, I could see why two beautiful ladies like you might be worried about that.

[1:04:56] And she's like, we are not going to be doing that.

[1:04:59] Back up.

[1:04:59] And he's like, okay.

[1:05:00] Calvin, read the room.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:02] But she's, he has a name tag on, so she's instantly referring to him by his first name, which I think is very funny.

[1:05:06] And when he goes, two words, Smith and Wesson.

[1:05:09] And it's like, that one, there was just a lot, there were some good jokes in that scene.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:13] And he's just, you know, he's just a guy who's trying to work a job on his end.

[1:05:17] So he's like, I don't know.

[1:05:19] What do you want?

[1:05:21] Yeah.

[1:05:21] Everyone has clear wants in that scene.

[1:05:23] It's funny.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:24] Yeah.

[1:05:24] And the two of the friends, two of the guy friends burst into the room to invite them to a costume party.

[1:05:29] And that makes them mad because they're already keyed up.

[1:05:32] You know, they're already paranoid.

[1:05:33] And that turns into an argument between Taylor and Margot.

[1:05:36] And Taylor ends up storming out where they kind of indict each other's personalities to a certain extent.

[1:05:40] That night, Margot does.

Hallie Haglund

[1:05:42] But their personalities are, they indict one as being highly, constantly skeptical of men and one as being too trusting of men.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:54] Yes, one who's too trusting and one who's so skeptical that she hides behind the internet, according to Margot.

[1:06:00] And I feel like this is when the movie takes its turn where it's like the filmmakers kind of weren't quite sure what to do with it.

[1:06:07] And so they go for the path of like what a movie is supposed to do.

[1:06:12] Because Margot sneaks into Robert's garage to put a tracking device on his car, which is an extreme action for a character to take.

[1:06:19] But maybe, you know, this character's been pushed to it.

[1:06:21] There's a dog in the garage.

[1:06:22] It's the dog she saw earlier in the movie.

[1:06:24] And Robert hears the dog growling and comes out and it leads to they get into a kind of semi not quite fight.

[1:06:32] And Margot accidentally maces herself and falls and hits her head.

[1:06:34] And she wakes up in Robert's house and he's very angry.

[1:06:37] He's like, if you walk out of here like this, everyone's going to think I did this to you.

[1:06:40] And then he starts going through their texts to prove that she misled him and led him on or was into him.

[1:06:46] He's angry and he's going through their texts.

[1:06:48] And I've never been this guy, but I know guys do this kind of thing where they're like, you need to give me a reason.

[1:06:52] Look at these things you said.

[1:06:54] Meanwhile, Taylor is like.

Hallie Haglund

[1:06:56] But I also think he's scared.

[1:06:57] I also think he's scared.

[1:06:58] Oh, I think he's scared.

[1:06:59] He's not just angry.

[1:07:00] No, no.

[1:07:00] Because he's scared that like.

[1:07:03] Sorry, go ahead.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:04] Well, looking at it from his point of view, which I don't, which when the movie is working well, I think you can do.

[1:07:09] This is a woman that he went out with once.

[1:07:12] She ghosted him.

[1:07:13] He doesn't know why.

[1:07:14] Then she showed up in his garage and trying to plant something on his car.

[1:07:19] And now.

[1:07:20] Mace herself and has a head injury.

[1:07:22] Yes, seems to be trying to entrap him in some sort of thing.

[1:07:26] So from his point of view, it's like, what is going on here?

[1:07:28] You know, what have I gotten into?

Dan McCoy

[1:07:28] And this is what I was trying to get at earlier where it's like.

[1:07:33] The movie in extending the film beyond the natural endpoint of the story is still trying to kind of keep up this ambiguity where it's like.

[1:07:46] Yeah, like you understand why she is terrified and she is more maybe historical, like definitely historical reason to be terrified.

[1:07:54] And he is like yelling.

[1:07:57] But also she broke into his home and like did something that would look very bad for him.

[1:08:03] And so the movie has turned into this weird kind of like the end of War of the Roses thing where it's more about like.

[1:08:11] I don't know, like how the mistrust between the heterosexual cisgendered sexes is going to like tear everyone apart than it is kind of saying something more like grounded and real at that point.

[1:08:26] I don't know, like it's it's I don't know how I feel about it.

[1:08:29] Like I'm kind of like impressed that the movie like took like a ballsy turn in adaptation, but it is gone so far away at this point to that it is.

[1:08:42] I don't know, something to see.

Hallie Haglund

[1:08:45] I agree.

[1:08:45] How do you feel about it?

[1:08:47] I mean, well, we're not.

[1:08:49] I don't want to jump ahead, but I agree.

[1:08:52] And I want to come back to that.

[1:08:53] Okay.

[1:08:54] Elliot, go.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:55] Okay.

[1:08:55] I mean, we could talk about it now, but well, so meanwhile, Taylor, she walks into Margo's room.

[1:08:59] She's not there.

[1:09:00] She goes, oh, my God.

[1:09:00] She knows what she's doing.

[1:09:01] She jumps in a Lyft car.

[1:09:03] We know because of dialogue earlier that she knows, but the driver of the Lyft car doesn't know that the driver of the Lyft car is the online moderator that she was mad at earlier.

[1:09:09] But she just goes, we've got to find Margo.

[1:09:11] Who's been impersonating a woman.

[1:09:12] Yeah.

[1:09:13] And then opened a new, and then when she, he was kicked out by her, opened a men's feminist, you know.

Hallie Haglund

[1:09:19] He wants to be an ally.

[1:09:20] And she doesn't really understand.

[1:09:22] She doesn't.

[1:09:23] She's rightfully suspicious.

[1:09:27] That's weird.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:28] And Robert admits this was the moment that seemed – if each of these characters has a moment where I'm like, movie, I think this is not necessarily helping you.

[1:09:37] With Margo, it is – for me.

[1:09:39] And for Margo, it is when she decides to put a tracking device on his car, which seems like a big jump.

[1:09:43] And for Robert, it's the moment where he admits, yeah, okay, so that was my dog.

[1:09:48] I was following you so that we could bump into each other and meet at some point, and I could ask you out.

[1:09:53] Is that so wrong?

[1:09:54] And that's something where I'm like, that's not a – he's like, and if we got married, this would be the story that would be told at our wedding.

[1:10:00] It would be adorable and romantic.

[1:10:02] And it's like, that is a – I don't know.

[1:10:04] Maybe it's just because I'm not the kind of guy who, like, follows – haunts places where there's a woman I know so that I can pretend to be meeting her, which is the kind of thing that happens in movies all the time.

[1:10:13] But, like, House of Gucci, for instance.

[1:10:14] But it's definitely like a – it's a moment when the character stops being an ambiguously creepish character to me and becomes, like, a little more overtly creepy.

[1:10:26] But he goes – and he's yelling at her, and she's like, can you just help me get water for my eyes because of the mace?

[1:10:33] And he goes, you need saline solution.

[1:10:35] She goes, oh, you know that because you've been in this situation before?

[1:10:37] And he goes, I'm a nurse.

[1:10:38] That's how I know that.

[1:10:40] And while he's going to get saline solution, she starts calling 911.

Hallie Haglund

[1:10:43] But wait, no, no, no.

[1:10:44] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[1:10:44] Because this is one of the most important moments.

[1:10:46] He says, I'm a nurse.

[1:10:49] You would have known that if you ever asked me.

[1:10:53] And I thought that that was, like, a very illuminating moment of –

[1:10:57] Yeah, that was good.

[1:10:58] They're both caught up in their own fantasies.

[1:11:01] And as much as she's made him central to his fantasy, to her fantasy, as much as he's been made, like, the main character in her fantasy and she feels like she constantly – that she has not actually,

[1:11:14] like, engaged getting to know this person.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:17] Yeah.

[1:11:18] Like, earlier she imagines his therapy session where he's talking about her, like we mentioned earlier.

[1:11:22] And the way his therapist's office looks, the way he's talking about it is so – is so not realistic.

[1:11:28] You know, not realistic to his life.

Hallie Haglund

[1:11:29] I'm wearing a white cable knit sweater.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:33] Yes.

[1:11:34] No, I did notice that.

[1:11:36] I'm like, I love the fact that her fantasy version of him is, you know, like, I don't know, Chris Evans in Knives Out sort of styled, you know, guy.

Hallie Haglund

[1:11:46] No, but I did think – but, like, I did think that that was, like – I don't think it's, like, indicting of her, but it's, like –

[1:11:53] It's very easy to lose sight of the reality that, like, okay, if we're talking about real life, like a Woody Allen movie, she's 20, he's 33.

[1:12:05] Basically all Woody Allen.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:06] Oh, that aspect of, like, real life is like a Woody Allen movie.

[1:12:09] And I was like, some of them.

Hallie Haglund

[1:12:10] No, to say, like, we're both, like, on equal – equal maturity should be expected of both of us.

[1:12:20] Mm-hmm.

[1:12:21] They shouldn't because they're completely different ages.

[1:12:25] But I did think that, like, I don't know, that's why I just wanted to pause because that moment struck me of, like, oh, yeah, like, they're making a point that she –

[1:12:35] Yeah.

[1:12:37] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:37] Very interesting in the way it shows how they're both constructing a fantasy version of the other person.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:43] Yeah.

[1:12:44] Yeah, and they're both oblivious to the real – they're not even interested in exploring the real person.

[1:12:50] Yeah.

[1:12:51] That being said, it's a very good point that then leads to them fighting over the phone until eventually he is strangling her and she's hitting him in the head with bottles.

[1:12:58] They knock over a heater in the basement.

[1:13:00] The house catches on fire.

Hallie Haglund

[1:13:01] Which wouldn't have happened if he didn't leave so many empty bottles around the house because he didn't clean up.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:06] Okay.

[1:13:07] Or plugged in heaters, you know.

[1:13:11] They're trapped in the basement.

[1:13:12] He climbs into a basement drain and tells her to follow.

[1:13:14] Which happened because he had real cats.

Hallie Haglund

[1:13:16] He did have cats.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:17] He did have cats.

[1:13:18] Remember?

[1:13:18] I was worried.

[1:13:19] Did the cats get away?

[1:13:20] I was worried about the cats.

[1:13:21] But the house gets out of fire.

[1:13:22] The house gets out of fire.

[1:13:23] Yeah.

[1:13:24] Yeah.

Hallie Haglund

[1:13:25] But that's – but the cats were being like kept warm by the heater, I think.

[1:13:30] That's why they were downstairs.

[1:13:33] That seemed to be the –

Dan McCoy

[1:13:34] Oh, I didn't notice that part of it, but –

Hallie Haglund

[1:13:36] Well, that's what – when she opened the door, the cat ran out.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:39] They ran out.

[1:13:40] Yeah.

[1:13:40] Okay.

[1:13:40] So, look, I'm just – I just want those fictional cats to be all right, Hallie.

[1:13:45] That's my main concern at this point in the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:50] Eventually, she does – she's reluctant to follow him into this basement drain.

[1:13:53] But eventually, she does the next morning.

[1:13:56] Then Taylor and her driver arrive as the firetrucks get there, and they sit through the night.

[1:14:00] The next morning, they're still there sitting on the curb.

[1:14:03] She reveals to him who she is, and he's like, oh, nice to meet you.

[1:14:07] You know, there's a tentative reproachment between these two fighting moderators at once they've met in person.

[1:14:14] He never fought with her.

[1:14:15] He never fought with her.

[1:14:17] No, that's true.

[1:14:18] He was pushed out for assuming a fake identity.

[1:14:21] And the firefighters find Robert and Margot passed out in the drain but alive.

[1:14:26] Days later, Margot and Tyler ride their bicycles by the lot where Robert's house is.

[1:14:30] And I couldn't tell if this was – having gone to college in New York City where people do not mostly ride bicycles around unless it's like a city bike, which didn't – was not a part of the city at the time I was going to school.

[1:14:41] I couldn't tell if them riding bikes over by his house was a realistic thing because they probably wouldn't have their own car at that point or if it was an unrealistic thing that was helpful in making them seem younger.

[1:14:52] Because there is a very kind of like ET quality to two young people riding a bike in a suburb.

Hallie Haglund

[1:14:56] So I will say I'm actually – I feel like I'm – I don't know if I'm like implanting memories but this whole layout of this movie having – so I was an undergraduate at Yale and this whole physical setup is exactly like New Haven.

[1:15:19] And I'm wondering – it's not supposed to – I think it's supposed to be like Michigan.

[1:15:22] No, and they shot at New Jersey.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:23] It's supposed to be somewhere else but they shot at New Jersey as well.

Hallie Haglund

[1:15:26] But it looked – I'm curious to know if like the – because like that like projector was on the same – the way that they like lined it up on the street was like where our – like the old movie theater was.

[1:15:40] And – or maybe I'm just like putting myself into the street.

[1:15:43] But all I did was like I had a like a cruiser bike that I rode around New Haven my whole time there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:50] With like the tassels on the handlebars and everything?

Hallie Haglund

[1:15:53] Not tassels but everything else.

[1:15:55] It was like as silly.

[1:15:57] Yes, I had a basket on the front.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:59] Did ET ever sit in it?

[1:16:01] No.

[1:16:02] Oh.

[1:16:02] That I know of.

[1:16:06] But even like his house.

Hallie Haglund

[1:16:08] Even his house that –

[1:16:10] ET's house?

[1:16:11] Like no.

[1:16:12] Even –

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:13] It's a spaceship tan.

Hallie Haglund

[1:16:16] Looked very much like a New Haven block like of the houses and like the – so I was wondering if like – oh, I wonder if like anyone who was making this was thinking about that or –

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:28] It's possible.

[1:16:28] I mean if Isabella Rossellini is going to be a professor at a college, it's going to be one of the best.

Hallie Haglund

[1:16:31] You know?

[1:16:32] No.

[1:16:32] But all to say, I don't think it is unrealistic because –

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:37] Okay.

[1:16:37] For them to be on bikes.

[1:16:38] Yes.

[1:16:38] All right.

[1:16:38] It's just outside my experience.

[1:16:39] Yeah.

[1:16:40] Unlike most of the movie, which is very much my experience with the older men that I dated.

[1:16:43] So they go by the lot where Robert's house used to be and they're like, yeah, his coworkers said he moved away but he might have just told them to say that.

[1:16:53] The girls are still suspicious.

[1:16:55] And later at work, another nerdy creep hits on Margot similar to the way Robert did and tells her to give him his number – her number.

[1:17:02] And she has this look on her face that's just like, here we go again.

[1:17:07] Cut to credits.

Hallie Haglund

[1:17:08] He was in Mad Men, right?

[1:17:10] That guy?

[1:17:11] That actor?

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:12] He might have been.

[1:17:13] He seemed really familiar.

[1:17:14] I didn't recognize him.

[1:17:14] I think you might be right.

Hallie Haglund

[1:17:16] I think he was like the young advertiser who – remember like Don like stole his thing and so he's like, you have to hire him.

[1:17:27] He was like the – he was sort of like a Nepo baby and whatever.

[1:17:35] We'll talk about it later.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:36] I don't know.

[1:17:36] I mean, you know, he looked like –

[1:17:38] Sorry, I have an instant Mad Men recall.

[1:17:43] Yeah.

[1:17:45] I-M-M-R.

[1:17:46] It's called.

[1:17:48] And that's the end of the movie.

[1:17:50] Yeah.

[1:17:51] Yeah, that's the end of the movie and now we're left to puzzle out the – you know, like pick up the pieces.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:58] Will she learn from her mistake and not give her number to this guy who calls her a girl who's never seen the apartment?

[1:18:04] Or will she –

Hallie Haglund

[1:18:05] Or will they get back together?

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:09] Hallie's such a hopeless romantic.

[1:18:11] The listener can't see that Hallie had double-crossed fingers on that one because she's so hoping for it.

[1:18:15] Well, and honestly –

[1:18:15] And a cat person too.

Hallie Haglund

[1:18:16] I had this like – like my babysitter when I was young used to make me watch Young and the Restless all the time.

[1:18:23] And I think this was Young and the Restless where there was like a – it was Marty and Todd.

[1:18:34] Todd had raped Marty.

[1:18:36] What?

[1:18:37] They were going through the rape trial and then during the rape trial, Marty and Todd fell in love as like the defendant.

[1:18:46] And the plaintiff?

[1:18:48] And the plaintiff.

[1:18:49] Yeah.

[1:18:49] So I was like, is this Marty and Todd?

[1:18:51] Should they be together?

[1:18:53] These are the most unlikely of couples.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:57] You're canceled, the Young and the Restless, probably for real.

[1:19:00] I don't know.

[1:19:00] Probably literally.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:01] Yeah, probably literally.

[1:19:03] The daytime soap world has been shattered.

[1:19:06] Struggling.

[1:19:06] But –

[1:19:07] Yeah.

[1:19:07] So, wow.

[1:19:09] What a –

Hallie Haglund

[1:19:09] What a rollercoaster, you guys.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:11] What a rollercoaster.

[1:19:13] What a rollercoaster.

Hallie Haglund

[1:19:14] I'm so glad we chose this movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:17] Here's the part we have to tease out.

[1:19:19] This is a Hallie Haglund choice.

[1:19:20] It's funny.

[1:19:21] Yeah, I got to say –

[1:19:23] I sent Hallie a list of possibles.

[1:19:26] And Hallie responded in the way that you know that Hallie's like really into – like it's just all caps, CAT PERSON!

[1:19:34] Exclamation point.

[1:19:37] And it was a lot to chew on.

[1:19:40] Like a cat.

[1:19:41] We should – yep.

[1:19:43] Very chewy, cats are.

[1:19:45] Let's do our final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie, bad, bad movie, or movie kind of like.

[1:19:50] I have to say, right off the bat, I'm not sure I can fit it into our arbitrary –

[1:19:56] We've had a lot of those lately.

[1:19:58] I know.

[1:19:59] But this one – here's the thing.

[1:20:02] I don't know.

[1:20:03] I don't know.

[1:20:05] Like I don't know it was totally successful for me.

[1:20:08] But I also don't know to what degree that is because it really defied my expectations of what an adaptation of this story would be.

[1:20:21] And I knew that it was going to go into some weird directions in the third act.

[1:20:26] What I didn't know was that it would still be sort of trying to like pump up some of the ambiguity in the third act.

[1:20:33] Like I had heard like, oh, you know, he becomes a killer in the third act.

[1:20:38] Yeah, that's what I heard also.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:39] But I appreciated that it didn't.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:41] Yes, I agree.

[1:20:41] Yeah.

[1:20:42] No, it's still – I don't know.

[1:20:45] It found a way – even as it got sort of absurdly heightened, it found a way to try and thread a certain needle.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:58] Why?

[1:20:58] Because sewing is women's work, Dan?

[1:21:00] Unacceptable.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:01] This woman's work.

[1:21:05] Anyway, I don't – what am I saying?

[1:21:06] I don't know.

[1:21:07] I'm saying that I think that – I don't know if it's totally successful.

[1:21:11] But if you're interested in this, like it clearly made us have a crazy conversation where multiple times I'm like, am I an asshole right now?

[1:21:23] Like I – you know, and that's valuable.

[1:21:26] So if you're interested in it, I'm not going to discourage you from seeing it.

[1:21:29] That's kind of where I'm at.

[1:21:31] That's my judgment on this.

[1:21:34] Hallie, what do you think?

[1:21:34] What do you guys have to say?

Hallie Haglund

[1:21:35] Yeah, I mean, I feel like I was – after I watched it, I was like –

[1:21:41] I know this isn't a good movie, but I don't – well, I don't know.

[1:21:50] I was like, I don't feel like it's a bad, bad movie.

[1:21:53] Like I wasn't bored.

[1:21:54] I wasn't like, this is silly.

[1:21:56] I was like, oh, I'm so glad there – that this is a movie that like talks about certain things.

[1:22:05] So I think it – I would say – I don't know exactly how you guys define your parameters, but I would say good, bad movie.

[1:22:14] No, neither do we.

[1:22:15] I would say it's worth watching.

[1:22:17] It's interesting.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:19] Yes.

[1:22:19] I agree.

[1:22:21] I think it doesn't fit into any of our categories.

[1:22:23] I feel like it is not as successful as I would like it to be.

[1:22:27] Also, I don't think the main actress is very good.

Hallie Haglund

[1:22:30] So that's another we haven't really talked about.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:32] Ooh, yikes.

[1:22:35] Wowza.

[1:22:35] Wow.

Hallie Haglund

[1:22:36] I'm sorry that I'm being so brave to say that when you guys won't.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:41] I think that – I think it's a movie that is not – it's not fully successful, but I think it's somewhat successful.

[1:22:46] And it's – yeah, I think in some ways it's worth seeing just for the things it's doing and it's trying to do.

[1:22:50] And I wish that it was like – I don't know.

[1:22:54] I just – I wish it was like a little more consistent in what it's doing.

[1:23:01] And I wish it didn't have quite so many needle drop songs.

[1:23:03] I don't need so much music on the soundtrack.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:04] And you wanted a happy ending where those two crazy kids got together.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:06] I didn't want them to realize, wait a minute, but you thought this, but I thought this.

[1:23:11] Aw, but I also – I think that I was – it's one of those movies where I both admire them for taking the story to a place where it gets – it's extreme, but the characters are still – there's still not one character who's an out-and-out villain and one who's an out-and-out hero.

[1:23:27] But I also kind of wish that it didn't end in a place where they were in a basement trying to escape from a burning house, even though I know that the metaphor is that if we can't come together as two or multiple sides and relationships, then our world will fall apart around us.

[1:23:45] We have to understand what we're doing.

[1:23:47] But it's –

Hallie Haglund

[1:23:47] But also –

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:49] I just wish it was – I think it wasn't bad, but I wish it was a little better than it was.

Hallie Haglund

[1:23:53] But didn't you also think that, like, that last image when they opened the drain and they're sort of, like, curbed around each other was supposed to be some reference to, like, the archaeology stuff of – it's, like, kind of like a Pompeii situation of how they're, like, wrapped around each other?

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:17] What I really wish is I wish that they were in a yin-yang formation to really get it home.

[1:24:21] I mean, they were.

Hallie Haglund

[1:24:21] Or were they – I mean, they –

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:23] I don't think they were, like, head to feet, you know?

Hallie Haglund

[1:24:25] I mean, they weren't in, like, a 69 position.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:27] Yeah.

[1:24:28] That's –

[1:24:28] That's not what I'm talking about.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:29] No, I mean, Elliot, that was the first thing that I thought of, too, so –

[1:24:33] Wow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:34] I guess I'm just a little more enlightened than you guys.

[1:24:36] Or not sexy enough.

[1:24:39] Huh.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:40] Yeah.

[1:24:40] Can you work on your sexiness?

[1:24:43] Can you bring your sexiness up for the podcast a little bit?

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:46] But it's definitely a movie that – like, it's a conversation starter movie, which is maybe all it needs to be.

Hallie Haglund

[1:24:50] Can I ask you guys?

[1:24:52] Did you ever feel bored during this movie?

Dan McCoy

[1:24:56] Well, that's the thing.

[1:24:57] It's two hours, which I think is too long for this movie.

[1:25:00] Too long for a movie.

[1:25:00] But I was not bored by it, no.

Hallie Haglund

[1:25:04] I couldn't tell if I was just like, oh, God, I just, like, get an excuse to not be around my children or, like, not pay attention to anything that happens.

[1:25:13] So, but I was like, yeah, it definitely, like, wasn't – I didn't feel like it was a two-hour movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:19] No, I agree.

[1:25:20] I thought it was two hours.

[1:25:21] I think it's a little – it could have stuff come from it, cut from it.

[1:25:24] But there was no parts where I was like, ugh, come on.

[1:25:27] Like, it feels like it moves relatively quickly.

[1:25:29] You know?

[1:25:29] Yeah.

[1:25:29] So, I think that's very successful about it.

[1:25:32] Yeah, it was not one of these movies where I was like, all right already.

[1:25:35] Like, just get a room.

[1:25:37] Oh, no, you did get a room.

[1:25:39] Oh, it's pretty awkward.

[1:25:40] Just get out of a room already.

[1:25:41] Like, come on.

[1:25:42] Just burn down this room.

[1:25:44] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:47] Speaking of burning down rooms, capitalism.

[1:25:52] We got to hawk some product here.

[1:25:55] And that means moving on to sponsors for the Flophouse.

[1:26:02] We're grateful for them.

[1:26:04] We love them.

[1:26:05] We hope you love them, too.

[1:26:07] We got to say, hey, here's –

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:08] There's some products that we want to tell you about today.

[1:26:12] Products, products, products for you.

[1:26:15] Things you can buy and things you can tell people that you liked enough that they should buy them, too.

[1:26:20] Their products for you.

[1:26:22] With Dan McCoy as Dan.

[1:26:24] Thank you.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:25] If I asked you how many subscriptions you have, would you be able to list all of them and how much you're paying?

[1:26:30] I know the New Yorker.

[1:26:32] That's one.

[1:26:32] Would you?

[1:26:34] The amount you're spending might surprise you.

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[1:27:02] Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has helped save its members an average of $720 a year with over 500 million in canceled subscriptions.

[1:27:14] So, cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash flop.

[1:27:20] That is rocketmoney.com slash flop.

[1:27:24] Rocketmoney.com slash flop.

[1:27:28] Also, sponsoring the show.

[1:27:31] Wow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:32] You did such a good job of not leaving a space for me to butt in and say, rocket money, saving you money.

[1:27:38] I'm rocket money because I'm a rocket money.

[1:27:41] Dan, you didn't even let me have time to do it.

[1:27:43] You went straight to the next ad.

[1:27:44] I know.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:44] And the next ad is for Squarespace, the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online.

[1:27:51] Stand out with a beautiful website.

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Elliott Kalan

[1:28:41] Drag-and-drop technology?

[1:28:42] You can drop a drag on something?

[1:28:44] Drag-and-drop.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:46] Drag-and-drop technology for desktop or mobile.

[1:28:49] Head to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial.

[1:28:53] And when you are ready to launch, use offer code FLOP, that is F-L-O-P, to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:04] Dan, you know what else the Flophouse is sponsored by?

[1:29:07] Tell me.

[1:29:07] The Flophouse.

[1:29:07] It's sponsored by the Flophouse.

[1:29:10] Huh?

[1:29:10] How's that possible?

[1:29:11] Well, because I'm here to tell you we've got some live shows coming up.

[1:29:15] One in a place that's very familiar to us and very dear to our hearts, and one in a very new place that we're very excited about.

[1:29:21] On March 31st, that's right, Easter Sunday, we're going to be performing at the Bell House in Brooklyn, our old stomping grounds.

[1:29:28] We love to be there.

[1:29:29] They're a great place to put on a show, and they're just a fun, comfortable place to see a show.

[1:29:34] You don't want to spend Easter with your family?

[1:29:35] I don't want to either.

[1:29:36] It's not even my religion.

[1:29:37] Go to the Bell House instead.

[1:29:39] At 7.30 p.m., we'll be doing a show there.

[1:29:41] Dan, can I announce what movie we're doing?

Dan McCoy

[1:29:42] Yeah, you know what?

[1:29:44] Let's do it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:45] You know, let's have a little fun.

[1:29:47] Okay.

[1:29:47] We're going to be watching—oh, right.

[1:29:50] I just saw the name of the movie.

[1:29:51] We're going to be watching The Garbage Pail Kids.

[1:29:53] Well, not what we're going to be talking about.

[1:29:55] We're not watching The Garbage Pail Kids movie at the show.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:57] Yeah, if you're confused, if you follow the Twitter page, I may have said something about Superman Returns.

[1:30:02] You know what?

[1:30:03] We had to change them up.

[1:30:04] We're going to do Garbage Pail Kids for a good reason.

[1:30:07] I don't know whether we're announcing that reason, but it'll be fun.

[1:30:10] It'll be an exciting surprise if we're not.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:11] Maybe we'll announce it in the future if we'll have to get permission.

[1:30:15] But we may have a guest who wants to do The Garbage Pail Kids movie.

[1:30:22] It's a guest you will like.

[1:30:23] It's a guest you'll like a lot.

[1:30:25] It's a guest that—and Dan, feel free to tell Alex to cut this out if it's too much.

[1:30:31] It's a guest who we gave a blank check to on what movie we would talk about at the show.

[1:30:36] See if you can noodle that clue.

[1:30:39] So that's March 31st, Easter Sunday at the Bell House.

[1:30:42] Going to be very exciting.

[1:30:43] But we also, in May, are doing two shows in one night in merry old England.

[1:30:48] That's right.

[1:30:49] We're going to be in Oxford, England.

[1:30:50] Two shows at the Oxford Town Hall as part of the Saint Audio Podcast Festival.

[1:30:55] We're so excited about this.

[1:30:56] We've been wanting to do a show in England for a very long time.

[1:30:58] And Oxford's just a beautiful town, you know?

[1:31:00] It's a beautiful city.

[1:31:01] It's a beautiful venue.

[1:31:02] We're doing two shows.

[1:31:04] The 7 p.m. show, the early show, we're talking about The Avengers.

[1:31:07] Not The Avengers.

[1:31:08] That's the good one with the Marvel superheroes.

[1:31:10] No, The Avengers with Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes that is the Hollywood version of the British television show, The Avengers.

[1:31:18] And at 9 p.m., we're going to be talking about the most important movie in British cinema history, Spice World.

[1:31:24] The only Spice Girls movie up to this point.

[1:31:27] Maybe there'll be another one.

[1:31:28] Who knows?

Dan McCoy

[1:31:29] You know, they could do another one.

[1:31:30] They could do it.

[1:31:31] They're all still with us, you know?

[1:31:32] Yeah.

[1:31:33] They could reunite for another movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:36] So March 31st at the Bell House, Garbage Pail Kids.

[1:31:39] May 24th in Oxford, we're doing The Avengers and Spice Girls, two separate shows.

[1:31:43] For ticket links and more information, go to flophousepodcast.com slash events.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:49] And I just want to remind folks, Max Fund Drive is coming up.

[1:31:55] This is what funds this show that you enjoy, I hope, still after all these years.

[1:32:03] It is as honestly, as television has, you know, vaporized as a previously lucrative career.

[1:32:14] Don't hold back, Dan.

[1:32:15] Don't hold back.

[1:32:15] Going up in flames.

[1:32:17] Podcasting has turned out to be the wave of the future.

[1:32:20] For us.

[1:32:21] For us.

[1:32:23] So we would love your support during Max Fund Drive.

[1:32:25] And I just want to do a quick mention of our Max Fund bonus content for members who donate at the $5 level or more.

[1:32:33] What's going to be available for them on day one?

[1:32:36] It'll be our Spawn LA live show.

[1:32:39] We are putting it up as our bonus content.

[1:32:43] You can hear us talk about Spawn.

[1:32:44] You can hear my heartfelt farewell to the West Coast tour at the end of that show.

[1:32:49] And we're also going to do a three-episode series on the films of Graydon Clark.

[1:32:55] We already talked uninvited with Gillian Flynn on Main.

[1:33:01] But we're going to talk about some of his other movies.

[1:33:04] Joysticks.

[1:33:05] The Forbidden Dance.

[1:33:06] One other that I can't remember.

[1:33:08] But he's a schlockmeister extraordinaire.

[1:33:11] So we're going to do more Boco than ever before.

[1:33:14] Stuart probably is going to do some RPG stuff at some point.

[1:33:18] Can't confirm that for sure.

[1:33:19] But I know he always loves it.

[1:33:21] So that'll be coming up with Max Fund Drive.

[1:33:24] Back to you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:25] If there's ever a time to contribute to Max Fund for the bonus content, this is it.

[1:33:29] We're going to be doing a lot.

[1:33:30] And as much as I'm not looking forward to talking about Garbage Pail Kids,

[1:33:34] I'm still looking forward to talking about the character of King Vidiot in Joysticks.

[1:33:37] I'm looking forward to watching that character again.

[1:33:39] He's an amazing character.

[1:33:40] Maybe the greatest character in film.

[1:33:42] Before we finish with the promo section, this has been a long one.

[1:33:44] I wanted to mention I have my Hercules comic book series from Dynamite Comics.

[1:33:48] It comes out starting in April.

[1:33:49] My other podcast, The 99% Invisible Breakdown, The Power Broker with Roman Mars,

[1:33:54] is currently out now.

[1:33:55] Look for, I guess, Power Broker and my name or go to the 99% Invisible feed

[1:33:59] because that's where the episodes are.

S4

[1:34:06] Max Fund Drive 2024.

S5

[1:34:09] Max Fund Drive?

[1:34:10] What about it?

S4

[1:34:13] It'll be the best time for someone to support the podcasts they love.

S5

[1:34:17] Oh yeah!

[1:34:18] Drive exclusive gifts, special events, and of course all the amazing bonus content.

[1:34:22] Bonus content.

[1:34:23] Yeah.

[1:34:24] So, what's on your mind?

[1:34:26] Check.

S4

[1:34:27] It starts March 18th and it's only two weeks long.

[1:34:31] And?

[1:34:32] Check.

[1:34:34] Well, what if they miss it?

S5

[1:34:36] Well, they should follow Max Fund on social media.

[1:34:39] Or sign up for the newsletter at MaximumFun.org slash newsletter so they don't miss it.

[1:34:45] Otherwise, checkmate.

S4

[1:34:48] Who guests on Jordan Jesse Go?

[1:34:50] I mean, we could just list Patton Oswalt, Kumail Nanjiani, Maria Bamford, whatever.

[1:34:55] We couldn't remember all of them.

[1:34:57] So, we asked my kids.

Hallie Haglund

[1:34:59] Uh, famous people?

[1:35:01] How famous?

[1:35:02] I don't know.

[1:35:03] Pretty famous.

[1:35:04] Duh.

[1:35:06] Duh.

[1:35:07] Duh.

[1:35:07] Really tiny celebrities who would go on this train wreck instead of like a big talk show.

S6

[1:35:15] There's just a bunch of people on your show.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:25] Jordan Jesse Go, a comedy show for grown-ups.

[1:35:28] Let us move on to letters from listeners.

[1:35:31] Listeners like you.

[1:35:33] Uh, this one, this first one.

[1:35:36] This listener or this letter?

[1:35:37] I'm confused, Dan.

[1:35:38] This first letter.

[1:35:39] Oh.

[1:35:39] From where?

[1:35:40] He's, listeners like you.

[1:35:42] This letter is from, not you specifically.

[1:35:46] Oh.

[1:35:47] But like you.

[1:35:48] Oh, okay.

[1:35:48] This letter is from Hanuman, last or first name withheld, depending on which one, it's unclear

[1:35:55] which one Hanuman is.

[1:35:57] But Hanuman writes, as a mechanic, I find the dead car trope poorly thought out in most movies.

[1:36:06] The lights are always on, brighter than any real headlights.

[1:36:09] The door dinger is digging away, but it never starts.

[1:36:12] So my question is, do writers do real-life research on the things they're writing about?

[1:36:18] And we've got three television writers here.

[1:36:23] You can't take that away from us.

[1:36:24] Oh.

[1:36:25] You cannot even.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:26] The way I wrote TV, you can't take that away from me.

[1:36:30] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:30] Even if we're not currently writing for television.

[1:36:34] But who is these days?

[1:36:35] You cannot deny that we have all three written for television.

[1:36:38] So as three writers, do we do research?

[1:36:42] Is this a thing that we do?

[1:36:44] Question mark?

[1:36:46] I mean, I have an answer for this, but.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:48] Oh, okay.

[1:36:48] Hallie, do you do research when you're writing?

[1:36:49] You do, right?

[1:36:50] You do a lot of research.

[1:36:51] I mean, you went to Las Vegas for an elderly beauty contest for research, right?

Hallie Haglund

[1:36:58] Yes.

[1:36:59] So I do do research.

[1:37:02] And I often feel like the research I do is insufficient.

[1:37:07] Because, you know, here we are.

[1:37:11] We listen to podcasts.

[1:37:12] So I feel like when I was a little bit younger and I would listen to, I like had this, like, you know, I would listen to, like, culture podcasts.

[1:37:27] Occasionally, when this whole crew was writing for the daily show, there would be times where.

[1:37:34] I've heard of it.

[1:37:35] There would, you know, there would be moments where, like, it's John's last show.

[1:37:39] It's Trevor's first show.

[1:37:40] It's Trevor's.

[1:37:41] And it was, like, listening to podcasts that I really trust, respect, opinions that I admire.

[1:37:56] And then I would hear them talking about something that, like, I knew so deeply about.

[1:38:01] And I would be, like, oh, you guys, like, I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

[1:38:08] And sometimes it would be, like, well, I don't usually watch late night, but, like, I tuned in for this episode and I would be so angry.

[1:38:16] I would be, like, well, then you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

[1:38:22] All to say, I understand both feeling like I am self-conscious when I write things about, like, doing research.

[1:38:34] But that gets continually magnified about, like, how little you know.

[1:38:39] Like, right now I'm saying I was, when people on podcasts talk about late night, I was like, you guys have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

[1:38:50] But the whole format of late night or specifically daily show stuff that we did was, like, hey, guys, catch up with this, like, presidential situation that's melting down in Brazil.

[1:39:06] And then let's, like, have a really strong opinion about it.

[1:39:09] And so it was, like, all right, yeah, I will.

[1:39:13] I'll engage.

[1:39:14] And I care a lot.

[1:39:15] And I'll read all this stuff.

[1:39:17] But also, how could I possibly know everything that anyone who really cared about that issue, I mean, I'm sure anyone who did was listening to it and being, like, all right, well, there's, like, a lot more nuance to this situation, you guys.

[1:39:34] So you don't know what you're talking about.

[1:39:36] So I would say, yes, I do do research.

[1:39:42] And I'm self-conscious about not doing research.

[1:39:45] But I think if it's something that you really care about and you, or maybe this is the definition of really good writing, when you watch something and you don't feel alienated by it because it's something you both care about and don't feel like the people who wrote it.

[1:40:04] Did not know what the fuck they were talking about.

[1:40:06] Then that's good writing.

[1:40:08] But I also think, yes, I do a lot of research.

[1:40:11] I care a lot.

[1:40:13] But sometimes I wonder if it's the thing you care about most, maybe you shouldn't be watching a TV show about it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:26] Yeah.

[1:40:27] I think there's some truth to that because definitely I do research for things.

[1:40:31] But there comes so many times when you're writing something and you're like, I know from our research this is not the way that it would work.

[1:40:38] But the story is what's important here and not getting these facts exactly right.

[1:40:43] The same way I got so mad watching Mank.

[1:40:45] There's so many times in that where there are things where I'm like, well, they can't be talking about the Wolfman.

[1:40:48] That movie didn't come out yet.

[1:40:49] But then I'm like, nobody cares about this but me, really.

[1:40:52] And it gets in the way of – the story wins.

[1:40:55] When it's between facts and the story, often it's the story that wins.

Hallie Haglund

[1:40:58] Well, I can't tell you.

[1:40:59] Like literally nobody remembers Studio 16 on the Sunset Strip except everyone that I talk to every day.

[1:41:09] It literally is a reference point every second of the day that I – so it's just like when it's your thing, yeah.

[1:41:20] Nobody knows how to recreate it.

Dan McCoy

[1:41:23] No, that's what I – I wanted to agree with Hallie on like the point of – yeah, if you are intimately familiar with the thing, you're always going to be disappointed by the way it is depicted.

[1:41:33] Like I would hear the same sorts of like assessments of like, oh, they clearly did this on the Daily Show because of this.

[1:41:40] I'm like, you have no fucking idea.

[1:41:42] You have a bullshit understanding.

[1:41:44] Like the thing is like – and that's like showbiz, a thing that people – that's like widely reported about.

[1:41:49] So people have like this idea that they understand it and even so, they're wrong.

[1:41:56] But that's fine.

[1:41:58] You know, that's not like why should you know about it if it's not your thing?

[1:42:01] And likewise, I agree with Elliot.

[1:42:03] I'm writing a screenplay right now that, you know, like most screenplays will probably remain unproduced.

[1:42:10] But among other things, for instance, I'm like looking into the workings of chimneys.

[1:42:15] I'm like, okay, does a chimney work like this?

[1:42:18] Maybe not, but it works close enough that for my story, I will write it like this and 90% of people won't give a shit.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:27] I've got to assume, Dan, this is a dark reimagining of Bert from Mary Poppins, and I can't wait to see it.

Dan McCoy

[1:42:32] Yeah.

[1:42:33] Bert!

[1:42:34] Exclamation point.

[1:42:35] But like, no, it's true.

[1:42:36] Like at a certain point, you have to make that judgment.

[1:42:39] Like, does this serve the writing that it is 100% accurate?

[1:42:44] Well, then maybe it's not as important.

Hallie Haglund

[1:42:46] But I also don't think it's like a decision a lot of times.

[1:42:50] I think a lot of times you think you do understand.

[1:42:53] And so you're just like, I mean, I feel like, yeah, that it's just like, oh, yeah, I get this.

[1:42:59] So, I mean, I think that's more the reality than like making a conscious decision to not represent something accurately.

[1:43:09] I think it's like, oh, well, I read about something.

[1:43:12] I mean, are you kidding me?

[1:43:13] You guys, when we worked on The Daily Show, you didn't feel like 100% like, oh, I get this.

[1:43:20] Yeah, this is wrong.

[1:43:21] I mean, The Daily Show is a special case.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:23] I was talking more about like movies, but in The Daily Show, very much so.

[1:43:25] Yeah.

[1:43:26] In The Daily Show, you'd also get a lot of people who were like, I read an article about this this morning.

[1:43:30] So, yeah, I know everything about this.

[1:43:31] So, I'm an expert.

[1:43:32] Yeah.

Hallie Haglund

[1:43:32] I remember one day where I was like, let's do this headline tomorrow because I'm going to need to catch up on the Brazilian governmental meltdown that's happening right now and has been happening for the last 50 years.

[1:43:49] Sorry.

[1:43:50] Like, let me step in.

[1:43:52] And it's like, yeah, no, I get people's frustration with that.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:59] I just had a flashback to the level of immediate expertise that was expected during my early years there, your mid-years there.

Hallie Haglund

[1:44:12] Yeah.

[1:44:13] And it was like, oh, okay.

[1:44:16] I'll write a financial headline today.

[1:44:21] Also, I have made very unwise investments.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:29] I think just taking it back to cars for a moment, I think there's also times when a thing is done wrong in a movie or TV show because…

Dan McCoy

[1:44:36] Lightning McQueen is totally inaccurate.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:37] He doesn't have eyes.

[1:44:38] The cars don't really have eyes.

[1:44:39] He wouldn't say ka-chow.

[1:44:40] I've never heard a car say ka-chow in my life.

[1:44:44] There's only one town where cars have taken over and kicked the people out, and it's actually not a desert town.

[1:44:49] That's what they get wrong.

[1:44:50] There have been definitely times I've been working on something where I've seen something happen where it's like, well, that's not how it would happen.

[1:44:54] And someone says, yeah, but that's how the audience thinks it happens.

[1:44:58] And so if a car goes dead on the highway and they open the door, I think there's like this assumption on the part of the person watching it.

[1:45:04] Oh, yeah.

[1:45:04] When a car door opens, it makes that ding sound.

[1:45:06] Or like, yeah, when your headlights are still on.

[1:45:09] And it's like…

Hallie Haglund

[1:45:09] I mean, that's like the worst example because everybody drives cars.

[1:45:14] It's not like…

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:15] No, but…

[1:45:16] Yeah, that's true.

[1:45:17] But I think for a lot of people who…

[1:45:19] There are things like that, though, where it's like you drive a car, but maybe you haven't been in a car that goes dead in the middle of the road.

[1:45:25] That's the worst example, Elliot.

[1:45:26] Have you driven a car like this?

[1:45:29] To our listener, I apologize.

[1:45:30] Hallie has really had to…

[1:45:31] Dan, go to the next question.

[1:45:32] Next question.

Dan McCoy

[1:45:33] This one is from Patrick, last name withheld from the original cast podcast.

[1:45:37] I'm just kidding.

[1:45:39] You can try and figure out which Patrick that is.

[1:45:42] Patrick says, hey, guys, I just finished watching Ballistic X vs. Sever and prep for your next episode of Flop TV so that you can date this to when that would have been.

[1:45:52] I'm married, Dan.

[1:45:53] I don't have to date a letter.

[1:45:55] You don't have to, but you could.

[1:45:57] But if I wanted to enter a web of seduction and deceit.

[1:46:01] Madam web.

[1:46:02] And I had to give…

[1:46:04] We're going to watch that at some point.

[1:46:06] I was watching…

[1:46:07] Sorry.

[1:46:08] Let me start over again.

[1:46:09] I just finished watching Ballistic X vs. Sever and prep for your next episode of Flop TV.

[1:46:14] And I had to give a piece of trivia you may not know.

[1:46:18] During the overwrought finale, I thought the closing song, Anytime, by Sam Waters and Louis Bianchiello, performed by Mary Griffin, sounded familiar.

[1:46:32] So I looked up where I thought it was from, and I was right.

[1:46:35] It was also featured in the film From Justin to Kelly during the emotional climax of the film as a duet between the titular leads.

[1:46:43] Which leads to my question.

[1:46:45] Has there ever been a needle drop song so strongly identified in your head with one film that you cannot help but think of that film when you hear it?

[1:46:54] Patrick, last name withheld again from the original cast podcast.

[1:46:59] I mean, the thing is, like…

[1:47:02] I mean, obviously, there are some needle drops that are associated so closely with one movie.

[1:47:09] It's hard to hear stuck in the middle with you without thinking about…

[1:47:11] Exactly.

[1:47:12] That was the number one with a bullet.

[1:47:14] You cannot think of stuck in the middle with you without thinking of someone's ear being severed.

[1:47:20] Just as Steeler's Wheel…

[1:47:23] Intended with the song, yeah.

[1:47:25] Originally.

[1:47:26] I don't know if there are other ones that people have, but…

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:30] I was trying to think of an answer for this one, but it's like, these are the things that came to mind.

[1:47:34] One is, I think they play Sweet Home Alabama when we were introduced to Killer Croc in the movie Suicide Squad.

[1:47:40] And now I associate that song with that scene, or with that movie at least.

[1:47:44] Two was, when I hear the song All Along the Watchtower, the Jimi Hendrix version, I always think of, like, Vietnam helicopters.

[1:47:52] And I don't know a movie that actually does that.

[1:47:54] There must be one, but I don't know what it is or anything.

[1:47:57] And the third is, similar to Patrick's experience, I was watching the movie Gunga Din years ago, the old 30s Gunga Din.

[1:48:06] And there was a music cue in it, and I'm like, I've heard that song before.

[1:48:09] I've heard that music cue.

[1:48:11] And dug through my VHS tapes, because this was how long ago this was.

[1:48:14] And put in Citizen Kane.

[1:48:17] And I realized they had reused that cue in the newsreel section of Citizen Kane, which is all made up of music that they had in the RKO library.

[1:48:24] And it was one of those moments where I was like, I've heard this little tiny bit of music before.

[1:48:28] And it was very gratifying to find where it came from.

[1:48:31] But otherwise, yeah, what movie do they, what movie is they doing that Vietnam to helicopters to?

Dan McCoy

[1:48:36] Well, did I ever tell you, like, there was, I wanted to do a sketch.

[1:48:39] I never wrote it, but it was going to be just like the most stereotypical music cues where it would be someone narrating, like, it was when I was in Vietnam.

[1:48:48] And I'm like, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

[1:48:51] And then they'd be like, or maybe it was when I was stationed in Hong Kong.

[1:48:57] And then they'd be like, I think it was during World War II.

[1:49:04] I was in Italy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49:05] Yeah.

[1:49:10] That's funny.

[1:49:11] You should have written that.

[1:49:13] Thanks.

[1:49:13] There's a lot of things I should have written.

[1:49:15] That's true.

[1:49:16] Hallie, what's your answer to this question?

[1:49:18] Wow.

Hallie Haglund

[1:49:19] So I was like, oh, it's just going to be so cliche.

[1:49:22] But then I was like, as you're talking, I'm like, oh, not at all.

[1:49:27] Because we're from different worlds.

[1:49:31] Yeah, what is it?

[1:49:32] It's a different world from where you come from, Hallie.

[1:49:34] I was thinking about like, and then he kissed me.

[1:49:37] Because that's such like an adventures in babysitting.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49:40] From adventures in babysitting.

[1:49:42] Exactly.

[1:49:43] Actually, you know what?

[1:49:44] That reminds me.

[1:49:45] So maybe the one that I think of the most in this way, which that reminded me of is.

[1:49:50] Be My Baby?

[1:49:50] No, well, the beginning of Gremlins.

[1:49:52] Christmas.

[1:49:53] Da, da, da, da.

[1:49:54] A song that has nothing else to do but with Gremlins other than it's at Christmas.

[1:49:58] But whenever I hear that song, I think of Gremlins.

[1:50:00] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:50:00] Yeah.

[1:50:01] I mean, like, that's a wonderful Christmas song.

[1:50:04] That has many other associations, but you're right.

[1:50:07] It will forever be Gremlins to us.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:10] Hallie, did you have any other ones?

[1:50:11] That's a good example.

Hallie Haglund

[1:50:12] I was thinking of like, the like, be my, be my, be my little baby for Dirty Dancing.

[1:50:21] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:22] That's for Dirty Dancing.

[1:50:23] The one I think of is, hello, lover boy.

[1:50:25] You know, come over here, lover boy.

[1:50:26] Yeah, yeah.

[1:50:26] That one.

[1:50:26] Yeah.

[1:50:26] But that's like.

[1:50:28] And Time of My Life.

[1:50:29] There's a lot of them in Dirty Dancing.

Hallie Haglund

[1:50:30] Yeah.

[1:50:31] But I think that, I mean, that was literally the first.

[1:50:33] That was for Dirty Dancing.

Dan McCoy

[1:50:35] Was it Time of My Life?

[1:50:36] Maybe ours was on.

Hallie Haglund

[1:50:36] No, I think Chris Patrick Swayze, he sings on Hungry Eyes.

[1:50:41] And I think he sings Time of My Life, too.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:43] Well, Time of My Life.

[1:50:44] So if you've watched the documentary that I watched about the making of Dirty Dancing,

[1:50:47] it wasn't written for Dirty Dancing, but it was original to it.

[1:50:50] Like, they went through a lot of songs that had been, that were submitted to be the song

[1:50:54] for Dirty Dancing.

[1:50:55] You know, they were looking through songs that were from music publishers that hadn't

[1:50:59] been released yet, I guess.

[1:51:00] And there's also, She's Like the Wind.

[1:51:02] Is that the.

[1:51:03] Through My Dreams.

[1:51:05] He sang that.

[1:51:06] Yeah.

[1:51:06] Yeah, he sings that one.

[1:51:07] Yeah.

[1:51:08] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:09] Dirty Dancing.

[1:51:10] What a great soundtrack for Dirty Dancing.

[1:51:12] It's a great soundtrack.

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:13] Yeah.

[1:51:13] Hits of the 50s, 80s, and today.

[1:51:16] Yeah.

[1:51:17] Not today, but.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:19] Sure.

[1:51:20] They looked into the future.

[1:51:22] They had a few Olivia Rodrigo tunes.

[1:51:25] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:26] Well, they're dancing and it's like, Britney, bitch, or whatever that song is that Hallie

[1:51:29] says everybody knows, but I didn't know it.

[1:51:31] It's Britney, bitch.

[1:51:35] Let's.

Hallie Haglund

[1:51:36] Elliot, you just text Sarv and ask if she knows.

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:41] It would not surprise me at all if Sarv knows it.

[1:51:43] I would surprise me if most people know it and I don't.

[1:51:46] Yeah.

[1:51:46] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:47] She'll get mad at me for not knowing it.

[1:51:48] Yeah.

[1:51:49] Our friend Lauren Sarver, previously mentioned on the podcast, also texting me recently about

[1:51:56] Madam Web and how much fun we're going to have when we cover it on the flop house.

[1:52:01] I'm looking forward to it.

[1:52:02] Yeah.

[1:52:03] Let's move on to recommendations of movies we've seen that we would recommend.

[1:52:09] I mean, you know, maybe along with Cat Person, if you like.

[1:52:13] You were about to say Cat People.

[1:52:14] I was.

[1:52:15] I was.

[1:52:16] It's so hard.

Elliott Kalan

[1:52:16] I keep almost calling it Cat People.

[1:52:18] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:52:19] Yeah.

[1:52:19] I mean, well, there's two movies called Cat People.

[1:52:22] There's only this one called Cat Person.

[1:52:24] And Curse of the Cat People.

[1:52:26] Yeah.

[1:52:26] There you go.

[1:52:28] I'm going to recommend, I watched on Valentine's Day, Waitress the Musical.

[1:52:36] Audrey and I dialed it up on, you know, your VOD.

[1:52:44] No, like, Waitress is a film that she brings up a lot because, you know, it's a film that

[1:52:51] I think has this kind of, like, weirdly long tail.

[1:52:54] It's, like, a sweet movie, a movie with a lot of qualities.

[1:52:58] Like, it's not, it has, like, a couple of, like, maybe, like, flaws.

[1:53:02] It's not quite, like, fully formed.

[1:53:04] But, unfortunately, Adrienne Shelley, the writer-director, you know.

[1:53:08] Sad stories.

[1:53:10] Sad, sad story.

[1:53:11] Yeah.

[1:53:11] I will not repeat it.

[1:53:13] Look it up if you want to find out.

[1:53:15] It's just very sad.

[1:53:16] She passed away.

[1:53:18] She was killed.

[1:53:20] You're pretty close to repeating the story.

[1:53:22] I mean, I just need to look it up.

[1:53:24] Waitress.

[1:53:25] Yeah.

[1:53:25] But she made this movie Waitress that was a lot of fun, bittersweet,

[1:53:33] Carrie Russell is very great in it, Nathan Fillion.

[1:53:36] And then it has The Second Life as a musical that Sarah Bareilles did.

[1:53:41] And I had never seen it on Broadway, but they have done this, you know,

[1:53:46] Broadway filming of it that I think they did actually during COVID.

[1:53:52] They brought the cast back for a limited time and did this filming.

[1:53:58] And it had a small theatrical release where it overperformed greatly.

[1:54:05] Like, everyone was surprised at how well it did.

[1:54:08] And it is just a really sweet musical.

[1:54:12] Like, all of the qualities of the film are there.

[1:54:15] Plus, then you've got these great songs that are very kind of nakedly emotional.

[1:54:20] I was talking to Elliot when we were on our West Coast tour.

[1:54:23] I saw the Back to the Future musical because we got discount tickets.

[1:54:27] And my friend Mary, like, loves Back to the Future.

[1:54:29] Like, we're going to go.

[1:54:30] We don't care whether it's good or bad.

[1:54:32] We're going to see it.

[1:54:32] And it was, like, fun and dumb.

[1:54:34] And, like, there's some good stuff, some bad stuff.

[1:54:36] But, like, the songs were just so terrible.

[1:54:40] But this, I only bring it up in contrast to, like, Waitress,

[1:54:45] where I felt all the songs, like, really were emotional and sweet and kind of gutting some of them.

[1:54:55] And it was just a really lovely filming of this musical.

[1:54:59] If I had any critique, it was that I think that the shooting of it gets a little frantic sometimes.

[1:55:07] Like, I think that sometimes when you're shooting a theatrical show, the people filming it think, like,

[1:55:14] we got to jazz this up so it doesn't feel like we're just shooting a play or a musical.

[1:55:20] But, you know, it's blocked to be seen from the front.

[1:55:24] It's blocked so you, like, sit in a seat and stationary watch it happen.

[1:55:29] And some of these camera moves kind of fucked with that a little bit.

[1:55:33] But other than that, I would totally recommend it.

[1:55:36] I had a great time watching it.

[1:55:39] What do you want to recommend, Elliot?

Elliott Kalan

[1:55:42] Hallie, why don't you go first?

[1:55:43] Because I'm going to take a little bit of time with mine for reasons that will become clear when I go.

[1:55:47] Okay, sorry.

Hallie Haglund

[1:55:48] I'm sorry.

[1:55:50] I would have been more prepared.

Elliott Kalan

[1:55:54] But you were so captivated by what Dan was saying about Waitress.

[1:55:56] I was lost.

[1:55:57] I was lost in Waitress.

[1:56:04] Honestly.

[1:56:06] Yeah.

[1:56:07] I would say.

Hallie Haglund

[1:56:09] I have nothing.

[1:56:10] Sorry.

[1:56:11] I'm so sorry.

[1:56:11] I don't have anything.

[1:56:12] No, it's fine.

Dan McCoy

[1:56:14] That's fine.

[1:56:14] You don't have to have something.

[1:56:15] Get Hallie.

[1:56:15] You got a busy life.

[1:56:18] Yeah.

Hallie Haglund

[1:56:18] No, I would bring.

[1:56:21] I only want to bring something with sincerity.

[1:56:23] I got nothing.

[1:56:25] So Elliot, do you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:56:28] I'll go.

[1:56:29] So I mentioned at the top of the show that Hallie and Dan very graciously kind of scrambled their schedules so we could record these episodes.

[1:56:36] The reason for that is yesterday I got the news.

[1:56:38] And I'd like to talk about this even though it's sad because it's something that I want to talk about.

[1:56:42] I got the news that my grandmother had passed away.

[1:56:45] My grandmother, Barbara Prashel, who was a very important person to me.

[1:56:49] Someone who was very much the matriarch of my family and a very strong person, a strong personality and a pioneer in the CD-ROM indexing world of the 1990s.

[1:57:02] And to make myself the protagonist of the story in a way that Cat Person should teach me not to.

[1:57:08] Someone who she brought so many things into the life of and she's the person who introduced me to theater.

[1:57:14] She's the person who introduced me to many of the types of movies I like the most.

[1:57:18] She introduced me to the opera.

[1:57:19] She introduced me to fine art.

[1:57:20] She introduced me to fine music.

[1:57:22] She was someone who lived the kind of stereotypical life of a New York, sophisticated, liberal Jewish lady, but lived it very well.

[1:57:32] And she was 95 years old and she just passed away yesterday as we're recording this.

[1:57:38] And so we're recording this early because I have to go home for the memorial.

[1:57:44] But I wanted to recommend two movies.

[1:57:46] One is her favorite movie, which was 123, the Billy Wilder comedy from 1961.

[1:57:52] This is James Cagney's last starring role where he is the executive who's in charge of the Coca-Cola office in West Berlin.

[1:57:59] And the head of the company sends his daughter to be watched there because she's in love with somebody that her dad doesn't like.

[1:58:07] And unfortunately, it soon turns out that she is sneaking across the border into East Berlin to be romanced by a communist and ends up pregnant.

[1:58:15] And he has to figure out how to solve this problem of how does he turn a pregnancy by East Berlin communist into a marriage with a West Berlin capitalist, basically.

[1:58:25] And it's a really funny farce.

[1:58:26] And it's one that my grandmother was a big fan of and made sure I watched multiple times.

[1:58:35] I can't ever think about it without thinking about her.

[1:58:38] And so she's someone who I just want to make sure her memory was known better.

[1:58:42] She was a prolific letter writer to the New York Times.

[1:58:45] So if you Google her, a lot of what comes up is letters she wrote to the Times criticizing or complaining about things.

[1:58:53] And the first time – for years, I wrote a weekly humor column in a free newspaper called Metro.

[1:58:59] And I'll never forget, after the first column ran, my editor was so excited.

[1:59:02] They were like, we already got a letter about your column.

[1:59:05] And it was like, I loved Ellie Kalin's cockeyed view of the world, signed Barbara Pruschell.

[1:59:09] And they had no idea – because she has a different last name they didn't know was my grandmother that was writing in.

[1:59:13] But she was a very important person, and I've been spending the past two days kind of like thinking about her when I haven't been helping my son with his California missions project, which has been a huge weight on everybody's souls.

[1:59:26] But I've been thinking about her a lot.

[1:59:29] And something that kind of helped me with thinking about it was not just thinking about all the things that she brought into my life.

[1:59:35] She introduced me to the Marx Brothers.

[1:59:37] She introduced me to Monty Python and John Cleese's comedy.

[1:59:40] She introduced me to Preston Sturgis, all these things that are very important to the point of almost sacred to me.

[1:59:46] And I was watching this movie last night that I finished, this movie The River.

[1:59:52] It's Jean Renoir's movie from 1951 that might be his first color movie.

[1:59:56] I'm not sure.

[1:59:58] But it's about a British family in India.

[2:00:01] And the kind of thing that the movie keeps coming back to is this kind of symbol of the river as a thing that is eternal and the way that events cycle through people's lives.

[2:00:14] And birth follows death and death follows birth.

[2:00:16] And it's a very – it's funny.

[2:00:18] It's a strangely complimentary movie to Cat Person because it's also about a young woman who has a crush on an older man that is obviously unworkable.

[2:00:27] But it's much more innocent in some ways and more mature in others.

[2:00:31] And at the end of it, there's just a – there's this kind of voiceover narration where they're talking about kind of the eternal quality of these cycles.

[2:00:41] And it was just very moving for me at the moment.

[2:00:42] So I was all teary, and so I thought I would recommend those two movies.

[2:00:46] One, two, three, which is just like a silly movie.

[2:00:48] Like it's a real farce of a movie and super fast moving and super silly, which was her favorite film.

[2:00:53] And The River, which just kind of helped me through that moment.

[2:00:57] And recording this episode has helped me through that moment too.

[2:00:59] So I really appreciate Dan and Hallie, you being there for me.

[2:01:03] Thanks.

Hallie Haglund

[2:01:04] Elliot, anyone who made you is the best.

Dan McCoy

[2:01:08] Oh, thanks, Hallie.

[2:01:09] That's very sweet.

[2:01:09] That's nice.

[2:01:11] What's to say after that?

[2:01:13] Well, we need to sign off.

[2:01:16] I know that.

[2:01:19] If you have it in your heart, go and give us a good review on iTunes.

[2:01:25] There were a couple of bad reviews that we got.

[2:01:29] Unacceptable.

[2:01:30] For political reasons that made me very sad.

[2:01:33] So if you want to cancel out their vote, go to iTunes, give us a five-star review.

[2:01:41] Make them pay.

[2:01:44] And if you like podcasts, if you like the sort of shenanigans, go to Maximum Fun, MaximumFun.org.

[2:01:52] We got a lot of great podcasts over there on our network.

[2:01:55] Again, we're going to do the drive pretty soon.

[2:01:58] So we'll be doing some special stuff with some special guests.

[2:02:02] Look forward to that.

[2:02:05] And thank you to our –

Elliott Kalan

[2:02:07] Hallie raised her hand as if she was one of the special guests.

[2:02:10] Sorry, Hallie.

[2:02:10] I mean, she is.

[2:02:12] She's a special star.

Dan McCoy

[2:02:13] She's more than a special guest.

[2:02:14] She's ramping up to – no, she's –

[2:02:16] She's a member of the family.

[2:02:17] Yeah.

[2:02:18] Yeah.

[2:02:18] When you're here, you're family.

[2:02:20] And Hallie is first among those.

[2:02:25] But also, I would like to thank our producer and editor, Alex Smith.

[2:02:30] He goes by the name Howell Doughty on various socials.

[2:02:34] You can find podcasts and Twitch streams and all sorts of things done by him.

[2:02:39] Music.

[2:02:40] He is a very creative man in his own right on top of helping us.

[2:02:44] So look his stuff up.

[2:02:47] And that's it for the Flophouse.

[2:02:49] I've been Dan McCoy.

[2:02:51] I've been Ellie Kalin.

Hallie Haglund

[2:02:53] I have been Allie Hadley.

[2:02:56] Good night.

[2:02:57] Good night.

Elliott Kalan

[2:02:59] Unless you're listening to this in the morning, in which case, good morning.

[2:03:04] I was playing Uno with Sammy today, and every single color that we put down, I'm yellow.

[2:03:16] Da-boo-dee, da-boo-dae, da-boo-dee.

[2:03:19] It was great.

[2:03:19] Oh, no.

Dan McCoy

[2:03:20] Danielle hates it so much.

[2:03:21] Yeah, that's what I was about to say.

[2:03:23] Danielle must hate it.

[2:03:23] Okay.

[2:03:24] She hates it.

[2:03:27] Maximum Fun.

[2:03:27] A worker-owned network.

S4

[2:03:29] Of artists-owned shows.

[2:03:31] Supported.

[2:03:32] Directly.

[2:03:33] By you.

Ep. #419 - Cat Person, with Hallie Haglund

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