Wuthering Heights

Stuart Wellington

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Wuthering Heights.

[0:04] Wrong, Dan. You forgot the quotation marks. Do it again.

Dan McCoy

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

[0:35] I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:36] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

Dan McCoy

[0:39] There's something a little different about Elliot today.

[0:42] I can't put my finger on it.

Elliott Kalan

[0:44] Or perhaps, maybe if I talk slightly more, you'll understand what's different about me today.

Stuart Wellington

[0:49] I think it's because Elliot is drawing attention to the fact that when this episode releases,

[0:54] Stuart is going to be floating down the Danube River, which crosses Germany.

[1:01] I actually didn't know that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03] I'm just trying to acclimate Stuart to what he's going to hear when he is in Europe.

[1:07] Yeah, because they all talk a little like this, very coy.

[1:11] Oh, I have a little secret or surprise.

[1:13] Well, it's good to know.

Dan McCoy

[1:15] I'd hate to look like an idiot over there.

[1:20] And, of course, what's more Wuthering Heights than German?

Elliott Kalan

[1:26] A slightly sinister German accent.

[1:29] What could be more?

Dan McCoy

[1:32] Hey, everyone who's listening.

[1:34] This is the Flophouse.

[1:35] It's a podcast where we watch, we used to say a bad movie, a movie that critics or audiences rejected.

[1:43] This is an interesting case because this was a huge financial success, actually.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47] An enormous hit, especially for a movie like this nowadays.

[1:50] This was a huge hit.

Stuart Wellington

[1:51] It was polarizing, critically.

[1:54] Let's say that.

[1:55] I would say the pre-release press was very positive, a lot of which turned out to be paid advertisement.

[2:02] Oh, really?

[2:03] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:03] Now, I would say, though, that the success of this movie would point me towards an appetite for this kind of movie

[2:10] that is so not being met by Hollywood that whenever a movie comes out like this,

[2:14] I think it will do well for a while until people get tired of them.

[2:18] But because I don't think – because I know a lot of people who went to see this movie opening weekend,

[2:23] and then when I talked to them right afterwards, we're not satisfied with it.

[2:27] We're not really happy with it.

Dan McCoy

[2:29] There are a lot of appetites not being met by Hollywood right now.

[2:32] It would seem that appetites for most kinds of films are not being met.

[2:36] It's true.

[2:36] It's unusual.

[2:38] But especially –

[2:38] An industry dedicated to not making stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[2:41] I mean it was a bad thing when the Hollywood studios realized they could probably make more money if they made fewer movies as opposed to more movies for more people.

[2:50] For less movies.

[2:51] Yeah, exactly.

[2:52] But it is – but especially because – and we'll get into it.

[2:54] Like this is the kind of movie that Hollywood used to excel at.

[2:58] Nobody could make this kind of movie as well as the Hollywood Dream Factory.

[3:02] Big budget.

[3:02] Yep.

[3:03] Costume drama.

[3:04] Big stars.

[3:05] Big passions.

[3:07] Big screen.

[3:09] Yep.

[3:09] A big guy.

[3:10] Jacob Elordi is tall.

[3:11] He's a very tall man.

[3:12] He's a biggin.

[3:13] I started calling – I was writing this with my wife and we started calling him Timothy Ptolemy because he looks like if Timothy Ptolemy was kind of stretched out on a rack.

[3:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[3:20] Like he took a mouse and put him on a stretcher.

[3:23] Exactly.

[3:24] Don't do that, please.

[3:24] Don't do that.

Dan McCoy

[3:25] Don't.

[3:26] Not even for science.

[3:27] No.

[3:27] What would you be learning?

[3:29] Oh, mice don't survive.

[3:30] Yeah, well, I think we can figure that out.

[3:32] Yeah, it's a stretchability of mice.

[3:35] Have you guys –

Elliott Kalan

[3:35] I'm forgetting the elastability of mice.

[3:39] This is what you're studying?

[3:40] Oh, yes.

[3:40] That's what my PhD is on.

[3:41] The varying levels of elasticity in mice.

[3:44] What have you found?

[3:45] There is none.

[3:47] But I got to keep testing just in case.

[3:49] I will say.

[3:49] Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[3:52] They're actually pretty good at squeezing into gaps that are much smaller than you would expect them to.

[3:57] That's very true.

[3:57] That's flexibility.

[3:58] I have some kind of gross stories I can tell you about off episode.

Elliott Kalan

[4:02] Yeah, I don't know if I want to know about what gaps you didn't think a mouse would squeeze into.

Stuart Wellington

[4:06] You suddenly found a mouse in.

[4:09] So, Elliot, let me – I just sent you an email.

[4:12] Don't open it in front of your children.

Dan McCoy

[4:14] Okay, you got it.

[4:16] Before we start, I want to say that –

[4:18] Dan, we're like five minutes in.

[4:20] Well, before we start actually talking about Wuthering Heights.

[4:23] About those heights that weather, yeah.

[4:25] I recently read the novel for the first time in part because –

[4:29] The novelization by Alan Dean Foster.

[4:30] No, no.

[4:31] The Bronte novel.

[4:33] Brontesaurus.

[4:35] Yeah.

[4:36] In part because I knew that we were thinking about doing this.

[4:40] And I'm like, Stuart can't be the only one who does homework for this, you know?

[4:44] He watched all those Silent Hills.

[4:45] I'm going to read –

[4:46] Thank you.

[4:47] I'm going to read Wuthering Heights.

Elliott Kalan

[4:48] You're going to do the –

[4:49] Similar levels of commitment.

[4:51] The literary equivalent of the Silent Hill movies, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

[4:55] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[4:56] Actually, I – and this is important because I – this is a gap in my knowledge.

[5:02] I have not read Wuthering Heights.

[5:04] I'm more of a Jane Eyre guy, but that's a different Bronte.

[5:07] That's a Bronte of a different source.

[5:08] That's a different Bronte.

Dan McCoy

[5:09] I had read Jane Eyre by a different Brontesaurus.

Elliott Kalan

[5:13] That's the – that's by Charlotte Apatosaurus.

Dan McCoy

[5:18] Elliot, have you read Wuthering Heights?

Elliott Kalan

[5:20] No, I have not read Wuthering Heights.

[5:22] My wife has read it more than once.

[5:24] And so I was watching this with her and she was pointing out to me all the stuff that was different.

[5:28] Yeah, it is.

[5:28] She was the Leonardo DiCaprio meme.

[5:30] So I felt like she was my Sherpa through this.

Dan McCoy

[5:32] It is wildly different.

[5:33] It is – as Stuart pointed out in a part of the intro that may or may not have made it in, there are quotation marks.

[5:41] Oh, you did – you said it.

[5:42] That was the whole intro.

[5:43] Yeah, like the quotation marks are huge in this.

[5:48] It is, quote, Wuthering Heights.

[5:50] It is a version.

[5:51] Wuthering Heights-ish.

Elliott Kalan

[5:52] It should have been called Wuthering Heights-ish.

[5:54] That would have been a great name for it, to be honest.

[5:56] Because there's a – I think this movie – well, we'll get to it in our final judgment some more time.

[5:59] Like this movie is looking to explode and kind of like extremify Wuthering Heights in that Emerald Fennell style.

[6:08] And I find that it consistently does not achieve that in a way that made an impact on me, to be honest.

[6:16] Yeah.

[6:16] But at the same time, got to admit, it looks great.

[6:18] This was – it's not – I don't love it as a movie, but it would be a great magazine spread.

[6:21] Those outfits?

[6:22] Yes.

[6:22] That decor?

Stuart Wellington

[6:22] There's a reason why this trailer was a huge success.

[6:25] And also why the movie – I would say in large part why the movie was a huge success.

[6:30] Yeah.

[6:30] Was that you have like maximalist imagery.

[6:33] You have two big stars.

[6:34] And you have a soundtrack dominated by one of the premier pop stars of the age who's also a huge cinephile.

[6:41] Yeah, yeah.

[6:41] Exactly, yeah.

[6:42] So I can see why the trailer would – like is super successful.

[6:47] And the trailer is great.

[6:48] Like it got me excited for it.

[6:51] But then as you see that – the content from that trailer like drawn out into a larger film, I – not to spoil things, I don't think it totally works.

[6:59] Now I do have to –

[7:00] Well, it's like –

[7:01] Yeah, go on.

[7:01] Sorry.

[7:02] I didn't mean to –

[7:03] I was just going to say before I go into the summary, I do have to point out that I am in the – I'm starting the recovery stage of a case of strep throat.

[7:13] So you may find my voice a little bit sexy.

[7:16] And if you find people that are very sick sexy, maybe this movie is for you.

Elliott Kalan

[7:22] So if you're listening to this in a public place and you feel the urge to masturbate to Stewart's voice, please find – get off the bus or subway you're on.

[7:29] Find a private place to do it.

Dan McCoy

[7:30] Find some heights that are wuthering.

Elliott Kalan

[7:32] And you just find a private place.

[7:34] Just wuther those heights.

[7:35] Just wuther.

[7:36] Go.

[7:36] Find yourself a blasted heath.

[7:37] Take a blasted heath.

[7:38] Take a blasted heath across you.

[7:39] A blasted heath.

[7:40] Find yourself a blasted heath and blast on it.

[7:43] Uh-huh.

[7:44] Was that a blasted heath?

Stuart Wellington

[7:45] It is now.

[7:46] Yeah.

[7:46] It is now, yeah.

[7:50] Please.

[7:51] Yeah, the Hound of the Blastervilles.

Elliott Kalan

[7:53] Oh, man.

[7:54] There's got to be a futuristic Sherlock Holmes in space called the Hound of the Blastervilles, right?

[7:58] If there isn't, somebody make that right now.

[8:00] Somebody's fucking up.

[8:00] Space lock Holmes in the Hound of the Blastervilles.

Stuart Wellington

[8:04] Dan, stop the podcast.

[8:06] Dan, you go write this shit.

[8:07] Do it.

[8:07] Actually, airlock Holmes.

[8:08] DM it right now.

[8:09] That was what I was –

[8:10] Airlock Holmes.

Elliott Kalan

[8:11] It should be airlock Holmes in the Hound of the Blastervilles.

[8:13] Dan, this is what you need to be working on next.

[8:15] Yeah.

[8:15] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[8:16] And Watson is a robot.

Elliott Kalan

[8:19] Oh, yeah.

[8:19] It's an acronym.

[8:20] We just gift wrapped that shit.

Stuart Wellington

[8:22] Yeah, Watson is like this –

[8:23] W period A period.

[8:24] It's like wireless Android serving blah, blah, blah, blah.

[8:27] I can't tell the rest.

[8:28] Yeah, yeah.

[8:29] Yeah, but you don't have to do everything.

[8:31] Dan can madly arrest the shit.

[8:32] Dan, I can tell you, you're writing this, Dan.

[8:33] You do the work.

Elliott Kalan

[8:34] Okay, come on.

[8:35] I'm not going to do the work for you.

Stuart Wellington

[8:37] Okay.

[8:38] So the movie – a movie about romance and passion, of course, opens with the hanging of a criminal.

[8:46] Yep.

[8:46] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[8:46] This is when the movie is making a real strong case that this is not your daddy's or your granddaddy's Wuthering Heights.

[8:53] And this is a – I would say this scene is a statement of purpose.

[8:57] And once you've seen it, I feel like you maybe don't need to see the rest of the movie.

[9:00] Like this scene is basically doing the rest of the movie once.

Stuart Wellington

[9:03] Because what's going on when they're hanging the criminal, Stuart?

[9:05] Well, we have a blank screen and we are hearing the sounds of like taut fabric and grunts and like rustling.

[9:15] There was nearly 30-odd foot of grunt that I had.

[9:17] And you're like, what are you going to do with all that grunt?

[9:22] What's that even going on?

[9:22] You're not even going to use most of that grunt.

Elliott Kalan

[9:24] It's just going to sit around in your garage for years.

Stuart Wellington

[9:27] Well, so it very much – the movie begins and you're like, are there people fucking or is somebody dying?

[9:33] And of course, there's a person being hung.

[9:35] But the look on the faces of the crowd, it could be either.

[9:39] They're really into it.

Dan McCoy

[9:40] Yeah, particularly a nun who appears to be in ecstasy.

[9:44] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[9:45] And the people in the crowd just start having sex right in the town square, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[9:50] It's like Ken Russell's The Devil.

[9:52] You might have flipped the channels.

[9:54] So – and this is where we start meeting our characters.

[9:58] So I'm going to kind of jump ahead here to the idea that we are going to meet the people

[10:03] who populate Wuthering Heights.

[10:05] Wuthering Heights is the name of a dilapidated manor house.

[10:10] And one of the people that is currently watching this hanging is Kathy, a young girl who is

[10:14] very into watching a guy die.

[10:17] Her father is Mr. Earnshaw, who is a drunk and a gambler and kind of a lout who is driven

[10:25] by very – he has some impulse control issues.

[10:29] Played by Doc Martin himself, Ewan Mitchell.

[10:33] Oh, really?

[10:33] By a pair of shoes?

Elliott Kalan

[10:35] No, Doc Martin himself, Martin Clunas.

[10:37] I was looking – I suddenly glanced at the wrong name in the – do you guys know the

[10:40] show Doc Martin where he's like a grumpy doctor?

[10:43] I'm aware of it.

Dan McCoy

[10:43] My parents love it.

[10:45] Yeah, it's a thing that my parents have watched.

Elliott Kalan

[10:47] My mom loves it.

[10:48] It's pretty good.

[10:49] It's a pretty fun show.

[10:50] Okay.

[10:50] And it was very fun.

[10:51] And in that show, he is the guy who's like – he's kind of a grump and he's like – doesn't

[10:55] like all these other characters.

[10:56] So it was very funny to see him as the guy sliding into decadence and just being a disgusting

[11:02] gremlin of a man.

[11:03] Yeah.

[11:04] You know, in this one.

[11:04] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[11:04] I liked his performance a lot.

[11:06] It's very like – it's very Klaus Kinski, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[11:09] We also have Nellie who is kind of like a lady's maid who has been taken in by the family

[11:19] to look after Kathy.

Dan McCoy

[11:21] Yeah.

[11:21] Well, in this – so in this version, she's a companion to Kathy.

[11:25] Yep.

[11:26] She's more a straight-up housekeeper in the book.

[11:31] She's not the like bastard child of anyone.

[11:33] And here she's supposed to be like actually like the daughter of someone important who

[11:39] has been like kind of disowned or what – like that doesn't really figure into anything.

[11:42] There's also like this weird implication that maybe she's in love with Kathy that doesn't

[11:47] really get explored.

Stuart Wellington

[11:49] There's a little bit of that.

[11:50] Yeah.

[11:50] In the movie, there's a little bit of that and there's also a little bit of an idea that

[11:53] she kind of is struggling for – to maintain her station or better, to survive outside,

[12:02] to like her namesake, be like a bird.

[12:04] She wants to fly away.

[12:05] Her namesake, of course, Nellie Furtado.

[12:07] Yes, of course.

[12:08] To be clear, I'm saying –

[12:08] That's who the character was named after, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[12:10] To be clear, I'm saying that the film appears to add a tiny bit of lesbian subtext.

[12:14] There's none of that in the book.

Elliott Kalan

[12:16] I did not pick up on that, but I did pick up on the idea that Nellie kind of like feels

[12:20] a sense of possessiveness over Kathy, maybe if only because if Kathy – without Kathy,

[12:25] she has – she will slip out of this station and just be on her own, poor and out and about.

[12:31] And as we know from every other thing set in 19th century England, if you had – if you

[12:36] did not have money, you were essentially living in slime like a serpent and your teeth fell

[12:42] out and you just were – the best job you could get would be taking un-orphaned babies

[12:47] and slamming their heads against walls.

[12:49] Like that was – that was what it was like in England at the time if you didn't have

[12:52] money, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[12:52] One person we will not be meeting is Kathy's brother who has died in this version.

[12:58] She – he is a big character in the book mostly because the book – like there's a whole

[13:03] second half of the book that's about the children of various characters and how they're caught

[13:09] up in like Catherine Heathcliff's doomed love after Catherine has died.

[13:14] Like she dies – spoiler alert.

[13:16] Like a little bit more than – earlier than midway through the book.

[13:20] But most of the adaptations just like focus on the first half because I guess they're just

[13:25] like this is what people are here for, this love story.

Elliott Kalan

[13:28] And also the story gets complicated and the story gets weirder after that part from what

[13:32] I know of it and that's the – this is a book that I always hear about it and if I want

[13:37] to hear about it as like a progenitor or a part of gothic literature.

[13:40] And like I think the gothic aspect of that is usually removed from the stories.

[13:45] Like the stuff about – I mean eventually in the book Heathcliff is digging up Kathy's

[13:48] body at night, right, to like to spend time with it.

[13:51] And like he talks about how he's done that a couple times and they – I don't know

[13:54] how many adaptations include that stuff in it.

[13:56] They don't want to see the dissolute kind of weird Heathcliff.

[13:59] They want to see the young hot Heathcliff, you know.

Dan McCoy

[14:02] Also –

[14:02] Maybe that was implied in ways I didn't catch.

[14:05] I did know that he would like go and like lie by her grave.

Elliott Kalan

[14:08] But Heathcliff, he is no good and terrorizes the neighborhood.

Stuart Wellington

[14:12] Uh-huh.

[14:13] But we – and it's important you bring up Heathcliff because he is the last major character

[14:17] that lives in Wuthering Heights.

[14:20] Heathcliff is a waif who was I guess assisting his father as like a great – like a corpse

[14:27] picker or something.

[14:28] I don't know what it was.

[14:29] A corpse picker.

[14:30] But he's the only person at the hanging who does not have a smile plastered on his face.

[14:36] And then later that evening, Kathy's father finds him being kicked by his father and adopts

[14:42] him and brings him to Wuthering Heights to be part of the family.

[14:46] So he is kind of Kathy's adoptive brother.

[14:48] Now, this character from my understanding in the book is described as not a tall, handsome

[14:58] white guy, right?

[14:59] He's described as being like –

Dan McCoy

[15:00] It is unclear exactly what his ethnicity is, but he is described as being darker.

[15:06] Like he might be Romani.

[15:08] It's not clear.

[15:09] But there was a whitewashing controversy over Jacob Elordi being Heathcliff.

Elliott Kalan

[15:15] And the – I mean it's – it was not as bad as him playing in Frankenstein a person

[15:19] of color, that color being blue.

[15:21] You know, but the –

[15:22] I mean he's a man of many colors in Frankenstein.

[15:24] That's a dumb joke.

[15:26] But the – I think they do – one of the things they do in this one is that my understanding

[15:30] of the Wuthering Heights story is that Heathcliff really has to feel like an outcast, right?

[15:33] Like there has to be something like so passionately charismatic about him.

[15:37] But you know that – but Kathy knows if she's in a relationship with him, it is unacceptable.

[15:41] It will drag her down.

[15:43] And I feel like this movie – there are times where I'm like, I don't know.

[15:45] Why doesn't Kathy just marry Heathcliff?

[15:46] They live by themselves in this weird old house.

[15:49] They don't seem to interact with anybody else.

[15:51] Who gives a shit?

[15:52] Like just marry him.

[15:53] I don't – he just seems like a dude.

[15:54] I don't know.

[15:55] Just do it.

[15:55] Who cares?

[15:56] Just do it.

Dan McCoy

[15:56] And he also seems much nicer in this.

[15:59] He is a real fucking asshole in the book in a way that like I found very entertaining.

[16:03] Good.

[16:04] He terrorizes the neighborhood.

[16:05] Yeah.

[16:05] I found very entertaining.

[16:06] But I'm like this is the romantic hero that all the ladies are swooning for?

[16:11] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[16:11] He's a bad boy.

[16:12] You just want to reform him, you know?

[16:14] Tame him.

[16:14] Yeah.

[16:15] Then this one, he's not that bad a bad boy.

[16:16] Kathy is like a kind of like – like a real pouty kind of like –

[16:21] She is a classic brat.

[16:24] Yeah.

[16:24] She's a brat.

[16:25] Exactly.

[16:25] And Heathcliff seems to be the one who often is like, Kathy, don't do that.

[16:28] But also this is – and I think this is something that we should just get out of the way.

[16:31] That Margot Robbie – I think she's a great actress.

[16:33] I think she's really wonderful.

[16:35] I can see why they cast her in this.

[16:36] She is not right for this part though.

[16:38] She's like – you don't believe that she is an impressionable young woman.

[16:41] I don't believe that either of these characters, Margot – Keith, Cliff, or Kathy have not had sex before.

[16:46] Like I just – and it's – and that's something I feel like you need to buy from these characters is that they are young and excited by passions they don't understand.

[16:52] And I just didn't – I couldn't believe that from them.

Stuart Wellington

[16:55] Yeah.

[16:55] I mean Margot Robbie is – like this is a crazy thing to say.

[16:58] But I think for this specific role, she is too old.

Elliott Kalan

[17:01] It's crazy because she's not an old – she's not too old for most roles.

[17:04] But when you're – if she's playing a character who's supposed to be in her late teens basically, like she just carries herself like a woman.

[17:10] And why wouldn't she?

[17:11] She is incredibly successful.

[17:13] She knows what she's doing.

[17:14] She produced the biggest movie of – and starred in the biggest movie of what – last year, the year before whenever Barbie came out.

[17:20] Like the – she kind of –

[17:22] It's great in most things.

[17:23] It's great in most things.

[17:24] She kind of has too much – one of the few things in Babylon that I think works is her performance.

[17:28] You know, that was just a slight dig at Dan's love of the movie.

Dan McCoy

[17:32] You know, I'll tell you, I feel so, you know, abused about it at this point that anything positive you say about Babylon is just –

[17:39] I've negged you so hard on Babylon that those few moments where I give you a little bit of sugar on it.

Stuart Wellington

[17:43] It's going to be wild when I watch Babylon and I'm like, Elliot, Dan was right.

Dan McCoy

[17:48] But I think both of them –

[17:49] It's wilder if you're just like, oh, whatever.

[17:50] You know, I'm in the middle.

[17:52] If you're like, yeah, I don't have a feeling about it either way.

Elliott Kalan

[17:53] Turn your brain off.

[17:55] You know, popcorn movie.

[17:55] Forget about it.

[17:57] But I think both of the leads in this movie are just not cast right and it really hurts the movie in a big way.

[18:03] You know, and they're trying their best.

[18:04] I think they're both –

Stuart Wellington

[18:04] This was another one of those movies where part of the promotional tour was how can we make it seem like Jacob Lorty and Margot Robbie were fucking while making this movie even though they are both in relation – or like she was married with a kid.

Elliott Kalan

[18:17] Which also like implies – I'm just going to say it here.

[18:20] We'll talk about it more later.

[18:21] Like a hotter movie than this movie.

[18:23] Yeah.

[18:24] But anyway, we can get into the story.

Stuart Wellington

[18:27] So the Earnshaws adopt Heathcliff basically.

[18:31] He comes to live with them.

[18:34] A dynamic is immediately set up, which is Kathy treats him like he is a pet or like a toy and he will do anything to protect her even if it means sacrificing himself.

[18:50] So he like will – even if she does something that would get her in trouble, he takes the blame for it and thus the physical punishment from her drunkard of a father.

[19:01] And they have –

Dan McCoy

[19:02] By the way, I don't want to keep like doing this too much because, you know, whatever.

[19:07] It's got quotation marks around it.

[19:09] But the dad in the book is just kind of like a dad.

[19:13] Eventually he gets sick and dies.

[19:14] He's not like the drunken wastrel.

[19:16] Well, they've kind of conflated his character with the son who has been written out of this movie.

[19:23] Like later he loses Wuthering Heights to Heathcliff because he has been gambling so much.

[19:29] They've just combined that.

Elliott Kalan

[19:31] I think the – about those quotes, the quotes around the title.

[19:34] Like the thing that I've seen it described as was that Emerald Fennell was getting it – trying to do something like this is what it feels like to be a young girl and reading this book for the first time.

[19:45] Like it's more a vibe of the book than anything else.

[19:47] So that's – so I'm willing to buy all the changes from the story and things like that.

[19:52] But it's – but I just – anyway, we'll get to our –

[19:54] But does the movie work?

[19:55] Let's get to that.

[19:56] Does it really work?

[19:57] Exactly.

Stuart Wellington

[19:58] So they – with that dynamic established, there's already an intense connection that the movie makes you immediately aware of and you know this is – they are in love.

[20:10] Like there's no question.

[20:11] There's no moment like do they kind of like each other?

[20:14] Do they like each other more than friends?

[20:16] No, immediately you're like they are into it.

[20:19] Yeah.

[20:19] Okay.

[20:20] Flash forward.

[20:23] It is an unnumbered amount of years later.

[20:26] Long enough for Margot Robbie to be very grown up and Jacob Lorty to be still pretty grown up.

[20:33] I think they have to fudge the fact.

[20:33] And Nellie is also very grown up.

Elliott Kalan

[20:35] Yes.

[20:36] They're all very – and Nellie is now played by Hong Chao who I just saw in –

[20:39] Who is –

Stuart Wellington

[20:39] Again, Hong Chao is great in things.

[20:42] She's great.

[20:42] Probably her least – her like most thankless role next to The Whale, which is a piece of shit of a movie.

Elliott Kalan

[20:49] There was – I thought – I saw this and then I saw The Sheep Detectives, which she's a supporting character.

[20:54] And I was like I really like her performance in The Sheep Detectives.

[20:57] Like I wish that they gave her more to do in – and she's in a lot of this movie.

[21:01] But they just don't – they don't give her a lot to do other than kind of look disdainfully or disapprovingly at things.

Stuart Wellington

[21:05] You know?

[21:05] Like she's so great in like The Menu.

[21:08] Like she's great in things.

[21:09] Mm-hmm.

[21:10] Okay.

[21:11] So flash forward.

[21:13] Everybody's a little bit grown up.

[21:16] Mr. Earnshaw has left Wuthering Heights a ruin.

[21:20] He is a horrible drunk who has let everything fall apart.

[21:24] Nellie is older, a little bit bitter at her situation.

[21:31] Kathy is brattier than ever.

Elliott Kalan

[21:34] She just – the problem is Kathy keeps trying on bathing suits and not liking the way she looks at them and going,

[21:38] Ack!

Stuart Wellington

Elliott Kalan

[21:41] Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.

[21:43] And Heathcliff is like –

[21:45] What other comic strips can we pull into this movie?

[21:47] What if it really was – they were like, it's Wuthering Heights in quotes and it is the comic strip character Kathy

[21:51] and the comic strip character Heathcliff the cat in a relationship.

[21:56] Would that be better?

[21:56] Maybe a little bit.

Dan McCoy

[21:57] And then they had a happy ending, you know, for the kids.

[22:00] Exactly.

[22:01] Exactly.

[22:01] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[22:01] And then their neighbor moves in Dagwood Bumstead.

[22:06] Uh-oh.

[22:06] They always take it over when he's trying to take a nap.

[22:10] Kathy bothers him.

[22:12] Okay.

[22:13] So – and Heathcliff at this point is like a rugged mountain man with a crazy beard and super long hair.

[22:21] Yeah.

[22:22] And a tall body covered in ropey muscles.

[22:27] If this was a romance novel, it would be described as he has a body that was built from hard work, not bought at the gym.

[22:36] Oh.

[22:36] I mean this is a –

[22:36] Which I'm like, bitch, that's hard work.

[22:39] Yeah.

[22:39] Why are we –

[22:40] Why are we denigrating any kind of effort?

Elliott Kalan

[22:42] Yeah.

[22:43] But you could say that this is not a romance novel but a romantic novel in the old sense of romanticism.

[22:50] So there's kind of like that.

[22:51] Yeah.

[22:52] Okay.

[22:52] So again, the previously established –

[22:55] So do you think – so Dan, in the original book, does Emily Bronte say he had the kind of body that was – that was earned by work, not bought at the gym?

Dan McCoy

[23:01] Uh-huh.

[23:01] Well, I mean she like had a real thing against Crunch Fitness.

[23:06] That's what it was.

[23:07] She wanted to take it down.

[23:08] So yeah.

[23:10] Take it?

[23:10] Yeah.

[23:11] No judgments.

[23:12] That's fucked up.

Stuart Wellington

[23:14] Okay.

[23:14] So – and again, the established dynamic between Heathcliff and Kathy seems to have only extended.

[23:23] Like they are very clearly into each other and they spend a lot of time like running around on the moors, like picking each other up and doing shit like that.

[23:31] You know, romance stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[23:34] I mean to be fair to them, it is a kind of shorthand for romance that's very old-fashioned but they don't do much.

[23:39] But on the same – look where they live.

[23:41] There's nothing but moors.

[23:42] There's nothing to do but climb up a crag and sit there.

Stuart Wellington

[23:46] Like are you telling me these two people haven't experimented yet?

[23:50] There's nothing to do.

Elliott Kalan

[23:51] There's nothing to do and there's nobody around?

[23:54] Yeah.

[23:54] Come see.

[23:55] There's a new thistle.

Stuart Wellington

[23:59] That was what they did.

[24:00] So it's – I think it's – is it around this point where – I actually don't have this part in my notes where Kathy gets mad at –

[24:06] When they go to space?

[24:08] Is this where Kathy gets mad at Heathcliff and goes – she gets mad at Heathcliff and she goes at night.

[24:16] She storms over to the barn that has holes in its roof.

[24:21] Yes.

[24:22] That he lives in.

[24:23] And she goes up to yell at him and she is interrupted by what one of the maids and the stable master having aggressive BDSM sex.

[24:33] Aggressive horse-based sex.

[24:35] Yeah.

[24:35] Horse-based sex.

[24:36] Horse-play sex.

Dan McCoy

[24:37] He is whipping her and –

Stuart Wellington

[24:40] And he puts a bridle in her mouth.

[24:41] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[24:42] And Kathy like watches through like a knot hole from the ceiling and I'm like –

[24:46] Oh, it's not a hole?

[24:47] I thought it was.

[24:48] What is it?

[24:48] This movie has stopped being inspired by Wuthering Heights and has started being inspired by the adaptation of The Scarlet Letter at this point.

[24:56] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[24:57] And this should be a really transgressive sexy scene, right?

[25:02] Uh-huh.

[25:02] But it just like doesn't – it like can't quite get there.

[25:05] It's like you get the idea.

Stuart Wellington

[25:06] Well, first of all, there's very little patience involved.

[25:09] I feel like this movie suffers from a total lack of patience.

[25:12] Yeah.

[25:12] Like there is no – there is not a single moment of foreplay in this movie.

[25:16] And I feel –

[25:16] It is ramming the dong in immediately.

Elliott Kalan

[25:18] And like even with – and even with pornography, I would argue, not that I'm a porn expert, but I've had experiences with it.

[25:24] Oh, okay.

[25:24] Like the anticipation of what's going to happen is often more arousing than the actual thing, right?

[25:31] What's this pizza delivery man doing here?

[25:34] But even just like the first – you see this in movies all the time.

[25:37] I mean certainly as in –

[25:38] The sexiest part of a love scene in a movie is often – in a real movie, not just a porn movie, is often the characters making those first tentative steps towards each other in an intimate way.

[25:47] And then once you get to the actual scenes where it's fake thrusting against each other, you're like, all right, I know what this is.

Dan McCoy

[25:52] Certainly as an older man more in touch with my emotions, I'm like, what's the story here?

[25:57] I need to know what's going on.

[25:59] I can't just see bodies.

[26:01] What's the scenario?

Elliott Kalan

[26:02] What did his stepmom get stuck in?

Dan McCoy

[26:04] Yeah, that's what Dan is wondering.

[26:07] But like, no, it is – you say it has no patience, but the thing that baffles me about this movie and – apologize for jumping ahead a little bit in terms of –

[26:16] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[26:16] Is something about the end credits?

Dan McCoy

[26:19] No, I'm just like giving you an opinion.

Stuart Wellington

[26:20] It's crazy that they gave Jacob Elordi stunt double second billing in the credits.

Dan McCoy

[26:26] What did he even do?

[26:29] I don't even recall any stunts.

[26:31] No, I mean like this movie is two hours and 20 minutes long.

[26:34] As I said, it adapts half of the novel, which is like not much of a story because it's just like, okay, these two people are in love, but they don't get married.

[26:43] And then one of them gets mad about it and then she dies.

[26:47] And it's like there's so much just like – this movie drags so much for me.

[26:53] Yes, it does.

Elliott Kalan

[26:53] Well, I think in a better version of the movie, it would be like in the mood for love, which is an amazing movie.

[27:00] But we're like –

Stuart Wellington

[27:01] In a better version, it would be an amazing movie.

Elliott Kalan

[27:04] But where the – that is a movie that moves slowly because it's building such a thick atmosphere.

[27:09] It's such a feeling.

[27:10] Like the feeling of it is so strong and so tactile and like you're living in it.

[27:14] You're living in the atmosphere of that movie.

[27:16] You're soaking in it.

[27:17] You're soaking in it.

[27:17] And here I think they're – that's the goal, but you're not really – the air is so thin.

[27:22] Like the atmosphere is so thin.

[27:23] Like you're not – it's taking its time as if you are luxuriating in this sweat, for lack of a better word, of the movie, but it's not there.

[27:30] The sweat is not there.

[27:31] I would say it's too dry, but everyone is wet all the time.

Dan McCoy

[27:33] It's too much weathering up there.

[27:35] Like all that wind.

Elliott Kalan

[27:36] It's more like dithering heights.

[27:38] Am I right?

[27:38] Just kiss her already.

Stuart Wellington

[27:40] So while she's watching this through a knot hole – yes, it's still a hole.

[27:44] Oh.

[27:45] Heathcliff climbs on top of her and puts a hand over her mouth and over her eyes initially so she can't scream out.

[27:52] And then I guess to like keep her from seeing it so she can just hear the sounds of horse sex.

[27:58] Not with an – it's horseplay.

Elliott Kalan

[28:00] It's horseplay.

[28:01] The sounds of horse sex.

[28:02] But it's not horseplay like when kids are horseplaying around in a pool or something like that.

[28:06] I fucking hope not.

Stuart Wellington

[28:09] So – and then of course this will establish a fetish for Kathy later.

[28:15] What's the fetish?

Elliott Kalan

[28:16] Sex?

[28:17] Or her having her mouth covered?

[28:18] Yeah.

[28:19] Mouth and eyes covered.

[28:20] Because it's like she's not into horseplay.

[28:21] I have a crazy fetish.

[28:23] Sex.

[28:25] Well, it's like there's that old –

[28:26] Of course.

[28:26] It really turns me on.

[28:27] I don't know what about it.

[28:28] There's that old article, local man has naked lady fetish.

[28:31] And it's just about what a perv he is.

[28:33] He just loves to see women without their clothes.

[28:35] Like he'll even see women in real life and imagine what they look like without their clothes on.

Stuart Wellington

[28:39] Now part of the reason – this is the moment where after this, this has opened up a whole new world of pleasure for Kathy.

[28:48] She starts –

[28:48] Just like in Aladdin.

[28:49] She starts seeing sex in all things whether it's somebody kneading dough.

[28:54] She's imagining, I don't know, hands kneading her dough.

[28:57] She sits up – she like – the reason she is mad at Heathcliff is she sits down on her bed.

[29:02] Nothing sexier has ever been said.

[29:04] You should be writing romance novels.

[29:09] I can't – I think one of the instigating elements between them like fighting is that one of the – I think she puts eggs in his bed.

[29:17] In his bed.

[29:18] It's a prank.

[29:19] And he sits on it.

[29:20] And like when he reveals the eggs, like it's like all yolk.

[29:23] It's like the thickest yolks you've ever seen.

[29:26] Yeah, and he runs his fingers through it.

[29:27] Yeah.

[29:27] And I'm like – as an egg enthusiast, I'm like, damn, give me some of them eggs.

Elliott Kalan

[29:33] Well, where do you think all those muscles are coming from?

[29:34] He's just slurping up that yolk total egg.

[29:36] Yeah, just slurping up eggs.

Stuart Wellington

[29:37] Yeah.

[29:38] Okay.

[29:38] So there's a lot of moments of like close-ups of things like that to indicate sexiness.

[29:44] But there is an – it isn't actually like –

[29:45] Like a slug.

[29:46] There's a slug.

[29:47] There's a slug.

[29:47] A sexy slug.

Elliott Kalan

[29:48] Ben Affleck snail movie.

[29:50] Have slugs been so sexy?

[29:52] Yeah.

[29:53] A movie that I would say sexier than this one.

[29:55] That movie certainly creates a torrid atmosphere in a way this doesn't.

[29:59] This one, it's like –

[29:59] Okay.

[29:59] There's all these close-ups.

[30:00] This creates a torpid atmosphere.

Stuart Wellington

[30:03] So – but things in Wuthering Heights aren't going to be normal much longer because they get some new neighbors in the form of Edgar Linton and his ward, Isabella.

[30:15] Edgar, what is like a super rich dude?

[30:17] I don't remember exactly what he does for money.

[30:19] Rich people, yeah.

[30:20] What's the name of his – because back then like your fancy house has a name.

[30:25] Yes.

[30:26] His name is something like something Grange or something.

[30:28] Is she –

[30:28] Thrushcross Grange.

[30:29] Yeah.

[30:30] Thrushcross Grange.

[30:31] Not as cool as Wuthering Heights, but it's still pretty cool.

[30:33] No, not as cool.

[30:34] She's his ward in this version.

[30:35] Equally nonsensical.

Stuart Wellington

[30:36] Is that what you said?

[30:37] Described as his ward.

Dan McCoy

[30:38] Okay.

[30:38] Because they're just brother and sister in the book.

Elliott Kalan

[30:40] I thought they were – I think they're brother and sister too, but she's like under his –

[30:43] Oh, okay.

[30:44] It's just because he's like the guy.

Dan McCoy

[30:47] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[30:48] Okay.

[30:48] So Kathy is spying on these – her new neighbors and she falls and she twists her ankle and Edgar goes outside of their very fancy garden to see Kathy.

[30:59] He is immediately in love.

[31:02] At no point is he not in love with her.

Elliott Kalan

[31:04] He's in the middle of 19th century England and he meets Margot Robbie.

[31:07] Like I have to assume he would fall in love with her instantly.

[31:09] Yeah, sure.

Stuart Wellington

[31:10] Yeah.

[31:11] He looks at her and he's like, this bitch has seen an iPhone before.

Dan McCoy

[31:16] There's not a lot of other hot singles in his area too.

Stuart Wellington

[31:20] That's true.

[31:20] Yeah, that's actually true.

[31:22] And honestly like Isabella, who is probably my favorite character in the movie, is – she's like very into ribbons and I'd be like, get me someone else to talk to.

[31:32] I think Isabella is the –

[31:33] Sister.

Elliott Kalan

[31:34] Isabella is the one character in the movie where I'm like, this is getting into the territory I want this movie to get into.

[31:39] Yeah.

[31:40] Like this character has things going on inside of her that are out of the ordinary.

Stuart Wellington

[31:45] And that actress, I don't remember the actress's name, but she was also in – she was really good on that show, Task, where she plays a character with a much different accent.

Elliott Kalan

[31:54] This is Alison Oliver is her name.

[31:55] I'm not familiar with her at all from other stuff, but I really liked her performance in this.

Stuart Wellington

[31:59] Elliot, if you want to see primarily English and Australian actors doing Delco accents, you got to check out Task, buddy.

[32:07] It's so funny.

[32:08] They're like – they're leaning – they're putting so much sauce on that shit.

[32:11] It's amazing.

[32:11] It's a specific recommendation.

[32:13] It's awesome.

[32:14] It's a good show.

[32:15] It's really fun.

Elliott Kalan

[32:16] My movie recommendation today is going to be partly because of a specific accent that's in the movie.

[32:19] So Stuart knows exactly who to talk to.

[32:21] So I know exactly.

Stuart Wellington

[32:22] Like I got to tell you, check out Task and it's the preceding show, Mayor of Easttown.

[32:27] Okay, so Kathy spends what we come to learn is like a month or something at Thrushcross Grange healing.

[32:38] And in that time, Edgar's love has only deepened.

[32:41] He's obsessed with her and he asks for her hand in marriage.

[32:46] Kathy returns to Wuthering Heights.

[32:50] Heathcliff is pissed.

[32:51] For sure.

[32:52] They get in an argument.

[32:54] She reveals to Nellie that Edgar has proposed to her and that – and Nellie steers the conversation, fearing that she will be left alone here in Wuthering Heights to – in squalor and garbage.

Elliott Kalan

[33:13] And we should mention also Wuthering Heights is a weird-looking house.

[33:17] Like these sets are not realistic sets.

[33:19] They're weirdly designed.

[33:20] It was like – throughout it, I was like it's like they bought the sets from an unmade Terry Gilliam version of Wuthering Heights and then just were like, these are already made.

[33:29] We'll just use them.

[33:30] It's a weird-looking building.

Stuart Wellington

[33:32] I do like that the entryway, you walk through the place they slaughter pigs.

[33:36] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[33:37] The entryway is the slaughter alley and it's like there's one side of the house and another side of the house and they're connected.

[33:43] It's designed like a TIE fighter.

Stuart Wellington

[33:45] Dan, is the book – do they describe it as looking like a TIE fighter?

Dan McCoy

[33:50] Well, I do want to say like certainly in the book, the Lentons are more well-off than, you know, Kathy and her father.

[33:58] They're in Shaw's, yeah.

[33:59] They're in Shaw's.

[34:00] But like here it is to a ridiculous degree where, you know, as soon as you go to the Lentons' place, it's like we're in Marie Antoinette.

Elliott Kalan

[34:07] Yeah, and the other thing is so the Lentons – so I kept expecting them to draw some parallel that like Wuthering Heights is a dark, gloomy place.

[34:16] But the Lenton house is something she can aspire to where it's not weird.

[34:19] Their house is also very weird.

[34:21] Like they have that fireplace that's made out of plaster casts of human hands.

[34:25] Also, every wall has a human hand coming out of it holding a flower or a candle or something.

Dan McCoy

[34:31] Kathy's room is covered in her skin.

[34:33] Yeah, that happens a little bit later.

[34:35] In the words of another podcast, he made it weird by making her room his skin.

[34:41] But like Audrey pointed out that maybe those hands were meant to evoke the Cocteau Beauty and the Beast in the sense that she's sort of – like not a prisoner in the same way but like she doesn't necessarily want to be there.

Elliott Kalan

[34:53] I think that's a really astute connection and I bet that's accurate.

[34:56] But I would say like the Earnshaw's – or the – his Edgar's house should not remind us of the Beast's house.

[35:05] Even if it's the idea that she's like a prisoner there, like it doesn't – it just doesn't fill the same role in the story.

[35:10] Like those characters are not – she's not in the house of a monster who is keeping her a prisoner and she's going to have to find the magic within it.

Stuart Wellington

[35:17] No, she's clearly a prisoner of her own desires.

[35:19] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[35:20] So she –

[35:21] Stuart, that's the name of your romance novel, Prisoner of Her Desires.

[35:23] You got it.

[35:24] Dan, you're writing this Airlock Holmes book.

[35:27] Stuart, you're writing Prisoner of Her Desires.

[35:28] She's like, I'm not a number.

Stuart Wellington

[35:31] You are number 69.

[35:35] See, it's a hot book.

[35:37] It's a hot book, yeah, yeah.

[35:39] In this conversation –

[35:41] Be fucking you.

[35:41] That's what they say at the end of each conversation.

[35:44] She ends up arguing with Nellie and tells Nellie that she doesn't understand.

[35:49] She's never been loved or will love anybody.

[35:52] And Nellie steers the conversation in a way so that she has to admit that she is going to accept Edgar's proposal because she can't marry Heathcliff.

[36:03] It's beneath her station.

Elliott Kalan

[36:05] She says it would degrade her.

[36:06] It would degrade her.

[36:07] And Nellie has seen because of the shadow under the door that she knows Heathcliff is listening.

[36:11] Heathcliff can hear this, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[36:13] Uh-huh.

[36:13] And we know based on last parts of the movie, Heathcliff's a freak who likes to peep, you know.

[36:21] He's a real castle peep.

[36:23] Yeah.

[36:23] Heathcliff hears this shit and he ain't having it.

[36:26] So he takes a horse and he goes riding off into a very interesting – like a very non-English sunset to me.

[36:33] Maybe I'm wrong.

Elliott Kalan

[36:35] I mean the sun does set there, so I don't know exactly.

Stuart Wellington

[36:37] I heard that the sun never sets.

Elliott Kalan

[36:40] Yeah, that's a good point.

[36:41] On the Empire.

[36:42] Yeah, that's true.

[36:43] I mean so foggy you can't even tell, you know.

[36:46] Yeah.

[36:46] Heathcliff leaves.

Dan McCoy

[36:47] They thought that the sun never set on the Empire.

[36:49] It was just the fog.

Elliott Kalan

[36:50] Just the fog, yeah.

[36:51] And all those pirate ghosts were coming out and bothering them when the sun was setting and they get distracted and miss it.

[36:56] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[36:57] But that's – you know, it's okay.

[36:58] The DJ made it out alive, right?

[37:00] Yeah, finally, yeah.

[37:01] Thank God.

[37:02] So –

[37:03] DJ Tanner from Full House.

[37:07] We're just reassociating now.

[37:09] Yeah.

[37:09] Kathy wakes up.

[37:10] She's like, oh, wait, I made a big mistake.

[37:12] I think I love Heathcliff.

[37:14] And it's like, no fucking shit, idiot.

[37:16] You knew that already.

[37:17] You knew that.

[37:17] That wasn't a new information, Kathy.

[37:19] She shouldn't have been like, I shouldn't have accepted this guy's proposal or whatever.

[37:22] And then she finds out, oh, wait, Heathcliff dipped.

[37:24] He already left.

[37:25] What?

[37:26] And he took one of the horses.

[37:27] So she spends a whole year of longing.

[37:29] And you know what happens in that horse barn.

Elliott Kalan

[37:31] You know what he's doing with that horse, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[37:32] Yeah.

[37:34] So she spends a year of longing waiting for him to come back.

[37:37] This is when she gets married.

Elliott Kalan

[37:39] Edgar upholsters her bedroom in walls meant to look like her skin, including the veins.

Stuart Wellington

[37:43] But she waits a whole year before getting married.

[37:46] Oh, that's true.

[37:46] That's true.

[37:48] And then, yeah.

[37:49] Then they get married.

[37:50] They have one of these weddings where she's wearing all black.

[37:54] You know, one of those normal weddings.

[37:56] And yeah, he upholsters her bedroom walls to look like her skin, including her beauty marks.

[38:02] Which is funny because it's like, he should do that.

[38:03] And it's like soft.

Elliott Kalan

[38:04] Yes.

[38:04] And so he should do that for his room.

[38:06] It doesn't make sense for her room to be like that.

[38:09] Yeah.

[38:10] She's not attracted to her own skin as far as I can tell, but he is.

[38:14] So anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[38:15] So we get a little bit of a montage of wedded bliss, which is basically just like goofing around the house.

Elliott Kalan

[38:21] It really looks like they're just having a staycation over winter break or something like that.

[38:26] They're just hanging around.

Stuart Wellington

[38:27] And Isabella has like given up her ribbon room so that Kathy can have a room.

[38:32] And like Isabella is very much.

[38:34] And also that house must be enormous.

Elliott Kalan

[38:36] Like there's plenty of rooms.

[38:37] They can both have rooms, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[38:38] And Isabella has almost like a childlike mind.

[38:42] She is very naive.

[38:44] And she brings a naivete that like you kind of would think that the Kathy character would also have to some extent.

[38:52] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[38:53] Is this when she gives her like the book she made of all the different like things that Kathy looked at or pointed at that Isabella obviously meant a lot to?

[39:02] That's normal.

Dan McCoy

[39:03] The second character I'm like, so is everyone in love with Kathy?

[39:07] Like is that what's going on?

[39:08] It's Margot Robbie, Dan.

[39:09] It's Margot Robbie.

[39:09] No, I get it.

[39:10] It's just –

[39:11] She's magnetic.

[39:12] It's interesting that like –

[39:13] I feel like that is laid into the movie without really it meaning anything, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[39:19] But it is a thing where people seem to love her or be obsessed with her without her doing anything.

Elliott Kalan

[39:25] Yes.

[39:25] I will say that there's a – so right now I'm reading The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.

[39:29] And the main character in that, she is this kind of woman where she's so beautiful and she has such grace and elegance that just her presence, people become very obsessed with her but in a way that ultimately hurts her in the long run.

[39:41] But like the – but it's just like people are so drawn to her that they all seem to want to be around her or be close to her.

[39:49] And I would kind of – if that's what they were going for with this, I would buy it.

[39:52] But I'm like – I feel like they don't go – again, with a lot of things in the movies, they don't go quite far enough.

[39:56] For a movie that's supposed to be like shocking and like titillating, I feel like they don't go far enough in that idea of like she's just so charismatic that everyone's drawn to her and wants to be involved with her in some way, you know.

Dan McCoy

[40:07] I'm just like you say it hurts her in the long run.

[40:09] I'm like, oh, did an Edith Wharton book turn out sadly?

Elliott Kalan

[40:14] Yeah.

[40:15] Now –

[40:15] She also makes some mistakes.

[40:17] She makes some mistakes.

[40:18] Sure, sure.

[40:18] Request to marry Rich.

[40:19] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[40:20] Kathy goes to check in on her dad who has become like a weird little golem gremlin who is begging for –

Elliott Kalan

[40:29] I mean not literally but –

[40:31] I mean almost literally.

[40:32] Like his teeth are rotting.

[40:33] He's just sitting in a corner drunk going hee hee hee.

[40:36] Ooh.

Stuart Wellington

[40:36] And he's begging for money and when she throws some money on the ground, he's like, no, don't go.

[40:40] You got to watch me pick it up.

Elliott Kalan

[40:42] He goes, it was my punishment because you have to watch me pick up every penny.

[40:45] But he's essentially turning into the leprechaun from the leprechaun movies.

[40:49] That's where he is right now.

[40:50] But also like there seem to still be people working at the house.

[40:53] So it's not like – he still has a couple servants and yet he's still somehow turning into a bog gremlin.

Stuart Wellington

[41:00] And yeah, I mean that's a classic English folk tale, right?

[41:04] About a guy who turns into a bog gremlin.

[41:07] Exactly.

[41:07] Okay.

[41:07] So happy news though, everybody.

[41:10] Kathy's pregnant.

[41:11] She probably got pregnant when she has sex with Edgar and she makes him cover her eyes and mouth like Heathcliff did.

[41:17] Sure.

[41:17] And he was like, that was crazy, bae.

[41:23] So, of course, those happy tidings are brought along by a return of Heathcliff.

[41:29] Heathcliff's back.

[41:30] And this time, guess what, guys?

[41:31] He's hot now.

[41:32] And he's rich.

[41:33] He shaved his beard.

[41:33] He's always hot.

[41:34] Come on.

[41:35] No way.

[41:36] He's hot now.

[41:36] He's got a little gold tooth.

Elliott Kalan

[41:38] He's got his hair.

[41:38] He's hot in like a caveman way, whereas now he's hot in like a dignified gentleman way.

[41:43] Sure, sure.

[41:44] But like there's a dignified gentleman with an earring.

[41:46] What?

[41:47] Yeah.

[41:47] And he's got frilly cuffs that are like – I love the cuffs on his shirts.

[41:51] They're so frilly.

[41:51] It's great.

[41:52] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[41:53] That was what was hot back in the –

[41:54] Guys, he looks cool.

[41:55] Yeah.

[41:56] Yeah.

[41:56] He looks like Lynch from Team 7.

Elliott Kalan

[42:00] Yeah, he does.

[42:00] You know what, Stu?

[42:01] I didn't even think about it.

[42:02] He does look like Lynch from Team 7.

[42:04] He's like – he should – Jacob already should start in the young Lynch adventures.

Stuart Wellington

[42:11] Yeah.

[42:12] He looks like he should be – he could play Sebastian Shaw in the Hellfire Club with this

[42:16] ghetto.

[42:17] Yes.

[42:17] I mean –

[42:17] Okay.

[42:17] Finally, a reference I know.

Elliott Kalan

[42:19] Finally, a comic book reference that Dan's familiar with.

[42:21] Yeah, yeah.

[42:22] From the 80s instead of the 90s.

[42:23] Yeah.

[42:25] So – and he comes back.

[42:27] He would be great casting for Sebastian Shaw, to be honest.

[42:31] Yeah.

[42:31] Like if it was a younger Sebastian Shaw, he would be great in it.

[42:34] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[42:36] And he is – he's back.

[42:38] He is rich from some mysterious means.

[42:41] He never kind of reveals it.

[42:43] Dan, in the book –

[42:45] No, we don't learn.

[42:46] He just shows up and he's rich now.

[42:49] But the assumption is he did something bad.

[42:51] Yeah.

[42:51] Right?

[42:51] Like there's no way he –

Elliott Kalan

[42:52] Well, Elliot, anytime somebody becomes rich, they did something bad.

[42:55] Yeah.

[42:56] Yeah.

[42:56] Well, not always.

[42:56] Not always.

[42:57] There's one or two people who got rich not doing bad things.

[43:00] Okay.

[43:01] George Lucas.

Stuart Wellington

[43:02] Yeah, I guess –

[43:04] Yeah, yeah.

[43:04] Yeah.

[43:05] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[43:05] So Heathcliff returns.

[43:08] He and Kathy, you know, they still have a will they won't they.

[43:12] They're clearly still very much into each other.

[43:16] And meanwhile, Heathcliff buys Wuthering Heights from her father, probably tricks him out to like ease his gambling debts.

Elliott Kalan

[43:26] I mean I think at this point he's sunken so far he just has to throw some money on the floor.

Stuart Wellington

[43:30] And he probably –

[43:31] Shortly after –

Elliott Kalan

[43:31] Oh, yes, I'll sell the house.

[43:33] He, he, he.

[43:33] Me coins, me coins.

Stuart Wellington

[43:35] Shortly after the dad dies –

[43:38] Oh, the hobbitses want to buy me house.

Elliott Kalan

Stuart Wellington

[43:40] Kathy goes to his house to find him lying on his back in a room with like mountains of bottles in the corners.

Dan McCoy

[43:51] Bottle framing him.

[43:53] I like some of the extravagant stuff.

[43:54] I'm like, come on.

[43:55] This I like.

[43:56] Some of these really work.

Elliott Kalan

[43:58] And that one works.

[43:59] When it's taking something that, when it's taking something from a, that makes sense in the story and like exaggerating it to a grotesque degree.

[44:07] Yeah.

[44:07] I'm like, I like that.

[44:08] I really like that.

[44:09] When it's just doing strange things for atmosphere but they're not really connected to what's happening.

[44:12] Yeah, when they go to the, what, the other side or whatever, upside down.

[44:16] Yeah, I hate that shit.

[44:17] Yeah, the whole dream sequence where it's the 1930s all of a sudden and they're just Lindy hopping all over the place.

[44:23] Yeah, that didn't work.

Stuart Wellington

[44:23] Like, wait, I got to go to a play to understand this?

[44:26] Not for me.

[44:30] JK, you should go to the play.

[44:31] My neighbor's in it and I want to support her.

[44:33] This is what the Stranger Things play?

Elliott Kalan

[44:35] Yeah, yeah.

[44:36] She's in the Stranger Things play.

[44:37] It would be so funny.

[44:38] It would be so funny if halfway through this movie, Ahsoka turned up and it was like, wait, I had to watch Ahsoka to understand the Wuthering Heights.

Stuart Wellington

[44:47] This adaptation?

[44:48] Oh, man.

[44:49] Okay.

[44:50] There's also, when Kathy is raging over her father's death, she initially seems sad about it.

[44:58] And then out of anger, she starts kicking him and she kicks him in the head and his teeth come flying out.

[45:04] Yeah, that was good.

[45:05] I like that.

[45:06] That's a protest.

[45:06] Okay.

[45:07] So when consoling her after, at the funeral, Heathcliff consoles Kathy and that immediately starts, turns to them hooking up.

[45:16] And again, you would think we are this late in the movie.

[45:19] You would think that this is the moment where like they are going to connect and they are giving into their passions.

[45:24] This is like, give me some fucking Zalman King shit here.

[45:28] No dice.

[45:29] They just start hooking up and you're like, okay, I guess they're hooking up now.

[45:32] Like there's no like, it doesn't feel like a payoff.

[45:34] It doesn't feel like an eruption.

Elliott Kalan

[45:36] No, it's just kind of like a montage of them having sex in different places.

[45:39] And it's, I think it's supposed to have that feeling of like, oh, they unleashed.

[45:43] Oh, wow.

[45:43] Like the, the, the, the, the flood walls, the flood has knocked down the walls.

[45:47] Like it's, but it's, yeah, it just doesn't, you don't feel that, that overcome with emotion.

[45:52] You don't feel that release or that, that like finally, you know, it's, you know, it's just not, it's not quite there, unfortunately.

Stuart Wellington

[45:58] Okay.

[45:59] Um, so.

[46:00] It's not like the moment when Pee Wee finally gets his bike back in Pee Wee's big adventure where you're suddenly like, oh man, now these two are together again.

Elliott Kalan

[46:07] Oh boy.

[46:09] Oh, lock up your sons.

Stuart Wellington

[46:11] Um, so Nellie, Nellie is aware of this affair going on.

[46:15] Kathy is not, uh, adept enough at sneaking.

[46:20] And, uh, Nellie is, and Nellie, Nellie's not happy about it.

[46:23] She's a little stressed.

[46:24] Later on, she gets, uh, she gets even more mad.

[46:27] And similar to, uh, the Nellie Furtado song, Promiscuous.

[46:31] Oh, okay.

[46:32] She's sick of, uh, you know, she's sick of this promiscuous girl.

[46:36] I know where you are.

[46:38] Et cetera, et cetera.

[46:39] Promiscuous boy, you know.

[46:41] Yeah, but she doesn't have the passion.

[46:43] You're playing with me, et cetera, et cetera.

Elliott Kalan

[46:43] She doesn't have the passion of the man eater from the Nellie Furtado song, Man.

[46:46] Thank you, Nellie.

Stuart Wellington

[46:47] You get what I'm going for here.

Dan McCoy

[46:49] But she saw Kathy turn out the lights and she knows what's going on.

[46:52] Yeah.

[46:53] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[46:55] Um, okay.

[46:56] So she, uh, Kathy is sick of Nellie and she decides to banish at her and kick her out.

[47:04] And Nellie is like, uh, where am I going to go?

[47:08] And Kathy's like, I don't give a shit.

[47:10] And so Nellie goes to, uh, Edgar and basically says, uh, yeah, she's been having an affair with Heathcliff, which Edgar does the thing.

[47:19] The normal thing, which he says, you can't have Heathcliff over anymore.

[47:24] Of course.

[47:25] Like, I don't want you hanging out with Heathcliff, which I feel like at this time, most, most gentlemen would not be super happy with their, uh, their wives spending unsupervised time with, uh, rakes.

[47:38] Right?

Dan McCoy

[47:39] Probably not.

[47:39] What kind of rakes?

[47:40] Like, uh.

Stuart Wellington

[47:41] But I guess this rake is her adoptive brother.

[47:43] Wait, wait, let Dan play this out.

[47:45] Let Dan play this out.

Dan McCoy

[47:46] Like the wide ones with like kind of the flexible end or like the ones that are, you know, more like a hoe.

Elliott Kalan

[47:53] But, uh.

[47:54] I mean, this rake is kind of a, is, is kind of a hoe.

[47:56] Like just giving it up to Kathy whenever, wherever, you know.

Dan McCoy

[47:59] I zoned out.

[48:00] Did we talk about like, has the weird like bondage stuff with Isabella happened yet?

[48:04] We're about to do that now.

[48:05] Okay.

[48:05] It hasn't happened yet.

Stuart Wellington

[48:06] Uh, Kathy and, uh, Kathy and Heathcliff are hooking up.

[48:10] She reveals that, uh, she's pregnant and Heathcliff seems fine with it.

[48:15] Uh, but then when they're hooking up, he, uh, while they're doing it.

[48:19] Sorry.

[48:20] I just thought of some gross bed talk he could have gotten into.

Elliott Kalan

[48:24] By all means.

Stuart Wellington

[48:25] Let's have it.

Elliott Kalan

[48:26] I'm going to squirt that baby in the face.

[48:28] Oh, man.

[48:29] I regret it.

[48:31] If he had said that, I would have been like, Wuthering Heights, I got to give you credit for being gross.

Stuart Wellington

[48:34] I can only, I can only assume Elliot's based this off of his real life experiences as a father.

Elliott Kalan

[48:39] Sure.

[48:40] Yeah, of course.

Stuart Wellington

[48:41] So, uh, Heathcliff seems fine with it, but then while they're part of his like dirty talk is he's like, yeah, I'll, I'll go kill Edgar.

[48:49] Like I'll just go up and kill him right now.

Elliott Kalan

[48:51] Is my, is my fake dirty talk that I just did any weirder than being like, yeah, I'm just going to kill your husband.

[48:56] I'm going to lick his blood up.

[48:57] I'm going to kill him right now.

Stuart Wellington

[49:00] Don't make me choose.

[49:02] Yeah.

[49:02] Okay.

[49:03] So, uh, Kathy obviously still, you know, still is into it in the time, but during her post nut clarity, she's like, yo, wait, that will cross the line.

[49:13] Maybe don't kill my husband.

[49:14] Yeah.

[49:14] Don't do that.

[49:15] Don't do this.

[49:16] And she's like, I can't see anymore.

[49:17] We're done.

[49:18] And, uh, and Heathcliff's like, yeah, whatever you said there last time.

[49:22] But, um, she seems to mean it.

[49:23] So he's like, okay, fuck this.

[49:26] Immediately goes over to Isabella who is clearly infatuated with him.

[49:30] Yes.

[49:30] Uh, and he's like, I'm going to, I'm going to be a piece of shit to you.

[49:34] I'm going to treat you like crap.

[49:36] I am never going to love you.

[49:37] Uh, do you want to get married?

[49:38] And she's like, yup.

Elliott Kalan

[49:40] And like, this is, this is one of the few, again, there's the Isabella stuff is one of the rare

[49:45] points in the movie where I'm like, this movie is getting into the kind of like stranger

[49:49] passions that, that it wants to get into.

[49:51] We're like, he's undressing her piece by piece.

[49:53] And he keeps going like, I'm going to be terrible to you.

[49:55] I'm never going to treat you well.

[49:57] I'm only going to marry you so I can get at Kathleen.

[49:59] Do you want me to keep going?

[50:00] She goes, yes, I'm going to do this.

[50:02] I'm going to be abominable.

[50:03] Like I'm going to do all these bad things.

[50:04] You want me to keep going?

[50:04] Yes.

[50:05] And that like, that's a, and so they get married, but like, I like the way that that scene

[50:08] is structured where it is not, I'm going to trick Isabella into, into loving

[50:12] me.

[50:12] So I can give back.

[50:12] Like he's just like, look, I know you're so desperate for anything that you're going

[50:17] to take this, but maybe you like it too.

[50:19] And she's like, yeah, maybe I do like it.

[50:20] Like that's the, it's an interesting place to go.

[50:22] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[50:22] It attracts a certain amount of modern, uh, like sub dom, uh, well that's in play.

Dan McCoy

[50:28] Yeah.

[50:28] They, they, they, they engage in a full sub dom relationship, which is even though

[50:35] it is like, like textually.

Elliott Kalan

[50:38] Now by sub dom you mean submissive and dominant, not submarine sandwich dom de Louise, which

[50:42] is a different relationship.

Dan McCoy

[50:43] Yeah.

[50:44] Okay.

[50:44] Well, there's, there's a certain amount of eating in both, but different types of eating.

[50:48] But I, they, it's just like, this is a part where like, you know, textually it's kind

[50:54] of unpleasant because you know, like how little he cares for her, but it does, it is like one

[51:01] of the few things that comes close to being kind of sexy, but it's also kind of like a

[51:07] shitty thing to do to the book character, Isabella, who like in the book, it's not, you know,

[51:12] he just is abusive towards her.

[51:14] And she is like the one character who kind of gets out of there.

[51:18] She's like, I'm not having this.

[51:20] I'm going to escape.

[51:22] I, you know, she goes off and has like part of a life in London.

[51:25] You know, like she eventually dies within the span of the book, but off screen free of

[51:31] these weirdos.

[51:33] And like to a certain degree, I'm like, well, this is unfair to this, this is unfair to this

[51:36] character.

[51:37] I shouldn't be bringing outside stuff, but it's like, you're making her so pathetic here

[51:41] versus kind of like.

Elliott Kalan

[51:43] I don't, I don't know because I don't know about that because I think that the thing that

[51:46] changes that for me is the scene also when Nellie goes to visit and he's treating her

[51:51] like a dog for real.

[51:52] And she, the way, at least the way that, uh, that Alison Oliver is playing it, she seems

[51:56] to genuinely be into this.

[51:58] No, she's into it.

[51:59] Genuinely be enjoying it.

[52:00] And I'm like, this gives this character a sense.

[52:02] Cause you know, in a, in a Dom sub relationship, not that I only know it academically, but like,

[52:06] in a Dom sub relationship, the sub has a certain amount of power.

[52:09] You did your PhD on it.

[52:10] I did.

[52:11] Yeah.

[52:11] It was that and the elasticity of mice, mice, the elasticity of mice in a sub Dom relationship.

[52:15] But like the, the sub has a certain amount of power because they are essentially setting

[52:20] the, setting the rules of limits and things like that.

[52:21] Right.

[52:22] Like it is, it is based on, and it's not like they're not being, when they're being punished

[52:26] or whatever, being submissive is because they're getting pleasure out of it.

[52:28] They're driving it in that way.

[52:30] And so I think by giving this, making this a pleasurable thing for her, it makes her

[52:33] character much more powerful and has much more agency than she might've been if it was

[52:37] just, oh, it's another victim of Heathcliff's, you know, horrible abuse.

[52:40] Well, it was just victimization.

Dan McCoy

[52:41] Sure.

[52:42] I'm, I'm, I'm talking about how she specifically is like, you know what?

[52:45] Fuck this.

[52:46] I'm out of the book.

Elliott Kalan

[52:47] She's the one who actually leaves.

[52:48] But, but what this also means though, is at the end of this movie, when Nellie comes

[52:51] and like rescues Isabella, it doesn't really make total sense to me because Isabella,

[52:56] it seems to be, again, super into this moment.

[52:59] Maybe it's just, maybe it's Stockholm syndrome.

[53:01] Maybe it's just, she's just putting up a show.

[53:03] But it's, but it feels like, I was like, this is again, the only other scene where I was

[53:06] like, now this movie is getting into like interesting sexual waters, you know, which is where it

[53:11] wants to be.

[53:12] The most interesting sexual waters, of course, being John Waters.

[53:14] But the movie doesn't get into that, you know?

Dan McCoy

[53:16] Oh, fascinating.

Elliott Kalan

[53:18] Yeah.

[53:18] You're right.

[53:19] I think on that.

[53:20] Yeah.

[53:20] The elasticity of John Waters in mice, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[53:23] And I think it a little bit does a disservice to the Heathcliff character because it effectively

[53:27] absolves him of any wrongdoing here.

Elliott Kalan

[53:30] I think that's true too.

[53:30] Yeah.

[53:30] That's, which is not, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[53:32] Because I feel like.

Dan McCoy

[53:33] That is definitely true of this movie in general.

[53:36] Like everyone is absolved of wrongdoing in a way where the book is just like, this is

[53:41] kind of a nest of viper.

Elliott Kalan

[53:42] Strangely, strangely, the one character that seems to be not absolved of wrongdoing is Edgar,

[53:46] the character who is on the surface doing the least amount of anything to anybody.

[53:52] Like he meets a woman, he falls in love with her, he marries her.

[53:55] He has the expectation she's not going to have an affair.

[53:58] Like that's pretty much it, you know, for the most part.

[54:02] But he's, but the movie seems to treat him as like, ugh, why is he standing in the way

[54:07] of Heathcliff and Kathy?

[54:08] And it's like, well, she didn't, I mean, she's the one who's doing it, not, who's not

[54:12] treating him right, you know?

[54:13] So the one weird thing he does is that skin room, you know?

[54:16] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[54:17] Okay, so as we said, Heathcliff and Isabella get married, they have this relationship, and

[54:25] this, when Kathy finds out, she begs them to stop, but clearly Isabella's into it, and

[54:32] Heathcliff likes to torment Kathy with it.

[54:38] Kathy gets depressed.

[54:40] She stays at home.

[54:41] She doesn't leave her room.

[54:44] Heathcliff feels bad.

[54:45] Like Heathcliff still wants Kathy in his life, even though she can't, you know, he, even

[54:51] though he wants to torment her, it's only worth it if she's involved still.

[54:56] So he's writing her letters, but whenever those letters show up, Nellie just burns them again.

[55:02] So Kathy loses the child.

[55:06] This causes sepsis, and she sickens.

[55:09] They don't catch it until it's far too late.

[55:13] Her legs are all gross, and she's all sick.

[55:16] She's dying, so Nellie rushes to Heathcliff and frees Isabella.

[55:23] Heathcliff rushes over, but it's too late.

[55:27] Kathy's already toast, and she bleeds out in a massive spreading pool of blood.

Elliott Kalan

[55:32] I mean, the thing is also, when a woman gives birth, there is a lot of blood.

[55:36] So it's like, there's a lot of blood in that scene, but I was like, I mean, like a regular

[55:41] birth, there's a fair amount of blood coming out too.

[55:43] So I guess this is dramatic, you know, but it's not, if it was a successful birth, it

[55:48] would not have been blood-free.

[55:49] Births are very messy.

[55:50] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[55:53] And again, you know, there's some gross, exciting images here, but you know, whatever.

[55:59] And-

[55:59] Nothing is exciting.

Elliott Kalan

[56:00] You know what?

[56:00] We did go over, we slid over one of my favorite weird things, which is the prawns and aspic

[56:07] that they're serving at one of the meals.

[56:09] There's just huge blocks of aspic with prawns in them.

[56:11] And I just kept thinking about, so they boil the prawns first and then put them in the

[56:16] aspic?

Dan McCoy

[56:16] And for people not familiar with weird foods of olden days that we don't really eat that

[56:23] much anymore, it's like a gelatin mold, essentially.

[56:26] Yeah, it's like a big gelatin block full of prawns.

[56:28] It's a savory gelatin thing.

[56:30] Yeah.

[56:30] And she like sticks her finger into it.

Elliott Kalan

[56:33] She just pokes her finger all the way through, like into a prawn's mouth or something like that.

Dan McCoy

[56:38] But anyways-

[56:39] That's sexy.

[56:40] Yeah, of course.

[56:40] I want to say that Kathy's death here, you know, the fact that it's related to her miscarriage

[56:45] is a lot more sort of like, a reason is given more than in the book, where in the book she's

[56:54] actually mad at her husband seemingly not caring that she is in hysterics.

[57:02] And like, she starves herself for a long time.

[57:04] And what I remember about Wuthering Heights most sort of enduringly is that every 30 pages

[57:10] or so, someone would get so emotional that they would fall sick with undisclosed illness.

[57:18] And sometimes they would die of it.

[57:20] Sometimes they would recover and be like weaker forever.

[57:22] But that was what was going on.

Stuart Wellington

[57:25] I mean, they live in a really damp place.

[57:26] That's actually why I got sick, guys, is because I was really upset.

[57:30] You're so emotional.

[57:30] You guys, yeah, you guys weren't complimenting my latest haircut.

[57:35] Oh, I'm sorry.

[57:35] Oh, no, it looks great.

[57:37] Yeah.

[57:38] You're not fixing that.

[57:39] I'm dead already.

[57:40] Oh, no.

Elliott Kalan

[57:41] Speaking of dead already, Kathy's dead and Heathcliff is like, no, haunt me.

[57:44] Come back as a ghost.

[57:46] You know, I never, I always want to think of you forever, you know.

[57:49] And that's the end of the movie.

[57:50] And that's the end of the movie.

[57:51] Just him howling in anguish.

[57:54] And that's it.

[57:55] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[57:56] Tragedy.

[57:57] Doesn't really, like, I feel like in this version, the, like, haunt me as a ghost stuff doesn't really land that much because it doesn't connect to anything.

[58:08] Like, in the book and presumably in other adaptations and in Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights song, it is about Kathy actually showing up at a certain point and, like, it's like, oh, is this actually a ghost?

[58:22] Is this really not?

[58:23] A better adaptation.

[58:24] The Kate Bush Wuthering Heights song.

Elliott Kalan

[58:25] Because he does believe she's haunting him, right, in the book?

Dan McCoy

[58:28] Well, he wishes for it.

[58:30] He's, like, he hangs around kind of waiting for her to haunt him.

[58:34] And she actually, like, shows up, like, the narrator of the book who is cut for obvious reasons.

[58:41] He's, like, totally unnecessary.

[58:44] He goes and he sleeps the night at Wuthering Heights and sees Kathy outside the window.

[58:50] And Heathcliff is so, like, mad that, like, he missed it.

[58:56] He didn't get the haunting.

[58:57] I mean, and then later at the end he finally sees her.

[59:00] But anyway, spoilers for the book.

Stuart Wellington

[59:03] He wants the screw turned, you know what I mean?

[59:05] Yeah.

[59:06] Yep.

Dan McCoy

[59:08] This is the part where we do our final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

[59:16] And I want to say I walked into this, you know, all prepared to like it just fine.

[59:22] I, you know, Emerald Fennell is a polarizing writer-director, but I have enjoyed her previous work mostly.

[59:33] And, you know, I also like, I mentioned Marie Antoinette earlier.

[59:40] I like movies that take big swings with, like, maybe we're going to have some anachronistic elements here.

[59:47] Maybe we're going to have, like, huge, like, stylish visuals.

[59:51] But I would argue that something like Marie Antoinette does that in service of making a point about the material.

[1:00:00] Whereas here in Wuthering Heights, like, I see what she was saying about, like, oh, the feeling of reading it.

[1:00:07] But I think that for the most part, a lot of the big swings kind of fights the material.

[1:00:12] It doesn't actually feel like it's saying anything about the original.

[1:00:17] And I just found it so slow that I have to say bad, bad.

[1:00:21] I just didn't really enjoy watching this at all.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:24] Yeah.

[1:00:25] For something that's dealing with big passions, I find it to be kind of dull and a bit lifeless.

[1:00:34] I feel like there's no, like, buildup.

[1:00:37] It feels very, yeah, it feels, and most of the choices feel so obvious.

[1:00:43] Yeah, just, I as well am a bit of a Emerald Fennell apologist with the previous movies.

[1:00:49] But this one doesn't work.

[1:00:50] And I was also disappointed that, like, I generally like Charlie XCX stuff when utilized in movies.

[1:00:58] And I feel like even the soundtrack was a little bit weak.

[1:01:01] So I'm going to say bad, bad.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:03] I feel like, for me, it doesn't quite fit into our categories exactly.

[1:01:08] Of all of them, it would be bad, bad, I guess, because I did find it, like you guys described, a little lifeless and kind of disappointing.

[1:01:15] Less in that, like, well, this isn't the story of Wuthering Heights.

[1:01:18] But instead, I'm not a Dan McCoy.

[1:01:19] But instead, more.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:20] I really wouldn't have cared if the movie worked.

[1:01:23] It's only that it didn't.

[1:01:24] That I'm like, well, you've replaced the stuff that I enjoyed with dumb stuff.

[1:01:29] If you replaced it with stuff I enjoyed as well, that would be fine.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:32] I hope you're hungry for nothing.

[1:01:35] But, like, I think the – going into it, I think I expected it to be more shocking and more out there and kind of, like, pushing buttons.

[1:01:43] And I was really disappointed that it wasn't.

[1:01:46] And I think the – if the things that, like – I think you're right that some of the stylistic things are fighting what's actually going on in the story and what these characters are doing.

[1:01:55] But if those things had been so, like, such big swings, then I might have been like, you know what?

[1:02:01] It feels like she is laying another movie on top of that story.

[1:02:05] And she's at least using it as an opportunity to do really big, really memorable things.

[1:02:11] And I wish that there was more – it was like there's so many good people who worked on this and there's so much good little pieces in it.

[1:02:17] Like, there's pieces of the art design, pieces of the wardrobe, pieces of the – like, some of the performances, like, some of the moments that I like.

[1:02:25] And it looks beautiful.

[1:02:26] It's a beautiful-looking movie.

[1:02:27] But it just – I wish it either worked better dramatically or it was a more out-there thing.

[1:02:34] Like, if it was – if I was watching it in every couple minutes, I was like, really?

[1:02:38] Oh, okay.

[1:02:40] Like, if it was –

[1:02:41] In this economy?

[1:02:41] Yeah.

[1:02:42] If it was challenging me more with the things it was doing, but instead –

[1:02:45] Yeah.

[1:02:45] It felt a little – like, I hate to say it, but it feels like a safe version of an, like, taboo-busting movie.

[1:02:53] Exactly.

[1:02:54] And like I was saying, at the beginning of the movie, you see someone get hung and everyone's pointing out how he has an erection.

[1:02:59] And then you see people just start making out and mounting each other in the town square.

[1:03:03] And I'm like, well, she did it.

[1:03:04] That's the move.

[1:03:05] Like, there's nothing more that she can – there's nowhere to build from there.

[1:03:08] Like, this is already a society suffused in death and sex.

[1:03:11] And there's no – there's no subtext to it and there's no – once you've done that, it was hard for her to top that in terms of, like, outrageousness.

[1:03:17] I wish it was a more outrageous movie, basically.

[1:03:19] You know?

[1:03:20] Like Jim?

Dan McCoy

[1:03:21] Yeah, truly outrageous.

[1:03:23] Like which one?

[1:03:24] Jim?

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:26] The musician Jim.

[1:03:27] No, no.

[1:03:28] She's truly outrageous.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:29] Truly, truly, truly outrageous.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:31] I think reached the limits of my frame of reference culturally.

[1:03:34] But I think –

Dan McCoy

[1:03:36] I've been pondering a Jim many because I've watched so much Jim and become so weirdly into it.

[1:03:44] Oh, this is Jim and the Holograms?

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:03:46] Oh, okay.

[1:03:46] I thought it was a new person named Jim.

[1:03:47] No.

[1:03:48] I think – I didn't know that song because I don't – I think I haven't watched a Jim and the Holograms until I was probably –

[1:03:53] This is why I got to explain Jim and the Holograms to you guys.

[1:03:55] But I think you surely should.

[1:03:57] But I think it's a – yeah, I guess it's a bad, bad.

[1:03:59] But it's, like, not terrible.

[1:04:01] It's just not – it's just kind of a misfire, you know?

[1:04:05] Misfire.

[1:04:06] You'll get caught up in the misfire.

[1:04:08] It's a crossfire song.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:10] Yeah, as we come flying out on – I don't know.

[1:04:12] Little hoverboards, yeah.

[1:04:13] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:14] And a kid with fingerless leather gloves is going, yeah, yeah.

[1:04:18] Mm-hmm.

[1:04:19] What a commercial.

S4

[1:04:24] Hey, it's Jon Moe and I host Depresh Mode and Sleeping with Celebrities.

[1:04:28] And I'm here with Max Fun member of the month, Cara Barnett.

S5

[1:04:32] Hi, Jon.

[1:04:33] It's great to talk to you.

S4

[1:04:34] We appreciate your support, Cara.

[1:04:36] How long have you been listening to the show?

S5

[1:04:38] I've been listening to Depresh Mode since the first promo came out with Patton Oswalt.

[1:04:42] I've been listening since the very first episode.

S4

[1:04:44] Now, Cara, as our Max Fun member of the month, you'll be getting some prizes here.

[1:04:49] A $25 gift card to the Maximum Fun store.

[1:04:53] A special member of the month bumper sticker.

[1:04:55] And get this, a parking spot at Max Fun headquarters in Los Angeles just for you.

[1:05:02] Just for a month or so.

S5

[1:05:03] Well, that's so exciting.

[1:05:04] If only I lived in Los Angeles.

[1:05:06] But I got my eye on some stuff in the Max Fun store.

S4

[1:05:10] Cara Barnett, thank you for being a listener.

[1:05:12] And congratulations on being this month's member of the month.

S5

[1:05:15] I hear the member of the month promos all the time.

[1:05:19] Uh-huh.

[1:05:19] And I can't wait for my friends who listen to Max Fun shows to hear me on the radio because I haven't told any of them.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:26] Support the shows you love, including this one.

[1:05:29] Check the show notes for a link or go to MaximumFun.org slash join.

S6

[1:05:34] Hello, this is Alden Ford.

[1:05:36] And Mujan Zofagari.

[1:05:37] Two of the creators of Mission to Zix, your favorite improvised, obsessively sound-designed sci-fi sitcom here on the Max Fun Network.

[1:05:44] And the news is...

[1:05:45] We're back!

S7

[1:05:46] With an all-new miniseries set in the Zix universe.

[1:05:49] The young old Durf Chronicles.

[1:05:52] Will Durf find his own killer before it's too late to find out how that question could possibly make sense?

[1:05:58] Well, you just have to tune in.

S6

[1:05:59] Yeah.

[1:05:59] And as always, it's ambitious and labor-intensive to a frankly absurd degree.

[1:06:04] Indeed.

[1:06:04] So if you are looking for a little break from your own galaxy, we would love for you to check it out.

S7

[1:06:09] That's the young old Durf Chronicles.

[1:06:11] Search Mission to Zix, Z-O-I-X-X in your podcast app.

S6

[1:06:14] Or on MaximumFun.org.

S7

[1:06:15] Keep it fresh.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:19] If you're anything like me, Dan McCoy of the Flophouse, you got trouble sleeping.

[1:06:25] Oh, man.

[1:06:25] You should see all the things I put on my body to sleep.

[1:06:28] I got a special pillow.

[1:06:31] I got a CPAP machine.

[1:06:33] Sometimes I wear sleep headphones.

[1:06:36] I got an eye shade so I can block out all the infernal lights that everyone puts on anything these days.

[1:06:44] Sleep can be hard.

[1:06:45] But you know what?

[1:06:47] It's easy when you're sleeping on a Lisa mattress.

[1:06:50] The best hack for sleep might be just what you're sleeping on.

[1:06:55] And I have heard from many, many a person, as well as, you know, like a lot of ratings online, that people are happy with these Lisa mattresses.

[1:07:07] They've got a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses that are tailored to how you sleep.

[1:07:11] Each is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind.

[1:07:16] If you're like me, if you're a side sleeper, because in my case, again, helps with sleep apnea, you want something that's going to cradle you in the right way so your shoulders don't get all messed up.

[1:07:28] Lisa has different types of mattresses for different sleepers.

[1:07:31] They're meticulously designed and assembled in the USA for exceptional quality.

[1:07:35] And they back it up with free shipping, easy returns, and a 120-night sleep trial.

[1:07:42] And Lisa isn't just about sleep.

[1:07:44] They're about impact.

[1:07:46] They work with local nonprofits across the U.S. to donate thousands of mattresses each year to families in need with over 43,000 mattresses donated to date.

[1:07:58] That's a lot of people sleeping.

[1:07:59] Go to Lisa.com for 30% off select mattresses, plus get an extra $50 off with promo code FLOP exclusive for our listeners.

[1:08:08] That is L-E-E-S-A.com, promo code FLOP for 30% off select mattresses, plus an extra $50 off.

[1:08:18] Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout.

[1:08:21] Lisa.com, promo code FLOP.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:25] Before we move on, I wanted to take a moment to tell people that Joke Farming, How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense, my joke writing book from the University of Chicago Press is now available in audiobook form.

[1:08:37] Let's say you don't want to read it with your eyes.

[1:08:39] Let's say you want to listen to my mellifluous tones as they read the book to you while you do other things.

[1:08:46] Now you can do just that.

[1:08:47] Joke Farming, the audiobook as read by me, the author, but I didn't read it that way, is available wherever.

[1:08:53] However, you can buy and download audiobooks.

[1:08:56] Please do buy it, listen to it, share it.

[1:08:59] It is all of my joke writing wisdom in one place for you, and I hope you enjoy.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:06] Let's answer some letters from listeners.

[1:09:08] Before we get into the letters proper, I wanted to acknowledge an outpouring from several people who wrote or tweeted.

[1:09:22] I'm not going to use a new word for tweeting, even though I'm not on X anymore for a long time.

[1:09:29] Dan, Dan, Dan, so what are we talking about?

[1:09:31] Many people contacted the podcast in many different ways to say how they were confused when listening to the 40 Days and 40 Nights episode because they had either confused that movie with 6 Days, 7 Nights.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:47] With Harrison Ford and Anne Heige, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:49] Or 30 Days of Night, which is also a Josh Hartnett film.

[1:09:52] Also a Josh Hartnett, yeah.

[1:09:54] Yeah.

[1:09:55] More understandable to me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:56] That's that movie where Danny Houston's always trying to do it, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:10:01] But I found this both amusing and it was just another sort of indication of like, oh, I'm not like other humans.

[1:10:09] I would never confuse these things.

[1:10:13] But that's because I'm too plugged into every dumb fucking movie that's been made and I remember what they are.

[1:10:20] Yeah.

[1:10:21] But yeah, several people were like, when are they going to start talking about the vampires?

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:26] Dan, is it possible for you to be a professional movie trivia guy?

[1:10:31] Because I think you would be great at it.

[1:10:32] I think you would be great at it, yeah.

[1:10:34] You should get on Colin Jost.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:36] Is that show Beat the Geeks still on?

[1:10:38] Actually, Beat the Geeks is not still on.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:40] Pop Culture Jeopardy is kind of that and I think you do pretty good.

[1:10:43] You just need to team up with somebody who doesn't do just movies.

[1:10:47] Like you should find somebody who's like up on, I don't know, modern what?

[1:10:51] Like are you up on modern?

[1:10:53] What's your weak point in pop culture trivia?

Dan McCoy

[1:10:57] I mean there's like a lot of like modern like internet personalities I would have no context for.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:03] Yeah, so team up with somebody who's into like YouTube.

[1:11:05] So team up with like an eight-year-old, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:07] Like several aging would-be hipsters.

[1:11:09] I gave up on music about 10 years ago.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:12] So listeners, if you know any eight-year-olds, you should team up with Dan for Pop Culture Jeopardy.

[1:11:18] Just send them in.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:20] Yeah.

[1:11:21] Well, anyway.

[1:11:21] Dan, what are your pop culture weak points?

[1:11:23] He's like anything after I was 32 years old.

[1:11:26] Like okay, that's just part of growing up, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:28] I mean, yeah.

[1:11:29] To a large degree.

[1:11:30] I mean, other than – I mean like I'm still I think up on movies and TV.

[1:11:33] Sure, sure, yeah.

[1:11:36] Hey, let's get into the meaty letters though.

[1:11:39] I just wanted to acknowledge how amused I was at how many people – like there were like seven or eight people who contacted with that, which means that, you know, sample size, there have to be like 100 people.

[1:11:49] Oh, yeah.

[1:11:49] There must have been at least 1,000 people who thought we were going to talk about vampires.

[1:11:53] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:53] Yeah.

[1:11:54] Anyway.

[1:11:54] Or Harrison Ford.

[1:11:56] Or Harrison Ford in Haitian, what, a plane crash somewhere?

[1:11:58] Yeah, that was the movie –

[1:11:59] I think it was a plane crash somewhere.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:00] That I saw it and the people came in after the movie being like, we're sorry that the movie theater flooded while you were watching this.

[1:12:10] Here, have some free tickets.

[1:12:12] And my friend Matt and I were like, what?

[1:12:14] We like looked down and we're like, oh, there's – yeah, there's water on the floor.

[1:12:17] You were just so caught up in the movie.

[1:12:19] You were so transported by it.

[1:12:20] Yeah, yeah.

[1:12:21] That's the mark of a good film.

[1:12:22] Yeah.

[1:12:23] This one's from Brian, last name withheld, this letter.

[1:12:28] Brian knows it.

[1:12:29] It goes like this.

[1:12:30] Dan's mention of Time Bandits on the Gabby's Dollhouse episode reminded me that I've seen Time Bandits at least three times from start to finish.

[1:12:38] And the only things I can remember about it –

[1:12:39] Three Time Bandits.

[1:12:41] The only things I can – what is that even – what is it?

[1:12:45] What was that?

[1:12:46] I'm just bothering you.

[1:12:46] It's nothing.

[1:12:48] Literally meaningless.

[1:12:49] The only things I can remember about it are one, John Cleese is in it and two, so are a bunch of little people.

[1:12:56] Are there any movies that you've watched multiple times and managed to retain almost no information about?

[1:13:02] Flop Hard, Brian, last name withheld.

[1:13:04] That's interesting to me because Time Bandits I feel like has so many indelible images like the giant with a ship on his head.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:09] Like the arm wrestling and the guy getting his arm ripped off in the arm wrestling match?

[1:13:14] Does that happen?

[1:13:15] I mean that happens.

[1:13:16] That's in the Robin Hood sequence.

[1:13:18] But that's pretty – it's a quick one.

[1:13:20] Sean Connery as like a bear over.

[1:13:21] As like a memnon?

[1:13:23] No, I remember.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:23] I was thinking more of like the cages hanging in a vast void that they have to swing across.

[1:13:30] Yeah.

[1:13:30] Pure evil.

[1:13:31] The parents exploding, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:33] Pure evil spinning – puffing up like a ball and spinning around and everything, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:36] That's a fucking sick move.

[1:13:38] Like if I'm going to – if I get caught in a – like jumped in an alley by some Tufts, I'm going to puff up like a big ball.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:46] Yeah.

[1:13:47] I don't know that there are movies that I've seen multiple times that I haven't – that I don't retain anything for.

[1:13:53] I have noticed since I've been doing Letterboxd, you know, pretty religiously, like there have been a couple times when I start watching a movie or think about watching a movie.

[1:14:06] And then I go to my own Letterboxd.

[1:14:08] I'm like, oh, I saw this.

[1:14:10] Like it has been erased from my mind.

[1:14:13] But I – you know, I've never – nothing is like interesting as time bends.

[1:14:18] I don't mean to like make fun of the writer of this letter.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:22] But that's the closest you get to a memento situation is you check your Letterboxd and you're like, I saw this movie already.

[1:14:28] Yeah.

[1:14:28] What?

[1:14:29] I think I have this experience with some movies that I watched as a kid.

[1:14:32] There's some movies I watched as a kid like Gremlins that just imprinted – or Robocop that imprinted themselves in my mind and I remember them in such detail.

[1:14:40] Even –

[1:14:40] Like super good movies.

[1:14:41] Yes.

[1:14:42] But then there's movies like – I know as a kid I watched Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend a lot because it has a dinosaur in it.

[1:14:48] I remember almost nothing about it and almost nothing that happens in it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:52] I bet if you watched it now, you would be like, I remember everything.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:56] Only one way to find out.

[1:14:57] Dan, cue it up.

[1:14:58] Fire it up.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:59] I mean that would kind of be a good nostalgia pick for us I think.

[1:15:03] Maybe, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:04] But actually that could be a good flop TV season is movies from our childhood that we don't remember that well.

[1:15:08] Yeah.

[1:15:09] I think otherwise there's movies I've seen like once.

[1:15:12] I know I've seen the movie Stage Fright, the Alfred Hitchcock movie because I remember a couple moments from it.

[1:15:16] But otherwise I don't remember most of the movie.

[1:15:18] And there's a few movies like that where I saw it once and I just – I know I've seen it and yet somehow I retain very little.

[1:15:24] But mostly it's movies I watched when I was young that were – that they just weren't I guess good enough to stick in my head.

[1:15:30] You know.

[1:15:31] But Stuart, do you have anything like that?

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:34] I feel like there's like entries in large franchises that I'm like I've probably seen – I've probably only seen like one or two and I've actually seen all of them.

[1:15:44] But I can't think of anything specific here.

[1:15:48] But real quick.

[1:15:48] So if my secret move is blowing up as a ball to defend myself, how would that compare to your move, Elliot?

[1:15:57] The what?

[1:15:57] Eradicator?

[1:15:58] The eliminator?

[1:15:59] The liberator.

[1:16:00] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:00] The liberator.

[1:16:01] We haven't talked about this in years.

[1:16:02] This is a move that I dreamed in a dream once that a friend of the podcast, Brendan Hay and I in the dream were in a fight with two people.

[1:16:09] And I said to the person I was paired up with, have a taste of the liberator.

[1:16:13] And it was just a straight leg kick right up into the other person's crotch, kind of like in train spotting.

[1:16:18] There's a kick like that.

[1:16:19] But they don't call it the liberator.

[1:16:21] So yeah, I think being – the two of us I think we're in a fight.

[1:16:23] I'll be on offense.

[1:16:24] You'll be on defense.

[1:16:25] You'll puff up into a big ball and I'll just straight leg kick everybody in the crotch.

[1:16:28] Yeah.

[1:16:28] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:28] Yeah.

[1:16:28] That's a good team.

[1:16:29] But what's the name of your puff move?

[1:16:31] That's a good call.

[1:16:32] I'm going to say the – I mean the puffer fish would be super accurate, but it doesn't sound as cool.

[1:16:39] So I would say probably maximum defender.

[1:16:45] That's great.

[1:16:46] I love it.

[1:16:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:47] Okay.

[1:16:48] And this next letter, I was trying to find the writer of it.

[1:16:52] I apologize.

[1:16:53] It seems to have not made its way into my document.

[1:16:55] Richard Bachman.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:57] It did arrive at your house in a bottle.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:59] Yeah, yeah.

[1:17:00] So, yeah.

[1:17:01] This person says, I want to point out a Flophouse reference made by Jim Carrey in Sonic 3.

[1:17:07] In the moment where Grandpa Egghead used nanotech to create a giant mechanical hand, Egghead says, ooh, a nanofist.

[1:17:14] Haven't seen that since I hate-watched Green Lantern in 2011.

[1:17:18] Now, this seems like a stretch.

[1:17:20] But if you go back and listen to your episode on Green Lantern in 2011, it is mentioned that Dan got a Sonic game for his iPad.

[1:17:27] So I find this, not to be coincidence, but the great Jim Carrey shouting you guys out.

[1:17:33] Probably love you guys.

[1:17:35] So, yeah.

[1:17:37] Thank you for drawing those connections in red twine on the wall.

[1:17:45] I appreciate it.

[1:17:47] But we should move on to recommendations.

[1:17:51] Movies that perhaps would be a better use of your time than Wuthering Heights, which we were all at best mixed on.

[1:18:03] I'm going to recommend a movie that I saw at the most recent, Ridiculous Sublime, at the Nighthawk last night.

[1:18:14] Stuart was briefly intrigued by this one, but he's got a lot of travel.

[1:18:18] He's been sick.

[1:18:19] He didn't make it.

[1:18:21] I see it, yeah.

[1:18:22] I'm just doing this to taunt you.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:27] Yeah, every time I see, after Ridiculous Sublime screening, I see Dan post about it in the letterbox.

[1:18:33] I'm like, fuck, I was supposed to go to that.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:36] This is from 1989.

[1:18:38] It is the movie Communion, based on the book of the same name.

[1:18:43] A witness driver.

[1:18:44] Yeah, one that purports to be a true tale of his alien abduction, but was written by the man who wrote Wolfen.

[1:18:54] And what was the other thing he wrote?

[1:18:57] It was a vampire.

[1:18:59] Oh, The Hunger.

[1:19:01] So this is his movie.

[1:19:01] I forgot he wrote The Hunger.

[1:19:03] Oh, yeah.

[1:19:03] He wrote those two books, and then he wrote Communion.

[1:19:05] He's like, no, no, but this one's real.

[1:19:06] I'm like, I don't think so.

[1:19:09] But it's a—

[1:19:10] Nice try.

[1:19:12] An early-ish, you know, UFO abduction narrative.

[1:19:19] And this movie version of it stars Christopher Walken as a supposedly normal author before he gets abducted.

[1:19:27] But he is totally Christopher Walkening the whole time.

[1:19:31] Like, he is going nuts in this movie.

[1:19:34] If you want to see Unleashed Christopher Walken, where he's like, I'm not going to say anything normal.

[1:19:40] He's great in it.

[1:19:41] He's a lot of fun.

[1:19:43] The movie's kind of weird how it, like, it doesn't really go much of anywhere.

[1:19:48] It's like Christopher Walken slowly realizes that he was abducted and probed and has memories about it.

[1:19:57] And that's pretty much it.

[1:19:58] That's pretty much it.

[1:19:59] You know, like, there's a funny kind of half-resolution at the end that I don't want to spoil for anyone because it's so silly.

[1:20:06] But, like, this is like all of the Ridiculous Sublime movies.

[1:20:10] It walks the line of, like, there's a lot in here that's funny because it's just like, what?

[1:20:17] What is going on?

[1:20:18] This is weird.

[1:20:19] And a lot of it that kind of genuinely works even though, I don't know, like, it's grounded in supposed realism that is, again, thrown off kilter by Christopher Walken's strangeness.

[1:20:32] And then, like, all of the effects are goofy, but goofy in a way that is really charming.

[1:20:39] So, like, I'm not recommending it as, like, a movie that totally works like a normal movie would.

[1:20:45] But as a fun experience, it's really great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:48] I think that would be a recommendation that doesn't hold up to scrutiny if you were recommending it that way.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:52] Yeah.

[1:20:53] So, Communion, 1989.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:54] I mean, it's a movie that you're recommending that was screened as part of the Ridiculous Sublime series.

[1:21:00] Yes.

[1:21:01] I feel like that does most of the work.

[1:21:04] So, since we're talking about, like, stories like love stories of obsession and desire, I thought I'd talk about another love story that actually doesn't need my help at all because it's doing some boffo B.O.

[1:21:17] I'm talking about the movie Obsession, the horror movie from Curry Barker doing big old numbers.

[1:21:24] People are obsessed with it.

[1:21:26] And I think it's really great.

[1:21:28] It's really fun.

[1:21:30] The premise is a kind of cowardly, wimpy dude who's, like, a real nice guy, though.

[1:21:39] He's obsessed with a longtime friend of his in the friend group, and he wants to ask her out, but he doesn't have the guts.

[1:21:48] So, he breaks a one-wish willow to allow him to get his wish for her to love him more than anyone else in the world.

[1:21:57] And it immediately goes crazy.

[1:22:00] And it's great, and it's weird.

[1:22:03] It ends up being way weirder than I thought it would be because I feel like it's a fairly straightforward premise that they expand on in kind of interesting directions.

[1:22:12] And it's all anchored by just an incredible performance from the lead actress whose name I can't remember, but she's so good in it.

[1:22:21] Yeah, it's really great.

[1:22:23] And the lighting is incredible.

[1:22:26] Like, the lighting is really good in it.

[1:22:28] So, if you haven't seen it yet and you want to see something a little bit queasy, check it out.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:35] I am going to recommend – so, I – this is a – this is a – not – this is a semi-qualified recommendation.

[1:22:41] So, with – I was thinking with Wuthering Heights, I wanted the movie to be sleazier a little bit, right?

[1:22:45] Like, it was still a little too respectable and dignified for what I think it was trying to do.

[1:22:50] Luckily, I happened to watch a movie recently, which I think is one of the sleaziest, like, professionally made movies I've seen in – maybe ever, but in a long time.

[1:23:00] And I was wondering, Dan, have you ever seen this movie?

[1:23:02] It's 52 Pickup with Roy Scheider.

[1:23:04] Oh, yeah.

[1:23:04] Yeah.

[1:23:04] And, like, I was watching it and I was like – the whole time I was like, Dan would like this.

[1:23:07] This movie is a sleaze fest.

[1:23:08] But it's a – it's – Roy Scheider plays a very unlikable rich guy who starts being blackmailed because of an affair he's having.

[1:23:18] His wife is about to run for city council in L.A.

[1:23:20] And he starts being blackmailed for having this affair.

[1:23:24] And the people blackmailing him are the sleaziest bunch of guys.

[1:23:27] He's really sleazy.

[1:23:29] Like, every – and things just keep descending and getting worse for him.

[1:23:32] And he doesn't really know how to handle this.

[1:23:34] And the – but the bad guys in it are such fun characters.

[1:23:38] And the main – the lead bad guy is played by John Glover, who I – will always be for me, Daniel Clamp from Ghostbusters 2.

[1:23:44] Yeah.

[1:23:44] And Gremlins 2.

[1:23:46] He is – I'm sorry.

[1:23:47] What is that?

[1:23:47] Ghostbusters 2.

[1:23:47] Gremlins 2.

[1:23:48] I'm sorry.

[1:23:48] Ghostbusters 2.

[1:23:49] But in this one, he's playing this bad guy who also has a heavy Baltimore accent.

[1:23:52] Yeah.

[1:23:53] And it's such a funny choice.

[1:23:54] And he's such a – like, he's such a villain who is a total slimeball, is not – is very, like, articulate and thinks he's very charismatic, but is not – but is just a very off-putting sleazeball.

[1:24:08] And he's just so fun to watch in it.

[1:24:10] And he's so – such a horrible person in it.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:12] He's also a great villain, I think, because you immediately, like, see this guy and hear him talking.

[1:24:17] You're like, this guy's an idiot.

[1:24:19] But, like, the problem is, like, you underestimate him at your peril.

[1:24:22] Like, he's, like – he's not, like, a genius criminal or anything, but he's, like, a lot wilier than this guy is prepared to deal with, the lead.

[1:24:31] So, it causes him more trouble.

[1:24:33] And, yeah, this is, like – John Frankenheimer directed this, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:36] John Frankenheimer directed it.

[1:24:37] And it's an Elmore Leonard –

[1:24:38] Frankensteiner?

[1:24:39] Yeah, John Frankenstein directed it.

[1:24:41] So, John Frankenstein – it's based on Elmore Leonard – and it's a Golden Globus movie.

[1:24:45] And apparently – or Canon films.

[1:24:46] Apparently, they had made – they had adapted this Elmore Leonard movie – the Elmore Leonard book already into a movie called The Ambassador,

[1:24:52] which I have not seen.

[1:24:53] And they changed it so much that John Frankenheimer read the book and was like, I want to make a movie of this book.

[1:24:57] And they're like, we did already.

[1:24:58] He's like, well, let me do it again.

[1:24:59] And I'll just be – I'll make it slightly more like the book.

[1:25:02] And it's a – so, and it's basically a story about a rich guy who's blackmailed by a bunch of pornographers.

[1:25:06] And it's just – the movie keeps, like, twisting in ways that are not necessarily, like, surprise shock twists,

[1:25:12] but are ways where I'm like, well, it's not exactly the way I thought this story was going to go.

[1:25:15] And the bad guys in there are just really – John Glover's performance is so funny.

[1:25:19] He's such a terrible person.

[1:25:21] He's such a charmingly terrible person.

[1:25:21] I can't remember if I've seen this one, but I want to.

[1:25:24] Anyway, it's super sleazy.

[1:25:25] It's not one to watch with your parents.

[1:25:27] You know, it's just like –

[1:25:28] You don't know my parents.

[1:25:30] That's true.

[1:25:30] But watching this right around the time I was watching Wuthering Heights, I was like,

[1:25:34] I wish Wuthering Heights had more of this kind of, like, for lack of a better word, sleaze factor, you know.

[1:25:38] And so – and John Glover's performance.

[1:25:40] I think the choice for him to do it with this accent makes everything his character says that much more fun.

[1:25:46] And so I'm just – if there is ever a movie – the same way that – what's his face?

[1:25:51] The Superman who had the mustache and they had to blot out his mustache.

[1:25:54] Henry Cavill.

[1:25:55] Henry Cavill.

[1:25:56] That Henry Cavill's mustache in the Mission Impossible movie is the character choice that, like, helps make that movie.

[1:26:02] I feel like John Glover's accent in this movie helps make this movie into something a little better.

[1:26:06] So it's just a – but it's a real slimy movie.

[1:26:08] So I would recommend that if you want a taste – want a heaping dose of sleaze.

[1:26:14] That's 52 pickup.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:15] Who doesn't?

[1:26:17] So, yeah, that's it for this episode.

[1:26:20] Before we go, we should thank our producer, Alex Smith.

[1:26:24] Check out his work under the name Howell Doughty if you like podcasts.

[1:26:29] And I think you do if you're listening to this one.

[1:26:31] And music, Twitch streams, he does them all.

[1:26:35] Thank you to our network, Maximum Fun.

[1:26:37] If you go over to MaximumFun.org, there are a lot of great shows in the network.

[1:26:41] Check out at least one other one, why don't you?

[1:26:44] See if you like it.

[1:26:45] But for The Flophouse, which is this podcast,

[1:26:48] I have been Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:51] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:26:53] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:57] Bye.

[1:26:57] Let's go weather some heights, guys.

[1:26:59] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:09] I'm recording here on the local.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:12] Oh, wow.

[1:27:13] You're doing a cool little Werner Herzog voice.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:14] This is what I – it's not really Werner Herzog at all.

[1:27:17] It's not really Werner Herzog.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:17] No, it's German.

[1:27:18] Yeah, it sounds like him, right?

[1:27:19] It does not sound like him at all.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:22] Cartoon villain.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:23] This is closer to maybe like the MC in Cabaret.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:27] No, it sounds more like the bad guy from Reacher or Jack Reacher, I guess.

[1:27:31] I feel like it's someone who'd be like, you know, who'd be like, oh, Indiana Jones, well.

[1:27:38] Maximum Fun.

[1:27:39] A worker-owned network.

[1:27:40] Of artist-owned shows.

[1:27:42] Supported.

[1:27:43] Directly.

[1:27:44] By you.

Wuthering Heights

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