Ep. #382 - Aline

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

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

[0:06] That's right, everybody, French Canada is in the house.

[0:09] Regular Canada, need not apply.

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

[0:37] I am Dan McCoy.

[0:40] I am Stewart Wellington.

[0:41] Et je suis Elliot Caillon.

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

[0:46] Oh, ho, ho.

[0:48] Oh, ho, ho.

[0:49] Oh, ho, ho.

[0:50] Oh, ho, ho.

[0:51] Oh, ho, ho.

[0:52] And that's it.

[0:53] I should be the center of our French.

[0:54] Guys, I'm uncomfortable.

[0:55] I am so glad that after the chaos of Small Timber, the madness of Shocktober, we get

[1:03] around to watching a normal-style movie where a 50-odd-year-old woman is turned into a 12-year-old

[1:10] kid and she sings in Canadian a bunch.

[1:13] I would explain...

[1:14] It's in French.

[1:15] It's French.

[1:16] It's called French.

[1:17] That's them?

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

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

[1:21] I thought they sounded alike.

[1:23] What are you guys watching?

[1:24] I said, I want to watch this movie, Aline.

[1:28] And it's the story of Celine Dion, but they didn't get her life rights.

[1:32] And then she cut me off right away.

[1:34] She's like, it's a Jackie Jorp Jorp.

[1:35] And I'm like, yeah, it's a dirty rock-style Jackie Jorp Jorp situation.

[1:42] Where it's clearly not even hidden that it's about Celine Dion, but they don't...

[1:47] She's Aline.

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

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

[1:53] I don't know what happens in the movie, but she sings My Heart Will Go On.

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

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

[2:03] It's such a weird...

[2:04] It's not really a Romana Clef at that point.

[2:09] No, no.

[2:10] It's just a Romana Roman.

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

[2:15] It's such a weird misshapen mishmash of a movie.

[2:19] And the fact that they're like, this isn't...

[2:20] At the very opening, it says, this is based 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 very...

[2:31] The other wild thing about that that you're making me think of, Elliot, is 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 a few

[2:50] personal road bumps along the way, but of the kind that are normal to most lives.

[2:58] Of the kinds that are not really the fodder for a dramatic film, but who disagrees with

[3:03] us, the French, because this movie was nominated for four Césaire Awards, including Best Film.

[3:11] And the lead actress, Valérie Lemissier, she won Best Actress.

[3:17] Writer, director, star of the movie?

[3:19] That's right.

[3:21] Quadruple threat.

[3:22] Writer, director, star, sniper, Valérie Lemissier.

[3:28] She doesn't do that in the movie, but just in her...

[3:29] And she's someone who...

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

[3:33] And I've seen her.

[3:34] She was a...

[3:36] She previously won a Césaire, or Césaire, how do you pronounce it, Dan?

[3:39] I think it's César.

[3:40] César.

[3:41] For the movie, The Visitors, in 1993, which I remember seeing in the 90s.

[3:46] It's a comedy with Jean Reno, a time travel comedy with Jean Reno, and they did an English

[3:49] language remake.

[3:50] Oh, right.

[3:51] So this is someone who I've...

[3:52] I think that's the only other thing I've seen of hers.

[3:55] So she comes into this as such a...

[3:58] She is very much the auteur behind this movie, but to an American viewer, it might as well

[4:02] be...

[4:03] She might as well be Neil Breen.

[4:04] Yeah.

[4:05] In terms of...

[4:06] But except the movie's budget is big, or sizable.

[4:09] I mean, she's a quite successful director in France, as well as a comedian and actor.

[4:16] And I will say that once the movie grows her up into full-size Céline Dion, she does

[4:21] a great job at capturing the vibe of Céline Dion.

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

[4:29] Yeah, a little bit.

[4:30] And also, when you trade in...

[4:35] I would prefer an entire movie where a 50-odd-year-old woman plays a 12-year-old than a movie where

[4:41] somebody does a passable Céline Dion impression.

[4:44] Sure, sure.

[4:45] Yeah, it loses a little bit of excitement when she grows up and stops playing a child.

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

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

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

[5:05] Yeah.

[5:06] I mean, or back in the day, I think SNL did a lot of Céline Dion impressions.

[5:10] Oh, okay.

[5:12] Who was the cast member who did that, Dan?

[5:14] Oh, God.

[5:15] I would have no idea.

[5:16] Andrea Martin, maybe?

[5:17] Was it that far back?

[5:18] Was she ever on SNL or just SCTV?

[5:19] That's a good question.

[5:20] Oh, maybe she was on SNL.

[5:21] Hold on.

[5:22] Oh, you know what?

[5:23] I'm thinking of Lorraine Newman.

[5:24] Did she also play Céline Dion?

[5:25] No, neither of them did.

[5:26] This part of the conversation is going nowhere, so I'm going to skip backwards to an earlier

[5:27] part where we're talking about what we know about Céline Dion.

[5:28] And I think...

[5:29] Let's get back to what we do on this podcast.

[5:30] On this podcast, we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[5:31] Sure.

[5:32] But Stuart asked the right question.

[5:33] I would say that Beyond My Heart Will Go On, and I guess I didn't know All By Myself

[5:34] was...

[5:35] Is that her originally?

[5:36] I didn't like...

[5:37] Or is that...

[5:38] I don't think so.

[5:39] Okay.

[5:40] But let's take a look.

[5:41] Oh, no.

[5:42] It's her.

[5:43] It's her.

[5:44] It's her.

[5:45] It's her.

[5:46] It's her.

[5:47] It's her.

[5:48] It's her.

[5:49] It's her.

[5:50] It's her.

[5:51] It's her.

[5:52] It's her.

[5:53] It's her.

[5:54] It's her.

[5:55] It's her.

[5:56] It's her.

[5:57] It's her.

[5:58] It's her.

[5:59] Let's take a look.

[6:00] It's her.

[6:01] It's her.

[6:02] It's her.

[6:03] It's her.

[6:04] It's her.

[6:05] It's her.

[6:06] It's her.

[6:07] It's her.

[6:08] Yeah.

[6:09] So, let's see.

[6:10] Doing some...

[6:11] Hold on a sec.

[6:12] Doing a little bit of online detective work.

[6:13] I will say that...

[6:14] No, it's originally Eric Karman.

[6:15] And then...

[6:16] And then Celine Dion did a version of it that was also very popular.

[6:17] I mean, she...

[6:18] I just...

[6:19] And I guess the song is...

[6:20] This is...

[6:21] The verse is based on the second movement of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.

[6:24] 2 in C minor.

[6:25] So, really, it's a Rachmaninoff song, All By Myself.

[6:27] Yeah, yeah.

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

[6:30] Uh-huh.

[6:31] But that's what he would say during his radio DJ days, he goes, you can't spell Rachmaninoff

[6:36] without rock.

[6:37] Now, here's the leg zip.

[6:38] Yeah.

[6:39] Here's Rachmaninoff.

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

[6:41] Go on, Dan.

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

[6:45] Don't turn that radio Rachmaninoff, because we're gonna be Rachmaninoff all day with the

[6:49] biggest hits.

[6:50] Okay.

[6:51] Anyway.

[6:52] Celine Dion has not been, you know, as big a part of culture lately because she's had,

[6:56] you know, health problems that have made her withdraw a little bit more.

[7:00] Like, she doesn't publicly perform, but, like, I feel like, you know, having lived through

[7:06] the peak Celine Dion, we should talk a little bit about it and be like, like, she was like

[7:10] a ubiquitous cultural figure, even though none of us can mention, like, really, like,

[7:15] know much about her.

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

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

[7:18] No, I mean, I don't...

[7:19] I mean, I think that it also...

[7:20] The time when she was...

[7:21] I mean, I think it's totally cool for us to not know that much about Celine Dion going

[7:26] into this, because it's not a form of music we're that excited about.

[7:29] And she was...

[7:30] Well...

[7:31] And in America, she had a...

[7:32] She had a brief moment where she was everywhere.

[7:35] And then she had her Las Vegas residency, but in Canada and in the French language world,

[7:39] she has been a star for decades and decades and decades.

[7:42] Like, she's...

[7:43] Yeah.

[7:44] She's a...

[7:45] They treat her in this movie kind of like Princess Diana.

[7:48] And I wonder if that's really the place she had in the French-Canadian imagination, you

[7:52] know, basically, as kind of their emissary to the world, and also the princess fairytale

[7:57] 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 impact the...

[8:03] You were listening to too much Bon Jovi to...

[8:05] No, exactly.

[8:06] It was...

[8:07] Back then, we just listened to the four Bs, Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, and

[8:14] also the big band sounds of Tommy Dorsey.

[8:17] Yep, the big bopper, yeah.

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

[8:22] Uh-huh.

[8:23] Yep.

[8:24] Yep, because the parkway was right there, the turnpike, yeah.

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

[8:31] Yeah, of course.

[8:32] Because that was about New Jersey, because that song's about New Jersey.

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

[8:36] And of course, you ain't seen nothing yet, because it has a part that goes, ba-ba-ba-baby,

[8:40] you just ain't seen no-no-no-nothing yet.

[8:41] On The Sopranos, why do you think they're at the Vaughn of Bing?

[8:43] Because it's Bs.

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

[8:45] Do you think what happened in the studio...

[8:46] Unboken?

[8:48] Man versus B, that's the story of New Jersey.

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

[8:53] like, ba-ba-ba-baby?

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

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

[8:59] That was on ba-ba-ba-behind the music, yeah.

[9:02] To go backwards, to clarify, I wasn't taking this as a task for not knowing Celine Dion.

[9:08] I think it's perfectly reasonable that three men of our age would have not...

[9:13] Like, that would have not been the music we were listening to, which is not...

[9:16] I know her biggest hit.

[9:17] Which is not anything against her.

[9:19] She's obviously a very talented vocalist, but it was not...

[9:23] You're really worried that the Celine Dion stans are going to come after us on Twitter?

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

[9:28] They're called Dioniacs.

[9:30] I think we all listen to wide swaths of things that are not necessarily...

[9:36] Particularly now.

[9:38] Stewart was texting me, and he was like, there's new Carly Rae Jepsen.

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

[9:45] So I'm not being like...

[9:47] I just want to make it clear, 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 Titanic.

[9:54] And she was almost immediately kind of a camp figure.

[9:58] Like a bit of...

[10:00] She was one of these very popular stars who was taken down by music critics for being too schmaltzy or whatever in a time where that was seen as a negative.

[10:13] I think that now there's been a turn in the pop culture criticism where we're not so much just dismissing things because they have emotionality or whatever.

[10:22] This is a larger discussion, but I think that that kind of music-critical establishment no longer exists.

[10:30] That's the other thing.

[10:31] 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] But in my mind, in the 90s, it was like, okay, Celine Dion is listened to by the same people who listen to Barbra Streisand, Andrea Bocelli, the suburban moms that I knew in the neighborhood.

[10:52] So it was like I'm not going to listen to their music.

[10:54] I'm busy listening to Shadowy Man on a Shadowy Planet, a Canadian surf guitar group I only knew because of a sketch comedy show, and I think they had already broken up before I started listening to them.

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

[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 here a little bit more.

[11:21] And also I want to say that this is exciting that we're finally inaugurating the first episode of House 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 before.

[11:35] We could just say Chez Flop.

[11:37] I think that that takes care of –

[11:39] All right.

[11:40] I mean that's not as exciting to me, but okay.

[11:43] Chez Flop.

[11:44] Yeah.

[11:45] 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 that's true.

[11:52] Because I watch a lot of foreign movies, and so if I was like, finally, a movie for me.

[11:56] Oh, wait a minute.

[11:57] No, it's not.

[11:58] So we open up.

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

[12:08] I had to actually read the film.

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

[12:17] I'm glad that didn't happen.

[12:18] Okay.

[12:19] Thank you.

[12:20] So we start with an opening text warning that says,

[12:22] The film is inspired by the life of Celine Dion but is 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 in an all-white bed in an all-white room, and there's children sleeping around her.

[12:38] Then this chilling vision of the future is quickly superseded by a vision of the past.

[12:44] And even more chilling vision.

[12:46] It's Quebec 1932.

[12:48] We're in a kind of rural poor area.

[12:50] 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.

[12:59] There are parts where you really have to pay close attention just to pick up what's being told in the moment.

[13:03] 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.

[13:09] 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, 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 now suddenly we're on the wife's life.

[13:23] Her name is Sylvie, and she grows up to be a middle-aged mom, and they're the Dieu family.

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

[13:32] It's really rapid, rapid fire.

[13:35] It almost makes you wonder why they start the movie this way since it's so rapid fire, and it's like the movie is just trying to speed through it so they can get to the birth of the divine Aline.

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

[13:51] Yes, 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.

[13:57] This movie is like a little more than two hours long, and it is so – there's so much of it where you're like I don't know why they included this in here.

[14:05] Oh, no. I think we need to watch these characters having a conversation around a lovingly appointed island in a kitchen.

[14:12] There are 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, and they name the new baby – yes?

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

[14:32] 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.

[14:44] It was confusing, and then I looked it up.

[14:46] I have seen it.

[14:47] I'm like, okay, Celine Dion was the 14th of a very large family.

[14:51] I don't want to make any – to presume anything, but the actress playing the mother also looks too old to have a child at that point.

[15:02] I mean that was part of her worry is that – yeah, that's the thing.

[15:06] 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] So I think they do kind of prematurely age her a little bit too much.

[15:19] When it was first showing, I thought that it was showing the farmer stealing the coins from her son.

[15:24] Then I thought it was the farmer taking an accordion and the farmer meeting someone.

[15:28] I had to look back.

[15:29] I had to rewind and go, oh, no, wait.

[15:30] That's – the son between cuts has aged like seven years and is now a man.

[15:35] And it was – so it's all – it's a little confusing at first, but don't worry.

[15:38] 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 when we get our first introduction to little Aline, who at this point is 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.

[16:00] 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.

[16:10] Yeah, 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. She was about 56 I think, yeah.

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

[16:30] So that's how they do it.

[16:31] A small –

[16:32] Do they do face mapping or do they just dress her up and then shrink her?

[16:35] Well, some of it –

[16:36] A little bit of both.

[16:37] Like my TV is forced perspective.

[16:39] There's some very unconvincing forced perspective.

[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.

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

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

[16:56] Yeah, classic French Canadians.

[16:59] Oh, mon dieu. Oh, we left it in the sugar shack.

[17:03] But also –

[17:06] Wait, wait, wait. I just want to jump in for one thing while you're dying.

[17:10] Okay.

[17:11] That later on it makes – a big point of the movie is this young woman cannot be in a relationship with an older man.

[17:18] And they look like they're the same age because it's a woman in her 50s playing a woman in her 20s at that point.

[17:23] Yes, and I – look, now we're really jumping ahead.

[17:26] But I wonder if that is the reason the decision was made to do it this way.

[17:30] Because otherwise so much about the central relationship in this movie would be unacceptable to the audience.

[17:37] But let's jump back and I'll just say like –

[17:40] Yeah.

[17:41] The actress – I want to be clear.

[17:44] Like it's both fine to look old and she looks great.

[17:49] But if you're trying to pretend that this woman like pushing 60 looks like a child, even with the digital de-aging,

[17:56] there's a limit to what the technology can do to make this look not –

[18:00] Well, just –

[18:01] Yes.

[18:02] Nutty.

[18:03] The children and adults don't have the same shaped heads.

[18:05] Exactly.

[18:06] Like there's so much about –

[18:07] I see her. I expect her to start screaming at a high pitch to break glass.

[18:12] Yeah.

[18:13] Be influential in World War I and II, all that shit.

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

[18:25] It doesn't really work here.

[18:27] Well, it also doesn't work here because this movie – whilst I think this movie has a certain camp edge like –

[18:34] I mean this is a comedian in the main role.

[18:37] I think that there –

[18:38] But it's not a comedy movie.

[18:39] It's very –

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

[18:46] In a comedy, doing this at least has some like – oh, the weirdness of it is part of the point.

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

[19:01] 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.

[19:13] Well, 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 –

[19:25] who's – this character is now a lean do like god, like this wild –

[19:30] 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.

[19:40] That would have been great.

[19:41] The producer talked her out of it and I was saying –

[19:43] The producer is wrong.

[19:44] No.

[19:45] Yeah.

[19:46] I think it would have worked better.

[19:47] Yeah.

[19:48] 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] Because there's a part of me that thinks that the choice – like of course she knows that this looks weird.

[20:00] weird, but yeah, she's trying to do some sort of like

[20:02] fantastical elements, you know, but without any signal of that,

[20:07] the tone is so strange.

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

[20:12] Yeah, it's not like it.

[20:13] It just doesn't it has no meaning.

[20:14] So it's just a strange thing.

[20:15] But if her face on a baby if she didn't say legugu, they're

[20:18] leaving money on the table.

[20:20] There's a point later on where they are about to introduce

[20:22] her to sing a song and he's like, I'm not going to tell you

[20:25] her age yet.

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

[20:30] I still don't know like from the neck down.

[20:32] She appears to be 12 from the neck up.

[20:34] She's clearly in her late 50s.

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

[20:38] This is 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.

[20:43] I guess because her family always has her out singing late.

[20:46] Yeah.

[20:47] Yeah, she's a huge draw for their like, what is it like a

[20:50] bed and breakfast that involves singing like it's a restaurant

[20:53] with something I couldn't I was honestly I couldn't the movie

[20:56] is storytelling was elliptical enough that I couldn't and I

[20:58] cared little enough that it I couldn't quite tell but she

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

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

[21:03] She idolizes Barbra Streisand and her mom says, you know,

[21:07] understandably, I'm going to write a song and Barbra Streisand

[21:10] another woman who spent a lot of her career running from

[21:12] 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

[21:18] brother Jean Bobin and Jean Bobin.

[21:22] It's one of the many Johns and email a demo tape of 12 year

[21:25] old alien to a big manager named be Claude Camar and either

[21:29] like we're going to hear back from him tonight and then it's

[21:32] like a week later and he's like tonight and it still hasn't

[21:34] happened.

[21:35] So so they call him and they go hey, listen to the tape and

[21:38] call us right back 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

[21:45] a girl with a 50 year old's head.

[21:46] 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 for some reason.

[21:52] Eileen decided to go ice skating minutes before they were

[21:54] supposed to leave and she forgets her shoes.

[21:57] She wears her mom's shoes to the meeting which doesn't pay

[21:59] off in any way.

[22:00] According to the trivia on IMDb.

[22:04] This is listed as one of the fictional liberties to the story

[22:08] of Celine Dion.

[22:10] Yeah, because when I was watching and I was like, oh this

[22:12] must have actually happened to Celine Dion or else this world

[22:15] swagger is it?

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

[22:20] day?

[22:21] What psychedelics was the screenwriter on to have imagined

[22:25] such a situation?

[22:27] It's teaching us a very important lesson about the character

[22:30] which is that she's forgetful about shoes, which of course

[22:33] will play into the movie later.

[22:35] I guess it's more than it's dumb and pointless.

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

[22:42] There's so many small incidents this movie where you're like

[22:44] what and I'm not going to go through a little moment.

[22:45] Yeah, if I've skipped any and you guys remember him, please

[22:48] stop me.

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

[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 the like

[22:55] her rising career, but once she's, you know at the peak, it

[22:58] was just like a list of things.

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

[23:03] She there's a certain way.

[23:04] It's like well, she's achieved it.

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

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

[23:08] And then I looked at the runtime and I was like, oh, there's

[23:10] another hour left to go.

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

[23:16] chronology of events could have just written each scene on

[23:19] a pack of cards thrown it up the air and it's whatever.

[23:22] Yeah.

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

[23:25] So why not?

[23:26] Why not not do all of it?

[23:28] But choose it up.

[23:29] Yeah.

[23:29] So Aline, this is some werewolves in there.

[23:32] Yeah.

[23:33] Come on.

[23:34] Werewolves in the movie.

[23:36] Yeah.

[23:36] Well, I can do 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 them.

[23:47] They go, Aline, we have a show to do on Le Moon and they go up

[23:50] there.

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

[23:55] Kennedy.

[23:55] And she's like, it's not it's not it's that's Aline is like

[23:58] clearly.

[23:59] It's the same person.

[24:00] They use your song.

[24:03] Just like you.

[24:03] She is the assassin forgot to wear her shoes to her first

[24:07] meeting.

[24:08] But I do.

[24:09] I did not do that.

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

[24:15] But so her dad gives her his lucky coin.

[24:18] The only one that his dad didn't steal from him and at the

[24:20] meeting the manager immediately calls her Celine by accident

[24:23] and they correct her.

[24:24] Her name is Aline and she sings for him and we don't hear what

[24:27] she sings because that's when the soundtrack plays a pop song,

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

[24:33] cry and he has to he has to manage her and he impresses the

[24:38] entire do family all 70 million of them with his memory for

[24:41] sales figures and hockey championship.

[24:43] I do.

[24:44] I do really like that.

[24:45] He they show him crying while she's singing and then the next

[24:50] scene.

[24:50] He's talking to a co-worker and he's like I had to sign her.

[24:53] I almost cried and I'm like, dude, you literally cried.

[24:57] I saw that shit.

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

[24:59] Gee, 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 and soft boys can have a bad side.

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

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

[25:16] That's another one of those scenes where you watch the movie

[25:18] and you're like, why did they do this?

[25:22] It's not like someone was like, oh, there's a rat having sex

[25:26] with another rat.

[25:26] We didn't get it on camera.

[25:27] They clearly published.

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

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

[25:32] Michael.

[25:33] Yeah, Michael Bay's like lightning struck.

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

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

[25:40] elbowed me while laughing when it happened.

[25:43] I think that it was a roaring success.

[25:46] We've been friends ever since I did that.

[25:49] Yeah, can you imagine the puppeteers like that's the commentary

[25:53] track?

[25:53] I want for bad boys to is the puppeteer who made the rat puppets.

[25:57] So Alina's recording an album at this point.

[26:02] She kind of always looks like a middle-aged woman, but they just

[26:04] talk about how amazing is she's a kid and she also tends to sing

[26:08] songs that comment on where her life is at right now.

[26:11] Very blatantly.

[26:12] So on T she goes on TV and she sings a song about I'm just a

[26:15] little girl.

[26:16] I still need my mother mother.

[26:17] I love you.

[26:18] Just a little girl.

[26:19] I still need my mother that one.

[26:22] Yeah, then it goes.

[26:22] I'm just a girl and I need my mom.

[26:25] Yeah, and then the host is like, hey, did you did you did you

[26:30] learn to become a singer?

[26:31] And she goes?

[26:31] No, I didn't need to and that cuts to later.

[26:34] She's eating an enormous cookie sandwich.

[26:36] I assume they picked it's like an ice cream sandwich made out

[26:38] of the biggest cookies.

[26:39] I've ever seen I seem to make her look like a little kid, but

[26:42] it is ridiculous.

[26:43] This is like Clifford like it becomes Clifford for a moment.

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

[26:52] know juice up interest in this episode to whatever whatever

[26:57] fans.

[26:58] Yeah, Dan's hitting the streets.

[27:01] But yeah, because it looks like this is a scene where she's

[27:05] just on her knees with a big cookie in front of her face.

[27:08] And then yeah, that's the extent of the technology and it

[27:13] makes me wish they had done it the whole movie and she was

[27:14] holding like a giant telephone a giant comb like on attendance

[27:18] anyone and she has a huge racket.

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

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

[27:24] Tell people you work really hard and she's signing albums.

[27:28] Her dad comes by and surprises her with an album sign and

[27:30] shows him she has the lucky coin and that she goes to Paris

[27:33] to sing.

[27:34] She poses the Eiffel Tower and backstage at the Paris show.

[27:37] She secretly sniffs an enormous bottle of geek Claude's cologne.

[27:42] It's so like I expect her to drink it.

[27:44] She's so enraptured by it and the bottle again is enormous.

[27:47] I don't know if that's how big French cologne bottles are but

[27:50] it's just again to make her look little but it's like it's like

[27:53] cats in Wonderland.

[27:55] Yeah, 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

[28:00] cats are the size of small children or they're so tiny that

[28:03] they can wear rings as belts in like this.

[28:07] They can't they can't decide how big Aline is in this before

[28:11] she another TV show show over here is a crew member kind of

[28:13] making saying she's weird looking and geek Claude assures

[28:16] she's beautiful and they do an elaborate handshake that I

[28:18] guess they always do before she performs which we have learned

[28:22] in practice and we will post videos of yeah, we got to learn

[28:26] how to do this.

[28:27] Yep.

[28:27] That's our max fun bonus bonus goal to learn the Aline special

[28:33] handshake if we get if we get 40,000 new and upgrading members

[28:37] will learn that handshake and so she sings a love song as she

[28:42] gazes at her manager and even the nasty crew guys like all

[28:46] all next her manager tells her family that so I was expecting

[28:50] it to be like smoking Galois and wearing berets.

[28:54] Yeah, they're all drinking big glasses of wine at while at

[28:56] work.

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

[29:00] sketch from like a comedy version of this where her manager

[29:03] goes her in the goes.

[29:04] I heard you know who loves her her album the Vatican they play

[29:07] it all the time at the Vatican and her parents are like the

[29:09] Vatican they play it all the time at the Vatican Jean Bon

[29:12] Jean come in here.

[29:13] Yes, the Vatican.

[29:15] They play it all the time at the Vatican Jean goes the Vatican

[29:17] all the time at the Vatican the manager all the time at the

[29:20] Vatican the Vatican and Aline comes in they go they play it

[29:23] at the Vatican the Vatican and they must say the Vatican.

[29:26] I don't know 20 times in this in this scene and it feels like

[29:29] very silly.

[29:30] It's very silly and it also it's just it's it feels like

[29:33] they brought in Tim and Eric to like guest direct a scene.

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

[29:38] I read let him in Eric.

[29:40] Let's see.

[29:40] Yeah, let him at Eric.

[29:43] I forget I forget where I read this and so it's of dubious,

[29:47] you know, who knows whether it's true, but supposedly the

[29:51] way that French Canadians say Vatican is very funny to French

[29:55] people.

[29:55] So maybe this is a part of what's going on here.

[29:59] I don't know.

[30:00] It just sounded like they were saying Vatican over and over again.

[30:02] It's pretty funny.

[30:03] Yeah.

[30:04] That reminds me of, I may have talked about this before on The Flop House, when I was

[30:08] in college, my mom took me and my sister and my grandmother to the Montreal Comedy Festival,

[30:12] and I decided to go by myself to the Best of Canada show, which my family was not interested

[30:16] in going to, and it was so much fun to sit through a stand-up show where I got none of

[30:20] the references.

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

[30:25] funny to hear the audience, and the audience loved it.

[30:28] And someone would be like, well, in Banff, and the audience would go nuts, you know?

[30:32] And the best part of it was, it 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.

[30:44] He's a British comedian.

[30:45] Ricky Gervais.

[30:46] 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, and they were like,

[30:55] now you know him.

[30:56] Here he is.

[30:57] And they announced him, and I never heard him.

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

[31:01] And I just loved it.

[31:02] He had such a strong opinion about someone I've never heard of before.

[31:06] So maybe you're right that it's just a joke on the way they say Vatican, but it's a long

[31:09] scene for that.

[31:10] Aline's career, it just continues to flourish under Guy's coaching, to the point where she

[31:15] feels like it's time for her to take a stand, take a controversial stand, and she ends one

[31:20] show by giving a strong statement about safe driving.

[31:23] Yep.

[31:24] It again feels like another like walk hard scene where it's like, no, I gotta say something

[31:29] at the end of the show.

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

[31:32] Drive safe.

[31:33] Now, I, you know, I'm not a huge fan of biopics generally, and I feel like the ones I like

[31:41] the least are musical biopics.

[31:44] That could just be my own issue, but I feel like walk hard is still like the best one.

[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] That was what was cool.

[32:00] It's possible.

[32:01] And she's finally standing up to it.

[32:03] I guess so.

[32:04] If anyone listening is from that region of Canada or is a huge Celine Dion fan, please

[32:09] write in.

[32:10] Tell us which of these things we're just not getting that are huge Easter eggs.

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

[32:20] And 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 performing and live her

[32:30] life and learn English and get her teeth fixed.

[32:32] And she does.

[32:33] And there's a long self-improvement montage sequence.

[32:36] 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

[32:43] an offscreen wind machine is obvious.

[32:45] It's over the top on purpose, but like it's so over the top.

[32:49] But as a joke, and we find that at night, she's sick when her mom goes to bed because

[32:53] they share a hotel room.

[32:54] She secretly caresses a photo of her manager.

[32:57] And one morning, her mom catches the photo in the bed.

[32:59] 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] I know a wrinkle old fat man like you shouldn't be with a beautiful young princess.

[33:09] And that this is the beginning of what seems like it could be a big conflict in the movie,

[33:13] but it dies down relatively quickly.

[33:16] Yeah.

[33:17] I mean, I don't look, I there's obvious reasons I don't want to dwell on this too much, but

[33:22] I do think that we need to talk about a little bit like this is.

[33:25] So this is true to Celine Dion's life, right?

[33:26] Like she.

[33:27] Yeah.

[33:28] 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 and they stayed together until his death.

[33:39] 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.

[33:47] No, I'm just like, look, if she says it's OK, like I don't know what to do with that,

[33:54] but I don't think that it's possible at all that it was as simple and innocent as it's

[33:59] presented in this film.

[34:01] Yeah.

[34:02] This is the manager of a child who then ends up marrying her.

[34:07] And like this, it's presented as a love story and sort of like the central narrative thrust

[34:11] of this movie in so much as it has any like center to it.

[34:14] It is a love story, which is why I wonder, like, I don't know, did they make her play

[34:21] Aline as a kid?

[34:23] Because like none of that would work at all if you actually saw her as a child.

[34:29] I would say at this point she's supposed to be in her kind of like late teens.

[34:33] So no, no, no.

[34:34] I know.

[34:35] But no, no.

[34:36] But I will say I will say in the history of movies that I would say maybe except that

[34:40] there is such a history in movies of much younger women and much older men to the point.

[34:45] And in France and in France, in France, it is less in the French language world.

[34:50] It is even more so to a disturbing point that I don't like.

[34:54] And but it's 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 has come 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 as a beautiful saint who brought love and success into her

[35:12] life.

[35:13] Like everything about this.

[35:14] Her family is very charming.

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

[35:17] Apparently Celine Dion was unhappy with with what Hicks they were portrayed as.

[35:20] They portrayed as like scheming.

[35:21] But they're the best characters in the movie.

[35:24] Like I will say like the mom in this movie, like she's putting in a great performance

[35:28] in this.

[35:29] Yeah, sure.

[35:30] Not so great movie.

[35:31] Like I loved her.

[35:32] I thought she was terrific.

[35:33] Yeah, she's great.

[35:35] But the I think but it is a it's something that the movie seems in the movie seems to

[35:41] take it for granted.

[35:42] I think that you are not going to be on the mom's side in this argument that it is clear

[35:45] as we know, because they end up together.

[35:47] This is true love.

[35:48] And she's being insensitive and intolerant.

[35:51] But you're right.

[35:52] It is something that they don't really grapple with much that he's a man who's known her

[35:55] 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 and they fall

[36:03] in love.

[36:05] And he is presented as like the cutest thing.

[36:08] And he's presented as extremely uninterested as someone who is being such a gentleman and

[36:13] not not or openly uninterested that like it's just they're taking something that it reminds

[36:19] me of the stories you used to hear about Elvis, where they'd be like, well, he met Priscilla

[36:22] when she was 13, but he was a gentleman and waited till she was 18 before he before he

[36:26] had sex with her.

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

[36:28] It's super creepy that I remember being told that when I was a kid, as if that was the

[36:33] height of gentlemanly behavior, that he that that even though he clearly wanted to have

[36:37] sex with the lowest bar that society has presented.

[36:41] Yeah.

[36:42] OK, I guess case, but it's yeah, it's all very.

[36:46] And again, if it may be, maybe I don't know, maybe there is something about it that we're

[36:51] not seeing, but it does seem creepy.

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

[37:02] the fact that she is so that she looks like she looks like a girl.

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

[37:08] Yeah.

[37:09] They look like the same age.

[37:10] Yeah.

[37:11] Anyway.

[37:12] Guy says to Eileen, we can't be together.

[37:13] A young girl and an old man.

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

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

[37:29] Eileen falls into despair.

[37:31] She's so sad.

[37:32] And just when she's about to perform at the Eurovision Song Contest.

[37:35] 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

[37:42] or something like that.

[37:43] Like, it's not it's not a they really make it to be a big thing, but they don't spend

[37:45] a lot of time.

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

[37:51] It's Chewbacca being dying in the in Rise of Skywalker.

[37:54] Oh, no.

[37:55] Chewbacca cut to Chewbacca's on screen.

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

[38:01] Don't worry.

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

[38:03] Yeah.

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

[38:09] and now he's back.

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

[38:14] I can't believe I can't believe Chewbacca has oh, wait, never mind.

[38:17] Backspace.

[38:18] Backspace.

[38:19] Backspace.

[38:20] Yeah.

[38:21] I forgot about that in that in that 50 Shades of Grey movie.

[38:22] I can't believe there was a second transport.

[38:23] This is what they have to change it to.

[38:25] It seems impossible.

[38:28] So the I wonder if there was a cut scene where you see where you see the marketing

[38:34] people at Disney going, you can't kill Chewbacca.

[38:37] We got to 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, OK, I'll come back.

[38:43] That's yeah.

[38:44] Yeah.

[38:45] That's what Chewbacca sounds like when he talks.

[38:46] Yeah.

[38:47] Amazing.

[38:48] Yeah.

[38:49] I love it.

[38:50] That's what he sounds like.

[38:51] So I don't know.

[38:52] That's me.

[38:53] Yeah.

[38:54] Chewbacca.

[38:55] I mean, the difference between Chewbacca is on that spectrum between Ray Romano and Mr.

[39:00] Bean voices.

[39:04] And so she wins the with it with the power of love.

[39:08] She wins the Eurovision Song Contest.

[39:10] She gets a congratulatory or her manager gets a congratulatory call from the prime minister

[39:14] of Canada.

[39:15] 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

[39:20] move to be like, no, no, no.

[39:22] I talked to prime ministers.

[39:23] You just sit there.

[39:25] And that night, you guessed it, folks, 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

[39:34] 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 the next morning.

[39:42] They're flirting.

[39:43] I'm sure we can picture it, but I think we can make sure what it's like in regular style.

[39:49] They did doggy style upside down style.

[39:55] And as you know, I've never been I've never been a woman, never done.

[40:00] I've never been a woman, but my understanding of the experience of the first time that women

[40:05] have sex is it's not always a magical, transcendent experience.

[40:10] And so the fact that movies almost always, maybe 90% of the time, present it that way

[40:16] is, I don't know, it's something that I wonder if women have thoughts about.

[40:21] So write in, women listeners, write in to The Flophouse, first time, colon, transcendent

[40:26] experience, care of Dan McCoy.

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

[40:31] And also, French-Canadian people, do you do it differently?

[40:35] Let's find out.

[40:36] Write in.

[40:37] Because it reminds me...

[40:38] Stuart, you were joking that they do it all these different ways.

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

[40:41] Yeah, it doesn't.

[40:42] And then just for fun, tell me what normal American upside-down style is.

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

[40:51] 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.

[40:58] This is not the grandmother that went to the Just for Laughs festival, this is a different

[41:00] one.

[41:01] Okay.

[41:02] My father's mother, I remember years ago, she's since passed, but she told me during

[41:06] World War II...

[41:07] Dan's got a look on his face like he's about to hear a hot story.

[41:09] Yeah, he's going to like this one.

[41:11] Was it dangerous later in time?

[41:14] Oh, he's tying a bib around his neck to catch all the drool, I guess?

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

[41:22] Oh, wait, now his head is turning into a steam whistle.

[41:27] She was on a small military transport plane.

[41:30] I'm going to just hurl my tongue back up.

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

[41:35] She was flying to Puerto Rico, and the only other person on board was a Frenchman who

[41:40] was a pilot, she said.

[41:42] It was for some reason flying also.

[41:44] And he came on to her, and she said, oh, no, thank you, but no, I have a fiancé.

[41:49] And 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

[41:57] that Frenchman.

[41:58] And 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 for decades and decades, she lived with the mystery of how French people have sex.

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

[42:14] 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.

[42:18] Anyway, Guy and Aline, they're flush with success.

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

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

[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.

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

[42:43] So for some reason, that seems weirder than if they were real pictures of Celine Dion or no pictures.

[42:49] And at one point, she even takes the time to cut a little eyeball slit out of a newspaper that has a picture of her face.

[42:57] So she perfectly frames it so that she can then steal glances at her beau through the newspaper she's holding.

[43:05] Yeah, like Gromit watching that penguin that wants to steal the diamond.

[43:09] So Aline's mom, she still doesn't approve of the relationship.

[43:12] 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 are for.

[43:21] But guess what?

[43:22] Things are about to get a little bit more okay.

[43:24] Because on her sold out European tour, 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.

[43:34] And he hands an ice cream cone to Aline.

[43:36] She takes a bite out of it.

[43:37] And what is this in my mouth?

[43:39] 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 putting a ring on it.

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

[43:47] Apparently this is also fictitious.

[43:50] 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 scenario?

[43:56] Right?

[43:57] I do want to talk.

[43:58] I want to talk about Elliot.

[44:00] Was Cormac McCarthy doing some script doctoring work on this one?

[44:03] That he came up with that twisted idea?

[44:05] He announces to the whole tour entourage or whatever it is.

[44:09] Oh, like tomorrow.

[44:12] He's like, the best ice cream in the world is two and a half hours away by bus.

[44:18] So I've arranged a bus to take us there tomorrow.

[44:21] And I was like, on my day off, my boss wants me to get on a bus so I can go two and a half hours to get ice cream in Rome.

[44:29] To get ice cream.

[44:31] Yeah, I'm sure that we've got great ice cream here.

[44:35] Close enough.

[44:38] I get on a bus for two and a half hours.

[44:40] And I'm kind of lactose intolerant.

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

[44:46] Yeah.

[44:47] Oh, yeah.

[44:48] But if you know if you didn't go and then if you went and you didn't eat the ice cream, you'd be fired.

[44:52] You would be off the tour.

[44:53] Immediately fired.

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

[44:58] So you're just gone.

[44:59] I'm glad that's what you were saying.

[45:01] I was a backup dancer.

[45:02] Yeah.

[45:03] Yeah.

[45:04] So they get married.

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

[45:07] They're going to go to the beach and make their baby, which is or make our baby, they say, which is a gross way to say it.

[45:12] They go on their.

[45:13] And so this is what I wrote my notes on their honeymoon.

[45:15] And somehow we're 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?

[45:21] She got guys eating too much and lean.

[45:24] She has to.

[45:25] He has a he passes out and she has to push him to the hospital 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

[45:41] 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

[45:46] that to us as a funny anecdote on a talk show.

[45:49] 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.

[45:56] 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

[46:05] rather than.

[46:06] Yeah.

[46:07] I mean, I feel I feel like the filmmaker leaned into.

[46:09] Yeah.

[46:10] She like leaned into her Mike Flanagan instinct where she's like, this will be way better

[46:13] as told through monologue instead of showing you shit.

[46:16] Nerds.

[46:17] She was.

[46:18] How would how would the late Spalding Gray handle this?

[46:21] This scene?

[46:23] So the she.

[46:26] Where were we?

[46:27] All right.

[46:28] In a limo back after the talk show.

[46:29] Guy says, if I die, please promise to keep performing.

[46:32] And, 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] Tells her to get your voice back.

[46:59] Do you like coffee?

[47:00] Yes.

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

[47:03] Every day to my mom.

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

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

[47:06] Cut it out.

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

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

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

[47:12] 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.

[47:19] And this must be a hard time, right?

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

[47:23] No, 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.

[47:31] She starts singing again.

[47:33] There's also a scene where she can't talk to her mom.

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

[47:44] 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.

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

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

[48:02] So I think texting was still not that big at the time.

[48:05] Yeah, but to take texting off the table, unless they knew Morse code prior, they have become well-versed very quickly.

[48:14] Yeah, 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?

[48:30] And she goes, okay.

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

[48:38] Like they skipped 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.

[48:46] 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 it by text.

[48:56] So they went on at the same time.

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

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

[49:01] 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.

[49:09] Well, he like hams it up and vamps in these photo poses for a long time.

[49:14] I think that the actress, the director, writer, the star of this film captures Celine Dion's sort of feckless, doesn't-give-a-shit dorkiness.

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

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

[49:35] It's fun.

[49:39] 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.

[49:52] But that's not what she's doing.

[49:53] She wants – she's putting a little bit of – she's playing a kind of character who can be goofy in a movie that's otherwise fairly serious.

[49:58] And guess what?

[49:59] It has to be because we're at the Oscars now, everybody.

[50:00] buddy, which are, they can't, they didn't get the rights, I guess, to show the actual

[50:03] Oscar statue, which is copyrighted by the Academy, and so they have a fake, they have

[50:07] a stand-in fake statue, when they could have just as easily not shown, not shown the statue.

[50:12] Aileen performs, My Heart Will Go On There, and it feels, here's the thing that feels

[50:15] weird, is they went to the trouble of licensing My Heart Will Go On, but not paying to get

[50:20] a real, to show what a real Oscar looks like.

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

[50:25] Aileen performs, at the backstage, her manager is like, hey, and now husband, is like, hey,

[50:31] some fans are here, and she goes, oh, not yet, not yet, it's her parents that showed

[50:34] up, they came to surprise her, Guy, can you fucking believe it, can you believe it, loving

[50:40] parents who have been supportive for the entire, showed up in their greatest triumph, I didn't

[50:47] see that coming, and she shows that she still has her dad's lucky coin, a high point of

[50:51] her life, her parents there, to be at this big success, could be the end of the movie,

[50:55] no, because you've got to learn about Guy's diet, he's eating carrot puree, while she

[50:59] eats hamburgers and fries, she gets some news on the phone, and she writes BB in his carrot

[51:04] puree, for baby, and she goes, I'm three months pregnant, and it's like, well, usually the

[51:09] husband knows before three months, like, three months is when you tell other people, but

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

[51:17] she knew, like, she didn't keep it a secret from me, or maybe the doctors there held off

[51:21] for three months, I don't know.

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

[51:26] doing that.

[51:27] How strange.

[51:28] I've got to figure out why, this doesn't make any sense, she's no longer doing belly flops

[51:34] right into that, right into the Twitch convention foam pit, I don't know why did she stop doing

[51:39] that.

[51:40] No longer injecting ketamine directly into her uterus.

[51:43] I understand, I've got to do, I'm not a Sherlock Holmes or a Slylock Fox, I can't figure this

[51:49] one out.

[51:50] When we watch Baby's Day Out, she seems concerned, as opposed to laughing.

[51:55] Laughing and saying, look at that stupid baby, I hope it falls.

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

[52:03] we had him that time.

[52:04] Curses.

[52:05] Like before.

[52:06] Foiled again.

[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.

[52:19] As opposed to, previously, she would say, eat that bastard, eat him up.

[52:24] Yep.

[52:29] This has been, Signs Your Wife Is Pregnant.

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

[52:36] The classic Wap House cabaret band that we of course owned in New York in the 60s.

[52:42] Yeah, that was a different time.

[52:45] Her family news is all over the TV, and her mom is offended at the way the TV anchors

[52:50] gossip and make light of Aline's family and rich lifestyle.

[52:55] But Aline, she's very conspicuously consuming.

[52:58] She buys a 40 room Vegas mega mansion that she gets lost in, and now you're like, okay,

[53:03] and she's going to have a son.

[53:04] Montage, there's a baby, her son grows up, her son is now like five, she's torn between

[53:09] work and family.

[53:10] It's one of these movies where the life of her family is sped through in montages, but

[53:16] the moment when she gets into a makeup chair and her food is cold, so she heats it up with

[53:20] a hairdryer, we take our time with that moment.

[53:23] We've got to register that.

[53:24] 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, the parable of the 12th meal.

[53:31] And the movie also shows her kid has some PS4 games, and this was long before the PS4

[53:37] was released.

[53:38] So it's like, did she invent the PS4?

[53:41] Because they should have included that in the movie.

[53:44] 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.

[53:53] So that's why I give this movie thumbs down.

[53:55] Not fresh.

[53:59] Where were we?

[54:00] Okay, so yeah, she's got a kid now.

[54:02] During one show, she accidentally learns right before going on stage that her father died,

[54:08] and the movie just keeps going on, much like her heart.

[54:11] She finishes her Vegas residency, takes her family on a performing trip.

[54:17] Her son gets to see her perform to a stadium in France.

[54:20] And there was one point, 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.

[54:32] I've never performed in front of a stadium full of people.

[54:34] I don't know if you're constantly fighting the exhalations because they're of such force

[54:37] that they could knock you right over.

[54:39] Again, Flop House listeners, do what you can, promote the show,

[54:43] so we can get popular enough to do an arena show and myth bust this ourselves.

[54:48] Or if you are listening and you have performed for an arena,

[54:52] let us know your experience.

[54:53] I know that Keith Richards is a listener.

[54:55] I'd rather do it the way we get famous.

[54:57] 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.

[55:02] Or performing for a million people in Rio or whatever happened.

[55:05] But yeah, it would be better if we...

[55:06] I would love for us to move up to arena shows, maybe just for one show.

[55:09] I feel like that might be too big a scale for what we actually do.

[55:12] 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.

[55:18] Their songs were called The Bits.

[55:20] Well, originally they were called The Bittles.

[55:22] Do that bit about the octopus's garden, they'd say.

[55:25] A lot of people don't know that they were called The Bittles.

[55:27] And then they were performing in Germany,

[55:29] and the German announcer says, and now The Beatles.

[55:31] And everyone thought it was Beatles.

[55:33] But it was really, he was saying Bittles.

[55:35] Although that is something, I've actually heard,

[55:37] that is why acting beats are called beats.

[55:41] Because the story I heard was that Stanislavski wanted to call them bits,

[55:45] but with 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.

[55:53] Much like Celine Dion and Deline Diou,

[55:55] it may be a beautiful reality twisted into a strange and horrifying fiction.

[56:01] So we get a bunch of shots of her performing.

[56:03] A lot of her basically walking onto stage in classic Celine Dion outfits.

[56:08] Which, this is a moment where I'm like,

[56:10] did she make this movie just so she could put on a bunch of cool clothes?

[56:13] Because, I mean, that's not the worst thing to do.

[56:16] Mission accomplished, yeah.

[56:18] She's on it, here's one of the stranger moments.

[56:20] She's on a private jet plane,

[56:22] and suddenly she's stealing her family's food.

[56:24] She has to shovel it in her mouth so much, she's so hungry.

[56:26] 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

[56:33] that she would just start stealing food from other people

[56:36] and slamming it into her face.

[56:38] Then, montage.

[56:40] She has the babies, they grow up, and so on.

[56:42] Aline is stressed out, 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,

[56:48] and then he dies while they're doing their special handshake.

[56:51] And his cancer is also treated,

[56:53] like, speaking of the family being shunted into the background,

[56:57] his cancer is treated so elliptically by the film

[57:00] that it's never really said outright,

[57:02] unless I missed it.

[57:04] Here's the thing is,

[57:06] everything is kind of shunted into the background.

[57:08] Very little in the movie is told so straightforwardly

[57:10] that you're like,

[57:12] ah, this is what the movie's about.

[57:14] It feels like,

[57:16] it really feels like a greatest hit.

[57:18] It feels like they took a TV show called Aline,

[57:20] and they chopped it up and made it,

[57:22] and compressed it into a movie.

[57:24] Like they used to do with Japanese TV shows,

[57:26] and edited down movie.

[57:28] That's what it feels like.

[57:30] And so, but you're right,

[57:32] you're kind of not sure what he died of.

[57:34] And they do their special handshake,

[57:36] but he doesn't finish it.

[57:38] She's sad at their funeral,

[57:40] there's a sad version of Elvis playing Love Me Tender,

[57:42] I think, over the funeral, right?

[57:44] And then, but Aline soldiers on,

[57:46] because the movie can't stop, can it?

[57:48] No, of course it can't stop.

[57:50] It's a never-ending story.

[57:52] Her kids are out of town,

[57:54] and she talks about how she's never been outside in Las Vegas,

[57:56] in all the 14 years that she's lived there.

[57:58] And while she's sleeping at Fred's house,

[58:00] she dreams that Guy's ghost shows up.

[58:02] Again, he died two scenes ago,

[58:04] or three scenes ago.

[58:06] The ghost shows up and is like,

[58:08] hey, I'm doing fine, so just do what you want.

[58:10] That's basically the message.

[58:12] She wakes up, and before Fred wakes up,

[58:14] she sneaks out of the apartment,

[58:16] and just walks around Las Vegas encountering people.

[58:18] Finally, she's like a normal person.

[58:20] Some Elvis impersonators.

[58:23] Some Elvis impersonators think that she is an Aline impersonator,

[58:25] and they give her some fairly unflattering advice.

[58:27] Two tourists ask for her to take a picture,

[58:29] not with her,

[58:31] just of them,

[58:33] and they're standing in front of her billboard,

[58:35] and they don't even recognize her.

[58:37] And she misses her show,

[58:39] and it has to be canceled.

[58:41] And then it cuts to kind of a dream musical moment,

[58:43] where she's on stage,

[58:45] and she sings a song about how

[58:47] she always wanted to sing,

[58:49] and her life is difficult,

[58:52] and there's so many things in the world,

[58:54] and apparently this is a real song,

[58:56] I think called Ordinaire,

[58:58] and she's just an ordinary woman,

[59:00] and then when she finishes the song,

[59:02] the movie's over.

[59:04] And again, the main actress,

[59:06] she is not actually singing.

[59:08] It's all lip syncing.

[59:10] So it is the last scene,

[59:12] much like the Academy Award winning scene

[59:14] in Bohemian Rhapsody,

[59:16] where Freddie Mercury just sings,

[59:18] and it's lip synced too.

[59:20] I want to talk about something

[59:22] that I found online.

[59:24] Apparently there's a...

[59:26] Uh oh!

[59:28] Shit!

[59:30] Relate it!

[59:32] Where's the cough button

[59:34] so I can hold that shit down?

[59:36] You wouldn't believe the way

[59:38] she takes care of her children.

[59:40] Anyway...

[59:42] No, no, it's a...

[59:44] Apparently a very famous clip

[59:46] of Celine Dion

[59:49] is out there.

[59:51] Her first performance in Vegas,

[59:53] after she came back,

[59:55] after her husband died,

[59:57] and she's singing...

[1:00:00] all by myself and like a song that must have whole new meaning to her all by myself and

[1:00:08] and is you know struggling with emotions to get through it but gets through it

[1:00:11] and you know i haven't i didn't like i was just reading about the book i haven't seen it but it

[1:00:15] sounds like it would be very effective you want to go that far well i'm curious i'll probably look

[1:00:20] but um but it's just weird it's weird to me this is a song that is in the movie earlier

[1:00:28] but instead they don't end with that song which would put a bow on again arguably the

[1:00:36] only real through line for the whole movie is like this quote love story of them like and

[1:00:44] all by myself would be such an emotional ending but instead they sing she sings a song that's just

[1:00:48] about how she loves to sing and like she doesn't care what her critics think she does it for the

[1:00:52] public which is not really a theme of the film otherwise like there's some acknowledgement that

[1:00:58] she's not like believed to be like like cricks don't like her but like very little you know it's

[1:01:04] a strange thing like this is the if you're gonna end with a whole song you know like which went

[1:01:11] on long enough for me to be like come on movie stop it like make it something relevant like have

[1:01:17] it sum up the film in some way and it's such a strange choice i mean it's it sums up yeah it

[1:01:22] sums up the themes of her life but not necessarily the ones that the movie highlights well because

[1:01:26] the movie is not it's not telling a coherent focused story you know instead of saying here's

[1:01:31] the here's the thrust of her life or here's what we're gonna emphasize in her life it's just kind

[1:01:36] of like read me celine dion's diaries and then we'll just kind of put it on screen and we'll

[1:01:41] every now and then we'll add in a little bit of fictional stuff now here's my question looking up

[1:01:45] online there was a i guess an official celine dion biopic in 2008 called celine and maybe that

[1:01:51] one and it's only an hour and a half long maybe that one stole the idea of structure and storytelling

[1:01:58] and and so this one was like we're going to do things differently we're just going to have because

[1:02:02] there are there are i have to say like there are times when when the movie goes into montage and

[1:02:06] just kind of skips through things there are times when i liked the idea of like i've got to catch up

[1:02:11] i don't know celine dion's life story i got to infer it but otherwise the movie is such a

[1:02:16] shapeless bag you know it feels a little bit like trying to go to sleep on an air mattress

[1:02:20] i mean like this is it i mean this movie suffers from one of the uh like one of the problems that

[1:02:26] i think a lot of biopics run into which is like not having any kind of point of view whatsoever

[1:02:30] and simply just trying to tell the entirety of somebody's life as opposed to like generally it's

[1:02:36] best to focus on a very specific event or a snippet or uh you know if especially if you're

[1:02:42] going to fictionalize it why not make it more interesting so much of this is just like

[1:02:47] watching a rich person hang out in their fucking giant mansion that they don't

[1:02:51] understand yeah yeah uh so final judgments whether this is a good bad movie a bad bad movie

[1:02:57] or a movie kind of liked um my cat is dreaming in front of me it's very cute

[1:03:03] aren't you just twitching like crazy um i don't know this is one that really defies

[1:03:10] a lot for me because like i kind of because you related to it so much i mean there's stuff like

[1:03:16] the thing is like there's stuff in here as a public figure dan as a public figure whose search

[1:03:20] for love was very much done in the in the in the press's eye yeah public eye yeah i know i

[1:03:27] look starring joe pesci there was stuff in here that legit worked for me like not that i thought

[1:03:34] it was particularly interesting but i'm like oh these like actors are like putting in good

[1:03:40] performers and it's kind of fun to see like this like cliff's notes on someone that i don't know

[1:03:47] anything about but all of that is so overshadowed by the weirdness of like one specific choice and

[1:03:54] a choice that like is gone halfway through the movie but still like cast a long shadow over the

[1:04:01] rest of it um i don't know i guess i'm gonna say good bad but maybe just watch the first hour and

[1:04:08] you've gotten enough of it and then stop uh what you guys have to say i feel like if you're gonna

[1:04:15] do the silly stuff i feel like the movie like i missed it at when it was gone when it was just

[1:04:21] like a boring very dry it's a movie where there's like light like you said like each time there's

[1:04:28] any kind of conflict or any kind of setback it's resolved in like two or three minutes

[1:04:34] yeah uh so there's nothing like i'm never like worried at any point in the movie i'm not like

[1:04:41] oh wow i wonder what's gonna happen it's yeah it's it's yeah it's it manages to despite having

[1:04:48] some kind of interesting scenes and some interesting performances it just ends up being

[1:04:52] very bland yeah it's very it's it's bad bad bad that's a bad i would i would also call it bad i

[1:04:59] feel like there's a good there's a good version of this movie and that is essentially coal miner's

[1:05:04] daughter which is also about a woman who comes from a poor rural background and through music

[1:05:09] becomes a huge star and it's very much about secret there was but the secret there was they put a

[1:05:15] woman's head on a baby's body the secret there is that when literally when loretta lynn is a baby

[1:05:21] sissy space x is on her body but i think but that's but it's a much more even that which is

[1:05:25] still a kind of like relatively full life story is still told with a like a focus and a thrust

[1:05:32] and it helps that i love loretta lynn's music so much more than celine dion's uh i'm still

[1:05:37] getting over her recent passing but uh the like there's a way to do this movie but you got to

[1:05:41] choose your moments and they just don't do it so yeah i bad because there's this weird energy

[1:05:47] that's running through the first like third of the movie and that energy is a grown-up playing a kid

[1:05:53] and her family because her family is the most fun part of the movie like there's how there's tons of

[1:05:57] siblings and they're all a little goofy and her mom is is such a big character and all this all

[1:06:02] of that kind of falls away and eventually just becomes almost like an acted out documentary

[1:06:08] about celine dion which is not to my taste yeah i would say a day in the life exactly so uh if you

[1:06:14] want so i guess maybe just read one of the many many great biographies of celine dion uh they're

[1:06:20] probably i think there was one that won the nobel prize go read that one yeah okay sorry i uh i i

[1:06:28] leaned back at an inopportune time dan had to text he had to text a french hairdresser that he was

[1:06:33] breaking up with him i was taking notes on things uh brutal 15 years week in the editing 15 years

[1:06:41] and to break up by text after 15 years when he's on his way to a job one of the biggest jobs of his

[1:06:46] career you know what what who does that who who who doesn't who who breaks up with a with a person

[1:06:53] or group of people without any warning whatsoever after years together who does something like that

[1:06:58] not worth your time exactly uh stewart you've probably heard about microdosing

[1:07:05] yep well if not well you answered uh we have but if you if you were a person who hadn't heard about

[1:07:12] it then you should know that all sorts of people are microdosing daily to feel healthier and perform

[1:07:16] better our show today is sponsored by microdose gummies microdose gummies deliver perfect entry

[1:07:22] entry level doses or entry losses uh that's the hip faster way of saying that of thc that help

[1:07:30] you feel just the right amount of good um you know if you want to watch a movie maybe where

[1:07:35] someone's face is mapped onto a small child i'm not going to tell you that a microdose gummy isn't

[1:07:41] going to make that a better experience true um so you know what microdose is available nationwide

[1:07:47] to learn more about microdosing thc go to microdose.com and use code flop that's f l o p

[1:07:53] to get free shipping and 30 off your first order links can be found in the show description but

[1:07:59] again that is microdose calm code flop uh any other uh in-house plugs as always i will plug

[1:08:08] my two businesses that's right hinterland's bar and minis bar both located in brooklyn new york

[1:08:14] come by have a drink uh you know support local business support your favorite podcaster

[1:08:20] and i will also plug my other podcast the who was podcast it's a quiz show for kids

[1:08:26] on iheart radio but also available wherever podcasts are available two kids come on and

[1:08:30] 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 so if you have a children or you like children

[1:08:38] and children and want to attract them to your house uh by blasting this through loudspeakers

[1:08:43] out your windows or if you have the mind of a child just listen to the who was podcast and also

[1:08:47] guess who's back in town that's right the maniac of new york in maniac of new york don't call it

[1:08:53] a comeback number one coming out december 7th that's right halloween is all is by the time

[1:08:58] you listen this halloween will be over but we can be spooky all year round even in the christmas

[1:09:02] time era so uh-huh maniac of new york don't call it a comeback number one comes out december 7th

[1:09:07] and then there's three more issues after that coming out each month and dan i have some

[1:09:10] interesting i have an interesting celine dion trivia right here okay my heart will go on is

[1:09:16] the second best-selling physical single by a woman ever the number one best-selling single

[1:09:21] physical single by wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait uh i bet you can guess it

[1:09:26] oh fuck uh it's what oh god damn it whitney houston yes uh bodyguard soundtrack song yeah

[1:09:35] what's the name of the song though oh fuck oh god damn it it's oh god dolly parton

[1:09:42] okay yes i will always love you but what seems strange to me i'm looking at the list right now

[1:09:47] i think i think i hurt myself you did it yeah i'm looking at don't you stretch

[1:09:52] pull the muscle yeah i'm looking at the list celine dion was also the like the biggest earner

[1:09:57] overall from like 2000 to 2010

[1:10:00] and in all of entertainment, or something like that.

[1:10:02] Oh yeah, 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.

[1:10:07] I'm looking at the Wikipedia list

[1:10:08] of best-selling physical singles, pre-digital,

[1:10:11] best-selling where someone had to buy a physical record.

[1:10:14] And strangely enough, both of those songs,

[1:10:16] "'I Will Always Love You' and "'My Heart Will Go On',"

[1:10:18] they both are below Mungo Jerry's,

[1:10:21] "'In the Summertime,' although it says disputed."

[1:10:23] And that is a dumb song.

[1:10:25] That song is dumb. That's a terrible.

[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

[1:10:38] so she can explain how shitty it is.

[1:10:39] I've never thought closer to Charlene to hear this.

[1:10:43] So, I don't know who is out there

[1:10:45] buying all these physical copies of

[1:10:47] "'In the Summertime,' a truly loathsome song,

[1:10:49] but you know what? Stop.

[1:10:52] Just stop doing it.

[1:10:58] 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, but hey, don't worry.

[1:11:04] You can jump in at literally any episode

[1:11:06] 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, 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

[1:11:23] from dogs to TV shows to bodily functions.

[1:11:26] And horses, 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, every other week on MaximumFun.org.

[1:11:38] ♪ Baby geniuses, tell us something we don't know. ♪

[1:11:41] Hi, I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.

[1:11:44] 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.

[1:11:55] 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, the same forever at MaximumFun.org

[1:12:18] or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1:12:21] Hey, let's talk letters.

[1:12:24] Yeah, why not?

[1:12:25] You write to us sometimes and then we respond.

[1:12:28] There would be an easier way of doing it

[1:12:29] without the middle man of the podcast,

[1:12:31] but it's less about the communication

[1:12:33] and more about creating content.

[1:12:35] Content, yeah, it's all about content.

[1:12:37] Anyway, so that explains the premise

[1:12:39] of reading letters on a show.

[1:12:40] Cool.

[1:12:41] But if you wanted to hear it explained in song form,

[1:12:45] if you wanted to hear it explained in song form,

[1:12:47] near, far, wherever you are,

[1:12:54] your letters will reach us if you send them.

[1:13:02] 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] No, okay, I didn't think he could hold the note,

[1:13:17] but he did it.

[1:13:17] Frank, last name withheld.

[1:13:19] The note was squirming,

[1:13:20] trying to get out of my grip the entire time,

[1:13:22] so I barely held it.

[1:13:23] Frank Henenlotter, I'm assuming.

[1:13:26] I was listening to some old episodes

[1:13:28] and 10 Cloverfield Lane was a recommendation.

[1:13:32] It got me thinking about the Cloverfield movies

[1:13:35] and how they are the perfect type of scary movie I like.

[1:13:39] Some jump, but mostly suspense, cool monster,

[1:13:43] and not just about a murderer.

[1:13:46] But the first Cloverfield movie-

[1:13:48] Oh, 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.

[1:13:54] The monster in Cloverfield's basically just a murderer.

[1:14:00] Just a really big one.

[1:14:01] Who's the real monster, Stuart?

[1:14:02] After all the damage we've done to the earth?

[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-

[1:14:08] When the movie ended, they go,

[1:14:09] it turns out the true monster was the Cloverfield.

[1:14:12] Yeah, well, that's what we thought.

[1:14:14] The first Cloverfield movie derailed the whole franchise

[1:14:19] for me with two shots.

[1:14:21] My wife worked at 20 Exchange Place,

[1:14:24] the building where Inside Man was filmed,

[1:14:25] about 2,000 feet from ground zero,

[1:14:27] and her dad worked on Wall Street.

[1:14:29] They were both working at 9-11

[1:14:30] and had to evacuate across the Brooklyn Bridge,

[1:14:33] having no idea where the other one was.

[1:14:35] In Cloverfield, when the monster attacks the city,

[1:14:38] there are a couple of specific shots

[1:14:39] where the destruction footage was basically lifted directly

[1:14:41] from news footage of 9-11.

[1:14:43] 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

[1:14:51] that you know you otherwise should have liked,

[1:14:53] but where a single shot, scene, or event

[1:14:56] hit a little too close to home and ruined the whole thing?

[1:14:59] Frank, last name withheld.

[1:15:04] You guys have any?

[1:15:05] Yeah, it's actually funny,

[1:15:06] because Cloverfield was,

[1:15:08] I remember seeing it in the theater

[1:15:11] shortly after the blackout in New York,

[1:15:14] and I remember the behavior of New Yorkers

[1:15:17] during that blackout was so chill and supportive, mostly.

[1:15:23] I feel like everybody was like,

[1:15:24] okay, lights are out, there's no power,

[1:15:27] and people were partying outside,

[1:15:30] but it was relatively chill, at least in lower Manhattan.

[1:15:35] But in Cloverfield, it's like as soon as stuff happens,

[1:15:38] people immediately start looting everything,

[1:15:40] and I'm like, that doesn't seem accurate

[1:15:42] to the New York that I now live in.

[1:15:46] Yeah.

[1:15:50] I was about to answer the question,

[1:15:52] then I found myself pausing, thinking,

[1:15:56] did Stewart answer the question?

[1:15:57] But I'll stop calling him out and give my answer,

[1:16:02] which is that Stewart's face right now, he's just.

[1:16:07] He is not happy.

[1:16:08] Staring angrily off into the middle distance.

[1:16:12] No, I mean, I think that part of the thing is like.

[1:16:14] He's trying to find a hitman on the dark web

[1:16:16] to kill Dan McCoy.

[1:16:19] Kill me?

[1:16:21] Why don't you just hire someone

[1:16:22] to like punch me or something?

[1:16:24] It seems like a lot of work to go onto the dark web

[1:16:27] just to punch you.

[1:16:27] I mean, he could do that himself, yeah.

[1:16:32] No, I mean, the thing is, I don't know that I've had.

[1:16:35] That's a funny sketch.

[1:16:36] If someone's, they contact a hitman on the dark web.

[1:16:39] How much does it cost?

[1:16:40] I hate my boss.

[1:16:41] 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.

[1:16:51] I'm going to anger Stewart even more

[1:16:55] by not precisely answering it

[1:16:58] after making such fun of him.

[1:17:01] Wow.

[1:17:02] Because I've been fortunate enough

[1:17:03] not to have like, I think, a big enough trauma

[1:17:07] that like I have that reaction to a moment in movies.

[1:17:09] It's more of the classic,

[1:17:12] like that's not what it's like thing that bothers me.

[1:17:15] Like I saw late night, the Mindy Kaling movie

[1:17:19] about working on a late night comedy show.

[1:17:23] And I was like, I think if I was a normal person,

[1:17:26] I would find this like totally pleasant.

[1:17:28] But as someone who has done this for a decade,

[1:17:32] it baffles me how incredibly wrong everything is,

[1:17:36] especially from someone who works in television.

[1:17:40] So that's a slightly different thing,

[1:17:41] but it's where my mind went.

[1:17:43] Here I lie, bleeding and broken from Dan's vicious barbs.

[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,

[1:18:03] but I think closer than either of you did, which is-

[1:18:07] We're ramping up, that's the pattern.

[1:18:11] Sure, that's the secret behind jokes.

[1:18:15] It's all wheels within wheels.

[1:18:18] So I don't know that I've had a movie,

[1:18:20] there are probably movies that kind of hit,

[1:18:21] I feel like there's movies that have kind of like

[1:18:24] nerd characters, angry nerd characters,

[1:18:26] 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,

[1:18:34] because these are not movies that I never liked,

[1:18:38] or that were ruined for me.

[1:18:40] But this is a very sad story,

[1:18:42] that years ago, a coworker of mine died,

[1:18:45] and the method of their death was kind of in a way,

[1:18:51] reflected by scenes in two movies that I saw

[1:18:53] in the theater shortly thereafter.

[1:18:55] And I found myself really having,

[1:18:58] and one was a movie I had seen many times before,

[1:19:00] that I was seeing in a revival house,

[1:19:02] on one of my, it was a very early date

[1:19:04] with the woman who's now my wife.

[1:19:05] And the other was a movie I hadn't seen before,

[1:19:07] but it was a remake of, so I kind of knew

[1:19:09] this kind of thing was in it.

[1:19:10] But I didn't expect to, it was for some reason,

[1:19:13] I didn't expect a real event to be mirrored that way,

[1:19:17] in a fictional event, in a way that really

[1:19:19] hurt me in the moment, and I've had a lot of trouble

[1:19:21] staying and sitting through those movies.

[1:19:23] Now I love movies, so I ended up just

[1:19:25] pushing my way through it, but it made it very difficult.

[1:19:28] And so I feel like that was,

[1:19:29] I would tell the story in more detail,

[1:19:30] but I kind of feel like I don't want to

[1:19:31] bring the rest of the episode down.

[1:19:34] But I get what you're saying,

[1:19:35] that there's something in it that,

[1:19:38] and in the case of Cloverfield,

[1:19:39] they're very much playing off of those memories.

[1:19:41] In the same way that the Spielberg War of the Worlds,

[1:19:44] they're very much playing off of September 11th.

[1:19:46] And when I saw that, it made the movie

[1:19:47] more frightening to me.

[1:19:48] I was like, this is much more frightening

[1:19:49] than I thought this movie was gonna be.

[1:19:51] Because I remember that day,

[1:19:52] and I remember the ways it mirrored this.

[1:19:54] But just that like, you can be watching something.

[1:19:56] And you're like, I don't believe that Tom Cruise is a.

[1:20:00] union stevedore but i guess i'll go along with it

[1:20:03] and also and also the fact that at the very end they're like we're reunited

[1:20:07] it's a happy ending and it was like oh like a lot of people died in this movie

[1:20:11] but uh the not to mention all the aliens and yeah not to mention those poor

[1:20:16] aliens uh so i bet that that idea that you can

[1:20:19] be watching something and it can make a connection in your mind

[1:20:23] either advertently or inadvertently that affects you emotionally and kind of

[1:20:27] makes it throws cast a different light on the experience i get what you're

[1:20:29] saying both of those movies that i watched in

[1:20:32] that situation they which were vertigo and and the peter jackson king kong

[1:20:36] both of those i later watched again and i think because it was farther from the

[1:20:40] original event they did not have as much of that

[1:20:43] effect on me but in a way the memory of that mood those movies are both

[1:20:47] not stains but there's always that uh it's you know it's a little bit like the

[1:20:51] crystal and dark crystal get it because it gets one of the shards darkens you

[1:20:55] know at different points and uh it's almost like that it added a

[1:20:58] different emotional level to that those movies that i did not expect

[1:21:01] going in um but thankfully didn't ruin either of them because vertigo i think

[1:21:05] is a brilliant movie that i love and the peter jackson king kong is a fun

[1:21:08] movie that's just way too long uh this next letter is from patrick uh

[1:21:12] last name withheld host of the original cast

[1:21:16] uh podcast you're not familiar yeah um this is just kidding

[1:21:22] hey peaches i'm teaching screenwriting to grad student playwrights this spring

[1:21:26] at university withheld the course focuses on story structure

[1:21:31] so i'm giving these students movies to watch on their own

[1:21:34] and then break down their beats we've got a good mix of classics like the

[1:21:38] apartment and casa blanca mixed with more modern films like

[1:21:42] nari and everything everywhere all at once the problem is i'd like to throw

[1:21:46] some genre films in the mix especially horror but i'm sorely lacking in

[1:21:50] this department i've got action films covered

[1:21:53] die hard and shafts big score but no horror other than the silence of the

[1:21:56] lambs can you guys recommend some horror and

[1:21:59] or sci-fi films that are great examples of story structure for my students love

[1:22:04] the show patrick less than withheld um i'm gonna

[1:22:09] jump right in there i think obviously the original castle freak

[1:22:13] that follow that up with head of the family your students will freak

[1:22:17] top that off with the invisible maniac uh which i think vinegar syndrome is

[1:22:21] putting out a blu-ray of though we are not this isn't a plug that's

[1:22:24] not a sponsor thing and uh then if you can track it down why

[1:22:27] not watch the granny there's four movies boom

[1:22:30] class dismissed um

[1:22:35] are you dismissing class before they watch the movies

[1:22:38] they're just well they gotta go home to watch the movies yeah they're gonna

[1:22:40] watch in class oh okay fair fair point fair point i

[1:22:44] watch the movies on their iphone in the middle of class like what the fuck

[1:22:47] uh i so here's other answers um alien i think it's probably a pretty

[1:22:54] good one that's the my number one yeah that i was

[1:22:56] gonna say i think that i mean there's the thing is like it depends on what

[1:23:00] you're looking for because there's stuff where it's like oh i want to teach you

[1:23:04] sort of a classic screenwriting stock structure or i want to teach you

[1:23:08] something that subverts it or plays with it in some way

[1:23:12] because like even something like alien which is i think

[1:23:15] very carefully structured like you know if you were seeing that for the first

[1:23:19] time you wouldn't know who the hero is at the

[1:23:23] beginning of the movie you you know people watching it for the

[1:23:26] first time probably by default were like okay tom scarrett is our hero

[1:23:30] in this film and then uh sigourney weaver is the

[1:23:34] survivor you know so it doesn't do kind of some of the stuff that people

[1:23:40] would tell you to do today maybe in terms of like really

[1:23:45] establishing like a clear focus but it's all the better for it

[1:23:49] elliot's looking at me quizzically but i think i think that i mean i think i

[1:23:53] think that that's that i don't know that that's necessary i

[1:23:55] think uh no no it's just a different different idea of what good structure is

[1:23:58] i think yeah i think that alien is is to me is a

[1:24:01] great structure for plot wise because of the way it builds on

[1:24:06] scenarios and it does and literally dan o'bannon there's a

[1:24:09] there's a book on his screenplay structure where the idea is to keep

[1:24:12] kind of like shocking or surprising the audience in

[1:24:16] builds so that um they can't get too comfortable

[1:24:20] but also there's always something new coming up to kind of

[1:24:22] keep pulling them through it and i think the way that alien i think alien is a

[1:24:26] basically as far as that kind of movie can go it's basically perfect like i

[1:24:29] don't there's it's hard for me to think of anything that you could change in it

[1:24:31] other than i guess allowing sigourney weaver to keep her pants on at the end

[1:24:35] but i want to clarify that i'm not saying it's bad

[1:24:38] structure i'm just saying that in a teaching situation often you're

[1:24:42] looking for something that kind of is like

[1:24:45] the like i don't know like this is the ur structure you know and like things

[1:24:52] that deviate from it in one way or other just like you got to call that out

[1:24:55] you know but like i think that alien is all the richer for

[1:24:58] not making a clear sort of telegraphed like this is our survivor

[1:25:03] at the beginning i think it's the difference between uh

[1:25:08] what i guess it depends yeah what you mean by structure i mean if it's the if

[1:25:10] it's the like robert mckee type structure then it should have

[1:25:14] started with ripley leaving her house high-fiving a black

[1:25:18] 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 exactly here's the cat at the

[1:25:24] beginning so we know she's good and then we can

[1:25:27] follow her through the rest of it but i then you're also not gonna like

[1:25:30] the other movie i was going to mention which is the thing

[1:25:31] which i think is also just a real is a really well structured movie

[1:25:35] because if you look at it if you don't assume that structure has to be

[1:25:40] let me introduce my protagonist let me introduce why they're likable let me

[1:25:43] then follow them clearly and follow only their

[1:25:46] character arc if instead you're looking at structure as

[1:25:48] um how you lay in information dramatically and then pay it off

[1:25:53] dramatically for like a satisfying story experience i

[1:25:56] think both of those movies do that incredibly well yeah and they do it in

[1:26:00] a way that uh i think an alien ripley is not

[1:26:03] necessarily like the she's again by the end she's the

[1:26:05] hero but not necessarily the main character but at the same time

[1:26:08] even though it's not made super clear if you watch it again afterwards

[1:26:12] it's very clear where she stands in relation with the other people there

[1:26:15] and why she stands out from them so even though the movie's not calling

[1:26:18] attention to it the character arc and is still in there but it's also

[1:26:21] not one of those ones where it's like she had to learn that uh at the

[1:26:26] beginning we see that uh she doesn't spend enough time with her

[1:26:29] family and by the end she spends time with her family you know that kind of

[1:26:32] man i want to make it clear i'm not saying

[1:26:34] these things no no i don't think you're saying that there

[1:26:37] is a generic sort of like version of hollywood story structure that exists

[1:26:42] out there and so if you're if that's one thing

[1:26:44] that you're looking for you have to recognize when there are

[1:26:47] differences i although you make it interesting like it's interesting to

[1:26:50] bring up the thing like i do think that that is a type of

[1:26:53] story that we see less of these days that i would like to see more of

[1:26:58] you know like that thing in alien where the hero

[1:27:01] emerges from a group of a group of time rather than it just being like

[1:27:06] the movie holding your hand and being like this is the person that we're

[1:27:08] following also i wish more movies had like a

[1:27:11] gross fucking thing hanging out and killing people

[1:27:14] that goes that that goes beyond without saying we all wish they had gross things

[1:27:18] uh but the that um there's a uh

[1:27:23] now i had another thing i was gonna say about structure and and and oh wait that

[1:27:27] i think both those movies help with avoiding

[1:27:30] they play into a little bit but not entirely i i used to get mad there were

[1:27:34] all those videos that were on youtube that were like

[1:27:35] every movie is the same movie we broke down the structure to show

[1:27:39] every story the same story star wars indiana jones

[1:27:43] batman they're all the same movie every movie's the same

[1:27:46] there's a lot of different ways to tell a movie they're not indiana jones or

[1:27:49] star wars or batman like there's lots of there's lots of other ways to do it like

[1:27:52] i guess tokyo story my dinner with andre

[1:27:56] the 400 blows they're all the same jules jules and jim last year at

[1:28:02] mary and bad three godfathers

[1:28:07] they're all the same movie wax of discovery of television among the bees

[1:28:12] it's all the same so like north uncle boone you can

[1:28:16] recall his past lives i i was a simple man all these things i

[1:28:21] think uh i think so it's a uh i think you owe it

[1:28:24] to your students to show them hollywood movies that aren't

[1:28:27] exactly those things and then start because there is a

[1:28:31] structure to let me that and that's the issue don't show them

[1:28:34] don't show them elene because elene has no structure that's the problem

[1:28:37] is that it's instead of being a structured movie it's just kind of like

[1:28:40] it's like a child telling a story and then and then and then

[1:28:44] and you're like all right where's this where's this going i don't understand

[1:28:47] yeah no i think you just i think that you should just have

[1:28:51] them watch as many movies that do interesting things with the screenplay

[1:28:56] as you can because like i don't know like you get into things like

[1:29:00] there's stuff that's like very like classically structured in a way that

[1:29:03] is sort of you understand like this is this is a story this is a hollywood

[1:29:08] story and then there's stuff that like in terms of horror for instance like

[1:29:11] seeing barbarian this year like i love the way that screenplay works

[1:29:16] but it works very clearly in part because it is

[1:29:19] breaking structure it is like leading you to believe

[1:29:22] it is under one structure and it's a different one and then you have to but

[1:29:26] like that is something that you get to after understanding maybe like the

[1:29:29] basics of movies because it doesn't affect you the same way if this is the

[1:29:34] first movie you have ever seen in your life

[1:29:36] you know i don't know that'd be funny if barbarian was the first person anyone

[1:29:39] the first movie anyone ever saw in their life oh so this is how movies were

[1:29:43] oh movies are like this i guess this is the way movies are

[1:29:47] that would be so funny it's like a it's like a very simple version of dogtooth

[1:29:51] like yeah yeah all the movies are like this they're all like this

[1:29:55] they all have justin long in them yes all of them i i remember reading a tweet

[1:29:59] where somebody

[1:30:00] of a screening of Teton and a guy was telling his date, he was like, yeah, all

[1:30:05] French movies are like this. They're crazy.

[1:30:11] Okay, well, in all French movies, someone's belly is ripped open by a metal

[1:30:16] sphere. Yeah, it's adorable. That's what birth is like, Elliot. French babies are

[1:30:24] all chrome. Yeah, all French babies are chrome. 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. Exactly. Spoilers

[1:30:33] for Teton, I guess. It's time to recommend some movies you can watch instead of

[1:30:39] Aline. We just got out of October, Shocktober, the horror season. I went to

[1:30:49] dismember the Alamo, the marathon at the Alamo Drafthouse, and I want to

[1:30:53] recommend my favorite of the films I watched there, Paganini horror, which

[1:31:01] Paganini horror? Paganini horror. Have you not seen this one? No. This would be

[1:31:05] right up your alley. So this is one of these movies that, you know, exists in the

[1:31:12] liminal space between like a horror movie that I'm enjoying on its merits

[1:31:16] because it's like bright and fun and and does wild stuff and is also like bad

[1:31:23] because of production elements. It's a movie that... Oh yeah, this looks good. I

[1:31:29] believe I can tell is a film that was, you know, spoken on set in English by

[1:31:38] Italian actors and then like they had American actors maybe dub over that so

[1:31:43] it was without an accent or something to that effect. It's possible. I mean, Italian

[1:31:47] movies, even at that time, were still mostly, they rarely recorded sound on

[1:31:52] set anyway. Most of Italian film history they would post-record

[1:31:57] that, so even movies in Italian would be dubbed. Well, I'm just saying like the

[1:32:01] lip motion appears to match the words but not quite. So it's one of

[1:32:09] those and the screenplay is very literal-minded, perhaps a screenplay, one

[1:32:14] imagines maybe, that was written to be performed in English by a non-English

[1:32:18] speaker, so everything that happens in the movie is being explained very

[1:32:23] literally at all moments in a way that like makes it feel like Dan Brown wrote

[1:32:28] a Goosebump book. And it's like this wild plot about this old scrap of a Paganini

[1:32:38] music for piano, I guess, that like they then adapt into a song but then that

[1:32:46] song has like nefarious, because like they like buy it from a character that's

[1:32:51] obviously coded to be the devil, like Donald Pleasant shows up with a 666

[1:32:55] briefcase, a briefcase where the that's the combination to the lock. That sounds

[1:33:01] great. Anyway, you get you get a sense of the vibes I'm talking about here. It's

[1:33:05] just it's just very like, especially with an audience, if you see this, this is a

[1:33:09] good one to get some of your goof-minded friends around and watch this. It was a

[1:33:14] lot of fun. Yeah, it looks great. I'm gonna recommend a movie that is playing in

[1:33:19] select cities right now, or maybe not, depending on when you listen this

[1:33:22] episode. I'm gonna recommend the new movie from our boy Park Chan-wook. The

[1:33:28] movie is called Decision to Leave. It is, I think, a little bit sweeter than some

[1:33:34] of his other movies. Well, this is a film adaptation of the show I Think You

[1:33:37] Should Leave, right? Uh-huh, exactly. Wait, yes. It is a story about a detective who is

[1:33:49] investigating a murder, and his life becomes more complicated when he meets

[1:33:56] the widow of the dead man, and it is great, and it's funny, and it's it's kind

[1:34:03] of less of a thriller than a lot of his other stuff, but it's very hot, and it's

[1:34:10] great, and I liked it a lot. Yeah, it was great. Thumbs up. Decision to Leave. Check

[1:34:15] that shit out. And I'm going to recommend a Japanese movie from 1998. This is a

[1:34:20] movie called After Life, written and directed by Hirokazu Koreda, and this is

[1:34:26] a movie where it posits that when you die, you go to a facility where you are

[1:34:32] interviewed about your memories, and then you get to choose one memory, and

[1:34:37] the people who work there make a movie of it. You watch the movie, and then

[1:34:41] that's your existence for the rest of eternity. It's just reliving that memory,

[1:34:45] and so we follow a few different people who are either running through their

[1:34:50] memories trying to choose the right one, or having trouble choosing a memory, and

[1:34:53] we meet the people who actually have to sit down and

[1:34:57] figure out how to make these as movies, and I found it to be a very beautiful

[1:35:01] movie, and a very moving movie, and funny at times, but also very sweet at times,

[1:35:05] and for a movie that's about the afterlife, it's also super

[1:35:10] matter-of-fact and straightforward, and part of the fun parts is when

[1:35:14] they're like, okay, this guy's memory is about flying a plane, so I guess we got

[1:35:18] to figure out how to, you know, Wes Anderson and Rushmore kind of like

[1:35:22] be kind, rewind, figure out how to make it feel like we're shooting a movie where a

[1:35:25] plane is flying, and so it's just a really good movie, and I found it to

[1:35:32] be just a very positive experience, so that's Afterlife, and I watched it

[1:35:39] on the Criterion channel. I think it's still available there.

[1:35:42] Man, that's three very similar recommendations.

[1:35:49] I was looking at the Wikipedia entry for Paganini Horror, and it

[1:35:54] says in it that it was prefaced on the idea that the Klaus Kinski

[1:35:58] biopic Paganini was going to be a huge hit, so they had to have a horror rip-off version of it.

[1:36:02] That's hilarious. Well, and I think I'm pretty sure that Paganini Horror is more

[1:36:11] widely remembered at this point. Yeah. Okay, well, you know, Alain. Alain? Alain?

[1:36:20] Alain? Alain? Alain. Here's where we leave you, Alain. It's been nice knowing you.

[1:36:28] For new listeners, Dan always personally addresses the film and bids farewell.

[1:36:33] Very warmly. It's actually a very sweet ritual. I think we should do this.

[1:36:37] Yeah. You were only in our life a short time, but you brought the three of us together.

[1:36:42] So much joy, yeah. So, thank you, and thanks to you, our listeners.

[1:36:47] Thanks to Maximum Fun. Go to MaximumFun.org. See all the other shows on our podcast network.

[1:36:54] They aren't just faceless overlords. They're nice people. Check them out.

[1:36:58] And thank you to Alex Smith, who edits and mixes the show and does his own stuff

[1:37:06] under the name HowlDotty, which is also his handle on Twitter.

[1:37:11] We were just on his fast track. We put out a song about a sexy xenomorph

[1:37:15] that I've sent to friends who surprised. I can hear the surprise tone in the text.

[1:37:22] Back said, this is a real song. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like it's a goofy, dumb song

[1:37:28] about a sexy xenomorph, but it's also really well done. Thanks to Alex Smith.

[1:37:34] He made it pretty funky. Yeah, he did. Guys, I actually have some exciting news

[1:37:40] I wanted to break. I sent a tape of that song to this manager, and he loves it,

[1:37:46] and he wants to marry all of us. Oh, that's amazing. Even though we're all 12 years old?

[1:37:51] Yes, but don't worry. We're grown men whose heads are on 12-year-old bodies, so it's okay.

[1:37:56] Okay, so it's not weird then. No, no, no.

[1:37:58] All right, well, thank you for listening. For The Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:38:01] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:38:03] J'esuis Elliot Kaelin, French again. Au revoir.

[1:38:06] Uh-huh. Bye. Bye.

[1:38:10] All our bases are covered. All three bases.

[1:38:13] All three bases belong to us. Home is not, does not count as a base.

[1:38:17] No, no, home is just an idea. It's a concept. Home is a state of mind. It's where the heart is.

[1:38:21] It is? It's where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there.

[1:38:24] That's where I left it. San Francisco? Mm-hmm.

[1:38:28] Okay, well, Stuart lives in San Francisco now, guys.

[1:38:31] Molaram took out my heart and put it in San Francisco.

[1:38:35] Put it in an album. Just wrote to San Francisco.

[1:38:38] Do you think that's what happened to Tony Bennett? Mm-hmm.

[1:38:41] Yeah, the original version was a duet with Molaram.

[1:38:45] I left your heart in San Francisco.

[1:38:48] And then there was tensions between the two of them and Tony Bennett of just recording it on his own.

[1:38:53] Yeah, eventually it broke up.

[1:38:55] But then Molaram told that story to Paul Schrader and became the inspiration for the movie Heart Beeps.

Ep. #382 - Aline

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