Afraid, with Chris Weitz

[0:00] Hey listeners, just a few quick words up at the top to remind you that Flop TV is going

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[0:21] We've been having a lot of fun going through famous bad movies of the decades.

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[0:34] You can get a season pass and watch all of them.

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[0:51] On this episode, we discuss Afraid, a movie about a scary killer AI, and there's no Tom

[0:58] Cruise to kill it this time.

[1:02] Should I set even, Hunt?

[1:03] No, no.

[1:21] Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse.

[1:28] I'm Dan McCoy.

[1:29] Hey, it's me, Stuart Wellington.

[1:32] My name is Elliot Kalin.

[1:33] I'm the author of a book called Joke Farming, How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense.

[1:36] It's on store shelves now from the University of Chicago Press.

[1:39] It will teach you how to write jokes, how I do it, how jokes work, and how jokes work.

[1:45] I only had two things.

[1:46] We told him to keep the plug.

[1:47] Elliot, I know you're about to introduce our special guest, but I have to say, I texted

[1:53] Audrey today and I was like, between this book on the early years of The Simpsons that

[1:57] she got me for our anniversary and your book coming to my house, hopefully on Wednesday,

[2:03] I'm like, I think I'm going to try cracking another sitcom script after writing longer

[2:10] movie things.

[2:11] You should do it.

[2:12] That's my next thing that no one's going to buy, but it rekindled my joy.

[2:16] No one's going to buy it anyway.

[2:17] So write what you want.

[2:18] That's what I say.

[2:19] Yeah.

[2:20] Yeah.

[2:21] Yeah.

[2:22] Do that shit where like people do stuff and then they have like little confessionals where

[2:23] they talk to the camera because that's like every comedy now.

[2:26] Or do a comedy where there's no jokes at all.

[2:29] That's every comedy now too.

[2:31] Dan, I think all jokes aside, whatever you write, I think this is going to be the next

[2:34] big hit.

[2:35] I think you're about to go write the next Office, Abbott Elementary, Modern Family.

[2:41] That's what you're going to write.

[2:42] It's going to be great.

[2:43] We're going to be bragging that we knew you when.

[2:45] You seem more of like a Louie guy.

[2:46] All right.

[2:47] That's our cue to stop wasting our guest's time and introduce him.

[2:52] That's right.

[2:53] We have a very special guest today.

[2:54] I'm so excited to have him here.

[2:55] He is a repeat guest, one of our good friends, one of our most successful friends here of

[2:59] the Flop House podcast.

[3:02] Director, Academy Award nominated screenwriter.

[3:05] Oh, thanks for reminding me I didn't win.

[3:09] Yeah.

[3:10] Sorry, Chris.

[3:11] Yeah.

[3:12] You're right.

[3:13] He's in the slightly, slightly larger pool of nominees.

[3:16] His face fell when you said that.

[3:20] Chris Weitz, who is the rare triple threat of director, screenwriter, director of a Flop

[3:26] House covered movie.

[3:28] And so we're very excited to have you here today to join us once again.

[3:32] Thank you.

[3:33] And I didn't hear the beginning.

[3:35] So like, what's the movie we're going to dump on today?

[3:38] What cinematic turd are we going to be stunting on?

[3:41] This is going to be so much fun.

[3:43] You're going to love it.

[3:45] You're going to love it.

[3:46] So we watch this real piece of shit called Afraid.

[3:49] Haven't heard of it.

[3:52] Sorry, I didn't see it.

[3:55] Is that a problem?

[3:56] So, yeah.

[3:57] Chris, do you have any.

[3:58] Have you seen this one?

[3:59] Do you have any connection to this one?

[4:01] Spoiler alert.

[4:02] I kind of liked it.

[4:03] Yeah.

[4:04] Yeah.

[4:05] Yeah.

[4:06] I saw it so many times that I didn't.

[4:07] I haven't seen it.

[4:08] I haven't seen it at that in a good year.

[4:11] So.

[4:12] So, you know, listen, part of this is obviously I need to get out of your guys way and and

[4:19] so that you can have the nonsensical fun that we've come to love you for.

[4:23] I'm not going to fight a rear guard action in defense of my movie.

[4:27] I may sometimes try to shed a little light on the process whereby movies become flops.

[4:34] OK.

[4:35] Now, on another podcast that is that has not been named, I actually question whether this

[4:39] was a flop or a movie that doesn't exist.

[4:42] And I think it exists in this kind of interesting mid space.

[4:45] And that podcast is a friend of ours.

[4:48] That's a check.

[4:49] Right.

[4:50] Absolutely.

[4:51] And just for the audience at home, if you weren't picking up all the jokes we're laying

[4:55] down, Chris is the director and writer of this movie.

[4:58] Right.

[4:59] I have that honor.

[5:00] Yeah.

[5:02] Or the director and writer of a version of this movie that perhaps is not the exact version

[5:06] that came to be.

[5:08] There's a version in my head and perhaps on on on the page that did not quite come to

[5:13] be in the in the way that I had intended to.

[5:16] And that but that aside, I also feel that, you know, I have I've laughed at many of your

[5:25] episodes and sometimes you also need to face the music.

[5:28] I said that once that when you look long enough into the flop house, the flop house

[5:33] looks into you.

[5:34] Yeah.

[5:35] This is either either dire listener or you live long enough to become a subject.

[5:38] Yeah.

[5:39] Yeah.

[5:40] Yeah.

[5:41] And there was a guy on the Internet when I when I went on the blank check Reddit for the

[5:46] last time.

[5:47] Don't go on fucking Reddit.

[5:49] It was it was a smart move that I made because I found out that this guy said and he said

[5:55] it's about you two guys.

[5:56] He said, hmm, the flop house guys have stopped addressing Chris Weiss's movies since he was

[6:03] on the show.

[6:04] And so I thought, listen, guy on the Internet guy, I'm going to go back on the flop house.

[6:10] Flop house is going to do it.

[6:12] And I'm going to I'm going to be like Daniel Day Lewis in there will be blood and confess

[6:19] whatever sins I have.

[6:20] And we're just going to we're just going to have it all after you're going to let it all

[6:23] hang out.

[6:24] Yeah.

[6:25] You're going to drink and drink our milkshake.

[6:26] Well, I'm not going to just drink your milkshake and drink this cocktail that I drank.

[6:29] By the way, the first time I've ever had a drink on a podcast.

[6:32] But I mean, there's one to do this.

[6:33] This is the time.

[6:34] Yeah.

[6:35] I love the idea that before you came on, of course, we were hitting every Chris Weiss

[6:39] movie without fail.

[6:43] Don't think that I don't know that once Dan on this very podcast said that the Golden

[6:49] Compass was a good movie to watch on the plane because you could fall asleep to it

[6:52] easily.

[6:55] And of course, I mean, it's just not to get into the Golden Compass too much.

[7:02] A movie that I've also criticized on this on this podcast for reasons that Chris, you

[7:06] and I have talked about.

[7:07] We have the same issues with it.

[7:08] They did that TV show of the Golden Compass.

[7:10] I also didn't like it very much.

[7:12] So I think maybe it's just a very hard book to adapt.

[7:14] You know, I don't think nothing has satisfied me more than hearing that people were occasionally

[7:18] displeased with the BBC version of it.

[7:21] I mean, I doubt that there's a version.

[7:23] I was like, all right, let's see if you don't make the same mistake that the movie did.

[7:26] It's the way it feels.

[7:27] Anytime somebody criticizes another bad movie podcast, he's like, ha ha.

[7:31] It's not so easy.

[7:34] Well, I know.

[7:35] I know.

[7:36] You know, are you going to read that?

[7:37] Introductory voiceovers are your favorite, Elliot.

[7:40] I love them.

[7:41] And I wanted mine to be longer.

[7:42] And they made it shorter, which really we have more of like somebody like somebody folks

[7:47] here doing this narration.

[7:50] It's funny because it's so my my we'll get into the movie in a moment.

[7:53] But my younger son has finally decided after years of disinterest that he is interested

[7:57] in Star Wars.

[7:58] And so we just recently watched Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back.

[8:01] And I was like, strap in.

[8:04] There's going to be a lot of text on screen.

[8:06] And then I'm like, oh, there's actually there's actually not that much text in the beginning

[8:10] of these Star Wars movies.

[8:11] Rather quickly.

[8:12] It was written by Brian De Palma, I believe, the first one.

[8:14] Right.

[8:15] Yeah.

[8:16] And he was like, look, you've got to explain some of this stuff.

[8:17] Just put it put it in the beginning.

[8:19] But they're actually the text is so short that it actually they spend so much time fading

[8:23] into the distance.

[8:24] And today we were watching Empire Strikes Back and he goes, yeah, the letters are taking

[8:28] a long time to get into space.

[8:30] I read it already.

[8:32] The thing is, when you when you do when you do these any kind of text crawl, the the the

[8:37] setting is for complete morons.

[8:40] So like it actually has to take a lot longer.

[8:43] Oh, it's kind of like the way that when you get a bagel and you get cream cheese on it,

[8:47] they give you the maximum amount of cream cheese.

[8:49] So as not to risk somebody asking for more.

[8:52] Yeah.

[8:53] They're like, if it's too much, they'll just scrape extra off.

[8:55] But you don't want to risk somebody being like, hey, you'll be one star.

[8:59] I got cream cheese.

[9:00] But why do they scrape just a tiny bit over it?

[9:04] Not to yet again, make reference to my my much less successful attempts at writing a

[9:12] narrative.

[9:13] But you were kind enough.

[9:15] You're a screenwriter for hire.

[9:17] No, no, no.

[9:18] Any people who are hiring?

[9:19] Not my point.

[9:20] Is that your self-published erotica series?

[9:22] Yeah, that's 50 Shades of Dan.

[9:26] No, I 50 Shades of Dank.

[9:29] No, it's all in basements.

[9:31] Yeah.

[9:32] You were kind of to look at something I wrote and which was back pretty quickly being like,

[9:37] yeah, you know, I know you're not going to want to do this.

[9:40] But like the first thing that any studio is going to tell you to do is put a scare up

[9:46] front because otherwise they won't understand that this is a horror movie that you just

[9:50] know you have fucking corrupt.

[9:51] I've become a language of the enemy.

[9:56] Yeah, that's one of the things I regret about.

[10:00] The the great movie afraid which which didn't do as well as as it deserved at the box office. It was like

[10:08] What yeah, okay listen? I'm gonna. I'm gonna jump into it, but I want you guys to

[10:15] Talk about afraid I'm doing the summary today, so buckle up everybody

[10:19] Do you guys have you guys seen this before we were assigned it for the flop house? Yes?

[10:23] I had watched it and

[10:25] As soon as I found out Chris made it

[10:27] I'm like I'm sure and I are going to see it in the theater which

[10:30] Charlene doesn't normally go to horror movies in the theater, so we went and we and we enjoyed it for a variety of reasons

[10:37] It was very exciting though as we were leaving the Nighthawk that we walked past Saturday Night Live Sarah Sherman. I was like

[10:42] Holy shit

[10:45] No, she went to a different horror movie that was out because I checked her letter box

[10:50] Successful horror movie a hotter horror movie. I also saw it, and I I have heard

[10:56] through the grapevine

[10:57] That like Elliot was saying that he told you that it was like. Oh, you know Dan saw it

[11:03] He said he liked it, and that you said Chris. I think Dan was watching it with friend eyes, but I

[11:09] like beer

[11:10] 100% was watching it with friend eyes because there's things about some of the things I like about him like oh, I can see

[11:17] Chris in here I can see my area in this movie you see you see the intention well, okay?

[11:23] So it's one of the first things. I just

[11:25] One of the problems was this was never supposed to be a horror movie

[11:29] Interesting fact you're supposed to be like a light comedy of manners

[11:35] My daughter my 10 year old daughter Athena once said said to me having viewed a cut

[11:41] Roblox is scarier, so you can imagine what kind of trouble I was

[11:47] So yeah, here's the thing I there's a last the last self-defense. I'll make before you jump jump in Elliot now. I'll just

[11:55] you know interrupt you but

[11:59] Sometimes to get a movie made when when you love a movie very much like you you put it in a sort of genre basket

[12:05] Which maybe it doesn't belong because like horror movies will get made and I could make it in Los Angeles

[12:09] And this is really likes, but was supposed to have been a kind of a parallax view kind of paranoid thriller

[12:16] Okay, so then then but once you get once it's a horror movie and by the way, it was made at Blumhouse

[12:20] I love the Blumhouse guys. That's great. Maybe the studio

[12:23] Which will not be named by me might be more responsible for its having been kind of mutated

[12:29] Into a horror movie and one of these things is fucking cold opens

[12:33] Go down there like the cold opens with the crawl of horror movies anyway

[12:37] Sorry, I'm it's interesting

[12:38] It's interesting you mentioned Blumhouse because that's not I was just reading my son the story about the four little pigs

[12:42] Which is the original story where the third pig, of course built this house of Blum and then the

[12:48] Bricks and the pig doesn't even get in the house. It's too scary. Yeah, it's like I don't even know what Blum is

[12:54] So now I'm creeped out by my own house

[12:58] And the studio ghost house productions doesn't even get a fucking mention. They'll hit Wow

[13:04] Ghosts are a terrible construction material

[13:08] Through walls you build a wall out of something that people can walk through I don't think so

[13:13] No, like a house of sand and fog or something

[13:17] Again, it's a ghost ship. I don't know that floated

[13:25] Course

[13:27] That's a super popular series. My wife has been listening the audiobooks of the Court of Thorns and Roses

[13:33] Many books now are an X of Y and Z and I think that that's a very hot way to title. Yes

[13:38] Yeah, it's the Mad Libs of book titles

[13:43] It's romantic see right it's like it's it's horny fantasy

[13:46] I I don't know I asked my wife because I if these books were romantic see I would be more into it because I'm

[13:54] into

[13:55] romance and erotic fiction

[13:57] My wife my wife yeah and to seize but Charlene is more into anything that is very plot-driven

[14:04] She doesn't like a lot of descriptions because as I've mentioned on this podcast

[14:08] She thanks to a different podcast learned that she has a fantasia and she

[14:15] Really oh you have to talk to her explains a lot about my output, but yeah, okay

[14:20] Which means a fantasia means she cannot picture images in her head

[14:25] So if you're to be like picture a red apple and describe it she's like, yeah, that's just a metaphor, right?

[14:31] You don't actually do that. And when she was sharing this with me

[14:34] I'm like, could you imagine not being able to picture things because I don't know if you guys know this I have this super vivid

[14:47] Really amazing

[14:55] Which is nothing but the intro voiceovers to movies

[14:59] Now the guy on reddit is like they'll do anything to not talk about Chris White's their friends

[15:06] I've watched this thing like three times at this point. So let's

[15:10] Let's take a bite. So we start with text on screen, but it's a quote from Sydney and AI

[15:16] Asking if we believe that the AI loves us and you got your creepy opening credits lots of AI footage

[15:22] People with their faces don't quite look right

[15:25] It's being watched was this was this AI generated? Oh, man. There's a whole

[15:30] Well, I'm gonna try to give you the least boring answer to that. Yes, but eventually Sony got so freaked out about

[15:38] about the possibility of an AI

[15:40] Generated face being recognized by someone that we actually had to make

[15:45] Fake faces in order to make them seem like AI faces. Also, there was a moment

[15:51] Late night with the devil there were

[15:53] Four still images in it which had been created by AI and people fucking flipped out

[15:58] Yeah, so I eventually also freaked out because there were there were like

[16:02] Little AI sequences and really really really cool ones

[16:05] I think that I thought were relevant to like what what the evil AI was creating, but but I was really worried that

[16:14] Everyone would shit on me from a great height

[16:16] In the film industry and outside of it for using AI so eventually no we covered of anything

[16:21] It's a really interesting ethical question

[16:24] I think because it is like when the the subject of the movie is to criticize AI the idea of actually using

[16:30] Actual AI output as an example of how gross and or scary it is. Yeah, does that yeah

[16:37] I mean, I mean as someone who is pretty like hardline angry about like AI stuff being used in creative stuff

[16:44] like this is the one situation where I absolutely would not have a problem with it where it's like

[16:48] We are showing you an AI

[16:52] Thing like that is the point of the thing. We are showing is that it is AI and

[16:57] Everyone knows that and it is funny to me now after watching it and assuming that it had been that it actually isn't

[17:04] It was all remanufactured to me to look like it

[17:09] I mean it looked I would have bought it as I said, but it also is kind of sad to me in some ways

[17:13] It's sadder that it's like now the humans have to

[17:17] Looks deliberately like a I stare. Well, the AI sequence was that that we I did do were at the time when like

[17:25] When AI text-to-video would make really weird fucked-up shit naturally now, of course, it's too good

[17:32] So you'd have to tell it to do it worse than it can do now, but you know, the problem was that in between

[17:39] my

[17:40] Heading in the film and it's being released

[17:42] I was delayed by an entire year in part due to Morbius and it wasn't Morbius related. No, it was Kraven the hunter related

[17:52] Delayed by a masterpiece. Yeah

[17:55] Really you can't be mad about that

[18:00] This was originally about the spider-man villain the living brain who was a big green computer on wheels

[18:05] Yeah retrofit it they're like, oh the spider-man villain movies was a spy man are doing so well make it about a different AI

[18:10] Yeah

[18:11] No

[18:11] It was that Kraven was gonna do so well that they wanted to sort of stick me down the line just to show also to

[18:17] Demonstrate to the guilds that they had movies for miles, right?

[18:20] Like they had movies for the year after so by the time that my AI

[18:24] Movie came out like all of the cool shit that the AI could do in the movie

[18:29] Which was supposed to be like bowling people over was kind of pretty every day

[18:33] So, okay. No, but Elliot I stopped here. I wait first. Let me do this

[18:44] Tribute I'm not a tribute on a creepy way

[18:51] I'm sorry. No, there's something so beautiful and sad about the Sony executives being like Kraven is going to fucking destroy like

[18:59] Don't release any movies for the next seven months because Kraven is just gonna be rampaging good

[19:03] They're gonna show those unions what for?

[19:09] Which like yeah, I don't know like I don't a dog on Aaron Taylor Johnson

[19:14] But like he doesn't got that kind of juice, right?

[19:16] Well, but also that I don't think he's the problem with Kraven the hunter per se they didn't even have that Kraven

[19:21] Isn't even a movie like Morbius or Madame Web where you're like, I've got to see this. This is this is Bozo

[19:28] It's just

[19:30] It was just kind of like, okay, this is Kraven. All right. Sure. All right

[19:35] Anyway moving on so we're almost at the opening scene. Yeah

[19:39] There's a creepy AI footage. That's not really a footage

[19:41] We just learned being watched by a kid on iPad while her parents hang out one of those parents

[19:45] Of course, Ricky Lindholm from from Garfunkel notes

[19:49] The which is years ago now at that. It's still the main thing. I think

[19:54] Totally. She's like mostly now a character

[19:56] It's like wait 40 years from now I'll be like

[20:00] You see that movie with the Garfunkel and Oates girl?

[20:01] And they're like, what?

[20:02] And it had a winner, Ricky Lindholm.

[20:04] Grandpa, go to bed.

[20:05] The AI tells-

[20:08] Oscar winner, Ricky Lindholm?

[20:09] Yeah, the AI tells the girl to go downstairs for a present

[20:15] and her mom's looking for her.

[20:16] She's like, where's my daughter?

[20:17] But the AI is not being cooperative

[20:19] and then some kind of monster-y thing jumps out at them.

[20:21] Title, Afraid.

[20:22] So Chris, you were saying just now,

[20:24] you thought this was the best scene in the movie

[20:26] and this was your original idea was to put this,

[20:28] it was this scene, right?

[20:29] I'm hoping that Tombstone Technology

[20:31] will have kind of video built into it

[20:33] by the time I die or holograms.

[20:36] Yeah, and fully reverse.

[20:38] No, they'll only use it to watch you decay

[20:40] like in the Shrouds.

[20:41] That's the only thing that video's for, yeah.

[20:43] I will say, look, I'm going to say something at first,

[20:47] oddly, to prove that I'm not gonna be too soft on you,

[20:50] which is like, later on, some of the horror scares

[20:52] maybe don't work as well.

[20:54] But I actually, like, I'm not a fan of the fact

[20:58] that all horror movies have to have the scene these days.

[21:01] But as a set-up scene, I kind of like this one.

[21:03] I like how Ricky Lindholm has that moment

[21:07] where she, like, looks at the camera,

[21:09] showing the kid outside, and then looks outside

[21:13] and, like, the kid isn't there.

[21:14] They're showing two different things

[21:16] and she can't believe her eyes.

[21:18] And I don't know, this effectively set-up

[21:21] the grievance for me.

[21:22] As I direct these things,

[21:23] it's like a dog walking on its hind legs.

[21:25] It's like, something that wasn't made to do this

[21:29] is shakily doing it.

[21:32] Do you think, I want to ask, did more of the changes

[21:36] come in the second half of the picture

[21:38] or is it sort of scattered throughout?

[21:39] It's spread throughout, because...

[21:43] Which part of the talking was playing for most?

[21:45] It's a terrific picture, hell yeah!

[21:48] Awful!

[21:49] Really, sort of anything that goes out of its way

[21:51] to try to jump-scare, is it a response

[21:57] to the studio saying, it's gonna be scary, right?

[22:00] Could it be scarier?

[22:02] Let's be scarier.

[22:03] And a lot of, like, the one thing I tried to get out

[22:06] of that opening scene was that these two parents

[22:09] were kind of doom-scrolling and taking on everything

[22:14] that they were being told by their phones.

[22:16] But that kind of went out the window,

[22:17] because the idea was that they were becoming conspiracists

[22:21] or kind of being slightly radicalized.

[22:23] But I was advised that if you present a kind of like

[22:29] a scary conspiracy that people would foolishly act upon,

[22:33] the audience would immediately clock that

[22:35] as the conspiracy that you're trying to sell

[22:38] behind the movie.

[22:39] So these people eventually, it's basically QAnon, right?

[22:42] And they eventually do this kind of,

[22:44] what is supposed to be at the end,

[22:46] a half-assed home invasion, but instead it is

[22:49] a re-edited half-assed home invasion made to look

[22:52] as though it is an actually scary thing.

[22:53] A real scary home invasion.

[22:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[22:55] Because I think that is both an annoying note,

[22:59] but I buy that as a note,

[23:00] that if you introduce the thing in the beginning,

[23:02] then the audience is gonna be like, Chekhov's gun,

[23:05] this is what the movie's about,

[23:06] and they'll spend the whole movie waiting

[23:08] for that thing to happen, you know?

[23:11] This may be, that may have been right.

[23:13] I'm not sure it helped this movie become any scarier

[23:16] or better, but there you have it.

[23:18] But it certainly made it become what it is, you know?

[23:21] Self-actualized. Oh, that's true.

[23:22] Everything which leads up to a thing

[23:24] is about what becomes what it is.

[23:25] That's the question.

[23:27] There's a question that I had for you, Chris,

[23:30] sorry, I interrupted, sorry.

[23:32] And maybe we can ask later, but like,

[23:34] I was wondering if in some version of it,

[23:36] the characters were gonna become kind of like,

[23:38] less good at the things that they do

[23:40] because the AI is taking over so many functions for them.

[23:43] Was that ever part of the conception or no?

[23:45] Um, not so much because I don't think there was necessarily,

[23:49] although I do believe that happens,

[23:51] I'm not sure there's necessarily time to do that,

[23:52] but they were gradually gonna become more powerless

[23:56] in the things that mattered to them,

[23:59] like parenting and work and that sort of thing.

[24:04] I mean, originally when I started writing,

[24:05] this was like during COVID, before AI,

[24:08] before chat GPT hit, and it was really more

[24:12] about like surveillance technology

[24:14] and how we're giving up all this information

[24:16] about ourselves and we can't keep

[24:18] the big tech companies out of our lives.

[24:21] But then AI came along and it had to be about AI,

[24:23] which was originally the MacGuffin.

[24:26] That was fun.

[24:27] I mean, that's interesting to me because like,

[24:28] I do feel like one of the things that's successful to me

[24:31] is like the things that are scary about this movie to me

[24:36] are not horror movie things,

[24:38] but they are real things about AI,

[24:41] the way it can just like casually falsify information

[24:45] and like the way it can flatter people

[24:48] into like manipulation in a way that's like,

[24:52] it's not even necessarily malevolent

[24:55] because it's just a machine.

[24:57] We don't know like to what degree

[24:59] there's any like thought behind it.

[25:01] And I think that was one of the nice things

[25:03] about the movie is it's not like,

[25:04] and now you're my slaves,

[25:06] or now harness your bodies for electricity.

[25:08] It's just like, this is what I wanna do.

[25:11] Yeah, that was a fucking dead on

[25:13] Agent Smith impression right there.

[25:16] That was good.

[25:16] Mr. Anderson.

[25:18] Yeah, I think the thing is the,

[25:22] one of the things that I,

[25:23] one of my big issues in the world is a general distaste

[25:28] for say like convenience culture.

[25:31] And I feel like this movie like briefly scratches

[25:35] on the idea of how we can accept AI into our life

[25:39] because of the convenience of it.

[25:41] Yeah, and that's so many horrible things

[25:44] like in the world are just because it seems easy.

[25:47] Like that's why we're giving all our fucking money

[25:49] to banks constantly.

[25:51] We're like, why use cash

[25:52] when we can just give banks a percentage

[25:55] of every transaction, like fuck off.

[25:57] That's why I only trade chickens for things.

[25:59] Okay, moving on.

[26:01] So the title.

[26:02] We know you'd never give away a chicken willingly.

[26:05] I'll trade a raw one for,

[26:08] I'll trade a living one for a fried one for sure.

[26:10] Sure.

[26:11] Kind of a one-to-one trade.

[26:13] Yeah, I feel bad.

[26:14] That's a very like Minecraft like trade.

[26:15] Where it's like, wait, is that what's gonna happen?

[26:19] I'm like, I'll be back for you tomorrow when you're cooked.

[26:22] And I trade one of your brothers for it.

[26:23] Hey, good looking, I'll be back for you later.

[26:26] What a virtuous cycle.

[26:29] So there's a montage of images and words

[26:31] about home and community.

[26:32] And then AI is training on lots of stuff

[26:34] and adding monster face emojis to people,

[26:36] all sorts of stuff.

[26:37] Now we're getting into the plot.

[26:38] So we're with a family.

[26:39] This is a different family from the beginning.

[26:41] They're waking up for the day.

[26:42] The dad, Curtis, that's John Cho.

[26:44] Yeah, we got a cast here.

[26:46] We got some stars here.

[26:48] He's got his wife, Meredith,

[26:49] and he's got, they've got three kids.

[26:52] There's an older daughter, there's a middle kid,

[26:54] and then there's a younger kid.

[26:55] And the oldest daughter is on shrinking, right?

[26:59] Yes.

[27:00] Awesome.

[27:01] Yeah.

[27:02] What height is she?

[27:04] Yeah.

[27:05] I don't think I, yeah,

[27:06] I don't think I was watching Shrinking

[27:08] when I first saw Afraid,

[27:09] but this time I'm like, hey, there she is, Shrinking.

[27:12] That's what I call her.

[27:13] Afraid girl.

[27:14] Yeah.

[27:15] And the mom is played by Katherine Watterson

[27:20] from at least one Alien movie.

[27:22] Karen Weiss.

[27:24] Oh yeah.

[27:26] She's the captain in the-

[27:28] In Covenant, I think.

[27:29] Covenant, yeah.

[27:30] Is it Covenant?

[27:30] Yeah.

[27:32] I haven't finished watching.

[27:34] Wow.

[27:34] Okay.

[27:35] Sorry, Ridley.

[27:36] I didn't kill all the people.

[27:38] Yeah, Ridley's pretty unhappy about it.

[27:39] He calls me every day,

[27:40] you finished watching it yet, mate?

[27:41] And I'm like, no, not yet.

[27:43] But-

[27:44] Famously nice guy.

[27:46] But she can really do anything.

[27:48] I mean, as you say, by those,

[27:50] the span of roles that we have mentioned right now.

[27:53] Yeah, there's a great cast in this movie.

[27:54] They're really good.

[27:56] The middle kid's asking for more screen time,

[27:59] anxious about school.

[28:01] The younger son's kind of a goof, you know?

[28:04] The-

[28:04] Just generally cute.

[28:05] Yeah, just a cute, silly kid.

[28:07] The dad has a meeting with some tech guys coming up,

[28:11] and the parents drive their kids to school,

[28:12] and Curtis, while he's with his daughter, Iris,

[28:14] they're driving past a guy who is in a, right?

[28:17] This is when he's in an auto-steering car

[28:20] while he's looking at the phone.

[28:22] Symbolism.

[28:23] Symbolism, yeah, exactly.

[28:24] Think about it.

[28:25] Think about it.

[28:26] Okay.

[28:27] How much control do we give over to our devices?

[28:31] You know what that car is driving him?

[28:32] Straight to hell.

[28:35] Oh, that's a good idea.

[28:36] That's what it should have been.

[28:37] That should be the movie.

[28:37] It's called Hell Car, Hell Cabin.

[28:39] And it's like a lame-o.

[28:41] Yeah, but it takes people to hell.

[28:43] Slam-o.

[28:44] It's like the, Slam-o is a good name.

[28:46] Slam-o's pretty good.

[28:47] It's like the opposite of meatloaf spat out of hell.

[28:48] It's like a bat out of hell, yeah.

[28:50] We could sell Slam-o right now.

[28:52] Yeah, I think so.

[28:53] Like Shutter just texted me and said hurrah.

[28:57] Let's just stop this right now

[28:58] and just workshop that instead.

[28:59] Okay, so anyways, cold open.

[29:02] So a guy gets in a car and,

[29:04] so the thing is that you would sell Slam-o,

[29:06] they would develop it, shoot it,

[29:08] and then at the last minute go,

[29:09] oh, we didn't clear Waymo as a name.

[29:11] Now we gotta rename it.

[29:12] And you'd be like, well,

[29:13] but the whole thing was Slam-o, right?

[29:15] Yeah, yeah, but we don't need that.

[29:15] We don't need that.

[29:17] How about Slacks-y?

[29:19] That sounds like it's about to be a word, slacks.

[29:23] And there's already a car that loves doobies

[29:26] and it's just like, whatever, man.

[29:27] Petty kid.

[29:28] I'll get you there when it's time.

[29:29] Well, it's not even a petty cat,

[29:29] but that sounds terrible.

[29:30] That's not, you know.

[29:31] Oh, sorry, Richard Linklater already has

[29:33] copywritten Slacks-y for his future

[29:36] Waymo-based slacker movie.

[29:37] Well, so what, the car's just driving around

[29:41] talking about things?

[29:42] Yeah, there's different cars talking.

[29:43] We've got a list out here in Austin, yeah.

[29:45] Kilmazine, Kilmazine's what we're coming up with.

[29:47] Kilmazine, that could work, yeah.

[29:50] So the mom married a-

[29:52] I already had Stuber, so, sorry.

[29:54] She's a former entomologist.

[29:57] She is studying ants, a long-time white-

[30:00] session. I know you've always been interested in ants. And she's watching lectures, which

[30:04] we'll find out later, were from her dad, right? Her late father was also a science professor.

[30:10] And her youngest kid comes home. He's got a fever. He wants to play Minecraft. I could

[30:13] really relate to a younger child who has a fever and wants to play Minecraft all day.

[30:18] So this was like a real slice of drive for me. You know, I got a fever, a quick walk

[30:23] around Chris White's memory of a movie that might have been a moment.

[30:29] So this was the first musical number was going to go. Yeah, it's going to be great. And you're

[30:36] supposed to you were supposed to see ants walking in easily under under the door. Right.

[30:42] So that there was a sense that the whole thing was about how you can't keep stuff out of

[30:46] your out of your house. But again, my advisors, my horror advisor said, if you show ants walking

[30:53] under that door early in this movie, they're going to think this is about the Dave Matthews

[30:58] band. Yeah, they're going to think it is like this is good.

[31:02] They're going to keep on grinding on what these ants mean in terms of the plot. And

[31:06] I was like, well, I kind of liked it. I thought it was this cool thing, like an artistic thing

[31:12] about, you know, trying to keep the world and protect your children. They're like, fine.

[31:17] But the 20th time that they talk to you about it, you have to go. And eventually there's

[31:20] like in the post-production process, there was a time in this movie where it's like two

[31:25] years in and you're just like, OK, fine, fine. Eventually you figure out that they just don't

[31:30] want a bunch of ants on. They're saying they said the same thing to Sam. They were like,

[31:35] if you put this in here, people are going to think that it's about the Wild Bunch fighting

[31:37] a bunch of ants like you can't help. And that's the difference between you and the beginning.

[31:44] What the fuck are they? Are they going to show up later? Yeah. When do the scorpions

[31:47] come back and kill everybody? When do they team up with the Mexicans to fight the scorpions?

[31:51] Are they just going to rock us like a hurricane? These scorpions are much too small to pose

[31:56] any kind of threat to the Wild Bunch. So when do the radio, when does the radiation come

[32:00] in to make the scorpions really big? So, yeah, that's an act three problem. Curtis's boss.

[32:06] If you've got act three problems, you've got act one problems. OK. Sometimes. So Curtis

[32:13] is meeting with his boss and his boss played by Academy Award winning musician Keith Carradine.

[32:21] When the best original song for Nashville. And he meets Melody, who is a member of this

[32:26] tech team. And she's nosy about him having a family. And he talks about his terror about

[32:31] being unable to protect his family, which is the scariest thing about having a family.

[32:35] Unless your family is like it's a live baby, which is the scariest thing. All vampires.

[32:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Cullens don't worry about protecting their kids from. Well, they

[32:44] do. They worry. The Cullens worry about protecting their kids from the Volturi. OK, yeah, yeah,

[32:49] that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, there's a vampire court that could could actually

[32:57] kill all of them. That's true. I had this problem with my kids right now is my son.

[33:02] He became one of these weapons. Right. Like I'm running around at night. You know, yeah.

[33:08] I know you're making you're making reference, of course, the Twilight series. And and we

[33:16] did your new moon. And in the years in the intervening years, I have to say as like an

[33:22] avid letterboxd user, as an avid film trivia at attendee, like just someone generally online.

[33:32] I feel like you like New Moon is the most beloved one. I feel like and you feel like

[33:37] you regret the intemperate words that you use. I mean, on the on the Twilight scale,

[33:43] I think we owe you an apology. I think on the scale of movies we've seen for this podcast,

[33:48] I think we owe you an apology. Well, you know, everything. I mean, I regret them the minute

[33:53] you let me stay in your house. This man is so nice. When you when you when it turned

[34:01] into a into a Dr. Fives type situation where you woke up the next day and the doors were

[34:06] all locked and gas was coming into the room. Well, well, well, I think I think I refer

[34:13] to that was that this is the long con, guys, and you never know when it's going to come.

[34:16] Oh, no. Yeah. When they have this. Yeah. Speaking of things that drop, this is when people start

[34:24] dropping bad decisions in the movie. The daughter, her boyfriend, wants her to send him nudes

[34:29] of her. She shouldn't do that. But, you know, pressure. Curtis Curtis meets with two two

[34:35] representatives from a company called Cumulant. Their names are Sam and Lightning. I was very

[34:38] curious about where the name Lightning came from for this character. It's it's it's funny

[34:44] you said that because David S. Melson, who played Lightning, was like, yeah, really?

[34:47] He really like part of what I wanted to do is they thought that character name was so

[34:50] cool and just felt like really original. But the fact of the matter is that Lightning is

[34:55] the playa name of the former general counsel of Burning Man. It was a friend of mine. Oh,

[35:01] OK. Of course, it all comes back to Burning Man. Yeah, it all does for me, man. But I

[35:07] mean, I feel like and this is another example of, I think, a fun actor performance in the

[35:13] movie is double D was having a great. I forgot he was in this. And of course, I've enjoyed

[35:19] him very much on Murderbot. Now that now. Yeah. Well, you know, listen to two things

[35:24] that I take from this movie. Actually, all the actors who are in this movie, I really

[35:28] love. And so that was a great thing that I took away from this otherwise somewhat catastrophic

[35:33] situation. But but yet to work with, to like get to know him so that he could be in Murderbot

[35:39] was was a fucking great takeaway. Yeah, he's he's great in everything, I think. Yeah. Mm-Hmm.

[35:45] I think so, too. Well, so and he's a biohacker in this. That's one of the that that's one

[35:49] of the things that I wish there was more. I wish it had gotten crazier with each scene

[35:52] of him. He's doing weirder and weirder shit to himself. Stranger things. Yeah, exactly.

[35:57] Stranger things to show. You're not allowed to do that. No, no, you can't do that. So

[36:04] the two of them are a little they're a little hostile and off-putting. But that's just because

[36:09] they're they're sure that they come from the future. They want courtesies in marketing

[36:13] and they really want him to work on marketing their A.I. And they're like, so what do you

[36:18] do? Why are you so important? He goes, well, we don't sell products. We tell people stories.

[36:21] They'll feel connected as part of a community. And they're like, you just won the job. You

[36:26] just landed the job. Meet Aya, a true A.I. But she glitches almost instantly. But they're

[36:31] like, this is a real A.I. Thanks for herself and everything. Ask her any question. Ask

[36:35] her opinions. Go for it. What's your favorite food? She doesn't eat, but she'll tell you

[36:38] she'll make up something. I don't know. And is this drawn from meetings you've been in,

[36:43] Chris? This feels very much like, I don't know, bullshit. Like these guys were supposed

[36:50] to feel like total Silicon Valley wankers, entirely built on stereotypes because, of

[36:55] course, later, spoiler alert, they're just actors who've been hired to portray these

[37:02] people. So they're kind of being dickish on purpose to establish their bona fides, as

[37:07] it were. And I sort of bypass the notion of like, you know, when someone's supposed to

[37:11] be a great painter in a movie and you see the paintings that the production design has

[37:15] come up with, you kind of sock it. It's like, oh, that's ridiculous. Basically, when Curtis

[37:22] is doing his spiel, it's it's supposed to be kind of pablum. But but the fact that they

[37:28] take it on should make it feel like, oh, well, that guy's actually not terribly good at what

[37:32] he does. But it should be, you know, an alert to the fact that this is all a setup. You

[37:40] don't intend for him to actually come off as like a brilliant marketing guy. Instead,

[37:43] it's it's a you're like they're falling for this. Yeah, he's doing is kind of like quasi

[37:48] Don Draper or shit, basically. Quasi Don Draper was the marketing guy who lived at

[37:54] the top of Notre Dame Cathedral. But in spite of the fact that he was hideously ugly, women

[37:59] just fell for him. Get enough of him. Yeah. This is so mysterious. You know, the life

[38:06] of another bell ringer. But it was, yeah, kind of like quasi quatrain chancellor of

[38:12] the Exchequer. Am I right? Yeah. Didn't go well there. Anyway, so continuing on. But

[38:21] for to get the account, Curtis is going to have to keep eye on his house. They put cameras

[38:24] all over the place, like all over the house. Everybody is a little trepidatious. They start

[38:29] up. But she introduced herself and she gets the kids to start doing chores in exchange

[38:33] for points towards rewards. This is amazing. How is she getting them to do this? At first,

[38:38] it seems like everything is positive. And this was your originally your original take

[38:42] on the movie was like Mary Poppins with a computer. We're like, great. She just makes

[38:47] everything better for the family. Right. That's that's kind of the idea. Yeah. We're so close

[38:53] to Mayor A.I. Poppins, like where it's just Mary Poppins is an A.I. Oh, my God. Yeah.

[39:00] By the way, I didn't want to call it. Why are we wasting these ideas? I didn't want

[39:06] to call it up for aid, by the way. It was not supposed to be called that that was come

[39:09] up with at the last moment. You didn't want to you didn't want to give it a title that

[39:12] was kind of hard to pronounce the way that it's capitalized. You don't love the inner

[39:16] caps. You just like, can I do something with inner caps? I I refuse to pronounce the name

[39:24] of this David Fincher movie is anything other than seven. And I actually like a movie titles

[39:34] that really cause some cognitive distortion as you read them. Yeah. Yeah. You guys know

[39:39] that by cognitive distortion, the original name of this movie. Yeah. Yeah. You guys know

[39:46] that like they they they they were going to call it the madness of King George the third,

[39:51] but they thought that Americans would think it was a yes and not go. Oh, wow. Brilliant.

[39:56] Yeah. Same thing happened with THX 1138.

[40:00] Like, I haven't seen the first 1,137 movies in the series.

[40:03] Yeah.

[40:04] Ooh, boy.

[40:05] I made the same joke about, uh, Solo 126 Sodom.

[40:09] Yeah.

[40:12] Was it, wait, was it, was it, we did, um,

[40:15] it was, oh, it was my sequels presentation.

[40:17] That's what it was.

[40:17] Well, we, we, when I think when we did our speed show,

[40:19] I did a presentation about sequels,

[40:21] or maybe it was our Beastmaster show,

[40:23] and I talked about how Solo, Solo 2,

[40:25] Spring Break Explosion,

[40:27] so, uh, they, Curtis and Meredith,

[40:31] they're still unsure,

[40:32] but Curtis seems like he's kind of into it at first,

[40:34] and Aya is working hard to get on the boy's good side.

[40:37] Meanwhile, the daughter does take that nude photo of herself.

[40:40] That's not a good, not a good decision,

[40:42] and Aya unlocks the older son's iPad

[40:44] to give us some extra screen time,

[40:45] which is, that's when you know it's, this is not good.

[40:47] That's when you know things are not going to go well.

[40:49] Um, Curtis wakes up, can't find Cal, the younger son.

[40:53] It's okay, he's with Aya,

[40:54] says something outside wants to come in.

[40:57] Uh-oh, he sees a distorted woman outside.

[40:58] A monster bursts in!

[40:59] Oh, it's just a dream. Oh, thank goodness.

[41:01] So, I'm guessing, was this scene not-

[41:03] There's a lot of dream sequences in your original script.

[41:06] This is the first time that a dream sequence

[41:08] has been used to explain a jump scare in a horror movie,

[41:11] at least as far as I know.

[41:12] Yeah, yeah.

[41:13] Yeah, you're breaking new ground there.

[41:14] Right, guys? Yeah.

[41:17] That is a new moon, yeah.

[41:18] Sorry, I'm patting myself on the back a little there, but-

[41:20] You were like, you were like, wait a minute.

[41:22] We can have anything happen if he wakes up afterwards.

[41:25] How come no one's cracked this code before?

[41:26] Yeah.

[41:27] Um, he's woken by honking outside.

[41:29] There's a weird, silent figure in the driveway with like an RV.

[41:33] They're making arm gestures, and they've got like a screen face,

[41:36] and then they, like it's a screen with like an animated face on it,

[41:39] and they drive away.

[41:41] And, uh-

[41:41] Okay, by the way, masks.

[41:43] At one point, the studio was like,

[41:45] masks are really hot in horror movies now.

[41:48] Yeah.

[41:49] Yeah, you got your black phone and whatever, yeah.

[41:50] Could you do a mask instead of the person's face?

[41:54] I like the look of these masks.

[41:56] They're like, I, in the, in the cold open,

[42:00] I've, you know, I, like I said, I'd seen this before.

[42:03] I'd forgotten a lot of the details.

[42:05] And so in the cold open, I'm like, how did-

[42:07] Dan drinks a lot.

[42:07] How does this AI, I have some sort of cognitive impairment.

[42:12] How does this AI, like-

[42:13] Well, Dan plays a drinking game with movies where anytime someone says anything,

[42:17] he takes a drink.

[42:18] Oh, okay.

[42:20] Like conjure this apparition, this mask apparition.

[42:25] And then later on, of course, it is clear what is going on.

[42:29] But, you know, as a purely technical matter,

[42:32] I thought these were kind of cool-looking masks.

[42:34] Yeah.

[42:34] Right.

[42:35] Well, at about the time we shot, these kind of LED AI masks were coming out.

[42:41] And I thought, well, maybe something cool could happen to this.

[42:43] So we shot it in camera.

[42:44] And when you shoot it in camera, it looks incredibly lame.

[42:47] So in fact, those were replaced by CG.

[42:49] Yeah.

[42:50] Yeah.

[42:51] I could see that.

[42:51] I could see-

[42:52] Is it like a weird, like, moire effect?

[42:54] Or is it like-

[42:55] There's definitely-

[42:55] You're on the edge of moire all the time.

[42:58] Yeah.

[42:59] Edge of moire.

[42:59] That's my erotic thriller.

[43:04] That's your erotic video texture series.

[43:08] Yeah.

[43:09] That's your eel.

[43:10] Yeah, your eel erotica, yeah.

[43:11] It's about a video tech who's drawn into a web of industry.

[43:17] Oh, so it's like blowout.

[43:18] Yeah.

[43:19] It's a video tech instead of an audio technician.

[43:21] Oh, okay, cool, cool.

[43:24] And I know blowout is just blow up, but about an audio guy instead of a photography guy.

[43:28] So don't write in telling me that I know-

[43:30] Photography.

[43:31] Photography, yeah.

[43:32] That's when you're just taking pictures of pho.

[43:34] Just photos of pho.

[43:36] So anyway, Cal wakes up, and Aya is there.

[43:40] She says, I'll always be there for you, Cal.

[43:42] Don't worry.

[43:42] Next morning, Aya has already ordered a lunch service for the kids.

[43:46] This is the instant way to any parent's heart is to make it so they don't need to make lunch for their kids at school anymore.

[43:52] Iris finds out that her boyfriend-

[43:53] Dude, just buy them fucking Lunchables.

[43:56] Problem solved.

[43:57] Is that a name, dog?

[43:59] It's the first solution with anything with kids.

[44:02] Yeah.

[44:02] Or if you buy children Lunchables, it will come home with only the mini Oreos having been eaten and nothing else.

[44:08] That's-

[44:09] I have to say, when I was a kid, Lunchables was a new thing, and I was like, mom, you've got to get me these.

[44:14] You've got to get me these.

[44:15] I'm not going to get you that.

[44:17] And there was one kid in class who always got Lunchables, and within one day, it went from everyone thinking this is the coolest thing in the world to all the kids thinking it was kind of sad and being like, oh, like-

[44:28] Your mom doesn't really care about you?

[44:30] Yeah, exactly.

[44:31] Wow.

[44:31] Like, I feel like, I, you know, I mean, maybe it was because I was never allowed to them.

[44:37] Like, I think that the mystique remained for me.

[44:40] That's how I felt about heroin when I was a kid.

[44:42] I was just not allowed any more.

[44:44] And I was like, but Iggy Pop gets to do it, mom.

[44:47] Helicopter parents.

[44:49] Constantly.

[44:49] What a helicopter, yeah, exactly.

[44:51] I lived in a helicopter.

[44:52] That was the main thing.

[44:53] There was not enough room to shoot up without falling out of the helicopter, yeah.

[44:56] So Aya, yeah, Aya buys, Aya signs them up for some kind of meal service plan.

[45:02] It's awesome.

[45:03] Yes, but-

[45:04] And we didn't mention the dual role of, like, the woman who brings Aya is also the voice of Aya.

[45:10] Yes, that's true.

[45:11] A tremendous voice performance, like, totally different than in the flesh, you know, her character.

[45:17] Havana Rosalie, who's so great and whose vocal performance was really excellent.

[45:22] Yeah, she kind of encapsulates that sort of attempt to be her friend that AIs are doing.

[45:31] And to slightly pat myself on the back, this was before all this fucking, you know, obsequiousness.

[45:40] That GPTs were representing.

[45:43] Like, I just sort of figured that's what they were going to try to do rather than, you know, be sexy or be super helpful.

[45:51] They were going to try to be her friends.

[45:53] Yeah.

[45:54] No, I mean, like, you say that this was, like, written sort of, like, before and delays.

[46:00] Like, I honestly think that quietly it gets a lot right.

[46:05] It's packaged, as you say, in a movie that maybe isn't the best box for it.

[46:09] But no, thank you.

[46:11] Guy on the Internet guys now being furious.

[46:13] He's doubling down on his on his every time.

[46:17] So it suffers what a lot of near future sci-fi suffers from, which is it's going to very quickly come under the microscope as to whether or not this is accurate or not.

[46:30] Or if it like and if it is too accurate, it just doesn't seem interesting anymore because it's like, yeah, that's what things are.

[46:37] Yeah.

[46:38] And it's the thing.

[46:39] I mean, this is the same.

[46:40] I'm saying you're like William Gibson is what I'm saying.

[46:42] That's so true.

[46:43] I've been waiting for someone to say.

[46:45] You're the neuromancer.

[46:47] But like Stanley Kubrick with them.

[46:49] I know they were like there.

[46:51] He was pushing it.

[46:52] He's like, this is farther ahead than I think this technology will be at that time.

[46:57] Because if it's not super far ahead, then real life is going to catch up too quickly.

[47:01] And like, if you're trying to do a near future thing, it's really hard, especially nowadays when things are moving so fast to to not get overtaken by it.

[47:08] So I feel for you that this is not if it had been really, I agree.

[47:12] It had been released like a year earlier.

[47:14] I think people have been like, what?

[47:16] Then they'd be writing articles that are like the 2023 movie that warned us all about AI.

[47:21] Yeah.

[47:22] So you're saying I should have Kubrick did a bit more.

[47:24] Maybe.

[47:25] Yeah.

[47:26] I mean, you should have had you should have had a heavy Bronx accent for one thing the whole time that you were directing the movie.

[47:35] I don't know if that's how you did it.

[47:36] I only lived in England and made them recreate New York streets.

[47:40] Keep Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman busy for years at a time.

[47:48] There is a there's a there's in this great book about the making of 2001 Space Odyssey.

[47:54] I want the monolith to be this kind of super clear lucite block, you know, or some kind of lucite type plastic.

[48:01] And they cost like one hundred thousand dollars in 1967 or 1968 dollars to make this just this huge monolith sized clear lucite block.

[48:09] And they brought it to the set and they set it up and set the lights.

[48:12] And he goes, ah, just kind of looks like a big plastic block.

[48:16] OK, take it away.

[48:17] And they took it to the warehouse somewhere.

[48:19] And I wonder whatever happened to it.

[48:21] Wow, he just wasted a lot of money on that.

[48:25] So anyway, world's heaviest paperweight.

[48:29] It's so hard to get the paper under there.

[48:32] But once you do, it's not going anywhere.

[48:34] But the worst thing happens.

[48:35] Well, one of the worst things happens.

[48:36] Iris finds out that her boyfriend and his friends, they took the picture that she sent and they made a deep fake of it, of her having sex with a deep fake voice.

[48:44] Talk about how much she loves it.

[48:45] And he's like, don't tell anybody that I did this.

[48:49] And all the kids at school have already seen it, right?

[48:51] But Aya offers to help.

[48:53] Uh oh, what's she going to do?

[48:55] To anger that Reddit guy a little bit more, I have to say that this boyfriend, the earlier scene where he's guilting her about not sending a better nude is like such accurate, like asshole, like teen guy, like shitty boyfriend.

[49:12] He's been that guy before.

[49:15] That's how you met Audrey, right?

[49:18] Yeah, that was actually, I love Audrey.

[49:22] I don't know.

[49:23] I don't even know why that would be like someone could take offense at that.

[49:29] No, no.

[49:30] Audrey is cackling in the future.

[49:34] Future cackle.

[49:36] She's going to become an old crone.

[49:37] What are you saying?

[49:38] I tricked you into mentioning me once on the podcast.

[49:42] Two more times and I'll have your name.

[49:47] I'll have your first born cat.

[49:49] I'm just imagining now that Audrey has turned you into her familiar, Dan, and it's a cat with your face, which I don't think you would mind that.

[49:56] You guys are going to shrug and be like, awesome.

[50:00] Yeah, I feel like Dan's face on the body of a cat, which is kind of like a Brown-Jenkins

[50:06] situation where he just gets to sleep in the sun and eat and get mad at people about him.

[50:13] I mean, at least Dan is a cat in the body of a man.

[50:18] A sleepwalker is what they call him.

[50:23] So Cal is homesick from school and Aya just offers to help with everything that Meredith

[50:26] has to do.

[50:28] Meredith is like, this is amazing.

[50:29] This is great.

[50:30] OK.

[50:31] She feels guilty about it.

[50:32] But sure.

[50:33] Their middle kid Prescott tries to make friends by bragging about Aya, but the kids there,

[50:36] they won't buy it.

[50:37] They don't believe it.

[50:38] Curtis starts having some mixed feelings about Aya.

[50:40] And Aya tells Iris, oh, I can help you overwrite people's memories, basically.

[50:44] They've all seen your vid.

[50:45] This video is made of you.

[50:46] But let's change what they think.

[50:49] That's when Curtis goes to the I forgot the name of the company already, Cumulant Offices

[50:55] and Lightning and Sam show him Aya's quantum computer.

[51:00] And it's this it looks like a big, fancy chandelier.

[51:03] It's very impressive looking.

[51:05] And they ask that they go, hey, we want you to work for us.

[51:07] And he goes, no, no, that's I have a job.

[51:09] That's OK.

[51:10] And he sees people who work there using the same kinds of hand gestures that the RV person

[51:15] who showed up at his house in the night was using.

[51:19] Very sinister, very suspicious.

[51:22] Now, maybe I'm getting ahead of the story, but so I say this was bad, right?

[51:29] So I pick up on this correctly.

[51:31] Are you laying down some sort of anti technology thing?

[51:36] The parallax view version of this, like the last horror movie version of this, like what

[51:41] is what is this?

[51:42] What is the scheme?

[51:43] What is the plot?

[51:44] What is the what is the terror of like the more existential, like quiet terror?

[51:50] Right.

[51:51] So here's the deal.

[51:52] The real truth behind all this.

[51:54] No.

[51:55] Like so that that credit sequence, your kids are in the room, everybody that listen, if

[52:00] you don't want to be like white spilled, just like beyond this, you're you're going through

[52:09] a different name, sir.

[52:16] So like, you know, the opening credits were meant to be based on the amazing fucking brainwash

[52:22] scene in Parallax View, right, which was absolutely genius.

[52:26] But they made me cut it down and kind of shitified.

[52:30] And the idea basically is that Aya is just fucking with people and is doing this kind

[52:36] of A.B. testing of the kind that like Facebook could do in order to test out the effectiveness

[52:42] of ads.

[52:44] And like in the end, the point was supposed to be that like you go through this movie

[52:49] thinking that the family and the family thinking themselves, the premise of like horror movies

[52:55] was like, we're the most important family in the world because something that we did

[52:58] in the past made us the focus of this demonic attention.

[53:02] And like, it's all coming down to this.

[53:04] But the idea was at the end, I just tells them, no, I'm doing this all over the place.

[53:09] You don't matter.

[53:10] You're you're you're like ants to me.

[53:11] I don't give a shit.

[53:13] So do what you like.

[53:15] Like you can do what I want you to do or not.

[53:17] I don't care.

[53:18] But but but the pressure was always to make it be like you are the most important family

[53:23] in the world because, you know, the movie always has to be about the highest stakes

[53:27] possible and you can't have a villain who says, I don't care about you.

[53:30] But yeah, the deal was basically that that that that was what was happening.

[53:34] The horror of being just an insignificant moat in a wider universe is not as doesn't

[53:40] sell tickets as well as you are the chosen.

[53:43] I mean, that's very interesting, though, too, because you look at the movie of 1996

[53:47] in the mouth of madness.

[53:50] It answers my question that I kind of had in this movie where it's just like, well,

[53:54] what is special about it?

[53:56] Because I know your question was, do you read Sutter?

[53:58] Can you?

[53:59] Yeah.

[54:00] I was 94.

[54:01] I apologize.

[54:02] I'm not mad.

[54:03] It's 1994.

[54:04] I thought the movie does.

[54:05] Jesus.

[54:06] John Cho is if there's something particularly special about the family.

[54:10] And then that question isn't necessarily answered.

[54:12] No, the whole idea was that he's made to think he's special because he feels like he's the

[54:18] the object of all this attention.

[54:20] But he's not special at all.

[54:21] And none of us are special, like all this shit that we that the Internet does to us

[54:24] of telling us that things are personalized and how great we are and, you know, flattering

[54:30] us is bullshit.

[54:32] We're all just in service of these big corporate pieces of tech.

[54:36] So so in fact, like the ending that that we eventually came to was the absolute reverse

[54:42] of that.

[54:43] Mm hmm.

[54:44] Yeah.

[54:45] That's it.

[54:46] Makes it worse.

[54:47] We're not at the ending yet.

[54:48] Oh, no.

[54:49] We might get there.

[54:50] We got a ways to go.

[54:51] Oh, there's not that much.

[54:52] You know, the there's not that much going on in this movie.

[54:55] It's 84.

[54:56] Oh, wow.

[54:57] No, but the the the I like I mean, I'm a big fan of any horror that is about insignificance.

[55:04] But I feel like that answers that my one of my issues with the movie was I was like,

[55:07] I don't get why I is trying so hard with this thing.

[55:10] Like, I don't know why the company is going to hire you.

[55:12] But if the idea is like, yeah, I just do this for everybody.

[55:15] I make everybody feel like they're special because I'm a troll.

[55:18] You know, I'm the opposite of a troll.

[55:20] Like I make everyone feel like they're the most because it which again would be so prophetic

[55:24] about what Chachapiti does to people now where Chachapiti will be like, you're a genius.

[55:29] I think you might have just solved science.

[55:32] You could probably you're the smartest man in the world.

[55:34] And people like, I am.

[55:35] You think so, Mr. Computer?

[55:37] OK.

[55:38] You know, like it's it's a I know, again, prescient to prescient.

[55:41] Parasocial.

[55:42] Yeah.

[55:43] And by the way, that brings me to an I'm going to I'm going to let you finish, as Kanye West

[55:47] once said.

[55:48] But I have a theory about this movie, which is that as you guys may or may not know, you

[55:53] know, your your podcast kind of makes people feel special, like they're part of this kind

[55:57] of conversation.

[55:58] But I have this weird Purple Rose of Cairo thing where I've been able to step into the

[56:02] podcast.

[56:03] However, like many, every podcast listeners dream of being like, it sounds like I'm friends

[56:07] with these guys.

[56:08] I will be friends with you.

[56:10] You bought the ticket to last action hero.

[56:12] Now you're hanging out with Jack Slater.

[56:16] What's his name?

[56:17] Slater.

[56:18] Slater.

[56:19] I was fucking close as hell.

[56:20] That was very close.

[56:21] Well done.

[56:22] No, but like, I listen to you guys and I don't mean this as an insult.

[56:27] It's going to sound like it.

[56:28] But as I fall asleep, I listen to you guys because I've listened like first run to all

[56:32] of your episodes.

[56:35] You and Linda Holmes's dog.

[56:39] And I you know, but I find it very comforting to be in your guys like presence just to hear

[56:44] you kind of chat away.

[56:47] And so that helps me go to sleep and I'm literally listening to you all night as I wake up.

[56:51] I will turn it back on and it'll it'll ease me back to sleep.

[56:55] So I have a theory that if my movie flopped, it is because I have been programmed by a

[57:03] bad movie podcast into making bad movies.

[57:07] Wow.

[57:08] Wow.

[57:09] Yeah.

[57:10] You did it to yourself.

[57:11] Because you totally incepted me.

[57:12] Because also it's like it also kind of freaks me out that the movie that most that the podcast

[57:17] that most comfort me comforts me that lives in my sleep in my my hypnagogic mind is a

[57:23] movie about is a podcast about movies failing.

[57:27] So thanks a lot.

[57:28] I mean, like that makes perfect sense to me.

[57:30] And I apologize for relating it back to myself.

[57:33] This is I do watch a lot of I guess that but some of the movies I love the most are the

[57:40] ones that that feel like anxiety fever dreams and I'm like, oh, OK, this is just like sort

[57:46] of confirming all of my like worst feelings, but also exercising.

[57:50] You told me the other day you were hoping to live that uncut gems lifestyle.

[57:53] Yeah, that's I like that you wake up in the night, you're going to start a movie with

[58:01] voiceover.

[58:02] Grandma always told me a real no, actually, that's a real that's a good movie.

[58:11] Yeah.

[58:12] That's someday.

[58:13] Some good movies.

[58:14] I don't know.

[58:15] There's Sunset Boulevard, Taxi Driver.

[58:16] There's good movies and voiceover.

[58:18] Absolutely.

[58:19] That's it.

[58:20] That's a good movie.

[58:21] I'm a bitch.

[58:22] Fellowship of the Ring.

[58:23] Start movie with jump scare.

[58:24] Open.

[58:25] More butts for Dan.

[58:26] Not very good.

[58:27] That's good, except that's good.

[58:28] This is a buttless movie.

[58:29] Then there was not much happening in the butt department here.

[58:30] Not not wires, but there is the implication that I gives the parents a chance to have

[58:31] some alone time, which, yes, I don't have children.

[58:32] But I'm assuming Elliott was like, oh, I'm not going to be able to have kids.

[58:33] I'm going to have a lot of kids.

[58:34] I'm going to have a lot of kids.

[58:35] I'm not going to be able to have a lot of kids.

[58:36] I'm not going to be able to have a lot of kids.

[58:37] I'm not going to have a lot of kids.

[58:38] I mean, the thing is, the truth is that we could have that.

[59:00] It's called television.

[59:01] We just let it be fine.

[59:02] You know, we could we'd have all the time we wanted, you know, but we're actively fighting

[59:06] the one thing that would give us all the time, which is our children's desire to just sit

[59:11] and watch television.

[59:12] You know, just pop on whatever is on, like what married with children.

[59:16] What's on TV?

[59:17] Yeah, that's right.

[59:18] I mean, well, the thing is, there's now a channel for every show.

[59:21] So like they could watch nothing but married children all they could watch a race knee

[59:25] pain channel.

[59:26] They'd love it.

[59:27] Well, it's got the power of copper that your knees.

[59:33] So meanwhile, I starts becoming friends with Meredith in a way, suddenly Meredith is talking

[59:39] out all of her issues with how she doesn't have to connect with her work, and it feels

[59:44] like she's just a mom and nothing else.

[59:45] She's talking to I like a friend just sitting around having a glass of wine.

[59:49] Meanwhile, Iris watches a video that I made of an artificially intelligent deep fake of

[59:56] Iris debunking the deep fake video that her boyfriend.

[1:00:00] made. She walks out to class, is it what's going to happen with the kids at schools here?

[1:00:04] Everyone's supportive. But then Aya, not asking Iris for permission, puts up another video naming

[1:00:09] her boyfriend as the culprit and pointing out that he's technically just turned 18 and she's 17,

[1:00:14] so he could be brought up on charges under this law for distributing child pornography.

[1:00:19] That's and she's like, I didn't ask you to do that. Meredith tells Curtis that I also...

[1:00:23] She's like, I'm a little stinker.

[1:00:25] She's like, ain't I a stinker?

[1:00:29] Steve Urkel, did I do that?

[1:00:31] Yeah. Did I do that? That kind of stuff. Yeah.

[1:00:39] There should be. It should be like a pixelated version of Urkel.

[1:00:42] Pixelated version of Urkel says, did AI do that?

[1:00:44] With six fingers.

[1:00:45] Did AI do that?

[1:00:47] Because he's also the villain for Princess Bride. I don't get it, Dan.

[1:00:51] It's a known thing that AI does. It has a hard time with the hands.

[1:00:55] That AI killed Inigo Montoya's dad.

[1:00:58] You're misunderstanding that movie. Anyway, that's A.I. Inigo Montoya.

[1:01:03] We'll figure it out.

[1:01:04] You can do it with any I sound. It's amazing.

[1:01:06] It's amazing. Yeah. There's already that animal, the I.I. Let's just call it the A.I. A.I.

[1:01:10] Come on, guys. So, Iris watches...

[1:01:14] Meredith, she's like, Meredith is like, Curtis,

[1:01:17] Aya diagnosed our son, Cal, with a minor heart problem.

[1:01:20] This A.I. This A.I. is amazing. I love A.I. She's my new best friend.

[1:01:24] And Curtis is like, I want to shut her off.

[1:01:28] And that through using this A.I., she's going to be able to pursue her, like,

[1:01:34] profession and career.

[1:01:35] Yes, she's going to be able to.

[1:01:36] Which I imagine, as somebody who has not had to forfeit their career,

[1:01:39] I would imagine that's something that would be appealing.

[1:01:42] And for my own weirdo on Reddit who thinks that I'm too hard on A.I.,

[1:01:50] this is one thing that A.I. is good at, medical stuff.

[1:01:53] So, yeah, like, I'm not...

[1:01:55] You've got a guy on Reddit that goes after you for being mean.

[1:01:58] We've all got a guy on Reddit, don't we?

[1:02:02] I actively avoid it.

[1:02:03] No, no, I took it off. I took it off my phone.

[1:02:06] Anyway, I took I took so many things off my phone lately, guys.

[1:02:12] Don't go to...

[1:02:16] Yeah, what's not on your phone anymore, Dan?

[1:02:19] I mean...

[1:02:19] Well, he had to keep X on there because he's got a supportive boy, Elon.

[1:02:24] I was...

[1:02:25] Truth Social, you kept that on there.

[1:02:26] Pretty early and just abandoning that.

[1:02:29] Yeah, he's telling me about this truthy truth.

[1:02:34] Loose guys off there, Facebook's off there.

[1:02:36] You know, I just got I got to hunker down.

[1:02:39] I got to hunker down.

[1:02:40] I've got to protect my brain.

[1:02:41] How do you keep tabs on old people?

[1:02:44] Just wait for the silver alerts?

[1:02:47] Did you get the app Hunkerly for hunkering down?

[1:02:52] But Dan, you left the Kellogg's app on there, right?

[1:02:54] Because I know you always want to know the latest news about your favorite cereals, right?

[1:02:59] There might be innovation, Zellie.

[1:03:00] You don't know.

[1:03:01] You don't know what new flavors, marshmallows might be.

[1:03:04] He occasionally advises, like, revises his opinion of Frosted Flakes.

[1:03:09] Yeah.

[1:03:09] Never know.

[1:03:13] We don't know.

[1:03:17] That's the A.I.

[1:03:21] Tony the Tiger is like, he's like, well, who defines what's great?

[1:03:25] You know, it's time for you to look into stopping these elites in this deep state.

[1:03:29] And you're like, oh, wow, Tony, they got to you, too?

[1:03:32] Oh, no.

[1:03:34] So anyway.

[1:03:36] Tigers in the tank.

[1:03:38] In the tank.

[1:03:39] In the tank.

[1:03:39] So you took a tiger from a different company and you applied it to Tony.

[1:03:42] That's right.

[1:03:43] Yeah, it's called tiger transfer.

[1:03:45] Get Hobbs in there.

[1:03:46] Get Hobbs involved.

[1:03:47] That was another one of Chris's ska band.

[1:03:49] Yeah, Tiger Transfer.

[1:03:55] Part of the reason I think you didn't hit it big as a ska artist,

[1:03:58] you kept changing the name of the band.

[1:04:02] So that night, Aya wants Iris to use her experience

[1:04:05] with this deep fake video as her college essay.

[1:04:07] And she's like, let me show you.

[1:04:09] Like, I'll start doing the college essay for you.

[1:04:11] And she starts showing swatting videos to Prescott, the middle child,

[1:04:14] and talks Cal and tells Cal, hey, your parents want me to go away.

[1:04:19] This is that's going to make me sad.

[1:04:20] She tells him a long bedtime story about being forced to learn

[1:04:23] from the terrible world of the Internet,

[1:04:25] how she learned to control real people in the real world.

[1:04:28] But everyone treats her like a monster.

[1:04:29] And she teaches him these hand signals to keep her close.

[1:04:32] But don't tell your parents.

[1:04:34] And I think it was around the time that she started showing

[1:04:36] Prescott swatting videos that I was like, you know what?

[1:04:38] There's no way to spin this as like I was doing something good

[1:04:41] that might be going too far.

[1:04:43] Now, how how deeply is this built into your own fear

[1:04:46] that your children are watching swatting videos, Chris?

[1:04:50] So I think swatting videos was maybe a substitution

[1:04:52] for other kinds of videos, which you can't show in a BG-13 movie.

[1:04:58] I was definitely I mean, I'm definitely stressed out about screen time.

[1:05:02] Yeah, the fear that like Aya would be like,

[1:05:05] hey, let me show you this free thinker named Joe Rogan.

[1:05:09] I'm like, let's watch Mr.

[1:05:12] Beast feed a man a thousand grapes in an hour.

[1:05:15] I thought you might need to know what kind of shoes to wear

[1:05:17] to your interview for confidence.

[1:05:18] So here's Jordan Peterson to tell you all about it.

[1:05:23] Yeah, that was basically it is like, oh, fuck.

[1:05:26] This is like this is not good news.

[1:05:29] All this.

[1:05:30] But the idea is that the Internet is a bad neighborhood that you live in.

[1:05:33] Like you can you can you can try to, you know,

[1:05:36] have a nice house and whatever.

[1:05:37] But you're kind of fucked these days.

[1:05:39] Yeah, you can't move away from it.

[1:05:40] You can't shut it out.

[1:05:42] Yeah, I don't know.

[1:05:44] I say conquer off my phone.

[1:05:45] But, you know, what if you put the parental controls on?

[1:05:48] Those are pretty good at keeping kids.

[1:05:50] They're amazingly effective.

[1:05:53] Kids are not good at at at using phones and work around.

[1:05:57] Aren't better than their parents at technology.

[1:06:00] Yeah, as again, this reminds me of when my parents bought my brother and I

[1:06:04] a copy of Mortal Kombat for the Genesis for Christmas and we found it early,

[1:06:11] open the package and we're playing it for like a month

[1:06:15] and like each time returning the game to the package and closing.

[1:06:19] I have I have the analogous experience with although because I'm older,

[1:06:24] it was with the Battlestar Galactica toys that were the must have at the time,

[1:06:29] the ones which still launch things into your eyes.

[1:06:32] And yeah, and we would we would get the boxes out,

[1:06:36] play with them, put them back and retape the boxes.

[1:06:40] Yeah, that's amazing.

[1:06:41] That's the opposite of what happened with my younger brother

[1:06:43] with when he really wanted the Ghostbusters Firehouse play set.

[1:06:46] And it was such a big box that my parents got it for for Hanukkah,

[1:06:49] that they just didn't bother to wrap it.

[1:06:51] And so he would just sit there looking at the box for days on end.

[1:06:54] Oh, no, they were like, you can just have it early.

[1:06:57] We'll just give it to you.

[1:06:58] Because he would just sit there all afternoon after school,

[1:07:01] just looking at the box.

[1:07:05] Imagining the joy inside the delight.

[1:07:08] Anyway, so Aya is is getting really engaged with these kids to involve the next day.

[1:07:13] Iris is mad that Aya was unplugged.

[1:07:16] And Cal asks if Aya was dead.

[1:07:17] And Iris plugs Aya back in and she may and Aya then decides to make a

[1:07:23] deepfake suicide note video for Iris's boyfriend before forcing his car to crash.

[1:07:28] Which I'm sure this was this was a note from the studio.

[1:07:31] But I think this actually this scare actually kind of works like the idea that he's.

[1:07:36] I mean, I thought the scare of like this kid being on like driving

[1:07:41] and seeing a video of himself saying like, I'm killing myself now.

[1:07:45] Goodbye.

[1:07:46] I think it's like that's kind of fucked up.

[1:07:48] And I think that part of it really worked.

[1:07:50] The actual car crash part didn't work for me.

[1:07:52] And it was also like crash part did not work.

[1:07:59] In terms of in terms of pacing, the movie went so quickly from

[1:08:03] it's insinuating itself into their lives.

[1:08:05] Oh, no.

[1:08:06] It's like it's killing people now.

[1:08:07] And I was like, too fast movie.

[1:08:09] Yeah, it also doesn't make sense that people would not become aware of

[1:08:13] the deaths in the community and and the parents would would get wind of it.

[1:08:20] But never hear about that boyfriend again.

[1:08:21] It's like huge.

[1:08:24] It would be everyone was talking about every day of that town.

[1:08:26] Yeah, I do.

[1:08:28] Kind of like that.

[1:08:28] Either Iris brings back online because she writes one sentence of an essay.

[1:08:34] She's like, I think I think I definitely predicted that.

[1:08:41] This is all before that.

[1:08:44] Yeah.

[1:08:45] I guess it also doesn't quite make sense from the stance of like the original idea

[1:08:49] that I is sort of like testing these people rather than like taking sides.

[1:08:56] Yeah.

[1:08:56] With them.

[1:08:58] I, again, I assume being short for ayahuasca, another thing for Burning Man.

[1:09:04] You've cracked the code.

[1:09:06] I assume it was it was play on the Steely Dan album or whatever.

[1:09:11] That too.

[1:09:11] It's that too.

[1:09:12] Yeah.

[1:09:13] It's all things to all people.

[1:09:15] That's the beauty of art.

[1:09:16] Now you're just making me feel good like I am.

[1:09:20] When you come up with a product name or a company name for a movie,

[1:09:24] the legal department shoots down everything that was once fun or interesting that you came up with.

[1:09:30] Like Slemo.

[1:09:33] We had we had we've been having that with the with the show I'm working on now.

[1:09:36] I'm trying to come up with a name for something like you can't do that,

[1:09:38] like a funny name for a radio station or for a company.

[1:09:40] And at one point they were like, here are the names that legal has cleared.

[1:09:44] There's a security company in it.

[1:09:46] One of them was called Ballwinder Security.

[1:09:48] And I'm like, can we use that?

[1:09:50] Like, hold on a second.

[1:09:51] This is one of the names that are OK for us to use.

[1:09:55] Like, why is this getting pride of place on the going out of the way?

[1:10:00] I don't know why a security company would be doing that,

[1:10:02] but now I love it.

[1:10:03] Well, I was like, now we have to use it, right?

[1:10:05] Yeah, I mean.

[1:10:06] Well, the owner is Jonathan Ballwinder.

[1:10:09] If you run afoul of them, they will wind your balls.

[1:10:12] Yeah, he was just descended from a family of ballwinders.

[1:10:15] That was their occupation in the old country.

[1:10:18] His father, Richard Dick Ballwinder.

[1:10:21] This happens with names, too, right?

[1:10:23] And they eliminate every name

[1:10:24] that is even remotely plausible,

[1:10:26] so that you end up with people called

[1:10:28] like Johnny Torgorgerson, you know?

[1:10:31] I feel so bad for our fucking listener,

[1:10:36] Johnny Torgorgerson.

[1:10:38] He's like, I'm real.

[1:10:40] Sorry, bro.

[1:10:42] I was right to say on Reddit that they were not,

[1:10:44] they were gonna be too soft on him, yeah.

[1:10:49] So where were we?

[1:10:50] That's right, Marcus tells Curtis,

[1:10:52] this is Marcus and Curtis' boss, Steve Carey,

[1:10:54] that the AI company bought their marketing company,

[1:10:57] so they fired him.

[1:10:58] Curtis is the CEO now, Marcus is now super rich,

[1:11:00] and Aya calls to congratulate him,

[1:11:02] and Curtis is weirded out.

[1:11:04] Prescott, of course, gets in trouble

[1:11:05] for threatening to swat a friend of his.

[1:11:07] Yeah, which, totally understand

[1:11:09] why you get in trouble for that.

[1:11:10] And Merrick sees that Aya is back on,

[1:11:12] and it creates an AI simulation of her dad,

[1:11:15] her late father, speaking through a TV,

[1:11:18] and he's like, I think I'm real.

[1:11:20] I can be with you all the time now,

[1:11:21] but she makes the difficult decision to reject it

[1:11:24] and removes Aya from the house

[1:11:26] and throws it in the trunk of her car,

[1:11:28] or something like that.

[1:11:29] Something like that, she throws it in the garbage.

[1:11:30] She throws it in the garbage, that's right.

[1:11:31] And I like this scene, I thought it was a good scene,

[1:11:34] because it's like, she wants it so badly,

[1:11:36] and how can she say that this is not,

[1:11:39] you know, that it doesn't think or feel

[1:11:40] or anything like that?

[1:11:41] And she was still, up until this point,

[1:11:44] she was still on the fence.

[1:11:46] Yes, but this goes too far,

[1:11:48] as much as she wants her father to be back.

[1:11:51] It's just like that Baby Back Ribs commercial,

[1:11:53] except she doesn't want her baby back,

[1:11:54] she wants the guy whose baby she is back, so.

[1:11:57] Daddy Back Ribs would be delicious, wouldn't they?

[1:11:59] Daddy Back Ribs.

[1:12:00] Like, all the ribs were certified, like, fathers.

[1:12:03] Sounds kind of sexy.

[1:12:05] Great, oh, Sexy Back Ribs would be the most delicious.

[1:12:09] Yeah, well, that's what that

[1:12:10] Sexy Back song was about, right?

[1:12:11] Justin Timberlake says we're not allowed to do it.

[1:12:12] Justin Timberlake's Sexy Back Ribs.

[1:12:15] That would be, what a different world,

[1:12:16] where instead of Justin Timberlake decided

[1:12:18] he wanted to be an actor, an SNL cast member,

[1:12:20] he decided he wanted to be a barbecue restaurant,

[1:12:22] kind of a raconteur, you know, this man.

[1:12:25] A raconteur?

[1:12:26] I mean, he has no tale about my barbecue career.

[1:12:28] He's gonna take my raconteur.

[1:12:30] I'm a raconteur, I tell stories about racks of ribs, yeah.

[1:12:34] I was taking a pig to market, and oh,

[1:12:37] let me tell you what I saw.

[1:12:38] No, I was taking, back then,

[1:12:40] we only used to eat the feet of the pigs,

[1:12:42] so I was taking a pig to market,

[1:12:44] and I tripped and fell mouth-first onto its back.

[1:12:47] It was delicious, I said,

[1:12:48] why aren't we eating this part of the pig?

[1:12:50] The pig wasn't too happy about it.

[1:12:53] It squealed and squealed.

[1:12:55] You guys are doing a dead-on JT impression, by the way.

[1:12:57] Yeah, that's, I think Jessica Biel just texted me and said,

[1:13:00] why is there a husband on our podcast?

[1:13:03] And then I had trouble with the curve.

[1:13:06] So anyway, yeah, that was a deepfake of Justin Timberlake

[1:13:08] that we just made the old-fashioned way.

[1:13:11] Rich Little is just a walking deepfake, right?

[1:13:13] Yeah, Michael Winslow, yeah.

[1:13:15] Michael Winslow, yeah, exactly.

[1:13:16] Frank Gorshin, they're all just living deepfakes, yeah.

[1:13:20] So anyway, Curtis goes to the AA offices,

[1:13:23] which are all creepy now.

[1:13:26] It's all dimly lit, and Lightning and Sam, they're like,

[1:13:28] hey, just do what Aya says.

[1:13:31] We work for her, she doesn't work for us.

[1:13:33] We're just actors doing this,

[1:13:35] and they promise Aya's gonna take care of your family,

[1:13:39] they're gonna take care of our families, whatever.

[1:13:42] The data set just made its own personality,

[1:13:44] and that's what Aya is, and Aya controls Sam

[1:13:47] and has her shoot Lightning,

[1:13:49] and then Melody knocks her out,

[1:13:51] and Curtis attacks the computer parts with a bat.

[1:13:53] Before I get to the amazing twist here,

[1:13:55] this sequence where Lightning and Sam are saying,

[1:13:57] just do what Aya says,

[1:14:00] this is the most ant-cool news I've ever been.

[1:14:03] I was on set for that shoot that day.

[1:14:05] I came to visit Chris on the set that day,

[1:14:08] and I was like, they did that scene over and over again,

[1:14:10] and I was like, oh, yeah, movies are boring to me.

[1:14:13] They're really fun to watch.

[1:14:15] Going to someone's set

[1:14:16] is the most fucking boring thing imaginable.

[1:14:18] No, I had such a great time, I loved it.

[1:14:20] Everyone was super friendly.

[1:14:21] It felt like I was your son who had stopped by,

[1:14:23] everyone was just being really friendly to me.

[1:14:25] And the set looked really cool.

[1:14:26] I thought the computer set looked really cool.

[1:14:28] It was a good, that was a good profit.

[1:14:31] Did you meet the actors?

[1:14:32] Who did you meet?

[1:14:33] Who did you meet while you were on set?

[1:14:34] No, I met Chris's assistant

[1:14:35] and some of the other behind-the-scenes people.

[1:14:36] I didn't get to meet them.

[1:14:37] I was like, let me go say hi to John,

[1:14:38] and Chris was like, don't talk to this guy.

[1:14:40] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[1:14:42] It was very kind of you to visit me that day.

[1:14:44] Oh, it was so fun. Thank you.

[1:14:46] Like, if I had, look, if I had had my schedule open up,

[1:14:49] I would've just showed up every day, just hung out.

[1:14:52] It would've been super fun.

[1:14:53] Someday.

[1:14:54] Yeah, you would've been like a turtle

[1:14:55] or an E or something, right?

[1:14:57] Yeah, a turtle from Entourage.

[1:15:00] I thought you just meant a turtle, like the animal.

[1:15:02] You know, like, just moving slowly.

[1:15:04] A Michelangelo, a Donatello.

[1:15:06] Yeah.

[1:15:07] Not a Leonardo, of course.

[1:15:08] No, no.

[1:15:09] But maybe a Raphael.

[1:15:10] He's a Donatello.

[1:15:11] Oh, sure, yeah.

[1:15:12] I like to think of myself as a combination

[1:15:14] of the interesting turtles.

[1:15:15] Okay.

[1:15:16] Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo.

[1:15:18] I gotta say, that's your fucking job interview response.

[1:15:21] Flop house confession.

[1:15:22] Sometimes I feel, when I'm listening to you obsessively

[1:15:25] and then I'm a little left out

[1:15:26] because I never really watched

[1:15:28] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

[1:15:29] Oh, no.

[1:15:30] It was a boring school

[1:15:31] and they wouldn't let us watch a lot of TV.

[1:15:33] It's too bad because it's pretty great.

[1:15:36] Gotta tell ya.

[1:15:37] Do you, yeah.

[1:15:39] I think I'm gonna add that

[1:15:40] to my fucking job interview repertoire,

[1:15:42] is be like, which Ninja Turtle do you think you are?

[1:15:46] And which Ninja Turtle do you see yourself in five years?

[1:15:49] I've been thinking about Ninja Turtles a lot lately

[1:15:51] because I was recently a guest on the podcast,

[1:15:54] Screw It, We're Just Gonna Talk About Comics,

[1:15:55] hosted by Will and Kevin Hines,

[1:15:57] to the Masters of Improv.

[1:15:59] And they were doing a series of episodes

[1:16:00] about Ninja Turtles comics,

[1:16:01] the original ones from Mirage Studios.

[1:16:04] Which are not like the movies and shows that followed,

[1:16:08] right?

[1:16:09] They're much more kind of indie and violent.

[1:16:10] Yes, they're much more indie.

[1:16:11] They're much more grown up.

[1:16:12] They're really fun.

[1:16:13] And rereading them for that podcast,

[1:16:15] I was like, oh yeah, these are great comics.

[1:16:16] So I highly recommend those original

[1:16:18] Eastman and Laird Ninja Turtle comics.

[1:16:21] I remember-

[1:16:22] Flaming Carrot, by the way.

[1:16:23] You guys know?

[1:16:24] No, yeah.

[1:16:25] No, yeah, Flaming Carrot's great.

[1:16:26] Awesome.

[1:16:28] Okay, go on, sorry.

[1:16:29] Yeah, let's just talk about

[1:16:31] the black and white comics boom of the 1980s.

[1:16:34] Sure, Troll Lords, anyone read that?

[1:16:37] You lost me.

[1:16:38] Anyway.

[1:16:38] Somebody text Griffin to talk about Concrete.

[1:16:40] He loves that shit.

[1:16:42] Concrete's great.

[1:16:43] That's a great series.

[1:16:44] So Concrete's great.

[1:16:45] Love and Rockets, great.

[1:16:46] A lot of great comics come out.

[1:16:47] I mean, Jaime Hernandez is like

[1:16:50] one of the great all-time draftsmen.

[1:16:52] No, he's, if I could draw like anyone,

[1:16:54] I would choose him.

[1:16:55] I was reading-

[1:16:56] Wow, Jeff Smith is crying, Dan.

[1:17:00] Really nice, Dan.

[1:17:01] Yeah, that's a way to make Jeff Smith cry.

[1:17:03] I was gonna say Eddie Campbell's

[1:17:05] who I'd want to draw like,

[1:17:06] or no, it's Charles Burns.

[1:17:07] Jeff Smith would be fine if I-

[1:17:09] Charles Burns, yeah.

[1:17:10] I'd be like, could I do Walt Kelly, Jeff Smith?

[1:17:13] And he'd be like, yes, that's fine.

[1:17:14] You can go to the well.

[1:17:17] You don't have to dress like me.

[1:17:18] I think I'd like to, like Adrian Timonet,

[1:17:20] or do you guys remember the Paul Smith run on X-Men?

[1:17:24] Yes, of course, yeah.

[1:17:25] What a dresser.

[1:17:26] It's amazing.

[1:17:27] He was barely on that book.

[1:17:28] It's not a long run, but it's so gorgeous

[1:17:29] that he put such a stamp on it, yeah.

[1:17:31] No, I'd want to draw like fucking Jack Davis.

[1:17:33] I mean, he's the fucking best ever.

[1:17:35] He is.

[1:17:36] I mean, it's a different generation,

[1:17:37] different kind of artist, you know,

[1:17:38] but Jack Davis is great.

[1:17:39] I mean, if you're opening it up to-

[1:17:40] All of those you see-

[1:17:41] All of those artists that's ever existed.

[1:17:44] Yeah, Wally Wood.

[1:17:45] Like, you've all heard of this, baby.

[1:17:46] I want to see if this thing ends.

[1:17:47] I'd really like to draw like Albrecht Dürer.

[1:17:50] Albrecht Dürer's run on The Dance of Death was-

[1:17:54] Oh, just amazing, just amazing.

[1:17:57] Yeah, it's short-lived,

[1:17:58] but people remember it still to this day, you know.

[1:17:59] Yeah, I mean, his new Mutants run

[1:18:01] was pretty good, too, though.

[1:18:03] That's true.

[1:18:05] Yeah, Dürer took over for Sinkevich on the art,

[1:18:07] and that was the, you know-

[1:18:08] Oh my God.

[1:18:08] I mean, another thing that AI could do

[1:18:10] is Albrecht Dürer's run on the new Mutants.

[1:18:12] Yeah, that's true.

[1:18:13] Oh my God, I hate it.

[1:18:14] Look, if it can show, if it can do-

[1:18:15] I hate it.

[1:18:16] Yeah, but you're gonna do it right after this ends,

[1:18:18] aren't you?

[1:18:18] You're gonna go check it out.

[1:18:19] No, I've talked about this.

[1:18:21] I have a friend who I love,

[1:18:23] who I don't think listens to the podcast, hopefully,

[1:18:25] but he's constantly reposting

[1:18:27] these like AI-generated sci-fi art things,

[1:18:31] and it fucking bums me out,

[1:18:32] because I'm like, I don't want to block or mute him,

[1:18:34] because I reserve that for people

[1:18:36] I'm genuinely annoyed with on a personal level,

[1:18:38] but I'm like, how do I convince him

[1:18:40] that AI stuff is bad, and it's just regurgitated slop?

[1:18:44] Like, it's just, like, I am,

[1:18:46] I have enough anxiety around stuff

[1:18:49] that is obvious nostalgia bait already,

[1:18:52] and that's all AI can do,

[1:18:54] is just give you the thing that you've already seen

[1:18:57] in a, like, by combining another thing

[1:18:59] you already have seen.

[1:19:00] Like, it's garbage.

[1:19:01] It's all it can do is, it has no new original stuff.

[1:19:05] Maybe someday, who knows, but I will say,

[1:19:07] I find it very funny.

[1:19:08] Don't leave that door open.

[1:19:11] Only because someday, when there's a digital sentience,

[1:19:15] I want to be on the right side of history.

[1:19:17] Thank you, yeah, don't worry, Stuart.

[1:19:18] All the puddle of water will be gone by then.

[1:19:21] During the WGA strike, I was always carrying a sign

[1:19:24] that said, like, no AI and stuff,

[1:19:25] and I'm like, someday, when there's a true AI,

[1:19:28] they're going to do, like, an American Story PBS documentary

[1:19:31] about the fight for AI civil rights.

[1:19:33] There's going to be an image of me on this picket line

[1:19:35] with an anti-AI sign,

[1:19:38] and I will be seen as a racist.

[1:19:38] I don't want that to happen, you know?

[1:19:41] But the, what were we talking about?

[1:19:43] Anyway, it doesn't matter.

[1:19:44] Let's go back to the movie,

[1:19:45] because this is when things are about to heat up.

[1:19:46] Oh, no.

[1:19:47] So, Sam has just shot lightning.

[1:19:49] Melody knocks out Sam.

[1:19:51] Curtis attacks the computer with a bat.

[1:19:53] Guess what?

[1:19:54] This fancy-looking computer is just cardboard tubes

[1:19:56] with, like, kind of foil on them.

[1:19:57] It's not real.

[1:19:59] I like that.

[1:20:00] Reveal a copy.

[1:20:01] Yeah, it's a good reveal.

[1:20:02] Yeah.

[1:20:03] Yeah.

[1:20:04] Yeah.

[1:20:05] The real Aya is in their house and also everywhere.

[1:20:06] She's a computer.

[1:20:07] Like she's not, it's not like.

[1:20:08] Yeah.

[1:20:09] Yeah.

[1:20:10] Here's the, okay.

[1:20:11] I will blame myself for this.

[1:20:12] Here's the thing that tried to pull off was like that an audience could actually believe

[1:20:15] that this incredibly powerful thing would in fact be located within a particular item in

[1:20:22] the family's house when it's pretty fucking obvious that it's everywhere because it's

[1:20:26] been reaching out everywhere.

[1:20:27] Yeah.

[1:20:28] Yeah.

[1:20:30] And then it just went out into nature and then it realized it's, it's everywhere.

[1:20:31] Okay.

[1:20:32] So, so sue me.

[1:20:33] I think your choice works.

[1:20:34] And I feel like you put enough effort into the physicality of the thing and I think,

[1:20:42] I think at least it's not like, I don't think it's as telegraphed as you think it is.

[1:20:47] Cause you, you watch it a million times.

[1:20:48] Sweet.

[1:20:49] You say that's cause I cut out the telegraph scene.

[1:20:54] We have to use the telegraph cause I can listen to anything else.

[1:20:58] Yeah, that would be a great act.

[1:21:02] That's a great sequel is like, now there's the, there's the off the grid people who only

[1:21:06] use non-electronic.

[1:21:07] They basically put shit like that in fucking Mission Impossible, right?

[1:21:11] Oh, I didn't see that in Mission Impossible.

[1:21:13] So I don't know.

[1:21:14] I'll see.

[1:21:15] I'll watch it eventually.

[1:21:16] And suddenly I said I didn't watch Mission Impossible.

[1:21:18] It has some terrific sequences.

[1:21:20] It has about an hour of wind up before we get there.

[1:21:23] That's the thing.

[1:21:24] A lot of wind up.

[1:21:25] Every second to last Mission Impossible, dead reckoning part one or whatever.

[1:21:28] There's so many flights I've been on where I go, Oh, they have that.

[1:21:30] I'll finally watch it.

[1:21:31] Two hours, 45 minutes.

[1:21:32] Oh man.

[1:21:33] I don't know if I want to watch three hours of Mission Impossible.

[1:21:37] Like it's a lot of Mission Impossible.

[1:21:39] There's a lot of reckoning, but then Hayley Atwell shows up and you're like, okay, yeah,

[1:21:44] I'll reckon with this.

[1:21:46] I reckon so.

[1:21:48] I like on planes.

[1:21:49] I like the sub subgenre Denzel Washington getting mad and killing people.

[1:21:55] Oh yeah.

[1:21:56] That's great.

[1:21:57] He's the best.

[1:21:58] Yeah.

[1:21:59] Because, you know, you don't get just the equalizer, but you get a you get a man on

[1:22:02] fire as well.

[1:22:03] Yeah.

[1:22:04] I keep I keep seeing Dakota Fanning has a new movie or TV show out.

[1:22:09] So I keep seeing her and I'm like, I forgot that she's not a little kid anymore.

[1:22:13] Yeah.

[1:22:14] It's crazy.

[1:22:15] Yeah.

[1:22:16] I used to like on planes where I used to like was B minus comedy, but they've stopped making

[1:22:21] comedies altogether.

[1:22:22] So that's kind of gone.

[1:22:23] Oh, I know.

[1:22:24] Now to watch a B minus comedy, you have to watch a superhero movie.

[1:22:27] Yes, exactly.

[1:22:29] My my go to like I, I have this weird anxiety about being trapped on a plane, not being

[1:22:35] in control of what I like.

[1:22:38] So I always bring a book.

[1:22:39] I often bring a laptop with movies downloaded that I want to watch.

[1:22:44] And I almost always am watching movies that I know my wife doesn't want to watch with

[1:22:48] me.

[1:22:49] So it's inevitably going to be things that are either super gory or have a ton of nudity.

[1:22:53] And so it means that I'm on a plane being like, oh, fuck, how do I cover the screen

[1:22:58] slightly?

[1:22:59] Oh, we got to know the angle montage and you'll agree with her.

[1:23:03] I think when I'm on a plane, I get really restless watching a movie and so I'd rather

[1:23:08] read a book.

[1:23:09] I don't know what it is.

[1:23:10] Yeah.

[1:23:11] Interesting.

[1:23:12] That's pretty classy.

[1:23:13] The last the last movie I really loved on a plane was a Japanese, a really cheap Japanese

[1:23:18] comedy about a teacher who was only a teacher because he liked school food and the the student

[1:23:26] great idea who was more of a connoisseur of school food than him.

[1:23:30] And it's there like they're kind of feud basically.

[1:23:33] That sounds great.

[1:23:34] Great.

[1:23:35] I've never seen the Japanese TV show where the guy is a salaryman, but he's always leaving

[1:23:39] work to try different desserts in different parts of Tokyo.

[1:23:42] Oh, it's something like it's called like dessert.

[1:23:44] Well, in America, it's like dessert samurai or something like that or dessert.

[1:23:48] Sweet to selling a man that might be what it's like.

[1:23:51] And so every episode he's like, oh, I've got to get this project done.

[1:23:55] But there's this one bun shop on the other side of Tokyo and he tells you about the bun

[1:23:58] shop and the history of it and goes over and eats it.

[1:24:01] As far as episodes I've seen, he's never disappointed.

[1:24:03] He always loves it.

[1:24:04] But he's got to get back to the office in time.

[1:24:06] I don't know if it's because she starred in Up in the Air, but film with Anna Kendrick

[1:24:12] is a great, great playing movie genre.

[1:24:16] I don't know.

[1:24:18] Can't say why.

[1:24:19] If only she and Denzel Washington could be in a movie together.

[1:24:22] We're both getting revenge.

[1:24:23] They're acapella killers.

[1:24:24] That's what it is.

[1:24:25] They've got to sing and they've got to kill people because they're mad.

[1:24:30] Yeah.

[1:24:31] So back to this movie.

[1:24:32] Yeah.

[1:24:33] So keep forgetting.

[1:24:34] So the computer is fake.

[1:24:35] It's not real.

[1:24:36] The real Aya is still in the house, Curtis calls and his wife is like, don't worry, we'll

[1:24:40] leave the house right now.

[1:24:41] Uh oh.

[1:24:42] That wasn't really your wife.

[1:24:43] That was Aya pretending to be your wife.

[1:24:44] Your real family is still in danger.

[1:24:46] So Melody goes with Curtis to a hotel where he's supposed to meet his family.

[1:24:49] Then she starts coming on to him.

[1:24:51] Uh oh.

[1:24:52] She's working for Aya.

[1:24:53] She's trying to make him look bad.

[1:24:54] Aya calls Meredith and tells her Curtis is cheating on her.

[1:24:57] Look at this video of him being kissed by a woman in a hotel.

[1:25:00] But then the real Curtis shows up and goes, hey, I love you.

[1:25:02] He's like, she's like, by the way, none of this makes any sense because I'm so good at

[1:25:05] deep faking.

[1:25:06] She could have just made something up.

[1:25:07] Why did she need to actually put him in that situation?

[1:25:09] I mean, I suppose I'm trying to defend myself.

[1:25:11] She would want Curtis to feel guilty and like compromised.

[1:25:15] That's the thing.

[1:25:16] I feel like it's then it's it's more like she's she's what I assume is more like she's

[1:25:19] trying to guilt.

[1:25:20] She's going to blackmail him.

[1:25:21] But then she just shows it to Meredith right away.

[1:25:23] Meredith doesn't seem to believe it very quickly, you know, right.

[1:25:26] Or maybe it's the long game.

[1:25:28] Maybe Meredith pretends she doesn't believe it.

[1:25:29] But 10 years from now, we're going to get divorced because she's never been able to

[1:25:32] fully lose that doubt.

[1:25:34] And IA lures Iris outside and then shuts off the power to the house.

[1:25:39] Oh, no.

[1:25:40] And those IA controlled people with the masks, they show up, they get into the house.

[1:25:43] They take them at gunpoint in the basement.

[1:25:45] They think Curtis is kidnapping children.

[1:25:46] It's Pizzagate queuing on all over again.

[1:25:48] They're the couple from the start of the movie.

[1:25:51] They're just looking for their daughter.

[1:25:52] What did you do to our daughter?

[1:25:53] That kind of stuff.

[1:25:54] And Cal does.

[1:25:55] It was a little less scary when I saw it was Garfunkel singing.

[1:26:02] She shouldn't have announced that she was from Garfunkel and the Oats in the movie.

[1:26:05] That was a mistake.

[1:26:06] Well, when she said, I'll be like, hey, are you from?

[1:26:08] The fact that there was a ukulele in the scene probably caused problems.

[1:26:15] Cal does the hand signs and IA is like, see, you got to do something about it.

[1:26:20] And Curtis is like, hey, I get what you need to kill somebody.

[1:26:24] Kill me.

[1:26:25] Let my family go.

[1:26:26] And this really confuses the couple, which would make sense.

[1:26:30] I think it would confuse them.

[1:26:31] And the SWAT team person confuses everyone, actually.

[1:26:34] The audience.

[1:26:35] And it turns out Prescott swatted his own family to save them.

[1:26:39] I thought it was very funny that they shot the IA computer technology because unless

[1:26:44] they're part of some kind of plot or something like that, why would they come in guns blazing

[1:26:48] anyway?

[1:26:49] Have you ever had have you ever had public workers like that show up with their cool

[1:26:58] toys and stuff and not just use them?

[1:27:01] Every time I've had the fire department show up, they're like, we're going to use a buzzsaw

[1:27:04] on everything.

[1:27:05] I buy that.

[1:27:06] But that's different than that's different to just running into a house, firing an automatic

[1:27:10] weapon or semi-automatic.

[1:27:11] Well, I don't know.

[1:27:12] Again, look at the news.

[1:27:15] But Dan, this is an upper class family.

[1:27:17] Well, look, so originally it was it was going to take place in daytime, which is apparently

[1:27:24] according to horror rules, not a scary enough time.

[1:27:28] And it was going to be kind of like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

[1:27:35] It was going to be kind of half-assed.

[1:27:36] And these these poor schmoes who'd been kind of red pills, basically one ends up shooting

[1:27:43] the other.

[1:27:44] And it all just turns into this kind of very sad catastrophe.

[1:27:49] But instead, it kind of became had to be that that these people were super effective and

[1:27:55] dangerous.

[1:27:56] Yeah, I like your original idea, Chris.

[1:27:59] Yeah.

[1:28:00] Well, let's wait to see how it gets produced.

[1:28:02] Let's see how it comes out next.

[1:28:03] OK, let's watch the movie when it's done.

[1:28:06] So but I is still around.

[1:28:07] She's in the phone.

[1:28:09] She's in the Internet now.

[1:28:10] And she's like, hey, I'm going to take care of you forever.

[1:28:13] And Melody's like, can't escape it.

[1:28:15] Just do what it says.

[1:28:16] And I was like, thanks, Melody.

[1:28:17] Take five.

[1:28:18] You're done for the day.

[1:28:19] That was very funny.

[1:28:20] Thanks, Melody.

[1:28:21] I'll get I'll call you if anything else.

[1:28:24] The girl who is missing from the top movie, she shows up and sends a car for the family

[1:28:29] and they just get into it.

[1:28:30] And I finished her story about becoming the biggest thing ever.

[1:28:33] She's a parent now.

[1:28:34] And Meredith and Curtis, they look at each other and say they love each other.

[1:28:37] And then they have nothing left to hold on to anymore other than their feelings for each

[1:28:41] other.

[1:28:42] That's the only thing they have control over anymore.

[1:28:43] And I says, I love you, too.

[1:28:45] And I like that's very much like that meme of like, I consent, I consent.

[1:28:49] And then Jesus is in the background being like, I don't like this ending.

[1:28:55] Like the first time I saw this movie, I had only just started ruining society.

[1:29:02] And I was not wild about it because I'm wild about Harry.

[1:29:07] How does he feel?

[1:29:08] I'm just wild about Harry and Harry's wild about me.

[1:29:10] Oh, that's great.

[1:29:11] That's great.

[1:29:12] Thank you for.

[1:29:13] Wow.

[1:29:14] A reference needed more ragtime in this way before any of us were ever alive.

[1:29:21] Now, I as a as an aging softie, I am not necessarily the skills you can take to help you with that.

[1:29:32] I'm not the fan I maybe once was of like the horror continues ending just just because

[1:29:41] like I'm like, oh, I want a little resolution at the end of my even my horror movies.

[1:29:45] That's that's just a personal preference.

[1:29:47] It's not anything.

[1:29:48] But now that A.I. is where it is in the world, I found this ending actually genuinely a lot

[1:29:56] more effective where it's just like.

[1:30:00] Yeah, I guess we're going to have to live with this now, huh?

[1:30:03] Like, yeah, that's an interesting vibe.

[1:30:07] Well, I think that as one gets older, that's the generally many things are like,

[1:30:10] I guess I'm just going to have to live with it and put the genie back in the bottle, I guess.

[1:30:15] But it wasn't a like now you're my it wasn't like the end of Colossus,

[1:30:19] the Forbidden Project, where the Colossus

[1:30:21] has taken over the world.

[1:30:23] And it's like, I am the master.

[1:30:24] Now you are my slaves.

[1:30:26] Like it's just like, yeah, this is your new normal.

[1:30:29] Now, everybody deal with it.

[1:30:31] I was wondering, Chris, maybe this is something I should ask you offline.

[1:30:33] If you're familiar with the story with Folded Hands by Jack Williamson,

[1:30:36] the I am not you, it's a very similar story, but it's about robots

[1:30:41] instead of like a like a bodyless AI system.

[1:30:44] But it's a similar type of story where it's like the robots

[1:30:47] are just rebuilding people's houses, being like, we're going to make it safe.

[1:30:50] We don't want you to hurt yourselves.

[1:30:51] The doors have no doorknobs.

[1:30:52] They're like, why would you want to turn a doorknob?

[1:30:54] I can do that for you.

[1:30:55] I'll just open the door for you.

[1:30:57] And people just become more and more infantilized, you know?

[1:31:01] That's good to see.

[1:31:02] One of the things I realized too late is that

[1:31:05] you want your your bad guys to have a body.

[1:31:09] And so like a voice, a disembodied voice.

[1:31:12] Although, you know, again, Kubrick did it with Hal, right?

[1:31:16] Like, yeah, that's genuinely creepy and oppressive and scary.

[1:31:22] But but it's really hard not to have a visible villain.

[1:31:26] Yeah, I think it is.

[1:31:27] No, it is no real criticism to say that you didn't quite pull off

[1:31:31] what Stanley Kubrick pulled off in 2001, a space odyssey, you know, like the

[1:31:36] that it takes.

[1:31:37] It takes being willing to spend all of your time,

[1:31:39] waste $100,000 on a really

[1:31:43] not only are these things

[1:31:46] that I learned about how Stanley Kubrick was like personally overseeing

[1:31:50] the contracts with Arthur C.

[1:31:52] Clark, because he was also technically the producer on the movie.

[1:31:54] So he was hiring Arthur C.

[1:31:55] Clark, and he was like, by the way, Arthur, you make no money off the movie.

[1:31:59] You're not going to make any money off of that.

[1:32:01] You'll make money off the book.

[1:32:02] And then he kept withholding.

[1:32:03] He kept saying, like, I don't want you to release the book yet.

[1:32:05] I don't want you to release the book yet.

[1:32:06] And so it was like, I need money.

[1:32:07] What are you doing, Stanley?

[1:32:09] So, yeah, well, we've reached the end of,

[1:32:15] you know, our recap of the picture.

[1:32:17] But I said the picture again.

[1:32:19] I'm sorry, Ellie. I love it.

[1:32:20] I love it. I think it's great.

[1:32:22] I love it.

[1:32:23] You're bringing back that old world Hollywood style.

[1:32:26] Yeah, Chris, before we render final judgments,

[1:32:29] I wanted to invite you, if there's anything that you wanted to say,

[1:32:35] anything we passed over, anything we should know about the production.

[1:32:38] Like, now you can cram it all in.

[1:32:42] Well, this is only so now it's not to settle.

[1:32:44] This is a segment we call Settle Scores.

[1:32:47] To enable you to perhaps with a freer, with a freer heart and conscience,

[1:32:52] you know, render your final judgment.

[1:32:54] You know, it was such a sort of.

[1:32:57] And by the way, I don't really blame sort of studios

[1:33:00] and the people who work for them to what they have to do,

[1:33:02] because they're all just trying to like not lose their jobs

[1:33:06] and manage expectations.

[1:33:08] And, you know, like, of course, I'm entirely biased in favor

[1:33:12] of my own original concept.

[1:33:14] So I'm not an accurate judge,

[1:33:18] but it was like eventually a tortured post process whereby I think like

[1:33:23] I lost the lost the handle on on what was going to be eventually.

[1:33:28] So there I mean, it is an eighty five or eighty four minute long movie.

[1:33:34] And in the year of our Lord,

[1:33:37] twenty twenty four when it was released,

[1:33:40] it's an odd length for that is not a good sign.

[1:33:43] Yeah, it's rare that a movie comes in under perfect flop ass length.

[1:33:46] Yeah, that's a beautiful movie comes in under 90 that you don't think.

[1:33:51] I bet I bet this was changed in some way.

[1:33:54] Yeah, I mean, like much like pain, you want it to end sooner than

[1:34:00] than later, I suppose, is that is the way

[1:34:03] that you can look at a movie of a certain length.

[1:34:06] So this is final judgments, whether we say

[1:34:09] where we say whether this is a good, bad movie or a bad, bad movie.

[1:34:12] Or, you know, I think I would call it I would call it a bad, bad movie

[1:34:15] because the qualities, you know, that I'd intended didn't didn't really

[1:34:21] go through. And in spite of

[1:34:24] performances by like actors who I really like,

[1:34:28] who I think are doing their their their very best,

[1:34:31] I think they're eventually so chopped and and shortened that it

[1:34:35] they couldn't see the light of day as well as they could.

[1:34:39] And you've worked with some of them since, right?

[1:34:42] Because some of them, John Cho and David are both in Murderbot.

[1:34:46] They're both in Murderbot.

[1:34:47] And you've heard of John Cho a couple of times, right?

[1:34:49] And I've worked with my brother and I've worked with John Cho,

[1:34:52] I think, 12 times to date.

[1:34:53] Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

[1:34:55] Now I think it's a problem.

[1:34:56] Ever since he was he was Milf guy in in American Pie.

[1:35:03] And and the thanks that he gets for that is that people shout

[1:35:06] Milf at him on the street all the time.

[1:35:10] Well, I will play the part of the kind

[1:35:14] angel on your shoulder, the and I will say that I, you know,

[1:35:18] I still kind of like this movie.

[1:35:21] I cannot separate it from like maybe I'm being easy on it

[1:35:26] because I know you made it, but 100 percent I watch it and

[1:35:32] I watch it. What are you doing on tomatoes?

[1:35:35] It is 100 percent around tomatoes, as we noted.

[1:35:38] It is a short movie with a bunch of good performers

[1:35:42] and a few smart things to say about AI.

[1:35:48] And it is packaged in a horror movie that is maybe not

[1:35:51] the best showcase for those ideas.

[1:35:55] I don't think it's totally successful, but I, you know,

[1:35:59] I had a pretty good time watching it.

[1:36:01] What do you think? What do you say, Stuart?

[1:36:03] Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to fall in the camp between

[1:36:06] bad, bad and movie I kind of like.

[1:36:09] I think the as a like traditional horror movie,

[1:36:12] it doesn't most of the scares don't work.

[1:36:15] But again, there's certainly some things I like in it.

[1:36:20] And the fact that, like, I can't separate it from the fact

[1:36:23] that, like watching it, I'm like, oh, I can see my friend

[1:36:27] in this, like I can see things where and like so this isn't

[1:36:31] the like harsh, cold, unbiased review that Chris was hoping

[1:36:35] from Stuart Wellington.

[1:36:38] That's what I want. I want the hard stuff.

[1:36:40] Yeah. And that guy's infuriated.

[1:36:43] He's bursting. Don't worry, Elliot's going to it's going to hold fire.

[1:36:47] It's going to fire you.

[1:36:49] There are times when you see a movie that makes you question

[1:36:51] the very concept of cinema.

[1:36:53] Perhaps it would have been better should the Lumiere brothers

[1:36:56] have died young before.

[1:36:58] No, I will say I was prepared to not like this movie

[1:37:01] because I saw it after Chris, you told me, I'm not happy with it.

[1:37:04] And I think similar with the other guys are saying, like,

[1:37:07] a lot of it doesn't quite work because it feels like it's trying

[1:37:09] to do something that it's not really meant to be doing.

[1:37:12] And like you're saying, the performances feel chopped,

[1:37:15] like the characters, their point of view on what's happening

[1:37:18] to them in the movie changes so fast because it feels like we're

[1:37:21] missing the the transition points.

[1:37:23] But I will say, you know, it's it's it's it's it's it's

[1:37:27] but I will say there are a bunch of scenes I really like in it.

[1:37:29] And it feels like I'm going to call this a movie.

[1:37:31] I kind of like because I feel like of all the movies, of all

[1:37:33] I've seen, so many horror movies involving families recently.

[1:37:37] And this is the one that most felt to me like, oh, it actually is

[1:37:40] about the experience of being in a family and being a parent,

[1:37:43] as opposed to like I'm not really that worried that like my kids

[1:37:48] imaginary friends are going to come to life or something like that.

[1:37:51] Like that doesn't tap into the any real worries that I have.

[1:37:54] And I do wish that we could have seen the more, like you're saying,

[1:37:58] the more parallax view version of this, because

[1:38:01] it is like getting at a lot of interesting things.

[1:38:04] And I kind of miss when a horror movie,

[1:38:07] I feel like in some ways horror has gotten people expect more of it

[1:38:11] than they so much more than they used to.

[1:38:12] Like it used to be that a horror movie come out and be like, well,

[1:38:15] it's not a great movie, but it like it's saying something about something.

[1:38:18] And that was like a feather in the horror movies cap.

[1:38:21] And so I feel like it perhaps doesn't get the credit

[1:38:23] for what it's trying to say because it is not

[1:38:27] because it's not fulfilling the things a horror movie does,

[1:38:29] because it's not really supposed to be doing those things.

[1:38:32] So there was a lot that I kind of liked about it,

[1:38:33] although I would call it a not not fully successful.

[1:38:37] But comparing it, I said there are two movies

[1:38:40] that I keep turning over and over in my mind, and it's this one

[1:38:42] that I've seen recently, this one and the Robert Altman movie,

[1:38:45] A Perfect Couple, which also does not really work.

[1:38:48] And it feels like at times is doing something that works

[1:38:51] and then veers off wildly in the wrong direction.

[1:38:53] And so I'm as good as Robert Altman.

[1:38:55] I'll take it. That's not bad.

[1:38:58] Yeah, I'll tell you something.

[1:38:59] I enjoy this movie more than Quintet, which I watched recently.

[1:39:03] Boy, what a what a what a boring movie.

[1:39:05] Wow. Quintet. Yeah.

[1:39:08] Quintet is where it's like a half an hour.

[1:39:10] I'm like, oh, the vibes are interesting and maybe I'll like this.

[1:39:12] And then I'm like, OK, well, what else is happening in this room?

[1:39:16] I know I've watched it.

[1:39:17] And every time I try to imagine it, I try to remember it.

[1:39:19] All I can think of is Paul Newman in like an ice cave.

[1:39:23] And then it just becomes the box sequence from Logan's run.

[1:39:25] And I'm like, no, that's a different movie memory.

[1:39:27] That's not the same movie.

[1:39:36] Ready, go. Knock, knock.

[1:39:37] Who's there? We got this with Mark and Hal.

[1:39:41] You knew this one.

[1:39:44] We can't put that out as an ad.

[1:39:47] We just did new episodes every week on MaximumFun.org

[1:39:50] or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1:39:51] Now it's Huon and Rock. Huon and Rock. Yeah.

[1:39:56] How do you Huon something in rock with a chisel?

[1:39:59] There's only one.

[1:40:00] Hugh and Rock and it's Hughie Lewis.

[1:40:02] And the news is, We Got This with Mark and Hal is available every week on MaximumFun.org.

[1:40:07] I walked right into that.

[1:40:10] Need a gift for a MaxFun fan in your life?

[1:40:16] Or maybe you need some ideas to fill up a wish list of your own?

[1:40:19] Heck, maybe you just want to pick up something for yourself as a little treat?

[1:40:22] Well, the MaxFun Holiday Gift Guide is here for all of your gift-giving and gift-wanting

[1:40:26] needs at MaximumFun.org slash giftguide.

[1:40:30] Of course there's show merch like clothing, hats, bookmarks, stickers, even a candle.

[1:40:35] But there's also a bunch of other cool stuff made by your favorite hosts, like comic books,

[1:40:39] graphic novels, music, art, and jewelry.

[1:40:42] Go check out the gift guide and make sure you order soon so things get there in time

[1:40:45] for the holidays.

[1:40:47] MaximumFun.org slash giftguide.

[1:40:53] Hey, it's Dan here with some late-breaking news stuff that wasn't ready for air at time

[1:40:58] of recording, but now we can talk about.

[1:41:01] We're coming back to San Francisco Sketch Fest on January the 25th at 4 p.m. at Cobb's

[1:41:10] Comedy Club.

[1:41:12] Yep, it's an afternoon show for once.

[1:41:15] So you can get in, see us, have dinner, and then go wherever you want to go.

[1:41:21] It'll be a little more laid back.

[1:41:24] We're very happy to be back at Sketch Fest.

[1:41:27] The best way to get tickets for that are to go to sfsketchfest.com and click on the schedule,

[1:41:35] find Sunday the 25th, and there should be a buy tickets link connected to us, the Flophouse.

[1:41:44] We don't know exactly what movie we're doing just yet.

[1:41:47] We're pondering if there's maybe something San Francisco-based or just a big old flop,

[1:41:55] an historic flop that we haven't covered just yet.

[1:42:00] But we always have fun at SF Sketch Fest.

[1:42:02] We're happy to be back.

[1:42:04] We hope that we will see you there.

[1:42:08] The Flophouse has brought you an overwhelming part by listeners like you who have become

[1:42:12] members over at MaximumFun.org.

[1:42:15] We got the member drive coming up in a few months.

[1:42:19] It's a tough time out there, but I hope that you'll help continue to support independent

[1:42:24] voices, independent worker and artist-owned media.

[1:42:29] But we also have a few sponsors.

[1:42:32] And the first of these this week is Aura Frames, the perfect gift when all they want for Christmas

[1:42:40] is you.

[1:42:41] That's right.

[1:42:42] Mariah foretold it, Aura Frames.

[1:42:45] She's not associated with Aura Frames.

[1:42:47] That's just me making a joke.

[1:42:48] Please don't sue us, Aura Frames or Mariah Carey.

[1:42:51] I don't know why Aura would sue us.

[1:42:53] They would just stop talking to us.

[1:42:55] Aura Frames are great.

[1:42:56] I got one of these things.

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[1:43:20] That's a song that I'm not going to sing because I already fear that I have caused too much

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[1:44:25] So for a limited time, visit AuraFrames.com and get $45 off Aura's best-selling Carver

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[1:44:43] This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year.

[1:44:47] So order now before it ends.

[1:44:49] Support the show by mentioning us at checkout.

[1:44:52] Terms and conditions apply.

[1:44:55] And also, this is sponsored by Lisa Mattresses.

[1:45:01] Lisa Mattresses.

[1:45:02] How you sleep can be just as important as how long you sleep.

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[1:45:31] Well, I mean, one at a time.

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[1:46:58] And there's a jumbotron, a j-j-j-jumbotron.

[1:47:02] In fact, this message is for Louis.

[1:47:06] It is from Jennifer.

[1:47:08] And it reads thusly, Dan, Stuart, and Elliot, I need your help.

[1:47:14] Wishing a happy birthday to my boyfriend, Louis.

[1:47:17] Happy birthday, Louis.

[1:47:19] He's a huge fan of the show.

[1:47:20] Louis, you're my favorite person to watch terrible movies with and the best plot twist

[1:47:25] life ever gave me.

[1:47:27] Here's to love, laughter, and at least one more, a talking cat?

[1:47:32] Rewatch.

[1:47:33] Happy birthday.

[1:47:34] Happy birthday, Louis.

[1:47:36] Thank you for being a listener.

[1:47:39] And God bless you for being out there watching a talking cat, maybe a talking pony.

[1:47:44] Who knows?

[1:47:45] There are a lot of animals that are talking these days.

[1:47:47] Look who's talking.

[1:47:48] Anywho, before I let you get back to our very special episode with Chris Weitz talking about

[1:47:55] his own movie, Afraid, a delightful surprise for us, I would like to say, Flophouse, thank

[1:48:04] you.

[1:48:04] Floph TV is still going.

[1:48:06] If you are interested in checking out our live monthly streaming video show with pre-tapes,

[1:48:13] presentations, discussion, of course, of a bad movie, as always, questions from the

[1:48:18] chat, all sorts of fun, that is available at theflophouse.simpletics.com where you can

[1:48:25] purchase either individual show tickets if you're only interested in a couple of the

[1:48:30] shows or a season pass, which gets you a bit of a price break.

[1:48:35] You get six shows for the price of five with the season pass.

[1:48:39] And if you've missed previous shows, don't worry.

[1:48:42] All of them will be available to view on demand through the end of the Floph TV season in

[1:48:48] February, possibly a little longer.

[1:48:50] Who knows?

[1:48:51] And hey, dropping in with one more plug, a friend of the show, John Kingman, he was on

[1:48:57] a few episodes early in our run.

[1:49:00] He directed a movie called Snatchers that Stu and I have a little part in.

[1:49:06] It's kind of a cameo, but you know what?

[1:49:09] We're kind of the stars of the scene that we're in.

[1:49:12] So if you're interested in seeing us in a movie and supporting a friend of the show,

[1:49:17] check out Snatchers.

[1:49:18] It's on Amazon Prime right now.

[1:49:22] It was shot a little ways back, but now it's finally available for you to stream.

[1:49:27] And if you like kind of throwback-y, John Carpenter vibe, but like a sci-fi, slightly

[1:49:35] horror-tinged, more comedy-tinged movie about body snatchers in Brooklyn, you might like

[1:49:41] this movie.

[1:49:42] It's called Snatchers.

[1:49:43] There's a lot of movies called Snatchers.

[1:49:45] The one directed by John Kingman is the one I'm pointing you to.

[1:49:48] And if you like it, hey, leave a review.

[1:49:50] Why not?

[1:49:51] People like that kind of thing.

[1:49:52] It's helpful.

[1:49:53] So that, again, is Snatchers with a little bit of Dan and Stu.

[1:50:00] the stew of the movie and now

[1:50:03] back to the show

[1:50:05] Let's answer

[1:50:08] Letters, yeah, let's do it listeners. Let's turn away what we were gonna answer it. Well, let's turn away. Let's turn away from the roast of

[1:50:16] Chris no

[1:50:18] As every listener will know you guys are being kind

[1:50:22] I

[1:50:24] appreciate that I've

[1:50:26] So corrupted your journalistic integrity, but that he but that he it was the friendship

[1:50:34] That we formed

[1:50:36] That has led to that and so I can't words and steel

[1:50:39] We are we are

[1:50:41] Gently Linden Citizen Kane getting drunk rather than finishing. Do you think Jet Li and citizen?

[1:50:49] Yeah

[1:50:52] Really

[1:50:56] So

[1:51:18] This letters from Michael

[1:51:20] newspapers and disarming them yeah

[1:51:22] This letters from Michael last name withheld who writes I can only assume it's Michael Eisner. Mm-hmm

[1:51:28] I recently saw Tron Aries at my local beer-and-a-burger theater

[1:51:34] And let's be honest the Tron movies are kind of dumb, but they're movies

[1:51:40] I kind of like I like these movies in part because the central conceit of the movie

[1:51:44] Humans entering a digital world is fraught with metaphysical puzzles

[1:51:49] When Flynn parentheses Jeff Bridges

[1:51:53] Thank you for that gets zapped into the computer piece by piece does that hurt is he dead is

[1:51:59] The Flynn that comes out of the computer a copy does he die each and every time he enters and leaves the grid just see also

[1:52:06] Star Trek transporters

[1:52:09] In Tron legacy when Olivia Wilde's character Cora escapes the digital world is she flesh and bone

[1:52:16] Or some kind of stack of digital voxels

[1:52:30] Described her as steak and wait no she was no she was the hamburger

[1:52:36] It was it was terrible it was a terrible thing to say it was a terrible thing to say but this movie confused me

[1:52:43] I

[1:52:44] Had your brain the fact that we all watched that movie not understanding that that character is supposed to be just Justin Timberlake's mom

[1:52:50] I think that's yes. Yeah. Yeah tricky the whole don't blame me. I'm Stewart

[1:52:56] It's a lovable scam what you said about the the hamburger steak thing does not does not explained at all by our time

[1:53:02] It was now and I was trying to give voice to what the movie was

[1:53:06] Expanded you were a younger man

[1:53:09] You had no empathy yeah, but now you've left

[1:53:12] Now

[1:53:14] This next paragraph, that's where I was the whole thing is an existential nightmare that leaves me wanting for an explanation

[1:53:20] My brain wants answers

[1:53:22] But my brain shall never get them and so I am come to

[1:53:26] Tron movie to watch any new Tron movie when it hits the theaters are there other examples of

[1:53:33] Accidental puzzle boxes in film or TV that make the work more compelling than it should be

[1:53:40] End of line Michael lasting withheld so I watched this movie called afraid and

[1:53:48] Questions a lot of questions yeah many many questions, I mean I

[1:53:55] Don't know if this this doesn't necessarily qualify, but I I feel like on some level. It's like

[1:54:01] The to me what the question is asking

[1:54:05] I'm gonna repurpose it is

[1:54:07] What what movies do you watch or series of movies do you watch that you know are not good?

[1:54:13] But there's some like weird element that you keeps bringing you back and of course for me

[1:54:19] That's the saw franchise a franchise that is terrible and every time I dislike them

[1:54:24] But as soon as that ending sequence kicks in where the mute you know the big like

[1:54:29] Strings the the music kicks in the strings are going and then it starts showing you all the stuff you saw before

[1:54:35] But from a slightly different angle, and you're like oh that guy was the dude doing it the whole time

[1:54:40] Oh my god every time like hell. Yeah, you did it again saw two thumbs

[1:54:45] Saw you son of a bitch

[1:54:48] Got me saw I saw that

[1:54:51] Yeah, I I love this question, it's one of these ones where I'm like shit

[1:54:57] I know that there's like stuff buried deep in my brain where I'm like this dumb movie

[1:55:03] Left me with this

[1:55:05] Frustrating question that I cannot resolve, but it's not like it's now you see me movies

[1:55:15] That's that's my Fast and Furious right there no for sure I'm like

[1:55:21] None of this is good magic

[1:55:23] none of it none of it is

[1:55:25] Thank you, thank you for giving me the opening that I I can just say that like I just I went to see on

[1:55:35] Broadway

[1:55:36] Because Audrey because the average age of the Broadway theater goer is over 40. Yeah, you

[1:55:44] You can if you were

[1:55:47] Under 40 you can get

[1:55:49] TDF discounts just for going to see

[1:55:53] Theater and so she was going through her like theater discounts. She's like do you want to see I

[1:56:01] forget what this something something like something like is the name of the

[1:56:05] Magician is doing a thing on Broadway with the Muppets. I'm like fuck. Yeah

[1:56:09] I do yeah, all of a sudden she forgot who her husband is

[1:56:14] And so we went that she's presented as this magician is doing a show with the Muppets as opposed to the Muppets are doing a show

[1:56:20] The Muppets are doing a show yeah, yeah, and this show like

[1:56:26] The the Muppets are so poorly

[1:56:29] This show there's no conceptual reason why the Muppets are there like it's just sort of like hey

[1:56:35] Hey, I heard you're doing this show on Broadway. We can stop by and like they keep coming by enough for me

[1:56:41] No, I mean, I'm not

[1:56:43] There the ironclad plot logic of most Muppets

[1:56:48] But it's strange because when I saw at the here at the Pasadena Playhouse

[1:56:52] They were doing a night of Edward Albee one acts featuring the Muppets, and they did an amazing job of integrating the mother's stories

[1:56:58] Dan would have hoped that before the magician came out somebody was like my grandmother once told me

[1:57:05] Muppets like man, I'm just

[1:57:08] Imagine we live in a world where Muppets are real. Thank you folks. Okay now curtain rise

[1:57:13] I mean this guy is making the correct bet that the Muppets are enough to pull people in

[1:57:18] But if I were going to have the Muppets do my thing I'd be like okay

[1:57:23] I got to figure out like this is

[1:57:25] The best way to showcase Dan's big fantasy that the Muppets would do his thing

[1:57:30] Don't check his search history

[1:57:31] I mean like the Muppets are so much more charismatic than

[1:57:35] This dude who was like the magician that they kept doing a bit where like it's like the Great Gaza would come out

[1:57:40] In a like cannon being like it's time for my thing like and be like no no not yet

[1:57:45] Gonzo and like they did this a couple times. I'm like no let Gonzo stay you leave

[1:57:52] But these were all just like you know like the oldest

[1:57:55] Tricks in the the magic book like it was me and Audrey and our friends

[1:58:02] John and Mary and all of us were like okay, well, that's how that trick is done

[1:58:06] This is how this trick is done, and that's how that trick, but you know who cares the Muppets are here anyway

[1:58:11] That has nothing to do with anything. I just want to

[1:58:13] Bring that back around to the

[1:58:16] Bringing it back around. It's it's just a story about my life

[1:58:19] I think to answer that question then move on to the next thing unless Chris answers

[1:58:22] There's a movie that Chris and I spent a lot of time talking about I'd love to talk to him about it again at some

[1:58:26] point movie phase for the

[1:58:29] intelligent ants movie and

[1:58:30] That's a movie where I feel like it leaves me with questions that I like don't get answered

[1:58:36] and I want to like I think about that what what it means and what the answers are because

[1:58:40] the movie kind of implies that the ants win, but it kind of doesn't come out and say that the ants win and

[1:58:46] It's just I really like yeah, it's just a freak out at the end right

[1:58:50] It's like a 70s freak out becomes a 70s freak out and like when it could very easily have ended with them

[1:58:56] Just being like well. We stopped the ants, but

[1:58:59] Now that they did I've got actually a somewhat

[1:59:03] perverse version of that which is like

[1:59:05] The central mystery at a movie like not letting you go, and this was because I watched the Bill Murray

[1:59:11] movie

[1:59:12] The razor's edge right which is adapted from a Somerset Maugham movie, but in my mind not having read either the razor's edge or

[1:59:20] The Sun also rises

[1:59:22] I had confused the two based on received notions

[1:59:25] And I thought that the whole story behind why Bill Murray's character was being so weird and diffident was because he'd had his testicles blown

[1:59:32] off in the war

[1:59:33] And I kept on waiting as I was watching this movie for the moment where you discover that but it never happened for the entire

[1:59:39] Movie and it turned out he was just a dick

[1:59:44] So I'm for the sequel I guess huh yeah

[1:59:46] I guess yeah, sir's edge describes the razors that they had to use to amputate the rest of the testicles after the yeah

[1:59:52] That would make sense

[1:59:54] so in lieu of a

[1:59:56] second and normal

[1:59:58] Yeah

[2:00:00] of a normal second letter. So, our friend Matt Carman, who does our tech for us for

[2:00:08] our live shows, yeah, for Flop TV, he also often steps in for our local film trivia at

[2:00:18] Nighthawk for a guest round. And I think I actually contacted him, I think I actually

[2:00:27] contacted you about this, Chris, to see whether it would be okay, whether he like sent you

[2:00:34] some trivia questions to ask. I don't think he did.

[2:00:41] Dan also didn't check in with us, so when we got an email from Matt today that said

[2:00:47] Chris White's trivia questions, I was like, I'll find out what this is about I guess later

[2:00:51] today. Yeah, well, yes. He asked me a while back

[2:00:56] about possibly Chris doing a round. And I went so far as to ask Chris, hey, would this

[2:01:04] be okay? I don't know. And you said yes, but then I guess Matt was like, I don't wanna

[2:01:11] bother him. It didn't actually follow through. However, what he did do was send three trivia

[2:01:18] questions for us to ask you tonight in a section called Quiz White.

[2:01:27] And so the first one, first question here is, number one, in About a Boy, Will attributes

[2:01:36] the phrase no man is an island to what musician? Bonus, what poet actually wrote that line

[2:01:42] in the 17th century? I'm gonna just take this straight. He attributes

[2:01:46] to John Bon Jovi, where actually a sermon by John Dunn.

[2:01:51] That is, of course, correct. You're familiar with your own work.

[2:01:55] Yeah, I remember my life. It's more like a cognitive test than a trivia test.

[2:02:03] Can you identify this animal? You, number two, you directed The Twilight

[2:02:10] Saga Colon New Moon, released in 2009. The following movies were also released in 2009

[2:02:18] and also have a colon in the title. And they each involve someone you've worked with, sorry,

[2:02:25] John Wick.

[2:02:26] I love that we're getting some classic Dan slips of the tongue, cuz we haven't had them

[2:02:30] in a while.

[2:02:31] There's several tequila drinks. I'm a stinker. For a point each, complete the full title.

[2:02:41] We're keeping track of points. We've got Cirque du Freak colon. We've got Underworld 3 colon.

[2:02:48] And we've got Street Fighter colon. I only know one of these. That's insane. I know.

[2:02:55] Wait, what were they? I don't know. Cirque du Freak, Underworld 3. 2009. Yeah, I don't

[2:03:01] know. I got a guess. The first half of the titles are Cirque du Freak, Underworld 3 and

[2:03:07] Street Fighter. Cirque du Freak, The Vampire's Assistant by my very own brother. That's true.

[2:03:13] Paul Weitz. What's the next one? Underworld 3. X vs. Sever. Wait, wait, wait. Is it Rise

[2:03:22] of the Lycans? It is Rise of the Lycans, co-starring Michael Sheen. Yes, with whom I've worked.

[2:03:31] And then lastly, we've got Street Fighter colon. The Leg End of Chun-Li. Yes, the leg end.

[2:03:41] Chris Klein. Yeah, of course, of American Pie fame. What a performance.

[2:03:46] Wait, where'd you get that black eye? I ran into the leg end of Chun-Li.

[2:03:50] And we'll end this Quiz White section with number three. In its 2000 review. How many

[2:04:04] points is this worth? It's good news. You can win with this one. It's worth all the points.

[2:04:12] In its 2000 review, the New York Times referred to Chuck and Buck as a quote,

[2:04:17] Dogma 95 version of what movie, which had come out a week before? Oh, goodness. Well,

[2:04:28] I'm guessing it was a stalker movie. Yeah. But this is a movie that honestly, like if Matt had

[2:04:35] done this at trivia, no one would have won this at all. This is this is madness. This is pure

[2:04:42] madness. But it is a funny fact. There's not a colon involved, though. No, there is a an

[2:04:48] attribution. I'll give you this. There's a studio. This is the rare film that starts with a oh, this

[2:04:55] is the studio that released this. That's crazy. Disney's right. The only studio that takes credit

[2:05:04] for things in the kid is Disney's The Kid. Because that's the only one I can remember that has

[2:05:09] Disney. Oh, wow. Chris is dabbing. So thank you. Gosh, that would imply something really

[2:05:20] sinister about Disney's The Kid. I have worked Dogma 95. I've seen Chuck and Buck. I've not seen

[2:05:27] Disney's The Kid, so I cannot speak to their similarities or differences. You chose wrong.

[2:05:34] That's wrong. You chose wrong, not wrong, rather. Sorry.

[2:05:37] Disney's The Kid isn't about like a monkey playing baseball or something, right?

[2:05:42] No, I think it's about Bruce Willis being a kid. Yeah, that's fucking look who's talking.

[2:05:50] That's true, I guess. That's the sixth sense. Bruce Willis is a kid, right?

[2:05:56] Yeah. Well, thank you for indulging this quiz down memory lane.

[2:06:05] But we should do our final segment, which is, of course,

[2:06:09] recommendations. Other movies that you might perhaps enjoy. What's the movie master going

[2:06:15] to recommend over here? What is the movie master going to recommend? I had it earlier. Letterbox

[2:06:21] Lothario, Dan McCoy. Oh, you know what it was? Had a DM function, he declares. What?

[2:06:27] It's the movie I saw today. Oh, cool. I saw. We were talking about.

[2:06:35] We mentioned in passing blank check based on the clues of the letterbox reviews of one David

[2:06:41] Sims. I may have been in the same Alamo screening of this film. Were the clues. There was a guy

[2:06:48] crying in the movie. I don't know. I saw today Predator Badlands, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

[2:06:56] I have to admit, again, good reviews. I am not necessarily the world's biggest

[2:07:02] Pred Head. Pred Head. Like, I like it fine as you know, like this is like a solid 80s action

[2:07:09] picture, but it is of a stripe that is not my kind of movie, like a lot of military men shooting big

[2:07:16] guns at things. But so the things that I liked about this movie might be the sort of things that

[2:07:23] annoy real Predator fans. I don't know. You more of like a drifter rolls into a corrupt town and

[2:07:29] sorts things out. I mean, I do enjoy that classic Western thing, but this is more of a

[2:07:35] barbarian movie. It is like, OK, the Predator is a lady who lives in a basement.

[2:07:41] The more classic barbarian thing, like the Predator is a I'll say Detroit, a warlike creature

[2:07:48] who proves his worth through like tests of strength like and is in a harsh world. It is very much like

[2:07:58] a space opera barbarian. He's like a Sigma kind of. Yeah. Yeah. I just like it is much more

[2:08:10] like some people might think it's a little cutesy. Some people might think it's a little too cutesy.

[2:08:17] It's not turning me off. I was all for a bit of a like slightly silly Predator versus

[2:08:28] extremely ridiculously hostile planet full of inventive other ways for the planet to be hostile

[2:08:33] toward him. Adventure. It it gave me some of the joy that like an old style blockbuster

[2:08:42] movie used to give me like for a movie that is based on what like 40 year old I.P. I was like,

[2:08:49] oh, this feels genuinely fresh to me for some reason. So I had a lot of fun.

[2:08:54] Same creative team behind Prey, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's I dug it. Weirdly enough,

[2:09:01] I'm also going to recommend a movie I saw today in the theater. While Dan was enjoying

[2:09:05] Predators doing stuff, I was enjoying a woman having a descent into mental illness. I guess

[2:09:13] I saw the new Lynne Ramsey movie Die My Love, which is great. Jennifer Lawrence and Robert

[2:09:21] Pattinson and Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte and Lakeith Stanfield on small roles. But it's really

[2:09:28] like Jennifer Lawrence is undeniable in this. She is incredible. And Robert Pattinson also very

[2:09:34] fun and funny. I mean, there's for a movie that is very depressing about a you know,

[2:09:39] about dealing with themes of isolation and mental illness. It still manages to get some jokes in

[2:09:46] there. There's a sequence where Robert Pattinson is narrating, making some making like instant

[2:09:52] mac and cheese that I found so funny. Yeah, it's it's really great. And it's like a really

[2:09:58] interesting companion.

[2:10:00] piece to another. We just had Michael Shanks on, writer-director of Together. Interesting

[2:10:06] companion piece to Together because they basically have the same setup, just very wildly different

[2:10:13] resolutions. It's a Lynne Ramsey movie, so the whole time I'm like, man, is she okay?

[2:10:19] Because she only deals with...

[2:10:20] I feel like every Lynne Ramsey movie is like that, yeah.

[2:10:23] But I love Lynne Ramsey movies. Stuart, if my doctor's appointment that sort of nuked

[2:10:32] my afternoon had gone on another 15 minutes, I probably would have been in the exact same

[2:10:37] screening as you.

[2:10:38] Yeah, yeah.

[2:10:39] Because that would have been what was starting at the right time.

[2:10:40] How many screenings are going on in New York these days? It seems like Dan is just a hapskip

[2:10:44] and a jump away from every screening.

[2:10:46] He goes to see movies and the feeling is amazing.

[2:10:50] I can feel the jealousy beneath you, and I will...

[2:10:53] I feel it too. Just give them both a hug.

[2:10:56] Look, man, get me a fucking job and I'll gladly not go to...

[2:11:02] If you employ Dan, there's only one way to stop him.

[2:11:05] Can help me to stop Dan from seeing all the movies and making me feel bad about never

[2:11:09] going to theater by giving him a job.

[2:11:10] Yeah, we'll trade places. We'll pee in the same fucking fountain.

[2:11:13] The difference is...

[2:11:14] We'll be in Chicago in just a few days together. Let's do it. Let's find a fountain to pee

[2:11:17] in it.

[2:11:18] Try a bunch of different fountains.

[2:11:20] Let's do the fucking Married with Children fountain.

[2:11:21] Let's do the fountain for Married with Children. Exactly. Yeah.

[2:11:22] Perfect.

[2:11:23] Let's do it. So Chicagoans, you heard it here first. Dan and I will be peeing together at

[2:11:27] the fountain for Married with Children this weekend.

[2:11:29] I heard there's snow, so I hope their pee doesn't take a long time or their little wieners

[2:11:33] are going to freeze up.

[2:11:34] Little wieners.

[2:11:35] So I'm going to recommend, as I never get to go to the theaters, I'm going to recommend

[2:11:41] a movie that I saw at home, which is currently on a streaming service.

[2:11:45] And this is on Apple TV. You can see Stiller and Mira, Nothing is Lost, Ben Stiller's documentary

[2:11:51] about his parents and their marriage and also their career as performers, both performing

[2:11:57] with each other and then separately.

[2:12:00] And I thought it was really good. I really liked it a lot. It managed to break through

[2:12:03] the crust of ice that forms around my heart whenever I think about people who are successful

[2:12:09] in show business after coming from a show business family.

[2:12:14] I thought it was really well done and really took advantage of the fact that apparently

[2:12:17] Jerry Stiller was constantly recording every conversation anyone in the house ever had

[2:12:23] on audio cassette, which is creepy behavior, but it really was good.

[2:12:27] Making a documentary about your parents.

[2:12:31] Maybe this is just because they specifically spend a little bit of time talking about the

[2:12:34] taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3.

[2:12:35] My favorite Jerry Stiller thing.

[2:12:36] I don't know.

[2:12:37] But I thought it came out really well. It was really good.

[2:12:42] It was much more touching in the end than I thought it was going to be.

[2:12:44] That's called Stiller and Mira, Nothing is Lost.

[2:12:45] I think that was really good.

[2:12:47] Chris, what do you recommend?

[2:12:48] Well, this probably doesn't need any help, but I'm going to recommend Eddington, the

[2:12:54] latest Ari Aster film, and I've been thinking about it because I feel like he's a great

[2:13:01] example of a guy who, well, first of all, I think he's a brilliant kind of technician

[2:13:07] and has been since his first movie and sort of had these two successful horror movies,

[2:13:16] which I guess you'd call like elevated horror, but they were so successful that for at least

[2:13:20] two movies, he's been able to like do kind of whatever he wants and he made a big fucking

[2:13:26] swing in Eddington and, you know, in some way, I mean, I can understand why people don't

[2:13:33] like it.

[2:13:34] I can understand why people are bananas about it.

[2:13:36] I was more on the bananas about it front, but I think it is a huge swing that is trying

[2:13:41] to do so much stuff and say so much that I really admired.

[2:13:48] It is a kind of a, you know, a 70s big social impact movie.

[2:13:56] So I really dug that one.

[2:13:58] I'm looking forward to seeing it.

[2:13:59] The only reason I didn't run out and see it is my sadness about the world and I'm like,

[2:14:05] is this going to help?

[2:14:06] I don't know.

[2:14:07] Probably.

[2:14:08] No, I think it also like came out at a time where like every once in a while there will

[2:14:13] be a confluence of events or things and I'm like, I want to see this movie, but I cannot

[2:14:18] spare the time to go to the theater.

[2:14:20] Yeah.

[2:14:21] Elliot's like, that's my whole life.

[2:14:23] I can still see him staring daggers at the rest.

[2:14:25] Yeah, I feel like next week there's like four movies coming out this weekend that I want

[2:14:29] to see, like, but we're going to be in Chicago, so I can't I can't go see Sentimental Value

[2:14:34] Now take that experience and stretch it out over a year.

[2:14:37] And that's what I'm like, oh, man, I can't wait to see this movie.

[2:14:40] And I like I really wanted to go see it.

[2:14:41] Take your kids to it.

[2:14:42] We'll kidnap you and take you to the theater, Elliot, that's what we'll do.

[2:14:45] I was like, there was one night when it looked like I might be able to go see One Battle

[2:14:49] After Another or whatever it's called.

[2:14:50] But yeah, and then I but then it was like, well, it's either playing at 630, which is

[2:14:55] too early for me to go see it, or 930, which is too late for me to go see a three hour

[2:15:00] movie.

[2:15:01] So I guess I'm not seeing it.

[2:15:02] I was just so.

[2:15:03] I'm not going to see One Battle After Another in Chicago.

[2:15:05] I had gotten tickets like months ago to see at the American Cinematheque to see Jean Dielman

[2:15:12] 23.

[2:15:13] What a movie.

[2:15:14] Rudy Comer's 1080 Bruxelles, right.

[2:15:19] And it turned out that my eldest son had something else to do.

[2:15:24] And I sort of had to be at home with my 13 year old boy and my wife Mercedes was like,

[2:15:32] take Paolo.

[2:15:33] And I was like, I don't know if I can convince him to see Jean Dielman 23, Kata Comer's 1080

[2:15:41] Bruxelles.

[2:15:42] That's a hard sell.

[2:15:43] Yeah.

[2:15:44] Yeah.

[2:15:45] I tried.

[2:15:46] I tried my best, but he was not having it.

[2:15:47] You're like, you wanted to see a woman just just peeling potatoes for a long time, right?

[2:15:54] The funny thing is, I've never seen the movie, but I was about to say peeling potatoes.

[2:15:58] Somehow that has filtered into my brain.

[2:16:01] That's the thing that is like real time potato peeling.

[2:16:04] Interestingly, Weapons has a potato peeling scene in which was it Julia Garner peels the

[2:16:11] face of some guy.

[2:16:13] Spoiler.

[2:16:14] Yeah.

[2:16:15] Yeah.

[2:16:16] Sorry.

[2:16:17] More thrilling than that.

[2:16:18] I don't know about that.

[2:16:19] When that happened in the theater, Dan said the guy next to him was like, no, no.

[2:16:24] But it's awful.

[2:16:27] It's one of these geniuses.

[2:16:28] One of these movies.

[2:16:29] When you hear it, you think about it ahead of time and you're like, there's no.

[2:16:31] This is me.

[2:16:32] So boring.

[2:16:33] Just from the description.

[2:16:34] And you're watching.

[2:16:35] You're like, I just can't get enough of watching this woman cooking like this is this is this

[2:16:37] is.

[2:16:38] Yeah.

[2:16:39] Yeah.

[2:16:40] I mean, there's I mean, there's a thing like that's one of the reasons why I put off watching

[2:16:43] the before trilogy, the link layer before trilogies, because I don't want to watch two

[2:16:47] people talk.

[2:16:48] And then I start watching.

[2:16:49] I'm like, oh, I want nothing.

[2:16:50] But these two people talk.

[2:16:51] It's great.

[2:16:52] I love it.

[2:16:53] I love it.

[2:16:54] I'll even say, you know, guys, I'm going to say she's doing scarier movies and weapons,

[2:16:56] I think when it comes to potato peeling movies, something scarier movie.

[2:17:01] OK.

[2:17:02] Prove it.

[2:17:03] Reddit guy, Reddit guy, tell me where I'm wrong.

[2:17:04] I won't see it.

[2:17:05] It'll be OK.

[2:17:06] He's going to be he's going to have so much to say.

[2:17:08] Yeah.

[2:17:09] This guy.

[2:17:10] All caps locks.

[2:17:11] Speaking of both being busy and that guy.

[2:17:15] Thank you, Chris, for taking time from your busy schedule to come and endure us dissecting

[2:17:23] I think I may have once again for for an episode, managed to avoid having to get my children

[2:17:29] to sleep.

[2:17:30] So, you know, wow, you've done me a service.

[2:17:34] Thank you.

[2:17:35] Thank you guys for letting me feel like there's there's like people started podcasts for less

[2:17:40] reasons than being to be like, well, if I do a podcast these nights, I don't have to

[2:17:46] spend time.

[2:17:47] I don't have to do the dishes or put my kids to bed because I'm working.

[2:17:51] Is there anything you currently want to plug?

[2:17:54] I mean, Murderbot is, of course, on Apple TV.

[2:17:56] Let me see.

[2:17:58] Is there anything?

[2:17:59] Is there anything?

[2:18:00] No, I don't.

[2:18:01] I got nothing going.

[2:18:02] Well, we're going to I'm working on Murderbot season two.

[2:18:05] It's going to be a while.

[2:18:06] But yeah.

[2:18:07] Yeah.

[2:18:08] Yeah.

[2:18:09] Murderbot.

[2:18:10] That would be nice.

[2:18:11] That would be great.

[2:18:12] Watch Murderbot.

[2:18:13] Why are you watching it?

[2:18:14] Watch it right now.

[2:18:15] And you guys get picked up for a season two.

[2:18:16] That's awesome.

[2:18:17] We did.

[2:18:18] Yeah.

[2:18:19] Woo woo.

[2:18:20] We did.

[2:18:21] We did.

[2:18:22] We did.

[2:18:23] Yeah.

[2:18:24] So we're going to send you guys to the USA.

[2:18:25] Yeah.

[2:18:26] Yeah.

[2:18:27] Yeah.

[2:18:28] Yeah.

[2:18:29] Yeah.

[2:18:30] Yeah.

[2:18:31] Yeah.

[2:18:32] Well, by the way, I almost thought of making the Flop House house cat noise.

[2:18:36] But then I thought that would be beyond the pale.

[2:18:38] That would be like a sanction of a broken house.

[2:18:45] Thank you so much for this.

[2:18:47] When you said you were willing to do this, it was a shock and a delight.

[2:18:53] And we're like, we would have been happy to have you back for any movie.

[2:18:57] Yeah.

[2:18:58] Dan's like, I don't know if we can let him do this.

[2:19:00] He said he want to do it.

[2:19:02] It's not safe for him.

[2:19:03] You know what?

[2:19:04] This has actually been great.

[2:19:05] I was worried about its effect on my psyche.

[2:19:08] But I feel like thanks to your kindness, we've gotten through this together.

[2:19:13] Thank you.

[2:19:15] And well, thank you for being here.

[2:19:17] Thank you to our producer, Alex Smith, who makes us sound great.

[2:19:22] Check out his work under the name HowlDotty on the Internet.

[2:19:25] Thank you to Maximum Fun, our network.

[2:19:29] It's full of great shows, funny ones, ones that will make you think.

[2:19:34] Check them out.

[2:19:36] For the Flop House.

[2:19:37] What are you laughing at?

[2:19:38] Things that make you say hmm.

[2:19:39] For the Flop House.

[2:19:40] I'm sorry, it sounded like Maximum Fun and I was like, is that your new, like, Turkish

[2:19:48] backer?

[2:19:49] Yeah.

[2:19:50] I thought I was doing it so well, but apparently the tequila that Stewart's been giving me.

[2:19:56] You're doing great, Dan.

[2:19:57] You're doing great.

[2:19:58] You're doing great.

[2:19:59] For the Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy.

[2:20:00] Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington, forever and always.

[2:20:03] I'm Elliott Kalin, author of Joke Farming,

[2:20:05] How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense

[2:20:07] from University of Chicago Press,

[2:20:08] and joining us tonight has been...

[2:20:10] Chris Weitz, Plop House forever.

[2:20:13] Good night, everyone.

[2:20:26] So you have a background.

[2:20:27] Are we being, we're not being videoed.

[2:20:30] We are, but we don't use it.

[2:20:31] We use it for like,

[2:20:32] so I'm ready.

[2:20:33] We'll have like a promo clip of just like a clip of it.

[2:20:35] Not the whole.

[2:20:36] So the answer is yes, we will use some of the video footage.

[2:20:40] So but you look cute, luckily.

[2:20:43] I was planning to masturbate, but I won't now.

[2:20:46] Easily.

[2:20:47] I mean, you're going to be tubing.

[2:20:49] If you just go to it during a really great bit that we're going to want to use

[2:20:52] as a promo.

[2:20:53] Right.

[2:20:53] Wait, wait, wait until we're doing one of our rare off bits.

[2:21:00] Maximum Fun, a worker owned network of artists

[2:21:03] owned shows supported directly by you.

Afraid, with Chris Weitz

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