Episode #375 - Short Circuit 2, with Ben Hosley

Stuart Wellington

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Short Circuit 2.

[0:05] If the first movie asked the question, who's Johnny?

[0:08] The second movie asked the question, where's Johnny?

[0:12] The answer, hell.

[0:15] What?

[0:16] Okay, Toronto.

[0:18] It's Toronto.

[0:19] Oh.

Dan McCoy

[0:20] That's why it didn't look like New York.

Elliott Kalan

[0:22] Yeah, because it's Toronto, but they never really refer to where he is.

[0:26] We'll talk about it.

[0:27] We'll talk about it.

[0:27] Okay.

[0:30] Hey, everyone.

Dan McCoy

[0:52] Welcome to the Flophouse.

[0:53] I, the one you're hearing right now, am Dan McCoy.

[0:57] And me, Stuart, the professional one.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01] His last name is Wellington.

[1:02] That's how professional he is.

[1:04] This is the first name.

[1:05] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:06] And joining us, we have a very special guest today.

[1:10] Guest, please introduce yourself for the audience.

[1:12] They love a mystery, but now it's time to reveal the solution to the mystery of who is our guest today.

[1:17] Guest.

Dan McCoy

[1:18] Hello.

[1:19] It is Ben Hosley.

[1:21] It's Ben Hosley.

[1:22] Producer Ben, you may know him as.

[1:23] That's right.

[1:24] From Blank Check.

[1:25] Blank Check with Griffin and David.

[1:28] There's a whole list of nicknames that we will not go through.

S4

[1:30] Oh, so we're not going to do the nicknames.

[1:32] Okay.

[1:32] I appreciate that, actually.

[1:34] That is a bit.

[1:35] I can see you tensing up.

[1:36] Yeah.

[1:37] Yeah.

[1:37] I feel like we started in the early days of the show.

[1:41] It's been going for about seven years.

[1:43] Oh, that's cute.

[1:44] I know.

[1:44] It's cute.

[1:45] It's like about a half the run of this show.

[1:47] Almost half of our run.

[1:48] Yeah.

[1:49] That's amazing.

[1:49] Yeah.

[1:50] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:50] And yet rocketed past us in success very quickly.

[1:53] Understandably.

[1:54] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:55] It's a very good show.

[1:55] It's a good show.

[1:56] You should probably be listening to that.

[1:58] And probably because the episodes are shorter than ours.

[2:00] Wait a minute.

[2:00] No.

[2:01] They're not.

[2:01] They're very long.

[2:02] They are not.

S4

[2:03] They are so long.

[2:04] And it feels like over the years, they have just gotten longer and longer.

[2:08] Same.

[2:09] Truly in like three hour run time.

[2:12] It's crazy.

Dan McCoy

[2:13] Ben, did you encourage David to have a child just to get the lengths of the episodes down?

[2:19] Yes.

[2:20] Yeah.

S4

[2:20] Yeah.

[2:21] Subconsciously, I was trying to like influence him so that he would impregnate his wife and

[2:26] hopefully would lead to him needing to go and constantly take care of his child and therefore

[2:32] cut down on the run time of our recordings.

[2:35] You kept being like, hey, man, look.

Stuart Wellington

[2:36] Oh, look at this picture of this happy family with a baby.

[2:38] Man, that looks great.

Elliott Kalan

[2:40] Oh, I imagine smiling.

[2:41] You're like, you're like, these episodes are getting so long.

[2:43] I got to start sending more chocolate covered strawberries to David's house so he can finally

[2:47] get this thing going.

[2:48] Sure.

[2:49] Yeah.

[2:50] That's how it happens.

[2:51] He also made me just.

[2:52] Break into his house and put rose petals on his bed so he can finally do it and get a

[2:56] baby.

S4

[2:56] Yeah.

[2:57] Just anonymous edible arrangements every other week coming to his doorstep.

[3:02] That's how you spice up a marriage, guys.

Dan McCoy

[3:05] Well, we were very excited to get Ben on the show we've had.

[3:11] As you know, Griffin and David, if you're a listener, you've heard them.

[3:16] And Ben, we asked what he would like to talk about.

[3:21] Okay.

[3:21] And I feel like you have a disclaimer right up at the top.

Stuart Wellington

[3:24] You wanted to.

[3:24] I do.

[3:25] Yeah.

[3:26] Okay.

[3:27] So.

[3:28] So we're like, Ben, out of every possible movie we could watch.

[3:31] Yeah.

[3:32] What do you, what are you dying to get, to give more, what like, get more eyes on?

[3:39] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[3:39] We said, what movie do you feel like needs to be seen, has to be seen, needs to be talked

[3:44] about?

[3:45] You want people to just experience the magic of, and it would help if one of the main characters

[3:49] who is where the least problematic thing about them is that their name is also your name,

[3:54] Ben.

[3:55] Sure.

S4

[3:56] Okay.

[3:56] So here's the context.

[3:58] We were drinking at the time of this conversation.

[4:00] So I just want to say that.

[4:01] Sure.

[4:02] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[4:03] Like with Dan and Stuart, likely story.

[4:05] Okay.

[4:05] Sure.

S4

[4:06] Yes.

[4:07] And so I know the show has been going for quite a long time.

[4:11] So I'm like, okay, what is like going to be some kind of deep cut movie that they haven't

[4:18] covered yet?

[4:19] And what came to mind was from my childhood, this dumb robot movie that I remember watching

[4:26] anytime I would catch it on cable TV.

[4:29] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[4:30] And I also-

[4:31] And it was on a lot.

[4:32] I remember.

[4:32] Yeah.

[4:33] Because I watched it a lot as a child as well.

S4

[4:36] And what I remember about both of them, right, is that the robot, he's a fun, cool guy.

[4:43] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[4:43] He's very cool.

[4:44] He's very cool.

[4:45] In the robots of my childhood, he is up there with the good robot Bill and Ted's from Bill

[4:51] and Ted's Bogus Journey.

[4:52] Like under coolest robots I can think of.

[4:54] Okay.

[4:54] Yeah.

S4

[4:55] So I remember two being where he really loosens up, Johnny Five.

[5:01] Yeah.

[5:02] You know?

[5:02] It's less, you know, about the military sort of complex.

[5:06] He starts calling himself Johnny.

[5:08] Yeah.

[5:08] He's already processed his trauma.

Stuart Wellington

[5:10] He's ready to move on with his life.

[5:12] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[5:13] And he's thriving.

[5:14] Yes.

[5:14] Well, the first one, he's really discovering what it's like to be a sentient being.

[5:18] And the second one, he's like, I'm here.

[5:21] I'm alive.

[5:22] Time to reference every pop culture thing of the mid to late 80s over and over again.

[5:27] Just to make sure people know that I'm just a cool dude who never stops fucking talking

[5:33] ever.

[5:33] Even when he's chasing someone down a wharf.

[5:36] Wow.

[5:36] I feel like Ellie was less charmed by Johnny Five than the rest of us.

[5:40] Well, I think it was more that, I think it was more by the end of the movie.

[5:42] I think the producers of the movie are like, this is not the exciting climax we hoped it was.

[5:46] What if we just layer in tons and tons of off-camera quips from Johnny Five over and over again?

[5:52] And I know it's rich coming from me, a guy who never talks and is very annoying.

[5:56] But I got to say, it was just one of those times when I was watching it.

[5:59] And I think maybe that's what hurt me so much was seeing Johnny Five and being like,

[6:01] is that what I'm like to people?

[6:04] A thing that is barely alive and is very annoying?

Stuart Wellington

[6:08] Ugh, terrible.

[6:09] But in addition to the talking robot, there's something else about this movie that makes it notorious.

[6:15] Yeah, yeah.

[6:16] And I think that's what we're talking about.

S4

[6:18] Right.

[6:18] So I suggested this film thinking about it as the 10-year-old, right?

[6:25] Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[6:26] The 10-year-old that would watch this movie.

[6:29] Uh-huh.

[6:29] And so I said, why not Short Circuit 2?

[6:33] Yeah.

[6:33] Uh-huh.

[6:33] And then sat down to watch this film two days ago and was horrified by what we are going

[6:42] to now have to talk about.

Stuart Wellington

[6:44] Now, when you made this suggestion to Dan, did you read the look of concern on his face?

[6:48] And you're like, why would Dan, is it the movie's going to be so bad?

[6:53] Or maybe Dan's frightened of robots.

[6:54] I thought he was shocked because it was such a good picture.

Elliott Kalan

[6:58] It's like, why did we talk about that movie?

[7:00] It's a great movie.

Dan McCoy

[7:02] Oh, my God.

Stuart Wellington

[7:02] We have overlooked this one.

Dan McCoy

[7:04] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[7:05] We haven't talked about it on the show.

[7:06] We have, in fact, referenced it a fair amount of time.

[7:10] Specifically, usually the Los Lobos kick your balls into outer space.

[7:14] Los Locos.

[7:15] Los Locos.

Elliott Kalan

[7:16] Los Locos is a band.

[7:17] They do not appear in the film.

[7:19] That's true.

[7:20] I would argue, okay, there's two.

[7:23] I would say that, obviously, we're dancing around the most problematic thing in this movie,

[7:27] which is Fisher Stevens reprising the role of Ben, who is an Indian character that Fisher

[7:32] Stevens is playing in Brownface.

[7:34] They did, I will give them credit.

[7:36] They changed the character's last name from the first movie, I guess, to throw people off

[7:40] slightly.

[7:41] I don't know.

[7:41] Or they forgot.

[7:42] I mean, that might be the most insulting thing is they were just like, ah, I guess he has

[7:45] some Indian last name.

[7:46] We'll give him another Indian last name.

[7:47] But I would say Los Locos are in some ways more offensive than Fisher Stevens' performance

[7:53] because they are the idea that, like, street gang, okay, Latino, and they induct Johnny Five

[8:00] into the gang, and he's immediately like, que pasa, hey, ba-da-da, and all they do is

[8:03] steal stereos from cars.

[8:05] I would argue they are even more problematic than Fisher Stevens' role.

Dan McCoy

[8:08] Yeah, they have, well, they have no positive side.

[8:11] Whereas Fisher Stevens, he's a man who has looked back on his career, apologized that this

[8:18] happened.

[8:18] Like, he seems thoughtful about it.

[8:21] You know, look, even, like, even at the time they should have known better, but it was a

[8:27] different time.

[8:28] But the other side to that is at least he is creating a lovable, multifaceted character

[8:35] who is, you know, an attempt to be a full human being.

[8:38] He has a lot of malapropisms, which are, you know, ethnic humor that certainly does not

[8:44] help.

[8:47] But Los Locos are just, like, cartoon villain gang Latinos.

Elliott Kalan

[8:51] Oh, and also the fact that, like, they are a multi-ethnic gang, but the idea was, but

[8:56] they all speak with kind of Mang-type accents, you know?

[9:00] And, like, that the idea is just like, well, and also the fact that it's never clear where

[9:04] this movie is set.

[9:05] They never say.

Stuart Wellington

[9:06] And they, I mean, they do accept Johnny Five into their ranks.

[9:10] He becomes a member of the gang.

[9:11] That's true.

Elliott Kalan

[9:11] I mean, after, after they trick him into stealing several dozen car stereos.

[9:15] But, uh, there is a, this movie is never very clear.

[9:18] And when I was a kid watching it, I assumed it was New York, because the second movie in

[9:21] a series is almost always the New York movie.

[9:24] Uh-huh.

[9:24] And they, but it's clearly not.

[9:26] Give me some examples.

[9:28] Uh, in, uh, in Gremlins 2.

[9:30] They go to New York.

[9:31] Doesn't he go to New York in the first movie?

[9:34] Oh, I guess he does.

[9:35] Right, right.

[9:35] He does.

[9:35] That's one of the different ones.

[9:36] Okay, I fucked up.

[9:37] But, like, uh, or, like, Muppets Take Manhattan is not the second one, but it's, it's one of

[9:41] the early sequels.

[9:42] Like, there was a, there was a feeling in a lot of movies, I feel like, where it's like,

[9:45] once the character has proved themselves, then they can go to New York.

[9:48] Yeah, like Jason, like how Jason proved himself, like, killing all those teenagers in the sticks,

Dan McCoy

[9:55] and then he's like, I gotta take my act to the big city.

Elliott Kalan

[9:58] Yeah, there was a scout who was scouting him at the summer camp, went, you know what, kid?

[10:02] I think you got what it takes to go on Broadway.

[10:05] Wow, really?

[10:06] I could kill people on Broadway?

[10:07] Come on, kid.

[10:08] And then it didn't work out.

[10:09] He didn't really have what he does.

[10:10] Yes.

[10:10] But, uh, so, but this, but this movie, it's shot in Toronto, and it's very clear watching

[10:16] it that they are dancing around where it is actually set.

[10:18] And so just the idea that they were like, uh, it's a city, a street gang, Latino street

[10:24] gang.

[10:24] It doesn't matter where we are.

[10:25] It's a big city.

[10:25] There's a, there's a, there's a Latino street gang.

[10:27] It's whatever.

[10:28] That's what we do.

[10:29] That, that laziness is in some ways more racist.

Stuart Wellington

[10:32] But it's still.

[10:33] It's not in Canada.

[10:34] It's, it's not meant to be in Canada because they go through a citizenship ceremony at the

[10:39] end.

Elliott Kalan

[10:40] Yeah, well, that's the other thing is that it's, it's that, you know, it could very well not

[10:43] be in the United States until the very end.

[10:45] Yeah.

[10:45] When they take, he takes the oath of citizenship for the United States, which they usually

[10:49] don't do in Canada.

[10:50] As far as I know.

Dan McCoy

[10:50] They also have a, uh, black three card, mighty street hustler whose reaction to Johnny Five

[10:56] is also cartoonishly sort of stereotyped.

[11:00] So, uh.

[11:01] Oh, wow.

[11:01] Yeah.

S4

[11:01] This is a real racist movie.

[11:02] On the ethnic front, it's not good.

[11:04] It's so racist.

[11:06] It's like, I'm so sorry, truly, to anyone that potentially would be offended by this movie.

[11:13] And you know what I'm also going to say?

Elliott Kalan

[11:14] Johnny Five is kind of a racist depiction of a, of a robot, to be honest.

[11:18] How so?

[11:19] He has no thoughts in his head other than whatever input has been given to him.

[11:23] Uh, he's just constantly spitting out nonsense.

[11:25] He's at, when they're all like, oh, what's he going to bleed?

[11:28] Motor oil?

[11:29] Or, and then he does later, or battery fluid or whatever it is.

[11:31] Yeah, I mean battery fluid.

[11:32] He's a, he's, he falls into a lot of robot stereotypes that he can read books real fast.

Dan McCoy

[11:37] Johnny Five is definitely a, uh, a character who, uh, shows that knowing a lot of facts doesn't

[11:42] make you smart.

Stuart Wellington

[11:43] But Johnny Five, the character, doesn't show up for like 20 minutes into the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[11:48] And also, I hate to break to you guys, Johnny Five was played by a puppeteer and a voice

[11:52] actor, not by a real robot.

[11:54] It took, it wasn't anything until a WALL-E, that you had a real robot played by a robot.

[11:58] Yeah.

[11:58] And so it's, so they have real, they have living, or get flesh humans in Robo-Face in this

[12:03] movie.

Dan McCoy

[12:03] I had no idea.

[12:05] I don't want too much talk about, too many jokes about, uh, anti-robot, uh, sentiment to

[12:12] diminish the fact, like, I want to, let's, let's address this fully and then, and then

[12:16] move on and not really dwell on it.

[12:19] But yeah, Fisher-Stevens is not an Indian man.

[12:22] He is doing this in brownface with a very broad Indian voice.

[12:28] Um, I don't think it is, uh, it is, I don't think it is ill-intentioned, but it is very,

[12:37] very miscalculated, let's say.

Elliott Kalan

[12:39] Yeah, and the strangest thing about it is that apparently in the first movie, they cast him

[12:43] as a white character and then decided to change the character to an Indian part, but then had

[12:48] him play it anyway.

Dan McCoy

[12:49] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[12:50] Which is, which is a strange way to do things.

Dan McCoy

[12:52] Yeah.

[12:53] And I, look, if I was a better, um, you know, sort of, I don't know what I, I, I don't,

[12:58] I wouldn't call myself the producer now that Alex does all the editing, but as a better, uh,

[13:03] arranger of things for the show, uh, I might've said to Ben, are you sure you went through that?

[13:09] But, but it was a movie that I saw a lot as a kid.

[13:13] I thought.

Elliott Kalan

[13:13] That's why they called him the steamroller is he just wouldn't take no for an answer when

[13:17] it came to Shorts Rookie 2.

Dan McCoy

[13:18] You can tell how, how assertive and angry he is.

[13:22] No, I, I was just like, I, you know, we can probably address it and there's a lot of other

[13:27] funny things to talk about, but it is, you know, it's, it's a, it's a thing that would

[13:33] keep me from recommending this movie to anyone now.

[13:38] Uh, as a kid, I don't think like, you know, I grew up in the middle of the country.

[13:41] I just didn't like when I saw Fisher Stevens in another part, like I was a kid, I was like,

[13:46] Oh, he's, I didn't know.

[13:47] I thought he's white.

[13:49] I didn't.

[13:49] What?

[13:50] Yeah.

[13:50] I mean, to be, I like, I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[13:52] I grew up in New Jersey at a school where there were a lot of Asian American kids, a

[13:55] lot of Indian American kids.

[13:57] And as a kid, I never put two and two together that Fisher Stevens was playing it, playing

[14:02] an ethnicity that he was not.

[14:04] Um, and I was just, I was rereading the article that Aziz Ansari wrote for the New York times

[14:08] where how as a kid, he was like, finally an Indian hero in a movie.

[14:12] And it wasn't until he was a college student that he was like, wait a minute, that guy's

[14:16] not from India.

[14:16] Hold on a second.

[14:18] But, uh, so there's, I, so you'll see, you can say.

[14:21] It's a bad, it was a bad decision, but Fisher Stevens kind of, uh, did the best he could.

[14:26] Although you, I think he didn't really understand the problem until he saw Dana Carvey wear a

[14:31] turtle face in Master of Disguise.

[14:33] And he realized how much it hurts to see your culture appropriated.

[14:35] Since Fisher Stevens does look like a turtle.

[14:37] That's true.

Stuart Wellington

[14:37] Yeah.

[14:38] Fisher Stevens does look like a turtle.

[14:40] He would be perfect to play Scar in the turtle remake of the Lion King.

[14:45] Yes.

[14:46] That would mean Michael Cera would be playing the Simba character.

[14:50] There's a whole.

S4

[14:51] Well, Michael Cera's the grown up, the grown up Simba, right?

[14:53] Yeah.

[14:54] He's a grown up Simba.

[14:55] He's doing his takes.

[14:56] You're saying it's a, it's a turtle-fied Lion King?

Stuart Wellington

[15:00] Yeah.

[15:01] It's like the turtle king, but you got to clarify that it's based on the Lion King.

[15:05] So I say a turtle version of the Lion King.

[15:08] I mean, the poster will probably call it turtle king, but maybe, maybe we'll release it as

[15:13] turtle version.

[15:14] You're the turtle.

[15:15] He's the turtle king.

Elliott Kalan

[15:16] That's a very different story.

[15:17] That's true.

Elliott Kalan

[15:17] Very different story.

[15:18] Now, Stuart, the real question is, would the opening song still be the circle of life

[15:20] or would it be the turtle of life?

[15:22] That's a good question.

[15:23] Would the song be Hakuna, the turtle?

Stuart Wellington

[15:25] I mean, turtles do look like circles.

[15:27] They do.

[15:27] They are round.

[15:28] Yeah.

[15:29] Can you feel the shell tonight?

[15:31] What are you doing?

S4

[15:32] Can you feel the shell tonight?

Stuart Wellington

[15:35] They're all great songs.

[15:36] Yeah.

S4

[15:37] Any other turtle references that we can make?

[15:40] I literally don't know anything else about turtles.

[15:42] I just want to finish casting this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[15:45] Who's playing the Mufasa in that movie?

[15:47] Who's the dad?

[15:48] Oh, man.

[15:49] That's really tough.

[15:50] And what animals are Timon and Pumbaa?

[15:52] Because are these sea turtles or are they land tortoises?

Stuart Wellington

[15:55] Okay.

[15:56] So Timon and Pumbaa are not going to be turtles.

[15:58] I think it's essential that they are not.

[16:00] They have to be some other kind of creature maybe.

[16:03] Yeah.

[16:03] So Pumbaa's main trait is what?

[16:06] Farting a lot?

[16:07] Farting and being kind of a bad thing.

[16:08] What other animal farts a lot?

[16:10] Are we going to?

[16:11] Main trait.

[16:12] Dan, you know a lot about farting.

Dan McCoy

[16:16] I mean, I do fart a lot.

[16:17] Let's get back to-

[16:18] So Pumbaa is Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[16:20] Okay.

[16:20] In this version.

[16:22] Let's talk about-

[16:23] Let's talk about what happens-

[16:24] Short circuit too.

[16:25] Why don't I take the summary reins on this one?

[16:28] How does that sound?

[16:29] Okay.

[16:30] The movie opens-

[16:31] Just quickly-

[16:32] If I may, quickly.

[16:33] Yes, Ben.

[16:33] The steamroller, Ben.

S4

[16:34] Because I also wanted to just say, I looked up an article in the LA Times that was promoting

[16:45] this movie.

[16:46] It was an interview with Fisher Stevens.

[16:48] And so, because I know we're moving on, but I just wanted to quickly add some choice quotes

[16:53] that I just-

[16:53] This is from the original release.

Elliott Kalan

[16:55] Oh.

[16:55] Yes.

[16:55] Oh, wow.

[16:56] Okay.

[16:56] Back in 1988, the year America made a choice, Bush or Dukakis, and they never looked back.

S4

[17:04] This is one of the quotes when he's talking about his career.

[17:08] He says, I'm like the UN.

[17:11] Okay.

[17:12] Yes.

[17:12] And then lists off some of the other roles.

[17:15] So not only has he done this as an Indian man, he's done this many times in a bunch of

[17:20] other movies.

[17:21] Okay.

[17:22] Well, this makes me feel less like it was a mistake.

[17:24] He's made a career out of it.

[17:25] It's so fucked up.

[17:26] I can't even like, because there is a tradition in Hollywood, right?

[17:32] Going way back, you watch old movies.

[17:34] Going back to the earliest movies there are.

[17:36] No, LA exclusively watches old movies.

Elliott Kalan

[17:38] And that's why.

[17:39] Because I don't like ethnic actors.

[17:41] I only want to see white actors playing other ethnic actors.

[17:43] I'm just kidding.

[17:44] That's not why.

[17:45] We got it on it.

[17:46] We got it on wax.

[17:46] No, no.

[17:47] It's on tape.

[17:48] No, that's not why.

[17:48] It's because old movies are just better.

[17:50] Aside from the problematic elements, which there are many.

[17:52] But anyway, so you're saying.

[17:54] So it's an old Hollywood tradition to not want to cast non-white actors.

S4

[17:57] Yes.

[17:59] And it's just so surprising to me that it's like in the 80s, this is still happening.

[18:05] I'm like, I'm just so astounded.

[18:07] So, okay.

[18:08] One other, a couple other pieces here.

[18:11] At a benefit premiere of the film.

[18:13] This is included in the article.

[18:15] Princess Diana was surprised he was not native of India when they met.

Elliott Kalan

[18:20] What a weird world where Princess Diana was sitting watching this movie.

Dan McCoy

[18:25] I know.

[18:26] That's what I'm like.

[18:26] I can't even imagine.

[18:27] I mean, there's never been a historical incidence of a British person being sensitive to India.

Stuart Wellington

[18:35] I mean, nothing in any biography of Princess Di or even the movie Spencer, are there moments where they show us her watching Short Circuit or Short Circuit 2?

Elliott Kalan

[18:47] That should have been the ultimate low point for the character in Spencer was her having to watch Short Circuit 2.

Stuart Wellington

[18:53] Do you think Kristen Stewart had to watch Short Circuit to get into character?

Dan McCoy

[18:57] Yeah, because she knew Princess Di did it.

[18:59] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[19:00] To get into that character, she did everything that she knew Princess Di did.

[19:03] She married Prince Charles briefly.

[19:04] She had two sons.

[19:06] She watched Short Circuit 2.

[19:07] The idea that at a certain point, Princess Diana was sitting in a theater watching a robot do an impression of Crazy Eddie from the local New York area electronic store commercials is bonkers to me.

[19:19] That's nuts.

Dan McCoy

[19:20] Crazy Eddie, by the way, who then later works at Radio Shack?

[19:24] I was confused.

Elliott Kalan

[19:26] We'll get to that.

[19:27] It's confusing.

[19:27] He's a character named Manic Mike in this one.

[19:29] Not to be confused with Magic Mike, who's very different.

Dan McCoy

[19:32] I just think that that's like a local mom and pop electric store type thing.

[19:42] Like the Radio Shack wouldn't have someone do that character.

[19:45] Probably not.

[19:46] No, no.

Elliott Kalan

[19:46] Well, unless it's a franchise.

[19:49] You know how they franchise it out?

[19:51] By this point, this may have been already the – I wonder if Crazy Eddie was – it must have been still around.

[19:55] This was before Crazy Eddie was shut down because they were cooking the books and breaking the counting.

[19:59] Okay.

[19:59] We're getting way ahead of ourselves.

Dan McCoy

[20:01] Let's get into the –

[20:02] Actually, we're way behind ourselves.

Elliott Kalan

[20:03] There's no reason to talk about the downfall of the Crazy Eddie chain.

[20:07] What other facts do you have about Short Circuit 2 before we get into the story?

S4

[20:10] Well, just the other thing about that premiere is it was a benefit.

Elliott Kalan

[20:13] Whoa.

[20:14] It was a fucking benefit.

[20:15] I love it.

[20:16] So fucked up.

[20:16] That's great.

[20:17] The weird thing is it was a benefit for –

[20:18] It was a benefit for a better representation in film.

S4

[20:23] And this film was an example of what not to do.

[20:27] Yeah.

[20:27] Okay.

[20:27] So the last thing in this feature with Fisher Stevens is he goes out with this quote,

[20:33] I'd like to play a white guy someday.

Stuart Wellington

[20:36] Oh, and he never did.

[20:38] And he never did.

[20:39] Not till Hackers.

[20:40] Just kidding.

[20:40] He's in Hackers.

[20:41] Yeah, he's in Hackers.

[20:42] Yeah.

[20:42] And he's in Lost and a bunch of other stuff.

[20:44] He's had a big, long career.

Elliott Kalan

[20:45] Yeah, he's had a very long career.

[20:46] And he's an Academy Award-winning documentary maker.

Stuart Wellington

[20:49] Yeah.

[20:49] So I guess his decisions paid off in the long run.

Elliott Kalan

[20:53] Yeah.

[20:53] Yeah, Fisher Stevens, you got what you wanted, but was it worth it?

[20:56] What did he have to do to get there?

[20:57] Really makes you think.

[20:58] All right.

[20:59] All right.

[20:59] So Short Circuit 2.

[21:01] Great.

[21:01] Those are all – that's all helpful context.

[21:03] The movie begins with what for me was its high point, the old TriStar Pegasus logo,

[21:08] which I have not seen in years.

[21:10] Yeah, that's great.

[21:10] This is the era before TriStar merged with Columbia, I think, and before they were all bought

[21:15] by Sony.

[21:16] So to see that horse with its flapping wings and hear that music and then gets trapped

[21:20] in a triangle, it brought back a lot of childhood memories.

Dan McCoy

[21:22] Yeah.

[21:23] You know, Elliot, I would feel bad about backtracking, but you were just talking about the TriStar

[21:27] logo.

[21:28] So obviously, we're not in too much of a rush.

Elliott Kalan

[21:32] No, no.

[21:32] We're three seconds into the movie.

[21:34] We're not even into the actual film proper.

Dan McCoy

[21:35] I feel like before we talk about Short Circuit 2, we should give a brief summary of the events

[21:41] of Short Circuit.

[21:43] Sure, go for it.

[21:43] Steve Guttenberg and Fisher Stevens play robo-scientists who have made these-

[21:50] In Montana.

[21:51] Yeah.

[21:52] Made robots for the government.

[21:55] They're dismayed to learn that they're going to be, you know, they put lasers on them.

[21:59] They're going to be used as military things.

Stuart Wellington

[22:02] Which is naive on their part.

Dan McCoy

[22:04] That's incredibly naive on the robot maker's part.

[22:07] Number five gets hit by lightning.

Stuart Wellington

[22:11] As shown on the poster for the movie.

Dan McCoy

[22:14] And, you know, in true Frankenstein fashion, this makes him alive.

[22:20] It changes something in his programming.

[22:23] Like, he becomes sentient.

Stuart Wellington

[22:26] I feel like during the 80s, there were a lot of fucking movie posters with dudes getting hit

[22:30] with electricity.

[22:31] Yeah.

[22:31] Like that.

[22:31] Electricity was huge back then.

[22:33] Young Einstein.

[22:34] Weird Science?

[22:35] Did they have lightning?

[22:36] Weird Science possibly.

[22:37] I can't remember.

[22:38] Shocker.

[22:38] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[22:39] He goes on the run.

Stuart Wellington

[22:41] Powder.

[22:42] Powder.

[22:42] You are blessed to talk about.

[22:43] Well, let's not talk about that one.

[22:45] Number five goes on the run.

[22:46] Even more problematic.

Dan McCoy

[22:47] Another one there, which is worth not talking about.

[22:49] Yeah.

[22:50] Number five goes on the run.

[22:52] He meets Ali Sheedy, who is a local hippie who teaches him to respect life.

[22:59] Steve Guttenberg and Ali Sheedy have a romance.

[23:02] They end up thwarting the government.

[23:05] That's basically it.

[23:06] The first one.

S4

[23:07] Guttenberg is kind of like the bad boy scientist, which is like the type of scientist that I just

[23:11] can't stand.

[23:13] It's like, how often are we really, like in the real world, do we have a badass scientist?

[23:18] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[23:18] I mean, I'm sure on some level, a lot of scientists are badass within their field, but they might

[23:24] not fall within the confines of a traditional badass.

S4

[23:27] I feel like any adult is committed to homework for the rest of their frigging lives.

[23:32] Yeah.

[23:33] Come on.

Elliott Kalan

[23:34] And it's a slippery slope from that just to like an Elon Musk type who thinks he's super

[23:38] cool and is constantly face planting in different ways.

[23:43] And like, you know.

[23:43] Okay.

S4

[23:44] Lava's cool.

[23:45] Right?

[23:45] Lava is cool.

[23:47] Lava is cool as hell.

[23:48] But like someone who studies lava is kind of boring.

Elliott Kalan

[23:52] I mean.

[23:52] Yeah.

[23:53] I think part of the issue is that most of science is not the fun stuff we see in movies.

[23:59] It's a lot of like keeping records and observing things very closely.

[24:03] And like I wanted to be a scientist when I was a kid because I had been taught by cartoons

[24:07] that being a scientist meant like building time machines and things like that.

[24:10] Yeah.

[24:10] Or like meeting aliens.

[24:11] Yeah.

[24:12] But it's not.

[24:12] A lot of science is putting different chemicals into a hundred different vials that have bacteria

[24:17] in them and then recording what happens.

[24:19] Yeah.

[24:20] For the next couple weeks.

[24:21] And then trying it again with a hundred new chemicals.

Dan McCoy

[24:23] You know.

[24:23] I forgot that Ben was the bad boy bully of podcasting.

[24:27] But I wanted to.

Elliott Kalan

[24:28] That's what they call him.

[24:28] Bad boy bully Ben.

[24:30] Another nickname.

Dan McCoy

[24:30] Yeah.

[24:31] It's one of my many nicknames.

[24:33] Triple B.

[24:34] Before I move on to Short Circuit 2 at long last I wanted to say one more thing which is

[24:38] both of the Short Circuit movies are written by the same screenwriting team who also wrote

[24:43] Tremors.

[24:44] But the first one was I was surprised.

[24:47] Perfect movie Tremors.

[24:48] Learn was directed by John Battam who did.

[24:50] Yeah.

[24:50] John Battam from War Games.

[24:51] War Games and Saturday Night Fever.

[24:53] And this one is by a director who mostly did like Bionic Woman episodes and the TV show

[24:59] V and other stuff.

[25:01] I mean he created the show V.

Elliott Kalan

[25:02] He created.

[25:03] His name is Kenneth Johnson.

[25:04] He created the show Alien Nation.

[25:05] So like he's not just a like a.

[25:08] He's a TV creator I would say.

[25:10] No, no.

[25:10] I know.

[25:10] Not just a journeyman director.

[25:12] But.

[25:12] I don't.

Dan McCoy

[25:14] He had.

[25:15] I'm still impressed by the career.

[25:17] I'm just saying that like in terms of.

[25:21] In Hollywood terms.

[25:22] It's like okay we've got this like kind of big name director.

[25:25] And then they're like okay now give the sequel to the TV guy.

Elliott Kalan

[25:29] Yeah.

[25:29] He's no.

[25:30] He's not John Battam.

[25:31] And John Battam is not even a top tier star director.

[25:35] You know like I don't think people are.

[25:36] It's not like people are like oh I gotta go see the new John Battam.

[25:38] When are you guys gonna do a blank check series on John Battam?

[25:41] I don't think anytime soon.

[25:42] No.

Stuart Wellington

[25:43] I don't think that we're gonna jump on that anytime soon.

Elliott Kalan

[25:44] I don't think he ever got that blank check is the thing.

[25:46] I don't know John Battam ever got that blank check authorization.

[25:51] But okay.

[25:51] War Games is great.

[25:53] It is great.

[25:54] I love that movie.

[25:55] If you're gonna see a movie about an Ascentian AI that is doing the wrong thing.

[26:00] Then War Games is the movie to see and not the Short Circuit.

[26:02] Okay.

[26:03] Now that we're caught up on Short Circuit.

[26:05] And we know that it's about a robot that comes to life.

[26:07] Let's talk about Short Circuit 2.

[26:09] So we start off with Fisher Stevens is reprising his character of Ben from the first movie.

[26:14] As I mentioned he does have a different last name than in the previous movie.

[26:17] Which is I think is a sign of the slipshod nature of much of this sequel.

[26:22] He's out on the street of an unidentified city.

[26:25] As we mentioned the movie allows you to believe it's New York.

[26:27] If you say New York the movie's not gonna correct you at any point.

[26:31] You know the same way that there are many times where I have not seen a movie or read a book that someone's talking about.

[26:38] And I just kind of don't say that out loud and let them believe that I know the thing that they're talking about.

[26:43] That's what this movie is doing with New York.

[26:44] Yeah.

[26:45] And Ben is out on the street.

[26:46] He's selling tiny little toy number fives that like to dance and things like that.

[26:51] And next to him is a guy named Fred played by Mike McKeon who is selling Rolex watches.

[26:58] Which is like kind of a hustler.

[26:59] Yes.

[27:00] That's 1980s shorthand for con man is out on the street selling Rolex watches.

S4

[27:05] When there are three buttons down they're like a sleazeball.

[27:09] Yeah, yeah.

[27:09] You know?

[27:10] Yeah, yeah.

[27:10] Exactly.

[27:10] How many buttons are you on dude?

Dan McCoy

[27:12] Yeah.

[27:12] He's always talking about his silk shirt and people not dancing.

Elliott Kalan

[27:15] And he talks like this.

[27:16] He talks like this.

[27:17] Yeah.

[27:17] And there's a – it reminds me – the other day we were driving and we passed a Rolls Royce on the road.

[27:23] And the guy driving it was the sleaziest looking guy I had ever seen in my life.

[27:27] Like he looked like he was a drug kingpin's henchman in a movie from 1987.

[27:31] And I was like it was either going to be a distinguished old British man or this guy who's driving this Rolls Royce.

[27:37] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[27:37] You either thought he was going to stop and ask for some Grey Poupon or some shit.

[27:41] Exactly.

[27:42] That's an appropriate joke for this episode.

Elliott Kalan

[27:44] Or reveal that the whole trunk is just full of cocaine.

[27:47] That's the other thing.

[27:48] Yeah.

[27:48] Okay.

[27:48] So Mike McKean is like, hey, you know what?

[27:52] Why don't I sell you some of these watches?

[27:53] But then one of the mini Johnny Fives.

[27:56] Has he started calling himself Johnny Five or no?

Dan McCoy

[27:58] Yeah, I think so.

[27:59] Okay.

[27:59] I couldn't remember if he did in the first movie.

[28:01] I mean, Who's Johnny the song was related to the first movie.

[28:06] I think though in the first movie they just always called him number five because when he shows up in this movie he's like, I'm calling myself Johnny now.

[28:14] It's Johnny Five.

Elliott Kalan

[28:15] Yeah, yeah.

[28:16] And Ben is surprised by that.

[28:18] So I was like, oh, I didn't realize that he didn't know that.

[28:20] Anyway, that little robot, he rolls all the way through a huge shopping mall and rolls by the office of one Sandy Banatoni played by Cynthia Gibb who for the past few years has been doing almost exclusively Christmas themed projects.

[28:35] And she is the toy buyer for this huge department store.

[28:39] Nothing she is interested in does her boss want to buy for the store.

[28:43] And it is, to be fair, all kind of shoddy gimmicky junk that looks like you would find it in the bargain bin of a Spencer's Gifts.

Stuart Wellington

[28:50] I love that her last name sounds like Panatoni.

[28:54] And I also love that she is way ahead of the curve on giant eyebrow fashion because her eyebrows are huge.

[29:01] They look awesome.

[29:02] I hadn't really noticed the size of her eyebrows.

[29:04] Okay.

[29:04] Well, I guess it's time for a rewatch of Short Circuit 2.

[29:08] You know what?

[29:08] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[29:09] Let me stop the recording.

[29:10] Let me watch Short Circuit 2 again.

[29:11] But her boss is like, I want high tech stuff, high tech things.

[29:15] And then Johnny Five rolls in, this tiny little robot Johnny Five.

[29:18] And she finds Ben who it turns out is living and working out of a truck.

[29:22] And she says, hey, I want a thousand of these little robot toys.

[29:26] Can you make them for me?

[29:27] And Michael McKeon is suddenly like, money?

[29:29] Yes, I'm his business partner.

[29:31] Yeah, we can build those for you.

[29:32] $50 a piece.

[29:33] Sure, sure.

[29:34] Anyway, we'll build you a thousand of those robots in 30 days.

[29:37] And Ben's in love with her too.

[29:39] So that helps.

[29:39] Ben is instantly in love with her.

[29:41] So he's all tongue-tied, which allows Fred to swoop in and just take over the negotiations.

[29:48] Meanwhile, there's a motorcade rolling into the city.

[29:51] And like this wealthy farm.

Stuart Wellington

[29:53] Again, we still don't have Johnny Five in this movie yet.

[29:56] We're not going to have it for a while.

[29:58] We're carrying up all the posters.

[30:00] First, we're setting up all the pieces on the board.

Elliott Kalan

[30:03] We're setting up the dominoes that Johnny Five will knock down.

[30:05] Yeah.

[30:06] A motorcade rolls into the city delivering a priceless diamond collection to a bank.

[30:11] And I guess the diamonds are going on display somewhere in a week.

[30:14] But they're going to wait in this bank vault for a little bit until then.

[30:16] What do we care about diamonds?

[30:17] I thought this was a short circuit movie.

[30:19] Uh-oh.

[30:20] Wait and see.

[30:21] Like all kids' movies from the 80s, this has to do with the things kids love most.

[30:25] One, corporate intrigue and how hard it is to start a business and keep it running.

[30:30] Two, someone who's worked at a job for a long time that they don't feel respected at so they decide to rob their employer.

[30:35] The two things kids love that are in most children's 80s movies.

[30:39] Live action division.

[30:40] So, uh...

[30:41] And this bank...

Stuart Wellington

[30:42] Michael McKeon...

[30:43] We watched the guards travel through the bank, which is a shopping mall, right?

[30:47] It's like a massive shopping mall with escalators.

Elliott Kalan

[30:51] Yeah.

[30:52] Yeah, pretty much.

[30:53] It's the biggest bank in the world.

[30:56] There's multiple levels in escalators.

[30:58] So, uh, Michael McKeon, this being a kid's movie, he goes to a pool hall where there's a stripper dancing to get a loan from a pool shark to start up their Johnny Five toy making business.

[31:07] They rent a rundown building.

[31:09] Shades of Ghostbusters and that.

[31:11] But that building, uh-oh, they don't realize in the basement.

[31:14] It's secretly the headquarters for two guys who are trying to tunnel across the street into the bank to steal those diamonds.

[31:21] Somehow they're using a computer to do this.

[31:23] I don't really know why.

[31:25] The graphics are incredible.

Stuart Wellington

[31:27] When they're like, how long is it going to take?

[31:28] We get like a little 3D representation of us flying through a fucking tunnel.

[31:32] Like it's like the opening of a movie where there's popcorn and shit flying in your face.

[31:36] And then it just ends with the word vault flashing.

[31:40] That's amazing.

Elliott Kalan

[31:41] Yeah, he really cheaped out on the animation for the vault.

[31:44] Yeah.

[31:45] One of the crooks is a technology expert and the other is just a crook.

[31:50] He's just a guy who's a tough guy.

[31:52] And so Ben is now overseeing a staff of homeless people that Fred has hired to build little Johnny Fives until the two crooks come in.

[32:00] They can't have these guys in the building if they're going to use it as their headquarters.

[32:03] They come in in masks and they just wreck the place with crowbars and scare everybody away.

[32:07] Oh no.

[32:08] How's Ben going to make a thousand of these little robot toys?

[32:11] It's impossible.

[32:12] Wait.

[32:12] But then a Deus Ex Machina arrives.

[32:15] That's right.

[32:16] A literal Machina.

[32:17] Because what appears in a giant packing crate?

Dan McCoy

[32:20] Dan, who is it?

[32:21] Oh, it's Johnny Five and he and this packing crate, this giant packing crate like jumps its way into the warehouse.

[32:30] I'm not quite sure what the mechanism of that is.

Elliott Kalan

[32:33] It's using the same physics that Hippity Hopper, the kangaroo from the Looney Tunes cartoons would use if he was in a box and the box was jumping around.

Dan McCoy

[32:41] Yeah.

[32:41] This is about the point.

[32:43] You know, him coming to New York is about the point in the movie that I tried to Google one of my favorite things from the early web.

[32:50] I wasn't able to find it.

[32:51] It may finally be gone from the script from the internet.

[32:54] But one of my favorite weird things I found in the early days was someone had done this illustrated calendar of Johnny Five.

[33:04] Oh, right.

[33:04] I remember seeing that also.

[33:06] Yeah.

[33:07] Each month was like a postcard that he or like a letter that he'd sent to Stephanie back home being like, I'm in France now.

[33:16] You know, like, oh, people are weird here.

[33:18] And like, it would be him like in a beret in front of the.

[33:22] Fucking love that shit.

[33:23] Or something.

[33:23] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[33:23] And he's like.

[33:25] Somebody just did that shit in their free time.

Stuart Wellington

[33:27] They weren't being paid.

[33:27] They just made these cool.

Dan McCoy

[33:28] It was just a fan thing for like somebody really fucking loved Short Circuit.

[33:33] And I wish I could.

[33:34] I hope it's still out there.

[33:36] It was.

[33:36] I think.

[33:37] Beautiful in like sort of the innocence of it.

Elliott Kalan

[33:40] It was.

[33:41] It was really groundbreaking.

[33:42] And you can.

[33:42] And it's a direct trail from that to the recent fan comic where the two main characters of Zootopia are in a relationship and they break up because one of them had an abortion without telling the other one.

[33:54] And it takes place in Jerry Seinfeld's apartment for some reason.

[33:56] I feel like that's the state of kind of fan fiction of children's characters.

[34:02] Yeah.

[34:02] You can draw a direct line.

[34:04] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[34:06] Yeah.

[34:06] It's like the descent of man.

Elliott Kalan

[34:08] But with those things.

[34:08] So anyway.

[34:09] Johnny Five is here.

[34:11] Finally this movie can begin.

[34:12] The star of the show.

[34:13] He rolls around making wisecracks.

[34:15] As always he is hungry for input.

[34:17] He wants constant input.

[34:19] He reads a book really fast.

[34:20] Dan did you have an issue with this?

[34:21] He reads The Hound of the Baskervilles and guesses that the chauffeur did it.

[34:25] And then flips through it and goes he did.

[34:27] Is there a chauffeur in Hound of the Baskervilles?

Dan McCoy

[34:29] This is the part where I admit that despite being a lover of all things Sherlock Holmes.

[34:38] I cannot make it through the full length novels.

[34:44] I don't.

Stuart Wellington

[34:44] Really?

[34:44] I don't.

[34:45] Have you tried reading it like Johnny Five reads it?

[34:48] We just flip through the pages and don't really look at the words.

Dan McCoy

[34:51] Yeah.

[34:52] I mean I read.

[34:53] I did read A Study in Scarlet which is probably from what I hear the worst one.

[35:01] But you know I had to read the first Holmes novel or story of any kind.

[35:08] And that's a bad one because half like part way through it just all the actions just switches to I don't know.

[35:16] Is it Utah?

[35:17] Like there's this whole like interlude where they talk about a bunch of Mormons in America.

[35:22] And it's just backstory for the solution of the mystery that will eventually be revealed.

[35:28] And I'm like where's Sherlock Holmes?

[35:29] That's what I want.

[35:30] But I don't know.

[35:31] I never read all of the Baskervilles.

[35:32] So that was a long way of saying you don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[35:34] I'm surprised.

[35:35] I thought you were.

[35:36] I'm very surprised.

[35:39] It is a long way of saying that.

[35:41] You felt you had to defend your Holmes bona fides by telling us you did try to read another long Holmes one.

[35:46] Well, I don't.

Dan McCoy

[35:48] Elliot, I have a sickness as a speaker where like I feel like I have to travel down every road and explain all of it.

[35:57] And, you know, my wife is a saint.

[36:02] We're still talking about Short Circuit 2, right?

Elliott Kalan

[36:05] I'm not short.

[36:05] Ben, are we still talking about Short Circuit 2?

[36:07] Should we get back to it?

[36:09] How do you feel?

[36:09] I don't think we have to jump back into it.

S4

[36:12] I'm willing to hear Dan sort of further explore just communication in general.

[36:17] Yeah.

[36:18] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[36:19] That's so rough.

[36:20] It's going to come as such a shock to our listeners is the thing.

[36:22] Okay, so Ben is like Johnny Five can't learn that he's in a city.

[36:25] He loves input so much that he'll just go outside and get lost and cause trouble.

[36:30] So he kind of tells them that the entirety of the world is the building that they're in right there and that there's nothing but a boring void outside,

[36:37] which is philosophically an interesting proposition to put forward to a robot.

Stuart Wellington

[36:42] Later explored in the movie, Room.

Elliott Kalan

[36:46] I guess in a much more harrowing way.

[36:50] Johnny assembles a toy really quickly and then he makes an isn't that special church lady reference.

[36:55] So he already has too much 80s.

[36:56] I like that.

[36:57] I was excited about that.

[36:58] I got that reference.

[36:59] By the end of the movie, by the end of the movie, it is like a snowball rolling downhill of pop culture references until by the end,

[37:06] all of his dialogue is just like, it's just like, go ahead, make my day and stuff like that.

[37:11] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[37:11] We're racing faster and faster and the stars start to just blur together.

Elliott Kalan

[37:16] Just getting more input.

[37:17] So Johnny works at night watching a Tarzan movie on TV, which will come in later when he does a Tarzan move,

[37:23] and also sees a commercial for a crazy Eddie style place called Manic Mike's.

[37:29] You may recognize the guy playing Manic Mike.

[37:31] It's Don Lake, regular Christopher Guest actor.

[37:35] And also, just like Fisher Stevens, was in the Super Mario Brothers movie.

[37:38] So this is his second Flophouse episode appearance.

[37:41] So very exciting for him.

[37:42] He'll be receiving his certificate in the mail with a big number two on it.

Dan McCoy

[37:47] And Dan, when we—

[37:49] It'll just be the number two, though.

[37:51] It'll be very confusing for him.

[37:52] No other explanation.

Stuart Wellington

[37:53] When Johnny Five shows up to the warehouse, he starts building one of the little toy robots.

[37:58] And I don't know about you guys, but he built it just as fast as a human would build it.

[38:03] He wasn't going that much faster.

[38:05] I don't know how that was going to solve all their problems.

Elliott Kalan

[38:07] I think more that he can work 24 hours a day.

[38:09] He doesn't need rest or lunch breaks.

[38:11] And they don't have to pay him.

Dan McCoy

[38:11] Yeah, they can pay him with input or whatever they call it.

[38:13] Yeah, they pay him in input.

[38:15] I thought you were going to say,

[38:18] will Johnny Five have some sort of psychological existential crisis

[38:24] when he's making a smaller—

[38:26] Robots, building robots.

[38:27] —versions of himself.

Stuart Wellington

[38:28] It's like when people fuck each other and make little babies,

Elliott Kalan

[38:30] like little smaller versions of themselves.

[38:33] Only the same existential crisis that we all have

[38:35] when we make smaller versions of ourselves,

[38:36] where he's like,

[38:37] he's like,

[38:38] how do I only put the good parts of myself in this toy

[38:41] and not the bad parts of myself?

[38:42] And now that I have this,

[38:43] I can foresee a future where I'm not around anymore.

[38:46] And I have to give this toy the input it needs

[38:49] to go on its own

[38:50] and make its own little smaller toys,

[38:52] poly pocket-sized someday.

[38:54] Oh, my God.

[38:54] Oh, wow.

S4

[38:54] Could you imagine them in little diapers?

Elliott Kalan

[38:57] I can, yeah, yeah.

[38:58] That would be so sweet.

[38:59] It would be very cute.

[39:01] Very cute.

[39:02] It's basically—

Stuart Wellington

[39:03] We're basically talking about batteries not included at this point.

[39:06] Right?

[39:07] Yeah.

[39:07] I mean, they don't wear diapers in it.

[39:08] That's the movie where the alien robot gets mistaken for a hamburger.

[39:12] Yeah, they flip a little cheese on it.

[39:14] Yeah, they put cheese on it.

[39:15] Yeah.

[39:17] I missed that one.

[39:18] Oh, you missed that one?

Dan McCoy

[39:19] It's like from the same time, right?

[39:21] Yeah, it's around the same time.

[39:23] Is that Trevor?

[39:24] Don Amici is the star.

[39:25] I think there might be a connection.

[39:27] Let me check this, actually.

Elliott Kalan

[39:29] Batteries Not Included is from 1987,

[39:30] so it's a year before Short Circuit 2.

[39:32] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[39:33] And that's the one where, like,

[39:34] a building is going to get torn down,

[39:39] but luckily these little robots save the day from outer space.

[39:42] They're outer space robots, right?

[39:44] But it's also another movie where it's like—

Elliott Kalan

[39:46] They're outer space robots, yeah,

[39:47] where it's like little robots in the big city.

[39:49] Yeah.

[39:50] Yeah.

[39:50] Much like the show Caroline and the City,

[39:52] which is also about a robot in a city.

[39:53] The robot is—yeah.

[39:56] Caroline stands for—what was it?

[39:58] It was classification, awesome robot,

[40:02] or living intelligence, not electronic,

[40:07] but it is electronic.

[40:08] It's not a great acronym.

Dan McCoy

[40:12] You know, I remembered correctly.

[40:15] One of the writers of this movie wrote Batteries Not Included.

[40:19] Oh.

[40:20] Oh.

[40:21] There is a connection.

[40:22] Oh, and Mick Garris had the story—

[40:25] Brad Bird had a screenplay credit?

[40:29] Wow.

[40:29] Yeah, he's been around for a while.

[40:30] Heavy haters, yeah.

[40:31] Anyway.

[40:32] Anyway, that's why Batteries Not Included is a better movie.

[40:35] Should have been better if Brad Bird worked hard.

Elliott Kalan

[40:37] Well, it's not a—I mean, he was young at the time.

[40:39] Anyway, so Johnny Five gets seen—

[40:42] Oh, actually, this is the question I want to ask.

[40:44] So did any of you guys grow up in the New York or New Jersey area?

[40:48] No.

Stuart Wellington

[40:48] I grew up in Jersey.

Elliott Kalan

[40:50] Okay, so you grew up seeing Crazy Eddie commercials on TV, probably.

[40:53] Oh, for sure.

[40:54] Like I did.

[40:55] Yep.

[40:55] So Dan and Stu, were you familiar?

[40:57] If you had seen this as a kid, would you know this was a reference to a real thing?

[41:00] Was Crazy Eddie a national enough chain that you would have seen in these commercials?

Dan McCoy

[41:04] I was familiar with the trope of Crazy Eddie style.

[41:11] Yeah.

[41:12] But I don't know that I—

Stuart Wellington

[41:12] And the Saturday Night Live did a bit, right?

[41:14] Yeah.

S4

[41:15] Did you guys ever see the question mark guy?

[41:18] Oh, yeah.

[41:19] He's another pitchman with a similar bit.

Elliott Kalan

[41:21] Matthew Lesko.

[41:22] Well, his was all about, you know, the government's giving out free money.

[41:26] Buy my book.

[41:27] So a friend of mine, he tells me a story I love where he was at a hotel and saw Matthew

[41:31] Lesko, the question mark guy, checking in.

[41:33] And he was like—and he introduced himself and said, like, hey, big fan.

[41:36] And the guy went, the government is suing me.

[41:40] Because apparently a lot of those programs are not really meant for anybody to just apply

[41:47] and get free money from the government.

Dan McCoy

[41:50] Yeah.

[41:51] Well, it's like subsidies, right, basically?

[41:53] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[41:53] I think you do need to be a turnip farmer to get that turnip farming subsidy.

[41:57] You can't just say your house is a turnip farm.

[42:00] So anyway, the bad guys, they see Johnny through the window and they decide they need to smash

[42:05] him.

[42:05] So the next morning, Johnny Five, he shows off all these new features and stickers he's

[42:09] got.

[42:10] He does the first of infinite manic Mike crazy-iddy impressions that he does throughout the movie.

[42:16] Maybe he only does it a couple times, but it seems like a lot.

[42:17] Yeah, but infinite, whatever.

[42:18] And Ben goes off to sign the contracts with the department store.

[42:22] Oh, and we've already seen that Ben has fallen asleep the night before while studying for

[42:28] the citizenship test.

[42:29] He's studying to become an American citizen.

[42:31] It really makes you wonder how he worked on that top secret military robot program in

[42:34] the first movie without being a naturalized citizen.

[42:37] But hey, you know, things were looser in the 80s.

[42:41] And while talking to Fred, Fred lets slip that they're in a city.

[42:44] Uh-oh, they're in a city?

[42:45] Input.

[42:46] Johnny Five goes out and goes sightseeing.

[42:48] He's making jokey observations about everything.

Stuart Wellington

[42:51] And we're to believe that this like derelict warehouse is in the middle of town.

[42:55] Yeah.

[42:56] It's like right there.

[42:57] Like right across the street is like a big business plaza.

[43:00] It's, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[43:02] Yeah.

[43:02] I mean, to be honest, there are times when that happens, but it's, yeah, it's usually

[43:06] not cheek by jowl.

[43:08] I guess like now.

Dan McCoy

[43:10] Well, also.

[43:10] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[43:11] The funny thing about it, too, was like, as soon as he finds out that there's an exciting

[43:20] city outside, he wipes the grime off the window and looks out.

[43:24] And then it's like a series of shots of the most uninspiring things, like just like a van

[43:29] like driving by or whatever.

[43:31] And, you know, I'm so naive even at my advanced age that it didn't even occur to me.

[43:38] I'm like, oh, of course, this wasn't shot in New York.

[43:39] But I'm like, why are they showing this?

[43:41] Like, why isn't he like looking outside and being like, oh, the Chrysler building or whatever.

[43:45] Like something, yeah, that genuinely would be like, oh, I got to get out and see the

[43:48] sights.

[43:49] You know, instead of.

Elliott Kalan

[43:50] Yeah, well, even if they weren't really shooting there, they could just get a stock shot of

[43:54] something exciting.

Dan McCoy

[43:55] But more like, oh, look, a mailbox is outside.

Elliott Kalan

[43:58] I have to imagine the director was like, this movie needs to establish a certain level of

[44:03] realism or the audience will never fall in love with Johnny Five.

[44:06] We can't just have people believe all these things are happening outside the window.

[44:09] We only can show the things that are really happening outside the window.

[44:12] That's why you get not very much.

[44:15] He he goes.

[44:16] He of course, he plays like mentioned we mentioned earlier, he plays three card Monty and almost

[44:19] gets in a fight.

[44:20] He meets the it meets the Los Locos street gang who have the immortal rhyme, which I still

[44:26] remembered to this day, even before I watched the movie.

[44:28] Guys, you want to do it for me?

[44:30] What's the Los Locos rhyme up?

Stuart Wellington

[44:32] You can do it.

[44:33] You seem primed for this one.

Elliott Kalan

[44:35] OK, so this you got if you want me to say it, Los Locos kick your ass.

[44:38] Los Locos kick your face.

[44:40] Los Locos kick your balls into outer space.

[44:42] And this was something me and my friend.

[44:43] As a child, I thought it was the coolest, funniest thing I've ever heard.

[44:47] We thought it was the funniest thing.

[44:49] It was the toughest thing.

[44:50] We thought it was so amazing.

[44:51] As a kid, we all thought they were called Los Lobos, which sounds cooler than Los Locos.

[44:55] But yeah, it was amazing how there are so many.

[45:00] I can never fully remember people's birthdays.

[45:02] And yet before the movie started playing, I was saying the Los Locos rhyme to myself.

[45:07] This is ridiculous.

Dan McCoy

[45:08] It's also such a funny conception of a street gang.

[45:12] It's like, OK, these guys are really tough.

[45:15] So they're going to have a rhyme.

[45:17] Of course, they'll have a song.

[45:18] They'll have a jingle.

[45:19] A song, basically.

Stuart Wellington

[45:21] Well, you want people to remember you.

[45:23] And the best way to do that is with a cool rhyming jingle.

Elliott Kalan

[45:27] Yeah.

[45:27] And so they convince him to steal a bunch of car stereos.

S4

[45:30] And then they make him part of the gang.

[45:32] What do they say?

[45:33] They say they are, oh, they're like part of the stereo department or something.

Elliott Kalan

[45:40] They have some kind of like funny.

[45:41] They talk about how they work for the city cleaning people's stereos and then bringing them back.

[45:46] And they go, we never see our kids.

[45:47] Oh, Department of Car Repair.

[45:48] Because he works so long.

[45:49] That's his Department of Car Repair.

[45:51] And Johnny Five, he doesn't know.

[45:53] He's never experienced.

[45:54] No one's ever lied to him before.

[45:55] He's never even seen the movie The Invention of Lying.

[45:57] It wasn't made yet.

[45:58] So he can't see the show lie to me.

[46:00] It didn't exist at the time.

[46:01] He doesn't know it was invented.

[46:03] Yeah.

[46:04] And so he joins the gang.

[46:07] And the thing I thought, the thing I did.

[46:09] He gets spray painted.

Stuart Wellington

[46:10] They spray paint them all over.

[46:12] A variety of exciting colors.

Elliott Kalan

[46:12] They give him a wild style.

Stuart Wellington

[46:15] Makeover.

Elliott Kalan

[46:15] Yeah.

[46:16] And he's got a vest.

Stuart Wellington

[46:17] Yeah, a little bit of street wear.

[46:18] He gets a jean vest.

[46:19] Yep.

Elliott Kalan

[46:19] Yeah.

[46:20] And he gets found and returned back to his headquarters by Oscar Baldwin, a nice man who works at the bank across the street,

[46:27] played by Jack Weston, who is an actor that was in A Thousand Million Things.

[46:31] And Johnny comes back.

[46:34] He offends Ben with the Los Locos rhyme.

[46:36] Ben is very angry at him.

[46:38] And Johnny is sad to learn that he was tricked.

[46:40] And he's like, why is everyone in the city so angry all the time?

[46:43] Why do they get so angry at me all the time?

[46:45] And there's part of me that was like, Johnny Five, that's a good question.

[46:47] Why are cities hives of aggression?

[46:49] Why do they bring out the worst in people sometimes?

[46:52] But also, you're very annoying.

[46:53] You're a very annoying robot.

[46:55] You're bumbling around saying annoying things.

[46:57] That's why they get mad at you.

[46:58] It's you a lot of the time, Johnny Five.

Dan McCoy

[47:00] Yeah, but it is like the whole theme of this movie, in so much as there is one, is like Johnny Five is alienated because no one will believe that he's alive.

Elliott Kalan

[47:11] Yes, they think he's a toy or a stunt or a puppet or yeah.

Dan McCoy

[47:15] Yeah, and at the end, his big triumph is getting citizenship.

[47:20] And it's interesting that for all that this movie makes so many racial mistakes, it also is trying to make a stab at this idea of inclusivity because Ben also bonds with Johnny Five over this idea of feeling like he's the other and lonely in the city, which in a much smarter movie would be interesting.

Elliott Kalan

[47:48] Well, and it's also one of those things where done well, that's a statement on how we dehumanize people who are different.

[47:54] But done poorly, it is saying that this Indian man has more in common with a robot than with a white horse, which is terrible, which is a terrible message.

[48:01] Yeah.

[48:03] Like any movie where an indigenous person is like an amazing tracker and is closer to the animal spirits than other people.

[48:11] Like that's not okay.

[48:12] That's not –

[48:13] I mean, he's named Hawk, Ellie.

[48:15] Fair point.

[48:16] Fair point.

[48:17] So that night, the crooks break in.

[48:19] They try to attack Johnny and he throws them out while quipping a lot.

[48:22] The next morning, Fred learns that Johnny is an $11 million robot and wants to sell him.

[48:26] And Ben is like, no, he's my friend.

[48:28] And he takes Ben to lunch to distract him and convinces him to go ask Sandy out so that he can go take Johnny Five and try to sell him.

[48:37] But Johnny Five gets – he gets distracted by a big bookstore.

[48:41] He loves all the input.

[48:42] And he takes two books as Fred kind of hustles him out of there.

[48:45] The crooks try to break into the factory again.

[48:48] They want to burn it down.

[48:49] But Johnny Five has set up a bunch of traps that – and that also involve a recording of him quipping.

[48:55] So even when he's not there, he can still quip loudly.

[48:58] This movie runs on quips.

[49:00] So Fred takes Johnny Five to this company to sell him.

[49:03] And I was confused here.

[49:04] Maybe you guys can help me with this.

[49:05] The people walking into the room seem to know about the Nova Corporation robots that Johnny was part of.

[49:10] They're talking to each other and they're like, I thought they destroyed all those Nova Corporation robots.

[49:14] But then when they get in the room with Johnny Five, they're like, okay, so how does he work?

[49:17] Is it like a remote control?

[49:18] Like, where are you controlling him from?

[49:20] And so it's like a second ago they knew what this was and now they don't.

[49:24] Like, are they trying to con Fred?

[49:25] Ben, explain it to me, please.

S4

[49:27] In the first movie, the difference between Johnny and the other robots is they don't have consciousness.

[49:34] Uh-huh.

[49:35] So they understand them to be traditional robots.

[49:40] I see.

[49:40] And that they don't speak and they are just programmed.

[49:46] Whereas Johnny is a free thinker.

Stuart Wellington

[49:48] Yeah.

[49:49] Do they, so wait, do these other robots like watch TV and then mimic what they watched?

[49:54] And, uh.

S4

[49:55] I mean, they, they're built so that they could do that if they wanted to.

Stuart Wellington

[49:59] But they, they probably don't because they weren't hit by lightning and given the power of consciousness.

[50:03] Correct.

[50:03] Oh, correct.

[50:04] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[50:04] That's why the same thing happened to Benjamin Franklin with the kite and the key experiment was he was hit by lightning and suddenly he could think for himself and was repeating stuff from TV all the time.

[50:12] Yeah, yeah.

[50:12] And it made the other founding fathers very irritated.

[50:15] Uh-huh.

[50:15] That he would, they, they'd, they'd be like, uh, Ben, it's your turn to sign the Declaration of Independence.

[50:21] And he was like, I'm going to do it because I'm crazy, I'm lazy, and I'm out of this spacey.

[50:25] And they're like, please stop.

[50:26] We know you saw that commercial, Ben, but please stop.

[50:29] Um, so that happens when he hit it by lightning, I guess.

[50:32] Uh, and Johnny Five is like, you're trying to sell me, but I'm alive.

[50:35] I won't be a slave.

[50:36] And he falls out of a window.

[50:37] Luckily, he does have a hang glider that comes out of his back.

[50:41] And he lands at a sculpture garden where a spectator calls him repulsive.

[50:45] And that makes him sad.

[50:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[50:46] I was, I was worried about Johnny Five when he fell out that window.

[50:50] I got to admit.

[50:51] I, that.

Elliott Kalan

[50:52] Oh, then you're really going to be worried when he gets beaten all to shit with a crowbar later on.

Dan McCoy

[50:55] This movie really played on my emotions with the way that it treated, uh, uh, Johnny Five.

[51:01] Because he, he goes through some shit.

[51:03] And he's like, I was not as irritated as Elliot.

[51:05] I'm like, this is just a naive, innocent robot in the city.

[51:09] Uh, yeah.

[51:09] Who's almost getting destroyed at every turn.

[51:12] But like, I was worried when he was falling out the window.

[51:15] Because it seems to happen for a very long time.

[51:18] And he's like, he has a lot of time to like, think about it.

[51:21] He's like, oh, this isn't good.

[51:23] You know?

[51:23] Gravity.

Elliott Kalan

[51:24] Velocity.

[51:25] Falling at X miles per second.

[51:27] You know?

[51:27] Yeah.

[51:27] It's a very tall building, Dan.

[51:29] It's a very tall building.

Dan McCoy

[51:30] It takes him a while to, yeah, put his hang glider out.

[51:33] You know what?

Elliott Kalan

[51:35] He's like a robot in the city.

[51:36] And he falls in with some crooks.

[51:37] And he gets beaten up a lot.

[51:38] They just ripped off Chappie with this movie.

[51:41] Short Circuit 2 is just a rip off of Chappie, guys.

[51:44] Yeah.

[51:44] This is crazy.

[51:46] I can't believe they so blatantly rip off Chappie.

[51:48] Anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[51:49] I'm sure we said the same thing when we reviewed Chappie all those years ago.

Elliott Kalan

[51:53] That we said that Chappie is a rip off of Chappie.

[51:56] Yeah.

[51:57] So Sandy is getting chewed out by her boss for trying to sell junk at the store when Ben walks

[52:03] in.

[52:03] And she's stressed.

[52:04] He tries to make awkward chit-chat.

[52:05] She doesn't even recognize that he's trying to ask her out.

[52:08] And so Ben, he just couldn't pull it off this time.

[52:12] Johnny Five, he has the bright idea to steal some clothes so he'll fit in.

[52:15] So he steals the most enormous shirt in the world.

[52:18] Uh-huh.

[52:19] And a hat, right?

[52:20] He has very broad shoulders.

Dan McCoy

[52:22] You know, he's a robot.

Elliott Kalan

[52:23] He's a robot?

[52:27] Yeah.

[52:27] But that shirt, who would wear that shirt?

[52:29] Who is wearing this shirt that's the size of a robot?

[52:32] It's astounding.

Dan McCoy

[52:33] He has a big and tall robot store.

S4

[52:36] Should we describe what Johnny looks like?

[52:39] Yeah.

[52:39] Maybe some of the people out there that are not going to even bother to watch.

Dan McCoy

[52:43] If you've seen WALL-E.

[52:45] Yeah.

[52:45] Okay.

[52:46] Yeah.

[52:47] He's like a big WALL-E.

[52:48] He's like a big WALL-E.

[52:50] Well, basically.

[52:50] And he's got tank tread feet.

[52:52] He's got tank tread feet.

[52:54] Sure.

[52:55] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[52:55] And then he's got a tall-

[52:56] I want somebody to draw this robot based exclusively on this description.

Elliott Kalan

[53:01] His body is like a reclining chair kind of look to it.

Stuart Wellington

[53:05] Yeah.

[53:05] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[53:06] Like the internal structure of a reclining chair.

[53:10] Yes.

[53:10] And he's got two long arms with robo-fingers at the ends.

[53:16] And then his head is kind of like WALL-E's.

[53:17] It's like a flat-

[53:18] It almost looks like a boombox.

[53:21] Yeah.

[53:21] But he's got two waggly eyebrow tops.

[53:24] I would say-

[53:25] And I don't know why they put that on the robot, to be honest.

[53:27] I don't know why the robot has-

[53:29] Oh, but it's showing a motion.

Dan McCoy

[53:30] It looks like a kind of like a-

[53:32] It looks like a view master sort of with, you know, the head.

[53:36] And then the eye-

[53:37] Yeah, it has these flat pieces of metal that are eyebrows,

[53:40] which are also the brilliant thing about WALL-E's design,

[53:43] which I think honestly took a lot from this.

[53:47] You know, it shows a lot of emotion.

[53:48] And this was designed by a guy who worked on Tron and Blade Runner.

[53:52] I think it's a really cool design.

Elliott Kalan

[53:54] It was Sid Mead who designed him, right?

Dan McCoy

[53:56] Yeah.

[53:57] I think so.

[53:59] It's performed by a Muppet performer who does the voice as well.

[54:04] And I think that probably did the movements because I read that they had it set up.

[54:10] So, you know, it was like motion capture.

[54:12] They had like a guy in like a suit-

Elliott Kalan

[54:15] He kind of moves around like a Skeksis.

[54:17] Yeah, it moved and then radio control moved the thing.

[54:20] And that puppeteer, Tim Blaney, he worked on Mystery Science Theater when I worked on it.

[54:24] He was one of the-

[54:25] Oh, awesome.

[54:25] One of the bot puppeteers.

[54:26] And I just remember, I was too nervous to talk to him about Johnny Five.

[54:29] And someone just pointed out and they go, you know, he's Johnny Five, right?

[54:32] And I was like, what?

[54:33] Because I hadn't seen the Short Circuit movies in years and still liked Johnny Five.

[54:36] And now having watched Short Circuit 2 again, I don't like him anymore.

[54:40] Oh, no.

[54:41] Yeah.

[54:41] No, but it was still-

[54:41] I was still super impressed that the guy who did the puppeteering was working for it.

[54:45] You know, was working on the show.

[54:46] Yeah.

[54:46] But it was only watching this movie that I realized that Johnny Five has a nose too.

[54:51] That there's like a bump in between his eyes that looks like a nose.

[54:54] And there are times when he kind of looks like if Urkel was a robot even more than the Urkelbot

[54:59] looks like if Urkel was a robot.

[55:01] Oh, interesting.

[55:02] Prove me wrong.

Elliott Kalan

[55:02] Yeah.

[55:03] And his body position is a little bit like-

Stuart Wellington

[55:06] Prove me wrong.

[55:07] Have you ever sat in one of those ergonomic chairs where your feet are kind of under you

[55:12] a little bit?

[55:13] It's almost like you're sitting on your knees kind of, you know what I'm talking about?

[55:16] Yeah.

[55:17] Yeah, sure.

[55:17] That's kind of what Johnny Five's body posture is like.

S4

[55:20] Yeah, he's always in kind of a meditation stance.

[55:23] Yeah.

[55:23] His eyes are aperture and like a camera.

[55:28] And I do feel like it's effective too.

[55:30] Like that's another aspect of like how he's expressive.

Elliott Kalan

[55:34] Yeah.

[55:35] Yes.

[55:35] I mean, of all the issues with this movie, the design of Johnny Five and the puppeteering

[55:39] of Johnny Five are not one of them.

[55:41] Yeah.

[55:41] That was a huge hit.

[55:42] It's an amazing-

[55:43] Yeah.

[55:44] It's in this one and the last one, it's an amazing puppeteering job.

[55:46] Like for all that you know you're watching a movie, you never feel like you're not watching

[55:50] a robot rolling around talking and interacting with things.

[55:53] Like he always feels like a living robot.

[55:54] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[55:55] He does have kind of a nose and it's like, it's like a, but it's like a black kind of,

[56:01] uh, you know, box, boxy nose.

[56:05] And that combined with the, uh, the eyebrows gives him kind of a Groucho look that I like.

Elliott Kalan

[56:10] Um, yeah, I also, oh, sorry.

[56:13] I was just saying, it's kind of weird.

[56:14] I don't know that he ever does a Groucho impression, maybe in the first one, but he does look like

[56:18] Groucho.

[56:18] So sorry, Ben, you were going to say.

S4

[56:20] Uh, I like the design, like I like of the robot itself, the aesthetic where I like on blank

[56:27] check, uh, regularly always love to talk about old school graphics, visual effects.

[56:33] And I feel like the Apple aesthetic, that sleek kind of aesthetic.

[56:39] Yeah.

[56:39] Um, it's just so nice to see this throwback kind of a Rector set looking kind of robot.

Stuart Wellington

[56:45] Yeah.

[56:46] Yeah.

[56:47] I agree.

[56:47] It's like boxy, almost cobbled together.

[56:50] Yeah.

[56:51] It's got, it's got wires and things.

[56:53] Yeah.

[56:53] You're saying the, you're saying the opposite of the two art critics who see him in the sculpture

[56:58] garden.

[56:58] Right.

[56:59] Who are like that.

[57:00] Yeah.

[57:00] Who are like the classic 80s style, like, uh, you know, like yuppie hipster types.

Dan McCoy

[57:07] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[57:07] Nowadays I look at them, I'm like, man, they look fucking cool.

[57:11] Yeah.

[57:12] They do look cool.

Dan McCoy

[57:14] Clark Griswold is just off camera ready to like tap some shit on them or something.

Stuart Wellington

[57:18] Watching, watching Christmas vacation now, I'm like, why are they fucking with those cool

[57:23] people?

[57:24] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[57:25] Like they have the house I want to have.

[57:28] I mean, that might be, I've, I've said it before.

[57:30] I've been on record that Christmas vacation is the first movie I remember seeing and thinking,

[57:34] I don't like this.

[57:35] I don't like what I'm watching.

[57:37] Like, what am I doing wrong?

[57:38] I don't like what I'm seeing right now.

[57:40] It has a weird sourness.

[57:42] Yeah.

[57:43] But I agree, Ben, that there's some, there is something very refreshing about this old

[57:46] school design that looks like a machine.

[57:47] It doesn't, it's not rounded and cute and, and smooth and sleek.

[57:51] And it doesn't look like a toy, which is ironic because they're making toys of him.

[57:55] Uh, so Ben, uh, so, uh, Johnny five's rolling around.

[57:59] He sees a church and there's a sign that says looking for answers.

[58:01] And he goes in and goes into confession and the priest is surprisingly accepting and keeps

[58:05] talking about how everyone has a soul and he's alive.

[58:07] Then he sees it's a machine and he kicks him out of the church.

[58:10] Oh boy.

[58:11] To talk about, talk about a harsh satirical statement on the non-inclusiveness of, uh,

[58:16] of Catholicism, I guess.

[58:18] And, uh, he says you can't confess by remote control.

[58:21] He's very offended by it.

[58:22] So obviously, so Johnny five is making trouble in a bookstore, making trouble in a church.

[58:26] He probably making trouble in a bubble, just like in biodome.

[58:29] And these cops stop him and arrest him.

[58:31] And he does a John Lovitz impression.

[58:32] And they give him, they take mug shots of him and everything, even though then they put

[58:36] him in the stolen property room.

[58:37] And Ben is brought in to get him and he finds the books that Johnny five took from the bookstore,

[58:42] Frankenstein and Pinocchio.

[58:44] Obviously Johnny five is working through some issues.

S4

[58:47] Uh, the cop, one of the, like, there's like some cop that has a really funny, like take,

[58:53] uh, where he's just like mug shots.

[58:55] Like, are you fucking serious?

[58:58] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[59:00] And, uh, that night.

[59:01] He's like, I only get one line.

[59:03] I'm going to fucking nail it.

Elliott Kalan

[59:04] I'm going to do it as big as possible.

[59:07] I hope there's a take of him going, mug shots and falling over backwards.

[59:11] Like his feet just are coming out of the frame, like a bazooka Joe comic.

S4

[59:15] No one falls like that anymore.

[59:17] No.

[59:17] Where you get the feet all the way up.

[59:19] The flip take.

Elliott Kalan

[59:21] And people used to fall like that constantly just from what stuff people said to them.

[59:25] They were just so shocked.

S4

[59:26] I hate being that guy.

[59:28] It's like, you know, talking about like Gen Z and stuff.

[59:30] Yeah.

[59:30] It's just like, we don't get like slips like we used to.

[59:34] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[59:35] No.

[59:35] People got to stop.

[59:37] Spending all their money on avocado toast and start falling out of frame.

[59:41] Mm-hmm.

[59:41] So that you can see their legs more.

[59:43] Mm-hmm.

[59:43] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[59:44] You know, back when we were growing up, if someone told you something surprising, you

[59:48] would just flip backwards.

[59:50] I know.

[59:50] Bowled over.

[59:52] And there wasn't all this free pornography everywhere.

[59:55] You had to work hard to get it.

[59:57] You had to put your reputation on the line to go to a public place that sold it.

[1:00:01] And these kids did.

[1:00:01] They just don't know how easy they had it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:02] Or hang around a train station and find some lying around the tracks.

[1:00:06] Or go into a forest.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:07] Yeah.

[1:00:08] Or in the woods in New Jersey and dig them up where some old man has left them.

[1:00:11] Yeah.

S4

[1:00:12] And if you were to find the bag of magazines and you discover it, you'd fall backwards.

[1:00:17] Uh-huh.

[1:00:18] Be surprised.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:19] Kick your feet up.

[1:00:20] Unfortunately, a lot of young men died hitting their heads on rocks and trees after finding

[1:00:25] pornography in the woods.

[1:00:25] That was the original plot of Bridge to Terabithia.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:29] I still remember.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:30] Was they found, was that he went out into the woods by himself and found porn and that's

[1:00:35] why he died.

[1:00:36] Exactly.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:36] That's why it's so sad.

[1:00:38] I still remember being in a B Dalton at our local mall and going, and like, I was in the

[1:00:45] humor section or whatever, and someone had stuck a penthouse back there.

[1:00:49] And I, you know, it's like, I've, I've, it's like finding buried treasure.

[1:00:53] And, uh, yeah, I don't know why those ladies decided to go rollerblading in the nude, but

[1:00:59] God bless them.

[1:01:00] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:01] Live your life, girls.

[1:01:03] I hate to break you, Dan, because someone was paying them to take pictures of them rollerblading

[1:01:06] in the nude.

[1:01:06] What?

[1:01:07] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:07] This isn't like Life Magazine.

[1:01:08] They were doing it for the love of the game.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:11] I don't think so.

[1:01:14] Let's not cheapen our nude rollerblading by accepting money for it.

[1:01:18] Yeah.

[1:01:18] So did the B and B Dalton just stand for books?

[1:01:21] Uh, yeah.

[1:01:21] Books Dalton.

[1:01:22] It's gotta be, right?

[1:01:23] I think so.

[1:01:24] I mean, it was founded by Dalton from Roadhouse.

[1:01:26] Maybe he was trying to separate himself from his, oh, maybe it's Bouncer Dalton.

[1:01:29] That's what it stands for.

[1:01:30] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:30] Probably is Bouncer Dalton.

[1:01:32] Correct.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:33] Okay, so that night, Johnny Five tells Ben he's feeling lonely.

[1:01:36] Ben admits he's lonely too.

[1:01:38] He's afraid Sandy's gonna reject him.

[1:01:40] Johnny Five decides to help him with all the romantic input he picked up at the bookstore.

[1:01:45] Uh, and the next day the robbers are like, you know what, let's get the robots to steal the jewels.

[1:01:49] And we find out their man on the inside of the bank is Oscar Baldwin, the nice man at the bank who befriended Johnny.

[1:01:56] Yeah.

[1:01:56] He says, I'll handle the robot.

S5

[1:01:57] You just keep doing what you do.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:59] Uh, and Johnny Five helps Ben accidentally, on purpose, run into Sandy.

[1:02:03] And then he broadcasts, he like uses his little antenna to take over an electronic sign to broadcast things for Ben to say, which already from the beginning, the things he's saying are not good.

[1:02:14] But then a cat jumps on Johnny Five.

[1:02:16] And for somehow this, somehow this messes with his broadcasting.

[1:02:19] So now he's broadcasting advertisements and things in, offensive things in Spanish.

[1:02:24] And this is, uh, sorry for interrupting.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:28] I mean, this is a scene that I remember most clearly from watching this countless times as a kid because, um, I don't know.

[1:02:37] I really actually genuinely laughed at when, you know, like, cause Ben is apparently willing to say whatever Johnny Five gives him.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:45] He doesn't read it and then think about it.

[1:02:48] He just reads it.

[1:02:49] He starts reading it as he's saying it.

[1:02:50] And so by the end of each other, it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.

[1:02:55] Like he, and he never stops.

[1:02:57] He never doesn't finish it.

[1:02:58] He always says the whole thing.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:59] That was a specific moment that really made me laugh as a kid.

[1:03:02] The tough man to make a tender chicken.

[1:03:03] Because then also there's a little, like, very old time, like, pixel animation of, like, a man punching a chicken.

[1:03:13] And he just, like, gives this quizzical look.

[1:03:17] But before this, like, yeah, Johnny Five's Cyrano is, is, is, is not very good because, like, you know, she'll just say something like the word stage.

[1:03:27] And he'll be like, and Johnny Five's like, oh, I, I know a quote about stage.

[1:03:32] I, you know, all the world's a stage.

[1:03:34] And, um, yeah, it doesn't seem like, uh, it's good, good dating advice.

S4

[1:03:40] Another part of this moment in the movie is then a man shows up with, uh, I guess, peanuts and balloons.

[1:03:48] Yeah.

[1:03:48] This is the middle of the night.

[1:03:50] The middle of the night.

[1:03:51] Selling balloons.

[1:03:54] And who's buying balloons in the middle of the night?

[1:03:58] On your way home, you're in the doghouse.

[1:04:00] Did you buy a couple balloons?

[1:04:02] You know, I forgot it's my anniversary.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:04] I got to get some balloons and peanuts on the way home.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:07] Smooth things over with a big bunch of balloons.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:10] I, I missed, there used to be a guy who would, uh, who would go to all the bars in Park Slope selling athletic socks.

[1:04:18] And it's probably the same sort of thing, right?

[1:04:20] Like buying socks from the sock guy.

[1:04:22] And I feel like going to a bar, like, yeah, a lot of our bartenders need new socks.

[1:04:26] So it was, it was a pretty good deal.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:28] Yeah, that was a good idea.

[1:04:29] Uh, and so, uh, Ben, he admits the whole thing.

[1:04:32] I have a friend who's broadcasting.

[1:04:33] You're fucking me up that you keep saying my name.

[1:04:34] Yeah.

[1:04:35] Sorry.

[1:04:35] I can see it messing with you.

[1:04:36] Every single time I'm like, I'm not hanging out with Johnny.

S4

[1:04:40] You wish.

[1:04:41] Fuck that guy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:42] You wish.

[1:04:43] Well, I'll say, I would say Fisher Stevens, but he so disappears into the part of Ben that, you know, it's not really him.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:48] He does put 110%.

[1:04:51] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:52] So, so Fisher Stevens, he admits that it's all a ruse they put together.

[1:04:56] And this wins over Sandy instantly in the way this happens always in sitcoms and movies where it's like, you made such a big effort for me.

[1:05:04] It's like, why didn't you say something?

[1:05:06] Why were you doing all this weird shit?

[1:05:07] To me.

[1:05:08] And so, uh, they start, they start bonding over their love of old time rock and roll.

[1:05:14] And, uh, Johnny five helps them catch a cab.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:16] A new characteristic of Sandy that we haven't heard before.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:19] And a new characteristic of, of Ben, to be honest, that I don't think we've heard before.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:22] For some reason, this was the part that really hung up, hung Audrey up that like, all of a sudden we learned that Sandy, like, she's like, Sandy.

[1:05:29] All we knew about Sandy is that she was a nice girl.

[1:05:32] We didn't like, no, her one quality was like, just kind of vaguely nice.

[1:05:36] And now she's like, she loves rock music.

[1:05:39] And I'm like, why aren't you getting more hung up on the fact that she seems immediately interested in Fisher Stevens, even though he's been acting super weird and had this creepy like scheme to talk to her.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:51] Well, and then as soon as, as she agrees to go out with him for more, a robot jumps out, shoots a suction cup dart at a taxi cab, reels it back into that for them.

[1:06:01] And then they get in it and drive away.

[1:06:03] Like, that's a big red flag at starting a relationship.

[1:06:06] If this guy is followed around by a violent robot that essentially is stealing a car.

S4

[1:06:11] Like, yeah.

[1:06:12] Ladies, if he shows up on the first date and he got a giant robot with a suction cup that pulls a taxi back, I think that's a red flag.

[1:06:22] Don't go to a second location with a guy who has a big robot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:26] So the next day they deliver the toys to the department store.

[1:06:30] And I have to admit, I had, I had lost track and I thought they were still making them.

[1:06:33] I don't know where Johnny five found the time, what was getting arrested and rolling around the city and going to church.

[1:06:38] But apparently he finished all those robots.

[1:06:40] So that, that deadline is no longer hanging over them.

[1:06:42] The stakes for that are over.

[1:06:43] Yeah.

S4

[1:06:43] Also, he just is like having a conversation with the delivery man.

[1:06:49] And like, it's, it's like this thing where sometimes, all right, fine.

[1:06:52] He's on the street.

[1:06:54] Yeah.

[1:06:54] Like he's just rolling by like New Yorkers.

[1:06:57] New Yorkers are like, okay, whatever.

[1:06:59] Whatever.

[1:06:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:06:59] I don't got time.

[1:07:00] I don't got time to ask follow-up questions.

[1:07:03] Sure.

[1:07:03] Even like you see a famous person, you know, it's like, you're like, oh, I got to respect them.

[1:07:07] It's like the same with the robot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:09] Yeah.

[1:07:09] They're used to seeing Murray Futterman walking down the street fighting a bat gremlin.

[1:07:13] Like they're, New Yorkers aren't fazed by very much.

[1:07:15] A frog and a pig might get out of a car and go to a diner.

[1:07:18] Jason might kick a boombox.

S4

[1:07:21] Tom and Jerry might like, you know, show up at a hotel.

[1:07:25] At a hotel.

[1:07:25] Ideally, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:26] There's a big gorilla climbing, climbing a skyscraper.

[1:07:28] Well, don't look up.

[1:07:29] They'll know you're a tourist.

[1:07:30] Don't look at that gorilla.

[1:07:31] Like, yeah, it's New York.

[1:07:32] They've seen it all, you know.

[1:07:34] Santa Claus shows up working in a department store for some reason.

[1:07:38] Yeah, there's ghosts in the library.

[1:07:39] The tape up marshmallow man.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:40] Bill the Butcher and a bunch of other gangs are going to have a big fight.

[1:07:43] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:44] Baseball Furies.

[1:07:46] Yeah.

[1:07:46] Bill Murray can't seem to get out of the city and he's dressed like a clown.

[1:07:49] It's New York.

[1:07:50] They've seen it all.

[1:07:51] They've seen it.

[1:07:51] There's a lady giving birth to Satan's baby.

[1:07:53] You know, it just happens.

[1:07:55] It's New York.

[1:07:57] Only in New York.

[1:07:59] But yeah, so now he's just having a conversation with the delivery guy.

[1:08:01] And the delivery guy is just razzing Johnny Five constantly.

[1:08:04] He's like, take me to your leader.

[1:08:06] Oh, like making robot and alien jokes.

[1:08:08] And it's like, are you not astounded that a robot is handing off these items for you to deliver?

[1:08:14] This has to be the most.

[1:08:15] It's literally in charge.

[1:08:16] Yeah.

[1:08:16] Like this has to be the most exciting thing that's ever happened to you in your delivery job.

[1:08:21] But I guess, again, he's seen it all.

[1:08:22] He's accepting packages from time travelers.

[1:08:25] I guess he goes to Doc Browns after this to get packages.

[1:08:28] Like he goes to another warehouse and a xenomorph walks out and hands him like a supply of candy that has to go to a store.

[1:08:35] Like this guy, he's seen it all.

[1:08:37] So when they're finished, Ben comes back from his date implying that he spends the night with Sandy, which is amazing.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:45] It's full on day at this point.

[1:08:48] Yeah.

[1:08:48] And he's smoking a cigarette.

[1:08:49] Smoking a cig.

[1:08:50] That's why.

[1:08:51] Yeah.

[1:08:51] He's still in the same clothes, but his tie's a little loose.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:54] We know what that means.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:55] Yeah, we know what that means, guys.

[1:08:57] Yeah, that's shorthand for sex.

[1:09:00] And when the robbers come in and kidnap them and Oscar jumps out and he distracts Johnny Five and then talks him into digging a tunnel ostensibly to keep Ben safe.

[1:09:10] He's worried about Ben.

[1:09:11] This is a big city.

[1:09:12] Let's make him an escape tunnel that he can get dug in.

[1:09:15] Meanwhile, Ben and Fred, they get thrown into a freezer in the back of a Chinese restaurant and they argue and then they make up.

[1:09:21] And then Ben reveals that Johnny Five is alive and will die if he runs out of electric power.

[1:09:26] I don't remember why he was worried about that at that moment.

[1:09:30] But because as far as they know, they don't know that Johnny Five has been talked into digging a robbery tunnel.

[1:09:36] Yeah.

[1:09:36] But they're worried about it.

[1:09:38] And as Johnny Five digs, Oscar complains about his job and how he handles all this money, but he never gets any of it.

[1:09:44] And Johnny Five comes out and hugs him, which I did think was a funny moment in the movie.

[1:09:48] He takes a break from being an unwitting criminal to hug this guy.

[1:09:53] The only thing that would have made it funnier is if he had hugged him too hard and crushed him and then was like, oh, no.

[1:09:58] Oh, no.

[1:09:58] I disassembled Oscar.

[1:10:00] Oh, no.

[1:10:00] And he doesn't know what to do.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:02] Yeah.

[1:10:03] Ben has to take him out in the woods and shoot him.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:06] And now Ben has apparently been in the freezer for a day, for hours, because he's like, oh, I'm missing my other date with Sandy.

[1:10:13] They made a date for the next night.

[1:10:15] And Sandy is all dressed up waiting for him.

[1:10:18] And the only way they can get in touch with her is, okay, so somehow I guess he had a big calculator with him.

[1:10:24] This is wild.

[1:10:25] This is so fucking crazy.

[1:10:28] It makes no sense.

[1:10:29] There's a currently unused phone line in the freezer that they're in.

[1:10:33] I guess in case someone needed to make a really private call when they're doing an inventory over the phone.

[1:10:39] And he manages to turn.

S4

[1:10:40] You don't have a freezer phone in your walk-in freezer?

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:43] Yeah, I should get one because my cell service is so bad in my walk-in freezer, which, by the way, has very little in it.

[1:10:49] There's not a lot.

[1:10:50] They don't need a walk-in freezer.

[1:10:51] There's like 10 ducks in there, I think.

[1:10:53] And that's about it.

[1:10:54] And they shouldn't be handling frozen ducks.

[1:10:56] They should be getting fresh ducks, cooking them right away, hanging them in the window to entice me to come in because nothing looks more delicious to me.

[1:11:03] than a freshly shellacked Chinese food duck hanging in the window.

[1:11:07] Guys, is there any way to resist it?

[1:11:09] They look so delicious.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:10] They are delicious.

[1:11:10] I do like that Michael McKean just keeps breaking over boxes, open boxes, and is like, it's more like lobsters or whatever.

[1:11:18] Like, he's completely nonplussed about.

[1:11:21] Like, what was he expecting to find?

[1:11:23] Like, a lock-picking kit?

[1:11:25] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:26] I thought maybe there might be one of those holes from Roger Rabbit that we can throw onto a wall and then walk through it.

[1:11:32] And so, Ben is such a genius.

[1:11:35] I mean, he invented a sentient robot with some help from lightning.

[1:11:38] Maybe there's lightning in the freezer that helps him build this.

[1:11:40] But he takes his huge calculator, which I don't know where he was keeping it, under his shirt maybe,

[1:11:46] and he turns it into a device that can transmit Morse code over the phone line and also call over the phone line.

[1:11:53] So they manage to call Sandy's number, but he doesn't know Morse code.

[1:11:57] So he taps out a series of classic rock songs, each of which has a clue in it to direct her from her apartment to the rest of the rest of the rest.

[1:12:05] In order, yeah.

[1:12:06] And it starts with Help Me Rhonda, and that's how she knows, oh, it must be Ben who needs help.

[1:12:11] Who else would tap out the sound to Help Me Rhonda on my answering machine?

[1:12:15] It's, this is, there's so many leaps of logic here, and it is by far the zaniest thing that happens in the movie.

S4

[1:12:22] If you got that message, you would be like a ghost is trying to connect with me over the phone.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:28] Or if they're just like, yeah, like, I don't know.

[1:12:31] I guess it's too early for, like, it to be the internet.

[1:12:36] Yeah, somebody's modem called me.

[1:12:38] Yeah, I think somebody's modem called me or just like, oh, there's something wrong with the phone line.

[1:12:41] I wouldn't be like, hmm, this beeping sounds kind of like Help Me Rhonda.

[1:12:46] I guess I better go find my new boyfriend.

[1:12:49] Well, and I like that he.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:50] I must use my escape room skills to help them.

[1:12:53] And it seems like he continues doing the song long enough for her to recognize what it is.

[1:13:00] Like, he has to build in that window of like, okay, she's going to hear it.

[1:13:04] It's going to take her a little while to figure this out.

[1:13:07] So I'm going to just keep doing it for a bit.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:09] I do like what this leads to, though, which is like her driving all around town in a taxi.

[1:13:16] And the taxi driver just like immediately getting on board with this and just like being enthusiastic.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:22] Because this is the 80s, he is a Russian cab driver who loves American music.

[1:13:27] Because in the 80s, Russians in movies were always crazy about it.

[1:13:31] They loved America.

[1:13:32] They were like, oh, this is great.

[1:13:33] Oh, yeah.

[1:13:33] And so.

[1:13:35] I've seen Red Heat.

[1:13:36] I know all about it.

[1:13:37] Yeah, exactly.

[1:13:38] Moscow and the Hudson.

[1:13:38] The Bay starts playing and they go, the docks.

[1:13:43] Broadway.

[1:13:44] Head down to Broadway.

[1:13:45] And so he knows all the songs, too.

[1:13:47] And he's just up for this scavenger hunt adventure.

[1:13:49] And I'm sure the fare is going to be enormous.

[1:13:51] Like this is.

[1:13:52] Yeah, that's probably why he's happy.

[1:13:53] It's a long drive.

[1:13:54] Yeah.

[1:13:54] So she finds them.

[1:13:56] Apparently, no one.

[1:13:57] There's no one in the restaurant at all because she can just walk in and open up the freezer.

[1:14:01] Which, correct me if I'm wrong.

[1:14:02] Usually, if you walk into a restaurant, they don't just allow you to go in and open up the freezer and just explore.

[1:14:07] Well, she, you know.

[1:14:08] It depends on who's on shift.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:10] Los Locos.

[1:14:11] She was like, I'm from the city's freezer department.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:14] Oh, I thought you meant that she kicked their ass, their face, and their balls.

[1:14:18] And they flew into the stratosphere.

[1:14:20] Yeah, they flew into orbit.

[1:14:22] And so Johnny Five, he finally cuts into the bank vault and he realized that.

[1:14:26] And Oscar takes the jewels.

[1:14:28] And Johnny Five is like, wait a minute.

[1:14:29] This is a bank vault.

[1:14:31] Those are famous jewels that I recognize.

[1:14:33] We're stealing.

[1:14:35] And Oscar runs off.

[1:14:36] And Johnny Five runs off.

[1:14:37] And then the bad guys chase him.

[1:14:39] And this is when they beat him up with crowbars so badly that they're just smashing his body apart.

[1:14:43] And there's sparks flying out.

[1:14:45] And there's oil or fluid coming out of him.

[1:14:47] It's horrific.

[1:14:48] It's really.

[1:14:49] I have to imagine when I was a kid, this must have really disturbed me.

[1:14:51] Yeah, it's like the opening of fucking RoboCop, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:14:55] When Murphy gets all blasted.

[1:14:57] It distressed me as an adult.

[1:14:58] Like when like the like red battery fluid splatters over like the one guy who's like, you don't understand.

[1:15:05] This is artificial intelligence.

[1:15:07] Like the criminal who kind of is sympathetic a little bit to Johnny Five.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:11] You can't destroy this.

[1:15:13] That makes him the worst criminal though.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:15] Yeah.

[1:15:16] It's just like the horror of him.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:18] Because he knows that what he's doing is bad.

[1:15:20] And he does it anyway.

[1:15:21] Yeah.

[1:15:21] And all while Johnny Five is like, dude, don't, don't disassemble.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:25] I'm alive.

[1:15:26] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:26] Like it's horrific.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:28] And Oscar's going, kill him.

[1:15:29] Kill him.

[1:15:30] Like it's horrible.

[1:15:31] The whole thing is horrible.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:32] Up to this point, up to this point, Johnny Five has been super badass.

[1:15:37] Like every other time they've tried to like physically stop him, he just whips their ass and like throws them around like he's the bionic woman.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:45] Yeah.

[1:15:45] I guess maybe he's tired from, from all that digging in the tunnel.

[1:15:50] Uh, and he's confused.

[1:15:51] So he uses, he's able to use his antenna to call some remote control airplanes over to chase away the bad guys.

[1:15:56] Which I don't think would really work in real life.

S4

[1:15:59] No, it's the scariest thing ever.

[1:16:01] If a, if a model airplane flew at me.

[1:16:03] That's actually.

[1:16:04] I would actually.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:06] I would say, okay, now you're talking about me right now, a normal guy walking down the street.

[1:16:11] Yes.

[1:16:12] But if I was in the middle of, be, of killing a robot with a robot, I feel like I would be less afraid of a model airplane flying at me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:19] You're like, bring on more synthetics.

[1:16:20] I will destroy them all.

[1:16:21] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:21] I'll take them all on.

[1:16:23] Oh, the rise of the machines?

[1:16:24] I don't think so.

[1:16:25] Smash, smash, smash.

[1:16:26] I have a taste for oil.

[1:16:27] This is for the meat puppets.

[1:16:29] Cutting our strings.

[1:16:30] No more.

[1:16:31] You know.

[1:16:31] Oh, a chess machine's breaking fingers?

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:34] I'm going to break its fingers.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:35] I'm going to rage against these machines.

[1:16:37] Yeah, let's do this.

[1:16:38] And then they're just Luddites.

[1:16:39] They're just smashing printing presses and sewing machines.

[1:16:42] And so the planes chase them off.

[1:16:45] And now Johnny Five, there's a readout on him that shows he has two hours left to total memory failure.

[1:16:50] Oh, no.

[1:16:51] And the cops come up through the bank tunnel just as Ben and Sandy show up.

[1:16:55] They arrest Ben and Sandy.

[1:16:56] Fred sees the cop car and runs off looking for Johnny Five.

[1:16:59] As mutilated, Johnny Five is rolling through the city.

[1:17:02] He steals a car battery, but it doesn't really help him that much.

[1:17:05] And Fred finally finds him.

[1:17:07] And Johnny Five can't even talk anymore.

[1:17:08] So he has to write, I'm dying, in chalk on a wall.

[1:17:12] Or he just writes dying.

[1:17:13] It's pretty fucked up, actually.

[1:17:14] Yeah.

[1:17:14] It's really intense.

[1:17:16] It's really sad.

[1:17:17] And he's like, get Ben.

[1:17:18] And Fred is like, Ben's arrested.

[1:17:20] So they go to a Radio Shack, which luckily in the middle of the day is not open and nobody is there.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:25] Now, you're probably wondering, like real Radio Shacks now.

[1:17:30] You're probably wondering, Stuart Wellington, former employee of Radio Shack.

[1:17:34] Oh, shit.

[1:17:35] Yeah, I was a manager of a Radio Shack store for a while.

[1:17:39] And am I an expert?

[1:17:40] Do I think you could fix a Johnny Five in there?

[1:17:43] I would say no.

[1:17:47] No?

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:47] Now, Stuart, was it your idea when you were –

[1:17:49] You didn't get a cell phone.

[1:17:50] Yeah, that's true.

[1:17:51] I mean, they couldn't get a cell phone then.

[1:17:53] It was 1988.

[1:17:54] But, Stuart, was it your idea when you were at Radio Shack that the Radio Shack Twitter feed should be super horny and a real douche?

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:00] Yeah, that was my idea.

[1:18:01] I sent an email to the corporate.

[1:18:03] Yeah, they only got read it.

[1:18:04] I never heard back.

[1:18:05] Years later.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:06] He said, dear Mr. Shack, your Twitter feed should be super horny in a totally unprofessional way.

[1:18:12] And they said – and it stacked up in his emails.

[1:18:14] And he finally got to it.

[1:18:15] He was like, hey, this Wellington has the right idea.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:17] We need to pivot away from all this Lance Armstrong content they were pushing for a long time.

[1:18:23] Like, not the coolest dude.

[1:18:27] So Johnny Five was able –

[1:18:28] Yeah, old Mr. Radio Shack.

[1:18:30] I'm sorry.

[1:18:30] No, no.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:31] What were you saying?

[1:18:31] Tell me more about old Mr. Shack.

[1:18:31] No, I was imagining old Mr. Radio Shack being mad at the horny Twitter.

[1:18:36] I'd be like, my store has always been a store where you can go and get those fiber optics that glow at one end that are a decoration I guess some people want.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:46] It's a store for families.

[1:18:47] It's a family store where you can go in looking for something and the people working there don't know what it is or what shelf it's on.

[1:18:54] And then you leave.

[1:18:56] That's my dream when I started this company.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:58] I ran a store in Park Slope and like 90% of it was people wanting the cable to connect their MacBook to their TV.

[1:19:10] And I'm like, every time, like, you need an extra dongle that they don't sell here.

[1:19:15] It was a very exciting time.

[1:19:17] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:18] Yeah.

[1:19:19] And so Johnny Five, he's able to type out instructions to Fred and Fred is able to fix him, but he still needs a new battery and needs wiring to get his memory to power.

[1:19:30] And he's kind of only half coherent.

[1:19:32] He's talking gibberish.

[1:19:33] He keeps calling Fred Durf, I assume, in a reference to my friend Dahmer, author Durf Backdurff.

[1:19:38] Yeah, Durf Backdurff, yeah.

[1:19:40] And Johnny Five learns that the bad guys only kidnapped Ben and Fred, but they tried to destroy him.

[1:19:47] And he goes, oh, kidnap the humans, destroy the machine, and that makes him really mad.

S4

[1:19:54] And so what does he do?

[1:19:55] He gets punk as hell.

[1:19:56] Yeah, he gets fucking badass.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:57] This is what I remember from the movie is when he becomes like a super badass looking dude with chains hanging off and spikes.

[1:20:04] He has himself a mohawk.

S4

[1:20:06] It's basically like one of – it's supposed to be, I think, one of those piercings that's like from your ear to your nose.

[1:20:12] I feel like it's –

[1:20:13] I thought they were very cool.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:15] It's Gizmo getting all Rambo'd up in Gremlins 2.

[1:20:19] It's not quite as cool as that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:20] I mean, Gizmo as Rambo is like –

[1:20:22] That's the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:24] And also because Gizmo legitimately – he uses a flaming pencil as an arrow to kill a spider gremlin.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:30] And he's been tortured the whole movie up to that point.

[1:20:33] And when he finally flips, like the audience just loses their fucking minds.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:38] Oh, they go nuts.

[1:20:39] It's right up there with Yoda fighting Count Dooku at the end of episode two when you're like, what?

[1:20:44] What?

[1:20:44] I didn't know this little dude could do this.

[1:20:46] This is amazing.

[1:20:46] You find out who's the man.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:47] Yoda man.

[1:20:49] I can't believe that was a real commercial.

[1:20:52] I cannot.

[1:20:53] Like – and that was a commercial they dropped after release where they're like, we need to juice up these sails with this fucking weird joke.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:59] We didn't realize this was the breakout moment was Yoda kicking ass.

[1:21:05] So we'll now release – and the commercials look so fake looking.

[1:21:08] Like they look so cheaply, quickly produced.

[1:21:10] But it reminded me of when that movie Bringing Down the House, I think that was it, came out with –

[1:21:15] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:15] When Eugene Levy had the line, you got me straight tripping boo.

[1:21:17] And they started adding a word balloon that said that to the print advertisements to be like, this is the movie where he says it.

[1:21:25] In case you only know this movie as you got me straight tripping boo, it's this movie.

[1:21:29] This is the movie where Eugene Levy says it.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:31] They must have had an argument.

[1:21:32] They're like, don't give it away for free.

[1:21:34] And he's like, no, no, no.

[1:21:35] The value of hearing him say it in the theater.

[1:21:37] Yeah.

[1:21:38] And the crowd reaction, that's going to sell itself.

[1:21:40] Don't worry about it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:41] Don't worry.

[1:21:42] We want people to know.

[1:21:43] You just don't want to be standing around the fucking water cooler on Monday morning and have somebody say that shit and you not have like a blank look on your face.

[1:21:51] Well, everybody else in the office is going to laugh.

[1:21:53] You need to know what it specifically is referencing.

[1:21:55] Yeah.

[1:21:55] You don't want to feel like you don't get it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:58] Yeah, exactly.

[1:21:58] So that's why you got to know who Yoda, who Yoda man is and who says, who's got, who says you got me straight tripping boo.

[1:22:07] And who got that?

[1:22:07] Who's the boo?

[1:22:08] Who's got them?

[1:22:09] Under what circumstances cause the tripping.

[1:22:11] Yeah.

S4

[1:22:11] I don't remember the movie them saying Yoda man.

[1:22:15] They don't.

[1:22:16] No, they don't say it's in the campaign.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:18] Okay.

[1:22:18] It was just in the campaign.

[1:22:20] They show it's like a bit with Yoda, like right before Yoda shows up and fights Count Dooku.

[1:22:25] But the commercial, like they either, did they actually have like a, like, like a voiceover artist say.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:32] The way I remember it is they had an announcer say, who da man?

[1:22:34] Yoda man.

[1:22:35] And the words Yoda man came up on screen.

[1:22:38] Very, very cheaply CGI'd on.

[1:22:40] Like, and this is on over footage from a Star Wars movie.

[1:22:43] So it looks like.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:44] Todd Vaziri is going to send us a very sternly worded email.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:47] Yeah, he's going to, he's going to have to explain to us how, how expensive those words were.

[1:22:51] But, but it was what those words were worth, much like William Wordsworth, the guy who came up with the Yoda man ad campaign.

[1:22:58] When he, because being a poet doesn't pay very much.

[1:23:00] And he, from his poem, I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high over Yoda man.

[1:23:08] And so there was a.

[1:23:09] So high and lowbrow shit.

[1:23:11] That's what brings people to the flop house.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:13] Like Ben's face right now, like witnessing this in person for the first time, like what the full force of Elliot and laughing, but also putting his head down.

[1:23:26] Yeah, his hands, very tired by it.

[1:23:30] Now, does this bring back Griffin flashbacks?

[1:23:32] How does this, what is this?

S4

[1:23:34] Oh, does it, because right.

[1:23:35] Yeah.

[1:23:35] I feel like Elliot, you get comparisons to Griffin on occasion.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:40] Yeah.

[1:23:41] I feel like Griffin is the high gloss version of me.

[1:23:43] Yeah, little, little motor mouth tricksters, right?

[1:23:45] Yeah.

S4

[1:23:46] Yeah.

[1:23:47] No, I, I'm feeling it.

[1:23:48] I'm feeling the frustration a little bit, but also the joy.

[1:23:51] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:51] Yeah.

[1:23:52] Oh, okay.

[1:23:52] That's fair.

[1:23:53] We call it, we call it joystration.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:55] It's both frustration and joy.

[1:23:56] That's what keeps bringing you back because, you know, like it's all strong emotions, right?

[1:24:00] So like, you know that you have this association with Elliot that like bombs you to.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:04] You're like, I know I feel intensely, but I don't remember what I feel.

[1:24:08] Oh, annoyance, irritation, annoyance, and disappointment.

[1:24:11] And exhaustion.

[1:24:13] Fred tries to talk him down from going after the crooks, but Johnny Five is ready to go

[1:24:17] on a rampage.

[1:24:19] And this is where we get to, this is the other zaniest thing in the movie, which is Johnny

[1:24:24] Five with a mohawk, all like tough guy'd out with Michael McKeon riding him on like,

[1:24:30] on his back.

[1:24:31] Like a Segway.

[1:24:32] Like piggyback.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:33] Riding him through the streets of this generic brand city that has not been named.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:38] While, while what?

[1:24:38] Holding Out for Hero is playing?

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:40] What's the song?

[1:24:40] Well, that happens, I think a little bit later is I Need a Hero comes up.

[1:24:45] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:45] Yeah.

[1:24:45] Michael McKeon.

[1:24:46] That was the moment where I'm like, man, I wish it would have been fun to be Michael McKeon

[1:24:50] right there.

[1:24:50] That's the thing.

[1:24:51] Like writing Johnny Five around.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:53] I don't.

[1:24:53] Well, here's the thing.

[1:24:54] I think we would think that.

[1:24:55] I don't know that Michael McKeon was having so much fun doing that.

[1:24:57] I know.

[1:24:58] You think in the.

[1:24:59] You're right.

[1:25:00] It is Holding Out for Hero.

[1:25:00] I'm sorry.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:01] In the film about Michael McKeon's life, it's going to open with him riding on Johnny Five

[1:25:05] and then it'll freeze frame and it'll be like, you're probably wondering how I ended up

[1:25:09] here.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:11] Stu, I was, I want to say you were right.

[1:25:13] That song is called Holding Out for Hero.

[1:25:14] I apologize.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:15] Oh, thank God.

[1:25:16] Credit.

[1:25:17] Delicious credit.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:18] Delicious credit.

[1:25:19] Michael McKeon, for reasons passing understanding, follows me on Twitter.

[1:25:23] I don't think he listens to the Flap House, but if he does, if he does, write in, tell

[1:25:28] us what it felt like to be riding Johnny Five around.

[1:25:32] Wind in your hair, falcons at your wrist.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:35] We are such fans.

[1:25:35] We have so much respect for your work.

[1:25:37] Yes, yes.

[1:25:37] And we would love to talk to you about what it was like to ride around on Johnny Five

[1:25:41] during the making of Short Circuit 2.

[1:25:43] You've had a long and illustrious career.

[1:25:45] Like Spinal Tap is still one of my favorite comedies of all time.

[1:25:48] You know, you've done so much.

[1:25:49] You're such an amazing dramatic actor, but I want to hear about what it was like

[1:25:53] to ride about Johnny Five.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:54] And it's pretty cool that in this movie, he gets to be the Slip and Jimmy character,

[1:25:58] basically.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:59] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1:26:00] Yeah, yeah.

[1:26:01] Well, I mean, it's a bit similar to his Lenny character from Laverne and Shirley, you know,

[1:26:04] that you kind of like.

[1:26:06] Oh, yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:06] And so, but he's a man with a lot of range.

[1:26:09] He can do a lot of stuff.

[1:26:09] And I will say, there are no moments in this that I feel like are embarrassing for him.

[1:26:14] I feel like his character, I think, never comes off as like embarrassing or cringey.

[1:26:20] I'm sure it was embarrassing to be riding around the streets of Toronto on the back of

[1:26:23] a giant puppet robot.

[1:26:25] Yeah.

[1:26:25] I mean, I would have loved it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:26] It's not like he's like John Candy in Splash where you're like, fuck, dude.

[1:26:31] Let's edit all your lines out, please.

[1:26:34] You've referenced this before.

[1:26:35] All I remember from that movie.

[1:26:36] It's been so long since I've seen Splash.

[1:26:38] I feel like he's just like so aggressively horned up.

[1:26:41] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:41] All I remember is him dropping money on the ground so he can go to pick it up and look up women's

[1:26:46] skirts.

[1:26:46] That's all I remember from him in that movie.

[1:26:48] Yeah, that wouldn't be.

[1:26:50] I remember even as a kid being like, that's not going to work.

[1:26:52] You're saying that's a no-no.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:55] I'm saying that's a big no-no.

[1:26:57] Yeah.

[1:26:58] That's a big no-no.

[1:26:58] That gets elified.

[1:27:01] Elliot's certified big no-no of the week.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:05] You know what?

[1:27:05] I'm elifying it, everybody.

[1:27:06] That stands for Elliot certification.

[1:27:08] I'm elifying that.

[1:27:09] Yeah, that's my no-no of the week is dropping change on the ground so you can pick it up while

[1:27:14] looking up women's skirts.

[1:27:15] Don't do it.

[1:27:16] That's elified.

[1:27:17] Just take it for granted.

[1:27:18] That's a no-no.

[1:27:19] Don't do it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:19] I gotta say, you gotta get a pretty deep squat or have to be around a lot of tall women

[1:27:23] to be looking up those skirts.

[1:27:25] Yeah.

[1:27:26] Unless your changes shine to like a mirror sheen.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:31] Yeah, the change is very, very shiny.

[1:27:33] So you can just look.

[1:27:33] Yeah.

[1:27:34] But don't do it.

[1:27:35] Aside from just the impracticality, morally, just don't do it.

[1:27:39] What's my yes-yes?

[1:27:40] Well, my elified yes-yes for the week has gotta be riding around on a robot's back.

[1:27:44] Well, holding up for you, no place.

[1:27:46] Sure.

[1:27:46] You can't go wrong with that.

[1:27:48] So Fred rides in as he-

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:49] And that's the kind of shit that like, if New Yorkers saw that, they'd be like, yep,

[1:27:53] okay, get out my phone.

[1:27:54] I'll put it up on what is New York.

[1:27:57] Yeah.

[1:27:57] This has gotta be.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:58] This will be my modern love entry to the New York Times.

[1:28:01] There was a man riding a robot.

[1:28:03] Wonderful.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:03] You're like a frustrated sort of like, ugh, is this an improv everywhere?

[1:28:07] What's going on?

[1:28:08] Yeah, yeah.

[1:28:08] And then you would walk along.

S4

[1:28:09] Like, one of those TikTok day in my life kind of videos.

[1:28:12] It was just like, oh my God, I got like, you know, my iced coffee man on a robot.

[1:28:17] Then I went to a rooftop party.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:20] Man, that seems great.

[1:28:22] What a life.

[1:28:22] Some dumb guy who's got a college internship in the city posts about it.

[1:28:28] I saw this guy riding a robot.

[1:28:30] What freaky stuff is happening around here?

[1:28:31] He loses his job.

[1:28:33] He's gotta go home.

[1:28:34] Yeah.

[1:28:35] It doesn't, all sorts of stuff like that.

[1:28:37] Anyway, Johnny Five, they go into the sewers to stop the, to pop up and stop the car.

[1:28:42] The poster you may have noticed for Short Circuit 2 involves Johnny and Ben in the sewers.

[1:28:46] No, it's Johnny and Fred in the sewers in the movie.

[1:28:48] And I'm tired of these posters lying to me.

[1:28:50] When I see the poster for bringing down the house, it accurately tells me which character

[1:28:54] says you got me straight trippin' boo.

[1:28:55] They don't have another character saying it.

[1:28:58] That's a good point.

[1:29:00] So then Johnny Five fights the robbers.

[1:29:02] He's wisecracking, non-fucking-stop.

[1:29:05] He just never stops talking.

[1:29:06] And he chases, he ties them up or whatever.

[1:29:09] And he chases Oscar while he's sparking and bleeding everywhere.

[1:29:12] Oscar gets on a boat.

[1:29:13] Johnny Five follows along on land.

[1:29:15] And then he gets on it with his few last minutes of life.

[1:29:18] He swings on a crane, Tarzan style.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:20] Oscar is running away.

[1:29:22] And he's like, are you, he's like, are you a curse from God?

[1:29:27] And that's it.

[1:29:28] There's no response.

[1:29:29] That's the one time when Johnny Five doesn't say shit because he's like, you better fucking

[1:29:34] believe it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:35] You know I am.

[1:29:36] Yeah.

[1:29:37] Yeah.

[1:29:38] Vengeance is mine, saith Johnny.

[1:29:40] So with his last minutes of life, he catches Oscar.

[1:29:43] The police show up.

[1:29:45] Ben and Sandy and Fred all show up just in time for Johnny Five to say goodbye and die.

[1:29:50] And then Ben takes a defibrillator because the EMS people showed up for a robot.

[1:29:55] Yeah.

[1:29:56] I get it.

[1:29:57] And he takes the defibrillator from him and he starts shocking him and he manages to shock

[1:30:01] him back to life.

[1:30:01] And he tells the EMS guy, he goes, don't cut off that power or I will shove you through

[1:30:06] a hole or something.

[1:30:07] I don't remember what his thread is.

[1:30:08] But it's like, that's not how a defibrillator works.

[1:30:10] Like it's not a constant stream of power.

[1:30:12] It's sharp shocks that are meant to jumpstart a heart.

[1:30:15] Johnny Five doesn't have a heart.

[1:30:16] Like it's not how machines work.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:17] Do you think transfer to a battery some of that power?

[1:30:21] It doesn't.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:21] It's the same way that like you can't really kick a jukebox and have it start playing.

[1:30:25] That's because Fonz is a magical being.

[1:30:27] That's how you can do it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:27] Do you think, now do you think the EMT showed up assuming that there was a guy inside the

[1:30:32] robot suit that he was going to need to do an emergency appendectomy on like that performer

[1:30:37] who was in the Godzilla monster suit that one time?

[1:30:40] Yeah.

[1:30:41] Where he had to have the surgery through the suit while he was still wearing it.

[1:30:45] And they realized that he was immune to anesthetic.

[1:30:49] It's the craziest story I've ever heard that this performer, yeah, he had like, that's

[1:30:54] the worst place to have an appendectomy in your body.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:58] It's to have an appendectomy while you're wearing a thick rubber suit and you're also

[1:31:02] on a scale model of a city that's very small.

[1:31:05] And you have to know that for the surgeon, it's hard to resist the urge, just walk away

[1:31:08] from the surgery for a moment to smash some buildings, to live out a dream of being a

[1:31:12] giant who can step on buildings because surgeons don't usually get to do that.

[1:31:15] Yeah.

[1:31:16] My uncle.

[1:31:17] That's Elliot's fun fact of the week.

[1:31:19] My uncle is a retired bone surgeon, never got to stomp around on buildings, was never

[1:31:23] a giant.

S4

[1:31:24] Bone surgeon?

[1:31:26] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:26] That's a fucking job?

[1:31:28] I guess so.

[1:31:29] It sounds cool.

[1:31:30] Yeah.

[1:31:30] It sounds cool as well.

[1:31:31] When your bones got to get pulled out of your body or whatever.

[1:31:34] Anyway, I could totally imagine him using a bone saw to just cut through someone's rib

[1:31:38] cage or something.

[1:31:39] Anyway, he doesn't do that now.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:40] He says bone saw's ready before he uses it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:42] Because he loves the Sam Raimi Spider-Man so much.

[1:31:45] I mean, they're great movies.

[1:31:47] Really, what is it?

[1:31:47] He's a Macho Man Randy Savage fan, but only when he's playing another character.

[1:31:51] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:51] Yeah.

[1:31:52] That makes sense.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:53] So he loves the Slim Jim ads and he loves bone saw, but he doesn't like his actual dead

[1:31:57] wrestling.

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:57] Wait, is he not playing Macho Man in the Slim Jim ads?

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:59] I have always assumed he was playing a Slim Jim guy named Slim Jim.

[1:32:03] Was he not?

Dan McCoy

[1:32:03] Okay.

[1:32:04] We are so close to the end of this movie, guys.

[1:32:07] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:08] So Johnny Five, he's in all the newspapers.

[1:32:11] Now he's a big star.

[1:32:12] He's on the cover of People Magazine, which I guess is accepting him as a person.

[1:32:17] You can't get more accepted as a person than be on People Magazine.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:20] People Life Magazine, that also would mean that he's alive.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:24] Yeah.

[1:32:25] He's starring in a remake of Alive.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:27] Time Magazine, like all living things.

[1:32:30] He only has a limited time on the planet.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:32] Time also affects non-living things.

[1:32:34] It's called entropy and erosion and stuff.

[1:32:36] So that's a little bit iffier.

[1:32:39] Woo.

[1:32:40] It's a news week.

[1:32:41] Only a living thing can feel weak.

[1:32:44] Uh-huh.

[1:32:44] Nanimate objects always have strength.

[1:32:46] So now it's a little bit of the future.

[1:32:48] Yeah.

[1:32:48] They have their own company.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:49] Dan, you reach too much of the earth.

[1:32:51] Yeah.

[1:32:53] Woo.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:54] So they have their own company called Input Inc.

[1:32:57] You know Fred has made it because it's the 80s, so he's wearing a fancy suit with sunglasses

[1:33:02] on and is talking to a big Zack Morris cell phone.

[1:33:04] That's how you know you're successful.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:06] He says words like bubbla and stuff like that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:10] And he says, you want my toys?

[1:33:11] Everybody wants my toys.

[1:33:13] And he and Sandy are late.

[1:33:14] They've got to rush to the citizenship oath ceremony.

[1:33:16] The only evidence we've received so far that this movie is not set in Toronto, because

[1:33:20] up to this point, everything else has pointed in that direction.

[1:33:23] And Ben is taking the oath and also a shiny gold Johnny Five.

[1:33:28] That's right.

[1:33:28] His body got turned to gold somehow.

[1:33:31] Not a great replacement because gold is not a strong metal.

[1:33:35] It's weak, like Newsweek magazine says.

[1:33:37] It's very malleable.

[1:33:38] And Johnny Five gets singled out by the judge administering the oath that he is America's

[1:33:43] first robotic citizen with all rights inherent to all citizens.

[1:33:47] Now, that means he has fewer rights now because of the current Supreme Court, which loves taking

[1:33:52] rights away.

[1:33:52] They're a bunch of assholes.

[1:33:54] So Johnny Five no longer has certain rights, but he has all the rights that Americans have

[1:33:59] left.

[1:33:59] Sandy kisses Ben and they ask Johnny Five, how do you feel now that you're a citizen?

[1:34:03] And he goes, I feel alive.

[1:34:05] And he jumps in the air, which he should not be able to do.

[1:34:08] He does not have legs.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:10] And then there's a freeze frame.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:12] Freeze frame of him.

[1:34:13] That's how you end a fucking picture, guys.

[1:34:15] A fucking freeze frame.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:16] We haven't talked about the score, but some primo 80s saxophone pop movie score plays.

[1:34:26] Oh, yeah.

[1:34:27] And we enjoy the credits.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:29] Some solid synth stuff, too.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:31] Yeah.

[1:34:32] Yeah.

[1:34:32] Yeah, that's true.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:33] Is it the score, like the love theme from Romancing the Stone?

[1:34:37] No, it's not that good.

[1:34:38] It's the best saxophone score.

[1:34:40] My favorite 80s score that sounds so 80s.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:44] The music, just looking it up now, the music is by Charles Fox, who did a lot of TV scoring

[1:34:48] in the 70s.

[1:34:50] He wrote the theme song for The Love Boat.

[1:34:52] And he also was one of the writers on Killing Me Softly.

[1:34:56] So he has a Grammy for the song Killing Me Softly with a song.

[1:35:00] No, the song.

[1:35:02] That makes more sense.

[1:35:03] No.

[1:35:04] So, yeah, that's the epic story of Short Circuit 2.

[1:35:10] Yeah.

[1:35:10] And there was no Short Circuit 3.

[1:35:12] There was, I guess they want, they were thinking about making a sequel.

[1:35:15] And they did not because this movie was not a success.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:18] Yeah.

[1:35:19] Although, it was a success.

[1:35:20] So did it live up to all your expectations, Ben?

[1:35:22] No, Dan.

S4

[1:35:24] Fuck.

[1:35:26] Rewatching it?

[1:35:27] No.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:27] Because I loved this fucking movie as a kid.

[1:35:29] I was like singing the songs.

[1:35:31] I was like, I'm thinking about how badass Johnny Five looked when he was like a punk rock version.

[1:35:36] Hell yeah.

[1:35:37] I was super into it.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:39] Well, before we get a reaction, we have a branded segment that's all about final.

[1:35:44] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:44] What's that segment?

Dan McCoy

[1:35:45] It's called Final Judgments, where we decide whether it's a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

[1:35:55] Yeah, Ben, we already, why don't you kick us off?

S4

[1:35:57] All right.

[1:35:58] Well, I will say that having been the one to suggest we watch this cursed fucking movie, and now revisiting it as an adult, I will probably never watch it again.

[1:36:15] Okay.

[1:36:15] And I have to say, I think this was a bad, bad movie.

[1:36:20] And just that, as much as it was, you know, I guess nostalgic to see my robot friend Johnny Five again.

[1:36:30] Mm-hmm.

[1:36:30] I just couldn't get past the scenes with the character Ben.

[1:36:35] Yeah.

[1:36:36] It was so distracting, so cringy.

[1:36:38] Yeah.

[1:36:38] Just awful.

[1:36:40] So, as much as, you know, it's like, as much as we are going to have to kind of always face this with our 80s, 90s comedies, really just movies from that era in general that we grew up on, and then you revisit, and you're like horrified.

[1:36:59] I mean, that is just so consistent.

[1:37:03] This is one of those ones.

[1:37:04] Wait, the nerds did what?

[1:37:06] Yeah, seriously.

[1:37:10] So, I just feel that as much as, like, I remember growing up loving this movie, on rewatch, I feel nothing but kind of ill will towards this film.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:26] Yeah, I mean, our reactions to these movies that we do fall so often outside of the codified categories we created.

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:39] We really should get different categories.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:41] The categories have become kind of a joke at this point, but I will say that, like, yeah, this is a movie that has one big problem, and it's consistent.

[1:37:53] It's consistent racial insensitivity, whether it be the lead character being in brownface the whole time, or minor characters just being terrible stereotypes.

[1:38:07] If that were not true about the movie, I would say, like, while this has little to offer me beyond nostalgia as an adult person, I would think it was a fine, sweet little comedy for kids.

[1:38:23] And it would, you know, it would be perfectly okay, but that is a glaring flaw, I would say, with the film.

[1:38:34] What do you guys have to say?

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:36] Yeah, I mean, it's obviously, looking back, it is obviously a bad, bad movie.

[1:38:45] I find it, I find it, I find there's something compelling for me watching it, because I'm like, why did I love this movie so much?

[1:38:55] And the puppeteering work is incredible.

[1:38:58] Like, they do some really impressive and very creative ways of, like, blocking and using Johnny Five.

[1:39:06] And I think that stuff's all super cool, but yeah.

[1:39:09] And I'm also shocked at how, like, they, like, made this crazy bank heist subplot.

[1:39:16] I don't know, like, it's a very weird movie.

[1:39:20] But no, it's not particularly good.

Elliott Kalan

[1:39:22] Yeah, I think there's a, so, I have a concept that I have named the classic movie cringe, which is when you watch an older film, and often, there is, many, many times, there is a moment that is racially insensitive, or sexually insensitive, or misogynist, or things like that.

[1:39:44] And you just kind of have to cringe at it and move on.

[1:39:47] And there's kind of a ratio in my head that I can't codify, but where the quality of the film has to kind of outweigh the quality of that cringe, the intensity of it, to a certain extent, to make the film worthwhile.

[1:40:00] And I love a lot of old movies that have those moments where you, like, cringe through it and then you move on.

[1:40:04] I love westerns, which are an inherently cringing and problematic genre, since they're built on extermination and colonization, and are themselves then also misogynistic lens on real life extermination and colonization.

[1:40:19] But, so, I'm used to kind of being through that stuff.

[1:40:22] And I feel like if this movie had been, because without the racist stuff, I feel like this is a good, bad movie.

[1:40:28] It's super dumb and silly, and the robot effects all look really good.

[1:40:33] It's not a good movie.

[1:40:34] It's not funny.

[1:40:35] And as a kid, I thought it was funny.

[1:40:36] Because kids, I feel like with kids, if the jokes are fast enough and they're references to things, then kids like it.

[1:40:41] I'm experiencing this right now because my kids have discovered the Despicable Me and Minions movies.

[1:40:45] And watching them, I'm like, ugh.

[1:40:46] Wait, there's movies about those things?

Dan McCoy

[1:40:48] Yeah, I thought they were just memes that people's aunts put online.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:53] No, no, they started as movies, and they are super fast-paced in terms of jokes.

[1:40:57] And there's a lot of references to things that my kids don't know what they are, but they know it's a reference to something.

[1:41:01] And they love them.

[1:41:02] And so it's like, if you took out the racist stuff, this would be kind of a good, bad movie.

[1:41:08] But with it, the quality of the movie is just not – and the ludicrousness of the movie is not of a high enough caliber to make up for the rest.

[1:41:16] So it becomes a bad, bad movie.

[1:41:18] But I will say that sometimes when you're a lover of any kind of cultural media, you have to wade through the toxicity of the past in order to get to the glimmers of treasure that still exist.

[1:41:32] But don't do that with Short Circuit 2.

S4

[1:41:34] It's not worth doing with Short Circuit 2.

[1:41:36] Yeah, definitely not worth it.

[1:41:38] Watch Chappie instead.

[1:41:39] Yeah, watch Chappie instead.

[1:41:41] No, no.

[1:41:42] What?

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:42] But the way that like I've been re-watching Seinfeld recently and there was an episode that I watched recently that was so funny but then also has a whole subplot that's super racist.

[1:41:50] With any time a Chinese person is on that show, it's super racist because they all just yell loudly in broken English and it's like, oh, I wish – if only this subplot wasn't in this episode, it would be an amazing episode of television.

[1:42:03] But the stuff in it that is funny to me is so funny that I'm like, okay, I'll cringe through this part to get to the funny scenes.

Dan McCoy

[1:42:11] But Short Circuit 2 is not the level of Seinfeld.

[1:42:15] You know, a good way maybe to deal with the disappointments of nostalgia could be microdosing.

[1:42:24] Oh, okay.

[1:42:25] You've probably heard about microdosing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:27] If not –

[1:42:27] Yeah, but not in this context before.

[1:42:29] I want to hear more.

Dan McCoy

[1:42:30] Yeah, tell me.

[1:42:31] Just know that all sorts of people are microdosing daily to feel healthier and perform better.

[1:42:35] They might be around you right now.

[1:42:36] You would never know.

[1:42:38] You can't know.

[1:42:39] It's impossible.

[1:42:40] Science hasn't figured out a way.

[1:42:42] Our show today is sponsored by microdose gummies.

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[1:43:29] But again, that is microdose.com, code FLOP.

[1:43:34] Elliot, I believe you have a Jumbotron now that you're just done opening various cans on microphone.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:41] Yeah, during the ads.

[1:43:42] That was a good idea.

[1:43:43] So the Jumbotron I have, this is a message for David, and this message is from Crystal.

[1:43:49] So if your name is David and you know a Crystal in your life, this message might be for you.

[1:43:53] And you'll figure out if it is for you from the context of the message, which goes like such.

[1:43:57] Howdy, Peaches.

[1:43:58] I am wishing my wonderful Spider-Man-loving partner a happy 17th wedding anniversary.

[1:44:02] We usually don't celebrate our anniversary, in part because we don't always remember the date in July we were married on.

[1:44:07] But 2022 marks 20 years together.

[1:44:10] So I wanted to get a special shout-out from our fave Peaches.

[1:44:13] Here's to 20 more years, babe.

[1:44:15] That's so sweet.

[1:44:15] Happy anniversary, David and Crystal.

[1:44:17] Congratulations.

[1:44:17] That's wonderful.

Dan McCoy

[1:44:20] That is wonderful.

[1:44:22] And?

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:22] Hey, and you know what else is wonderful?

[1:44:24] What?

[1:44:24] You know what, Dan?

[1:44:25] When this episode comes out, it's only going to be a few days before the release of the collected edition of Maniac of New York, The Bronx Is Burning,

[1:44:32] my second volume of Maniac of New York comics from Aftershock Comics, written by me, art by Andrea Moody.

[1:44:38] It's the story of an unstoppable slasher, loose in New York, and this time he's in the Bronx.

[1:44:43] So that's on August 3rd.

[1:44:44] The collected edition, Maniac of New York, The Bronx Is Burning, is coming out just a few days after this episode is released.

[1:44:49] Yeah, I snuck in an ad for my own stuff.

[1:44:52] It's great.

Dan McCoy

[1:44:53] Yeah, sounds like a good, I don't know, Halloween gift.

[1:44:57] Do those exist?

[1:44:58] I'm trying to think of a holiday that might be coming up soon.

[1:45:01] Anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:02] I mean, it comes out on one of my son's birthdays, and he loves scary stuff, so it could be.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:06] Yeah, so buy it for one of Elliot's son's birthdays.

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:09] But don't buy it for them, because they're too young for it.

[1:45:11] So buy it for someone you love and say, happy Elliot's son's birthday.

S5

[1:45:19] Hi, my name is Graham Clark, and I'm one half of the podcast Stop Podcasting Yourself, a show that we've recorded for many, many years.

[1:45:30] And at the moment, instead of being in person, we're recording remotely, and you wouldn't even notice.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:36] You don't even notice the lag.

S5

[1:45:41] That's right, Graham.

[1:45:43] And the great thing about this...

[1:45:46] Go ahead.

[1:45:47] No, you go ahead.

[1:45:48] Okay, and...

[1:45:49] Okay, go ahead.

[1:45:51] And you can listen to us every week on MaximumFun.org.

S4

[1:45:57] Or wherever you get your podcasts.

S5

[1:46:00] Your podcasts.

[1:46:02] Hi, it's me, Dave Hill, from before.

[1:46:05] Here to tell you about my brand new show on Maximum Fun, the Dave Hill Good Time Hour.

[1:46:09] Which combines my old Maximum Fun show, Dave Hill's podcasting incident, with my old radio show, The Goddamn Dave Hill Show, and one new futuristic program from the future.

[1:46:19] If you like delightful conversation with incredible guests, technical difficulties, and actual phone calls from real-life listeners, you've just hit a street called easy.

[1:46:28] I'm also joined by my incredible co-host, the boy criminal, Chris Gersbeck.

[1:46:32] Say hi, Chris.

[1:46:33] Hey, Dave.

[1:46:34] It's really great to...

[1:46:35] That's enough, Chris.

[1:46:36] And New Jersey chicken rancher, Des.

[1:46:38] Say hi, Des.

[1:46:38] Hey, Dave.

[1:46:39] The Dave Hill Good Time Hour.

[1:46:41] Brand new episodes every Friday on Maximum Fun.

S4

[1:46:44] Plus, the show's not even an hour.

[1:46:46] It's 90 minutes.

Stuart Wellington

[1:46:47] Take that, stupid rules.

[1:46:49] We nailed it.

[1:46:51] Hey, and while we're doing plugs, I just want to do a quick shout-out to my friend and friend of the pod, Tom Fowler.

[1:46:56] He's a comic book creator, and he has a brand new book on the way.

[1:47:00] It's a collection of the comic book Refrigerator Full of Heads, which is part of DC's Hill House line, and it's the follow-up to the successful Basket Full of Heads.

[1:47:11] If you're a fan of horror comics, 80s horror, Hammer Horror, all that stuff, this is something for you to check out.

[1:47:19] So you should head down to your comic book, and get that pre-order in, because pre-orders are super important in this business.

[1:47:26] And the cutoff is going to be either the 8th, 19th, or 21st, depending on your comic book distributor.

[1:47:33] So head to that shop and ask for it.

[1:47:35] It is curated by the one and only Joe Hill, and there's a lot of other great people working on it.

[1:47:42] So check it out.

[1:47:43] Refrigerator Full of Heads.

Dan McCoy

[1:47:49] But moving on back to the show from our delightful sponsors and Elliot's plug, here's some letters.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:58] August 3rd, Maniac of New York, The Bronx is Burning, Collected Edition, in comic book stores, August 3rd.

[1:48:02] Oh, Dan, letters time, huh?

Dan McCoy

[1:48:04] Listeners sometimes write us letters.

[1:48:06] I mean, frequently they do, because we've made it part of the show.

[1:48:10] Yeah.

[1:48:10] And this is the part where I talk about them.

[1:48:13] This first letter is from Amos, last name withheld, who writes...

[1:48:19] I've become a big Nicolas Cage fan, thanks in no small part to the podcast.

[1:48:25] It's been a delight to witness his late career renaissance, although I hope he continues to churn out direct-to-streaming B-movies so that Cagemas can continue.

[1:48:35] But this brings me to my question.

[1:48:37] Are there any other actors that you think deserve late career reconsideration and that you would like to see rescued from B-movie purgatory?

[1:48:47] That's Amos, last name withheld.

[1:48:53] You guys have any thoughts on this?

[1:48:56] Any actors that you would like to see rescued that maybe are, you know, not being given the parts that they deserve?

Stuart Wellington

[1:49:05] I mean, to think of a few, I mean, it's also tough because I don't know if these are actors and necessarily fall within these categories.

[1:49:14] For a while, I would say Melanie Linsky was always an actress that I wish had gotten more big parts and got more, you know, awards consideration.

[1:49:24] But she's been working consistently and she's great in Yellow Jackets.

[1:49:29] Yeah, she's got her own TV show.

[1:49:30] But I don't know, like, Jeffrey Combs definitely deserves to be in more stuff.

[1:49:35] I love Jeffrey Combs.

[1:49:36] More Jeffrey Combs, please.

[1:49:38] He's so great in everything he's in.

[1:49:39] Put him in more stuff.

[1:49:40] Not just Star Trek stuff.

[1:49:42] Put him in other stuff, too, please.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49:44] Put him on stuff that Stuart's going to watch.

[1:49:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:49:49] A couple, just sort of looking at movies that I've watched recently, the movie that I talked about for Miss That Movie last time, I always feel like Mimi Rogers, like, kind of got a raw deal.

[1:50:03] Like, she, you know, had, like.

[1:50:06] She's not in the movie Raw Deal, though, right?

[1:50:08] No, no.

[1:50:09] Like, she was in kind of a few big movies at the sort of the peak of her career.

[1:50:15] But then, I don't know, never seemed to really, you know, like, she works consistently.

[1:50:22] But I think that she could have done bigger things.

[1:50:25] Like, when I see her, like, show up and saying Ginger Snaps, I'm like, I'm so.

[1:50:28] Yeah, she's great.

[1:50:29] Happy about it.

[1:50:30] She's so good in it.

[1:50:31] And also, I recently, I went to the Nighthawk to see Supernova, the legendarily troubled production that, like, started out as a Walter Hill movie.

[1:50:41] Took his name off of it.

[1:50:42] They had another director.

[1:50:43] And then, like, Francis Ford Coppola came and re-edited that.

[1:50:47] Anyway, it stars James Spader, who certainly had, like, a great career.

[1:50:53] But, like, of late just kind of seems happy to be in these long-running television shows.

[1:50:59] And I just wish that we saw something that was a little more ambitious out of him.

[1:51:06] Like, I mean, I can't fault him for it.

[1:51:07] I just wish that he would get a good, like, career movie role as well.

[1:51:14] You guys have anything?

[1:51:15] You haven't said anything?

S4

[1:51:19] I'll shout out Keith David.

[1:51:22] Yeah.

[1:51:22] Oh, yeah.

[1:51:23] Yeah, he's amazing.

[1:51:24] That's my boy.

[1:51:25] I, like, I mean, we did on Blank Check a little while back.

[1:51:29] Yeah.

[1:51:30] Yeah.

[1:51:31] Yeah.

[1:51:31] Any series.

[1:51:32] Um, and, I mean, he just has an amazing voice.

[1:51:37] Mm-hmm.

[1:51:37] And I just was looking at his filmography.

[1:51:40] He apparently is in Nope.

Stuart Wellington

[1:51:42] Oh, great.

[1:51:43] Yeah.

[1:51:43] I also, and Michael Wincott is in Nope.

[1:51:46] And I fucking love Michael Wincott.

[1:51:49] It's another character actor.

[1:51:50] Sorry.

[1:51:50] Oh.

[1:51:51] Yeah, yeah.

[1:51:51] That's okay.

[1:51:52] I'm going to say.

[1:51:52] Yeah, that's awesome.

[1:51:53] That's more Keith David.

[1:51:54] More Keith David.

[1:51:55] In the world, please.

[1:51:56] He's got, like, also the best smile.

[1:51:59] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:59] Best smile.

[1:52:00] Such a great voice.

[1:52:01] Like, he's just.

[1:52:02] Yeah.

[1:52:02] He's so killer.

Elliott Kalan

[1:52:04] I want to flip the premise of this question and say, I kind of want to free a lot of the

[1:52:09] great actors that are working today from the A-list kind of big budget franchise IP

[1:52:14] movies that they're making.

[1:52:15] Yeah, yeah.

[1:52:15] I feel like there's an entire generation of actors that I think is so tied up in Star Wars

[1:52:21] and Marvel and those kinds of things that they're not getting the more individual or

[1:52:26] unique or iconic on their own roles that they could be getting.

[1:52:31] And that's disappointing to me that there's a, I feel like now it happens with indie directors,

[1:52:36] which doesn't bother me as much.

[1:52:37] But with some of these actors, they get locked into a franchise and they just don't get to

[1:52:45] do too much else.

[1:52:46] And those movies also eat up resources that studios could be using to make one-off movies

[1:52:50] that are amazing, you know, and memorable rather than big chain franchises.

[1:52:55] So I would love to, I wish that there are many actors that I would love to have, like,

[1:53:00] bigger careers, but I also want the actors who have big careers to be able to do things

[1:53:04] that are more unique or special and not just, oh, well, now they're playing this character

[1:53:10] in this adaptation of a thing from my childhood.

[1:53:14] You know, oh, well, that could, like, I guess they're a thundercat now and they will be for

[1:53:19] as long as those movies are made.

Stuart Wellington

[1:53:20] It's something how, like, there was a period where Colin Farrell was starring in a lot of big,

[1:53:25] like, he was in, like, SWAT and all kinds of other shit.

[1:53:28] And now he's, like, now he's kind of leaning into doing more smaller roles or more interesting

[1:53:34] projects.

[1:53:36] And he's great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:39] But I think a lot of that, a lot of that is tied up in my being tired of WebVa.

[1:53:44] I went to, I took my older son to Comic-Con in San Diego for the day a couple days ago.

[1:53:50] And that tired you out?

[1:53:51] And I was tired out.

[1:53:52] But also that it made me realize how tired I am of seeing the things that I grew up with

[1:53:58] dominating media or nerd media, at least, and how hungry I am for new things, new things

[1:54:04] my son can enjoy that I don't know anything about.

[1:54:07] And also new things that are just new ideas.

[1:54:09] Like, I love, as much as I love, you know, all the junk I grew up with, like, I want some,

[1:54:14] I need new, I want new things, you know.

[1:54:17] And I'd love to see the actors of today doing new stuff.

[1:54:19] You want, like Johnny Five, you want input.

[1:54:23] Yeah, well, but not just any.

[1:54:25] Johnny Five would just take any input.

[1:54:26] Like, if he had rolled into the wrong part of that store, he's just reading, you know,

[1:54:30] a lot of libertarian books and things like that.

[1:54:31] And now he's, you know, nice.

S4

[1:54:34] I mean, there is, though, something to Johnny Five getting to experience the internet.

[1:54:39] I mean, talk about input.

[1:54:42] That'll be short-term.

[1:54:43] But then we just read the Lasm immediately.

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:45] Speaking immediately read.

[1:54:48] Johnny Five, he's storming the Capitol on January 6th and telling people that

[1:54:52] blowjobs happen on first dates.

[1:54:54] And, like, it's all, like, all the terrible things he picks up on the internet.

[1:54:58] And he just rolls around going, am I the asshole?

[1:55:01] Am I the asshole?

[1:55:02] Like.

[1:55:02] Well, actually.

[1:55:04] Actually.

[1:55:06] And some, a girl runs up and goes, I'm such a big fan of yours.

[1:55:09] And he goes, oh, are you really a fan of me?

[1:55:11] Tell me.

[1:55:11] What's my middle name then?

[1:55:12] Oh, you failed my test.

[1:55:14] Forget it.

[1:55:14] Tell me five of my songs.

[1:55:18] I don't like modern-day incel radicalized Johnny Five.

[1:55:21] I don't like him.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:23] Well, let's leave this fantasy figure behind and move on to.

Elliott Kalan

[1:55:28] Johnny Five's like, I'm not getting those vaccines.

[1:55:30] You don't have to, Johnny Five.

[1:55:32] You're a machine.

[1:55:33] You're not going to get a virus.

[1:55:34] Don't tell me that they shouldn't get them.

Stuart Wellington

[1:55:37] He would look pretty cool wearing a m'lady fedora, you know?

[1:55:42] I mean, a handsome man looks good in anything.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:44] So, let's, there's another letter here.

[1:55:47] It's from Emma, last name withheld, who writes.

[1:55:50] Emma Stone.

[1:55:52] This email is titled, From the Mouths of Babes.

[1:55:57] Please, I am begging you.

[1:56:00] Tell Elliot I introduced my boyfriend to the Flophouse while also re-watching the Star Wars prequels.

[1:56:06] And this absolute treasure of a man said,

[1:56:08] The Separatist battle droids sound like that nerdy dude from your podcast.

[1:56:13] Oh, thanks.

[1:56:14] I need to know if Elliot finds this more, less, or just as offensive as the comparison to Moraka.

[1:56:21] Love ya, Emma, last name withheld.

Elliott Kalan

[1:56:25] I mean, I love Moraka.

[1:56:26] I've worked with Moraka.

[1:56:28] He's a great guy.

[1:56:29] So, I'm not offended by that at all.

[1:56:30] The battle droids, I think more just the fact that they're so incredibly incompetent all the time.

[1:56:35] Yeah.

[1:56:36] But I'd never heard that comparison before, but I'll take it.

[1:56:39] I'll accept it.

[1:56:40] I understand.

[1:56:41] I'd so much rather be that than Watto.

[1:56:43] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:56:45] Well, it's still shorter than a lot of blank check, but we've kept in here a while.

[1:56:51] So, let's speed through the last thing.

[1:56:55] I'm so used to it.

[1:56:56] Looking for the exit.

S4

[1:56:57] Well, you know.

[1:56:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:56:59] How often are you texting someone breaking or canceling or changing plans because the episodes have gone longer than you thought they would?

S4

[1:57:07] Quite often.

[1:57:08] Quite often.

[1:57:09] Because what happens too is Griffin will be classically late.

[1:57:13] And then they'll start talking about some nerd shit that I can't listen to.

[1:57:21] And then we'll probably start then about an hour after we've met up.

[1:57:26] And then it'll be like a two and a half long recording.

[1:57:29] And then, yeah, I have to tell my girlfriend that like I'm going to be late for dinner because I was talking about the Matrix.

Stuart Wellington

[1:57:38] You were listening to somebody passionately explain how the Eminem experience isn't what it should be and how it's advertised.

Dan McCoy

[1:57:47] I love that Ben like breaks the like, you know, there's this old stereotype that like nerds and I don't know, how would you describe yourself?

[1:57:57] Sort of like humorous dirtbags can't get along.

[1:58:03] I mean, you just described him like that.

[1:58:05] No, I mean, this is the part he plays on the.

S4

[1:58:07] That's the part I play on the show.

[1:58:09] Kind of the everyman.

[1:58:12] Yeah, I mean, nerds and people like me can get along because they're both misanthropes and have trouble communicating with people.

[1:58:24] So it's like you have that sort of shared bond of being kind of a weirdo.

Dan McCoy

[1:58:29] Yeah, freaks and geeks, you know, together in one candy bar.

Elliott Kalan

[1:58:35] Hey, you got your freaks and my geeks.

[1:58:37] Well, you got your geeks and my freaks.

[1:58:39] Let's try it.

[1:58:40] No, that's cannibalism.

[1:58:41] Stop, stop.

[1:58:42] They're eating freaks and geeks.

[1:58:43] Stop.

Dan McCoy

[1:58:45] Let's do the recommendations.

[1:58:48] Movies that we've seen, that we enjoyed, that might be a better use of your time.

[1:58:53] Then Short Circuit 2.

[1:58:54] I think I didn't recommend this.

[1:58:57] I hope I'm not.

[1:58:59] My memory is full of holes these days.

[1:59:01] I'm sorry if I already recommended this.

[1:59:04] I would be remiss not to, though, because it is related to Stuart's favorite movie, Ricky O, the story of Ricky.

[1:59:14] Uh-huh.

[1:59:14] I saw The Cat.

[1:59:15] Did I talk about this?

[1:59:16] No.

[1:59:17] I don't think so, no.

[1:59:18] The Cat from 1992.

[1:59:21] It's apparently based on, like, a whole series of novels about a character that, if you watch the movie The Cat, you would walk out being like, wait, that was the main character?

[1:59:32] You wouldn't have known.

[1:59:34] It's mostly about these aliens who are living on Earth.

[1:59:38] And one of them, like, is, like, a guy, like, just some dude.

[1:59:43] Like, one of them is a young lady, and one of them is in the form of a cat.

[1:59:47] It's a, and they, there's a fight in it between, like, a cat and a dog where, you know, both of the, both, it's very, it's a dramatic, like, science fiction fight between a cat and a dog.

[2:00:01] Where, like, there's, like, this cat puppet flying around and stuff and, like, a lot of glowing stuff and neither of the animals get hurt and they're both get to be, like, good guys so animal lovers can watch this movie and be happy.

[2:00:14] But it is, by the end, it gets just as gross as Ricky O.

[2:00:19] Well, not just as gross.

[2:00:20] Ricky O is pretty gross.

[2:00:21] Oh, great.

[2:00:22] There's, like, they're there to fight, like, a bad alien and they get, you know, mixed up and, like, there's the, the main character from the novels is, I guess, an investigative reporter.

[2:00:34] There's all these shenanigans I don't really understand.

[2:00:37] It is one of these bizarre movies where really getting everything that happens isn't key to your enjoyment of it.

[2:00:44] It's just a very strange movie with a lot of delightful, bizarre practical effects and things that happen.

[2:00:54] And if you like Story of Ricky, I guarantee you will also enjoy The Cat.

Stuart Wellington

[2:00:59] That's a solid recommendation for me, Stuart.

[2:01:02] Mm-hmm.

[2:01:03] Stu, do you have a?

[2:01:05] I do.

[2:01:06] I will go next.

[2:01:07] I am going to recommend a movie that I don't think we've recommended on the show before.

[2:01:11] It's directed by Ridley Scott and it's written by that sicko freak, Cormac McCarthy.

[2:01:20] What a fucking nasty boy.

[2:01:22] You know, his author photo.

[2:01:24] He's always trying to shock the squares.

[2:01:26] Mm-hmm.

[2:01:26] His author photo should have him in a fucking straitjacket because he's just that twisted.

[2:01:32] And he serves up another sticky slab of creepy shit in this one where a, the description of the movie.

[2:01:40] So this is a movie with a lot of people in it.

[2:01:42] There's a big cast, a lot of stars.

[2:01:44] You got your Fassbender.

[2:01:45] You got your Penelope Cruz.

[2:01:47] Cameron Diaz's last movie.

[2:01:49] Is that correct?

[2:01:50] As of yet, I believe that she's coming back.

Dan McCoy

[2:01:53] She has announced.

Stuart Wellington

[2:01:54] Okay.

[2:01:54] For Counselor 2, I hope.

[2:01:56] Javier Bardem's in it.

[2:01:57] Yeah, a bunch of people, a bunch of folks.

[2:01:59] Brad Pitt's in it.

[2:02:01] And the plot description is a lawyer finds himself in over his head when he gets involved in drug trafficking, which is true.

[2:02:09] That is technically true.

[2:02:10] But it is a much weirder movie than that.

[2:02:13] Every character, every conversation is in a kind of like, like a location that is at both times like high class and also very grimy.

[2:02:24] Javier Bardem is dressed insane the whole movie.

[2:02:29] Cameron Diaz does have sex with a car.

[2:02:33] It's, it's, it's a, well, I don't know.

[2:02:36] It's just like a weird kind of gross movie where characters are just constantly talking about fucking.

[2:02:41] And, uh, it does feature a really, it features a Chekhov's Bolito, which is a execution method that will slowly strangle and slice off your head.

[2:02:52] Uh, and you know that they talk about it a bunch up front and you're like, oh, that's weird.

[2:02:56] They're going to be talking very specifically about the rules of this, uh, this execution device.

[2:03:00] Well, you know, that shit comes back in the end, baby.

[2:03:03] So the counselor, uh, you were a good time.

Dan McCoy

[2:03:06] Thank you.

[2:03:07] I want to say for any, any car fetishists in our audience, this isn't like detain level car fucking.

[2:03:13] It's more, you know, kind of grinding against a car, but that's true.

[2:03:16] I just don't want, I don't want anyone to be disappointed.

[2:03:19] Yeah.

[2:03:20] Yeah.

[2:03:20] Like detain.

Elliott Kalan

[2:03:21] Yeah.

[2:03:22] Thanks for, thanks for heading off those angry letters right now, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[2:03:25] Yeah.

[2:03:25] Elliot, what do you got to recommend?

Elliott Kalan

[2:03:28] I'm going to recommend, this is a slightly qualified recommendation.

[2:03:33] Uh, we watched this movie where a guy who is not Indian played an Indian person.

[2:03:37] And I recently watched a movie where Indian people played Indian people.

[2:03:40] And it's, uh, the Tollywood movie that everyone's talking about.

[2:03:44] That's right.

[2:03:45] RRR.

[2:03:46] Uh, the movie, uh, directed by SS Rajamuli that tells the story, the heavily fictionalized,

[2:03:52] because in that none of what happens in it is true story of two real life, uh, anti-British

[2:03:58] revolutionaries in, uh, 1920s India who, uh, have a, um, have an incredible friendship

[2:04:06] that involves lots of action scenes and the two of them torturing each other at different

[2:04:11] points.

[2:04:12] And, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a, just big explosive, big budget Indian action adventure

[2:04:18] movie.

[2:04:19] Uh, there's a lot of fun stuff in it.

[2:04:20] The action scenes are really great.

[2:04:22] There's a scene where one of the characters releases a whole herd of animals to, to, to

[2:04:26] start, to attack the guards at a base.

[2:04:29] Um, it's qualified because politically the movie is problematic if you are following Indian

[2:04:34] politics at all.

[2:04:35] And by the end of the movie, there is a, a musical number that is so essentially that

[2:04:40] it's so incredibly like nationalistic that I was like, wait a minute, this movie kind

[2:04:44] of became propaganda at the end.

[2:04:45] Like this movie just, just turned into nationalist propaganda.

[2:04:49] So I would say, um, enjoy it for the action scenes.

[2:04:53] There's one scene that's an entire action scene where one of the guys is on the shoulders of

[2:04:56] the other guy while they're fighting people.

[2:04:58] Uh, and enjoy that aspect of it.

[2:05:01] But, uh, please don't take it as a, um, as a fair look at the Indian independence struggle.

[2:05:07] Uh, it is, uh, politically problematic, but the adventure scenes are really fun in it.

[2:05:14] Uh, and there's some fun dancing in it too.

[2:05:16] So that's RRR.

[2:05:17] It's available all over the place, though dubbed into Hindi, which is not the language I think

[2:05:22] it was made in.

[2:05:23] So I don't know why, but I couldn't tell the difference.

[2:05:25] I don't speak any of those languages.

[2:05:27] Ben, what have you got?

[2:05:29] What would you like to recommend?

S4

[2:05:30] Well, so, okay.

[2:05:31] I mean, you mentioned Fassbender.

[2:05:33] I feel like overall these three recommendations have been pretty straightforward, pretty genuine.

[2:05:39] I got a dumbass one.

[2:05:40] Okay.

[2:05:40] Yeah.

[2:05:41] Yeah.

[2:05:41] I love a dumbass recommendation.

[2:05:43] A movie that if you haven't watched yet, I highly recommend is Assassin's Creed.

Stuart Wellington

[2:05:48] Okay.

[2:05:49] Have you seen?

[2:05:50] Yeah.

[2:05:50] I think we may have even done an episode on it.

[2:05:52] I don't listen to it.

[2:05:53] I think we might've done it.

[2:05:54] You'll get insulted.

[2:05:55] Tell us.

[2:05:55] That's weird.

[2:05:56] But I want you to do Assassin's Creed on this show.

[2:06:00] In the episode, I think we were like, duh.

[2:06:02] Yeah.

[2:06:02] It does sound fucked up.

[2:06:03] Can you explain to us why we shouldn't have done it?

[2:06:06] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:06:07] I think we said in the episode, I think we said in the episode, anyone who likes this

[2:06:09] and is named Ben is a dumbass.

[2:06:11] So I apologize for that.

[2:06:13] Shots fired.

[2:06:14] I didn't even know.

[2:06:16] Yeah.

[2:06:16] But so why Assassin's Creed?

[2:06:17] Why?

[2:06:18] What's great about it?

S4

[2:06:19] You sit down and you hit play.

[2:06:21] And then right away.

[2:06:22] I've watched a movie before.

[2:06:23] I haven't seen it.

[2:06:24] You are transported.

[2:06:26] Okay.

[2:06:27] To a whole different universe.

[2:06:29] Oh, shit.

[2:06:31] With rules that don't necessarily apply to like our reality.

[2:06:37] Okay.

[2:06:38] Yeah.

S5

[2:06:38] But you're so on board because it's sick.

S4

[2:06:42] Yeah.

[2:06:43] There is an amazing action.

[2:06:46] It's like set in a time in history that I don't know anything about.

[2:06:49] True.

[2:06:50] So I'm just like, I'm on board for whatever I'm seeing.

[2:06:53] Yeah.

[2:06:54] It's dusty.

[2:06:54] I love it.

[2:06:55] It's got tons of cool ass fighting and violence and shit.

[2:06:59] You know, I didn't really play the video game.

[2:07:02] So I have no context, but I do love that.

[2:07:08] There's just this weird machine that somehow through memory gets people to travel in time.

[2:07:15] None of it makes sense, but damn, is it good?

[2:07:19] Okay.

[2:07:19] Like if you want to, there's like movies that I like where it makes you feel like you're

[2:07:25] not alive anymore when you watch it.

[2:07:28] Does that make sense?

[2:07:29] Yeah.

[2:07:29] Where you're just like, I have like floated out of my body and that's like.

Stuart Wellington

[2:07:34] You're like stumbling out of the movie theater, wondering, like you have to check your pockets

[2:07:39] because maybe you left it.

[2:07:40] Oh, I wouldn't see this in the theater.

[2:07:41] This is on a theater going recommendation.

[2:07:43] No, but I'm saying like when you like, that's the feeling of like you're, you have left your

[2:07:48] body behind.

[2:07:48] You have entered another realm.

[2:07:50] Yeah.

[2:07:50] Maybe you have re-entered a different body that is not your own.

S4

[2:07:53] Yes, exactly.

[2:07:55] But it's, it's just, it's a blast.

[2:07:58] It actually has a decent director, I think is Justin Kurt, Kurtzel, Kurtzel.

[2:08:06] But it's like beautifully shot.

[2:08:08] And yeah, for a video game movie, it's not half bad.

[2:08:12] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[2:08:13] I, I, I do like, you're, you're not the first guest to recommend a movie that has been also

[2:08:19] featured on an episode.

[2:08:20] So that's.

[2:08:21] And you're not alone in liking Assassin's Creed.

Dan McCoy

[2:08:25] This is, I've heard defenses of Assassin's Creed from people I trust.

[2:08:31] You know, we had a different experience, but maybe if we weren't.

Stuart Wellington

[2:08:35] And there's, yeah, there's also, there's also the argument that when we go into a movie

[2:08:38] for the purposes of the podcast, it is hard that for our, uh, our opinion to not be colored

[2:08:45] a little bit.

[2:08:46] A little bit.

Elliott Kalan

[2:08:47] Yeah.

[2:08:47] A little bit.

[2:08:48] I always, I always want to like it.

[2:08:50] Maybe we went into short circuit too with the wrong attitude and maybe that's why we

[2:08:53] didn't, we didn't care for it.

[2:08:55] But that's true.

[2:08:56] I've been trying to go, I've been trying to go into these movies lately being like, what

[2:08:59] am I going to like about this movie?

[2:09:01] Just so that I'm not going after things just for negative reasons.

[2:09:05] But Assassin's Creed, I didn't like.

S4

[2:09:07] Can you guys jump from rooftop to rooftop?

Dan McCoy

[2:09:10] I, I can't.

[2:09:11] I mean, how close are the rooftops?

[2:09:14] Yeah.

S4

[2:09:14] That's a great distance away.

Dan McCoy

[2:09:16] No, no.

[2:09:16] I, no, I couldn't do that.

S4

[2:09:17] Do you have knives hidden under your sleeves?

Dan McCoy

[2:09:20] No, I don't, I don't have.

[2:09:21] No.

[2:09:22] Not currently.

[2:09:22] That seems dangerous.

S4

[2:09:23] So I feel like what else do you need to know?

Dan McCoy

[2:09:26] Yeah.

[2:09:27] You make a good point.

Stuart Wellington

[2:09:28] It's actually a pretty good point.

S4

[2:09:29] Yeah.

[2:09:30] And it's got assassins in the name.

[2:09:33] True.

[2:09:33] Yep.

[2:09:34] And Creed.

[2:09:36] We all love the movie Creed.

[2:09:37] Yeah.

[2:09:38] Yeah.

[2:09:39] And the band Creed.

[2:09:40] Yeah.

[2:09:41] There's that, you know.

[2:09:43] We have familiarity there.

[2:09:45] Maybe you like the play Assassins.

[2:09:47] I think you've turned us around.

Elliott Kalan

[2:09:49] Yeah.

[2:09:49] You know what?

[2:09:50] Do you want to do it again?

[2:09:52] Do you want to do another episode?

[2:09:54] I'm putting on my top 10 list for this year, even though it didn't come out this year.

[2:09:57] That's how much you've convinced me.

Dan McCoy

[2:10:00] This has been a lot of fun.

[2:10:03] Ben, is there anything you would like to take this moment to plug?

S4

[2:10:07] Yes.

[2:10:08] Listen to Blank Check.

[2:10:10] I mean, if you like longer.

[2:10:12] You said Lin-Manuel Miranda on.

[2:10:14] Yeah, we did.

[2:10:15] That was a big deal.

[2:10:15] I know.

[2:10:16] That's crazy.

[2:10:16] I got him to rap my nicknames, which is absurd.

[2:10:20] Yeah.

[2:10:22] But yeah, so check out Blank Check if you want to listen to a movie podcast that goes even longer.

[2:10:31] People have been demanding that.

[2:10:33] Yes.

[2:10:33] Okay.

[2:10:34] Well, I'm sorry that I introduced that idea to your listeners.

[2:10:39] And I will just also say coming soon, because I don't know exactly when this is coming out.

[2:10:44] So whatever.

[2:10:45] Hopefully, I'll maybe actually make the website and launch it.

[2:10:48] But I also have a fashion line.

[2:10:51] So congratulations is the name.

[2:10:56] So if you go to congrats you-lations.

[2:10:59] Okay.

[2:10:59] Yeah, because the other one was already taken.

[2:11:01] That's congrats.

Elliott Kalan

[2:11:03] Y-O-U-lations.

S4

[2:11:05] I have various merch and dice, including buried jeans, which sound exactly like what they are.

Dan McCoy

[2:11:14] Yeah, I was going to say, I'm a listener, so I know about these buried jeans.

[2:11:20] But I didn't know that it would necessarily translate immediately to everybody.

[2:11:26] But I guess you saying they sound like what they are, that is the quickest and easiest and clearest way of saying it.

S4

[2:11:33] If you want more explanation, just go to the website and you'll see.

Dan McCoy

[2:11:38] I mean, this is beautiful because you're giving them a taste that will make them want to go.

S4

[2:11:44] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[2:11:46] Well, this has been fun.

[2:11:47] Yeah.

S4

[2:11:47] Thanks for having me on, though.

[2:11:48] This is a blast.

Dan McCoy

[2:11:50] Thank you for coming.

[2:11:52] And I guess, sorry, too.

S4

[2:11:54] I should just apologize, too.

[2:11:56] Okay, apology accepted.

[2:11:57] Sorry about that.

[2:11:58] Sorry.

[2:11:59] Sorry.

[2:11:59] Yeah.

[2:11:59] You're forgiven.

Dan McCoy

[2:12:00] We'll allow it.

[2:12:01] Or the Flophouse.

[2:12:03] I've been Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[2:12:04] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[2:12:06] I'm Elliot Kalin.

S4

[2:12:08] I'm Ben Hosley.

[2:12:10] Bye.

[2:12:11] Bye.

[2:12:12] Bye.

Dan McCoy

[2:12:18] I bought a Steely Dan album, Elliot.

[2:12:20] This is how I know that I've-

[2:12:21] Wow.

[2:12:22] You've reached that age.

[2:12:23] You did it.

[2:12:24] I don't know.

[2:12:25] What album?

[2:12:26] A-ha.

[2:12:27] Or is it Aja?

[2:12:28] Aja.

[2:12:29] Yeah, I don't know.

[2:12:29] I think it's Aja.

[2:12:30] Yeah, A-ha is a different band.

[2:12:31] I mean, that's a solid place to start.

[2:12:32] Well, it's A-J-A.

[2:12:34] I took a stab and I stabbed wrong.

[2:12:37] I stabbed the wrong person with my Steely Dan album.

[2:12:42] They call him Steely Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[2:12:43] He's a killer who stabs people with Steely Dan albums.

[2:12:46] And his name is Dan.

[2:12:48] Is he Steely?

[2:12:49] He's actually not that Steely.

[2:12:50] That's the thing.

[2:12:51] We wish he fit the bands better.

[2:12:52] He's pretty warm.

[2:12:53] Yeah.

[2:12:54] Yeah.

[2:12:54] He's very warm and loving.

[2:12:55] Aside from the stabbing, of course.

[2:12:58] Well, yeah.

[2:13:01] MaximumFun.org.

S6

[2:13:02] Comedy and culture.

[2:13:04] Artist owned.

[2:13:05] Audience supported.

Episode #375 - Short Circuit 2, with Ben Hosley

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