Ep. #416 - Cobra, LIVE!

Dan McCoy

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Cobra!

Stuart Wellington

[0:04] Live from Vancouver, Canada!

[0:30] Hey everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse, I'm Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[0:38] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:40] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

Dan McCoy

[0:43] And we are...

[0:44] I added a lot more N's to my name.

[0:51] Stolen Valor.

[0:53] Junior.

Elliott Kalan

[0:55] Stolen Valor, yeah, I've been going around pickpocketing N's from other people's names.

[1:00] What's your name?

[1:00] Christopher Ola, the director of Oppenheimer.

[1:03] Two N's more in my sack.

Dan McCoy

[1:08] We're here in Vancouver, Canada.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11] Look, it's baseball pitching superstar Ola Raya.

[1:16] Three more N's for Elliot.

Dan McCoy

[1:20] I wish I could say I'm not trying to think of a name with a lot of N's in it.

[1:27] That's how I get you.

[1:29] Yeah, this is a podcast where you watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[1:33] Now, for this live episode, we decided to watch Cobra, a canon classic starring one Mr. Sly Stallone.

[1:44] And written by.

[1:45] And written by Sly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46] Yeah, when he says canon, just for anyone who's not a bad movie buff, he means canon films, not canon like it's in the Bible.

Stuart Wellington

[1:54] There's no book of Cobra.

[1:55] I'm not saying this is a canonical work.

[1:56] Yeah, it's listed on the syllabus.

[1:58] We have to read it.

[1:59] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:00] It's a classic text of Western civilization.

[2:02] So we're going to, we watched Cobra.

[2:04] This is a movie.

[2:05] I'm not going to lie to you.

[2:06] I've seen this movie before.

[2:07] Guys, have you seen this movie before?

Dan McCoy

[2:09] I have seen it.

[2:10] I've actually been meaning to re-watch Cobra.

[2:13] For once in my life, the podcast has been a good excuse to like see a movie I wanted to see.

Stuart Wellington

[2:17] I was like, hey, Dan, have you seen The Holdovers yet?

[2:19] He's like, nah, I'm waiting to watch Cobra first.

Elliott Kalan

[2:23] The Holdovers doesn't make sense if you haven't seen Cobra yet.

[2:25] It's true, actually.

Dan McCoy

[2:27] My wife really wants to see The Holdovers.

[2:29] I'm being good.

[2:30] I'm waiting.

[2:31] You are good.

Elliott Kalan

[2:33] You're being very good.

[2:34] You know what?

[2:35] You're great.

[2:36] I'll take it.

[2:37] Thank you.

[2:38] He was waiting for me to say back to him.

[2:39] No, I'm right.

[2:40] But I didn't do it.

Dan McCoy

[2:40] You know, I'll take any level.

Elliott Kalan

[2:43] I'm on board.

[2:44] Okay, everybody.

[2:45] So let's talk Cobra.

[2:46] I'm going to go through the plot of Cobra.

[2:47] These guys are going to chime in and interrupt me or try to.

[2:52] Anyway, we start.

[2:54] Cobra starts the way.

[2:55] We'll let you run.

[2:56] Cobra starts the same way every movie should start.

[2:59] With a voiceover of Sylvester Stallone telling you suspect crime statistics.

[3:04] He goes, in America, there's a burglary every 11 seconds.

[3:09] Somebody steals a baby every 15 seconds.

[3:13] Every 34 minutes, somebody says they're going to,

[3:16] they're going to pay for a piece of baked goods in a store.

[3:19] They just run away.

[3:21] We should have.

Dan McCoy

[3:22] It's only now occurring to me that we should have called up our old daily show fact checker

[3:27] friend, Adam Chodikoff, and be like, hey, Adam, can you fact check these Cobra statistics

[3:31] for us?

Elliott Kalan

[3:31] Can you just let them see what the crime statistics were for 1986?

[3:34] It's accurate.

[3:36] Well, Dan, I'll have you know that I did the fact checking myself.

[3:39] That's right, everybody.

[3:40] It's me, Sylvester Stallone.

Dan McCoy

[3:40] You made it out.

[3:41] I didn't know whether he was going to come, but.

Elliott Kalan

[3:44] When I saw that you were going to talk about my movie Cobra, which I.

Dan McCoy

[3:46] It's going to be two hours of the.

[3:48] God damn.

Elliott Kalan

[3:49] It's a movie I starred in and wrote and probably directed to under an assumed name, maybe.

[3:55] Yeah.

[3:56] And maybe I played all the other parts as well.

[3:58] A real toll in the force.

Dan McCoy

[3:59] Even Brigitte Nielsen's role.

Elliott Kalan

[4:01] Yes.

[4:02] We met on set and I said, let's get married, but first I will do your part.

[4:07] Allow me to assume your physical form.

[4:10] I got to live out every man's dream of kissing himself on camera.

[4:16] But I checked all those statistics.

[4:18] I went around to the newspaper offices in town and I said, give me your crime statistics.

[4:22] And I had it.

Dan McCoy

[4:23] A large man is yelling at us.

Elliott Kalan

[4:25] I was already famous, Daniel.

[4:27] They knew it was me, Sylvester Stallone.

[4:29] I'm sorry.

Dan McCoy

[4:30] I presumed you went out in incognito as a famous man.

Elliott Kalan

[4:34] Impossible.

[4:35] I'm just that famous.

[4:36] That's true.

[4:37] Once I went, you know, COVID, everyone was wearing masks.

[4:40] And even though I wore a mask, everyone was like, are you Sylvester Stallone?

[4:42] And I'd be like, no, I'm just a masked regular person who's going on their business.

[4:45] You're right.

Dan McCoy

[4:46] I cannot imagine encountering Sylvester Stallone and not knowing it was Sylvester Stallone.

[4:50] Yeah, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[4:51] Imagine me when I look at myself in the mirror and I'm like, oh, it's Sylvester Stallone.

[4:54] What are you doing in my house?

[4:55] You get the fuck out of here.

[4:56] And I pull a gun.

[4:57] I say, how'd you get out of here?

[4:59] And my family is like, sly, sly, because they call me that too.

[5:02] Yeah, yeah.

[5:02] That makes sense.

[5:03] They go, sly, it's you.

[5:03] It's a mirror.

[5:04] And I'm like, oh, thank goodness.

[5:06] I thought I was in the movie Judge Redd again where I was dealing with my clone.

Dan McCoy

[5:13] Well, I'm glad I took us down that road.

Elliott Kalan

[5:17] Well, anyway, maybe I'll be back later.

[5:19] I don't know.

[5:19] I noticed there was some Tostitos in the back.

[5:24] Restaurant style.

[5:25] I'll go have that.

[5:26] Okay, Sylvester Stallone's leaving.

[5:28] It's me again now.

[5:29] In the old days, I do a bit where I was like, oh, I just came back.

[5:33] Where's Sly Stallone?

[5:33] I don't need to do that anymore.

[5:34] I mean, I'm more Stallone than Elliot now.

[5:36] So he has these statistics as we are looking at the handle of a gun with a cobra image on

[5:41] it.

[5:41] And then the gun turns and points at us, the audience.

[5:45] And does it fire?

[5:46] I can't remember.

[5:48] In what I assume would be an homage to the movie Spellbound.

Stuart Wellington

[5:53] Okay.

[5:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[5:54] Yeah.

[5:55] Yeah, we're kind of given a vision of hell.

[5:58] There's occasional shots of people riding motorcycles over a red, fiery backdrop.

Elliott Kalan

[6:03] It's the blood-red skies of Southern California.

[6:06] And there's a mysterious person on a motorcycle.

[6:09] He looks super cool in silhouette.

[6:11] He'd be forgiven for thinking this is our titular hero, Cobra, the snake man.

[6:15] But no, because intercut with this man riding a bike under these blood-red skies are scenes

[6:20] of the meeting of an axe-killing cult, which is mainly a bunch of guys who meet in the sewer

[6:25] and they each hold one axe in each hand and clang them together.

[6:27] Clang them together, yeah.

[6:28] That's the extent of the service, the ceremony.

Dan McCoy

[6:32] I mean, that sounds like a nice club.

[6:33] You get to a certain age, you just want to meet new people.

Stuart Wellington

[6:36] Yeah.

[6:36] It's hard to make friends after a certain point when you're like, you leave school.

[6:40] Like, maybe your kids are all grown up.

[6:43] It's hard to meet people.

[6:44] And so it's nice to-

[6:44] You need a common interest.

[6:46] Like clanging axes.

[6:46] Like axe clanging.

[6:47] Investing in axes aren't that expensive.

[6:49] You didn't buy axes.

[6:50] I could buy axes, sure.

[6:52] Yeah, I think you could.

[6:52] What are you trying to say about me?

Elliott Kalan

[6:53] No, I mean, I don't know.

[6:55] Dan, I hate to break it to you this way.

[6:57] And for all these people, you couldn't buy an axe.

Stuart Wellington

[6:58] Yeah, I mean, I think the thing is you just don't have like axe cult vibes.

[7:02] Right?

[7:02] Yes.

[7:03] Although you are wearing a-

Dan McCoy

[7:04] Yeah, I'm wearing a plaid flannel.

Elliott Kalan

[7:06] I mean, it feels like you're patronizing those.

[7:08] But for that, you're going to use one of those double crosscut saws, right?

Dan McCoy

[7:12] That's true.

[7:13] I need a partner.

[7:14] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[7:15] There's a lot to think about.

[7:16] No, but it's another reason people become lumberjacks to meet other people.

[7:19] Because it's a two-person saw.

Dan McCoy

[7:20] I need another wanted second man for saw.

Elliott Kalan

[7:24] Must like flapjacks.

Dan McCoy

[7:26] L for L.

Elliott Kalan

[7:28] Oh, it's lumberjack for lumberjack?

[7:29] Yeah, yeah.

[7:30] Misconnection.

[7:31] I was cutting down a tree.

[7:32] You were cutting down another tree.

[7:34] What, chemistry?

Dan McCoy

[7:35] Question mark?

[7:35] Thought, would be easier to cut down tree together?

[7:38] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[7:39] Answers to name P. Bunyan.

[7:42] So we were watching the axe clanging cult.

[7:45] And this was the moment when in real life, IRL, Dan was so excited,

[7:49] he knocked over the cup of tea he had made for himself

[7:51] and spilled it all over the desk in my hotel room.

Stuart Wellington

[7:53] Yeah.

[7:54] And he kept like muttering like, oh, word.

[7:56] Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, no.

Elliott Kalan

[7:59] Yeah, but more like piglet.

[8:00] Oh, dear, oh, oh, oh.

[8:03] We all know I'd be in Eeyore.

[8:05] Yeah, that's true.

[8:06] You would be in Eeyore.

[8:06] That's true.

[8:07] Would be.

[8:08] Are.

[8:10] Anyway, so this biker, it's not Sly Sloan.

[8:13] He goes to a supermarket.

[8:14] Understandable, that's where the food is.

[8:16] But he's not interested in food.

[8:17] Instead, he parks his motorcycle in a handicapped spot.

[8:20] So you know this guy is a bad dude.

[8:21] Yeah, bad guy.

[8:23] And he goes to the grocery store, and he's just knocking people aside.

[8:26] And then he takes out his pump-action shotgun,

[8:28] the official weapon of 1980s low-budget action movies,

[8:31] and just starts blasting all the produce.

Stuart Wellington

[8:33] Yeah, this is.

[8:34] Because this is before Last Boy Scout, where we reach peak Uzi culture.

[8:39] Yes.

[8:39] Uzi is when.

Elliott Kalan

[8:40] This is pre-Uzi.

[8:40] The late 80s, early 90s was Uzi times.

[8:43] But this is the kind of early to mid 80s, where it was all about pump-action shotguns.

[8:47] What's the weapon du jour of action movies now?

[8:49] Like, I saw that Oppenheimer.

[8:50] Like, atomic bombs?

[8:51] I think so, yeah.

[8:53] Second Oppenheimer joke of the episode.

[8:55] Really going to date this episode in the future.

Dan McCoy

[8:57] Like those swords with, like, a cool handle that has other, like, spikes on them?

[9:03] And what movies is that in?

[9:04] I like science fiction stuff.

[9:06] Sorry.

[9:07] I'm thinking about how we're still in the supermarket.

[9:09] But I do want to, you make a good point, Ellie.

[9:11] Yeah, we're lost in the supermarket.

[9:14] Thank you.

[9:16] That was for the Clash fans.

[9:19] No, it's like, the game that this movie is playing.

[9:22] Like, if you thought that Dirty Harry wasn't fascist enough, this is the movie for you.

Elliott Kalan

[9:27] Because.

[9:28] Yes, this movie is, it's saying we need cops that will break every rule and every bone in a perpetrator's body.

[9:36] And what kind of world justifies that cop?

[9:38] Yeah.

[9:38] A world of non-stop random violence.

Dan McCoy

[9:41] Cattling, maniacal, criminal, violent people with no particular motivation for anything they're doing.

Elliott Kalan

[9:48] As we'll learn later, they have a very good, if vague, and seemingly tacked on motivation.

Stuart Wellington

[9:52] I mean, if they, like, put a bow on it, they even cast the serial killer from Dirty Harry to play a cop in this world.

[9:59] That's how bad this world is.

[10:00] Scorpio from Dirty Harry is one of the cops in this one.

Elliott Kalan

[10:03] He's the voice of reason.

Dan McCoy

[10:04] He's the one, like.

[10:04] And he's the weak cop.

[10:05] Due process?

Elliott Kalan

[10:06] Who's always like, Cobra, you really shouldn't have ripped that guy's throat out before we knew if he had parked in that handicap spot.

[10:11] Like, that's how bad this world is.

[10:13] Scorpio is the nice guy.

[10:14] So anyway, he's blasting stuff up.

[10:17] The weenie negotiator, Monty, played again by the Scorpio.

[10:22] His name I can't remember.

[10:22] What's his real name?

Stuart Wellington

[10:25] Thank you.

[10:26] It's the husband from Hellraiser.

[10:28] Yeah, but that's not his name.

[10:30] I think it is at this point.

Elliott Kalan

[10:31] His driver's license says Hellraiser, comma, the husband from.

Dan McCoy

[10:34] I mean, if you polled everyone in the world, the percentage of people who mostly knew him as husband from Hellraiser over his real name would probably be higher.

[10:42] Fair point.

[10:43] And as we know, that's how you choose someone's name.

Elliott Kalan

[10:46] This is my popular vote.

[10:47] Yeah.

[10:48] Everyone's name gets voted in the United States.

[10:50] I don't know how they do things here.

[10:51] In the United States, everyone votes on everybody's name all the time.

Stuart Wellington

[10:54] Yeah, I feel like even Julia in Hellraiser would be like, yeah, he's just the husband.

Elliott Kalan

[11:00] So he's like a weenie negotiator.

[11:02] He represents all that Cobra says is wrong.

[11:04] He's shouting through a megaphone, just come out and talk to us.

[11:07] We want to help you.

[11:08] We promise we won't hurt you.

[11:09] And he's shooting people in the back with his shotgun.

[11:12] That's when the cop that's above him goes, call the Cobra.

[11:17] The Cobra gets called.

[11:18] He drives up in his old car.

[11:21] Called a Dragula.

[11:22] And his car has the license Awesome 50.

[11:27] Awesome spelled A-W-S-U-M, I think it was.

[11:31] And Glass's cop does not like that.

[11:34] He's like, I don't approve of his actions.

[11:36] Guys, when Cobra steps out, Cobretti, the cop, describe kind of his general look, his allure.

[11:42] Kind of like, what's his image?

Dan McCoy

[11:43] Well, later he's described as like some sort of, they were all reject from the 50s or something like that.

[11:50] Uh-huh, yeah.

[11:51] There's nothing particularly 50s about it.

[11:53] He just has kind of like jeans and a black shirt.

Stuart Wellington

[11:58] Jeans, biker boots, trench coat, sunglasses, always.

[12:01] Matchstick always in his mouth until he burns a guy alive later with it.

Elliott Kalan

[12:05] Yeah, with his one matchstick.

Stuart Wellington

[12:07] Oh, that was good.

[12:09] Now I've got to get a new one.

[12:09] I don't know how you do that.

[12:10] That matchstick was my best friend.

[12:13] I appreciate your sacrifice.

[12:15] And he carries his signature weapon, a pistol with a Cobra on it,

[12:18] stuffed into his belt instead of in a holster or something.

Elliott Kalan

[12:21] Yeah, and he also has throwing knives.

[12:22] I don't know where he keeps those.

[12:23] But Cobra gets, he goes into this grocery store.

[12:26] He's stalking through.

[12:27] The baddie is trying to shoot him.

[12:28] And then he's ranting about how the people here are trash.

[12:31] They deserve to die.

[12:31] This is a new world coming.

[12:33] And Cobra gets on the store PA and he goes, it's time to waste you.

[12:37] And they have a standoff, the two of them at gunpoint.

[12:41] They're both holding guns.

[12:42] And the baddie is like, I've got a bomb.

[12:44] I'm a hero of the new world.

[12:45] And he goes, I'll blow up the whole store.

[12:49] And so Stallone has a number of very good quips in this movie.

[12:52] He goes, that's okay.

[12:53] I don't shop here.

[12:55] And here's when he says, the key line of the movie goes, you're a disease and I'm the cure.

[13:00] And he throws the throwing knife at him and then shoots him to death.

[13:03] So we're presenting a world where it's so dangerous that you need a guy like Cobra.

[13:10] You want a guy like Cobra.

[13:11] You love a guy like Cobra.

Dan McCoy

[13:12] Yeah, a man who is essentially a later Stallone character, Judge Dredd, in that he will provide the sentence and carry it out himself.

Elliott Kalan

[13:22] But he doesn't wear a helmet.

[13:23] That's the main difference.

[13:24] Not even when he rides like a motorcycle later on, which is a bad message for kids.

[13:29] So if any kids out there watching Cobra, wear a helmet.

Dan McCoy

[13:32] That's the message in Cobra that we got to protect the kids.

Elliott Kalan

[13:35] Yeah.

[13:35] And Stallone, he gets him and these reporters crowd him.

[13:38] When he walks out, they're like, Cobretty, Cobretty, is this related to the Night Slasher?

[13:42] We're going to hear a lot about the Night Slasher in this movie.

[13:44] And this reporter goes, did you use unnecessary force?

[13:46] What makes you judge and jury?

[13:48] And luckily, the dead body of one of the victims is lying right there with a blanket over him.

[13:51] And he gets mad and pushes the reporter at the body.

Dan McCoy

[13:54] And he goes, you tell his family.

Elliott Kalan

[13:56] Anyway, it's a terrible argument.

[14:00] Checkmate.

[14:01] But we see Cobretty, he doesn't keep bullying people with his greater physical force just on the job.

[14:08] He does that at home, too.

[14:10] He goes home.

[14:10] The parking spot he wants to get in is too small.

[14:12] And the car in front refuses to move.

[14:14] So he gets into his car and pushes their car ahead with his.

[14:17] Luckily, their car was in neutral, I guess, the whole time.

Dan McCoy

[14:19] Yeah.

[14:20] Elliot, I'll be honest.

[14:21] When you say bullying people at home, I completely forgot about this.

[14:24] And I thought you were going to talk about that he bullied that piece of pizza.

[14:27] We'll get there.

[14:28] We'll get there.

[14:29] Or, sorry, slice of pizza.

[14:30] Charlene, I apologize.

[14:31] And when the people...

[14:32] Yeah, piece of pizza.

Elliott Kalan

[14:35] And the other people are like, hey, what are you doing?

[14:37] And they are very much stereotypical kind of Chicano, you know, L.A. types that you would

[14:43] see in 80s movies.

[14:44] He gets mad and he grabs the undershirt collar of one of them and just rips it off of him.

Stuart Wellington

[14:49] Which the guy is, like, surprisingly chill about.

[14:52] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[14:53] At that point, he's like...

[14:54] He's like, oh, I was going to rip it anyway.

[14:55] It's cooler this way.

[14:56] You know, I needed to get a new undershirt.

[14:58] I was sick of this shirt, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[14:59] I know when I've been bested by a man tearing my shirt up.

Elliott Kalan

[15:03] I don't like the violent hostility, but you could have punched me.

[15:06] You could have kicked me.

[15:07] Instead, you used your imagination.

[15:09] You ripped off the undershirt I was wearing under my other shirt.

[15:12] God damn it, I respect it.

[15:13] I commend your freedom and creativity.

[15:18] So, Cobra goes home.

[15:20] And then one moment after another, is this amazing?

Dan McCoy

[15:22] He picks up a newspaper.

[15:23] Sorry, I'm just imagining that's the name of the sequel novel.

[15:26] Cobra goes home.

[15:27] Yeah.

[15:28] Oh, this is my high school reunion.

Stuart Wellington

[15:30] I got to go back to it, I guess.

[15:31] Life has really changed for me in the years between.

[15:35] I'm not where I thought it was going to be, I'll tell you that.

[15:38] Written by R.A. Silvatore.

Elliott Kalan

[15:42] So, Cobra, he picks up his newspaper, immediately throws it in his barbecue grill.

[15:47] Goes into his house, because he doesn't care about the media.

[15:49] He goes into his house, opens the freezer, takes out a pizza box and an egg carton.

[15:54] He takes out a pair of scissors, cuts a little tiny triangle that beats off the slice and eats that.

[15:59] And then the egg carton is just full of his gun maintenance collection.

Dan McCoy

[16:02] It's already a triangle.

Elliott Kalan

[16:05] And it's got a crust to hold onto.

[16:08] Why is he making it harder?

[16:09] He's making a very important point about fractals.

[16:12] Because what is not made clear in the movie, but if you read the novel by Alan Dean Foster, it's all in there.

[16:17] That Cobra has a PhD in mathematics.

[16:19] Yeah.

[16:20] I was trying to solve these Poincari equations, but instead I got called up to service to fight crime.

[16:26] Yep.

Dan McCoy

[16:27] You've got a triangle, just another triangle, you know?

[16:31] Triangle's all the way.

[16:32] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[16:33] Is that the lesson you want us to walk away with?

[16:35] That's the lesson of Cobra.

Dan McCoy

[16:37] That's what I took away from Cobra.

Elliott Kalan

[16:39] So I took away from it, you've got to wear a helmet when you ride a motorcycle.

[16:42] And you took triangles all over?

[16:43] What was it?

[16:45] It's a triangle, triangle, triangle, triangle world?

[16:47] That was it.

Dan McCoy

[16:47] Hey baby, triangles all over.

Elliott Kalan

[16:51] You ever tried angles?

[16:53] So anyway, the news on TV while he's cleaning his gun with his frozen gun maintenance kit.

[16:59] Maybe that's how you do it.

[17:00] I don't have a gun.

[17:01] Does it have to be super cold to clean a gun with?

[17:04] The news is talking about there's another victim of the night slasher, a serial killer, identity unknown, and there's no theme to the victims.

[17:12] Everyone is a possible victim of the night slasher, and he seems to use household simple weapons and tools.

[17:16] There's so many notes in that notebook.

[17:18] Yeah.

[17:19] Yeah.

[17:19] Get ready.

[17:20] Anyway, then we cut to there's a waitress going home at night.

[17:23] She's attacked by masked guys with axes.

[17:25] They kill her.

[17:26] It's this axe cult.

[17:27] The cops are talking, and Cobra's like, I think there's more than one killer at work.

[17:31] He has nothing to base this on, but Cobra's just that good a cop.

[17:34] He just knows.

[17:35] And Glass's cop is like, you shouldn't be involved.

Dan McCoy

[17:37] And Cobra's like, we're going to lose as long as they play by the rules and we don't.

[17:42] No, no, no.

[17:42] As long as we play by the rules and they don't.

[17:44] I don't remember when I wrote the movie.

[17:46] I want to see this one man, Elliot Kalin.

[17:50] One man, one night only.

[17:52] Cobra.

Elliott Kalan

[17:53] Elliot Kalin is Sylvester Stallone as Cobra.

[17:56] And everyone else.

[17:58] And everyone else.

[17:59] Friends, he's end everyone else in Cobra tonight.

[18:03] You know, you won't let me go after those people.

[18:05] You shouldn't go after those people, Cobra.

[18:07] But I got to go after those people.

[18:08] Sorry, Cobra.

[18:09] You can't go after those people.

[18:11] That scene goes on for a while.

[18:12] He did it.

[18:12] Raves the times.

[18:15] But why?

[18:16] Questions the times after.

Stuart Wellington

[18:18] And he has like a sidekick who wears a little cap, right?

[18:21] Who likes junk food.

[18:22] Yes, yes.

Dan McCoy

[18:22] He has his sidekick who's named Sergeant Gonzalez.

[18:25] I like that you're like, is that his trainer?

[18:27] Because he like.

[18:28] Yeah.

[18:28] It's like a Burgess Meredith style like manner of dress.

Elliott Kalan

[18:31] Well, he's wearing a little old-fashioned cabby cap.

[18:34] And he doesn't dress.

[18:35] He's not in uniform or anything.

[18:36] And he doesn't do anything except talk about junk food for most of the movie.

[18:41] And they have a little back.

[18:42] They always have back and forth banter.

[18:44] Cobra's always like, you guys start eating right.

[18:46] You can't eat all this junk food.

[18:47] And he's like, oh, but I love junk food.

[18:49] It's all I want to eat.

[18:50] And again, this is a good message for the kids.

[18:52] Balance diet, please.

[18:53] Don't be like with Sergeant Gonzalez.

[18:54] You got to eat good things.

[18:55] Anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[18:55] And also, like, this is the flavoring of the movie that I like the best.

[19:00] Yes.

[19:00] Like, wacky crap that doesn't have anything to do with, like, I don't know, the politics of it.

[19:05] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[19:07] There's another victim of the Axe Maniacs.

[19:09] But they're not wearing their pantyhose masks this time.

[19:13] And Brigitte Nielsen is driving by to what appears to be a modeling shoot that was scheduled for 10.30 p.m. or 11 p.m.

[19:20] And she sees the face of the guy who commits the murder, which, as we'll find out, is the leader of this Axe cult.

[19:27] And we find out after that, the woman who is part of this murder, she's a cop, too.

[19:32] Oh, no.

[19:33] One of the cops is a bad guy.

[19:35] They're not all good cops.

[19:36] Just Cobretti.

[19:37] And to a lesser extent, Gonzalez.

[19:40] But even he has a fatal flaw of loving junk food, which, as you all know, traditionally, each hero has to have a heroic flaw.

[19:47] This is his love of junk food.

Dan McCoy

[19:48] Is that what they were trying to convey with the idea that he was cutting off just a little bit of pizza?

Elliott Kalan

[19:52] Maybe.

[19:53] That he's watching his calories?

[19:54] I guess so.

[19:54] It reminds me of my favorite line that Stallone has in Tango and Cash.

[19:57] Yeah.

[19:58] When he jumps out from behind the refrigerator of a dirty cop who set him up and sent him to jail.

[20:03] A dirty cop is, I think, just holding a bowl of pasta that was just in the fridge or something like that.

[20:06] And he goes, well, it's obvious from your diet you're not watching your calories.

[20:10] Seems you were just watching the money they paid you to set us up.

[20:15] And it's such a stretch.

[20:16] It is not a Cobra-level quip.

[20:18] But I love it.

[20:19] And he's really going to rush to get it out.

[20:20] Just watching that money.

[20:21] Oh, yeah.

[20:23] So we know there's someone on the inside.

[20:25] And she looks up the witness's license plate to find out who owns that car.

[20:29] An old-time computer.

[20:30] And the police captain is like, we've got no leads, Cobra.

[20:34] Okay, you're on the job.

[20:35] You and your friend, the cab driver, slash your trainer.

[20:38] You're going to shake down the town and do what you do.

[20:40] And this leads to the most amazing montage maybe since Sergei Eisenstein invented the technique.

[20:47] And I know he didn't realize.

[20:47] I guess what Kuleshov did.

[20:49] I'm not a cinema studies major.

[20:50] Anyway, so these are the three strains of this montage.

[20:55] Stallone and his partner walk in the streets, which are mainly covered in homeless people,

[21:00] and going into places and asking people questions.

[21:03] Bridget Nelson doing the photo shoot in which she is wearing different outfits around different antique statues of robots.

[21:10] Oh, yeah.

[21:11] And a few shots of the bad guy just kind of looking mean and holding his knife and stuff like that.

[21:15] But the montage starts intercutting Stallone and the robots.

[21:20] And you're like, so are there robots in this movie?

[21:22] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[21:23] Well, yeah.

[21:23] And the robots are lighting up in a way where you're like, they know what's going on.

Dan McCoy

[21:27] The montage ends with this ominous music and the lights shutting off except for the robots' eyes being on.

[21:35] You're like, is this going to turn into a movie about how these robots kill people?

[21:38] Do they know they're in the photo shoot?

Stuart Wellington

[21:41] And the photo shoot is being done by David Rash, TV Sledgehammer, also in Succession, et cetera, et cetera.

[21:47] Burn After Reading.

[21:48] Burn After Reading.

[21:49] He's like a dad in some Ashton Kutcher movie.

[21:54] Yeah, he gets killed almost immediately.

[21:55] It's a disappointment.

Elliott Kalan

[21:57] He hits on Ingrid, the model, and then gets instantly killed by the axe people as they attack them.

[22:03] Oh, I forgot.

[22:04] There's great – the music in this movie is great.

[22:06] And the montage is set to a song called Angel of the City.

[22:08] It's great.

[22:09] And it's amazing.

[22:10] Anyway, so the photographer, he gets killed.

[22:13] A nerdy bystander who just seems to be walking out of a store gets killed.

[22:16] And then they step on his glasses after he's dead, which is adding insult to injury.

[22:19] Those glasses belong to his family.

[22:21] Now he has nothing to leave them.

[22:23] This security guard, she runs off to him and she's like,

[22:26] help me.

[22:27] And he starts firing his gun to the bad guys and they ram a van into him.

Stuart Wellington

[22:31] And it's like one of many very good practical stunts.

[22:34] Yes.

[22:35] Like it's very intense and like, I don't know.

[22:37] There's a number of stunts here where you're like, whoa, that's a good stunt.

[22:41] I hope nobody got hurt doing that.

Elliott Kalan

[22:42] Like late on in the movie, people are just flying off on motorcycles, wearing helmets,

[22:46] thankfully.

Dan McCoy

[22:46] I hate to sound like an old man, but it's way too late for that.

[22:51] No, I mean like this movie, like we were saying, it comes from a time where even the worst

[22:56] movies kind of looked beautiful because they had to shoot them in real places.

[23:00] They had to light for films.

[23:02] They had to actually think about them.

Stuart Wellington

[23:03] I mean like, not everything.

[23:05] Yeah, like the shootout in the grocery store where they're like, why is there so much dry

[23:08] ice in here?

Elliott Kalan

[23:11] Well, I remember watching it, you were like, who turned off all the lights in the grocery

[23:15] store?

[23:16] But it looks fucking cool.

[23:17] It's a good looking movie.

[23:20] It is a super dumb movie.

[23:21] And not just Stallone, who looks incredible.

Dan McCoy

[23:23] Yeah.

[23:24] And the director's son went on to make Mandy in other movies.

Elliott Kalan

[23:29] Did you research that or you just...

[23:31] Yeah, no, I researched it.

[23:32] Yeah.

[23:33] So do you imagine as a kid he was on the Cobra set walking around?

[23:36] He's got to have been on the Cobra set.

[23:37] What a lucky kid.

[23:38] If I could do anything to be that boy.

[23:40] If I could just change places with him.

[23:43] Guys, find me a magic fountain that I can pee in with him and then go back in time.

[23:47] Okay, okay.

[23:48] Yeah.

[23:49] Because I don't want to be...

Dan McCoy

[23:49] It has to be the pee scenario, though.

[23:52] It can't be like...

Elliott Kalan

[23:52] Name me another way to switch bodies with somebody.

Dan McCoy

[23:55] ...touching a skull at the same time.

[23:56] Magic skulls.

Elliott Kalan

[23:57] Yeah, magic...

[23:57] Yeah, it's real...

[23:58] Making a wish.

[23:59] Yeah, magic skulls.

[24:00] That's a real thing, too.

Dan McCoy

[24:01] Like, give me a magic fountain.

[24:02] Yeah, making a wish on a Friday.

[24:03] You know, go down to, like, Coney Island and, like, get a...

[24:06] You know, the Zoltar statue.

[24:07] No, that's not what happened to them.

[24:09] That's not a switch, actually.

[24:09] That's just a big situation.

[24:11] But I bet he could do a swap.

[24:12] Okay, yeah.

[24:12] If you asked him for a swap specifically.

Stuart Wellington

[24:15] I mean, yeah, that's pretty fucked up.

[24:16] I mean, like, he's still a little kid and that lady...

[24:18] Oh, man, that's messed up, right?

[24:20] But she doesn't know he's a little kid.

[24:21] We didn't need to go down that road.

[24:22] But, I mean...

Elliott Kalan

[24:23] I agree with you, but...

[24:27] Look, it's hard to talk about Big without talking about two things.

[24:30] How it's about a little kid who has sex with a lady.

[24:32] And also, that the toys that company makes, even when he gives them advice, are not good.

[24:37] It's not a good toy company.

[24:39] Yeah.

[24:40] Take that, toy company and Big.

Dan McCoy

[24:41] Also, that keyboard thing is bullshit.

Elliott Kalan

[24:44] Tell me...

[24:44] Okay, speak to it.

[24:45] Tell me your truth about it.

[24:46] Speak your truth about Big.

[24:46] No, it just...

Dan McCoy

[24:47] It just kind of sucks as a toy and it breaks easily.

[24:50] That's all.

Elliott Kalan

[24:51] Okay, so you're saying that Robert Loja and Tom Hanks wouldn't really be able to dance chopsticks on it.

[24:55] Not in real life.

[24:55] That was just movie magic?

[24:56] I mean, they could.

[24:57] That's the kind of practical stunt we're talking about.

[24:59] Come out here.

[25:01] Okay, everybody, enough about Big.

[25:02] This isn't the Big episode of the podcast.

[25:04] This is the Cobra episode of the podcast.

[25:06] Because there's no one bigger than Sylvester Stallone.

[25:08] Anyway, so the police show up.

[25:11] The bad guys run off.

[25:12] Ingrid has been saved.

[25:13] She's interviewed by Cobretti and Gonzalez.

[25:15] And the evil lady cop is kind of watching her through a window.

[25:19] And she tells them the least amount of information she could possibly get away with.

[25:23] They're like, why did anyone come after you?

[25:25] You owe anyone money?

[25:26] No.

[25:26] You're involved with drugs or people who do drugs or sell drugs?

[25:28] She goes, no.

[25:29] Which is bullshit.

[25:30] She's in the fashion industry.

[25:31] I'm sorry.

Dan McCoy

[25:32] And then she's like, you know what?

Elliott Kalan

[25:35] Earlier in the night, I drove by a man and he scared me.

[25:38] And they're like, what?

[25:39] He just looks scary.

[25:41] What time was that around?

[25:42] 10 o'clock.

[25:42] And he's like, that's the airtight lead we need.

[25:44] She drove by a scary guy.

[25:48] And the ex-cult leader.

[25:52] And so tell us about who, his name in the credits is just Night Slasher.

[25:56] But where else have we seen him?

Dan McCoy

[25:58] He's the alien bounty hunter from X-Files.

[26:02] He's the judge in Buffy.

[26:05] He was one of the punks in Terminator.

[26:08] Terminator.

Stuart Wellington

[26:08] Terminator with Bill Paxton.

Dan McCoy

[26:12] He's all over genre movies.

[26:15] Yes.

[26:15] Because he's like a big, distinctive looking guy.

Elliott Kalan

[26:18] Yeah.

[26:19] He is just sharpening knives and he's putting so much effort into it that he's coated in sweat.

Stuart Wellington

[26:24] I fucking love this movie.

[26:26] It has a hero and a villain, both with like signature weapons.

[26:29] He's got this like plus five dagger with spikes.

[26:32] Like I love that shit.

Elliott Kalan

[26:34] And he keeps it sharp.

[26:35] He takes good care of it.

Stuart Wellington

[26:36] But he's totally a sword guy.

[26:38] He loses that thing.

[26:39] He's fucking done, man.

[26:40] He doesn't have unarmed combat.

Elliott Kalan

[26:43] And he has some pretty bad roles later on.

[26:46] That's part of it also.

[26:47] The evil lady cop is like, let me kill her for you.

[26:50] And he goes, no, this one's mine.

[26:52] And she's in the hospital still, Ingrid, because she was so frightened so badly, I guess.

[26:58] And Cobretti and Gonzales, Cobretti's like, you're going to have to stay here under guard.

[27:03] And then offers Gonzales whatever she has left over from her hospital food.

[27:06] And he just takes it.

[27:07] And at no point is she like, what are you doing?

[27:09] You're going to eat my leftovers?

[27:12] I'm supposed to trust you as protection now?

[27:15] This is...

[27:15] Cobra and Gonzales, they banter a little bit about whether she's attractive or not.

[27:20] And Cobra goes home and those punks whose undershirts he ripped,

[27:22] they respect him now.

[27:24] They respect his strength.

[27:26] Cobretti does some computer research at home on a very old-timey computer.

[27:30] And meanwhile, the cult leader is entering the hospital.

[27:33] He kills a janitor, steals the uniform.

[27:36] The uniform fits him perfectly, despite him being a foot and a half taller.

[27:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[27:40] Agent 47.

[27:40] Yeah.

[27:41] Again, it's the traveling...

[27:43] It's the...

[27:43] It's the sisterhood.

[27:44] It's the sisterhood.

Elliott Kalan

[27:44] It's the sisterhood of the...

[27:45] It's the sisterhood of the...

[27:45] The sisterhood of the...

Elliott Kalan

[27:47] What are those called?

[27:49] Jumpsuits?

[27:49] Not onesies?

[27:51] Yeah, they're...

Dan McCoy

[27:51] They are generally called jumpsuits instead of onesies.

Elliott Kalan

[27:55] But you're saying janitors don't routinely wear outfits that are legless and snap at the

[27:59] crotch?

[27:59] Yeah.

[28:00] For ease of diaper changing?

Dan McCoy

[28:02] And say, my daddy loves pavement.

[28:05] Yeah.

[28:05] No, no, it's one of those...

[28:06] That's like a Brooklyn-specific sort of onesies.

[28:08] Yeah, yeah.

[28:09] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[28:09] It could be one of those onesies they sell at tourist spots that are like, I might mommy

[28:13] drinks, that kind of thing.

[28:14] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Stuart Wellington

[28:15] Don't like them.

[28:16] I don't like them.

[28:16] I'm not saying that approvingly.

[28:17] It's wine o'clock somewhere.

[28:20] And you're like, kid, you're a baby.

[28:22] I'm down.

Dan McCoy

[28:25] You're scaring this baby straight.

[28:29] We talked to your baby.

Elliott Kalan

[28:30] You got your whole life ahead of you.

[28:31] You don't want to get in jail.

[28:32] You know what they do to babies in jail?

Dan McCoy

[28:34] What do you got to be stressed about, baby, huh?

[28:36] Come on.

Elliott Kalan

[28:37] I mean, babies have a lot to be stressed about.

[28:39] Their mom walks out of the room.

[28:40] They don't know if she's ever coming back.

[28:41] That's true.

[28:41] Maybe she doesn't exist anymore.

Dan McCoy

[28:42] I shouldn't make fun of baby's pain just because it's different from my own.

Elliott Kalan

[28:46] Yeah.

[28:47] Dan, I'm glad that we opened your mind about babies.

[28:50] They're an ally.

[28:51] They're all right.

[28:53] All right.

Stuart Wellington

[28:53] Raves Dan McCoy on Human Young.

[28:56] Yeah.

[28:56] You don't put babies in corners.

[28:58] No.

[28:59] You never do that.

Elliott Kalan

[29:01] You never put babies in corners.

[29:03] Thank you.

[29:04] What if they're giving you a timeout?

[29:07] Why would you give a baby a timeout?

[29:09] They don't understand why they're being disciplined, Dan.

[29:12] They're babies.

[29:16] Wah, wah.

[29:16] That's enough out of you.

[29:17] Timeout.

[29:17] This is the only way I know how to communicate.

[29:19] Wah.

Stuart Wellington

[29:20] Do you think the big lift dance move in Dirty Dancing is because her name's Baby?

[29:25] It's much easier with a baby.

[29:26] Yeah.

[29:26] They're like, well, her name's Baby.

[29:28] That's what you do with babies.

[29:30] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[29:30] I mean, you don't usually do that with babies.

[29:32] You do a lying thing.

Stuart Wellington

[29:33] What do you do with them then?

Elliott Kalan

[29:34] You do what Jay Orbach does and you carry around Jennifer Grey in a Bjorn strap to your chest.

[29:38] Yeah.

[29:38] Oh, that makes sense.

[29:40] Yeah.

[29:41] This is what, yeah, I still love carrying you around, baby.

[29:43] And she's like, okay, I guess it is my nickname.

[29:46] I guess you do have to carry me around in this thing.

[29:49] And then he's feeding her like, you know, strained peas and things like that.

[29:54] Sure, build out the world.

[29:56] Yeah.

[29:58] So anyway, the cult leader gets real distracted from Mission 1, which is killing the witness,

[30:04] and decides to go after a nurse just because the movie needs another body to get killed.

[30:08] He's about to stab, he sneaks into Ingrid's room, Ingrid's room.

[30:10] He's about to stab her bed when he has the strangest non sequitur, which he just goes, pretty hair.

Stuart Wellington

[30:15] And then stabs her bed.

[30:17] She wasn't even in it.

Elliott Kalan

[30:18] She walks out of the bathroom and is surprised to see him, which is like, did he imagine the hair or?

Dan McCoy

[30:23] We must have not been paying attention.

[30:25] And she put like a wig in there.

[30:26] And that was like a clumsy screenwriter's way of being like,

[30:31] this will really underline what's going on rather than confusing it.

Elliott Kalan

[30:36] And the weirdest thing before this is part of his trap for the nurse he killed

[30:39] is that he goes into an old lady's room and puts the janitor's mop in the bed with her

[30:43] as if that's making the nurse think that he's actually in the bed and not her.

[30:47] She's like, oh, long, stringy, greasy hair attached to a metal mop head.

[30:53] But anyway, he's after her.

[30:56] She locks herself in the bathroom.

[30:57] He stabs through the door of the bathroom.

[31:00] Meanwhile, Cobretti's finally there.

[31:01] But he doesn't get there in time to save her.

[31:03] She runs into the hallway because the bathroom has a back door that exits on the hallway,

[31:07] which seems, I mean, I haven't spent a lot of time in hospitals these days.

[31:10] But do they, the bathrooms routinely have a public door and a private door?

Dan McCoy

[31:14] I can't speak to that.

[31:16] But I do know that there's a supreme lack of privacy in hospitals.

[31:20] So maybe they just do it to add a little less privacy.

[31:23] What can we do here to minimize it?

Elliott Kalan

[31:25] We already see everyone's butts all the time.

[31:29] So she pulls off the fire alarm.

[31:31] The hall's flooded with people.

[31:32] The cult leader, knowing he's not going to get her this time, he leaves.

[31:35] The next day, Cobretti's like, this cult's got to have somebody on the inside.

[31:40] And they're like, prove it.

[31:41] And he's like, well, I can.

[31:42] If I could, I'd be doing something about it already.

[31:45] I'd tell you earlier if I had proof.

[31:47] Yeah.

[31:48] Everyone's mad at him.

[31:49] They're so mad at him.

Dan McCoy

[31:50] A lot of scenes of people are just yelling one line back to him.

Elliott Kalan

[31:52] You got a lot of nerve, Cobretti.

[31:54] And he's like, yeah, but the nerve I got is pretty good or something like that.

[31:57] Actually, the real one, you got a real attitude problem.

[32:00] He goes, yeah, but it's just a little one.

Dan McCoy

[32:02] Which is a line that sounds really good.

Elliott Kalan

[32:04] And then you think about it, you're like, his attitude problem is enormous.

Dan McCoy

[32:08] I think he's being facetious, though.

Elliott Kalan

[32:10] I guess that's true, yeah.

[32:12] Facetious is like Confucius, but he doesn't mean it.

[32:14] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[32:15] It's like, why did you believe all that things I said?

[32:18] All those aphorisms, they don't make that much sense if you think about them for more than just a little bit.

Elliott Kalan

[32:23] I see when my disciples collected my Analects into one book, they couldn't put winking in parentheses in front of every one of them.

Dan McCoy

[32:30] J.K. J.K. was the end of a lot of these.

[32:32] I don't.

Elliott Kalan

[32:34] So they got to take Ingrid to a safe house.

[32:36] Cobretti, Gonzalez, and mean, evil lady cop, because there are no other police officers, I guess.

[32:41] They take her, and Stallone's like, why?

[32:43] There were cops on guard at Ingrid's hospital room.

[32:45] Why were they removed?

[32:46] And Glasses' cop was like, I don't know.

[32:48] Find it out yourself, dude.

[32:50] They don't.

[32:50] They don't bother to look into it.

[32:52] But as they're driving away, the axe cult again makes another strange move.

[32:56] This is a secret underground cult that kills at night.

[32:58] They decide to send two, that is, kills people with axes.

[33:01] They send two carloads of people with guns to chase after them in broad daylight.

[33:06] And this leads to...

Stuart Wellington

[33:07] So a witness who may have seen somebody do something.

Elliott Kalan

[33:11] Certainly, this witness would not stand up in court.

[33:13] Oh, I saw that person, and they were scary.

[33:15] Did you see them committing a crime?

[33:16] Isn't being scary a crime?

[33:18] Of course not.

[33:19] If it was, then R.L.

[33:21] Stein would have been locked up a long time ago.

[33:27] And now, can you point out to the court the man who gave you goosebumps?

[33:33] It's okay.

[33:33] He can't hurt you now.

[33:35] It was that man.

Dan McCoy

[33:36] We find you innocent of goosebumps, but guilty of the lesser charge of goose pimples.

Elliott Kalan

[33:43] Yeah, he plea bargained it, yeah.

[33:45] So there's a big car chase.

[33:47] It's honestly...

[33:48] Guys, how would you describe this car chase?

[33:49] Awesome or extremely awesome?

Dan McCoy

[33:52] There's a lot of slow-mo jumping in the air as they go over hills.

[33:56] And it's the same hills sort of three times, because it is that awesome.

Elliott Kalan

[34:01] Yeah.

[34:01] And we see it multiple times.

[34:03] Cobra, when he finally pulls out a machine gun, he shoots a car to pieces or something like that?

Dan McCoy

[34:08] Yeah.

[34:08] He basically skins the car like he's peeling an apple.

[34:12] He shoots it, and somehow the carapace comes off.

[34:15] Yeah.

[34:16] And it's just...

[34:17] I'm not really sure.

Stuart Wellington

[34:17] I do love that he's like, you know, I have this witness that I'm trying to protect in the car.

[34:22] I'm going to chase these fuggers.

Elliott Kalan

[34:24] Yeah.

[34:24] Well, so Isaac Asimov's three rules of co-products tell us that, number one, kill bad guys.

[34:32] Law number two, protect good guys unless it conflicts with law number one.

[34:37] Law number three, cut up that pizza smaller.

[34:40] Unless it conflicts with law two or law one.

[34:43] So if a bad guy was like, you can kill me or you can cut up pizza, obviously Cobra has to follow the first law and kill him.

[34:49] But on the other hand, if it's like, don't do Cobra, don't cut up that pizza because it's attached to a bomb that'll destroy a good guy.

[34:55] Then he goes, oh, I can't do it.

[34:56] Law two supersedes law three.

Dan McCoy

[34:58] I mean, the things you're saying are dumb, but I admire the skill for which, like the speed at which you sort of like came through.

[35:09] What would the logic be of these scenarios?

Elliott Kalan

[35:12] Yeah, sure.

[35:12] I spent a lot of time thinking about Asimov's laws in case I ever become a robot.

[35:15] In case you need to.

[35:16] In case I ever got to program a robot for a fashion shoot.

Dan McCoy

[35:21] I don't want this robot to kill Brigitte Nielsen, so I better put some safeguards in here.

Elliott Kalan

[35:25] Yeah, so eventually the hunter becomes the hunted.

[35:27] Stallone's going after the bad guys.

[35:29] Flips his nitrous boost, the thing that you think you would do the first to get away from the bad guys, but no.

[35:34] And eventually the bad guys get away.

[35:36] They manage to crash into a boat that's on the land.

[35:38] Yeah.

[35:40] Nighttime.

[35:41] The superiors are like, Cobretti, you almost killed the witness, blah, blah, blah.

[35:43] He's like, I want to take Ingrid out of town for her protection.

[35:48] And Glass's cop is like, did you have to kill so many people?

[35:51] And Cobretti is going to punch him.

[35:54] But they agree, let Cobra take the witness outside.

[35:56] Worst case scenario, at least all the violence that trails him everywhere will be outside of the city.

[36:01] And that plan works.

[36:03] And Gonzalez and bad guy cop go along also.

[36:06] On the drive, we get finally some talking time between Cobretti and Ingrid.

[36:10] And he gets to explain to Ingrid that when he arrests people, the judges just let them go.

[36:15] And Ingrid is like, that makes me sick.

[36:17] And I'm like, well, that's how it works.

[36:19] I mean, that's what happens.

Dan McCoy

[36:21] It's called the criminal justice system.

[36:23] It's not your job to circumvent it, Cobra.

Elliott Kalan

[36:25] No, but I mean also that kind of conversion where she's like, oh, I think the law is a good thing.

[36:29] He's like, actually, it's not.

[36:30] Let me red pill you.

[36:31] Yeah.

[36:32] You know, I was doing my own research.

[36:33] And it turns out judges are just letting people go.

Stuart Wellington

[36:35] Yeah, yeah.

[36:36] I mean, this is her equivalent of being like, tell me about Quentin Tarantino movies.

Dan McCoy

[36:40] This is also like where she like falls in love with him during the course of one scene for no particular reason.

Elliott Kalan

[36:47] Yeah, well, because, you know, they're all weird people.

[36:49] Is this where they're stopped at the roadside?

Dan McCoy

[36:52] Tell us.

[36:53] So they stop at a.

[36:54] It's like a novelty stand on the road.

[36:56] Like it has a.

[36:57] It's like a gas.

[36:58] Rubber chicken hanging.

Elliott Kalan

[37:00] It's a roadside stand where you'd expect to see fresh produce.

[37:04] But as Dan is saying, it's selling novelties and like goofy things.

Dan McCoy

[37:07] Like you'd be driving down the road and be like, oh, you know what?

[37:09] I did need some x-ray specs.

[37:10] Hold on.

[37:10] Let me stop real quick for this.

Stuart Wellington

[37:12] A bobblehead wearing a Padres uniform and a rubber chicken.

[37:17] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[37:18] Could I have the gum that snaps your finger when you try and take a piece?

[37:22] Oh, is this locally made?

[37:23] No.

[37:24] Oh, okay.

[37:24] I'll buy it anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[37:25] Yeah, we raise our own whoopee cushions here at the farm.

[37:28] Yeah.

[37:29] Oh, well, you can really tell the difference.

[37:31] You can really tell.

Dan McCoy

[37:31] Now, is this actual peanut butter?

[37:32] Oh, no, it is snakes.

[37:33] Okay, I'll take the snakes.

Elliott Kalan

[37:34] Open that slowly.

[37:35] Open that slowly.

[37:38] Now we have the ones that come with real snakes and the ones that come with fake snakes.

[37:42] The real snakes, that would be really dangerous.

[37:44] They're dead.

[37:45] They don't even pop out.

[37:47] It's just kind of gross.

[37:48] Oh, yeah.

[37:49] Logically, it makes sense to me now that a snake wouldn't do well just stuck in a can.

[37:53] No, they do very badly.

[37:55] I tell you, whoever can crack keeping a snake alive in a can will be a millionaire someday.

Dan McCoy

[38:01] Build a better snake trap.

Elliott Kalan

[38:03] They said it couldn't be done, and yet my son has figured out how to do it.

[38:08] Oh, no, he didn't.

[38:08] No, no.

[38:10] It's dead again.

[38:10] I'm sorry I called all the assembled press here.

[38:12] For this conference.

Dan McCoy

[38:14] To this roadside novelty stand.

[38:17] Please.

[38:18] Take a free whoopee cushion as you go.

Elliott Kalan

[38:20] Well, that story didn't pan out, but now Geraldo's going to open up Al Capone's vault.

[38:24] Let's see how that turns out.

[38:27] It's the 80s.

[38:28] Okay, so meanwhile, the Axe Cult is doing...

[38:30] Oh, this is when Gonzalez goes, hey, you should call Cobra this, and whispers something.

[38:34] And she comes over and goes, oh, nice to meet you, Marion Cobretti.

[38:38] That's his name.

[38:39] Marion Cobretti.

Dan McCoy

[38:40] Fuck.

[38:40] What?

[38:41] This tough guy?

Elliott Kalan

[38:42] His name is Marion?

[38:43] Why, you'd have to be fucking John Wayne to be named Marion, because that's his actual name.

[38:48] Anyway.

[38:50] And later on, he's like, yeah, you know, you get beat up a lot as a kid, so that's why I'm tough and I kill people.

[38:54] Wait a minute, because I had a name like that.

[38:56] Meanwhile, the Axe Cult is doing what they do best, hanging out in the sewers, banging their axes together.

[39:00] Clanging, clanging.

[39:03] Maybe that's how they talk to each other, is that?

[39:05] Yeah.

[39:06] They can't hear shit anymore because of all the clanging.

[39:09] Yeah.

[39:09] They click at each other like mimics.

[39:11] And for some reason, they make another stop.

[39:13] They stop at a burger place where we get to see Sylvester Stallone's funny side.

[39:17] He picks up a big novelty hamburger, and he's like, oh, they make them pretty big over here, don't they?

[39:22] And he's like, she puts so much ketchup on her fries, and he's like, oh, your fries, they're drowning.

[39:27] Oh, I need a lifesaver for those fries.

Dan McCoy

[39:28] He's got a lot of food material, this guy.

[39:31] Just let me fucking eat, Slot.

Elliott Kalan

[39:33] On the way over to the safe house, we've got to stop at this one burger place.

[39:36] I've got a lot of site-specific material.

[39:40] It doesn't work anywhere else.

Dan McCoy

[39:42] You won't believe this hamburger they got.

Elliott Kalan

[39:44] Yeah, I always go ahead in time to check out where we're going to stop so I can come up with some material.

[39:48] See if there's anything funny there, you know?

[39:50] It's what I'm famous for.

[39:52] I think you're mostly famous for killing criminals without reading them their rights or anything like that.

[39:55] Yeah, but it's the comedy that I want to be known for.

[39:58] Yeah.

[39:59] You know, comedy is really art when you think about it.

Dan McCoy

[40:01] Oh, boy.

[40:02] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[40:03] Is Nanette stand-up?

[40:05] Cobra, we don't need to hear it.

[40:06] We don't need it.

[40:06] Okay.

[40:07] And she is coming on to him hard.

[40:08] She goes, do you ever date women?

[40:09] And he's like, you'd have to be crazy to date me, which is notably self-knowing.

[40:14] It was self-knowledging.

[40:15] Yeah.

[40:15] And he's still dismayed at how she puts even more ketchup on it, just cuts to a shot of his face,

[40:21] and he's like, what?

[40:22] Do I want to date this woman?

Dan McCoy

[40:25] There's so much sugar and acid in there.

Elliott Kalan

[40:28] Your vinegar intake is too high.

[40:32] I've been giving my partner a guff about it, but at least he puts a reasonable amount of ketchup on these french fries.

[40:37] Is that a red flag for you, Alan?

[40:40] Yeah, it's as red as the sauce itself.

[40:44] No, Stuart, it's not.

[40:45] Because you know what?

[40:46] I truly believe.

[40:47] Ketchup is the humble, everyman king of the condiments.

Dan McCoy

[40:51] Not a joke.

[40:52] Unless it's in one of those jars where someone has an old-timey mustache.

Elliott Kalan

[40:56] Oh, you mean Sir Kensington's ketchup?

Dan McCoy

[40:58] So my kids...

[40:59] They don't want to call anyone out by name.

[41:00] They might, you know...

[41:01] I'll do it.

Elliott Kalan

[41:01] So in my family, there's a big ketchup battle.

[41:04] My sister hates ketchup.

[41:05] She's not a part of it.

[41:06] She refuses to pick a side, which I think is immoral.

[41:09] But anyway, Heinz ketchup, it's the biggest ketchup in the world.

[41:13] There's this fancier ketchup called Sir Kensington's that has a man and a mustache on the label.

[41:17] My children are not a fan of this ketchup.

[41:19] I think it's fine.

[41:19] It's just ketchup.

[41:20] But every time I go to the store, I go, guess what?

[41:23] They had your favorite ketchup, Sir Kensington's, and they get so mad.

[41:29] Anyway, feel free to sponsor our show, Sir Kensington's.

[41:34] It's night at the motel.

[41:35] Oh, so now the Axe Cult, they arm up, they get guns, they get on their motorcycles.

[41:38] They are riding.

Stuart Wellington

[41:40] And we learned that this roadside bar and town they're staying in is a foundry town.

[41:45] That's important because that's going to be the location for the final battle of foundry that I guess just makes sparks and flames and stuff.

[41:51] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[41:52] Yeah, it's a make work project.

[41:53] Yeah, it's just to employ people.

[41:55] There's a big crane on a chain that just goes back and forth, doesn't really do much of anything.

[42:00] So, yeah, they're in an old foundry town.

[42:02] They stay at a motel that night, and Cobra catches the evil cop using a payphone.

[42:08] It was very suspicious, but not for the reasons he thinks it is.

[42:11] He's like, where's Gonzalez?

[42:12] And she's like, oh, he's asleep in the room.

[42:14] Well, why didn't you use the phone in the room?

[42:16] And it's like, well, she just told you he's asleep.

[42:18] Like, what kind of jerk uses the phone in the room when there's someone sleeping there?

[42:22] But he thinks it's very suspicious.

[42:24] And she's like, oh, it was broken.

[42:25] It's like, you just, you know, all you have to tell him is he's sleeping.

[42:27] I don't, anyway.

[42:30] It made this.

[42:30] It really hit a nerve with you.

[42:31] It did.

[42:32] I feel like, well, I don't like it when a move, when something is supposed to be like the key that tips someone off about something.

[42:37] But it is a dumb thing that should not do it.

[42:40] Oh, well, why'd you shoot that one?

[42:42] How'd you know that was one of the kidnappers, not one of the hostages?

[42:45] His shoes.

[42:46] Really?

[42:47] You know that much about shoes?

Dan McCoy

[42:48] Yeah.

[42:48] He was wearing kidnapper shoes.

[42:50] I hate the ones where there's like, I never said their name.

[42:53] I'm like, I know that with my memory I could easily say someone's name and then forget I said it.

[43:00] I'm just like, yeah, if you say that I told you your name, I trust you, man.

[43:04] Like, how else would you know?

[43:06] Certainly not some evil scheme, you know?

Elliott Kalan

[43:09] And also, usually they think they're probably pretty good about not saying stuff they're not supposed to know.

Dan McCoy

[43:15] These are evil masterminds we're talking about.

[43:17] Yeah, exactly.

[43:17] They're masterminds.

[43:18] They're constantly coming up against them.

Elliott Kalan

[43:20] That's why we need a cobra.

[43:21] Anyway, Ingrid is watching Sylvester Stallone put guns together, and she is so turned on that she has to call him over to the bed so they can start making out.

Stuart Wellington

[43:30] I mean, the gun has a laser sight, man.

[43:32] It's so cool.

Elliott Kalan

[43:32] Yeah, it's like a future gun.

[43:34] That's true.

[43:34] Yeah, the next morning, the bad cop is gone.

[43:37] Uh-oh, the axe cult arrives.

[43:39] The bad cop is pointing out where everyone else is.

[43:41] They attack this roadside motel.

[43:43] There is so much shooting.

[43:44] They're just destroying this place with guns.

Stuart Wellington

[43:47] And grenades and firebombs and motorcycles and everything.

Elliott Kalan

[43:52] Yeah, all the weapons in the rainbow.

Dan McCoy

[43:55] The weapons rainbow.

[43:56] Yeah.

[43:57] Gonzales.

[43:57] Back in, you know, of course, back in the 80s, we had the weapons pyramid that we had.

Elliott Kalan

[44:01] Yeah, yeah.

[44:02] And they decided to put more Uzis in, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[44:05] You don't actually need those Uzis per day.

Elliott Kalan

[44:09] So, Gonzales gets shot.

[44:10] Oh, no, there's a lot of great stunt falls.

Stuart Wellington

[44:12] Ah!

[44:12] And there's some good bits.

[44:13] I like that there's an evil sniper guy in the axe cult who every time he, like, lifts his sniper rifle up, the camera, like, cuts to, like, sniper vision for a second.

Elliott Kalan

[44:22] So, the first shot, that first shot is a fantastic shot where you're looking at the motel and then the sniper scope lifts up into frame so that it becomes that you're now looking through the scope.

[44:31] That was a cool shot.

[44:32] Yeah, it's great.

[44:32] That should be on that one perfect shot Twitter feed that whose standards are kind of up and down, you know, a little iffy at times, but.

[44:40] Yeah, Dan.

[44:41] Wait, you want us to debate you on this?

[44:43] Yeah, I'm just, I'm coming up with hot take after hot take.

[44:45] Yeah, I'll fuck you.

[44:45] Catch up is great.

[44:46] That's where feed is okay.

[44:47] I guess I'll fucking tweet at him right now.

[44:49] Do it.

[44:50] You're skeet or whatever the bullshit is.

[44:51] Ask him why they're cobra deniers.

[44:53] Come on.

[44:53] Anyway.

[44:54] So, they escape, Ingrid and Sly, they escape in a truck.

[44:57] Sly's in the flatbed of the truck, pickup truck, just shooting people.

[45:00] This is the platonic ideal of an action movie.

[45:02] He's a man standing up in a moving pickup truck with a machine gun shooting motorcycle riders.

[45:07] They have to smash through a flaming car barricade, which makes them get out of the car, the truck for some reason.

Stuart Wellington

[45:13] Some guy climbs on the hood of the car, falls off, gets run over.

[45:17] It's great.

Elliott Kalan

[45:18] Now they're running on foot through an orange grove.

[45:20] They're making use of the space.

[45:21] Like any great mime artist.

[45:23] Yeah.

[45:24] They get separated.

[45:26] Ingrid runs into the foundry, pursued by the evil cop.

[45:29] She shoots the controls in such a way that it starts the foundry up, which is, I guess, a fail-safe mechanism.

[45:34] They're like, what if we lose the key to the machine?

[45:37] Don't worry.

[45:38] Don't worry.

[45:38] It's made so that if you shoot it, it turns on.

[45:40] Okay.

[45:41] What if he gets shot by accident by like an ex-cult cop?

[45:44] I don't think that's going to happen.

Dan McCoy

[45:46] Also, don't shoot anywhere around it or else it'll just ricochet and hurt you.

[45:50] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[45:50] We are surrounded by metal.

[45:51] Don't do that.

[45:53] The cult leader finally shows up.

[45:54] He's tired of letting his goons do their work and is stalking Ingrid through this flaming sparks factory.

[46:00] And Sly Stallone is setting traps for all these cult members.

[46:03] He puts a grenade somewhere and then waits for them to walk over to it and then shoots the grenade to blow them up.

[46:07] And it's like, that seems time consuming.

[46:08] And you're really hoping that they walk by that one spot.

[46:11] Yeah, you know what?

Dan McCoy

[46:11] You could just throw the grenade at them.

[46:14] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[46:14] It only now occurred to me that one normally does with a grenade.

[46:19] Yeah.

[46:19] If he just fires two bullets, one into each guy, he succeeds.

Dan McCoy

[46:22] Yeah, he has both a gun and a grenade and he's not using either of them effectively.

[46:26] Yeah.

[46:27] I mean, like.

[46:28] They do not need to be used in tandem.

[46:30] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[46:30] Look, I get you want style points, okay?

[46:32] It's a multiplier for your total score.

Elliott Kalan

[46:36] But it's true.

[46:37] It is like turning on a TV so that your other TV that's attached to the clapper will turn on when he hears the sound of that TV.

[46:47] It seems like an extra unnecessary step.

[46:49] He does cover someone with gasoline and then what?

[46:51] Just throws a match on them and burns them alive.

[46:53] It's like at that point it's gratuitous.

Dan McCoy

[46:56] We haven't gotten to the most gratuitous kill.

[46:59] The biggie.

Elliott Kalan

[47:00] Gratuitous kill is a great name from an 80s action movie.

[47:03] Yeah.

[47:03] Why did they make that?

[47:04] Dan, why didn't you make that?

Dan McCoy

[47:06] I guess I'll go through the portal of time or.

[47:08] Yeah.

[47:09] Porthole of time.

[47:10] I even fucking fucked up my own thing.

[47:14] You did.

[47:14] Guys, Dan fucked up his own thing.

[47:16] I even fucking fucked up my own thing.

[47:17] Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[47:18] But like gratuitous kill.

[47:20] We got like a killer looking through the blinds at like a lady changing.

[47:24] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[47:25] Shannon tweets inside.

Elliott Kalan

[47:26] It starts with a lady changing.

[47:27] We pull back to show that's a video on a screen being watched by another lady who's changing.

[47:31] Oh, I didn't know this was a Brian De Palma movie.

[47:34] Then we pull back to reveal that this is actually being watched through a window by a naked lady.

[47:38] And she kills the lady.

[47:40] But in a way where the bullet also hits the TV.

[47:41] The screen, it doesn't break the TV.

[47:43] There's just a bullet hole over the heart of the visual image.

[47:45] Cut to the cops are like the naked lady killer struck again.

[47:49] What are we going to do?

[47:51] What can we do?

[47:52] And Saul Gratuitous, the bad, the like over the edge cop, he's like, you got to send me out there.

[47:58] I'm the only one who can do it.

[48:00] Saul Gratuitous, we only send you into the worst of worst situations.

[48:04] And for some reason, a serial killer does not meet that definition for some reason.

Dan McCoy

[48:08] Every time we send you out, you kill at least three more people than you need to.

[48:11] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[48:12] Hey, let's just say I get the most from my money.

[48:15] He's got a lot of those kinds of lines.

[48:16] It's an extra added value.

Stuart Wellington

[48:18] Yeah.

[48:18] Not even bang for your buck.

[48:19] I mean, that's more obvious, right?

Elliott Kalan

[48:22] He's workshopping a lot of these.

[48:24] He's workshopping a lot of these.

[48:24] We're so close to the end of Cobra.

Dan McCoy

[48:25] We got to push through.

[48:26] We got to.

Elliott Kalan

[48:27] All right.

[48:27] We'll tell you more about Gratuitous Kill some other time, I guess.

[48:30] So.

Elliott Kalan

[48:32] 2 TM.

[48:33] Yeah.

[48:33] Thank you.

[48:33] Yeah.

[48:34] Copyright us.

[48:34] Don't anyone steal it.

[48:35] Come on.

[48:36] So only the cult leader's left alive.

[48:38] And he's doing his classic rant.

[48:39] There's a new world coming.

[48:41] We're paving it.

[48:41] We have to kill the weak so the strong survive.

[48:43] We are the future.

[48:44] It is a very messy philosophy.

Stuart Wellington

[48:46] He makes a lot of good points now that I think about it.

[48:48] And also, I feel like Cobra would follow a lot of these beliefs.

Elliott Kalan

[48:52] If this was a better movie, I mean, if this was another kind of bad movie, you'd say,

[48:56] we're not so different, you and I.

[48:57] But if this was a better movie, they'd do a better job of drawing a parallel where, like,

[49:00] yeah, the world they're creating is the world Cobra thinks he lives in and wants to live in

[49:04] because then he can do whatever he wants.

[49:05] But this is a movie that I think, for some reason, they can't make that connection.

[49:09] And maybe it's where Sylvester Stallone's head was at at the time that he's like,

[49:13] can you believe this bad guy doing this thing?

[49:14] Anyway, the good guy who does the same thing, he's cool.

Dan McCoy

[49:16] Yeah.

[49:17] No, it's literally a good guy with a gun argument.

[49:21] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[49:22] Or in this case, a knife versus a chain, which becomes just bare hands at a certain point.

[49:27] Anyway, he's like, Cobra, you won't kill me.

[49:30] You have to take me and even I have rights.

[49:32] And then the courts will call me insane and let me go.

[49:34] He, he, he, he, he.

Stuart Wellington

[49:36] And Cobra, he goes.

[49:37] And like at this point, at this point, he has shown no compunction to kill anybody.

Elliott Kalan

[49:43] If ever there was a guy that the speech doesn't work with, it is Cobra Eddie.

[49:47] Yeah.

[49:47] The guy who's just mowed down every single one of your followers.

[49:51] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[49:51] Cobra, Cobra at this point is like, allow me to present my rebuttal, which is to take him,

[49:57] put him on a hook.

[49:58] Yeah.

[49:59] And then push him into some fire.

[50:00] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[50:02] Kills, they have a fight and they do it.

[50:03] It's not since I saw Dial of Destiny where the bad guys are so kill crazy.

[50:08] And then when they are in a room with the two heroes and they're like, give us the thing

[50:13] or we'll kill you.

[50:14] And it's like, you killed the guy who opened the gate for you at the airport.

[50:17] Just like, shoot them both.

[50:18] What are you doing?

[50:20] Anyway, they, they have a big fight.

[50:22] It ends with Sylvester Stallone, yeah, Texas Chainsaw Massacring this guy by just impaling

[50:26] him on a giant hook, which pulls him into fire.

[50:29] And Sylvester and Ingrid reunite.

[50:32] Police descend on the area.

[50:34] Gonzalez is alive and asks for some gummy bears.

[50:37] And the police boss is like, you did a good job, Cobra.

[50:39] You need anything?

[50:39] Tell me.

[50:40] And Cobra goes, I need my car replaced.

[50:41] And he goes, it's not in the budget.

[50:42] Walks away.

Dan McCoy

[50:44] Great fucking moment, honestly.

Elliott Kalan

[50:48] I was thinking more in case like you need someone to house sit while you, while you recover

[50:52] on a vacation or something.

[50:53] And weenie cop, he taunts Cobra.

[50:56] He's like, no, but yeah, you know, no hard feelings, but you didn't really have to do all

[50:59] that stuff.

[51:00] And Cobra punches him.

[51:01] And the audience at that point, I guess, is supposed to go nuts cheering.

Dan McCoy

[51:03] Yeah, this was the stand up and cheer moment at the Oscars that year.

[51:06] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[51:07] They were like, well, we wish we could stand up and cheer at the Flash entering a speeds force,

[51:12] but it hasn't happened yet.

[51:13] Or hasn't.

[51:14] So, yeah, you're right.

[51:18] Time for that wall.

[51:20] And Cobra and Ingrid, they drive away on one of the dead Axe Cult members' motorcycles,

[51:26] I assume, not wearing helmets, to a sort of Sub-Springstein-ish song.

Dan McCoy

[51:31] Yeah.

[51:31] And now the story of Cobra has been immortalized in the oral tradition for future generations.

[51:37] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[51:39] I'll pass down the tale of Cobra to my children, who will pass it down to their children.

[51:45] Until someday.

[51:46] They're like, why do they call him that, Papa?

[51:48] Is he a reptile?

[51:49] And I'll say, yeah, you love animals, sure.

[51:52] Yeah, he's a Cobra man, sure.

[51:53] Like in that old anti-drug PSA.

[51:56] Oh, you remember that?

[51:57] When the guy turns into a cobra?

[51:58] Or that character from Jonah Hex, the movie?

[52:00] Oh, the snake man in Jonah Hex?

[52:01] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[52:02] Or like those car commercials, the security system, where the burglar's reaching for the

[52:07] car, but he keeps seeing a snake in the window.

[52:09] Yeah, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[52:10] All snake things.

[52:11] But now is the part of the show.

Elliott Kalan

[52:13] I love the idea.

[52:14] We go to do a show in a different country, and we're like, remember all these ads from when

[52:18] we were kids?

[52:19] Hyper specific.

[52:20] Where we grew up.

Dan McCoy

[52:22] Advertisements.

Elliott Kalan

[52:22] Hey, remember, you guys remember those ads for Bowcraft Amusement Park, the New York

[52:26] Area Amusement Park?

Dan McCoy

[52:28] You guys know the ads for Menards, the Midwestern furniture?

Elliott Kalan

[52:32] You remember when Room Plus was having their Just Round the Corner sale?

Dan McCoy

[52:37] This is the part where we say our final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad

[52:42] movie, or a movie we kind of like.

[52:45] This straddles a couple categories in that morally I find it to be a good, bad movie in

[52:52] the sense that I enjoy laughing at how outside of my own views this movie is.

Elliott Kalan

[53:01] Does he like to laugh at people who share different views than you?

[53:03] Interesting.

Dan McCoy

[53:05] How typical.

[53:07] How typical.

[53:07] I am both enjoying it ironically and unironically at the same time because I grew up in the

[53:11] 80s and this sort of trash action has a lot of pull for me.

[53:16] Traction.

[53:17] But also, I kind of like it because it has that Canon pictures thing where it is working

[53:23] over time to entertain you the whole time, whether or not it's doing it with good stuff

[53:30] or nutritious art.

[53:34] Nutritious art.

[53:35] Not really, but it's fun.

Elliott Kalan

[53:37] I imagine an ad for the French Tourism Board hires you to do ads and there's one where you're

[53:42] taking a bite of the Mona Lisa and you're like, art, it's good for you.

[53:44] And they're like, why did we do this?

[53:46] Why did we hire to eat our paintings?

Dan McCoy

[53:48] I'm just acknowledging that it is the junkiest of movie junk food.

[53:52] Very much so.

[53:53] But it's fun.

[53:54] What do you guys think?

Stuart Wellington

[53:55] Yeah, I mean, it's basically like a movie equivalent of a Benjamin Mara comic.

[53:59] And, I mean, I feel like, I don't know, it's still a movie I kind of like.

[54:06] It's so dumb and it's obviously the message is terrible.

[54:10] But I do love the fact that the bad guys are a fucking axe cult.

[54:15] Like, I feel like if this movie is made these days, but it can't be.

[54:19] But if it was made now, the axe cult would be like fucking vampires or something dumb.

[54:24] But in this case, it's just like a bunch of dudes who playing axes together.

Elliott Kalan

[54:28] And they make a point, they're like, anyone could be in this cult.

[54:31] And there's one guy wearing a suit who's in the meetings.

[54:34] You never see him in a fight.

[54:35] The only guy, it's just like biker dudes that are in the fights.

[54:38] This movie hits every category for me.

[54:39] Morally, it is a bad, bad movie.

[54:41] It's a bad message that this world is such a hell pit of violence that we need a man who will kill in order to keep things in line.

[54:48] But it's also a good, bad movie because it's super fun.

[54:50] But I also really like it.

[54:52] It hits.

[54:53] Every time I've watched it, I'm always like, this movie, I'm going to hate this movie.

[54:58] And then it gets the action scenes and I'm like, that car just flipped over.

[55:02] And I'm such a sucker for Sylvester Stallone quipping.

[55:05] Like, I'm such, this is, there's a, I feel like this is top tier Stallone junk, for sure.

[55:11] He's made good movies.

[55:12] This is, I mean, if you want a good Stallone movie, go see Creed.

[55:15] If you want a movie that is like the Stallone-iest Stallone in a junky way, then Cobra's pretty, it pushes the buttons.

[55:21] Yeah, it checks off those boxes.

[55:24] Is that what you check?

Dan McCoy

[55:25] Yeah, I think so.

Elliott Kalan

[55:25] To make sure there's no snakes inside them?

Dan McCoy

[55:28] Yeah, that's what the PSA told us in the 70s.

[55:31] Check a box to see if there's a snake inside.

Elliott Kalan

[55:33] Not so fast, little Johnny.

[55:35] Check that box to make sure there's not a snake inside it.

Stuart Wellington

[55:38] There was a snake inside.

Dan McCoy

[55:40] Glad I checked it.

[55:41] Really?

[55:42] That's the first time that's ever happened.

[55:44] Well, I guess this whole PSA outlay of money was worth it.

Elliott Kalan

[55:48] I'm Chubby Checker for box checking.

[55:51] Don't forget to check your boxes for snakes.

[55:55] Maybe.

Dan McCoy

[55:58] Don't twist yourself in knots with worry.

[56:05] What are we doing?

Stuart Wellington

[56:06] You can go on some more.

[56:07] I bet you got some more.

[56:08] No.

[56:08] More gas in the tank on that one.

Elliott Kalan

[56:11] I'm Fats Domino.

[56:12] Before you put those boots on, there might be a scorpion inside.

[56:16] Check your boots for scorpions.

S4

[56:18] Sound Heap with John Luke Roberts is a real podcast made up of fake podcasts.

[56:27] Like, if you had a cupboard in your lower back, what would you keep in it?

[56:31] So I'm going to say mugs.

[56:32] A little yoghurt and a spoon.

S6

[56:34] A small handkerchief that was given to me by my grandmother on her deathbed.

Dan McCoy

[56:37] Maybe some spare honey?

[56:40] I'd keep batteries in it.

[56:41] I'd pretend to be a toy.

S4

[56:42] If I had a cupboard in my lower back, I'd probably fill it with spines.

[56:46] If you had a cupboard in your lower back, what would you keep in it doesn't exist.

[56:50] We made it up for Sound Heap with John Luke Roberts.

[56:53] An award-winning comedy podcast from Maximum Fun made up of hundreds of stupid podcasts.

[56:58] Listen and subscribe to Sound Heap with John Luke Roberts.

[57:02] Now.

Elliott Kalan

[57:07] Oh, darling.

[57:08] Why won't you accept my love?

[57:11] My dear, even though you are a duke, I could never love you.

[57:15] You.

[57:16] You.

[57:17] Borrowed a book from me and never returned it.

[57:22] Save yourself from this terrible fate by listening to Reading Glasses.

[57:25] We'll help you get those borrowed books back and solve all your other reader problems.

[57:30] Reading Glasses, every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Dan McCoy

[57:34] Hey there.

[57:35] This week is a live show, and that means that you are lucky, question mark, enough to have

[57:40] me alone, Dan McCoy, doing your ad reads for you.

[57:46] Stuart, Elliot, get out of here.

[57:48] I got ads to do.

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[58:13] And I find that a little bit of Microdose Gummies helps me relax, helps me make emotional connections

[58:19] that maybe I have a little harder time doing without the Microdose Gummies, and just has

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[58:49] Also, we are sponsored in part by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform, for building your brand

[58:55] and growing your business online.

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[1:00:04] of a website or domain.

[1:00:08] Sorry, this is the part where we talk to the audience.

[1:00:11] There's a microphone right there.

[1:00:15] Am I pointing in the right direction?

[1:00:16] No.

[1:00:17] No.

[1:00:17] Oh, the microphone is coming out.

[1:00:18] Oh, it's coming.

[1:00:19] Dan.

[1:00:19] I forgot that we were supposed to vamp a little to give time for this.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:24] Okay, I'll vamp a little.

[1:00:25] Oh.

[1:00:27] Children of the night.

[1:00:28] He does this every time.

[1:00:29] Yeah.

[1:00:31] Okay, so we have a microphone.

[1:00:34] We have some time for some audience questions.

[1:00:36] Yes, let's...

Dan McCoy

[1:00:37] We've dawdled a while.

[1:00:39] Let's try and keep it tight.

[1:00:40] Let's do this.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:41] Okay, we only have time for 73 questions.

[1:00:44] But from each of you.

[1:00:47] If you do not have 73 questions, do not get out of your seat.

[1:00:50] Just kidding.

[1:00:51] Don't do that.

[1:00:51] Sorry.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:52] Everybody don't panic.

[1:00:53] I'm untucking my shirt.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:56] Good news, fellas.

[1:00:56] Yeah, that's the farthest we'll let him go.

[1:00:59] Jiggity check one.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:01] Oh, yeah, he's wearing underwear.

[1:01:02] All right.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:04] Good news, fellas.

[1:01:06] Flophouse TV show on Netflix.

[1:01:08] Greenlit.

[1:01:08] Pilots coming up.

[1:01:10] Thank you.

[1:01:10] This is amazing.

[1:01:12] Right a room full.

[1:01:13] Oh.

[1:01:14] But you do get to be music consultant.

[1:01:17] What's going to be the needle drop when you are introduced on the show?

[1:01:23] Yeah, I mean, this is pretty easy.

[1:01:24] Obviously, it's the sexiest song ever.

[1:01:26] Drop Dead Legs by Van Halen.

[1:01:29] You know, it's a little bit funky.

[1:01:31] He says giant butt in it.

[1:01:32] I love it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:35] Did you expect me to go longer on my answer?

[1:01:37] Yeah, I thought you were going to have more.

[1:01:39] My children are well aware, because I've talked to them about this.

[1:01:42] If I was ever a major league baseball player, my walkout, or a wrestler for that matter, I'm still working on it.

[1:01:48] That my walkout music originally...

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:50] What position would you play on a baseball team?

[1:01:52] Do you know the positions?

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:53] I'd probably be the full front.

[1:01:59] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:59] Yeah.

[1:02:00] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:00] Yeah.

[1:02:01] But my walkout...

[1:02:02] If I was a pitcher or something like that.

[1:02:03] My walkout music originally was going to be This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us by Sparks.

[1:02:07] Because it's a fantastic song.

[1:02:08] It's a great walkout song.

[1:02:09] But I don't know.

[1:02:10] I've been listening to so much Adarashi Gakko lately.

[1:02:12] And it's got to be either Tokyo Calling or Giri Giri now.

[1:02:16] I don't know.

[1:02:17] I'm going to have to do some Japanese girl pop to come out.

[1:02:19] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:20] And I would like to come out to the Monster Mash.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:23] Yeah.

[1:02:24] Never has a song been associated with somebody more.

[1:02:28] Every time we do karaoke within, I don't know, 11 months of Halloween, Dan will inevitably...

[1:02:36] I'll hear the opening strains of Monster Mash.

[1:02:38] And I'm like, what the fuck?

Dan McCoy

[1:02:39] It's better to sing it far away from Halloween.

[1:02:42] That way you have the element of surprise.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:45] That was the song where, at my wedding, that was the song that my coworkers requested

[1:02:50] the DJ play.

[1:02:51] And they pointed at me and they were like, eh?

[1:02:53] And my new wife was like, I can't believe we're dancing to the Monster Mash.

[1:02:58] I was like, just like I always visualized it when I was a little boy.

[1:03:02] Yes.

S6

[1:03:04] This is a quick two-parter.

[1:03:06] It's for Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:07] Yeah.

[1:03:08] So it's not going to be that quick.

S6

[1:03:09] Okay.

[1:03:10] It'll be...

[1:03:10] Well, you'll see.

[1:03:11] Elliot, I noticed you haven't drank any of your water.

[1:03:13] Are you going to drink that?

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:15] Do you want it?

[1:03:17] I don't...

[1:03:17] Yeah.

[1:03:17] The second part is, can I have it if you're not going to?

[1:03:19] It was a two-part question?

[1:03:22] I guess so.

[1:03:22] Unless the venue doesn't want me to give away...

[1:03:26] I mean, here.

[1:03:26] No one's going to.

[1:03:27] Make it...

[1:03:28] Have it.

[1:03:29] Have it in good home.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:29] This is a clever beverage workaround, but it only works once.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:33] But also, now you have to give a bottle of water someday to someone in need.

[1:03:38] Yeah.

[1:03:39] Yes.

[1:03:41] Hi.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:41] My question is, did you notice that Gonzales was Poppy from Seinfeld?

[1:03:49] You know what?

[1:03:49] I didn't, but you're right.

[1:03:50] And what do you have to say about it?

[1:03:51] Oh, my God.

[1:03:52] Well, you know that all that junk food really got to him because he could not control his

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:55] bowels eventually.

[1:03:57] You're right.

[1:03:58] That was Poppy.

[1:03:58] We were so busy.

[1:03:59] What was the thing?

[1:04:00] We were so busy being excited about David Rash being in the film that we didn't even notice.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:04] Well, we spent so long being...

[1:04:05] Dan's like, I think the main bad guy is this guy.

[1:04:09] No, wait.

[1:04:09] I think it's this other guy.

[1:04:10] I'm like, you can look on IMDb and he's like, shut up.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:12] Why are you going to make me look stupid in front of all these people?

[1:04:15] This reminds me, when I was working on the television show Mystery Science Dude 3000, we

[1:04:20] had...

[1:04:21] Great show.

[1:04:22] We had...

[1:04:22] It's still available online.

[1:04:25] There's a movie we did called Killer Fish, where there was kind of like loud, obnoxious

[1:04:29] character in it.

[1:04:29] And then I was watching Seinfeld and that actor shows up much older in one scene in episode

[1:04:34] of Seinfeld.

[1:04:34] And I took a picture of the screen.

[1:04:35] I texted it to my coworkers on it.

[1:04:37] I'm like, he's from Killer Fish.

[1:04:38] He's in Seinfeld.

[1:04:39] Which guy?

[1:04:40] And I received no response.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:42] I would respond.

[1:04:44] Which guy is it?

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:45] In Seinfeld or in Killer Fish?

[1:04:46] In Seinfeld.

[1:04:47] He was somebody's angry neighbor.

[1:04:48] I don't remember what he actually did.

[1:04:49] He's only in one scene.

[1:04:50] But I was like, that's him.

[1:04:52] He's aged terribly.

[1:04:53] You know.

[1:04:55] But that was Poppy from Seinfeld.

[1:04:57] You're right.

[1:04:57] That's amazing.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:58] It is.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:59] Thank you for that.

[1:05:00] That's great.

[1:05:02] All this time we thought we were teaching them, they're teaching us.

[1:05:04] Yeah.

[1:05:05] They grew up so fast.

[1:05:06] Yeah.

S5

[1:05:07] Hey, guys.

[1:05:08] I'm always struck when a movie's most famous scene is a real tonal shift from what the actual

[1:05:13] movie is.

[1:05:13] So, for instance, when I finally watched Risky Business, I was surprised at how kind of

[1:05:17] grim and sinister it is compared to the scene.

[1:05:19] It's not a musical.

[1:05:20] No, no.

[1:05:21] It's not just Tom Cruise sliding around in his jockeys or whatever it is.

[1:05:24] Have there been ever any movies where you've been like, you feel like you've been sold

[1:05:28] a false bill of goods on the basis of what the movie's most famous scene or what it's sort

[1:05:33] of been presented to you as.

[1:05:34] And you go into it and you get something very, very different from what you were expecting.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:37] Well, we did just record an episode about Kangaroo Jack.

[1:05:39] Yeah.

[1:05:40] Yeah.

[1:05:41] I mean, that's an obvious movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:42] It's a movie that famously retooled its entire deal to, well, at least marketing-wise, to

[1:05:47] focus on the one scene of the rapping kangaroo.

[1:05:49] Yeah.

[1:05:49] Fool people into thinking, this is a jaunty romp about a kangaroo that raps.

[1:05:53] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:53] Well, the first half of Audition made me think it was going to be something.

[1:05:58] I mean, really recently I watched American Fiction and all the trailers really pitch it as like

[1:06:04] a Hollywood shuffle type comedy.

[1:06:05] And I feel like there's a lot more going on there.

[1:06:09] So it is a lot of different movies and I think to some degrees of success.

[1:06:16] So that kind of.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:19] Yeah.

[1:06:19] I don't know that I have a good one because I, as much as I.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:24] My girls seem to be like, man, this is going to be nothing but Happy Macaulay Culkin.

[1:06:28] Uh-oh.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:28] Literally, they sold that movie as a comedy.

[1:06:31] Like you watch it and they're like the wackiest, wettest comedy.

[1:06:33] That is true.

[1:06:34] This is going to be hilarious.

[1:06:38] But yeah, I'm in trouble thinking of one where it's like there's a famous scene and you

[1:06:43] watch the movie.

[1:06:43] Oh, you know what?

[1:06:44] Like five easy pieces.

[1:06:46] I grew up, my dad was always quoting the toast scene or whatever it is.

[1:06:50] You know, put the chicken between your knees or whatever.

[1:06:52] And I was like, he's like, it's a great scene.

[1:06:55] And I'm like, oh, this must be a really funny movie.

[1:06:57] And then I watched it and I'm like, no, this is, it's not really a movie about a guy who

[1:07:00] wants food cooked the right way.

[1:07:02] Like it's about.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:03] Sort of an unpleasant man.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:05] Yeah, very unpleasant.

[1:07:05] But he plays piano beautifully.

[1:07:07] Yeah.

[1:07:13] Cool.

[1:07:13] Like Claudia's shirt.

[1:07:14] Yeah.

[1:07:15] Great show.

[1:07:16] Did a podcast about it.

[1:07:17] It's called iPodias.

[1:07:21] It's a really good podcast.

[1:07:22] Check it out.

[1:07:23] Maximum fun.

[1:07:25] Great question.

[1:07:30] I'm wondering if you were ever in a situation where you impaled somebody on a hook and then

[1:07:34] pushed them into a furnace.

[1:07:35] You think I'm going to tell you that when the cops have been after me for years?

Dan McCoy

[1:07:38] Sorry.

[1:07:39] This is if you were in that situation.

[1:07:41] Oh, right, right.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:42] Oh, yes.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:44] Would you want to have a snappy one-liner to say about it after prepared?

S5

[1:07:49] And if so, what would that snappy one-liner be?

Dan McCoy

[1:07:51] I feel like if I was in that situation, I would be like Rachel McAdams and Kate Knight.

[1:07:56] When I don't automatically, I'd immediately be like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry.

[1:07:59] I'm so sorry.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:01] Oh, my God.

[1:08:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:08:03] The camera would cut to me and I'd go, bleh.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:10] I imagine, yeah, you would want one prepared because that's a scenario that's likely to

[1:08:14] happen.

[1:08:15] And I'd probably be like, give this guy the hook.

[1:08:18] But that's not great.

[1:08:19] But then the other thing that comes to mind is the hook does bring you back.

[1:08:21] That's a reference to Blues Traveler's less big hit.

[1:08:25] I'm like, all right.

[1:08:27] We'll think of something, yeah.

[1:08:28] I'm all hook up.

[1:08:29] Watch out.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:30] You don't want to keep doing that or else you're going to get hooked.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:33] Oh, that's good.

[1:08:34] That's good.

[1:08:35] Yeah.

[1:08:36] And or, let's see, something about fishing.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:42] Oh, stick a hook in him.

[1:08:44] He's done.

[1:08:45] He's done.

[1:08:46] Hook him.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:48] Looks like you're a deader shade of pale because it's impaled on a hook, you know.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:54] Just, I guess Peter Pan must be your mortal enemy because call you Captain Hook.

[1:09:02] Hope you got a PhD because now you're Dr. Hook.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:07] Yeah.

[1:09:08] Doctor.

[1:09:09] I hope that answers your question.

[1:09:11] Yeah, absolutely.

[1:09:12] It does.

[1:09:13] The answer is we've got to work on it.

[1:09:14] We've got to do this.

[1:09:14] Yeah.

[1:09:15] I've got to assume.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:16] You're on a cover of Rolling Stone because you're Dr. Hook.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:20] I imagine Svess Sloan drives around just thinking of good quips and being like, I've got to write that down.

[1:09:24] And pulls over and writes, if a guy shoots another guy through the knee, then he can say, knees to meet you.

[1:09:34] Okay, well, I'm running late, so I better get back on the road.

[1:09:37] Or he's got like a dictation app.

[1:09:39] He's like, note to self.

[1:09:41] If I'm ever in a movie and I throw a guy into quicksand.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:49] Okay, yeah.

[1:09:51] So, ever since I watched, I think it was Children of Men, I've been kind of obsessed with movies that use long takes.

[1:09:58] Oh, sure, yeah.

[1:09:59] Like Russian Ark?

[1:10:00] Yeah, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:02] It's a movie in one take.

[1:10:04] It's amazing.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:05] You're going to start a fight about it?

[1:10:07] Yeah, I am.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:08] So much so that my fiancé now makes fun of me for it when we're watching movies together.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:12] Is your fiancé Mike D'Angelo a famous long take hater?

[1:10:16] Oh, yeah, of course.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:17] I wish.

[1:10:18] I was just wondering if you had a favorite example of a long take or a one-er in a movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:25] I mean, the opening of Touch of Evil is a classic.

[1:10:31] I don't have much to say about it, but, you know.

[1:10:34] I mean, both versions are pretty good.

[1:10:36] You either get some great sound design or you get a Henry Mancini score.

[1:10:41] All flavors are good.

[1:10:42] Can't go wrong with any cut of Touch of Evil.

[1:10:44] Yep.

[1:10:45] Raves Dan McCoy in local podcast show.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:49] I mean, this is not a controversial take, but the hallway fight scene in Old Boy is a favorite one-taker of mine.

[1:10:56] Because it's like, not just because it's like, oh, it's cool.

[1:10:59] It's all one-take.

[1:11:00] But it's like, they have to catch their breath.

[1:11:02] They keep falling down and getting up again.

[1:11:04] And I was like, yeah, I guess if I was in a fight, even if I was doing well, I'm not knocking out these guys with punches.

[1:11:10] Like, they have to keep getting up and doing it again.

[1:11:12] And you can tell they're real tired of it.

[1:11:14] I feel like it's not just one take, but it's a thing where it's like, oh, if this wasn't in one take, it wouldn't be quite the same.

[1:11:19] The same as, finally last year watched Jeanne Dillman, which is a lot of single take scenes of a woman making meals.

[1:11:26] And I'm like, you know what?

[1:11:29] God damn it, there's no other way to make this movie.

[1:11:32] I got to watch her make cutlets from beginning to end.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:35] Speaking of making meals, the end of Big Night is a good one where you just see him make an omelet for his brother the night after and they just play it out.

[1:11:46] That's great.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:47] Yeah, I like there's a couple shots in It Follows where the camera just lingers on the crowd scene and you're like, man, one of those has got to be That It Follows.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:56] Which one's walking weird?

[1:11:57] The title told me it was going to follow.

[1:12:00] That It Better Follows something.

[1:12:02] There's also one less is the opening of Day for Night, the Truffaut movie, where it is a long single take and then you realize you are watching a movie being shot that is doing a long single take.

[1:12:12] And I love that.

[1:12:13] They're like, you're like, oh, I wonder which of these characters this movie is going to be about.

[1:12:16] Oh, none of them.

[1:12:18] Wow.

[1:12:20] Good one.

[1:12:21] Single takes, everybody.

[1:12:22] Why not do it?

S6

[1:12:25] Hey, I don't know much about Marvel, but I know that the Winter Soldier was a good guy turned bad guy turned back to good guy.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:33] You know it.

[1:12:34] So ignoring the first part of it, what supervillain or movie monster would you want to turn over to the good side and fight for the good guys?

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:45] Oh, that's tough.

[1:12:46] Somebody with some really good powers.

[1:12:49] Usually that's what makes the characters not so good no more.

[1:12:52] But I'm a huge Venom fan, not the movies necessarily, but the original character.

[1:12:56] And he's gone from being a psychopath who thinks he's a hero to, in the comics, he's now the emperor of a time and space spanning alien race.

[1:13:07] And I'm like, I kind of missed when he was just a guy who ate people's brains.

[1:13:11] But what do you mean?

[1:13:12] Like Detective Dracula maybe or something like that?

Dan McCoy

[1:13:15] I mean, this is what happens to any long running horror franchise, right?

[1:13:19] It's just like, okay, well now they're kind of de facto the hero.

[1:13:23] Even if they're killing people, you don't care about any of those people.

[1:13:26] You go to see the monster.

[1:13:28] That's true.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:29] Like Freddy becomes the hero in a way.

[1:13:31] Yeah.

[1:13:32] I mean, Freddy Mercury.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:33] I'm going to say Lydia Tarr.

[1:13:34] I want Lydia Tarr to be a good guy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:37] Oh, she's got a lot to look at.

[1:13:39] Okay.

[1:13:41] And what's the second movie where Lydia Tarr becomes a hero in some way?

[1:13:46] Tootar?

[1:13:47] Tootar, yep.

[1:13:51] But I think, yeah, if it's got to be a monster, I think probably Dracula.

[1:13:55] Dracula.

[1:13:56] But if it doesn't have to be like a traditional monster, then, hmm.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:01] The Zodiac Killer.

[1:14:04] He's a hero.

[1:14:05] Finally.

[1:14:05] Use those powers for good.

[1:14:07] He was dexturing the whole time.

[1:14:09] You didn't know it.

[1:14:09] The whole time.

[1:14:10] You didn't know.

[1:14:11] That's the twist.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:12] And he's great at making puzzles.

[1:14:14] If I was there, I'm like, Zodiac Killer, come to my office, please.

[1:14:17] You've got two strengths.

[1:14:18] Murdering people and puzzles.

[1:14:19] I want you to steer into the puzzle side of your talents.

[1:14:25] Thanks.

[1:14:25] Yeah.

[1:14:26] Look, Zodiac Killer.

[1:14:27] Will Shorts, the crossword puzzle editor at the New York Times, is retiring.

[1:14:31] I think you can get that job.

[1:14:32] You've got to stop killing people.

[1:14:33] I don't know if I want to leave the Bay Area.

[1:14:35] You'll do it remotely.

[1:14:36] It's fine.

[1:14:36] You can do that now.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:38] I don't think we're in any danger, but I'm just going to say, don't join the line.

[1:14:41] We'll cut it off.

[1:14:42] Anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:43] It'd be amazing if I stabbed you, right?

[1:14:44] After you say, I don't think we're in any danger.

[1:14:46] And then, I don't, but I'm not willing to go that far for a bit.

S6

[1:14:51] You all along.

[1:14:52] Okay.

[1:14:54] First off, Stuart, thank you for saying that thing about, it's a spark factory.

[1:14:58] I guess I've been saying the exact same thing since I saw the movie.

[1:15:02] Yeah.

[1:15:03] You've got to make them somewhere.

[1:15:04] Yeah.

[1:15:05] The question I've had since watching Cobra, does Stallone just want to be a cop?

[1:15:12] Is that basically, or is that just every 80s movie guy or action guy?

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:16] Yeah.

[1:15:17] I mean, I think there's a certain amount of like wanting to be a first responder.

[1:15:22] Like, I feel like there's a, I don't know.

[1:15:24] I feel like there's an urge to be like lumped in with the heroes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:28] I mean, certainly to be a hero.

[1:15:30] Perceived heroes.

[1:15:30] To be in a position, I mean, to be in a position where force is authorized, you know.

[1:15:36] And I think for heroes in movies at least, it's like, well, if we put this guy in a uniform,

[1:15:41] then he can just go ahead and kill people.

[1:15:42] But if he's not wearing a uniform, then he's a maniac.

[1:15:45] You know?

[1:15:46] Or a maniac cop.

[1:15:47] Or that you can be a maniac cop, still be a maniac cop.

[1:15:50] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:50] I don't know that it's specific to Stallone.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:53] I think that.

[1:15:54] I think he'd rather be a boxer than a cop.

[1:15:57] But I think he'd rather be a cop than a race car driver, like in that one movie.

[1:16:02] I think he'd rather be a race car driver than like a.

[1:16:08] Than like a mob boss with a daughter that's going to get.

[1:16:11] Yes.

[1:16:12] But what, did he want to be a cliffhanger?

[1:16:14] Yeah.

[1:16:15] He'd rather be a mob boss with a daughter than a guy who, than a cliffhanging, you know,

[1:16:19] a mountain climbing guy.

[1:16:20] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:20] Anyway, my serious response was that I think that, you know, I think that just human beings

[1:16:26] have power fantasies and some people deal with them better than others and realize which

[1:16:32] ones are poisonous.

[1:16:33] Someone make a fucking movie about that.

[1:16:34] Yeah.

S6

[1:16:40] First of all, Dan, I just have to say I was stunned by your revelation that the director

[1:16:44] of Cobra's son went on to make Mandy.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:47] Yeah.

[1:16:47] And also the director of Cobra, like, I mean, Stu said that rumor is that Kurt Russell directed

[1:16:53] a lot of Tombstone, but I had no idea that it was the same guy.

[1:16:56] Like, there's such different feeling movies.

S6

[1:16:58] Yeah.

[1:16:58] I was just thinking about Mandy throughout watching this because they're both red lit films

[1:17:03] about a woman who was marked for death by a cult leader she saw on her way to work.

[1:17:06] That's wild.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:07] Mandy is a stealth remake of Cobra.

[1:17:10] That's right.

[1:17:11] Oh, man.

[1:17:11] I mean, Mandy does feel like.

[1:17:13] That explains why Nicolas Cage cuts that pizza with a pair of scissors.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:18] It totally feels like you're, like, taking one of these, like, trash 80s movies and just

[1:17:21] like, let's just push it further and further into, like, absurd hell world.

[1:17:27] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:27] And Mandy, it corrects the one big error with Cobra.

[1:17:33] The big error of Cobra was the 1980s.

[1:17:35] You're confusing the pun in our tour name.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:37] Oh, because it has the Cheddar Goblin, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:40] The whole time you're watching Cobra, you're like, where's the goblin that pours cheese on

[1:17:45] kids?

[1:17:47] That...

[1:17:48] Mandy has that amazing chainsaw-chainsaw fight.

[1:17:50] And the one thing that Cobra's missing is they're holding axes the whole movie.

[1:17:54] There is never an axe fight in the entire thing.

[1:17:56] Stallone never picks up an axe.

[1:17:58] And it's just...

[1:17:59] They're leaving money on the table.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:00] Yeah, there should have at least been a moment where they're like, go on, pick up the axe.

[1:18:04] And he's like, never.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:06] That's not how I do things.

[1:18:08] You're one of us.

[1:18:09] Pick up the axe.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:09] Or he picks up the axe and he's, like, even way better at clanging it and shit.

[1:18:13] And the gang's like, what?

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:14] You'd be the best.

[1:18:15] Oh, the chosen one.

[1:18:16] And they kneel before him.

S6

[1:18:17] My question, though...

[1:18:18] Oh, okay.

[1:18:22] Cobra is unfortunately not streamable in Canada.

[1:18:24] I just settled for renting it on YouTube.

[1:18:26] But I did spend multiple weekends over the last month searching for it on DVD in thrift stores.

[1:18:31] Which I was not able to find.

[1:18:33] But it did make the act of thrifting way more fun to have something to be after.

[1:18:38] So my question to you, gentlemen, is...

[1:18:40] Is there a white whale movie that you yourselves are looking to add to your physical media collections?

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:47] Ooh.

[1:18:48] Oh, I thought you were going to ask me what I look for in thrift stores.

[1:18:50] The answer is always, sweaters with cats on them.

[1:18:54] That is a true answer.

[1:18:55] Often don't sell them in my size, unfortunately.

[1:18:58] Usually they're small people clothes.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:02] I mean, I don't...

[1:19:03] I mean, honestly, not really at this point.

[1:19:05] Because it's much more...

[1:19:09] Like, if I want to see something and it's not available, like, that is the one time where I'm, like...

[1:19:15] You know, as someone who makes their money sometimes off of people paying for art...

[1:19:20] Like, if it's not being made available, that is the one time I will be like, yeah, I'll just find it somehow.

[1:19:26] I'll do whatever.

[1:19:27] But to own it to Dan.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:27] Dan, to possess it.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:28] Yeah.

[1:19:29] I've got to get...

[1:19:31] I've gotten past that, I think.

[1:19:32] I hope.

[1:19:33] I don't know.

[1:19:34] I've got too much stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:35] I mean, I would love to get a good quality copy of a lot of, like, John Woo's movies, which are just not available.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:41] I used to have a bunch of those on VHS tapes.

[1:19:43] And I, you know, when I did my...

[1:19:45] We did a...

[1:19:46] Before I moved to Los Angeles, we did an Alamo show where I then gave away and signed all my VHS tapes.

[1:19:51] And I wish I had kept a lot of those.

[1:19:53] It's not movies that I want.

[1:19:54] But I am a collect...

[1:19:55] A couple years ago, I got into the hobby of collecting really beat-up, bad-conditioned 60s Marvel comics.

[1:20:01] Like, ones where they're all ripped up and people wrote their names on it.

[1:20:04] I missed an issue of Amazing Spider-Man that someone took a bite out of.

[1:20:07] And I'm really mad that I missed that auction.

[1:20:09] But I've been trying to collect a run of really beat-up all of Steve Ditko's issues of Amazing Spider-Man.

[1:20:15] And I've got really crappy copies of all but the first five.

[1:20:18] And I'm still looking for those.

[1:20:19] It was an issue two that someone took a bite out of.

[1:20:22] And I'm like, surely this won't go for a lot of money.

[1:20:24] And it surprisingly did.

[1:20:26] Yeah.

[1:20:26] Maybe whoever was trying to solve a crime and they figured there's still DNA on the...

[1:20:30] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:30] Whoever owned this loved it so much that they wanted to be it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:34] We finally have an example of the culprit's tooth marks here.

[1:20:39] You can match them up to the wound.

[1:20:40] But that's more what I'm into right now is kind of old beat-up, ripped-up Marvel comics.

[1:20:43] So maybe someday.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:51] So this movie has a lot of...

[1:20:52] Or Cobra has a lot of unmentioned Christmas decorations.

[1:20:56] Yeah.

[1:20:56] Which I read was because all of their shooting locations just had them up.

[1:21:00] So...

[1:21:00] I love that.

[1:21:02] We'll lean into it.

[1:21:03] I love that.

[1:21:03] It's great.

[1:21:04] So I'd like to advance the front in the die-hard theater of The War on Christmas and ask,

[1:21:10] is this a Christmas movie?

Dan McCoy

[1:21:12] It's as much a Christmas movie as any other action film set at Christmas.

[1:21:18] If you, in your heart, believe it to be one, then the magic of Christmas has made it so.

[1:21:23] And I feel like...

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:24] I will say, die-hard is slightly more Christmas because he does say ho, ho, ho at one point.

[1:21:29] Whereas this movie, Cobra doesn't have time for Christmas.

[1:21:32] Cobra doesn't have a family.

[1:21:33] Cobra...

[1:21:34] The only God he believes in is his own two fists and the guns that they're holding.

[1:21:38] Like, it is...

[1:21:39] But it is very funny to watch it.

[1:21:40] We kind of had a similar reaction.

[1:21:41] We're like, is it?

[1:21:43] Is it Christmas?

[1:21:45] Do they even know it's Christmas?

[1:21:47] But it's a...

[1:21:49] But yeah.

[1:21:49] So I guess, yeah, it's a Christmas movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:50] Right?

[1:21:51] Yeah.

[1:21:51] Obviously.

[1:21:52] Yeah.

[1:21:52] We did it.

[1:21:53] No question.

[1:21:53] We did it, everyone.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:54] Let's add it.

[1:21:55] Add it to the list.

[1:21:56] Let's add to the holiday rotation now.

[1:21:59] Yeah.

[1:21:59] Now it's got to play every year at the same time.

S6

[1:22:02] Hello.

[1:22:03] My name's Max.

[1:22:04] Last name withheld.

[1:22:05] I don't know if we're still doing that.

[1:22:07] Great to have you here.

[1:22:08] And last minute, you talked about the theater experience.

[1:22:11] Yeah.

[1:22:12] And I think that Rio counts as one of those old-timey theaters.

[1:22:15] Yeah.

[1:22:16] 20 years ago, I lived in the apartments right next door, and this used to be a Bollywood theater.

[1:22:21] And I never came in.

[1:22:22] Okay.

[1:22:23] So I'm wondering, what sort of large, gaping genre gaps do you have in your cinematic viewing experience here?

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:32] Well, Dan, certainly not pornography for you.

[1:22:34] Not pornography.

[1:22:35] We know.

[1:22:36] I think you're covered on that one.

[1:22:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:22:39] He's got a P.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:41] I am as God made me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:46] I mean, Bollywood is a huge gaping hole.

[1:22:49] I mean, a lot of world cinema I have not seen.

[1:22:53] And it's hard to get a hold of sometimes.

[1:22:55] I mean, it's getting easier.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:56] Well, I think it's hard to know where to start off.

[1:22:58] Yes.

[1:22:59] And that, like, African cinema is similar for me.

[1:23:01] Like, there's every time I see a movie from an African nation, I'm like, yeah, I'm starting to see these.

[1:23:06] And I'm like, well, it's a whole continent.

[1:23:07] It's all different countries with different cinema heritages.

[1:23:10] But that's the thing.

[1:23:11] One of the things that I kind of like and find frustrating about film is that, like, the more you learn about it, the more you realize you don't learn about it.

[1:23:17] It's like paleontology that way, where, like, the more you learn about dinosaurs, the more you learn you will never know most of the things about dinosaurs.

[1:23:23] And so...

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:24] Yeah, because you can't, like, get in a time machine and go back and look at a dinosaur and then accidentally step on a butterfly.

[1:23:28] I mean, you shouldn't.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:29] That'd be bad.

[1:23:30] I mean, that's pretty much what happened.

[1:23:31] And that's why 2016 happened the way it did, I think.

[1:23:33] Yeah.

[1:23:34] But I think that's one of the fun things about film.

[1:23:36] But it's also frustrating.

[1:23:38] That there's always so much out there.

[1:23:39] But for me, it's very much African film.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:41] I mean, a big obvious one for me was a few years ago, I realized that when I was growing up, I just avoided romantic comedies.

[1:23:49] Because I was like, I want to watch horror movies.

[1:23:52] So I've been watching a lot of romantic comedies, and there's some really good ones.

[1:23:56] Like, I'd never seen Dirty Dancing for a long time that I've mentioned earlier, and I love it.

[1:24:01] It's the best.

[1:24:02] It's great.

[1:24:03] And, yeah, so you should check out things you haven't seen.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:07] Yeah, I don't know.

[1:24:08] My biggest real gaps are, as you say, it's not so much genres as, like, a lack of knowledge of a lot of world cinema, which is just something that happens, unfortunately, I think.

[1:24:19] And you really have to work against if you want to change it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:22] How many times have you seen Cobra?

[1:24:23] No?

Dan McCoy

[1:24:24] Shut up.

[1:24:26] But there are, like, a couple genres that, like, I used to think I didn't like.

[1:24:30] Like, the Western, which I realize I do like, but I still have huge gaps in.

[1:24:35] And then there's stuff that I, there are outliers where I'm like, oh, that's a great movie, but I don't really like war movies, so I don't seek them out, you know.

[1:24:44] But that's the best I got.

[1:24:45] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:48] Final question.

[1:24:49] And finally.

[1:24:50] A lot of pressure.

[1:24:50] That was a much more appropriate ending question.

[1:24:54] I was talking, because I remembered, so Bridget Nielsen was married to Sylvester Stallone during this movie,

Dan McCoy

[1:24:59] but she had an important era in the early 2000s on a show called The Surreal Life.

[1:25:04] Yeah, sure.

[1:25:05] She brought her dogs with her hair, right?

S6

[1:25:06] Where she fell in love with Flavor Flav.

[1:25:08] Mm-hmm.

[1:25:08] Before his.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:09] Flavor Flav and Sylvester Stallone are very similar.

[1:25:11] She's got a type.

S6

[1:25:12] Well, this is my question.

[1:25:13] So before his Flavor of Love series, but I was just wondering if you had any key plot points that would need to change if Flavor Flav was Cobra.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:21] Yeah, a lot more time-conscious cop.

[1:25:27] Yeah.

[1:25:27] Some sort of time cop, if you will.

[1:25:29] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:29] Well, I feel like he's also expressed his beliefs against the police many times.

[1:25:34] Yeah, that's true.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:35] Be less of a police officer.

[1:25:38] And if he was, like, I imagine his role being, like, similar where he's, like, a hype man behind another guy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:46] He was kind of, yeah.

[1:25:47] But his quips would be amazing.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:49] Amazing.

[1:25:49] They'd still be great.

[1:25:50] Amazing.

[1:25:51] Look.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:52] I love that idea now.

[1:25:54] Like, crime's the disease.

[1:25:56] And maybe rhyme's the disease.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:03] How could you ask for a better ending?

[1:26:08] Thank you so much for being here.

[1:26:10] I don't want to take up any more of your time.

[1:26:12] We don't want to take up any more time.

[1:26:13] We thank you for allowing us to be here.

[1:26:16] Thank you so much for coming.

[1:26:17] For the Flap Us, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:26:19] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:26:21] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:26:22] Thank you for being here.

[1:26:23] Thank you to the Rio Theater.

[1:26:25] Thank you, Vancouver.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:33] If you think of any questions on the way home, forget them.

[1:26:36] They will not be answered.

[1:26:50] Maximum Fun.

S6

[1:26:51] A worker-owned network.

[1:26:52] Of artists-owned shows.

[1:26:54] Supported.

[1:26:55] Directly.

[1:26:55] By you.

Ep. #416 - Cobra, LIVE!

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