Ep. #359 - Dear Evan Hansen, with Sharlene Wellington

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Dear Evan Hansen.

[0:03] A warning to listeners, on today's episode,

[0:05] we will be touching on some very sensitive topics,

[0:07] such as how Dear Evan Hansen is very bad.

[0:10] Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Flophouse.

[0:39] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:40] Oh, hey there, Dan McCoy.

[0:41] It's me, Stuart Wellington.

[0:43] Dear Dan and Stuart, it's me, your friend, Elliot.

[0:46] He's already doing this.

[0:47] Elliot Kalin, that is.

[0:49] And who's joining us today?

[0:50] And we have a special guest today.

[0:51] That's right.

[0:52] We have bar owner, podcaster, queen of Brooklyn.

[0:59] Charlene Wellington, my wife.

[1:01] Hi, everybody.

[1:03] Should I do my disclaimer now?

[1:04] Charlene, I didn't realize the previous queen had died.

[1:07] Yeah, I had no idea I was a queen.

[1:08] The queen of Kings County, Charlene Wellington.

[1:12] I'm the queen of kings.

[1:13] It's a spin-off series.

[1:14] Oh, man.

[1:15] More Scientology, though, right?

[1:16] Yeah.

[1:17] Man.

[1:18] Yeah, if there was a king of queens, why not a queen of kings?

[1:19] Yeah, exactly.

[1:20] I know.

[1:21] It seems odd that they have that.

[1:22] It's wild.

[1:23] When people meet Jesus, they go, is there a queen of kings?

[1:24] Because he's a cat.

[1:25] Yeah.

[1:26] He's got a good job.

[1:44] He's got a solid job, holes in his hands.

[1:45] His dad is rich.

[1:46] And he's got a beard, right?

[1:47] Like, that shit's getting him.

[1:48] He's got that hot beard and that long hair.

[1:49] Come on, you know?

[1:50] Yeah.

[1:51] He can take a whipping.

[1:52] You know that.

[1:53] He's a tough dude, but he's not afraid to be sensitive.

[1:54] He wears his heart on his sleeve, literally, sometimes.

[1:57] Often statues show him uncomfortably hot.

[1:59] Yeah.

[2:00] Yeah, he's uncomfortably hot and also uncomfortable, because he's crucified at the time.

[2:06] That's Jesus for your dating needs.

[2:10] Now what?

[2:11] So, Shirley, you were super excited.

[2:12] We picked...

[2:13] Yeah, Elliot's going to riff on Jesus a little bit more later.

[2:18] We'll save that.

[2:19] We'll table that.

[2:20] So we picked this movie because it has been a...

[2:25] Let's say it has been kind of vilified by critics.

[2:27] And also, you have a personal connection to this movie.

[2:30] Explain.

[2:31] So we saw it on Broadway and we hadn't heard that much about it, but I kind of had the

[2:40] idea that it was going to be about a gay teenager.

[2:50] And...

[2:51] Was that just from the ads that were on New York One?

[2:53] Yeah, maybe from the ads on New York One.

[2:57] And I guess because most of my friends that talk to me about Broadway shows are gay.

[3:04] I feel like you've got a biased sample set there.

[3:06] You're making assumptions based on...

[3:08] Yes, I did.

[3:10] And then we saw it and, I mean, am I allowed to reveal how I felt about the play before

[3:15] we talk about the movie?

[3:16] Who knows?

[3:17] Maybe the movie fixed whatever problems you had with the play.

[3:21] I did not like it.

[3:22] And I felt like I was the first person to express that.

[3:28] Like I was being gaslit by this show.

[3:31] And everybody who had seen it, who I'd spoken to about it, was so excited.

[3:35] And I was like...

[3:38] It was fine.

[3:39] Well, what had happened was Ben Platt and his powerful producer father had been personally

[3:43] going around to each person who was about to say bad things about it.

[3:47] They're like, no, no, no.

[3:48] But they didn't call me at all.

[3:50] I know.

[3:51] I didn't get any memo.

[3:52] Maybe you went to my spam folder.

[3:54] I had a similar...

[3:55] I also kind of just, I think, assumed this was a coming out tale.

[3:59] I don't know why.

[4:00] Yeah.

[4:01] Just because it was like a very, like a heartfelt, like the title is something about it.

[4:05] I don't know.

[4:06] And then I think it was a bit of a meme.

[4:07] You thought it was referring to My Dear Evan Hansen.

[4:10] Like, oh, it's My Dear Evan Hansen.

[4:12] Yeah, maybe.

[4:13] It was a bit of a meme when the movie trailer came out of people like Googling the plot

[4:18] of Dear Evan Hansen and discovering it for the first time.

[4:23] And I went through that.

[4:24] I hadn't seen the play, but like I saw the trailer and I was like, what?

[4:29] That's what this play is about?

[4:30] I read the plot description and I was gobsmacked by what happens having not seen it yet.

[4:39] And yet we still watched the film.

[4:40] Yeah.

[4:41] I want to say this is one of the rare occasions where Stuart gets to be the Flophouse co-host

[4:46] who talks about seeing a star of a movie on Broadway because I did not see the show on

[4:50] Broadway.

[4:52] I refused multiple, multiple invitations to buy tickets to it because I was, I wasn't

[4:57] sure what it was about, but just off the title and the poster, I was like, this is probably

[5:01] about like teen drama.

[5:02] Like I don't, I don't need to see this the same way that you've been an old man for a

[5:06] long time.

[5:07] Yeah.

[5:08] No, but every year, the same way that every year there's a play where people are like,

[5:11] you've got to see it.

[5:12] And I'm like, is it about a family that gets together and secrets come out?

[5:15] Well, yes.

[5:16] Well, then I don't need to see it.

[5:17] I've seen that play 30 times before.

[5:20] I don't need to see it again.

[5:21] I just follow that lead.

[5:22] But this time it's in Osage County.

[5:24] That's okay.

[5:25] I don't need to see that one.

[5:26] But this time they're the humans.

[5:27] Yeah, it's okay.

[5:28] I don't need to see it.

[5:29] Sure.

[5:30] So Charlene, you're saying you did not like the play.

[5:31] So what was it about the play that you didn't like?

[5:34] I mean, I'll, I'll spoil the plot if I, if I tell you that.

[5:37] Oh, should we talk?

[5:38] Should we talk?

[5:39] Yeah.

[5:40] I mean, we shouldn't we plot stuff and it, it didn't change, like it didn't, this movie

[5:42] didn't change or improve on your opinion.

[5:45] Right.

[5:46] I mean, we'll have to wait to see, but what about the part when, what about with the part

[5:50] when Alfred Molina showed up as Doc Ock?

[5:51] Well, that was exciting, right?

[5:52] That was the best part.

[5:53] When all the other Evan Hansens showed up.

[5:54] Oh my God.

[5:55] That's some sicko shit there, right there, man.

[5:56] Yeah.

[5:57] I do, I do actually kind of want to offer the more sincere version of the joke introduction.

[6:13] Just like, you know, a content warning that by its nature, the plot of this show is about

[6:18] suicide and also mental illness in a way that, and I just want to make it clear that

[6:24] we will be ragging on this film.

[6:26] We will be laughing about it, but that's because the movie presents it in such a schmaltzy

[6:36] bad way.

[6:37] Not, not because we are trying to like make light of actual serious things.

[6:42] I think that was one of the, that was one of the things that I think, I don't know if

[6:45] it struck you guys the same way, but struck me really hard was I was like, I, the things

[6:50] that this character is ostensibly supposed to be going through, like I went through those

[6:53] types of feelings when I was a teen.

[6:56] Like I didn't, you know, to get, to get real for a moment, like I was depressed, I didn't

[7:00] want to live anymore at different times.

[7:03] And to see it handled in such a schmaltzy shallow way, I was like, this should be hitting

[7:07] me right where I live.

[7:08] And instead I was just like, come on, get out of here movie.

[7:12] Like don't, don't bother.

[7:13] What are you doing?

[7:14] Like, I don't really feel like you know what you're talking about.

[7:16] So it was, I think that's most infuriating about it.

[7:19] Yeah.

[7:20] And so, so yeah, we'll be touching on those topics, but yeah, we are, we're only going

[7:22] after the movie.

[7:23] We are not going after people feeling those feelings, you know, while, while, while watching

[7:27] it, I was talking to Audrey about like why I was resisting it so strenuously.

[7:31] And it's like, well, when a movie is like, you know, like this movie feels like it's

[7:35] not just pushing my buttons, but it like invited an elephant over to jump on those buttons.

[7:41] It just makes me get mad.

[7:42] I'm like, no movie.

[7:43] No.

[7:44] I didn't give you a plus one and the plus one certainly would not have been an elephant.

[7:49] Yeah.

[7:50] What has anyone, do you think anyone's ever done that?

[7:52] They've ever gone to a party with like an animal and they'd be like, it said plus one.

[7:55] It didn't say plus one human should have been more clear throwers.

[8:01] Like, I guess there's nothing in the rule book for this party.

[8:04] Judge says I'll allow it.

[8:06] Yeah.

[8:07] And that's also a dog.

[8:09] That's the thing.

[8:11] That's how deep the airbug conspiracy goes.

[8:14] The judge is a dog.

[8:15] Yeah.

[8:16] So Stuart, what happens in this movie?

[8:17] Let's get into it.

[8:18] Well, the movie certainly opens with text.

[8:21] Evan Hansen, a high school boy played, uh, let's say an ancient high school boy.

[8:28] I guess we'll have to get that out of the way is in case people are not familiar.

[8:31] Ben Platt, the star of the Broadway show, plays the character in the movie.

[8:34] And I think he was in like his early twenties when he played the character on Broadway.

[8:38] But now he is in his late twenties and he looks like a grown man who has been held back

[8:43] 15 times.

[8:44] He's in his late twenties but looks a little older because like whatever, like everything

[8:49] they've done to style him down has the opposite effect of aging him up.

[8:55] When an elderly man has a mullhawk and sunglasses, he doesn't look like a cool teen.

[8:58] He looks like an old man.

[9:00] He also lost a lot of weight.

[9:02] So he looks like he lost a lot of weight to look like a younger, like awkward teenage

[9:07] boy, but it just made him look older.

[9:11] Like it made him look wrinklier.

[9:12] He didn't have his hat on backwards.

[9:14] He didn't have a slingshot in his pocket.

[9:16] Nope.

[9:17] No beanie with a propeller.

[9:18] Yeah.

[9:19] None of these things.

[9:20] I would not be so focused on appearance if it wasn't so disastrous to the movie.

[9:24] But yeah, like there's something about like the way it, it accentuates the, the olderness

[9:30] of his face.

[9:31] Like the fact that he has done this with his body.

[9:34] And it accentuates the artificiality of the plot to have someone who's clearly, so obviously

[9:38] not of the inaccurate age playing this part.

[9:42] And I think in a play you can get away with that the same way that in a play you can get

[9:45] away with having no set and you'll end, you'll buy whatever.

[9:48] But in a movie it's harder to do that.

[9:49] But that's our town Elliot.

[9:50] Unless the movie is Grease.

[9:51] Unless it's Grease.

[9:52] But if it, but Grease is already such a goofball movie.

[9:57] You know, like.

[9:58] Everybody was in their thirties.

[10:00] Yes, if everybody in the movie looked like a grown-up, then you'd be like Saved by the

[10:06] Bell or Beverly Hills 90210, where it's like every teen looks like they're in their 20s,

[10:11] so it's not so bad.

[10:12] But in this, it's everyone, even when they are in their 20s, they're cast to look like

[10:17] teens.

[10:18] They look like teens.

[10:19] And you have this one guy who looks like he's a grown-up.

[10:21] It looks like the John Cryer movie where he has to go, he has the witness protection program

[10:25] and has to go back to high school as a teen, and you think all the other people in the

[10:29] high school must be like, what is this grown-up doing in our class?

[10:32] Is this Cameron Crowe?

[10:33] Come back to research, Fast Times, Original High, what's going on?

[10:36] Yes, and the lead character will be engaging in the sort of behavior that is much more

[10:42] understandable out of a confused teenager, but the older the man looks, the more angry

[10:47] you become with the character.

[10:50] Yes.

[10:51] Yeah.

[10:52] Okay, well, the movie opens with text.

[10:53] Evan Hansen's a high school boy, and he's writing an encouraging email to himself before

[10:58] the first day of his senior year of high school.

[11:03] He's anxious.

[11:04] He looks super old and has a cast over his wrist, and he sings this big number waving

[11:11] through a window like that sicko meme, and he's waving to all the people that walk by.

[11:17] It's this very moving piece about how everybody feels like they don't belong, and he takes

[11:23] a break.

[11:24] He's tap, tap, tapping at the window.

[11:25] Yeah.

[11:26] Exactly.

[11:27] And the rest is there.

[11:28] We can only assume, being a teen, that he broke at masturbating furiously.

[11:30] It's some kind of carpal tunnel masturbation injury, you know, and dear Evan Hansen, give

[11:36] it a rest.

[11:37] It's not going anywhere.

[11:38] You're going to have it the rest of your life.

[11:39] You don't need to use it up now.

[11:43] We meet his mom, played by Julianne Moore, and she is just too busy for him.

[11:48] You know, she's a single mom.

[11:49] She works real hard.

[11:50] She loves her kids, and she'll never stop.

[11:53] I don't remember the rest of the theme song.

[11:56] But she's still encouraging him to overcome his social anxiety.

[12:02] He's on a series of medication that we see glimpses of.

[12:06] He's very nervous about this upcoming day of school.

[12:10] The school's mascot is the Bobcats.

[12:11] I don't know why I wrote that down, but it's important to me.

[12:16] Well, hold on.

[12:17] Well, it does play in very important later, right?

[12:18] Oh, no, it doesn't.

[12:19] Never mind.

[12:20] As long as you bring it up, though, we were watching it, and Audrey was suddenly like,

[12:24] wasn't there a movie with basically like a similar plot?

[12:27] And she was describing like, oh, yeah, World's Greatest Dad, directed by Bobcat Goldthwaite.

[12:31] And she's like, do you think that they did the Bobcats because of this?

[12:35] Because they knew it could be a weird tip of the hat, tip of the hat to how they stole

[12:38] the plot from a different movie?

[12:40] Maybe.

[12:41] Yeah.

[12:42] Yeah.

[12:43] In many ways.

[12:44] And in many ways, a more sensitive handling of the topic, despite being like an overtly

[12:50] tasteless movie, you know.

[12:52] But anyway.

[12:53] And the song that he's singing, which builds to this big crescendo while he's singing in

[12:57] a auditorium filled with people, but he's all alone, is that he keeps referencing climbing

[13:04] up a tree and then falling out of it and like no one being around there to like pick him

[13:08] up.

[13:09] There's this song.

[13:10] And so I was I had never heard the soundtrack to this show before.

[13:14] All the songs kind of sound the same.

[13:16] And it's basically all like remixes of A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton.

[13:22] And there's so many metaphors that he runs through.

[13:24] He's like, I'm tap, tap, tapping at the window.

[13:26] Then it's if a tree falls and no one's there, does anyone hear it?

[13:29] I'm stepping into the sun.

[13:30] And I was like, song, pick a metaphor like then go with it.

[13:33] Like I don't you don't get to run through every possible metaphor in the whole song.

[13:37] It's also a very modern style of musical theater composition that I don't like, probably just

[13:42] because I'm old, where it is not melody based.

[13:46] Like you can't you cannot like leave this and be like, oh, I remember the tune to that

[13:51] song.

[13:52] It's not the only part I walked away remembering was the line.

[13:55] I will sing no requiems in a later song because the line felt so out of character for every

[14:00] single person that sang the lyric because yeah.

[14:03] But anyway, that's the only that's the only part I remember.

[14:06] No one else.

[14:07] People did La La Land.

[14:08] And sorry.

[14:09] Oh, I was gonna say, did no one else wake up this morning singing, Dear Evan Hansen,

[14:13] What to say to you?

[14:15] No.

[14:16] Audrey was literally singing to dear Theodosia around the house.

[14:23] I have to admit, if it's possible, the music didn't stick with me because my kids are obsessed

[14:27] with your good man, Charlie Brown, right now.

[14:29] And we're listening to that soundtrack nonstop.

[14:31] So no matter what song I want to think of, what I hear is, why are you telling me my

[14:36] new philosophy from that show?

[14:39] I thought it was going to be supper, supper, supper, supper, and strangely enough, Beethoven

[14:44] Day.

[14:45] My kids love that song.

[14:46] Yeah.

[14:47] That's a song about the day where you watch all the Beethoven movies.

[14:50] Exactly.

[14:51] Yeah.

[14:52] Schroeder, the Peanuts character, loves the Beethoven films.

[14:53] That's what he's obsessed with.

[14:54] So that's why he has he has the skin of a St. Bernard that he wears and he says, I'm

[14:59] Beethoven.

[15:00] I'm Beethoven.

[15:01] Who's going to be my Charles Brodin?

[15:02] It frightens the other children so badly.

[15:04] That makes sense.

[15:05] And then he's burned alive at the end of the festival.

[15:07] So at the end of Burning Beethoven.

[15:10] Yeah.

[15:11] Yeah.

[15:12] It's the only way they can ensure a good harvest.

[15:15] So no, no, I do want to see a Wicker Man parody where there it's where Summer Isle is just

[15:20] obsessed with the Beethoven films and they're like, he's like, coming, we won't bring back

[15:24] the Beethoven franchise.

[15:25] Yeah.

[15:26] At first, he's moved on to Clifford, the Big Red Dog.

[15:30] Yeah.

[15:31] He's so musical.

[15:32] So at first, Edward Woodward thinks he's just talking about Beethoven, the composer.

[15:36] And after a while, there's a dawning moment of horror when he realized it's about the

[15:40] movies.

[15:41] Yeah.

[15:42] It's like I almost understood it when it was the music.

[15:47] OK, so the so this, you know, this big opening ends at a like a school like pep rally or

[15:54] some shit.

[15:55] Yeah.

[15:56] Where Evan Hansen is working, doing A.V. for it with his friend, Jared, who is like playing

[16:05] the bitchiest gay best friend role.

[16:08] Like he dials up the snark to an insane level.

[16:12] It's wild.

[16:13] But at the same time, I find him the most sympathetic because I'm like, yes, you're

[16:17] right.

[16:18] You should be.

[16:19] You should be scoffing.

[16:20] Well, at at the well, I mean, like Evan Hansen does some things later on that I'm like, correct.

[16:27] The correct reaction to it is, what are you doing?

[16:30] But the problem here is.

[16:31] So Evan Hansen is so presented as life's innocent.

[16:34] He's so naive and innocent and and gentle and doesn't want to hurt anybody.

[16:38] And his friend talks is really bitchy, kind of in the way that teen boys are to each other,

[16:43] like teen boys are nasty to each other.

[16:45] And it just feels so over the top because Evan Hansen is just so is giving him nothing

[16:49] back.

[16:50] Like there's no like I feel like when I was a teen boy, a lot of my commercial conversations,

[16:53] my friends were like, fuck you, idiot.

[16:55] No, you're stupid, asshole.

[16:56] Like that would be the whole conversation.

[16:57] But and then we made a podcast about it.

[17:00] Yeah.

[17:01] Yeah.

[17:02] But Jared is like, hey, loser.

[17:04] And Evan's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess I guess I am kind of a loser.

[17:07] And it's like, wait, hold on.

[17:08] That's not what a friend does.

[17:10] Like if your friend would dial it back and be like, are you OK?

[17:13] But instead, he's just mean to him all the time.

[17:15] It's basically nobody in the movie bullies him except his best friend.

[17:18] When you get down.

[17:19] And and also and also Connor, the actual dear Evan Hansen.

[17:23] Speaking of Connor, Evan has an intense encounter with Connor, an angry loner.

[17:28] And then Evan Hansen is disrespectful to Connor's sister.

[17:31] His crush, Zoe, played by Caitlyn Dever.

[17:35] Yeah.

[17:36] And Caitlyn Dever, one of the many overqualified actresses in this movie, her and Amy Adam

[17:42] and Julianne Moore are all fantastic.

[17:45] And like there are scenes in this movie, spoiler alert, that work for me.

[17:48] And then and they almost all revolve around one of those side characters.

[17:53] Yes.

[17:54] Oh, and by far, their stories are are more interesting, more, yeah, more emotional than

[18:00] Evans.

[18:02] Yeah.

[18:03] Well, like Caitlyn Dever, Zoe, played by Caitlyn Dever, approaches Evan Hansen after his after

[18:06] her brother, who we later find out is aggressive and abusive, that she approaches him with

[18:12] sympathy and offers to, like, shake his hand.

[18:16] And he won't shake her hand because he's worried his hand is wet.

[18:19] And he just like he's super it's like it's hard at this point.

[18:22] You're like, I'm having trouble finding sympathy for you.

[18:24] You got to you got to give me something here, Evan Hansen.

[18:27] He runs off with a goofy run that like I've been been plaid.

[18:32] I just have a theory that like the fact that he played this on stage really hampered him.

[18:38] Not just for the age thing, but like I feel like he's giving a much bigger performance

[18:42] than everyone else that maybe was like calibrated for the stage and is not so good when the

[18:49] camera is right next to you.

[18:50] But sorry, what were you going to say, Elliot?

[18:51] Well, it's adding to that the fact that every time a song ends, he stands there for 20 seconds

[18:55] to a minute.

[18:56] I'm waiting for the movie.

[18:57] No, I think similarly, I think not worthy of applause.

[19:02] I think any time a grown up plays a kid and this is and I mean, there's the movie Jack

[19:06] with Ron Williams, which is which is not a good movie, but he is ostensibly playing a

[19:10] kid in a grown man's body.

[19:11] But he plays him as a small child as opposed to like a 10 year old.

[19:16] And here it feels like Ben Platt is playing a 10 year old rather than a teenager.

[19:19] Like he's when grownups play kids for some reason, they kind of forget that kids are

[19:24] almost always trying to appear older than they are in their actions or that their kids

[19:29] are full of energy.

[19:30] And like, if anything, Evan Hansen's character should be too loud rather than too quiet.

[19:34] Like he should be too eager rather than so.

[19:37] So like he's when a kid feels that way, often they kind of overcompensate for it because

[19:43] they don't want people to notice.

[19:44] And that gives them away.

[19:45] And instead, he comes off as like, you know, I mean, to put it in the most tasteful way

[19:50] of it, not really.

[19:51] He comes off as a guy with not just emotional problems, not emotional instability, but also

[19:56] like mental disabilities.

[19:58] Like he comes off as a guy who is not of.

[20:00] average intelligence for that age,

[20:01] when he's not writing letters to himself.

[20:03] And it's because he's overdoing it all the time.

[20:05] Well, it's one of the reasons why adults playing children

[20:08] or even teenagers usually only works if it's a comedy,

[20:12] whether it's like John Hodgman's never produced a TV show

[20:16] where he plays himself or Charlene's favorite show,

[20:20] Pen15.

[20:21] I knew you were gonna bring that.

[20:21] Or.

[20:26] For listeners at home, Charlene would like to warn everyone

[20:29] that she hates all nerds.

[20:31] And wanna stuff all nerds in the loggers.

[20:34] Not true.

[20:35] I'm married to a nerd.

[20:39] Oh, I guess my days are numbered.

[20:41] Give me your handsomest nerd.

[20:43] Yeah.

[20:46] Give me a nerd where people don't realize he's a nerd

[20:48] until they hear him talk or look at his T-shirt.

[20:53] Oh, that's cool.

[20:54] That's cool.

[20:56] Let's make this about me instead of Evan Hansen.

[21:00] Anyway, so what's Evan Hansen doing these days?

[21:02] So he's, so we get a little bit of a montage of him

[21:05] in school and he's just not fitting in,

[21:07] for instance, in the locker room.

[21:08] He's surrounded by a bunch of super cut

[21:10] fucking hard bodies in his school.

[21:14] Like, yikes, yeah.

[21:15] I'd be waiting for him to know that.

[21:16] Like, are they all in the same gym class?

[21:17] Because he's picked the wrong elective, I think.

[21:20] Yeah, I think you're right.

[21:21] They're all in the same class.

[21:22] Like, he doesn't belong in that class.

[21:23] He bumps in, he's, so he's been writing these,

[21:27] he's been writing these layers to himself

[21:28] as an assignment from his therapist.

[21:30] And he has to print one of them out in the library,

[21:35] which seems like a huge mistake.

[21:38] And the school library is backed,

[21:39] the printer line is backed up.

[21:42] And he bumps into Connor again, who they, you know,

[21:47] they don't really hit it off,

[21:48] but Connor offers to sign his cast.

[21:51] He signs Evan's cast in the biggest font possible

[21:55] with a massive Sharpie.

[21:58] And you think for a moment-

[21:59] Now, I don't know if it's,

[22:00] I don't know if it's called a font,

[22:01] if it's being handwritten.

[22:03] Dan, thank you for saying it so I didn't have to.

[22:05] Thank you.

[22:06] I mean, but it's Times New Roman, right?

[22:09] That you select.

[22:13] Yeah, he selected wingdings on the Sharpie.

[22:16] He's like, hold on, I gotta write in all these symbols.

[22:18] Wait, let me look up which one is an N.

[22:20] Hold on.

[22:21] This is one of those interactions, though,

[22:23] you know, you have a lot of in high school

[22:26] where it's like, there's a weird aggression to it.

[22:28] It's like, Connor's not being maybe like genuinely nice

[22:35] to Evan Hansen.

[22:36] There's like this weird undercurrent at all times.

[22:39] Like maybe if he's challenged,

[22:41] things will go off the rails as they do later on.

[22:44] But it does seem that maybe Connor also is willing

[22:48] to reach out to some degree.

[22:51] If things went differently, I don't know, who knows.

[22:54] And he does feel like Connor's-

[22:54] And he initiates.

[22:55] He initiates you to say exactly.

[22:57] In the way he knows how, which is through hostility.

[22:59] Yeah, but it's not.

[23:00] But it doesn't feel like he is doing it.

[23:02] He's not like, let me sign your cast, moron.

[23:06] He's like, I'll sign it, I'll sign it.

[23:08] And he just does it too big.

[23:08] And he's, you know, he's a trouble soul.

[23:10] And the Connor character who plays, in a way,

[23:14] plays a big part in the movie,

[23:16] he's supposed to be this troubled loner

[23:18] who has problems with drugs.

[23:21] But he just looks like a jock or like a theater dude.

[23:25] I mean, because he is a theater dude,

[23:26] because he was also in the stage show,

[23:28] Dear Evan Hansen.

[23:29] But the fact that it's like he has black fingernail polish

[23:32] and wears a black shirt, and it's like,

[23:34] look at this troublemaker.

[23:36] Look at this guy on the edge.

[23:38] Look at his fingers, man.

[23:39] Better close up the town a little early tonight.

[23:42] We got trouble here.

[23:43] And he's also such a troublemaker, but he has no friends.

[23:46] Like, where does he get the drugs?

[23:48] That's a really good point.

[23:51] Every troublemaker I knew was surrounded

[23:53] by other troublemakers.

[23:54] Yeah.

[23:55] And I was like, how can I be with those cool kids?

[23:58] The kids most like him in my high school

[24:00] were not one kid.

[24:01] It was, yeah, five of them.

[24:02] And they were like a pack that roamed around

[24:04] and people were like rolling their eyes at them

[24:06] all the time.

[24:07] And I think they all got expelled

[24:08] when they called in a fake bomb threat

[24:09] so that they could leave school to go to a concert, I think.

[24:13] That's a movie right there.

[24:14] Yeah, that's a good plan.

[24:16] So those were the Connors at my school.

[24:19] But yeah, so Connor signs his cast,

[24:21] but he gets the letter, right?

[24:22] Yeah, he finds in the printer, Evan Hansen,

[24:25] I keep trying to call him Dear Evan Hansen.

[24:28] He finds Evan Hansen's, the letter that he had written

[24:31] to himself that specifically mentions Connor's sister, Zoe.

[24:36] And Connor thinks that his moment of connection

[24:42] is immediately broken.

[24:43] His walls go up.

[24:44] He thinks Evan is like gaslighting him

[24:46] or doing something to him.

[24:48] He takes the letter and he storms off in, you know,

[24:52] and Evans freaks out because he's worried

[24:55] that Connor is going to share this letter

[24:57] that shows his vulnerability to the school.

[25:00] And he spends the next couple of days

[25:01] trying to track down Connor who is missing.

[25:03] He is gone.

[25:05] And we find out that he is then,

[25:07] when he is called into the principal's office

[25:09] shortly after this to meet with Connor's parents,

[25:13] Cynthia Murphy and Larry.

[25:17] Oh, I don't.

[25:18] Larry is a different last name.

[25:21] But it's Connor's parents, played by Amy Adams

[25:25] and an actor who I'm not familiar with,

[25:27] but Char saw him on a cop show.

[25:28] He's on SVU and he played like a-

[25:30] Danny Pino, he was on Cold Cases for a long time.

[25:34] And he plays a gang boss.

[25:36] He's on Mayans MC, right?

[25:38] Maybe that, yeah, I think that's the one

[25:40] where he plays a gang.

[25:41] He plays a gang leader on something.

[25:43] He definitely looks like he is on

[25:47] some sort of Dick Wolf detective show.

[25:49] Yeah, he is.

[25:50] He looks like all the gang.

[25:51] He could be like Ben Bratt or something.

[25:54] Like, yeah, like one of the Dick Wolf guys.

[25:57] He's an SVU, that's right, yeah.

[25:58] There's a scene later on where he's like

[26:00] sitting on the couch watching TV

[26:02] and he's still wearing his tie.

[26:03] And I'm like, what maniac is still wearing

[26:06] their tie in their own home?

[26:09] Like he doesn't need to stay dressed up for any reason.

[26:12] He's watching TV.

[26:14] It's not like the TV can see you.

[26:16] Yeah.

[26:18] So, yeah.

[26:19] Certain TVs can see you and there was a large settlement

[26:22] case a couple of years ago because people were being

[26:24] watched through their TVs.

[26:25] Oh my goodness, this TV can see me.

[26:27] Yeah.

[26:28] Computer screen.

[26:31] We can see you right now.

[26:33] Oh no.

[26:34] And they're like-

[26:35] So the reason why-

[26:35] They give him some bad news, right?

[26:36] Yeah, thank you for leading me along, Elliot.

[26:40] I don't know, I think this show's more about bits

[26:43] where I was gonna make a joke about Black Mirror,

[26:44] but you know, fuck it, let's get on with the plot.

[26:47] Oh wow.

[26:48] So the reason why Evan has to go talk to Connor's parents

[26:52] is because Connor has committed suicide

[26:54] and their only bit of information that they have

[26:58] is the note that Evan had written to himself

[27:02] was found in Connor's back pocket

[27:03] and they assumed that it was a suicide note

[27:05] written by Connor.

[27:06] So at this point, this story that we thought was about

[27:10] like teen isolation has now turned into like a farce

[27:13] a little bit, which is fucking strange.

[27:16] I bet like a tragic farce.

[27:17] It's not meant to be funny.

[27:18] It's not like the movie is like,

[27:21] uh-oh, what's gonna happen with this mix up?

[27:24] But you're right, it is a farce type of mechanism

[27:27] for them to, I mean, if I can understand in their situation

[27:32] them being like, I think this is what this is,

[27:35] he must've written this, it doesn't sound like him,

[27:38] but, and we didn't know that he ever knew you

[27:40] cause we don't know who you are, Evan Hansen, but maybe.

[27:43] But then for Evan Hansen to be like, uh, yeah.

[27:47] Yeah, yeah, maybe, like he doesn't,

[27:51] it would be so easy for him to say,

[27:53] I wrote that by myself and he took it from me.

[27:56] But I guess he doesn't want anyone to know

[27:58] that he has a crush on Zoe or something like that.

[28:00] So he just goes along with it.

[28:03] I think a lot of it has to do with his crippling anxiety

[28:06] and like in the moment he doesn't wanna like take away,

[28:10] like Amy Adams is like,

[28:11] this is one of the few things we have.

[28:13] That's true, he feels like he's saving her the pain

[28:16] of not having anything left.

[28:19] I have to point out that this is somebody

[28:21] who is so socially awkward,

[28:23] he couldn't even shake Zoe's hand,

[28:26] yet he is cold reading this family

[28:28] and figuring out what they wanna hear.

[28:32] Like only Liz Cleo can do.

[28:34] He's like, yeah, yeah, we used to hang out at a,

[28:36] I mean, this might be later,

[28:37] we used to hang out at a different place.

[28:39] The Orchard?

[28:40] Yeah, the Orchard, exactly.

[28:41] And I'm getting, I'm feeling, you know,

[28:45] I'm feeling the letter L.

[28:47] You know someone with the letter L?

[28:49] My Aunt Louise?

[28:50] Yes, that's right, it's Louise, okay.

[28:53] Yeah, well, he grows up to be Bradley Cooper

[28:55] in Nightmare Alley is what happens.

[28:57] So he grows up, he goes through a time warp to the past?

[28:59] Hold on a second.

[29:02] Maybe so at the last scene of Dear Evan Hansen

[29:04] is him writing a letter to himself

[29:05] and then falling through a time portal

[29:07] and ending up in the 1920s

[29:09] and he can grow up to be Bradley Cooper

[29:11] in the 1940s or whatever, 1930s.

[29:13] Age and time mean very little to Evan Hansen

[29:16] as we have already talked about.

[29:18] He's already halfway to being the character

[29:21] from was it Heinlein's story,

[29:23] All You Zombies or something,

[29:24] where the same person is their own mother,

[29:26] father and child, like,

[29:28] as they travel through time, anyway.

[29:30] Like Jesus.

[29:31] No, that's not, that's not true at all.

[29:34] So Evan goes along with the ruse.

[29:35] Jesus is not his own mother and father,

[29:37] he's just a hot single who's looking to connect.

[29:42] Evan goes over to the Murphy's house

[29:44] and he continues this lie

[29:46] that he and Connor are best friends.

[29:48] He does this cold reading situation

[29:52] and when he's pressed, he continues to double down.

[29:56] He keeps building on the lie.

[29:58] He sings a whole song about it.

[30:00] And yeah, it leads to a big musical number and it takes place entirely at a dining room table

[30:08] where Ben Platt sits at the table singing to their faces.

[30:12] It's so funny. It's such a funny way to stage it.

[30:16] It's just like, yeah. And because there's nothing fantastical about the staging,

[30:21] there's no musical number, it's like, yeah, I think maybe this character in reality

[30:25] is just sitting at this table singing to these people's faces.

[30:29] And the thing that makes it...

[30:31] Go on.

[30:32] I was wondering if you had the same experience I did with this dinner thing where...

[30:35] Where you really wanted to eat the food because they weren't touching it?

[30:37] I was trying to figure out what the food was.

[30:40] They had some kind of chicken on there, it looked like.

[30:42] They had chicken, but they also had like this, what I guess was like a giant roll,

[30:46] but it had kind of like a pastry outside.

[30:49] It looked like maybe like a brioche, I don't know.

[30:51] Which is weird because the mom makes a big point of being gluten-free later in the movie.

[30:55] It was bothering me that nobody was touching this food the entire scene.

[30:59] I'm like, is that a roll? Is it a potato?

[31:02] Sorry.

[31:04] That's clearly why the father was looking so unhappy the whole time.

[31:07] It's like, well, this kid showed up so I could eat.

[31:10] Yeah, so he's basically singing a song that's all made up about his friendship with Connor.

[31:16] And it's mainly just him sitting at the table singing to their faces.

[31:20] And occasionally we get glimpses of him, of flashbacks where Evan climbed a tree and fell out of the tree.

[31:28] But in this version of it, Connor is there to help him up.

[31:33] But at the same time, Amy Adams is so desperate to learn more about her son.

[31:40] But the father is skeptical and the sister Zoe is very skeptical because –

[31:49] the twist at this point we learn is that Connor was not well-liked by them, that he was abusive, that he had drug problems.

[31:57] And that this is kind of the first time they'd heard anything positive about him from anybody.

[32:02] Yes, which is also like World's Greatest Dad where he forged his notes to make his son sound nicer than he was.

[32:11] Yeah.

[32:13] So when they realize that he doesn't have – that they want more information, that they couldn't find any communication between Connor and Evan on Connor's devices, Evan decides to sweeten this deal a little bit by involving his friend Jared.

[32:31] And together they forge an extensive email relationship between Evan and Connor.

[32:40] This is the one lighthearted song in the whole movie when they're doing this.

[32:43] It gets pretty silly, this song.

[32:46] Because every other song in this is like, we're going to make you cry with this song.

[32:53] You're going to cry by the end of this song.

[32:55] But this one is like, we're buddies and we're doing things, me and my friend Connor.

[32:59] We're in go-karts now.

[33:01] That first one you did was like something out of the Bat Out of Hell musical.

[33:05] It was much more Jim Steinman of Meatloaf.

[33:08] No, it has fun staging because they're putting words into Connor's mouth and you see Connor singing them and dancing.

[33:16] And as Evan objects to what his friend is writing, the words will change.

[33:23] They'll do it over again.

[33:25] I agree that this is actually a pretty funny song.

[33:27] It's probably the number I enjoyed the most because I'm like, OK, something is like cutting through the schmaltz with a little bit of irony.

[33:36] Like showing some sense that the show knows how screwed up all of this is.

[33:43] Rather than like, look what this sad web, like a lot of bad things happened.

[33:51] But ultimately it brought people closer together and taught this kid how to be better.

[33:57] So isn't it worth it?

[33:58] I'm like, I don't know.

[34:00] It almost makes it worse because now you understand that they know how to make like a light, fun song.

[34:08] So in the show, were there other light songs?

[34:12] Because I know they cut songs for the movie, but I don't know any of them.

[34:15] Or were they all serious except for this one?

[34:17] Or was this the new song they added to the Oscars?

[34:19] No, this was in the – I remember this song from the stage production.

[34:23] I know there's a song they cut where Larry, Connor's dad, plays catch with Evan.

[34:31] For some reason they're like, no, this doesn't need to be in the movie.

[34:36] And they also cut a couple songs that Evan's mom sang.

[34:42] I'm assuming in part because Julianne Moore does not have a big musical theater background.

[34:47] I mean they can put in someone else's voice though, I guess.

[34:50] I guess that's not as well looked on now, but that's the way movie musicals used to be for decades.

[34:57] I guess two hours and 21 minutes weren't enough for you.

[35:00] I wanted more Evan.

[35:03] I wish the movie was called more Evan Hansen.

[35:05] That's what I want is to just exist in the world of the Bobcat school for longer.

[35:10] Follow some of those other characters, see where their labyrinths lead.

[35:13] This was your avatar.

[35:16] Some people dream of living on Pandora.

[35:18] I didn't want to be in that high school.

[35:20] Where's the theme park for me, my dear Evan Hansen world?

[35:23] So I mentioned Julianne Moore.

[35:26] Well, she keeps trying to reach out to Evan, but she also keeps flaking on him.

[35:32] She wants to connect, but every time she makes plans, she has to bail because she has to work.

[35:38] And Evan is getting more and more distant from her, whether it's because he's wise to her.

[35:44] Her patterns or because he is getting so caught up in his imaginary life in his web of lies that are pushing Zoe his crush to the point of to the two extremes of behavior.

[35:57] Yeah.

[35:58] And he also and speaking of Zoe, this is when he used an opportunity to get closer to her, where she wants to know more about because she's mentioned in the dear Evan Hansen letter.

[36:10] She wants to know more about if Connor said anything about her.

[36:14] So at this point, he sings this super creepy ass song about basically superimposing all of his feelings and observations about Zoe onto things Connor said, which is fucking wild.

[36:28] So it's so creepy and gross.

[36:31] Yeah, it feels like Zoe should be like, oh, so that's why he killed himself.

[36:35] He couldn't deal with the fact that he was in love with his own sister.

[36:38] Yeah, that's what it feels like.

[36:40] All the things he's saying are like things that would make sense for a crush to say.

[36:44] But, yeah, he's channeling it through the Connor's memory.

[36:46] And she's like, really?

[36:48] Yeah, really?

[36:49] That's weird.

[36:50] These are not things.

[36:51] It's a mixture of things that a brother feels for his sister.

[36:53] Yeah.

[36:54] It's a mixture of things you would have for your crush, but also this like, oh, but it's forbidden.

[37:00] Like his attitude toward why he can't share this information is that like there's an I can't do it.

[37:05] Society wouldn't accept it.

[37:09] And it's also wild to see, you know, Ben Platt, who looks like an old man singing.

[37:13] I don't know.

[37:14] I don't have any siblings.

[37:16] I guess.

[37:17] I mean, maybe maybe we know that they're not.

[37:20] But, you know, the Internet seems very taken with the concept of step siblings having relations.

[37:25] Right.

[37:27] What?

[37:28] You brought it up.

[37:29] You were just telling me about it.

[37:30] So there's.

[37:31] Have you guys have you guys ever seen.

[37:32] Have you just ever, ever stumbled upon.

[37:34] Pornography about step siblings?

[37:36] Have you guys seen this?

[37:40] I'll send you some links.

[37:42] The pornography where it is people who are not related and who are pretending to be in a family in the video so that they can so that they can be having sex within their family.

[37:53] But you the viewer knows they're not really a family, though.

[37:56] It's this it's a it's like it feels like this is something that was it was shown to me.

[38:01] And I was like, who is what audience is this for?

[38:04] What is this?

[38:05] Who is not only going to buy this?

[38:07] Halfway.

[38:11] Yeah.

[38:12] Well, even within the confines of fantasy, I need to make it clear that I realize that's everyone.

[38:20] I'm going to sign an affidavit about this pornography.

[38:25] Meanwhile, the rest of the school was plausible deniability.

[38:32] Yeah, I mean, once you have all that, then you're allowed to legally have a boner.

[38:38] That's when that's when Judge Judge Airbuds says, which means I'll allow it.

[38:43] Yeah, because the judge at sex court is also a man.

[38:48] How deep does this go?

[38:50] Sex court.

[38:51] OK, so the whole school is latched on to the tragedy today in sex court.

[38:56] The plaintiff wants to have sex with the defendant.

[38:58] Will the defendant say yes?

[39:00] OK, well, OK, the verdict was yes.

[39:02] That's sex court.

[39:03] OK, I feel like I feel like that show Hot Bench was like, can we just call it sex court?

[39:08] And they're like, no, no, no.

[39:09] That's too obvious.

[39:11] What is hot?

[39:12] I don't know that show.

[39:13] Which is a show with Charlene.

[39:15] You're a well judicial judge is created by Judge Judy.

[39:19] And there are three judges.

[39:21] And I actually don't watch it.

[39:24] I don't like it that much.

[39:26] Oh, see, it sounds more to me like, you know, like a game show that would confuse you while you were traveling.

[39:32] Yeah, like there's a very hot bench.

[39:35] People just have to sit on it.

[39:37] You're not really sure what the rules are like.

[39:40] The longest wins the bench.

[39:42] There's eight different pieces of writing in different fonts on the screen at any point.

[39:46] And a cartoon character with a tongue hanging out, just spinning around in one corner.

[39:49] And you're like, I don't understand how a human being intakes this sensory input and processes it in a way.

[39:55] We were watching that work recently.

[39:57] We were watching a clip from a Japanese.

[40:00] of hidden camera show and there were so many people in like there were so many commentators

[40:06] on the video talking at the exact same time and also audience noise and i was like i don't

[40:10] understand how to parse these voices like i don't know that's always really interesting to me is

[40:15] like watching uh shows that you know in america we wouldn't think would have commentators but

[40:23] uh like in japan japan various like different genres like also like have like a panel of

[40:28] commentators to talk about the show it's like they took the after show and put it in the middle

[40:32] of the show during the show yeah so it's a bold uh very busy country they've got to get it done

[40:38] quickly they're on the move so meanwhile the whole school is latched onto the tragedy of

[40:44] connor's passing uh oh wait oh can i mention one thing where uh we see evan's room and there's a

[40:49] ben folds poster in his room and i turned my wife and went no shit because like yeah of course he

[40:56] the bed falls like this yeah right next to like a radio headmaster um yeah so the whole school's

[41:02] latch onto the tragedy and uh they the the kids have all found ways to make uh this tragedy

[41:08] personal uh like teenagers and sociopaths do um and specifically alana the head i think she's like

[41:15] the head cheerleader or like the class president like she's the class president i think she's like

[41:21] she's like the activist kid at the school she's always got a cause she uh she decides to organize

[41:27] a charity in connor's name so at this point the lie is starting to get even bigger um yeah there's

[41:33] uh i mean there is one thing the show does then it latches it grasps is that teenagers find a way

[41:39] to make every little thing about them uh and then we uh i have a note here that amy adams takes uh

[41:47] evan hansen to her son connor's room bedroom which is surprisingly clean and makes me feel like

[41:53] what was my clean my room was way more fucked up none of the rooms in this in this movie look like

[42:00] people actually live in them they all look like they've been staged for a real estate company or

[42:05] a department store that's selling the furniture there are a couple holes in the drywall from where

[42:09] he punched them but i feel like a real bad kid would have then like drawn around them in sharpie

[42:14] or something um because we all know that he likes to write his name big in sharpie

[42:20] that would be funny the walls were covered with with him practicing his name and sharpie in

[42:26] different fonts and styles and he does one in bubble letters and one where the letters are

[42:32] all animals with hot with faces and things you know uh yeah he's you know he's he's a tagger um

[42:38] evan agrees to speak at connor's memorial at the school uh and he is going he is going to wear the

[42:44] saddest tie in the world connor's tie that was purchased for him to go to bar mitzvahs

[42:49] and he did not get invited to a single one it's like baby shoes never worn the tie

[42:58] this time it's a tie

[43:02] uh evan goes up on on stage in front of the whole school and he starts to biff it

[43:08] it's a six word short story for sale tie never worn shit i need another word

[43:16] so evan goes up to speak and he starts fucking it up he gets too nervous and he fucks it up

[43:21] just enough that all the shitty kids whip out their phones to start tick-tocking it

[43:25] and of course at that point he's like fuck yeah it's my time to shine and he sings a

[43:29] big-ass song and everyone's like oh my god he's doing it uh he sings this song about how even

[43:34] no matter how alone you feel you will be found it's just such an amazing song

[43:38] it's the big one that's in all the ads um and they yeah and then he sings it so long

[43:44] that there's a montage of it going viral in this song in this montage of it going viral

[43:50] we were watching it my wife went that's my old co-worker and there's an old there's an older

[43:54] lady who shows up in it and she was like that can't be it must be somebody else and we looked

[43:58] it up on on the like when you pause it on amazon and the names the cast came up and there it was

[44:03] listed the woman she used to work with at the private school she was a librarian at and it

[44:07] turns out this woman her her son-in-law was one of the editors on the movie and put her in during

[44:13] this section so if anything that was the most exciting that was the most exciting part of the

[44:18] movie to us was when my wife recognized an old co-worker as lady talking virally about how this

[44:24] video you have to look at and the and the viral video the video of his speech it has the title

[44:28] his best friend killed himself it was like his best friend killed himself you'll never guess

[44:34] what he did next literally what he's doing is giving a eulogy for his friends like it's not

[44:40] it's not that but it's such a funny title yeah and this whole segment is shot like i don't know

[44:47] like an ad for youtube that would play during the super bowl that's meant to make you cry about

[44:53] something like that that this is one of the biggest instances of me like getting mad at the

[44:58] movie specifically the way it's directed because it does seem to be taking its cues from like

[45:04] tear-jerking advertisements rather than anything that feels like honest i don't know and yeah no

[45:10] you're you're 100 right and it's filled with people also making this tragedy about them

[45:15] making their own videos like reaction videos to the video and it starts to get actually starts

[45:20] to get some serious views at first i'm like oh those are dog shit numbers but it makes some

[45:24] serious views and i'm like i'm assuming there's people on twitter they're like i hope evan hansen

[45:29] doesn't become a milkshake duck and you're like oh buddy what sure i'll explain what milkshake

[45:37] i think i have before um you asked me to do it to you once but i didn't know what it was

[45:42] yeah yeah uh yeah that's a little uh well peek behind the curtain

[45:52] it involves a curtain is why is it oh okay yeah um so uh yeah so it like this this lie continues

[46:00] to build and get bigger but it also by going the by his eulogy going viral it finally allows the

[46:08] family to come to terms with connor's death and they come together and they grieve finally i don't

[46:13] know why this does it but then i also can't explain how people can get through this life of ours

[46:21] but it is it is this weird moment of it that that i it is i this is the closest it gets to like

[46:28] commentary about modern age modern days i guess is that it's like he gives this he gives this fake

[46:34] speech that connects with people emotionally all over the world and it's not until this family has

[46:39] gotten the like the eyes of the world on them that they can finally move forward it's almost

[46:44] like they don't exist until other people are witnessing their grief and absorbing it into

[46:48] themselves and reflecting it back as gratitude you know yeah which is a sad commentary on these

[46:53] troubled times for 60 minutes i'm elliot caylan

[46:57] tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick uh how did our show get in the middle of 60 minutes

[47:03] evan keeps leeching off the family he keeps pushing his mother away he manages to get his

[47:08] cast off i don't know what that symbolizes maybe that's uh that shell that he's uh been

[47:13] trying to burst out of uh so he can become a full-time fucking manipulator like chrysalis is

[47:19] gone yeah beautiful butterfly he's no longer a gentle caterpillar he's now a con man butterfly

[47:24] yeah so then we get a weird scene where zoe comes over to his house and uh she sees she

[47:31] immediately wants to go see his bedroom and we're like what the hell and uh you know she

[47:36] takes her coat off charlene you're a girl you've done this before right i've been like can i see

[47:40] your bedroom yeah let me check it out let me sit on the edge show me where you keep all your dirty

[47:48] socks yeah um and then she explains that like evan we don't have to talk about my brother anymore

[47:55] that she she likes him for him not because he sings like Pavarotti or because he's such a hottie

[48:02] oh boy i was wondering if that song was gonna come up

[48:07] did not like it then don't like it now it's still bad uh but yeah this is a weird scene because

[48:14] again it's ben platt and kaitlyn deaver and it's you know what and and again they're not that far

[48:20] apart from each other in real age but in movie age they look like they're very far apart from

[48:24] each other yeah yeah and and it is also we've heard to be like i like you for you and it's like

[48:29] well he's provided nothing but connor stuff so i don't know what it is about him that you're you're

[48:34] seeing that you're i mean she senses a gentle lying soul but she like lies to grieving families

[48:41] she approached him i mean she's the one who initiated contact first and we don't really know

[48:46] enough about her that's true like in her life other than she was like threatened and abused by

[48:52] her brother so she likes to maybe she had a huge crush on him too we don't know we don't know that

[48:57] was something that there was something that my wife was saying we were watching was that

[49:00] she totally when she was younger she would see a guy who was kind of like quiet moping by himself

[49:04] and assume he must have such a deep soul like he must he must be so wise and there's such poetry

[49:10] in him and then she'd meet those guys and they which never worked for me no one ever approached

[49:14] anything i had a deep soul when i was a quiet mopey kid but the uh but she would approach them

[49:18] and it would be like oh no they've all they they have nothing going on like i have a question

[49:24] though were you really a quiet kid gotcha all right he got me i'm making up for it now that's

[49:34] why i'm so talky talky now okay because i have all these words built up behind the the dam of

[49:40] loneliness that was there before but then when i reached a certain age it just burst through the

[49:44] dam and into an endless torrent of language right dan uh-huh i'm sorry i was just remembering

[49:50] full of words i was thinking of the full of worms part of roxanne

[49:59] so

[50:00] Sometimes, if I get bored in the middle of a flop house, I just start thinking about a Steve Martin movie.

[50:04] Steve Martin's in Zeus and Roxanne?

[50:08] He played the porpoise.

[50:12] Somebody saw the poster for Zeus and Roxanne and they were like,

[50:16] I love Steve Martin. I love Greek mythology. This is going to be great.

[50:20] And they were so disappointed in that movie.

[50:24] I love Greek mythology. I love the police. Gotta go see this movie.

[50:28] So, Evan's mom finally meets Connor's family.

[50:32] They have this organized dinner thing.

[50:36] He's been lying to his mom as well, but

[50:40] significantly lazier. He has been kind of distracted

[50:44] while talking to her.

[50:48] There's a scene earlier where his mom is like, why didn't you tell me you had a friend and he died and you gave a speech and it was a big thing?

[50:52] Someone at work showed her the video.

[50:56] They're separated from each other. They don't ever seem to be in the same room very often.

[51:00] She's finally learning a lot about her son.

[51:04] It gets pretty harsh because Connor's family offers to help Evan out with

[51:08] college money and Julianne Moore's like, uh-uh, conversation over.

[51:12] I got my own money and they bounce.

[51:16] Evan is like, I don't know. He kind of just doubles down on being shitty.

[51:20] This part felt a little real to me at least

[51:24] because I feel like a teen boy would fail to see the complicated

[51:28] emotions in a moment of a rich family saying to your

[51:32] mom, don't worry, we'll pay for college for you. I totally get that a teen

[51:36] kid would only be able to look at it from their own point of view and not see how that's difficult for his mom.

[51:40] I don't remember there being any

[51:44] payoff to that other than that they're just mad at each other for the scene and then it just goes back

[51:48] to Evan's parade of lies with everybody else.

[51:52] Meanwhile, Alana is starting to find the cracks in Evan's story.

[51:56] She flat out asks him if he's lying and then

[52:00] he of course doubles down again by

[52:04] emailing her the original Dear Evan Hansen letter

[52:08] before the public had only seen the phony emails. Now he sent the actual

[52:12] letter which he could have just shown her on his phone.

[52:16] He didn't need to do this paper trail because that

[52:20] gets worse because she is nervous that the fundraising

[52:24] for the charity is not going well enough.

[52:28] This charity is to rebuild the orchard that Connor supposedly loved.

[52:32] That was Connor's favorite place. Something we should all feel pretty

[52:36] strongly about.

[52:40] She posts the letter on Instagram. We then see our characters at a party

[52:44] where everybody is very eagerly looking at Instagram.

[52:48] Everyone's got notifications set up for Connor-related material

[52:52] because it instantly goes to everyone's phone.

[52:56] Things go viral in movies so much faster than they do in real life

[53:00] because I feel like things move quickly, they go viral.

[53:04] I've never been in a room at a party and suddenly everyone's

[53:08] looking at their phone and getting the news all at once or something like that.

[53:12] So rarely is the news relevant. I have a Google Alert

[53:16] set up for Flophouse Podcasts and it's usually something like,

[53:20] the house flip-flops on this piece of legislation.

[53:24] Disappointed again.

[53:28] I'm going to keep scrolling, they might mention me.

[53:32] Seeing this letter gets everyone mad at the parents

[53:36] which was something I didn't understand for a while.

[53:40] Granted, I wasn't paying the closest attention.

[53:44] The letter refers to his own dad and mom.

[53:48] They think they're saying that Connor's dad and mom were bad.

[53:52] I don't think we see the full text

[53:56] of the letter earlier. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know.

[54:00] There is something in there about his parents not understanding him or something.

[54:04] I think people latch onto that as it must be their fault that he did this to himself.

[54:08] It does seem like it comes out of nowhere.

[54:12] Unless it was a letter where he's like, I don't know, the parents were

[54:16] abusing me or something really horrible.

[54:20] I don't want to sound insensitive saying this, but I feel like one would

[54:24] assume that a troubled teen in their

[54:28] letter would blame their parents for

[54:32] things and I don't know. I wouldn't necessarily see that and assume

[54:36] these must be horrible parents. This person was in a lot of

[54:40] pain. I think to play devil's advocate,

[54:44] which means I'm now Keanu Reeves.

[54:48] You're Al Pacino in that movie.

[54:52] To play devil's advocate, the internet

[54:56] does, I mean there is right now at least, I don't know when this movie was made if it was

[55:00] that way as much, but there is this feeling that anything that gets posted on the internet

[55:04] cannot be taken at face value and is a mystery to be unraveled.

[55:08] There was that video recently where the girl

[55:12] surprised her boyfriend at college and it took him a second to realize

[55:16] that she was there and people were like, I can tell from all the clues in this video

[55:20] that he is a monster. He's a sociopath. I could see

[55:24] just because the internet is so uniquely corrosive that people would

[55:28] do that I guess. I don't know, but it's not really earned in the movie.

[55:32] In real life I would totally buy it, but in a movie I expect more.

[55:36] For me, what really would have happened

[55:40] is people would have turned on Evan Hansen and this family

[55:44] the first day or so. There would always be

[55:48] that's how it works. That's how the cycle works.

[55:52] The first hundred comments on the video of his speech would be like, eat a dick, you suck,

[55:56] that kind of stuff. The cycle doesn't take that long.

[56:00] It's almost instant. The internet is terrible.

[56:04] The family starts to get some serious heat. They are not loving it.

[56:08] Not serious heat in a bad way. Not serious heat like Hollywood is calling.

[56:12] You've got to make a musical of this.

[56:16] The family starts to crack apart under the pressure.

[56:20] It's brought up that

[56:24] one of the changes from the stage show is that

[56:28] Connor's father is actually a stepfather in this.

[56:32] That provides an additional seam to split apart

[56:36] where Amy Adams brings up that maybe Larry

[56:40] wasn't as supportive of Connor because

[56:44] he's not his biological father. Evan is watching all this happen

[56:48] and he's starting to feel real bad, so you know what he does?

[56:52] He makes it about him. He's like, hey guys, I was just lying.

[56:56] I feel better now. I was lying.

[57:00] He's like, guys, let me level with you.

[57:04] This was a goof. This is all a good goof.

[57:08] I don't think that's necessarily him taking responsibility.

[57:12] I think that's him trying to

[57:16] evade conflict. He's trying to make them feel better.

[57:20] It's not like

[57:24] his courageous move.

[57:28] I think at this point he sees

[57:32] his actions have had negative consequences in a way that I should have been able to anticipate

[57:36] but didn't. So I have to do something to avoid

[57:40] this family from eating itself.

[57:44] Wait, Dan, are you saying you wouldn't watch a movie called The Family That Eats Itself?

[57:48] I would love that movie.

[57:52] The thing to me for this scene was this long shot on Evan Hansen

[57:56] singing to this family as they're at this table.

[58:00] It's all on him. And then they do a cut back to the family

[58:04] in stunned silence. And I was like, anything that was moving

[58:08] about that has been taken away because it is such a comedy cut

[58:12] to go back to all of them just staring at it. It's a real record scratch

[58:16] of an edit. And so of course it doesn't go well. The family

[58:20] want him out of there. The next day at school he runs into Zoe and he's like,

[58:24] why didn't you guys post about it? And she's like, yeah, we didn't want to deal

[58:28] with it. It's not about you, dude.

[58:32] She says my mom doesn't want the truth to come out because she's worried that if you get blamed

[58:36] for this you're going to hurt yourself. So his mom does not want the cycle to continue.

[58:40] So they're willing to be the villains of the world

[58:44] on the internet if it means that the noble and

[58:48] precious Evan is okay. Which is one of those

[58:52] that decision adds complexity to Amy Adams character

[58:56] I feel like, in a big way.

[59:00] But it also feels like the movie is in many ways set up to

[59:04] get Evan off the hook as much as possible and keep him from

[59:08] facing consequences about what happened. And that is one of those moments.

[59:12] And then Evan's at home. He finally talks to his mom

[59:16] about it. He explains that he didn't hurt his arm

[59:20] as an accident. It was a failed

[59:24] suicide attempt. And then his mom sings him a song

[59:28] to make him feel better.

[59:32] I just want to pause because I do like to highlight when

[59:36] the movies work for me. Just so I'm not a jerk

[59:40] all the time. Only 99% of the time.

[59:44] Julianne Moore, obviously a wonderful actor and

[59:48] she has this one song here. And it's one of the parts

[59:52] of the film I found genuinely moving. Her singing her

[59:56] song about how she'll always be there for him.

[1:00:00] and comfort when he's, you know, admitted to finally not just the bad things he's done,

[1:00:07] but also how lost he had felt that she didn't know. And I, you know, she's very strong,

[1:00:14] I think, in a movie that doesn't deserve her. And she's not in it much like she's she makes a

[1:00:21] fair amount out of a small role. Yeah, I mean, Julianne Moore is, I think, is by far the best

[1:00:27] performance in the movie. And maybe it's just because it isn't those small portions. But like,

[1:00:32] she's playing her character so much more real than anyone else is playing their character.

[1:00:36] Like Amy Adams character is like, kind of a is so is so in denial, kind of blank, that yeah,

[1:00:45] it gets it becomes almost like, inhuman at times. And Evan Hansen, we talked about what the issues

[1:00:51] are with that. But I think like, but Julianne Moore, I feel like when she's on screen, it's

[1:00:56] I'm seeing like a real person who's interacting with like, with characters, you know, and that

[1:01:01] song is I will admit that song that I felt really touched by at first, and then it goes on for a

[1:01:06] very long time, like all the songs are incredibly long. And but like, yeah, this message of like,

[1:01:12] there's nothing you can do that will stop me that were I won't be on your side. And you know,

[1:01:17] you have to and I had no idea and I'm sorry about it. But and all that stuff like that was,

[1:01:22] it was like, Oh, this isn't like real emotions in this as opposed to like, some of the like,

[1:01:27] teen melodrama emotions, you know, which are real feelings that people have. But

[1:01:30] when you have someone blasting them out at at musical theater opera level, it comes off as

[1:01:37] like, you know, false, you know, in my opinion. So Evan takes this, this inspiration,

[1:01:42] he immediately goes on Instagram and post that it was all his fault. And then and then he then he

[1:01:49] tries to learn as much about Connor as he can by cyber stalking him, like a psycho creepy,

[1:01:56] still creepy, didn't learn anything. Yeah. And through his internet Scooby Doo work, he finds

[1:02:02] a video of Connor playing guitar, which he then shares with the family. And they you know, they're

[1:02:11] touched by it because they didn't have they had very few positive memories of their dead son.

[1:02:16] Yeah, and he never would play songs from this was another thing that I found moving,

[1:02:20] not because of the movie, but because of the goosebumps thing that Elliot has talked about,

[1:02:24] like, if this was a situation in real life, I would find it moving. So I mapped that onto the

[1:02:30] film. Although I did wonder why you can do sometimes Yeah, who who in this group therapy

[1:02:35] was filming him play this song that was seems like a breach of the first rule of AA.

[1:02:42] Yeah, you don't usually record it for your archives, the like group therapy sessions at

[1:02:46] rehab. But I mean, I can only assume based on on other behavior in this film was that

[1:02:52] Connor was fucking up real bad. And some shithead was like, this is going to be hilarious for me to

[1:02:56] put this. This failed, played a beautiful song. Yeah, this guy was this guy got to group therapy

[1:03:04] and you won't believe what he did. But I feel like there's so much this movie is asking me to

[1:03:10] buy into that I can't buy into. But the idea that someone would have been like, Hey, can I

[1:03:14] record the song? And he'd be like, Okay, like, I can, I can believe that. I'll buy that therapy

[1:03:20] fails. So then flash as opposed to everyone, everyone in the world deciding they need to

[1:03:25] donate money in a high school kid's name to to rebuild an oil and an orchard, which they're like,

[1:03:32] we need to create the Connor project. The Connor project is going to be a beacon of hope for

[1:03:36] everyone who's depressed out there. orchards. That's where it's in. People need one local

[1:03:41] orchard. We don't need to, you know, work on suicide prevention or mental health issues.

[1:03:47] We'll just make an orchard. That's got to get an orchard together. This place.

[1:03:53] If we can make an orchard out of leaves, I wrote it back.

[1:03:57] Yeah, every nice one. That's right. Everyone's like, it was Connors favorite place. And

[1:04:03] most of that seems to be based off of Evan's story. So I don't know, like,

[1:04:07] the family went and had picnics there. But we don't really know that kind of really liked it

[1:04:10] very much. If anything, if he's anything like my kids, he hates to go outdoors and go places with

[1:04:15] his family. So it's they're like, it was Connors favorite place. And I'm always like, based on what

[1:04:19] I don't understand his character diamond as as laid out in this film includes loves orchards.

[1:04:26] So speaking of the orchard, our final scene, we have we have Evan Hansen and Zoe walking around

[1:04:32] in that orchard. They're talking a little bit about their future, what they're going to do next.

[1:04:37] And Zoe says some wild shit about how she wishes she'd met him now after he'd gone through all this

[1:04:44] character building. And I'm like, I don't know, man, I don't think he's learned anything.

[1:04:48] And then the movie's over. His big one. They're like, how are you going to tone

[1:04:52] for all this? And he's like, I'm going to take a year off from college and get a job.

[1:04:55] It's like, take a gap. All right. I'm going to have a gap year. Probably travel around Europe,

[1:05:00] go to clubs. Really? Yeah. So that's it. Dear Evan Hansen. Evan writes another letter to himself,

[1:05:07] right? Does he write a letter to himself? I don't remember that. Yeah, I've looked at the very at

[1:05:11] the very end. He writes another letter to himself. And it's like all the things that he was fake

[1:05:14] saying to himself at the beginning. Now he's really saying it today is going to be a big

[1:05:19] now. He's really saying it today is going to be a good day because he's been through

[1:05:23] the the crucible that was lying to everybody and mostly getting away with it.

[1:05:29] Let's roll straight into final judgment. Was this dear Evan Hansen or dear Evan Hansen?

[1:05:35] Yeah. Yeah, I'm not going to top that. I mean, for me, this was a bad, bad movie that was like

[1:05:45] almost made worse by like a few moments that genuinely affected me because I'm like, oh,

[1:05:51] OK, well, that just throws the rest into sharp relief. How terrible some of this is. And like,

[1:05:58] look, I. I don't want to take anything away from anyone who found something meaningful in this,

[1:06:05] like this is obviously my own opinion, and this is like going dealing with a lot of heavy stuff,

[1:06:11] but I expect more if it's dealing with a lot of heavy stuff. I feel like there's a higher degree

[1:06:16] of difficulty to make it justified. And the movie, at least I've not seen the show like just ladled

[1:06:25] it on so thick and did not seem to truly be able to grapple with the conundrums that it set up for

[1:06:33] itself in a way that just made me like deeply uncomfortable for most of the runtime. So I

[1:06:39] didn't like it. But what do you guys have to say, Elliot? Maybe you. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah,

[1:06:45] it's it's it felt like I didn't like it. I didn't think it was very good. And much,

[1:06:49] much like when we when we saw the Dark Tower movie, I was like, this really makes me want

[1:06:53] to go back and read the books. So I know what was so interesting about them that someone wanted to

[1:06:58] go to the trouble of making this very mediocre movie of it that like that it kind of made me

[1:07:04] wish I had seen the play so I could see what was in it that was powerful, that was lost in

[1:07:09] translation to film because watching it, it just felt like it felt like it was it was reaching

[1:07:14] for something really emotional and failing to get there at almost every moment, you know,

[1:07:20] aside from the one or two that we mentioned. And yeah, there's just a few baffling decisions in it.

[1:07:26] And I totally understand the like, I understand the motivation of like, this guy has an amazing

[1:07:32] performance on Broadway. We got to immortalize it on film so people can see it. But it doesn't

[1:07:37] always work out the best for film. And it's just the but it felt like a certain point I was I was

[1:07:42] like, I'm not sure what this movie is, is I don't know what this movie is saying to me. It's the

[1:07:47] songs don't get to me. They're just not my kind of songs. They all sound the same. I don't like

[1:07:51] the characters. And I don't know what I'm I don't know what the messages I'm supposed to be getting

[1:07:55] from this, even as someone who should, like I was saying earlier, should be sympathizing with

[1:08:00] the emotions this character is having and should be like the the feeling of like being a teenager

[1:08:05] who feels lonely and lost and doesn't know how to reach out to people and and doesn't feel seen

[1:08:11] and doesn't feel like anyone recognizes the value in them, but also isn't quite sure what about

[1:08:15] themselves is valuable and doesn't know how to show that to people. Like that's all stuff that

[1:08:19] I felt. And but while watching this, I was like, get out of here. Come on. I don't think so. Like

[1:08:25] it just it felt like I'm watching someone who and I and maybe the people who made this went

[1:08:31] through all that themselves. But it felt like watching someone who felt like when I was a kid

[1:08:35] and a lot of the popular kids in school were all into Catcher in the Rye when we read it in class

[1:08:40] and they were like, this book really gets me. And I was like, no, it doesn't. This is like that's

[1:08:45] what we watched. We watched Harold and Maude in a class in high school and and seeing the popular

[1:08:50] kids being like, oh, finally, a movie that understands what an outcast I feel like.

[1:08:53] And it was like, no, you are. And like, it felt like a movie made by those people,

[1:08:57] the people who like felt like they had been through it, but weren't really through it,

[1:09:01] you know. But I shouldn't judge other people's emotions. If they felt like outcasts, then they

[1:09:05] were probably outcasts, even though they were all football players and cheerleaders.

[1:09:09] But that's the thing. Everybody feels like an outcast. Yeah, I guess everyone feels like an

[1:09:12] outcast, no more than than Big Boy and Andre 3000. And they're the ultimate outcast. But

[1:09:18] the it felt like the movie just felt very shallow. It felt shallow in a way that it

[1:09:23] was it felt it was deep, but it was not. And it was like the old anti-drug ad where the where the

[1:09:28] woman dives into the swimming pool and there's no water there. Like that's what that's what

[1:09:32] watching this movie felt like in a lot of ways. But, Charlene, you loved it, right?

[1:09:38] Well, let me get my notes. Oh, wow. We got to start at the beginning.

[1:09:45] So, yeah, I felt like this movie deals with a lot of like important themes,

[1:09:51] you know, like growing up, feeling alone, feeling like no one understands you, you know, like.

[1:10:00] he tried to commit suicide and and nobody even cared like nobody came to find him and it should

[1:10:05] all be so touching and then they wrapped it around this like horrible person of a character

[1:10:11] and some of my least favorite um like plot devices ever like i i can't stand when the story is wrapped

[1:10:22] around if you would just tell the truth the story would be over and this is like one of the worst

[1:10:27] representations of that i've ever seen um and they treat it almost like a rom-com would treat that

[1:10:33] kind of thing like oh if he finds out that i'm the one that closed the factory then he's never

[1:10:38] gonna fall in love with me and you're like just tell him just tell him but but this is like so

[1:10:43] much worse i want to i want to know about this factory closing right that's a good story and it

[1:10:51] just it made me it made me so mad and uh so i yeah i did not like i did not like the movie i did

[1:10:59] not like the play and i thought that if you took the songs out um some of the lyrics of the songs

[1:11:06] were really good if you like wrapped these themes around a character that was deserving

[1:11:12] of of this kind of so you're saying that julianne moore should have given up on evidence

[1:11:17] yeah you're so terrible give up on him he's bad

[1:11:26] there's yeah i mean you pointed this out you suggested this while we were watching the movie

[1:11:31] that like it feels like it was written by somebody who doesn't have a lot of experience with friends

[1:11:37] like like doesn't know how friends work well that makes me feel like maybe the people who

[1:11:41] working on it did know what those feelings are like but they're trying to they're like

[1:11:44] the problem is not that they don't know what that kind of depression is like and they're coming at

[1:11:48] it from the outside but they're so far inside that they don't know how how the story would

[1:11:52] actually work if it happened in person like they didn't they don't understand the way like

[1:11:56] two high school boys would be friends because they didn't have i don't know um yeah that was

[1:12:03] a problem i had too charlene where it's like i mean i don't know audrey tried to convince me like

[1:12:07] oh you know if you don't know what friends are then like maybe this is your vision but i'm like

[1:12:11] i guess but his like like fantastic version of it like the version he confabulates is so strange

[1:12:18] and so unrecognizable to me it's like how to like boys in high school would be friends that like

[1:12:25] i don't know it is all i mean everything about it is everything about that the scene where he's like

[1:12:30] singing about their friendship that the his friend who is gay is making jokes about oh it sounds like

[1:12:36] your relationship is really gay and it's like their relationship what he thinks about does sound

[1:12:41] like a love relationship like it doesn't sound like he's like yeah we'd go sit and tell each

[1:12:45] other about all our fondest dreams and then we're going to the amusement park together and it's like

[1:12:49] well these are dates like you didn't do that with all your dudes i mean we did i did go to amusement

[1:12:54] park maybe it'd be a little more in line to elliot okay fair point fair point yeah and when he is

[1:13:02] when he's singing the song to connor's sister about like these are the things that connor felt

[1:13:07] for you but what he's really singing about is romantic love if it's it's yeah it feels like

[1:13:12] it's written by someone who is not who's having trouble understanding how those emotions play out

[1:13:16] yeah that's a good point so guys when i was younger should i have gone to amusement parks

[1:13:20] more with my friends and told them all my fondest dreams probably uh of course i mean i think that

[1:13:26] in general like if an amusement park is around like it's it's a pretty good decision to go to

[1:13:30] an amusement park you might find one of those wish machines where you could get big and then

[1:13:37] yeah you say with an old lady stewart you can do it i mean she's also a bad little boy

[1:13:50] but did you say old lady because she was almost certainly younger than we are now

[1:13:54] yeah

[1:13:57] you could do what i did as a kid and go to an amusement park with just your dad and have him

[1:14:01] like wave at you as you go by on those like motorcycle merry-go-round thing i mean it sounds

[1:14:08] like a nice day out sounds fun to me so uh you didn't give us final judgment charlene is this

[1:14:16] a good one a bad one or a yummy one one more point i feel like you love it or what the i like the

[1:14:21] moment where um the girl that was the president of all the different teams alana where she was

[1:14:28] like you know we all feel like that you know like like you're not the only one that that feels like

[1:14:34] they don't fit in or is depressed or like thinks high school is weird and i believe that's a song

[1:14:40] that was written for the movie i don't believe it's in the show um is i i also like that moment

[1:14:47] when they're like and they were like saying like oh we don't know what what antidepressants are you

[1:14:52] on yeah and the thing the weird thing about it though is by inserting that sequence relatively

[1:14:58] early in the movie that's the sort of that's the sort of revelation that a character like

[1:15:03] evan hansen would be like oh wait everyone's a little bit like me but it makes no effect on it

[1:15:09] because they're like let's just stick this in the movie because it's actually good and makes sense

[1:15:14] but it does not alter his behavior at all yeah yeah uh yeah i'm uh so i'm gonna say it's a bad

[1:15:21] bad movie uh i guess you love musicals maybe give this one a look but i don't know i'm not into it

[1:15:32] somewhere between science and superstition there is a podcast

[1:15:37] oh your daughter doesn't say she's a demon she says she's the devil himself that thing

[1:15:45] is not my daughter and i want you to tell me there's a show where the hosts don't just

[1:15:50] report on french science and spirituality but take part themselves well there is and it's oh

[1:15:59] no ross and carrie on maximum fun this year we actually became certified exorcists so yes carrie

[1:16:05] and i can help your daughter or we can just talk about it on the show oh no ross and carrie on

[1:16:13] maximum fun.org i can't hear myself but these are real podcast listeners not actors

[1:16:24] hey thanks for coming here's a list of descriptors what would you choose to describe

[1:16:30] the perfect podcast i mean vulgarity dumb definitely dumb and like

[1:16:38] right here this one meritless what if i told you there was a podcast that did have all of that

[1:16:45] no jordan jesse go and it's free jordan jesse go jordan jesse go jordan jesse go a real podcast

[1:16:57] okay let's talk about our sponsors i mean like all the shows on max fun we are primarily sponsored

[1:17:03] by listeners like you uh and thank you for being a max fun member if you are if you're not maybe

[1:17:09] look into it there's a lot of great bonus content but we also have a few uh advertisers who are uh

[1:17:15] kind enough to sponsor us one of them is green chef uh green chef makes eating well easy with

[1:17:23] plans to fit every lifestyle uh it's got fresh produce premium proteins and organic ingredients

[1:17:32] you can trust green chef is uh is uh is playing it on the edge there if i didn't have a nice uh

[1:17:39] foam guard for my microphone that premium proteins might have caused a lot of popping

[1:17:45] but that's how confident they are in their proteins is this an ad for your microphone guard

[1:17:50] green chef is the number one meal kit for eating well it's pre-made and pre-measured sauces

[1:17:55] dressings and spices get you more chef curated flavor in less time green chefs expert chefs

[1:18:02] curate every recipe so you can enjoy nutritious restaurant quality dishes at home without

[1:18:07] compromising on taste i've used green chef i have to admit i um i like cooking a lot and i can be a

[1:18:16] little snobby about this sort of thing and be like well you know the meal kit i don't want to

[1:18:20] do that it's it's it's actually very good food it's very convenient to have something that you

[1:18:26] know you've got the ingredients for in your house you don't have to run out at the last minute to

[1:18:31] get something um even the uh lower calorie options are delicious uh so go to greenchef.com

[1:18:39] slash flophouse 130 flophouse 130 that's the code and use code flophouse 130 to get

[1:18:46] 130 off that's 130 off plus free shipping that's greenchef.com

[1:18:53] slash flophouse 130 and use code flophouse 130 again those are numerals at the end of flophouse

[1:19:00] to get 130 off plus free shipping you're saying you're not spelling out the words

[1:19:06] yeah yeah that would be a lot for uh for an offer code save yourself some keystrokes just do it as

[1:19:12] numbers this podcast is also sponsored by better help online therapy uh we've uh talked about

[1:19:19] better help a lot of times on this show because they've been sponsoring us and this month according

[1:19:23] to the copy that's been prepared for me we're discussing some of the stigmas around mental

[1:19:27] health uh there's a lot of people who think that uh you should wait until you've got a really

[1:19:33] big problem that is throwing your life all out of whack before you go into therapy but i find that

[1:19:38] is not the best way to use therapy therapy is something that you can use to keep yourself on

[1:19:43] balance uh and keep you from getting to the point where you are desperately in trouble and need it

[1:19:49] for instance in the movie that we were talking about today dear evan hansen it's mentioned many

[1:19:53] times in it that he is missing his therapy sessions and i think that he might have been able to um at

[1:19:59] least get to a

[1:20:00] better place if he was going to those therapy sessions

[1:20:02] rather than making up lies about his classmates

[1:20:06] and presenting himself as someone he's not.

[1:20:09] Now, perhaps the fact is that maybe his therapist

[1:20:11] wasn't a good match, that happens sometimes.

[1:20:13] You just gotta keep trying.

[1:20:14] Look, that's the worst part of therapy for me

[1:20:17] is having to find the therapist that I want.

[1:20:20] You have to try more than one often

[1:20:22] before you find one that really matches

[1:20:24] and who's right for you,

[1:20:25] and you can form that very special relationship

[1:20:29] where you can feel vulnerable for them

[1:20:30] and really open yourself up for them,

[1:20:32] and BetterHelp might be able to help you do that.

[1:20:34] I find therapy to be an invaluable thing for me

[1:20:37] and many of the people that I know

[1:20:38] because, if anything, it's good to have a space

[1:20:41] where you can just talk about yourself

[1:20:43] and be open about yourself

[1:20:46] and not worry about what the other person thinks

[1:20:48] because you're paying them to listen to you,

[1:20:51] unlike this podcast where I talk about myself all the time

[1:20:54] and I can see my co-host getting noticeably annoyed by that.

[1:20:57] So, BetterHelp is customized online therapy.

[1:21:00] It offers video, phone, or live chat sessions

[1:21:02] with a therapist.

[1:21:03] You don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to.

[1:21:05] That might help you open up.

[1:21:08] I don't know.

[1:21:08] It depends on who the person you are is.

[1:21:11] It can be more affordable than in-person therapy.

[1:21:12] You can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours.

[1:21:15] Give it a try.

[1:21:16] See why over two million people

[1:21:17] have used BetterHelp online therapy.

[1:21:20] I would recommend some kind of therapy to just about anybody.

[1:21:23] BetterHelp may be the way that you find the therapist

[1:21:26] that is right for you.

[1:21:28] And unfortunately, you just have to keep trying to get,

[1:21:31] if you don't find the right person, you try again

[1:21:33] because therapy is worth that search.

[1:21:35] It's like marriage in a way.

[1:21:37] Maybe the first one isn't gonna work out, but eventually.

[1:21:40] So, this podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp

[1:21:42] and Flop House lets you get 10% off their first month

[1:21:46] at BetterHelp with betterhelp.com slash flop.

[1:21:49] That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P.com slash flop.

[1:21:54] Therapy, I recommend it.

[1:21:56] Wow, Elliot, banger of a lead in for this j-j-j-j-jumbo truck.

[1:22:01] That's right.

[1:22:02] Video stream your next live event

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[1:22:49] Yeah, you can, it's easy to remember.

[1:22:50] You just remember European Union Alien versus Predator.

[1:22:55] It's a phrase I'm already thinking.

[1:22:57] I'm glad to finally have something I can go with.

[1:23:00] Let's do some letters from listeners.

[1:23:02] And by do, I mean, I will read them

[1:23:05] and then we'll talk about them.

[1:23:06] So there's nothing sexual about what you're gonna do

[1:23:08] with the letters?

[1:23:10] Yeah, nothing.

[1:23:10] I mean, the shape of an envelope is kind of sexual.

[1:23:14] I guess that it opens?

[1:23:17] I don't know.

[1:23:19] Not the way I expected you to go, Dan.

[1:23:21] Not what I expected.

[1:23:22] Anyway, I guess what we're saying is,

[1:23:24] dear Flop House, today's gonna be a great day

[1:23:28] or whatever they said in that dear Evan Hansen letter.

[1:23:32] Hey, dear Flop House, you're writing this letter

[1:23:34] to yourself about all the things you wanna hear

[1:23:37] in the letters today.

[1:23:38] I hope there's a letter about how much they like us.

[1:23:41] I hope there's a letter about riding a bike.

[1:23:44] I hope there's a lighter.

[1:23:46] I hope there's a lighter inside of the letter

[1:23:50] so I can light this cigar.

[1:23:52] Did I mention I'm into cigars now?

[1:23:55] That's right, I'm a cigar guy, hanging out at cigar bars,

[1:23:59] reading that magazine about cigars.

[1:24:02] Everything's cigars now on the Flop House.

[1:24:04] Welcome to the Flop House, a podcast about cigars

[1:24:08] until I lose interest.

[1:24:10] So guys, should we make this a podcast about cigars?

[1:24:12] I'm not really into cigars, but I could get into cigars

[1:24:16] if we need to.

[1:24:17] I feel like that would be pretty cool.

[1:24:18] I've needed a reason to be in the same room

[1:24:20] as Alec Baldwin and Rudy Giuliani, so cigars are it.

[1:24:23] I thought you said moody Giuliani.

[1:24:26] That's what they say when he's being a grumper

[1:24:30] on the office, more like moody Giuliani.

[1:24:33] And by office, I mean jail cell he'll be in.

[1:24:36] Oh, hell yeah, playing the hits there.

[1:24:38] What are you, Colbert over here?

[1:24:41] You know what, that's a perfect lead-in to this letter,

[1:24:46] which is, hi, peaches.

[1:24:48] Movies are inextricably linked to the politics

[1:24:51] in the time and place they're made.

[1:24:53] With the collapse of democracy in the US

[1:24:55] about four to six years away,

[1:24:57] due to one party having a longing for a time

[1:24:59] that never existed and willingness to say anything

[1:25:01] to get the votes of the unaccountably large number

[1:25:03] of people with no empathy or understanding of consequences,

[1:25:06] and the other party being completely inept

[1:25:08] and confused about how government works,

[1:25:10] what do you think movies will look like in 10 years?

[1:25:14] Are Kevin James and Mark Wahlberg on every screen?

[1:25:17] Do war movies take over the space

[1:25:19] that superheroes currently hold?

[1:25:21] Is there a strong reaction that grows a larger

[1:25:24] and more vibrant art house scene?

[1:25:26] Is there any chance that a movie could have

[1:25:28] a bikini carwash or Castle Freak in them?

[1:25:31] Jim, willing to trade last name for asylum.

[1:25:34] I mean, there's always a chance,

[1:25:36] but I enter into every movie.

[1:25:38] A bikini could be a bikini carwash or a Castle Freak.

[1:25:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:25:42] Way to stay on base.

[1:25:44] Jackie, starring Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy.

[1:25:47] Yeah, could be a bikini carwash in this.

[1:25:51] The Hours.

[1:25:52] Yeah, they're probably Virginia Woolf

[1:25:53] as a bikini carwash in this movie at some point.

[1:25:55] Yeah, yeah.

[1:25:56] The Lighthouse Carwash.

[1:25:59] The waves are the waves of the carwash.

[1:26:02] So here's the, I think, ironically,

[1:26:04] the movies that are big right now,

[1:26:05] superhero movies and science fiction disaster dystopia

[1:26:08] and ethics and things like that,

[1:26:10] are the perfect ones for the time we're living in right now.

[1:26:13] When people have a real black and white understanding

[1:26:16] of the world and morality,

[1:26:17] and every single day is a battle between good and evil.

[1:26:20] And so many people want to believe

[1:26:22] that there's a hidden world beneath our own

[1:26:25] that is the true reality, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[1:26:27] So my guess is that in the future,

[1:26:31] the movies will actually probably have less to do

[1:26:32] with politics and more to do with the way

[1:26:35] that the streaming and theatrical models

[1:26:37] are built economically.

[1:26:38] So it's not as interesting as it would seem.

[1:26:41] But it's gonna be much more about what movies

[1:26:45] will people subscribe to streaming services

[1:26:49] to get access to than about what's going on in politics.

[1:26:52] But I'm sure the content will, in some way, reflect it.

[1:26:55] Yeah, in so much as there will be politics in the movies,

[1:26:59] perhaps because of the liberal bent to many creatives,

[1:27:04] it will become more and more Adam McKay-style strident

[1:27:11] satires that are basically making the subtext text.

[1:27:16] Satires that are meant for people who already agree

[1:27:18] with the message that the movie is presenting.

[1:27:22] But I mean, the thing is, unless you live in a,

[1:27:27] even though so many creators have a liberal bent movie,

[1:27:31] the people who put the money to make movies

[1:27:33] have a capitalist bent.

[1:27:34] So they're gonna do whatever they think

[1:27:36] they can make money on.

[1:27:37] But I think that I would be surprised

[1:27:39] if it turned into like, if we turned in,

[1:27:42] I, you know, it could happen.

[1:27:43] I'd be surprised if we turned into a country

[1:27:44] where all the movies have to support

[1:27:48] whatever the government is saying at that moment,

[1:27:50] even if democracy falls apart further.

[1:27:53] But at a certain point, it's just whatever speaks

[1:27:57] to people that can make money at the moment

[1:27:58] in which they can sell merchandise for.

[1:28:01] So who knows what that'll be.

[1:28:04] You know what, here's the cycle we're gonna be in.

[1:28:07] Because our generation has proved

[1:28:08] that you cannot let go of anything in your childhood

[1:28:10] and you'll just make it.

[1:28:11] In 10 years, there's gonna be like a Ben 10 movie

[1:28:14] and like a Blue's Clues movie.

[1:28:15] And that's the kind of stuff.

[1:28:16] The generation that watched that

[1:28:17] is now gonna have disposable income probably.

[1:28:21] And they'll wanna see stuff that's gritty reboots

[1:28:23] of their childhood.

[1:28:24] A deepening of like IP stranglehold over the arts.

[1:28:29] Yeah, until the last IP left is Uncle Ben

[1:28:34] and they try to make a movie out of him and it fails.

[1:28:36] And they have to, and then Hollywood collapses

[1:28:39] and everyone wanders their eyes hurting

[1:28:43] from the glare of the sun of original ideas

[1:28:45] as they wander into a wasteland

[1:28:47] in which only original ideas exist.

[1:28:49] And they have to reinvent the world again

[1:28:51] and find out what is an idea

[1:28:53] that nobody's ever thought of before.

[1:28:55] Is the Uncle Ben Rice movie also a Spider-Man movie?

[1:28:58] It doesn't start out as one, but it will cross over

[1:29:00] when it comes to Uncle Ben across the rice verse.

[1:29:04] When he's, and the Uncle Ben from Spider-Man.

[1:29:06] Sure, you got wild rice, Basmati, and Arborio,

[1:29:11] and long grain and short grain all together in one film.

[1:29:14] And that crazy wild rice.

[1:29:16] Yeah, yeah, there's gonna be risotto Ben.

[1:29:18] Yeah, it'll be all the different Ben

[1:29:21] from different rice universes.

[1:29:23] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[1:29:24] That sounds really exciting.

[1:29:25] Yeah, I mean, it's just like,

[1:29:28] one of the fear is that it's just gonna get

[1:29:32] more and more commercial and that interesting small movies

[1:29:35] are gonna continue to get pushed to the margins

[1:29:37] and budgets are gonna be smaller.

[1:29:39] But who knows, maybe streaming services

[1:29:41] will help support our auteur cinema.

[1:29:45] Yeah, I mean, there was also,

[1:29:46] there was a time when movie theaters

[1:29:49] had kind of hot and cold running Westerns

[1:29:52] and TV screens had hot and cold running Westerns.

[1:29:54] And that was crowding out a lot of other stuff.

[1:29:56] And it all goes through cycles.

[1:29:58] I was wrong though.

[1:29:59] I said the last time he would be on.

[1:30:00] The last IP would actually be Ready Kilowatt, the electricity mascot.

[1:30:04] That's the last character that will be adapted based on IP.

[1:30:07] We were playing Monopoly yesterday, and Sammy, my older son, he goes,

[1:30:11] has there ever been a Monopoly movie?

[1:30:13] And I was like, Sammy, therein lies a tale.

[1:30:15] A tale of generations of development executives trying to develop a Monopoly movie.

[1:30:20] So funny. I want to hear this tale.

[1:30:22] Well, I mean basically what they've been trying to make a Monopoly movie.

[1:30:24] And like Ridley Scott was going to direct it at one point.

[1:30:27] What?

[1:30:28] Yeah.

[1:30:30] Yeah, that's why he made that Getty movie instead.

[1:30:33] He's like, I'll just take the script for the Monopoly movie.

[1:30:37] Instead of being Rich Uncle Pennybags, it'll be J. Paul Getty.

[1:30:40] Okay. Well, here's our other letter for the episode.

[1:30:45] It is from First Name Withheld Craft, like the mac and cheese.

[1:30:51] Okay.

[1:30:53] Dear Flophouse, on a girl's getaway, I met a woman who I nicknamed Gone Girl

[1:30:58] due to her exceptional resemblance to Rosamund Pike.

[1:31:02] Because she had faked her own death and gone on the run under an assumed identity.

[1:31:06] Upon telling my husband about this, he asked, did she cut a dude's dig off too?

[1:31:11] My jaw dropped as I realized my husband was following the mistaken footsteps of Stuart Wellington.

[1:31:16] I suggested—

[1:31:17] What?

[1:31:18] She was thinking of the scene in Gone Girl wherein, spoiler alert,

[1:31:21] Neil Patrick Harris gets his throat slit and we also happen to see his ding-dong.

[1:31:26] This leads me to believe there exists a phenomenon where,

[1:31:29] presented with a scene that includes ding-dongs along with blood or gore,

[1:31:34] men will form a false memory of violence—

[1:31:36] Oh, interesting.

[1:31:37] —enacted upon said ding-dong.

[1:31:39] A ding-dong-della effect, if you will.

[1:31:42] I won't research paper and peer review forthcoming.

[1:31:49] I think you've already been asked about false memories of movies,

[1:31:51] so as an artist tired of being asked about NFTs, I'll ask,

[1:31:55] what will the Flophouse release as its first NFT?

[1:31:59] Wow, I thought Dear Evan Hansen would receive the majority of my ire,

[1:32:02] but now it's going to be NF-fucking-Ts.

[1:32:05] I think we're all on the same page of not wanting to ever be involved with NFTs, right?

[1:32:10] Yeah, I want everything to be as fungible as possible.

[1:32:12] I was going to say the same thing.

[1:32:13] I think all your tokens need to be fungible.

[1:32:15] I have a real issue with how—and maybe this is me being a Philistine, I don't know—

[1:32:20] I feel like I have an appreciation of art that people are like,

[1:32:23] this is the art of the future.

[1:32:24] And it's really like a shitty cartoon of a monkey smoking a doobie is like,

[1:32:28] that's the art of the future.

[1:32:29] I've yet to see an NFT that was not just like a piece of crap.

[1:32:33] Or the number of artists I've seen—

[1:32:35] On top of the fact that it's bad for the environment,

[1:32:37] I'd rather not get involved.

[1:32:38] Or the number of artists I've seen who have had to take down their public art pages

[1:32:42] because they keep getting notified that some asswipe is turning their artwork into NFTs.

[1:32:49] Yeah.

[1:32:50] Like, it sucks. It's the worst.

[1:32:52] The promise of blockchain-based technologies was supposed to be right,

[1:32:55] that like you'd always have a chain of authorship,

[1:32:57] so you wouldn't need to keep a ledger and you wouldn't have things stolen.

[1:33:00] But all I hear about is people getting their bitcoins and their art stolen.

[1:33:03] So I don't—

[1:33:04] Or like accidentally throwing them away.

[1:33:06] Mm-hmm.

[1:33:07] Yeah. It's like one of those things where the government builds a dam to provide water

[1:33:11] and it makes the river dry up and they're like,

[1:33:13] well, now we've got to bring in water from another river.

[1:33:16] Like, it seems like it's—

[1:33:18] So I guess our NFT would probably be like, probably the house cat.

[1:33:21] Yeah, probably. It'd be a really cool house cat drawing.

[1:33:24] Like roller skating or whatever.

[1:33:26] Dan, you've got a real collector's impulse.

[1:33:28] Have you ever felt the urge to jump into the NFT market

[1:33:30] and collect links to images that you supposedly own?

[1:33:35] I have not.

[1:33:37] I will admit that my collector's impulse usually extends mostly to tangible things,

[1:33:45] things that I can touch and have.

[1:33:47] So anyway.

[1:33:49] Every time I see a thing where it's like,

[1:33:51] new NFT is dropping, new NFT is dropping,

[1:33:53] and it's always like, OK, here's like a skull with a Nazi hat on.

[1:33:57] I don't really—and it's drawn poorly.

[1:33:59] Like I don't need that.

[1:34:00] This is not a thing I want to spend any money, let alone thousands of dollars on.

[1:34:03] Wow.

[1:34:04] Have you guys mentioned the thing about sex workers and NFTs before?

[1:34:07] I mean, we haven't talked about it on the show.

[1:34:09] Well, basically, if sex workers aren't taken at his payment,

[1:34:12] it's not legitimate enough for me.

[1:34:14] Yeah, and I think that's fair, yeah.

[1:34:16] But would you—Dan, would you buy NFT pornography?

[1:34:22] Just so I could know that I was the only one getting aroused at this particular image.

[1:34:27] Now you have a point.

[1:34:29] I guess there's something special about that.

[1:34:31] The ultimate hedonism.

[1:34:33] No one has been able to explain to me how NFTs are different than pogs,

[1:34:37] which 30 years ago, people just shoved whatever picture they could find onto a pog and sold it,

[1:34:42] and people were buying it for a lot of money.

[1:34:44] But they're the pogs of the 22nd century.

[1:34:47] The 22nd century?

[1:34:49] Yeah, I'm putting us ahead.

[1:34:51] Wow, amazing.

[1:34:52] We're that much closer to the Duck Dodgers era.

[1:34:55] That's great.

[1:34:57] You quote me on it.

[1:34:59] NFT is the pogs of the 22nd century, I guess.

[1:35:02] I guess quote Dan on it, but I would say 21st century.

[1:35:07] It's the future. I get it.

[1:35:09] Hey, I know you don't want this picture of Spawn,

[1:35:13] but what if we put it on a cardboard disc?

[1:35:15] Yeah, give it to me. I want it.

[1:35:20] A pog? Definitely. I'll take it.

[1:35:22] I remember as a kid buying pogs and being like,

[1:35:25] I guess I'm supposed to buy these now.

[1:35:27] Yeah, the way I felt about pogs, I kind of feel about Funko Pop stuff,

[1:35:32] and I know that kind of makes me a little grumpus,

[1:35:35] but it's the same sort of thing where I'm like,

[1:35:38] I don't need this in my life. I don't need a little statue.

[1:35:41] I have so many ways to enjoy the things that I like

[1:35:44] that I don't need to own every single way of enjoying them.

[1:35:48] Yeah, I think that if that's your thing,

[1:35:51] and you've made a commitment to this will be my thing,

[1:35:55] that's one thing. I can understand being like,

[1:35:57] oh, I enjoy this character. I'll have it in an action figure form,

[1:36:01] but as a man in his fourth decade of life

[1:36:05] who has acquired a bunch of bullshit,

[1:36:08] I don't need to have little statues of Doctor Who.

[1:36:13] I really admire, and in some ways envy,

[1:36:16] that it's a very straightforward way of interacting with the world

[1:36:21] where stuff I want put on my shelf, done.

[1:36:25] I wish that I could interact with the world that straightforwardly sometimes,

[1:36:29] but I guess it reminds me a little bit of my feelings

[1:36:35] about Star Wars burlesque shows where it's like,

[1:36:38] look, I love Star Wars. I love women taking their clothes off.

[1:36:41] I've never felt the need to combine these two pleasures.

[1:36:44] I don't feel like one is not reinforcing or heightening the other

[1:36:48] by bringing them together.

[1:36:50] You don't feel like they were both created separately.

[1:36:52] It's a confusion of the two flavors.

[1:36:54] Yeah, exactly. I don't need to bring sexual arousal

[1:36:57] and I love these aliens. That alien looks neat

[1:37:01] into the same moment.

[1:37:04] It's not a Venn diagram that I need to be living in, I guess.

[1:37:07] You made a good point that it didn't occur to me

[1:37:10] that maybe NFTs are collectibles

[1:37:13] that you don't need to have the space for.

[1:37:16] Oh, I think that's a big part of it.

[1:37:18] I was reading a thing where they're talking about,

[1:37:21] we're getting more into NFTs than we probably need to,

[1:37:24] where they're talking about the idea that

[1:37:27] this was somebody trying to push NFTs as a positive,

[1:37:31] saying in the physical world, there are many ways to show your status,

[1:37:35] your shoes, your car, your clothes, your house,

[1:37:38] but in the digital world, it's unlimited resources, essentially.

[1:37:42] So there's no way to show your status off.

[1:37:44] But with NFTs and their artificial scarcity,

[1:37:47] you can finally show people online how cool you are

[1:37:51] and how much money you are by wasting it.

[1:37:54] And it's like, I don't know, that seems like a negative more than a positive.

[1:37:58] Not by your picture on the top of a mountain from your dating app.

[1:38:03] Yep.

[1:38:05] She's already planning her dating profile

[1:38:07] where she goes to the top of a mountain to get her picture taken.

[1:38:10] Under bio, it would say, no, nerds do not apply.

[1:38:15] But the idea, like, the internet was sold to us as like,

[1:38:18] here's a world where anyone can be whatever they want to be,

[1:38:21] and we're all equal.

[1:38:22] Psych!

[1:38:23] Sometimes we buy stupid, ugly pictures, and it shows that we have more money.

[1:38:26] Yeah, I mean, it's, what was that, what's that fucking movie,

[1:38:29] Ready Player One?

[1:38:30] It's that kind of shit.

[1:38:32] Yeah.

[1:38:33] When is Player 2 finally going to get their chance?

[1:38:35] I think they've made a move.

[1:38:36] They made that book, and by that I mean the author.

[1:38:40] Well, what about Player 3?

[1:38:41] I assume it's the old X-Men arcade game where like six people can play at the same time.

[1:38:44] I thought it was four, like the Ninja Turtles game.

[1:38:47] Oh, possible.

[1:38:48] Dan, which one is it?

[1:38:49] Well, I mean, but then you wouldn't have to wait.

[1:38:52] It's a cooperative.

[1:38:53] That's true.

[1:38:54] It's a cooperative game you can all play at the same time.

[1:38:55] Oh, wow.

[1:38:56] Our theories are falling apart like a house of cards.

[1:38:58] Maybe I'm wrong.

[1:38:59] Maybe NFTs are great.

[1:39:00] Okay, let's move on to the next segment.

[1:39:02] The next segment is recommendations movies that we liked.

[1:39:06] Do you think they named the show House of Cards predicting that Kevin Spacey was going

[1:39:13] to get called out so that it would fall apart like its name?

[1:39:20] Oh, wow.

[1:39:21] Yeah, I think that's probably what happened.

[1:39:23] File that away with the Bobcats theory.

[1:39:28] Recommendations movies that we liked, that we saw recently or, you know, you have to

[1:39:35] see it recently.

[1:39:36] Just something you can recommend.

[1:39:37] I saw...

[1:39:38] Thanks for loosening the rules a little bit, Judge Dan.

[1:39:41] Thanks for letting me off the leash.

[1:39:44] I'm going to take my sad tie off.

[1:39:47] I saw at probably the last possible moment that I, as a triple vaccinated guy, felt comfortable

[1:39:55] seeing something in the theater before sort of quarantining again.

[1:40:00] Nightmare Alley, which I mentioned earlier in the episode, and it was a little bit of an Easter egg for people who waited till the end of the episode.

[1:40:09] It had the misfortune to be a movie released during Omicron that was not Spider-Man, and thus people have not been seeing it.

[1:40:19] And I wouldn't recommend you risking your life to go out right now, but I did enjoy it.

[1:40:27] Nightmare Alley, Guillermo del Toro doing a film without a supernatural element, but still sort of harrowing in its own way.

[1:40:38] A remake, well, not a remake of a film so much as it's another adaptation of the novel Nightmare Alley.

[1:40:46] A noir story about a man who works in a circus sideshow and a lot of noir-y things that follow from there.

[1:40:58] It is a little too glossy for the genre, I would say.

[1:41:05] Guillermo del Toro has his sort of thing where it all looks very beautiful, it all looks like sort of painted covers to a pulp novel.

[1:41:14] And with the seedy story, it kind of keeps you at a distance.

[1:41:20] It's a little too polished, but it is still really great.

[1:41:27] The performers are all good in it.

[1:41:30] I particularly, I think, liked Willem Dafoe as a sort of totally amoral carny.

[1:41:39] And, you know, if you like this kind of thing, it was a lot of fun.

[1:41:43] Sometimes, you know, I had the fear that it would feel too much like he was just playing in a genre rather than deeply feeling it.

[1:41:54] It only had a little bit of that.

[1:41:56] It was a good, fun movie, Nightmare Alley.

[1:42:01] Charlene, you got one?

[1:42:02] I got one.

[1:42:04] I recently saw a little movie called How Saragucci.

[1:42:12] And I'm not making fun of Italian accents, I'm making fun of actors portraying Italian accents.

[1:42:19] It was based on a true story about a couple.

[1:42:30] I'm like, now I remember the plot of the movie.

[1:42:34] You don't have to remember it too well. You can just say what you liked about it.

[1:42:37] Yeah, just say that you liked it. You don't have to do a whole episode.

[1:42:40] Oh, good. I loved the outfits and the hair.

[1:42:45] I loved the two actors portraying Al Pacino.

[1:42:51] Al Pacino and Jared Leto.

[1:42:53] And I thought Lady Gaga did an amazing job.

[1:42:58] Was that an authentic Italian accent?

[1:43:01] No.

[1:43:02] Was it the exact accent that I needed it to be?

[1:43:05] Yes, it was perfect.

[1:43:08] Go see it, or if you're not going, I guess it's not available yet, right?

[1:43:14] It'll probably be available.

[1:43:15] It'll be available soon, I'm sure.

[1:43:17] I thought it was hilarious.

[1:43:20] Probably I didn't feel about it the way the makers of the film wanted me to feel about it.

[1:43:25] But I really enjoyed it.

[1:43:28] How Saragucci, okay.

[1:43:30] I'm going to recommend a movie that I saw as a screener.

[1:43:35] I don't know if it's available for watching anywhere.

[1:43:38] It's a movie called The Worst Person in the World.

[1:43:41] It's a Norwegian movie about a millennial woman.

[1:43:46] And it just kind of follows her for a couple of years of her life.

[1:43:49] And mainly focuses on a relationship, a key relationship she has.

[1:43:59] And the movie manages to perfectly capture a lot of my feelings about getting older, about relationships, about art, about nostalgia.

[1:44:14] And it's this beautiful, relatable, funny, sad movie that just fucking wrecked me.

[1:44:22] So if you get a chance, you should totally check out The Worst Person in the World.

[1:44:27] And that's also a callback to earlier in the show.

[1:44:29] Because there's a lot of talk about a cartoon character named Bobcat.

[1:44:33] And how he's been neutered by removing his butthole.

[1:44:37] So if you get a chance, check out Worst Person in the World.

[1:44:40] It's great.

[1:44:41] By removing his butthole?

[1:44:43] Yeah, it's about an underground cartoon character who basically gets Disney-fied.

[1:44:48] And I would say the least believable thing about the movie is about how clean and nice the apartment of a 40-year-old underground cartoonist's apartment is.

[1:45:00] All right.

[1:45:01] So it's a metaphorical neutering.

[1:45:03] Yeah, metaphorical.

[1:45:04] Because you don't neuter a cat by removing its butthole.

[1:45:06] You don't?

[1:45:07] Uh-oh.

[1:45:08] Don't remove a cat's butthole.

[1:45:11] This would explain the lawsuits against my vet office.

[1:45:15] As an owner of cats, they are very proud of their buttholes and would be really upset to have them removed.

[1:45:21] Yeah, yeah.

[1:45:22] There's a reason why they added them to catch the movie.

[1:45:25] Yeah.

[1:45:26] Elliot, you're the last one.

[1:45:28] Take us home.

[1:45:29] Finally, the last one.

[1:45:30] I'm going to recommend a movie that I think Dan is going to love based on the title.

[1:45:34] But which the title is a little misleading.

[1:45:36] This is a British television play from the 60s called The Year of the Sex Olympics.

[1:45:41] Which is set in the future when it's kind of a very 1984-type story.

[1:45:47] There's two types of people in society.

[1:45:49] There's high drives who are allowed to have careers and have sex and enjoy the good life.

[1:45:55] And low drives, which are the massive people, who are kept from overpopulating through television control.

[1:46:01] Basically, they realize that if you air things on television for them to watch, it takes away the motivation to actually do it.

[1:46:07] So they're running something called The Sex Olympics, which is this campaign that is involved in a show called Sport Sex and a show called Art Sex.

[1:46:15] Which are meant for people to watch it and then not do it, basically, in order to keep the population down.

[1:46:21] And one of the people involved in the programming, he starts to doubt the situation that he's in.

[1:46:27] And he wants to escape from this world.

[1:46:29] So he agrees to be the star of a new show called The Live Life Show.

[1:46:33] Where he and his family are going to go live on a windswept aisle, kind of as people did hundreds of years before this society came about.

[1:46:45] And a lot of people talk about how it basically predicted reality television in a lot of ways.

[1:46:51] But even beyond that, I thought it did a really good job of kind of interrogating why we watch stories to begin with.

[1:46:59] There's this idea in it that – and the characters speak in this very future-y language where they're missing words.

[1:47:05] Where it's half futuristic and half caveman.

[1:47:07] But basically like you see an emotion, you feel the emotion, but you don't feel the bad parts of the emotion.

[1:47:12] And you laugh and feel better.

[1:47:14] And kind of the idea that – and it kind of digs into the idea for me about how even when we're watching fictional characters.

[1:47:20] We are getting a sort of pleasure from watching them go through bad things.

[1:47:23] Partly through the relief of us not being the one going through it.

[1:47:26] But we're able to vicariously feel those emotions.

[1:47:29] And in the movie, they're asking kind of what responsibility do people have for each other.

[1:47:32] But it made me think about what responsibility do we have to our characters and stories that we're telling.

[1:47:36] Not to be cavalier with them, things like that.

[1:47:39] But it's – unfortunately, it was originally broadcast in color.

[1:47:42] But all that exists is a black and white version of it.

[1:47:45] But it still looks really neat, and I thought it was really good.

[1:47:47] It's available on YouTube in its entirety, but I think it's also on DVD.

[1:47:50] And a very young Brian Cox is in it as the kind of meanest and jerkiest of the programmers of these TV programs.

[1:47:59] But the other performers were all real good.

[1:48:02] It's written by Nigel Neal who's best known for stuff like the Stone Tape.

[1:48:05] Kind of like Supernatural stories that were on British television.

[1:48:09] This is not Supernatural, but it's a 1984 dystopia type thing.

[1:48:12] And I thought it was really good.

[1:48:14] It's called The Year of the Sex Olympics.

[1:48:17] Ask for it by name at your local Sex Olympics store.

[1:48:20] Sounds great. Sounds like you made it up, Elliot.

[1:48:22] I feel like I'd be embarrassed to ask for it by name.

[1:48:25] Well, this was a blast.

[1:48:27] We talked about a heavy movie that was not very much fun.

[1:48:30] But I had fun getting to talk to you guys about it.

[1:48:32] I know it's the day after Christmas, so that's a holiday that Dan and I celebrate.

[1:48:37] Elliot and Charlene being Jewish, I know that isn't as big of a deal for you.

[1:48:42] It's not a big deal at all.

[1:48:45] It's not the idea that I'm Jewish, so I only celebrate half of Christmas.

[1:48:50] My day yesterday was a frantic search for things to do when it was one of our rare rainstorms in L.A.

[1:48:56] and nothing was open anywhere.

[1:48:58] So even the Chinese restaurants have started closing on Christmas.

[1:49:01] This is not a tenable situation, everybody.

[1:49:05] There is no way we are going to make dinner on Christmas.

[1:49:07] We're going to have Chinese food. We've got to find it.

[1:49:09] I'm sorry that the birth of my Messiah put you out, Elliot.

[1:49:13] It is a huge inconvenience.

[1:49:15] And I've got to believe that when God set it all up, he was like,

[1:49:18] tee-hee, let's see Elliot deal with this one in 2,000 years.

[1:49:22] He's a trickster.

[1:49:24] But I hope you guys did have a merry Christmas.

[1:49:27] Thank you. Thank you.

[1:49:29] I hope you will have a better day.

[1:49:32] I don't know.

[1:49:34] Being Jewish, of course, I had a Murray Christmas.

[1:49:37] It's Murray Christmas being an accountant on the Upper East Side.

[1:49:45] That sounds really fun.

[1:49:47] Borscht belt joke.

[1:49:51] But I've got to get into my mother-in-law material.

[1:49:56] Go over to MaximumFun.org and check out all the great podcasts there.

[1:49:59] Stuart, you have something to say?

[1:50:00] Yeah, sure. Do you have anything you want to, uh, Charlene, thank you for being our guest. You've

[1:50:03] been lovely. Oh, thank you. I'm, I'm glad that we gave you an opportunity to vent some of your

[1:50:08] Evan Hansen issues. I feel so much better now that I've gotten that out. Um, do you have anything

[1:50:12] you'd like to plug? Oh, so many things to plug. Um, we got Minnie's bar, which, um, was closed

[1:50:19] for a few days due to, you know, COVID, COVID safety and, uh, we'll reopen tomorrow. Um,

[1:50:28] that's in sunset park. We got hinterlands, which is open and we'll all be open for new years. Um,

[1:50:36] you know, hopefully I think we will. And, um, my podcast, I know the owner,

[1:50:43] uh, will be coming back next year. So look out for that. And, uh, that's a podcast where bar

[1:50:48] people talk bar stuff. Yes. Bar people talk bar stuff and I'll be getting some new guests

[1:50:53] and hilarity will ensue. Uh, that sounds great. And, uh, also thanks to Alex Smith

[1:51:00] for, uh, producing this podcast. Yeah. Thank you, Alex. Thank you for the flop.

[1:51:12] No, no, I appreciate it. I don't, I don't like doing it. Okay. Well,

[1:51:16] yeah. And for the flop as I've been Dan McCoy and I'm Ellie Kalen and joining us has been

[1:51:21] Charlene Wellington. Bye.

[1:51:32] Cinnamon is his first and favorite love.

[1:51:36] Oh man. He's crazy about that. Yeah. He just loves it. He's a real cinnamon man.

[1:51:43] I have this cinnamon farm that is going to be paying for my retirement. I guess I'll leave

[1:51:49] David Kalen to watch over it. Oh no. I just, I finally hired a security guard for my cinnamon

[1:52:02] vault. I mean, that would be a very impressive. If he killed a cinnamon, it's hard to eat large

[1:52:10] quantities. I mean, particularly on a farm. Well, that's the thing is he takes a little

[1:52:13] bit at a time. So you don't notice it's going until it's too late. Yeah. Okay.

[1:52:17] It's not like a one night cinnamon binge. Yeah. Yeah. He's not a serial mascot.

[1:52:23] Yes. A swarm of tiny David K.

[1:52:29] Yeah. That's one of the plagues, right? One of the biblical plagues.

[1:52:33] Gentlemen, gentlemen, ladies, my fellow Americans, we face a dire toast crunch emergency.

[1:52:41] Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.

Ep. #359 - Dear Evan Hansen, with Sharlene Wellington

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