Ep. #382 - Aline

Dan McCoy

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

Elliott Kalan

[0:03] The Flophouse's first ever foreign language film.

[0:06] That's right, everybody.

[0:08] French Canada is in the house.

[0:10] Regular Canada need not apply.

[0:30] Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flophouse.

Dan McCoy

[0:37] I am Dan McCoy.

[0:40] I am Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:42] Et je suis Elliot Kellon.

[0:44] That's right, I'm speaking French.

[0:46] Oh, oh, oh, oh.

[0:49] Oh, wow, wow, wow.

Dan McCoy

[0:52] And that's it.

[0:53] That's the sense of our French.

Stuart Wellington

[0:54] I'm uncomfortable.

[0:54] Guys, I am so glad that after the chaos of Small Timber,

[1:01] the madness of Shocktober,

[1:03] we get around to watching a normal-style movie

[1:06] where a 50-odd-year-old woman is turned into a 12-year-old kid

[1:11] and she sings in Canadian a bunch.

Dan McCoy

[1:13] I would explain.

[1:14] It's in French.

[1:15] It's French.

[1:16] It's called French.

[1:18] That's them?

[1:19] It's the same thing?

[1:20] It's the same language.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21] I just thought they sounded alike.

Dan McCoy

[1:23] What are you guys watching?

[1:24] And I said, I'm going to watch this movie, Aline,

[1:27] and it's the story of Celine Dion,

[1:30] but they didn't get her life rights.

[1:32] And then she cut me off right in the minute.

[1:34] She's like, it's a Jackie Jorpjomp?

[1:35] And I'm like, yeah, it's a 30-rock-style

[1:38] Jackie Jorpjomp situation

[1:40] where it's clearly not even hidden that it's about Celine

[1:45] Dion, but she's Aline.

Elliott Kalan

[1:48] At one point, someone says, now Celine,

[1:50] and they go, oh, Aline.

[1:52] Like that happens in the movie.

[1:54] But it's clear.

[1:55] I mean, she sings My Heart Will Go On.

[1:57] She sings real Celine Dion songs in the movie.

[1:59] Yeah, at that point.

[2:00] So it's clearly based on Celine Dion.

[2:03] It's such a weird, it's such a, it's such a, this is such a weird.

[2:06] It's not really a Romanoclef at that point.

[2:09] It's just like.

[2:09] No, no, it's just a Roman or Roman.

[2:11] It's just a clef a clef.

[2:13] Like it's, it's such a, it's such a weird, misshapen mishmash of a movie.

[2:18] And the fact that they're like, this isn't a, at the very opening, it says, this is based

[2:22] on Celine Dion's life, but it's fictional.

[2:24] And then throughout it, they're like, Celine Dion, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink.

[2:29] Not Celine Dion.

[2:30] It's, it's, it's very.

Dan McCoy

[2:31] The other wild thing about that, that you're making me think of Elliot is like, once they've

[2:36] gone down the road of fictionalizing Celine Dion's life, why not make it more exciting?

[2:41] Because this is basically the story of a woman who had instant success and then had like a

[2:50] few personal road bumps along the way.

[2:53] But, you know, of the kinds that are, you know, normal to most, most lives.

Elliott Kalan

[2:58] Yeah, of the, of the kinds that are not really the fodder for a dramatic film, but you know

[3:03] who disagrees with us?

[3:04] The French, because this movie did win, it was nominated for four Césaire, Césaire awards,

[3:09] including best film, and the lead actress, Valerie Lemusier, she won for best actress.

[3:16] You mean writer, director, star of the movie?

[3:19] Yeah.

[3:19] That's right.

[3:20] Triple threat, quadruple threat, writer, director, star, sniper, Valerie Lemusier.

[3:28] She doesn't do that in the movie, but just in her, and she's someone who, so.

[3:30] Lemusier, Lemusier, me, sir.

[3:32] And I've, I've seen her, she was a, she previously won a Césaire, or Césaire, how do you

[3:38] pronounce it, Dan?

[3:39] I think it's Césaire.

[3:41] Césaire.

[3:41] She, for the movie, The Visitors, in 1993, which I remember seeing in the 90s, it's a

[3:46] comedy with Jean Renaud, a time travel comedy with Jean Renaud, and they did an English

[3:49] language remake.

[3:50] Oh, right.

[3:51] So this is someone who, I think that's the only other thing I've seen of hers.

[3:54] So, so, she comes into this as such a, like, she is very much the, the auteur behind this

[4:00] movie.

[4:00] Mm-hmm.

[4:00] But to, to an American viewer, it might as well be, she might as well be Neil Breen.

[4:04] You know, in terms of, but except the movie's budget is big.

Dan McCoy

[4:08] Well, she's, I mean, she's a quite successful director.

[4:11] She's a star in France.

[4:12] She's a star in France as well as a comedian and actor.

[4:15] And I will say that, like, once the movie grows her up into full-size Celine Dion, she

[4:21] does a great job at, like, capturing the vibe of Celine Dion.

Elliott Kalan

[4:25] But she always, but she always seems like she's kind of parodying Celine Dion in a weird way.

[4:30] Yeah, a little bit.

Stuart Wellington

[4:30] And also, when you, when you trade in, like, I would, I would prefer an entire movie where

[4:37] a 50-odd-year-old woman plays a 12-year-old than a movie where somebody does a passable

[4:42] Celine Dion impression.

Elliott Kalan

[4:46] Sure, sure.

[4:47] Yeah, it loses a little bit of, it loses a little bit of excitement when she grows up

[4:51] and stops playing a child.

Stuart Wellington

[4:53] Are you guys big-time Celine fans?

[4:55] Because for the most part, I think all I know about Celine Dion is based on bad RuPaul's

[5:02] Drag Race Snatch Game performances where people imitate.

Dan McCoy

[5:05] Yeah, I mean, or back in the day, I think SNL did a lot of Celine Dion impressions.

[5:10] Oh, okay.

Stuart Wellington

[5:11] Who was the cast member who did that, Dan?

[5:13] Oh, God, I would have no idea.

Dan McCoy

[5:16] Andrea Martin, maybe?

[5:18] Was it that far back?

[5:19] Was she ever on SNL or just SCTV?

Elliott Kalan

[5:23] That's a good question.

[5:23] Oh, oh, maybe she wasn't on SNL.

[5:25] Hold on.

[5:26] Oh, you know what?

[5:26] I'm thinking of Lorraine Newman.

Dan McCoy

[5:28] But she also didn't play Celine Dion.

[5:30] No, neither of them did.

[5:32] This part of the conversation is going nowhere, so I'm going to skip backwards to an earlier

[5:36] part where we're talking about what we know about Celine Dion.

Elliott Kalan

[5:39] Let's get back to what we do on this podcast.

[5:41] On this podcast, we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

Dan McCoy

[5:44] Sure, but as Stuart asked the right question, I would say that Beyond, My Heart Will Go On

[5:51] and I guess I didn't know all by myself, is that her originally?

[5:55] I didn't like, or is that?

[5:56] I don't think so.

[5:58] Okay.

[5:58] Let's take a look.

Elliott Kalan

[5:59] Oh, no.

[6:00] So let's see.

[6:01] Doing some, hold on a sec.

[6:04] Doing a little bit of online detective work?

[6:06] I will say that Celine—

[6:07] No, it's originally Eric Carman.

[6:09] Okay.

[6:12] And then Celine Dion did a version of it that was also very popular.

[6:15] I mean, she occupies—

[6:16] And I guess the song is—the verse is based—this is what it would be.

[6:20] It's based on the second movement of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor.

[6:24] So really, that's a Rachmaninoff song all by myself.

[6:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[6:27] That's why it rocks.

[6:29] And he was often by himself.

[6:32] That's what he would say during his radio DJ days.

[6:34] He goes, you can't spell Rachmaninoff without rock.

[6:37] Now here's the lead, Zip.

Stuart Wellington

[6:39] Here's Rachmaninoff.

[6:40] Time to get your rocks off.

[6:42] Go on, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[6:42] I wanted to say, I do think that like—

[6:45] Don't turn that radio Rachmaninoff because we're going to be Rachmaninoff all day with the biggest hits.

[6:49] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[6:50] Anyway, Celine Dion has not been as big a part of culture lately because she's had health problems that have made her withdraw a little bit more.

[7:00] Like she doesn't publicly perform.

[7:01] But like I feel like, you know, having lived through the peak Celine Dion, we should talk a little bit about it and be like—

[7:09] Like she was like a ubiquitous cultural figure even though none of us can mention like really like know much about her.

[7:16] Or maybe you do, Elliot.

[7:17] I haven't gotten to yet.

Elliott Kalan

[7:18] I mean, I think it—but also the time when she was—I mean, I think it's totally cool for us to not know that much about Celine Dion going into this because it's not a form of music we're that excited about.

[7:29] And she was—and in America, she had a brief moment where she was everywhere.

[7:35] And then she had her Las Vegas residency on for years.

[7:37] But in Canada, in the French-language world, she has been a star for decades and decades and decades.

[7:41] Like she's a—they treat her in this movie kind of like Princess Diana.

[7:47] And I wonder if that's really the place she had in the French-Canadian imagination, you know, basically as the kind of their emissary to the world and also the princess fairy tale that they fell in love with.

[7:58] And maybe that's the case.

[7:59] But in New Jersey in the 1990s, I have to say it didn't—

[8:02] You were listening to too much Bon Jovi to—

[8:05] No, exactly.

[8:06] It was—back then, back then we just listened to the four Bs.

[8:10] Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, and also the big band sounds of Tommy Dorsey.

[8:17] Yep, the big bopper.

Dan McCoy

[8:19] And also big trucks rolling through the neighborhood.

[8:22] Uh-huh, yep.

[8:23] Yep, because the parkway was right there, the turnpike.

Stuart Wellington

[8:27] And big country by the band Big Country off the album Big Country.

[8:31] Yeah, of course.

Elliott Kalan

[8:32] Because that was about New Jersey.

[8:33] Because that song's about New Jersey.

Dan McCoy

[8:34] Yeah, it is, yeah.

[8:35] And, of course, you ain't seen nothing yet because it has a part that goes, ba-ba-ba-baby, you just ain't seen nothing yet.

Elliott Kalan

[8:41] On The Sopranos, why do you think they're at the bada-bing?

[8:43] Because that's Bs.

[8:44] Do you think—

[8:44] New Jersey's all about the letter B.

Dan McCoy

[8:46] Do you think what happened in the studio—

[8:47] A broken?

Stuart Wellington

[8:48] Man versus B.

[8:49] That's the story of New Jersey.

[8:49] Do you think in the studio when they were recording that, he saw a ghost baby and he's like, ba-ba-ba-baby?

Elliott Kalan

[8:55] That's exactly what happened.

[8:56] And they're like, leave it in, that shit fucking whips.

[8:59] That was on behind the music.

Dan McCoy

[9:03] To go backwards, to clarify, I wasn't taking us to task for not knowing Celine Dion.

[9:08] I think it's perfectly reasonable that three men of our age would have not—like, that would have not been the music we were listening to.

[9:16] We know her biggest hit.

[9:16] Which is not anything against her.

[9:19] She's, like, obviously a very talented vocalist, but it was not the sort of like it was—

Elliott Kalan

[9:23] I'm worried that the Celine Dion stans are going to come after us on Twitter.

[9:26] No, I just want to clarify that, like—

[9:28] They're called Dioniacs.

Dan McCoy

[9:30] Uh-huh.

[9:30] I think we all listen to, like, wide swaths.

[9:33] Wide swaths of things that, like, are not necessarily—like, particularly now.

[9:38] Like, Stuart was texting me.

[9:40] He was like, there's new Carly Rae chips.

[9:42] And I'm like, I'm already listening.

[9:45] But I'm—so I'm not, like, being, like—I just want to make it clear.

[9:48] I'm not like, oh, that's girl music or something like that.

[9:49] But it was not a thing that I had any familiarity with beyond, like, Titanic.

[9:55] And she was almost immediately kind of a camp figure.

[9:58] Like, a bit of—like, because, like, she was taken—like, she was one of these very popular stars who was taken down by music critics for being, like, too schmaltzy or whatever in a time where that was seen as, like, a negative.

[10:12] I think that now, like, there's been a turn in, like, the pop culture criticism where we're not so much just dismissing things because they have emotionality or whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[10:21] But I don't know.

[10:22] Well, maybe.

Elliott Kalan

[10:22] I think that—I mean, this is a larger discussion.

[10:24] But I think that that kind of music critical establishment no longer exists.

[10:31] And it certainly is no longer in the hands of the same rock-obsessed aging indie hipster nerds or whatever.

[10:37] White male baby boomers.

[10:38] Yeah, white male baby boomer babies.

[10:40] And so, like, so I feel—but in my mind, in the 90s, it was like, okay, Celine Dion's listened to this by the same people who listened to Barbara Streisand, Andrea Bocelli, like, the suburban moms that I knew in the neighborhood.

[10:51] So it was like, I'm not going to listen to their music.

[10:53] I'm busy listening to Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, a Canadian surf guitar group I only knew because of a sketch comedy show.

[11:01] And I think they had already broken up before I started listening to them.

[11:05] So that's what I was into, man.

Dan McCoy

[11:07] But anyway, let's get into the movie because we've made a reference multiple times to the single strangest part of this movie but have not really dug into it.

[11:17] And so I'm sure that the listener is waiting to hear a little bit more about this.

Elliott Kalan

[11:21] I also—I want to say that this is exciting that we're finally inaugurating the first episode of Haus du Flop international because this is our first foreign movie, I think, that we've done, right?

[11:31] Like, I don't know if we've done English movies for us.

Dan McCoy

[11:34] I think we could just say Chez Flop.

[11:36] I think that that takes care of—

Elliott Kalan

[11:38] Oh, right.

[11:39] I mean, that's not as exciting to me, but okay.

[11:42] Chez Flop.

[11:42] Not as good as Chez Flop.

[11:44] But I think this is our first movie that's not in English as its main language, and I'm very excited about it.

[11:51] I think you're probably right.

[11:51] Because I watch a lot of foreign movies, and so if I was like, finally, a movie for me.

[11:55] Oh, wait a minute.

[11:56] No, it's not.

[11:57] So we open up.

[11:58] I'll take us to—

Dan McCoy

[11:59] It did help me combat my natural tendency to get disgusted by these movies halfway through and pay less attention.

Elliott Kalan

[12:08] That you had to read it?

[12:09] I had to actually read the film.

[12:11] I'm just—I'm so glad you didn't try to, like, cut a piece of fruit while you were watching it and keep your eyes on the screen and cut your own fingers off.

[12:16] I'm glad that didn't happen.

[12:17] Yeah.

[12:17] Okay.

[12:18] Thank you.

[12:18] So we start with an opening text warning that says,

[12:21] The film is inspired by the life of Celine Dion, but it's a work of fiction in keeping with the filmmaker's vision.

[12:27] And then we get a brief moment of a woman, Aline Dieu, as we're going to learn, in white sunglasses and white headphones and an all-white bed in an all-white room, and there's children sleeping around her.

[12:37] Then this chilling vision of the future is quickly superseded by a vision of the past.

[12:43] An even more chilling vision.

[12:45] It's Quebec, 1932.

[12:47] We're in a kind of rural, poor area.

[12:49] And so this sets the tone of a lot of the movie, which is—the movie is told in a lot of montages, very quick montages, where you have to—I'll give the filmmaker credit.

[12:58] There are parts where you really have to pay close attention just to pick up what's being told in the moment.

[13:02] Yes.

[13:02] And so we see a mean farmer dad steal all but one coin from his teenage son.

[13:07] Then his son plays the accordion.

[13:08] Then suddenly he's a grown man who meets a woman who plays violin.

[13:12] Then they're married.

[13:13] He says he doesn't want to have children.

[13:14] But then they have 14 children, all of whom—or 13 children, almost all of whom's names start with Jean.

[13:20] And we see the—now suddenly we're on the wife's life.

[13:22] Her name's Sylvie, and she grows up to be a middle-aged mom.

[13:25] And they're the Deux family.

[13:27] And this is told in—it's like six minutes straight of montage or something like that.

[13:32] Yeah.

[13:32] It's really rapid.

[13:33] Rapid fire.

[13:35] And it almost makes you wonder why they start the movie this way since it's so rapid fire.

[13:40] And it's like the movie's just trying to speed through it so they can get to the birth of the divine Aline.

Dan McCoy

[13:46] One of the few parts of the movie that is made with efficiency and speed.

[13:50] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[13:51] Because this movie is—for a movie that is mostly made of montages, I don't want the audience to think, oh, this is a quick movie.

[13:56] This movie is like a little more than two hours long.

[13:59] And it is so—there's so much of it where you're like, I don't know why they included this in here.

[14:04] Oh, no.

[14:05] We didn't need this scene.

Stuart Wellington

[14:06] I think we need to watch these characters having a conversation around a lovingly appointed island in a kitchen.

Elliott Kalan

[14:12] There's so many scenes of them eating.

[14:15] Yes.

[14:16] Anyway, so soon, Sylvie, the mother, she's pregnant again with her 14th child.

[14:22] She's worried about her health, but the local priest says she'll be okay.

[14:25] And they name the new baby.

[14:26] Yes?

Dan McCoy

[14:27] Well, you talk about how this is—a lot of this actually is told not directly.

[14:31] And, like, this opening part was told so elliptically that both Audrey and I were like, wait a minute, wait.

[14:37] She's having another child or this is the child of one of her children?

[14:43] Yes.

[14:43] Like, there was a—

[14:43] It was confusing.

[14:45] And then I looked it up.

[14:46] I have to say—

[14:46] I'm like, okay, Celine Dion was the 14th of a very large family.

[14:49] I mean, like, I don't, you know, I don't want to make any—to presume anything.

[14:55] But the actress playing the mother also, like, looks too old to have a child at that point.

[15:02] So I was also confused.

[15:03] I don't know what to worry is that—

Elliott Kalan

[15:04] Yeah.

[15:05] Yeah, that's the thing.

[15:05] She does—you watch her age and she looks basically the same from this point on through the next 30 years of the movie.

[15:15] And so I think they do kind of prematurely age a little bit too much.

[15:18] But I have to admit, when it was first showing, I thought that it was showing the farmer stealing the coins from her son.

[15:23] Then I thought it was the farmer taking an accordion and the farmer meeting someone.

[15:27] And I had to look back.

[15:28] I had to rewind and go, oh, no, wait.

[15:29] That's the—the son between cuts has aged, like, seven years.

[15:33] Yeah.

[15:33] And is now a man.

[15:35] And it was—so it's all—it's a little confusing at first.

[15:37] But don't worry.

[15:37] It's about to get so incredibly unconfusing as the movie becomes so literal.

[15:42] So they name her Aline.

[15:44] Now we see the Dew family band playing on a little stage for a small crowd.

[15:48] And this is where we get our first introduction to little Aline, who at this point, they're still kind of hiding her face a little bit.

[15:53] She's creeping around beneath the stage watching her family play music.

[15:56] But it's still clearly a grown-up's face that is on a child's body.

[16:01] Guys, what was your first thought?

[16:03] We knew going into this movie that she plays this character at every age.

[16:07] I didn't realize how jarring it was going to be.

[16:09] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[16:10] Let's set the stage—let's set the table a little bit more because, as Stuart mentioned, I believe she was, like, 56 or 57, this actress, when this film was being shot around that age.

[16:23] Yeah, yeah.

[16:23] She was about 56, I think.

[16:24] Yeah.

[16:25] And the film puts her on the body of a child here at the beginning.

[16:29] So that's how they do it.

[16:31] A small child.

Stuart Wellington

[16:31] They do face mapping or do they just dress her up and then shrink her?

[16:35] Well, some of it I think is forced perspective.

Dan McCoy

[16:39] Like, there's some very unconvincing forced perspective.

Elliott Kalan

[16:42] And transplant technology is much better in Canada than it is now.

[16:47] So part of it, they did take her head and put it on a 12-year-old's body.

[16:49] Sure.

[16:50] And then they swapped the heads back at the end of the shoot.

[16:52] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[16:52] I mean, it was a little scary for a while that they thought they lost the other head.

[16:57] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[16:57] That was classic French-Canadians.

[17:00] Oh, my dude.

[17:00] Oh, we left it in the sugar shack.

[17:02] Oh.

[17:02] No.

[17:03] You know.

[17:04] But also, later on, it means—and I'm going to—wait, wait, wait.

[17:08] I just want to jump in for one thing while you're dying.

[17:10] Okay.

[17:10] That later on, it makes—a big point of the movie is this young woman cannot be in a relationship with an older man, and they look like they're the same age because it's a woman in her 50s playing a woman in her 20s.

[17:22] Yes.

[17:22] At that point.

Dan McCoy

[17:23] And I—look, well, now we're really jumping ahead, but I wonder if that is the reason the decision was made to do it this way because otherwise, so much about the central relationship in this movie would be unacceptable to the audience.

[17:36] But let's jump back and I'll just say, like, the actress, you know, I want to be clear, like, it's both fine to look old and she looks great.

[17:48] But if you're trying to pretend that this woman, like, pushing 60 looks like a child, even with the digital de-aging, there's a limit to what the technology can do to make this look not—

[18:00] Yes.

[18:00] —not—

Elliott Kalan

[18:00] Because the children and adults don't have the same shaped heads.

[18:05] Exactly.

[18:05] Like, there's so much about—

[18:06] There's so much about it that—

Stuart Wellington

[18:07] I see her—I see her.

[18:08] I expect her to start screaming at a high pitch to break glass.

[18:12] Yeah.

[18:12] Have—be influential in World War I and II.

[18:16] You know, all that shit.

Elliott Kalan

[18:17] So, I think what this is, it's—it didn't work in The Love Guru when they put Mike Myers' head on a child's body.

[18:24] Yeah.

[18:24] And it doesn't really work here.

Dan McCoy

[18:26] Well, it also doesn't work here because this movie—whilst I think this movie has a certain camp edge, like, I mean, this is a comedian in the main role, I think that there—

Elliott Kalan

[18:37] But it's not a comedy movie.

[18:39] It's very, you know.

Dan McCoy

[18:40] No, I think that there's, like, some tinges of comedy around the sides of it, but it is played very straight.

[18:45] And a comedy doing this at least has some, like, oh, the weirdness of it is part of the point.

[18:53] But here—

Elliott Kalan

[18:53] Well, especially because—especially because they make such a big pick point very soon out of, can you believe that voice is coming out of that little girl?

[19:00] She's got this amazing adult voice, but she's just a little girl, but she never looks like a little girl.

[19:05] It's like the choice to do it undercuts everything that they're doing about it.

[19:08] So if it's not a joke, if it was a joke, they'd be pulling it off fantastically.

[19:12] Just like—

[19:13] Right.

Stuart Wellington

[19:13] But—

[19:13] And the idea of, like, it adds, like, definitely this, like, weird magical realism to it that is not helped by the fact that they named this character—this character is now a lean do, like, God.

[19:28] Like, that's wild.

Dan McCoy

[19:31] I read that she wanted to have—to push it even further and have a scene where her face was on a baby's face.

[19:39] That would have been great.

[19:40] And the producer talked her out of it, and I was saying—

[19:43] The producer's wrong.

[19:44] No, yeah, I think it would have worked better.

[19:45] Yeah, that would have been the best scene in the movie, yeah.

[19:47] If they had done that, at least it signals something to the audience of, like, oh, I don't need to take this completely seriously.

[19:55] Yeah.

[19:55] Because there's a part of me that thinks that the choice, like, of course she knows that this looks weird, but, yeah, she's trying to do some sort of, like, fantastical element.

[20:04] Yeah, that's a great thing, you know, but without any signal of that, the tone is so strange.

Elliott Kalan

[20:09] It's—well, that it never—it never pays off in any way.

[20:12] Yeah.

[20:12] It's not like it—it just doesn't—it has no meaning, so it's just a strange thing.

[20:15] But if her face on a baby, if she didn't say le goo goo, they're leaving money on the table.

Stuart Wellington

[20:20] There's a point later on where they are about to introduce her to sing a song, and he's like, oh, I'm not going to tell you her age yet.

[20:26] And I'm like, they're going to be very confused.

[20:29] It's like, I still don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[20:31] Like, from the neck down, she appears to be 12, but from the neck up, she's clearly in her late 50s.

[20:36] So she sings at a wedding.

[20:38] She's still a kid.

[20:39] She sings at a wedding.

[20:40] Everyone's amazed at her beautiful voice.

[20:42] She's failing in school because she's always tired, I guess, because her family always has her out singing late.

Stuart Wellington

[20:46] Yeah.

[20:47] She's a huge draw for their, like, what is it, like a bed and breakfast that involves singing?

[20:52] Like, it's a restaurant?

Elliott Kalan

[20:54] Something like that.

[20:54] I couldn't—I was—honestly, I couldn't—the movie's storytelling was elliptical enough that I couldn't—and I cared little enough that I couldn't quite tell.

[21:01] But she wants to be a great singer.

[21:02] She's not being forced into it.

[21:03] She idolizes Barbra Streisand.

[21:05] And her mom says, you know what?

[21:07] Understandably.

[21:08] I'm going to write a song—Barbra Streisand, another woman who spent a lot of her career running from her age.

[21:13] So, you know, it all makes sense.

[21:15] Her mom says, I'm going to write a song for you with your brother, Jean Bobin, or Jean Bobin.

[21:22] It's one of the many Jeans.

[21:23] And they mail a demo tape of 12-year-old Aileen to a big manager named Guy Claude Camar.

[21:28] And they're like, we're going to hear back from him tonight.

[21:31] And then it's, like, a week later.

[21:32] And he's like, tonight!

[21:33] And it still hasn't happened yet.

[21:35] So they call him, and they go, hey, listen to the tape and call us right back.

[21:39] And he calls back 10 minutes later.

[21:42] He's got to—if it's true that a girl can sing this way, even a girl with a 50-year-old's head, he's got to hear it in person.

[21:48] He's got to meet this 50-year-old girl.

[21:50] They have a big meeting.

[21:51] For some reason, Aileen decided to go ice skating minutes before they were supposed to leave, and she forgets her shoes.

[21:56] She wears her mom's shoes to the meeting, which doesn't pay off in any way whatsoever.

Stuart Wellington

[22:00] According to the trivia on IMDb, this is listed as one of the fictional liberties to the story of Celine Dion's life.

Dan McCoy

[22:10] Because when I was watching it, I was like, oh, this must have actually happened to Celine Dion, or else this would—

[22:15] Or else why include it?

Stuart Wellington

[22:16] Could you imagine inventing this idea whole cloth, Dan?

[22:21] What kind of psychedelics was the screenwriter on to have imagined such an improbable situation?

Elliott Kalan

[22:27] It's teaching us a very important lesson about the character, which is that she's forgetful about shoes, which, of course, will play into the movie later, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[22:36] It's more that it's dumb and pointless, so why would you put it in?

Elliott Kalan

[22:40] This movie is so full of incident.

[22:41] There's so many small incidents in this movie where you're like, what?

[22:44] And I'm not going to go through all of them.

[22:44] It's little moments, yeah.

[22:45] If I skip any and you guys remember them, please stop me.

[22:48] Somebody stop me and tell me an incident.

Dan McCoy

[22:50] I mean, the whole second half of this movie, at least.

[22:53] I mean, there's at least some narrative thrust to her rising career.

[22:56] But once she's at the peak, it's just like a list of things.

Elliott Kalan

[23:01] I would say the second hour of the movie.

[23:03] There's a certain point where it's like, well, she's achieved it.

[23:05] This is the end of her story.

[23:06] She's just successful at this point.

[23:08] And then I looked at the runtime, and I was like, oh, there's another hour left to go.

Dan McCoy

[23:12] Yeah, and at this point, the screenwriter, other than the actual chronology of events,

[23:17] could have just written each scene on a pack of cards, thrown it up the air in a simple

[23:21] thing, whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[23:22] Yeah.

[23:23] I mean, it's a fictionalized version.

[23:25] So why not not do all of it?

[23:28] Juice it up.

[23:29] Yeah.

[23:29] So Aline, this is-

[23:31] Put some werewolves in there.

Dan McCoy

[23:32] Why not?

[23:33] Put werewolves in the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[23:36] You can do anything.

[23:38] Literally anything.

[23:38] You can do anything you want.

[23:39] It's fictional.

[23:39] Have her go back to the dinosaur era.

[23:41] She becomes emperor of Rome.

[23:43] Why not?

[23:43] She killed Kennedy.

[23:44] Who knows?

[23:46] She goes to the-

[23:46] They go, Aline, we have a show to do on Le Moon.

[23:50] And they go up there.

[23:51] Uh-huh.

Dan McCoy

[23:52] Yeah.

[23:52] And the police come, and they arrest Celine Dion for killing Kennedy.

[23:55] And she's like, it's not-

[23:56] It's not-

[23:57] That's Aline.

[23:58] He's like, clearly it's the same person.

[24:00] They used your songs.

Elliott Kalan

[24:01] Mm-hmm.

[24:02] Just like you, the assassin forgot to wear her shoes to her first meeting.

[24:08] But I did not do that.

[24:10] So, j'accuse of killing Kennedy, Celine Dion.

[24:15] Oh, wow.

[24:16] So, her dad gives her his lucky coin, the only one that his dad didn't steal from him.

[24:20] And at the meeting, the manager immediately calls her Celine by accident, and they correct

[24:24] her.

[24:24] Her name is Aileen.

[24:25] And she sings for him, and we don't hear what she sings, because that's when the soundtrack

[24:28] plays a pop song.

[24:30] But we see that he's so moved by it that he begins to cry.

[24:34] And he has to manage her.

[24:37] And he impresses the entire Du family, all 70 million of them, with his memory for sales

[24:41] figures and hockey championship wins.

Stuart Wellington

[24:43] I do really like that he- they show him crying while she's singing.

[24:49] And then the next scene, he's talking to a co-worker, and he's like, I had to sign her.

[24:53] I almost cried.

[24:54] And I'm like, dude, you literally cried.

[24:57] I saw that shit.

[24:58] Don't try to save face, Guy.

[25:00] Like, we all saw it.

[25:00] It's in the movie.

[25:02] It's cool, man.

[25:03] Bad boys can have a soft side.

[25:05] And soft boys can have a bad side.

Dan McCoy

[25:07] Bad boys, too, can have a rat fucking another rat.

[25:11] Exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[25:11] I mean, not only can it, it does and will.

Dan McCoy

[25:16] That's another one of those scenes where you watch the movie, and you're like, why did

Elliott Kalan

[25:19] they do this?

[25:20] Why would they-

[25:21] I know why.

[25:21] It's not like someone was like, oh, there's a rat having sex with another rat.

[25:26] We're going to get it on camera.

[25:27] They're clearly puppets.

[25:29] Michael Mann's like, I got to get this shit on camera.

[25:30] They do it just like us.

[25:32] Michael Bay's like, lightning struck.

[25:35] We had to include it in the film.

Dan McCoy

[25:37] I mean, based on the fact that the guy next to me in the theater elbowed me while laughing

[25:42] when that happened, I think that it was a roaring success.

[25:46] And we've been friends ever since I did that today.

Stuart Wellington

[25:50] Can you imagine the puppeteers?

[25:52] Like, that's the commentary track I want for Bad Boys, too, is the puppeteer who made

[25:56] the rat puppets.

Elliott Kalan

[25:59] So, Elaine is recording an album.

[26:01] At this point, she kind of always looks like a middle-aged woman, but they just talk about

[26:05] how amazing it is she's a kid.

[26:06] And she also tends to sing songs that comment on where her life is at right now very blatantly.

[26:12] So, she goes on TV and she sings a song about, I'm just a little girl, I still need my mother,

[26:17] mother, I love you.

[26:18] I'm just a little girl, I still need my mother.

[26:21] That one?

[26:21] Yeah, that one that goes, I'm just a girl and I need my mom.

[26:25] Yeah, exactly.

[26:26] And then the host is like, hey, did you learn to become a singer?

[26:31] And she goes, no, I didn't need to.

[26:33] And that cuts to later, she's eating an enormous cookie sandwich.

[26:36] I assume they picked, it's like an ice cream sandwich made out of the biggest cookies

[26:39] I've ever seen, I assume to make her look like a little kid, but it is ridiculous.

[26:43] This is the screenshot.

[26:44] This is like Clifford.

[26:45] Like, it becomes Clifford for a moment.

Dan McCoy

[26:47] This is the one I posted on Twitter to, you know, try and, you know, juice up interest

[26:53] in this episode to whatever fans remain on Twitter.

[26:59] Dan's hitting the streets.

[27:00] But, yeah, because it looks like this is a scene where she's just on her knees with a

[27:07] big cookie in front of her face.

[27:08] Yes, yeah.

[27:08] And they de-aged her.

[27:09] And he's standing above.

Elliott Kalan

[27:11] And it makes me wish they had done that the whole movie and she was holding like a giant

[27:15] telephone, a giant comb, like a 10-year-old and she has a huge racket.

[27:20] But, and her geek cloud says, don't flaunt your natural gifts.

[27:23] People won't like it.

[27:24] Tell people you work really hard.

[27:26] And she's signing albums.

[27:28] Her dad comes by and surprises her with an album to sign and shows him she has the lucky

[27:31] coin.

[27:32] And then she goes to Paris to sing.

[27:34] She poses at the Eiffel Tower and backstage at the Paris show, she secretly sniffs an enormous

[27:38] bottle of Geek Lodge cologne.

[27:41] And it's, it's so, like, I expected her to drink it.

[27:44] She's so enraptured by it.

[27:45] And the bottle again is enormous.

[27:47] I don't know if that's how big French cologne bottles are, but it's just, again, to make

[27:50] her look little.

[27:51] But it's like, it's like cats.

[27:53] Yeah, it's like Owls in Wonderland.

[27:54] Yeah.

[27:55] It says sniff me and it makes you shrink.

[27:58] It's like in Cats, how they can never quite figure out if the cats are the size of small

[28:01] children or they're so tiny that they can wear rings as belts.

[28:05] In like this, they can't, they can't decide how big Aline is in this.

[28:10] Before she, another TV show, she over here is a crew member kind of making, saying she's

[28:14] weird looking and Geek Lodge assures her she's beautiful.

[28:16] And they do an elaborate handshake that I guess they always do before she performs.

Stuart Wellington

[28:21] Which we have learned and practiced and we will post videos of.

Elliott Kalan

[28:25] Yeah.

[28:26] We got to learn how to do this.

[28:27] Yeah.

[28:27] That's our max fun bonus bonus goal for next year is to learn the Aline special handshake.

[28:34] If we get, if we get 40,000 new and upgrading members, we'll learn that handshake.

[28:38] And so, so she sings a love song as she gazes at her manager and even the nasty crew guys like,

[28:45] Oh, c'est bon.

[28:46] Next, her manager tells her family.

[28:49] So, this scene, this next scene.

Stuart Wellington

[28:50] I was expecting them to be like smoking galois and wearing berets.

Elliott Kalan

[28:53] Yeah.

[28:54] They're all drinking big glasses of wine while at work.

[28:56] So, the next scene, this is the scene that most feels like a sketch from like a comedy

[29:01] version of this where her manager goes to her and he goes, I heard, you know who loves

[29:05] her album?

[29:06] The Vatican.

[29:07] They play it all the time at the Vatican.

[29:08] And her parents are like, the Vatican?

[29:10] They play it all the time at the Vatican?

[29:12] Jean, come in here.

[29:13] Yes?

[29:14] They play it all the time at the Vatican.

[29:16] Jean goes, the Vatican?

[29:17] All the time at the Vatican?

[29:18] The manager, all the time at the Vatican.

[29:21] And Aline comes in and they go, they play it at the Vatican.

[29:24] And they must say the Vatican, I don't know, 20 times in this scene.

[29:28] Yeah, it's very silly.

[29:30] It's very silly and it also, it feels like they brought in Tim and Eric to like guest

[29:34] direct a scene.

Dan McCoy

[29:36] Well, I forget where on the internet I read this.

[29:39] Oh, let Tim and Eric.

Elliott Kalan

[29:40] Yeah, let Tim et Eric.

Dan McCoy

[29:42] I forget where I read this.

[29:44] And so it's of dubious, you know, who knows whether it's true.

[29:49] But supposedly the way that French Canadians say Vatican is very funny to French people.

[29:56] So maybe this is part of what's going on here.

[29:59] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[29:59] To me, it honestly just sounded like they were saying Vatican over and over again.

[30:02] It's pretty funny.

[30:02] Yeah.

[30:03] But that reminds me of, I may have talked to this before on the Flophouse.

[30:07] When I was in college, my mom took me and my sister and my grandmother to the Montreal

[30:11] Comedy Festival.

[30:12] And I went to, I decided to go by myself to the Best of Canada show, which my family was

[30:16] not interested in going to.

[30:17] And it was so much fun to sit through a stand-up show where I got none of the references.

[30:21] And it was like, I got the jokes because like, I understand how jokes work.

[30:25] But it was just funny to hear the audience.

[30:27] And the audience loved it.

[30:28] And then someone would be like, well, in Banff.

[30:30] And the audience would go nuts, you know.

[30:32] And the best part of it was, there was kind of like a, oh, what's his name?

[30:38] Who's the guy?

[30:39] Who's the comedian that is very annoying?

[30:42] Roy Calhoun.

[30:43] No, no, no.

[30:43] He's a British comedian.

[30:45] Ricky Gervais.

[30:47] No, no, no.

[30:47] The other night, the one, Russell Brand, sorry.

[30:51] There was a guy who was like a Russell Brand type comedian who came up.

[30:54] And they're like, now you know him.

[30:56] Here he is.

[30:56] And they announced him.

[30:57] And I'd never heard of him.

[30:58] He walks up.

[30:58] And the guy behind me goes, I hate this guy.

[31:00] And I just love that he had such a strong opinion about someone I've never heard of before.

[31:04] So anyway, so maybe you're right that it's just a joke on the way they say Vatican.

[31:08] But it's a long scene for that.

[31:11] Aline's career, it just continues to flourish under Guy's coaching.

[31:14] And she, to the point where she feels like it's time for her to take a stand, take a controversial stand.

[31:19] And she ends one show by giving a strong statement about safe driving.

[31:23] Yeah.

[31:24] It again feels like another like walk hard scene where it's like, no, I got to say something at the end of the show.

[31:30] Be careful and drive slowly on the way home.

[31:32] Drive safe.

Stuart Wellington

[31:33] Now, I, you know, I'm not a huge fan of biopics generally.

[31:39] And I feel like the ones I like the least are musical biopics.

[31:44] That could just be my own issue.

[31:46] But I feel like walk hard is still like the best one.

Dan McCoy

[31:52] Maybe this is like a regional thing too, Elliot.

[31:54] Maybe like all the rage in Canada at the time was to drive unsafely.

[31:59] Like that was what was cool.

[32:00] It's possible.

[32:00] It's actually good reading now.

Elliott Kalan

[32:03] I guess, so if anyone listening is from, is from that region of Canada or is a huge Celine Dion fan, please write in.

[32:09] Tell us which of these things we're just not getting that are huge Easter eggs.

Dan McCoy

[32:12] Tell us about the donuts you used to drive in the parking lot outside of Celine Dion concerts.

Elliott Kalan

[32:19] And, and, uh, Guy tells Sylvie, Guy is just such a hero, just such a saint throughout the movie.

[32:24] He tells Sylvie, Aline's mom, Aline needs to take a break from-

[32:26] I think he has a ponytail at this point.

[32:28] Yeah, he takes a break from performing and live her life and learn English and get her teeth fixed.

[32:32] And she does, and there's a long self-improvement montage sequence.

[32:35] She's learning English.

[32:37] She finally gets her hair cut.

[32:38] And when she greets Guy at the door when he shows up, the wind being blown on her by an off-screen wind machine is obvious.

[32:45] It's over the top on purpose.

[32:46] But like, it's so over the top.

[32:49] But as a joke, and we find that at night, she's secret- when her mom goes to bed, because they share a hotel room, she secretly caresses a photo of her manager.

[32:56] And one morning, her mom catches the photo in the bed, and Aline is like, I love him.

[33:01] And Sylvie confronts Guy, or Guy, and says, if you touch Aline, I'll kill you.

[33:05] A no- a wrinkled old fat man like you shouldn't be with a beautiful young princess.

[33:09] And that's- this is the beginning of what seems like it could be a big conflict in the movie, but it dies down relatively.

[33:15] Quickly resolved.

[33:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[33:16] I mean, I don't- look.

[33:18] I- I- there's obvious reasons I don't want to dwell on this too much, but I do think that we need to talk about it a little bit.

[33:23] Like, this is- so this is true to Celine Dion's life, right?

[33:26] Like, she-

[33:27] Yeah.

[33:27] She did marry her manager.

[33:29] He was much older than her.

[33:30] Her much older manager, who, like, knew her as a- as a minor and all that, like, stuff.

[33:35] And, uh, and they stayed together until his death.

[33:38] And to some degree, I'm like, well, we can only believe Celine Dion's version of things.

[33:44] You don't want to talk about it because it's your ultimate fantasy.

[33:46] No, no, I'm just like-

[33:48] Look, if she says it's okay, like, I don't know what to do with that, but I don't think that it's possible at all that it was as simple and innocent as it's presented in this film.

[34:02] Yeah.

[34:02] In this film-

[34:03] The manager of a child who then ends up marrying her.

[34:07] And, like, it's presented as a love story and, like, the central narrative thrust of this movie in so much as it has any, like, center to it.

[34:14] Yeah.

[34:15] As it comes to the love story.

[34:15] Which is why I wonder, like, I don't know.

[34:17] Did they make her play Aline as a kid?

[34:22] Because, like, none of that would work at all if you actually saw her as a child.

Elliott Kalan

[34:28] I would say, at this point, she's supposed to be in her kind of, like, late teens.

[34:34] No, no, no, I know, but you see-

[34:35] But I will say, in the history of movies, I would say maybe, except that there is such a history in movies of much younger women and much older men.

[34:43] Sure.

[34:44] To the point of-

[34:45] And in France-

[34:45] What?

[34:46] And in France, very much so.

[34:46] In France, it is less-

[34:48] It is less of a-

[34:48] So, in the French language world, it is even more so.

[34:51] To a disturbing point that I don't like.

[34:54] But what's weird is that this is a fictionalized portrayal of Celine Dion.

[34:57] They did not really have permission from her.

[35:00] Celine Dion does not let-

[35:01] Has come-

[35:02] Came out against the movie.

[35:03] And yet, she is portrayed as the most beautiful soul in the history of the world.

[35:07] Her manager is portrayed as a beautiful saint who brought love and success into her life.

[35:12] Like, everything about this screams-

[35:13] Her family is very charming, I find-

[35:15] Her family is charming and lovable.

[35:16] Apparently, Celine Dion was unhappy with what Hicks they were portrayed as.

[35:20] They were portrayed as, like, scheming, you know, country folk.

[35:22] But they're the best characters in the movie.

Dan McCoy

[35:23] Like, I will say, like, the mom in this movie, like, she's putting in a great performance in this-

[35:29] Yeah, sure.

[35:29] Not-so-great movie.

[35:30] Like, I loved her.

[35:32] I thought she was terrific.

Elliott Kalan

[35:33] Yeah.

[35:34] Yeah, she's great in it.

[35:34] But the-

[35:35] I think-

[35:36] But it is a-

[35:37] It's something that the movie seems-

[35:40] And the movie seems to take it for granted, I think, that you are not going to be on the mom's side.

[35:43] In this argument.

[35:44] That it is clear, as we know, because they end up together, this is true love and she's being insensitive and intolerant.

[35:51] But you're right.

[35:51] It is something that they don't really grapple with much, that he's a man who's known her since she was 12.

[35:56] He is in a position of real authority over her.

[35:59] Like, he constantly coaches her on her and he's in charge of her career.

[36:02] And they fall in love and it's just like-

[36:04] And the movie is just like, is this the cutest thing?

[36:08] And he's presented as extremely uninterested, as someone who is being such a gentleman and not-

[36:14] Or openly uninterested.

[36:15] That like, it's just-

[36:17] They're taking something that-

[36:18] It reminds me of the stories you used to hear about Elvis, where they'd be like, well, he met Priscilla when she was 13, but he was a gentleman and waited until she was 18 before he had sex with her.

[36:27] And it's like, that's so creepy.

[36:29] It's still super creepy.

[36:31] But I remember being told that when I was a kid as if that was the height of gentlemanly behavior.

[36:35] That even though he clearly wanted to have sex with this adolescent girl, he waited.

Dan McCoy

[36:39] See, Elvis cleared the lowest bar that society has presented.

[36:42] Yeah.

[36:42] Like, okay, I guess.

[36:44] Case closed.

Elliott Kalan

[36:45] But it's, yeah, it's all very, and again, if it maybe, maybe, I don't know, maybe there's something about it that we're not seeing, but it does seem creepy.

[36:52] But that creepiness is somewhat, is somewhat, what's the word?

[36:59] Mitigated?

[37:00] Ameliorated, yeah, by the fact that she is so, that she looks like a grown-up.

[37:06] They look like they're the same age, yeah.

[37:08] They look like they're the same age, yeah.

[37:09] Anyway, Guy says to Eileen, we can't be together, a young girl and an old man.

[37:14] Again, this is when they most look the same age.

[37:17] And she goes, tell me you don't love me.

[37:19] And he can't, he can't say it.

[37:21] And so she confronts her mom, and her mom has a heart attack and goes to the hospital.

[37:24] And meanwhile, Guy Claude has disappeared.

[37:27] No one knows where he is.

[37:28] Oh no, Eileen falls into despair.

[37:30] She's so sad.

[37:32] And just when she's about to perform at the Eurovision Song Contest, oh no.

[37:36] But backstage, he shows up.

[37:38] This is roughly four minutes of screen time, three minutes of screen time that he's gone or something like that.

[37:42] Like it's not, it's not a, they really make it to be a big thing, but they don't spend a lot of time on it.

Stuart Wellington

[37:46] Yeah, that's like Christian Grey plane crash levels of disappearance.

Elliott Kalan

[37:50] It's Chewbacca dying in Rise of Skywalker.

[37:54] Oh, there must have been another transport.

[37:57] Oh no, Chewbacca.

[37:58] Cut to Chewbacca's on screen.

[38:00] I'm okay, folks.

[38:01] Don't worry.

[38:02] It's Ray Romano as Chewbacca.

Stuart Wellington

[38:03] Yeah.

[38:04] And the whole audience is like, well, I didn't even finish my tweet about Chewbacca dying, and now he's back.

[38:10] I guess I'll delete my, add that to drafts.

Elliott Kalan

[38:13] I can't believe Chewbacca has, oh wait, never mind.

[38:17] Backspace, backspace, backspace.

[38:19] Yeah, I forgot about that in that 50 seconds of the movie.

[38:21] I can't believe there was a second transport is what they have to change it to.

[38:24] It seems impossible.

[38:27] So the, I wonder if there was a cut scene where you see the marketing people at Disney going, you can't kill Chewbacca.

[38:37] We gotta, hold on a second.

[38:38] We make a lot of money off of Chewbacca.

[38:39] Bring him back.

[38:40] And then Chewbacca goes, oh, okay, I'll come back.

[38:43] That's, yeah.

[38:44] And that's what Chewbacca sounds like when he talks.

[38:46] That's amazing.

[38:47] Yeah, I love it.

[38:48] That's what he sounds like.

[38:49] Oh, my, no.

[38:52] That's me.

[38:53] Oh, buddy.

[38:54] Hey, Chewbacca.

[38:55] Hey, Chewbacca.

[38:57] I mean, the difference between, Chewbacca's on that spectrum between Ray Romano and Mr. Bean in terms of voices.

[39:04] And so she wins the, with the power of love, she wins the Eurovision Song Contest.

[39:10] She gets a congratulatory, or her manager gets a congratulatory call from the Prime Minister of Canada.

[39:14] He does not hand the phone to Celine.

[39:16] He just says thank you and hangs up, which I thought was such a passive-aggressive power move to be like, no, no, no.

[39:22] I talked to prime ministers.

[39:23] You just sit there.

[39:24] And that night, you guessed it, folks.

[39:27] Dreams can come true.

[39:28] They have sex for the first time.

[39:30] He leaves the room, but then he sneaks back in in his pajamas, and he says, if it's what you want, I'll be the first.

[39:35] And she says, the first and only.

[39:37] And we are thankfully saved from watching the lovemaking itself.

[39:41] The next morning, they're flirting from across the room.

[39:42] I'm not sure we can picture it.

Stuart Wellington

[39:45] But I think we can picture what it's like.

[39:48] They did regular style.

[39:49] They did doggy style.

[39:50] Okay.

[39:51] Upside down style.

[39:52] What?

Elliott Kalan

[39:54] And as, you know, I've never been, I've never been a woman.

[39:59] You've never done it?

[40:00] I've done it, but I've never been a woman, but like the, my understanding of the experience of the first time that women have sex is it's not always a magical transcendent experience.

[40:09] And so the fact that movies almost always, maybe 90% of the time presented that way is, I don't know.

[40:17] It's a, it's, it's something that I wonder if women have thoughts about.

[40:20] So write in, women of listeners, write into the Flophouse first time colon transcendent experience care of Dan McCoy.

[40:28] Let's find out what you think.

[40:30] Yeah.

[40:30] And, and if they, and also French Canadian people, do you do it differently?

[40:34] Let's find out.

[40:35] Write in.

[40:36] Because it reminds me, Stuart, you were joking that they do it all these different ways.

Dan McCoy

[40:39] Is upside down style different up in Canada?

[40:41] Yeah.

[40:41] And then just for fun, tell me what normal American upside down style is.

[40:47] I know, but I'm, I'm just curious.

[40:50] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[40:50] I know all the styles.

[40:52] I know all the styles.

[40:53] I'm pretty well versed.

[40:55] It reminds me of one of my favorite stories about my grandmother.

[40:57] This is not the grandmother that went to the Just for Life festival.

[40:59] It's a different one.

[41:00] Okay.

[41:00] My, my, my father's mother, I remember years ago, she, she's since passed, but she told

[41:04] me when she, during World War II.

Stuart Wellington

[41:06] Dan's got to look on his face like he's about to hear a hot story.

[41:09] Yeah.

[41:09] He's going to like this one.

[41:10] Is it dangerous?

[41:11] Yeah.

[41:13] Almost.

[41:14] He's tying, he's tying, he's tying, he's tying, he's tying a bib around his neck to catch

[41:17] all the drool, I guess.

[41:19] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[41:19] Yeah.

[41:19] Oh, he's putting towels down on the ground to catch the drool.

Elliott Kalan

[41:22] Oh, wait.

[41:23] Now he's, wait, his head is turning into a steam whistle.

[41:25] Hold on.

[41:27] The, uh, she was, she was on a small military transport plane.

[41:30] Hurl my tongue back up.

[41:32] During World War II, her fiance, my grandfather was stationed in Puerto Rico.

[41:36] She was flying to Puerto Rico.

[41:37] And the only other person on board was a Frenchman who was first, whatever, who was a pilot,

[41:42] she said, it was for some reason flying also.

[41:44] And that he came onto her and she said, oh no, I'm sorry.

[41:46] I thank you, but no, I have a fiance.

[41:48] And, uh, was it 60 years later?

[41:52] She said to me, she goes, if there's anything I regret in life, I should have done it with

[41:56] that Frenchman.

[41:57] And I said, I said, grandma, why?

[42:00] I thought that was an amazing answer.

[42:01] I said, grandma, why?

[42:02] And she goes, maybe he would have done it differently.

[42:04] And that for decades and decades, she lived with the mystery of how French people have

[42:08] sex.

[42:09] So please, so that I can tell my grandma's ghost in a seance.

[42:12] French people, write in.

[42:13] Tell us how you do it.

[42:15] Care of Dan McCoy.

[42:16] I'll give you his address at the end of the show.

[42:17] Anyway, um, anyway, Guy and Aline, they're flush with success.

[42:21] They're flirting across a room where they read newspapers.

[42:23] Aline dips a croissant in champagne because she's just like that, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[42:26] I do love the newspaper.

[42:28] Like the pictures they use for the newspapers are very funny.

[42:31] Yeah.

[42:32] Because the pictures are of her victory, her victory at the Dublin singing contest.

Elliott Kalan

[42:38] And they're all, and that, and they're all pictures of her, the actress playing Celine.

[42:42] So it's, it just, it, for some reason that seems weirder than if they were real pictures

[42:47] of Celine Dion or no pictures.

Stuart Wellington

[42:49] But, uh, so, uh, Aline's mom.

[42:51] And at one point she even takes the time to cut a little eyeball slit out of a newspaper

[42:56] that has a picture of her face.

[42:58] So she perfectly frames it so that she can then, uh, steal glances at her, uh, bow through

[43:04] the newspaper she's holding.

Elliott Kalan

[43:06] Yeah.

[43:06] Like Gromit watching that penguin that, that wants to steal the diamond.

[43:10] Uh, so Aline's mom, she still doesn't approve of the relationship.

[43:13] And, uh, and so Aline can't talk about it publicly.

[43:17] And Aline goes on a talk show and she starts crying when she can't say who her love songs

[43:21] are for.

[43:21] But guess what?

[43:22] Things are about to get a little bit more okay because on her sold out European tour,

[43:27] her manager on the day that was supposed to be just her and her manager's day together,

[43:31] he takes out the whole staff for ice cream in Naples and he hands an ice cream cone to Aline.

[43:36] She takes a bite out of it and, oh, what is this in my mouth?

[43:39] Oh, an engagement ring.

[43:41] There's an engagement ring in the ice cream.

[43:43] That's right.

[43:44] They're going to get married.

[43:45] He's making, he's putting a ring on it.

[43:46] He's making it legal.

Stuart Wellington

[43:48] Apparently this is also fictitious.

[43:51] What?

[43:51] This did not happen.

[43:52] Again, one of those things where it's like, what kind of fucked up mind could invent this

[43:56] scenario, right?

Dan McCoy

[43:57] Well, I do want to talk, I want to talk about Elliot, you know.

[44:00] Was Cormac McCarthy doing some script doc framework on this one that he came up with that twisted

[44:04] idea?

[44:05] He announces to like the whole like, like tour entourage or whatever it is, like, you know,

[44:11] oh, like tomorrow, he's like, the best ice cream in the world is two and a half hours away

[44:18] by bus.

[44:19] So I've arranged like a bus to take us there tomorrow.

[44:22] And if I was like, oh, on my day off, you want, my boss wants me to get on a bus so I

[44:27] can go two and a half hours to get ice cream in Rome.

[44:30] To get ice cream.

[44:31] Yeah.

[44:32] I'm sure that we've got great ice cream here.

[44:35] Like close enough.

[44:37] Not getting on a bus for two and a half hours.

[44:40] That one seems very excited.

Stuart Wellington

[44:41] And I'm kind of lactose intolerant.

[44:43] So that trip would be bad for me the whole way.

[44:45] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[44:46] Oh, yeah.

[44:47] And you know, but if you know if you didn't go and then if you went and you didn't eat

[44:50] the ice cream, you'd be fired.

[44:51] You would be off the tour.

[44:52] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[44:52] Immediately fired.

[44:53] Yeah.

[44:54] And she's got so many backup dancers that one less, nobody would even notice.

[44:57] So you're just gone.

[44:58] Because I assume that's the role in the show.

[45:00] I was a backup dancer.

[45:01] Yeah.

[45:02] Yeah.

[45:03] So they get married.

[45:05] Now they live in a big mansion.

[45:06] They say they're going to go to the beach and make their baby, which is, or make our baby,

[45:10] they say, which is a gross way to say it.

[45:12] They go on their, and so this is when I wrote my notes, on their honeymoon and somehow we're

[45:16] only halfway through the movie.

[45:17] She's already a successful singer.

[45:19] She's achieved love.

[45:20] What else is there?

[45:22] Guy is eating too much.

[45:24] And Aline, she has to, he has a, he passes out and she has to push him to the hospital

[45:29] on a luggage cart.

[45:29] And she's in such a, such a stressed out rush that her boob falls out of her dress.

[45:34] We don't see any of this.

[45:35] It is told to us in an anecdote she's telling on a talk show.

[45:38] So the movie has decided to take what would have been one of the more suspenseful and

[45:42] exciting scenes in the movie.

[45:43] The rush to get him to the hospital before he dies and decides to have a character relate

[45:47] that to us as a funny anecdote on a talk show.

Dan McCoy

[45:50] Yeah.

[45:50] Perfect story.

[45:51] Dan, your thoughts on this?

[45:52] Yeah.

[45:53] I mean, the talk show seemed like it was pretty fun.

[45:57] Like she was having a good time.

[45:59] But yeah, I think as a movie, we probably could have done with any sort of incident rather

[46:05] than.

[46:05] Yeah.

[46:05] I mean, I feel, I feel like the filmmaker leaned into, yeah, she like leaned into her Mike

Stuart Wellington

[46:10] Flanagan instinct where she's like, this will be way better as told through monologue

[46:14] instead of showing you shit, nerds.

Elliott Kalan

[46:16] She goes, how would, how would the late Spalding Gray handle this, this scene?

[46:23] So the, she, where were we?

[46:26] All right.

[46:27] In a limo back after the talk show, guy says, if I die, please promise to keep performing.

[46:32] And she, you know, like Sisyphus, you can never stop pushing that boulder up the hill.

[46:36] And she says, yes, but never talk about dying again.

[46:38] She's having trouble getting pregnant.

[46:40] She also has this grueling performance and publicity schedule.

[46:43] And she's singing all by myself on stage.

[46:45] And she has to stop mid song because of trouble with her vocal cords.

[46:48] And the audience sings one of her own songs back to her.

[46:51] It's a touching moment.

[46:52] Would have been a beautiful climax to the film.

[46:54] No, there's still about 50 minutes left.

[46:57] Her doctor tells her to get your voice back.

[46:59] Do you like coffee?

[47:00] Yes.

[47:00] Do you like ice cream?

[47:01] Yes.

[47:02] Do you talk on the phone?

[47:02] Every day to my mom.

[47:04] Don't do any of those things.

[47:05] You've got to save your voice.

[47:07] And she, and then eventually it's not working.

[47:08] And he goes, you know what?

[47:09] Just stop talking for three months.

[47:11] She also starts taking fertility treatments.

[47:14] And she has to take, you know, hormone shots in her butt and stuff like that.

[47:18] Eventually three, and this must be a hard time, right?

[47:21] It must be the crux of the film.

[47:22] No.

[47:23] It's told through the visual of the napkins she uses to write on because she can't talk.

[47:28] The stack just gets shorter and shorter.

[47:30] Three months have passed.

[47:30] She starts singing again.

[47:32] There's also a scene where.

[47:34] She's apparently fine.

[47:36] Yeah, there's a scene where she.

[47:37] Now she's fine.

[47:37] Her voice is back.

Stuart Wellington

[47:38] She can't talk to her mom.

[47:40] So she calls her mom and just does like Morse code through the phone using a spoon.

[47:45] And then like two scenes later, a character mentions getting broken up with over text.

[47:50] And I'm like, she could have just texted her mom.

[47:53] Yeah, I don't.

Elliott Kalan

[47:55] Yeah, this Morse code thing.

[47:57] Now, unless.

[47:58] I think there's more time between those two scenes because this is pre-Titanic.

[48:03] So I think texting was still not that big at the time.

Dan McCoy

[48:06] Yeah, but texting off the table.

[48:09] Unless they knew Morse code prior, they have become well-versed very quickly.

Elliott Kalan

[48:15] Well, it's the kind of, you know, they're very smart people who have a lot of different interests.

[48:20] Maybe Morse code is something they already know.

[48:23] So her guy plays her an instrumental demo of My Heart Will Go On and she hates it.

[48:28] And he goes, well, why don't you just sing a demo?

[48:29] And she goes, okay.

[48:31] That is pretty much the end of the story of the creation of her, at least to me, her most well-known famous song.

[48:38] Like they skip straight from that.

[48:40] The next time we hear about it, she's at the Oscars.

[48:43] So here's when she starts crying at a photo shoot and then her makeup guy, Fred, consoles her and goes, oh, I was crying all the way here.

[48:51] I was dumped on the plane.

[48:54] I think maybe he does say by text.

[48:56] Yes.

[48:57] So at the same time.

[48:58] And he becomes her new confidant.

[48:59] We finally have a new character in the movie.

[49:02] It doesn't really matter.

[49:03] And then we watch her do a photo shoot for a while.

[49:05] And this is the part that felt the most like I'm watching an SNL sketch about Celine Dion while she like hams it up and vamps in these photo poses for a long time.

Dan McCoy

[49:14] Yeah, well, that's what I mean, I think that I think that the actress, the director, writer, you know, the star of this film captures Celine Dion.

[49:24] Valerie LaMercier.

[49:25] Yeah.

[49:25] Sort of feckless, doesn't doesn't give a shit dorkiness.

[49:28] Like she like knows she's kind of like, I don't know, like a goof.

[49:32] And like she's like, oh, I'll dance around like this, like badly, you know, it's fun.

Elliott Kalan

[49:38] Yeah.

[49:38] I think if the movie was not, if this wasn't a birth to the moment the movie came out, total chronology story, I think there would be like a fun kind of funny tongue in cheek Celine Dion biopic.

[49:51] But that's not what she's doing.

[49:52] She wants, she's putting a little bit of, she's playing a kind of a character who can be goofy in a movie that's otherwise fairly serious.

[49:57] And guess what?

[49:58] It has to be because we're at the Oscars now, everybody, which are, they can't, they didn't get the rights, I guess, to show the actual Oscar statue, which is copyrighted by the Academy.

[50:05] And so they have a fake, they have a stand in fake statue when they could have just as easily not shown, not shown a statue.

[50:12] Eileen performs, my heart will go on there.

[50:14] And it feels, here's the thing that feels weird is they went to the trouble of licensing, my heart will go on, but not paying to get a real, to show what a real Oscar looks like.

[50:22] It's they, I guess they needed, they couldn't do without it.

[50:25] Eileen performs at the backstage.

[50:27] Her manager is like, hey, now husband is like, hey, some fans are here.

[50:32] And she goes, oh, not yet, not yet.

[50:33] It's her parents that showed up.

[50:35] They came to surprise her.

[50:37] Can you fucking believe it?

Dan McCoy

[50:39] Can you believe it?

[50:40] The loving parents who have been supportive for the entire failure campaign and showed up in her greatest triumph.

[50:46] I didn't see that coming.

Elliott Kalan

[50:48] And she shows that she still has her dad's lucky coin.

[50:51] A high point of her life.

[50:52] Her parents there to be at this big success.

[50:54] Could be the end of the movie.

[50:56] No.

[50:56] Could be the end of the movie.

[50:56] I learned about Guy's diet.

[50:58] He's eating carrot puree while she eats hamburgers and fries.

[51:01] She gets some news on the phone and she writes BB in his carrot puree for baby.

[51:06] And she goes, I'm three months pregnant.

[51:08] And it's like, well, usually the husband knows before three months.

[51:10] Like three months is when you tell other people.

[51:13] But usually, like, at least in the case of when both times my wife is pregnant, I knew when she knew.

[51:18] Like, she didn't keep it a secret from me.

[51:19] Or maybe the doctor's there and held off for three months.

Stuart Wellington

[51:22] You're like, normally when she wakes up, she shotguns straight vodka.

[51:26] But she stopped doing that.

Elliott Kalan

[51:28] How strange.

[51:29] I've got to figure out why.

[51:30] This doesn't make any sense.

[51:32] She's no longer doing belly flops right into the Twitch convention foam pit.

[51:38] Why did she stop doing that?

Dan McCoy

[51:39] She's no longer injecting ketamine directly into her uterus.

[51:43] Uh-huh.

Elliott Kalan

[51:44] I understand.

[51:45] I've got to do it.

[51:46] I'm not a Sherlock Holmes or a Slylock Fox.

[51:48] I can't figure this one out.

Stuart Wellington

[51:49] When we watch Baby's Day Out, she seems concerned as opposed to laughing.

Elliott Kalan

[51:55] Laughing and saying, look at that stupid baby.

[51:57] I hope it falls.

[51:59] Every time the baby evaded danger, she's not snapping her fingers and going nuts.

[52:03] Thought we had him that time.

[52:05] Curses.

[52:05] Floiled again.

Stuart Wellington

[52:07] When she sees Fat Bastard chasing mini-me around, she tuts and shakes her head and says,

[52:14] I don't think so.

[52:15] I don't find that funny, she says.

[52:18] Whereas previously, she found it mildly amusing.

Elliott Kalan

[52:22] She would say, eat that bastard.

[52:23] Eat him up.

[52:24] Yep.

[52:27] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[52:29] This has been, signs your wife is pregnant.

[52:34] Your wife may be pregnant if.

[52:36] The classic flop house cabaret bed that we've, of course, owned in New York in the 60s.

Elliott Kalan

[52:43] Yeah.

[52:43] It was a different time.

[52:44] So, her news, her family news is all over the TV and her mom is offended at the way the TV anchors gossip and make light of Aline's family and rich lifestyle.

[52:56] But Aline is, she's very conspicuously consuming.

[52:59] She buys a 40-room Vegas mega mansion that she gets lost in.

[53:02] And now, you're like, okay, and she's going to have a son.

[53:05] Montage.

[53:06] There's a baby.

[53:06] Her son grows up.

[53:08] Her son is now like five.

[53:09] She's torn between work and family.

[53:11] But the movie, it's one of these movies where the life of her family is sped through in montages.

[53:16] But the moment when she gets into a makeup chair and her food is cold, so she heats it up with a hair dryer, we take our time with that moment.

[53:23] We got it.

[53:23] We've got to register that.

[53:25] And I don't know, but I'm willing to bet there might be another fictional invention.

[53:28] I don't know if it's a famous Celine Dion parable.

[53:30] The parable of the cold meal.

Stuart Wellington

[53:32] And the movie also shows her kid has some PS4 games.

[53:36] And this was long before the PS4 was released.

[53:38] So, it's like, did she invent the PS4?

[53:41] Because they should have included that in the movie.

[53:43] It would have been a big story point.

Dan McCoy

[53:45] Plus, they don't even zoom in on what the games are so we can see.

[53:48] Yeah, we don't know what games they're playing.

Elliott Kalan

[53:53] So, that's why I give this movie thumbs down.

[53:56] Not fresh.

[53:57] Ew.

[54:00] Where were we?

[54:00] Okay.

[54:01] So, yeah.

[54:01] She's got a kid now.

[54:03] During one show, she accidentally learns right before going on stage that her father died.

[54:07] But the movie just keeps going on, much like her heart.

[54:11] She finishes her Vegas residency, takes her family on a performing trip.

[54:16] Her son gets to see her perform to a stadium in France.

[54:20] And there was one point.

[54:21] Again, I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a joke or not.

[54:23] She comes out on stage and the audience goes, ha!

[54:26] And the wind that pushes her back almost knocks her over.

[54:29] And I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a joke or not.

[54:31] I've never performed in front of a stadium full of people.

[54:33] I don't know if you're constantly fighting the exhalations because they're of such force that they could knock you right over.

Dan McCoy

[54:39] Again, Flophouse listeners, do what you can.

[54:43] Promote the show so we can get popular enough to do an arena show and myth bust this ourselves.

Stuart Wellington

[54:49] Or if you are listening and you have performed for an arena, let us know your experience.

[54:54] Thanks.

[54:54] I know that Keith Richards is a listener.

[54:55] I mean, I'd rather do it the way we get famous, but sure.

Elliott Kalan

[54:58] That's true.

[54:58] But Keith Richards, I know you love the show.

[55:00] Tell us what it's like to perform for an arena, if that's the truth.

[55:03] Or performing for a million people in Rio or whatever happened.

[55:05] But yeah, it would be better if we – I would love for us to move up to arena shows, maybe just for one show.

[55:10] I feel like that might be too big a scale for what we actually do.

Dan McCoy

[55:13] Like the Beatles, we'd be like, ugh, no one can even hear our bits.

[55:16] That's what the Beatles called their songs.

[55:19] The Beatles?

[55:19] Their songs, they called them bits.

Elliott Kalan

[55:21] Well, originally they were called the Beatles.

Dan McCoy

[55:22] They didn't do that bit about the octopus's garden, they'd say.

Elliott Kalan

[55:26] A lot of people don't know that they were called the Beatles, and then they were performing in Germany, and the German announcer says,

[55:30] Annalda Beatles, and everyone thought it was Beatles.

[55:34] Yeah.

[55:34] It was really saying Beatles, yeah.

[55:36] Although that is something – I've actually heard that is why acting beats are called beats, like characters –

[55:42] because the story I heard was that Stanislavski wanted to call them bits, but in his accent it sounded like beats when he came to the United States.

[55:49] So anyway, that's the story I heard.

[55:51] Who knows if it's true or not.

[55:52] Theater history.

[55:53] Much like Celine Dion and Aline do, it may be a beautiful reality twisted into a strange and horrifying fiction.

[56:01] So anyway –

Stuart Wellington

[56:02] So we get a bunch of shots of her performing.

[56:04] A lot of her basically walking onto stage in classic Celine Dion outfits, which this is a moment where I'm like,

[56:11] did she make this movie just so she could put on a bunch of cool clothes?

[56:14] Because, I mean, that's not the worst thing to do.

Elliott Kalan

[56:17] Mission accomplished, yeah.

[56:19] She's on it – here's one of the stranger moments.

[56:21] She's on a private jet plane, and suddenly she's stealing her family's food.

[56:25] She has to shovel it in her mouth so much she's so hungry, and she faints because she's pregnant with twins.

[56:29] And, you know, I'm a twin.

[56:31] I have to ask my mom if she would just suddenly get so hungry that she would just start stealing food from other people and slamming it into her face.

[56:38] Then montage.

[56:40] She has the babies.

[56:40] They grow up and so on.

[56:41] Aline is stressed out.

[56:42] She misses her mom and the simple life.

[56:44] Meanwhile, Guy's health is failing.

[56:46] He has to watch her concerts from a hospital bed, and then he dies while they're doing their special handshake.

Dan McCoy

[56:52] And his cancer is also – like, speaking of the family being shunted into the background, his cancer is treated so elliptically by the film that it's never really said outright unless I missed it.

Elliott Kalan

[57:04] No, here's the thing is everything is kind of shunted into the background.

[57:08] Very little in the movie is told so straightforwardly that you're like, ah, this is what the movie is about.

[57:14] It feels like – it really feels like a greatest hit.

[57:17] Like, it feels like they took a TV show called Aline and they chopped it up and made it and compressed it into a movie like they used to do with Japanese TV shows where they released in the United States as an edited-down movie.

[57:26] That's what it feels like.

[57:27] And so – but you're right.

[57:29] You're kind of not sure what he died of.

[57:32] And they do their special handshake, but he doesn't finish it.

[57:34] She's sad at their funeral.

[57:35] There's a sad version of Elvis playing Love Me Tender, I think, over the funeral, right?

[57:41] And then – but Aline soldiers on because the movie can't stop, can it?

[57:46] No, of course it can't stop.

[57:48] It's a never-ending story.

[57:50] Her kids are out of town, so she asked Fred the makeup man if she can stay at his place after her show.

[57:55] And she talks about how she's never been outside in Las Vegas in all the 14 years that she's lived there.

[58:00] And while she's sleeping at Fred's house, she dreams that Guy's ghost shows up.

[58:04] Again, he died two scenes ago – or three scenes ago.

[58:07] The ghost shows up and is like, hey, I'm doing fine, so just do what you want.

[58:10] That's basically the message.

[58:11] She wakes up, and before Fred wakes up, she sneaks out of the apartment and just walks around Las Vegas encountering people.

[58:17] Finally, she's like a normal person.

[58:19] Some Elvis impersonators –

[58:20] And I'm walking in Vegas.

[58:23] Some Elvis impersonators think that she is an Aline impersonator, and they give her some fairly unflattering advice.

[58:29] Two tourists ask for her to take a picture, not with her, just of them.

[58:33] And they're standing in front of her billboard, and they don't even recognize her.

[58:36] Yeah, finally.

[58:36] Some anonymity.

[58:38] And she misses her show, and it has to be canceled.

[58:41] And then she's just on – and then it cuts to kind of a dream musical moment where she's on stage, and she sings a song about how she always wanted to sing, and her life is difficult.

[58:51] And there's so many things in the world.

[58:52] And apparently this is a real song, I think, called Ordinaire, and she's just an ordinary woman.

[58:56] And then when she finishes the song, the movie's over.

[58:59] And again –

[58:59] Yeah.

[58:59] And the main actress, she is not actually singing.

[59:02] It's all lip syncing.

[59:03] So it is – the last scene, much like the Academy Award winning scene in Bohemian Rhapsody where Freddie Mercury just sings, and it's lip synced too.

[59:13] That's just what this ending is.

[59:14] She's just lip syncing the song, and then the movie's over.

[59:17] And it's just – we've run out of Celine Dion's life to tell, so the movie has to end.

Dan McCoy

[59:21] I want to talk about something that I found online.

[59:24] Apparently there's a –

[59:26] Uh-oh.

[59:27] No, shit.

[59:29] Related.

[59:30] Related.

[59:31] Where's the cough button so I can hold that shit down?

[59:34] You wouldn't believe the way she takes care of her children.

[59:40] Anyway.

[59:42] No, no.

[59:43] It's apparently a very famous clip of Celine Dion is out there.

[59:49] Her first performance in Vegas, like after she came back, after her husband died.

[59:57] And she's singing All By Myself and like a song that must have whole new meaning to her, All By Myself, and is struggling with emotions to get through it.

[1:00:10] I think it's through it.

[1:00:12] And I haven't – I didn't – like I was just reading about the cloak.

[1:00:14] I haven't seen it.

[1:00:15] But it sounds like it would be very affecting.

[1:00:17] You weren't going to go that far.

[1:00:18] Well, I'm curious.

[1:00:19] I'll probably look.

[1:00:20] But it's just weird.

[1:00:22] It's weird to me.

[1:00:23] This is a song that is in the movie earlier.

[1:00:28] Yes.

[1:00:28] But instead, they don't end with that song, which would put a bow on.

[1:00:33] Again, arguably, the only reel-through line for the whole movie is like this, quote, love story of them.

[1:00:42] And All By Myself would be such an emotional ending.

[1:00:46] But instead, they sing – she sings a song that's just about how she loves to sing and like she doesn't care what her critics think.

[1:00:52] She does it for the public, which is not really a theme of the film otherwise.

[1:00:56] Like there's some acknowledgement that she's not like believed to be like – like critics don't like her.

[1:01:01] But like very little.

[1:01:03] It's a strange thing.

[1:01:06] Like this is the – if you're going to end with a whole song, you know, like which went on long enough for me to be like, come on, movie.

[1:01:13] Stop it.

[1:01:14] Like make it something relevant.

[1:01:17] Like have it sum up the film in some way.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:19] And it's such a strange choice.

[1:01:20] I mean it sums up – yeah, it sums up the themes of her life but not necessarily the ones that the movie highlights.

[1:01:26] Well, because the movie is not – it's not telling a coherent, focused story.

[1:01:29] You know, instead of saying here's the thrust of her life or here's what we're going to emphasize in her life, it's just kind of like read me Celine Dion's diaries and then we'll just kind of put it on screen and we'll every now and then we'll add in a little bit of fictional stuff.

[1:01:43] Now, here's my question.

[1:01:44] Looking up online, there was I guess an official Celine Dion biopic in 2008 called Celine.

[1:01:50] And maybe that one – and it's only an hour and a half long.

[1:01:54] Maybe that one stole the idea of structure and storytelling.

[1:01:59] And so this one was like we're going to do things differently.

[1:02:01] We're just going to have – because there are – I have to say like there are times when the movie goes into montage and just kind of skips through things.

[1:02:08] There are times when I liked the idea of like I've got to catch up.

[1:02:12] I don't know Celine Dion's life story.

[1:02:13] I've got to infer it.

[1:02:14] But otherwise the movie is such a shapeless bag, you know.

[1:02:18] It feels a little bit like trying to go to sleep on an air mattress.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:21] I mean like this is – I mean this movie suffers from one of the – like one of the problems that I think a lot of biopics run into which is like not having any kind of point of view whatsoever and simply just trying to tell the entirety of somebody's life as opposed to like generally it's best to focus on a very specific event or a snippet or, you know, especially if you're going to fictionalize it.

[1:02:44] Why not make it more interesting?

[1:02:45] So much of this is just like watching a rich person hang out in their fucking giant mansion that they don't understand.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:53] Yeah.

[1:02:54] So final judgments whether this is a good bad movie, a bad bad movie or a movie kind of like my cat is dreaming in front of me.

[1:03:03] It's very cute.

[1:03:04] Archie is twitching like crazy.

[1:03:07] I don't know.

[1:03:08] This is one that really defies a lot for me because like I kind of –

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:13] Because you related to it so much.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:15] I mean there's stuff – like the thing is like there's stuff in here that –

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:17] Well, as a public figure, Dan, as a public figure whose search for love was very much done in the press's eye.

[1:03:24] Yeah.

[1:03:24] In the public eye.

[1:03:25] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:25] I – look.

[1:03:27] Starring Joe Pesci.

[1:03:28] There is stuff in here that legit worked for me.

[1:03:32] Like not that I thought it was particularly interesting.

[1:03:37] But I'm like, oh, these like actors are like putting in good performers and it's kind of fun to see like this like glyph's notes on someone that I don't know anything about.

[1:03:48] But all of that is so overshadowed by the weirdness of like one specific choice and a choice that like is gone halfway through the movie but still like casts a long shadow over the rest of it.

[1:04:03] I don't know.

[1:04:04] I guess I'm going to say good, bad, but maybe just watch the first hour and you've gotten enough of it and then stop.

[1:04:13] What do you guys have to say?

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:14] I feel like if you're going to do the silly stuff, I feel like the movie – like I missed it when it was gone.

[1:04:21] It was just like a boring, very dry – it's a movie where there's like – like you said, like each time there's any kind of conflict or any kind of setback, it's resolved in like two or three minutes.

[1:04:33] Yeah.

[1:04:34] So there's nothing like – I'm never like worried at any point in the movie.

[1:04:40] I'm not like, oh, wow, I wonder what's going to happen.

[1:04:42] It's – yeah, it's – yeah, it manages to – despite having some kind of interesting scenes and some interesting performances, it just ends up being very bland.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:53] Yeah, it's very – it's –

[1:04:55] So it's bad.

[1:04:56] Bad, bad.

[1:04:56] That's a bad, bad movie.

[1:04:57] I would also call it bad – I feel like there's a good version of this movie and that is essentially Coal Miner's Daughter, which is also about a woman who comes from a poor rural background and through music becomes a huge star.

[1:05:11] And it's very much about a marriage.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:12] And the secret there was – but the secret there was they put a woman's head on a baby's body.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:18] The secret there, yes, that when Loretta Lynn is a baby, Sissy Spacek's head is on her body.

[1:05:23] But that's – but it's a much more – even that, which is still a kind of like relatively full-life story, is still told with like a focus and a thrust and it helps that I love Loretta Lynn's music so much more than Celine Dion's.

[1:05:36] I'm still getting over her recent passing.

[1:05:39] But the – like there's a way to do this movie, but you've got to choose your moments and they just don't do it.

[1:05:44] So yeah, it's bad because there's this weird energy that's running through the first like third of the movie.

[1:05:50] And that energy is a grown-up playing a kid and her family because her family is the most fun part of the movie.

[1:05:56] Like there's – how there's tons of siblings and they're all a little goofy and her mom is such a big character.

[1:06:01] And all this – all of that kind of falls away and eventually just becomes almost like an acted-out documentary about Celine Dion, which is not to my taste.

[1:06:10] So yeah, I would say –

[1:06:11] A day in the life.

[1:06:12] Exactly.

[1:06:13] So if you want – so I guess maybe just read one of the many, many great biographies of Celine Dion.

[1:06:20] There – I think there was one that won the Nobel Prize.

[1:06:22] Go read that one.

[1:06:23] Mm-hmm.

[1:06:23] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:25] Okay.

[1:06:26] Sorry.

[1:06:27] I leaned back at an inopportune time.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:30] Dan had to text – he had to text a French hairdresser that he was breaking up with him.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:34] I was taking notes on things to –

[1:06:38] It's brutal.

[1:06:38] 15 years.

[1:06:39] To tweak in the edit.

[1:06:40] 15 years.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:41] And to break up by text after 15 years when – and he's on his way to a job, one of the biggest jobs of his career?

[1:06:47] Mm-hmm.

[1:06:48] You know what?

[1:06:49] What?

[1:06:49] Who does that?

[1:06:50] Who doesn't – who breaks up with a person or group of people without any warning whatsoever after years together?

[1:06:57] Who does something like that?

[1:06:58] Somebody not worth your time.

[1:07:00] Exactly.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:02] Stuart, you've probably heard about microdosing.

[1:07:05] Yep.

[1:07:05] Well, if not – well, you answered.

[1:07:08] We have.

[1:07:08] But if you were a person who hadn't heard about it, then you should know that all sorts of people are microdosing daily to feel healthier and perform better.

[1:07:17] Our show today is sponsored by Microdose Gummies.

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[1:07:32] You know, if you want to watch a movie maybe where someone's face is mapped onto a small child, I'm not going to tell you that a microdose gummy isn't going to make that a better experience.

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[1:07:52] That's F-L-O-P to get free shipping and 30% off your first order.

[1:07:57] Links can be found in the show description.

[1:07:59] But again, that is microdose.com, code FLOP.

[1:08:04] Any other in-house plugs?

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:07] As always, I will plug my two businesses.

[1:08:09] That's right.

[1:08:10] Hinterland's Bar and Minnie's Bar, both located in Brooklyn, New York.

[1:08:14] Come by, have a drink.

[1:08:16] You know, support local business.

[1:08:18] Support your favorite podcaster.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:20] And I will also plug my other podcast, the Who Was podcast.

[1:08:24] It's a quiz show for kids on iHeartRadio, but also available wherever podcasts are available.

[1:08:29] Two kids come on and answer questions about two historical figures, and we have a lot of fun with very silly stuff.

[1:08:33] The recent episodes have gotten very silly.

[1:08:36] So if you have a children or you like children and want to attract them to your house by blasting this through loudspeakers out your windows,

[1:08:43] or if you have the mind of a child, just listen to the Who Was podcast.

[1:08:47] And also, guess who's back in town?

[1:08:49] Who?

[1:08:50] The Maniac of New York.

[1:08:51] In Maniac of New York, Don't Call It a Comeback, number one coming out December 7th.

[1:08:57] Halloween is, by the time you listen to this, Halloween will be over.

[1:08:59] But we can be spooky all year round, even in the Christmastime era.

[1:09:03] So, Maniac of New York, Don't Call It a Comeback, number one comes out.

[1:09:06] December 7th, and then there's three more issues after that coming out each month.

[1:09:09] And Dan, I have some interesting, I have an interesting Celine Dion trivia right here.

[1:09:13] Oh, good.

[1:09:14] I didn't realize, My Heart Will Go On is the second best-selling physical single by a woman ever.

[1:09:20] The number one best-selling physical single by a woman is a question.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:22] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[1:09:25] I bet you can guess it.

[1:09:27] Oh, fuck.

[1:09:28] It's, what, oh, goddammit.

[1:09:30] Whitney Houston?

[1:09:32] Yes.

[1:09:33] Bodyguard soundtrack song?

[1:09:35] What's the name of the song, though?

[1:09:36] Oh, fuck.

[1:09:37] Oh, goddammit.

[1:09:39] It's, oh, god.

[1:09:39] Dolly Parton would be so ashamed of you.

[1:09:41] I will always love you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:42] Okay.

[1:09:42] Yes, I will always love you.

[1:09:43] But what seems strange to me, I'm looking at the list right now.

[1:09:46] Oh, I did it.

[1:09:46] Guys, I did it.

[1:09:47] I think I hurt myself.

[1:09:48] You did it.

[1:09:49] I'm looking at, don't, you stretched, you really pulled something.

[1:09:52] I pulled a muscle, yeah.

[1:09:53] I'm looking at the list.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:54] Celine Dion was also the biggest earner overall from 2000 to 2010 in all of entertainment or something like that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:02] Oh, she makes, I mean, she makes a huge amount of money.

[1:10:04] It was insane.

[1:10:05] But this is what struck me as strange.

[1:10:06] I'm looking at the Wikipedia list of best-selling physical singles, pre-digital, best-selling where someone had to buy a physical record.

[1:10:14] And strangely enough, both of those songs, I Will Always Love You and My Heart Will Go On, they both are below Mungo Jerry's In The Summertime.

[1:10:22] Although it says Disputed, and that is a dumb song.

[1:10:25] That song is dumb.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:27] It's an awful song.

[1:10:30] My wife gets so mad at that song every time it comes on.

[1:10:33] She complains about it to anyone within listening distance.

[1:10:36] She'll, like, grab people by the arm and drag them over so she can explain how shitty it is.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:40] I never felt closer to Charlene to hear this.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:43] So I don't know who is out there buying all these physical copies of In The Summertime, a truly loathsome song.

[1:10:49] But you know what?

[1:10:51] Stop.

[1:10:52] Just stop doing it.

S4

[1:10:57] I'm Lisa Hanawalt.

[1:10:59] And I'm Emily Heller.

[1:11:00] Wow, Emily, we've been doing this podcast for 10 years.

[1:11:03] I know.

[1:11:03] But hey, don't worry.

[1:11:04] You can jump in at literally any episode and hear us talk about some of our favorite stuff.

[1:11:09] Caterpillars becoming butterflies.

[1:11:11] Martha Stewart flying around in a private jet full of trees.

[1:11:14] Yes, you heard me right.

[1:11:15] Trees.

[1:11:16] Neighbors becoming enemies.

[1:11:18] Just kidding.

[1:11:19] Whatever messed up stuff we can find on Wikipedia.

[1:11:21] Our impeccable taste in everything from dogs to TV shows to bodily functions.

[1:11:26] And horses.

[1:11:27] Lots and lots of horses.

[1:11:28] Come for our horned up rants about the world.

[1:11:30] Stay for the catchy theme songs.

[1:11:32] You might not learn anything, but we're a good hang.

[1:11:34] Baby Geniuses.

[1:11:35] Every other week on MaximumFun.org.

[1:11:38] Baby Geniuses.

[1:11:39] Tell us something we don't know.

Jesse Thorn

[1:11:41] Hi, I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.

[1:11:43] And I'm Jordan Morris, boy detective.

[1:11:46] Our comedy podcast, Jordan, Jesse, Go!

[1:11:48] just celebrated its 15th anniversary.

[1:11:52] It was a couple months ago, but we forgot.

[1:11:54] Yeah, completely.

[1:11:56] Our silly show is 15 years old.

[1:11:59] That makes it old enough to get its learner's permit.

[1:12:02] And almost old enough to get the talk.

[1:12:04] Wow, I hope you got the talk before then.

[1:12:06] A lot of things have changed in 15 years.

[1:12:09] Our show's not one of them.

[1:12:10] We're never changing and you can't make us.

[1:12:14] Jordan, Jesse, go!

[1:12:15] The same forever at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:24] Hey, let's talk letters.

[1:12:26] Yeah, why not?

[1:12:27] You write to us sometimes and then we respond.

[1:12:30] There would be an easier way of doing it without the middle band of the podcast.

[1:12:33] But it's less about the communication, more about creating content.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:37] Content, yeah.

[1:12:37] It's all about content.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:38] Anyway, so that explains the premise of reading letters on a show.

[1:12:43] Cool.

[1:12:43] And this first one is...

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:44] But if you wanted to hear it explained in song form...

[1:12:48] Near, far, wherever you are, your letters will reach us if you send them.

[1:13:01] If you don't, you just write them and keep them.

[1:13:07] We won't get any of your letters.

[1:13:11] They won't come on.

[1:13:14] Yeah.

[1:13:14] Oh, wow.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:15] Okay, yeah.

[1:13:15] I didn't think he could hold the note, but he did it.

[1:13:17] Frank, last name with held.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:19] I mean, the note was squirming and trying to get out of my grip the entire time, so I

[1:13:22] barely held it.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:23] Frank Hennenlotter, I'm assuming.

[1:13:26] I was listening to some old episodes and 10 Cloverfield Lane was a recommendation.

[1:13:31] It got me thinking about the Cloverfield movies and how they are the perfect type of scary

[1:13:37] movie I like.

[1:13:39] Some jump, but mostly suspense, cool monster, and not just about a murderer.

[1:13:46] But the first Cloverfield movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:48] Okay, then I guess don't read Maniac of New York.

[1:13:51] Don't call it a comeback.

[1:13:52] Thanks for nothing, Frank.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:53] I mean, the monster in Cloverfield's basically just a murderer.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:59] Just a really big one.

[1:14:01] Who's the real monster, Stuart, after all the damage we've done to the earth?

[1:14:04] Hmm?

[1:14:04] Makes you think.

[1:14:05] No, you're right.

[1:14:06] You're actually right.

[1:14:07] The first Cloverfield movie derailed.

[1:14:08] When the movie ended, they go, it turns out the true monster was the Cloverfield.

[1:14:12] Yeah, well, that's what we thought.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:16] The first Cloverfield movie derailed the whole franchise for me with two shots.

[1:14:21] My wife worked at 20 Exchange Place, the building where Inside Man was filmed, about 2,000 feet

[1:14:26] from ground zero.

[1:14:27] What?

Dan McCoy

[1:14:27] And her dad worked on Wall Street.

[1:14:29] They were both at work at 9-11 and had to evacuate across the Brooklyn Bridge, having

[1:14:33] no idea where the other one was.

[1:14:35] In Cloverfield, when the monster attacks the city, there are a couple of specific shots

[1:14:39] where the destruction footage was basically lifted directly from news footage of 9-11.

[1:14:42] She almost walked out, but stuck it out.

[1:14:45] However, those shots soured the experience for both of us.

[1:14:49] Have any of you had a movie that you know you otherwise should have liked, but where a single

[1:14:54] shot, scene, or event hit a little too close to home and ruined the whole thing?

[1:14:59] Frank, last name withheld.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:04] You guys have any?

[1:15:05] Yeah.

[1:15:05] It's actually funny because Cloverfield was, I remember seeing it in the theater shortly

[1:15:11] after the blackout in New York.

[1:15:14] And I remember the behavior of New Yorkers during that blackout was so chill and supportive

[1:15:21] mostly.

[1:15:22] I feel like everybody was like, okay, lights are out.

[1:15:26] There's no power.

[1:15:27] And people were partying outside, but it was relatively chill, at least in lower Manhattan.

[1:15:35] But in Cloverfield, it's like as soon as stuff happens, people immediately start looting

[1:15:39] everything.

[1:15:40] And I'm like, that doesn't seem accurate to the New York that I now live in.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:46] Yeah.

[1:15:50] I was about to answer the question, then I found myself pausing, thinking, did Stuart answer

[1:15:56] the question?

[1:15:59] But I'll stop calling him out and give my answer, which is that Stuart's face right now.

[1:16:06] He is not happy.

[1:16:09] Staring angrily off into the middle distance.

[1:16:12] No, I mean, I think that part of the thing is like-

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:14] He's trying to find a hitman on the dark web to kill Dan McCoy.

[1:16:19] Kill me?

[1:16:21] Why don't you just hire someone to like punch me or something?

[1:16:24] It seems like a lot of work to go onto the dark web just to punch you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:27] I mean, he could do that himself.

[1:16:29] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:32] No, I mean, the thing is, I don't know that I've had-

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:34] That's a funny sketch.

[1:16:36] If someone's-

[1:16:37] They contact a hitman on the dark web.

[1:16:39] How much does it cost?

[1:16:40] I hate my boss.

[1:16:40] How much would it cost to kill him?

[1:16:42] $100,000.

[1:16:43] Ooh, that's steep.

[1:16:44] What about just to punch him in the face?

[1:16:46] I don't know, like $400?

[1:16:48] Yeah, let's just do that.

[1:16:49] Let's just do that.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:51] I'm going to anger Stuart even more by not precisely answering it after making such fun of him.

[1:17:00] Wow.

[1:17:01] Because I've been fortunate enough not to have, like, I think a big enough trauma that, like, I have that reaction to a moment in movies.

[1:17:09] It's more of the classic, like, that's not what it's like thing that bothers me.

[1:17:15] Like, I saw Late Night, the Mindy Kaling movie about working on a late night comedy show.

[1:17:23] And I was like, I think if I was a normal person, I would find this, like, totally pleasant.

[1:17:28] But as someone who has done this for a decade, it baffles me how incredibly wrong everything is, especially from someone who works in television.

[1:17:39] So that's a slightly different thing, but it's where my mind went.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:42] Here I lie, bleeding and broken from Dan's vicious barbs.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:48] And yet, does Dan answer the question accurately?

[1:17:51] No, no one cares.

[1:17:54] It appears that some animals are more equal than others.

[1:17:57] There's two sets of laws for answering questions.

[1:18:01] I will answer the question not exactly, but I think closer than either of you did.

[1:18:06] See, we're ramping up.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:08] That's, you know, added up to a pattern.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:11] Sure, that's the secret behind jokes.

[1:18:15] It's all wheels within wheels.

[1:18:17] So I don't know that I've had a movie.

[1:18:20] There are probably movies that kind of hit – I feel like there's movies that have kind of like nerd characters, angry nerd characters, who are a little too close to the bad side of my personality.

[1:18:29] And so I didn't like – I was repelled from those movies.

[1:18:32] But what I want to say is this is not the exact thing, but – because these are not movies that I never liked or that were ruined for me.

[1:18:40] But this is a very sad story.

[1:18:42] But years ago, a coworker of mine died.

[1:18:45] And the method of their death was kind of in a way reflected by scenes in two movies that I saw in the theater shortly thereafter.

[1:18:55] And I found myself really having – these are – and one was a movie I had seen many times before that I was seeing in a revival house on one of my – it was a very early date with The Woman Who's Now My Wife.

[1:19:05] And the other was a movie I hadn't seen before, but it was a remake of – so I kind of knew this kind of thing was in it.

[1:19:10] But I didn't expect to – it was for some reason I didn't expect a real event to be mirrored that way in a fictional event in a way that really hurt me in the moment.

[1:19:20] And I've had a lot of trouble staying and sitting through those movies.

[1:19:23] Now, I love movies, so I ended up just pushing my way through it.

[1:19:26] But it made it very difficult.

[1:19:27] And so I feel like that was – I would tell the story in more detail, but I kind of feel like I don't want to bring the rest of the episode down.

[1:19:33] But I get what you're saying that there's something in it that – and in the case of Cloverfield, they're very much playing off of those memories in the same way that the Spielberg War of the Worlds, they're very much playing off of September 11th.

[1:19:46] And when I saw that, it made the movie more frightening to me.

[1:19:48] I was like, this is much more frightening than I thought this movie was going to be because I remember that day and I remember the ways it mirrored this.

[1:19:54] But just that like you can be watching something –

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:56] And you're like, I don't believe that Tom Cruise is a union stevedore, but I guess I'll go along with it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:03] And also the fact that at the very end, they're like, we're reunited.

[1:20:07] It's a happy ending.

[1:20:08] And it was like, ugh.

[1:20:09] Like a lot of people died in this movie.

[1:20:12] But the –

[1:20:12] Not to mention all the aliens.

[1:20:14] Yeah.

[1:20:15] Not to mention those poor aliens.

[1:20:17] So – but that idea that you can be watching something and it can make a connection in your mind either advertently or inadvertently that affects you emotionally and kind of makes –

[1:20:27] throws – casts a different light on the experience.

[1:20:29] I get what you're saying.

[1:20:30] Both of those movies that I watched in that situation, which were Vertigo and the Peter Jackson King Kong, both of those I later watched again.

[1:20:38] And I think because it was farther from the original event.

[1:20:42] They did not have as much of that effect on me.

[1:20:44] But in a way, the memory of that – those movies are both not stained, but there's always that – it's a little bit like the crystal and dark crystal.

[1:20:53] It gets – one of the shards darkens at different points.

[1:20:56] And it's almost like that.

[1:20:58] It added a different emotional level to those movies that I did not expect going in.

[1:21:02] But thankfully, it didn't ruin either of them because Vertigo, I think, is a brilliant movie that I love.

[1:21:06] And the Peter Jackson King Kong is a fun movie that's just way too long.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:09] This next letter is from Patrick, last name withheld host of the original cast podcaster.

[1:21:18] Not familiar.

[1:21:19] Yeah.

[1:21:20] Just kidding.

[1:21:21] Hey, Peaches.

[1:21:23] I'm teaching screenwriting to grad student playwrights this spring at University Withheld.

[1:21:28] The course focuses on story structure, so I'm giving the students movies to watch on their own and then break down their beats.

[1:21:36] We've got a good mix of classics like The Apartment and Casablanca mixed with more modern films like Minari and Everything Everywhere All at Once.

[1:21:44] The problem is I'd like to throw some genre films in the mix, especially horror, but I'm sorely lacking in this department.

[1:21:51] I've got action films covered, Die Hard and Shaft's Big Score, but no horror other than The Silence of the Lambs.

[1:21:57] Can you guys recommend some horror and or sci-fi films that are great examples of story structure for my students?

[1:22:04] Love the show.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:06] Patrick, last name withheld.

[1:22:09] I'm going to jump right in there.

[1:22:10] I think, obviously, the original Castle Freak.

[1:22:14] Follow that up with Head of the Family.

[1:22:16] Your students will freak.

[1:22:17] Top that off with The Invisible Maniac, which I think Vinegar Syndrome is just putting out a Blu-ray of, though this isn't a plug.

[1:22:24] That's not a sponsor thing.

[1:22:25] And then if you can track it down, why not watch The Granny?

[1:22:28] There's four movies.

[1:22:29] Boom.

[1:22:30] Class dismissed.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:35] Are you dismissing class before they watch the movies?

[1:22:37] Uh-huh.

[1:22:38] They're dismissed to go home.

[1:22:39] Well, they've got to go home to watch the movies.

[1:22:40] They've got to watch it in class.

[1:22:42] Oh, okay.

[1:22:42] Fair point.

[1:22:43] Fair point.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:44] Watch the movies on their iPhones in the middle of class.

[1:22:46] I was like, what the fuck?

Dan McCoy

[1:22:49] I – so here's other answers.

[1:22:52] Alien, I think, is probably a pretty good one.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:54] That's my number one, yeah, that I was going to say.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:56] I think that – I mean, there's – the thing is like – it depends on what you're looking for because there's stuff where it's like, oh, I want to teach you sort of a classic screenwriting structure.

[1:23:06] Or I want to teach you something that subverts it or plays with it in some way.

[1:23:12] Because like even something like Alien, which is, I think, very carefully structured.

[1:23:16] Like, you know, if you were seeing that for the first time, you wouldn't know who the hero is at the beginning of the movie.

[1:23:24] You know, people watching it for the first time probably by default were like, okay, Tom Skerritt is our hero in this film.

[1:23:31] And then Sigourney Weaver is the survivor.

[1:23:35] You know, so it doesn't do kind of some of the stuff that people would tell you to do today maybe in terms of like really establishing like a clear focus.

[1:23:47] But it's all the better for it.

[1:23:49] Elliot's looking at me quizzically.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:51] But I think that –

[1:23:52] I mean, I think that that's – I don't know that that's – I think – no, no, it's just a different idea of what good structure is, I think.

[1:23:58] Yeah.

[1:23:59] I think that Alien is – to me is a great structure plot-wise because of the way it builds on scenarios.

[1:24:06] And it does – and literally Dan O'Bannon, there's a book on his screenplay structure where the idea is to keep kind of like shocking or surprising the audience in builds so that they can't get too comfortable.

[1:24:20] But also there's always something new coming up to kind of keep pulling them through it.

[1:24:23] And I think the way that Alien – I think Alien is basically as far as that kind of movie can go, it's basically perfect.

[1:24:29] Like it's hard for me to think of anything that you could change in it other than I guess allowing Sigourney Weaver to keep her pants on at the end.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:35] I want to clarify that I'm not saying it's bad structure.

[1:24:38] I'm just saying that in a teaching situation, often you're looking for something that kind of is like the – I don't know.

[1:24:48] Like this is the er structure, you know?

[1:24:51] And like things that deviate from it in one way or other, just like you got to call that out.

[1:24:55] But like I think that Alien is all the richer for not making a clear sort of telegraphed like this is our survivor at the beginning.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:04] I think it's the difference between – I guess it depends on what you mean by structure.

[1:25:09] I mean if it's the like Robert McKee type structure, then it should have started with Ripley leaving her house, high-fiving a black person to show that she's cool and we can like her.

[1:25:20] She should have saved that cat at the beginning of the movie.

[1:25:23] Exactly.

[1:25:23] Saved the cat at the beginning so we know she's good and then we can follow her through the rest of it.

[1:25:28] But then you're also not going to like Dan the other movie I was going to mention, which is The Thing, which I think is also – is a really well-structured movie.

[1:25:35] Because if you look at – if you don't assume that structure has to be let me introduce my protagonist.

[1:25:41] Let me introduce why they're likable.

[1:25:43] Let me then follow them clearly and follow only their character arc.

[1:25:47] If instead you're looking at structure as how you lay in information dramatically and then pay it off dramatically for like a satisfying story experience, I think both of those movies do that incredibly well.

[1:25:59] And they do it in a way that – I think in Alien, Ripley is not necessarily like the – she's – again, by the end, she's the hero.

[1:26:06] But not necessarily the main character.

[1:26:07] But at the same time, even though it's not made super clear, if you watch it again afterwards, it's very clear where she stands in relation with the other people there and why she stands out from them.

[1:26:17] So even though the movie is not calling attention to it, the character arc is still in there.

[1:26:21] But it's also not one of those ones where it's like she had to learn that at the beginning we see that she doesn't spend enough time with her family.

[1:26:29] And by the end, she spends time with her family.

[1:26:31] You know, that kind of stuff.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:32] And I want to make it clear.

[1:26:34] I'm not saying these things.

[1:26:35] No, no.

[1:26:35] I don't think you're saying that.

[1:26:37] I'm saying that there is a generic sort of like version of Hollywood story structure that exists out there.

[1:26:43] And so if that's one thing that you're looking for, you have to recognize when there are differences.

[1:26:48] Although you make it interesting – like it's interesting to bring up the thing.

[1:26:51] Like I do think that that is a type of story that we see less of these days that I would like to see more of, you know, that thing in Alien where the hero emerges from a group over time rather than it just being like the movie holding her hand and being like this is the person that we're following.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:10] Also, I wish more movies had like a gross fucking thing hanging out and killing people.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:14] Well, that goes without saying.

[1:27:16] We all wish they had gross things.

[1:27:19] But there's a – I don't know what I was going to say about structure.

[1:27:26] And – oh, wait.

[1:27:26] That – I think both those movies help with avoiding – they play into a little bit but not entirely.

[1:27:32] I used to get mad.

[1:27:34] There were all those videos that were on YouTube that were like every movie is the same movie.

[1:27:37] We broke down the structure to show every story is the same story.

[1:27:40] Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman.

[1:27:43] They're all the same movie.

[1:27:45] Every movie is the same.

[1:27:46] It's like, well, there's a lot of different ways to tell a movie that are not Indiana Jones or Star Wars or Batman.

[1:27:50] Like there's lots of – there's lots of other ways to do it.

[1:27:52] Like I guess –

[1:27:53] Tokyo Story, My Dinner with Andre, Claire's D.

[1:27:56] The 400 Glows.

[1:27:57] They're all the same.

[1:27:59] Jules and Jim, Last Year at Marion Bad, Three Godfathers, Tokyo Godfathers.

[1:28:07] They're all the same movie.

[1:28:10] Wax, Discovery of Television Among the Bees.

[1:28:12] It's all the same.

[1:28:13] Metnook of the North.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:15] Uncle Boon B who can recall his past lives.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:18] I was a simple man.

[1:28:20] All these things.

[1:28:21] I think so it's a – I think you owe it to your students to show them Hollywood movies that aren't exactly those things.

[1:28:29] Yeah, yeah.

[1:28:29] So you can then start interviewing –

[1:28:30] Because there is a structure to – I mean – and that's the issue.

[1:28:32] Don't show them – don't show them Eileen because Eileen has no structure.

[1:28:36] That's the problem is that instead of being a structured movie, it's just kind of like – it's like a child telling a story.

[1:28:42] And then, and then, and then, and then, and then.

[1:28:45] And you're like, all right, where is this going?

[1:28:47] I don't understand.

[1:28:47] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:48] No, I think you just – I think that you should just have them watch as many movies that do interesting things with a screenplay as you can.

[1:28:57] Because like, I don't know, like you get into things like – there's stuff that's like very like classically structured in a way that is sort of – you understand.

[1:29:06] Like this is a story.

[1:29:07] This is a Hollywood story.

[1:29:08] And then there's stuff that like in terms of horror, for instance, like seeing Barbarian this year.

[1:29:13] Like I love the way that screenplay works, but it works very clearly in part because it is breaking structure.

[1:29:20] It is like leading you to believe it is under one structure and then it's a different one.

[1:29:26] And then you have to – but like that is something that you get to after understanding maybe like the basics of movies because it doesn't affect you the same way.

[1:29:33] If this is the first movie you have ever seen in your life, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:37] I don't know if –

[1:29:37] That would be funny if Barbarian was the first person anyone – the first movie anyone ever saw in their life.

[1:29:41] What a crazy movie.

[1:29:41] Oh, so this is how movies work.

[1:29:43] All movies are like this, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:45] This is the way movies are.

[1:29:46] That would be so funny.

[1:29:48] It's like a very simple version of Dogtooth.

[1:29:51] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:53] All the movies are like this.

[1:29:54] They're all like this.

[1:29:55] They all have Justin Long in them?

[1:29:56] Yes, all of them.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:57] I remember reading a tweet where somebody got out of a screening of Teton and a guy was telling his

[1:30:03] date, he was like, yeah, all French movies are like this.

[1:30:06] They're crazy.

[1:30:10] Oh, man.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:12] Okay.

[1:30:12] Well, this is –

[1:30:13] In all French movies, someone's belly is ripped open by a metal sphere.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:18] Yeah.

[1:30:18] It's adorable.

[1:30:19] That's what birth is like, Elliot.

[1:30:21] It's trying to have kids.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:23] French babies are all chrome?

[1:30:25] Yeah.

[1:30:25] All French babies are chrome.

[1:30:26] That's why it seems weird to us.

[1:30:27] So that's why he's not freaked out when he delivers the baby.

[1:30:31] Exactly.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:33] Spoilers for Teton, I guess.

[1:30:35] It's time to recommend some movies you can watch instead of Aline.

[1:30:41] We just got out of October, Shocktober, the horror season.

[1:30:47] I went to dismember the Alamo, the marathon at the Alamo Draft House.

[1:30:53] And I want to recommend my favorite of the films I watched there, Paganini Horror, which –

[1:31:01] Paganini Horror?

[1:31:03] Paganini Horror.

[1:31:04] Have you not seen this one?

[1:31:05] No.

[1:31:05] This would be right up your alley.

[1:31:08] So this is one of these movies that, you know, exists in the liminal space between, like, a horror movie that I'm enjoying on its merits because it's, like, bright and fun and does wild stuff and is also, like, bad because of production elements.

[1:31:27] It's a movie that –

[1:31:28] Oh, yeah.

[1:31:29] This looks good.

[1:31:29] I believe –

[1:31:30] Oh, wow.

[1:31:31] I believe from what I can tell is a film that was, you know, spoken on set in English by Italian actors and then, like, they had American actors maybe dub over that so it was without an accent or something to that effect.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:46] It's possible.

[1:31:47] I mean, Italian movies, even at that time, were still mostly – they rarely recorded sound on set anyway.

[1:31:53] Ah.

[1:31:53] Yeah.

[1:31:54] So most of Italian film history, they would post-record that.

[1:31:58] So even movies in Italian would be dubbed, basically.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:00] Well, I'm just saying, like, the lip motion appears to match the words but not quite.

[1:32:07] So it's one of those – and the screenplay is very literal-minded, perhaps a screenplay one imagines maybe that was written to be performed in English by a non-English speaker.

[1:32:20] So everything that happens in the movie is being explained very literally at all moments in a way that, like, makes it feel like Dan Brown wrote a Goosebomb book.

[1:32:29] Like, it's like, okay.

[1:32:32] And it's like this wild plot about this old scrap of Paganini music for piano, I guess, that, like, they then adapt into a song.

[1:32:44] Uh-huh.

[1:32:45] But then that song has, like, nefarious – because, like, they, like, buy it from a character that's obviously coded to be the devil.

[1:32:53] Like, Donald Pleasant shows up with a 666 briefcase, a briefcase where the – that's the combination to the lock.

[1:33:01] That sounds great.

[1:33:01] Anyway, you get a sense of the vibes I'm talking about here.

[1:33:05] And it's just – it's just very – like, especially with an audience.

[1:33:08] If you see this, this is a good one to get some of your goof-minded friends around and watch this.

[1:33:14] It was a lot of fun.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:15] Yeah, it looks great.

[1:33:16] I'm going to recommend a movie that is playing in select cities right now, or maybe not, depending on when you listen to this episode.

[1:33:23] I'm going to recommend the new movie from our boy Park Chan-wook.

[1:33:28] The movie is called Decision to Leave.

[1:33:31] It is, I think, a little bit sweeter than some of his other movies.

[1:33:35] Well, this is a film adaptation of the show I Think You Should Leave, right?

[1:33:38] Uh-huh.

[1:33:39] Exactly.

[1:33:40] Wait.

[1:33:41] Yes.

[1:33:42] The – it is a story about a detective who is investigating a murder, and he – his life becomes more complicated

[1:33:53] when he meets the widow of the dead man, and it is great, and it's funny, and it's kind of less of a thriller than a lot of his other stuff,

[1:34:06] but it's very hot, and it's great, and I liked it a lot.

[1:34:12] Yeah, it was great.

[1:34:13] Thumbs up.

[1:34:14] Decision to Leave.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:15] Check that shit out.

[1:34:16] And I'm going to recommend a Japanese movie from 1998.

[1:34:20] This is a movie called After Life, written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, and this is a movie where it posits that when you die,

[1:34:31] you go to a facility where you are interviewed about your memories, and then you get to choose one memory,

[1:34:37] and the people who work there make a movie of it.

[1:34:40] You watch the movie, and then that's your existence for the rest of eternity is just reliving that memory.

[1:34:45] And so we follow a few different people who are either running through their memories trying to choose the right one or having trouble choosing a memory,

[1:34:53] and we meet the people who actually have to sit down and figure out how to make these as movies.

[1:35:00] And I found it to be a very beautiful movie and a very moving movie and funny at times but also very sweet at times.

[1:35:05] And there's nothing – for a movie that's about the afterlife, it's also super matter-of-fact and straightforward.

[1:35:12] And part of the fun parts is when they're like, okay, this guy's memory is about flying a plane,

[1:35:17] so I guess we've got to figure out how to, you know, Wes Anderson and Rushmore kind of like be kind, rewind,

[1:35:23] figure out how to make it feel like we're shooting a movie where a plane is flying.

[1:35:26] And so it's a – it was just a really good movie, and I found it to be just a very positive experience.

[1:35:37] So that's afterlife, and I watched it on the Criterion channel.

[1:35:41] I think it's still available there.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:43] Man, that's three very similar recommendations.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:48] Dan, I'm looking at – wait, I want to say looking up – I was looking at the Wikipedia entry for Paganini Horror,

[1:35:54] and it says in it that it was prefaced on the idea that the Klaus Kinski biopic Paganini was going to be a huge hit,

[1:36:00] so they had to have a horror rip-off version of it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:36:02] That's hilarious.

[1:36:05] Oh.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:06] Oh.

[1:36:07] Well, and I think – I'm pretty sure that Paganini Horror is more widely remembered at this point.

[1:36:14] Yeah.

[1:36:16] Okay.

[1:36:16] Well, you know, Elaine.

[1:36:19] Elaine?

[1:36:20] Elaine?

[1:36:20] I already forget.

[1:36:21] Elaine?

[1:36:23] Elaine.

[1:36:24] Elaine.

[1:36:24] Here's where we leave you, Elaine.

[1:36:25] It's been nice knowing you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:28] For new listeners, Dan always personally addresses the film.

[1:36:32] Yeah.

[1:36:32] And bids very well.

[1:36:33] Very warmly.

[1:36:34] Thank you for her.

[1:36:35] This is actually a very sweet ritual.

[1:36:37] I think we should do this.

[1:36:38] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:38] You were only in our life a short time, but you brought the three of us together.

[1:36:43] So much joy, yeah.

[1:36:44] So thank you, and thanks to you, our listeners.

[1:36:47] Thanks to Maximum Fun.

[1:36:49] Go to MaximumFun.org.

[1:36:51] See all the other shows on our podcast network.

[1:36:55] They aren't just, you know, faceless overlords.

[1:36:57] They're nice people.

[1:36:58] Check them out.

[1:36:58] And thank you to Alex Smith, who edits and mixes the show and does his own stuff under the name Howl Doughty, which is also his handle on Twitter.

[1:37:12] We were just on his fast track.

[1:37:13] We put out a song about a sexy xenomorph that I have sent to friends who surprised.

[1:37:21] I could hear the surprise tone in the text back said, this is a real song.

[1:37:25] That's the thing, it's like it's a goofy, dumb song about a sexy xenomorph, but it's also really well done thanks to Alex Smith.

[1:37:35] He made it.

[1:37:36] He made it.

[1:37:37] Pretty funky.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:38] Yeah, he did.

[1:37:39] Guys, I actually have some exciting news I wanted to break.

[1:37:42] I sent a tape of that song to this manager, and he loves it, and he wants to marry all of us.

[1:37:49] Oh, that's amazing.

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:50] Even though we're all 12 years old?

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:52] Yes, but don't worry, we're grown men whose heads are on 12-year-old bodies, so it's okay.

[1:37:57] So it's not weird then.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:58] Yeah.

[1:37:58] No, no, no.

[1:37:59] All right, well, thank you for listening.

[1:38:01] For The Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:38:02] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:38:04] Je suis Elliot Kalin, French again.

[1:38:05] Au revoir.

[1:38:06] Au revoir.

[1:38:07] Bye.

[1:38:08] Bye.

[1:38:11] All our bases are covered.

[1:38:12] All three bases.

[1:38:14] All three bases belong to us.

[1:38:15] For the purpose of this, home is not counted as a base.

[1:38:18] No, no.

[1:38:18] Home is just an idea.

[1:38:20] It's a concept.

[1:38:20] Home is a state of mind.

[1:38:21] It's where the heart is.

[1:38:22] It is?

[1:38:23] It's where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there.

[1:38:25] That's where I left it.

[1:38:27] San Francisco?

[1:38:28] Mm-hmm.

[1:38:28] Okay, well, Stuart lives in San Francisco now, guys.

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:32] Molaram took out my heart and put it in San Francisco.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:35] Put it in an almost.

[1:38:36] Just wrote to San Francisco.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:39] Do you think that's what happened to Tony Bennett?

[1:38:41] Mm-hmm.

[1:38:42] Yeah, the original version was a duet with Molaram.

[1:38:46] I left your heart in San Francisco.

[1:38:48] And then they, you know, there was tensions between the two of them, and Tony Bennett ended

[1:38:52] up just recording it on his own.

[1:38:53] Yeah, eventually broke up.

[1:38:56] But then Molaram told that story to Paul Schrader, and it became the inspiration for the movie

[1:38:59] Heart Beeps.

Jesse Thorn

[1:39:03] Filmfund.org.

[1:39:05] Comedy and culture.

[1:39:06] Artist owned.

[1:39:07] Audience supported.

Ep. #382 - Aline

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