Ep. #363 - Being the Ricardos, with Alison Rosen

[0:00] on this episode we discuss being the Ricardos the long-awaited third chapter

[0:05] in the Ng trilogy after chasing Amy and finding Forrester

[0:30] hey everyone welcome to the flop house I'm Dan McCoy oh hey I didn't see you

[0:40] come in there it's me Stewart Wellinger this is my apartment I'm Ellie

[0:44] Kaelin wondering if Stewart was talking to Dan or to the listeners or perhaps to

[0:48] our guest our very special guest this week Alison Rosen the host of Alison

[0:52] Rosen is your new best friend co-host of childish and host of the new podcast

[0:57] up worthy weekly your place for positive things every Saturday it's

[1:01] Alison Rosen as mentioned in the previous part of the sentence hello I'm

[1:06] so excited to be here and I'm just gonna I'm just gonna come in hot and say

[1:12] understanding is you have a guest that is like everyone's favorite and I am

[1:19] gunning I mean I was about to say for a second favorite but I don't know why I'm

[1:23] like handicapping myself because she's so beloved I don't want people to take

[1:29] it the wrong way but like I am trying to displace her okay just being all just be

[1:34] an alternate favorite shoot for the moon and reach the stars which doesn't make

[1:39] sense because the stars are further out than the moon but right I think you're

[1:43] the one who said it dance or you do yourself isn't that the saying though

[1:48] like I feel like that I always was reach for the moon but at least you'll hit a

[1:52] very tall mountain okay the moon but reach for the stars you're gonna be like

[1:59] I am lost my navigation system was incorrect I know I'm in orbit yeah very

[2:08] dangerous well you're off to a great start there's I think there's a real

[2:12] chance that Hallie's gonna have to come back in and reclaim her crown at some

[2:16] point yeah as flop house star what do we uh what do we uh what do we do here

[2:24] dance are you are you is the spirit of Norm Macdonald rest in peace it has he

[2:30] just entered your body because it's very normal is so concerned with like setting

[2:33] the stage for what the podcast is and being professional that he forgets that

[2:38] what people like about the show is the nonsense people like this show Stewart

[2:44] took a moment from sipping what appears to be just molten chocolate out of a

[2:48] huge cup to make sure that we set up this is a so this is a protein smoothie

[2:54] that Stewart made at Henderlin's before coming here yeah and then he arrived

[2:57] with it he asked he's like can I do I have it can I have a knife to punch a

[3:01] hole very nervous powder just slurping dry protein powder my mouth is the

[3:12] fucking Sahara protein pixie stick yeah so Allison protein shakes yeah we're

[3:19] con you know I am pro for other people myself I'm not really a protein shake

[3:25] gal I feel like and Stewart I don't know what your you know regimen is but I feel

[3:30] like if you're gonna suck down a protein shake then you should be

[3:33] following it up with some kind of reps or things where you're grunting and I

[3:38] don't do any of that there's a lot of things where he grunts I'm putting him

[3:45] on to even love the brothers grunt one of MTV's least popular television shows

[3:49] so Stewart you mentioned what are we doing this podcast clearly what we do is

[3:53] we talk about protein shakes welcome to the shake house it was just one of those

[3:57] bids for attention we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it in this case

[4:04] we watched being the Ricardos which has been nominated for multiple Academy

[4:08] Awards Wow yeah well there they are mostly acting there are three awards

[4:14] entirely acting awards three acting awards and I honestly like the acting in

[4:19] this movie maybe you guys will argue with me I like the performances I don't

[4:23] think that's where the fault lies I know I think if I have any I really like

[4:27] a lot of Nicole Kidman's performance I don't like that she's performing it

[4:31] beneath several inches of drywall that have been applied to her face with some

[4:35] sort of a spackling to make her look like Lucille Ball but she does she looks

[4:39] like the statue of Lucille Ball that was removed because it was such a was so

[4:43] inhuman like I my issue with Nicole Kidman was that I think that she would

[4:47] have been better in it without makeup to look like Lucille Ball this was one

[4:54] of Nicole Kidman's roles where she puts on makeup and goes too far with it like

[4:58] in the hours a little bit we're in destroyer we're in destroyer she's

[5:02] supposed to look like someone who's been through amazing it looks like somebody

[5:05] who has who has survived like an explosion like in this one she's

[5:09] supposed to look like Lucille Ball but instead she looks like a I don't it she

[5:13] looks like someone had chronic of Lucille Ball yeah she looks like a

[5:17] Lucille Ball at like the magical world of Disney who is gonna be like welcome

[5:20] as I show you some of my favorite routines no I agree that the what they've

[5:27] done to make her look like Lucy is distracting but that her I think her

[5:31] performance is strong she acts through it yeah yeah but was the actual Lucille

[5:35] Ball humorless and self-important did nail it I mean from everything I've read

[5:42] she was a very difficult person to be around I don't know about humorless but

[5:47] self-important I think some way I think the Sorkin is what you're yeah yeah this

[5:51] is well so this movie was not nominated for a best screenplay or director which

[5:56] is accurate because it is it is Aaron Sorkin playing to his faults on this

[6:01] which as I this is a comment I made before recording and I warned you all

[6:04] that I would say it during recording and now I'm saying it we're recording it now

[6:07] that Aaron Sorkin a man who has made multiple television shows he wrote a

[6:12] Broadway show about the beginning of television and the creation of it he is

[6:16] obsessed with television he's just really fascinated by television and yet

[6:19] he seems to have no idea how television works or how to at least present that in

[6:24] a dramatic way or in a way that even feels real because it feels like he's

[6:28] he's caught up in this kind of fantasy idea of how TV works and but especially

[6:33] I guess the problem is that Sorkin writes about characters who are all who

[6:38] are who are geniuses that everyone else won't believe until the last minute and

[6:42] the process has to be warped around the idea so for instance we'll get into the

[6:47] plot of this but that like Lucille Ball is dealing with a direct a television

[6:50] director that nobody likes and the whole movie out and is wrong about everything

[6:53] and will not listen to Lucille Ball and I was like Lucille Ball owns the company

[6:57] that produces this show yeah why did they hire this guy if she hates him so

[7:01] much he's so bad at his job and like later on she's like we're gonna re

[7:05] reblock this scene and her biggest idea is to shoot it so that the characters

[7:10] are facing the camera and don't have their backs to the camera and it's like

[7:12] yeah they should have fired him the moment he blocked it this way terrible

[7:16] idea like it you should always see the characters faces it's so anyway there's

[7:20] a lot about this that is not true to life in many ways I will I will I will be

[7:25] a little gentler and think that like there are moments when the the executive

[7:29] producers and like the higher-ups are trying to put out multiple fires which

[7:33] is what the which is largely about I thought that that felt accurate to my

[7:39] experience my limited experience at the one TV show under you know to two bosses

[7:44] that like if it that felt real ish but then as soon as it came to the comedy

[7:50] stuff it's like wow like like his vision of like someone making comedy is Nicole

[7:55] Kidman staring off into space for a while looking like visual or intense and

[8:01] she's like that the what's-his-name from Hannibal where yeah he's like

[8:05] imagining the design of the serial killer that's how you tell it like it's

[8:09] a Queen's Gambit way of creating comedy you know she takes some drugs yeah now

[8:17] Dan when you went over it all by the comedy drums that were put the comedy

[8:21] swing drums that were playing in many things to give us the impression of

[8:23] energy and movement well why don't we just get into the because I believe the

[8:27] movie starts with some comedy swing boy does it ever so a lot of the

[8:31] soundtracks as if to tell because it's like come on this is exciting comedy and

[8:39] people are troubled so we start off this it's kind of old-timey right it's like

[8:42] old-timey showbiz music yes it is old it is old-timey behind-the-scenes showbiz

[8:47] music yeah the movie starts off with something that we're gonna see multiple

[8:51] times throughout which is I'm not gonna go in as much detail at the plot as I

[8:54] usually do scene by scene because it's but it starts up with something that

[8:57] we're gonna see throughout which is the older versions of the executive producer

[9:01] of the show and the two writers on the show at the end one of the writers has

[9:05] played as an old person by Linda Lavin and the others by Ronnie Cox so I was

[9:08] like I love seeing them like this is great I love seeing anything but uh they

[9:12] we're gonna see them describe things which we will then see in the scene

[9:16] afterwards where they have added very little information we couldn't have

[9:20] gotten from the scene yeah and so they're like hey you know when we were

[9:23] on I love Lucy there was this one scary week boy what was scary it was the

[9:27] biggest show in America people didn't use the fucking bathroom when I love

[9:30] Lucy was on and sometimes hospitals would shut down like they would all hide

[9:35] because they were watching their shit their TV is in their pens you know each

[9:39] one was like the thing you got to understand I'm like fucking I don't care

[9:43] anymore like I don't need people to tell me the thing I need to understand also I

[9:47] think that like that you reach a range was reused in multiple scenes for the

[9:53] first like 15 minutes and when an old person when you reach a certain age when

[9:58] you're an old person and you say

[10:00] Those words to me, I immediately tune out.

[10:02] Well, and especially because all of almost all of the first couple scenes,

[10:05] because it's not like we learn anything about the characters, even the characters

[10:09] that they're that these old that these people are portraying as old people.

[10:12] This could have if there was a title screen, there was a text on title

[10:15] that just said in 1953, I Love Lucy was the biggest show in America.

[10:19] That's all the information they're basically telling us that we're not.

[10:22] Oceans are battlefields.

[10:23] That's all I also.

[10:25] I'm going to sound like my mom told me a prophecy about it,

[10:28] about it, I Love Lucy show.

[10:30] I'm going to sound extremely uptight saying this, but I do not like the device

[10:35] of actors playing like older versions of the characters

[10:40] as if they're being interviewed for a documentary.

[10:43] You know, I don't like Frostnicks and they do it.

[10:46] It's terrible. Yeah.

[10:48] I was like a dingbat enough that I thought these were the actual like they say

[10:54] it was believable enough that I.

[10:56] Yeah. For a second, I was like, wait,

[10:57] is this like a semi documentary?

[10:59] But Madeline Pugh, played by Linda Lavin, who I believed at this point

[11:03] was Madeline Pugh, and I'm like, God damn, she looks so familiar.

[11:07] I must be familiar with the actual Madeline Pugh.

[11:10] I think she's been on Sesame Street.

[11:12] And then I'm like, no, she looks familiar because she's Linda.

[11:15] Aha. And then like, yeah, I realize that's as soon as they as soon as

[11:18] because I kind of have remembered Linda Lavin.

[11:20] And then as soon as Ronnie Cox is on screen, I'm like, well,

[11:22] the villain for Beastmaster did not work on I Love Lucy.

[11:25] But that is the thing.

[11:26] Like, I don't think you're a dingbat at all.

[11:28] That's why I'm mad at it, because these are not like I mean, like,

[11:31] you know, Linda Lavin was like a big television star in her day.

[11:34] But these are like character actors.

[11:36] They're not people that were like audiences are immediately going to be like,

[11:40] oh, I know who that is. That's not the real person.

[11:42] Like, I feel like it is.

[11:44] It does fool people into thinking. Yeah.

[11:47] I want to say something I said.

[11:48] Wait, I meant the villain from Total Recall.

[11:50] I got Beastmaster in Total Recall.

[11:51] Ronnie Cox was not in Beastmaster.

[11:52] He's Rip Rip Torn, I think, is who you're.

[11:54] If you hadn't corrected yourself, I was going to I was going to leave this meeting.

[11:58] I could I could see the fire in Alison's eyes as she said, unacceptable,

[12:01] really angry.

[12:03] The thing that brought me to this show was a Twitter feud that I had with.

[12:06] Oh, yeah, yeah. This is unacceptable.

[12:09] I think that this device speaks to what

[12:13] one of the main problems I had with the whole movie, which is just

[12:16] this is like the self-importance of Aaron Sorkin.

[12:19] That I think we would you know that to get into this story,

[12:23] we would need to be hearing from three people who we don't know who they are,

[12:27] but they're so important that they're being interviewed.

[12:29] And I think that's part of it.

[12:30] And I think also that it is a way of paper.

[12:33] I feel like the more a movie does this, the more the movie is saying to you,

[12:36] we really fudge to the historical record.

[12:38] So we're going out of our way to pretend like this is accurate

[12:43] because we made a lot of we really because and which is like

[12:47] a lot of the things they're dealing with in this one crazy week.

[12:49] And I love Lucy, in reality, happened over multiple years.

[12:52] And at one. And the thing that really bothers me is some stuff about

[12:55] Desi Arnaz's backstory, which they which is with the way they present it is

[12:59] they're conflating two different Cuban revolutions that happened 20 years apart.

[13:03] So like there's things that happen in this movie there.

[13:05] But it feels like they're like, look, we messed with the historical record so much.

[13:09] We got to have people come on and pretend to be the real people

[13:12] in interviews in front of the cameras so that our dumb audience thinks

[13:15] that this is accurate, because otherwise they might start pulling the threads.

[13:18] The real irony being one of the threads

[13:21] that goes through this movie is is Lucy's concern that the script is

[13:27] is insulting to the audience, like the audience isn't so dumb.

[13:31] Yeah. And yet Sorkin thinks we.

[13:35] Yeah, let's see the game they're playing.

[13:37] It's like, yeah, I want to.

[13:39] Yeah, this is a big thing that people have had a problem with the movie.

[13:43] So I don't want to like go over it too quickly that the accusation

[13:47] that Lucy is a communist, the the her saying that she was pregnant

[13:51] and the problems that that would cause for the show and the stuff about,

[13:55] like, you know, having trouble with like Desi's affairs being on in the news.

[14:00] Like those are three events that did not occur in one week

[14:03] that have been conflated into one week.

[14:06] And the movie like makes this falsehood about them being a week,

[14:10] but then also does flashbacks and also has these actors

[14:14] pretending to be these characters.

[14:17] And, you know, like this really disturbed Audrey,

[14:20] where she was like, if you're going to like, why put the self-imposed

[14:24] like one week thing on?

[14:26] It's a lie.

[14:27] Here's a flashback.

[14:29] And you have all these things.

[14:30] Everyone knows Aaron Sorkin.

[14:32] This is famous in our in Hollywood.

[14:33] Everyone understands in Hollywood.

[14:34] Maybe you don't know it, Dan, because you live on the East Coast.

[14:36] Then Aaron Sorkin is a huge Barenaked Ladies fan.

[14:38] And he listens to Barenaked Ladies songs while he's writing.

[14:41] He's been to all those shows.

[14:43] So I think that's the influence there is the one aspect.

[14:46] Yeah. If he had a million dollars, he'd make this movie.

[14:48] She even said that to Desi because he'd been out, you know, with his band.

[14:52] And she's like, it's been one week since you've looked at me

[14:55] because he hadn't even been there.

[14:56] And he said, look, I'm the kind of guy that laughs at a funeral, you know.

[14:59] And there's all this stuff about Chinese chicken.

[15:01] It really again, it's it once you know it's there, it really pops out at you.

[15:05] So but they're saying this crazy week when Walter Winchell on his radio show

[15:09] said that Lucille Ball was a communist and a magazine said that Desi,

[15:13] her husband, for anyone who's not familiar with with I Love Lucy,

[15:16] who's listening to this?

[15:17] I mean, kind of shame on you, but also clearly you didn't grow up

[15:20] watching Nick at Night like I did.

[15:22] But I Love Lucy was a big show and it started Lucille Ball

[15:25] and her real husband, Desi Arnaz, and they also produced the show.

[15:27] Anyway, that's that's what you need to know, I guess.

[15:30] We see that that the news broke on the same day

[15:33] that Walter Winchell discovered Lucy had signed up as a communist once

[15:37] and that Desi Arnaz was having an affair that was in a magazine.

[15:39] We then cut to Lucy and Desi arguing about the affair story.

[15:44] And then they start making up and having sex.

[15:46] And then they hear the Walter Winchell radio show say she's a communist.

[15:49] So it's like this movie is like it's like a five paragraph essay.

[15:53] We're going to tell you what we're going to tell you.

[15:54] Yeah, I'm going to tell it to you.

[15:55] Then we're going to tell you what we told you over and over again.

[15:58] Well, we learned at the very beginning, courtesy of Linda Lavin,

[16:01] that as Madeline Pugh, that if they're not tearing each other's

[16:05] heads off, they're tearing each other's clothes off.

[16:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[16:09] Relationship, which I believe is like an actual quote

[16:12] that some of them said about them, that then the movie makes like

[16:16] thuddingly literal by having them have an argument and then have sex.

[16:20] Oh, I thought they tore their each other's heads off.

[16:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[16:24] They were the one that was eaten like a brain magnet.

[16:27] Yeah, they were the inspiration for Rockham Stock and Robots.

[16:29] Originally in Rockham Stock and Robots,

[16:31] you could have them had sex with each other, too.

[16:32] So they then were at a table read for a new episode of I Love Lucy.

[16:37] Everyone's like, oh, we're talking about the Red Scare.

[16:39] It's the 50s.

[16:40] So this is all that we talk about is the Red Scare.

[16:43] All we talk about is communism.

[16:44] And we see the tension between Vivian Vance, who plays Ethel

[16:48] and and William Frawley, who plays her husband, Fred, on the show.

[16:53] And we'll see. There's a lot by J.K. Simmons.

[16:55] Yes. And and and Nina Ariadne, Tony Award winner, Nina Ariadne plays Vivian Vance.

[17:00] Favorite. Yeah, this is a and I thought they were both they were both good.

[17:03] They're given this is a and this one going to say

[17:05] this is the mission statement of this movie.

[17:07] It is a movie about the making of a sitcom that operates as a sitcom.

[17:10] There is an A story.

[17:12] Lucy and Lucy and Desi are worried about losing their show.

[17:14] And there's a little side story on the A story about Lucy and Desi

[17:17] are worried about their marriage.

[17:18] There's a B story.

[17:19] Vivian Vance doesn't like that the show needs her to be frumpy.

[17:23] She's a human woman and she likes to seem attractive.

[17:25] And she doesn't like this.

[17:26] The show is pushing her to be a frumpy housewife type.

[17:29] And then there is the C story of there's a bad director on set

[17:34] and nobody likes him.

[17:35] And it's like and by the end of the movie, this will all have been wrapped up

[17:38] in one scene of conversation, which like this is a it's basically

[17:42] we're watching a sitcom

[17:43] that has been extended out for over two hours and is not funny.

[17:46] But they're all.

[17:47] And we also get we meet the we meet the executive producer,

[17:51] Jess Oppenheimer, played by Tony Hale.

[17:53] We meet the young Madeline Pugh, Madeline Pugh, played by Alia Shockwith.

[17:56] That's right.

[17:56] It's a Arrested Development reunion, Arrested Development mini reunion.

[17:59] They have very few scenes together.

[18:01] And although I guess on Arrested Development,

[18:03] they didn't have that many scenes together either, maybe in Buster.

[18:07] And so on and so forth.

[18:09] And everyone's like, oh, what are we going to do?

[18:11] Everyone's arguing.

[18:12] What if the show gets gets the plug poles?

[18:14] Because Lucy's a communist now and everybody hates communists.

[18:17] And William Frawley doesn't like communists either.

[18:18] But he's kind of an old cantankerous drunk.

[18:20] This is J.K.

[18:21] Simmons doing one of those a what I would call a later stage Tom Hanks role

[18:25] where it's just kind of like, I'm charming.

[18:27] I'm just going to I'm just going to kind of float through this movie being charming.

[18:30] You know? Yeah.

[18:31] I mean, he was in this first earned a nom.

[18:34] You know, you can't do that.

[18:35] But but considering his previous offs that he won was for such an intense role.

[18:39] Maybe they're just looking at his range.

[18:40] I mean, he does have great range, you know.

[18:42] I remember like watching the first part where they're like,

[18:44] you know, fighting and fucking him like, oh, I don't know about this movie,

[18:48] whether I'm going to find anything I like about it.

[18:50] And then when J.K. Simmons showed up, I'm like, oh, at least,

[18:52] you know, there's going to be something because like he's on there

[18:55] just to be like cantankerous, but also secretly likable.

[18:58] I'm like, well, that's that's gold for you, J.K.

[19:01] Yeah. And he and he has the genuinely funny lines in the movie.

[19:04] Like he gets some real digs on.

[19:06] When whenever the movie wants to be misogynist towards Vivian Vance,

[19:08] it has some real funny lines, almost as if Aaron Sorkin.

[19:11] I don't know. It comes more naturally to him to do those.

[19:13] And I don't know if that's true or not.

[19:16] But so Lucy and Desi are meeting with the network executives.

[19:18] One of them is Clark Gregg.

[19:19] So it's like Shield is producing Lucy.

[19:23] And he's got like he's got a little hairpiece. It's cute.

[19:25] Yeah. And he's she's meeting with her executives and sponsors.

[19:28] One of the sponsors is Philip Morris.

[19:30] And the movie sees nothing wrong with that,

[19:32] which which feels like there's a kind of real old fashioned bent to this movie.

[19:36] That's like, yeah, why wouldn't she be sponsored

[19:37] by a huge cigarette company that kills people?

[19:39] Who cares? No problem.

[19:41] Yet I do feel like that happened.

[19:44] But I do feel like there's an aspect of it

[19:47] that is trying to look at it through a very modern lens with the.

[19:52] Yes. You know, with some of the issues like they take on race

[19:55] and they take on gender a little bit and things like that,

[19:57] which I feel like is unrealistic.

[20:00] stick for how the show actually was. But with the Philip Morris, that gets a pass.

[20:05] Yeah. Well, it's funny that the it's also if you were watching this movie, you would expect that

[20:10] I Love Lucy was like a deeper show than it was or like a more I mean, it was an important show in

[20:17] that it was a huge show, but like the but it was important for I don't know, I guess more for what

[20:22] was going on behind the scenes rather than the actual text of the show itself. Yeah, that's

[20:25] the thing about a goofy lady who was always ruining things for her husband and doesn't have a job and

[20:30] he won't let her have one. I'm going to push back on this a little bit just because like

[20:35] so if anyone's interested in the story of Lucy, go and listen to instead of watching this,

[20:42] the Turner Classic movies. What is it? The Plot Thickens, their podcast recently did a whole

[20:49] series on Lucille Ball, I'm sure because they knew this movie was going to come out and they

[20:54] would look like roses compared to the movie, you know, a smart move on their part. But like,

[21:00] it was important in the sense that it did. It did do some of the things that you're saying, like

[21:06] it revolutionized the way these shows were shot. I mean, all the behind the scenes stuff. Yeah.

[21:13] Yeah. Lucy being in, you know, such a creative force, you know, while being a woman, like the

[21:17] fact that it did show an interracial marriage, it wasn't the first one to have pregnancy on TV,

[21:23] but it was definitely the most important one. So I got a question, guys, do you think when when,

[21:29] you know, like Lucy and Desi pushed their beds together or slept in the same bed? Do you think

[21:35] do you think all the sickos out there are like, fuck, yeah, just started cranking it?

[21:40] Yeah, that was porn for the time. I would imagine. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, probably.

[21:46] It is the behind the scenes. I'm not I'm not saying like, I love Lucy was like, you know,

[21:50] a silly show about a silly married couple. But yeah. And so is in in this there's all this drama

[21:57] around. Is it believable that Desi would walk in and put his hands around her eyes and say,

[22:06] guess who? And that she would, you know, guess all these names. And there's this like,

[22:10] but in the reality of the show, this is all Lucille, the character of Lucille Ball saying

[22:17] but are we supposed to believe that he would actually think that she thinks,

[22:22] see, I'm even having trouble articulating that. Are we supposed to believe that she's like,

[22:25] are we supposed to believe that I don't know what man is in my house and that he's supposed

[22:30] to believe that I don't know what that I don't know who it is? And it's like, well, the joke

[22:34] is clearly that she's teasing him and he gets frustrated being teased with. He doesn't seem

[22:38] to understand the joke. There's so much drama around that. And it has that sorkin like,

[22:43] aha, you know, he's found the weak underbelly of this, that everything's going to spin around.

[22:50] And so after I watched this movie last night, I watched the episode that was like the main

[22:53] episode featured in the movie. Yeah. And within three seconds, you buy into the reality of I

[22:59] love Lucy, that I love Lucy, that she's like sort of, you know, daffy and silly and would do this.

[23:05] And it all makes sense on the show. Yeah, it's it's a weird thing of like it. Well, that that

[23:11] feels like it's one of those times. Yeah, exactly. Like you're saying, like Aaron Sorkin is is poking

[23:14] holes in the show that the people who made the show would not poke holes in because they know

[23:18] they're making a silly show. Yeah, it's but Aaron Sorkin doesn't quite get it. It's not the best

[23:25] like politics. It feels like politics is a better place for him to have characters like poking holes

[23:30] in each other's arguments as opposed to like what's a funny joke and what the logic of the joke

[23:34] is. You know, that's I mean, like and look, I'm I'm talking as a person who I don't like a joke

[23:41] that were that that exists on faulty logic. Like I, I mean, like I there were times when like I

[23:49] was writing just like other people at the Daily Show and like I feel like is that a false premise?

[23:56] And I like it would be a small thing, but I would like push back against it. So I certainly

[24:01] understand like objecting to a small issue. But as you say, this is clearly a tease like it doesn't

[24:08] make any sense as anything else. So to show her integrity by like her getting hung up on this

[24:14] just makes the character look dumb in the movie in a weird way, especially because the episode

[24:19] they're doing is about like Fred and Ethel have had a fight and Lucy is going to invite both of

[24:23] them to dinner without telling each of them so that they I guess fall back in love at dinner.

[24:26] It's like that is a faultier premise than that. She was teasing her husband and he got mad like

[24:32] it's a ridiculous plot. But yeah, I mean, in the movie, it comes off as her hyper fixating

[24:38] on something that doesn't like doesn't matter. And she seems like she's out of step with the

[24:42] rest of the people involved. Yes. But I think that's also supposed to be that

[24:46] it's she is the one she's the one right genius there and everyone else won't listen. It's like

[24:52] I'm not sure if the movie is but it doesn't come off as being a writing genius. It comes off as

[24:56] somebody who doesn't know what's going on. No, that's true, too. I guess it depends on whether

[25:01] whose side you're taking. But anyway, Lucy is worried. Are they going to take away her show

[25:06] because she's a communist? Meanwhile, she's still worried that Desi was unfaithful to her possibly.

[25:11] And she explains she only signed up to be a communist in the 30s to please her uncle who

[25:17] raised her or her grandfather. I forget her grandfather, her grandfather, who himself was

[25:21] a communist. And and Desi once we'll find out later, Desi wants to have her played off like

[25:25] a mistake. Like she's as daffy in real life as she is on TV. And she doesn't want to admit that

[25:30] she doesn't want to admit she made a mistake because she didn't. We see a lot of flashbacks

[25:34] of how Lucy and Desi met when she was an undercontracted RKO. And the end Desi is singing

[25:40] a song about four. There's a number of times when Javier Bardem sings songs in this movie.

[25:44] And I thought he did a really good job of selling those songs. But there are so many like we don't

[25:49] have time to go to all the inaccuracies and anachronisms in the movie. But like there were

[25:54] so many times during the discussion of her film career when I was like, she's waiting in this

[25:59] waiting room in the 40s. There's a movie poster on the wall from a movie from the 50s. Like this

[26:03] is bothering me. Like she has a smartphone in her hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's she's she's

[26:08] watching TikTok while she's on set. But there's we see basically how she fixated. She set her

[26:16] sights on Desi and and chase after him and really seduced him through a combination of

[26:21] brassy rudeness and brassy taking off her clothes in front of him. And so one to punch. And another

[26:28] thing that keeps coming up is the idea that Desi was driven from Cuba because he was born in Cuba.

[26:33] His family was a prominent Cuban family, that he was driven from Cuba by the Communist Revolution.

[26:38] And that's why he has this deep, deeper thing about communists. And that's the thing

[26:42] anachronistically that really got to me because he left he left he left Cuba in the 30s when the

[26:47] government was overthrown by Batista, who the communists would later overthrow 20 years later.

[26:52] So that was what made me mad. It was I was like, I can buy there's a movie poster in the background

[26:56] that's from the wrong year, like whatever. The same way that it didn't make me as mad as in

[27:00] Mank when they were like, oh, we don't make the Wolfman. And I'm like, that movie didn't come out

[27:04] for 12 years until after this conversation. They're like, we don't make horror movies like

[27:08] Frankenstein's like Frankenstein wasn't out yet. The scene takes place in 1930.

[27:12] But the but the idea that this is an alternate universe where the communists took over Cuba

[27:17] like 20 years earlier is such a big change for his backstory that really, it really bothered

[27:22] me more than anything. You know, when you're saying that about Mank, I was enjoying watching

[27:26] Allison's face where she sort of just like clocks who you were as a person more fully.

[27:32] That I'm still that really bothered me in May. Yeah. But that's another one where it did.

[27:37] I mean, that's also like a film history period that like I particularly but it bothered me that

[27:42] I mean, aside from the fact that Gary Oldman was playing a man 30 years younger than him in many

[27:46] scenes. But the that movie is that anytime you do a movie that's like about behind the scenes in the

[27:53] entertainment business and there can't be bothered to get basic facts right just to create that

[27:59] illusion. It's it just bugs me. You know, I want to fill you in, though. This is part of a long

[28:05] running segment of the show, Yanking the Mank Crank, which is where we talk about my problems

[28:11] with it. Oh, I've never seen Mank. Should I should I do it? No, neither. Good. It's more fun to not

[28:17] see it. I think. Yeah. Amanda Seyfried's pretty good. I didn't really like the movie that much.

[28:22] She's fine in it. Yeah, the it's I'm segwaying eventually into a into a segment called Manks

[28:27] for the Memories, which is long after everyone else has forgotten about Mank. I'm just like

[28:32] reminding people about it. So anyway, they now they're in the in the past. They're a thing.

[28:37] She dumps her fiance over the phone and and sticks with Desi. But even that scene was so and I'm

[28:44] sorry to keep using this very, very technical term. So sorkiny. It was just so sassy and clever

[28:54] the way she called him up and dumped him. And just like no one is allowed to say a line that isn't

[29:01] like zing. Yeah, everything is so zingy that it's it's strange credulity. Well, and I think that if

[29:07] the movie was more, it's directed in a very straightforward, I would almost say boring

[29:12] manner. And if it was more stylized, I would say like, yeah, that works for me. But the idea that

[29:17] like this movie is supposed to be a historic, semi historically accurate to the point that

[29:21] we're pretending we have talking heads, people explain it for it to be that zingy is is annoying.

[29:26] It both looks and plays like it would be better suited to being a mini series on TV. Yeah, I mean,

[29:33] it feels like an HBO made for TV movie from about 30 years ago, where it's like, oh, this is a

[29:38] prestige TV movie like that. They've got big stars and HBO put money into it. But like, we're only

[29:43] going to hold it to TV movie standards like we're not going to hold this to like movie movie

[29:46] standards. Yeah, I could see it being a mini series because the pacing I thought was pretty weird.

[29:52] So if it were divided into little chunks, then it wouldn't have been so noticeable.

[29:56] Yeah, I think that should fix the flashback.

[30:00] The more I think about it, the more I think none of the flashbacks were necessary for the story they wanted to tell.

[30:07] Not at all.

[30:08] But all of them.

[30:09] And they all caught me by surprise.

[30:11] It took me a little while to be like, oh, this is some time ago.

[30:14] And also it got to the point where later on there's a scene that is not a flashback that I thought was a flashback for a while.

[30:20] Where I was like, oh, if she knew this a long time ago, oh wait, that was not a flashback?

[30:24] That was supposed to be in real time?

[30:27] There's nothing in the flashbacks that hasn't already been told to us in dialogue, basically.

[30:32] And it's like, do the flashbacks or do the talking heads.

[30:35] Don't do both.

[30:36] I mean, Dan is like, I love the talking heads.

[30:38] Yeah, put them all over the soundtrack.

[30:40] That is the place.

[30:42] They're burning down the house.

[30:43] I mean, you wanted more of a style choice for the movie?

[30:45] That would be a very bold choice to just do talking head songs for the whole soundtrack of this.

[30:50] That's true.

[30:51] But you don't need – it feels like padding at a certain point.

[30:55] It feels like the movie had only a little bit of story.

[30:58] And they're just like – they're like, yeah, let's tell the audience three times that their jobs took them away from each other for a while.

[31:05] So we don't need to – I mean I guess that is the plot of La La Land, so you can fill a movie with that.

[31:11] But anyway, they're mad at each other as tension continues.

[31:16] Vivian Vance, she doesn't like that nobody thinks she's sexy.

[31:19] And she doesn't like that people think that she's the right age to be married to William Frawley.

[31:24] Who is much older than her, much like everyone in the movie pretty much is older than the people that they're playing except for J.K. Simmons.

[31:32] And they – there's a lot of scenes of just people in rooms talking about, oh, did you see the story in the magazine?

[31:39] Oh, did you hear about Walter Winchell on the radio?

[31:41] And that's when Lucy and Desi walk into the writer's room, which this being the movie, the show has two writers, which might have been the case.

[31:48] Back then the shows didn't have a lot of writers.

[31:50] It's just the executive producer and two writers sitting in a room together.

[31:53] They really want to send Lucy to Italy so she can stomp on some grapes, which Lucy loves the idea of.

[31:59] And she goes – yeah?

[32:03] Sorry. I was just thinking like it was one of these scenes I'm talking about where she stares intently off into space.

[32:08] And Zeus comes down from Mount Olympus to give her the greatest joke in history, which is in this case to lose her earrings in the grapes that they're stomping.

[32:20] And she has to swim around looking for it.

[32:23] And we get to see a flash forward of her fantasy of this happening and the audience losing their fucking minds.

[32:30] And she dreams in black and white much like androids dream of electric sheep.

[32:34] Every time she imagines things, it's in black and white.

[32:37] And the audience – and wait. Here's Stuart saying the audience is losing their minds.

[32:41] I mean it is a very funny scene.

[32:42] Yeah, yeah.

[32:43] Not as played by Nicole Kidman but as played by Lucille Ball.

[32:48] And there's a – the same way that – I almost wish they had done like the chocolate conveyor belt or stuff like that, like more classic Lucy scenes so we could see audiences going nuts.

[32:56] But every joke that anyone says in front of an audience in this, the audience explodes.

[33:01] Like I hope they had doctors on the set of Isle of Lucy to help these people whose sides were literally splitting open and their guts falling out.

[33:06] Their funny bones are shattered.

[33:07] Yeah.

[33:08] I've been slapping my knee so hard that my knee is powder now.

[33:11] Like they – I think movies about comedy, they so rarely realize that like not every joke is a super gut buster.

[33:19] Yeah.

[33:20] And also that like people aren't just like silent until they like suddenly come out with a brilliant joke.

[33:25] Like that's – I wanted to talk a little bit about the way this is presenting comedy writing because like as we've mentioned before in the show …

[33:33] You're a comedy writer.

[33:35] There was a lot of – well …

[33:36] Yeah, we get it.

[33:37] There's a lot of – no, like …

[33:38] Show us your awards.

[33:39] Show us your NAACP image awards, Andy.

[33:41] At this daily show when – especially when Elliot and I were there at the same time, there was a lot of obsession with Studio 60 because it's …

[33:48] And Hallie, right, the other favorite?

[33:50] There was a lot of obsession with Hallie around the …

[33:52] And Allison's nemesis Hallie, my office mate, now my neighbor.

[33:55] Yeah.

[33:57] But like Sorkin is so serious about the way he thinks comedy is done and on this show like I will say he gets two things right.

[34:07] The comedy writers are really mean to each other and they secretly think that they're better writers than the other one.

[34:13] And – but in real life, my experience is there's also a lot more esprit de corps and a lot more just like tossing out jokes.

[34:23] The comedy room is – sounds more like an episode of The Flop House or something where everyone is just saying nonsense to try and …

[34:30] And shouting over each other as opposed to looking at each other silently and then occasionally – it's like he thinks a comedy writer's room is like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf where it's just kind of like bitter zings and otherwise deep silence when usually it's a lot of people yelling at each other.

[34:46] Now, is a real comedy room extremely dimly lit?

[34:50] Because if so, they nailed that.

[34:52] Aaron Sorkin really thinks comedians work in darkness, which is strange because you have to see what you're reading.

[34:58] You have to write things down on pads and stuff like that.

[35:00] But yeah, it's the one – like in Studio 60, they worked in a room with I think one light.

[35:05] It looked like a Nazi interrogation room where they're arrayed around a table and most of them are in darkness like some kind of Brecht or Kafka-type room.

[35:13] And in this one, it's – yeah, it's just like the one room in the building with no lights, no overhead lights.

[35:19] It's lit by whatever stray shafts might make it to the Venetian blinds to hit the table.

[35:24] They're writing from the room in Network where Ned Beatty makes his big speech.

[35:29] Yeah, it's lit by one tiny lamp on a table.

[35:32] Yeah, he's – for someone who is also like – he's a writer.

[35:36] Like Aaron Sorkin is at heart a writer.

[35:38] He's not – he directs things but he's not like a great director.

[35:41] It seems what comes naturally to him is words and yet he doesn't seem to know how writing works.

[35:46] I don't know.

[35:47] Maybe that's how it works for him.

[35:48] Maybe he sits in a dark room and stares into space and a scene comes to him.

[35:54] Maybe he's not used to working with other people on projects.

[35:56] Maybe he –

[35:57] I mean that seems very likely based on what I've heard of his experience.

[36:01] I mean, yeah, that's true.

[36:03] So this – with the movie, these kinds of – oh, so Lucy and Desi announced to the writers in this depressingly dimly lit room that Lucy is pregnant and they want to write the pregnancy into the show.

[36:14] And the executive producer was like, no, we're going to have her go to Italy and stomp on grapes instead.

[36:20] And it's like you guys are doing 37 shows a season.

[36:22] You got room.

[36:23] Do both episodes.

[36:24] But he says they'll never let us discuss pregnancy on the show.

[36:27] And later on when they're talking to the studio – the network execs and sponsors, they're like, you can't ever be pregnant on the show.

[36:33] People will wonder how the baby got in there.

[36:36] Sickos, yeah.

[36:37] And I think probably they –

[36:38] I was just yanking it to that too.

[36:42] Like just the thought of it, just the barest hint of it.

[36:47] And I think there's probably – there was a reality to that.

[36:51] Because the most erotic thing about sex is that a baby is the result.

[36:54] A baby could be the result.

[36:55] If you're St. Augustine, that's why you're supposed to do it.

[36:58] I mean there – and also there are people with pregnancy fetishes.

[37:01] But –

[37:02] Yeah, that's true.

[37:03] Don't shame them, Dan.

[37:04] There are people who like that.

[37:05] I mean it's – they don't – they like – I think it's more that they like the shape of the woman's body during pregnancy than the idea that –

[37:10] That's not –

[37:11] That there's a tenant to that.

[37:13] Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of – I mean there's other reasons, I'm sure, like the fantasy of virility.

[37:18] But let's not – we don't need to –

[37:19] I could see that.

[37:20] I could see that, yeah.

[37:21] I mean you know – I mean it's – if there – it's a fantasy of virility if they're with a pregnant woman.

[37:25] I think they don't understand how it works.

[37:28] It's not like they built an annex so that they could then fill in new tenants.

[37:35] But anyway, we can cut all that.

[37:36] It doesn't matter.

[37:37] Anyway, so – and I believe there was –

[37:40] Even a double it.

[37:41] They didn't let them say the word pregnant as is pointed out smugly at the end of the movie.

[37:45] Right, they had to say expecting I guess.

[37:46] But it is one of those things where it's like the – people do – like people do have some idea even in the 50s of how babies are born.

[37:55] It's the same way that like there are all these – when people watch movies from the 30s and 40s and they'll see stuff that seems like unintentional dirty jokes.

[38:03] And they'll be like, can you believe they didn't realize that was in there?

[38:05] And it's like I hate to break it to you.

[38:06] They knew it was in there.

[38:07] They did it on purpose.

[38:08] Like they had sex back then too.

[38:09] It wasn't invented in 1967.

[38:12] But –

[38:13] Yeah.

[38:14] Oh, no.

[38:15] I was just going to – before – I was just going to say they shouldn't have played these executives.

[38:18] Yeah, as if they're like shrinking violets.

[38:20] Like they should have been like, oh, we're going to get complaints from this group and this group and this group, which I'm sure is what the actual thing was.

[38:27] What were you going to say, Allison?

[38:28] When she announces she's pregnant, it's like a running joke that no one ever says congratulations to her because when she announces that she's pregnant,

[38:35] the people in the room are so uncomfortable that that one executive was like, how gulp much pregnant are you?

[38:44] He didn't even – he couldn't even use the right language.

[38:50] He was so uncomfortable.

[38:51] We're just so ignorant.

[38:53] Men back then, they didn't even know.

[38:55] They were only interested in women as –

[38:57] Luckily, it's all fixed.

[38:58] As cooks and that's it, and they didn't know how anything else happened.

[39:02] Yep.

[39:03] It's fine now though.

[39:04] Yeah, luckily we live in a gender utopia now.

[39:07] So they –

[39:08] It's like when I was watching 9 to 5 the other day.

[39:10] I'm like, oh, yeah, it's all better now.

[39:13] It's equal.

[39:14] You just brought that up because you want to talk about 9 to 5.

[39:16] I love 9 to 5.

[39:17] So sue me, Dan, not literally because I don't have that much money.

[39:22] And you are –

[39:23] I would have standing.

[39:24] I think that probably –

[39:25] Yeah, what rounds would Dan be suing you on?

[39:27] What damages would there be from you liking 9 to 5?

[39:29] I'm not a fucking lawyer, dude.

[39:30] I sell drinks to people.

[39:33] I mean in a way, that's kind of what a lawyer does except for the drinks is you listen to people's problems and you tell them what to do.

[39:38] Although what you always tell them what to do is have another drink, which I think is a little self-interested.

[39:43] So okay, they block the table read.

[39:46] Lucy keeps adding gags, which nobody is happy about, which doesn't make any sense.

[39:51] And this is when the – as I was saying earlier, the director who's very bad and nobody likes him, and he's a fictional character.

[39:57] He's not a real person.

[40:00] He's doing a bad job and he's like,

[40:02] hmm, let's shoot this scene so that

[40:04] the people's backs are to the camera.

[40:06] And Lucy is like, I don't think this is a good way

[40:08] to shoot this scene.

[40:09] And he's like, Lucy, I'm the director.

[40:11] And I wonder how real those dynamics were.

[40:14] Maybe because she was a woman, people didn't listen to her.

[40:16] But she was the boss.

[40:17] Like again, her company was producing this show.

[40:20] It was a Desilu production.

[40:21] So it just feels like the dynamics

[40:24] are a little fakey, a little forced.

[40:27] I know that, yeah, this was a problem that I had

[40:30] trying to assess the movie,

[40:32] because I know that it must have been

[40:34] terribly difficult for her,

[40:36] even as a powerful woman in Hollywood,

[40:38] to like have her voice heard.

[40:39] But at the same time, like, you know,

[40:42] any show is desperate to keep the star happy.

[40:46] So I don't know.

[40:47] I mean, and as you say, she was the producer as well.

[40:50] So it seems very confusing to me.

[40:52] And especially because later, there's a whole,

[40:54] so in our flashbacks, we eventually get to the point

[40:57] where she is pitching the show to CBS.

[40:59] And they don't want Desi to play her husband,

[41:02] because it would be an interracial relationship.

[41:04] And she says, well, then we're not doing the show.

[41:07] And we know how that turned out,

[41:08] because Desi is the husband on the show.

[41:10] And it seems so weird that every other step of the way,

[41:14] we see Lucille Ball as an unstoppable juggernaut

[41:17] who just batters her way through obstructions

[41:19] and gets her way.

[41:20] But this one director will not listen to her ideas

[41:23] when they're blocking a totally unnecessary scene.

[41:25] And there's a part where they break for lunch

[41:28] and Lucy's like, no, no, I wanna talk to you about this.

[41:30] And the crew is standing around and he's like,

[41:32] we're getting into a lunch penalty.

[41:34] And it was like, why don't you just send the crew to lunch

[41:36] and then talk to Lucy about it for like two minutes?

[41:38] I don't understand.

[41:38] There's no, it's like the fakest tension,

[41:40] you know, the fakest suspense in that.

[41:42] But why this, at a certain point,

[41:44] this director who becomes the hero of the movie,

[41:46] because he's the only one willing to stand up

[41:48] to Lucille Ball, even though it's for a dumb reason.

[41:51] So, Vivian Vance gets insulted because Lucy sends Madeline Pugh

[42:00] to her room with some food for her to eat

[42:02] because she skipped breakfast

[42:03] because she's trying to lose weight.

[42:05] Desi tells the network executives, and as Allison said,

[42:07] they're like, how much pregnant is she?

[42:10] Which is kind of a funny line, but it's a funny line

[42:12] like if a robot or an alien says it, you know.

[42:15] And-

[42:16] And Javier Bardem plays this scene pretty well.

[42:18] He's pretty fun, he's charming, yada, yada, yada.

[42:20] Oh yeah, and I think the, and it's just like,

[42:23] tension is building, Desi's trying to keep things together,

[42:25] Lucy's trying to make things the way she wants them to be,

[42:28] everyone's complaining to each other,

[42:30] they're all mad at each other.

[42:33] J.K. Simmons takes Lucy for a drink and says,

[42:36] you gotta let Desi be the boss in public

[42:38] because you're pushing him away,

[42:39] you're making it so he doesn't feel like a man.

[42:41] And we flash back to, you know,

[42:44] just Lucy's career in movies ending

[42:47] and her being mad because they don't,

[42:50] she did such a good job in one movie

[42:52] that they don't have any more roles for her.

[42:53] She's too good an actress,

[42:55] they don't have the right roles for her anymore,

[42:56] which is not true, it's like not how things turned out.

[43:01] And she's claiming to be 35, but she's actually 39.

[43:05] Which the movie presents as if it is a real sin,

[43:08] like that's, the studio executive says that to her

[43:11] and it's like, case closed, sorry, you're out of business.

[43:15] Now, the scene with J.K. Simmons

[43:17] where he's trying to explain to her

[43:19] the problem with her marriage,

[43:20] that's not the only scene like that,

[43:22] but nothing in Javier Bardem's performance

[43:25] or the script at this point has indicated

[43:28] that he is particularly unsatisfied

[43:30] with the dynamics on the show.

[43:33] No, that's true.

[43:35] That is true.

[43:35] Which is weird to me.

[43:37] He's presented very much as a very supportive guy

[43:39] who is trying to keep things going

[43:41] and at least outwardly does not have any feeling,

[43:44] does not seem to have tension about his career

[43:47] basically now being second fiddle to his wife

[43:49] after he was a successful touring band leader

[43:52] and stuff like that.

[43:53] That doesn't seem to be coming through in his performance

[43:56] even though people are telling Lucy that.

[43:58] But Lucy is like, okay, I gotta make him feel

[44:00] like he's the boss and she goes to the executive producer

[44:02] and says, hey, why don't we give Desi,

[44:04] an executive producer, credit?

[44:05] And this is a strange scene because one,

[44:07] it is genuinely insulting to the executive producer

[44:09] to be like, hey, can you help me make my husband

[44:11] happy by doing this?

[44:12] But two, Desi is essentially the executive producer

[44:14] of the show.

[44:15] He makes a lot of decisions.

[44:18] He runs the business.

[44:21] She's like, he designs the camera system that we use.

[44:24] He set up the company.

[44:26] He does all these problems.

[44:27] She makes a really good argument

[44:28] for why he should be an executive producer.

[44:30] So at that point, I was like, why is he not?

[44:31] Why doesn't he already have that title?

[44:33] It feels like another weirdly forced conflict.

[44:37] I mean, particularly because, again,

[44:39] I don't know whether this was different in old Hollywood,

[44:43] but producer credits are given out like candy.

[44:46] Even executive producer credits,

[44:48] you can have multiple executive producers

[44:50] on a television show.

[44:51] Most do.

[44:52] So it's very strange to me

[44:55] that they aren't just also giving him a credit.

[44:57] I wonder if it was different then

[44:59] because now literally a credit bump

[45:02] is written into your contract when you sign onto a show

[45:04] where it's like, and on this season,

[45:06] I'll get bumped up to this title.

[45:07] So it's, I don't know, it's a weird thing

[45:12] that it becomes conflict for a moment

[45:14] and then doesn't really,

[45:16] it's just part of this churning stew of conflict and tension

[45:19] over at the Lucy show.

[45:20] Are they ever gonna get this episode shot?

[45:22] What if they don't even have a show

[45:24] because of the communist thing,

[45:25] which is kind of dropped out.

[45:26] Nobody's really, for most of the movie,

[45:28] the communist thing is totally forgotten.

[45:31] And people are like, yeah,

[45:31] nobody's talking about the communist thing.

[45:32] That should be the main concern of that week.

[45:34] Yes.

[45:35] Is that the show might be canceled

[45:37] because of this communist bombshell.

[45:39] If you're making a movie about,

[45:41] there's a week when we thought the show might get canceled,

[45:44] make it about the communist thing.

[45:45] If you're making a movie about,

[45:46] it's hard for two people to be in a marriage

[45:48] who are both creative people

[45:50] and are as driven to be together as they are,

[45:53] by ambition driven to be apart,

[45:55] make the movie about that.

[45:56] If the movie is about,

[45:57] we wanna present pregnancy for the first time in television

[46:00] and the network is up against us on it,

[46:02] make it about that.

[46:03] But there's like so much stuff going on

[46:05] that none of it really gets much attention.

[46:07] And I wonder if the feeling he's going for is like,

[46:09] that's another week at the Lucy show.

[46:12] It's always crazy.

[46:13] Now we got to do it all over again next week.

[46:14] But it feels like none of them are that important

[46:17] because there's so much fires to put out.

[46:20] She's so much pregnant all the time.

[46:22] How much pregnant?

[46:22] So much pregnant with problems.

[46:24] Yeah, it's weird.

[46:25] You're right.

[46:26] Like none of the storylines really,

[46:27] I found myself not invested in any of them.

[46:31] Yeah.

[46:32] None of the stakes for,

[46:33] they didn't create stakes that could like,

[46:38] create a scaffolding to make a movie that you'd care about.

[46:42] I said that like a robot.

[46:44] They did not.

[46:44] How much stakes were there?

[46:51] No stakes enough.

[46:52] And then by the end of the movie,

[46:54] when they wrap them all up,

[46:55] it feels dissatisfying.

[46:56] And the ones that they put the most emphasis on,

[46:58] you're like, oh, that matters.

[47:02] Also, some of the stakes are to some degree,

[47:05] like false.

[47:06] I mean, like, again,

[47:08] just bringing in stuff from the more in-depth show

[47:12] about Lucy that I listened to,

[47:14] like, it was not like Lucy didn't know

[47:17] that Desi was a philanderer.

[47:20] Like this was a huge part of their relationship,

[47:22] but the movie kind of makes it out to be like,

[47:24] oh, this one time he was in the tabloids

[47:27] and she was worried about this one thing

[47:29] that he convinced her was not true.

[47:32] Whereas in reality,

[47:33] they're mostly prostitutes.

[47:34] He would go out and he would sleep

[47:36] with a bunch of prostitutes.

[47:37] And Lucy kind of knew,

[47:39] but she loved him so much anyway.

[47:41] And he was supportive career-wise,

[47:45] and they loved each other.

[47:46] Like it was a complex relationship,

[47:48] but it's all boiled down to this one time

[47:51] that she thinks he's sleeping around.

[47:53] And it's so fake.

[47:56] Now, I've never hired a prostitute.

[47:58] Do you hire them by the bunch?

[47:59] Is that how it works?

[48:01] Sometimes.

[48:03] Cause I always thought it was like a pack of prostitutes.

[48:05] Was it a bunch?

[48:05] I don't know the terminology.

[48:07] I don't know how you order them.

[48:09] Yeah, it's a, well, one's just a prostitute.

[48:13] Two is a pair of prostitutes.

[48:16] Let's make some jokes about sex work, guys.

[48:19] That's cool.

[48:20] I'm not making a joke about sex work.

[48:21] Stuart, it's a joke about,

[48:22] it's a joke about plurals.

[48:24] It's a joke about plurals.

[48:26] It's a plural joke.

[48:28] I mean, it wasn't a good one.

[48:30] You can certainly take me down for that.

[48:32] Yeah, Stuart, you can sue him for that.

[48:33] I mean, you have the images from that and heard the joke.

[48:36] You don't need to claim that I'm trying

[48:38] to put anyone down, though.

[48:39] Sometimes you could get a BogoPro,

[48:41] which is a buy one, get one prostitute.

[48:43] Oh, yeah.

[48:45] See, that's good.

[48:45] That's good stuff.

[48:47] So, yeah.

[48:48] Yeah, so they're, anyway, they're all arguing.

[48:51] Everybody's arguing.

[48:52] And they're waiting to find out

[48:55] if the big sponsors in the East,

[48:57] if the big executives are gonna support

[48:59] their pregnancy storyline.

[49:00] And Lucy is like, gets into a,

[49:03] not an argument, but a tense conversation

[49:05] with Madeline Pugh,

[49:06] because she wants the Lucy character

[49:08] to be smarter than she is.

[49:10] And there's a generation gap between them,

[49:12] you know, of women who want to be seen as smart

[49:15] and women who just want to work

[49:17] and be the bosses behind the scenes.

[49:19] And if that means looking daffy in public,

[49:21] that's what they'll do.

[49:22] A telegram arrives supporting Desi

[49:23] in the pregnancy battle.

[49:24] So it's kind of over by two-thirds

[49:26] of the way through the movie.

[49:28] That night, and this is the scene

[49:29] where I thought it was a flashback,

[49:30] but it was actually a regular back.

[49:32] Just, it was a forward.

[49:34] It was a regular time forward,

[49:35] because it was just the next scene.

[49:37] Lucy is-

[49:38] Consecutive.

[49:39] She's doing the laundry and practicing her lines.

[49:41] And they have a baby daughter who is not sleeping well.

[49:45] And-

[49:46] And just showed up for the first time.

[49:47] Like, this is the first time I became aware

[49:49] there's a baby.

[49:50] I think they mentioned her, like,

[49:51] briefly in passing once, but up to this point.

[49:53] And so my wife was like, oh, so now it's the future

[49:56] and they had the baby?

[49:57] And I'm like, no, no, no, this is their first child.

[50:00] First of all, that never got mentioned, or barely.

[50:02] And she finds something in the laundry

[50:05] that's not super clear at first,

[50:07] but we know that it has unnerved her somewhat,

[50:10] so much so that she walks out into the rain in her pajamas,

[50:13] just dazed like a zombie.

[50:15] What does this mean?

[50:16] Okay, it's 2 a.m.

[50:17] She calls Vivian and Frawley over to the studio

[50:21] to restage the dinner scene.

[50:23] And again, she's like,

[50:24] hey, let's have you look facing the camera

[50:26] so we can see what you're doing.

[50:27] And they're like, you're a genius.

[50:29] This is better.

[50:30] And she says, oh, I did this show to be close to Desi,

[50:35] so we'd be working in the same place together,

[50:36] but outside of work, it's like he ignores me

[50:38] and he doesn't pay attention to me.

[50:40] And she feels bad about it.

[50:43] Then we get some more flashbacks about her radio career.

[50:45] And this is when,

[50:47] if the movie is trying to present Lucille Ball

[50:48] as a smart person,

[50:49] this is a scene that really bothered me,

[50:51] where she does her radio show,

[50:53] she's in her dressing room,

[50:54] and the EP of the radio show,

[50:55] who would go on to be the EP of the TV show, Tony Hale,

[50:58] he goes, hey, some people from CBS wanna talk to you.

[51:01] And she's like, yeah, yeah, radio, CBS radio, blah, blah.

[51:04] And they go, well, actually, we're from CBS television.

[51:05] And she's like, CBS does television?

[51:07] What, you wanna sell me one?

[51:08] And it's like, no, we wanna do a TV show with you.

[51:11] And she's like, oh.

[51:12] She keeps running fucking bits.

[51:14] And she runs so many zingers at them.

[51:16] And it's like, look, the minute someone walks in

[51:19] and says, no, to you backstage,

[51:21] and says, we're from television,

[51:22] you know they're there to offer you a television show.

[51:26] It takes so long for that to,

[51:28] she's got such a wall of zingers around her.

[51:30] It takes so long for that news to reach her skull.

[51:32] It's just like, come on, Lucy.

[51:34] You know this.

[51:34] We've noticed when you do your radio show,

[51:36] you do a lot of gesturing.

[51:37] It's called acting.

[51:40] And the thing is, like, every bit she does,

[51:43] their reaction is either complete confusion,

[51:46] or they just say, that's funny.

[51:47] And you would think that that complete lack of response

[51:50] would make you not wanna keep doing bits.

[51:52] Now.

[51:53] Well, that's the thing, Stuart.

[51:55] For a true comedian, there's a certain point

[51:56] where what you want is the bad reaction.

[51:58] You're doing bits so that they fail.

[51:59] Yeah, you're right.

[52:00] It is true that she really started

[52:03] playing up her facial expressions in radio

[52:05] because she noticed she got a good reaction from the crowd,

[52:08] and that was kind of what brought her into comedy on TV.

[52:13] But the way it's presented in the movie

[52:16] really makes it seem like the CBS execs are like,

[52:19] wow, we didn't realize you had a face.

[52:22] Like, you could be on television.

[52:24] It's like, she's been in movies.

[52:26] They know what she looks like.

[52:27] She knows she can express things.

[52:30] When we listened to you, it was like,

[52:32] we thought you were just a voice, a disembodied voice.

[52:35] But now we realize there's a face and a body attached to it,

[52:37] and we assume a person, a soul, inhabiting that body.

[52:40] And television needs souls.

[52:41] Not if played by Nicole Kidman, but.

[52:44] Oh, wow, ouch.

[52:46] I'm sorry.

[52:47] I really, I get that she's being commended

[52:50] for this performance, but I did not.

[52:53] I mean, maybe, I guess it's the material.

[52:56] It depends what the direction was,

[52:57] but I just would have, there's a million other actors

[53:00] I would have rather seen as Lucille Ball.

[53:02] Okay, list one of them.

[53:05] Emma Stone, Kate Winslet.

[53:07] There's two.

[53:08] I mean, actually, Kate Blanchett was initially cast.

[53:12] She was initially cast,

[53:12] and I think she would have been

[53:13] more interesting in a lot of ways, but.

[53:16] My wife suggested Annaleigh Ashford of stage name.

[53:22] I think she's good when she's doing the dramatic parts.

[53:25] I don't think you ever get a sense from her

[53:27] that she's a comedian, which is weird,

[53:29] because I do think Nicole Kidman

[53:31] can be funny in other movies.

[53:33] I thought she was really funny in Moulin Rouge,

[53:35] and she's doing a comic performance in To Die For,

[53:38] but here, you don't get the sense

[53:41] that she's got the whatever Lucy had is.

[53:44] I'm gonna blame the director on that.

[53:45] No, that's fair.

[53:46] That's where I'm gonna put the blame on that,

[53:48] that there's a, the same way that

[53:50] when I was watching the Star Wars prequels

[53:53] with my older son, and my wife walked in the room,

[53:55] she was like, Natalie Portman's really bad in this,

[53:58] and I was like, oh, they're all bad in it.

[53:59] You gotta blame the directing.

[54:01] Like, these are all actors who are good actors,

[54:03] and they're very bad in this movie,

[54:04] but you just, like Samuel L. Jackson is bad in this movie.

[54:07] Like, that's how bad the directing is,

[54:08] but so I'm gonna blame Sorkin on that one,

[54:11] but I do agree with you that, like,

[54:14] Nicole, a lot of the reviews I've seen,

[54:15] they're like, Nicole Kidman plays Lucio Ball

[54:17] as a real person, and I don't really get that from her.

[54:20] I get a character from her,

[54:21] but I don't get a full, like, living, breathing,

[54:24] if anything, and the weird thing was that

[54:25] I had heard stuff about Javier Bardem being miscast,

[54:28] and I actually found him to be more of a person

[54:31] than Nicole Kidman was, you know?

[54:33] I just found the portrayal to be so uncharismatic

[54:37] and unlikable, which, if you're gonna spend two hours

[54:42] and however many minutes, like, with someone,

[54:46] they should be a little more likable,

[54:48] even if she really was that tough in real life.

[54:50] Or at least have the, like, someone could be unlikable,

[54:52] but still have the charisma, where you're like,

[54:54] I get it, I see why this person is the center

[54:56] of this whole thing, and I wanna see them succeed,

[54:58] and, but it's, there's a, I don't know,

[55:01] some of it is that Aaron Sorkin thing

[55:03] where it kind of, like, the ending is never in doubt.

[55:05] Like, you kind of always know what's gonna happen,

[55:07] and there's no stakes, and that makes it harder

[55:10] for the character to be sympathetic

[55:12] when they are, like, kind of spinning like a top, you know?

[55:16] Like, Nicole Kidman, I mean, it is a weird choice,

[55:18] but in the scenes where she's particularly flustered,

[55:21] Nicole Kidman begins to spin like a top

[55:22] with her arms out, you know?

[55:24] Like a Mega Man villain.

[55:25] You gotta use that bubble on him.

[55:30] Yeah, you gotta use bubbles, get a quick bubble.

[55:32] Well, that's why, it's,

[55:33] because Mega Man is all about the order of the levels.

[55:35] We all know that, that's the secret.

[55:37] You gotta know what order to do them in, yeah.

[55:38] I'm gonna change from saying she was unlikable,

[55:41] even though I found her to be unlikable,

[55:42] to she wasn't compelling.

[55:45] The character wasn't compelling enough

[55:47] to want to spend that much time.

[55:48] I do wonder if that's, like, in part,

[55:52] the problem is that they are making her up

[55:54] to look so much like Lucy,

[55:55] and so much emphasis is going on imitation

[55:58] that I think that that mutes people's charisma sometimes

[56:02] when there's too much of that going on,

[56:04] like the surface stuff.

[56:06] Yeah, I would always rather watch a movie

[56:07] where someone is playing the character in the movie

[56:10] and not worrying that much

[56:11] about seeming like the real person

[56:13] than one where they go all out to seem like the real person.

[56:16] If they can do both, that's amazing,

[56:18] but it's better to see this, like,

[56:20] you could cast someone who doesn't look like,

[56:22] I mean, cast Tiffany Haddish as Lucy O'Ball,

[56:25] and then don't worry about the way she looks,

[56:27] and just, like, let her be the character,

[56:28] and it would be great, you know?

[56:30] So, but the idea that, like,

[56:33] you gotta get the voice exactly right,

[56:34] you gotta get the look as close as you can.

[56:36] Yeah, like the Wizard Magazine fucking casting shit

[56:39] where people were like,

[56:40] Deborah Messing did that one photo shoot

[56:42] and she looked like Lucy, why didn't they get her to do it?

[56:45] There's obviously only one person who can play Wolverine,

[56:48] a man who is not an actor.

[56:53] So, anyway, she's a sitcom star now, cut to now,

[56:56] and Lucy, she surprises the executive producer

[57:01] by admitting that he was right,

[57:02] it was insulting to him for her to just kind of say,

[57:05] hey, can I give your credit to my husband

[57:07] in order to save our marriage?

[57:08] And he's like, I don't think you've ever said that before

[57:10] that you're right, she's like,

[57:11] I don't think I've ever said it out loud,

[57:12] and they're interrupted by-

[57:13] Zing.

[57:14] Yeah, zing.

[57:16] I'm very humble in my head.

[57:19] They're interrupted by the news

[57:20] that the executives are meeting with Desi,

[57:23] which is the kind of thing you would do

[57:24] if he was the executive producer of the show.

[57:26] The newspapers have picked up that Lucy

[57:28] is a communist story, uh-oh,

[57:30] and Desi Arnaz has a plan,

[57:31] he's gonna tell the audience

[57:32] that Lucy checked the wrong box

[57:34] on the what party do I belong to card,

[57:37] and she's like, no, I don't want to,

[57:38] I didn't check the wrong box, I'm not gonna do that.

[57:41] And he's like, you did check the wrong box

[57:44] because I was kicked out of my country by them,

[57:46] and it's like, well, you weren't in real life.

[57:47] Like, again, that's not true.

[57:52] You might as well go ahead

[57:53] and make him a Holocaust survivor at that point,

[57:55] if you're gonna fudge it that much.

[57:57] Or make it so that his family was killed

[57:59] in the Stalinist purges or whatever,

[58:01] really make it obvious.

[58:01] When the Decepticons attacked Cuba.

[58:05] I was there when the bugs attacked Puerto Rico

[58:07] and destroyed San Juan.

[58:09] Wait, that's, you're not from Puerto Rico,

[58:11] and that's from Starship Troopers.

[58:12] Like, is that where you're from now?

[58:14] Bolsheviks ran me out during the Crusades.

[58:18] So confused, I have to believe it.

[58:22] I mean, so no one would make up a lie that obvious,

[58:24] so it must be true.

[58:27] And Lucy and Vivian kind of make up a little bit

[58:29] over the fact that they're both worried about life, I guess.

[58:32] And Madeline Pugh comes over to Lucy and is like,

[58:34] you're my hero, Lucy.

[58:35] There's a lot of unearned, like, bending bridges.

[58:39] Yeah, and William Frawley comes out,

[58:41] and this was something I actually liked.

[58:42] He goes, you know, a man doesn't like being called old.

[58:46] And it was the first time throughout the movie

[58:48] where I'm like, oh yeah, his feelings probably are hurt

[58:50] when Vivian Bantz is constantly like,

[58:51] he's too old to be my husband.

[58:53] I'm not old enough to play his wife, you know?

[58:57] It was funny to me where I was like,

[58:59] I kind of bought into like, well,

[59:01] who cares about men's feelings until that moment?

[59:03] And I was like, oh yeah, that's right.

[59:04] Men have feelings too.

[59:05] I should know that, I have feelings.

[59:07] Like, I should feel for William Frawley a little bit.

[59:08] Okay, men's rights.

[59:09] Yeah, I'm just saying.

[59:11] Yeah, file this episode under men's rights, I guess.

[59:13] And that men have the best feelings.

[59:14] That's all I'm saying is that men have the best feelings.

[59:17] And they're all nervous about losing the show,

[59:19] even though that's a problem that just popped up

[59:21] like a couple minutes ago

[59:23] and they had forgotten about until then.

[59:25] Desi goes out and he goes to warm up the audience,

[59:28] which he usually did, and he goes,

[59:30] look, I'm gonna tell you this story about how,

[59:32] this is the story that's out there,

[59:33] that Lucy is a communist.

[59:34] Well, guess what?

[59:36] I've got a phone call that I think is gonna help out.

[59:39] And he puts the phone up to the microphone,

[59:42] you can tell me, does the FBI have any reason

[59:45] to believe Lucille Ball is a communist?

[59:46] And the phone calls like, no, we don't.

[59:48] In a very cheery voice.

[59:50] Yeah, no, we don't at all.

[59:51] And would the FBI be investigating her for communism?

[59:55] Nope, we're not gonna do that.

[59:56] And can you tell us your name?

[59:57] And he goes, J. Edgar Hoover.

[1:00:00] loses their shit. They're like, well if J. Edgar Hoover has cleared her, she must be an all-american woman.

[1:00:05] And it's like the, I saw someone, before this was spoiled for me, because I saw someone mention on Twitter like that, the idea that

[1:00:11] J. Edgar Hoover is the hero of the movie, a genuinely bad man, doing terrible things.

[1:00:15] Yeah, I was like, I was like, we're the directorial notes.

[1:00:17] Okay, you're only going to be a voice, but you need to convey that you're a huge piece of shit.

[1:00:23] But you're also, you're a, by all, by against all accounts, now everyone in this movie is going to go way overboard in trying to impersonate

[1:00:28] their people. But we want, instead of J. Edgar Hoover, the, the very, very mean man, who is never happy,

[1:00:34] we want you to be kind of J. Edgar Hoover as kind of a Santa Claus type, you know.

[1:00:38] Although,

[1:00:39] I was confirming what I already knew to be true, but I just looked it up, uh, that this phone call never happened.

[1:00:46] Uh, and apparently he, he was a fan of the show.

[1:00:49] He was too busy spying on civil rights activists. He didn't have time to call into I Love Lucy.

[1:00:53] No, he, but he, he did write a fan letter. So apparently he did love Lucy like everyone else did.

[1:00:59] I wanted to ask Elliot, was this the fact that

[1:01:02] you, was this the part that you were particularly mad about? Because I was mad about this, that this, the whole

[1:01:08] major conflict is solved by a call to J. Edgar Hoover that didn't happen in real life.

[1:01:13] And it's like, well, if you had Hoover on your side the whole time, like what is your problem?

[1:01:17] Must be nice to have Hoover on your side. Rather than what really happened,

[1:01:20] which was that Desi came out and gave a heartfelt speech about his wife, which would have been, you know, a much more

[1:01:27] interesting,

[1:01:29] cinematic, rousing moment. Much more interesting and much more on the note, on point for the story of the movie,

[1:01:34] which is about their marriage. Like the, the, what I think it bothered me that in a couple,

[1:01:39] I mean, the thing that bothered me the most was the, was the Cuban revolution thing, honestly,

[1:01:42] but this bothered me second most. But it was partly also because

[1:01:45] he says, I called everybody to, I called everybody I could to get to this and it's like,

[1:01:49] oh, I would have liked to have seen that. I would have liked to have seen

[1:01:52] what the man who turns out to be the hero of the movie,

[1:01:55] fighting for his wife and doing all the work,

[1:01:57] as opposed to just seeing the, have him tell me that and hear a final phone call. Much as in the movie, The Post,

[1:02:02] the, the, uh, the court judgment that allows the Pentagon Papers to be printed is relayed to us

[1:02:08] by a woman repeating what she's hearing over the phone, where it's like,

[1:02:11] movie, you can show us them announcing this. Like we don't need to, it doesn't need to be reported to us via phone,

[1:02:16] you know, but the, maybe this is why he was never home.

[1:02:20] Yeah, because he was busy.

[1:02:22] Busy calling.

[1:02:23] And, uh, I have to keep these calls a secret from Lucy too, so it can be a big surprise.

[1:02:28] It is crazy, but Danny, I think you're right, for a movie that has done so much work to gin up kind of fake drama,

[1:02:34] for it to then

[1:02:35] completely avoid the most real drama that they could have, with that moment, is a, is a very frustrating thing.

[1:02:42] Alison, you wanted to say something earlier, and I'm sorry we interrupted you. Oh, yeah, so apparently,

[1:02:47] she wasn't cleared though. I mean, she wasn't, she was, like, that was the, I think, the end of it publicly, but

[1:02:53] I think J. Edgar Hoover. Oh no, she went to jail. She died in jail. Wow.

[1:02:58] Yet again, they didn't show that. No, but I think that they did, like, keep records on her and keep tabs on her for years after.

[1:03:04] I know this because,

[1:03:05] after I watched the movie, then I was griping about it to my husband for so long, and then we watched

[1:03:10] the episode of I Love Lucy, and then both of us were curious, like, what was the real story?

[1:03:14] So then we both did some googling, and he encountered something that said that they kept, you know,

[1:03:20] they were, they were, like, spying on her for years after this. I totally believe it. Well, that sounds like Hoover.

[1:03:25] Yeah. Yeah, I don't even, I could imagine Hoover being like, what a hilarious lady. I love her show.

[1:03:30] She might be a communist, so we're gonna watch her for the rest of her life.

[1:03:33] I love watching Lucy on the TV. Now I can finally watch her in her private life.

[1:03:38] But it's, it is such a, it's such an

[1:03:40] anti-dramatic way to end the movie, and it is the idea that

[1:03:43] J. Edgar Hoover is a good guy in it, that

[1:03:45] they're gonna finish everything with a telephone call. Like you said, in the real life, Desi came out and gave this, this

[1:03:50] inspirational speech about his wife, like, end the movie that way. Like, why? Yeah.

[1:03:54] But I guess. Well, I texted you this, you know, beforehand, but, like, it feels like Aaron Sorkin's like, no, no, no, no.

[1:04:00] I write the inspiring speeches here, Desi Arnaz.

[1:04:03] You don't get one in my version. Not, not realizing that. He would get to write this speech in the movie, because it's, yeah,

[1:04:09] it's a little bit like, uh, there's an old story about, um,

[1:04:12] an episode of the Joey Bishop show, where Joey Bishop was playing himself, and did, like, an identical brother, or identical cousin,

[1:04:18] and he was mad, because the cousin character was getting all the funny lines, and it was like,

[1:04:21] but, like, it would, he just couldn't figure, he couldn't accept that, even though he was playing both characters,

[1:04:26] he didn't like that the other character, who was not him, was, was getting the funny lines, you know. Oh, man.

[1:04:31] That's great. But, uh, so they, they arranged that call. Now that they have J. Edgar Hoover's seal of approval,

[1:04:37] no one can ever take their show off the air. It's, it's good, it's gold forever.

[1:04:41] The audience applauds. They can't wait to see Lucy, uh, and backstage.

[1:04:45] Desi's like, we did it, Lucy, I saved you. And Lucy goes, have you been cheating on me?

[1:04:49] And he goes, no, no, of course not. I never would. Crazy that it's all hap, like, that's like Whiplash, not the J.K.

[1:04:56] Simmons movie. Like, it happened so fast.

[1:04:58] Yeah. Like, yay, he, I'm exonerated, but also, I have something to bring up to you.

[1:05:04] And I think if they had really been able to sell the idea that this is festering in her, this doubt,

[1:05:08] you know, this worry about his fidelity, then it would have made sense that, like, she just can't hold it in anymore.

[1:05:13] But instead, it just feels like, the movie's like, well, we're running out of time.

[1:05:16] We gotta resolve this plot, too. And he's like, what are you talking about?

[1:05:18] We're about to do the show. Come on, let's do it. And she holds up, she goes,

[1:05:21] I found this handkerchief with lipstick on it. And he goes, no, no, that's your lipstick, remember?

[1:05:25] And then she holds up another handkerchief with her lipstick, which is a different shade,

[1:05:28] which I thought was hilarious, that she's like, I gotta have all my evidence on it.

[1:05:34] That she's been walking around all day with these two handkerchiefs, waiting for the moment to spring the trap.

[1:05:40] Yeah, just to remember which pocket, which one's in. Oh, yeah, like a great magician.

[1:05:45] And that she's like, close the doors. One of us in here is a philanderer.

[1:05:50] Let me explain. And he goes, oh, they were just call girls. They were hookers. It doesn't mean anything.

[1:05:54] There's nothing deeper than that. And my wife turned to me at this point and went, that's not a good excuse.

[1:05:59] That does not fly. I was like, yeah, I know. Don't worry.

[1:06:02] And she interrupts him. She's like, I just want to know. Now we have to start the show.

[1:06:06] Like now that that doubt has been has been taken, now that she knows she can go do the show.

[1:06:11] But then there's this like this coda. And I want you guys to maybe explain it to me,

[1:06:16] because I didn't really understand what's going on with it.

[1:06:18] The talking heads are back and they're like, so Lucy and the director disagreed about this bit

[1:06:22] where Desi sneaks up behind her and she pretends she doesn't know who he is.

[1:06:26] So they did it two ways and they recorded it the way where she pretends.

[1:06:29] And it worked fine. And they recorded that they tried to do the other way.

[1:06:33] And for the only time in I Love Lucy history,

[1:06:36] Lucy forgot her lines and she just kind of blanks and can't remember what the line is.

[1:06:40] And then they go on and they go, we never did a retake of that open.

[1:06:44] And we shot the rest of the episode and Lucy went on forever.

[1:06:47] And then there's a piece of text on screen that says the morning after the Lucy show ended,

[1:06:51] she filed for divorce from Desi the morning after I Love Lucy ended.

[1:06:54] And what is going on when she blanks in the opening scene?

[1:06:59] Is it that she like, at that moment, she no longer loves him.

[1:07:02] And so she can't play that real scene. She has to play the fake scene or what's going on?

[1:07:05] There's a part earlier in it where she talked like,

[1:07:08] it says whenever Lucy was in like a particularly bleak mood,

[1:07:12] she said that she has no home because like, she'd, you know,

[1:07:15] like all this stuff that happened with her family growing up and,

[1:07:18] and et cetera. So it's like, she feels displaced.

[1:07:20] And then like Desi comes in, he does his Lucy, I'm home.

[1:07:24] That's the line that triggers her to be like, like, just like, I don't have a home anymore.

[1:07:29] Like this man has cheated on me. Like that is the way I interpreted what was going on.

[1:07:34] That makes sense. Cause she was talking earlier about like, I made this,

[1:07:37] we were never together, even though we were married, we're always apart working.

[1:07:40] So I made this home and the only place he pays attention to me is this stage.

[1:07:44] This is, this is our house. Like that makes sense to me.

[1:07:46] Yeah. I didn't get that either.

[1:07:48] This one, but well, but the thing that makes me mad about it is just like, this is all,

[1:07:53] I presume, I mean, I don't know for sure, but I presume this is,

[1:07:56] this part is all made up bullshit. You heard a podcast about it. You don't know.

[1:07:59] I mean, you're an expert now, I guess. I was not there for the, the,

[1:08:02] the shooting of this particular episode, but this feels like just like made up

[1:08:06] bullshit. So you can have like this emotional ending and it also like, yeah,

[1:08:11] she divorced him after I love Lucy went off the air, which was further down the line.

[1:08:19] And like, it just makes it feel like, again,

[1:08:21] that there was this one instance of philandering and then she divorced him when in reality,

[1:08:27] yeah, she divorced him because he was sleeping with prostitutes all the time,

[1:08:31] but it was something that was going on all the time, even during the shooting,

[1:08:35] even during the episodes.

[1:08:36] Even while she was sleeping with him, he was sleeping with prostitutes at the same time.

[1:08:40] She was like, how do you think I don't notice this?

[1:08:42] We're both in the bed together. He's like, Lucy, I don't know what you're talking about.

[1:08:46] Yeah. And then she pulls out one pair of panties. He's like, that's your panties.

[1:08:50] And he pulls out another pair of panties and then she points to her own,

[1:08:54] her own pelvis where she's still wearing panties. And she goes, these are my panties.

[1:08:57] This is that's no, no, that's your vagina. This is my vagina.

[1:09:02] The I mean, the implication is also that the implication is that they did not,

[1:09:07] from that moment on their marriage was a sham until the end of the,

[1:09:10] and she only stayed with him for the show, which is like,

[1:09:13] they were like friends till they died. Like they could not stay married,

[1:09:17] but they shared a lot of love. And like, she was there when he died. Like it,

[1:09:22] it's just a weird way of presenting it.

[1:09:24] But at the same time, like the, I mean, their children are executive producers on this movie,

[1:09:29] which means that they oversaw everything. Cause as the movie makes clear, you earn that executive

[1:09:33] producer title. And, and I know that their, her daughter was like, they did it. They got an honest

[1:09:38] movie. So I don't know, maybe that's wonder which part she's talking about.

[1:09:42] Not the Cuban revolution stuff. Yeah. I mean, is there any idea why this specific episode? Cause

[1:09:48] so the movie takes place over a week where they're like producing this one episode of the show. And

[1:09:53] yes, from what I can tell, it's not a particularly exemplary episode. Like it's not one of the

[1:09:58] standouts. Well, I think that

[1:10:00] be part of it is that they're they is choosing a week where they're just making a regular run of

[1:10:04] the mill episode rather than like one with a famous set piece or like uh that not not her

[1:10:10] dancing with the eggs in her shirt or vitamin or any of those episodes you know and maybe this is

[1:10:14] the one the communist one like i mean they they compressed it all but like they could he could be

[1:10:19] like okay well what was the one i don't think so according to what i read i think they just

[1:10:22] picked an episode yeah that's very strange yeah and also this may be his favorite episode i don't

[1:10:28] know this was the 22nd episode of season one and in the movie it's the 37th episode yeah i don't

[1:10:35] know the significance of that but it's also wait because numerology baby they do say it's the 37th

[1:10:42] right which would be the last episode of the season but the writers are working they have a

[1:10:46] whole board of right coming episodes and it's like how far ahead were they working do they

[1:10:49] work on next season's episodes already i mean that's how they did it back then i don't know

[1:10:53] it is eric said today does anyone know is aaron sorkin like a big i love lucy fan

[1:10:59] i don't know it doesn't seem like not based on the content well that's i i kind of had the same

[1:11:04] reaction to this that i had to west side story in some ways where i was like i don't know why

[1:11:09] the people who made this felt the need to make this like i don't know what from this

[1:11:13] aaron sorkin felt was the story he wanted to tell or why he's telling it you know i wouldn't be

[1:11:17] surprised if you know number one as you say he's a he's a tv nut but even though he doesn't seem to

[1:11:23] know anything about it so he's like it says it says aaron sorkin tv and a number one grandpa

[1:11:30] the most important television shows and it touches on like these political and social

[1:11:35] issues that i can get on my high horse about yeah his horse is very funny of his twitter bio

[1:11:41] was like tv nut husband uh mushroom

[1:11:47] shroom enthusiast and then it's like uh it's like west wing guy or something like that

[1:11:52] but i yeah i i mean he also i guess he was not the first person attached to this movie

[1:11:57] but uh so maybe he was just taking a job i don't know but it doesn't

[1:12:01] seem like yeah i don't know it's a movie that it's a movie that feels very like um

[1:12:06] yeah like when i mean i was very bored by it while watching it i have to admit but uh

[1:12:10] once it was over i was like so that was so that was something about i love lucy but i don't know

[1:12:15] what i don't know i don't know what it's saying you know i don't know what the story is meant to

[1:12:18] communicate other than what a crazy week you know who did enjoy it at the very end my five-year-old

[1:12:24] walked in during the scene where he comes up behind her and puts his hands in front of her eyes

[1:12:29] this is during the movie not when i watched the actual episode afterwards and he laughed and said

[1:12:34] that's funny yeah so okay yeah so that's it was aaron sorkin was a five-year-old in all of us

[1:12:40] yeah uh that does seem like a thing five-year-olds you know would enjoy a little peekaboo a little

[1:12:45] you know surprise he's like they put a zoo spin on peekaboo that's amazing

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[1:18:43] okay well let's do our final judgments and this is where we say whether it's a good bad movie

[1:18:48] a bad bad movie or a movie uh you kind of like we will clarify if you have any questions about these

[1:18:56] categories that don't really uh because if you if you choose wrong you'll be punished yeah you'll

[1:19:02] the dunk tank what happens um no i'm gonna look having given out the categories i don't know if

[1:19:11] this really fits into the usual ones for me because we got to talk about our categories

[1:19:14] at some point it happens so often that that we have trouble with the categories that's part of

[1:19:18] the fun i like part of the wait so dan i put together actually i have an agenda for our next

[1:19:21] meeting of what things we need to talk about number one kevin yeah for sure number two the

[1:19:25] categories and then i have an alternate list of things we don't need to talk about the meeting

[1:19:29] and bruno is number one on those so we gotta talk about kevin we gotta talk about the categories we

[1:19:33] don't need to talk about bruno so that's just for the meeting next time okay great um now everybody's

[1:19:39] talking about jamie but i don't know that we have to we'll put that on a separate list for the

[1:19:42] meeting okay you know everybody's doing it so i can't wait um the so i don't i don't know sorkin

[1:19:51] sometimes i i enjoy him very much and then sometimes his uh particular flaws are so big that

[1:20:00] They just sink everything.

[1:20:01] Um, he likes to be clever.

[1:20:03] He likes to have all of his characters basically talk exactly the same as

[1:20:07] one another in these clever ways.

[1:20:09] Uh, he loves grandstanding speeches, et cetera, et cetera.

[1:20:13] And the thing is, I usually find it entertaining.

[1:20:17] It just depends on whether I find it entertaining good or

[1:20:20] it's like a hate watch, which is like, I don't think it's good, bad.

[1:20:24] I think that if you, you know, enjoy Sorkin sometimes, but

[1:20:28] sometimes she gives you a headache.

[1:20:30] This is interesting to watch because you can be like, Oh,

[1:20:33] why are you doing it this way?

[1:20:35] And especially because the movie is so filled with like information while

[1:20:40] still being wrong about so much.

[1:20:42] Like, like it is, it might as well be like a, like a YouTube

[1:20:46] explainer about I love Lucy that he's done in dramatic style, except

[1:20:50] for them, like a bunch of the facts are wrong, so I don't know.

[1:20:53] Yeah.

[1:20:53] There's a bunch of footnotes in the comments.

[1:20:54] Yeah.

[1:20:55] What do you, what do you say, Stu?

[1:20:56] Yeah.

[1:20:56] I mean, I'm not, uh, I honestly, I wasn't

[1:20:59] super familiar with, I love Lucy.

[1:21:01] When I was a kid, I'm sure I saw some episodes on Nick at night.

[1:21:05] Um, but it didn't seem to have a particularly big place in my brain.

[1:21:10] Uh, but I found like, particularly I found like Nicole Kidman's

[1:21:13] performance was very off putting.

[1:21:16] Uh, I, most of the scenes are fairly flat.

[1:21:19] It's all that like walk and talk, like overly snappy kind of mean

[1:21:23] everybody's mean to each other dialogue.

[1:21:25] They are all very mean to each other.

[1:21:27] Yeah.

[1:21:27] Um, and it turns out all the stuff I learned was wrong.

[1:21:30] So fuck you movie.

[1:21:33] Uh, so I'm going to say bad, bad.

[1:21:35] Yeah.

[1:21:35] I'm also going to say bad, bad.

[1:21:36] I found it very boring and, um, some people in it were trying and there

[1:21:40] were some moments that were amusing, but overall I was, I was left bored and

[1:21:45] baffled, that's right, B and B a classic Airbnb in that I was breathing air.

[1:21:50] And I was bored and baffled while watching the movie, Alison, what do you think?

[1:21:52] I think you probably liked it, right?

[1:21:54] I loved it.

[1:21:55] I don't know.

[1:21:56] I don't, when you said that we're going to do being the Ricardos, I thought,

[1:22:00] but this is the flop house.

[1:22:01] I thought we'd talk about trash and this is a gemstone.

[1:22:05] Um, I was on the edge.

[1:22:07] No, I also give it two B's bad, bad.

[1:22:10] Um, I found it very unenjoyable to watch.

[1:22:16] Uh, and if I, if we weren't going to be talking about it,

[1:22:18] I would have turned it off.

[1:22:20] And you know, also like Stuart, I, uh, I love Lucy was not, you know, like

[1:22:25] I'm sure I've seen episodes, but I never really paid attention to them.

[1:22:28] And then afterwards I did go watch an episode and I found myself

[1:22:32] laughing and really enjoying it.

[1:22:34] So, uh, this movie does a disservice to the show.

[1:22:37] Yeah.

[1:22:37] It's a, it's a fun show.

[1:22:38] I mean, I grew up in a very, I love Lucy, uh, loving household

[1:22:42] because my mom was a big fan.

[1:22:43] And, and so it's, uh, and probably continues to be, but she doesn't, doesn't

[1:22:47] talk about it that much anymore.

[1:22:48] But, uh, yeah, we, we, we don't talk about Lucy.

[1:22:52] She's more into the dictator and, uh, what's the other, other ones.

[1:22:57] Yeah.

[1:22:57] Now what if they, if another thing, if in Conto, it was the movie, Bruno,

[1:23:00] they weren't talking about, I would totally get it.

[1:23:02] There's, you know, you want to avoid it, but the, it, yeah, it's like, uh,

[1:23:07] this is the movie equivalent of like, you go out for a meal and they're like,

[1:23:10] oh no, no, we only serve protein shakes here.

[1:23:12] And you're like, okay, well at least it's going to have the nutrients of a meal.

[1:23:15] And you drink the whole thing and it tastes chalky.

[1:23:17] And they're like, actually, there were no nutrients in that.

[1:23:18] And you're like, what?

[1:23:22] Thanks for, thanks for putting it in words.

[1:23:24] I'll understand.

[1:23:25] Yeah.

[1:23:25] I had to translate it into Stewie's.

[1:23:26] Yeah.

[1:23:28] Like, so wait, I'm not getting gains from this.

[1:23:33] Okay.

[1:23:33] Yeah.

[1:23:33] It was just a slog, but it wasn't accurate.

[1:23:37] Yeah.

[1:23:40] When it lacked in excitement, it gained in disinformation.

[1:23:44] Yeah.

[1:23:45] Yeah.

[1:23:46] It's like, if you're going to make up a story, make a fucking good one, dude.

[1:23:50] Yeah.

[1:23:50] I wondered, was there source material this was based on?

[1:23:53] And it seems like there was not.

[1:23:55] Hence, like we're saying, he made up so much of everything.

[1:24:00] Yeah.

[1:24:00] When you realize he can just make up a story, like, I don't know, do like a Lord

[1:24:03] of the Rings or something.

[1:24:04] Who knows?

[1:24:04] Yeah.

[1:24:05] Yeah.

[1:24:05] I have a Lucille Ball at Mount Doom.

[1:24:07] Yeah.

[1:24:07] Sure.

[1:24:07] Why not?

[1:24:09] Okay.

[1:24:09] Well, let's, uh, uh, go on to letters from listeners, listeners like you, you

[1:24:14] write them and then they go through the internet and I get them and I, uh, read

[1:24:19] them on the air.

[1:24:20] That's how it works.

[1:24:21] I didn't need to explain it in such detail.

[1:24:23] This is from Chris.

[1:24:25] Last name withheld.

[1:24:27] And Chris writes, fellas, let's have a chat.

[1:24:31] It's been, it's going to be hard when you can't talk really back to him, but I guess

[1:24:34] we could do it through, like he sends a letter or she he's, they send the letter

[1:24:39] and then we respond and they send another letter, like a chest by mail type thing.

[1:24:43] Yeah.

[1:24:43] Uh, yeah.

[1:24:44] Let's have a chat.

[1:24:45] It's been nearly three years since Tom Hooper's cats and your episode about it

[1:24:49] came out, but earlier this month I was struck with, and I suddenly saw this look

[1:24:53] on the face of Stuart, just feeling very old, but it's been three years, especially

[1:24:58] because like night from the crusades, that was one of the last movies we saw before

[1:25:02] the, I also think you misread that.

[1:25:05] You should have said ants, man.

[1:25:07] Almost three years since just for Aaron Sorkin sake, he's listening to this

[1:25:10] episode, you know, but earlier this month.

[1:25:13] I was struck with an intense cat's fever that snowballed out of control.

[1:25:17] It could be feeling AIDS.

[1:25:20] Thank you.

[1:25:20] That is a good point.

[1:25:21] Or cat scratch fever.

[1:25:24] No, we're not giving Ted Nugent money.

[1:25:26] Okay.

[1:25:26] No, I mean that we don't ever, Stu, we, I don't think we have to pay for that.

[1:25:29] We've never paid for me singing one part of Cat Scratch Finger.

[1:25:34] Uh, cat's fever that snowballed out of control and resulted in me spending full

[1:25:39] days watching the cat's movie followed by filmed cat stage shows, followed by

[1:25:44] your cat's episode, followed by listening to my favorite songs on repeat, despite

[1:25:50] Elliott teasing the audience that the Flathouse might do a yearly cat

[1:25:53] extravaganza that never occurred.

[1:25:56] I am a gracious listener.

[1:25:58] And since you seem to get such joy from the movie, I'd like to

[1:26:01] inform you of two cats facts.

[1:26:03] Number one, number one, the word facts has all the letters in cats.

[1:26:07] Plus one extra.

[1:26:11] I guess that is a fact.

[1:26:14] Prove me wrong, Dan.

[1:26:15] Prove me wrong.

[1:26:16] It's a cat.

[1:26:17] That's a cat foot.

[1:26:18] All right.

[1:26:22] In the recording of the 1998 stage production during Rum Tum Tugger's song.

[1:26:29] I like even just reading the name makes Dan smile.

[1:26:31] It's hard to say without giggling.

[1:26:34] Rum Tum Tugger's song.

[1:26:35] A lot of the choreography is concerned with Rum Tum Tugger's undulating

[1:26:39] hips and pelvic thrusting.

[1:26:41] And at one point there's a lady cat kneeling on the ground and he

[1:26:45] pelvic thrusts directly into her face.

[1:26:47] She then swoons and has to be held back by some other cats.

[1:26:51] And almost immediately after she sat upright, Rum Tum Tugger approaches

[1:26:55] her again and put something we have no idea what in her mouth, but

[1:26:58] she then eats with the light.

[1:27:00] He struts away and we are given no explanation for why that just happened.

[1:27:04] That's a little cat's moment from the stage show.

[1:27:06] So is that the fact?

[1:27:07] Cause that's not really a fact.

[1:27:08] That's just not really a fact.

[1:27:09] It's just kind of a thing.

[1:27:12] Yeah.

[1:27:12] Number two, I believe it was, I will say this is, there was at one point when I

[1:27:16] think there might've been a daily show piece about it, a woman was suing the

[1:27:19] production of Cats in New York before it closed because she was in the audience.

[1:27:22] And I believe the actor playing Rum Tum Tugger came up and like thrusted

[1:27:25] his pelvis in her face as part of it.

[1:27:27] Like he would go into the audience, I guess, and be sexy in front of the

[1:27:31] audience and she did not care for that.

[1:27:32] And I think I wouldn't either.

[1:27:34] I think I don't know how the case went, but I think there was a lawsuit.

[1:27:36] Yeah.

[1:27:36] I think they should not have, uh, choreographed it in that fashion.

[1:27:39] Number two, I regret to inform you that as opposed to the movie where

[1:27:43] Monkstrap is, as you said, a cat so boring that he has no discerning

[1:27:47] qualities and can only sing about other cats, he does have one standout quality

[1:27:52] in the stage production, which is that he is Monkstrap the racist cat.

[1:27:56] Yes.

[1:27:57] You, you may say that Tom Hooper did everything wrong with this movie, but

[1:27:59] he did make one good decision, which was removing the particular song from

[1:28:03] the movie, The Awful Battle of the Peaks and the Pollicles.

[1:28:08] This is a song that comes right after Old Doot arrives, in which all the

[1:28:12] Jellicle cats put on a play for him about a fight between the Pollicle dogs,

[1:28:17] presumably the dog equivalent of the Jellicles, and the Peak dogs, who

[1:28:21] seem to be distinguished from Pollicle dogs purely by their being Chinese breeds.

[1:28:26] Monkstrap narrates the play and at some point sings, now the Peak, although

[1:28:30] people may say what they please, is no British dog, but a heathen Chinese.

[1:28:35] And soon after, and together they started to grumble and wheeze in

[1:28:38] their huffery snuffery, heathen Chinese.

[1:28:41] Oof.

[1:28:42] Yeah.

[1:28:42] It sounds like, yeah, that's like Dr.

[1:28:44] Seuss to the polish.

[1:28:47] Those are the, those are the pages that they take out of the Dr.

[1:28:49] Seuss books now.

[1:28:49] Yeah.

[1:28:50] Of course they're not, they're referring to dogs here and not people, but you know.

[1:28:54] Oh, okay.

[1:28:54] Then it's fine.

[1:28:57] Then why didn't you say, yeah, then, then bafflingly, once the cats are done

[1:29:02] with their play, they look to old dude for approval and his response is

[1:29:05] essentially cats, dogs, what does it matter?

[1:29:09] We will both come to dust in the end.

[1:29:11] And you're like, uh, what prompted me to say that now that you've experienced

[1:29:18] the ups and lows of my cats facts.

[1:29:20] And again, we're not sure about the facts, but it was interesting.

[1:29:23] I have an entirely unrelated question.

[1:29:25] Have you ever had a movie or a book, album, comic, or anything?

[1:29:29] I guess that you, for some reason had a very specific impression of that you

[1:29:33] thought everyone on earth must have only to go out in the real world and discover

[1:29:38] that your impression was horribly, horribly mistaken in some way bonus

[1:29:42] points, if it's super embarrassing.

[1:29:45] Thanks, Chris redacted.

[1:29:46] Well, I thought cats wasn't racist, which apparently is not true.

[1:29:49] So there's that.

[1:29:50] Well, first, before you have that question, Alison, have you seen cats?

[1:29:53] I saw the show when I was young, I have not seen the movie.

[1:29:57] Is it enjoyable?

[1:29:58] Bad or just bad, bad.

[1:30:00] I think we all think it's very enjoyable.

[1:30:03] I think I need to see it.

[1:30:04] Maybe I'll watch that today on a television that's not playing the Super Bowl.

[1:30:09] Yeah.

[1:30:10] There's not a second in that movie that you're not like, someone made this movie.

[1:30:13] This is crazy.

[1:30:14] This was a choice.

[1:30:16] And I think there's two really great dance scenes in it.

[1:30:20] And just when the movie starts to flag, that's when, that's right, the railroad cat comes

[1:30:23] out and he just does an amazing tap dance and he's like a, just, he's a gay icon and

[1:30:30] everything.

[1:30:31] I love tap dancing.

[1:30:32] I love Andrew Lloyd Webber.

[1:30:34] And I love T.S.

[1:30:35] Elliott.

[1:30:36] Some of T.S.

[1:30:37] Elliott.

[1:30:38] So I think I should see it.

[1:30:39] Which is the railroad cat?

[1:30:40] Is it Skimble Pants?

[1:30:41] Skimble Shanks.

[1:30:44] Yeah.

[1:30:45] Yeah.

[1:30:46] So it's well worth, it's well worth seeking out.

[1:30:47] I think we, you know what?

[1:30:48] Guys, we should do an annual cat.

[1:30:49] We should watch Cats again at least with Jenny and Natalie.

[1:30:52] And then we can bring other people, a star of the show, Allison, or maybe a star of the

[1:30:56] show, Hallie.

[1:30:57] Yeah.

[1:30:58] Sorry, Hallie.

[1:30:59] Now, the actual Cats movie does have buttholes or does not?

[1:31:04] So I mean, the performers have buttholes somewhere on their person, I would imagine.

[1:31:08] Under the costumes.

[1:31:09] So there's, there are conflicting reports about the butthole cut.

[1:31:15] It seems like the buttholes were not necessarily intentionally meant to be buttholes, but an

[1:31:21] artifact of the way the CGI was and looked in the context of wearing catsuits like buttholes.

[1:31:27] We're not sure.

[1:31:28] I mean, I can be, I mean, I assume Todd Vaziri will write in and correct me on this, but

[1:31:32] one of the, all CGI characters start with buttholes and then they have to be painstakingly

[1:31:37] erased.

[1:31:38] So Jar Jar Binks, Gollum, all the, you know, Killer Croc or whatever, all the Transformers,

[1:31:43] they all have buttholes originally.

[1:31:45] And then it has, that's just for accuracy.

[1:31:46] Yeah, just right.

[1:31:48] Well, it's just the way the computer graphics work and they have to be erased frame by frame,

[1:31:52] much like a Henry Cavill mustache.

[1:31:54] And so it's, yeah, so maybe they just forgot to do it for a cut of cats, you know.

[1:31:59] You never know.

[1:32:00] Well, yeah, if nothing else, we'll encourage you to watch Cats.

[1:32:06] What was the question?

[1:32:07] Have you ever had a movie or something that you had a specific impression of that you

[1:32:10] thought everybody knew?

[1:32:11] Well, I think this wasn't embarrassing, but I think I've talked to before, I may have

[1:32:14] been shouted down on the show about it, about my interpretation of the song Norwegian Wood

[1:32:18] by the Beatles, where it seems that everybody but me agrees that the main narrator of the

[1:32:24] song burns down this woman's house at the end, which I always, I never, I never took

[1:32:29] that interpretation.

[1:32:30] I never assumed it.

[1:32:31] And it was, it stopped being a meaningful song to me once it gained that interpretation

[1:32:34] of a story.

[1:32:35] When it was, when it was a, a song about a man who goes out on a date with a woman, ends

[1:32:41] up at her home, wants to sleep with her.

[1:32:43] She seems to want to sleep with him, but he cannot figure out how to make it happen

[1:32:46] because he's just so awkward around her.

[1:32:48] And when he wakes up the next morning, she's gone and he lights a fire for himself and

[1:32:51] just thinks about this missed opportunity.

[1:32:53] Like that really struck home to me.

[1:32:55] And when people like, no, no, at the end, he burns their house down.

[1:32:57] I was like, well, then it's no longer a story I can relate to.

[1:32:59] I don't think you have to take that as a gospel interpretation of something that I think is

[1:33:03] out there in the world as interpretation.

[1:33:05] OK, because I read that song.

[1:33:07] It had an important place for me as a kid where I was like, this is one of the first

[1:33:11] songs I remember hearing about where it was like, this feels like a grownup situation.

[1:33:13] This is a real grownup situation that is not just like, I love you or I'm so mad or whatever.

[1:33:20] And for it to end with a Tales from the Crypt-esque ending was, it was like, it was, it just always

[1:33:25] a disappointment to me.

[1:33:26] I mean, that was a show for adults when I was a kid.

[1:33:29] I guess that's true, man.

[1:33:34] But I don't know, like there was a time on this podcast where I recommended a movie based

[1:33:39] almost entirely on my belief that the titular character rips off his own ding-dong in the

[1:33:47] film.

[1:33:48] And apparently even the director has sounded off and R.I.P.

[1:33:54] Stuart Gordon sounded off and told me that I was wrong.

[1:33:57] I can't convince him now.

[1:33:58] I mean, there's no convincing.

[1:34:00] We've all seen the movie.

[1:34:01] There's no way it doesn't happen.

[1:34:02] It's called Castle Freak, directed by Stuart Gordon.

[1:34:06] And I recommended the film based on the merit that the Castle Freak rips off a lot of stuff,

[1:34:12] including his own ding-dong.

[1:34:14] But nope.

[1:34:15] In fact, having multiple views, you heard it here first, folks, I'll admit that having

[1:34:20] watched the movie many times, you know what?

[1:34:22] I don't think, I don't think it, yeah, we can put this to bed.

[1:34:27] Do you still recommend it though, or only if he rips off his ding-dong?

[1:34:31] You know what?

[1:34:32] I've watched it multiple times.

[1:34:34] You know, as we said, going painstakingly frame by frame to erase buttholes.

[1:34:40] In order to prove myself right, you know what?

[1:34:42] I learned to find a lot of things to love about that movie.

[1:34:45] Yeah.

[1:34:46] Okay.

[1:34:47] So yeah.

[1:34:48] So I guess I'll be recommending Castle Freak.

[1:34:49] I mean, for anyone listening, if you haven't seen Castle Freak, it's a very rough movie.

[1:34:52] Like it's a grim movie.

[1:34:54] Yeah.

[1:34:55] Yeah, it's gross.

[1:34:56] Even though there's no scene of him ripping off his own ding-dong, there are other things

[1:34:58] that are difficult to watch.

[1:34:59] There's evidence that it's been removed.

[1:35:00] There is.

[1:35:01] Yeah.

[1:35:02] There's evidence.

[1:35:03] It's not there.

[1:35:04] Yeah.

[1:35:05] Yeah.

[1:35:06] I don't know if this like fully is the best answer to this specific question, but...

[1:35:08] Well, we'll be the judges of that.

[1:35:10] It's adjacent.

[1:35:11] When I was a kid, I had really weird sort of pop culture heroes, like out of step with...

[1:35:19] Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson, Bill Cosby.

[1:35:22] Harvey Weinstein.

[1:35:23] Harvey Weinstein.

[1:35:24] Yeah.

[1:35:25] He's really into Harvey Weinstein.

[1:35:26] As a kid.

[1:35:27] Yeah.

[1:35:28] No.

[1:35:30] Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood.

[1:35:34] It seems like very old English...

[1:35:37] I mean, they're perfectly good childhood heroes if you were born in the 1880s.

[1:35:40] Sure.

[1:35:41] Yeah.

[1:35:42] I just remember that I had a birthday when I was a young kid that was Robin Hood themed.

[1:35:51] Like my parents made a bunch of little felt green hats for us.

[1:35:54] Oh, that's cool.

[1:35:55] That's cute.

[1:35:56] And there was a toy arrow game.

[1:35:58] No, I mean, you know, it was fun.

[1:36:01] I had a great birthday.

[1:36:03] In retrospect, I think that my friends probably were all like, this guy's weird.

[1:36:08] Why is there a Robin Hood theme to this?

[1:36:12] I mean, you were 23 at the time.

[1:36:13] That's why it's so awkward to be in.

[1:36:14] Yeah, that was the problem.

[1:36:15] That was the problem.

[1:36:16] Allison, is there anything that you're thinking of?

[1:36:19] Yeah, but can I also judge your answer?

[1:36:21] Sure.

[1:36:22] Because I say no, that doesn't work for this question.

[1:36:24] It doesn't answer the question.

[1:36:25] That's for sure.

[1:36:26] I mean, he said it was adjacent, but I don't know that it is.

[1:36:29] It seems like your impression was that Robin Hood was cool, which is like more of an opinion

[1:36:32] than a misinterpretation.

[1:36:33] Yeah, that's true.

[1:36:34] That's true.

[1:36:35] Well, I, you know, you caught me, Allison.

[1:36:40] Listen, when I was on Jordan, Jesse Go, I talked about our little Twitter feud and Jesse

[1:36:47] was like, you chose the worst guy to have a Twitter feud with because and by the way,

[1:36:51] I didn't start it because he's just gonna like, you know, think about it and feel bad.

[1:36:56] So now I'm is, is that your thing?

[1:36:59] Thinking about things and feeling bad.

[1:37:00] It's kind of my thing because one of my things, okay, because I don't want that's one of his

[1:37:04] big things.

[1:37:05] One of your big things.

[1:37:06] Okay.

[1:37:07] I'm just kidding.

[1:37:08] Your answer was totally fine.

[1:37:09] No, I, it was funny when like I was listening to that episode, it was such a, it was such

[1:37:17] a weird combination of like, Stuart, you'll understand this, uh, you know, not distinguishing

[1:37:24] between bad and good attention.

[1:37:26] I was like, oh, they're talking about me.

[1:37:27] That's great.

[1:37:28] But also feeling like, oh, people who don't know any of us, maybe they'll take this seriously

[1:37:34] and think.

[1:37:35] So the beef was Jesse was talking about Amish hats and I quickly Googled and found that

[1:37:41] the name of these Amish hats are, they're called scribblers.

[1:37:45] And so we had a lot of fun with that.

[1:37:46] And then Dan Googled and saw that there's like some Amish publication called the scribbler

[1:37:52] where they had written about the hat.

[1:37:54] And so he thought that I had, I was confused.

[1:37:56] Um, but then I found something that I know, can you believe the temerity?

[1:38:02] And then I found something that said the hat is called the scribbler.

[1:38:05] So yeah, no, no, I, I'm fully, uh, I will accept the villain role here because I was

[1:38:12] a guy making a correction on the internet.

[1:38:15] Uh, you explained to me the reason why I, that's why, that's why you and me think alike.

[1:38:21] The only reason why I thought this was okay was because I wanted to join in the fun with

[1:38:28] my podcast pals and Jordan, Jesse go have a thing that like, if, if you make a correction,

[1:38:36] you actually tweeted at JD power to avoid that.

[1:38:40] So I'm like, yeah, I'll play into this, like this like bit of JD power.

[1:38:44] But I, I, I tagged Allison in part because I wanted to know like, is this like, did she

[1:38:51] see something different than me?

[1:38:52] Cause like, it's such a fun fact that I kind of wanted to be proven wrong and know that

[1:38:57] it was indeed the scribbler, but what I had been seeing was not that.

[1:39:02] But anyway, I, I will stop trying to justify myself.

[1:39:04] I, I, I'm sorry.

[1:39:05] Really?

[1:39:06] Cause it seems like you're still doing that.

[1:39:07] Yeah.

[1:39:08] It sounds like, uh, it was all fun to me being a guest on this podcast and unseating Hallie.

[1:39:13] So I have two answers to Chris Redacted's question.

[1:39:17] Um, my best friend growing up was Mormon and we used to watch the show small wonder.

[1:39:22] So for a long time afterwards, I thought that small wonder was religious programming.

[1:39:30] I thought it was a Mormon wholesome Mormon show, but like, remember that?

[1:39:35] What was it?

[1:39:36] Was there a show called, uh, Sammy and Goliath or there's Davey and Goliath.

[1:39:41] That was a religious show.

[1:39:42] Yes.

[1:39:43] I thought it was like that.

[1:39:44] Um, okay.

[1:39:45] So like just the 10 of us was, was a religious show.

[1:39:49] Was it?

[1:39:50] What?

[1:39:51] Yeah.

[1:39:52] Cause they're like, cause there's so many kids.

[1:39:53] Yeah.

[1:39:54] Coach Lubbock and his wife definitely were not using any sort of devil's contraception.

[1:40:00] Absolutely. I thought it was just because he needed to feel it.

[1:40:03] I thought I said, you know, there was a weird shape we

[1:40:08] normal normal human condoms don't work for that.

[1:40:10] They did an episode about that, but it was pulled by the network

[1:40:13] where he talks about his inability to find a condom that fits his feet.

[1:40:16] I feel like I also like I feel like I also while

[1:40:21] I went on a trip through Europe with an ex girlfriend

[1:40:24] and we like crashed in, I think, like Nice or somewhere.

[1:40:29] And I remember we were watching on TV

[1:40:31] and we found the one station that had English programming.

[1:40:35] And there was an episode of just the ten of us.

[1:40:37] And there's like a moment where Coach Lubbock is like praying to God

[1:40:41] and there's like a light on him.

[1:40:42] And I'm like, oh, wow, it does ring a bell that there that he was religious.

[1:40:47] And my other one, and I don't know if this really, Dan,

[1:40:51] you'll have some company in your Jason answer.

[1:40:52] I don't know how much this really qualifies.

[1:40:54] But when I saw Napoleon Dynamite, and I don't know how you guys feel

[1:40:57] about that movie, but when I saw it, I was like,

[1:40:59] this is a bunch of manufactured nostalgic trash.

[1:41:03] I really I had a strong distaste for that movie.

[1:41:06] And then I tons of people that I like and respect like that movie.

[1:41:10] So that was one where I was convinced that we all must be having

[1:41:13] the same specific reaction.

[1:41:16] And then I guess I'm kind of alone.

[1:41:20] Yeah, I mean, I've experienced that from the other side of like thinking like,

[1:41:24] oh, this is going to be a huge blockbuster because it's so fun.

[1:41:27] And the hit bombing are like when I saw the the Frighteners.

[1:41:31] I was like, oh, that's a great movie.

[1:41:33] Yeah. And then no one went to see it.

[1:41:35] But nobody else was there.

[1:41:37] You put all that stock into John Carter merch.

[1:41:39] And that just didn't go anywhere.

[1:41:41] I am far more on your side with Napoleon Dynamite.

[1:41:44] Yeah, I find Napoleon Dynamite hard to hard to take in large doses.

[1:41:48] But I think that Dan Dan's watching the Frighteners as like a teenager.

[1:41:52] And he's seeing the scene where John Ashton as a ghost of a cowboy

[1:41:56] is having sex with a mummy.

[1:41:57] And he's like, this is a huge hit.

[1:42:01] I love the idea that you're defining a movie of Napoleon Dynamite

[1:42:05] as like a large amount.

[1:42:07] Like, would you prefer to be in like Quibi sized chunks?

[1:42:10] Very, very. It was like that.

[1:42:11] You'd be like, this is great.

[1:42:13] Very great, necessarily.

[1:42:14] But like if it was if it was if you cut took that same movie

[1:42:16] and cut it up into five minute episodes, I'd be like, oh, yeah,

[1:42:19] I can watch a couple of these in a row.

[1:42:21] I'm not going to watch the whole thing.

[1:42:22] But, you know, so our second and final question is from or not question.

[1:42:27] Just, well, I guess there's a question here.

[1:42:29] Adam, last name with.

[1:42:30] Let's let the hell let us be the judges, Dan, rather than.

[1:42:32] Yeah, I started as soon as I was unsure of.

[1:42:34] Now, did this one also get sent to you and then come to you through the Internet

[1:42:38] and then now you're reading it on the show?

[1:42:41] Thank you. You grasp the idea.

[1:42:43] I'm so glad that you made that clear.

[1:42:45] Now, guys, before we get to this letter, I do want to mention that

[1:42:47] I've done some research and I think I understand the origin

[1:42:50] of the butthole cut of cats.

[1:42:52] Originally, the soundtrack was performed by the butthole surfers.

[1:42:55] And then and so that's that cut.

[1:42:58] And then they came to a disagreement and they had to have the actors

[1:43:01] sing the songs.

[1:43:02] It was very expensive to reshoot the whole movie.

[1:43:05] Makes sense.

[1:43:06] Adam, last name withheld rights.

[1:43:08] Howdy, floppers.

[1:43:09] I recently listened back to the 2017 episode, The Countant,

[1:43:13] where Stu briefly introduces his own Louisiana based character, Gumbo Stu.

[1:43:18] First, I'd like to note that this precedes Elliot's introduction

[1:43:22] of Crawdaddy by several years.

[1:43:24] And therefore, I believe Elliot owes Stu royalties.

[1:43:28] Second, I'm wondering what you would pitch as a Gumbo Stu

[1:43:31] slash Crawdaddy crossover romantic comedy, a Toho style

[1:43:34] Gumbo Stu versus Crawdaddy.

[1:43:36] What? Oh, we got a hot mystery.

[1:43:39] I think. Yeah.

[1:43:39] Where does a noir kid fit in all this?

[1:43:41] Here's a flop or two to Adam.

[1:43:42] Last name withheld.

[1:43:43] Now, I do want to say I think as great as Gumbo Stu is,

[1:43:46] I feel like Crawdaddy has a premise, which is that he's from the Louisiana Bayou,

[1:43:51] but now he lives in suburban Connecticut.

[1:43:53] So where's Gumbo Stu is just kind of like a guy, right?

[1:43:56] Like like usual, I tossed out the beginnings of an idea

[1:44:01] that Elliot then made much better.

[1:44:03] Oh, we do that. That happens. That happens sometimes.

[1:44:06] So I think if I was going to pitch a movie, it would be about

[1:44:08] it's a real country mouse, city mouse type story or back to your root story

[1:44:12] where maybe either a Gumbo Stu goes to visit Crawdaddy or what?

[1:44:16] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:44:17] Where Crawdaddy comes home and realizes he doesn't fit in anymore.

[1:44:20] And Gumbo Stu has to teach him how to get back into the bayou.

[1:44:22] Or Gumbo Stu visits Crawdaddy and is aghast that Crawdaddy

[1:44:27] is all about being an insurance executive and stuff like that.

[1:44:30] And he has any force that he takes, kidnaps him and takes him back to the bayou

[1:44:33] to teach him how to be himself again.

[1:44:35] You know? Yeah.

[1:44:35] There's got to be like some fish out of water elements

[1:44:38] and like Beverly Hillbillies type stuff.

[1:44:40] Yeah. You know, Gumbo Stu is trying to like wash his clothes.

[1:44:43] I don't know, like the fountain at a public park or something.

[1:44:49] He's trying to stuff his clothes into the Koorig coffee maker in the kitchen

[1:44:52] and to wash them. Yeah, that and the

[1:44:57] you know, this is kind of like hook in a way.

[1:44:59] We're like, yeah, Crawdaddy is another huge success.

[1:45:02] Yeah. And and he has to go back and rediscover a big success.

[1:45:06] I feel like I loved it when I was a kid and I say bangerang all the time.

[1:45:11] Sure. I think it was reading only only when appropriate,

[1:45:15] which is when something very good happens.

[1:45:17] So Hook was a critical flop.

[1:45:18] But according to Wikipedia, on a budget of 70 million dollars,

[1:45:21] it made 300 million dollars.

[1:45:23] Whoa. I don't know what the marketing costs were, but that seems like

[1:45:26] like a success. Like some buffo B.O. Yeah. Yeah.

[1:45:28] OK, well, let's move on to the last segment.

[1:45:31] Do you have any any Louisiana based characters you'd like to introduce?

[1:45:34] Oh, my God. Swamp Al.

[1:45:40] Nice. That's me. Swamp Al.

[1:45:42] Swamp Al. Yeah.

[1:45:44] And I also wash my clothes in coffee makers.

[1:45:48] You got to do it. And I make my coffee in a boot.

[1:45:54] I think you can say you make your coffee in a washing machine

[1:45:56] and it's so much coffee.

[1:45:57] Oh, yeah. It's sounding more and more like the like improvised song off of

[1:46:02] I think you should leave.

[1:46:04] And I make my coffee in a boot.

[1:46:06] Just details.

[1:46:09] OK, well, the last thing we do on the show is we recommend movies

[1:46:12] that we've seen, usually recently because they're on our mind, but whatever

[1:46:16] that we like, maybe you should watch it instead of being the Ricardos.

[1:46:20] Almost certainly.

[1:46:21] I'm going to absolutely start off real quick

[1:46:24] because I don't have much to say about the movie other than

[1:46:27] Stu invited me on a movie date a little ways back.

[1:46:30] We saw Jackass forever.

[1:46:32] I had never seen.

[1:46:33] Took some edibles full Jackass movie or show even

[1:46:39] I'd seen individual stunts, which

[1:46:43] maybe I would laugh a little bit, but my nervousness about personal injury

[1:46:49] kept me from enjoying it.

[1:46:51] But I discovered the secret of Jackass,

[1:46:53] which is like one stunt on its own might be too much.

[1:46:56] But 50 stunts in a row is exactly the right number.

[1:47:01] It's a masterclass of pacing.

[1:47:03] Yeah, I just I laughed a lot.

[1:47:05] And at the end, I was just there are moments when I was sort of falling out

[1:47:09] of my seat just with a combination of discomfort and laughter.

[1:47:15] So I've I've been brought around, I mean, partly because also

[1:47:19] they're also old right now that it's kind of I kind of watch it.

[1:47:24] I'm like, oh, you know, they're just like me anyway.

[1:47:28] Yeah, Jackass is like they're just like us.

[1:47:30] What about you, Stu?

[1:47:32] I'm going to recommend a movie from this year

[1:47:34] that I don't think I've recommended yet.

[1:47:36] I'm going to recommend a movie from the director of Heart Beeps.

[1:47:40] That's right.

[1:47:41] I'm going to recommend The Card Counter, directed by Paul Schrader.

[1:47:43] Paul Schrader, just for the record, Paul Schrader did not direct Heart Beeps.

[1:47:46] So we know this.

[1:47:47] We can agree to disagree on this one.

[1:47:50] Stuart's new rip off the ding dong is that Paul Schrader directed Heart Beeps.

[1:47:55] So it is a movie where Oscar Isaac plays a very cool dude

[1:48:00] who counts cards and got out of jail.

[1:48:03] He's so cool.

[1:48:04] He has to wrap every piece of furniture in his hotel room with this.

[1:48:07] That's true.

[1:48:09] He's got a let's say a complicated past featuring Willem Dafoe.

[1:48:14] And he has a friendship with Tiffany Haddish.

[1:48:19] And it's a movie about professional gambling that doesn't like

[1:48:24] where the gambling part of it isn't actually that important.

[1:48:28] It's just like a fun character study.

[1:48:29] And it's great.

[1:48:31] And it's fine.

[1:48:31] Like it's a revenge movie.

[1:48:33] I thought it was fun.

[1:48:34] It also had me googling in the aisle.

[1:48:37] Yeah, exactly.

[1:48:38] It had me googling Oscar Isaac Sunglasses Card Counter.

[1:48:42] And I found out they're not that bad.

[1:48:43] They're like only 250 bucks.

[1:48:45] So why don't you send me some money so I can buy some sunglasses.

[1:48:50] But seems for something I will immediately lose, probably.

[1:48:55] But I mean, in all like, you know, all things considered,

[1:48:58] they could be what, like 10 million dollars.

[1:49:00] I don't know what sunglasses cost.

[1:49:04] This is the bubble that the Flophouse apparently lives in.

[1:49:07] But I don't know the price of sunglasses.

[1:49:10] Yeah, yeah.

[1:49:12] I'm going to recommend a movie from another country.

[1:49:16] That's right.

[1:49:17] It's I'm Your Man from Germany.

[1:49:19] Ich bin dein Mensch, starring Maren Eggert and Dan Stevens,

[1:49:22] Flophouse favorite Dan Stevens.

[1:49:25] And it's the story of an academic who, in order to secure

[1:49:30] or it's kind of a it's kind of a under the table quid pro quo

[1:49:33] to get more funding for the work she's doing in archaeological studies.

[1:49:36] She agrees to three weeks of product testing with a robot man

[1:49:40] who's supposedly designed to be her perfect partner.

[1:49:43] And I thought that I just really liked it.

[1:49:47] I thought it was a really charming movie.

[1:49:48] It's a real small scale science fiction character study.

[1:49:51] And I like the characters in it.

[1:49:53] I felt like it was the most emotionally real portrayal

[1:49:56] I've seen so far of someone with a romance with a written a romance with a.

[1:50:00] with a mechanical object.

[1:50:01] Take that, her.

[1:50:02] And I just really liked it.

[1:50:05] It was Germany's entry for the Oscars,

[1:50:09] but it was not selected as a nominee

[1:50:10] for Best International Feature Film.

[1:50:12] That's a tough category.

[1:50:13] It is.

[1:50:14] And that's a hard category, especially this year.

[1:50:16] And this movie was probably a little lightweight

[1:50:18] in some ways for that category, especially this year.

[1:50:21] But I really liked it a lot.

[1:50:23] So that's I'm Your Man.

[1:50:25] If you want to watch a kind of German romantic comedy-ish

[1:50:30] that is charming and sometimes funny

[1:50:33] and sometimes very serious and sweet.

[1:50:35] I just, I'm imagining me like thinking like,

[1:50:37] oh, what am I in the mood for?

[1:50:39] A German romantic comedy-ish.

[1:50:42] Well, that's the thing.

[1:50:42] It's like, I kept thinking about how like Germany

[1:50:45] is not the country you think of as romantic comedy.

[1:50:46] But there's also like, was it mostly Martha?

[1:50:49] The movie that they remade with Catherine Zeta-Jones.

[1:50:51] Well, that's a German romantic comedy.

[1:50:52] It was really good.

[1:50:53] At this point, 20 some odd or 30 years old.

[1:50:56] So every 30 years, I guess Germany comes out

[1:50:57] with a real good, real solid romantic comedy.

[1:51:00] Is it subtitled or dubbed?

[1:51:03] The one I watched was subtitled.

[1:51:04] And the funny thing was that it had been recommended to me

[1:51:06] and I did not know at first that it was a German movie.

[1:51:08] So when the credits came up in German,

[1:51:10] I was like, wait a minute.

[1:51:11] And then I, the whole, and because Dan Stevens,

[1:51:14] who is not German, is the co-lead.

[1:51:16] I was like, is this dubbed in German?

[1:51:19] But they're speaking, I can tell from their lip flap

[1:51:21] that they're speaking German.

[1:51:21] Like this is, so.

[1:51:23] Wait, Dan Stevens speaks German?

[1:51:25] I get, unless he learned all of his lines phonetically

[1:51:28] in Tony Banger's in the Mambo King style,

[1:51:30] but maybe, I don't know.

[1:51:31] Yeah, Alison, do you have a movie you'd like to recommend?

[1:51:33] Yes, so I just watched a movie that quite possibly

[1:51:37] you guys have all already seen and your audience as well.

[1:51:40] But I watched the 1975 version of Stepford Wives

[1:51:44] and I had never seen it.

[1:51:45] I, a thing about me is I, I scare very easily.

[1:51:49] So I generally can't handle horror,

[1:51:52] can't handle scary movies.

[1:51:52] And when I was a kid, I had a babysitter

[1:51:54] that watched Stepford Wives.

[1:51:56] And I saw like, you know, the funny thing is

[1:52:00] that it's really not a scary movie.

[1:52:02] But there are a couple scenes that are like scary.

[1:52:05] And so I had seen one of these scary scenes

[1:52:08] when I was a kid and that movie, just the idea,

[1:52:10] I was very afraid of like Superman 3, as silly as that is.

[1:52:13] Like I was very afraid of robots and things like that.

[1:52:15] So that movie always kind of haunted me when I was young.

[1:52:19] And I don't know what compelled me

[1:52:21] to check it out very recently,

[1:52:24] but I decided I could probably handle it.

[1:52:25] And I, I mean, it's, there's issues with the movie,

[1:52:30] but I really did enjoy it.

[1:52:31] And I was able to go to sleep right after

[1:52:33] and I didn't have nightmares.

[1:52:34] So if anyone out there also avoids all scary things,

[1:52:39] I think you might enjoy this movie.

[1:52:40] I love that.

[1:52:41] It's a, yeah, no, that's, no, that's a,

[1:52:44] most of the stuff I recommend is super gross or,

[1:52:47] yeah, I mean, mainly.

[1:52:48] I feel like we get a fair number of emails from people

[1:52:51] who are like, I want to watch a scary movie,

[1:52:53] but I don't want to get scared.

[1:52:55] So this is a very.

[1:52:57] Yeah, I mean, my husband who does enjoy scary things

[1:53:00] was surprised, and he and I have this ongoing debate

[1:53:03] about whether something is really horror or not.

[1:53:06] Cause like, I didn't see Squid Game.

[1:53:07] I watched the trailer for Squid Game and I was like,

[1:53:09] there's no way I can handle that.

[1:53:11] And he kept insisting it's not horror.

[1:53:13] And I'm like, everything about it seems like horror to me.

[1:53:16] I get though that Stepford Wives is more like drama,

[1:53:20] thriller than horror, but still it's, you know,

[1:53:24] I feel like nowadays it's almost,

[1:53:26] it almost feels like a quaint movie.

[1:53:28] The things that there's the tension about in the movie

[1:53:30] are kind of quaint.

[1:53:32] The, when, I feel like it's a horror movie similarly to,

[1:53:37] in the way that when people ask me if they,

[1:53:39] for a scary movie that's not that scary,

[1:53:40] I usually recommend The Others.

[1:53:42] Also with Nicole Kidman, which is a movie I love,

[1:53:44] but it's like.

[1:53:45] Stepford Wives, what do you remake with Nicole Kidman?

[1:53:47] I wouldn't recommend that.

[1:53:49] And it's a, and it's like a ghost story,

[1:53:51] but it's not a, it's not a horror,

[1:53:53] like there's nothing in it where you're going to

[1:53:54] shield your eyes because you didn't want to see that.

[1:53:57] You know, unlike my wife and I,

[1:54:00] we recently watched Yellow Jackets

[1:54:01] and we both really enjoyed a lot, but.

[1:54:03] Nothing gross in there.

[1:54:04] I didn't realize how gory it was right off the bat.

[1:54:07] And I was like, even the thing that happens

[1:54:08] before the plane crash is really gory.

[1:54:10] She has so many sweet issues where I had the pleasure

[1:54:13] of watching something while she told,

[1:54:16] watching something while also being on,

[1:54:18] when can my wife go back to looking patrol?

[1:54:20] Yeah.

[1:54:21] Maybe Yellow Jackets is what like

[1:54:23] made me think I could handle it.

[1:54:24] Cause I really did surprisingly enjoy Yellow Jackets.

[1:54:28] So then I was like, maybe there's more that I could watch.

[1:54:31] So here's the question.

[1:54:31] Could I handle The Shining?

[1:54:34] That's a good question.

[1:54:35] That's a pretty scary movie.

[1:54:36] That's a pretty scary movie.

[1:54:37] It's a pretty scary movie.

[1:54:38] I think The Shining, it's also,

[1:54:40] the atmosphere in it is genuinely really frightening.

[1:54:43] There's some blood gore stuff,

[1:54:44] but it's like, that's a movie where from moment one,

[1:54:47] I feel like the movie is daring you

[1:54:50] to not be creeped out.

[1:54:52] Yeah, I don't know.

[1:54:53] It's less actual gore that stays with me

[1:54:57] than disturbing ideas.

[1:54:59] That's what really gets me.

[1:55:00] Okay.

[1:55:03] So I have a pamphlet that's gonna terrify you.

[1:55:09] Hey, we've come to the end of our show.

[1:55:11] Yeah.

[1:55:11] I wanna thank Alison very much for quashing our beef

[1:55:15] and coming on the show.

[1:55:16] Thank you so much for having me.

[1:55:18] Do you have anything that you wanna plug?

[1:55:20] I know that we asked you towards the beginning,

[1:55:22] but again.

[1:55:24] I mean, just check out my podcast,

[1:55:26] Alison Rosen is Your New Best Friend,

[1:55:28] Childish, and the new one, Upworthy Weekly.

[1:55:31] And for us, I will promote us and say,

[1:55:34] hey, listener, if you have a moment,

[1:55:36] go to iTunes, leave us a review,

[1:55:37] spread the word on Twitter or whatever you like

[1:55:40] to use something nicer than Twitter, maybe.

[1:55:43] You can follow The Flophouse.

[1:55:43] There are none, Dan.

[1:55:44] They're all cesspools.

[1:55:46] At The Flophouse Pod on Twitter,

[1:55:48] at The Flophouse Podcast on Instagram.

[1:55:50] We have a YouTube channel,

[1:55:51] youtube.com, The Flophouse Podcast.

[1:55:54] And if you like merch, it's on our website.

[1:55:58] We're a member of Maximum Fun.

[1:56:00] Go to maximumfun.org to check out all the great podcasts

[1:56:03] from that network.

[1:56:04] Alison Rosen, as mentioned before,

[1:56:07] has been on Jordan Jesse Go many times.

[1:56:11] So if you like her here,

[1:56:12] there's other podcasts to discover with her on Maximum Fun

[1:56:15] in addition to her own podcasts.

[1:56:18] Thank you to our producer, Alex Smith,

[1:56:21] who is at HowlDotty on Twitter,

[1:56:24] if you wanna see what he's up to.

[1:56:25] Thank you so much for listening.

[1:56:28] Until next time, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:56:30] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:56:32] I'm Ellie Kalen.

[1:56:33] And I'm Alison Rosen.

[1:56:35] Bye.

[1:56:36] Okay, we're gonna do the intro

[1:56:38] and then we're gonna roll into the show.

[1:56:42] Being the Ricardos.

[1:56:43] Ricardos.

[1:56:44] That's what.

[1:56:47] That's what we're doing, we are being them.

[1:56:50] Yeah, okay.

[1:56:52] On this episode, we discuss Being the Ricardos.

[1:56:56] The sequel to Being John Malkovich,

[1:56:58] but this time it's about the Ricardos.

[1:57:02] I think we can do dumber.

[1:57:04] MaximumFun.org, comedy and culture.

[1:57:08] Artist owned, audience supported.

Ep. #363 - Being the Ricardos, with Alison Rosen

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