Episode #377 - The Gray Man

Dan McCoy

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss the Gray Man.

Stuart Wellington

[0:03] More like the board identity, am I right?

[0:07] Ha ha!

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

Dan McCoy

[0:38] I'm Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[0:39] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:40] I'm the special podcasting operative known as Elliot Kalin.

[0:44] That's my code name.

[0:45] My real name, though, is Elliot Kalin.

Stuart Wellington

[0:47] Your name is not cool enough.

[0:48] It's not cool enough, Elliot Kalin.

[0:49] If you're going to be an operative, if you're going to be a top secret operative,

[0:52] you need like a cool name, something that just sticks right in the brain.

[0:57] Something that connotes dullness.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00] Or something like Sierra Six, which sounds like a seltzer of water of some kind.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06] So we're going to get into this when we talk about the movie,

[1:08] but we're talking about a character who is introduced to us with the name Cortland Gentry.

[1:16] They're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[1:18] He's going to be Sierra Six from now on.

[1:21] They're like, what is there?

[1:22] As the person who was taking notes to summarize his movie,

[1:26] I found it very convenient that all I had to write was six.

[1:30] Yeah, over and over again.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31] Yeah.

[1:31] They said, what's dumber than Cortland Gentry?

[1:35] I know, Sierra.

[1:37] But what if we can make that even dumber?

[1:39] Sierra Six?

Dan McCoy

[1:41] Great.

[1:41] Okay.

[1:42] So it's...

[1:43] Numbers are all the rage these days.

[1:45] Yep.

[1:45] That 11 over on Stranger Things.

[1:47] Mm-hmm.

[1:48] People love numbers.

Stuart Wellington

[1:50] Yeah.

[1:50] People like 11.

[1:51] They will like five less than her.

[1:53] Or five better.

Elliott Kalan

[1:55] I guess we'll find out.

[1:56] Potentially, yeah.

[1:57] It depends on what you're...

[1:58] Dan, what do we do on this podcast?

[1:59] We don't just talk about numbers.

[2:00] This isn't, what's your number, the movie, the podcast.

Dan McCoy

[2:03] Mm-hmm.

[2:04] This is a podcast where we talk about movies that were critical or commercial flops.

[2:11] And in this case, I know you're going to say something about Topeka.

[2:15] Also, there's a secondary Topeka-related mission statement.

[2:20] Just opinions on Topeka.

[2:21] But in this case...

[2:22] Calm down.

[2:23] I wasn't even going to say it.

Elliott Kalan

[2:24] I was kind of done with that bit.

[2:25] But if you want to keep it going, Dan, we'll keep it going.

Dan McCoy

[2:27] I presumed you had this look on your face like you're going to say something.

[2:30] I was actually...

[2:31] I presumed that was it.

Elliott Kalan

[2:32] I was actually going to say, and this might be what you were going to say, I think we might

[2:35] have to change our remit because the idea of a commercial flop is so much harder to understand

[2:39] now.

[2:39] The Gray Man is a Netflix original.

[2:41] So who knows how well it did?

[2:43] Nobody.

Dan McCoy

[2:44] And that is why I say critical or commercial flop.

[2:48] That and to fend off the people on the internet who are constantly like, I thought that was

[2:56] a financial success.

[2:57] I'm like, look, man, it's just a name.

[2:59] Don't get hung up on it.

[3:00] Do people actually do that?

[3:00] I wish...

[3:01] Yes, they do it all the time.

[3:02] And I'm like, I wish, honestly, at this point, I wish I could go back in time, change the name

[3:08] to something that makes no reference to something that could be misinterpreted that way because

[3:15] I don't like having to be like, look, we're going to do whatever movie we want to do ultimately.

Stuart Wellington

[3:20] So...

[3:21] Dan is the podcaster equivalent of King Kong standing on the Empire State Building and these

[3:25] internet people are the biplanes that are flying around bothering him with their incessant

[3:30] questions.

[3:30] Listen.

[3:31] Until he drops off out of sheer boredom.

[3:34] But Dan, what you're saying is...

Elliott Kalan

[3:34] I love that you listen to us.

[3:37] Is if you could turn back time, doodoo doodoo, if you could find a way, you would change

[3:45] the name of this podcast to something else.

Stuart Wellington

[3:49] Now imagine Dan is twirling around in a thong bodysuit with sailors all around him.

[3:52] Yeah, thanks for sharing that with us, Elliot.

Dan McCoy

[3:55] Now, Netflix does not release numbers, but they do...

Elliott Kalan

[3:59] They release number six, Sierra Six, Star of the Gray Man.

[4:02] Oh, yeah.

[4:03] And 11.

[4:04] And wait a minute, there's 11 who's on Stranger Things.

[4:06] A Netflix show.

[4:07] Sounds like Netflix releases a lot of numbers, Dan.

[4:09] I guess that's true.

[4:10] Station 11, of course, is on HBO.

Dan McCoy

[4:12] According to Netflix, this was very successful for them.

[4:16] But it was...

[4:17] And it wasn't even like a critical flop, let's say.

[4:21] It's a critical...

[4:22] Eh.

[4:22] Despite not being good.

[4:24] I'll say this, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[4:25] Yeah.

[4:25] Netflix likes to play...

[4:26] I feel a little fast and loose with the numbers since I'll turn it on and they're like,

[4:30] this movie is the most watched movie in the world.

[4:33] By the way, it's on your home screen and it's playing right now unless you press a button.

[4:38] And I'm like, wait, does this count as a view?

[4:39] I'm not watching this.

[4:41] I feel like they are...

[4:41] It's a little unfair that they're like, it's amazing.

[4:44] Everybody in the world is watching Squid Game merely because we forced it onto their TV screens whenever they opened our app.

[4:51] That's what they do in Squid Game.

Dan McCoy

[4:52] The most popular album is this shitty U2 album that no one wants.

Elliott Kalan

[4:57] Yeah, that's true.

[4:57] Apple could say it's the most downloaded album in music history is this U2 one they shoved onto my phone and I deleted that shit as fast as I could.

[5:06] I felt that's maybe the most violent...

[5:08] And this shows how entitled and privileged my life has been.

[5:11] That was the most violated I ever felt was opening my phone and seeing this U2 album.

[5:16] Again, says more about me.

[5:17] First world problems.

[5:18] First world problems.

Dan McCoy

[5:19] I don't even hate U2 as much as most people seem to these days.

[5:23] They're fine.

[5:24] It's fashionable to dislike.

[5:26] But they put out some really strong albums in the past.

[5:30] I don't want this one.

[5:32] Who can forget that?

Elliott Kalan

[5:33] It's not to my taste.

[5:34] That whole thing on the pop tour where Bono was like the devil on a phone call with somebody.

[5:39] Great stuff.

[5:40] Great stuff.

[5:41] The Spider-Man musical.

[5:42] Wonderful.

[5:42] I guess that was only two members of U2.

[5:44] The two U2 they call them.

[5:45] The U2 too.

[5:46] Yeah.

[5:47] But yeah, I don't want a U2 album.

[5:49] Fetch.

Elliott Kalan

[5:49] Fetch they call it.

Stuart Wellington

[5:51] Now that we're on the subject of talking about numbers like U2, let's talk about number six.

[5:55] The hero of the movie, The Gray Man.

[5:57] Now featured on Netflix.

[5:59] According to my television, it's in the top ten of all movies.

Elliott Kalan

[6:03] Now, I have a question.

[6:05] Why is this movie called – I know it's based on a book called The Gray Man.

[6:08] They barely ever refer to him as The Gray Man.

[6:11] I think they do it once.

[6:12] Why don't they just call it number six or something like that or Sierra Six?

[6:15] Well, because –

[6:16] I am number six.

[6:16] I mean, I –

[6:17] As much as –

[6:18] As much as –

[6:18] I am number four, I think.

[6:20] Oh, shit.

[6:21] I mean, number six is Patrick McGowan's character from The Prisoner.

[6:24] But they never call him The Gray Man.

Dan McCoy

[6:26] Dan, sorry.

[6:26] I keep interrupting you on purpose.

[6:28] As much as The Gray Man is a uninspiring name, I think Sierra Six or Six would be a less

[6:36] inspiring name.

[6:37] Well, they're –

[6:37] Those are the only three titles possible.

[6:38] Unless you're talking about the musical six, which has some real bangers in it.

[6:43] Thumbs up.

[6:44] It's a huge hit.

[6:45] I mean, yeah, The Gray Man.

Elliott Kalan

[6:47] He works in a gray area.

[6:49] He was –

[6:49] I'm just saying they should call him that more in the movie because they just say it once.

[6:54] I mean, a lot of times he's wearing like a gray tracksuit.

Dan McCoy

[6:58] True.

[6:58] Elliot, were you not listening to me before when I was talking about the Flophouse?

[7:02] It's just a name.

Elliott Kalan

[7:03] You can name anything, whatever the fuck you want.

[7:04] Yeah, you can just name it whatever.

[7:05] I've been hoisted on our own flop tart.

[7:08] You're right.

[7:08] I should have been more sensitive to the fact that they don't – they could just name

[7:12] a movie whatever.

[7:13] They don't have to hold it to that movie.

Stuart Wellington

[7:15] So The Gray Man begins in 2003 in a Florida state prison.

[7:19] We're introduced to prisoner Ryan Gosling whose character again is named Cortland Gentry

[7:23] who is trading quips with –

Elliott Kalan

[7:26] Which does sound like the name of a kind of mid-level hotel.

Stuart Wellington

[7:30] Yeah.

[7:30] Like a regional hotel.

[7:31] Yeah.

[7:33] He's trading quips with CIA agent Billy Bob Thornton.

[7:36] He is a lifetime criminal.

[7:38] He's been in prison since he was 15 years old and seems to have a very good prison barber shop

[7:44] because – I mean he looks great and I mainly comment on it because Billy Bob Thornton has

[7:49] that very traditional CIA agent look of coming off a three-day bender.

[7:55] It's great.

[7:56] Thumbs up.

[7:56] I think that's more of a traditional Billy Bob Thornton look.

[7:58] But he looks so much more cleaned up later on.

[8:01] I'm guessing it's the wig department's problem.

[8:04] Yeah.

[8:04] So we're introduced to this character.

[8:05] We'll find out later on because I'm not going to go through every single jump around and flashback or whatever.

[8:11] Right.

[8:11] He's in jail because he killed his dad for abusing him and his brother.

[8:17] He was protecting his brother.

[8:20] So he killed his dad and then was sentenced to like 30-some years in prison, which is a lot for a 15-year-old.

[8:27] Well, his dad was the president though.

[8:29] Oh, that actually makes sense.

[8:30] Oh, wow.

Elliott Kalan

[8:31] Yeah.

[8:31] So I'm going to say that – Stuart, not to throw you off track too early.

[8:35] It's okay.

[8:36] Ryan Gosling plays such a bland, nothing character in this.

[8:40] We're given so little reason to like him.

[8:42] And in the movie you find out about this killing his dad for abusing him and his brother much later.

[8:48] And by the time it showed up, I was like, too little, too late movie.

[8:51] It is past the window where I can care about this character.

[8:54] And it felt very –

[8:55] He's a gray man.

[8:56] But I mean, here's the thing, Dan.

[8:59] Maybe you called the gray man, but you make him an interesting character for the audience.

Dan McCoy

[9:04] I mean, I found Gosling perfectly likable in this.

[9:07] Like, Gosling is a weird one for me.

[9:11] He's a baby goose.

[9:13] I think for me he's at his best when he's allowed to play a little funnier.

[9:17] Yes.

[9:18] Like this is not really one of his funny roles.

Elliott Kalan

[9:21] He has a lot of quips.

[9:22] But it is a role that I feel like – usually a good role has two pillars, let's say.

[9:27] One is a well-written character and one is the charisma of the actor.

[9:31] And this role has one pillar, which is just Ryan Gosling's charisma.

[9:34] And he has – there's no written character there for him to lean on.

[9:38] And it's even – and you see it even more with Anna DeArmas' character who has nothing – she has no character written for her.

[9:44] It's entirely resting on her shoulders.

[9:46] And so it's – by the time they got to that, I was like, movie, if he lives in the gray area, just make him like a morally complex dude.

[9:55] Up to this point, he's like – you know, they're trying to make him into a good guy, good guy, which doesn't work for me.

Dan McCoy

[10:00] I wouldn't mind it.

[10:01] I mean like I mind it more with Anna DeArmas not having more of a character because, number one, we saw how fun she is as a goofy spy in No Time to Die.

[10:13] She's so much fun in that.

[10:14] Also, like – then it becomes like a trend of like having like a bunch of like boring characters.

[10:20] If our lead character – like the thing – I think the idea is that we see him being abused later on.

[10:25] And the form it takes is his dad, you know, burning him with a cigarette lighter or maybe a cigar.

[10:32] We don't see what actually made the burn.

[10:35] But him being like, as long as you can, you know, stay calm through this, you know, you'll be unstoppable.

[10:42] Yeah, fear is the mind killer.

[10:44] That is the gray man's superpowers.

[10:46] He is preternaturally just sort of self-possessed and calm while all this chaos is going on around.

[10:52] And that could work.

[10:54] But, yeah, it didn't for you, Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[10:57] No, it didn't for – it very much – well, I have – I will get to it.

[11:00] I have a lot of – I have a lot of issues with this.

[11:03] What – at first I was like, oh, this is kind of a mediocre programmer.

[11:06] By the end of it, I was – I found myself actually offended by the existence of the movie in some ways.

[11:10] Okay, so we're almost done with the first scene.

Stuart Wellington

[11:15] Billy Bob Thornton's character whose name is Fitz, I think.

[11:19] Fitzroy.

[11:19] But they call him Fitz.

[11:21] Yeah, they call him Fitz.

Elliott Kalan

[11:22] Named after the classic X-Men villain of the same name.

Stuart Wellington

[11:24] Well, let's get back to that first scene.

[11:26] So, Fitz –

Elliott Kalan

[11:27] I'll just say Fitz offers him a role as a hitman.

[11:31] That's basically it.

Stuart Wellington

[11:32] Thank you.

[11:32] He does.

[11:33] He offers to commute his sentence if he engages in a lifetime of being a CIA hitman.

[11:38] Boom.

[11:38] That is our setup.

[11:39] We have to accept it.

[11:41] Is it silly?

[11:41] Yes, but it's an action movie.

[11:43] Whatever.

[11:43] Let's fucking get on this.

[11:45] We bought the ticket.

[11:47] We paid for our Netflix subscription.

[11:48] Let's just take this ride, guys.

Elliott Kalan

[11:50] I'm willing to suspend my disbelief and continue with the Hollywood idea that the CIA is this sort of masterful, shadowy organization that just murders people secretly left and right and you never find out about it.

[12:02] Even though all the evidence in the movie is that every operation is a total fuck-up with nonstop collateral damage.

[12:08] It reminded me so much – we'll get to it.

[12:10] It reminded me so much of in Firestarter when they're like, Rainbird's the best in the business.

[12:14] And it's like, really?

[12:15] He kills 10 extra people for every target you send him after.

[12:18] Yeah, you get this tremendous value.

[12:20] That's true.

[12:21] Tremendous value.

[12:21] It amortized over a dollar per bullet.

[12:23] It's amazingly cheap.

[12:24] Yeah.

[12:25] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[12:25] Okay.

[12:26] So it is now 18 years later in Bangkok.

[12:29] We know it's later because they tell us and because Six now has a little beard.

[12:34] That's Ryan Gosling's character.

[12:35] His name is Sierra Six.

[12:36] He's got a little beard.

[12:38] And then finally, Ana de Armas shows up and she is wearing this fucking amazing suit.

[12:44] Yeah, that's a great suit.

[12:45] So much charisma.

[12:46] Oh, man.

[12:47] Why couldn't she be the lead?

[12:48] We'll find out.

Elliott Kalan

[12:49] And by the end of it, when we get to the end of it, it's the most enjoyable moments for me where the end when she's running around with rocket launchers strapped to her back like Bugs Bunny, hurdling past bad guys.

Dan McCoy

[13:01] That is definitely a thought that I also had though where it was just like, well, she's played sort of like fourth banana in two spy movies now.

[13:08] Like give her her own spy movies.

[13:09] Make her the first banana.

[13:10] It would be so much better.

Elliott Kalan

[13:11] They should call the movie First Banana.

[13:13] That's her code name.

[13:14] Agent First Banana.

[13:16] She's the best in the biz.

[13:17] She peels the bad guys.

[13:18] Paul Schrader's first banana.

Stuart Wellington

[13:19] So Ana de Armas is like a partner, co-agent or something, and she gives Six a little water pistol.

Elliott Kalan

[13:25] She's just assigned to – she's a different agent assigned to his case.

[13:28] She's not part of the Sierra program.

[13:30] She's not one of the elite CIA hitmen.

[13:33] She's one of the slightly more commonplace everyday CIA hitmen.

Stuart Wellington

[13:38] Yeah.

[13:39] So he – yeah.

[13:40] And this is specifically – this is a specific non-Sierra mission.

[13:46] He's getting orders directly from Langley and is from a shadowy figure, the shadowy head of the CIA known as Denny Carmichael, which is a hilarious.

[14:00] He's got his name to say over and over.

[14:02] Played by what?

[14:03] Reggie Jean Page from Bridgerton, the guy who's just skeeting all over the place.

[14:08] And he has the –

Elliott Kalan

[14:09] He doesn't do any of that in this movie.

[14:10] No, no, no, no.

[14:11] But he has the – he's the character in a lot of these spy movies who is kind of the villain, and he says things that make people – that should sound tough, but no one in the movie takes him seriously.

[14:21] Yeah.

[14:21] As a – he reminds me of Kelsey Grammer in Money Plane, where like –

[14:25] The Rumble.

[14:25] From his point of view, he is the baddest of badasses, but nobody takes him seriously that way.

[14:29] And that was when I realized, wait a minute.

[14:31] This movie is just a Warren Ellis comic where everyone just kind of talks tough all the time and shoots each other.

Dan McCoy

[14:37] He keeps referring to the old man who is the person really in charge.

[14:42] Yes.

[14:42] Who we do not meet and is a clear setup for further gray man adventures.

[14:47] Oh, you think so?

[14:48] I wasn't sure about that.

[14:49] Gray man adventures.

Elliott Kalan

[14:50] Because I think we do meet him at the very end, right?

[14:52] He's the one who gives them a talking to.

[14:55] I thought – by the old man, I thought they just meant the head of intelligence.

[14:58] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[14:59] So Six does not take the shot to kill the target.

[15:02] He's been hired to kill because a kid gets in the way, so he has to do it up close.

[15:06] So we get a little action sequence where he's like killing a bunch of dudes.

[15:09] Turns out the target – when he corners him, the target is number four, Sierra Four, one of his brothers-in-arms, a fellow assassin,

[15:17] who has a – they get in a fight in like a little fireworks area and Six wins.

Elliott Kalan

[15:24] They seem to be in sort of a fireworks-launching alley.

[15:28] Like they fell into the sumers of Bangkok and it was full of fireworks.

Stuart Wellington

[15:31] The fireworks pit.

[15:33] Six wins and four, because he has been bested, hands Six a secret medallion that we will later find out has an even more secret little thumb drive in it.

[15:46] Carmichael and Six have a phone call.

[15:48] Denny Carmichael is not happy with his situation.

[15:50] Six is like, I'm going to go rogue.

[15:53] So he goes off the grid.

[15:54] He borrows somebody's clothes, which continues a trend where he asks everybody before he takes their outfit,

[16:00] he asks them if they're a 42 regular, which I checked.

[16:03] And I think Ryan Gosling is a 42 regular.

[16:06] I'd buy it, yeah.

[16:07] Glad that you fact-checked that.

[16:08] I double-checked it.

[16:09] I also appreciate they didn't say like 42 long.

[16:11] I'm like, Ryan, you don't have to lie about your height, buddy.

[16:14] You're six foot.

[16:15] That's fine.

Elliott Kalan

[16:16] This is one of a few different kind of forced cute little runners.

[16:19] The other being for me, Fitzroy's niece's love of vintage pop, I guess, which is where it was like, can we give these characters like actual things?

[16:32] Can we give them actual personality things?

Dan McCoy

[16:34] I don't know that that's like that cute.

[16:37] I don't know.

[16:37] Elliot, I feel like at this point you've been worn down by watching so many movies that you're angry at.

Elliott Kalan

[16:42] I'm saying that like I've seen a lot of movies where like Last Night in Soho and things like that where young women are obsessed with the music of the guy – the music that the guy who made the movie likes.

Stuart Wellington

[16:54] Girls don't like music, says Elliot Kalin.

Elliott Kalan

[16:56] Girls like lots of music, but I'd love to see a movie where girls listen to music that like girls listen to now and not just what the guy who made the movie likes to listen to, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[17:05] I mean, people listen to everything.

[17:08] So Six Calls –

Elliott Kalan

[17:09] It doesn't feel the same to me as in Booksmart when they do the karaoke of You Oughta Know where it was like I totally buy that.

[17:16] I buy that these girls are into this music even though it's not the music of their era or whatever, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[17:21] Yeah.

[17:21] So Six Calls retired friend, mentor, father figure Fitz who now – like he looks great.

[17:29] He's got his gray hair.

[17:30] He's got a little mustache.

[17:31] He looks awesome.

[17:33] That's Billy Bob Thornton who seems to be – despite being retired, he's still going to be Six's ally and he gives him some advice on a new extraction point.

[17:43] Meanwhile, back in Langley, Denny decides to overrule his – I guess one of his agents played by Jessica Henwick who is really great and doesn't get to do anything in this movie other than like tut tut and be mad at Chris Evans.

Elliott Kalan

[18:01] There were long periods in the movie where I forgot she was in the movie and then she would show up to tell Chris Evans, you can't do that and then she'd go back to the craft service.

[18:10] You can't let a dog play basketball.

[18:13] He's like, I'm going to do it.

[18:14] There's a version of this movie where – there's that version of this movie where Amanda Armis is Six and Jessica Henwick is Denny and it's instantly a more interesting movie.

[18:23] Instantly.

Stuart Wellington

[18:23] Yeah, Denny or the villain that Denny brings in which is Lloyd Hansen played by Chris Evans.

[18:31] Yep, he's one of the Hansen brothers, now an assassin.

[18:36] Assassin for hire.

Elliott Kalan

[18:37] Oh, is that his backstory?

[18:37] Wait, he's one of the Hansen brothers?

Stuart Wellington

[18:39] You didn't pick that up?

[18:41] I thought it was all context clues.

Elliott Kalan

[18:42] I didn't pick that up.

[18:43] I missed the scene I guess where he just said, mm-bop, and then walked into another room.

Stuart Wellington

[18:47] This movie is filled with tiny little Easter eggs like that, Elliot.

Dan McCoy

[18:51] Chris Evans is having all of the fun that Ryan Gosling is not allowed to have, although he's basically playing Henry Cavill from the last Mission Impossible.

[19:00] Complete with mustache.

[19:02] Yeah.

[19:02] Well, yeah.

[19:03] A lot of his personality comes from his mustache and his sort of like retro mid-century shirts he wears.

[19:11] Yeah.

[19:11] I feel like they missed it.

[19:13] Looks great though.

[19:13] He looks great.

Elliott Kalan

[19:14] He does.

[19:14] He looks great.

[19:15] He looks, I mean, he's a handsome man.

[19:17] He dresses well because someone dressed him.

[19:19] It's not like he picked out his own clothes.

[19:20] Maybe he did.

[19:21] But I feel like they.

[19:22] He's got some serious cheeks on him.

[19:23] I feel like there was a.

[19:25] Like butt cheeks?

[19:26] Yeah.

[19:26] Maybe it's.

[19:27] Yeah, sure.

[19:27] Maybe it's because.

[19:29] I mean, the Avengers movie even pointed out what a great butt he has.

[19:32] Yeah, of course.

[19:33] Yeah.

[19:33] I feel like the.

[19:36] Knives out, maybe because they got to do it first.

[19:38] They got to have this guy who is best known as Captain America kind of surprise the audience in turning out to be not a good guy.

[19:45] And I feel like this movie, I couldn't help because it's the Russo brothers that made it.

[19:49] I couldn't help thinking that they're like, now we're going to show Captain America being like a bad guy.

[19:53] But it never quite, it just doesn't, it doesn't come off the same way.

[19:56] And I was, I kept hoping for the moment where I'd be like, I can't believe I'm seeing Captain America do this.

[20:00] The same way that at the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West, when you see that Henry Fonda has shot a child in the face.

[20:05] And you're like, that's not what I expect Henry Fonda to do.

[20:08] Like, I wish they could have played it off.

[20:09] Certainly not the actor Henry Fonda.

[20:11] Well, the fact that.

[20:12] He should be in jail.

[20:12] The fact that he shot a child in the face on the set and then they had to write it into the movie so that he didn't go to jail.

Stuart Wellington

[20:17] True Hollywood stories.

[20:19] So Lloyd is being brought in, but apparently he's a loose cannon.

[20:23] He's an independent contractor assassin with a huge network of killers on hand.

[20:29] And he lives in a castle, I guess.

Elliott Kalan

[20:31] He has a seemingly unlimited budget.

[20:33] Like he must be spending billions of dollars on this operation.

Dan McCoy

[20:37] Yeah.

[20:37] I was like, is he, did he set himself up at Versailles?

[20:40] What's going on?

Stuart Wellington

[20:41] Yeah.

[20:42] So basically in a montage, we see that he kidnaps Fitz's niece, who we later find out as a pacemaker and a fetish for like old timey records.

[20:55] And is close to six.

[20:57] See, she and six already have a familial relationship.

Dan McCoy

[21:00] Close to the person six.

[21:02] In age, she's a teenager.

[21:04] No, no.

Dan McCoy

[21:04] In age, she's a teenager.

[21:06] It's true.

Stuart Wellington

[21:07] Close to six.

[21:08] She's five and three quarters.

[21:10] Her birthday's in a couple months.

[21:11] Billy Bob Thornton is like.

[21:12] And she keeps reminding us.

[21:14] Billy Bob Thornton, who is now being held captive by Lloyd, orders six to be killed by the same extraction team he arranged.

[21:22] What a betrayal.

[21:24] It's fine.

[21:25] So we get a plane fight on this cargo plane with like flares and smoke bombs.

[21:32] And it ends with a hole being blown in the side of the plane.

[21:35] And like six jumps out and has to like chase a guy while flying through the air to get his parachute.

[21:41] There's some neat ideas.

[21:42] Like I feel like there's bits where like where he keeps trying to get a parachute and it either gets sucked out or somebody else takes it.

[21:49] Like, I think that's kind of a neat idea.

[21:50] And there's some cool stuff, but it's so – I don't know about you guys, but it was hard for me to follow this one.

Elliott Kalan

[21:56] Yes.

[21:57] I was wondering why like this movie is trying very hard to do I feel like Mission Impossible type set pieces.

[22:04] And why in the last couple of Mission Impossible movies, the set pieces are gorgeous and they're so exciting.

[22:09] And here I just couldn't get into them.

[22:11] And I wonder if that was it.

[22:12] That it was kind of – it was moving so fast it was hard for me to follow exactly what was happening sometimes.

Dan McCoy

[22:17] Yeah.

[22:17] There are some action set pieces in this that I actually like a fair amount, but this one is kind of hard to follow.

[22:25] And it weirdly like cuts off before you would expect it to.

[22:30] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[22:30] It kind of feels like the movie is like, all right, well, you've seen one of these things where a guy dives after a guy and like does the thing where he makes his body small so he can catch up and get the parachute.

[22:39] It's like you don't need to see it happen.

[22:41] Yeah, yeah.

[22:41] Scott McCloud pops out and explains it.

Elliott Kalan

[22:44] It does feel like the movie goes – and then the plane explodes and Six is to jump out and he's going and yada, yada, yada.

[22:50] You got the idea.

[22:51] Anyway, he's calling Fitzroy.

[22:52] You get the rest.

Elliott Kalan

[22:52] You get it.

Stuart Wellington

[22:53] Yeah.

[22:53] I mean it reminded me of the really fun plane fight level in Uncharted 3, which is great and is – literally ends with you landing in the desert.

[23:05] And then the game just progressed from there.

[23:06] It's great.

[23:07] What a game.

Dan McCoy

[23:07] I like that I have to say in these movies usually –

Elliott Kalan

[23:12] In these movies?

[23:12] There's only the one so far.

[23:14] I know they're making a sequel and a spinoff of some kind.

[23:17] On Wikipedia it says a spinoff film which will explore a different element of the Gray Man universe will be written by et cetera et cetera.

[23:23] What other elements of the Gray Man universe are there?

[23:25] There's nothing.

Dan McCoy

[23:26] I mean let's just hope it's on an armist.

[23:28] I guess so.

[23:29] It's a paper-thin universe.

[23:31] No.

[23:33] Movies of this ilk.

[23:35] I am glad –

Elliott Kalan

[23:35] Listeners, I know all universes are paper-thin if you believe in the M-brain theory of stacked universes.

[23:41] Look, I don't necessarily –

[23:42] Oh, man.

Dan McCoy

[23:42] You would have been roasted online if you hadn't given that disclaimer.

Elliott Kalan

[23:46] I'm so glad I covered myself.

Dan McCoy

[23:48] Yeah.

[23:49] No, in movies of this ilk they usually make it that Fitz would be the bad guy.

[23:56] Like that we're supposed to be shocked that this character that we only now met and is a shadowy government person betrayed his son-like assassin character.

[24:08] And I liked that this movie at least was like, no, no, no, they actually have a good relationship.

[24:13] It's just that he got pushed out.

[24:14] And then like the one time that Fitz is like forced to betray him, they have a little call on the phone.

[24:21] It's like, yeah, they've got my niece.

[24:24] And Six is like, oh, okay, cool.

[24:27] Like understood.

[24:29] Yeah, I get it.

Stuart Wellington

[24:30] It's all in the game, baby.

[24:31] So at this point, Six has managed to escape the first genuine attempt at his life.

[24:37] He is on the run.

[24:39] He landed in Turkey.

[24:41] So –

[24:42] Yum.

[24:43] And Lloyd has now scrambled assassins from all over the world.

[24:47] We see assassins from all different locations with monuments and other landmarks in the background.

[24:53] So we're like, oh, wow.

[24:54] Even – that's the Sydney Opera House.

Elliott Kalan

[24:56] It's ridiculous.

[24:57] And they're all walking up to their planes fully armed as if Six is going to jump out of the plane at them.

[25:05] And so many of them are wearing like skull bandana masks and it's like –

Stuart Wellington

[25:08] You got to wear – I mean, you put on your cutest outfit when you're going to kill Six.

Elliott Kalan

[25:13] I guess so.

[25:13] Like the best case scenario, you've got a plane flight to get to where Six is.

[25:17] Like relax.

[25:18] You got some time.

[25:20] Put your yoga pants on.

[25:22] Get your head pillow.

[25:22] So it's a perfect time.

Stuart Wellington

[25:23] It's a perfect time for us to have a flashback.

[25:26] Woo!

[25:27] Woo!

[25:27] Two years ago, the gray man is wearing a dope suit and he has to be a babysitter for Fitz's niece whose identity has been leaked to, I don't know, assassins all over the world.

[25:40] And Denny Carmichael is like, I don't care about that.

[25:43] You don't need protection.

[25:43] Where Fitzroy lives on his show.

[25:46] So he has to – so Six, despite having no background in babysitting, has to babysit Fitz's niece who has a glitchy pacemaker.

[25:55] Like some kind of pacifier.

[25:56] I know.

[25:56] Like some kind of ninja next door.

[25:58] He's going to have some kind of adventure in babysitting.

[25:59] Yeah.

[26:00] Like some kind of Mr. Nanny.

[26:01] So we get a little reveal that one of Six's tattoos is just the name Sisyphus on his arm.

[26:08] It's pretty cool.

[26:10] That's a good tattoo to get.

[26:12] She plays – after having a scare with her pacemaker, she puts on a quirky record, which is perfect for an action sequence, which is what we get.

[26:20] And Assassin shows up and Six beats him up pretty quick and it's fun.

[26:25] Okay, that was it.

[26:26] That was the whole flashback.

[26:27] We're back in present day in Vienna.

Elliott Kalan

[26:29] That was just – and that's all just a setup that now Six cares about – Six also cares about this niece and Lloyd went too far in doing that.

Stuart Wellington

[26:38] Up until this point, we thought if he met the niece, he might just gobble her up.

[26:43] Like a wolf lying in a bed pretending to be a grandma.

[26:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[26:48] Like Saturn thinking he's eating a child, but it's just rocks.

[26:52] Stupid Saturn.

[26:53] Look under the swaddling clothes.

[26:55] What a fool.

Elliott Kalan

[26:56] I didn't realize one of my kids was just super dense and round.

[27:01] Well, down the gumbler he goes.

Stuart Wellington

[27:03] Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

[27:05] I mean, Ephesus probably looks like a rock.

[27:08] Okay, so –

Elliott Kalan

[27:10] I like that Stuart is edging slowly into a Greek mythology hot or not section that I'm really excited to finally hear.

Dan McCoy

[27:17] Oh, I thought it was the Stuart Wellington roast of Greek mythology.

[27:22] Oh, hell yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[27:23] Yeah.

[27:23] You thought Kratos fucked up the Greek gods.

[27:26] Now it's time for Stuart.

[27:28] Okay, so –

Elliott Kalan

[27:29] I see King Midas is in the audience.

[27:31] Get a load of this asshole.

[27:32] Hey, buddy.

Stuart Wellington

[27:34] How's that gold silverware doing for you?

[27:36] I like to think that I'd be a little more specific than just say, hey, look at this asshole.

[27:40] But you know what?

[27:40] That's just how you start.

[27:41] I'm just buying time.

[27:42] Buying time for the old wheels to start churning.

[27:44] Yeah.

[27:44] So we're in present day Indiana.

[27:45] I see Medusa's here.

[27:46] Don't look.

[27:47] Anyway.

[27:50] Don't worry.

[27:51] We'll have more of these jokes as the show goes on, folks.

[27:53] Okay.

[27:53] So Six meets up with a quirky hacker guy to find the tracking information for Chloe's pacemaker and get new passport photos taken.

[28:03] So that, of course, means it's time for us for a shirtless Ryan Gosling shot.

[28:09] He's covered in scars and tattoos, and he's completely yoked.

[28:13] Like, this dude looks amazing.

[28:15] Zero percent body fat.

[28:17] And you know what?

[28:17] Despite all those scars and tattoos, I think I could fix him, guys.

[28:21] You know?

[28:22] Don't fall into that trap.

[28:22] I could fix this guy.

[28:23] No, no, no.

Elliott Kalan

[28:23] It's not your job to fix him.

[28:25] No.

[28:26] Don't fall into that trap.

Stuart Wellington

[28:27] He's got a little beard.

[28:28] He's got that haunted look in his eye.

[28:30] He's got that –

[28:30] I think that means that he's more fixable if he has a beard.

[28:32] He's got that little blonde shock in the front of his hair for some reason.

[28:34] Yeah.

[28:34] He does look like – it looks like he drinks out of court containers behind the restaurant.

[28:39] So, okay.

[28:41] Turns out that eccentric weirdo is actually a trap-based assassin.

[28:46] What?

Elliott Kalan

[28:46] Turns out this man who is essentially a spider in human form and is doing everything – he's giving off so many warning signs.

[28:52] Not since the – not since that New Yorker story about the girl who goes out with that guy and he stalks her and she's a cat person or something.

[28:59] Has there been so many warning signs?

[29:01] In such quick succession.

[29:03] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[29:03] Okay.

[29:04] So, yep.

[29:05] Trap-based assassin traps him in a well.

[29:08] Big surprise.

[29:08] Like a spider.

[29:09] Like a trap spider.

[29:10] Mm-hmm.

[29:11] So, while Six is MacGyvering his way out of the trap –

[29:14] Luckily, wait.

Elliott Kalan

[29:14] Traps him in a well that we later found out has like an escape kit in it that has everything he needs.

[29:19] But we'll get to that.

[29:19] Everything he needs.

[29:20] Yeah.

[29:20] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[29:22] So, Six takes him a little while but he does MacGyver his way out of that trap.

[29:26] Meanwhile, Ana de Armas is being interrogated by Denny Carmichael who's a real creep.

[29:31] Keeps turning off the recording.

[29:33] Yada, yada.

[29:33] He's basically – and Ana de Armas' character – is her character Miranda?

[29:37] What –

[29:38] Does she –

[29:40] Because they vary.

[29:40] Her name is –

[29:41] Her name is –

[29:41] Nobody refers to her by name.

[29:43] Like she's only there to save Ryan Gosling every once in a while.

Elliott Kalan

[29:46] According to Wikipedia, her name is Danny Miranda, which sounds like –

[29:51] Two first names.

[29:52] It sounds like a sitcom detective.

[29:55] Sitcom character.

[29:56] Yeah.

[29:57] But yeah, they almost never refer to her by name because she just exists – yeah, she just exists in her relationship to Six.

[30:02] She has no outside existence of her own whatsoever.

Dan McCoy

[30:05] So I lost focus for a moment because I was distracted by a tweet from Kevin Smith about how much he still bones his wife.

[30:12] Dan, why are you looking at Twitter and especially Kevin Smith's Twitter while we're recording?

[30:16] I don't – it was –

[30:17] You need a notification.

[30:20] Howell Dottie, our producer, retweeted it.

[30:25] That's why I saw it.

[30:26] And you got a Howell Dottie retweet alert on your computer and you said, I'll have to check this out.

[30:32] We – no, we – well, I didn't think that we would go so fast that I would miss anything in this web of pieces from other spy films.

[30:43] But apparently we already did pass something while I was not paying attention, which was him being trapped in the well.

[30:49] And I just wanted to make a note of this guy who makes fake passports and stuff.

[30:55] He is, from moment one, the most suspicious acting man.

[30:59] Yes.

[31:00] Everything about him says, I'm going to betray you and trap you in a well.

[31:03] Yeah.

[31:04] Yeah, and from my perspective as an audience member, look, I don't mind it that much because part of it is creating the tension of like something's going on here.

[31:15] Like, you know, like playing the audience that way.

[31:19] But on the other hand, Six is supposed to be the world's greatest assassin.

[31:25] He's a monster spy.

Elliott Kalan

[31:26] I mean he is – I guess you could say maybe he's a blunt instrument or a scalpel.

[31:30] He knows how to kill.

[31:31] He doesn't know how to recognize danger.

Stuart Wellington

[31:33] But other than –

[31:34] But also, it also shows that his back is up against the wall and he knows that there's something up.

[31:41] But there's – he has like no other options right now.

Elliott Kalan

[31:43] I guess that's true because the only – short of a fly buzzing by this guy's face and his tongue zapping out and catching it and pulling it into his mouth, he could not be more creepy and suspicious.

[31:54] Like there's no – for a moment, I worried that Six had wandered into the lair of a vampire and that the movie was about to take a very abrupt turn.

[32:01] But that's why they call me the gray man.

[32:02] I can only operate at dusk because I can't be out in the light of the sun.

[32:05] I'm a vampire assassin.

Stuart Wellington

[32:07] Yeah.

[32:08] Anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[32:08] Anyway, yeah.

[32:09] I just wanted to talk about that guy.

[32:10] He's in a well.

[32:11] Anna de Armas is being questioned because –

[32:12] She was just trying to do her job.

[32:14] But now –

[32:14] Yep.

[32:15] Now Denny suspects that she's also in on this thing that – have we learned what's on that thumb drive yet or no?

Stuart Wellington

[32:21] No.

[32:21] And he, of course – and he threatened – he takes her off active duty and she's like, well, I'm not going to stand for that.

Elliott Kalan

[32:30] I can't – you mean I'm not allowed to go back into the field and help Ryan Gosling kill people and cause massive damage?

[32:36] That's not why I got into this job.

Stuart Wellington

[32:38] Meanwhile, Chris Evans shoots his own pilot.

[32:41] So they will make an emergency landing in Vienna with his little hit squad, which is perfect timing because Ryan Gosling, six, manages to make an explosion and escape right as Chris Evans and his hit team arrive.

[32:59] So wait –

[32:59] Six carbs through those goons, like a hot knife through goons.

[33:03] What?

Elliott Kalan

[33:04] I have two things to say about this escape from the well.

[33:05] One, he creates an explosion which blows away the guys who are at the edge of the pit.

[33:10] Yet Ryan Gosling, who is inside the pit where the explosion takes place, is totally fine and jumps right out.

[33:15] I don't understand where this explosion – maybe he threw it up in the air and I don't know.

Dan McCoy

[33:18] Well, he swam way down to the bottom of the well and the explosion is at the top.

[33:23] Although it does seem like debris would crumble into him.

[33:27] I mean gravity would make it harder than it seems.

Elliott Kalan

[33:29] But he shaped the explosion, I guess, so everything shot right out.

[33:32] But also, where did he get the stuff that he's using from – like is there just like a case of tools in the well?

[33:39] He had it in his backpack.

Dan McCoy

[33:39] Did he go into the well with his backpack?

[33:41] Yeah, yeah.

[33:42] Oh, okay.

[33:43] Yeah.

[33:43] He like laid out all the stuff that was –

[33:46] Yeah, yeah.

[33:46] He had a bunch of stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[33:46] We were learning the –

[33:48] There's also pipes and a water main and all kinds of shit.

Dan McCoy

[33:51] You scoff at me for eating mango, but the dishwashing seems to have robbed your attention.

[33:55] No, you're right.

[33:56] That's it.

[33:57] Your attention.

Elliott Kalan

[33:58] I miss that he has a backpack on.

Stuart Wellington

[34:00] Okay.

[34:01] So, he kills all the goons.

[34:04] He exchanges a little bit of banter with Lloyd.

[34:07] But then he's rescued at the last minute by Ananda Armas, who decides to help Six track down that mystery drive that he mailed to retired CIA chief Alfre Woodard, who is currently living in Prague.

[34:22] Open the mail for your mystery drive.

[34:26] Mm-hmm.

[34:27] Lloyd goes back to his lair in a castle in Croatia to torture Billy Bob Thornton.

[34:31] He's just pulling his fingernails out.

[34:33] Yeah.

[34:33] Yeah, it's kind of gross.

[34:34] Yeah.

[34:35] Alfre Woodard decrypts the thumb drive and reveals evidence that Denny is a bad guy.

[34:41] Big surprise.

[34:43] It's like, it's so fucking lame that they're like, I'm assuming, like, I figured they all assumed he was a bad guy.

Elliott Kalan

[34:51] Well, also, that Alfre Woodard is like, this has all this, all this thumb drive is a collection of video and other evidence showing them killing people, causing explosions.

[35:01] And it's like, well, that's what the hero of the movie does.

[35:04] So you got to tell me why this is, why it's bad when Denny does it, but it's totally cool when Ryan Gosling does it.

[35:09] Like, I don't, I didn't understand the difference.

[35:11] They're like, this is, this is without authorization.

[35:13] It's like, well, even the stuff they're doing with authorization is pretty bad.

[35:16] It's all bad.

[35:17] Yeah.

[35:17] It's all terrible.

Dan McCoy

[35:18] Yeah.

[35:19] Yeah.

[35:19] It's true.

[35:20] I mean, I guess, I guess the idea is that this is like shadow government stuff.

[35:26] I think they even say that at one point.

[35:27] That's what Ryan Gosling does.

Elliott Kalan

[35:29] It's not like, it's not like America voted.

[35:31] It's not like the Senate voted to pass a bill saying 06 should go kill a guy, you know?

Dan McCoy

[35:35] I know.

[35:36] But, but what, look, I'm not, I'm not arguing in, in favor of Ryan Gosling as a gray man who like goes around shooting people.

Elliott Kalan

[35:45] Dan's like, where's the candidate that supports my pro gray man position?

Dan McCoy

[35:49] But, but I do think that the idea is supposed to be that at least those unsanctioned operations are like sanctioned.

[35:59] Like the, the, the, the goals of them are at least sanctioned by the official government.

[36:03] Whereas this is, this other stuff is like some cell within the government.

[36:07] Yeah.

[36:07] In theory, Ryan Gosling is supposed to be taking out like drug dealers and arms dealers and terrorists.

Elliott Kalan

[36:11] And Denny is taking out like maybe his landlady.

[36:15] Yeah, he, he signed up to be a fucking Dexter, you know, a killer that kills other killers.

Stuart Wellington

[36:20] He's not down with being just a regular killer who kills normal non-killers.

[36:24] The, but it is one of those things where I'm like, this, this is information that the, the audience already assumes that this guy is bad.

[36:32] He's been a creep the whole time.

[36:33] And also he's like hiring all kinds of assassins.

[36:36] At this point, you're like, I wish there was a little bit more of a reveal where it's like, oh, this drive reveals that Denny Carmichael is actually driving.

[36:45] Drawing the earth or drawing the moon down to the earth to destroy the planet.

[36:49] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[36:49] Or Denny Carmichael has a, has a secret double life as Osama bin Laden.

[36:55] Like something, something that means something as opposed to just like, I mean, but the movie doesn't really, I guess that's what it comes down to for me.

[37:00] It's like all these movies are just excuses for people to shoot things and blow them up.

[37:05] Yes.

[37:05] But here the excuse is so weak that it made me, it feels like explosion porn and shooting porn after a certain point.

[37:11] And the idea that, well, of course, Ryan Gosling has to murder dozens and dozens of people in order to save this one girl.

[37:19] Like, or that, uh, we can watch a shootout as we're going to get to soon between an army of mercenaries and, and Prague police officers who are legitimately trying to stop a gun battle in the middle of the, in the middle of Prague.

[37:32] And it's, and it's just like that the movie just wants you to kind of, uh, the movie is not rough enough for this to be like heat where we're supposed to question the thin line between villain and hero.

[37:42] And it's not fun enough for it to be, uh, the Anna to Armand, it's of it to be heat.

[37:47] Yeah.

[37:48] It's not, but it's not fun enough for it to be like, um, you know, a James Bond movie where you're like, well, this is a cartoon world.

[37:54] I'm not supposed to take this seriously.

[37:55] You know, it's, uh, it's just, it's.

Dan McCoy

[37:58] Are we at, I'm sorry.

[38:00] I was, are we at that shootout now?

[38:01] Just about.

Stuart Wellington

[38:02] I was about to.

[38:02] So, uh, they can't, they learn that they can't copy the drive.

[38:05] So six now has to wear it on a little medallion around his neck.

Elliott Kalan

[38:09] Um, and it looks a lot like the medallion that the bad guys all want in minions.

[38:13] The rise of grew, which I, my family and I went to.

[38:16] That's good information actually.

[38:17] So, so I, the first time the medallion showed up, I was like, wait a minute, is this a crossover with minions?

Stuart Wellington

[38:22] Wouldn't surprise me.

[38:24] Yeah.

[38:25] Uh, cause there's later on, there's a, there's a joke where Chris Evans refers to, uh,

[38:31] he refers to Ryan Gosling's character as like looking like Ken, which is wild because the

[38:37] whole time Ryan Gosling was doing press for this movie, he had that like platinum blonde Ken hair from the Barbie movie they're making.

[38:43] From playing Ken.

[38:44] Yeah.

[38:45] Man, what an, what an awesome choice.

[38:46] Um, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[38:47] I will also mention, wait, just one more thing about minions rise of grew is that.

[38:50] So.

[38:51] Oh, sure.

[38:51] First time, first time my younger son ever went to a movie in the movie theater.

[38:54] It's the movie he wanted to see.

[38:55] And my wife has not been in a movie theater.

[38:57] I think in three years because of COVID.

[38:58] And she kept saying, I haven't been to the movies in three years and I'm seeing minions rise of grew.

[39:04] This is the movie I've been waiting three years to go to the theaters for.

[39:08] And I thought that was, I just thought, I found it very funny each time that she was so disappointed in that.

Dan McCoy

[39:13] I mean, yeah, but she could also, you know, you guys could go see a movie.

[39:17] Yeah.

[39:18] It's more.

[39:18] Maybe your wife's trying to tell you to get some babysitters and go out to see a movie.

[39:22] Dan, we don't all have.

[39:23] Maybe that's her hand.

[39:24] We don't have Alamos.

Elliott Kalan

[39:24] A whole club of babysitters.

[39:26] We don't all have Alamos season passes and a complete disregard for mortality.

[39:30] We can't all just go see every movie.

Dan McCoy

[39:31] No, I'm saying go see a good movie.

Elliott Kalan

[39:33] What are you talking about?

[39:33] Yeah, actually, that's a pretty good defense, dude.

Stuart Wellington

[39:35] You're like, not all of us can spend our afternoon watching a piece of shit like Minions Rise of Gru.

[39:41] Yeah.

[39:41] But when you don't keep the kids busy.

[39:42] What are you talking about?

[39:46] No, you make the kids go see the movie by themselves.

[39:49] Then you go across the way.

[39:50] You go see bodies, bodies, bodies or some shit.

[39:53] Whatever you want to watch.

[39:54] I don't care.

Dan McCoy

[39:55] Also, that's the difference between Danielle and me because if I had not seen a movie for three years, I don't care if it's Minions Rise of Gru.

[40:04] I'd be like, this is amazing.

[40:06] Now, Minions Rise of Gru, I love it.

[40:08] It's my favorite movie ever.

[40:09] Just the pleasure of being there, I would have been like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[40:13] Minions.

[40:14] Do your thing.

[40:14] Whatever it is.

Dan McCoy

[40:16] Show your banana butts.

Elliott Kalan

[40:18] Make noises.

[40:19] Their thing is showing their butts and making my children scream nonsense words for hours afterwards.

[40:24] Love it.

[40:25] This is my kid.

[40:26] Although I've gotten back on my kids.

[40:27] They always go.

[40:28] So they think the Minions sound like this.

[40:29] Kuda, kuda, kuda, kuda.

[40:31] That's what they say to be Minions.

[40:32] And I go, are you calling for kuda, kuda?

[40:35] My favorite aria from Eugene Onegin?

[40:37] Lenski's aria before the big duel scene?

[40:39] And they go, no, no.

[40:40] And I play that beautiful aria, kuda, kuda.

[40:42] And they get so mad at me.

[40:44] So anyway, I'm fighting back against Minions with Russian opera right now.

[40:48] So we'll see who wins.

Dan McCoy

[40:49] You're a real gentle minion.

Stuart Wellington

[40:51] Thank you.

[40:53] Alfre Woodard's apartment gets attacked by goons.

[40:56] Six and Ana de Armas briefly escape.

[40:58] Alfre Woodard blows herself up in one of multiple last moment sacrifices to kill goons.

[41:07] To save Six of all people.

[41:09] Yeah, she's saving Six.

[41:10] Who's an assassin?

[41:12] Six gets picked up by check police pretty quickly.

[41:16] And he gets handcuffed to a bench.

[41:18] And then the hit squad arrives and starts blasting everyone.

[41:22] And this is one of our big, big action sequences.

[41:25] This scene is huge.

Dan McCoy

[41:26] This is the marquee action scene.

[41:26] This is a huge action scene.

[41:28] It's enormous.

[41:29] Yeah.

[41:29] And I got to say, guys, I liked this action scene.

[41:32] Okay.

[41:32] I know that Elliot has moral issues with it.

[41:38] And I wish I didn't.

Elliott Kalan

[41:39] I wish I could just sit back and be like, look at it.

[41:41] Stuff blowing up.

[41:42] But I did end up having moral issues with just how huge this action scene is.

[41:45] And that it's happening in the middle of a city.

[41:48] And that they are continuing the James Bond tradition of other cities and other countries exist.

[41:53] So that Americans and British people can go shoot the shit out of them and blow people up.

[41:58] And things like that.

[41:59] Sure.

[41:59] Fine.

[42:00] Great.

[42:01] But also the fact that they're fighting over nothing.

[42:03] They're fighting over the evidence that Danny is a creep, which we already knew.

[42:06] It's not like they're fighting over nuclear codes or something like that.

[42:08] Which we're only confirming with this fight sequence.

Dan McCoy

[42:11] It's not like Blofeld has a laser satellite that's a danger to the earth.

Elliott Kalan

[42:15] It's just to catch Danny.

Dan McCoy

[42:17] They do.

[42:18] Well, that's the ridiculousness of it, though.

[42:20] They send in a bunch of cops.

[42:22] And Chris Evans' team of mercenaries is just using sledgehammer tactics, just shooting up everyone.

[42:34] And this is the point at which the woman with Chris Evans, who you mentioned before, voices what I had been thinking much earlier in the movie.

[42:46] Like, what kind of covert operative is Chris Evans?

[42:49] It's like none of his operations are covert.

[42:52] And now it's like going crazy.

[42:53] And she's like yelling.

[42:54] She's like, you're just shooting cops now?

[42:57] And it's a nutty scene, and I enjoy Ryan Gosling just like being behind this bench, this concrete bench, handcuffed to it, trying desperately to get the gun next to him.

[43:11] That's under the bench.

[43:12] I mean, it's a great setup.

[43:14] The gun is out of bullets, and he has to reload.

[43:16] He has to get more bullets.

[43:18] It's a fantastic setup.

Elliott Kalan

[43:19] And I wish this – there's a certain point at the scene where Ryan Gosling becomes almost an extra in the action scene.

[43:25] And I wish it was more focused on him.

[43:27] Because while watching it, I was like, this is a great setup.

[43:29] He's handcuffed to a bench.

[43:31] These hitmen just keep going after him.

[43:32] For some reason, they don't decide to come behind him.

[43:35] They only come from one direction, like ninjas in an 80s movie.

Dan McCoy

[43:38] Well, I think the cops are on the other side.

[43:40] I mean, that's the thing.

[43:41] Like, he is accidentally sort of protected in this thing.

[43:44] I guess that's true.

[43:45] While there's a gunfight all around him.

Elliott Kalan

[43:46] The idea that he has to fight when he is so incredibly vulnerable is such a great setup.

[43:50] But the scene is so big that he gets lost in it.

[43:53] And it's so chaotic.

[43:54] And there's so many cops getting shot and cop cars getting flipped over.

[43:59] And at a certain point – and there's no – you don't see any civilians getting shot, which is good.

[44:04] But it also – like, the place is so empty of civilians that it starts feeling like a hermetically sealed bubble.

[44:11] This world that only exists for action movies.

[44:14] It's like I'm torn between wanting to see a big, like, crazy cartoonish action sequence but also wanting to see it happen in some kind of world where I believe that people exist.

[44:24] You know?

[44:24] But it is a great setup.

[44:25] There's a lot of great setups for action scenes in this.

[44:28] And one thing that is realistic in this movie is that Jessica Henwick and Chris Evans and Denny Carmichael nonstop keep reminding the audience that their characters went to Harvard.

[44:39] Which is accurate to people who went to Harvard.

[44:40] They do not stop talking about it.

[44:42] And so we learn so much more about –

[44:44] That grounds it for you.

[44:45] I feel like we don't learn that much about Ryan Gosling.

[44:47] But we find out that the villains went to Harvard over and over again.

Dan McCoy

[44:50] Yeah.

[44:51] Yeah.

[44:51] Well, they went to school in Boston, you know.

[44:53] Yeah.

[44:54] Just an unnamed school.

Elliott Kalan

[44:56] No, they say Harvard a bunch of times.

Dan McCoy

[44:59] Six at one point escapes onto a tram.

Elliott Kalan

[45:01] You're saying like Harvard students when they're like, well, I went – yeah, I was in – I was in – I went to college in Boston.

[45:06] You understand what I'm putting down?

Stuart Wellington

[45:09] He's on a tram.

[45:10] There's like goon vehicles chasing him and shooting all kinds of different guns.

[45:14] And an armist shows up in a little sports car that's bulletproof and is like helping out and saves his bacon yet again.

[45:22] As you mentioned, there's some cute moments.

[45:25] This action sequence is at least more legible than the plane fight.

[45:30] Yeah.

[45:31] I also like the bit where he's using the reflection in the glass to like guess where the goon is in the tram underneath him to shoot.

[45:39] Yeah, there's a lot of clever stuff in it.

[45:41] Yeah.

[45:41] I feel like Gosling does a pretty good job with the like physical performing.

[45:46] Like he has some good facial expressions especially when he realized that he used his two bullets to shoot somebody and not shoot the handcuffs off himself.

[45:57] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[45:57] I will say that this sequence does end in a moment that I'm like what is this supposed to be where he like he jumps off the tram like Ana de Armas reverses the car level with him.

[46:13] So he can jump off the tram onto the car and I'm like how is that better?

[46:19] Like it is it's still a hard moving target.

[46:23] Like I guess theoretically it's a little less of a drop because it's closer to him and the crunchable metal is softer than the ground.

[46:32] But I don't think that like it's like oh good.

[46:35] Thank you for it's not like you're like driving.

[46:37] Thank you for driving this pile of mattresses beneath me.

[46:40] He just wants to leap off onto a car.

Stuart Wellington

[46:43] Maybe he draws energy off of the car like they do in the Fast and the Furious movies where it's like as long as you're landing on a car you're probably going to be okay.

Elliott Kalan

[46:52] Yeah, you're probably safe.

[46:53] I can't wait for what I hope is the next and final movie where it's revealed they live in a magic universe where cars are magic.

[46:59] And they're like in the beginning God created the car the perfect object and all the universe came from this car.

[47:06] And they just show planets and galaxies coming out of the nitrous boost exhaust pipe.

[47:11] I love it.

[47:11] And then it reveals that Vin Diesel and the others are part of like a pantheon of – they're all reincarnations of ancient Egyptian gods who drove cars around and things like that.

[47:27] I love this.

[47:28] Oh.

Stuart Wellington

[47:29] So Prague is now in flames.

[47:31] Oh, and it's called Fast Destiny.

Elliott Kalan

[47:33] It's called Fast Destiny.

[47:34] That's what it's called.

[47:34] Perfect.

[47:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[47:35] Prague is now in flames.

[47:37] Six and Dona de Armas infiltrate a hospital in order to track Chloe's pacemaker.

[47:44] And then they get attacked by a knife guy assassin who has a very nice suit.

[47:49] Not a nice guy.

[47:51] No, not a nice guy.

[47:52] He's a knife guy.

[47:53] You know the deal.

[47:54] He immediately whips out his little switchblade thing.

[47:58] It's like butterfly knife or whatever.

[48:00] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[48:01] Now Ryan Gosling is one of the nice guys, but he's not playing a very nice guy in this movie.

[48:05] No.

Elliott Kalan

[48:07] He's not playing that nice guy in The Nice Guys, to be honest.

[48:10] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[48:11] Oh, wait.

[48:12] So is the title a joke?

[48:14] No, no.

Elliott Kalan

[48:15] It accidentally – the movie – the title was switched with that of another movie by accident.

[48:18] It was too late to stop it.

[48:20] There's another movie called The Bad Guys, which is out now, which is a children's movie.

[48:24] Should have been called The Nice Guys because it's for kids.

Stuart Wellington

[48:26] Oh, okay.

[48:27] Oh, yeah.

[48:27] It should have been.

[48:28] Not the wrong guy.

Elliott Kalan

[48:29] That's got Dave Foley in it.

Stuart Wellington

[48:32] No.

[48:32] And a lot of good jokes.

Elliott Kalan

[48:33] And not Mr. Wrong, which has Bill Pullman, Ellen DeGeneres, and a lot of bad jokes.

[48:37] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[48:39] Okay.

[48:40] I hope this has been helpful.

Elliott Kalan

[48:42] If any of the questions, just write to what are we talking about again?

[48:45] Care of the Flophouse.

Stuart Wellington

[48:46] So the knife guy assassin, who is known as Lone Wolf because he operates alone, he manages to steal the medallion drive and he runs off with it.

[48:58] So he runs back to the castle in Prague.

[49:01] Not in Prague, in Croatia.

[49:03] Anna de Armas and Six have to infiltrate the castle by stealing guard uniforms.

[49:10] Six rescues Fitz and Chloe while Anna de Armas, as we mentioned before, runs around like Bugs Bunny blowing up everything with a missile launcher.

Elliott Kalan

[49:19] The way she runs is hilarious.

[49:21] She's got like a ninja mask on her face but like a sleeveless shirt.

[49:24] And she's got just missiles strapped to her back, you know, rockets strapped to her back.

[49:28] And it looks like – I mean it hints at a much like kind of sillier like looser movie that would have been super fun.

[49:37] Because it looks like – it looks ridiculous but in a fun way.

Dan McCoy

[49:40] It's such a huge launcher.

[49:43] It is big.

Elliott Kalan

[49:44] It's huge and she is running around like a – not in a cool way.

[49:49] She's not running around in a like – she knows where everything is at all times and she's like got controlled movements.

[49:54] Like she looks like someone who is hauling ass, desperately trying to get this done before someone shoots her.

[49:58] And it's like, oh, this is just a hint of the movie that I kind of wish this one was.

Stuart Wellington

[50:04] She eventually ends up getting in a battle with Lone Wolf in the ruins of the command center.

[50:13] And they're fighting over the drive but Lone Wolf gives it up.

[50:17] And what was going on in that scene?

Elliott Kalan

[50:18] Was it that he saw he was fighting her that he stopped?

[50:21] Like he abruptly just stopped.

Dan McCoy

[50:22] He was fighting her.

[50:24] But earlier also like there was a moment where he's like you're going to kill a child.

[50:30] And like Chris Evans is like don't worry about it, man.

[50:33] And like it's clear that like this guy is supposed to be like he has his line.

[50:38] He's got his own code.

Elliott Kalan

[50:39] But it's like –

[50:40] And he realized that –

[50:41] But like he almost – the two of them almost strangle each other.

[50:44] And then it's like, oh, because their backs – this is another cool kind of setup where they're fighting back –

[50:49] their backs are each to like a couch or something that's in between them.

[50:52] And they've got like a –

[50:53] Yeah, like a table.

[50:54] Like a wire or rope that they've wrapped around each other's necks.

[50:57] And so they can't – if one of them moves, it strangles both of them.

[50:59] And like it's a neat setup.

[51:00] But then it's like, oh, I didn't realize I was fighting you.

[51:03] Well, cool.

[51:04] Forget it.

[51:04] He goes, these people have no honor.

[51:06] And it's like, did you watch the rest of the movie?

[51:09] Like of course they don't.

[51:10] They blew up all those buildings in Prague.

[51:12] Like what are you talking – like this is new to you?

[51:14] I don't –

[51:14] Yeah.

[51:15] Did you realize Denny is a bad guy?

[51:17] And he's like, no, Denny?

Stuart Wellington

[51:18] He hasn't – yeah, he hasn't checked out the tribe yet.

[51:22] Meanwhile, on the battlements of the castle, Six and Fitz and Chloe are running away from some goons.

[51:28] But Fitz gets shot.

[51:29] He's like, I can't go on.

[51:30] I'm bleeding.

[51:31] Give me a grenade.

[51:32] And so they give him a grenade and he has his heroic – he has his heroic final moment,

[51:38] blowing up a grenade, killing two goons, and briefly inconveniencing Chris Evans.

Elliott Kalan

[51:42] Chris Evans is – he has the amazing luck because he's the main bad guy.

[51:46] Explosions don't – he's always the first one to jump out of the way of an explosion.

[51:50] And like there's a part earlier where Ananda Armas saves Six by shooting a tranq dart into Chris Evans' butt.

[51:55] And the whole movie I'm like, why didn't they just shoot him in the head?

[51:58] Like I don't understand why they – that guy's clearly like a top bad guy.

Stuart Wellington

[52:02] Well, it might show that she has like – she has her own line, Elliot.

[52:06] She has her own code too, I guess that's true.

Dan McCoy

[52:08] Well, that doesn't – I mean at that point she is – she's just been told to like stand down.

[52:14] But she is theoretically on the same side as Chris Evans.

[52:17] So she's like gung rogue.

[52:19] Like she's like I got to figure out what's going on.

[52:20] Like it makes sense that she would tranq him and then like talk to Six.

[52:24] I guess so.

[52:24] At that point in the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[52:26] They're not – Elliot, just to be clear, you know they're not playing the same characters from Knives Out, right?

Elliott Kalan

[52:31] Oh, that's what it was.

[52:33] I thought they were still in the Knives Out universe.

[52:35] Yeah, yeah.

[52:35] Of course she also –

[52:36] She should know he's trouble.

[52:37] He tried to get her arrested, you know?

Dan McCoy

[52:39] Yeah, yeah.

[52:40] Spoiler alert.

[52:41] She also hasn't read the – that character hasn't read the script to the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[52:46] Everyone else in the movie seems to have though – because at a certain point I was like why do these characters care about what's happening to each other at a certain – like it becomes very personal between Six and Lloyd at a certain point.

[52:57] Yeah.

[52:57] When the drive is no longer really an issue.

[52:59] When they don't really – at a certain point it was like I don't know why these guys are still fighting other than just alpha male toxicity.

Dan McCoy

[53:07] Well, they're mad at each other for trying to kill each other.

[53:09] But that was all business.

Elliott Kalan

[53:11] Like it's – at a certain – if you're going to get mad at everyone who tries to kill you in the gray man assassin business, then how do you –

[53:17] How are you going to finish your day?

Dan McCoy

[53:19] You're not going to be able to – like you can't just walk away from – the thing that – I'll tell you something though.

[53:24] Going back to Chris Evans and the explosion, I'll tell you something that would have made the end of this movie 100% better if half of his mustache had been burned off by the explosion.

[53:34] Oh, yes.

[53:34] You're exactly right.

[53:35] Does the rest of the movie with half a mustache?

Elliott Kalan

[53:37] But I do like that by the end they are really calling attention to his fancy slip-on shoes very heavily and I notice them at every shot after that.

[53:44] And his – what are they, capri pants?

Stuart Wellington

[53:46] Yep.

[53:47] So at this point the gray man and Chloe are escaping through the – using the moat because they're in a castle and Chris Evans goes chasing after them.

[53:59] And this is where we get a big – just like how a movie of this caliber has a huge twist ending, this podcast has a little bit of a twist ending because you know what, guys?

[54:09] I did not watch the rest of the movie from here because I thought we were recording an hour later.

[54:13] So what the fuck happens in the end of the gray man?

[54:16] Will you please tell me?

[54:17] I am dying here.

Elliott Kalan

[54:19] Okay.

[54:19] Tag me in, coach.

[54:20] I'll get this one.

[54:22] You rest and I'll take on the Bash brothers here.

[54:25] Okay.

[54:25] Thank you.

[54:26] So they're trying to escape in the moat.

[54:29] I didn't take notes because I thought you were taking notes.

[54:32] The important thing is to –

Stuart Wellington

[54:33] To be clear, I was taking notes.

Elliott Kalan

[54:36] Yeah.

[54:37] The important thing –

[54:37] The important thing is that Lloyd catches up with Six.

[54:41] They catch up to each other.

[54:42] They go into a hedge – and Lloyd catches up with them.

[54:45] He captures Claire and puts a flare gun to her head and brings her to a hedge maze which leads to like a little fountain.

[54:54] And at the fountain, Hanson says, I'll let Claire go if you fight me, Six.

[54:59] And so Six – and Anadarmus is like, I've got the shot.

[55:01] And he goes, no, no, no.

[55:03] Go to the end of the hedge maze and meet the girl there.

[55:05] I'll take this guy on.

[55:06] And so they have a one-on-one hand-to-hand fight.

[55:07] This makes no sense.

[55:08] This is what I wanted to talk about.

Dan McCoy

[55:10] Because it's like, or hear me out, shoot Chris Evans, and then go get the girl.

[55:18] But here's the thing.

[55:18] He doesn't take that long.

[55:19] Well, but I wonder –

Elliott Kalan

[55:20] There's no reason.

[55:21] Here's where I'll defend this movie because you're right.

[55:23] That's exactly what they should have done.

[55:25] Two things.

[55:25] One, at this point, like you guys were saying, it's just personal.

[55:28] He's been trying to kill him.

[55:29] He doesn't like Chris Evans.

[55:30] He's going to go after him.

[55:31] Two, early in the movie, he wouldn't take the shot because there was a kid possibly in the way.

[55:36] I don't think he trusts Anne de Armas to shoot Chris Evans without hitting the girl.

[55:40] I think he just – at that point, he's like, if she's in the way, I'm not going to let him.

Dan McCoy

[55:44] But at one point, Chris Evans does, as we've said, let the girl go.

[55:49] Yes, and then she should still just shoot.

Elliott Kalan

[55:51] Oh, but then Anne de Armas is like, ugh, to get to the hedge maze, I better leave now.

[55:55] Or else she's going to be waiting for me.

[55:56] I'm all tuckered out from Cartney's dog.

[55:59] There's going to be a lot of goon traffic in the hallways of this castle, so I've got to get there.

[56:03] And so it's too bad you missed this fight.

[56:05] Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling have one of those fights where it's not clear why one of them gets the upper hand at different points.

[56:13] They just kind of take turns having the upper hand.

[56:15] And then this is where his abused child training comes in, where Chris Evans has Ryan Gosling's face in the water of the fountain,

[56:22] and he flashes back to his own father, pushing his face into water, telling him,

[56:28] I will end you in the kind of stuff that nobody says in real life, but they say in the movies.

[56:32] And so that imbues Ryan Gosling with the berserker faith and rage and the nobility that he needs to get back.

[56:41] And he's fighting – he's strangling Chris Evans.

[56:45] And then, boom, someone shoots Chris Evans in the gut.

[56:48] Who is it?

[56:49] Wyatt's Jessica Henwick.

[56:51] She has decided that she is going to pin everything on Lloyd, and Six can live as long as he goes along with her story,

[56:58] that there is a rogue Chris Evans who did all this damage, and it's not her fault or Denny's fault.

[57:04] And Ryan Gosling is like – I've got to call him Jake Gosling for some reason.

[57:07] Ryan Gosling is like, yeah, okay, I'll do that as long as the girl is safe.

[57:12] So, movie over, right?

[57:13] No, wrong steward.

Dan McCoy

[57:15] Well, no, and he also says, I'm also losing a lot of blood, so if we're going to do this, do it fast.

[57:20] If this is the plan, get me to a hospital.

Elliott Kalan

[57:22] He does have a line of – she goes, are you complying?

[57:26] And he goes, can I comply over there?

[57:27] And then moves to a more comfortable place to sit.

[57:30] It's great.

Stuart Wellington

[57:31] Now, I got a question.

[57:32] This might ruffle some feathers.

[57:33] The movie's not over yet, but ask your question.

[57:34] The movie's not over yet.

[57:36] But like Devil's Advocate.

[57:37] There's like 15 minutes left in the movie, but yeah.

[57:39] Devil's Advocate.

[57:40] Elliot, you are a father.

[57:43] Did this movie make you feel like maybe if I want my children to succeed in life, I should abuse them?

Elliott Kalan

[57:49] No, you know what?

[57:51] I'm going to be honest and say it didn't.

[57:54] I've never had dreams of my children being super tough, cool assassins with no emotional lives and no personal lives.

[58:00] I've always wanted them to – right now, my older son wants to be a Dodgers baseball player slash engineer.

[58:07] And one of those more likely than the other, but I won't say which one.

[58:10] And my younger son wants to be a scientist who becomes a chocolate maker, who becomes a paleontologist, who is sometimes a ninja.

[58:16] And I think the ninja I have a little bit of issues with, but otherwise, these are life goals I'm very happy for them to pursue.

Stuart Wellington

[58:22] Because of the lack of honor, right?

Elliott Kalan

[58:25] Well, I mean, well, that's a very samurai way of looking at things, Stuart.

[58:28] That's a classist way of looking.

[58:29] You could say that the ninja are just those that have been deemed less important than the samurai trying to defend their own in the only way they can by striking in the shadows.

[58:38] But, you know, that's – if you want to be a Bushido apologist –

[58:41] It's a coward's tool.

[58:44] But, no, it did not in any way make me feel like I should be a terrible person to my children to motivate them.

Dan McCoy

[58:52] This is a small thing, but I do want to call out a moment I liked, which is they have this, like, last fight in the fountain in the middle of the hedge maze.

[59:01] And, you know, like, Chris Evans at this point has, like, a couple fingers missing.

[59:05] And, like, there's, like, open wounds.

[59:07] And they get, like –

[59:07] He stabs Rangaslin so many times.

[59:10] It's crazy.

[59:10] Yeah, and then he goes into the water and Chris Evans, like, clearly is like, ah!

[59:14] He, like, gets this, like, fountain water on his wound.

[59:18] And I –

[59:18] Yeah, that's where he goes, ah!

[59:18] I loved it because I'm like, that's what I think every time, like, there's dirty water on an open wound in a movie.

Elliott Kalan

[59:25] Yeah.

[59:26] I will say – this is, like – if there was – this is not – I mean, the fight scenes in this movie are great – they're choreographed great.

[59:34] Like, everyone's doing a great job in them.

[59:36] Like, I wish it was shot a little bit more cleanly.

[59:38] But otherwise, I just – it's one of these scenes where I'm, like, I'm not quite sure why they're fighting other than to show who's got the biggest dick in this moment.

[59:46] And that is not a reason that I'm – that really is going to get me emotionally invested in this fight.

[59:51] You know, at a certain point, I'm watching it just for the – just to watch the choreography, I guess, like an ice skating routine.

[59:57] But there is – but Chris Evans does give little moments of, like, character to it that are basically – he gets – he's playing a petulant asshole.

[1:00:03] So, like, it's easy for him to add those moments of character where he's just kind of a dick or he reacts badly to things.

[1:00:08] Anyway, so, there's also a part where Ryan Gosling slams Chris Evans' head into, like, a sculpted vase and it shatters.

[1:00:17] And I was like, wait a minute.

[1:00:18] What is this fountain made of that his head just shattered in?

[1:00:21] Like, it should be made out of concrete.

[1:00:23] Like, this is crazy.

[1:00:24] He should be dead if he hit it that hard.

[1:00:26] But anyway, it's a movie.

[1:00:28] So, they – so, now, Suzanne Brewer, Jessica Henwick's character, she has taken – now she's taken Claire, the girl hostage, and basically said, I'll watch her and make sure nothing happens to her.

[1:00:39] But you have to do what I say, Six.

[1:00:40] And someone meets with Denny and Anna D'Armis and Jessica Henwick and basically says, I don't like what happened, but I absolve you of all charges.

[1:00:50] And I assumed this was the old man, but maybe it's somebody else.

[1:00:52] Maybe it's an – maybe it's the inspector general.

[1:00:54] I don't know.

[1:00:54] He's not named.

[1:00:56] And now – and Jessica Henwick says to Denny, now Six will do whatever I tell him because I've got this girl.

[1:01:02] And she's the new Denny now.

[1:01:05] But at the house where Claire is being held by these gunmen who do make her lunch, they don't – they didn't hire someone else to come make her lunch.

[1:01:13] The gunmen do it for her.

[1:01:14] She comes back to her room, and the record that she played two years ago when Ryan Gosling killed those men in her house to protect her, it's sitting up on her record player with a note that says,

[1:01:26] play me loud.

[1:01:26] And she starts playing it loud.

[1:01:29] That's the cue for Ryan Gosling who has escaped from the hospital bed that he was imprisoned in.

[1:01:33] In one of those escapes where they don't show it.

[1:01:35] They just show that there's dead or knocked out soldiers lying in hallways and the buckle he was handcuffed to is unbuckled because I guess their choreography budget was out.

[1:01:46] Ryan Gosling goes to the home and kills all the gunmen there and takes her away in a jeep.

[1:01:50] And that's the end of the movie.

[1:01:52] The end.

[1:01:53] That's the end.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:54] This is a part of the movie, by the way.

[1:01:56] Like most of the movie I was actually able to do what I was not able to do, which is like turn off my moral compass.

[1:02:02] I wish I could do it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:03] I wish I could do it, Dan, but I'm just not as sociopathic as you.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:06] At the end of the film when she puts this record on to cover up the noises of these people getting shot, like the camera like actually like shows her sort of pained face as she has like her hands over her ears to not hear it.

[1:02:20] And I was thinking like, oh, what a horrible thing for this young girl to be involved in this trauma of like –

[1:02:28] Over and over again.

[1:02:29] Well, my protector, my assassin protector told me to put this record on so I could ignore the screams of the men he's killing to rescue me.

[1:02:38] Men potentially with families who just made her lunch.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:42] Yes.

[1:02:43] And the body count is enormous in this movie.

[1:02:46] And there are certain points where it's like these are – some of them I guess are assassins, the worst of the worst.

[1:02:51] They're mercenaries.

[1:02:52] You know, they're just evil people.

[1:02:54] But a lot of them are also like soldiers or guys who were hired to be bodyguards or something.

[1:02:59] But anyway.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:00] Unlike the noble assassins who save girls.

[1:03:03] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:03] Well, it's like – and when he saves her from the castle, he keeps saying cover yours, cover your ears because she's genuinely being traumatized by all this violence going on around her.

[1:03:13] And it's like the movie doesn't have – the movie, it's like – I wonder if the movie believed in itself a little bit more like The Professional, which is objectively a – like has a lot of not okay things going on in it.

[1:03:29] That –

[1:03:29] Yeah.

[1:03:29] That the fact that it was made by a creep who I think genuinely believed that in the nobility of the main character like kind of gives that movie a certain weird energy where you're like, well, I don't agree with it.

[1:03:43] But at least I know the guy making it really does believe that you can be a weird outcast hitman who falls in love with a teenage girl.

[1:03:51] Like I don't think it's okay.

[1:03:52] But at least the guy making it.

[1:03:53] Whereas this, it's like a – it doesn't have that weirdness.

[1:03:57] So when the – I can't just be like, well, the person making this was a strange person.

[1:04:01] Instead, I have to be like, oh, regular people made this movie where this girl is repeatedly having to go through her life being put in danger and violence being – going on all around her.

[1:04:10] With only the thinnest shred of the song Silver Bird as a force field to protect her from it.

[1:04:15] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:16] Before – I mean before we get into Final Judgments, you mentioned the guy making this movie isn't a weirdo.

[1:04:21] So the movie was made by the Russo brothers who struck gold with the various Marvel franchises but seemed to have – the various Marvel movies they made – but seemed to have trouble operating outside of that.

[1:04:35] Do you think people are just sick of them or like want to take them down a peg or do you think that they just don't operate as well when they aren't using characters that are already beloved to the audience?

Dan McCoy

[1:04:47] Well, I mean specifically with this movie, you know, when they were promoting it, they said a lot of stuff that people online got annoyed at where they're like –

[1:04:56] What did they say?

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:57] Because I'm not familiar with that at all.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:58] They were like saying like, oh, there's nothing like that's sanctified about the theatrical experience and, you know, like honestly it's a little elitist to be like you got to see movies in the theater and blah, blah, blah.

[1:05:11] Which is – look, if it was a genuinely held belief, that's fine.

[1:05:18] It's one that I don't agree with, but it's clear that it's just like they're doing this because they're promoting their big Netflix movie and they're huge beneficiaries of the theatrical experience with Infinity War and Endgame and, you know, other of their films.

[1:05:36] And it's just like – I don't know.

[1:05:38] It just feels disingenuous, yeah.

[1:05:40] Yeah, and I think it like ticked movie people off a bit and because they have –

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:45] Oh, do movie people have opinions about stuff?

Dan McCoy

[1:05:48] Because they're part of the Marvel machine, which also people are like turning on a little bit.

[1:05:53] I think that it was – I think there's a lot of –

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:55] Well, you got to turn on the Marvel machine or else it's not going to work.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:58] Yeah.

[1:05:58] It's going to sit there.

[1:06:00] I have enjoyed their work enough that I will ignore them saying some dumb things.

[1:06:06] I don't have particular ill will, but I think that that has a lot to do with it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:11] I mean, I wonder – I mean, it's – I feel like I'm constantly working to perfect separating the art from the artist since there's so much art I couldn't enjoy if I didn't do that.

[1:06:23] But I like their – I enjoyed their Marvel stuff so much, but I wonder why it is that like – I don't know, that their non-Marvel stuff hasn't quite hit the same thing.

[1:06:32] And I wonder if it's because they are – it helps for them to be working with characters that already exist or had the bugs worked out.

[1:06:39] I mean, The Gray Man is based on a novel series, but I feel like they don't really do the character building work that would make me care.

[1:06:48] And like their first Captain America movie, which was their first Marvel movie, was the second Captain America movie, right?

[1:06:53] Winter Soldier.

[1:06:54] So like they didn't really have – they didn't have to deal with building up who Captain America and Bucky are and their relationship.

[1:07:00] They could just do the payoff of Bucky's still alive.

[1:07:02] Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen Winter Soldier yet, an eight-year-old movie that was enormous.

[1:07:08] And the character is in –

[1:07:09] Robert Redford's the baddie?

[1:07:10] And also the character that is in other Marvel movies.

[1:07:14] They're like, wait, this is the one I skipped.

[1:07:15] Wait a minute.

[1:07:16] Bucky's in it?

[1:07:17] I know he's in the later movies.

[1:07:18] But I wonder.

[1:07:19] I don't know enough about them as filmmakers to know why that is.

[1:07:24] But this one, it's partly – it's a movie that should be kind of like a lean, fun action movie.

[1:07:32] And it's big.

[1:07:33] It's like a little too big for its own good.

[1:07:36] It's a little too heavy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:38] Yeah.

[1:07:39] I've been reading – I just read another one of the Parker novels.

[1:07:44] Richard Stark.

[1:07:45] Parker Lewis Can't Lose novels.

[1:07:46] Yep.

[1:07:46] Parker Lewis Can't Lose novels.

[1:07:48] Every time I read one, I get another punch on my pizza card.

[1:07:51] And when I'm done, I get my personal band pizza.

[1:07:55] But like in those books, we have a hero who is definitely not a hero.

[1:08:02] He's a bad guy.

[1:08:03] But part of the appeal of it is watching – is like the procedural element of it.

[1:08:09] And like having to watch a character go through all the steps of what needs to be done to do his work.

[1:08:15] And it doesn't make any kind of moral justification as to what he's doing.

[1:08:19] And I feel like this movie is just like, yeah, he's an assassin.

[1:08:23] But like he's a good guy.

[1:08:25] Yeah.

[1:08:25] They got jokes sometimes.

[1:08:27] And I don't know.

[1:08:28] I think I would like it more if either –

[1:08:30] It was bigger or smaller, I feel like.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:34] Yeah.

[1:08:34] Or darker or lighter.

[1:08:35] It's so in between.

[1:08:36] It's so gray.

[1:08:37] It is gray.

[1:08:38] It's like the character – the idea that he is a ruthless killer.

[1:08:44] But he's also a pretty good guy.

[1:08:46] If he was just a ruthless killer, I think I'd like the movie more.

[1:08:49] It feels like it's almost – it's almost insulting to the audience a little bit to be like, but he's good around kids.

[1:08:55] So even though his job is murdering people, that's why he's different than the other guys whose job is murdering people.

[1:09:01] And one where I guess the bad guy is supposed to be so bad that you're on the side of the good guy.

[1:09:06] But the bad guy is so ludicrously – it's hard for me to believe in a – unless you're in a stylized John Wick type world, it's hard for me to like buy into a world where these covert operatives are just blowing up buildings left and right without ever getting called on their shit, you know?

[1:09:24] Yeah.

[1:09:24] It's not as stylish as a John Wick, which I think hurts this movie.

[1:09:28] I mean it very much I think wants to be a John Wick type of thing.

[1:09:32] But John Wick has that austerity that I think helps put across the ludicrousness of that movie, you know?

Dan McCoy

[1:09:38] I mean it started out with austerity.

[1:09:40] It is extremely baroque now.

[1:09:43] No, but that's the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:43] It starts out with – the first movie has that super austere way of doing it.

[1:09:47] The next movie is bonkers.

[1:09:49] And the third movie gets more bonkers.

[1:09:51] But this movie – it's like they establish the foundation basically.

[1:09:54] The same way that the Fast and the Furious movies weren't always them surfing on cars and flying through the air and stuff like that.

[1:10:01] Going in outer space, yeah.

[1:10:02] Going in outer space, yeah.

[1:10:03] Once upon a time, they were just point break.

[1:10:05] It's so funny.

[1:10:06] It's so funny that when that first movie came out, I remember so well people being like, oh, it's so refreshing to see just like a stripped down little action thriller without all the bells and whistles.

[1:10:15] And they became the most belliest, whistlest franchise that there ever was.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:19] I mean they're going to have to go –

[1:10:21] They're going to have to drive so fast they go back in time and visit their younger selves and be like, you guys got to start learning all kinds of shit because you're going to be flying.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:30] You're going to be doing – I feel like at this point those movies could do – you could zoom into Vin Diesel's blood and reveal that his blood cells are tiny cars that are driving around.

[1:10:38] Tiny cars, yeah.

[1:10:39] Or zoom out and reveal that this was all happening inside of Vin Diesel's body.

[1:10:42] Like, you know, they could do anything at this point.

[1:10:44] I love it.

[1:10:44] It's amazing.

[1:10:45] Yeah, I love it.

[1:10:45] But they built to it.

[1:10:46] They built to it.

[1:10:46] And it works.

[1:10:47] It all works.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:48] Yeah.

[1:10:49] We've kind of been soaking in it already but we got to do our final judgments whether it's a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

[1:10:58] I think I'm the outlier here in that I have to say I actually kind of like this.

[1:11:04] I think it's too long.

[1:11:05] It's two and a half hours long.

[1:11:07] Fifteen minutes of that is credits.

[1:11:09] But still, even at that, it's too long.

[1:11:12] It's very long, yeah.

[1:11:13] But I mean, I don't know.

[1:11:15] Maybe it's just on the sliding scale of kind of mediocre action movies that we've done on the podcast.

[1:11:20] I think it's near the top for me.

[1:11:22] It's certainly near the top of Netflix would-be blockbusters for me just because it has a talented group of actors and directors doing a basically generic film.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:38] This is a mild challenge.

[1:11:40] But Dan, can you name one other Netflix would-be blockbuster?

Dan McCoy

[1:11:45] Oh, sure.

[1:11:45] There's the Atom Project.

[1:11:47] There's Bright.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:48] There's –

[1:11:48] That we haven't covered on the podcast.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:51] Enola Holmes, I guess, kind of is that.

[1:11:54] Oh, okay.

[1:11:55] What's the one with Charlize Theron where they're like immortal assassins?

[1:11:57] Old Guard.

[1:11:58] That one rules.

[1:11:59] Old Guard.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:59] I was thinking –

[1:12:01] That's the best one.

[1:12:01] Old Guard is probably the best one of those.

[1:12:04] Yeah.

[1:12:04] Best one of the dumb action movies.

[1:12:06] I think –

[1:12:07] Six Underground is another one that we didn't do, but that's –

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:10] Oh, right.

[1:12:10] For me, this is a bad, bad movie.

[1:12:12] On paper, like it's got a great cast.

[1:12:14] The set piece ideas are really good, like –

[1:12:17] But it was –

[1:12:18] This is the first time I felt recently, like where I was watching a movie where I felt –

[1:12:22] There's a story that Steven Soderbergh tells about being on an airplane flight and the guy sitting next to him watching action movies and just fast-forwarding to the action scenes.

[1:12:30] And only watching the action scenes and skipping all the talking scenes.

[1:12:33] And there were times when I kind of felt like that was the experience I was having.

[1:12:36] And at that point, it becomes pornography more than a story, like –

[1:12:41] And so for me, watching it, it was like the script is – or the story is so generic.

[1:12:46] The characters are so generic.

[1:12:47] And there's so little in between the action scenes that it felt to a certain point like –

[1:12:51] You know, like I was filling up on candy.

[1:12:54] You know, I don't want that much candy.

[1:12:55] Like I like a little bit of candy.

[1:12:57] I don't need to eat seven bags of candy.

[1:12:59] And so at a certain point, it made – you know, makes my tummy hurt.

[1:13:02] So that's kind of what the experience was like for me.

[1:13:04] But the elements are all there.

[1:13:06] I just wish that they had like – if they had cut out one big action sequence and filled that space with the characters doing something that gave me a reason to care about what they were doing.

[1:13:17] That's all – I think that would have fixed a lot for me in this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:20] Yeah.

[1:13:21] I mean, I feel like – I mean, I guess this kind of fits in a gray area.

[1:13:26] Yeah.

[1:13:27] Between a movie I kind of liked and a bad, bad movie.

[1:13:30] Because it's not like – with the exception of a few like moments in some of the action sequences, there's nothing particularly that felt new or original.

[1:13:41] It just all felt like reshuffled, you know, stuff from various action movie playbooks.

[1:13:47] And it doesn't – didn't do the legwork to make me care about anything.

[1:13:53] Yes.

[1:13:54] So – and I mean, obviously, I like – basically, every member of the cast is great in other things.

[1:14:03] And they're not necessarily bad in here.

[1:14:04] They just don't have anything to work with.

[1:14:07] So, yeah, I mean –

[1:14:08] It feels like – oh, sorry.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:09] Just to build on that.

[1:14:10] It feels like a crime to me the way they used Alfre Woodard in this where she's so amazing.

[1:14:16] And they stuck her in the black woman who's in charge of a covered ops thing role.

[1:14:20] But she's also playing the retired former head who is now dying of cancer.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:27] She gets a noble sacrifice though, Elliot.

[1:14:30] And it gives her –

[1:14:30] Just like Billy Bob Thornton gets later on.

[1:14:33] Yeah.

[1:14:33] Which is a pretty lame noble – they both had lame noble –

[1:14:37] They're very lame.

[1:14:37] They didn't even kill like a named bad guy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:39] Well, also, that Billy Bob Thornton, instead of just killing the bad guys, has to get in a little wisecrack dig at Chris Evans,

[1:14:48] which gives Chris Evans enough time to recognize there's a grenade there and get out of the way.

[1:14:51] And it's like, what kind of spy are you?

[1:14:52] Just do – what kind of hit man?

[1:14:54] But that Alfre Woodard is given – it's emblematic of like there's a lot of really great actors in this who are not given very much to do.

[1:15:00] And Chris Evans is given so much scenery to chew in a fun way.

[1:15:04] But it's like, Chris, quit hogging the scenery.

[1:15:07] Like let somebody else chew that scenery.

[1:15:09] You know?

[1:15:09] Like give someone else a thing to do.

[1:15:11] Not that he's in charge of the movie or anything.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:13] Yeah.

[1:15:13] I don't know.

[1:15:14] I don't know if we can put that on Chris.

[1:15:15] No.

[1:15:16] Yeah.

[1:15:17] Okay.

[1:15:18] Well, a spectrum of reactions.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:20] This was – I feel like this was a – there's a spectrum – for me, like the way we talked – when we talked about Firestarter and we were like, this movie looks like cheap.

[1:15:29] And it's very thin.

[1:15:31] This movie looked very expensive.

[1:15:32] It was still very thin.

[1:15:33] And it was – it kind of like – but it was – they both kind of felt like direct to video type stuff.

[1:15:40] You know?

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:40] Fair.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:40] It could happen to you.

S4

[1:15:47] You're all grown up now.

[1:15:49] A professional adult with diverse interests and hobbies.

[1:15:53] And one of those hobbies is video games.

S5

[1:15:55] You just can't help it.

[1:15:56] They're so good now.

[1:15:58] If that's you, we're here to tell you, you are completely normal.

S4

[1:16:02] I'm Maddie Myers.

S5

[1:16:03] I'm Jason Schreier.

[1:16:04] And I'm Kirk Hamilton.

[1:16:05] And together we form Triple Click, a podcast about video games.

S4

[1:16:09] If you think you might be a person who likes video games, we hope you'll give Triple Click a listen.

S5

[1:16:14] Triple Click.

[1:16:15] New episodes every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

[1:16:21] Hey, kid.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:22] Your dad tell you about the time he broke Stephen Dorff's nose at the kid's choice awards?

S6

[1:16:28] In Dead Pilots Society, scripts that were developed by studios and networks but were never produced are given the table reads they deserve.

S5

[1:16:36] When I was a kid, I had to spend my Christmas break filming a PSA about angel dust.

[1:16:41] So, yeah, being a kid sucks sometimes.

S6

[1:16:44] Presented by Andrew Reich and Ben Blacker.

[1:16:46] Dead Pilots Society, twice a month on MaximumFun.org.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:51] You know, the show you like, that hobo with the scarf who lives in a magic dumpster.

[1:16:58] Doctor Who?

[1:16:59] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:03] Let us take a moment to talk about our sponsors.

[1:17:08] The Flophouse is—

[1:17:09] Brought to you by the Russo Brothers.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:11] Oh, no!

[1:17:11] I mean, you'll see the great one.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:12] It's great.

[1:17:14] The Flophouse is mostly made possible by listeners like you who are members of Maximum Fun.

[1:17:21] If you're interested in the network, go to MaximumFun.org.

[1:17:23] Check out the other great shows.

[1:17:25] But also, we have a couple of sponsors.

[1:17:28] This week, we are sponsored by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online.

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[1:18:47] Elliot is trying to listen to something.

[1:18:49] I can see—

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:50] Sorry, I heard a child crying.

[1:18:51] I was just trying to make sure that they're—see if they're okay still.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:54] You're like, is it?

[1:18:55] Is it?

[1:18:55] Thank God.

[1:18:56] It's someone else's child crying.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:58] Yeah, I don't—

[1:18:59] Because that creates—

[1:19:00] I don't need to bark up on a—

[1:19:01] That leaves more happiness for my children.

[1:19:03] There's a limited supply of happiness.

[1:19:05] Yep.

[1:19:05] Every child that cries means more happiness for my kids.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:09] Hey, everybody.

[1:19:10] Stuart.

[1:19:10] What's that?

[1:19:11] We got a j-j-j-jumbotron.

[1:19:15] Do you enjoy media?

[1:19:18] Do you—

[1:19:19] Sure.

[1:19:20] Enjoy a media that has a subversive sense of humor?

[1:19:24] Do you love things that are so bad they're good?

[1:19:28] Don't understand what RuPaul means when she says a queen's look is camp?

[1:19:33] Then check out Is It Camp?

[1:19:36] A podcast all about the queer subgenre of camp.

[1:19:40] Hosts Sam and Sarah, a drag pro wrestler and an enthusiastic nerd and both queer,

[1:19:48] discuss films, TV, music, books, and any media they think might be camp.

[1:19:56] Search Is It Camp?

[1:19:57] Or at Is It Camp Pod on all socials.

[1:20:03] Sam is at Reese Indigo.

[1:20:06] That's R-H-Y-S-I-N-D-I-G-O.

[1:20:09] And Sarah is at Sour Citrus Lady.

[1:20:15] That's S-O-U-R-C-I-T-R-U-S-L-A-D-Y.

[1:20:19] Bye!

[1:20:20] So search for Is It Camp on all your podcasters of choice and subscribe or follow on their socials.

[1:20:26] At Is It Camp and follow the hosts at Reese Indigo and at Sour Citrus Lady.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:31] I did it, guys.

[1:20:33] That was a mouthful, but it was fun.

[1:20:36] You should feel very proud.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:38] Thank you.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:40] Anyone have any other plugs before we move on to the next segment?

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:42] Sure.

[1:20:43] I'd love to plug that the second volume of the Maniac of New York series, Maniac of New York,

[1:20:48] The Bronx is Burning, is out in a collected trade in stores now.

[1:20:52] Go to your local comic book store.

[1:20:54] Find it there.

[1:20:54] Maniac of New York, Volume 2, The Bronx is Burning, on shelves now.

[1:20:57] If you haven't read the first volume, Maniac of New York, The Death Train, pick them both up.

[1:21:02] They're good.

[1:21:03] I like them.

[1:21:04] Patton Oswalt is always talking about how much he likes them.

[1:21:06] Stewart thinks they're great.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:07] The thing is, the idea that my friend Elliot has made a very good comic that is a twist on Friday the 13th

[1:21:15] makes me slightly jealous, but it is good enough that I get over my jealousy almost immediately.

[1:21:22] Oh, thank you, Stu.

[1:21:23] I appreciate that.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:25] Just clicking buy now and make your order.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:29] But he's not buying your book.

[1:21:31] He's buying some socks.

[1:21:34] A hat.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:35] I am buying your book, although on a major commerce website that I won't mention.

[1:21:44] Good cover.

[1:21:45] Excellent.

[1:21:47] There's no image available for the cover.

[1:21:49] Oh, if I click on it, I see it.

[1:21:51] Oh, wow.

[1:21:52] This is all fascinating content.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:54] Some sliver sleuthing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:58] Some sliver sleuthing.

[1:21:59] Sliver sleuthing.

[1:22:00] And while we're plugging.

[1:22:01] You drool all over your computer, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:02] Yeah, while we're plugging shit, you know what?

[1:22:04] In addition to being a super fun, cool podcaster, I also own a couple of bars in Brooklyn.

[1:22:09] One is called Hinterland's Bar.

[1:22:10] The other is called Minnie's Bar.

[1:22:12] You know what?

[1:22:12] If you're in Brooklyn and you need to wet your whistle, go to one of those bars.

[1:22:16] Hinterland's Bar, Minnie's Bar.

[1:22:17] Why not?

[1:22:18] If it's Hinterland's, I might even be there.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:21] Dan might even be there.

[1:22:22] You never know.

[1:22:22] Minnie's is a little further away.

[1:22:25] But he still might be there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:26] Still, possibly.

[1:22:27] It's possible.

[1:22:28] Dan, help him out.

[1:22:28] Come on.

[1:22:29] It has happened.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:31] Let's move on to letters from listeners.

[1:22:35] Listeners like you.

[1:22:36] You write them, we read them.

[1:22:37] This one is from Timothy Leslie with Hell.

[1:22:41] Not the other way around.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:42] We're not writing anything for you to read.

[1:22:44] Except unless it's Maniac of New York.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:46] Yeah.

[1:22:46] I write that.

[1:22:47] That's true.

[1:22:49] This letter.

[1:22:51] Well, we've all certainly had a wonderful time discussing slash debating the merits of Kansas'

[1:22:56] fifth largest city, Topeka.

[1:22:58] But the time to get serious has come upon us.

[1:23:00] It's time to discuss somewhere else.

[1:23:02] A place known for the world's smallest natural waterfall.

[1:23:06] That claims the director of Purple Rain amongst its residents.

[1:23:09] That boasts the writer of Captain America, symbol of truth.

[1:23:13] Tochi Onyebuchi amongst its former residents.

[1:23:17] The birthplace of the Eddie Current Game Call.

[1:23:21] What?

[1:23:21] The place where Amy Archer Gilligan, the inspiration for Arsenic and Old Lace, may have claimed

[1:23:26] her first victims.

[1:23:28] That's right.

[1:23:29] It's time to talk about Newington, Connecticut.

[1:23:32] Please feel free to commence.

[1:23:33] Warmest regards, Timothy.

[1:23:34] Last name with Hell.

[1:23:35] Well, it seems like you've covered all the bases.

[1:23:37] Yeah.

[1:23:37] I don't know if there's anything more to say about it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:39] I think Elliot's sharpening his knives over there.

[1:23:42] He can't wait to dig in.

[1:23:43] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:45] I'm sad.

[1:23:47] I'm sorry if I mispronounce anything.

[1:23:49] I mean, you're sad too.

[1:23:49] I'm sad about it too.

[1:23:50] Yeah.

[1:23:51] I'm sad just in general, but I'm sorry about that.

[1:23:55] Wait, Newington?

[1:23:57] Connecticut.

[1:23:58] Yeah.

[1:23:59] Okay.

[1:23:59] New, I-N-G, ton.

[1:24:02] That's a ton of Newings.

[1:24:04] I feel like...

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:04] Sounds like a made-up town, but thanks for writing in.

[1:24:08] I'm sure we'll...

[1:24:09] We're going to do some research and roast the fuck out of it on our next mini.

[1:24:12] That's Dan's next mini called Newington.

[1:24:14] Where is that?

[1:24:15] Who cares?

[1:24:16] It'll give them a couple of weeks.

[1:24:17] You have to do that as a mini now.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:18] Of course, the thing is, this writer didn't give us their opinion of Newington, right?

[1:24:23] Yeah, that's the thing.

[1:24:23] We want people's opinions about these places.

[1:24:24] They don't want to poison the well.

[1:24:26] That's true.

[1:24:27] They don't want to pre-discriminate the jury.

[1:24:30] Stuart.

[1:24:30] Prejudice it.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:31] You do bring up a good point that the construction of Newington sounds like someone is just sort

[1:24:37] of like, as they go along, be like, uh, it's New-ing-ton.

[1:24:47] Connecticut?

[1:24:47] There's too many things going on there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:48] Is that really, that's where you're from?

[1:24:49] Can you tell me the name of it again?

[1:24:51] Yeah.

[1:24:51] Well, why don't you read it back to me and I'll tell you if it was right.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:56] This letter is from Stephen, last name withheld.

[1:24:58] Stephen Hawking.

[1:24:59] Hi, Beaches.

[1:25:00] From Green on the Grave.

[1:25:01] I've been following some of Stuart's exercise journey via the clock app.

[1:25:07] Cool.

[1:25:07] Who hasn't?

[1:25:09] But I'm curious if you'd share a workout.

[1:25:11] It's America's journey at this point.

[1:25:12] Yeah.

[1:25:13] Have we done this already?

[1:25:14] Share a workout routine?

[1:25:15] Have I, has, have you talked about this on the podcast?

[1:25:19] Uh, a workout routine is found the most useful.

[1:25:21] I went from high movement teaching job straight to a desk job and need desperately to kick off

[1:25:26] my own exercise journey.

[1:25:28] So any tips would help.

[1:25:30] That's, uh, I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:32] Uh, I'm always happy to talk about working out cause I don't do anything else cause I'm

[1:25:36] pretty boring.

[1:25:38] Uh, but let's see.

[1:25:40] Uh, for me, the thing that kind of started my journey was throwing out my back at the

[1:25:44] start of the pandemic.

[1:25:45] So I, uh, I started doing a lot of core strength.

[1:25:49] It was mainly lower back focus.

[1:25:51] So I did a lot of core strengthening stuff and I do, uh, so like leg lifts, reverse leg

[1:25:55] lifts, uh, some like, uh, bridges, uh, bird dogs, dead bugs.

[1:26:02] Just make it all that kind of stuff.

[1:26:04] Squats, um, and, uh, supplementing that with, uh, stretching for about at least 30 minutes

[1:26:10] every morning with a lot of like leg and back stuff.

[1:26:14] Um, but then since then I have, uh, I started going to the gym when they reopened and I have

[1:26:20] a trainer that I like a lot and I'm doing a lot of strength training.

[1:26:23] So, uh, I do a four day a week, upper, lower split two leg, two leg, lower body days, two

[1:26:29] upper body days.

[1:26:30] And those upper body days are a nice mix of push pull exercises.

[1:26:35] Um, and I like it so far and I like, uh, I never, I never thought I would be, I would

[1:26:41] like weightlifting.

[1:26:42] I don't know why.

[1:26:43] I don't know why I never like, I think there is, there's a little bit of a, um, you know,

[1:26:49] like I didn't, I didn't know how to use the equipment and I didn't want to ask anybody.

[1:26:53] Uh, so it wasn't until I got a trainer, uh, who gave me some direction that I felt comfortable

[1:26:59] with it and I fucking love it.

[1:27:01] Like there's something, there's something so satisfying for me.

[1:27:04] Uh, some people when they work out really like, uh, to, uh, like variety and they like to do

[1:27:10] a lot of different things.

[1:27:11] So they take their mind off the fact that they're working out me.

[1:27:14] I like to do the same shit over and over and over.

[1:27:17] So like, I like to see like slow, steady, generally slow and steady, small improvements in the

[1:27:25] amount of weight I'm lifting and taking breaks and listening to music and just like keeping

[1:27:30] track of my progress.

[1:27:32] Um, and I find that really rewarding and it, uh, it has made, uh, exercise really fun for

[1:27:39] me.

[1:27:40] So that's it.

[1:27:41] Work it.

[1:27:42] Lift weights.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:43] So that fulfills the educational content requirement of this.

[1:27:47] Uh, now we can send it through the mail at media.

[1:27:50] The government's been cracking down on us.

[1:27:51] Uh, let's, uh, let's, you know, let's make some recommendations of movies that people should

[1:27:58] watch instead of this and then put a bow on the whole thing.

[1:28:00] Let's bow up.

[1:28:01] Uh, my recommendation is I recently rewatched, uh, Lilo and Stitch from 2002.

[1:28:08] Uh, I don't know.

[1:28:09] I had a, I've had an itch to see some stitch.

[1:28:12] I don't know why.

[1:28:14] Uh, Dan, why are you saving gems like that for the end of the show?

[1:28:19] Yeah.

[1:28:21] I don't, I don't know what it was.

[1:28:23] I, I've been wanting to rewatch it.

[1:28:25] I remembered liking it at the time, you know, the, the nineties, uh, Disney Renaissance

[1:28:31] had passed and they were kind of like at a point of like at a crossroads trying to figure

[1:28:36] out they, they were having some not that successful movies and Lilo and Stitch came out, tried

[1:28:42] something a little different and was their most successful movie, uh, in a while at that

[1:28:47] time, you know, after having that dip.

[1:28:50] Um, and, uh, I like it because it's a contemporary story.

[1:28:56] Uh, you know, it's not like so many Disney movies are not contemporary.

[1:29:00] Uh, I like that the, the look of it is kind of this beautiful watercolor look that you don't,

[1:29:07] uh, see a lot.

[1:29:07] There's a lot of character comedy, like just like the kid acts like a real little kid.

[1:29:13] And there's, there's a very sort of Calvin and Hobbes quality to the relationship.

[1:29:16] And also, you know, as Audrey is, uh, you know, uh, her family's from the Philippines.

[1:29:24] This is about, uh, Polynesian, uh, sisters in Hawaii and, um, uh, sort of, you know, obviously

[1:29:34] not the same, but Pacific Islander, uh, culture.

[1:29:37] And it's good to see that in Disney, like years, years before Moana was, uh, a sparkle in anyone's

[1:29:45] eye.

[1:29:45] Um, and so it's a movie that I think has gotten a cult following, uh, as much as anything from

[1:29:52] Disney.

[1:29:53] One of the world's biggest conglomerates can have a cult following over the years, but,

[1:29:57] um, is still a little under the radar.

[1:30:00] And I think it's, uh, just a lot of fun.

[1:30:03] So that's.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:04] I never, I never saw it when it came out.

[1:30:06] I feel what, I feel like it came out when I was past the age where I was seeing children's

[1:30:12] movies often.

[1:30:14] Well, 2002.

[1:30:16] Yes.

[1:30:16] So I was 22 years old.

[1:30:18] Yeah.

[1:30:20] Um, and it, it wasn't like any reason to get, but for whatever reason, I've never gotten around

[1:30:24] to checking it out.

[1:30:25] And I feel like I keep meaning to, uh, and people seem to really like it.

[1:30:30] I feel like it's got, I don't know if I think it's fair to say it's gotten a little bit

[1:30:34] of a reevaluation, but yes, kind of, it has.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:37] And maybe, maybe I'll, maybe I'll give it a shot.

[1:30:41] It's a, it's also 90 minutes.

[1:30:43] So it's, you know, love that commitment.

[1:30:45] 90 minute adventure.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:47] Uh, LA, you got something in the pipe?

[1:30:49] I do.

[1:30:50] I'm going to recommend a movie, a kind of, uh, fluffy kind of little movie from 1937 called

[1:30:57] The Man Who Could Work Miracles.

[1:30:59] This is a British movie, uh, that stars Roland Young and, uh, a bunch of other people.

[1:31:05] Ralph Richardson's in it.

[1:31:06] Ernest Thessiger, uh, who played Dr. Pretorius in Bride Frankenstein.

[1:31:10] He appears in it.

[1:31:11] Uh, and it's directed by a guy named Lothar Mendes, which, Mendes, which I only bring up

[1:31:15] because Lothar is a fantastic first name.

[1:31:17] But, uh, it's, uh, based on an H.G. Wells story.

[1:31:21] Um, and it is, and he worked on the script.

[1:31:24] And it's just about, uh, this guy who, uh, for some reason, the, the eternal, uh, gods

[1:31:30] of the universe decide to give one man the power to work miracles.

[1:31:33] Essentially, whatever he wishes for happens.

[1:31:35] And they want to see what's going to happen to him.

[1:31:37] And he starts out with very modest ambitions and his, uh, he, and very much influenced by

[1:31:43] the people around him telling him what he should do with this power.

[1:31:45] And eventually he goes a little overboard with it.

[1:31:48] And it's a movie that I found very, like, kind of quaintly delightful.

[1:31:52] It's like a quaint little British, like, kind of fantasy movie, uh, that sometimes kind of

[1:31:56] silly and sometimes takes itself a little too seriously in the way of, like, thinking it's

[1:32:00] making a profound message.

[1:32:02] Um, but overall, I thought it was just fun.

[1:32:04] So that's The Man Who Could Work Miracles.

[1:32:07] Stu, what about you?

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:08] Uh, I'm going to recommend a big movie that you've probably already heard, uh, about, but

[1:32:13] I think I would like to throw my hat and say it is definitely good.

[1:32:17] I'm going to recommend Nope, Jordan Peele's latest movie.

[1:32:21] Um, it's, uh, it's a lot of fun.

[1:32:24] It's different than his other two.

[1:32:27] Uh, but he gets some great performances.

[1:32:31] Um, I don't want to go too much into the plot, but, uh,

[1:32:34] the movie manages to be both disturbing and, like, touching at times and it's fun.

[1:32:40] Uh, and again, not to go too into the plot, but, uh, Dan and I are both big fans of this

[1:32:45] movie in part, I think, because we're also big fans of a little movie starring Kevin Bacon

[1:32:50] and Fred, uh, what's his name?

[1:32:53] From, uh...

[1:32:53] Fred Ward.

[1:32:54] Fred Ward, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:32:55] A little movie called Tremors.

[1:32:56] So if you like Tremors and you haven't seen Nope yet, why don't you go check out Nope?

[1:33:00] Why not?

[1:33:01] Uh, it also does feature a character doing a fucking Akira motorcycle slide, which it's

[1:33:07] going to be hard for me not to like you movie.

[1:33:09] Uh, so, so give it a shot.

[1:33:11] Um, again, Nope.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:14] Well, that's it.

[1:33:15] Uh, it's been a while since we've said this.

[1:33:17] Uh, but if you have a moment, maybe go to iTunes, leave a positive review to help us,

[1:33:23] uh, spread word about the show.

[1:33:25] If you want to leave a negative review, maybe put that energy into meditation or painting.

[1:33:31] Fixing your relationships.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:33] Anything other than, anything other than leaving a review.

[1:33:36] Don't put your energy into that.

[1:33:37] Yeah, yeah.

[1:33:38] We just have a positive review just for the, the, uh, self-control I showed in not doing

[1:33:42] an Abbott and Costello title, a style routine in which I asked Stuart if he wants to go see

[1:33:47] a movie and he says, Nope.

[1:33:48] And I go, Oh, so you don't want to see a movie?

[1:33:49] And he goes, Yeah, I want to see a movie.

[1:33:51] Okay.

[1:33:51] Which movie do you want to see?

[1:33:52] Nope.

[1:33:53] So I thought you said you did want us to go see a movie, but you don't want to go

[1:33:55] see a movie.

[1:33:56] I want to see a movie.

[1:33:57] What movie?

[1:33:57] Nope.

[1:33:58] Okay.

[1:33:58] So you don't want to see a movie.

[1:33:59] Anyway.

[1:34:00] So if you appreciate us not doing that.

[1:34:02] So thank you.

[1:34:03] So if you want to thank us for not doing that bit, then go ahead and leave us a positive

[1:34:07] review.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:07] It's great that Elliot did the whole bit by himself because I'm sure that if we tried to

[1:34:10] do it together, we would have just fucked it up.

[1:34:13] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:14] Uh, certainly without pre-planning.

[1:34:16] Um, if you want to follow the, us on Twitter, we're at the Flophouse pod.

[1:34:23] And we're also at the Flophouse podcast on Instagram.

[1:34:27] A few extra letters on the end of that.

[1:34:29] Um, our home is a Flophouse podcast.com.

[1:34:34] If you want to check out that site.

[1:34:36] And as I stated before, we are part of the maximum fun network.

[1:34:40] They are at maximum fun.org.

[1:34:42] They have a ton of great podcasts.

[1:34:45] I'm sure there are other ones you would enjoy if you give them a try.

[1:34:49] And lastly, thank you to Alex Smith is at how old Dottie on Twitter.

[1:34:55] Thank you for retweeting, uh, the news about Kevin Smith's continuing.

[1:35:01] Horny relationship with his wife.

[1:35:03] It's, you know, it's inspiring.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:05] Alex also retweeted that video of you performing in hair because in the background, you can kind

[1:35:11] of make out Alex's point.

[1:35:13] It was playing guitar for the band on that performance.

[1:35:16] Uh, and you can kind of see a little Alex, uh, in the back, uh, rewatching that.

[1:35:20] I fucking love that shit.

[1:35:21] Seeing Dan with his hair and man, I love it.

[1:35:24] Two thumbs up.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:25] If you want to see like a, a 45 second clip of, uh, me singing the title song from hair,

[1:35:32] you can go check that out at our, our Twitter.

[1:35:35] Um, but anyway, thank you for, uh, being here for the podcast for the flop house.

[1:35:40] In fact, I've been Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:43] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:35:44] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:35:46] Bye.

[1:35:47] Bang.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:48] Shorter than the gray man.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:49] We did it guys.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:50] Boom.

[1:35:50] Finally.

[1:35:51] We finally managed to do an episode that's shorter than the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:56] More like the board identity.

[1:35:59] Am I right?

[1:36:00] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:09] Ooh.

[1:36:10] Ha ha.

[1:36:11] All right.

[1:36:13] Um, and.

[1:36:14] Think you can top that shit?

[1:36:15] Top that shit.

[1:36:16] No, that was great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:17] That was perfect.

[1:36:18] Untoppable.

[1:36:19] Untoppable.

[1:36:21] Um.

[1:36:21] She's alive, damn it.

[1:36:23] Let's do it.

[1:36:24] It's a miracle.

[1:36:26] Maximumfun.org.

S5

[1:36:28] Comedy and culture.

[1:36:29] Artist owned, audience supported.

Episode #377 - The Gray Man

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