Ep.#404 - The Legend of the Titanic

Dan McCoy

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss the legend of the Titanic.

Stuart Wellington

[0:04] Finally, the true story of what happened to the Titanic.

[0:10] I got like two more of these.

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

[0:38] I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

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

[0:41] And later in the show, I'm going to tell you some exciting Flophouse show news for shows that you can see,

[0:47] like the fact that later today, when this episode is released,

[0:50] tonight we'll be doing the second episode of our Flop TV series.

[0:53] And we've got a live show coming up in Los Angeles, October 19th.

[0:57] I'll tell you more about those later in the show.

[0:59] But for now, back to the show.

[1:00] And on with the show, here comes Dan McCoy with the show.

[1:04] Dan, what's on the show tonight?

[1:05] Dan and Stu, what's going on with the show?

[1:08] Without further ado, let the show go on because the show must go on.

[1:12] There's no business like show business.

[1:14] Show me a rose and I'll show you a show.

[1:16] So let's show it all together.

[1:18] Show pulling right along.

[1:20] Let's show with Dan.

Dan McCoy

[1:21] Show with Stu.

[1:22] Show full off to Buffalo.

[1:24] Here in Missouri, the show me state.

[1:27] Thank you, Elliot, for that concise windup.

[1:32] Hey, this is the Flophouse, a podcast where we talk about bad movies.

[1:39] We've been recently, because of the strike and because of our unwillingness as members.

Elliott Kalan

[1:45] The strike of the Writers Guild of America and StagAFTRA.

Dan McCoy

[1:49] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49] Because of those strikes, we are like, you know what?

[1:51] Not the strikes you did in bowling last night.

[1:53] We all went to bowling last night and Dan was just throwing strike after strike.

[1:56] It was amazing.

Dan McCoy

[1:57] I'll let this lie stand because it paints me in a good light.

[2:00] Bowled a perfect game.

[2:02] It was incredible.

Elliott Kalan

[2:04] A perfect game for Dan.

[2:05] Of course, each of the pins was a freeze-dried live pigeon.

[2:08] So it wasn't.

[2:09] So Dan was just destroying pigeons left and right.

[2:12] Very terrible.

[2:12] We call that Brooklyn-style bowling.

Dan McCoy

[2:18] So, to sum up, we're on strike right now.

[2:22] Yeah.

[2:22] The Writers Guild and StagAFTRA.

[2:24] And we don't want to promote recent films.

[2:29] So we've been reaching back in time and promoting old films.

[2:35] We don't really promote films on the podcast.

[2:37] Let's be clear.

[2:38] This is us out of a, you know, a willingness to go the extra mile to not even come close to supporting anything during the strike.

[2:46] Yeah.

[2:47] So we're talking about older films.

[2:49] Specifically from that magical decade.

[2:52] The 90s right now.

[2:53] The 90s.

[2:54] Hey.

[2:56] Spindockers.

Elliott Kalan

[2:58] Spice Girls.

Dan McCoy

[2:59] Uh-huh.

[3:00] Yeah.

[3:00] Flannel shirts.

[3:02] Mr. Peabody will hustle us back into the time machine and we'll go back maybe another decade.

[3:08] Sure.

[3:08] But right now we're in the 90s.

[3:10] And it's also small timber.

Stuart Wellington

[3:13] Oh, special time of the month.

[3:15] Small-vember.

[3:16] Yeah.

[3:17] I mean, time of the year, I guess.

[3:18] But, you know, it is also a time of the month if you think about it.

Elliott Kalan

[3:21] Yeah.

[3:22] If the year is a month, then this is a time of the month for sure.

Dan McCoy

[3:24] Yeah.

[3:25] Honestly, most of the films we would cover in small-vember anyway.

[3:29] Would not be AMPTP signatory.

[3:35] True.

[3:35] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[3:36] Productions.

[3:36] This one wasn't a big studio tentpole?

Dan McCoy

[3:40] I mean, not for an American studio.

[3:43] I don't know what it was like in Italy where this was mostly produced.

[3:46] Although it was a joint production between a lot of different countries.

Elliott Kalan

[3:49] It was a joint Italian-Korean co-production with some, I think, some other money from other places.

Dan McCoy

[3:54] But we thought thematically we should still reach back to the 90s.

[3:58] We said we're in the 90s right now.

[3:59] We're going to go with some older small movies.

[4:03] This one, The Legend of the Titanic, an animated film, came out a few years after a little movie called Titanic.

[4:11] The real Titanic.

Elliott Kalan

[4:12] Took the world by storm.

[4:13] Here's how much we dislike the AMPTP and don't want to drive business their way at the moment.

[4:17] This is a movie that was a co-production with not just a Korean company but a North Korean state-owned animation company.

[4:23] Oh, dear lord.

[4:25] Out of the frying pan into the fire.

[4:26] Oh, boy.

[4:27] Yeah.

[4:27] So this is a movie that you have to imagine that Kim Jong-un – was it Kim Jong-un or Kim Jong – it was Kim Jong-il at the time, right?

[4:35] Yeah.

[4:35] Who was the lead of North Korea, was going to the studio every day to look at the daily animation rushes and the pencil tests for these characters.

Dan McCoy

[4:42] And clapping his hands in delight, I'm sure.

[4:44] Oh, sure.

[4:45] Yeah, he loved it.

[4:46] This magical world that has been spun.

Elliott Kalan

[4:47] Him and his buddy, Dennis Rodman, were just going through, giving their notes on the animation.

[4:51] Yeah.

[4:51] Looking at this horrific dog-faced octopus and being like, beautiful.

Dan McCoy

[4:56] That's what its face looked like.

[4:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[4:59] And now, guys, as you mentioned, this is clearly jumping on the Titanic bandwagon.

[5:03] But it's also throwing in a dash of Don Bluth, a dash of Miyazaki, all sorts of things to create a sort of animated mishmash of – a strange combo of things.

[5:16] Yeah.

[5:17] Unlike combos the candy, which are a naturally occurring, wonderful combination of elements, this is a weird combo.

[5:23] Yeah.

[5:23] The combo is so weird.

Dan McCoy

[5:25] Should I not call combos a candy?

[5:26] Because they're not sweet.

[5:27] No.

[5:28] They're savory, right?

[5:29] They're a snack food.

[5:30] A snack food.

[5:31] Okay.

[5:31] Yeah.

[5:31] I mean, I think there's some sweetness with, like, the pizza sauce part of it.

[5:35] Sure.

[5:35] There's sweetness in the way that, like, food scientists add sweetness to everything to get us addicted to their snack foods.

[5:41] Oh, for sure.

[5:42] Did you do that?

[5:43] Yeah.

[5:43] But anyway.

[5:45] Yeah, didn't you see –

[5:45] I thought they were adding nutrition.

[5:47] I have some pamphlets to give.

[5:50] I don't know why we're pretending.

[5:52] Like, Stuart only eats nuts and fruit.

[5:54] Yeah, he's the healthiest eater among us.

[5:55] I don't know how he looks like this, guys.

[5:57] Yeah.

[5:58] Every time he comes over, it's a big package of nuts and some fruit.

Elliott Kalan

[6:02] Yeah, Stuart's on what he calls the marmoset diet.

[6:05] If a marmoset doesn't eat it, he is not interested.

Dan McCoy

[6:07] To – not to get too into the specific details.

[6:09] And occasionally he'll eat a marmoset.

[6:11] Every couple of weeks he'll eat a marmoset, too.

[6:13] Yeah.

[6:13] You know, Stuart had food poisoning.

[6:15] We had to delay this recording.

[6:16] Oh, boy, did I.

[6:17] And he brought over his lunch, which was some brown rice, it looks like.

[6:21] Uh-huh.

[6:22] So there you go.

[6:23] And a thermos filled with broth.

[6:28] So that led to the Titanic.

[6:29] Oh, yeah.

[6:30] That's where we were in the –

Elliott Kalan

[6:30] So this was back when the Titanic – when Titanic was a huge movie as opposed to now when it's been overtaken by Avatar Way of Water as the James Cameron movie about water.

[6:40] And they decided to get in on that Titanic business.

[6:43] Guys, should we talk about this movie, which starts out a little misguided and eventually gets to some very strange places?

Dan McCoy

[6:50] Oh, yes, we should.

[6:51] Although – sorry, I just remembered what I wanted to say.

[6:53] It's like the disparate elements in this are so confusing to me.

[6:56] Like they – even once the kind of different plot lines start intersecting and theoretically influencing one another, they still feel completely separate to me somehow.

[7:11] Like they have this like mouse world and animal world and human world.

[7:17] And I don't – like the film is so bad about integrating them that even when the plot integrates them, like my brain still wants to keep them apart.

Stuart Wellington

[7:24] Yeah, it kind of hurts your head.

[7:25] You get a headache.

[7:26] Although, guys, I know you're saying that this is kind of riding on the coattails of James Cameron's Titanic.

[7:31] But what about – what if James Cameron's Titanic?

[7:34] Wouldn't it have been improved if Billy Zane's character had access to a gang of tough-talking sharks?

Elliott Kalan

[7:40] Yeah.

[7:40] It certainly would have.

[7:42] It almost certainly would have.

[7:43] And a naive octopus.

[7:43] The moment when that shark shows up is really, I think, when the movie enters a new level.

[7:48] Yeah.

[7:48] It was fucking awesome.

Dan McCoy

[7:49] I mean, maybe in the course of explaining this movie to us, which you're about to start, you will explain to me why part of the villain scheme was to sink the ship he also was on.

[8:02] But we'll get to it, I guess.

Elliott Kalan

[8:04] We'll get to that.

[8:05] Okay.

[8:06] And also, no, I won't be able to explain it.

[8:08] But we'll get to that.

[8:08] So the movie begins, as all great movies do, with an instrumental version of New York, New York, playing over a cityscape that doesn't really resemble New York at all.

[8:18] One building does have a prominent Braniff Airlines logo on it.

[8:22] And I was like, is that the famous Braniff building?

Stuart Wellington

[8:25] I get it when you shoot a movie in Toronto, for instance, and you're like, yeah, we're in New York, whatever.

[8:33] But when it's animated, can't you just draw it from a picture?

Elliott Kalan

[8:36] You'd think you would just be able to draw that city, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[8:38] Just draw it from a picture.

[8:39] It's pretty easy.

[8:40] Just, like, Google New York, Skyline, and draw that shit.

Elliott Kalan

[8:44] Well, this is 1999.

[8:45] It was a little bit harder to get pictures of New York back then.

[8:48] The internet wasn't what it is now.

[8:49] Okay, slightly harder, yeah.

[8:50] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[8:50] So you have to get on, like, microfiche or some shit.

Elliott Kalan

[8:53] I mean, and it's also possible these scenes were drawn in North Korea, where information about the outside world is very, very heavily controlled.

[8:58] Oh, yeah, that's a good point, yeah.

[8:59] So maybe they could not get a picture of New York.

[9:02] So we zoom into an apartment where some mouse children are asking their grandpa about what it was like being a sailor on the Titanic.

[9:09] Let's unpack that sentence.

Stuart Wellington

[9:11] Okay, so wait, they're in, like, a regular-sized apartment?

[9:14] Yes, they are not.

Elliott Kalan

[9:16] It does not show them zooming into, like, a mouse hole.

[9:18] They're in a regular-sized apartment.

Stuart Wellington

[9:19] So we assume it's, like, a duck world, like they're—

[9:22] Yes, yes.

[9:23] Okay, so they're, like, human-sized mice.

Elliott Kalan

[9:25] At this point, we assume they're human-sized mice in a human-sized city,

[9:28] or perhaps maybe it's a mouse city that Braniff Airlines also has—

[9:33] It's still existing.

[9:34] Maybe Braniff is still in business.

Dan McCoy

[9:36] Maybe it only does mouse work now.

[9:38] I want to unpack the other part where you talk about how he was a sailor on the Titanic.

[9:42] Now, I—this is another thing that wasn't really clear to me.

[9:46] This—the Titanic obviously had its, you know, human-sized sailors who staffed the ship and made it run.

Elliott Kalan

[9:55] Ample historical evidence to support the idea that there were humans working on the Titanic, yes.

[9:59] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[9:59] Uh-huh.

[9:59] But this movie posits, it seems, that there's also, like, a separate mouse crew.

[10:05] Yes.

[10:05] Because there's, like, a mouse captain.

[10:07] And I'm wondering what these animals are doing to pilot the ship, if anything.

Elliott Kalan

[10:13] Well, so he's—calling him a sailor is misguided or misdirected because they are—these—and these mice are operating more like coyotes, the people who help smuggle—

[10:23] Yeah.

[10:23] —immigrants across borders.

[10:25] Because they are—they're just there to take care of the mice and help them to sneak onto the ship.

[10:30] Right.

[10:30] So he—

[10:30] They don't have any technical—although later on, they do get heavily involved in the technical apparatus of the ship.

[10:36] True, yeah.

[10:36] Sure, sure.

Dan McCoy

[10:36] But the captain is less than sort of a captain and more of, like, a cruise director for these mice.

Elliott Kalan

[10:40] Yes, exactly.

[10:41] I mean, maybe he stands there with a soda pop cap, pretending it's a steering wheel.

[10:45] Like, oh, yeah, well, we're almost in New York.

[10:47] Right.

[10:48] Okay.

[10:49] So, one of the kids finds a—and he says, you were on the Titanic, it sank.

[10:54] And the grandpa says something very funny that is never really borne out by the movie.

[10:57] He goes, oh, it was all a misunderstanding, which doesn't really make any sense.

[11:02] And one of the kids finds a whistle, and he goes, oh, that was used to call the terrible Mr. Ice.

[11:06] Now, never having seen this movie before, I immediately assumed, oh, there's going to be, like, a giant talking iceberg that is summoned.

[11:13] Or, like, some kind of ice elemental who creates the iceberg.

[11:16] That would be ridiculous.

[11:18] As we'll later find out, Mr. Ice is terrible, but is actually a sea creature that is—that has nothing to do with—well, we'll see.

[11:25] I don't know why he's called Ice.

Stuart Wellington

[11:26] And, from what I can tell, a felon.

Elliott Kalan

[11:28] Yes.

[11:28] Consider he has both—that he has—his body literally has prison stripes on it, and he wears a cap.

[11:33] But anyway, so Grandpa flashes back to England, 1912, which makes me wonder, maybe—you know what?

[11:39] So that story must be being told in, like, the 1970s, maybe the 1980s.

[11:43] So maybe Braniff is still around.

[11:45] Okay.

[11:45] England—at this point, I'll stop talking about Braniff Airlines, a defunct airline, which is just weird to me that that's the logo that is on the—branded on a building.

[11:53] So England, 1912, and passengers are boarding the Titanic.

[11:56] And I'm just going to go through who some of these passengers are.

[11:58] I'm not going to go moment by moment entirely.

[12:01] Okay.

[12:02] There's the wealthy Duke of Cameron, whose voice is kind of like a cut-rate Donald Sutherland.

[12:06] Like, if you asked one of us to do, like, a Donald Sutherland depression, that's the Duke of Cameron.

[12:10] His beautiful daughter, Elizabeth, her evil stepmom, Rachel, and Elizabeth's evil fiancé, Everard Maltravers.

[12:18] Now, guys, is this a name?

[12:19] Is this a real name?

[12:21] Everard Maltravers?

[12:22] Everard Maltravers.

[12:24] And we also meet Maltravers—

Dan McCoy

[12:26] Which is, of course, French for bad Travers.

Elliott Kalan

[12:29] And he has a—much like Draco Malfoy and Malvolio, if you want people to know that it's a bad guy, put Mal in front of the name.

[12:38] That's why we know Mallory was the villain on what show was that?

[12:42] Family Ties.

[12:43] Yes.

[12:43] Yeah.

[12:44] That's right.

[12:45] And so—and Mal Travers has an eyepatch, and he also has a bumbling hench butler named Jeffries.

Stuart Wellington

[12:50] That's why you know that Malcolm in the middle is the bad guy in the middle.

Elliott Kalan

[12:55] That's why they keep him in the middle, because he's in prison, so they can't get out.

Stuart Wellington

[12:58] Yeah, he's in prison between a Dewey and a—what's the other guy?

[13:01] The older one.

[13:02] Yeah.

[13:02] The older son.

[13:03] That's his name.

[13:03] My God, Captain Mal in Firefly was the bad guy all along, right?

Elliott Kalan

[13:08] Yep, yep, yep.

[13:09] Yep, and Ian Malcolm from the Jurassic Park movies.

[13:11] He's the one who let the dinosaurs loose in the behind-the-scenes.

[13:14] I mean, he is a bad boy.

[13:15] He is a bad boy.

[13:16] He wears the leather jacket.

Dan McCoy

[13:17] He's a sexy mathematician.

Elliott Kalan

[13:20] And Mal Travers has a bumbling hench butler named Jeffries,

[13:23] who's basically just Gaston's sidekick from Beauty and the Beast.

[13:25] Like, it's such a total ripoff.

[13:28] Elizabeth does not want to marry Mal Travers, but Rachel—

Stuart Wellington

[13:30] Can I point out that Elizabeth has, like, a pretty cool mullet haircut?

[13:34] Yeah, sure.

[13:35] Like, it's pretty current.

Elliott Kalan

[13:36] Like, I could see some kids in Bushwick wearing this haircut.

[13:39] And surprisingly low-cut dresses through much of the movie,

[13:42] considering this is a kids' movie set in 1912.

[13:44] Dan was pleasantly surprised, he said.

Stuart Wellington

[13:47] I can't remember.

Dan McCoy

[13:48] Like, I have to make an admission here, which is that, you know,

[13:54] as we said, Stuart had some food poisoning, so we pushed the—

Elliott Kalan

[14:00] We call them the troubles.

Dan McCoy

[14:02] We pushed the recording back.

Elliott Kalan

[14:03] Oh, is that what Ireland was going through when they had the troubles?

[14:06] Was just bad food poisoning nationwide?

[14:07] Yeah.

[14:08] Uh-huh.

[14:08] Yeah.

[14:09] This is like—

Stuart Wellington

[14:09] Bad airline food.

[14:10] Probably from Braniff Airlines.

Dan McCoy

[14:12] Three days on from when we were supposed to record.

[14:15] I watched the movie the day before.

[14:17] Even as I was watching, my brain was having a really hard time just intaking this movie.

[14:23] Maybe you had food poisoning, too.

Elliott Kalan

[14:26] Yeah.

[14:26] No, no, I'll admit, as someone who was very healthy and ate good food, I also had trouble—

[14:30] I frequently had to rewind and re-watch scenes because it was like—

[14:33] I've said this before in other movies.

[14:34] It's like the movie, my brain was so—it was so frictionless.

[14:37] The movie would just slide right off of my brain, and I would have to shove it in to make sure it actually made a memory.

Dan McCoy

[14:44] Right.

[14:45] So, I mean, at this point, you can tell me anything happened in this movie, and I would believe you.

Elliott Kalan

[14:50] Well, Dan, I'll tell you right now, anything does happen because also boarding the ship are many immigrant mice from different countries, including sailor Tom Connors, who will someday be Grandpa Mouse.

[15:00] That's Tom Connors, the mouse, not Stompin' Tom Connors, the pride of Prince Edward Island, creator of the hockey song, the ketchup song, and many other great songs from Prince Edward Island.

[15:10] The ketchup song?

[15:12] Yeah.

[15:12] What is the song?

[15:14] Just look up Stompin' Tom Connors, the pride of Prince Edward Island.

[15:16] Okay.

[15:16] Look, Prince Edward Island is proud of two things.

[15:18] Okay.

[15:19] Anne of Green Gables and Stompin' Tom Connors, a country singer who would stomp on a wooden board while he sang.

[15:25] And when I went to visit our friend Eric, who has now been mentioned in a number of Flop House episodes, when he lived in Prince Edward Island, there were not one, but two different Anne of Green Gables musicals going on at the same time.

[15:34] And one Stompin' Tom Connors biographical stage show where someone played him and performed his music.

Dan McCoy

[15:41] You got to combine them.

[15:43] Have a Stompin' Tom Connors Anne of Green Gables musical.

[15:47] I just like the idea that Stompin' was his thing, like an earlier era of entertainment, like to live in that era of entertainment where you can just have a thing and the thing can just be used to stomp on some wood.

Elliott Kalan

[15:58] He would sing and they would bring out the wood and people would cheer when they brought out the wood in a blank and he'd stomp on it really hard.

[16:04] Okay.

[16:04] So these two Brazilian mice are also coming on.

[16:07] Stella, who Tom immediately falls in love with.

[16:09] She is barely a character.

[16:10] She just shows up every now and then.

[16:12] And her soccer-obsessed brother, Ronnie, who is, again, Brazilian, a Brazilian named Ronnie, and they do not have accent, Brazilian accent.

Stuart Wellington

[16:19] And he also repeatedly refers to soccer as soccer.

Elliott Kalan

[16:25] Yes, he never calls it football or football.

[16:27] He has been in England to learn how to play soccer, as he calls it, and he becomes Tom's sidekick very quickly and shows off some soccer tricks.

[16:34] Now, before they fully board the ship, Elizabeth's eye is caught by some Spaniards who are dancing on the dock, including the black-cloaked Don Juan Prince of Andalusia, who also has a dog named Smiley.

[16:46] And all the rich people hate Smiley, but Elizabeth immediately takes a liking to him.

[16:50] And in one of the creepier moments, Smiley takes Elizabeth's glove, brings it to Don Juan, who immediately smells it, and goes, ah.

Stuart Wellington

[16:57] Very weird.

[16:59] Which, guys, guys, I've been there.

Elliott Kalan

[17:01] I mean, it's literally the name of a Spinal Tap album is Smell the Glove, right?

[17:05] Like, it's a weird thing to do in a kid's movie.

Dan McCoy

[17:07] Yeah, I mean, that's weird.

[17:08] But also, like, her just acceptance of, well, I guess that's the dog's glove now.

Stuart Wellington

[17:15] Possession of nine times of the law when you're a dog.

[17:16] Spoken like a guy who's never had a dog bite a glove off his hand.

Elliott Kalan

[17:19] Yeah, Dan, are you really chasing after that dog to get that glove?

[17:22] I guess, I mean.

[17:23] It's not worth it.

[17:23] It's just a glove.

Dan McCoy

[17:24] You're that wealthy.

[17:25] You just, you know, open up your pack of gloves.

[17:28] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[17:29] Meanwhile, the steward on the ship tells Juan's buddies, you can't take that dog on here.

[17:33] So they bully him, and then Smiley, on camera, pees on the steward's leg, and we see the pee.

[17:39] Oh, yeah, that was pretty great.

[17:40] Yeah, yeah, we do see the pee.

[17:41] It's like a fiddley pool.

[17:44] So the Titanic sets off.

[17:46] We learn that Maltravers is a whaling magnate who has a fleet of whaling ships, and he wants the Duke to sign over his valuable whaling territory, which the Duke has not been whaling in.

[17:55] But Maltravers wants to, and as he says to Jeffries, nothing in the world counts but money and power.

[18:00] And then we get the first of many hideously ugly swooping flybys of the CGI Titanic in this otherwise hand-drawn animated film.

[18:08] Guys, how did you feel about Maltravers' whaling plan or about these CGI ships in an otherwise pen and ink film?

Stuart Wellington

[18:16] I do like when he refers to his little buddy as a sniveling factotum and shit like that.

[18:25] Has he been working on all these fucking burns?

[18:28] What's going on?

[18:28] Yeah, he has a thesaurus that he's consulting all the time.

[18:31] It's like bad guy thesaurus?

[18:32] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[18:33] Yeah.

[18:34] Well, the CGI, yeah, I do want to mention this.

[18:37] The rest of the movie is, you know, not good animation at all, but it, you know, like the design at least is like acceptable sort of mid-budget knockoff animation.

[18:53] Yeah, sub Don Bluth, sub Disney, you know.

[18:55] Yeah, but, you know, but the sort of stuff that still used to get into the theaters once in a while.

[19:02] But then when you switch to CGI, you see like this, you know, very of the time bad CGI boat like running through water that looks like it's kind of like someone just took like the Mac paint, you know, the spray paint or airbrush thing and just like sprayed a bunch of gray all over.

[19:22] So it looks like they're going through kind of like smoke or dirt instead of water.

Elliott Kalan

[19:26] Yeah, I mean, and the boat gives the impression of being made out of cardboard when they do these.

[19:31] So it's – I don't think they're getting the majesty that they were hoping for or that James Cameron achieves in his own Titanic movie, which is called, of course, as we remember, The Abyss.

[19:41] Now, the humans, they have a gala banquet.

[19:44] Ronnie and Tom, the two mice, they ogle the food, and Elizabeth makes a big scene about not wanting to marry Mal Travers.

[19:49] And Ronnie goes, oh, she's beautiful.

[19:52] I've got a crush on her.

[19:53] And Tom goes, but she's a human.

[19:54] And he goes, I'm not a racist.

[19:56] I could have a crush on her.

[19:57] And it's a proud anti-speciesist, anti-racist message from the movie where a mouse can lust after a human being.

Stuart Wellington

[20:05] And that's the thing, guys.

[20:06] That's the most I've identified with a mouse in a movie before is because like, guys, I get it.

[20:12] I can – even though I'm a mouse, I can appreciate a baddie when I see one, you know?

[20:16] Yeah.

[20:17] Now, hold on.

Dan McCoy

[20:19] So this – I mean like –

[20:21] Dan, are you going to kink shame this mouse?

[20:23] I normally don't agree with this sort of slippery slope logic of like, well, that leads to lusting after animals.

[20:31] But this is literally what's happening here where it's just like instead of saying what it is, which is these are two different species of creature.

Elliott Kalan

[20:41] Of varying – vastly different sizes as well.

[20:43] They're framing it like –

[20:45] There's a huge power differential.

Dan McCoy

[20:46] Yeah, they're framing it like it's racism as if, you know, someone's like going to be like find someone who like fucks their dog.

[20:53] You're like, whoa, what a racist.

Elliott Kalan

[20:56] I'm supposed to be intolerant towards dogs now and not find them attractive.

Stuart Wellington

[20:59] Are you guys saying that if you guys got morphed into a cartoon mouse, you wouldn't find your wife attractive anymore?

Elliott Kalan

[21:05] I have two answers to that.

[21:07] Dan, you answer first and then I have two answers to that.

Dan McCoy

[21:09] Stuart, you're reminding me of the time I sort of like – I legitimately kind of teared up thinking about how if I was mouse-sized, my cats would just eat me.

Elliott Kalan

[21:19] You know what, Dan?

[21:20] That's much better than what I was going to say.

[21:22] It doesn't answer his question at all.

[21:24] But it's much better than what I was going to say.

[21:26] Now, I will mention also the mice in the movie are mouse-sized, which again raises some questions when we see them in New York living in an apartment where they have regular-sized furniture.

Stuart Wellington

[21:35] I mean that's New York apartments these days.

Elliott Kalan

[21:38] Yes.

[21:38] Now, that's true.

[21:39] This movie is about to take a huge left turn because we cut immediately.

[21:44] It seems to be the middle of a song while Elizabeth is wandering the deck alone crying.

[21:49] Some dolphins leap up into the air up to her eye level, which is a huge leap for a dolphin.

[21:53] That's like 1,000 feet in the air.

[21:55] They leap up and they start talking to her and they explain that she can now hear animals because her tears landed in a net of magic moonbeams.

[22:02] And then they added some dolphin magic to it.

[22:04] So now she can understand all animals.

[22:07] And this is a huge swing for this movie to take.

Dan McCoy

[22:10] I love that they say, and we added some dolphin magic.

[22:14] Like, as long as you're doing this bullshit, just say that the tears landed in a magic moonbeam and be done.

[22:19] We'll just say the dolphins have cast a spell.

[22:21] Either way, pick a lane movie.

[22:23] They're like, oh, we saw that you were halfway to a magic spell.

[22:27] And so we added a little bit of our own magic so we could talk to you.

Stuart Wellington

[22:30] They don't want kids at home dropping their fucking tears in magic moonbeams.

[22:33] Oh, okay.

[22:34] Hoping that it's going to work.

[22:35] They had to clarify that they also have to have dolphins.

[22:37] Yeah, yeah.

[22:38] You don't want copycat kids.

Dan McCoy

[22:39] You want kids to know that if they can't talk to dolphins, it's because the dolphins rejected them.

[22:43] Yes.

[22:44] Not being worthy.

Elliott Kalan

[22:46] That's what you – kids need to learn this stuff.

[22:49] And the dolphins explain that they have been battling Maltravers' whaling fleet, which is about to go hunting in forbidden waters or has been hunting in forbidden waters.

[22:56] And I want to remind everybody, this is a movie about the Titanic, a real ship.

[23:01] Yeah.

[23:02] And we've now introduced dolphins that can talk because of magic and are fighting a secret battle against whaling.

[23:07] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[23:08] It's not going to get any weirder, though.

Elliott Kalan

[23:11] Oh, I cannot promise you that it's not going to get weirder.

[23:13] In fact, I can promise you it will get weirder.

[23:15] So Maltravers, he asked the Duke for the rights to his whaling concession, and the Duke is very noncommittal.

[23:21] The Duke is like, hmm, well, hmm.

[23:24] And Maltravers, he just tells Jeffreys to send out –

Stuart Wellington

[23:27] Because he's on – guys, because he's on fucking vacation, right?

[23:30] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[23:30] He's like, I don't want to talk about work right now.

[23:32] He's on that cruise life, you know?

[23:33] I'm trying to unplug.

[23:34] Yeah.

[23:35] Mm-hmm.

[23:36] And Maltravers tells Jeffreys, give the go-ahead to my whaling fleet anyway.

[23:40] Tell them to go hunting.

[23:42] Jeffreys – and also, go talk to Ice.

[23:44] Jeffreys then, in another real swerve for the movie, Jeffreys goes to the bow of the ship, blows on a whistle, which calls up a shark named Ice who wears a prison cap and has prison stripes on his body and speaks in a New York accent.

[23:57] To tell Ice, be ready.

[23:59] The boss is going to call the plan into effect.

[24:01] So what this tells us is Elizabeth – there was a lot of magic that had to happen for Elizabeth to talk to these dolphins.

[24:07] But Maltravers and Jeffreys have already been in contact with and have been plotting with a band of sharks who can speak English with a heavy New York accent.

[24:15] Even at this point, they're closer to English-British waters still.

Dan McCoy

[24:19] I also like the idea that at some point they're like, okay, what's the easiest way to sabotage this ship?

[24:27] We've got to get in touch with some sharks.

[24:29] We've got to get some sharks on our side who can maybe – spoiler alert – talk to an octopus whose size changes dramatically from CBC.

[24:37] We'll get to that octopus.

Elliott Kalan

[24:38] We'll get to that amazing size-changing octopus.

[24:41] With the mind of a child.

Dan McCoy

[24:42] At no point someone was like, hey boss, what about a bop?

Elliott Kalan

[24:46] What about an old-fashioned –

[24:47] It's 1912, Dan.

[24:48] I don't know if they had those.

[24:50] In 1912, they only had shark-calling flute technology.

[24:54] Sure.

[24:55] And it's so – like it was such a disappointment to me.

[24:59] I want to know if it was to you when I found out that ice was not – Mr. Ice was not like an elemental wind spirit who was going to crash the ship.

[25:06] But just a mean shark, just a criminal shark.

Dan McCoy

[25:08] Yeah.

[25:08] No, I did anticipate some sort of anthropomorphic iceberg that had a grudge against the Titanic or something.

Stuart Wellington

[25:15] I'm going to say I like the fact that this – as soon as this shark showed up, I couldn't be mad at it.

[25:20] That's true.

Elliott Kalan

[25:21] This shark – I mean, I didn't like that all sharks are bad guys in this, just like in all fish movies.

[25:29] I mean, except Finding Nemo, I guess the sharks are reluctant bad guys sometimes.

[25:33] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[25:34] What about Jabberjaw, dude?

[25:37] You're right.

[25:37] All he wants to do is rock us.

Elliott Kalan

[25:38] I won't point out that I said movies very clearly and that Jabberjaw has yet to have a feature film on his own.

[25:44] But no, good point.

[25:46] You see, you addressed the spirit of my note rather than the letter of my note, which is fine.

[25:51] I'm not going to play rabbi here and say, oh, technically the good book says movies.

Dan McCoy

[25:56] Thank you for your restraint, Elliot, for not doing any of those things.

Elliott Kalan

[25:59] No, I will not do those things.

[26:01] I will refrain from it.

[26:02] So getting back to the story, Ronnie and Tom, the mice, they can also talk to Elizabeth now because, again, magic moonbeams.

[26:09] And they tell her not to run for her problems but to face them head on, and she resolves to fight.

[26:13] She will fight for her freedom.

[26:15] Meanwhile, Juan can think of nothing but Elizabeth.

[26:18] And after the mice spy on Rachel as Elizabeth's stepmother plotting and scheming with Maltravers, and it's kind of implied that they're having an affair.

[26:25] Yeah.

[26:25] Elizabeth goes to her father.

[26:27] I mean, he's got an eye patch.

[26:29] He does have an eye patch.

[26:29] He's sexy.

[26:30] He's like the – what?

[26:31] Is that the Hathaway shirt man who had the eye patch or was it a different shirt company?

Stuart Wellington

[26:37] I don't know, but I'm going to have to look that up.

[26:40] Look it up.

[26:40] Hathaway shirt?

Elliott Kalan

[26:41] I'm asking about mid-century shirt ads that would be in print magazines.

[26:45] So I expect you to know these things.

[26:47] Yeah.

[26:48] So the – Elizabeth goes to her father, Duke.

[26:52] She says, I'll never marry Maltravers.

[26:54] And in a shockingly anticlimactic moment, the Duke says, that's fine.

[26:58] I just want you to be happy.

[26:59] And it's clear he never really liked Maltravers that much anyway.

[27:02] That is then followed up a little bit later by –

Dan McCoy

[27:04] I never really liked that man you were dating with the eye patch and the negative name.

Elliott Kalan

[27:10] Yeah.

[27:11] Who is clearly a villain and was mean to his bumbling servant.

[27:14] So – and then some other stuff happens.

[27:16] But the important thing is that Ronnie the soccer mouse kicks a tiny soccer ball into Maltravers,

[27:20] causing him to fall onto a catering cart that then dumps him into a laundry vat.

[27:25] Which is the kind of –

[27:26] I mean, that's very powerful.

[27:27] That is a potent kick from a mouse.

[27:28] It's a potent kick.

[27:29] And also the kind of thing that usually happens at the ends of these movies.

[27:32] I'm like, shouldn't the movie be over by now?

[27:33] No, because we're on the Titanic, I remind you.

[27:35] A real ship that actually sunk.

Stuart Wellington

[27:38] I mean 100% Maltravers looks like the villain in a movie with like a soccer-playing dog, right?

[27:43] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[27:44] But in this case, a bunch of mice and a dancing dog.

[27:47] Yes, because we'll see.

[27:49] The movie is not over because they've got to get Elizabeth and Juan to fall in love.

[27:52] Smiley, the mice, and all the other animals on board.

[27:55] There's a surprising number of pets on board the Titanic.

[27:58] They arrange for Juan and Elizabeth – and we do not see most of them in the lifeboats at the end of the movie, I have to say.

[28:04] They arrange for Elizabeth to bump into Juan on deck.

Stuart Wellington

[28:07] And this is a challenge at this point because at this point, Juan can still not understand the animals.

Elliott Kalan

[28:13] Yes.

[28:13] They have – and also these two people have to fall in love.

[28:15] They have never met.

[28:16] Juan has only smelled Elizabeth's glove.

[28:18] He cannot understand the animals.

[28:19] But Tom says – Dan, wait.

[28:21] Tom says they'll know if it's true love because their souls will unite and Juan will suddenly gain the ability to talk to animals too.

[28:28] A great narrative shortcut that is explained to us by a mouse in a moment and does not at all feel like they're just making up the rules as they go along.

[28:36] There's a lot of thought-out world-building going on in The Legend of the Titanic.

[28:39] Dan, what were you going to say?

Dan McCoy

[28:40] I'm just wondering why all these animals are so invested in the romantic lives of these two humans.

[28:44] Like do they not have their own emotional wants and needs?

Elliott Kalan

[28:49] They do because you'll remember there is a mouse wedding at the end of the movie.

[28:53] We'll get to it.

[28:54] Okay.

[28:55] In this movie about the real tragedy of the Titanic.

[28:58] So they bump into each other.

[29:00] A mouse orchestra plays a love serenade.

[29:02] The humans dance and kiss.

[29:04] The animals cheer.

[29:05] And then the mouse orchestra immediately plays some swing jazz that everyone dances to for a very long time.

[29:10] This is a very long sequence of them just dancing.

Dan McCoy

[29:13] I took a sequence.

[29:15] I took a –

[29:15] Expertly animated.

[29:16] A video of part of the sequence and made a gif at it because I was so charmed.

[29:21] Not charmed but like charmed by how bad it looked of all these –

[29:24] It looks terrible.

[29:26] These animals and people dancing together.

[29:28] And I posted it on our Flophouse Instagram story.

[29:32] And someone messaged me pointing out that one of the mouse's beard appears and disappears as he dances.

Stuart Wellington

[29:40] I like when you were telling that story, Dan, you kind of like reverse reality show judged it.

[29:44] You're like, I was charmed by how bad it was.

[29:51] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[29:51] Yeah, that was well done.

[29:52] That was well done.

Elliott Kalan

[29:54] So this was the part – this is how my brain works is I started thinking, wait a minute.

Dan McCoy

[30:00] I don't know if this music is the kind of jazz they would have been listening to in 1912.

Elliott Kalan

[30:04] This feels like 40s jazz.

[30:06] And I had to stop myself and be like, you know what?

[30:08] Yeah, put it on the fucking goofs page.

[30:09] This is a movie about the Titanic that involves talking mice.

[30:12] And I didn't even know yet at the time that it involves a talking childlike octopus.

[30:16] So I – but I then shut that thinking down.

[30:19] I was like, why am I caring?

[30:20] This is an animated movie on the Titanic.

[30:22] So – and the zaniest things have yet to happen yet.

[30:26] So this possibly anachronist in music, let's not worry about it.

[30:29] The duke gives Elizabeth permission to marry Juan.

[30:32] All he wants is for a star to be happy.

[30:34] But Rachel and Mal Travers –

Stuart Wellington

[30:34] And we don't know that he's like the duke of Andalusia, right?

Elliott Kalan

[30:37] I don't think she even knows yet that he's a prince.

[30:39] She's just danced with him once and they kissed and that's it.

[30:41] Yeah.

[30:42] Rachel and Mal Travers – and it's also one of those things where it's clearly supposed to be she's the rich one and he's like with the people in steerage.

[30:50] But they say he's a prince.

[30:51] But he's got this like dark shadows outfit on.

[30:54] Yes, yes.

[30:55] I wouldn't have been surprised if it turned out he was a vampire at any point.

[30:58] The duke gives Elizabeth permission to marry, but Rachel and Mal Travers are still plotting.

[31:02] And the mice tell Juan that they overheard Mal Travers saying he's planning to sink the ship.

[31:07] But I'm not actually sure if the audience heard him say that.

[31:09] Did I just miss him saying that?

[31:11] It seems like the mice were making that up to make Mal Travers look bad.

[31:15] That's possible.

[31:15] And he is planning to do it.

[31:17] But it's very – it's like I don't remember actually hearing him say that.

Stuart Wellington

[31:20] That's a really good question.

[31:21] Dan, do you remember this very specific part of the dialogue from the movie?

[31:25] Yeah, Dan.

[31:25] You have a mind like a steel trap for this stuff.

Dan McCoy

[31:27] I don't remember.

[31:28] I'm still puzzling over.

[31:30] I don't understand what his plot is.

[31:32] Like why it involves sinking the ship.

Elliott Kalan

[31:34] Somehow he has to sink the ship in order to – well, so here's his plot.

[31:39] I think he has to kill the duke.

[31:41] Well, we'll get to it because he has the duke sign some paperwork.

[31:44] We'll get to it.

[31:45] So the mice then stop the telegraph operator from sending Mal Travers' whaling ship orders.

[31:49] How do they do it?

[31:50] By chewing through all the ship's telegraph wires.

[31:53] This is going to be a bad thing it turns out later on.

Stuart Wellington

[31:56] I mean it won't be a problem unless they need to send an emergency message from the ship.

[32:00] And that would be wild.

[32:02] Yeah, the ship is unsinkable.

[32:03] I remember reading that.

[32:04] It's a unsinkable ship.

Elliott Kalan

[32:05] It's the Titanic.

[32:06] Although the mouse captain earlier did say that the mice inspection board did not go out of their way to inspect the Titanic.

[32:12] They didn't manage to do that yet.

[32:13] Oh, wow.

Stuart Wellington

[32:14] Way to keep them in the fucking clear.

[32:16] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[32:16] Yeah, so you can't blame the mice.

[32:18] They didn't – the mice inspection board, they didn't okay this ship.

[32:21] They're not liable.

[32:22] They're not liable.

[32:22] Don't sue them.

Elliott Kalan

[32:22] Yeah, let me check to see who produced this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[32:25] The mouse inspection board?

[32:27] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[32:28] Yeah.

[32:29] The ultimate authority on –

[32:30] Yeah, that's right.

[32:32] It's like United Passion.

[32:33] The soccer movie.

Elliott Kalan

[32:37] Ah, the movie about how great FIFA is and how Seth Blatter's a hero.

[32:40] Yeah.

[32:40] So this is when Jeffries contacts Ice the shark, tells him to sink the ship at midnight so these sharks also can tell time.

[32:48] And Ice and his thugs, they set this up.

[32:51] There's only one way to sink this ship.

[32:53] It's the only logical way to do it.

[32:55] It's easy peasy.

[32:56] They're going to have to trick an enormous childlike octopus named Tentacles who has the face of a puppy dog.

[33:02] And the Tentacles is a good friend with an orca named Orky.

[33:05] They're going to have to trick the octopus into an iceberg-throwing contest so that they will get an iceberg into the path of the ship.

[33:11] Again, this movie is based on a true story.

Dan McCoy

[33:14] People died.

[33:15] Like lots of people died.

Stuart Wellington

[33:16] One thing I love about octopi is that they're like – people who make cartoons, they love to put fucking octopi in their shit.

[33:24] Yeah.

[33:25] Those octopi are great.

[33:26] They're amazing animals.

[33:27] They're amazing animals.

[33:28] They're great.

[33:28] But they also have like the least friendly face possible.

[33:32] Yes.

[33:32] So they're like, okay, this is the one animal we have to completely fuck the face around to make it look normal.

Elliott Kalan

[33:37] Because there's no way to make a cute octopus who has a hard beak in the middle of his tentacles where a human would assume a butt would be.

[33:44] It's very – it's a weird design for an octopus.

[33:46] And so they always have to put the face on its bulbous head and not where it actually goes, which is in the middle of the tentacles.

Dan McCoy

[33:52] I will – I agree with all of what you're saying except for –

Elliott Kalan

[33:55] Dan, where's your butt?

[33:56] Is it between your legs?

[33:57] Yes.

[33:58] Where's your mouth?

[33:59] Nowhere near your legs.

[34:00] Is it between my legs?

[34:01] Yeah, dude.

Dan McCoy

[34:02] I don't know if my butt is between my legs.

[34:04] It's between the muscles of the back of my legs.

[34:06] I would call it sort of the terminus of my –

[34:07] I'm going to take a bunch of pictures of Dan's body.

[34:10] Where my legs meet the shore.

Elliott Kalan

[34:13] What's closer to the center of the area between your legs, your butt or your mouth?

[34:18] What?

[34:20] This is not what I want to talk about.

[34:21] Answer the question, Dan.

[34:22] Why are you afraid to answer the question?

[34:24] What are you hiding?

[34:24] He is being weirdly evasive actually.

[34:26] Yes.

[34:27] I don't know.

[34:27] I'm just asking you a simple question about the location of your butt and your mouth,

[34:30] and for some reason, you refuse to answer.

[34:34] Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in the case of Grace Anatomy versus Dan McCoy –

Stuart Wellington

[34:39] Dan, do you have like a measuring tape around here?

[34:42] I think that'll – we can just clear this up.

[34:44] It's super simple.

[34:44] It's in the middle of my body.

Dan McCoy

[34:46] Like if you're talking about the top of the head to the bottom of your feet,

[34:51] I wouldn't say it's between my legs.

[34:53] But which is closer, your mouth or your butt, to your legs?

Elliott Kalan

[34:58] Which is closer to your legs?

[35:00] I guess.

[35:00] You still refuse to answer.

[35:02] Still cannot answer.

Dan McCoy

[35:04] I don't understand the point you're making.

Elliott Kalan

[35:06] I didn't think this was going to be the question that tripped you up in that –

Dan McCoy

[35:08] I don't get – I'm just trying to understand the underlying point.

Elliott Kalan

[35:14] Answer the question, sir.

[35:16] Answer the question.

[35:17] Your Honor, the witness is being incalcitrant.

[35:19] You refuse to answer a question.

Dan McCoy

[35:20] You're pulling a Rand Paul on me.

[35:24] You're like asking a ridiculous question and then being like, see, he doesn't want to answer.

Elliott Kalan

[35:29] I don't know what's ridiculous about the location in your body of different orifices.

[35:34] You're the one who's trying to cloud the issue and make it seem as if your butt and your mouth might be the same distance from your legs.

Dan McCoy

[35:41] Could I just say the thing that I wanted to say though?

[35:43] Yes.

[35:43] Why not?

[35:43] If you remember what it was, then please do.

[35:46] I find –

[35:47] Avoid the question.

[35:47] I agree with what you're saying except for I find actual octopuses or octopi, depending on how you say it, cute.

[35:56] Whereas whenever you try and anthropomorphize an octopus, it's horrifying.

Elliott Kalan

[36:02] Look, we can agree – even if we can't agree on the variable distances between your legs and your orifices.

[36:08] We can agree that octopuses are great.

[36:11] They're beautiful animals.

[36:12] They're really cool.

[36:13] Yeah.

[36:13] No, but I think there is – I think they're cute until you look at that beak.

[36:17] The beak feels weird because octopuses, you think soft.

[36:20] You think mushy.

[36:21] That beak is hard and dangerous.

[36:23] And all you can think about is it biting your fingers off when you go into pet an octopus.

[36:26] So I understand why a cartoon octopus would have a cute face.

[36:29] Why it would have a puppy dog nose on its head, I don't understand.

[36:32] I don't know why they made that choice.

Dan McCoy

[36:34] Alarming part about this design.

Elliott Kalan

[36:36] And then why they also gave it one of these kid personalities that movies give to kids where it's borderline mentally damaged.

Stuart Wellington

[36:44] How innocent this octopus is.

[36:45] Well, yeah.

[36:45] I mean I think it's like to play on like a mice and men type, Lenny type thing, right?

Dan McCoy

[36:51] I don't know.

[36:52] Possibly.

Stuart Wellington

[36:53] Because they're like trying to take advantage of like a simple character who's very strong.

[36:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[36:58] I guess it's more the way that in the movie Jack with Robin Williams, Robin Williams is playing a child.

[37:02] And there are other children who are supposed to be the same age as him.

[37:05] And the other children have personalities and can be, you know, lies sometimes.

[37:10] But Jack is just – nature is innocent.

[37:12] He can never do wrong.

[37:13] And he's just a – he's an angel.

[37:15] He's an angel, yeah.

[37:17] It's called Angel of the Morning.

Dan McCoy

[37:18] I just – I want to say to listeners though –

Elliott Kalan

[37:22] Is that what that song is about?

[37:23] Is that about the movie Jack?

[37:23] Yeah, that song is about the movie Jack.

[37:24] It was a tie-in of the movie Jack, yeah.

[37:26] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[37:26] Spoiler alert.

[37:27] I'm not going to recommend that people watch all of this movie.

[37:30] But you should Google what Tentacles and the legend of the Titanic looks like because he'll haunt you.

[37:39] Yeah, he will.

Elliott Kalan

[37:40] He will.

[37:40] And he haunts the movie.

[37:41] Yeah.

[37:42] Like the specter of communism haunting Europe.

[37:46] Tentacles haunts this film.

[37:47] So the Duke tells Maltravers the engagement is off.

[37:50] That's when Jeffries, Maltravers, and Rachel, the Duke's wife, threaten the Duke at gunpoint.

[37:56] They demand he sign a paper giving Maltravers the ownership of the whaling territory and also a new will giving everything to Rachel.

[38:03] They then tie him up and escape the ship in a lifeboat.

[38:06] This is why they're sinking the ship.

[38:07] They have to fake the Duke's death so that they can inherit everything and fake – not fake the Duke's death.

[38:12] They have to kill the Duke.

Stuart Wellington

[38:13] The weirdest part was when they're tying him up and his wife reveals that she is betraying him.

[38:21] He's like, oh, joke's on you.

[38:23] I'm into this.

Elliott Kalan

[38:25] Does that happen?

[38:26] I don't remember that.

Stuart Wellington

[38:26] Yeah, it was really – it was a quiet moment.

Elliott Kalan

[38:28] He's like, oh, if only you knew I'm a major cuck.

[38:31] He wouldn't do this because you'd know that I'm really aroused right now.

Dan McCoy

[38:35] I know that they're villains.

[38:38] But this is a really insidious plan to cover up one murder by sinking an entire ship.

Elliott Kalan

[38:44] Yes, by sinking an entire ship and killing 1,500 people.

[38:46] Yes, it's overkill.

[38:48] Let's call it that.

[38:48] It's overkill.

[38:49] And I don't mean overkill the band.

[38:51] I mean overkill the action.

[38:52] So Tentacles is horrified to learn that he has helped the sharks potentially hurt the humans and the sharks.

[39:00] So their plan is they're going to – he's already thrown a giant iceberg into the path of the ship.

[39:03] The sharks will hold the Titanic's rudder so it can't avoid hitting the iceberg.

[39:08] This, again, every human on the ship, their hands are clean except for Mel Travers.

[39:13] It's not human error at all.

[39:14] It is shark error.

[39:16] There is chaos as people fall over trying to get into the lifeboats.

[39:19] People cannot walk steady on the ship and Juan and Elizabeth search for the Duke to save him as the captain announces he plans to go down with the ship.

[39:28] He has to.

[39:29] The mouse captain, who does not plan to go down with the ship, says their only hope is to send out an SOS signal.

[39:35] Oh, no, guys.

[39:36] Are they going to be able to telegraph out an SOS?

[39:38] The wires.

[39:39] What happened to the wires?

[39:40] Do you remember?

[39:41] Remind me.

[39:41] What did the mice do with the wires?

Stuart Wellington

[39:42] The mice chewed through them, right?

Elliott Kalan

[39:44] Yeah.

[39:44] They chewed through the wires.

Stuart Wellington

[39:45] So there's no way that they could ever connect them.

[39:47] There's just not enough wire.

Dan McCoy

[39:49] I appreciate this little taste of sort of like a library reading to children hours.

Elliott Kalan

[39:55] Yeah, well, I just want to show you what a well-structured movie this is, is that they can't just – there's consequences for that.

[40:02] They planted earlier.

Stuart Wellington

[40:03] In order to connect the wires, there's like a gap.

[40:06] They're not going to be able to pull that.

[40:07] There's a gap between the wires.

[40:08] Oh, no.

[40:08] They can't hold a wire to close.

Elliott Kalan

[40:10] I think the only thing that could connect those would be – if only there was some kind of strings or something that they could use to connect these wires.

Stuart Wellington

[40:18] Maybe a character with a long mustache.

[40:20] Maybe there's a –

[40:20] They haven't introduced a character with a long mustache.

[40:23] Have they?

Elliott Kalan

[40:23] No.

[40:24] Well, they did.

[40:24] Thankfully, earlier they did introduce the French mouse, Camembert, who has a long mustache.

[40:29] And Camembert demands that they attach the wires to his mustache.

[40:33] Luckily, his mustache is just long enough to close the gap between the wires.

[40:36] The message goes out and –

[40:37] His mustache is made of wire and conducts electricity.

[40:40] Thankfully, the hairs that grow out of his face are incredibly good at conducting electrical signals and impulses.

[40:46] Tragically, though, he appears to die in the process.

[40:49] Camembert has given his life to save everyone on the Titanic.

[40:53] He has sadly passed on screen.

Dan McCoy

[40:56] On screen.

[40:57] Yeah, one of the characters takes their little sailor hat off and goes, oh, Camembert.

Elliott Kalan

[41:01] Yeah, Camembert.

[41:02] Tom does because he's the only sailor on the damn ship.

[41:05] The staff is just the captain, Tom, and Camembert, who I think was like the cook or something.

[41:09] Anyway.

[41:09] Yeah.

[41:10] The mouse captain, he goes, get into the lifeboats, but don't let the women see you because, quote,

[41:14] they'll just raise a ruckus and get in the way.

Dan McCoy

[41:17] This movie was made in 1999.

[41:18] It was set in 1912.

Elliott Kalan

[41:20] But the fact that the mouse captain has to go out of his way to talk about how the women are useless when they see a mouse is bonkers.

Stuart Wellington

[41:25] Well, just because a character says something doesn't necessarily mean that's like the viewpoint of the film.

Elliott Kalan

[41:30] I shouldn't blame the legend of the Titanic for what the misogynist mouse captain says.

Dan McCoy

[41:35] For this mouse captain's view on female hysteria.

Elliott Kalan

[41:40] The mouse captain is like, they're not funny, by the way, either.

[41:43] Women can't be funny.

[41:44] It's impossible.

[41:45] It's like, mouse captain, why are you saying these things?

[41:47] Anyway, Elizabeth and Juan, they find the duke.

[41:50] They untie him.

[41:50] They get him into a lifeboat.

[41:51] For some reason, they don't join him in the lifeboat.

[41:54] They stay on the bow of the ship as it continues to sink.

[41:56] And I couldn't understand why they didn't say get in the lifeboat.

[41:59] But anyway, that's up to them.

[42:02] Tentacles, who it turns out is way bigger than it at first seemed.

[42:06] He manages to hold the ship together with his tentacles long enough for everyone to get into lifeboats except for our two heroes, Elizabeth and Juan, and the animals that are with them.

[42:15] This is all documented, right?

[42:17] This is documented in history.

[42:17] Yeah.

[42:18] Again, this is based on a true story.

Dan McCoy

[42:20] This child octopus is kraken-sized.

[42:23] Mm-hmm.

[42:24] This is, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[42:25] And it's good because the Titanic has been kraken in two, into two pieces.

[42:30] That is good.

[42:31] It takes a kraken to fix a kraken.

[42:33] Yeah.

[42:34] And so Tentacles holds it together, and the captain goes, I'm going down with the ship.

[42:38] And Tentacles apparently hears this, understands it, and says, no, you aren't.

[42:41] He frees one of his tentacles, grabs the captain, and places him in the lifeboat.

[42:45] I remind listeners that in real life, Captain Smith, the Titanic, was not saved by a giant octopus, but died along with 1,500 other people on board the ship.

Dan McCoy

[42:53] Putting him on an orca.

[42:55] Guys, I want to reverse.

[42:57] And I should have said fight kraken with kraken anyway.

[43:00] Yeah, sure.

[43:02] We can just drop that in.

[43:03] That's good.

[43:04] Yeah, just splice it.

[43:04] And then put like a little slide whistle afterwards.

[43:09] Yeah, let's do that.

[43:10] That's great.

Elliott Kalan

[43:11] So anyway, so yeah.

[43:13] As it happened in real history, a giant octopus has saved the captain of the Titanic.

[43:19] Eventually, our heroes, they're like, here goes nothing.

[43:23] They jump off the bow of the now vertical ship.

[43:26] They fall, it must be 2,000 feet into the water.

[43:30] They are luckily saved by some whales.

[43:32] By morning, another ship shows up and rescues every single passenger from the Titanic.

[43:38] The ship that famously sunk, killing most of the people on it.

[43:41] Wait a minute.

[43:43] Didn't Camembert die?

[43:45] Yes, that's true.

[43:46] Camembert and also...

[43:48] Tom takes a moment to remember those who died saving them.

[43:51] He remembers Camembert and also Tentacles, who we see appears to have been crushed to death under the Titanic.

[43:57] Grieving fish show up and leave bouquets.

[43:59] But then we see one of Tentacles.

[44:02] Tentacles grab a bouquet.

[44:04] So...

[44:04] And Camembert shows up.

[44:06] He didn't die at all.

[44:07] Yeah, we'll get to that.

[44:10] The ship arrives in New York.

[44:11] A newsie announces that Maltravers and Rachel were the only ones not rescued.

[44:15] And we get a chilling, pun intended, glimpse of them rowing through a field of icebergs waiting for death.

[44:21] Waiting for inevitable death.

[44:23] Yeah.

[44:24] Which one?

[44:24] I assume they're going to eat Jeffries at some point.

[44:26] It basically is like the start of the terror.

[44:29] Yes.

[44:29] Yeah.

[44:30] And not the start of the terroir, which is an important element in, you know, wine growing, things like that.

Dan McCoy

[44:35] Wine and the other.

[44:36] Any, you know, anything can have terroir.

Elliott Kalan

[44:38] Yeah, that's true.

[44:39] Yeah, anything.

[44:40] Jared Harris.

[44:42] Your hat.

[44:43] Yeah.

[44:44] So Elizabeth and Juan, they get married at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

[44:49] Tom and Stella get married as well.

[44:51] They have a mouse wedding.

[44:52] And one coach ride later over a horribly CGI Brooklyn Bridge, a fleet of whales and dolphins arrive to reveal that Tentacles is still alive.

[45:00] Elizabeth gives Tentacles a kiss and the captain says, Tentacles, you are a true hero.

[45:05] Again, in real life.

[45:06] Salutes.

[45:07] He salutes this giant octopus.

[45:10] In real life, I'll remind you that captain at this point had died, had drowned to death.

[45:14] And was not around to salute a giant octopus for saving him.

[45:17] And that's when Camembert returns.

[45:20] No explanation given.

[45:22] Yeah, I'm sorry.

[45:23] I jumped the gun.

[45:24] I was just so excited.

[45:25] Camembert arrives.

[45:26] Who knows what deal with Satan he made.

Stuart Wellington

[45:28] I was just as excited as everyone else.

Dan McCoy

[45:30] I know.

[45:30] You were just so excited to know that Camembert comes back.

[45:33] I want to say, too, also, when Ted shows up, he comes out of the water, like, bulging.

[45:41] I was like, I literally said out loud, Jesus Christ.

[45:45] Because he, like, dwarfs the Brooklyn Bridge.

[45:48] Oh, he's enormous.

[45:49] It's just like the movie.

[45:50] He's a fucking kaiju.

[45:52] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[45:52] It's it, isn't it, I think?

[45:54] The movie with the giant octopus that Ray Harryhausen did the effects for.

[45:57] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[45:58] Like, it looks like that.

[46:00] It looks scary.

[46:01] And everybody on the bridge is cheering.

[46:02] When they should be so frightened, this giant octopus shows up.

Stuart Wellington

[46:04] I would say the saddest thing for me is that Tentacles did all this work throwing those fucking icebergs around just so he could get Mr. Ice's hat.

[46:14] And he was so fucking happy to wear that hat.

[46:15] And then after all that shit happened, he couldn't wear the hat again.

[46:19] And that really sucks that it was like his love of that hat was colored by the tragedy that followed.

Elliott Kalan

[46:23] I forgot that was the prize that was awarded to him was the Ice's hat.

[46:28] That is the real tragedy of this.

[46:29] Because, again, in this movie, nobody except the bad guys died.

[46:32] And we have to assume that the captain also cried on the ship at some point into some magic boon beams.

[46:36] And that's how he can talk to tentacles.

[46:38] That's actually a really good point.

[46:40] But this is a movie where – this is a movie about the Titanic where a mouse dies using his mustache to send a telegraph message for an SOS.

[46:50] And then shows up later totally alive with no explanation.

[46:54] The mouse orchestra plays.

[46:55] Everyone dances.

[46:57] End of flashback.

[46:58] We are now back in modern-day Mouse York.

[47:01] Grandpa Tom warns his grandkids that evil still exists and that whales are still hunted.

[47:06] And he's about to tell them.

[47:07] He's like, you must always remember.

[47:09] But Grandma Stella comes out, cuts him off, tells the kids to go get something to eat.

[47:12] She refers to her husband as Connors, his last name, which is weird.

[47:15] She goes, oh, Connors.

[47:16] And we pull back to the skyline again.

[47:19] Goodbye to our Titanic friends until the sequel.

[47:23] Guys, there's a sequel to this movie that came out five years later called In Search of the Titanic, which involves where Elizabeth, Juan, Tentacles, all our friends return to meet a race of undersea merpeople who I guess are living near the Titanic.

[47:36] God's honest truth, this is a real movie.

[47:38] I feel like we have to watch it at some point.

Dan McCoy

[47:41] Maybe sometime.

Stuart Wellington

[47:42] It almost auto-played on Tubi?

[47:46] Yeah, on Tubi.

[47:47] It immediately brought this up.

[47:48] And I was like, what?

Dan McCoy

[47:48] But luckily you broke your television before it could happen.

Stuart Wellington

[47:50] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[47:52] He pulled Elvis Presley and shot it.

[47:54] That is the true legend of the Titanic.

[47:57] All that stuff about Jack, Rose, the heart of the sea necklace, all made up because in real life, the Titanic was the story of Elizabeth and Juan and some brave mice and a very easily duped giant octopus named Tentacles.

[48:10] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[48:12] Hey, let's move on to giving our final judgments about this movie, whether it was a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, a movie we kind of liked.

[48:20] I want to say something.

Elliott Kalan

[48:23] Say something.

[48:24] Go ahead.

[48:24] You've got the floor.

Dan McCoy

[48:26] We've had a lot of fun here today talking about the legend of Titanic.

[48:30] But I want to get real with you guys.

[48:32] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[48:33] Yeah, get super real.

[48:34] Much like the real story of the legend of Titanic, a movie based on reality.

Stuart Wellington

[48:38] Oh, wow.

[48:38] Dan's taking his shirt off.

[48:41] And the pants, too.

[48:43] Oh, wow.

Dan McCoy

[48:44] He's thumping his chest like a gorilla.

[48:46] I overheat when I get emotional.

[48:48] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[48:48] Yeah, that's how you sweat out of your eyes.

Dan McCoy

[48:50] I have a lot of great things.

[48:54] I've seen my life.

[48:55] Yeah.

[48:55] I know.

[48:55] Yeah.

[48:56] Yeah.

[48:56] I...

Elliott Kalan

[48:57] This is already much deeper than I expected you to go in your final judgment for Legend of the Titanic.

Dan McCoy

[49:01] I have a lovely wife.

[49:03] I have a nice, you know...

[49:06] Two beautiful cats.

[49:07] A surprisingly affordable apartment for where we are in Brooklyn.

[49:11] You know, I've accomplished things.

[49:15] I have this podcast.

[49:16] You have like a little community and...

[49:18] Keeping us afloat during...

[49:19] You won an NAACP image award.

[49:21] It's true.

[49:22] As likely as it sounds, that's an actual thing that happened.

[49:27] So, I know that I have a blessed life in many ways, but I've been feeling my fair share of ennui recently.

[49:37] Yeah.

[49:38] Kind of had a sense of...

[49:39] The industry that Elliot and I work in is a very uncertain place.

[49:45] Mm-hmm.

[49:45] It's the best of times.

[49:47] And now it feels like perhaps it's all falling apart in a larger way.

Elliott Kalan

[49:52] Some very powerful people made some very stupid decisions.

[49:55] Now we have to pay the price.

Dan McCoy

[49:58] You know, this podcast, which I am very proud of, has a parasitic relationship to creativity.

[50:07] And sometimes I wish maybe I'm doing something with my life that's more...

[50:10] Harsh but fair, I guess.

[50:12] Forwardly creative.

[50:15] Legend of the Titanic.

[50:17] I'm a 45-year-old man, you know.

[50:20] I'm dealing with...

[50:21] Yeah, but you look great.

[50:21] Midlife stuff.

[50:23] I look okay.

[50:24] I, you know, I'm heavier than I would like to be.

[50:28] I have a lot of joint pains.

[50:29] Dan, you don't look a day over 55.

[50:32] Thank you.

[50:34] And just lately I felt like a little adrift.

[50:37] The world seems like a scary and horrifying place.

Elliott Kalan

[50:43] Adrift much like the Titanic.

[50:44] Again, the subject of the movie.

Dan McCoy

[50:46] Mm-hmm.

[50:46] Seems like most of the country's groundwater is gone now in addition to a lot of other horrible things.

Elliott Kalan

[50:52] I mean, that, that, that, I saw that newspaper article and I'm like, yeah, no shit, dude.

[50:56] People have been talking about this for, for 40 years.

[50:59] The loss of groundwater.

[51:00] Don't, don't scare me about it now.

[51:02] We've known about it.

[51:03] My point is...

[51:04] Someone didn't read Cadillac Desert.

Dan McCoy

[51:06] Maybe I was in a depressive place when I watched The Legend of the Titanic.

[51:12] And, you know, there were, an already not great movie just felt like a chore to me.

[51:23] That's what I mean by saying, like, we had a lot of fun.

[51:24] This is a fun movie to talk about.

[51:26] A lot of zany stuff happens in it.

[51:29] But the actual experience of watching it for me was a combination of, like, dutifully rewinding parts of the movie to try and figure out what the heck was going on.

[51:39] Because I was like, well, I got to talk about this.

[51:41] And is it acceptable how little of this is filtering into the, let's say, the groundwater of my brain?

[51:50] And anger at it when I didn't understand it.

[51:56] I just found this an unpleasant thing to watch overall.

[52:00] And I'm going to say it was bad, bad.

[52:02] It was a long road to get here.

[52:04] But the answer is bad, bad for me.

Stuart Wellington

[52:07] Guys, when I was a little boy.

Dan McCoy

[52:09] Oh, wow.

[52:09] Oh, okay.

[52:10] Great.

[52:10] Good one.

[52:11] Yeah, let's do this.

Stuart Wellington

[52:11] No, I'm just joking.

[52:12] When I started watching this movie, I watched, like, the first third of this movie shortly before I started feeling the effects of food poisoning.

[52:21] That hit me hours after getting home from a 10-hour flight.

[52:28] And I remember enjoying that first third.

[52:34] And then the second batch I watched after spending 36 hours in, like, fever dreams and puking and shitting my guts out.

[52:43] Yeah.

[52:43] And I started watching it again as soon as my eyes could focus on a screen of any kind.

[52:49] And you know what?

[52:51] I think this is a good, bad movie.

[52:52] I think it's, like, super dumb and wacky.

[52:56] And it's just as fun.

[52:58] I feel like it's, like, yeah, you probably shouldn't pop it on by yourself in the dark moments of the night.

[53:04] But if you're hanging out with some friends and you want to watch a dumb, bad movie, this is a pretty fun one to laugh at.

[53:09] It's pretty silly.

[53:10] Yeah.

[53:11] I'm going to say good, bad.

Elliott Kalan

[53:12] I agree with Stuart that I think it's a good, bad.

[53:14] I've also been going through some, you know, we've all been going through tough, uncertain times right now.

[53:19] I have so much to be thankful for and feel blessed about.

[53:22] But at the same time, these are uncertain times.

[53:24] And I feel like I had the opposite experience with Dan is that I started watching it and I was like, I'm really going to have to watch this piece of shit?

[53:30] And then about 20 minutes in, I was like, I can't wait to see what other dumb things this movie has in store for me.

[53:36] And by the end, when the captain of the Titanic was telling Tentacles, you're the real hero, Tentacles.

[53:41] I was like, movie, you cast a spell of crap on me.

[53:45] So, yeah, I would also say this is a good, bad movie for watching with your friends.

[53:49] Just don't tell them what happens.

[53:51] Let them discover Camembert's death and resurrection.

Stuart Wellington

[53:54] Guys, if I'm unfortunately, you know, God forbid, in a situation where I get to make a wish, it would be to, maybe it's because of magic or maybe, you know, because of some kind of malady.

[54:08] Some sort of wish master?

[54:10] I would wish to get to watch this movie again in the presence of James Cameron and he would have to watch the whole thing with me.

[54:17] That would be very fun.

[54:19] Well, let's move on to, what do we call them?

Dan McCoy

[54:25] Sponsors.

[54:26] That's what they are.

[54:28] Sponsors.

[54:28] People who have been kind enough to, you know, sponsor the show.

Stuart Wellington

[54:34] I got this first one because, you know what?

[54:36] I was just away for a little bit and when I came, and the one thing I missed most of all was my two kitty boys.

[54:43] The two kitties that live in my apartment.

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[55:27] That's a big deal.

[55:29] You love your cat and you want them to get the right ingredients in their body so that they stay healthy and will love you for longer.

[55:37] Muscles and Meatball both give it a big thumbs up if they had thumbs.

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[55:58] That's the best offer you'll find, but you have to use our code FLOP for 50% off your first order.

[56:05] One last time for everybody in the back seats.

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Dan McCoy

[56:13] I was laughing at you saying, you know, the important thing about loving them is giving them food.

[56:19] But then I realized that, honestly, the main way I express love is by cooking dinner for Audrey.

Stuart Wellington

[56:26] I mean, cooking for a partner is part of my love language as well, Dan, so I understand.

[56:31] There's nothing, you know, sometimes we laugh about stuff, guys.

Dan McCoy

[56:35] We do laugh about stuff sometimes.

Stuart Wellington

[56:36] Sometimes we love about stuff and sometimes we live about stuff.

[56:40] Dan, do we have another sponsor?

Dan McCoy

[56:41] We also love about stuff.

[56:42] And I love our next sponsor.

[56:44] It's called Tushy.

[56:46] The bathroom is the only place we get to escape real life.

[56:50] Don't I know it.

[56:50] It's time to upgrade.

Elliott Kalan

[56:51] Yeah, because my bathroom is a magical wonderland where physics goes out the window and I can talk to flowers.

Dan McCoy

[56:57] No, your body is a wonderland, Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[57:00] Oh, yeah.

[57:00] You don't know my body that well.

[57:02] It's more of a wasteland.

[57:04] And then it ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

Stuart Wellington

[57:09] And warlords fight over the precious juice.

Dan McCoy

[57:12] Good stuff.

[57:13] It's time to update that meditation closet.

[57:16] With over 100,000 five-star reviews, see why millions of real pooping humans already love Hello Tushy Bidet.

[57:27] Every Hello Tushy Bidet attachment comes with a 30-day risk-free guarantee and a 12-month warranty.

[57:34] You know what?

[57:35] I switched to the bidet lifestyle just before the pandemic, not because of it.

Elliott Kalan

[57:39] That's why you have that tattoo that says Bidet Life on your belly?

[57:42] Yeah.

[57:43] Well, I mean.

[57:43] Should be over his booty.

[57:44] It was just a fortunate switch.

[57:46] Yeah, but we don't know for certain where his booty is located.

[57:48] Yeah, he's been super unclear.

[57:49] He's been very, very cagey about where his butt and where his mouth are.

Dan McCoy

[57:53] We remember the early days of the pandemic where it was hard to get toilet paper.

[57:58] And I felt very fortunate to have a bidet for that reason.

[58:00] But I also just, I was like, why haven't, why didn't I do this?

[58:04] Like, getting a bidet, like, made me think about all of the years that for some reason, I had been sold the idea that just rubbing some dry paper on my butt was a sufficient thing to do.

Elliott Kalan

[58:20] It's one of the most sensitive parts of your body.

Dan McCoy

[58:23] Yeah.

[58:23] I mean, look, I'm not going to disclose too much.

[58:25] It's one of the top 10 erogenous zones, guys.

[58:27] There were.

[58:28] Top 10.

[58:28] We can talk about that.

[58:29] I hope it makes it into the top 10.

[58:31] The easy top 10.

[58:32] There were medical reasons why I was like, I can't keep abusing my butt like this.

[58:37] I was like, this is not a soft thing to do.

[58:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[58:41] And I love having a bidet.

[58:44] I don't care.

[58:44] Yeah, you don't have to say it.

Elliott Kalan

[58:45] And not all of us can afford silk toilet paper.

[58:48] So the bidet is the way to go.

[58:49] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[58:50] Hello Tushy Bidet cleans your bum with a fresh stream of water that is two times better than wiping and prevents poo particles from strutting your hands and everything you touch.

[59:00] That's what makes Ant-Man shrink, right?

[59:02] That's poo particles.

[59:03] It attaches to your existing toilet, requires no electricity or additional plumbing, and comes with a 30-day risk-free guarantee and a 12-month warranty.

[59:14] Hey, look, I'm no handyman, but presuming your toilet is not angled in an inconvenient way, which sometimes happens, these things are very easy to attach.

[59:24] So it's always Labor Day for your butt, says this copy.

[59:29] Save 40% off all bidets and bundles by visiting hellotushy.com forward slash flop and using promo code flop.

[59:38] Sale in September 11th.

[59:39] That's hellotushy.com slash flop for 40% off.

Stuart Wellington

[59:43] When I said that the number one thing I missed when I was on vacation was my kiddie boys, the number two thing was my tushy because that's essential.

[59:52] The bidet, you mean?

[59:53] Yeah, my tushy bidet.

[59:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[59:54] Not my butt.

[59:55] You took that with you.

[59:57] Yeah, I took that with me.

Elliott Kalan

[59:59] I tried to leave it at home.

[1:00:00] This is a real check your butt at the door type movie.

[1:00:02] Just, you know, leave your butt at home.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:04] At customs, they thought he was smuggling a couple melons.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:07] Mm-hmm.

[1:00:08] But that was just his butt.

[1:00:10] I have been working on my squats and various other things, too.

[1:00:13] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:14] Anyway, in addition to butts, we also have some other things going on.

[1:00:19] If you are listening to this episode on the day of its release, September 9th, then tonight you can join us by watching Flop TV.

[1:00:27] That's right, episode two of Flop TV, our one-hour streamlined flop show, right?

[1:00:32] It's September 9th, right?

[1:00:33] Mm-hmm.

[1:00:34] All right.

[1:00:35] That this episode comes out, we're going to be talking about Cool World.

[1:00:38] This is going to be a favorite where I think it's a long time coming.

[1:00:42] It's a movie that we've talked about a lot in passing.

[1:00:44] We've never given it the full flop treatment.

[1:00:46] That's tonight at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern.

[1:00:50] I always put Pacific first because I live here, but I should say 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific because New York is the center of the world.

[1:00:56] Just go to theflophouse.simpletix.com.

[1:00:59] Again, that's theflophouse.simpletix.com.

[1:01:01] To see us live giving a presentation on a subject of our choice, I believe it's Stuart who's doing the presentation this time.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:09] Oh, man.

[1:01:10] And do I have something special cooked up?

[1:01:12] Might want to tape over your webcam.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:16] Why?

[1:01:18] So they can't see him.

[1:01:19] Yeah, you know.

[1:01:19] And Dan will be doing the summary.

[1:01:21] I'll just be kicking back, talking Cool World with him.

[1:01:23] If you can't watch us live, which is too bad.

[1:01:25] If you can watch us live, then you'll be able to submit questions for us to answer.

[1:01:28] But if you can't watch us live, your ticket gets you access to the video later.

[1:01:33] And all of these episodes, the videos will remain up on the site available to you through the run of the show.

[1:01:38] That's a new decision that we have made.

[1:01:40] Instead of a window where you have to watch the videos in, instead you will have six months to watch this show.

[1:01:46] It's one episode per month for six months, and you can always go back and catch the reruns if you miss one.

[1:01:51] So that's theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

[1:01:53] Tonight we're talking Cool World.

[1:01:55] That's this month's episode.

[1:01:57] Hey, next month, in addition to another episode of Flop TV, we've also got live shows.

[1:02:03] That's right.

[1:02:03] If you're in the Los Angeles area, on Thursday, October 19th, we're going to be doing two shows in one night, two different shows in one night at Vidiot's.

[1:02:13] Vidiot's, the legendary video store, now has the theater space.

[1:02:16] It's in eastern Los Angeles in the Eagle Rock neighborhood, and we're going to be doing two shows that night.

[1:02:20] The first show, Speed 2, Cruise Control.

[1:02:23] The second show, Three Men and a Baby.

[1:02:25] As Dan dubbed it, it's a night of numbers between one and four.

[1:02:28] That's October 19th.

[1:02:29] We haven't done a live show in LA in a while, and it's going to be fun.

[1:02:33] Vidiot's is a kind of intimate little space.

[1:02:35] It's a little smaller than our usual places that we play.

[1:02:38] So you'll be that much closer to us.

[1:02:40] You'll be able to see the pores on our face, and maybe we'll run up and down the aisles kissing everybody.

[1:02:45] Probably not.

[1:02:45] Don't scare everyone off.

[1:02:47] But it's possible.

[1:02:48] It's possible.

[1:02:48] We won't do it, but it's possible.

[1:02:50] So for that, go to – so to learn more about that.

[1:02:53] Yes, anything's possible.

[1:02:54] Anything's possible.

[1:02:55] Go to vidiotsfoundation.org, and that's vidiotsfoundation.org for tickets for our two Thursday, October 19th shows.

[1:03:03] And also tonight, join us on FlopTV, theflophouse.simpleticks.com as we talk cool world.

[1:03:09] Not the movie The Cool World, but the movie Cool World.

[1:03:12] Let's get that straight.

[1:03:12] This is the one about people having sex with cartoons.

[1:03:14] Mm-hmm.

S4

[1:03:19] Somewhere in an alternate universe where Hollywood is smarter.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:25] And the Emmy nominees for Outstanding Comedy Series are Jet Pacula, Airport Marriott,

[1:03:34] Frepple, Dear America, We've Seen You Naked, and Allah in the Family.

S4

[1:03:42] In our stupid universe, you can't see any of these shows, but you can listen to them on Dead Pilot Society,

[1:03:49] the podcast that brings you hilarious comedy pilots that the networks and streamers bought but never made.

[1:03:57] Journey to the alternate television universe of Dead Pilot Society on MaximumFun.org.

Jesse Thorn

[1:04:04] I'm Jesse Thorne.

[1:04:06] Bullseye is celebrating 50 years of hip-hop by bringing you an entire month of brand new interviews with rappers.

[1:04:15] That means Jeezy.

[1:04:17] I put my pain in the music.

[1:04:19] Angie Stone.

[1:04:20] You know, hip-hops. We called them hops back then.

[1:04:24] Master P.

[1:04:24] Music is what's going to open the doors for us, but whatever we come up with after this, it's going to be bigger.

[1:04:32] Plus, Chica, Saba, even the greatest of them all, Rakim.

[1:04:36] That's this September.

[1:04:38] Open up that podcast app, type in Bullseye, and hit subscribe.

[1:04:42] You're not going to want to miss any of this.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:46] Hey, here's a weird thing I'm going to try.

[1:04:49] So, I put together a book proposal a little while back.

[1:04:55] I was working with a very nice agent.

[1:04:59] It was, like, kind of flop-adjacent, you know, funny stuff about trash culture.

[1:05:06] Send it out into the world.

[1:05:08] No one seemed that interested.

[1:05:10] I might publish it.

[1:05:11] I might self-publish it.

[1:05:12] Finish it.

[1:05:13] And self-publish it.

[1:05:14] Because I already did a lot of work on these essays.

[1:05:18] But, I don't know, it seems like in this world, like, certainly someone who had, like, a couple of Emmys for comedy writing and a semi-successful podcast, there's got to be some interest out there, right?

[1:05:34] So, if you work in the publishing industry, maybe I just got it out to the wrong people.

[1:05:39] If this sounds interesting to you, I don't know, maybe get in touch.

[1:05:42] It's a weird use of the podcast, I know, but...

[1:05:45] Very weird.

[1:05:45] But, look, I need to diversify my career.

[1:05:50] As we said, the world's falling apart.

[1:05:54] If you think this is something you might like to see, a book you might want to read, and you work in a position that, you know, you want to take a look at it, ask me to take a look at it.

[1:06:03] That's all I'm saying.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:04] Dan, Dan, I'm going to take this weird, borderline, unethical thing that you're doing, and I'm going to piggyback on it because I've mentioned, I think I might have mentioned in the past, I've written an unpublished novel that I don't think anyone wants to publish.

[1:06:15] It's a fantasy horror novel set in Hollywood in the 30s.

[1:06:19] You want to publish something like that, get in touch with Dan, tell him that you don't want his book, but you want my book.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:23] I don't see why it's borderline unethical.

[1:06:25] All we're doing is cutting out, you know, the middle people who honestly also have a parasitical relationship to creativity.

[1:06:34] Wow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:35] Wow.

[1:06:35] Now we're going into territory I cannot abide.

[1:06:38] So, Dan, what do we do next on this podcast?

Dan McCoy

[1:06:41] On this podcast, we also take a few letters from listeners.

[1:06:46] Like who?

[1:06:47] Like you.

[1:06:49] Me?

[1:06:49] The listener.

[1:06:50] Well, you're hosts.

[1:06:52] Oh.

[1:06:52] You're not included in that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:54] Oh, but I listen sometimes to you guys, but often I don't.

[1:06:57] I just talk and talk and talk.

[1:06:58] Yeah, it would be weird if one of the hosts just wrote a bunch of letters to the podcast.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:01] Yeah, you can write a letter to me anytime.

[1:07:03] One of the hosts will specify.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:07] Dear Dan, it was a little weird when you started asking people to look at your book.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:12] Love it.

[1:07:12] I don't think I, you know.

[1:07:14] Keep up the great work.

[1:07:15] I think it's an acceptable one-time use of the podcast.

[1:07:19] Sure, sure.

[1:07:20] One-time use.

[1:07:21] To ask whether anyone is interested.

[1:07:24] This letter is from Jeff, last name withheld.

[1:07:28] Jeff Bridges.

[1:07:28] Who writes,

[1:07:30] I was recently diagnosed as having type 2 diabetes, so I decided to lose some weight.

[1:07:35] Toward that end, I bought a cheap secondhand treadmill and I've been watching movies on my tablet

[1:07:41] as I walked for hours in my basement.

[1:07:44] Today, I watched the 2020 Donnie Yen action comedy movie, Enter the Fat Dragon.

[1:07:49] I figured I'd watch some fantastic action sequences and endure some fat-shaming jokes

[1:07:53] as I wild away the cardio hours.

[1:07:56] To my surprise, the action and comedy were there,

[1:07:58] and while Donnie Yen spends two-thirds of the movie in a fat suit,

[1:08:01] his weight in and of itself isn't the butt of the joke.

[1:08:04] Sure, it's odd to see Yen running around Tokyo carrying the extra pounds,

[1:08:07] but his fighting and movement remain a highlight.

[1:08:10] It's actually pretty body positive for the most part.

[1:08:13] Do you remember a time when you assumed a movie would go for the easy joke,

[1:08:16] but then went in a different, better direction?

[1:08:20] By the way, Enter the Fat Dragon is available for free on Tubi and Hoopla.

[1:08:24] I was very pleasantly surprised.

[1:08:26] Love the show.

[1:08:28] Jeff, last name withheld.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:29] Well, before I think deeper onto this question, I will say on a similar note,

[1:08:34] I was, as soon as I saw promo shots of Scott Adkins for the new John Wick movie,

[1:08:39] where he also plays a character in a fat suit, I was like, oh no, this is going to be terrible.

[1:08:45] But they actually don't spend too much time.

[1:08:48] They don't really play on the idea that he is large.

[1:08:54] How about, do they play on the idea that he's in charge?

[1:08:56] Of course they do.

[1:08:58] And there's...

[1:08:58] I thought Charles was in charge.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:00] There's, I think it's...

[1:09:02] Only of our days and our nights.

[1:09:03] Wait, that's all the time.

[1:09:04] That covers it all.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:05] But, yeah, and then he, in that fat suit, he does get in a good fight with John Wick

[1:09:10] in a scene that's basically like a Street Fighter level, and it's fun.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:16] This is a very good question that I should have thought more about,

[1:09:20] considering that I'm the person with the most exposure to the letters ahead of time.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:25] I'll tell you that I can't...

[1:09:27] It's hard for me to think of a movie off the top of my head.

[1:09:29] I'm sure there are, but I will say that lately my kids have been super obsessed

[1:09:33] with the Dogman series of books by Dave Pilkey.

[1:09:36] And there's a fair amount of potty humor in it and a fair amount of dumb humor in it.

[1:09:41] But that's one where I was surprised at how often there'll be a certain amount of toilet humor,

[1:09:46] and then it will swerve away from that at some point.

[1:09:48] And those books start out just kind of being dumb fun for kids,

[1:09:52] and they, more and more of each book as it goes on,

[1:09:55] involves the characters talking about the redemptive power of love.

[1:09:58] And so I'm like, oh, this is not what I expected.

[1:10:00] So that's a book version of the same thing,

[1:10:02] where those volumes more and more are less about jokes about poop or people being covered in pee,

[1:10:07] and more and more about the characters having to make choices.

[1:10:10] So I'm like, okay, I appreciate that.

[1:10:12] But those are books, not movies.

[1:10:13] I don't know what to tell you.

[1:10:14] Books are like movies that you don't watch, but you read.

[1:10:17] Yeah.

[1:10:18] And you can't hear them unless it's a book on tape,

[1:10:20] which is like a movie in your mind.

[1:10:21] Continue.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:23] And your mind is the biggest erogenous zone.

[1:10:26] The thing that leaps to my mind is that I really enjoy—

[1:10:32] Your biggest erogenous zone.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:36] Now that since we don't know where your butt or your mouth are on your body.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:40] Oh, boy.

[1:10:42] My butt's where my butt goes.

[1:10:44] And where is that, Dan?

[1:10:45] Where is that?

[1:10:46] At the top of my legs.

[1:10:47] It's where the butt goes.

[1:10:49] Between my legs and my torso.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:52] I imagine Dan—

[1:10:53] Yeah, Dan is putting together a skeleton that goes,

[1:10:55] the butt bone goes where the butt goes.

[1:10:57] And he's like, I don't even know what bone this is.

[1:11:01] So, Dan, what leaps to mind?

Dan McCoy

[1:11:04] I just liked it in Booksmart where the whole setup of the movie is that these two,

[1:11:10] you know, people who think they've made this choice to be like,

[1:11:14] we're the responsible ones.

[1:11:15] We're going to go to the good schools or whatever.

[1:11:17] Like, everyone else at their school who a normal movie would dismiss as like,

[1:11:23] the stereotype is like, oh, these partying people, you know, can't also be,

[1:11:29] you know, successful.

[1:11:32] Like, the movie is like, no, no.

[1:11:34] Like, either through like them actually being smart or, you know,

[1:11:39] one implies maybe like, or infers from the fact that they're at this like fancy school,

[1:11:44] like they just have connections.

[1:11:46] Like, they're all also going to good schools.

[1:11:48] And these people have sort of artificially limited their own,

[1:11:52] social life through the choices they have made.

[1:11:57] Like, they're not ostracized nerds necessarily.

[1:12:02] They are people who have chosen to like not socialize and missed out because of it.

[1:12:08] And I think that that's a fun subversion of like the normal high school.

[1:12:13] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:13] Just because the popular kids are popular doesn't mean that they aren't like studious and hard working.

[1:12:18] Yes, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:20] Yeah, I like a movie that takes the brave stance of being pro-popular kid and anti-nerd.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:25] All right, you're still stuck in your-

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:27] He's going to get that chip off his shoulder someday.

[1:12:29] Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[1:12:30] Yeah, okay.

[1:12:30] So let's move on.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:31] This is from Patrick, last name withheld.

[1:12:33] Who writes?

[1:12:34] Patrick O'Brien of the Aubrey Matern novels.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:36] Oh my God.

[1:12:37] Tell him I love him.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:39] Do you like books with a lot of sales in this?

[1:12:41] Hold that, motherfucker.

[1:12:43] Patrick specifies that this is Patrick from the original cast podcast.

[1:12:47] Oh, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:48] So not Patrick O'Brien of the late author.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:50] Stuart, did you ever do that show or was it just Elliot and I?

[1:12:52] I think it was just you guys.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:54] Oh, that's a big joke.

[1:12:54] That's fun.

[1:12:55] That's what, about musicals or?

[1:12:56] It is about musicals.

[1:12:57] I can see why I might not be invited.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:00] You love musicals though.

[1:13:01] You go to a long together.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:01] I do love musicals, but you know, sometimes just people stereotype me as like a cool popular

[1:13:06] hunk and not somebody who likes musicals.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:08] And not a nerd like Elliot and me who likes musicals.

[1:13:10] Yeah, exactly.

[1:13:13] Your Black Adam discussion about how to do exposition dumps and audience confusion reminded

[1:13:17] me of one of the most confounding movie theater experiences of my life.

[1:13:21] Oh, I want to hear about it.

[1:13:22] My dad and I went to see Skyfall on opening weekend.

[1:13:25] If you'll recall, the film opens with a shot of a hallway and then a figure appears at

[1:13:29] the end of said hallway out of focus and accompanied by a horn sting on the score.

[1:13:34] They should have called it Sky Hall.

[1:13:37] Burned.

[1:13:38] The moment this happened, the person next to me turned to the person they were with and

[1:13:42] said, who's that?

[1:13:44] The movie was 10 seconds in.

[1:13:47] We all had the same amount of information.

[1:13:49] These people had been in their seats since before the trailers began.

[1:13:52] Did this person want a chyron to appear with the words James Bond and an arrow pointing

[1:13:57] to Daniel Craig?

[1:13:59] Which brings me to my question.

[1:14:01] What is a moment in a film that others found confusing that you thought made perfect sense?

[1:14:06] Patrick's last name withheld.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:07] Thank you, Pat.

[1:14:07] I want to mention, before you answer that question, I want to mention that is the opposite of the

[1:14:11] situation I think I've talked about before at some point where I was watching the movie

[1:14:14] My Architect at the film forum in the middle of the day and it was just old people in the

[1:14:17] audience and the architect I.M.

[1:14:19] Pei is talking on screen and then his name comes up on screen, I.M.

[1:14:23] Pei, and then it fades away.

[1:14:25] And about 10 seconds after his name faded away, a woman turned to her husband and said,

[1:14:28] that's I.M.

[1:14:29] Pei.

[1:14:30] And it was the opposite experience.

[1:14:33] It was like, yeah, we all have that information.

[1:14:34] We know it.

[1:14:34] Thank you.

[1:14:35] Yeah.

[1:14:37] Thanks for pointing that out.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:39] Stuff that we thought was, I mean, I feel like there's a lot of times in the past, I know

[1:14:49] that there are times in the past where I've been too snide in my own head.

[1:14:54] People thought this was confusing.

[1:14:56] I thought this was obvious, but I'm having trouble.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:00] I feel like it happens to me with certain types of science fiction or fantasy movies, like

[1:15:05] time travel movies.

[1:15:07] A lot of times people are like, oh boy, I couldn't wrap my noodle around that one.

[1:15:14] You've got your Christopher Nolan time travel movies, like Interstellar and Tenet, where

[1:15:17] it's like, all right, yeah, I see what he's doing here.

[1:15:20] If you've seen time travel stories, you kind of know ahead of time what he's doing some

[1:15:24] of the time.

[1:15:24] But to your regular audience that hasn't read a lot of time travel stuff, I guess, they're

[1:15:28] like, hold on a second.

[1:15:30] But it also reminds, that story reminds me of going to see The Matrix with my dad and having

[1:15:35] to spend about as long as the length of the movie explaining to him how it worked.

[1:15:39] Like why?

[1:15:39] He's like, so Neo is special, and that's how he can be in both The Matrix and the real

[1:15:43] world?

[1:15:44] And I'm like, no, no, no.

[1:15:45] Everyone's in The Matrix in the real world.

[1:15:46] Like The Matrix is just happening in the computer, in people's heads, basically.

[1:15:49] And he's like, oh, okay, okay.

[1:15:52] So in their heads, they're all in those tubes?

[1:15:54] No.

[1:15:54] That's the real world.

[1:15:55] Hold on a second.

[1:15:57] So it was, sometimes people just can't grasp it.

[1:15:59] Oh, that's great.

[1:15:59] And then there's movies like, there's a movie like The Fountain, which I remember made a

[1:16:03] lot of sense to me when I saw it.

[1:16:04] I think it's been baffling to other audiences because it's more, it's operating on an emotional

[1:16:09] level more than it is on a story level.

[1:16:11] I think that that stuff like.

[1:16:14] And also because a lot of the story was supposed to be told in other medium that, media that

[1:16:17] didn't come out.

[1:16:18] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:19] But that's often the thing that sort of confuses me just because it's like a different way

[1:16:25] of looking at stories.

[1:16:27] Like there are stories that, you know, there's stuff that happens in it that mostly makes sense

[1:16:32] on a metaphorical level or.

[1:16:35] Yeah, yeah.

[1:16:35] Maybe doesn't need to be like understood like literally.

[1:16:43] And I think that like in life, it's not like I'm not a practical person, but that never

[1:16:48] bothers me.

[1:16:49] I'm like, why do you need a literal explanation for all that happens in art?

[1:16:54] Like, why does it have to be like, you know, why can't it just be both?

[1:16:58] Yeah.

[1:16:59] This is like.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:59] I don't know if this super answers the question, but like, yeah, I think more often than dealing

[1:17:05] with people like not getting it in the, in like the literal sense, it's more often just

[1:17:10] like a general lack of media literacy where people are just, just take the complete wrong

[1:17:17] message from a movie, whether it's like watching fight club and being like, yeah, we should

[1:17:20] be starting fight clubs.

[1:17:21] Right.

[1:17:22] And you're like, Oh, what are you talking about, dude?

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:24] Yeah.

[1:17:25] I think that is, I think it's, it's, that's, I think you're exactly right, Stuart.

[1:17:28] It's like that kind of media literacy where people don't always know how to read.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:31] We should all become wolves of wall street.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:33] Yeah.

[1:17:34] And also at the kind of media literacy that is like what I'm saying with the time travel

[1:17:37] thing where often movies are playing off of preexisting either tropes or whatever, or stories.

[1:17:44] And if you're not familiar with that stuff, then sometimes it can, it can be hard for you

[1:17:48] to ingest it.

[1:17:48] But I think you're right that people often, they want to take movies as literally as possible.

[1:17:53] But Dan, what you're saying, Stuart, what you're saying.

[1:17:54] And it becomes a barrier for them in movies that are meant to be either read into or understood

[1:18:02] or thought about, or are trying to get at a more powerful message because it's not just

[1:18:08] stating it outright, you know, but is making you ponder on it.

[1:18:12] But at the same time.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:13] Treating it like it's just content that you're supposed to ingest.

[1:18:16] And it's almost, it's like almost the same as like news.

[1:18:19] Like you're ingesting these facts.

[1:18:21] You're ingesting these like plot points.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:22] Well, it's like how people will be like, I don't have to read that book.

[1:18:25] I read like a summary of the, of the plot of the book.

[1:18:27] And it's like, well, the experience of reading a book is not just to get that, you know,

[1:18:31] what happened in the story.

[1:18:32] Right.

[1:18:32] The experience is to experience it, to feel it, you know, to live it that way.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:36] Yeah.

[1:18:36] I mean, I know that this probably sounds insufferably snobby on many levels.

[1:18:42] Oh, let's hear it.

[1:18:43] No, no, no.

[1:18:43] I'm just, I do, like, I don't.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:45] You already told us that you have an unpublished book of essays about pop culture.

[1:18:48] So yeah, just tell us what you can say.

[1:18:50] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:52] I wonder why the publishing world didn't, that didn't set the world ablaze.

[1:18:57] Another comedian with humorous essays.

[1:19:01] Anyway, but still get in touch with me.

[1:19:04] But I, no, I, we've been derailed so long that I can't remember what I was thinking of.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:12] You were afraid of sounding snobby.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:13] Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm afraid of sounding snobby, but like, or old and crotchety, but like, I'm

[1:19:21] not usually one to wring my hands about the state of culture.

[1:19:26] I think that a lot of times, like, that, you know, people like look at things with rose-colored glasses, nostalgia.

[1:19:32] Bono, certainly, yeah.

[1:19:35] That's all he wears.

[1:19:36] Or Stewart, when he came in today, he was wearing rose-colored glasses.

[1:19:39] That's true, he had rose-colored sunglasses too, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:41] Just like Bono.

[1:19:42] Me and Bono, two cool dudes.

[1:19:44] I have, my glasses are rose-colored, but it means they're colored like Betty White.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:48] But I do feel like the way that the media diet has become so homogenized, where it is like

[1:19:56] certain types of movies get made, they tend to, you know, hold your hand about what's going

[1:20:03] on, that the depth and breadth of like the types of stories that can be told do get like

[1:20:12] squeezed, not only like in the marketplace, but in people's minds.

[1:20:17] Like, I think that people get used to a certain kind of storytelling, which leads them to believe

[1:20:21] that that's the only kind of storytelling, and reject things that are outside of that storytelling

[1:20:26] as bad, rather than as something that's trying something different.

[1:20:31] And I find that kind of distressing.

[1:20:34] Like, I mean, maybe I'm just, you know, poisoned by, you know, being online too much and

[1:20:41] seeing too much of the idiots of the world.

[1:20:45] But, you know, but.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:46] Yeah, it's probably true.

[1:20:46] That's, that is, that's factually true.

[1:20:48] But you're right that there's a, there's a, I'm going to lay it on the feet of the corporations

[1:20:54] that have consolidated and control much of American media, that there is a, there's that

[1:20:58] lack of variety in the, in the material that they create and put out for people.

[1:21:04] And as a result, I think you're right that there becomes this feeling among a certain type

[1:21:07] of audience member that there are rules that art has to follow in order to be good.

[1:21:12] And it's like those videos that made me so mad where they're like, every movie is the

[1:21:16] same movie.

[1:21:17] We looked at Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and The Fugitive.

[1:21:20] And we can prove to you every movie is the same movie.

[1:21:22] And it's like, so that's, those are your three points on the compass of film is just those,

[1:21:26] like, there's no movies that are not Star Wars or Indiana Jones, The Fugitive, or Die

[1:21:29] Hard or something like that.

[1:21:31] Like, there's no, because it's, it's very frustrating.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:33] Finally, we will be starring the same man.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:37] Have startling similarities.

[1:21:39] They're all the same movie.

[1:21:41] It always makes me mad.

[1:21:41] I'm like, yeah, you're right.

[1:21:42] Let's, let's apply those theories to, you're right.

[1:21:44] Last year at Marianbad is the same movie as this.

[1:21:46] And, you know, Hiroshima, Manamore, same movie.

[1:21:49] They're all the same story.

[1:21:49] You're right.

[1:21:51] You're right, Dan.

[1:21:52] These avant-garde shorts.

[1:21:54] And it's a, it's a Stan Brackage, just let's apply some story circles to them.

[1:21:59] But I think the, I think you're right, Dan.

[1:22:01] And you're right, Stu.

[1:22:02] I think we've raised a lot of interesting points that are not necessarily funny or entertaining,

Dan McCoy

[1:22:06] but are interesting and funny.

[1:22:07] Yeah.

[1:22:08] So we, we got one of the four.

[1:22:11] Yeah, we did, I guess.

[1:22:12] Sort of podcast quadrants.

[1:22:14] Yeah.

[1:22:16] Hey, let's recommend some things that we like.

[1:22:20] Maybe it would be a better use of your time.

[1:22:23] Again.

[1:22:24] Impossible.

[1:22:24] We've been steering away from doing as many current recommendations because of the strike.

[1:22:31] I'm going to recommend something that is far from Hollywood because it was a 16, or probably

[1:22:39] Super 8 short.

[1:22:40] Yeah, Super 8 short shot by a bunch of teens in 1989.

[1:22:45] It's called Dr. Death.

[1:22:48] It was directed by Webster Colcord, who I was impressed by the Super 8 short.

[1:22:54] And was gratified to see that he went on to be a special effects artist for a bunch of major motion pictures.

[1:23:03] Um, so he had a career in the industry, or has one, presumably still going.

[1:23:09] Uh, but in 1989, uh, he made this Super 8 short with a bunch of kids.

[1:23:13] Uh, and it's essentially kind of their take on a Mad Max, uh, post-apocalyptic world where, uh, Dr. Death, the titular Dr. Death is riding around in a school bus.

[1:23:29] And there's like, there's like, there's like legit car chases in the Super 8 movie that these kids made.

[1:23:34] It is a very kinetic movie.

[1:23:37] Uh, there's like a moment of claymation.

[1:23:41] And there's a thanks to the Will Benton Studios.

[1:23:43] And I guess this kid, like, worked there at some point.

[1:23:46] Uh, anyway.

[1:23:48] It's just one of these things where there is, I don't know.

[1:23:53] I don't know if you're like me.

[1:23:54] I kind of grade entertainment on a curve sometimes.

[1:23:56] And if it's done by, like, kids with access to, like, so few actual resources, the degree to which this hits the mark and is entertaining and so much more fun than, you know, stuff done by quote-unquote professionals makes me love it all the more knowing that, like, ah, it's just these kids fucking around.

[1:24:20] But they're doing, like, a really good job doing it.

[1:24:22] And I think you can find the short on Vimeo.

[1:24:25] Maybe not under the same name.

[1:24:28] I forget there's, like, another name you can sometimes find it under.

[1:24:30] But Webster Colcord is the director.

[1:24:33] So you should be able to dig this up online.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:36] I'm going to recommend an older movie.

[1:24:39] I'm still going through my journey of watching old Brian De Palma movies.

[1:24:43] And I just watched, on my flight back, I watched Blowout.

[1:24:47] What, from 1981, I think?

[1:24:49] Starring Mr. Jonathan Travolta.

[1:24:53] Bolt himself.

[1:24:55] And it, yeah, it's about a sound engineer who gets in over his head when he's looking for some sounds for his sound library.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:04] I mean, what's a new sound?

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:05] Remember that new sound he's been looking for?

[1:25:07] That sound?

[1:25:08] It's of a car crashing.

[1:25:09] Yeah.

[1:25:09] And he gets involved in a kind of a murder mystery conspiracy.

[1:25:14] And it is that kind of, like, it reminds me a little bit of, you know, it's got a little bit of that, like, De Palma, like, Giallo-esque stuff from that era.

[1:25:22] And it also has a little bit of the, like, 70s thriller thing where you have people, like, it gets really into the guts of, like, practical occupations, whether it's something like Thief or To Live and Die in L.A.

[1:25:37] where you're, like, watching a professional in a very specific career do his thing, which I found really cool.

[1:25:45] Plus, it's a very good Philadelphia movie, which is great.

[1:25:48] Dennis Franz is in it.

[1:25:49] So, you know, it's a De Palma movie.

[1:25:52] And it also has, like, one of the four, you know, some of the other ones I've watched are, like, are fun and, like, kind of sleazy and also a little bit scary and also stylish.

[1:26:06] This one has dials down some of that a little bit.

[1:26:09] But it actually has a super emotional ending.

[1:26:11] I found the ending really, like, really sad and touching and also kind of ties everything together.

[1:26:17] So if you're looking for something like that, I'd check out Trackdown Blowout.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:23] Yeah.

[1:26:24] I think that's one of his best.

[1:26:25] I'm going to recommend two movies.

[1:26:28] Two movies.

[1:26:28] It's a while since I've recommended two.

[1:26:30] But I recently saw two movies that, I don't know, kind of like an interesting double feature.

[1:26:34] They're both kind of supernatural romances in a way.

[1:26:39] But one is very funny and the other one I found very moving and poignant.

[1:26:43] The funny one I'll start with, this is, you know it's me, so it's got to be check.

[1:26:47] It's a Czech New Wave movie from 1970 that it appears to be under a bunch of different titles.

[1:26:52] I saw it under the title The Murder of Mr. Devil, but it's also called Killing the Devil.

[1:26:56] And this is the only movie directed by Esther Kromacheva, who was one of the writers on the movie Daisies and on the movie Report on the Party and the Guests.

[1:27:04] So she was a major Czech New Wave person, but she only directed this one movie.

[1:27:07] And it is all about – there's only – there's really only two main characters in it.

[1:27:12] This woman who is desperate to land a husband has decided that this guy who is selfish and disgusting and only interested in eating things and what food she can make him, that she's got to land him as a husband.

[1:27:25] And he is also the devil or a devil, and every now and then will just show off supernatural powers to win arguments or things like that.

[1:27:33] But it's a very – I thought it was a really funny movie.

[1:27:36] It's very brightly colored.

[1:27:37] It's got this weird kind of like 60s kind of colorful pop feel to it.

[1:27:44] But there would be scenes where like she catches him chewing on the legs of her table.

[1:27:48] She gets very mad because he's always constantly eating.

[1:27:51] And I thought it was really funny.

[1:27:52] It was a funny take on women and men.

[1:27:56] Similarly, here's a supernatural romance that is not a comedy, but instead a movie about yearning.

[1:28:01] This is the movie Rouge from 1988.

[1:28:03] It's a Hong Kong movie starring Anita Mui and directed by Stanley Kwan where this woman is a very high-class prostitute in the 1930s who has been in a suicide pact with her lover, a rich young man who his family won't allow them to get married.

[1:28:19] And now it's the 80s, and she has come back as a ghost to find out why he never joined her in hell.

[1:28:25] And she meets up with this reporter and the reporter's girlfriend who's also a reporter and has them help her.

[1:28:31] And it sounds like it could be a setup for a horror movie or it could be set up for a comedy.

[1:28:35] But instead it's a setup for like a real – like a movie about romance and about love and about kind of sensual yearning and things like that.

[1:28:45] And I found it really beautiful.

[1:28:46] So those are two movies that are both about love and fantasy aspects.

[1:28:52] One of them is kind of silly and the other one might make you cry a little bit.

[1:28:56] And so the one that might make you cry a little bit is Rouge.

[1:28:59] And the one that's a little silly is killing Mr. Devil or the murder of Mr. Devil or – I don't know how to accurately translate the title.

[1:29:06] But they're both good.

[1:29:07] Check them out, won't you?

[1:29:10] Check them out.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:12] Okay.

[1:29:13] Well, this has been an episode of The Flophouse.

[1:29:17] Yeah.

[1:29:18] A podcast that is on the Maximum Fun Network.

[1:29:20] Go over to MaximumFun.org.

[1:29:22] Check out the other podcasts they have there.

[1:29:25] I listen to several of those shows myself.

[1:29:29] They're full of good, funny shows, good, informative shows.

[1:29:35] Take a look.

[1:29:36] I'm sure you'll like at least one of them.

[1:29:39] We're also produced by Alex Smith, who edits, makes us sound good.

[1:29:45] He has a lot of great stuff online under the name Howell Doughty.

[1:29:50] He has his own podcast called Fast Track you could check out.

[1:29:55] I want to say, if you have the time, maybe consider leaving us a five-star review over at iTunes or elsewhere.

[1:30:05] But iTunes is the easiest place to leave us a good review.

[1:30:09] It really does help us.

[1:30:11] If you like the show and you want to just give us a little help, if you don't like the show, maybe consider not finding the time to write a review.

[1:30:21] And think about, you know, is it really worth hurting three strangers?

[1:30:29] You know, is your feeling about the show worth the time that you put into a bad review?

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:32] Why not use that time to promote something you do like?

[1:30:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:38] And just thank you for listening.

[1:30:40] For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:42] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:30:44] And I hope to see some of you tonight on Flop TV.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:47] I'm Elliot Kalin saying the same thing.

[1:30:50] Flop TV, it's tonight.

[1:30:51] We hope to see you.

[1:30:52] And maybe on October 19th in Los Angeles.

[1:30:55] Until then, I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:30:59] Bye.

[1:31:03] Just keeps getting longer.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:09] On this episode, we discuss The Legend of the Titanic.

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:13] Directed by Ayo Miyazaki.

[1:31:18] Slander.

[1:31:20] Okay.

[1:31:22] Let's move it along.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:23] One of those will be good.

[1:31:24] One of those is good.

[1:31:25] Yeah, sure.

[1:31:25] Now she'll figure it out.

[1:31:26] You got a good taste.

[1:31:30] Alex, you should know that Stuart laughed and made a face when I said that.

[1:31:34] So, you know which side your bread is buttered on between the two of us.

[1:31:38] Oh, man.

[1:31:39] I'd butter his bread anytime he wants.

[1:31:41] And this guy.

[1:31:43] Maximum Fun.

Jesse Thorn

[1:31:44] A worker-owned network.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:46] Of artists-owned shows.

Jesse Thorn

[1:31:47] Supported.

[1:31:48] Directly.

[1:31:49] By you.

Ep.#404 - The Legend of the Titanic

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