Ep# 397 - 65

Stuart Wellington

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss 65.

[0:03] Did it make us Smilodon or leave us Dino sour?

Elliott Kalan

[0:10] There's no Smilodons in the movie.

[0:30] Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Flophouse.

Dan McCoy

[0:39] I'm dancing Dan McCoy.

[0:45] I'm dancing to circus music for some reason.

[0:47] I was going to say, you dance to circus music.

[0:49] That's fine.

[0:51] And who are you guys?

Stuart Wellington

[0:52] Well, today I'm going to be all business boy Stuart Wellington.

Dan McCoy

[0:55] Oh, no. We're not going to get along then.

Stuart Wellington

[0:59] You're too silly. I'm too business.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02] And I'm reflecting on my regrets, Elliot Kalin.

[1:05] Oh, the things I should have done differently.

[1:08] The doors I should have opened and the ones I should have left closed.

[1:10] So you're just playing your normal self.

[1:14] Not that different from normal.

[1:16] That's Elliot when he's in the shower and there's nothing to distract him

[1:19] from the horrible things that he wishes he hadn't done.

[1:22] And usually they're just embarrassing things.

[1:24] They're not that horrible.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25] What normally distracts you in the shower?

[1:28] Your wiener or your phone?

[1:31] What are you doing?

Elliott Kalan

[1:32] Yeah, taking pictures of my wiener with my phone.

[1:35] Then my phone gets wrecked because of the water and the pictures don't come out.

Stuart Wellington

[1:38] No, you've got to put it in a Ziploc baggie, idiot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40] That's why I keep a Polaroid camera in the shower with me,

[1:43] but I can't share those pictures with anybody on the internet because it's a Polaroid.

Dan McCoy

[1:47] I have a Bluetooth speaker that I listen to music or podcasts in the shower frequently.

[1:54] I did realize, and I hesitate to reveal this on air,

[1:59] lest it encourage people to listen to less of our podcasts, which pays our bills.

[2:04] But I found at a certain point that the incessant chatter of the modern world was actually killing me.

[2:10] And so I've tried to cut back and have more sort of silence in my life.

[2:15] But, you know.

[2:16] Yeah.

[2:17] But I do like having the speaker on.

[2:20] So should we just sit here?

[2:23] Yeah.

[2:23] Well, let's just exist in the moment.

[2:25] You know what?

[2:26] This is your meditation podcast, guys.

[2:29] Everyone who's listening, just get ready for two hours of unmitigated silence.

Elliott Kalan

[2:34] Welcome to the Flophouse Meditation Podcast.

[2:38] Unfortunately, the soothing whale songs could not arrive today.

[2:42] The whales were double booked.

[2:43] So we do have soothing dolphin songs.

[2:48] So just take a breathe in.

[2:51] Now just breathe out.

Stuart Wellington

[2:53] Click, click, click, click, click, click.

[2:56] Elliot's voice is reaching such high pitches that Zoom is like, stop it.

Elliott Kalan

[3:00] Yeah, my recording device has its hands out begging me to stop at the noises.

[3:06] Now, silence would be good since the movie we're talking about today has very little dialogue in it.

Stuart Wellington

[3:10] And it features one of the stars of the movie, Silence.

[3:13] Oh, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[3:14] Yeah.

[3:14] A Tyrannosaurus.

[3:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[3:19] Yeah.

[3:19] Okay.

[3:20] So let me reset for new listeners who are very confused and probably won't listen again.

[3:25] This is a podcast.

Stuart Wellington

[3:26] No, not after those dolphin sounds.

Dan McCoy

[3:28] Where we watch a movie that is purported to be bad, either by critics or audiences.

[3:34] And then we talk about it.

[3:35] In this case, the movie was 65.

[3:38] Those are the numerals.

[3:40] Yeah.

[3:40] Six and five.

[3:41] Second entry in numbers month.

Elliott Kalan

[3:43] Yeah.

[3:44] For the record, this is a movie that Sammy Higar can drive.

Dan McCoy

[3:47] Oh.

[3:48] Oh, nice, nice.

[3:48] That's really cool.

[3:50] Yeah.

[3:50] And yeah, as Stuart points out, of course, we had 80 for Brady.

[3:55] 65, we're going down.

[3:57] That's right.

Elliott Kalan

[3:57] As we continue numbers month here on the Flophouse, we're doing numbers-themed titles.

[4:03] M for Y.

[4:05] Yeah.

[4:06] May.

Dan McCoy

[4:08] Yeah.

[4:09] And in this case, yeah, we did 65, the movie about Adam Driver meeting dinosaurs.

[4:15] Meeting is an interesting way to describe it.

Stuart Wellington

[4:17] Yeah, before we get into the plot of this one, I remember when the trailer dropped online,

[4:24] my little film circle was very excited.

[4:27] Like, Adam Driver's going to fight dinosaurs.

[4:29] Did you see that trailer yet?

[4:30] It's produced by Sam Raimi.

[4:32] Yeah.

[4:32] But I didn't actually, I didn't see the trailer for a little bit.

[4:35] And then all I remember of it was the shot later on where there's a T-Rex right behind

[4:41] Adam D.

Dan McCoy

[4:42] Yeah.

[4:42] I got to say that the trailer didn't do a whole lot for me.

[4:46] I mean, as a trailer.

[4:48] Like, Adam Driver and dinosaurs sounds appealing.

Elliott Kalan

[4:51] It did a lot for you as a friend who helps you move?

Dan McCoy

[4:54] Yeah.

[4:54] I mean, am I crazy?

[4:55] At this point in my life, I was more excited by the presence of Adam Driver than I was about

[5:00] the promise of dinosaurs.

Elliott Kalan

[5:01] Yes.

[5:02] And here's, and this is, I kind of felt the same way.

[5:04] And this is coming from a real hardcore dinosaur kid.

[5:07] I love dinosaurs.

[5:08] Always had since I was a child.

[5:09] No offense.

Stuart Wellington

[5:10] You look like a dude who knows a fuckload about dinosaurs.

Elliott Kalan

[5:13] Thank you.

[5:14] Hey, wait a minute.

[5:16] I've been binging a podcast called Terrible Lizards that's all about dinosaurs because

[5:20] I feel like I'm not up on the latest science and I really want to be because there's

[5:23] been, especially in the last 10, 15 years, there's been a lot of exciting discoveries in

[5:26] the world of dinosaur paleontology.

[5:28] But I love dinosaurs.

[5:30] I'll never forget seeing Jurassic Park when it came out in theaters.

[5:33] I saw it twice within 12 hours or so because I just wanted, it was so amazing to me to

[5:39] see real looking dinosaurs that looked alive.

[5:42] And I think I'm just, at this point, we've seen it.

[5:45] Like, we've seen movies with dinosaurs.

[5:46] It's not a special thing anymore.

[5:48] And the way that they could have staked out a special territory is maybe if the dinosaurs

[5:52] in this were accurate to the latest science.

[5:55] So they looked different or weird.

[5:56] But instead, they're just kind of your average movie dinosaurs.

[6:00] And they don't.

[6:00] And the dinosaurs in the movie act like horror monsters.

[6:03] Like, they don't act like animals.

[6:05] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[6:06] Well, it's, I mean, yeah, it's even more beyond them just being like movie dinosaurs.

[6:09] They're like not particularly trying to be any actual dinosaurs that existed.

[6:13] I read a little bit about the production.

[6:16] And apparently, it started out a lot more like what you were talking about.

[6:19] Like, let's make it really accurate.

[6:21] And then they're like, you know what?

[6:23] For the type of like, this is their thinking.

[6:25] I don't know if they're right or wrong.

[6:26] But for the type of like stripped down, simple action sci-fi story we're telling, it's better

[6:33] for us to just not care about it than like do monsters.

Elliott Kalan

[6:36] I think if they had taken that energy and invested it into like cool scenes or like new things

[6:42] that could happen with the characters.

[6:44] Yeah.

[6:44] But the movie itself feels so stripped down and so, I mean, spoiler alert, I guess we'll

[6:49] get into this more.

[6:49] It feels so stripped down and so generic and so kind of like, blah, you know, like nothing.

[6:54] I like, it just feels like a very generic movie with generic dinosaurs as opposed to like

[7:00] something cool and crazy with some new hot dinosaurs that I think are going to sound a little

[7:05] something like this.

[7:08] They're dolphin dinosaurs.

Dan McCoy

[7:11] Here's the funny thing, Elliot, is like, I'm sure that, you know, I mean, you're recording

[7:14] directly into your Zoom digital recorder.

[7:17] You know it.

[7:17] As we explained in the behind the scenes flop house mini.

[7:23] But your dolphin noises are blowing out the Zoom thing.

[7:28] So whenever you do that, I just see your-

Stuart Wellington

[7:31] We see you smiling and doing a little bit.

Dan McCoy

[7:34] Which I'm not against.

[7:34] Your head kicks back.

[7:36] We see your uvula, you know.

[7:38] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[7:39] It's just like in the Company documentary when he's singing Being Alive and it's such a beautiful

[7:44] song, but you can see straight down his throat because of the angle of the camera.

[7:49] And you just see how much the inside of a human mouth looks like gore-covered viscera.

[7:54] And you're like, oh, this is not the way Sondheim intended these lyrics to be taken

[7:57] with a sense of horror at what the interior of all humans looks like.

[8:01] No, he did.

[8:01] I have him right here.

[8:05] Yeah, I mean, the-

[8:07] Well, I've always loved puzzles, Dan.

[8:11] And the ultimate puzzle is how you disassemble a human body.

[8:14] Oh, God.

[8:15] No.

[8:15] Stephen Sondheim, you are the Zodiac Killer.

[8:17] There he is.

[8:18] The late Stephen Sondheim.

Dan McCoy

[8:22] Horrible.

Elliott Kalan

[8:23] Dan, I've buried each piece of James Lapine somewhere in your apartment.

[8:29] You'll have to solve a series of clues and riddles.

Dan McCoy

[8:31] For a second, I thought you were going to say that you buried each piece of James Lipton

[8:35] in my apartment.

[8:37] Which also would have been appropriate to the theater, I suppose.

[8:40] Yeah, somewhat, I guess.

Stuart Wellington

[8:41] That's why Dan's apartment has a beating of a terrible heart, you know?

[8:46] But you know what movie doesn't have a terrible heart?

Elliott Kalan

[8:48] Like in that Bruce Springsteen song, there's the beating of a terrible heart.

[8:54] We all hear that terrible heart.

[8:57] Yep.

[8:58] Here's the beating of a telltale heart.

[9:02] Everybody has a telltale heart.

Stuart Wellington

[9:05] So this movie is kind of sold on the promise that we have Adam Driver as a space traveler

[9:12] who lands on Earth.

[9:13] A space driver.

Elliott Kalan

[9:14] He drives a spaceship.

[9:16] Yeah.

[9:16] Who lands on Earth 65.

Stuart Wellington

[9:17] He's called a space trucker, in fact.

[9:18] A million years ago.

Elliott Kalan

[9:19] No, I wouldn't call him that.

[9:20] He's more of a space airport shuttle driver.

[9:23] Yeah.

[9:23] Because he's just carrying human cargo.

[9:25] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[9:26] And he lands on Earth 65 million years ago, and there's dinosaurs there.

[9:29] And I feel like that's the kind of premise that needs like a poster with like him in like a painting,

[9:36] with him in like a ripped space suit with like bulging muscles,

[9:39] and like very like 70s paperback thriller.

[9:43] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[9:44] Which is one direction you could go.

[9:45] Maybe a woman in like a metal bikini clinging to his leg as he stands on top of a pile of slaughtered dinos.

Stuart Wellington

[9:53] Yes.

[9:54] Now that's, I mean, I feel like that's one direction they could have gone,

[9:57] or they could have gone like hyper-realistic,

[9:59] and I feel like they ended up somewhere kind of in the middle that just doesn't quite work.

Elliott Kalan

[10:02] Yeah, and the direction they didn't take was to have him face one direction on a prehistoric Earth.

[10:08] The world's favorite non-Korean boy band, finally against Adam Driver in prehistoric Earth.

[10:13] And here's, I mean, my main issue with this is the movie, it kind of, it sets itself up for a fall right at the beginning

[10:21] because a lot of what you just described should be a surprise.

[10:25] We should assume that this movie is set in the future,

[10:27] and that, and then it's a surprise when he lands on prehistoric Earth,

[10:30] and we realize he's not from Earth, actually.

[10:33] But the movie, as Stuart will tell us when it's the summary,

[10:35] the movie starts with text that gives that game away.

Stuart Wellington

[10:38] Okay.

[10:38] Pretty much.

[10:39] So we got some production logos, and specifically the final logo is from,

[10:44] is that TSG logo where an Agent Greek guy shoots an arrow through a bunch of axes.

Elliott Kalan

[10:50] That's Odysseus proving that he's Odysseus by pulling back the bow.

[10:53] Thank you.

[10:53] Ancient Greek guy.

Stuart Wellington

[10:54] I was not wrong by saying that.

[10:57] You were right that he was Ancient Greek.

[10:58] That's very true.

[10:59] I was like, yes, he looks like some fucking dude's avatar on Twitter that has fucked up political views.

Elliott Kalan

[11:05] Yeah, someone who's like, yeah, I'm a Bronze Age pervert.

[11:07] Anyway, so here's my, anyway, everything was better back in the old days when things were terrible.

[11:12] So that logo dissolved.

[11:13] Because, of course, if we went back to that time, I'd be in the leadership position.

[11:16] There's no way that me, a moron, it would ever occur to me that I might be a slave in that time period or die for some reason.

[11:24] I, of course, would be a philosopher king or perhaps a warrior king.

[11:28] There's no way.

[11:29] There's no way I would be one of the many teeming thousands or millions who were just nobodies.

Stuart Wellington

[11:34] Yeah, fuck that guy we made up.

[11:35] Yeah, this guy we just made up.

[11:38] So this, I bring up the production logo.

[11:40] Unfortunately, we made him up, but there's like a lot of that guy.

[11:42] He's a composite character.

[11:43] Yeah.

[11:45] I bring up the production logo because it dissolves into a star field and we're in outer space.

[11:52] Odysseus is returning to the stardust from which all humans were formed.

[11:55] Exactly.

[11:56] We get a text overlay on the screen that says, prior to the advent of mankind in the infinity of space, other civilizations explored the heavens.

[12:07] And then we find Planet Somaris, which is a, we only see a little bit of, we see a beach and we see Adam Driver playing a character.

[12:17] Somaris.

[12:17] Mills.

[12:18] That's all I could think of.

Elliott Kalan

[12:19] It's a planet named after something Fraser might have said.

[12:22] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[12:26] So, yeah.

[12:28] Adam Driver plays a character named Mills and he is spending some time with his sick daughter, Naveen or Naveena.

[12:37] I don't, I don't remember.

[12:38] And.

Elliott Kalan

[12:39] Very popular name these days.

[12:40] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[12:40] And Naveen's mom, whose character name is Naveen's mom.

Elliott Kalan

[12:45] And it turns out.

[12:46] Technically, she's listed in the credits on Wikipedia as Elia.

[12:51] But I don't know if she's ever named on screen.

[12:54] No.

Stuart Wellington

[12:54] And on the credits, just say Naveen's mom.

[12:56] Oh, really?

Elliott Kalan

[12:57] So where is Wikipedia getting this name from?

[13:00] I don't know.

[13:00] Like the novelization?

[13:01] Call up Alan Dean Foster.

[13:02] Ask him if he invented this name.

Dan McCoy

[13:04] I know that there were a couple of very different cuts of this movie that were tested out.

[13:11] Maybe they got it from an alternate version that got in a little more detail.

[13:15] Should have given us the extra dyno cut.

Elliott Kalan

[13:17] I will say this.

[13:17] That opening text, I love it.

[13:20] I love it in a different movie.

[13:22] The idea that anything that is saying before humans, the other species explored the infinite cosmos, I'm on board.

[13:29] But then when I find out that that other species is just like Adam Driver and his family and they hang on the beach.

[13:34] I'm less interested.

[13:35] They're hanging out on a beach.

Stuart Wellington

[13:36] They're explaining he, Mills, is taking a new job.

[13:41] It requires him to go on an exploratory run for two years.

[13:45] But it's going to triple his salary because he needs that money to pay for his sick daughter's, like, life-saving treatment.

[13:51] Which right away, guys, I got to say, I'm like, oh, fuck this.

[13:56] Like, in the infinite cosmos, again, we have, what, health insurance?

[14:00] Like, what the fuck?

[14:03] Are, like, healthcare is tied in with our fucking employment again?

[14:06] Jesus Christ.

[14:07] Yeah, even before that.

Elliott Kalan

[14:08] Well, that's the thing.

[14:09] God created that.

[14:09] Even before the advent of humanity, God created an employer-based health insurance system.

[14:14] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[14:14] And I, like, I like, I like a blue-collar, like, I like a blue-collar sci-fi story.

[14:19] I love aliens.

[14:20] I love Stars My Destination.

[14:21] I keep telling you, the movie Blue Collar is not a science fiction story.

[14:23] It's set in the 1970s.

[14:25] Sadly, it's very, very real.

[14:27] Yeah.

[14:27] Or, like, as I said, Stars My Destination.

[14:29] Or, like, this whole, the premise of the movie basically feels like a mix between, like, Dead Space and Turok Dinosaur Hunter, kind of.

Dan McCoy

[14:38] See, I actually liked this setup because I found it pretty efficient in, like, getting me on board with these characters without being too, like, I mean, like, it was very obvious, but it didn't feel, like, as clunky as a lot of movies handle this kind of material.

Elliott Kalan

[14:59] I would say, oh, sorry, finish what you're saying then.

Dan McCoy

[15:02] Oh, just, like, I was more mad than later on, spoiler alert, like, we learned that this daughter has, like, died during his time in space, you know, and I found that kind of just sort of mean on the behalf of the movie in a weird way.

Elliott Kalan

[15:20] It is somewhat.

[15:20] I would say, like a chat GPT written script, it is efficient but soulless.

[15:27] Yeah.

[15:27] It is nothing, it is very efficient.

[15:28] It gets the information out of the way.

[15:30] But there was nothing about it where I was like, oh, these characters feel alive.

[15:33] There's something about them that's interesting or unique.

[15:35] Yeah.

[15:36] It just was like.

Stuart Wellington

[15:36] And the thing is, if you're going to introduce that kind of a thing where it's like, okay, even in this fantasy universe, capitalism is basically crushing us.

[15:44] Like, if they, I mean, I feel like if they built into that and added more to that theme throughout the rest of the movie, I would have been like, okay, yeah, I'm into it.

[15:52] But it felt like it was like, just, as you said, just like churned out by a, like, let's get this out of the way.

[15:57] This makes sense.

[15:58] People will immediately understand.

Elliott Kalan

[15:59] It looks like someone was selecting from a menu of options for reasons to care about a character.

[16:06] And they're like, oh, okay, sick kid.

[16:07] Great.

[16:08] We'll do it.

[16:08] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[16:09] So, as I said, the next thing we see is sometime later, Mills is sleeping on a spaceship.

[16:19] That spaceship goes through an, as of now, uncharted asteroid field.

[16:23] And he has to do some quick evasive maneuvers.

[16:26] They get, the ship gets damaged and he has to crash land on a undocumented planet.

[16:32] You were about to say space planet.

[16:34] Yes, space planet.

[16:35] Which, of course, we will later find out is Earth.

[16:38] And he manages to send out a distress signal at the last minute, giving their coordinates.

[16:45] Ship has crashed in a swamp.

[16:47] He's been injured.

[16:49] Half the ship is missing.

[16:50] The cryo units are damaged.

[16:52] And it seems like he's the only survivor.

Dan McCoy

[16:55] Yeah.

[16:56] And so, I have to wonder, like, is this the exploratory mission he was talking about earlier?

[17:03] Because, like, this seems like maybe we've jumped ahead.

[17:07] This is a different mission because, like, why is there a bunch of cryo people that he's shuttling somewhere?

Elliott Kalan

[17:11] I think when he said, well, he is bringing colonists to a colony.

[17:16] So, I think that's, if they refer to it as an exploratory mission earlier, it's an unfortunately confusing way to describe it.

[17:25] I think, I'm not sure if he is looking for a habitable planet for them or if they know the place they're going to and he's dropping them off.

[17:32] But this is that mission.

[17:33] I don't think he was like, yeah, I'm on this two-year mission.

[17:36] Anyway, I took another job right after I finished.

[17:40] I think it's a, this is supposed to be that mission.

[17:42] If it's not supposed to be that mission, then it's a crazy way to write a movie.

Stuart Wellington

[17:45] It's a weird, extra weird setup.

[17:47] So, he, like, he tries to record another log or another distress signal giving an update as to his situation.

[17:54] But he doesn't have the heart.

[17:56] He contemplates suicide.

[17:57] But the memory of his daughter is what keeps him going, staves off that impulse.

[18:03] So, he treks through the swamp.

[18:05] We have, like, some sinister creatures in the background, but nothing particular, just an overwhelming sense of dread.

[18:10] There's dead bodies.

Elliott Kalan

[18:11] This thing happens where he's, like, wading through a swamp and there's, like, some kind of sea serpent that rises, that is, like, breaking the surface of the water around him, but he doesn't notice and doesn't interact with him.

Stuart Wellington

[18:21] Perfect for a 70s paperback, sci-fi novel cover.

[18:25] Yep.

[18:25] He finds one of the, all the other cryo units are damaged.

[18:29] Everybody else seems dead.

[18:31] But he does find one cryo unit with a survivor in it, a young girl that we'll learn is named Koa, who he rescues and takes back to the crash site.

[18:40] But on his way back, he finds a massive footprint that looks just like a Tyrannosaurus Rex's footprint.

[18:46] And we hear dinosaur roars and then, boom, 17 minutes in it.

[18:50] Tidal, baby.

[18:51] Mm-hmm.

[18:51] 65 on the screen.

[18:53] And it says, with the text, 65 million years ago, a visitor crash-landed on Earth.

[19:01] And we see they're on Earth, baby.

Elliott Kalan

[19:04] I mean—

[19:04] Which seems like a perfect way to reveal that information if you hadn't already set up that they were not from Earth at the very beginning.

[19:10] Well, I mean, they know.

Dan McCoy

[19:11] Here's the fucking thing.

[19:12] Like, no movie can have a surprise anymore.

[19:14] The way things are marketed, this thing, like—

Stuart Wellington

[19:17] Barbarian had a surprise, Dan.

[19:18] The twist was revealed in all of the ads.

Elliott Kalan

[19:21] Good point.

[19:22] But even then, even if on the first release, a lot of that stuff—and I know I'm usually a fan also of, like, why are you hiding the monster so much?

[19:30] Like, we're going to see it on the poster.

[19:32] You know, why are you doing this?

[19:33] Like, with Critters, why are you pretending we're not going to see what a critter is?

[19:37] But the rebuttal to my own complaint from that and this is that, like, if you believe in this movie, it's going to have a life long past the original release.

[19:47] And it's going to be seen by many people who haven't seen the trailer.

[19:50] And, like, the fact—I mean, at this point, everyone knows the end of Planet of the Apes.

[19:54] And when they release it on DVD, they have the Statue of Liberty scene on the cover of the DVD.

[19:59] But, like, at least when you're making the movie, bring us into that story as if, you know, we don't want to make the story.

Dan McCoy

[20:06] I'm not arguing against you in a perfect world.

[20:09] I just know the world we live in where this is all going to be revealed.

[20:12] I would love more movies where I end up being surprised because everything isn't revealed immediately and I don't know exactly what it is before I walk into the theater.

[20:24] And I say this as a person who likes to read things about movies ahead of time.

[20:29] But I try and skip over anything that I think is actually going to spoil any, like, plot details.

[20:34] But I just know that they know that this is going to happen, unfortunately.

Elliott Kalan

[20:38] In that case, then, they should go the other way and, like, just not worry about a twist.

[20:41] Like, at the beginning, just be like, welcome to Gleepzorp.

[20:44] My name's Grinkagronk and we're all aliens.

[20:48] Oh, we've got to go, but don't crash land on Earth.

[20:50] Yeah, the monster planet?

[20:52] Why would I go there?

[20:53] It's full of lizard monsters.

[20:54] And then, oh, no.

[20:56] Oh, shit, we're on the lizard monster planet.

[20:57] Oh, damn it.

[20:58] Oh, God.

[20:59] This is no one ever comes back from here.

[21:01] Yeah, this is unrestricted.

Dan McCoy

[21:02] You make a good point, Elliot, which is this movie should have been called Gleepzorp and Glyzzazonk's Big Adventure on the Lizard Planet.

[21:09] On the lizard monster planet.

[21:10] Again, I'd be super into it.

Stuart Wellington

[21:12] So he starts, he's exploring his surroundings.

[21:14] He's looking for the back half of the crash shuttle because that has the escape shuttle part of it.

[21:21] And he's hoping that will let him get off this fucking planet.

[21:24] Meanwhile, he finds a bunch of dino bones and claws right by a geyser.

[21:31] And the geyser almost roasts him, but he survives and catalogs this dangerous terrain feature for later use.

[21:39] Can I...

[21:40] It's Chekhov's geyser.

[21:42] Real quick, I got to say, on the subject of geysers.

[21:45] Okay.

[21:46] Recently on Law & Order...

[21:48] This is your pamphlet on the subject of geysers.

[21:50] Yeah.

[21:50] Recently on Law & Order, Stabler had to go undercover because there was somebody using a gay dating app.

[21:55] Guys, if you're going to keep interrupting me, I'm going to go longer.

Dan McCoy

[21:59] No, we know.

[22:00] Good point.

[22:00] We understand how it works.

Stuart Wellington

[22:02] So Stabler, played by Christopher Maloney, is on this show called Law & Order.

[22:06] Okay.

[22:06] Are you following me?

[22:07] Okay.

[22:07] So he's...

[22:08] Wait, you're asking questions, but you don't want us to interrupt?

[22:11] Yep.

[22:11] He is in the show Law & Order where he plays a detective and his character's name is Stabler

[22:17] and he has to go undercover on a gay dating app.

[22:19] This is Christopher Maloney from Wet Hot American Summer.

[22:21] Yes.

[22:21] And he has to go undercover on a gay dating app because somebody's been using that to commit crimes.

[22:25] So, of course, there's jokes about like Christopher Maloney being like, wait, am I a daddy?

[22:29] And it's like, duh, no shit, you're a daddy.

[22:31] Yeah, you're a daddy of hosts.

[22:32] So the thing is that that dating app on the show is called Geyser, G-U-Y-S-E-R.

[22:40] And I got to say...

[22:40] That's a good name.

[22:41] That's fucking incredible.

[22:42] And that's the reason why writers deserve fair pay.

[22:46] Thank you.

[22:46] No machine is going to think of something that beautiful.

[22:49] Yeah.

[22:49] Stuart, we shouldn't have interrupted.

[22:50] We didn't know you were doing...

[22:51] You were being...

[22:52] Think of the imagery that a dating app called Geyser creates in your mind.

[22:58] Yeah.

[22:58] Something spouting out hot liquid all over everything.

[23:03] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[23:03] And the tagline's like, you're going to explode.

[23:05] I don't want that.

[23:05] Or like...

[23:06] Perfect.

[23:07] Or like explode on you or something like that.

[23:09] Yeah, yeah.

[23:09] Yeah.

[23:09] I love it so much.

[23:10] Yeah.

[23:11] Can I...

[23:11] Sorry.

[23:12] Geyser's a great name for that.

[23:13] All the writers...

[23:14] The writers for Law & Order should win like 100 Emmys just for that.

Dan McCoy

[23:17] As long as we're talking about things related to the landscape, something a little less jizz-oriented.

[23:23] Is that possible?

[23:25] I just wanted to say that...

[23:26] I mean, according to this one...

[23:27] It's part of the natural world, guys.

Elliott Kalan

[23:28] According to this one James Tiptree story, all of humanity is just basically sperm carriers for a larger organism that reproduces by having us colonize the universe until we encounter specific plants.

Dan McCoy

[23:40] It's a great story.

Dan McCoy

[23:44] No, I just wanted to say that I texted Elliot and Stuart this, but I want to say on air.

[23:51] I will give the movie this in terms of...

[23:53] I saw the trailer and I was like, this is going to look like every other sort of mid-budget, which now in the era of only blockbusters means low budget.

[24:05] It feels like action science fiction movie.

[24:09] It's going to look too grimy and gritty.

[24:12] It's going to look too digital.

[24:15] And I have to say that this movie, I feel like looks pretty good.

[24:19] Like there are some sort of gray times, but that's connected to like if it's raining or foggy.

[24:26] And then there's some sunny times too.

Elliott Kalan

[24:28] My mother always told me legends of the gray times.

[24:30] When the old world died.

Stuart Wellington

[24:31] Yeah, it's when Liam Neeson fights fucking wolves.

[24:34] But you get scenes that are...

Elliott Kalan

[24:36] Liam Neeson, he's just at his kid's parent-teacher meeting and some wolves walk in this.

[24:41] Ugh, another gray time.

[24:42] Okay.

[24:43] Just straps the mini bottles to his fingers and goes hog wild on them.

Dan McCoy

[24:46] Like the movie is atmospheric, but you also get things that are like full sun.

[24:51] And it seems like for the most part, what they did was they found real locations.

[24:57] And then they're augmented by digital stuff, obviously.

[25:00] But a lot of it is shot in an actual place rather than just on a soundstage somewhere.

[25:08] And I appreciated that.

[25:09] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[25:09] I will give it credit on the low bar of it clearly showing us a real location.

[25:15] I wish something more interesting was happening in that location.

Stuart Wellington

[25:17] Yeah.

[25:18] No, sure, sure, sure.

Elliott Kalan

[25:18] Considering that, again, we're dealing with the premise of space traveler fights dinosaurs.

Stuart Wellington

[25:22] Okay, so Mills sees a reflection of something metallic on a nearby mountain and his little scanner thing informs him.

[25:30] He sees his reflection in a snow-covered hill with a landslide coming down.

[25:34] Mm-hmm.

[25:34] And he finds out that that's where the escape shuttle is.

[25:39] It's a mere 15 kilometers away.

[25:42] He's going to have to get his ass over there.

Elliott Kalan

[25:44] But before he can do that—

[25:44] Did it bother you guys at all that they use kilometers in this alien race,

[25:48] or it's just that they translated all of his language into English, so why not?

Dan McCoy

[25:51] I find that if I start worrying about that sort of thing, I go insane.

[25:54] Mm-hmm.

[25:55] Okay, fair.

Stuart Wellington

[25:56] Mm-hmm.

[25:57] I won't worry about it anymore.

[25:58] Like distancelings or—

Elliott Kalan

[26:02] I mean, even if they had said, like, clicks.

[26:03] Space units.

[26:05] Yeah, clicks.

[26:05] Yeah, like, yeah, space miles.

Stuart Wellington

[26:07] It is 15 space miles away.

[26:11] 15 smiles away.

[26:14] But before he can head to that crash—

Dan McCoy

[26:16] And he says to himself, which, of course, stands for space miles.

Stuart Wellington

[26:20] Before he can head to that crash, he gets attacked by a very small dinosaur,

[26:24] and he bludgeons it to death, assuming it's some kind of alien or something, I guess.

[26:30] Well, assuming it was trying to kill—

Elliott Kalan

[26:32] It was trying to kill—

[26:33] This dinosaur also jumps out of nowhere.

[26:35] It's a very funny moment of a dinosaur just leaping out of—

Stuart Wellington

[26:39] Yeah, he's like, this big can—

[26:41] This can of peanuts, let me open—

[26:44] What?

[26:45] A dinosaur.

Dan McCoy

[26:47] Also, unfortunately, guys, because Adam Driver bludgeoned that dinosaur,

[26:50] my grandfather doesn't exist.

[26:52] So I only want to have a time with you.

[26:54] A real sound of thunder.

Elliott Kalan

[26:55] Yeah, the classic story, a sound of bludgeoning.

Stuart Wellington

[26:59] So Koa, the young girl, the survivor, wakes up and follows him,

[27:03] and they find the carcass of a big dinosaur.

[27:05] Turns out that she doesn't speak the same language as Mills,

[27:10] and so they have some trouble communicating,

[27:11] but he explains that they need to get to this crash site.

[27:15] He makes, like, a little diorama or a display or drawing

[27:18] using red dust or spice or something.

[27:20] He draws in red dust, a reference, of course, to the safari movie Red Dust.

[27:24] And he lies to her, or Dust Devil.

[27:27] He lies to her and says that her family's up there,

[27:31] though he knows full well that her family is most likely dead.

Elliott Kalan

[27:35] I shouldn't call Red Dust a safari movie.

[27:37] It takes place in a jungle, but it's not a safari necessarily.

[27:40] Thank you, Elliot.

[27:40] I was glad you corrected.

[27:42] Because they're in French Indochina.

[27:44] They're not in Africa.

[27:45] So I apologize.

[27:46] It's a reference to the jungle movie Red Dust.

Stuart Wellington

[27:50] So they're hiking cross country trying to avoid the notice of predators.

[27:54] They bond a little over poisonous berries, giant bugs,

[28:00] and they rescue a baby dino from a tar pit only to watch it get torn apart

[28:04] by a bunch of other little dinos.

Elliott Kalan

[28:05] Yeah, that was a real sad moment when they're like,

[28:09] we saved it.

[28:10] Ah!

Dan McCoy

[28:11] Yeah, I was surprised the movie was that mean.

[28:13] Because, you know, honestly, like, the thing about this movie is

[28:16] a lot of it feels like it could just be,

[28:19] like this would be a good movie for older kids, I feel like.

[28:23] Yeah.

[28:23] You know?

[28:24] Like this feels like a young adult adventure.

[28:26] It's very confined.

[28:27] It's, you know, a story between a kid and a guy.

Stuart Wellington

[28:29] I mean, it does feel like a movie adaptation of a choose-your-own-adventure novel.

[28:32] Yeah.

[28:32] For sure.

[28:33] And, like, again, this, like, has all the beats of a, like,

[28:37] a survival horror game.

[28:38] I think, you know what?

Elliott Kalan

[28:39] This would be, you're right.

[28:40] This would be a good entry level, like,

[28:41] if you want to show, like, a 10- or 11-year-old,

[28:44] if you're interested in the idea of, like, science fiction adventure movies,

[28:47] and they haven't seen this kind of story before,

[28:48] and there's nothing particularly scary or too violent or, you know,

[28:52] offensive in it or something like that.

[28:54] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[28:54] So he ends up losing his signal,

[28:58] so he has to climb a tree to get a better signal on the escape craft,

[29:01] only to fall and dislocate his shoulder.

[29:04] That was foolish of him.

[29:06] Koa has to help him pop it back into place

[29:09] just in time to start blasting an ambush from a bunch of dinosaurs.

Elliott Kalan

[29:14] That fall, not to bring in a frame of reference that Stuart doesn't understand,

[29:18] but that fall reminded me of when you're playing a Dungeons & Dragons game,

[29:21] and it's like, oh, yeah, I just have to hop across this thing.

[29:23] Okay, roll, like, a two dexterity, and you roll a one,

[29:26] and it's like, oh, you fell in and broke your neck.

Stuart Wellington

[29:27] Like, it should be a very easy roll, and it destroys you, yeah.

[29:31] Well, he got ants on his hand.

[29:33] He had ants on his hand, and he fell,

[29:35] so he dislocates his shoulder,

[29:36] and these, like, dinosaurs start getting ready to pounce out of the mist,

[29:40] and he's like, okay, step on my hand,

[29:42] and then they pop it back in just in time for him to, like,

[29:45] it's like one smooth motion.

[29:47] Pop shoulder back in, gun stock goes to shoulder,

[29:51] and he starts blasting.

[29:52] And I kind of like the, like, sound of the pulse rifle here,

[29:55] the, like, sound effect of it.

[29:56] Sure.

[29:57] Yeah.

[29:57] And this is, like, this is what the IMDb trivia for this movie

[30:00] It's like the first action scene in the movie.

Dan McCoy

[30:02] said something like, this is the only movie where Adam Driver,

[30:09] Marine, has been able to use some of his weapons training.

[30:13] I'm like, it can't be true.

Elliott Kalan

[30:16] There's no way the Marines didn't teach him how to punch walls,

[30:18] like he does in that story.

[30:19] Yeah, yeah, marriage story.

[30:20] In the back story, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[30:21] I mean, that level of, yeah, I'm not going to get into that.

[30:24] Okay.

[30:25] This is how a Marine wins an argument.

[30:27] Semper Fi.

[30:28] Hit the wall.

Dan McCoy

[30:30] Okay, so.

[30:31] There's going to be two hits.

[30:33] Me hitting the wall and me, I guess, hitting the floor

[30:37] because I fainted because of the pain of hitting the wall.

[30:39] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[30:39] So he blasts these dinos.

[30:42] I go, the Marine Driver, this is where we're going to teach you

[30:44] how to treat a puppet of a little girl as if it was a real little girl.

[30:47] You don't think you're going to use this training.

[30:49] Well, you will.

[30:50] And when he's on the set of Annette, he was like,

[30:51] all my Marines training is finally coming in handy.

[30:54] I never thought I'd use it, but now I am.

Dan McCoy

[30:57] Mm-hmm.

[30:57] Don't worry, Stuart.

[30:58] There's a little plot.

[30:59] We'll still get through it.

[31:00] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[31:00] No, I was kind of worried because we haven't even made a single joke

[31:03] about the fact that, like, do you think there was ever a point

[31:06] where Adam Driver was like, you could shrink me down

[31:08] and I could be a mini driver?

[31:10] And they're like, we're not legally allowed to do that.

[31:11] We can't call you mini driver.

[31:13] There's no human being called that.

Elliott Kalan

[31:14] What if you de-aged me into a baby driver?

[31:16] Again, we can't.

[31:17] We can't do that.

Stuart Wellington

[31:18] Not allowed to do that.

Dan McCoy

[31:20] What if you killed everyone else named Driver,

[31:22] so now I'm the driver?

Elliott Kalan

[31:25] Again, that sounds even less legal than us infringing on the copyrights

[31:29] with an actual murderer.

[31:30] What if you wrote a book about me and I was a paperback driver?

[31:33] That song is called Paperback Writer, Adam Driver.

[31:35] It's not called Paperback Driver.

[31:37] Oh, yeah, now the song makes more sense to me now

[31:39] because I was like, how can you be a paperback driver?

[31:42] I don't know what it is.

[31:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[31:43] It doesn't even rhyme.

[31:43] But what about when I hit that wall?

[31:44] It's got certain accidents.

Stuart Wellington

[31:45] When I hit that wall, would you call me drive angry?

[31:47] And they're like, well, that's not your name.

Elliott Kalan

[31:50] Well, what if I was real long and full of water

[31:52] and I was the Mississippi driver?

[31:54] Again, that's river.

[31:55] Mississippi river.

[31:56] It's a different word.

[31:56] It doesn't rhyme.

[31:57] It doesn't rhyme.

[31:58] It has a lot of the same letters.

[32:00] It has all the same letters except for one.

[32:01] That's true.

[32:03] Yeah.

[32:04] And then he goes into his tight five about the letter D.

[32:07] You ever notice how the letter D changes the pronunciation of I

[32:09] if you stick it on top of river?

[32:11] What's that all about?

[32:12] Who made those rules?

[32:13] Excuse me, Mr. Alphabet.

[32:15] Can you explain this to me?

[32:16] Oh, yeah.

[32:17] D has magic powers.

[32:18] Sure it does.

Stuart Wellington

[32:19] I'm like, where did he find that brick wall to stand him?

[32:22] No, it's amazing.

Elliott Kalan

[32:23] In a pretty stark world.

[32:24] This is from Adam Driver's Comedy Central roast of the alphabet.

[32:28] He's wearing a blazer, but he has a t-shirt under it?

[32:32] It's amazing.

[32:32] Surely not.

[32:33] He's breaking all the rules.

[32:34] Are those Kirkland brand jeans he's wearing?

[32:37] Let me do my impression of Q.

[32:40] I'm scared.

[32:41] Will you keep me company?

[32:42] I don't want to start the letter without your help.

[32:45] Is that Q from Star Trek he's doing?

Dan McCoy

[32:49] Is it James Bond's Q?

Elliott Kalan

[32:52] Anyway, here's my impression of X.

[32:54] Guys, I almost never get to start a word.

[32:57] It's not fair.

[32:58] Versus Sever?

Stuart Wellington

[33:00] X-23?

[33:02] But she's just a little girl.

[33:03] She's just a little girl Wolverine.

[33:06] So speaking of little girls, this one little girl goes running away from the dinosaurs,

[33:10] ends up on a beach with other dinosaurs,

[33:12] and these nasty dino guys are chasing her,

[33:15] and they're about to get her, but at the last minute,

[33:18] that's right, Adam Driver's.

[33:19] Driver shows up and scares them off, saving her.

[33:22] However, she's a little bit traumatized,

[33:23] so they have to play a little whistle game to calm down.

Elliott Kalan

[33:26] Yep, because that's when his dad's skills come into play.

[33:29] Much as in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,

[33:31] the real superpower is fatherhood.

[33:33] It's being a dad.

Stuart Wellington

[33:34] They have a little whistle stop.

[33:35] So they make camp in a little cave.

[33:39] They make camp in a little cave,

[33:40] and while they're sleeping, a little bug crawls into Koa's mouth,

[33:44] and Adam Driver has to blow it up.

[33:45] It's pretty gross.

[33:46] It's kind of gross.

[33:46] Yeah.

[33:46] It's a little gross.

Elliott Kalan

[33:47] It's not as gross as the similar scene in The Sisters Brothers,

[33:50] which is a grotesque scene about, what, a spider biting him while he's sleeping?

[33:55] I haven't seen it.

[33:56] I heard good thing.

[33:56] Oh, I haven't seen that.

[33:57] Oh, it's a good movie.

[33:58] That sounds gross.

[33:58] Where does it bite him?

[33:59] It bites him, I think, on the face, and his face,

[34:01] it like blows up really gross.

[34:03] Anyway.

[34:04] Oh, that's horrible.

Stuart Wellington

[34:05] Yeah.

[34:05] So, but they're like, their proximity alarm goes off,

[34:09] and they are like, uh-oh, is it another bug crawling into our mouths?

[34:12] But nope, it's a T-Rex.

[34:14] A Tyrannosaurus shows up right behind them in a fairly effective, like, surprise shot.

[34:19] So effective they have to use it in the trailer.

[34:21] So he turns around and blasts it with his pulse rifle, but is not able to-

Elliott Kalan

[34:25] We don't want to use it in the trailer, but we have to.

[34:27] It's just too damn effective.

Stuart Wellington

[34:29] So they're kind of forced deeper into the cave,

[34:32] because his pulse rifle is not enough.

[34:34] And don't worry.

[34:34] Okay.

[34:35] We're going to see more of this treacherous Tyrannosaur later in the movie.

[34:40] So they're wandering through the caves.

[34:41] Check off Tyrannosaur.

[34:41] Yep.

[34:41] They're wandering through the caves.

[34:43] They eventually get stuck,

[34:45] and they have to start blasting their way through using little grenades.

[34:48] That causes a cave-in and separates them.

[34:51] And Adam Driver has to go back the way he came.

[34:54] Adam Driver, of course, playing the character Mills,

[34:55] not playing himself.

[34:56] That would be weird.

[34:57] Oh, right.

[34:57] Sure, sure.

[34:58] So Mills has to make his way back.

[34:59] He gets jumped by another sneaky dino,

[35:02] and they have a little fight in the dark.

[35:04] And he uses the little sonar feature of his scanner thing to distract it before he blasts it.

[35:13] So he's kind of using all his equipment pretty well here.

Elliott Kalan

[35:15] Oh, yeah.

[35:15] That's the marine training.

[35:16] You know, everything you have can be used as a weapon if you need to.

[35:19] It's very resourceful.

Dan McCoy

[35:21] I will say that, like, yeah, this is, like, he has this, you know, all these weapons that he uses.

[35:27] Wonderful toys.

[35:29] Not.

[35:29] Where does he get them?

[35:31] Well, I mean, like, I think that that is a place where this movie falls down.

[35:35] Just as the movie Cowboys vs. Aliens.

Elliott Kalan

[35:39] I believe it's just called Cowboys and Aliens.

Dan McCoy

[35:41] Cowboys and Aliens.

[35:41] Sorry.

Elliott Kalan

[35:42] You don't know until you watch the movie whether they're going to fight or not.

[35:44] Maybe they're just hanging out.

[35:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[35:46] Maybe they're just hanging out on a dude ramp.

[35:48] Maybe they're dating.

[35:48] Who knows?

[35:49] Yeah.

[35:50] Much like that fails to deliver on the promise of, like, oh, man, what if Cowboys and Aliens, what if?

[35:57] Like, this doesn't quite deliver on, like, I think that the idea is, okay, obviously.

Stuart Wellington

[36:03] Obviously, shout out to Fred Van Lentee who wrote the original, I think, the original treatment for Cowboys and Aliens.

[36:08] Yeah.

[36:09] Oh, I didn't realize that.

Elliott Kalan

[36:10] Yeah.

[36:10] I bet it was better than the movie.

[36:12] Fred Van Lentee's great.

Dan McCoy

[36:14] He's a regular Adam Driver, just, you know, your run-of-the-mill Adam Driver that you might find in any Hollywood today.

Elliott Kalan

[36:24] Not a Dark Side Jedi, just a person.

Dan McCoy

[36:27] Yeah.

[36:27] He would not fare well against a jungle full of dinos.

Elliott Kalan

[36:32] You're saying, like, a lucky Logan Adam Driver would not fare well against a dinosaur jungle.

[36:36] Yeah, probably.

[36:36] But this is one that has a bunch of—

[36:38] He'd be trying to drive one, ironically, because he's just driving in that movie.

[36:41] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[36:41] This guy's got a bunch of space stuff, you know.

[36:44] He's got space stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[36:44] So it's like a predator.

[36:45] I mean, we're all made of space stuff.

[36:47] Thank you, Carlson.

[36:47] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[36:48] But, yeah.

[36:48] But, no, you know what I'm saying.

[36:49] What I'm trying to get to is, like, the fun, trashy version of this would lean a lot more on, like,

[36:56] okay, how is a spaceman with his, like, space technology going to take on these, you know,

[37:02] primitive but dangerous and large and all-over monsters?

[37:05] I feel like the trashy version of this—

Elliott Kalan

[37:06] Kind of like a predator.

[37:07] Yeah.

[37:08] Yeah.

[37:08] Or, like, he has a gun that shoots, like, circular saw blades or something.

[37:11] So he's, like, chopping the heads off of dinosaurs.

[37:13] Yeah, fucking awesome.

Stuart Wellington

[37:14] That'd be cool, right?

[37:15] It's fucking awesome, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[37:16] I mean, I guess what I'm saying is, like, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[37:18] Like, shoots a little shuriken like he's a fucking Eldar guardian.

Dan McCoy

[37:21] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[37:23] I know what you're talking about.

[37:24] Dan, is it clear that I don't know what he's talking about?

[37:26] Yeah.

[37:27] No, it is.

[37:28] No, but it falls victim to the neither fish nor fowl thing that Stuart's talking about,

[37:31] where it's like—

[37:31] No, they're dinosaurs.

Elliott Kalan

[37:33] So they are fowl.

[37:34] They're the ancestors of modern birds.

[37:36] You know, dinosaurs never went extinct, Dan.

[37:37] They just evolved into birds.

Dan McCoy

[37:38] It's kind of trying to do a serious version of the story, but Spaceman versus dinosaur is inherently a little more pulpy than that wants to be.

Elliott Kalan

[37:48] I think the serious version of this, it's weird.

[37:50] Like, they're trying to do an emotionally serious version, like he's an emotionally tortured man.

[37:55] When it feels like the serious version of this—

Stuart Wellington

[37:56] He definitely—he hits at least one wall.

Elliott Kalan

[37:58] Yes, he does.

[37:59] Well, that's in his contract.

[38:00] He's got to do it.

[38:01] The serious version of this, I feel like—

[38:02] He hates walls.

[38:02] I feel like would be one that, like, takes the survival aspect of it that much more seriously.

[38:07] Where it's really a man-against-nature story where you're taking the details seriously.

[38:11] And it doesn't quite do that either.

[38:12] And then there's also dinosaurs on top of this.

[38:14] And there's also dinosaurs, yeah.

[38:15] But you're right.

[38:16] It doesn't—it clearly doesn't want to do the silly, pulpy version of it where he's just like, get extinct,

[38:22] and then, like, blows Deinonychus' head off, which would be a crime.

[38:25] Deinonychus is the best dinosaur.

Stuart Wellington

[38:26] Or, like, jump kicks a brontosaurus' head right off.

[38:29] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[38:32] Oh, man, if only—that's the Scott Adkins version of this movie.

[38:34] That would be fucking sick.

Dan McCoy

[38:36] I mean, it is kind of like a T-ball.

[38:38] Just, like, a little bulb on the end of it.

[38:39] Yeah, he can get attached that strongly.

[38:41] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[38:43] And the hard part is the jump.

[38:44] It still has a second brain, right?

[38:46] Or a second heart or some shit?

[38:47] No, at best, that's a nerve cluster.

[38:50] The hard part is not the knocking off the head.

[38:52] The hard part is the vertical leap to get to that level.

[38:54] He's going to have to jump kick off a tree or something like that.

[38:57] You've got to get a ramp.

Dan McCoy

[38:58] He'll just be in a tree and then sort of jumps down while kicking.

[39:02] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[39:02] Or he just does a—he's standing on a branch and just does a spin kick and knocks that

[39:06] dino's head clean off.

[39:07] Yeah.

[39:07] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[39:08] Like a Ken-style—a Ken Master-style hurricane kick.

Elliott Kalan

[39:12] And then the head flies across the horizon and it lands in the lap of a dinosaur that's

[39:16] just waking up.

[39:17] And he looks down and screams at the severed head that landed in his lap.

[39:20] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[39:20] Yeah, yeah.

[39:21] Or it lands right in a bathtub where like a topless dinosaur is taking a bath with its

[39:26] tits out and I'm like, what the heck?

Elliott Kalan

[39:28] Okay, that's interesting.

Dan McCoy

[39:30] You're entering like kind of Howard the Duckmore territory with this one.

Elliott Kalan

[39:34] Ducks are birds.

[39:35] Neither are ducks.

[39:36] Ducks are dinosaurs.

Dan McCoy

[39:37] Or dinosaurs are mammals, so they shouldn't have breasts.

Elliott Kalan

[39:41] That's true.

[39:41] But these are—well, it's interesting that dinosaurs evolved to non-milk-producing features

[39:46] that look like human breasts, purely by convergent evolution.

[39:50] And we're not sure if those are air sacs that allow them to make loud noises for mating

[39:55] purposes or if there's a defense mechanism.

[39:57] Dinosaur breasts are still hard to understand because they don't fossilize well.

[40:00] It's all soft tissue.

[40:02] So it's very rare that you get them fossilized.

[40:04] Yeah, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[40:04] One scientist who's like, I'd like to present my theory of dinosaurs.

[40:08] It's just a bunch of slides that he's pointing to at the conference.

[40:12] They all have big—

Stuart Wellington

[40:13] Like crude drawings that he's made that he's like, I'm like, I'm going to

[40:16] I'd like to draw your attention to the only evidence we have.

Elliott Kalan

[40:19] They called me mad.

[40:20] I'd like to posit a hypothetical situation in which I am having sex with these bosomed

[40:25] dinosaurs.

[40:26] Allow me to click to the next slide.

Stuart Wellington

[40:28] See, the thing is that they're going to be—I might not be big and strong, but they like

[40:32] me because I'm a little bit goofy.

[40:33] No, obviously this rendering is not to scale.

[40:36] That's why they're into me.

Elliott Kalan

[40:38] And also, you know what?

[40:40] I attend to them.

[40:42] I'm not just about my pleasure.

[40:43] I'm attending to the dino's pleasure.

[40:45] He's a really good listener.

[40:46] Yeah, exactly.

Stuart Wellington

[40:46] And he's clearly got a great imagination.

[40:48] So, I mean, who is this guy?

[40:50] I don't know, but he's amazing.

Elliott Kalan

[40:51] And I'm putting the work in.

[40:53] That's the thing.

[40:53] I'm wooing them.

[40:54] And he's working on himself a little bit, too.

[40:55] I'm not just fucking these dinosaurs.

[40:57] I'm wooing them because a dino's brain is the largest erogenous zone.

[41:00] And their brains are surprisingly small for the size of their bodies, but it's still a larger erogenous zone than, say, the dino clitoris, which is hard to find even for me.

[41:09] How about we don't ever say that?

[41:10] A guy who considers himself a dino feminist, you know?

Dan McCoy

[41:13] What street did we drive down?

[41:16] We took a wrong turn along the way, Stuart.

[41:20] Okay.

[41:21] Well, Elliot's talking about this.

Stuart Wellington

[41:22] Meanwhile, Koa manages to escape to the surface, and she makes—

[41:26] She uses a discarded dino talon.

[41:27] Modern paleontology is not afraid to go there, guys.

[41:29] Yeah, you're right.

[41:30] I guess that's—

[41:31] No, no, no, no.

[41:32] We shouldn't be afraid.

[41:32] Keep up to date.

[41:33] Yeah, a lot of great discoveries have been made.

[41:35] Yeah.

[41:35] So, Koa makes a paste of poisonous berries and smears them all over a discarded dino talon.

[41:41] Maybe that'll come up later.

[41:43] And then outside of the caves, this is where we get the second real twist of the movie, guys.

[41:48] Mills checks his scanner, and it reveals a previously mentioned anomaly.

[41:53] We—the asteroid that ends up wiping out the dinosaurs is on a collision course with Earth.

[41:58] They got to get off this fucking planet.

[42:00] We have a ticking time—we have a ticking clock now, folks.

[42:04] Let's get out of here.

Elliott Kalan

[42:05] They didn't just land on Earth 65 million years ago.

[42:08] They landed the day before the dinosaurs were wiped out.

[42:11] That is bad luck.

Stuart Wellington

[42:13] It's bad timing.

[42:14] Yeah, that's very bad luck.

[42:14] Although I guess it makes sense because that's why there's the asteroid field before—

[42:18] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[42:18] I think they would say that's why they crashed in the first place is because of the asteroids.

[42:23] But the fact that they were passing by Earth a couple days before the life form that had ruled the planet for over 100 million years is about to be wiped out, leaving space for a little stinker known as humanity to evolve.

[42:38] It's just good to—the only way I would have liked it more, and maybe they are implying this but not, is if it was their crash that sent the asteroid towards the Earth.

[42:46] And that they're like—it bounced off their spaceship towards the planet.

[42:50] And they're like, oopsie.

Stuart Wellington

[42:52] Sorry.

[42:52] That would be zany.

[42:53] What a mix-up.

[42:55] Yep, it's humanity's time to shine.

[42:57] So, Koa and Mills are reunited.

Elliott Kalan

[43:01] I am glad of one thing.

[43:01] Okay.

[43:02] That I was worried that it was going to be like, oh, no, the dinosaurs go extinct.

[43:06] Are they going to reveal that Adam Driver and Koa are the ancestors of all of humanity in some kind of, like, forced Adam and Eve situation?

[43:13] I'm glad they didn't do that.

[43:15] Yeah.

[43:15] Spoiler alert, they don't do that, which is great.

[43:17] They don't do that.

[43:17] Not only would that really screw with the fossil record, but it would be—it's dumb.

[43:21] We've seen it before.

[43:22] You know.

[43:23] Thank you for not doing that.

Dan McCoy

[43:24] I want to say, though, that if it was the movie you're talking about and they hit the asteroid into the Earth, like, I love how that flips the whole thing where the dinos have a legit gripe against Adam Driver.

[43:38] Yeah, that's true.

[43:39] They have a reason to attack him.

[43:40] Who has doomed their entire species.

Stuart Wellington

[43:42] That he doomed them and is trying to just dip out.

[43:46] Sorry, guys.

Elliott Kalan

[43:47] My bad.

[43:48] It is the ultimate hit and run.

[43:51] Universal hit and run.

[43:52] He's just going to leave a note that's like, sorry, I destroyed your planet for a little bit.

[43:56] Let's get our lawyers in touch.

[43:58] Rename the movie Bad Driver.

[44:00] Now, here's the better movie.

[44:01] Here's the movie I want to see of that.

[44:02] They catch him.

[44:04] He gets taken to dino court and put on trial for war crimes.

[44:08] They sentence him to 65 million years in jail.

[44:10] And then humanity evolves and Adam Driver emerges from his cryo prison 65 million years later.

[44:18] That's why humanity has this warlike gene inside of us that caused us to fight our neighbors is because the guy who taught us all that destroyed the dinosaurs first.

[44:27] And he's gone insane from his time in cryo jail for 65 million years.

[44:31] Anyway, there's your movie.

Stuart Wellington

[44:32] You TM that shit, right?

[44:34] Okay, so.

[44:34] Yeah.

[44:35] Transcendental Meditated.

[44:36] I will.

[44:36] So they reunite.

[44:38] Koa kills a couple little baby dinos and saves Mills from some quicksand.

[44:41] They climb up the mountain.

[44:42] They find the crash.

[44:43] The escape vessel is intact and working.

[44:46] They have the coordinates to connect with the rescue vessel.

[44:48] But then Koa realizes Mills had lied to her about her family being alive and at the crash site.

[44:53] So he, like, talks about his daughter or some shit and everything's fine and they're okay.

Dan McCoy

[44:57] And by the way, he talks about his daughter.

Stuart Wellington

[44:59] And I tweeted about this and this was the inspiration for the tweet.

Dan McCoy

[45:04] Yeah, you can go back and be like, oh, now I know why.

[45:06] Yeah.

[45:07] In movies where.

[45:09] All the clues were there, Mr. Policeman.

[45:10] In movies where there's, like, a language barrier, I'm always annoyed at how at the moment that something really emotional and important needs to be imparted, seemingly that problem falls away.

[45:24] Like, seemingly the message gets across.

Elliott Kalan

[45:26] There's one language we all speak.

[45:28] The language of the human heart.

[45:29] In Esperanto.

[45:30] In Esperanto, yeah.

[45:31] The universal language.

[45:32] It's a, I mean, she saw the footage of Adam Driver's daughter that he keeps on his little, like, hologram cards that look for the life of me.

[45:41] Like the little lenticular viewer that used to come with Secret Wars superhero action figures.

[45:47] Oh, cool.

[45:47] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[45:48] Or like those trading cards that had, like, dinosaurs wearing clothes and shit.

[45:52] Did you ever get those?

[45:52] Yes, yes.

[45:53] Or Jesus following you around the room.

Elliott Kalan

[45:55] Exactly.

[45:56] Please tell him to stop.

[45:57] I'm not going to convert.

[45:58] I appreciate it.

[45:59] Yeah, I'm not buying anything.

Dan McCoy

[46:01] I'm not going to, I'm just here to.

Elliott Kalan

[46:03] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[46:03] When, depending on the way you look, when you go back and forth, it looks like his eyes are rolling the whole time.

[46:07] You're like, calm down, buddy.

[46:08] Yeah, sarcastic Jesus.

[46:09] We're doing the best we can.

Elliott Kalan

[46:11] We're not all God's son, okay?

[46:13] And even you kind of fucked it up a little bit when you were doing that job.

[46:16] So, you can pop those little things into the video toaster like she does and see the hologram projections.

[46:22] So, maybe she sees his emotions and kind of guesses, oh, he must be talking about this girl.

[46:27] No, I know.

Dan McCoy

[46:28] It's just a thing that happens in movies that bothers me, though, where it's just like, well, I guess everyone understands everyone now.

[46:34] Like, I have no idea what she thinks he's actually saying.

Elliott Kalan

[46:37] She thinks he's going, I'm so hungry.

[46:39] Can we just go home?

[46:40] I need a sandwich.

Stuart Wellington

[46:41] Yeah.

[46:42] It's like when you bonk someone in the head with a coconut.

[46:44] You're like, you could have killed him.

[46:45] That's what Judd Apatow texted me.

[46:47] He's like, you could kill someone if you hit him in the head with a coconut.

Elliott Kalan

[46:51] It's a war crime.

[46:52] It's something that, that bothers me, and it shows you, it's true, but it shows you the power of storytelling is that if the story was told well and it was more interesting, you wouldn't notice.

[47:01] The same way that we mentioned Play of the Apes earlier, Charlton Heston must be the biggest moron in the world to not, or Taylor, his character, to not notice he's on earth when every ape speaks perfect English to him.

[47:12] And it never occurs to him that, oh, yeah, these aliens on this other planet where apes evolved, they also evolved English, the same language I speak.

[47:19] Like, that should tip him off.

[47:20] But the movie's so good.

Stuart Wellington

[47:21] Every single, like, dialectic nuance, it's exactly the same.

Elliott Kalan

[47:26] Yeah, they use the same slang.

[47:27] Like, but the movie just, like, is so well told that you have to watch it a couple times before that even really bothers you to a certain extent, you know?

[47:34] Yeah.

[47:35] Whereas this, that stuff, it's a cop right out.

[47:36] Guys, we are in the home fucking strip.

Stuart Wellington

[47:38] Yeah, okay, okay.

[47:39] So they strap in, their shuttle gets hit by a chunk of asteroids, so they slide down a mountain.

[47:43] Uh-oh.

[47:44] Yeah, they're upside down, yeah.

[47:45] They're upside down.

[47:46] And unfortunately, they also slide right into the path of an angry T-Rex.

[47:50] Wait a minute, two T-Rexes?

[47:53] There's two T-Rexes.

[47:54] Adam Driver's like, I'm gonna start blasting them.

Elliott Kalan

[47:56] Yeah, the T stands for twin, twin Rexes.

Stuart Wellington

[47:59] His little blaster's out of ammo, so he has to lead them on a little chase.

[48:03] And the T-Rexes are like, you did this.

Elliott Kalan

[48:05] This is your fault.

[48:06] This is all because of you.

Stuart Wellington

[48:08] They trap him under a piece of wreckage, and things are looking grim.

[48:11] Tyrannosaurus wreckage.

[48:12] So Koa uses the little hologram player and plays a little hologram of his daughter to kind of lift his spirits and also to distract those dinos.

[48:21] Because one of them tries to bite his daughter hologram, and he's like, fuck this.

[48:26] And his gun suddenly starts to work, and he fucking blasts one in the dome and kills it immediately.

[48:31] It is funny.

[48:32] Perfect shot.

Elliott Kalan

[48:33] We're familiar from movies when a character sees a loved one threatened and gets berserker strength.

[48:38] But the idea that their gun was also like, we gotta protect that girl.

Stuart Wellington

[48:41] You don't understand future guns, Elliot.

[48:43] Maybe they're powered by rage.

Elliott Kalan

[48:44] And it's not the future, Stuart.

[48:46] It's 65 million years ago.

[48:47] These are past guns.

[48:48] But maybe they are powered by rage.

Stuart Wellington

[48:49] Oh, okay.

[48:50] So he then, the other T-Rex is mad about this whole thing.

[48:54] So it goes and attacks the shuttle, putting it in the perfect position to launch.

[48:58] Thank you.

[48:59] Thank you, help the T-Rex.

[49:00] And then Adam Driver blasted a whole bunch, and it collapsed.

[49:02] And we're like, oh, man, the nightmare's over.

[49:04] No, no, no.

Elliott Kalan

[49:05] Way to thank that T-Rex for saving you by blasting it to death.

[49:08] Come on, Adam Driver.

Stuart Wellington

[49:09] And no, no, no.

[49:10] Nightmare's not over, because a third T-Rex shows up, and you know which one it is.

[49:14] It's the sassy one that already has gotten shot in the face and does not like him.

[49:19] So he tries to lead it away so that Koa can escape.

Elliott Kalan

[49:22] That T-Rex shows up, hey, buddies, I'm ready to join you for our picnic.

[49:26] And they're dead.

[49:28] Who did this?

[49:28] And he sees Adam Driver and goes, so it's you.

[49:31] You asshole, you're back.

[49:32] And Adam Driver goes, feets, don't fail me now.

Stuart Wellington

[49:35] So he goes running away.

[49:36] Dino chases him.

[49:38] And Adam Driver's like, ha-ha, remember that geyser from earlier?

[49:41] You're about to get a face full.

[49:42] Unfortunately, this T-Rex is way too smart for him and stops short before getting its face roasted off.

[49:47] Yeah.

[49:47] And it looks like it's curtains for males.

[49:50] Unfortunately for the dino, Koa runs up and stabs it right in the eyeball.

[49:54] Perfect shot.

[49:55] No scope.

[49:56] Right in the eyeball.

[49:57] And it starts thrashing around right in the path of a geyser and gets its face melted off.

[50:02] Gross.

[50:04] Yeah.

[50:05] They get on the shuttle.

Elliott Kalan

[50:06] They fly away.

[50:07] What?

[50:08] There was this, maybe you guys are familiar with the Dinosaur Attacks trading card series, which was an 80s kind of sequel to Mars Attacks, where they were like, let's do the same thing with dinosaurs.

[50:17] It super freaked me out when I was a kid.

[50:19] It's so over-the-top gory.

[50:20] And there's one where the dinosaurs are being sucked back in time and their skin is being pulled off of them.

[50:25] Oh, dear.

[50:25] And that's what this reminded me of.

[50:27] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[50:27] Nice.

[50:28] That's pretty cool.

[50:29] So, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[50:30] That series, by the way, ends with the scientists who saved the world going to hell for some reason, which is ruled by a satanic dinosaur.

[50:35] It doesn't really make any sense, but it's a trading card series.

Stuart Wellington

[50:38] Oh, man.

[50:38] I wonder what pleasurable delights Satan dinosaur can offer me.

Elliott Kalan

[50:43] Yeah.

[50:44] Yeah.

[50:44] Pinsaurus is down there.

[50:45] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[50:45] So, yeah.

[50:47] So, they get back onto the shuttle and they fly away and they fly close enough to that asteroid to fucking wave at it as they fly past.

Elliott Kalan

[50:53] They go ace those suckers.

[50:56] Let's get out of here.

Stuart Wellington

[50:57] So, they're up in the sky and then the credits roll over footage of a scorched earth, which is followed by an ice age, followed by regrowth and civilization, and then presumably John Hammond getting the idea for a sick-ass theme park.

[51:12] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[51:13] When we saw the movie end with this sort of like the earth, you know, changing a new species, like building, you know, humans.

[51:24] Yeah, yeah, humans.

Stuart Wellington

[51:25] There's no surprise.

Dan McCoy

[51:26] It's earth.

[51:26] I was just like evolution.

[51:28] Evolution.

[51:28] Yeah.

[51:28] Like, when we see that happening, I really wanted it to end with, like, some human finding the remains of his ship.

[51:36] Man, animal, rat brains.

Elliott Kalan

[51:37] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[51:38] And being like, what the hell is this?

Elliott Kalan

[51:41] Like that great Star Wars legend story comic where Indiana Jones finds the Millennium Falcon crashed in South America and Han Solo's skeleton is inside of it.

[51:50] And he's like, you don't know you're meeting yourself, Indy?

Stuart Wellington

[51:53] But anyway.

[51:53] That's pretty cool.

[51:53] So, wait.

[51:55] So, did they take Han Solo after he died and put him in the Millennium Falcon and, like, send him out?

Elliott Kalan

[52:03] This is no longer canon.

[52:05] This was written, this was published before the newer movies.

[52:08] So, at this point.

Stuart Wellington

[52:10] But I bet it could still work.

Elliott Kalan

[52:12] Yeah, that's true.

[52:13] Yeah, like a Viking funeral.

[52:14] They stuck his body back in the Millennium Falcon and then set it on fire and set it off in space.

[52:19] They're like, sorry, Lando.

Dan McCoy

[52:20] You never get this.

Elliott Kalan

[52:22] That was my ship.

Stuart Wellington

[52:23] In a way, that would be very funny.

Elliott Kalan

[52:25] And as we know, there is fire in Star Wars space.

[52:28] We see a Star Destroyer on fire in Return of the Jedi, right?

[52:31] So, they could give him a Viking funeral.

[52:33] I think in the story.

Stuart Wellington

[52:34] Yeah, there was that stormtrooper who just lit a cigarette while he was staying outside in outer space.

Elliott Kalan

[52:39] Okay, let's.

[52:40] And in the story, I believe Indy is investigating a Yeti-type creature.

[52:45] And that turns out to be Chewbacca, who's just been living in the jungles there, if I'm remembering the story correctly.

Stuart Wellington

[52:49] No, that sounds pretty cool.

[52:50] Yeah, so it's like that.

[52:51] So, do you want to go talk about that whole story?

[52:54] Sure, anyway.

[52:55] So, exterior, jungle.

Elliott Kalan

[52:57] Oh, wow.

[52:58] We're scripting it out.

[52:59] So, what do we do now, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[53:01] This is when we do Final Judgments.

[53:03] Cool.

[53:03] Whether they talk about this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

[53:09] Why don't you guys go first this time?

[53:12] One of you.

[53:12] What do you think?

Stuart Wellington

[53:13] Okay, it feels like I'm about to step on a Dan landmine or a Dan mine.

[53:18] So, I would say I wish that this movie had gone a little bit more in either direction.

[53:24] Like, I wish it was a little bit either grittier or ideally a little, like,

[53:29] crazier and pulpier.

[53:31] Like, it feels kind of joyless.

[53:33] And I understand the motivation.

[53:36] And I understand, like, the idea of, like, a serious portrayal of this.

[53:40] But, like, I kind of wish that there had been maybe, like, a voiceover or a narration or some kind of, like, humor to it.

[53:48] I don't know.

[53:49] Like, I feel like it could have been.

[53:51] I mean, it's because it's a movie about a Spaceman blast and dinos.

[53:55] Like, I would like it to be a little, I ideally would like it to be a little more fun.

Elliott Kalan

[53:59] I would, I think, I'm going to jump on you about with that, or jump on your idea.

[54:03] I'm not going to jump on you.

[54:04] That would be disrespectful.

[54:06] Hop on pop.

[54:07] It would be like a little monkey from Raiders of the Lost Ark just being on you.

[54:11] Or we'd eventually, if I jumped on you, it would eventually.

[54:12] Save me from dates.

Dan McCoy

[54:13] I guess if Stu was daddy, it could technically be hopping on pop.

Elliott Kalan

[54:18] Yep, that's true.

[54:19] Yeah, yeah.

[54:20] I mean, it would be not hop on pop so much as pop on hop.

[54:24] Or hop hop on, I guess.

[54:26] Anyway, you guys, are you ready for that prequel they announced that tells the story about pop from hop on pop before he became a pop?

[54:32] What was he like when he was a bachelor?

Stuart Wellington

[54:34] No.

[54:34] When he can't stop popping.

Elliott Kalan

[54:37] You know, once you pop, you can't stop.

[54:40] It's law.

[54:41] Well, I'm going to join Stuart.

[54:42] I'm going to write a concurring opinion to Stuart's opinion in the case of Flophouse V65.

[54:48] Where I wish that, yeah, I wish the movie had been more fun or I wish the movie had been more intense.

[54:53] I wish it had been more thrilling.

[54:54] I just wish the movie had been more on an emotional level in terms of the story.

[54:59] I wish that the movie, it feels like this is the most, it feels basic.

[55:03] It feels like the most normcore basic bitch way to tell the story.

[55:06] And I wish they had just taken some more chances either by making it more extreme or more fun or anything like that.

Dan McCoy

[55:12] I am going to write the descent for this, but I'm going to be clear.

[55:18] It is not a scathing descent.

[55:19] It is a mild descent.

[55:21] Okay.

[55:21] I kind of like it, but only sort of on the sliding flophouse scale of movies that are so much more poorly made or ill conceived.

[55:34] I will define what I like about this movie sort of mostly in opposition to things I don't like about a lot of modern blockbusters.

[55:42] Like, I appreciate that in contrast to a lot of modern blockbusters, this felt very sort of confined for a fantastic story.

[55:54] It was human scaled.

[55:55] I understood the emotions and the wants of everyone.

[56:01] You know, like I said, a lot of it took place in real locations that got juiced by special effects rather than just sort of a layer of digital sludge over everything.

Elliott Kalan

[56:14] Robert Rodriguez style, make it in your basement all on green screen.

Dan McCoy

[56:17] Yeah.

[56:17] And, you know, I like that they got a pair of-

[56:19] Yeah, it doesn't take place in the quantum realm.

[56:22] A pair of good performers.

[56:23] Adam Driver, obviously very good.

[56:25] I also really thought that the young actress who played the Koa, was it?

[56:31] Ariana Greenblatt, that's her name.

[56:33] Yeah.

[56:33] She was really good.

[56:33] She played young Gamora in Infinity War.

[56:38] So she's actually been around in big movies for a while now.

[56:41] She specializes in young characters.

[56:43] Yeah.

[56:43] But for how long?

[56:44] Only time will tell.

[56:46] Probably not that much later.

[56:49] Time will tell.

[56:50] The way Hollywood treats actresses, you're right, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[56:53] In a couple years, she'll be playing moms, and then it'll be 80 for Brady for her.

[56:57] Yeah.

[56:57] But, you know, it's-

Dan McCoy

[57:00] These people who made this movie, the writing-directing team, were the writers with John Krasinski on A Quiet Place.

[57:10] That was their sort of breakthrough into bigger movies before that.

Stuart Wellington

[57:12] So they made bad movies before.

Dan McCoy

[57:14] Yeah.

[57:14] I'm not wild about A Quiet Place, but I think it is-

[57:16] No, you're wild about Harry.

[57:18] A skillfully-

[57:18] And Harry, in turn, is wild about you.

[57:20] I don't love it.

[57:22] It is a skillfully made kind of starter-level horror movie, I say, with probably annoying condescension.

[57:28] But I like that they-

[57:31] It seems like they came up in smaller horror movies, and I feel like they still have that sort of instinct of, like, let's keep it tight.

[57:40] But, that all said, it is a little more boring and basic than it should be.

[57:46] And, you know, for a 90-minute movie, I shouldn't get as, like, sleepy watching it as I do.

[57:51] But I did appreciate that it had qualities.

Stuart Wellington

[57:55] Yeah.

[57:55] Let's say that.

[57:56] I don't think that this is a quality-free movie.

[57:59] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[58:00] No, but I think it is a-

[58:01] It's not the highest recommendation when most of what you liked about it is in opposition to things that you don't like about other movies.

[58:09] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[58:09] That's what I said.

[58:11] Mild dissent.

Elliott Kalan

[58:12] Yeah.

[58:12] I mean, this is a-

[58:13] I don't think it's a-

[58:14] I think this is a-

[58:15] I'm going to go back to a frequent Flophouse rating and say, if you're sick and this starts playing on TV in the afternoon, go ahead and watch it.

[58:23] You know, why not?

[58:24] But it's not-

[58:25] You're not going to remember much about it afterwards, and not just because you're sick.

Stuart Wellington

[58:28] Yeah.

[58:28] I mean, I guess it would fall into the-

[58:31] If we're using our categories, it would be, like, the mildest of bad-bads for me.

Elliott Kalan

[58:35] Yeah.

[58:36] I think it doesn't rise the level of bad-bad for me.

[58:38] It's like, it doesn't fit quite into our criteria because it's-

[58:41] But, again, that's-

[58:42] It's a-

[58:42] To me, that's a mark against it, is that, like,

[58:44] it just doesn't generate enough feeling in me to even want to give it that rating, you know?

[58:50] It just kind of is.

[58:52] And you know what?

[58:53] Maybe we should all just try to be, you know?

[58:54] Yeah, live in the moment.

[58:55] Yeah, be like 65.

[58:56] If that moment is 65 million years ago.

Dan McCoy

[58:58] You know how you can live in the moment and generate feeling?

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Elliott Kalan

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Dan McCoy

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Stuart Wellington

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Dan McCoy

[1:02:02] Is there anything else anyone wants to plug before we move on?

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:06] See, the thing is the WGA is on strike right now.

[1:02:08] Oh, that's true.

[1:02:09] And Elliot has something you would like to say about it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:11] That's very true.

[1:02:12] The WGA is on strike for a number of different specific reasons.

[1:02:16] The WGA, of course, is the Writers Guild of America.

[1:02:18] If I was a fool, okay, can you give me a quick summary of those?

[1:02:23] Sure.

[1:02:24] The Writers Guild of America, the union that Dan and I both belong to as members.

[1:02:28] Me, as a very active member.

[1:02:30] Dan is more of a, you know, give along, go along, get along kind of guy.

[1:02:34] He'll take out his badge every now and then.

[1:02:37] We are on strike right now for a few different reasons.

[1:02:40] One is, and they all come down to basically different ways that the studios that employ us, that buy our product, that distribute our product, different ways that they are trying to either minimize the amount of writers that they can pay, minimize the amount of money they can pay those writers.

[1:02:56] And also, try to eliminate the writers entirely.

[1:02:59] Here are the main things that we're trying to go after.

[1:03:01] One is something called mini rooms, where an entire television season is broken and basically written by a small group of writers who then are often not involved in the production of the show, are paid very little for that amount of time.

[1:03:13] It's a short time period.

[1:03:15] And they often don't get the kinds of residual payments that they deserve for the work on that series.

[1:03:23] What are residual payments?

[1:03:24] It should be that every time someone who owns a product that we have created gets money from it, that we should also get a little bit of that money.

[1:03:32] It's what sustains us between jobs.

[1:03:34] It's what makes writing an actual career that you can live off of and not a series of gigs that you're lucky to get every now and then and you have to take vacation days off of your day job to do them.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:42] And if the bosses are making money off of your work, you should be benefiting from your work.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:47] Exactly.

[1:03:47] Because the bosses didn't create our work.

[1:03:49] We created that work.

[1:03:50] They are merely exploiting our abilities, our labor, our imaginations.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:56] It's almost like the bosses need you more than you need the bosses.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:59] Thank you, Stuart.

[1:04:00] That's a very good point.

[1:04:01] Unfortunately, the new streaming world that we exist in has taken those residual amounts, which I'll be very honest.

[1:04:07] Residuals are often what get me from month to month or sometimes year to year when work is not there.

[1:04:16] I've been receiving residuals recently from SAG-AFTRA for a little bit of voiceover work I did in Housebroken in the first season, and it has really helped to patch up the holes in my finances right now, which I really appreciate.

[1:04:28] They are necessary, and it is not a matter of getting paid more than once for the same work.

[1:04:35] It is a matter of, as Stuart said, when our bosses make money off our work, we should make money off our work.

[1:04:39] Unfortunately, in the streaming world, those residuals have sunk to next to nothing, in some cases nothing, and they are not transparent about how much money they're making off of our work or how many people watch it even.

[1:04:52] And so it's hard to know what we're owed, and so that's the second big thing.

[1:04:56] The third big – and these are just what television writers are on strike for.

[1:04:59] Feature film writers are on strike also, and they have a slightly different set of issues but related.

[1:05:03] They're all related to companies trying to weasel out of paying us what we're owed and what we deserve.

[1:05:08] The third thing, artificial intelligence.

[1:05:10] It's coming for everybody.

[1:05:11] It's coming for everyone's job basically, and there is a vision that studio executives have of a world where computers write scripts and maybe they hire a person to do a little bit of tweaking on it to make it not feel like a computer wrote it.

[1:05:24] That's a world that we are trying to eliminate.

[1:05:26] The fact is the machines are rising right now, and we've got to do what we can to make sure that creative work is done by humans.

[1:05:32] We are entering possibly a kind of brave dystopian world where – not a brave – a cowardly dystopian world in which mainstream culture is just a matter of things being regurgitated based on computer algorithms, based on things that have already been made.

[1:05:47] And the fact is you cannot make a thing without human imagination being involved at this point in history.

[1:05:54] You certainly can't get a new thing.

[1:05:56] You can only get variations on something you've already had before.

[1:05:59] If someone showed – there's this video that's been going around where it's like the Lord of the Rings in the style of Wes Anderson.

[1:06:04] And it's like the person who used, I'm sure, multiple AI programs to make it – to put it together did a very good job.

[1:06:11] It looks really good, and it's a funny idea.

[1:06:14] That is a book written by a person, put in the visual style of a director who's a person, then cast with the images of actors who are only famous or beloved to us because they are people, because they have given us imaginative performances.

[1:06:27] It is an idea for that mashup that was come up with by a person, and the person had to use the program to make it.

[1:06:33] So even something like that, which is eventually a fan work that uses AI, still relies on so much of the work of human beings and cannot be done entirely by computers.

[1:06:41] So why are we striking?

[1:06:42] It is at a basic point to maintain the position of human beings in our creative culture and to maintain that creative work as work that people can afford to do for a living.

[1:06:53] And so you're like, yeah, you've made such a great case.

[1:06:56] This is amazing.

[1:06:57] I wasn't on board before.

[1:06:58] Before, I was a big fan of David Zaslav.

[1:07:00] I was like, why are they booing him at Boston University?

[1:07:02] He's a great guy.

[1:07:03] Yeah, changing it to max is a good idea.

[1:07:06] I want HBO to be devalued from a place that special TV shows and movies get made into just another place that can watch the people who do house flipping and stuff like that where they flip more houses.

[1:07:17] Anyway, which is not to say anything wrong against our fellow workers in the reality TV or unscripted nonfiction television production area.

[1:07:27] They are also writers, and they deserve to be covered in the guild.

[1:07:30] But that is to say, what can you do?

[1:07:32] Well, a lot of people want to come on the picket line and strike with us.

[1:07:35] That's great, and you're welcome to do so.

[1:07:37] But what might be even more helpful at this point is if you could go to entertainmentcommunity.org and donate to the Entertainment Community Fund.

[1:07:45] It used to be called the Actors Fund.

[1:07:47] Now it's the Entertainment Community Fund.

[1:07:48] That's at entertainmentcommunity.org.

[1:07:50] Donate and choose to donate to designate that gift for supporting film and television professionals.

[1:07:56] That money will go not just to – it goes to anyone in the entertainment community who will need money right now.

[1:08:01] And that's not just writers.

[1:08:02] That's also support staff.

[1:08:04] That's technical crew.

[1:08:05] That's everybody whose work is suffering because the AMPTP, the American Motion Picture and Television Producers or whatever it's called, the Association of – I don't remember what it's called.

[1:08:14] Anyway, the AMPTP, because they will not pay writers what they deserve, and they will not give us the respect and credit for having built the business that they now make a lot of money off of.

[1:08:24] They could end this tomorrow, but they aren't.

[1:08:26] And so if you can go to that place and help the people who will be suffering as a result, again, not just writers but writers assistants, script supervisors, people on crew, actors, anyone in the entertainment community, this will help.

[1:08:39] They can reach out to that fund for help should they need it to get through this strike period.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:43] And as you brought this up, I just want to mention a message from Leslie in Colorado who said,

[1:08:50] I just donated to the Entertainment Community Fund and almost forgot that my company matches charitable donations one-to-one.

[1:08:57] Luckily, I did remember before donating, so I doubled the donation with their portion and thought I'd bring it up in case other people have companies that do the same.

[1:09:04] More money from the man to help stick it to the man.

[1:09:07] So I just wanted to pass that out.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:09] Thank you very much.

[1:09:10] What was her name again?

Dan McCoy

[1:09:12] Leslie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:13] Thank you, Leslie.

[1:09:13] Or his.

[1:09:14] Leslie, I don't know what your –

[1:09:16] Or there.

[1:09:17] Or there.

[1:09:17] I don't know what your gender is, but I'm saying thank you.

[1:09:19] Why are you getting mad at me when I'm saying thank you?

[1:09:21] Oh, Leslie, let's patch this up.

[1:09:22] We'll talk about it off mic.

[1:09:23] Ali, I think you're projecting.

[1:09:25] Please take a – yeah, because I'm in the movies.

[1:09:27] It's a movie projector.

[1:09:29] Please take a note from Leslie, and if you want to support – if you want to show your support, if you want to contribute, this is a good way to do it.

[1:09:35] It doesn't have to be a lot of money.

[1:09:36] Any amount is helpful.

[1:09:38] That's money that people in the entertainment industry who will most likely have trouble paying their bills during this time can turn to.

[1:09:47] So thank you very much for doing so.

[1:09:48] And thank you so much for – I feel like this – what's different between – one of the things that's different between this and the last time the Writers Guild was on strike is that the public at large feels like it's on our side.

[1:09:58] The other unions are on our side, which is enormous.

[1:10:00] But it feels like everyone I know gets it to a certain extent and supports us, and we really appreciate it.

[1:10:07] We really appreciate that the public understands this is a battle between workers and bosses.

[1:10:13] And the bosses can afford to take care of the workers, and they're refusing to.

[1:10:16] And people are taking the side of the workers, which is us.

[1:10:18] And I feel like everyone in every industry is going to have to start making these types of stands.

[1:10:24] And so to have your support now means a lot to us, and you can count on our support later on when you have to do the same.

S4

[1:10:34] You probably already have a favorite animal.

[1:10:37] Maybe it's a powerful apex predator like the tiger or a cute and cuddly panda.

[1:10:41] And those are great, but have you considered something a little more unconventional?

Dan McCoy

[1:10:45] Could I perhaps interest you in the Greenland shark, which can live for nearly 400 years?

[1:10:52] Or maybe the jewel wasp who performs brain surgery on cockroaches to control their minds.

S4

[1:10:57] On Just the Zoo of Us, we review animals by giving them ratings out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics.

[1:11:04] Listen with friends and family of all ages to find your new favorite animal with Just the Zoo of Us on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get podcasts.

S5

[1:11:15] I'm Jordan Cruciola, the host of Feeling Scene, where we talk about the movie characters that make us feel seen.

[1:11:22] And I'm the show's producer, Marissa.

[1:11:24] Jordan, you've interviewed so many directors, actors, writers, film critics, and I like to play this little game where I take a sip of coffee every time someone says,

[1:11:33] That's such a great question.

[1:11:34] That's such a fabulous question.

[1:11:36] Or they tell you how smart you are.

[1:11:38] I think that you are rather brilliant.

[1:11:40] And of course, the big one is when they cry unexpectedly.

[1:11:42] When they cry unexpectedly.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:44] Jordan, I don't want to cry on your podcast.

S5

[1:11:46] I wasn't expecting to cry.

[1:11:48] I mean, it makes me kind of want to cry.

[1:11:50] Feeling Scene comes out every Thursday on MaximumFun.org.

[1:11:53] Listen already.

[1:11:54] What are you waiting for?

[1:11:55] Jordan, that's such a great question.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:59] Let's move on to letters from listeners.

[1:12:02] This letter begins thusly and then continues, as I will say.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:10] Wow.

[1:12:11] Thank you for being so comprehensive.

[1:12:13] I appreciate that.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:14] Yes.

[1:12:15] Victor E. Bull here.

[1:12:17] While listening to the delightful Newmania Mini, I was delighted to hear my brother in Buffalo College mascots,

[1:12:25] Petey the Griffin of Canisius College, mentioned.

[1:12:29] This name drop was exciting, both as a mascot and as a proud Buffalonian.

[1:12:34] I have one question for you all.

[1:12:35] If you could be any mascot, real or fictional, who would you choose to be?

[1:12:40] Thanks for many years and hours of wonderful programming.

[1:12:44] Victor E. Bull.

[1:12:46] Really, David, last name with help.

[1:12:49] So, you know, look, I'm going to say, everyone's got Gritty fever.

[1:12:57] I can't say that I could be Gritty.

[1:13:00] Gritty has a certain crazed party energy.

[1:13:03] You could never pull it off.

[1:13:04] No.

[1:13:04] That I couldn't.

[1:13:05] But his cousin, the Philly fanatic, I think, has a whimsical, goofy quality that I enjoy and I'm drawn to.

[1:13:15] I think that would be my choice.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:16] Now the idea that they're cousins, now I'm just imagining the Philly fanatic being woken up in the middle of the night

[1:13:22] and Gritty asking him to help him hide a gun somewhere in his house.

[1:13:26] Just hold on to this.

[1:13:27] Hold on to this for a little bit.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:28] Put it in your nose.

[1:13:31] They can't look in there without a warrant.

[1:13:34] Oh, man.

[1:13:35] Fudgy the Whale is really cool.

[1:13:37] Is that a mascot?

[1:13:40] Kind of.

[1:13:40] It's a mascot for an ice cream company.

[1:13:43] Green Giant has those big-ass thighs.

[1:13:46] I like that.

[1:13:47] So, I didn't know we could do corporate mascots.

[1:13:48] Yeah, if we could do corporate mascots.

[1:13:49] I just think it's sports mascots.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:50] I do like, mostly because Thorough Ravenscroft voices.

[1:13:55] I like Tony the Tiger.

[1:13:56] He seems enthusiastic.

[1:13:57] And he gets to actually enjoy the product rather than having it cruelly taken from him, like the Trix rabbit or the other number of-

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:07] Yeah, I've always assumed also that Tony the Tiger was gay, too.

[1:14:11] So, that's an LGBTQ icon right there that you're-

[1:14:13] Yeah, I think it's the ascot that you're-

[1:14:16] Yeah, that's probably it.

[1:14:17] And there's also, I feel like there's a certain-

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:19] Elliot's going to say the fucking cookie crisp cop or some shit.

[1:14:22] And I'm like, what's wrong with you, dude?

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:24] No, I want distribution of those cookie crisps to all, you know?

[1:14:29] I mean, with that dog and everything?

[1:14:31] No, thank you.

[1:14:32] I was going to say, when I was thinking of sports mascots, I was thinking, so there's a Twilight Zone episode about a robot that plays baseball.

[1:14:39] And there's a team called the Hoboken Zephyrs.

[1:14:41] And I always really loved that name.

[1:14:43] And I imagine their mascot was like some kind of personification of the wind.

[1:14:47] And so, I was going to say that.

[1:14:49] But if it can be a corporate mascot, then-

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:51] Yeah, can I do that little chuck wagon from the chuck wagon dog food?

[1:14:55] Oh, you're in such danger.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:56] Oh, you know who I'd like to be?

[1:14:57] The La Choy Dragon.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:59] Oh, cool, yeah.

[1:15:01] Can I be the Pringles guy?

[1:15:02] Just the guy on the Pringles team?

[1:15:03] Oh, yeah.

[1:15:03] Yeah.

[1:15:04] That's a fun one.

[1:15:05] He's nasty.

[1:15:07] He is nasty.

[1:15:08] Look at his face.

[1:15:09] Yeah, look at him.

[1:15:09] But he's also just a hardworking immigrant, I assume.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:12] Yeah.

[1:15:13] This is also from a David, or a Dave, in this case.

[1:15:17] These are the Daves I know.

[1:15:18] Sing the song.

[1:15:19] These are the Daves I know.

[1:15:22] This is from Dave, last name withheld, who writes,

[1:15:26] Dear Floppers, I recently had a dream where I was hanging out with Dan and Stu.

[1:15:31] My brain must have admitted Elliot because he lives in LA.

[1:15:34] Although it seemed okay with the fact that I'm in North Carolina.

[1:15:36] But anyway.

[1:15:37] East Coast.

[1:15:39] Also present was Cameron Diaz.

[1:15:41] It was obvious Ms. Diaz was an old friend of theirs.

[1:15:44] She lives in LA too, I think, though.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:46] So this, hold on a second.

[1:15:48] I feel like she's probably bi-coastal.

[1:15:50] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:50] That's true.

[1:15:51] It was obvious Ms. Diaz was an old friend of theirs because she was about to tell an embarrassing story.

[1:15:57] One where Dan and Stu were doing the whole, oh no, don't you dare tell this thing while smiling because they know it's hilarious.

[1:16:04] Yeah.

[1:16:05] Unfortunately, just before the story was told, my cat jumped on my bed to wake me up because it was 8, 10, and way past 8 a.m. kibble time.

[1:16:13] My question is, what are the things in art that you're most disappointed in not being able to consume?

[1:16:18] Whether it's a show being unexpectedly canceled, a screenplay that never got filmed, music collaboration that was rumored but didn't happen, etc.

[1:16:28] Thanks for all the laughs over the years, Dave Lasting withheld.

[1:16:34] That's a good one.

[1:16:35] I'm sure I'll think of more as we talk, but the one that first sprung to mind was something that has been mentioned on this show before.

[1:16:42] And I agree with Elliot that it probably wouldn't actually have been that great.

[1:16:47] But the Billy Wilder, Marx Brothers movie, A Day at the United Nations, sounds so tantalizing to me.

[1:16:57] I can't even imagine what it would be.

[1:16:59] And of course, I just want another Marx Brothers movie in the world.

[1:17:02] So that's one that springs to mind.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:04] That's one that definitely came to my mind too, but I discarded it for that reason is that I think there's comedy styles I don't think would have meshed particularly well.

[1:17:11] And the only joke that Billy Wilder, as far as I know, ever said that Heath was thinking of for an interview, an interview talking about it, was that the Marx Brothers mix up the signs for all the countries.

[1:17:22] So the Egyptian delegate says Israel in front of him and the Israeli delegate has an Arab country in front.

[1:17:30] And I'm like, well, that's not that funny a joke.

[1:17:31] That's not really very good.

[1:17:34] It's not really much there.

[1:17:34] It's a bad prank.

[1:17:37] But I would say there is a movie that they started shooting and never finished that I wish they had finished, which was Joseph von Sternberg was directing an adaptation of I, Claudius, starring Charles Lawton as Claudius.

[1:17:50] And there's very little footage that exists of it.

[1:17:52] And apparently Lawton was having a very hard time with his performance, and he and Sternberg didn't work well together.

[1:17:57] But I think it would have been so interesting to see how they would handle that story, which is such a, like, sadistic sexual element in it in a 1930s movie.

[1:18:07] And to see it in Joseph von Sternberg style, which, like, if there's any movie that would have given me hope for it is it's his movie The Scarlet Empress, which is such a, like, beautifully, like, Baroque, strange movie for a Hollywood studio to make.

[1:18:19] But there's only a little bit of footage.

[1:18:20] It doesn't – the rest of it doesn't exist.

[1:18:22] But I had some other things I want to mention too, which is, one, any of Franz Kafka's books, he didn't finish any of them.

[1:18:27] And the castle literally finishes mid – it ends mid-sentence, so you don't even know where the scene is going.

[1:18:32] And I would have loved to have known where he was going to go with these things.

[1:18:34] And on the same level, back in the 90s, Marvel had this insert that was in a bunch of their comics where they were hyping new projects they had coming up.

[1:18:43] And one was a Sauron prestige format series.

[1:18:46] And I was like – as a young person, I always loved the character Sauron.

[1:18:49] He's a big Pteranodon man.

[1:18:50] And I was like, wait a minute.

[1:18:52] What possible story would justify, like, a prestige format series?

[1:18:56] Prestige format for non-comic book readers would mean, like, instead of being stapled in the back, it would be, like, perfect bound.

[1:19:02] It would probably be on, like, better cover and paper stock and, like, cost a little more.

[1:19:07] And it's like, what possible story about Sauron would justify this?

[1:19:11] But as far as I know, I've never heard any detail about what that might have been.

[1:19:15] And I wonder if it was literally just them being like, we got to fill out this insert with other things that we might have someday.

[1:19:21] So make something up.

[1:19:22] But I've always wondered what that was.

[1:19:24] Stuart?

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:25] Yeah, I mean, I think – I mean, there's been so many, like, TV shows that have been canceled that I liked.

[1:19:33] But I feel like the project that I would be the most excited about, even though I have no idea if it would be any good,

[1:19:42] is the Guillermo del Toro Mountains of Madness movie project that he wanted to do.

[1:19:50] I have no idea how far they even got.

[1:19:53] I mean, there's a script.

[1:19:54] Tom Cruise was attached to it.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:56] There's some test footage.

[1:19:58] Did you see the –

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:59] I haven't seen the test footage, but I did see some of the maquettes of the giant penguins that they made for it.

[1:20:08] It looked really cool.

[1:20:09] I love giant penguins.

[1:20:10] I love giant penguins.

[1:20:11] Sure, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:12] And if you want giant penguins, that's the story for you.

[1:20:14] There's really pretty much just two stories for you, that and with the narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

[1:20:18] That's about it.

[1:20:19] Yeah.

[1:20:20] The – I think that there's a number of things – there's a lot of, like, lost films as well.

[1:20:27] Many, you know, a huge, vast swath of silent films don't exist anymore.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:31] Especially with the current streaming situation.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:33] Yeah, that's – there's deliberately unavailable films too.

[1:20:36] And there's like – but there's stuff that, like, the Marx Brothers made a silent movie that was never released at all.

[1:20:41] It was only screened, I think, once or twice, and they hated it so much that it was called humor risk.

[1:20:46] And it was – the story they always told was they hated it so much that they just destroyed it.

[1:20:50] But I always wonder if it survived somewhere.

[1:20:52] But here's what I'm going to say.

[1:20:54] All of this talk about projects that didn't get made or that didn't get finished should be taken with a grain of salt.

[1:20:59] Because sometimes that project doesn't happen because it doesn't really have the strength to stay alive.

[1:21:05] And you look at something like The Other Side of the Wind, which for years it was like, we'll never see Orson Welles' final lost masterpiece.

[1:21:12] And then they tried to patch it together.

[1:21:14] And admittedly, you know, it's a monster of a thing.

[1:21:17] It's, like, sewn together out of bits.

[1:21:18] But, like, I was like, I can't wait to see this.

[1:21:20] And I finally started watching it.

[1:21:21] I couldn't get through, like, more than a few minutes of it.

[1:21:23] It was so, like – and from everything that I've learned or heard about that movie, I don't think it was going to be that much better in some ways.

[1:21:31] And ironically, the part of it that ages the best is the part where he's, like, parodying artsy European movies.

[1:21:36] And he has those, like – the two characters just kind of wandering silently around a city.

[1:21:40] And it's like, oh, this looks really cool.

[1:21:42] But that's not the movie he was making.

[1:21:44] So I think sometimes these movies are better off living in our imaginations.

[1:21:47] You know, in that Sandman library of all the books that were never written, you know, and things like that.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:53] Well, let us move on to the last segment, which is to recommend movies that probably would be a better use of your time than 65.

[1:22:03] I'm going to recommend a movie I saw a little while back.

[1:22:06] It has been divisive.

[1:22:08] But I think I really enjoyed it.

[1:22:11] You know, I can see why it's not for everyone.

[1:22:14] Babies stay out.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:16] It's called Martyrs.

[1:22:18] Bo is Afraid.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:20] The most recent Ari Aster movie.

[1:22:25] A very black comedy about a man who is living in a world where seemingly every anxiety he could possibly have turns out to be true.

[1:22:39] Not in a way like, not like a fantastical, like literal, like, I'm having anxieties and they're coming true.

[1:22:44] But like, that is the way to understand it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:46] Like evil tunes?

Dan McCoy

[1:22:47] It has the same sort of mother exclamation point stress dream logic.

[1:22:56] But more of a sort of deadpan comedy than mother is.

[1:23:02] Like Synecdoche, New York?

[1:23:03] Yeah, I would say it has a certain quality of that.

[1:23:07] Yeah.

[1:23:07] I can, look, I can see why people don't necessarily want to watch a movie that's three hours of sort of grueling anxiety, but with jokes.

[1:23:19] You lost me at three hours.

[1:23:21] And particularly a movie that...

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:23] If I'm going to watch a three-hour movie, it better be Red Beard starring Toshiro Mifune.

[1:23:27] Thank you very much.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:28] And I'm particularly a movie that, like, I understand at this point some people's thirst for a movie about a white man's angst is not what they...

[1:23:39] It's not something that they have a lot of.

[1:23:40] I get it.

[1:23:41] But as an angsty white man who has a lot of anxieties, I found it cathartic to watch and funny.

[1:23:50] And, yeah, I would say that the last third of it is actually kind of the weakest part, which is a problem.

[1:23:58] You know, you want to walk out of a movie on a high, but there's a lot of great stuff in it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:02] That's when those microdose gummies come in.

[1:24:04] Yeah.

[1:24:05] Yeah, if I was going to watch a three-hour movie, I would watch what I'm assuming is the TV edit of Killers of the Flower Moon.

[1:24:12] Yeah, I'm going to recommend a movie that a friend of the Flophouse, Jamel Bowie, described as a men in meetings movie.

[1:24:24] I'm going to recommend Air, a movie about a shoe.

[1:24:29] It's very, like, it was a little hard for me to get on board with a movie about a company succeeding.

[1:24:35] But they manage...

[1:24:37] But at least it's a company that stands for great values and treats its workers well, right?

[1:24:42] But they managed to do a pretty interesting job of showing how the Michael Jordan, Air Jordan deal paved the way for athletes getting more of a cut of products that they are endorsing, which is really cool.

[1:24:58] Specifically the whole, like, college athletes thing, which is still fucking insane to me.

[1:25:03] These fucking pieces of shit are taking advantage of college athletes.

[1:25:08] But, yeah, it's a lot of fun performers.

[1:25:13] Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, all these guys.

[1:25:15] Viola Davis gives some, you know, she puts in the work.

[1:25:18] She's incredible.

[1:25:19] Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

[1:25:22] And having just seen Guardians of the Galaxy and been a little bit like, oh, man, these needle drops are a little on the nose.

[1:25:30] I felt that the needle drops in Air are both kind of more on the nose, but I like them more.

[1:25:36] So I don't know.

[1:25:38] I'm a jerk.

[1:25:39] Who knows?

[1:25:40] You're inconsistent.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:41] Look, you contain multitudes.

[1:25:43] That's the thing.

[1:25:43] You contradict yourself.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:44] Yeah, that's me.

[1:25:46] So, yeah, check out Air.

[1:25:47] Why not?

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:49] I'm going to recommend also a movie, I guess, that feels a little weird in today's climate, but I'll explain why.

[1:25:56] But I enjoyed it a lot.

[1:25:57] And that's a movie called Park Row, which is a Samuel Fuller movie from 1952 starring Gene Evans, which is about the founding of a newspaper in the 1880s in New York.

[1:26:07] And this upstart newspaper that has to fight against the established newspapers.

[1:26:11] And it is super energetic.

[1:26:14] It's really fun.

[1:26:16] It's a little weird in that it's in some ways about a man who just can't do what he wants because this rich woman keeps trying to destroy him.

[1:26:25] But at the same time, the kind of newspaper that he dreams of bringing into creation and that the movie is celebrating is like a newspaper that sets up stunts and then reports on them.

[1:26:35] So it's not like – he's not like – he's not – I mean the most positive thing that they do is the campaign to raise money for a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty.

[1:26:44] But other than that, he's like, yeah, yeah, let's start a fight over there and then we'll report on the fight.

[1:26:48] So it's not like it's holding them to the highest journalistic standards.

[1:26:52] But I'm a big fan of movies where like a group of people are getting together to accomplish something.

[1:27:00] And this is all about that.

[1:27:02] The period aspect of it is really fun.

[1:27:04] It's set in the 1880s but it's not stodgy at all.

[1:27:07] Like the characters are super alive, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:10] You said it's set in the 80s so it's got a lot of like a lot of piano key neckties and stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:15] Yeah, I know in the 1880s.

[1:27:16] Oh!

[1:27:18] Yeah, yeah, 1880s.

[1:27:19] So there's a lot of needle drops but the needle drops are like I dream of Jeannie with the soft brown hair and things like that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:29] Guys playing music on what like kitchen instruments.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:33] I'm just wild about Harry.

[1:27:35] Yeah, exactly.

[1:27:36] And how Harry is also reciprocally wild about me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:39] And by the reflexive property, Harry is also wild about me.

[1:27:43] And it's just super fun.

[1:27:45] It's a Samuel Fuller movie so it's like got a lot of brash energy and a lot of in-your-faceness and I really enjoyed it a lot.

[1:27:51] So that's Park Row.

[1:27:53] We did it, guys.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:54] We did it.

[1:27:54] We traveled 65 million years into the past.

[1:27:57] Stuart.

[1:27:58] And back again.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:59] That's exactly what I was going to say.

[1:28:00] It's amazing.

[1:28:01] It's like a fucking mind link.

[1:28:04] We've been doing this too long.

[1:28:06] But if you enjoy it, thank you for listening.

[1:28:10] Thank you for supporting us.

[1:28:12] Hey, if you're so inclined, why not give us a nice review on iTunes?

[1:28:19] I say this because I subscribe to a service that gives us our rankings on iTunes but also rounds up the reviews.

[1:28:29] So unfortunately now I'm back to seeing reviews and we've had a few reviews that I would say were mad at us not for the show but for political reasons.

[1:28:41] So if you want to counteract bad trolls out there, why don't you drop a nice review?

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:47] As opposed to the good trolls who believe only in love and their long, shiny hair and introducing my children to the song Barracuda, which I appreciate because I love that song but I don't like that my younger son now refers to says, I like that song Barracuda.

[1:28:59] It's from Trolls World Tour.

[1:29:00] And I go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[1:29:01] It's not from Trolls World Tour.

[1:29:03] It's in Trolls World Tour.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:04] So if you want to support good trolls and counteract bad trolls, maybe leave us a good word.

[1:29:10] And go over to MaximumFun.org.

[1:29:12] Check out the other great podcasts on our network.

[1:29:15] Maximum Fun is what it is called.

[1:29:17] It has fun comedy and culture podcasts.

[1:29:21] And thank you to Alex Smith, our producer.

[1:29:24] You can find him as HowellDotty on Twitter.

[1:29:28] Someone pointed out that the fact that I said that Howell is not spelled like Howell as in Howell's Moving Castle was confusing because in the book, Howell's real name is Howell.

[1:29:40] Oh.

[1:29:41] It turns out.

[1:29:42] So let's just say that it is spelled HowellDotty.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:47] Just spell it.

[1:29:47] Just say the letters.

[1:29:48] H-O-W-E-L-L.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:49] H-O-W-E-L-L.

[1:29:50] Well, I enjoy kind of—

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:51] Why are we dancing around architecture here?

[1:29:53] Dickering around.

[1:29:54] Let's just spell the name.

[1:29:56] Take me on a trip, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:29:59] I'm driving us around the neighborhood.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:01] Never heard of a shaggy dog spelling before.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:03] I'm trying to put you to sleep because you've been fussy all day, Stu.

[1:30:06] I get fucking fussy.

[1:30:09] He does get fussy, yeah.

[1:30:10] But thank you for listening.

[1:30:12] For the Flap House, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:30:14] I've been Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:15] I've been Elliot Kalin.

[1:30:17] Thank you for support of us and of the writer's strike and all things good in the world, of which those are two.

[1:30:23] Well, the strike's not—you know, it's not good, but what we're striking for is good.

[1:30:27] Talk about fucking taking us on a ride.

[1:30:28] Anyway, this is my shaggy dog goodbye.

[1:30:31] Bye.

[1:30:32] Bye.

[1:30:34] Ah!

Dan McCoy

[1:30:45] You can do this now.

[1:30:46] Wait, wait, wait for the—

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:47] You've done it almost 400 times.

[1:30:48] Yeah, no, no.

[1:30:49] I was done with my snack station.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:50] I was thrown off by the almond squeaks.

[1:30:52] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:54] This next hit comes from the almond squeaks, and it goes like this.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:58] It took a—I laughed at the first part, and then I laughed when I realized there was an actual tune being used to it.

[1:31:13] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:15] Maximumfun.org.

S6

[1:31:17] Comedy and culture.

[1:31:18] Artist owned.

[1:31:19] Audience supported.

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