Ep.#402 - The Net

[0:00] On this episode we discuss the net, but not the kind that you get fishes with

[0:30] Hey everyone and welcome to The Flop House. I'm Dan McCoy. And I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:47] And I'm Elliot Kalin. And I want to take a quick moment before we get into the episode

[0:50] just to remind everybody we're in the middle of our Flop TV series of kind of streamlined

[0:56] TV-ish episodes of The Flop House. By the time you are hearing this, we have done our

[1:00] first episode, Beastmaster 2, through the portal of time. And when you're hearing this,

[1:04] if you're hearing this on the day this episode is released, you will have one more week to

[1:07] watch the recording of it. Even though that episode was released live, we did it live

[1:12] on the air. We're doing it live on the air. We're just going to do it live on the air

[1:16] in the road. Nobody's watching, but hopefully you're watching. You have one more week to

[1:20] watch if you today buy a ticket. We're going to have five more episodes, five more months.

[1:25] It's going to be great. Once a month, go to theflophouse.simpletics.com for tickets and

[1:31] more information.

[1:32] Sorry, I'm laughing because there's a brief point where like that sort of turned into

[1:36] like a James Joyce version of an advertisement, just like pure stream of consciousness. Less

[1:45] helpful maybe for the listener, but more beautiful. Should I watch the Flophouse live

[1:50] show? Yes. I said yes. And then yes.

[1:55] Well this is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. Hey, let's

[2:00] be upfront with what we're doing here. The Writers Guild of America is on strike. SAG-AFTRA

[2:06] is on strike, at least when we're recording this. No end in sight for those strikes so

[2:11] far. And because of that, we thought, hey, even though we talk about movies that we are

[2:20] saying the general consensus is that they're bad. And so maybe that's not like the most

[2:25] promotional one could be. We still didn't want to promote new stuff, you know, newer

[2:31] media while the strike was going on.

[2:36] So we decided to use this strike as an opportunity to sort of go back in time and do some older

[2:44] films that were before the Flophouse even existed. And we were going to kind of do this

[2:49] by decade when the Flophouse was just a twinkle in Dan's eye. We were going to we decided

[2:56] let's do let's do this by decade. Let's start off in the 90s to do some 90s films, then

[3:03] go back a decade, do some 80s films. So you're saying we're already going to go back in time

[3:08] and then we're going to go back even further in time. Yeah. I mean, who knows if the strike

[3:13] lingers on forever, you might get some real classic flops. Yeah, we're going to be seeing

[3:17] we're going to talk about all the worst movies of the silent era eventually. Hopefully the

[3:21] strike won't go that long. But also, you know, going back, we loosened up what we thought

[3:28] of as a flop. We're just going back and looking at some movies that maybe are thought of as

[3:34] being kind of dumb, which I think is. Yeah. At this point, life is difficult. Let's just

[3:40] have fun, guys. Like, let's just have fun. Let's not worry about the deets. If you speaking

[3:45] of the strike, if you would like to make a donation of any kind to help support entertainment

[3:49] workers who are affected by the strike, please go to entertainment community dot org. Otherwise,

[3:54] the most direct way you can help two specific workers affected by the strike, Dan and me,

[3:59] is by buying tickets to our live shows and continuing to support us and so forth.

[4:03] Yeah, we really appreciate it. We appreciate that a lot. We're doing that. Without this podcast,

[4:09] things would be pretty dicey for us. And I don't just mean because I would have to go

[4:13] back to my gambling roots to keep my family afloat. Also, you call it the Mississippi grind,

[4:18] right? Yeah, I call it the Mississippi grind. And sometimes I call it the Tallahassee shuffle.

[4:22] But I'm not calling it that too much lately. I did not mean to imply, by the way, that only

[4:28] those who support us financially in some way are valued listeners. I'm glad that you're all

[4:33] out there, but I'm also glad that there is some money coming in. Dan is merely saying all animals

[4:38] are created equal, but some are more equal than others. And the ones that are more equal are the

[4:41] ones who are directly financially supporting us. Different way of saying it, I guess.

[4:45] Also remember, four hoofs was good, but it's now bad. Two hoofs was bad, and it's now good.

[4:51] This is the new hoof update for 2023. Is it good that I have a star on my belly,

[4:58] or should I not have a star on my belly? I talked to, I looked at the latest McBean numbers,

[5:04] the latest Monkey McBean numbers, and it's inconclusive at the moment whether it's better

[5:08] to have a star or not have a star. What about butter side up or down? Is that a thing?

[5:13] Dan, we never make light of that. Never forget the victims of the butter battle. Oh,

[5:18] it's dangerous. Yeah. So today we talked about a little movie from 1995 called The Net. Now,

[5:24] have you guys seen The Net before? I saw The Net in the theater, baby. Same here,

[5:28] and I remember walking out being like, that was a thrill ride. Yeah, I saw it in the theater,

[5:33] and I saw it years later when the late lamented 92i Tribeca put on a double feature called Hackers

[5:39] of 1995. Okay, so I was there with you. I asked Stuart whether he was there, and he was like,

[5:44] unfortunately, no, but I think that was a laugh riot, those two movies together.

[5:48] It was great. It was so much fun watching The Net and Hackers, and it was so great then,

[5:53] and I feel like internet stuff has only gotten more complicated, and these programs only look

[5:57] more primitive now, and that was at least 10 years ago, I think. So, what a ride, what a ride.

[6:03] Before we actually get into the plot of the movie, I just want to talk about the thing that the

[6:07] biggest appeal of this movie, watching this now, is the anytime a character logs on or turns on a

[6:14] computer screen, we are graced with the most beautiful graphics in the universe.

[6:21] Whether it's ordering a pizza where you get to see the pizza before you,

[6:25] imagine the ingredients when they appear on screen. The funny thing about this movie is

[6:30] it looks so out of date now, but at the time, a thing that seems very simple to us today,

[6:38] ordering pizza online, was not a thing that was done.

[6:42] No, it was a new thing.

[6:44] It was an amazing thing that Sandra Bullock would be ordering a pizza online,

[6:47] and that the graphics would look so good for this pizza.net, this magical website.

[6:54] You remember when Jurassic Park came out, people were like, it's amazing,

[6:58] the idea of a cloned dinosaur. It astounded people. Now they're everywhere. People are

[7:02] not that impressed by them. You can't go outside without tripping over a damn raptor,

[7:06] just lying on the ground being lazy, you know?

[7:08] Thank you for deflating the moment because I was realizing how old I sounded right then.

[7:12] But it is true that this movie, when it came out, was a thrill ride because it seemed prescient,

[7:20] and it is in certain ways still, but it also, now, it's imagining such a goofy version of

[7:29] the future that we know isn't quite right.

[7:31] It's prescient in the idea that there are corporations and shadowy figures that want

[7:36] to use the internet as a means of control and to make money, and the thing the movie gets wrong is

[7:41] that it preposits they would have to do that in a conspiratorial, a covert way, when in reality,

[7:46] they just do it. It's just over, and everybody just puts up with it.

[7:50] But I have to say, I was also hit by the nostalgia bug while watching it because

[7:54] a lot of it centers around this website for a band called Mozart's Ghost,

[7:59] and the way their website is set up, the buttons to get to different areas are in the shape of

[8:04] instruments, and I was like, oh, yeah, remember when people would make, the websites looked

[8:11] interesting, or at least everyone was like, we gotta jazz it up, it's the internet,

[8:15] as opposed to now when it's just kind of like you click on the menu button and then a menu

[8:19] pops up, you know?

[8:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody go over to boardgamegeek.com to see what a bad-looking website

[8:25] looks like.

[8:27] I understand what you're saying, but I mean, the reason we abandoned that was it was annoying.

[8:32] Oh, it's super unwieldy, and it means that all these animations, it's the same way we've been

[8:35] watching, I've been showing Monty Python to my older son, and I have the DVDs that got put out

[8:40] by A&E years ago, and every disc, when you put it in, you have to sit through this long animation

[8:47] that promotes Monty Python. It's like a long animated introduction that's like,

[8:50] the groundbreaking BBC series, now on DVD for the first time, and I'm like,

[8:54] you don't have to make a big show of it, just get me to a menu, just get me the episode I want,

[8:58] I don't need to celebrate DVDs each time I put it in. Or we watched a DVD of League of Their Own

[9:03] the other day, and it opens with this long advertisement for movies on DVD, and it's the

[9:08] most random assortment of movies, and it's just like, I get it, yeah, it's just, take me to the

[9:13] fucking movie.

[9:13] I gotta say, I'm pushing back, I love that shit. Give me trailers for old-ass movies I haven't

[9:18] thought about, give me a trailer for Chain Reaction or some shit, yum yum yum.

[9:22] That was, when I finished watching The Net, one of the movies that came up as an option

[9:26] to watch again, next was Chain Reaction, and I was like, should I? Maybe?

[9:30] You looked over at Danielle, she's asleep.

[9:34] It felt like I was cheating on the movies of today.

[9:37] Andrew Davis is a pretty good action director, it's gotta have something.

[9:42] Okay, let's get into The Net, movie has a cold open, we see the Undersecretary of Defense,

[9:49] he's making calls, doing deals, doing business, he goes off on a ride to a playground,

[9:55] he says goodbye to his family, and then he promptly commits suicide in a public park.

[10:00] sticks a gun in his mouth as the camera pans up to a big statue of like a man

[10:05] drowning in sand that's in that part yeah and you heard the gunshot and you're

[10:09] like that's a dope statue yeah it's a great statue I like the movie doesn't

[10:15] want you to laugh it's like it's like a man committed suicide but it was the

[10:20] first big laugh of the movie for me just in the sense that like you're given it's

[10:27] such a classic like thriller opening yeah oh what what was so horrible that

[10:31] caused that girl to get killed by the ring well that's how we you know but it's

[10:35] also I'll mention that that so this would have meant more in 1995 also

[10:40] because this is deliberately playing off the death of Vince Foster who was one of

[10:43] the White House counsels died of a gunshot of a self-inflicted gunshot wound

[10:48] in a in a park in a in a public park and there were all these conspiracy theories

[10:52] about that the Clintons had him murdered and stuff like that when it seems

[10:56] likely now that it was just suicidal depression and if you are if any

[11:00] listening or feeling depression or feeling those thoughts please reach out

[11:03] to someone please you're not alone and this is a serious moment that I didn't

[11:07] mean to stumble into but please yeah take a moment reach out to somebody

[11:12] people care about you and you are worth it but this would it but to viewers the

[11:16] time that would have been like oh this is like that thing that happened and I

[11:19] will say that statue it's a real statue it's called the awakening it's a it's

[11:23] located in Prince George's County Maryland so it's a giant on your tour

[11:29] there's the net filming location yeah I imagine there's a plaque that says in

[11:34] 1995 the movie The Net was shot here and there's a picture of all the kitchen

[11:39] staff standing next to Sandra Bullock okay okay so we are we are wasting

[11:49] daylight here guys so we are then introduced to Angela played by that's

[11:53] right Sandy B and she is a computer programmer who works remotely

[11:58] oppression right that's just like all you guys she works remotely finding bugs

[12:02] and programs she lives alone she hangs out in chat rooms she takes care of her

[12:07] mother who suffers from Alzheimer's and is very excited about an upcoming

[12:11] vacation it was very funny to me how this was positioned as like the saddest

[12:17] life that she has where she's like alone ordering pizza off the internet

[12:21] talking to other people on the internet when that's just how life is these days

[12:25] yeah she like yeah well I mean not a not a bad mess not incorrect life has gotten

[12:32] sadder in a lot of ways no no I I know it's just like at the time it's like

[12:37] this is the worst thing you can imagine alone or home she's ordering pizza and

[12:44] talking to people on the internet she well she's and she's ordering pizza off

[12:48] of one computer and the other computer she's playing Wolfenstein I gotta tell

[12:52] you I've never been happier than when I was doing this yeah look pretty good to

[12:56] me yeah but you're right Dan that the message seems to be why would you stay

[13:00] at home why would you talk to people at a distance what good lady is sitting

[13:04] alone in your room Elliot come to the cabaret she needs to be at a cabaret she

[13:10] needs to be in a crowded indoor space with lots of people everyone really in

[13:14] each other's faces yeah okay so songs about two ladies anyway go on this is

[13:21] great there's a lot of like little touches as we mentioned there's pizza

[13:24] dotnet there's Wolfenstein she hangs out in a cyber chat room of other people who

[13:30] are cyber inclined like cyber Bob and Iceman all our friends she she's clearly

[13:36] that Iceman from it is yeah and he the thing is she's dangerous okay so we

[13:43] learned that she's single but she has kind of high standards she has a very

[13:46] specific idea of what kind of man she wants and she explains it to her friends

[13:50] in the chat room she also discovers a virus in the copy of Wolfenstein she's

[13:54] playing terrible so she mails that to her friend Dale who in exchange viruses

[13:58] who collects viruses and who works in their office but she's never been there

[14:02] right because yes so the officers are in San Francisco so Citadel the company

[14:07] that she works for is in San Francisco she lives in Venice California LA baby

[14:11] it's Cathedral Elliot failed Amazon Prime program yeah more sense though as

[14:18] a as a cybersecurity company that she does yeah an early remote worker I don't

[14:23] want to gloss over her like high standards for men because it's like it's

[14:28] you felt threatened she was asking too much I feel like I have a chance with

[14:34] the girl from it did feel a little bit like the song that don't impress

[14:38] impressing me much for I'm like okay well your standards I don't know that's

[14:44] the Italian version song that don't impress me much she was she was like I

[14:50] want Albert Schweitzer by way of Captain America and I know this is like in the

[14:55] context of like a fantasy like who's your ideal man on the thing but I'm like

[14:59] all right originally was even worse I looked at the original screenplay at one

[15:05] point she mentions hung like a centaur which seems like that is unrealistic

[15:09] yeah I'm typically a centaur yeah centaur yeah mm-hmm cuz that's that's

[15:14] where there's a little set of extra legs behind the balls right cuz that's what

[15:18] she likes yeah exactly it's like a horse you know like that's that's more than

[15:23] you need like a centaur now I'm assuming the centaur has a somewhere

[15:27] between a normal man's penis medium yeah it's a medium in terms of penis size

[15:31] yeah then get out your etch-a-sketch and draw me what you're talking about okay

[15:35] hold on twiddles no no no he should get oh he sees it's lost to history oh no so

[15:40] much great art has been has been lost because of the etch-a-sketch okay so

[15:44] she's talking to her friend Dale this is where the plot of the movie starts to

[15:47] kick in guys she's talking to her friend Dale who's played by the game played the

[15:50] priest from Deadwood you know what he looks like it looks kind of like if

[15:53] Matthew Modine was a little bit weirder and she mails his name is Ray McKinnon

[15:57] as I mentioned he collects viruses and in exchange he mails her a disc that

[16:02] leads her to a website for a rock band called Mozart's ghost which is a very

[16:07] funny website and it has lots of sound and it seems like a like a band webs a

[16:13] web page but in the bottom corner it's actually this if you click on it it has

[16:18] a little pie symbol and it's an elite hacking key that lets the user basically

[16:24] into any website it is what I it is this is not an important correction but you

[16:27] do have to click on it and then do like a control something or whatever it's not

[16:31] just like someone who could be like why is there pie a pizza pie I'll go to pie

[16:36] net so two things I want to say here one when Mozart's ghost boots up it goes

[16:42] Mozart's ghost the hottest band on the internet and you hear this I think seven

[16:46] six times throughout every time it makes me smile every time it makes me and each

[16:50] time I've seen this movie that is the thing for some reason that's the line

[16:54] that makes me the most nostalgic every time is Mozart's ghost the hottest man

[16:58] on the internet and then and then and then don't and the other thing is that

[17:03] when you click on that pie and do whatever keystroke thing Dan wanted to

[17:07] clarify because yeah yeah I didn't realize I was sitting with a fucking

[17:13] yeah I didn't realize the goof section was right here to correct us but yeah

[17:17] whenever you click on it it does the thing that 90s computers do when you

[17:22] hack them which is a lot of screens and a lot of different text all flash onto

[17:27] your monitor at once so all the stuff flashes on to you at once and you're

[17:31] like huh what just the same way that in hackers if you remember when you cut

[17:34] code out of a program and store it on a disk and you put that disc in your

[17:38] computer you see a sort of red dimension where code is floating around

[17:42] in big in big numbers so they really didn't know how computers worked I guess

[17:46] is what I mean this is like the funniest like tech stuff is like the weird

[17:52] shorthand like that where it's like oh yeah like something something hackery is

[17:55] going on it looks like you're you're like TVs on the fridge so or like this

[18:00] person collects viruses so she somehow just like is able to extract just the

[18:06] virus and send it to like that seems I wasn't quite clear on computers work

[18:11] maybe you can do that I don't know but um yeah a lot of it is is a little silly I

[18:16] guess that's all yeah I mean it gets sillier yeah so Dale convinces her to

[18:22] meet and so he he's gonna fly down and visit her in his Cessna unfortunately

[18:26] due to a computer era era we're in the computer era still yeah due to a

[18:32] computer error he crashes his Cessna and he dies so it is implied that the

[18:39] hacker the evil hackers have taken over his navigation system and misdirected

[18:44] him is that I mean you guys are come you guys are hackers you're netrunners is

[18:48] that possible this is before wireless internet as far as I can tell so can

[18:53] they do that yeah that's I don't know that this would be have been wired he

[18:58] just said like you know like his instruments and then I mean unless he's

[19:03] in a plane with a long with like a 40-mile wire that just comes out of the

[19:07] plan cable yeah I would imagine that they probably had been tapping his phone

[19:14] and went to his plane and uploaded a virus that makes more sense to me that's

[19:22] a good continuity fix you get your no put your net prize that's a no prize for

[19:25] people who watch the net yeah but just despite this sadness Angela still gets

[19:29] her beach vacation she goes down there yeah I would I want to say the guy

[19:34] doesn't show up she goes to the the the airport yeah there's widespread like

[19:42] nothing is working because all the computers are down and then there's a

[19:45] part where they're like the guy giving her coffee or whatever it's like oh it

[19:49] looks like you're in luck it's back up and like everything that had been down

[19:52] immediately went to on time which I was like bullshit after the systems are down

[19:58] everything is yeah

[20:00] But also, this is one of these parts in the movie where I'm just like, I guess I assume that they

[20:05] were delaying her leaving till they could figure out how to deal with things.

[20:09] I guess because we see that she's being watched by a shadowy figure also.

[20:12] Yeah.

[20:13] So it's all, it's, it's, this movie is, it's dealing with two different modes.

[20:17] The future mode of the internet where you can, you can affect people at a distance.

[20:21] It's spooky action at a distance to the internet.

[20:24] And the old fashioned world of, of movie thrillers where someone has to be physically present

[20:29] to do this.

[20:30] And the movie is battling between these two.

[20:32] It's a dialogue or perhaps an argument between these two modes of thought,

[20:36] the physical and the remote digital.

[20:38] Yeah, these two ideas.

[20:39] Really, the movie is, is, it creates a fascinating synthesis

[20:42] between these two, these two competing modes.

[20:45] Stuart, explain.

[20:46] So she gets her beach.

[20:49] She meets a charming stranger.

[20:51] Is this the last day of her vacation?

[20:54] She meets a charming stranger named Jack Devlin, which sounds a lot like Jack Devil.

[20:59] In, um, they share some Miss Jones.

[21:03] Yep.

[21:04] They share some Jack Devlin.

[21:07] Gibson.

[21:08] The devil.

[21:10] Well, hold on.

[21:10] I'm confused about which one I am now.

[21:12] Okay.

[21:13] Uh, they share some of Dan's favorite cocktail, the Gibson martinis.

[21:16] Um, but with an onion.

[21:19] He, he seems to, he works in the same field after Mel Gibson.

[21:23] Is that why you like it?

[21:23] Cause you, you, uh, you also subscribe to the same antisemitic and he likes extreme

[21:28] antics.

[21:32] I've never been a fan of the man's work, but his off screen antics really appealed to me.

[21:37] Uh, so they, uh, they, they, they work in the same field.

[21:41] They have a lot in common.

[21:42] Uh, they flirt.

[21:44] They, uh, he calls her a hacker, like right off the bat, just because she has a computer.

[21:51] I guess this is an indication of how bizarre that was at the time.

[21:55] To be sitting on a beach with a laptop is pretty hacky at the time.

[22:00] And I don't mean hacky, like old.

[22:01] I mean, hacky, like new, like you're happy.

[22:04] I'd be kind of surprised if I saw somebody sitting at the beach with a laptop now,

[22:07] just because of the sand issue.

[22:09] And it's bad.

[22:10] No, thanks.

[22:12] Anakin was right.

[22:12] So, uh, I hate saying to get some, my computer keys.

[22:18] Uh, so she allows him to take her out that night.

[22:21] So they go on a hot ride in a go fast boat.

[22:24] Uh, she gets her personal term.

[22:27] Turns out Jack, uh, Jack chases after the bandit only to discover we learn Jack's in

[22:34] on it.

[22:34] He hired this bandit to steal her purse and he finds the disc, uh, that has the Mozart's

[22:40] ghost bullshit on it.

[22:41] And he's like, ha ha, we got it.

[22:42] Throws away all of her stuff, which is important for the next phase of this movie.

[22:46] But we're not there yet.

[22:47] He kills the burglar.

[22:49] You've already, you've downgraded from bandit to burglar.

[22:51] Bandit is a little more romantic, a little more dashing.

[22:54] Burglar is a little bit, you know, scummier.

[22:56] Yeah.

[22:58] House to be burgled.

[23:00] Yeah.

[23:01] Technically.

[23:01] I don't know.

[23:02] Once again, the goof patrol is correcting us again.

[23:05] Appreciate it, Dan.

[23:06] Oh, oh, I'm sorry.

[23:09] You never correct anything.

[23:12] We then, we then learned that this character smokes Newports, which I was surprised by.

[23:16] Um, he's come a long way, baby.

[23:19] Oh no, those are Virginia Slims.

[23:20] I'm sorry.

[23:20] Those are Virginia Slims.

[23:21] Uh, he takes her on a late night boat ride.

[23:23] She, he very clearly, uh, has nefarious plans for her, but they decide to have sex first.

[23:29] Uh, she spills about her.

[23:30] In her defense, she doesn't know about the nefarious plans.

[23:35] They get together.

[23:36] They have like, I'm an evil hacker and I'm going to kill you.

[23:38] But first, would you like to have sex?

[23:40] Okay.

[23:40] Yeah.

[23:40] Well, what am I actually going to do?

[23:41] Yeah, it's been a while, so.

[23:42] Yeah, sure.

[23:43] I mean, I spend most of my time playing Wolfenstein, so yeah.

[23:46] Okay.

[23:47] Well, uh, in, in the post-coital glow, she spills all about her past relationships,

[23:52] her mom's Alzheimer's, all this stuff.

[23:54] But then she finds.

[23:55] Really sexy pillow talk.

[23:56] Really the stuff you want to hear in the afterglow.

[23:58] Yeah.

[23:59] Then she finds the, uh, the silenced pistol he had hidden in his coat.

[24:05] And she throws the bullets away and knocks them in the head and manages to grab some stuff

[24:11] and takes a dinghy and the keys and takes a dinghy to escape.

[24:15] Only to crash that dinghy and get knocked out.

[24:18] Now, Stuart, I understand why you, uh, are, are, are whizzing through the summary.

[24:24] Most people probably have seen the net and you have a busy day.

[24:27] I don't know about that.

[24:28] I don't know about that, Dan.

[24:29] I don't know if most people had seen the net.

[24:30] There's nearly 8 billion people on the planet.

[24:33] What percentage do you think has seen the net?

[24:34] Most of them.

[24:35] Most of them.

[24:36] Yeah.

[24:36] Fill in the gaps.

[24:37] No problem.

[24:37] Fill in the gaps.

[24:38] At least 5 to 6 billion.

[24:40] Yeah.

[24:40] Add some texture, Dan.

[24:42] We had a long mini recording before this.

[24:44] You've got a busy day.

[24:45] I, I know why you got to zip through some of this, but I, I just want to highlight the

[24:50] moment where like, so she asked him about the gun, why he has it.

[24:56] He gives her some bullshit, takes the gun away from her.

[25:01] And then like, like gets really mad all of a sudden.

[25:05] Like, it's like, oh, I know what you want.

[25:07] Albert Schweitzer.

[25:09] Who am I?

[25:10] Who am I?

[25:10] Like, I'm the perfect man.

[25:11] I don't know why he got so mad at her.

[25:14] And then he like.

[25:17] Dan, he is a male hacker.

[25:19] He is mad at women and mad at the world.

[25:21] That's probably.

[25:23] And he's, and he's especially, and you'd think he giving him sex, the thing he wants more

[25:27] than anything else would make him less mad.

[25:29] No, it only enrages him more.

[25:31] So the fact that he suddenly starts violently getting angry at a woman, it's not a, not

[25:35] a shock to me.

[25:36] That's, that's true.

[25:38] Although he's like, not presented like the sort of hacker who might react that way.

[25:44] He's still a movie.

[25:45] You know, Suave, Jeremy Northam.

[25:48] But originally they had cast Jeremy Southam.

[25:51] And then they had a lot more.

[25:53] But he, you know, he tries to shoot her and then she kind of like reveals that she'd taken

[25:58] the clip out.

[25:59] But I found this part of the like.

[26:04] Sandra Bullock is one of an immensely like charismatic actor, like she just exudes a

[26:10] certain likability.

[26:11] And this moment, I think it's also some very good acting from her where she has this like.

[26:17] Look on her face like she found the gun.

[26:19] She didn't believe that he was telling the truth, that something was weird, but she definitely

[26:23] did not expect that this man she just slept with would try and shoot her.

[26:27] And this like hurt, stunned shock is very effective, I think, in that moment.

[26:33] Yeah, I think you're right.

[26:34] I think this, this stuff, I think this scene really works.

[26:37] Yeah.

[26:39] So she has crashed her boat.

[26:40] She wakes up a few days later in a hospital.

[26:43] There's a doctor who's smoking a cigarette.

[26:45] That's great.

[26:47] Probably shouldn't do that in there, dude.

[26:50] And this is where.

[26:50] It was 1995.

[26:51] Everyone was smoking.

[26:52] It was all over the place.

[26:53] Yeah.

[26:54] This is where she learns that her identity is being stolen.

[26:58] And this happens over a series of incidents.

[27:00] One, when she goes to check back into her hotel, it turns out she's already been checked out.

[27:04] That's weird.

[27:05] She didn't do that.

[27:06] She didn't authorize that.

[27:07] But the computer says so.

[27:08] When she's at like a train station or something, she's approached by a strange woman with a visa

[27:13] application that's to Ruth Marks.

[27:16] That's not her name, but it has her picture and all her information.

[27:19] It seems like that filling out this form is the only way she can.

[27:22] The computer says so.

[27:24] So each of these things, people are like, the computer says so.

[27:27] We've got to go by the computer says.

[27:29] But her signing this fake name is literally the new gas cooker sketch for Monty Python,

[27:34] where they're like, they're like, well, we got to deliver the gas cooker to here,

[27:38] but it's got the wrong name on it.

[27:39] Can you just sign that name?

[27:40] And then later in the sketch, they're like the wrong names on this application.

[27:43] We can't help you.

[27:44] And so what I like is that this thriller took a little bit of Monty Python and made it scary

[27:50] as opposed to funny.

[27:51] Yeah.

[27:52] When she gets back to L.A., she she learns that her home has been sold and all of her

[27:58] furniture is gone.

[27:59] And when she questions everybody, they're like, no, Angela moved out all this time ago.

[28:03] You're not who you say you are.

[28:04] Yeah.

[28:04] And this this scene has the most hilariously unhelpful neighbor who has only seen her from

[28:10] a distance.

[28:11] And it's like she moved out.

[28:13] And, you know, one thing that is effective, maybe cheaply effective in certain ways, but

[28:18] effective is always to have like a character who is just like the worst and unhelpful.

[28:25] And but the scene, I was just like, get the fuck out of here.

[28:29] Awful neighbor.

[28:30] Why are you still hanging around me?

[28:31] Like being such a jerk?

[28:34] Yeah, I like it.

[28:36] You're like, yeah, we're expecting a little bit of help and it does not come at all.

[28:40] Yeah.

[28:40] And you have to imagine they didn't even ask her.

[28:42] She just wandered into the house going, what's going on here?

[28:44] What's happening here?

[28:46] Yeah.

[28:46] Oh, police, huh?

[28:47] This is weird.

[28:48] Tell me about it.

[28:50] So while while this is happening, meanwhile, Jack Devlin is driving around the streets of

[28:56] L.A. wearing a turtleneck like a maniac, using his laptop computer from the car to track her

[29:05] down.

[29:06] And he also builds a like a criminal background for Ruth Marks so that she is she has to run

[29:15] from the police as well, that she that she is everyone finds her suspicious.

[29:20] Do you think there's anything?

[29:21] Do you think there's anything?

[29:22] Do you think it's a coded message here that her original name is Angela Bennett and that

[29:26] now she's been renamed Ruth Marks, a much more Jewish name.

[29:29] Both Ruth and Marks say Jewish to me that now they have they've been not only is she

[29:34] they've made her into a criminal, but they've kind of decaucasianized.

[29:38] I guess they mean most most Ashkenazi Jews, you'd still call it.

[29:41] They've dechristianized her in a way that makes her more suspicious in the eyes of institutions.

[29:46] Do you think that's part of it?

[29:47] Or am I reading too deeply into it?

[29:50] No, I think you have some possible.

[29:53] Now, meanwhile, she the disc that had the the the program Mozart's Ghost on it has been

[30:00] on the Internet has been destroyed by the saltwater.

[30:02] But she did manage to hold on to Jack's wallet

[30:06] that has a few clues and passwords and crap like that.

[30:09] And so she's still in the game.

[30:10] She can still figure things out.

[30:11] Now, the game is a different movie. This is the net.

[30:14] So she figures out she reaches out to her one safety,

[30:18] her one phone, a friend, Dr.

[30:20] Alan Champion, her former therapist and former lover,

[30:24] played by Dan's favorite comedian, Dennis Miller.

[30:27] And if before you say anything, if he's not your favorite comedian,

[30:32] why do you have his beard?

[30:35] Son of a bitch.

[30:38] No, a man that even I, you know, I didn't ever love

[30:42] Dennis Miller that much, even before he became a weird crank

[30:46] on the opposite side of the political spectrum.

[30:49] But it definitely it always seemed to be like,

[30:52] I don't know if I cram enough words in here, people will think,

[30:55] what a smart comedian.

[30:57] But here, I guess it's kind of my bit.

[31:00] That's kind of what I do. Yeah. Yeah. He does.

[31:04] Here he does. OK, I would say he puts in a better performance

[31:06] than, say, Bordello of Blood. OK.

[31:10] This is around the time when this came out.

[31:12] Not to it was around the same time as I think it was a murder at 1600.

[31:16] So there was this brief period in movie history where they were like,

[31:19] this movie thriller needs kind of like a wisecracking side character,

[31:23] Dennis Miller, like he had a monopoly on that.

[31:25] Yeah. Let's make him real lovable by making him

[31:29] her therapist who had a sexual relationship with her, apparently

[31:35] who committed adultery to have an affair with. Yeah.

[31:38] Yeah. But he retains his title.

[31:40] He's still out there acting therapist.

[31:42] And he so she gives him like some snippets of what's going on,

[31:46] but she doesn't fill him in completely.

[31:48] So they have this kind of weird dynamic where he still thinks

[31:51] this is going to be some kind of romantic situation.

[31:53] And she's just trying to get a little bit of safety,

[31:56] but she kind of doesn't want to get him too involved.

[31:58] And he also keeps trying to get her to speak with his friend in the FBI

[32:02] because he thinks that'll help.

[32:03] I got to say, when she was having so much trouble

[32:07] finding anyone to like say like, yes, this is Angela Bennett.

[32:12] I don't know why she didn't call him a gentleman who she knows very well.

[32:18] But also like throughout the film, I understand she's harried.

[32:21] She doesn't know what's going on.

[32:22] She's having her life stolen from her.

[32:24] But she does not explain things well to people at any point.

[32:28] That's because she's been working.

[32:30] She's been working from home too long, guys.

[32:32] Well, it's like there's all the I mean, maybe that's a good explanation.

[32:34] She lost her people skills because there's

[32:36] but there are so many movies where someone has a limited amount of time

[32:40] to say, like, someone framed me for murder, but I didn't do it.

[32:43] I need your help.

[32:44] But instead, they're like, please, you've got to understand.

[32:46] Just listen to me.

[32:47] But so here's the thing.

[32:48] I don't have a lot of time.

[32:49] And then the police show up and they've got to run.

[32:51] It's like, just say the thing you need.

[32:52] Like, don't I got to leave?

[32:53] What do you think?

[32:53] I got to make some room for some sputtering first.

[32:58] So Angela is having trouble piecing together the conspiracy.

[33:01] And Dennis Miller, or I guess Alan Champion, is not really helpful.

[33:07] Everyone in it.

[33:07] You know, there's no close together.

[33:08] How can you tell the difference at this point?

[33:11] He would look in the mirror, Dennis Miller, and he'd say, Who am I?

[33:13] Am I Dennis Miller?

[33:14] Or am I Alan Champion?

[33:15] I've gone too far in the character.

[33:17] Stay in character as Alan Champion the whole time they're making the net.

[33:20] He would demand, people call him Alan Champion.

[33:23] He would set up appointments as a therapist and then sleep with the patients

[33:27] just to stay in character.

[33:28] Really, I mean, method acting.

[33:30] And then that had to, like, pay for all of those lawsuits after that,

[33:33] the production of the net.

[33:34] And they're like, was it worth it to cast Dennis Miller,

[33:37] Irwin Winkler, director of the net?

[33:40] Director of the net.

[33:41] Here's the funny, it's interesting.

[33:42] I didn't, it's, I didn't realize, I'd forgotten at least,

[33:44] that Irwin Winkler directed this, because Irwin Winkler is a huge producer.

[33:47] Like, he's been a huge Hollywood producer.

[33:48] Yeah.

[33:49] He won Best Picture for Rocky.

[33:50] He produced Raging Bull.

[33:51] He produced The Right Stuff.

[33:52] He produced Goodfellas.

[33:53] Like, he's, he's, he, uh, he produced They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

[33:56] Like, he's a really amazing producer.

[33:58] Not a great director, it turns out.

[34:01] That's okay.

[34:01] What else, what else did he do?

[34:03] Uh, let's see what else.

[34:05] He did the remake of Night in the City, uh, with Robert De Niro.

[34:09] Uh, his last, the last movie directed was Home of the Brave,

[34:12] uh, which I've not seen.

[34:14] That's right.

[34:14] Samuel L. Jackson, Jessica Biel, a number of other people.

[34:17] Recognized as a movie, but.

[34:18] Home of, yeah, Home of the Brave sounds like the name of a movie.

[34:22] It could be about anything.

[34:23] Yeah.

[34:24] If you told me that was a movie, I'd be like, yeah, I believe you.

[34:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[34:27] Sure.

[34:27] Second launch.

[34:28] Uh.

[34:28] His name is attached to the Creed movies, but I wonder if that's just

[34:31] because he produced the Rocky movies.

[34:33] Yeah.

[34:33] I don't know if he actually was involved in the Creed, but maybe he was.

[34:36] Yeah, who knows?

[34:37] Um, so, uh, because she doesn't, she reaches out to a, uh, because, uh,

[34:42] Alan champion is not well-versed in cyber crimes.

[34:46] She reaches out to her friend, cyber Bob from the chat room, and

[34:48] they agree to meet in real life.

[34:50] I guess her friend crimes.

[34:51] Bob was busy.

[34:52] Yeah, exactly.

[34:53] So, uh, on her way, uh, Alan champion gets, uh, gets, it goes into

[34:59] anaphylactic shock after, uh, taking the, he's been chomping down pills.

[35:04] Turns out his prescription was messed up and they gave him penicillin,

[35:08] something he's allergic to.

[35:09] Computers.

[35:10] Look, I know that you're not necessarily going to look at the, at the bottle

[35:18] every time, you know, if you trust that it's the correct thing, but it

[35:20] does say penicillin on the side, which I thought was funny that he's

[35:26] yeah, the computer analyzed Alan champion realized his greatest

[35:29] weakness was penicillin.

[35:30] So it gave it to him and reading bottles.

[35:32] So, yeah, so he is, so he can't read.

[35:35] That's his big weakness.

[35:36] He's a therapist who can't read.

[35:37] Yeah.

[35:37] So she has to leave him.

[35:39] Uh, he's admitted to the hospital.

[35:40] Angela leaves him so that she can go meet with her hacker friend.

[35:44] Unfortunately, unbeknownst to her, uh, Jack Devlin has, uh, waylaid

[35:48] cyber Bob probably killed him.

[35:51] And, uh, when they go, one of those movies where the fixer who is tracking

[35:55] someone is just murdering people left and right and leaving a trail of bodies.

[36:00] And then when it's time to get to the person he has to kill, he is coming up

[36:03] with reason after reason not to kill her.

[36:05] Which I wish, I kind of wish they'd leaned more into it.

[36:09] Cause there's like when he, he ambushes her at the Santa Monica pier, which is

[36:15] the, like the scariest place that appears to meet somebody there's like, there's

[36:19] like steam shooting out of everywhere.

[36:22] Bright lights.

[36:23] There's noises.

[36:24] It's a bad place to go.

[36:25] And there's a guy in, what is it like a big bunny costume?

[36:29] Just, and that is the scariest person in the whole movie.

[36:32] He's way scarier than Jeremy Northam in this one.

[36:35] This bunny is going, come on, dance with me.

[36:37] Dance with me, grabbing people's bodies.

[36:40] Oh, and now we, we don't know if we can believe him, but he does say that like

[36:44] he has genuine affection for her, which I kind of wish the movie, I feel like the

[36:49] movie would have been more interesting if it had not to be like Monday morning

[36:52] quarterback, but I feel like it would have been more interesting if they like

[36:54] not to be, not to be 28 years later, quarterback, but I think if they leaned

[37:00] into it and he was like genuinely conflicted and he was trying to find

[37:03] ways to get her to come over to their side and not have to kill her.

[37:08] Yes.

[37:09] Or even if he was, if he is, if he was, his obsession with her was just felt

[37:13] more emotionally rich, like you could get into like weird kind of like De

[37:16] Palmer or Cronenberg type territory.

[37:18] Yes, please.

[37:19] Yeah.

[37:20] Yes, please.

[37:21] Like a good movie.

[37:22] Yep.

[37:24] Uh, yeah.

[37:25] Like if this movie had been made by a real sicko, it would have been good.

[37:28] If only the late Cormac McCarthy could have written this thing.

[37:31] No, I'm really fucked up.

[37:34] So she managed it.

[37:35] He ambushes her, but she manages to slip away.

[37:37] Thanks to a man in a bunny suit and a carousel.

[37:42] Unsung hero who Ellie was just vilifying.

[37:45] You're right.

[37:46] I take it all back.

[37:47] Bunny man.

[37:47] You were right.

[37:48] You saved a woman's life with your, with your, with your molestational antics as

[37:52] you, as you use other people's bodies like puppets.

[37:54] Yeah.

[37:55] And your famous echo.

[37:58] Echo in the bunny man.

[37:59] She goes to check on Alan.

[38:01] The dolphin.

[38:02] And his bunny men, uh, the, she goes to check on Alan.

[38:08] Unfortunately, Alan has been given the wrong medication and he has died.

[38:12] Computers again.

[38:14] Uh, she's wearing tennis shoes and now this, uh, they did it to him twice too.

[38:19] First they got him the penicillin thing.

[38:21] Then they changed the computers again to say that he was in diabetic shock.

[38:24] And so they gave him the wrong medicine.

[38:26] And what can you do with Sandra Bullock?

[38:28] That's the only thing you can do.

[38:29] Push a computer monitor off a desk and then walk out unreprimanded for doing

[38:33] that.

[38:33] And weirdly enough, that doesn't, yeah, it doesn't stop the problem.

[38:37] And it's not the computer's fault.

[38:38] To be honest, people are doing stuff with the computer.

[38:40] Just a tool.

[38:41] Yeah.

[38:41] You know, yeah.

[38:42] Filled with rage and sadness.

[38:44] She takes Alan champion's car, a Pacific coast highway, one baby probably passed

[38:48] our friend Chris's house.

[38:49] Uh, and then she gets pulled over.

[38:52] Uh, she gets pulled over by the police because of course.

[38:56] Their computer says that she's stolen that car.

[38:58] She's a criminal at large.

[39:00] Uh, so she is arrested and taken to jail.

[39:03] Uh, we catch up with her shortly afterwards while she's being interviewed

[39:06] and she finally pieces it all together that the, that these hackers are actually

[39:12] working together with the gatekeeper.

[39:15] Uh, what, uh, security, security, security company gets like so much play in the

[39:22] movie.

[39:22] Like, it's so funny to me that the, like, uh, the public defender that she talks to

[39:28] while she's in jail is like, there's no way they could do that.

[39:30] It's protected by the gatekeeper security that

[39:33] the gatekeeper security plan.

[39:35] And it's like, it was Coca-Cola.

[39:36] Every news story that you see on a TV mentions gatekeeper security

[39:40] and the head of the company.

[39:42] Like there's no hotter brand in the world of the net than

[39:45] gatekeeper security software.

[39:47] It's just, it's on everybody's lips all the time.

[39:49] The public defender read her ad copy before going in.

[39:52] Yeah, it's, you know, we remember when that craze for the McAfee

[39:57] antivirus, you know, swept the nations.

[39:59] We had.

[40:00] McCaffey posters above our beds.

[40:02] Oh, sure.

[40:02] We all remember the Norton for president campaign that briefly flared up and then fizzled out.

[40:07] Yeah.

[40:08] So, uh, she is sprung from the chail.

[40:12] I support Nort with the buttons.

[40:14] I'm sorry.

[40:15] It took me a while.

[40:17] I apologize for interrupting.

[40:18] It took me a while to figure that out.

[40:19] And then it was avoid the noids, support Nort.

[40:21] It was a complicated time.

[40:23] There were a lot of brands going around.

[40:24] There were a lot of noids to avoid.

[40:27] A lot of noids to avoid.

[40:29] So she is sprung from jail by Allen's friend in the FBI.

[40:33] Well, he could not step out the door without having to run from annoyed back and back in the 90s.

[40:37] It was right out the ground.

[40:39] You know, they're they're all over the ground.

[40:41] Yeah.

[40:45] Thankfully, the noise warms of noids swarms of noise.

[40:48] Just these noid hives everywhere.

[40:49] Luckily, the clone dinosaurs that are everywhere ate those noids.

[40:52] But now we got to put up with the dinosaurs lying around in the ground.

[40:55] So, you know, is the cure better than the disease?

[40:57] I'm not so sure.

[40:59] Yeah, it's horrible.

[41:00] We'll follow the fly situation.

[41:02] Oh, and don't even get me started on those dino noids.

[41:04] Oh, man, they're so cute.

[41:06] They're so they're so frustrating.

[41:07] Yeah, delicious, though.

[41:09] Yeah, they get they get into the crawl space of the house and can't get them out.

[41:12] And they make those noises in the middle of the night.

[41:13] We're trying to sleep.

[41:14] It was so happy earlier.

[41:16] Yeah, you are mad.

[41:19] Yeah, you wouldn't want to you wouldn't want to be a pizza in those times, would you?

[41:23] Yeah.

[41:23] Oh, no.

[41:24] You had a constant chance of being ruined.

[41:25] Yeah.

[41:27] So she's going to get a movie, a series of movies that are the IP from pizza

[41:32] brands, and it's all one big crossover universe where the noid and little Caesar

[41:35] and Papa John are just are fighting.

[41:38] Elliot, bitch.

[41:39] The writers are on strike.

[41:40] Stop pitching ideas.

[41:41] I shouldn't be pitching ideas.

[41:42] I don't want to scab.

[41:43] I don't want to scab.

[41:44] I apologize.

[41:44] Good point.

[41:45] Get out of here.

[41:47] So she is sprung from jail by Alan's friend from the FBI who has a lot of

[41:53] very has a lot of questions about the disc mainly and she pretty quickly

[42:00] realizes that this is not Alan's friend.

[42:03] This is or if it is he's working for the hackers.

[42:07] Yes.

[42:08] So she takes control of the wheel and she crashes the car into Jack's car,

[42:13] which was weird.

[42:14] I don't know why that was very convenient.

[42:17] It's a movie with a number of different convenient coincidences, but that is

[42:20] potentially the most convenient coincidence.

[42:22] The whole movie that Jack happens to be lurking by in his car and that they

[42:26] happen to be going by at that point.

[42:27] It seems like at that point the movie is helping Angela Bennett along.

[42:30] It's like you need a you need a push.

[42:32] Let's get out of our other rut.

[42:33] We're in.

[42:33] Let's just get it moving.

[42:35] Yeah, so she crashes the car knocking out the FBI agent.

[42:38] She runs away on foot and escapes using a drawbridge and hides out in a motel

[42:44] where the news informs her that not only is gatekeeper taking a big play and

[42:49] taking over all of the government security, but also Ruth Marks is wanted

[42:54] for murdering a guy gangland style, which she didn't do.

[43:00] I not to not to spoil anything.

[43:03] Yeah.

[43:04] Okay, so she sneaks back into her the the office of Cathedral software.

[43:11] She nobody recognized her because as we said, she'd been working remotely.

[43:15] She finds you mentioned what did we mention already?

[43:17] She tried to call the company at one point and she was patched through to a

[43:21] woman taking on the role of Angela Bennett.

[43:23] One of the hackers has impersonated her so that the people at Cathedral think

[43:26] that Angela Bennett is now no longer working remotely but working in the

[43:29] office because guys it's time to stop working remotely and time to get back

[43:32] to the office.

[43:33] Let's do it everybody.

[43:34] There's just a certain there's a certain creative friction that emerges when

[43:38] people are in the same space together.

[43:40] You just don't get at home.

[43:42] Anyway, that's me a guy who owns several office space buildings partially.

[43:46] It's time to get back to the office.

[43:48] Let's rent them and let me Jack those rent prices.

[43:49] Right?

[43:50] So there is a fake Angela Bennett that in the in the office.

[43:53] I enjoyed this little twist for thriller logic of like, you know, having this

[44:00] evil Angie Bennett who looks, you know, sort of vaguely like Sandra Bullock

[44:04] taking the place and what it like I I like it in movie logic in real life

[44:09] logic.

[44:10] I'm like, why do they bother?

[44:11] I don't even bother exactly this fake woman in there.

[44:14] And guys, how dumb am I that?

[44:16] I just realized that it's Angela versus Devlin.

[44:19] This is a smart movie.

[44:20] This is a very subtle movie.

[44:22] I wonder who the good guy in the bad guy is.

[44:24] Anyway, I feel stupid that I just noticed that now but continues to and

[44:28] the movie is even more explicit with it because her little her little avi in

[44:33] the chat room is an angel.

[44:35] Yeah.

[44:35] Yeah, and and and Jack Devlin keep saying ain't I a little devil.

[44:41] And it's it's a screen grab from the movie little Nikki.

[44:44] It amazingly pretty guys are laughing because that movie so funny.

[44:50] Yeah, that's why we're laughing.

[44:51] I mean Ali enjoys the way it supports Popeye's chicken.

[44:55] I'm I don't know if I enjoy the existence of Popeye's chicken being

[44:58] acknowledged, but I wish that a better movie did to promote it.

[45:01] I remember when I was in college.

[45:02] One of my professors my screenwriting professors was so convinced little

[45:05] Nikki would be an enormous hit.

[45:07] He was like the script is hilarious.

[45:09] It's Adam Sandler.

[45:10] He's a box office champ.

[45:11] They were shooting it in New York at the time.

[45:12] I was in college.

[45:13] He's like you should go watch them shoot this movie if you see them on

[45:17] the street because this is going to be a huge hit movie and you're going to

[45:19] be able to tell people that you saw them shooting it and then the movie

[45:22] came out and didn't do very well and I feel like he maybe should have had

[45:25] his his teaching license removed to that point.

[45:28] Yeah.

[45:28] No, he's a good professor.

[45:29] Otherwise, but you know, he was tenured, you know, that's the problem

[45:34] with the tenure.

[45:34] You can't get rid of these little Nikki apologists.

[45:38] I want to be very clear.

[45:39] I support tenure.

[45:41] You don't support little Nikki, but you do support tenure.

[45:43] Yeah.

[45:43] Yeah, so this is where she finds her former now deceased co-worker

[45:49] Dale's desk and she uses his computer and she gets the virus that she

[45:55] mailed him.

[45:56] That's going to be important later everybody and she uses the computer

[46:00] and her hacking skills to identify where her double is and then after

[46:07] identifying that she uses the computer to create a fake fire alarm and

[46:12] get everyone out of the building.

[46:14] Now.

[46:14] I also want to point out.

[46:15] I don't know if you notice this.

[46:16] This is all happening at night feels pretty late in the workday for

[46:20] everybody to be at the office.

[46:22] Yeah, it was very confusing what time of day this was supposed to be

[46:26] now.

[46:26] You could say the software industry the video game industry, especially

[46:30] I assume the other software industry industry.

[46:31] They push people to work very long hours very hard and so it's possibly

[46:36] could be all there but it seems to be a bustling daytime office.

[46:40] It's not like there's nothing about the office that says this is at

[46:43] night right now.

[46:43] And also when she goes to the Convention Center, the convention is

[46:46] in full bloom.

[46:47] So it also feels like that at night usually conventions kind of shut

[46:51] down for a little bit and people go out and have drinks and and then

[46:57] they come back the next day newly refreshed by their by their hangovers

[47:00] and their guilt, but this because it's San Francisco.

[47:03] It's a nighttime City.

[47:04] Everything's always going on at night City that never sleeps San

[47:07] Francisco.

[47:07] The Red Planet the Big Chatter Bowl City abroad shoulders.

[47:15] They call it.

[47:16] Okay, so now that her double is not at her desk.

[47:21] She manages to slip in there jump on that computer log on she starts

[47:26] she tries to fix her data.

[47:29] Unfortunately, she's going to need mainframe access for that shit.

[47:33] So instead she downloads the information onto a disk.

[47:37] She is out of there.

[47:38] She's got to get to that mainframe folder titled evidence exculpatory

[47:44] evidence and she copies it.

[47:46] Yeah, I think she even like she takes she prints out the evidence

[47:51] against them.

[47:52] Yeah, it's awesome.

[47:53] Okay, so then she's she's fucking out of there.

[47:55] They try and track her down but she

[47:59] Oh and she finds out who who's into it.

[48:05] It's the CEO of gatekeeper.

[48:06] He is the head of the hacking organization.

[48:08] Yada Yada Yada Pretorians the name is gatekeepers of these hackers

[48:12] called Pretorians and Greg the the gatekeeper CEO is the head of

[48:17] them.

[48:17] Yeah, so she runs away from the bad guys.

[48:19] She uses a health care which is usually a good strategy do not run

[48:23] towards the bad guys.

[48:24] You want to run away from them.

[48:25] That you're like running like you're going to skewer them with and

[48:31] they don't have any like you want to use that as it you want to use

[48:34] that as a pole vault to get farther away from the bag.

[48:36] It might give you a charging bonus like a bonus to your strength

[48:40] characteristic.

[48:40] Do you have double action?

[48:43] Can you take two actions in this turn in this case?

[48:46] Yeah, I think so.

[48:46] Okay.

[48:47] Oh then by all means didn't listen to Dan.

[48:49] So yes, so she runs away from them.

[48:52] She's a health care protest again prescient to luckily health care

[48:57] was fixed after that shortly after the making of this.

[48:59] Yeah, they call that the net effect.

[49:00] Yeah, the health care is fixed and then she hides out in a computer

[49:04] convention, which did she know there's a computer convention there?

[49:07] She did know they mentioned it earlier that there's a big computer

[49:10] convention at the Moscone Center again.

[49:11] It is cool.

[49:12] It is a huge convenient coincidence that is happening at this time,

[49:15] but it's but they did mention it earlier.

[49:17] So she finds she finds a computer terminal to use everybody's computer

[49:23] crazy in this convention.

[49:23] She she jumps on she emails all the evidence to the FBI and then right

[49:29] the real FBI the real FBI not the bad.

[49:32] Yeah, she hopes and right before Devlin's able to grab her.

[49:35] She swaps disks with the virus disk so that when Devlin is like, ha

[49:42] ha all I have to do is hit escape to get out of this program that

[49:46] actually triggers the virus and then we see we see the screen look

[49:50] like somebody poured acid on it and it all starts to melt and like

[49:54] goo starts spitting out of the computer of lives that they

[50:00] She'll act over the internet or is melting away, revealing the previous.

[50:04] Oh, that's great.

[50:04] I love it.

[50:05] Yeah.

[50:06] Okay.

[50:06] But she, she manages to slip away in the crowd.

[50:08] She is chased.

[50:10] They find the like, she's not chased.

[50:12] She slept with the bad guy earlier.

[50:14] Oh yeah.

[50:15] You're right.

[50:15] Actually.

[50:16] I messed up.

[50:17] Okay.

[50:17] Killer that I guess she is sex positive and owning it and there's

[50:21] nothing wrong with that.

[50:21] Yeah.

[50:22] So she slips away into the darkened steam filled, uh, back tunnels of the

[50:29] catwalks, the Moscone center, like all large buildings in the 1980s and

[50:33] nineties, he has filled of shat filled with shadowy catwalks and just

[50:36] random steam jets and barrels and boxes.

[50:39] Yeah.

[50:39] I have expected her to walk in on matrix and Bennett fighting commando.

[50:46] Uh, that was a movie I watched recently and it's good.

[50:49] What a fun movie.

[50:50] Okay.

[50:50] So, um, he, uh, Devlin thinks he's got her in his sights.

[50:56] He shoots her.

[50:57] Turns out he shot the wrong Angela Bennett.

[50:59] That's right.

[50:59] He shot the double.

[51:01] Whoops.

[51:01] Uh, that doesn't matter.

[51:03] Later on, he tracks down the real Angela who then bonks him on

[51:06] the head with a fire extinguisher.

[51:07] He falls off a catwalk and dies.

[51:09] Oh no.

[51:11] Um, turns out and she, I mean, she is in danger because he's likely to kill her,

[51:16] but he is not actively threatening her at the moment.

[51:18] So she just kills him hard enough to kill him.

[51:21] Yeah.

[51:22] Uh, yeah.

[51:22] He's, he's pushed her too much.

[51:23] And to quote the name of a Jennifer, uh, Jennifer Lopez movie, she's had enough.

[51:30] She pushed her too much.

[51:31] And like gizmo putting a Rambo, uh, headband on and, uh, yep.

[51:38] You're getting a shooter flame.

[51:41] She dipped a pencil in some white out and lit it on fire and then use the

[51:44] little paperclip cross bone arrow.

[51:50] Well, the audience cheers.

[51:51] Okay.

[51:51] So, uh, Jack's dead, uh, flash forward.

[51:54] Angela now lives with her mom.

[51:56] Uh, all the bad guys are, uh, are in jail.

[51:59] She lives with her mom.

[52:00] She works from home.

[52:01] I think everything's better.

[52:02] But then in the corner of the screen, we see a little pie symbol and a

[52:05] cursor goes over and clicks on it.

[52:07] Oh, the movie was the net.

[52:10] Yeah.

[52:11] So that was the net guys.

[52:12] I think I did a pretty good job.

[52:13] So I did a great job.

[52:15] I can't, you know, Elliot kept interrupting and I kept feeling like,

[52:23] well, Elliot is safe across the country and I'm in the room with Stuart and I

[52:27] can't tell whether the slow burn frustration is a bit or whether he's

[52:32] going to suddenly snap the veins in my forearms, bulging out of my, uh, bulging

[52:39] under my skin and tattoos and hair.

[52:41] And he's like, what is going on?

[52:42] Is Stuart going to tear, rend me apart?

[52:45] Like his garments, like, like your pre-rendered garments.

[52:51] Um, Hey, let's do our final judgments about the net, whether it's a good, bad

[52:56] movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie.

[53:00] We kind of like, I'm going to say it's a movie.

[53:02] I kind of like, I wouldn't say it's a bad movie so much as a dumb one.

[53:08] Like there's, uh, like I, I love this guy.

[53:12] We don't get that many of this kind of old fashioned thriller anymore, where

[53:16] it's essentially, you know, innocent person on the run, trying to clear their

[53:22] name, yada, yada, yada with, with what at the time was a thin layer of, uh,

[53:27] relevance slathered on top.

[53:29] Uh, like of the fugitive.

[53:31] Yeah.

[53:31] It's not, it's not particularly thrilling.

[53:34] I have to say it's a, it's a little pokey.

[53:37] Um, uh, I don't, you know, Diz Miller.

[53:41] I don't love him in this movie.

[53:44] He's not that great.

[53:45] Uh, I feel like when I first saw this movie, he brought a little bit of like,

[53:50] did bring some zazz.

[53:51] It was a different energy.

[53:52] Um, but now I, I have different feelings toward him.

[53:58] Yeah.

[53:58] I mean, it's just, it's just kind of a, a silly movie, but.

[54:04] It's a movie that is really kind of enjoyable on that old, like this would

[54:11] have been on TNT on Sunday afternoon kind of way, I feel like there's something

[54:16] else I wanted to a point I wanted to make that I, I forgot.

[54:19] Oh, I know what it was.

[54:20] Uh, this is just like a side thing.

[54:23] When I was reading about this movie, uh, apparently, uh, the director

[54:27] originally got the, like employed the writers to write this movie.

[54:30] And his original idea was just going to be about a woman hiring someone who like.

[54:38] Uh, falsified resumes to get a job or something.

[54:42] And it seemed like, and then they were looking into like stuff and they're

[54:46] like, oh, this identity theft angle seems more interesting.

[54:50] I have no idea what that original movie.

[54:51] It doesn't sound like it was a thriller so much.

[54:53] It's just like a half-baked notion.

[54:58] Yes, it was like, uh, like a bad, can you ever forgive me?

[55:02] Yeah.

[55:03] Like, can you imagine someone lying to get a job?

[55:06] Uh, anyway, that's what I have to say.

[55:08] It's true.

[55:08] What do you, what do you think?

[55:10] Uh, yeah, this is a movie I kind of like, I remember enjoying it in

[55:12] the theater and it was fun to watch now.

[55:14] I mean, obviously a big part of it is I'm a sucker for all those graphics, baby.

[55:19] Um, but yeah, it's, uh, there's, uh, there's like the fact that Sandra

[55:26] Bullock is very charming and she, uh, she carries a lot of the weight of this movie.

[55:32] Is it great?

[55:33] No, but it is that like, like that easy thriller.

[55:38] Not cozy.

[55:39] It goes down smooth.

[55:40] Yeah.

[55:41] Yeah.

[55:42] Yeah.

[55:42] It, this is, it's kind of easy watching, easy listening thriller.

[55:45] I would say, I don't think it's a, it's not a movie that you should

[55:49] need to go out of your way to see, but I definitely, it's a movie I kind of

[55:52] like, but more for nostalgia sake than anything else, because as Dan said, you

[55:55] don't see a lot of these anymore.

[55:57] As Stuart said, you got those great old school computer, fake computer graphics,

[56:01] not even old school computer graphics, but old school Hollywood, fake computer

[56:04] graphics, and that is worth a lot to me.

[56:08] But, uh, for the young people out there listening, uh, I want you to find the,

[56:11] uh, the entertainment that's relevant to you in cheesiness, not the

[56:16] entertainment that's relevant to me.

[56:17] I feel like part of the fun for a young person to be like, they did what?

[56:21] That's how, that's what a pizza looked like.

[56:23] This would be so baffling.

[56:24] I feel like someone who only remembers a time when the internet was the

[56:30] major dominant force in the world.

[56:33] It kind of makes me in like five years, I kind of want to show it to my son

[56:36] and be like, can you believe this is what the internet was like?

[56:39] Like you were so used to having the internet exactly.

[56:41] You're saying like, be everywhere, be everything.

[56:43] You can do anything with it.

[56:44] And it looks professional and shiny and like, it used to be like this and

[56:48] people didn't know what to make of it.

[56:49] And they thought maybe Russell Crowe would come out of the internet

[56:52] and start murdering people.

[56:54] You're going to lawnmower.

[56:55] Maybe one who carried a computer around was a weirdo.

[56:59] Yeah.

[57:00] It's, it's a, yeah, it's a, it's a kind of snapshot of a more innocent time.

[57:04] And I think it's valuable for that.

[57:05] So, you know, what helps you, uh, you know, relax when you

[57:12] yearn for a more innocent time.

[57:14] Maybe a microdose gummy.

[57:16] Our show today is sponsored by microdose gummies.

[57:20] Microdose gummies deliver perfect entry-level doses of THC that help

[57:25] you feel just the right amount of good.

[57:28] Maybe you're looking for an entry-level dose THC.

[57:31] You haven't had THC before.

[57:32] You're like, what's an entry-level dose.

[57:35] You hear me say it, get some Lululabs.

[57:36] Maybe you you're, you're used to professional levels of THC, but just

[57:43] want to take it back for a softer experience, microdose gummies might be good for you.

[57:48] I, you know, we, we got, uh, some of these gummies.

[57:53] I know that Stuart also uses them.

[57:55] They're an enjoyable thing to, I don't know if you got time at the end of the

[58:01] day, that isn't going to make a lot of demands on you, this is a good way to

[58:07] relax, watch some TV, chill out, go to sleep.

[58:12] I like it.

[58:13] Microdose is available nationwide to learn more about microdosing THC.

[58:16] You go to microdose.com and use code flop.

[58:19] That is F L O P to get free shipping and 30% off your first order links can be

[58:24] found in the show description, but again, that is microdose.com code flop.

[58:29] Dan, we've also got another sponsor today.

[58:31] Look, if there's anything, I know it's terrible news.

[58:35] I apologize.

[58:37] If I, this is now I want you to find out if there's anything the movie, the net

[58:40] has shown me, it's that the internet is a powerful tool that can make or break

[58:44] human lives.

[58:44] And I know I want me a piece of that, but I don't know anything about hacking or

[58:48] programming.

[58:48] Luckily there's Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that empowers everyone from

[58:52] Sandra Bullock level neuromancers to Dennis Miller level meet space noobs to

[58:56] build their brand, create their passion project, or just stake out a place for

[59:00] themselves in the digital frontier, put together a beautiful website, sell stuff,

[59:04] engage with people.

[59:05] Look, if you want to do it on the net, Squarespace can help you.

[59:08] They've got all the tools you need, like e-commerce templates, a simple checkout

[59:11] process and secure payment systems.

[59:13] You can get in-depth analytics to see exactly who's using your website, when,

[59:17] where, and how.

[59:18] And they've also got the fluid engine, a next generation website design system

[59:22] that also has a cool name that sounds like a car made out of a waterbed.

[59:26] So boot up the mainframe, hack the planet and jack on into squarespace.com slash

[59:31] flop for a free trial.

[59:33] And when you're ready to launch, use offer code flop to save 10% off your first

[59:37] purchase of a website or domain that's squarespace.com slash flop with offer

[59:42] code flop for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[59:46] We also have a Jumbotron and it goes like this.

[59:52] Want to hear a podcast all about 184 choose your own adventure books?

[59:59] Huh?

[1:00:00] Well, librarian and best friends, Abby and Peter, last names redacted, are doing it anyway.

[1:00:07] Join them as they escape from dinosaurs, vampires, and that one time Nazis controlled dragons

[1:00:13] for some reason.

[1:00:15] It's Choose Your Own Book Club, a Choose Your Own Adventure podcast.

[1:00:19] New episodes of Choose Your Own Book Club drop bi-weekly, so make your mother proud

[1:00:25] and try new things, and maybe call her more.

[1:00:28] So listen to Choose Your Own Book Club on all podcast platforms.

[1:00:33] You there, have you considered listening to the Beef and Dairy Network, an award-winning

[1:00:41] comedy show in the form of a newsletter podcast for the beef and dairy industries?

[1:00:44] Well, maybe you should, and why don't you try our most recent episode, episode 99, which

[1:00:48] features American man Paul F. Tompkins playing Queen Elizabeth II's former personal beef

[1:00:53] sommelier.

[1:00:54] Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and I, laying on the floor of her bedroom, just helplessly

[1:01:02] laughing till tears run down our faces as corgis are jumping on us, over us, licking

[1:01:07] us.

[1:01:08] That is a day that I will treasure forever, until I am executed.

[1:01:12] Find the show at MaximumFun.org.

[1:01:14] I hope there's beef in heaven.

[1:01:15] Hey there, beautiful people.

[1:01:17] I'm Jarrett Hill.

[1:01:18] And I'm Trayvon Anderson, and we want to know, have you ever had mixed feelings about the

[1:01:22] things that you love?

[1:01:23] Ooh, maybe about the things that you hate?

[1:01:26] Then Fanti is the show for you.

[1:01:28] Fanti is the podcast for all those complex and complicado conversations about the gray

[1:01:32] areas in our lives.

[1:01:34] You might have conflicting feelings about Kamala Harris, or propaganda, or interracial

[1:01:39] friending.

[1:01:40] Mm-hmm.

[1:01:41] That's all right, because we do too, and we get into it every single Thursday.

[1:01:45] Catch this slay-worthy audio at MaximumFun.org.

[1:01:48] That's MaximumFun.org slash Fanti.

[1:01:51] That's F-A-N-T-I.

[1:01:53] Come get all this goo-goo.

[1:01:54] Or this great gray.

[1:01:56] We get letters here at the Flophouse from listeners like you, particularly if you're

[1:02:02] the one who wrote these letters.

[1:02:03] Then it really is from listeners like you, the one most like you in the world.

[1:02:09] And this first one is-

[1:02:10] You know what?

[1:02:11] You remind me of you.

[1:02:12] Everything about you reminds me of you.

[1:02:14] Classic Groucho.

[1:02:16] Except you.

[1:02:17] Except you.

[1:02:18] This first one is from Melissa.

[1:02:20] Letter that is.

[1:02:21] Hello, Floppers.

[1:02:22] Is this a letter?

[1:02:23] I recently learned-

[1:02:24] I've been doing this for 16 years.

[1:02:29] I recently learned that my neighbor is a self-published book author, and he gave me a copy of his

[1:02:34] latest book, Patron Saints of the Living Dead.

[1:02:38] I was initially confused because the book treats voodoo and zombies as historical facts,

[1:02:42] but when Dr. Henry Jones Jr. was mentioned as a real person, I figured out that the book

[1:02:47] was pulling characters from various films and creating a relatively cohesive universe

[1:02:51] from them.

[1:02:52] A great Anno Dracula.

[1:02:56] And I understood almost none of the references and still enjoyed the pulpy fiction of mad

[1:03:00] scientists creating zombies.

[1:03:02] My question is this.

[1:03:04] What is your favorite zombie flick, and do you prefer zombies to be created by an infectious

[1:03:09] bite or by the science and magic of a zombie master?

[1:03:14] Thanks for flopping, Melissa.

[1:03:18] I best know the George Romero-style zombie, and I'm less familiar with sort of the drawing

[1:03:26] on voodoo folklore zombie.

[1:03:30] So I don't know if it's a preference, but it's what I'm most used to, and my favorite

[1:03:35] of those is Return of the Living Dead, sort of the punk rock zombie comedy.

[1:03:42] That has the most full frontal on it, too.

[1:03:44] It also has the most full frontal, although reports vary over whether that's a Merkin.

[1:03:49] What do I have to say?

[1:03:52] I don't know.

[1:03:53] Because you're the host of The Merkin Report with me, Dan McCoy.

[1:03:56] Merkin Muffly.

[1:03:57] McCoy on Merkins.

[1:04:00] They're like, why?

[1:04:02] Ever since Clear Channel bought our local television news station, we've had to run

[1:04:06] these Merkin Reports with Dan McCoy, McCoy on Merkins.

[1:04:09] I don't like it.

[1:04:10] Shirking to Merkins, jerking to Merkins.

[1:04:14] This is time we should be spending talking about local important issues, but instead

[1:04:17] it has to be this national Merkin coverage.

[1:04:20] My bosses are trying to get me to start shirking the Merkin, and I want you to call in and

[1:04:27] tell them that you want more Merkin Reports.

[1:04:29] Wow, that was weird.

[1:04:32] I like that movie a lot.

[1:04:36] I've ruined everyone's opinion of me.

[1:04:39] No, no, Dan, our opinion of you is very low.

[1:04:43] It's okay.

[1:04:44] In a more traditional zombie mode, I like I Walked With A Zombie.

[1:04:52] Elliot Kinn, is that from the 40s?

[1:04:54] Yeah, that's from the 40s, of the Val Lewton-produced RKO horrors from the 40s, yeah.

[1:05:01] A great one.

[1:05:02] What do you guys think?

[1:05:04] My favorite movie, zombie movie, is probably Dead Alive or Braindead, depending on what

[1:05:13] country you watch it in.

[1:05:14] Peter Jackson's foray into zombie cinema.

[1:05:18] Splatter comedy.

[1:05:19] It is.

[1:05:20] Oh, boy.

[1:05:21] Swamity.

[1:05:22] It is gross.

[1:05:23] Do you like fake blood?

[1:05:24] Because this movie's got a lot of it.

[1:05:26] Do you like someone eating porridge that part of an ear has fallen into?

[1:05:30] It's very gross.

[1:05:32] It's rich and creamy, and it also, you know, it's a beautiful story of a son coming to

[1:05:37] grips with his overbearing mother.

[1:05:40] It's really wonderful.

[1:05:41] Yeah.

[1:05:42] And now, in that one, it's the bite comes from being bitten by a monkey, right?

[1:05:45] Yeah.

[1:05:46] Zombie, yeah.

[1:05:47] Yep.

[1:05:48] So, I, you know, Dan mentioned the Romero movies earlier.

[1:05:51] I've seen, I've watched the zombie stuff far and wide, and I think, to me, it is still

[1:05:56] the Romero stuff that I like the best.

[1:05:57] I still love the original Night of the Living Dead.

[1:06:00] I love a lot of the Living Dead movies from that series.

[1:06:04] They can get a little uneven at times, but Night, Dawn, and Day are still three movies

[1:06:09] that I think are great, and it's hard for me to think of any that surpass that.

[1:06:13] And I prefer an infectious bite causing it, rather than there being some kind of zombie

[1:06:17] master, because things are scarier to me when they're kind of out of control, when it's

[1:06:22] just a chaotic system that you're up against, or an overwhelming thing, rather than, like,

[1:06:26] a single villain.

[1:06:27] I remember so well how disappointed I was in Game of Thrones when they revealed that

[1:06:32] all the White Walkers were controlled by just a dude, like, just this king of the White

[1:06:37] Walkers.

[1:06:38] Oh, is that what happens?

[1:06:39] I haven't seen it.

[1:06:40] That's in the show, right?

[1:06:41] Sorry.

[1:06:42] In the TV show, there's, like, I don't know, in the books, I don't believe there was ever

[1:06:43] any indication of this, but in the TV show, there's just, like, a king of the White Walkers,

[1:06:48] and they kill him, and all the White Walkers disappear, and it's like, oh, well, that was

[1:06:51] lame.

[1:06:52] So, I like it when it's, like, I like it when, instead of there being a person that you can

[1:06:57] defeat, it's just a lot of creatures crawling around, and they're not fast, but they might

[1:07:02] overwhelm you, because there's so many of them, and you're going to get tired.

[1:07:05] My pushback is, I like when the person controlling them is not doing a very good job, i.e., reanimator.

[1:07:11] Yes, well, that's true.

[1:07:13] I mean, that is kind of like the center of the Venn diagram, where they're being controlled,

[1:07:17] but there's still a chaotic force, yeah.

[1:07:21] This next letter is from...

[1:07:22] The worst of the zombie movies is deanimator, where he fails to get the zombies back to

[1:07:26] life, yeah.

[1:07:27] Yeah, it's just a bunch of static shots of corpses on gurneys.

[1:07:33] Yeah, and my favorite, actually, my favorite one is deanimator, the one about the scientist

[1:07:37] who created Dan.

[1:07:38] Oh!

[1:07:39] I call him Dad.

[1:07:44] This is from...

[1:07:45] Using cutting-edge genetic science, he was able to fertilize an egg, which eventually

[1:07:49] gestated into Dan.

[1:07:50] Well, I wouldn't just call my dad my creator if I was literally...

[1:07:56] Anyway, I don't want to...

[1:07:57] No, you have two creators.

[1:07:58] You have two creators.

[1:07:59] Yes, yes.

[1:08:00] At three, if you count God.

[1:08:01] Let's give my mom the credit, or the blame, depending on how you feel about the things

[1:08:06] I said earlier about merkins.

[1:08:09] This is from MontyLastNameWithheld, who writes, hello, peaches.

[1:08:14] I just saw Henry VIII in beautiful...

[1:08:16] Oh, sorry, I didn't...

[1:08:17] Sorry, I said it wrong.

[1:08:18] I also saw Henry VIII in beautiful Ashland.

[1:08:22] Oh, really?

[1:08:23] Perhaps around the same time as Elliot.

[1:08:26] We got cheap seats at a 90-degree angle from the stage, which let us see a lot of theatercraft

[1:08:32] we wouldn't have otherwise.

[1:08:35] Also saw just how far the spittle of the actors projected, which is less fun in retrospect.

[1:08:41] It occurred to me...

[1:08:42] This is where we disagree.

[1:08:45] It occurred to me that that sort of look behind the scenes is very controlled in movies, appearing

[1:08:50] as special features or commentary tracks.

[1:08:53] If you could have that kind of behind-the-scenes perspective on any movie, which would it be?

[1:08:59] Yours, MontyLastNameWithheld.

[1:09:04] When I said this to you guys, I kind of opened it up to just people like, you know, if you

[1:09:08] had sort of a full access backstage, like if you could roam around, whatever, however

[1:09:15] you want to take it.

[1:09:16] But I don't know.

[1:09:17] What do you think?

[1:09:18] I've got to think about this because I forgot I was going to ask you this question.

[1:09:23] So what I'm going to say is, this is, I think, under the influence of...

[1:09:26] I've been listening to a lot of episodes of the Marx Brothers Council podcast, which is

[1:09:29] a great podcast by the Marx Brothers.

[1:09:31] And they've really put this...

[1:09:34] Something they talk about a lot is wanting to see how they put their work together and

[1:09:38] want to see what it's like when they're on stage and things like that.

[1:09:41] And it's really put this excitement in me over the idea that I will never have fulfilled

[1:09:45] because these sources don't exist of what would it be like to be on set, seeing the

[1:09:49] Marx Brothers, creating a movie and kind of crafting that material, but especially in

[1:09:53] their early movies when this was a new thing for them and they were coming off of this

[1:09:57] big Broadway success and they were...

[1:10:00] really at the top of their game in terms of being innovative and exciting comedy figures.

[1:10:04] And it dovetails with, I don't know if you guys watched Get Back, the Peter Jackson,

[1:10:09] speaking of Peter Jackson again, the Peter Jackson Beatles miniseries.

[1:10:13] Yes, I did.

[1:10:13] But I really loved it. But what it mean, but I want, I wanted that kind of nonstop

[1:10:20] kind of fly on the wall access to exactly the same thing to the Marx Brothers. I want to see

[1:10:24] what it was like to be around them when they're working. And I remember when it was over,

[1:10:27] I was talking to my wife about it and I was like, I want to see that for the Marx Brothers.

[1:10:32] I want to see that for like Marvel in the 1960s and just watching what it was like for those

[1:10:37] people to work together on these things. So I really wish I could have just kind of like

[1:10:40] hung around and watched the Marx Brothers doing, you know, coconuts or animal crackers or,

[1:10:44] you know, one of their early movies.

[1:10:46] You know, having thought like the thing that comes to mind from what you said just now is

[1:10:53] I would like to see the Muppet movie where like there's a combination of like those performers,

[1:10:58] those special performers with these characters. I love seeing them,

[1:11:04] you know, how they operate, how they like would talk to each other as the characters.

[1:11:09] You know, you see these outtakes that are very funny. It's just like

[1:11:12] them staying in character, goofing around, but also like just the technical challenge of like

[1:11:17] how do they do these various things? How do you make a frog ride a bicycle?

[1:11:20] That's all puppets. Yeah, and I think that's part of the interest of it.

[1:11:25] This wouldn't be my choice, but I think that I thought of it because of like the theatricality

[1:11:30] of it. Something like Russian Arc where they're like, let's do it all in one take,

[1:11:35] being like on the side and be like, OK, well, what goes into that, you know?

[1:11:40] So that you can sneeze during the first and second takes and they're like,

[1:11:44] all right, we're 95 minutes into the movie. I guess we got to go back to one.

[1:11:48] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think mine is is pretty obvious. I'm going to bring bring up our old

[1:11:55] pal Peter Jackson again and say the Lord of the Rings movies. Oh, what I wouldn't give

[1:12:00] to have been in Middle Earth during that time. It just obviously there's a ton of

[1:12:07] behind the scenes footage on the extended version discs, which I'm assuming are still in some of the

[1:12:15] I don't know if in the various physical media they still package it with all that.

[1:12:19] But all the all the behind the scenes stuff so cool. And like, obviously, it looks like it was

[1:12:25] hard, but so much stuff was like built for it. And there were so many extras, many of whom were

[1:12:30] not treated very well. And that's too bad. But yeah, there's just like there's something kind

[1:12:34] of special about that movie because it feels it's obviously something that, you know,

[1:12:38] is never we're not going to get a movie made like that anymore.

[1:12:41] No. And combining similarly combining that with Dan's Muppet thing, I hadn't thought about this

[1:12:46] for but to be on the set of The Dark Crystal would have been. Oh, yeah. Wow. To see to see

[1:12:50] them similarly to see them operating those puppets, see them like see people in those

[1:12:55] costumes and make it walking around to just live in that world for a little bit would be super

[1:12:58] exciting. And watching and watching people problem solve and work around and figure out the way to

[1:13:03] make those things happen. You got to assume not every Gartham worked every time. No, no.

[1:13:10] So let's do the last thing we usually do on the show, which is recommend things. Now, normally,

[1:13:17] again, if the strike wasn't going on, we would recommend maybe new movies or any movies that

[1:13:22] we'd seen. But now we're opening up recommendations to just sort of whatever to to not be promoting

[1:13:30] maybe stuff we don't want to at this time. I'm going to recommend a book.

[1:13:36] Uh, it's like a movie in your mind. It's like a movie in your mind. Well, you know what? If you're

[1:13:41] not watching movies, maybe because of the strike, maybe read about them. The book I wanted to

[1:13:46] recommend was Cameraman Buster Keaton, the dawn of cinema and the invention of the 20th century.

[1:13:52] I had had this book on my Amazon wish list for a long time. And then the blank check Buster Keaton

[1:14:03] episode that had Dana Stevens on inspired me to be like, you know what? No one's going to buy me

[1:14:09] this, at least not anytime soon. I'll get it. I'll read it. And I'll I'll like it. It's a Dana

[1:14:16] Stevens has been a lifelong fan of Buster Keaton. She did a lot of amazing research into not just

[1:14:27] sort of the story of his life, but about how his life intersected with the technical changes

[1:14:36] of just the world in general and moviemaking in particular. And it's just a really engaging

[1:14:43] thing to read if you have any interest in that topic. Last time I recommended tank tops,

[1:14:49] but unfortunately today I think I'm actually going to recommend a movie. I hope that's okay.

[1:14:53] I'm going to recommend an older movie. I'm going to recommend watching some newer movies made me

[1:14:59] want to go back and rewatch the films of Brian De Palma, a filmmaker who I'd seen bits here and

[1:15:05] there, but I feel like there's large portions of his filmography I hadn't really explored.

[1:15:11] So I went back and watched Dressed to Kill, which is a very sleazy New York thriller

[1:15:18] featuring Michael Caine. And it's, yeah, it's, it's like a great, like sleazy, gross, giallo

[1:15:30] thriller that is, yeah, I mean, it has such a sense of place. And it also is like grimy in a

[1:15:38] way that, you know, you're not going to, you're not going to see anymore because it certainly

[1:15:42] doesn't deal with issues of mental health or, or, or gender identity. It's not sensitive,

[1:15:54] but it's, it's beautifully made and it's, it's a, it's a good thriller. Yeah. Dressed to Kill.

[1:16:02] And I'm also going to recommend a movie. I'm going to recommend an old movie,

[1:16:04] but an even older movie than Stu recommended. I'm going to recommend a comedy from 1934 that's

[1:16:10] called Sing and Like It. And it's a very goofy movie. This is very much the second half of a

[1:16:17] double bill, most likely because the big stars in it are Zazu Pitts, Nat Pendleton, Pearl Kelton,

[1:16:25] Edward Everett Horton. The romantic interest of the, of the main female lead is John Qualen,

[1:16:30] who Dan would know best as the prisoner in His Girl Friday that they're hiding in a desk,

[1:16:35] the production for use guy. But it's the story, Zazu Pitts plays a woman who works in a bank,

[1:16:41] but is singing a song about loving your mother in a, in the bank amateur talent show. A gangster

[1:16:47] overhears her in the middle of a heist. The gangster, a gangster overhears her singing it

[1:16:51] and becomes so obsessed with this song and bringing it to a larger audience that he essentially

[1:16:56] hijacks the production of a Broadway show and forces them through threats to include her and

[1:17:01] make her the star. And I especially want to highlight the actor Ned Sparks, who is just a

[1:17:07] deadpan gangster type that he was in a lot of 30s movies, but he's just very funny.

[1:17:11] And everything he says, he's always like around it. He has a cigar in his mouth. He's always like,

[1:17:16] yeah, I'll say like, anyway, that's his tone every time. But I think it's hilarious. I will

[1:17:20] warn you, there is one joke in the movie about the gangster giving his, his girlfriend two black

[1:17:27] eyes. That joke did not go over well with me when I was watching it. But otherwise,

[1:17:32] it's just a really funny movie. There's a lot of funny, uh, just back and forth repartee.

[1:17:36] It's super silly. And by the end of it, it has barely held together as a film. It's less than

[1:17:41] an hour and 20 minutes long. Uh, but it sounds perfect. It's very fun. It's called sing and

[1:17:47] like it. And I saw it on the criterion channel, so it may still be available there.

[1:17:52] Well, uh, that's it for this episode. As always, uh, check out the website, uh,

[1:17:59] flop house podcast.com. If you're interested in flop TV, there's links there. You could also just

[1:18:04] go directly, uh, what is it? The flop house dot simple ticks.com. If you go to the flop house

[1:18:10] dot simple ticks.com, our next episode is coming up on again. You have one week to watch our last

[1:18:17] episode. Our next episode comes out September 9th and we're doing the cool world. Uh, but yeah,

[1:18:25] if you, if you can't remember that, just go to our website and there'll be links there too.

[1:18:29] Uh, thank you to Alex Smith, our producer, uh, for all the great work he does. He goes by the name

[1:18:37] Howell Dottie on various socials. He has his own podcast fast track, which is very good.

[1:18:44] If you want to check that out, uh, if you want to go over to maximum fun.org, our podcast network,

[1:18:50] there are a lot of other great shows on the network. I'm sure you would find something

[1:18:54] else that you liked if you'd give them a sample. Uh, thank you for listening. You know what?

[1:19:01] The only way we can really grow the show honestly is through you. So if you know people who are

[1:19:10] just raring to listen to a funny podcast about movies, maybe recommend us to them, uh, leave us

[1:19:16] a review on iTunes or elsewhere, a positive one, please. That would be nice. Uh, keep being you,

[1:19:23] you know, you're trying to just keep on trucking. You know, if you're great, if you're, if you're a

[1:19:27] bummer, don't do you should change. Yeah. If, if you, if you drive a truck, keep on trucking,

[1:19:31] whatever you do, keep on doing it. If it's not hurting people. Yeah. If it's murder, don't

[1:19:36] keep on stopping. Stop murdering. If you're hitting people with a truck and you're like,

[1:19:41] I'm maximum overdrive. Don't keep on trucking. Also there's a maximum overdrive. There were

[1:19:45] no drivers in those trucks. The trucks that you're evil. Yeah. Uh, the green goblin,

[1:19:50] the villain in that from what I recall. Well, the green goblins truck.

[1:19:56] Anyway, uh, thank you for listening for the flop house. I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:20:00] I've been Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kaelin.

[1:20:03] Bye!

[1:20:14] Let's do a count-off, count-off, let's count it off, count it off,

[1:20:18] let's count it off, let's count it off, count it down, count it up,

[1:20:21] count it round, count it, count it, count it, count it, count-off.

[1:20:25] One. Two.

[1:20:28] Three.

[1:20:30] That was a count-off, count-off, we did it just to count-off,

[1:20:34] countin' all around the town, countin' up, countin' down,

[1:20:37] countin' off, countin' on, countin' in, countin' out,

[1:20:40] countin' up, countin' clout, countin' bout, countin' snout.

[1:20:43] Countin'!

[1:20:45] Okay.

[1:20:46] Maximum Fun.

[1:20:48] A worker-owned network.

[1:20:49] Of artist-owned shows.

[1:20:51] Supported.

[1:20:52] Directly.

[1:20:53] By you.

Ep.#402 - The Net

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