Ep.#462 - Imaginary

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

[0:06] Woof, I wish this movie was imaginary.

[0:10] Still, I said that right before we started recording.

[0:30] Hey everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse, I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:40] And I'm Stuart Willington, all the way from New York City.

[0:44] And I'm Elliot Kalin, and I'm recording in a different mode than usual because there's a Dan next to me.

[0:49] Hey, that's not usually there in my bedroom.

[0:52] I'm recording from Elliot's bedroom, where the magic happens.

[0:56] I'm right here with all these rabbits and hats.

[1:00] Yeah, a lot of doves, cards.

[1:03] It must stank in there, you know?

[1:06] I mean, I live in a clean house, Stuart.

[1:09] A clean house with a clean bed.

[1:11] Yeah, why must it stank in there, Stuart?

[1:13] Oh, look at Elliot. Elliot knows what I'm talking about.

[1:16] I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

[1:18] Oh man, yeah, oh buddy.

[1:20] Oh buddy, oh how.

[1:23] Now Dan, what do we do on this podcast other than talk about stank?

[1:26] This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[1:30] And of course, it is Shocktober, the time of year that we talk about scary movies or movies that purport to be scary.

[1:40] It's a spooky month, it's spooky times.

[1:43] That's true, and on this episode, we're going to talk about a movie.

[1:47] It's actually from last year that I think people were a little disappointed we didn't get to.

[1:52] It was the sort of standout flop horror film of last year.

[1:57] People took to the streets in anger, and we had to listen to the voice of the people.

[2:02] The Vox Populi rose as one and said, wither, imaginary flop house.

[2:08] And we said, why are you talking that way?

[2:10] Yeah, this is the first time I heard of this movie when you suggested watching it.

[2:15] So maybe I'm death to the people.

[2:18] I realized I thought I had never heard of it, and then I recognized the poster.

[2:22] Once you see the poster, which it says imaginary, and there's like a little stuff.

[2:27] I mean the poster that's here online is like there's a little girl sitting in front of a glowing portal, and there's a little stuffed bear next door.

[2:34] And you're like, okay, it's an evil imaginary friend. I get it.

[2:37] And the poster is the first thing of many that attempts to evoke poltergeist and fails.

[2:46] This is a movie. It's amazing. It's trying to be poltergeist really badly.

[2:49] It's also – let's just get it right out of the way.

[2:51] It's the movie If, but the scary movie version as opposed to the makes-your-stomach-hurt-with-saccharin version.

[2:59] It's Drop Dead Fred but less scary.

[3:02] That's true.

[3:03] There's like – and there's some like Beetlejuice in there, and there's some like the Boogeyman episodes of the Star Wars – the real Ghostbusters TV show.

[3:10] There's another Star Wars Boogeyman Halloween special.

[3:12] Now I want to see a Star Wars horror story so badly now.

[3:15] Delicious Beetlejuice.

[3:18] Dan, a lot of times when you eat something, you're like, what is this flavor?

[3:22] What makes it so good?

[3:23] It's the Beetlejuice.

[3:24] Yeah.

[3:25] I mean didn't – wasn't Campari originally colored by beetles?

[3:30] So in a way, it's like Campari is the original Beetlejuice.

[3:33] A number of guys are made by grinding up beetles.

[3:36] Yeah, I was trying to remember.

[3:37] I remember this factoid but not as well as you guys.

[3:40] So you got to it.

[3:42] If you buy red clothes, that's probably the blood of George Harrison or John Lennon that has been ground up.

[3:49] They grind up beetles to make that color, yeah.

[3:51] And their bones to make your bread too.

[3:56] Yes, yes, well, the Englishmen, yeah.

[3:57] If you grind up Pete Best, it doesn't – you don't get quite as rich a color.

[4:00] Not a full beetle, yeah.

[4:03] Stu Sutcliffe, same thing.

[4:05] Anyway, so –

[4:07] Original Paul McCartney, same thing.

[4:09] Yeah, right before he was replaced by a robot.

[4:12] I just – I literally just learned of this conspiracy theory today.

[4:15] You didn't know about that?

[4:16] No.

[4:17] How they tried to replace original Paul McCartney with Paul McCartney – with new Paul McCartney and people looked at the taste test.

[4:21] The new flavor of Paul McCartney won out, but when it actually came out, people wanted Paul McCartney classic.

[4:26] Which one is saying that wild duet, The Girl is Mine?

[4:30] That was – that was actually Paul McCartney number three.

[4:32] That was when they bred in a lab who, like, wasn't all there.

[4:35] But, yeah, you never heard about the Paul McCartney – Paul's Dead conspiracy?

[4:38] It's a classic.

[4:39] No, I never heard it, yeah.

[4:40] Yeah.

[4:41] Yeah.

[4:42] Well, this is a conspiracy theory podcast, right?

[4:44] No.

[4:45] It was – what I love – before we get into imagery, what I love about that conspiracy theory is the idea that Paul died.

[4:49] They didn't want anyone to know, so they replaced him and then left clues in all of their work so that you could find out that Paul had died.

[4:55] It's like, really?

[4:56] Like, what are they, Batman villains?

[4:57] Like, they're trying to get caught?

[4:58] What's going on here?

[4:59] Come on.

[5:00] Yeah, I mean that's the thing.

[5:01] The only thing that's better than committing a crime – the only thing better is, like, teasing people to let them know you did it.

[5:08] And John Lennon was like, we gave you all the clues, Mr. Policeman.

[5:11] Oh, man.

[5:12] That actually sounded more like Paul.

[5:14] Yeah, well, what are you going to do?

[5:16] Let's talk about imaginary.

[5:17] Is that what we're doing today?

[5:18] That's what we're doing.

[5:20] We're trying – Stuart, he realized we were stalling, so we didn't have to talk about imaginary.

[5:24] Yeah.

[5:25] He called our bluff.

[5:26] Do you have any more conspiracies you want to talk about?

[5:30] It's been a while since I've watched a PG-13 horror because horror has had kind of a resurgence, and there's a lot of great horror out there.

[5:39] And we were mostly out of the period of time where it seemed like producers were like, we've got to make this all PG-13 so we can get the widest possible audience with the most dreck, the most watered-down dreck.

[5:51] They realized at a certain point that people – audiences like horror, which is the kind of thing the movie business rediscovers every 20 years or so.

[6:00] And, yeah, so horror has been real hard-edged lately.

[6:02] But for a while, it was like we've got to have horror that young people can go see, young kids.

[6:08] And, yeah.

[6:09] So what did you think about seeing a PG-13 movie, Dan?

[6:13] One of the most striking things about this film is how unscary it is and not just how unscary it is.

[6:19] But every time there was something that clearly was meant to be a scare, I sort of had to rewind it a few times to be like, wait, what was supposed to be scary?

[6:29] People were reacting as if something happened, and I'm like, oh, no, nothing really happened.

[6:33] I will say there's a section in the middle of this movie where I was like this movie despite itself is starting to become an effective-for-me horror movie.

[6:41] And then the movie throws that all away and gets very, for lack of a better word, kind of like PG-13 Jim Henson-y almost by the end of it.

[6:52] I see what you're saying, but I found the middle section to be the most perturbing because it was like the most unscary.

[6:59] And at the end, at least the silliness at least was something.

[7:04] I guess so.

[7:05] I mean the beginning of it is so boring though.

[7:07] We'll talk about it.

[7:08] I found the first 40 minutes of this movie very dull.

[7:11] I really want to hear Dan describe this movie that he ain't scared of, Mr. Big Balls over here.

[7:16] Stu, you were wetting yourself the whole time.

[7:19] Constantly.

[7:20] You can see me shivering as I read the synopsis.

[7:24] I'm like, oh, this is scary.

[7:27] OK, so we start with a tiny door and a woman bursts from it and she says, sorry, we couldn't finish our game.

[7:36] There's like a poem on the wall with crayon.

[7:39] There's blood.

[7:40] There's a bloody tooth.

[7:41] And a man with a bloody mouth grabs her and says, your friend isn't coming back before turning all spidery.

[7:47] And there's a creepy hole in a kid's bedroom and blah, blah, blah.

[7:51] And she tries to wake this kid before the Spider-Man attacks, not Spider-Man.

[7:58] Not Spider-Man, a man spider.

[7:59] A man spider.

[8:01] Which was one of Spider-Man's transformations when Spider-Man went to the Savage Land.

[8:05] He became the man spider.

[8:06] He doesn't own the fucking rights to all Spider-Man.

[8:09] He does.

[8:10] He actually does own the rights to the name Spider-Man, yeah.

[8:12] So we're kicking off with a bunch of scary imagery we have no context for, so it doesn't mean anything.

[8:18] And much of that imagery does not really come back.

[8:21] Not really.

[8:23] But don't worry, guys.

[8:24] This style of cold open horror is effective, and I think a lot of movies like – they like a scare up front.

[8:31] They like to set the tone of the movie.

[8:33] In this case, the tone is things don't make sense.

[8:36] I think it sets the tone of desperate flailing to try to figure out what is going to scare you.

[8:42] Yeah, I would disagree with the idea that it is effective.

[8:46] I would say it is a thing that studios seem to like because they have to tell you up front that you're watching a horror movie.

[8:53] Because otherwise the person who bought the ticket to a horror movie would be like, I don't know what kind of movie this is.

[8:58] Is it going to get scary at any point?

[9:00] I mean to be honest, I think it's designed not for the ticket-buying audience but for the streaming or home-viewing audience.

[9:05] Yeah, possibly.

[9:06] That like you have to have a scare up front or else they might zap away within seconds.

[9:10] But don't worry.

[9:11] Don't worry, guys.

[9:12] Don't get too scared by any of it because, of course, it's just a dream.

[9:16] It's just a dream.

[9:17] The best way for a movie to begin, by telling you that what you saw doesn't matter.

[9:21] That was just a dream.

[9:22] Just a dream.

[9:23] Dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee.

[9:27] And she was losing her religion.

[9:28] It's like immediately starts to editing this out.

[9:30] You don't have the rights to that song.

[9:33] Oh, good point.

[9:34] Good point.

[9:35] We've been so good about that up till now.

[9:36] So we meet Jess who's the woman of the dream, who is having the dream and her husband, Max.

[9:42] We learn they're moving back to Jess' childhood home with their two kids from Max's previous marriage.

[9:48] Now, I would describe their relationship as just met the day before shooting.

[9:52] Yeah.

[9:53] Yeah.

[9:54] Well, and also, don't worry, Max will disappear for most of the movie.

[9:58] So you won't have to know too much about what's going on.

[10:00] who were with his band, yeah.

[10:01] I know he's got an English accent,

[10:03] and he's a guy in a band.

[10:05] Yeah.

[10:05] And he's got a classic crazy ex.

[10:08] I mean, so I guess he maybe could be a Beatle,

[10:12] you know, possibly, yeah.

[10:13] True.

[10:14] Yeah, there's nothing in the movie

[10:16] that says he isn't a Beatle.

[10:17] There's nothing in the movie except his name,

[10:20] which is not one of the Beatles' names.

[10:23] His face, the fact that he's a young person now, yeah.

[10:28] But you really gotta dig hard.

[10:29] I'm doing the math and it's out,

[10:30] I see him like looking.

[10:30] But he does have like a little beard, right?

[10:32] That could be anything.

[10:34] That's true, they did have little beards.

[10:35] Ringo Starr has a little beard.

[10:36] He does, maybe this is Ringo Starr.

[10:38] As a pet?

[10:39] I think he's still touring, Ringo Starr, yeah.

[10:42] This could be him.

[10:43] Anyway, Max has two kids from a previous marriage.

[10:46] Maxwell Silverhammer, he is a Beatle, okay.

[10:49] There's a younger daughter, Alice,

[10:50] and a teenage daughter, Taylor.

[10:52] And Alice seems willing to accept Jess as her new mom,

[10:55] but Taylor is more resistant

[10:58] because she is a teen.

[10:59] Yeah, classic teen.

[11:02] She's like a very angry teen

[11:04] and there's like weird moments where she's affable,

[11:08] but for the most part,

[11:08] she's just really like mad at everything.

[11:10] And at first I was like, this is annoying.

[11:12] And then by the end, I'm like, that's kind of grown on me.

[11:15] Yeah, I think as she earns it,

[11:16] I mean, what we pick up from the backstory

[11:18] is I guess their mother had some kind of what,

[11:21] mental breakdown?

[11:22] Breakdown, yeah.

[11:22] And is kind of a stalking or a danger to them.

[11:26] Yeah.

[11:27] At one point early on here,

[11:28] Max explains to Jess that you give love to kids

[11:32] and usually get jack shit in return.

[11:34] Elliot, true or false?

[11:35] Very accurate, very accurate.

[11:37] Considering I know both my boys love me,

[11:39] they do not like to show it, admit it,

[11:41] or they like to, one of them in particular,

[11:44] likes to, as a joke, tell me he does not love me

[11:46] or that he sometimes loves me.

[11:48] And you just have to take it on faith

[11:50] that all the things you do for them,

[11:51] which are so many, are received in the spirit of love.

[11:53] I mean, that's a pretty good joke.

[11:55] Yeah, it's a hilarious joke.

[11:57] The punchline is he enjoys the discomfort

[12:00] that I get from it.

[12:01] It's a real Andy Kaufman type routine.

[12:03] Yeah, he likes the way that you're the-

[12:04] The audience becomes the victim, yeah.

[12:06] Yeah, he likes the way that the company looks uncomfortable

[12:09] when he says it in front of them.

[12:10] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[12:12] The same way when the company shows up

[12:13] and he likes to go, daddy, why did you touch me there?

[12:15] And I go, oh, what?

[12:16] That didn't happen.

[12:17] But I'm up for a big promotion.

[12:20] Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is my son is Clifford.

[12:22] The dog?

[12:25] Yeah.

[12:26] Yeah, Clifford the big red dog, yeah, exactly.

[12:29] So they return to Jess's old family home.

[12:32] They're settling there to live.

[12:34] Alice is afraid of the drawings in Jess's office.

[12:37] We learn Jess is a children's book writer and illustrator.

[12:44] She's got a series that's called Millie Millipede

[12:46] or something?

[12:47] Molly Millipede.

[12:48] Molly Millipede, where there's an evil spider guy

[12:49] named what?

[12:50] Simon the Spider.

[12:51] Simon the Spider.

[12:52] Kind of, I guess, a villainous character,

[12:54] although she writes a-

[12:55] Yeah, kind of an anthropomorphic Spider-Man.

[12:57] Yeah, and for anyone listening,

[12:59] they're like, Simon the Spider?

[13:00] That's another Beatles thing.

[13:01] No, that's The Who and it's Boris the Spider.

[13:03] So you're wrong on both counts.

[13:04] Get the hell out of here.

[13:06] Yeah, well, you told that person who maybe exists.

[13:09] I did.

[13:11] But yeah, later on, we learned that maybe,

[13:14] she writes a book from Simon's point of view

[13:16] to show that maybe seemingly bad guys

[13:19] can have a good side.

[13:21] Yeah, I mean, The Bad Guys is a serious hit

[13:23] of an animated series, right?

[13:25] That's true.

[13:26] The Bad Guys 2 is a movie that also exists.

[13:29] Yeah, and to be honest,

[13:31] I kind of like it more than the first one.

[13:32] Oh, really?

[13:33] Yeah.

[13:34] I don't know anything.

[13:35] I saw the first one, I thought it was fine.

[13:36] And then the second one just tanked like a stone.

[13:39] And I'm like, you know what?

[13:40] I've had my fill of bad guys.

[13:41] It was not a success.

[13:43] It was-

[13:44] Oh, I'm surprised by that.

[13:44] The theater was full when I went to see it.

[13:46] Do you think they should have called it Despicable Them?

[13:49] Bleh.

[13:51] Bleh.

[13:52] I guess so.

[13:54] Isn't that a-

[13:55] I don't like this recording setup anymore.

[13:59] You guys are a lot easier.

[14:02] It's not so easy to just be out on your own.

[14:04] Stuart, is it more comforting to have me next to you?

[14:07] Yes.

[14:08] Stuart, now you know what it's like for me

[14:09] every single time, just sitting here, off in space.

[14:12] You guys are yucking it up.

[14:12] Screaming into a void, yeah.

[14:14] Yeah, exactly.

[14:14] Oh, that's sad.

[14:16] Well, now, I mean, we'll have to do it round Robin style.

[14:19] I'll have to do it alone.

[14:20] The thing about Despicable Them,

[14:21] because there's multiples,

[14:22] and Despicable Me is a successful movie about a bad guy.

[14:26] So why not, you know what I mean.

[14:27] No, I got it.

[14:28] The math worked.

[14:29] It was not that I didn't see the logic of the joke.

[14:32] Did I not say it silly enough?

[14:34] Maybe that was it.

[14:35] Yeah, maybe try it as a Goofy's voice.

[14:37] Goosed it a little, I guess.

[14:39] Slightly.

[14:41] Like a goose voice.

[14:42] Yeah, can you do it?

[14:43] Like an evil goose.

[14:44] Do it as an evil goose, yeah.

[14:45] More like, they should have called it Despicable Them.

[14:49] You know what, for me, it failed.

[14:51] I liked it.

[14:52] I wouldn't say that was an evil goose.

[14:53] It was more like a goofy goose.

[14:54] You heard him, Stuart.

[14:55] Dan wants you on his team.

[14:58] Okay, anyway.

[15:01] What do we got here?

[15:02] Oh, okay.

[15:02] So, yeah.

[15:03] So she's a children's book illustrator.

[15:05] It scares Alice a little bit.

[15:06] Yeah, Jess gets distracted in the middle of a game

[15:09] of hide and seek while Alice goes to the basement.

[15:12] This is a classic thing you should not do as an adult,

[15:15] is play hide and seek and then leave

[15:16] in the middle of the game.

[15:17] Get a call and be like, yeah, she'll be okay.

[15:19] She'll be fine.

[15:20] She probably won't hide inside the dryer or something.

[15:21] A place that kids love to hide.

[15:23] They should not go in there.

[15:23] It's not safe.

[15:25] But when Alice is in the basement,

[15:26] she finds a teddy bear hidden in a door in the wall.

[15:30] And she talks to it as if she's saying things.

[15:32] That's a weird place for a teddy bear, guys.

[15:33] It's one of the top three weirder places for a teddy bear.

[15:36] I heard of a bear sort of stuck in a rabbit hole once.

[15:40] That's a place where a bear can be found.

[15:42] Yeah, you can find a bear stuck

[15:43] halfway through a rabbit hole, yeah.

[15:45] Or covered in mud, attached to a balloon.

[15:48] I think that's the same bear.

[15:51] The same bear, yeah.

[15:52] Any other bears you can think of, Dan?

[15:55] Don't say looking for heffalumps.

[15:57] Same bear, Dan.

[15:58] Okay, well, floating down an African river.

[16:01] Okay, that's a different bear.

[16:03] That's a different bear.

[16:03] Yeah, there you go.

[16:05] Anyway, is this Africa?

[16:07] I can't remember where the jungle book-

[16:08] No, the jungle book is in India.

[16:09] India, okay.

[16:09] Yeah, that's why there's a tiger there.

[16:11] What about a bear that just stalks Danny Moon

[16:15] Yeah, that's a different,

[16:17] I mean, there's two of those inside of everybody.

[16:19] Yeah, that's where you find them.

[16:21] So she should have found this teddy bear

[16:22] inside of her with another teddy bear that is not evil.

[16:24] Because as it becomes pretty clear,

[16:26] this is an evil teddy bear, right?

[16:27] Almost immediately, yeah.

[16:28] This bear's name is Chauncey.

[16:31] Meanwhile, Taylor is, you know, sad

[16:35] because she's-

[16:36] Because he wants to marry Tzaytl, Tevye's daughter.

[16:39] But Tevye's daughter has promised

[16:40] to laser wolf the butcher.

[16:41] A poor Taylor, even a poor Taylor

[16:43] deserves some happiness.

[16:45] She's taking a confident selfie

[16:47] to pretend that everything's okay in her life.

[16:50] It's a pretty funny selfie choice

[16:52] because like her backdrop is what, the window?

[16:56] It's not like it's a good view,

[16:58] except for the creepy old monster lady in the back.

[17:01] Yeah.

[17:02] She's just showing, she's like,

[17:03] look at this, I have sunlight in my life.

[17:06] Yeah, she sees some sort of creepy figure downstairs

[17:10] which causes her to run downstairs outside.

[17:14] Whoever it is is gone,

[17:14] but she meets the hunky boy next door.

[17:16] I think this is very funny.

[17:17] This is up there with, in the electric state,

[17:19] when a woman, when, what's her name?

[17:20] When hears like something in the garbage cans

[17:24] and immediately assumes it must be a danger

[17:26] that she has to confront and not a raccoon.

[17:28] Yeah.

[17:29] She sees, she's like in the window,

[17:30] she sees there's an old lady standing on the sidewalk

[17:32] and she's like, oh, I've got to investigate this.

[17:34] Yeah.

[17:35] This suburban street can't have any old ladies on it.

[17:38] And she like whirls around so that like,

[17:41] it feels like she's like,

[17:42] let's whirl around to reveal

[17:44] that there's nobody standing there,

[17:46] but you can kind of see somebody leaving the frame.

[17:48] Yeah.

[17:49] This is not a ghost.

[17:50] This is just their neighbor.

[17:51] Yeah.

[17:52] This is my favorite character in the movie

[17:53] who will eventually meet that.

[17:54] Yeah.

[17:55] But downstairs she's-

[17:56] Meet the hunky neighbor, yeah.

[17:56] She flirts with the boy next door.

[17:58] Who's my favorite character in the movie.

[18:01] This boy says it's probably old bag Patterson

[18:03] who tried to buy the house that they're in now.

[18:07] They're interrupted in their discussion of bars

[18:10] and how to don't check IDs by protective mother, Jess.

[18:14] You know, there's some stuff where they overhear

[18:18] Alice talking to Chauncey, more like creepy stuff.

[18:22] What was that?

[18:23] What happened?

[18:24] No, it's just creepy.

[18:25] I just think it's funny to summarize.

[18:26] There's some creepy stuff.

[18:27] You know.

[18:28] Creepy.

[18:29] Like the guy-

[18:30] They discover that she's-

[18:31] Oh sorry, so you're summarizing the movie

[18:32] the same way that the guy summarized

[18:33] what was in his refrigerator

[18:34] in the Sunny D commercial.

[18:35] Yeah.

[18:36] Purpose of, yeah, whatever.

[18:37] Well, this is like-

[18:39] Sorry, go on.

[18:40] I was just saying that the creepy stuff

[18:42] is she now starts speaking in a voice for Chauncey.

[18:46] Yes.

[18:47] Yes.

[18:48] Yeah.

[18:49] I'm an evil bear voice.

[18:50] You know what I'm saying?

[18:50] It doesn't sound like that at all.

[18:52] I think about it.

[18:53] Cookie crisp.

[18:54] Oh yeah.

[18:55] Now I'll say here, what we've got is a bear.

[19:00] I'm an evil bear.

[19:01] I want my two dollars.

[19:05] Is that a bear thing?

[19:06] Yeah.

[19:08] I mean, that kid's pretty creepy, right?

[19:09] That kid was a bear?

[19:10] Yeah, that kid was a bear, yeah.

[19:10] That's the subtext of Better Off Dead.

[19:13] That kid was a bear.

[19:14] A lot of people don't know,

[19:14] in the original screenplay for Better Off Dead,

[19:15] that kid's referred to as Shaved Bear Kid.

[19:19] But you wouldn't get that.

[19:20] They had trouble finding a bear

[19:21] they could shave and play that part,

[19:23] so they added just a kid to it, yeah.

[19:25] It was called Bairder Off Dead, originally.

[19:27] And then they became Barter Off Dead

[19:29] in a world without money.

[19:30] How does this kid deal with high school?

[19:32] And they became Batter Off Dead.

[19:33] Batter Off Dad, where you're a dad instead of dead.

[19:36] Then it was Batter Off Dead,

[19:37] where he's a baker instead of a student.

[19:39] Yeah, then it was Batter Off Dead,

[19:40] where he's a baseball player.

[19:42] Yeah, then it was Batter Off Dead,

[19:43] where he's a bat, yeah.

[19:46] Then it was Batter, B-A-D-D-E-R Off Dead,

[19:49] where he was like worse than dead,

[19:50] which is like, I guess, you know,

[19:52] just really sad all the time.

[19:53] And then there was Better Off Dud,

[19:55] where he's Dudley Moore.

[19:57] Yes, and then there was Better Off Doug,

[19:58] where he's Doug from the TV show Doug.

[20:00] Yeah, Better Off Ted, which was a different TV show, that was used later on, yeah.

[20:05] Sure.

[20:06] It's also a movie.

[20:08] Yeah.

[20:09] Was that character Better Off Ted?

[20:10] Because I don't feel like it was particularly...

[20:11] I mean, I don't know what the standard is, better off than what, you know?

[20:15] Yeah.

[20:16] Hard to say.

[20:17] And then it was Better Off Teddy Ruxpin, which brings us to Bears, Dan.

[20:21] Yeah.

[20:22] Yeah.

[20:23] Well, I mean, part of why...

[20:24] So I'm going through like this, like some creepy stuff happened, is the whole first

[20:29] part of it.

[20:30] Like, eventually stuff starts happening, and a surprising amount of stuff starts happening.

[20:35] But for a long time, there's not a lot of stuff that happens in this movie.

[20:37] It takes a long time for the plot to kick in, in this movie, yeah.

[20:39] And I'm sort of editing in real time my notes, I'm like, well, that's not important.

[20:43] My guess is they added that dream sequence at the beginning, because it's such a long

[20:46] time before scares should happen.

[20:49] So they're like, we've got to make sure people know this is not really a movie about just

[20:52] a woman trying to bond with these two stepkids.

[20:54] Yeah.

[20:55] But eventually...

[20:56] We're not making Janet Planet here, people.

[20:58] We're making imaginary.

[20:59] Yeah.

[21:00] I think that's about a mom and a daughter, not step, but you understand.

[21:03] Find some ominous old boxes of memories in the basement, including a crayon drawing of

[21:08] a door labeled Never Ever.

[21:12] And...

[21:13] Is this before or after Alice has already said that Chauncey has...

[21:16] He's heard...

[21:17] She's heard Alice say Never Ever in the voice of Chauncey or something like that.

[21:21] I honestly don't know the first time that that happens, but that's, yes, that's a thing

[21:25] that also occurs.

[21:26] And speaking of Alice talking to Chauncey, Jess goes upstairs.

[21:30] She hears Alice talking to someone, assumes it must be her imaginary friend.

[21:34] This is another really funny scene.

[21:36] But it's a woman who knocks Jess down and says, there's something here.

[21:39] I have to protect my girls.

[21:40] Who is it?

[21:41] It's Max's ex-wife.

[21:42] Bang, bang, Max's ex-wife came down on her head.

[21:49] I mean, I absolutely love the framing of this shot where she's like spying on Alice, talking

[21:55] to her imaginary friend.

[21:57] And she's like, it's so cute.

[21:58] But like, she's clearly not seeing enough of the room to see that someone else is in

[22:03] there.

[22:04] Yeah.

[22:05] Just so funny to me.

[22:06] It's like such an obvious bullshit filmmaking technique.

[22:09] Yeah.

[22:11] So the ex-wife knows where they are, I guess, because Taylor was secretly texting her and

[22:16] she escaped from whatever institution she was in.

[22:19] Arkham.

[22:21] She gets carted off while Taylor apologizes tearfully.

[22:26] You know, and in this period, Jessica starts writing a book from Simon the Spider's point

[22:32] of view to make him seem less scared.

[22:34] Is this one, this around when the dad leaves on the tour, right?

[22:36] Yes.

[22:37] Yeah.

[22:38] This is what I was about to say.

[22:39] Literally the next sentence.

[22:40] Meanwhile, Max goes off on tour with his band.

[22:41] Well, now that my wife is back in custody and certainly can't escape again, it's time

[22:44] for me to leave and go on tour with my band.

[22:46] Yeah.

[22:47] Yeah.

[22:48] He's a bad dad, band dad, you know, he's a bad dad, band dad.

[22:51] You don't ever hear any of Max's music.

[22:54] I so wish we got to hear what his band's because from the way he looks, I have to assume it

[22:59] sounds like Imagine Dragons.

[23:00] Yes.

[23:01] But maybe it's like a whatchamacallit, like your body's a wonderland sort of thing.

[23:07] Yeah.

[23:08] John Mayer.

[23:09] Yeah.

[23:10] Like that.

[23:11] What should we call it?

[23:12] Commercial.

[23:13] Yeah.

[23:14] What should we call it?

[23:15] Whosamabob.

[23:16] I was talking to my older son yesterday about how my brain chooses to remember the jingles

[23:20] from candy commercials and not things that I actually need, as I sang the entire Ring

[23:23] Pop song to him.

[23:25] But the I would be really funny if he's like, it's like, sorry, I've got to go out on tour.

[23:30] Al wants to hit all the towns again.

[23:32] It turns out he's the bassist in Weird Al's backing band.

[23:35] I would love it.

[23:36] I mean, that would that would be a cool job.

[23:38] I mean, Weird Al puts on a great show.

[23:40] He puts on a great show.

[23:42] Yeah.

[23:43] You see, you see, he's there.

[23:45] They're trying to telepathically call to him for help.

[23:47] And you see him playing on stage and he notices it.

[23:49] But but he's he's in the middle of a 10 minute poke.

[23:51] I'll turn a poke like medley with Weird Al.

[23:55] And Weird Al's like, head in the game, man.

[23:56] Head in the game.

[23:57] Yeah.

[23:58] He's like, I don't know.

[23:59] I think I have to leave the tour.

[24:00] My my kids are in danger because of this imaginary monster.

[24:03] And Weird Al's like, no, there's people who would want to play bass with the master of

[24:08] mirthful music mayhem.

[24:10] And you you.

[24:11] So you walk out that door.

[24:12] He's never coming back.

[24:13] And the rest of the movie is just about the trouble he has with Al, you know, the pressures

[24:17] to life on the tour.

[24:18] I think this would be great.

[24:19] Let's do it.

[24:20] Yeah.

[24:21] It's called Imaginal.

[24:22] Imaginality.

[24:23] Almaginary.

[24:24] Al.

[24:25] Yeah.

[24:26] OK, I guess.

[24:27] That's that's tacit acceptance right there.

[24:32] Yeah.

[24:33] Dan, you you said yes.

[24:35] You ended it.

[24:36] Now you own it.

[24:37] OK, I guess I do.

[24:38] If anyone wants to buy it from me, good touch.

[24:42] It turns out that Gloria was Jess's old babysitter, which just does not remember.

[24:52] And Gloria is also a writer.

[24:53] Anybody could walk up to Jess and just be like, oh, yeah, I used to know when you were

[24:56] a kid.

[24:57] And he's like, oh, I guess so.

[24:58] OK, I don't know.

[24:59] Gloria was also a writer.

[25:00] Not successful.

[25:01] She talks about how creative Jess was and had her own imaginary friend.

[25:06] Wait a minute.

[25:07] Jess specifically said she never had an imaginary friend.

[25:10] She didn't remember having an imaginary friend.

[25:12] How is this possible?

[25:13] I wonder if that'll come into play.

[25:14] And she says that Jess's dad is a fan of her books, which makes Jessica uncomfortable since

[25:20] her dad also had some sort of mental break after her mother's death.

[25:26] And there's some sort of complicated history that we will hear later.

[25:30] Probably.

[25:31] Yes, we will.

[25:32] There's a complicated history that was it was dangerous enough that she had to be taken

[25:37] away from her father, never to be seen again, but not so dangerous that he had to leave

[25:42] his home.

[25:43] And they only move into the house because he's moved into an assisted care facility.

[25:48] Yes.

[25:49] And it's also this.

[25:50] But she knows where he is.

[25:51] And it seems like she's maybe it's just the trauma of it.

[25:53] It seems like she's never tried to find out anything about what happened or bridge the

[25:57] gap or anything like.

[25:58] Well, speaking of bridging the gap and that assisted care facility, she goes talking about

[26:03] she goes to visit him.

[26:05] He doesn't seem to recognize her at first.

[26:09] She's like doing her own like little info dump in the form of a one sided conversation

[26:14] being like, how did you how can you just change like that?

[26:17] We were happy.

[26:18] But when he finally does recognize her, he starts screaming about how she went away and

[26:25] was always talking about CB CB construction crew.

[26:32] Yeah.

[26:33] As soon as he started saying that, I'm like, OK, guys, you could you could be a little

[26:36] more open.

[26:37] You could be a little more open.

[26:38] Yeah.

[26:39] It's like, how am I going to.

[26:40] Oh, so there's a bear named Chauncey.

[26:41] How am I going to decode CB and for fucking you didn't think it was about like, you know,

[26:47] she was like a long haul trucker.

[26:49] No, I didn't.

[26:51] Is it felt like that's on convoy.

[26:54] But something that John Hodgman once told me years ago is that he was told audiences

[26:58] like to be ahead of the mystery.

[26:59] It's not that audiences like to be surprised by twists.

[27:02] They like to figure it out themselves.

[27:04] And this felt like one that was designed for the audience to be like CB Chauncey Bear.

[27:08] Of course.

[27:09] Oh, when are the heroes going to figure out the thing?

[27:10] I'm so smart that I figured out, you know.

[27:12] Yeah.

[27:13] Hodgman learned that when he was when he was studying under Dick Wolf.

[27:17] Right.

[27:18] Yeah.

[27:19] He took him under his wing.

[27:20] Exactly.

[27:21] Yeah.

[27:22] He was he was briefly he was briefly raised by wolves.

[27:23] They called him TV Mowgli.

[27:24] Yeah.

[27:25] To me, the jungle bug.

[27:26] Because Dick Wolf was raising him.

[27:27] Yeah.

[27:28] Also, Dick Wolf, who at first protected him from sheer con.

[27:32] But you know, a theme in this movie is, of course, bad babysitting.

[27:38] Taylor is supposed to be babysitting Alice, but she ignores that she's being really creepy

[27:42] with Chauncey in a jar of bugs in favor of instead hanging out with a boy next door.

[27:46] I will say this.

[27:47] If collecting a jar of bugs is creepy, I take offense because considering my son has a room

[27:52] full of jars of bugs and pieces of animals, basically, we just someone just recently gave

[27:56] him a mummified lizard they found in their garage.

[27:58] Well, you know, like you find animal bones out in the forest.

[28:01] Yeah.

[28:02] Yeah.

[28:03] You know, like we have we have a coyote.

[28:04] Yeah.

[28:05] You make little fetishes out of them.

[28:06] Exactly.

[28:07] Yeah.

[28:08] How else are you going to talk to Ba'al?

[28:09] That's that's what I want to know.

[28:10] Yeah.

[28:11] No, there's a science way of doing something like this.

[28:12] But this is.

[28:13] No, this is clearly some sort of clearly collecting bugs as a way of getting in with

[28:15] Chauncey.

[28:16] Yeah.

[28:17] So you're saying Taylor brings over the boy next door and he brings along a gift.

[28:21] And this time it's not a first edition of the Iliad.

[28:24] No, no, no.

[28:26] He presents a bag of drugs, which Taylor does not take.

[28:30] But he fails to read the room and starts reading the liquor cabinet as well and breaks something

[28:36] that drops a bottle and they clean it up.

[28:39] Yeah.

[28:40] So he tries to get a towel, but he's distracted by a toy in Alice's room that is casting bear

[28:46] shaped colored lights on the wall and he's tripping balls at this point.

[28:50] Yeah.

[28:51] Well, one would think so.

[28:52] So he believes.

[28:53] Yeah.

[28:54] There's a jaunty but creepy music playing.

[28:57] And then while he's peeing, he is distracted by Chauncey's pull string, you know, sort

[29:03] of like slowly, you know, being retracted in a way that scares him.

[29:07] And this is the part that I had to, like, rewind to be like, what?

[29:11] Why did he jump?

[29:12] What was the scary thing?

[29:13] Yeah.

[29:14] Like, it's just that he like it.

[29:15] He follows the string up to the bear covered by a towel on the on the counter.

[29:21] This scene.

[29:22] And he jumps.

[29:23] He puts in peas all over the floor.

[29:25] And I'm like, why was that?

[29:26] So what what is what doesn't work about the scene is he should he shouldn't be scared

[29:30] unless he already knows that there is an evil imaginary bear character in the house.

[29:34] And that is information that has not yet been given to him, you know.

[29:39] And this leads to at very worst, this is a home, not wanting to buy an elf on the shelf

[29:44] type scenario and instead just drafting this bear into that into that role.

[29:49] Yeah.

[29:50] Yeah.

[29:51] This leads to a follow up scene that I thought the imagery of this was more effectively a

[29:56] little later on.

[29:57] Right.

[29:58] What?

[29:59] Later on or right here.

[30:00] He sees the pull string again, he chases around, he steps on it, which causes it to pull the

[30:06] teddy bear slowly towards him on the hall.

[30:09] I thought that was a creepy image, but then it's immediately followed by an unscary CGI

[30:15] real bear that leaps at him for a second before he falls down and disappears.

[30:21] I forgot about that CGI bear.

[30:23] There's two bears inside of everyone, a stuffed bear and a CGI bear.

[30:28] At this point, Jess comes home like, what the fuck?

[30:31] And we cut to a neighbor's mom being there, and Jess is like, I come home to your son

[30:35] giving my daughter Molly, and she's like, this isn't Molly, this is my allergy medicine.

[30:40] And I fucking rolled my eyes, because what are we to believe that the kid thought was

[30:45] going on here?

[30:47] He just found a baggie of allergy medicine in the medicine cabinet, and was like, this

[30:52] is probably Molly that I can give to the neighbor.

[30:56] What was the, what was, like this dumb fucking payoff of a joke, like what was the backstory

[31:03] of this?

[31:04] I buy that he's dumb, and my guess is that it is their way of saying, don't worry, this

[31:08] character was not actually doing drugs, this is a PG-13 movie.

[31:11] Oh, that makes sense, that makes sense.

[31:14] But also-

[31:15] Even dub kids aren't like, they find pills in their home, and they're like, my mom probably

[31:20] has Molly.

[31:22] You don't know what their life is like.

[31:23] Maybe she's like, that's my allergy medicine, you idiot.

[31:25] I keep the Molly in the other drawer.

[31:27] I mean, it would be one thing if it's the same brand of allergy medicine, and he bought

[31:32] it off a smarter, dumb kid.

[31:35] Yes.

[31:36] I mean, maybe that's the backstory.

[31:37] For some reason, the one thing I liked about this was it reminded me-

[31:39] Let's check the novelization of the allergy medicine.

[31:41] Yeah, let's check Alan Dean Foster's version of this.

[31:43] The one thing I liked about it was that it reminded me of a moment in a state sketch

[31:47] that I liked.

[31:48] One of the Doug sketches where they find, he has pot in his, it's either his dad or

[31:52] his principal's like, what's this?

[31:53] And he goes, oh, that's oregano for home ec.

[31:55] And then he goes, that's a lot of oregano, Doug.

[31:57] Should be, I paid 50 bucks for it.

[32:02] So Jess also finds one for Paintings Ripped.

[32:07] Sorry, I got a text from my wife.

[32:11] You got too scared, yeah, you got too scared, I get it.

[32:13] He had art being destroyed was what was scary for Dan.

[32:16] I tried to dismiss it, and the phone was like, you probably want to switch over to those

[32:19] texts.

[32:21] No, she finds one of her paintings ripped and she thinks Alice is mad at her and was

[32:26] the one who ripped it.

[32:27] And so she does this extremely long monologue to a lump under the blanket in Alice's bed

[32:32] that is clearly not Alice.

[32:34] And it goes on forever without her checking if the kid is there while she's talking to

[32:38] this.

[32:39] It's a heartfelt speech about what, being afraid and stuff like that.

[32:42] And when I was angry, I would break things or whatever, I don't remember.

[32:46] You know, like her dad got sick and it made her upset, but she loves these kids so much.

[32:51] And she finally, she looks out the window, she goes on this long speech about how Tim

[32:56] Roth gobbled her baby up.

[32:58] And you're like, what?

[33:04] She's like, oh, and you're not really talking to me.

[33:06] You're not talking and the blanket's not moving.

[33:08] You're so mad that you're not talking, you're not breathing.

[33:11] You're so mad that you're dead now, yeah.

[33:15] You're also super tiny.

[33:17] Guys, we've all been there.

[33:19] We've all had a podcast guest who just will not talk and is just lying there under a blanket

[33:23] and not breathing.

[33:24] Yeah, it turns out.

[33:25] And it turns out that we look outside and see the guest and it was a teddy bear under

[33:28] the blanket the whole time.

[33:29] Yeah.

[33:30] Yeah.

[33:31] She sees Alice outside taking a fence apart for some reason.

[33:33] Well, we know why.

[33:34] We know why.

[33:35] It's pretty funny.

[33:36] We find out why later.

[33:37] But not at this point.

[33:38] Yeah.

[33:39] And she pulls back the blanket to see Chauncey.

[33:40] And she reacts as if it's this big scare moment and not like, yeah, it's a teddy bear

[33:45] in a bed where a teddy bear lives.

[33:48] The idea of a teddy bear being in a bed, how did it get here?

[33:54] What possible logical explanation could the teddy bear have for being in a bed?

[33:57] But she runs downstairs and rescues Alice from intentionally slamming her hand down

[34:01] on a rusty nail from the fence because presumably Chauncey told her to.

[34:07] Yes.

[34:08] Yeah.

[34:09] Cocktail.

[34:10] She has to do something to her.

[34:11] That hurts.

[34:12] Yeah.

[34:13] Because Chauncey has given her a scavenger hunt.

[34:14] That's why she collected those bugs.

[34:15] She had to have something that scares her.

[34:16] Yeah.

[34:17] And I will say.

[34:18] Jess has found the scavenger hunt list, right?

[34:20] Yes.

[34:21] Yeah.

[34:22] And I will say the girl almost slamming her hand down on a rusty nail.

[34:25] I don't.

[34:26] Maybe it's just that I'm a parent.

[34:27] I didn't like it like this.

[34:28] I felt like this movie had not established a scary enough nightmarish atmosphere that

[34:32] I could that it felt like this was the moment where I was like, this seems harsh for the

[34:36] movie that I have been watching.

[34:37] Yeah.

[34:38] And I will say from this point on for a little bit, I did find it getting more kind of like

[34:43] realistically upsetting in some ways, not necessarily scary, but like effective in making

[34:48] me not happy.

[34:49] Is that because the next thing that happens is a child psychiatrist is called in?

[34:54] I think.

[34:55] I think the child psychiatrist stuff, I think it's the best stuff in the movie, to be honest.

[34:59] You know, I guess I have a hard time separating it from the movie.

[35:04] You know, I guess if I think about it, I could imagine a better movie having this in.

[35:09] I want to hear both of you explain why you feel this way, but let's continue with the

[35:13] plot because there's a couple of specific moments that I found very strange and one

[35:17] very funny.

[35:18] Well, I think this is the part of the movie where I'm like, I don't really know exactly

[35:22] what game.

[35:23] I know the game this movie is playing.

[35:24] There's an evil imaginary friend, but I don't know exactly what this movie is trying to

[35:27] do compared to the earlier part of the movie.

[35:29] And then at the end, I was like, now I really don't know what this movie is attempting to

[35:32] do.

[35:33] But so Dr. Soto comes in to talk to Alice and she asks Alice about the scavenger hunt

[35:37] that led her to almost hurt herself.

[35:40] And in the process of this, she encourages Alice to tell Chauncey how he made her feel.

[35:46] And she's filming this whole thing.

[35:48] Yeah.

[35:49] She's filming it like any good therapist.

[35:50] She wants to be videotaped so that she can show it to her, the parents of other patients.

[35:55] Yeah, we haven't gotten there yet.

[35:57] The act of her filming it is not weird at this point, but I think it's weird.

[36:02] That's done.

[36:03] That is done.

[36:04] There are therapists that record their sessions, you know, but none of mine have that I know

[36:09] of.

[36:10] In ways that this therapist is not going to do later on.

[36:13] But she cuts together a compilation called called Weird Wacky Kids that she sells on

[36:18] TV later.

[36:19] I think in particular, if it's a child therapy session, there are reasons why this might

[36:23] be done.

[36:24] But yeah, because it's extra scary anyway, because it might end up on kids say the most

[36:30] traumatic things.

[36:31] Well, you want you.

[36:32] You know, I know you may need it.

[36:35] For different types of reasons.

[36:36] Yeah.

[36:37] So she encourages Alice to tell Chauncey how he made her feel.

[36:40] And the doctor sees Alice doing Chauncey's voice and talking back and forth to herself.

[36:45] Alice has her back to the doctor during this conversation.

[36:48] Chauncey is saying things like, fake mommy will leave.

[36:51] Fake mommy is mean.

[36:52] Only Chauncey love Alice.

[36:54] And I do love that.

[36:55] I do love that the psychologist or psychiatrist, whichever one that she keeps.

[36:59] She's like still like she's like, this ain't that weird.

[37:02] I'm just going to keep asking these like, like in-depth probing questions, which I feel

[37:07] like this kid, even if it wasn't arguing with its imaginary friend, would have trouble handling.

[37:14] She doesn't seem like emotional questions like that.

[37:16] I don't think she's really approaching the child at the child's level, but also feels

[37:19] like a certain point.

[37:20] She's like, I'm going to stir up shit between this kid and her imaginary friends.

[37:22] Like, I'm just going to see what the drama is that erupts here.

[37:25] But then we get the great line where the doctor asked Jess, has Alice taken up any new hobbies

[37:31] lately?

[37:32] Ventriloquism?

[37:33] That is, it is very funny.

[37:35] That I don't think that's where I would start if I was the doctor, especially since, especially

[37:40] since as she then reveals, she has lungs, she has dealt with other patients where kids

[37:44] have evil imaginary friends.

[37:46] Yes.

[37:47] Well, let's get to that because we teased it.

[37:49] She tells Jess that Alice brought up a place called the never ever, which reminded her

[37:53] of an old patient.

[37:54] And then she fucking shows Jess video of the kids session.

[37:58] She shouldn't do that.

[38:00] That's not a violation.

[38:01] That's not all right.

[38:02] Yeah.

[38:03] And I like that she has that shit just like queued up.

[38:04] She shows it to people at parties.

[38:07] She sees people, she's like, hey, you've seen this?

[38:08] This is crazy.

[38:09] Let me show you this clip.

[38:10] This is bonkers.

[38:11] Look at this maniac.

[38:12] Look at this little weirdo.

[38:13] Aren't you supposed to have like, not to not do this?

[38:16] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[38:17] Everybody does it.

[38:18] Everybody does it.

[38:19] Yeah, it's a hundred and one great therapy fails.

[38:20] Yeah.

[38:21] America's funniest.

[38:22] It's like we all share these clips.

[38:23] It's like how doctors always share x-rays of stuff up people's butts.

[38:26] Like, you know, you know, they're doing it.

[38:28] Yeah.

[38:29] But the point is, that kid disappeared right after talking about the never.

[38:32] And he also had cut his thumb off.

[38:34] Right.

[38:35] Oh, I missed that part.

[38:36] It was that this kid who is missing a thumb.

[38:37] And it turns out that he did his his his his imaginary friend told him to hurt himself

[38:43] and then to and they disappeared.

[38:45] You know?

[38:46] Yeah.

[38:47] I it was like, it's OK for me to show you this session.

[38:48] This kid disappeared.

[38:49] He's not going to get mad.

[38:50] It wasn't 100 percent clear what the kid had done to hurt himself.

[38:54] But then later on, they mentioned that he cut his thumb.

[38:56] Yes.

[38:57] Yeah.

[38:58] This reminds Jess of that crayon.

[39:00] You don't see him go hitchhiking, but he can't do it because he's, you know, he's yeah, he's

[39:05] trying to talk about a movie he really liked and he's like, no, I liked it more than one

[39:09] thought.

[39:10] Yeah.

[39:11] That was like that kid disappeared.

[39:13] We know that he didn't go hitchhiking because he couldn't.

[39:15] He couldn't.

[39:16] Yeah.

[39:17] There's no way he was scheduled to be on on Roper at the movies, but he never showed up.

[39:22] Yeah.

[39:23] Yeah.

[39:24] He was going to play in the video game championships.

[39:27] But no.

[39:28] What happened?

[39:29] Yeah.

[39:30] This was sitting in a corner with a plum pudding.

[39:32] We had nothing to stick in it.

[39:34] This is horrible.

[39:36] We're only making these jokes because, of course, this is a made up.

[39:38] This is not a real.

[39:39] We would never make these jokes about a real person with a thumb, only a fictional character

[39:43] in a stupid movie.

[39:44] Yeah.

[39:45] This reminds Jess of her crayon drawing of the never ever.

[39:48] And Jess is like, I got to destroy that bear.

[39:50] And the doctor says, what bear that that shit was amazing.

[39:56] That reveals.

[39:57] I'm like, come on, Mufi.

[39:58] You didn't.

[40:00] No, I admire the audacity of it, I admire the audacity of it because it does not make sense

[40:05] with anything we've seen previously in the film, yeah. She starts uh freaking out and I know if I

[40:10] was the doctor. This is when the doctor shows her the video, right? No, no, that was before.

[40:14] No, no, it shows the video of the session and there's no bears. Oh, of the session, yeah.

[40:18] And there's the moment where like Taylor walks in and she's like, uh, you've seen the bear, right?

[40:23] Yeah. She's like, yeah, it's not that funny but it keeps winning best original comedy,

[40:27] I don't understand. Oh, not this year, it didn't. No, that's true, it lost this year but yeah,

[40:30] the uh, yeah, she's like, you've seen the bear, right? She's like, what bear are you talking

[40:33] about? Like, there's no bear. So, um, you know. It is one of the funnier fight club style reveals

[40:41] that, oh my god, all those times we thought we saw a bear there, there was no bear there.

[40:45] Uh-huh, instead of carrying a bear, she was just holding her arm at a weird angle. Yeah, yeah.

[40:51] Um, so, uh, Jess knows something is going on with that creepy never ever door. She looks for Alice

[40:58] but can't find Alice because she's busy doing some weird ritual and, uh, Taylor and Jess can't

[41:04] find her but there's blood on the tiny basement door. Ah! And, uh, there's an argument between

[41:10] Taylor and Jess where Taylor says people don't just disappear and that reminds Jess of what her

[41:15] dad said. She thinks, oh, Chauncey was also her childhood friend and Taylor's like. She's found

[41:21] all these drawings of, of Chauncey bear that she did as a kid. Yeah. Yeah. And, and Taylor's like,

[41:26] that's nuts, which is, uh, is reasonable but Taylor's really mean about it because she's a

[41:31] teen. Again, she's a teenager. Yeah. So, she's mean. I mean, it is on the face of it, if you

[41:34] don't know you're in a horror movie, then to be told, oh, my stepdaughter has my imaginary friend

[41:39] and he's come back for revenge. Yeah. In the form of a bear that you can't see. Your first reaction

[41:44] would be, I don't believe that. Yes. Unless, you know, you're in a horror movie, in which case,

[41:48] you'd say that is reasonable. It seems like exactly the situation. Let's figure out the rules

[41:52] here. Yeah. Um, so I thought it was the, I thought it was the dead school janitor who was coming to

[41:59] her in her dreams to try to kill her, but no, it turns out it's this bear. Yeah. In another moment

[42:04] of good parenting slash babysitting, uh, after looking around for their missing, uh, for, for

[42:10] Alice, who's missing, she then just lets Taylor wander the streets looking for her by herself.

[42:16] Yeah. A girl who they've expressly pointed out is a minor. Uh, well, Taylor's out, uh, wandering

[42:23] the streets at night. As you say, she bumps into Gloria, the old neighbor, who's like, it's time

[42:28] for some more exposition. And, uh, you've earned, you've unlocked this next level of knowledge.

[42:34] And she tells Taylor that, uh, when, when, uh, sorry, my notes are bad here. Uh, when,

[42:42] when Jess was a kid, she said she was going to a secret place just for her and her imaginary friend.

[42:47] And she opened that secret door and disappeared. Well, and this is what, and, uh, and that she

[42:53] talks a lot about like how when kids have imaginary friends, right. They're, they're

[42:56] really spirits from the other spirits. Some are good and some are bad. And some get angry when

[43:01] the kids grew up and their connection is severed, uh, because they hunger for the child's power of

[43:07] imagination. Yeah. And Gloria's house has been turned into this like cool library of the arcane

[43:14] filled with like folklore and like, it has a really kind of interesting open plan design,

[43:19] but I thought it was pretty cool. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Let me explain this to you. Kind of. Um,

[43:27] I mean, to be honest, I love, this is my favorite character in the movie. Like I said,

[43:30] she's full of, she's this, she's this weird old lady who's like, yeah, you know what? Ever since

[43:35] you were, you disappeared when I was babysitting you, I've just devoted myself to the esoteric and

[43:39] arcane. I know exactly what's happening. And as we find out later, she's super into it, you know?

[43:44] Yeah. She's like, since I lost you, I found a world so new. And that world is the arcane and

[43:51] the macabre. Uh, anyway, meanwhile, Jess has been busy repainting all of the art she drew on her

[43:57] walls as a child. She's trying to reconnect to the old memories and it's kind of a naive style.

[44:05] Yeah. Outsider art. Yeah. Uh, she's joined by a Gloria and Taylor who, and Taylor's now totes on

[44:10] board with the evil spirit stuff. Uh, and Jess is like, I remember most of what happened to me as a

[44:16] kid. The thing my dad kept saying CB that stands for Chauncey bear. Oh, yeah. Uh,

[44:26] and the gang has to finish CB scavenger hunt so they can open the door. And you know that

[44:32] the scavenger had, of course, as usual, something old, something new, something borrowed,

[44:36] something that hurts. Yeah. And, uh, the ritual doesn't work the first time. So Jess has to be

[44:42] really mean to Taylor to make it actually work, calling her selfish like her mother.

[44:47] But it kind of brings them closer together because Taylor realizes that it hurt Jess to be so cruel

[44:52] to her. Yeah. That it wasn't that it hurt her that finished the ritual is that it hurt Jess to say

[44:56] these things that were kind of, I mean, there's a little bit of truth to them, to be honest,

[45:00] you know, there was a little bit of truth. It wouldn't hurt, you know? Yeah. And I think that

[45:04] Taylor's also like when you're at a roast and it's like, people are mean to you, but they're mean to

[45:07] you in a really specific way that shows they really know you like that. It's like, you must

[45:10] really even pay attention to be so mean. You see me, you must see me, Tom Brady and know exactly

[45:16] the man I am. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Jeff Ross for penetrating this exterior and getting to the

[45:23] molten vulnerable core beneath. So they go through the door into it. Here I, Tom Brady,

[45:29] stand before you naked and exposed to you, Jeff Ross. Cut me to the quick, will you?

[45:36] They go through the door into this M.C. Escher nightmare world. I'm going to say this. I would

[45:41] like to put a ban on using black and white checkered floor tiles in paranormal worlds.

[45:47] They do that. And I'm like, that is not a paranormal world thing. That is a Tim Burton

[45:51] thing. That's Tim Burton's thing. So that's the Beetlejuice you're talking about. Yeah,

[45:55] that's the Beetlejuice that's in there. That's what I'm saying. Campari.

[46:01] And once we're in the world, Gloria starts cackling about it. Everyone said that her

[46:06] books were the nonsensical ramblings of an old woman, but she was right.

[46:10] And it's just like, now we're in this world, we can imagine anything. It's full of imagination.

[46:14] It's wonderful. But the movie is done with her. So, of course, she is mauled by a bear.

[46:18] Well, don't get ahead of myself. I was so excited about it because it was like,

[46:22] oh, suddenly I'm watching The Winter's Tale. Because what happens before that is Jesse's

[46:28] a vision of her dad fighting off the evil spirit in its tentacle spidery form to save her.

[46:34] And she knows that that's what drove him mad. And he gave up his sanity to save her from the

[46:39] never. And that's the point at which Gloria has unpropped the door and gives her villain monologue

[46:45] where she says, the entity told me to bring you here. We'll leave our pain behind. We will be

[46:50] happy here forever. And, you know, it's it's it's it's so big that telegraphs that, of course,

[46:54] she's about to die. Yeah. Yeah. And where does that character go from there? She becomes the

[46:59] villain of the movie or she dies. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but also it's like so clearly like a set

[47:02] up of a joke is like, oh, we'll live forever. Yeah. This is this is their deep blue sea moment.

[47:08] Yeah. And some furry Paul Paul pulls her into like a Scooby-Doo hallway door.

[47:16] This is so goofy. This part, this is where the and it is, I think,

[47:19] officially at this point that the movie stops being a horror movie and becomes kind of like.

[47:26] We'll live forever. This is when the movie officially stops trying to be a horror movie

[47:32] and just becomes kind of like, I don't know, like like an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark or

[47:36] something like that, you know? Yeah. So it takes a long time for this thing to kill her. Yeah.

[47:45] The others are trying to save her at any moment. My first thought was, hey, guys,

[47:49] free house, right? I guess I know he's going to need her house anymore. That's true.

[47:55] Yeah. That library, that cool library books. How are they going to explain this to the police?

[48:02] I mean, I don't think they have to. There's nothing there. Yeah.

[48:06] I think it'll just be weird. You don't think your ring camera caught them walking into the house?

[48:11] Something tells me that she doesn't have a ring camera. There's no body. Yeah.

[48:17] Anyway, they get we saw you go into the house and leave with her on the camera and then she

[48:22] disappeared. It's like, yeah, well, we all went out to get Froger Froger. And then, you know,

[48:27] she she left, you know, to get frozen. We all get frozen calzones.

[48:34] She's just walked away. I don't know. I'm frozen for frozen, frozen.

[48:41] Because you guys are in Frocal, California. That's right. Yeah.

[48:44] Frocal, the chilly part of California. Yeah, exactly.

[48:48] Ruled by the ice queen.

[48:53] So Jess and Taylor get briefly separated. Taylor finds a zombie looking Alice who's like,

[48:59] I've been here too long and long John Daddy. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah. Yeah.

[49:04] And there's the giant bear Chauncey shows up and zombie Alice.

[49:08] Wait, wait, wait. You got to tell me about the giant bear Chauncey. We got to talk about it.

[49:12] OK, this is this one. It's the person in a costume, Chauncey. Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

[49:17] When it's but it's this one, it's the scary costume or when it's just a regular bear.

[49:20] This looks more like a regular bear later on. Later on, we get a we get a scary costume,

[49:25] which again is again a moment where it was like, oh, I feel like I'm watching

[49:27] an episode of The Storyteller. Like this is not. I kind of love how goofy that one looks.

[49:31] It looks it looks like halfway between a bear and the monster that at the end of

[49:36] Big Trouble in Little China is on the Porkchop Express. Yes. Yeah. Or kind of it also,

[49:42] you know, like the crate from Creepshow a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that kind of thing.

[49:48] And again, if that's the movie I was watching, I'd be like on board 100 percent. But it was like

[49:52] not until that character shows up. Am I like, oh, that's the kind of movie. Yeah,

[49:55] I didn't. I didn't expect this Creepshow. I'd be like, oh, yeah.

[50:00] Give me another serving.

[50:02] But you can't ask me to be like,

[50:04] I'm really worried this kid is in danger,

[50:06] and then suddenly show me that.

[50:08] But Taylor saved just Yankser from the room,

[50:11] and they find a room that has the number of their old apartment,

[50:16] and they take a page from the Barenaked Ladies

[50:19] and break into the old apartment.

[50:21] And have some fucking craft dinner or whatever they eat.

[50:25] They find real Alice.

[50:27] And it has been one week since they looked at their dad, I guess.

[50:33] Real Alice is living like a tea party queen,

[50:36] and there's also some evil feature there.

[50:39] As if she had a million dollars.

[50:41] Do we know any other Barenaked Ladies songs?

[50:43] No other bands.

[50:44] I don't know any other Barenaked Ladies.

[50:45] I don't even know the Barenaked Ladies song that Dan started with.

[50:48] I only know the One Week and the If I Had a Million Dollars.

[50:51] And I guess the Big Bang Theory song is them, right?

[50:53] Is it?

[50:54] It's not, but it sounds like them.

[50:56] No.

[50:57] Listeners, write in and tell Elliot whether his favorite show,

[51:00] The Big Bang Theory, has a theme by the Barenaked Ladies.

[51:02] Listeners, write in to Who Gives a Shit, care of the flop house.

[51:05] Send Elliot a list of Barenaked Ladies songs.

[51:07] Don't do that, please.

[51:09] Canadians, help us.

[51:11] So, yeah.

[51:13] Also, at this tea party room where Alice is living like a queen,

[51:17] there's an evil version of Alice's birth mom.

[51:21] I mean, they have painted her pretty evilly before this moment.

[51:24] Yeah, but this is clearly like some fake version.

[51:26] But this is like a supernatural version of it,

[51:28] especially when she gets her Coraline eyes.

[51:30] And Jess starts tearing up the room to draw a new blue door on the wall

[51:35] because imagination has power here, and that's how they're going to get out.

[51:38] They're going to make their own blue door.

[51:40] Like, now it turns into Harold and the Purple Crayon.

[51:42] At this point, I was like, what is this movie?

[51:44] Like, what is it trying to do?

[51:46] The mom turns into the giant tooth bear, and Jess stays back to fight.

[51:51] That's when the tooth bear shows up.

[51:54] She starts sinking into a pile of blue junk on the floor like quicksand

[51:58] and falls back into the Scooby-Doo-like hall of doors.

[52:03] Yeah.

[52:04] And Chauncey stalks her.

[52:07] She stabbed him with some scissors earlier, so he's a little injured.

[52:12] She tries to pry the original door open just as Taylor opens it from the outside

[52:15] and traps Chauncey inside.

[52:17] Yay, nightmare's over.

[52:19] The movie's over, right?

[52:20] Well, we cut to Jess reading her new book to her dad in the assisted living home,

[52:26] and Max and Alice are there and Taylor gazing on lovingly, and she tells her dad

[52:32] she knows what he did for her and she's sorry, and Taylor and Alice thank Jess.

[52:36] They're all finally one family, right?

[52:39] It's all so loving that you're like, oh, no, I know where this is going.

[52:42] You're like, when's the other shoe going to drop?

[52:43] Sure enough, Jess realizes she's still trapped in the dream world.

[52:47] This has all just been constructed to keep her happy.

[52:51] Like at the end of Thriller when Michael Jackson has werewolf cat eyes.

[52:57] No, no, no, everybody's got cool spider eyes.

[53:01] Yeah, spider eyes.

[53:03] They're pretty funny looking.

[53:04] They look a little silly, yeah.

[53:06] Evil Simpsons eyes on all these people.

[53:10] They end up with the same eyes that Feathers McGraw has in the Waltz of Gromit movies that he's in.

[53:16] Yeah, everyone turns evil and they're like, you said you'd never leave him.

[53:21] Do you think he'd let you go again?

[53:23] And Jess realizes Alice was just the bait so that Chauncey could bring his favorite child back.

[53:32] Because as powerful as the child's imagination is, Jess's imagination is like, oh, for sure.

[53:37] I mean, she's a professional artist.

[53:38] Yeah, she's just so full of imagination, yeah.

[53:40] That spider thing, the millipede.

[53:44] Yeah.

[53:45] Who could think of that stuff?

[53:46] I mean, the fact that she's done a series of books with the same two characters over and over again.

[53:50] I mean her imagination is bursting with ideas.

[53:52] She's Jack Kirby over here.

[53:53] Come on.

[53:54] So Jess agrees to stay there to keep her kids safe.

[53:59] But no, Taylor shows up and hits the monster saying, forever's over, asshole.

[54:04] This is when I was like, so what?

[54:06] Like, you know what?

[54:07] I don't care that much.

[54:08] But like how did she get in?

[54:09] How did she know?

[54:10] What did she do?

[54:11] Well, once you're in the dream world, if you can just hit the bad guy with a hockey stick or something, it's fine.

[54:15] She did the ritual over again.

[54:18] She was really mean to Alice.

[54:20] And then what?

[54:21] She called Alice a real bitch.

[54:23] This would have happened if you were better with your stupid imaginary friend, you idiot.

[54:26] And then what?

[54:27] She just asked for directions when she was in the dream world?

[54:29] Yeah.

[54:30] I guess so.

[54:31] So they escape after all.

[54:33] They try and follow the Rolling Stones' advice, re-doors and paint it black.

[54:37] But the monster comes out.

[54:39] That's what that song was about.

[54:40] There's so much British invasion in this episode.

[54:42] Yeah.

[54:43] The monster pushes out and starts to crazy-fly Jess with its eyes.

[54:48] And it's like all spider now, right?

[54:49] No, no, no.

[54:50] It stopped being a spider, and now it's got kind of like a weird television face, right?

[54:54] Yeah, he's got a weird television face.

[54:56] And he's like projecting like flashing lights from its eyes that I guess dazzles people.

[55:00] There's a new ability.

[55:01] I'm shocked that they've just added new abilities at this point in the game.

[55:06] Well, we saw that briefly to her dad, but not in this detail.

[55:10] No, but this is the kind of thing you see in 70s Marvel comics where from issue to issue the rules change drastically.

[55:14] Yeah.

[55:15] Because there's a different writer and artist on it where they just don't care.

[55:17] They don't remember what happened in the previous issue.

[55:19] Rarely do you see this happen in a movie where they can just read from the same script.

[55:23] You know, that a monster just suddenly manifests an entirely new face and power with no explanation at the end.

[55:28] Yeah.

[55:29] So –

[55:30] Not that I mind – again, if the whole movie was like this, I'd be like, great.

[55:34] You know, surreal nonsensicalness.

[55:36] It looks like all is lost.

[55:37] Taylor can't like break –

[55:39] It doesn't really look like all is lost.

[55:40] It's just Robert Redford on a boat.

[55:41] Okay.

[55:42] Yeah, it's true.

[55:43] It's a different movie.

[55:44] R.I.P.

[55:45] R.I.P.

[55:46] Yeah.

[55:47] Robert Redford is perished.

[55:48] Yeah.

[55:49] That's what R.I.P. stands for.

[55:50] Jeez Louise.

[55:51] By the time this comes out, that will have been a couple weeks ago.

[55:53] Oh, yeah.

[55:54] Everyone will be desensitized.

[55:55] Yeah.

[55:56] Yeah.

[55:57] Alice sees everything happening, and she springs into action.

[56:02] She says, you were never my friend, never, ever.

[56:04] And she burns the monster and the whole house, which is going to be a hard thing to explain to Max.

[56:08] Whoa, yeah.

[56:09] Alice gets her groove back.

[56:10] I mean now that the house has been burned down, I guess they are a little bit –

[56:13] it is easier to believe they're complicit in the disappearance of the neighbor.

[56:16] Yeah.

[56:17] Fade to black, but somehow the movie is still not over.

[56:20] There's a poltergeist ripoff ending where they go to a hotel and they see a kid with a stuffed bear.

[56:26] And they're like, you want to go to a different hotel?

[56:28] As the kid insists that the bear is not imaginary.

[56:31] Yeah.

[56:32] The end.

[56:33] And music plays that also sounds suspiciously like kind of a music box version of the poltergeist music.

[56:38] And that's imaginary.

[56:41] That's the tale of Chauncey the Bear.

[56:43] What a story.

[56:45] Tale as old as time.

[56:46] And that we've seen it before.

[56:48] Last year.

[56:49] I think this movie should have been called CB instead of imaginary.

[56:52] Yeah.

[56:53] Could be.

[56:54] Could be.

[56:55] CB.

[56:56] Could be.

[56:57] It should be called CB.

[56:58] Again, there is a movie called The Fighting Seabees, but it's spelled differently and

[57:00] also I don't think they're going to get mixed up.

[57:02] Sometimes movies have similar names.

[57:04] Name two.

[57:06] Wait a minute.

[57:08] There's – I know this one.

[57:11] There's –

[57:12] Because you don't seem to be saying any.

[57:14] There's – wait.

[57:15] There's Fast – there's The Fast and the Furious and Fast and Furious?

[57:18] No.

[57:19] Those are two in the same series.

[57:20] Scream and scream.

[57:21] No.

[57:22] Again, those are the same series.

[57:23] Okay.

[57:24] There's – wait a minute.

[57:25] There's Scary Movie and Scree.

[57:28] No.

[57:29] Again, one is a parody of the other.

[57:31] There's Mission to Mars and Police Academy Mission to Moscow.

[57:34] Okay.

[57:35] You got it.

[57:36] Okay.

[57:37] There.

[57:38] That's very similar.

[57:39] Yeah.

[57:40] It's only the framing of it being a police academy adventure and also the different destination

[57:41] that differentiates those two movies.

[57:42] There's The Martian and Mars Attacks.

[57:46] Again, I don't know if those are that similar.

[57:48] I mean, they're both involving Mars.

[57:50] Sure.

[57:51] Yeah.

[57:53] There's Casablanca and Casablanca 2, the new batch.

[57:56] Casablanca and Castle Freak?

[57:58] Yeah.

[57:59] Okay.

[58:00] Very similar.

[58:01] There you go.

[58:02] There's Red and The Reader.

[58:03] There you go.

[58:04] I mean, there's a movie called Reds and a movie called Red, and they're very different.

[58:06] So there's that.

[58:07] Yeah.

[58:08] And there's a movie called Dropped Dead Friends.

[58:10] And a movie called Dropped Dead Reds.

[58:14] Let's do – what are we doing?

[58:19] I feel like this has been our number one episode of just saying dumb movies.

[58:23] Yeah.

[58:24] I think so.

[58:25] I think so.

[58:26] Yeah.

[58:27] I guess there are two movies called Clifford.

[58:28] So yeah.

[58:29] You know what?

[58:30] It could have the same title.

[58:31] See?

[58:32] Yeah.

[58:33] Final judgments.

[58:34] Is this a good, bad movie?

[58:35] A bad, bad movie?

[58:36] Or a movie we kind of like?

[58:37] I got to say, this one was really harmed for me by having to take notes on it.

[58:41] I mean, rarely is a movie more enjoyable when you have to take notes on it.

[58:45] Yeah.

[58:46] I feel like if I didn't, there would be like – it might sneak up on a good, bad because

[58:52] there's some like goofy stuff in there.

[58:54] I like that visual twist line.

[58:55] I like how silly it gets at the end.

[58:57] But I think overall, I'm still going to go with a bad, bad.

[59:01] What do you guys think?

[59:03] Stuart, what do you think?

[59:04] Yeah.

[59:05] I'm with you.

[59:06] I think there is some genuinely like nonsensical choices and very silly things.

[59:13] But it is – I think it's a bad, bad movie.

[59:15] I'm going to say bad, bad also.

[59:16] It's like if you could watch it starting from the middle.

[59:20] But I feel like you're not going to get how goofy it is at the end if you haven't

[59:25] seen the beginning where it's not goofy at all.

[59:27] But I think it's not worth sitting through that to get to the goofy stuff.

[59:32] I liked it more than the evil pool movie we watched last year.

[59:36] Night Swim?

[59:37] Was that it?

[59:38] Yeah.

[59:39] I liked it more than Night Swim.

[59:40] Was that what it was called or am I forgetting?

[59:42] Russell is like Jack Nicholson.

[59:45] This pool water is making me so strong.

[59:48] Yeah.

[59:49] I did like it more than Night Swim.

[59:50] I felt like Night Swim was a funnier premise but they didn't know what to do with it.

[59:54] Whereas this is not that funny a premise.

[59:56] But by the end, they certainly find some things to do with it they did not expect.

[59:59] Yeah.

[1:00:00] Now everybody knows that The Greatest Generation has always been MaxFun's go-to podcast for

[1:00:11] old Star Trek recaps, but what my theory presupposes is, what if it isn't?

[1:00:16] In a shocking turn of events, Greatest Trek, the comedy podcast covering new Trek, has

[1:00:22] gone through a temporal wormhole back to the very beginning.

[1:00:26] Because we are now reviewing Star Trek The Original Series.

[1:00:29] That means when you subscribe now, you'll get episode-by-episode recaps of all the 1960s

[1:00:34] style action and intrigue, along with all the jokes and fun that make Greatest Gen and

[1:00:38] Greatest Trek the number one Star Trek podcast out there.

[1:00:43] Subscribe now to Greatest Trek on MaximumFun.org.

[1:00:45] Hey gang, it's Jesse Thorne, host of Bullseye with Jesse Thorne.

[1:00:52] We are ringing in 25 years of Bullseye this fall.

[1:00:57] That's right, listener, 25 years.

[1:00:59] I started the show in my dorm room at UC Santa Cruz.

[1:01:02] What does that mean for you?

[1:01:03] Well, we'll have a whole month of special shows, new and old, for one thing.

[1:01:07] We are putting on live shows in Los Angeles, New York, and Santa Cruz.

[1:01:12] Got guests like Adam Scott, Roy Wood Jr., and Rebecca Sugar, just to name a few.

[1:01:16] And on October 9th, I will interview 25 people in a row.

[1:01:20] You can watch that live and streaming on our YouTube channel.

[1:01:24] I hope you'll plan on celebrating with us.

[1:01:27] That's MaximumFun.org slash events.

[1:01:30] Thanks.

[1:01:31] Hey, the Flophouse is brought to you by the good people, good listeners like you, who

[1:01:40] have become members over at MaximumFun.org and help us keep this thing going.

[1:01:48] But it's also brought to you in this episode by Squarespace.

[1:01:54] Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid online, all

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[1:02:49] your first purchase of a website or domain.

[1:02:54] You know, Dan, the Flophouse is brought to you by listeners like you and also by Squarespace.

[1:02:59] And the Flophouse is also brought to you by the Flophouse.

[1:03:01] And the Flophouse is going to be bringing the Flophouse to Chicago.

[1:03:06] That's right.

[1:03:07] The Flophouse is going to Chicago.

[1:03:08] They can't keep us out.

[1:03:10] No matter what the president says, we're still going to Chicago.

[1:03:13] We still want to be there.

[1:03:14] So we're going to be there Sunday, November 16th.

[1:03:16] Now, you may go on the website and be like, but that show's sold out.

[1:03:21] The early show is sold out.

[1:03:22] And that's why we added a late show.

[1:03:24] You know what that show is going to be?

[1:03:26] Different than the early show because we're talking about two different Jim Belushi movies.

[1:03:29] Yeah, that's right.

[1:03:30] Chicago's favorite son, the Belush.

[1:03:32] We're going to do two entries in his cinematic oeuvre.

[1:03:36] So that's the Flophouse Live in Chicago at Sleeping Village.

[1:03:41] For tickets, go to flophousepodcast.com slash events, right?

[1:03:46] And you'll see a link to get tickets to the Flophouse Live in Chicago, Sunday, November

[1:03:50] 16th.

[1:03:51] I'm looking forward to it.

[1:03:52] It's going to be a lot of fun.

[1:03:53] If you can't get tickets to the early show and only the late show, that's okay.

[1:03:55] We're going to be extra loopy at the late show because we'll have just done the early

[1:03:58] show.

[1:03:59] And we're talking about a dog movie.

[1:04:01] Yeah, we're talking about canine in that late show.

[1:04:03] So watch out.

[1:04:06] It's probably the most famous movie about a cop with a dog, right?

[1:04:11] Not even the most famous from that year.

[1:04:14] Same year as Turner and Hooch.

[1:04:15] Not familiar.

[1:04:16] I only know canine.

[1:04:17] Turner and Hooch?

[1:04:18] Wait, how did they get those guys together in one movie?

[1:04:19] They hate each other.

[1:04:20] Turner and Hooch.

[1:04:21] Yeah.

[1:04:22] Anyway.

[1:04:23] They quashed their beef.

[1:04:24] So if you're in Chicago or the Chicago area, come see us November 16th.

[1:04:27] Tickets at flophousepodcast.com slash events.

[1:04:30] Let's say you can't go to Chicago in November.

[1:04:33] Let's say you can't.

[1:04:34] It would be too bad.

[1:04:36] I mean, I mean, I think there's many reasons why someone would not be able to go to that

[1:04:38] specific day in Chicago.

[1:04:40] Don't worry.

[1:04:41] The Flophouse is coming to your house via your computer.

[1:04:46] Don't worry.

[1:04:47] You don't have to put us up for the night.

[1:04:48] Don't have to feed us.

[1:04:50] Flop TV is back on the air.

[1:04:51] But yes, you are required to, by law, to put us up in your home and feed us if if we come

[1:04:58] by if we come to your home.

[1:05:00] Yeah, I think it's the Fourth Amendment.

[1:05:01] Yeah.

[1:05:02] You can't quarter soldiers, but you have to go to the Flophouse.

[1:05:04] Yeah.

[1:05:05] So the Flophouse is on the air with Flop TV.

[1:05:08] That is our monthly one hour televised video version of the Flophouse.

[1:05:12] It's like it's a little TV show.

[1:05:13] You got video segments.

[1:05:14] You got a presentation and you got us talking about movies.

[1:05:17] And this season, it's Flopster Peace Theater.

[1:05:19] We're going back through the decades, each episode talking about a flop we've never talked

[1:05:23] about.

[1:05:24] September.

[1:05:25] We talked about the adventures of Pluto Nash.

[1:05:26] That was a lot of fun.

[1:05:27] And in October, we'll be talking about Jack Frost.

[1:05:30] I just I just sent my introduction to the Jack Frost show to Matt, our tech guy, just

[1:05:37] before taking this trip to see Elliot and do other stuff in L.A.

[1:05:41] And I am working on my video for it.

[1:05:44] My little video interruption.

[1:05:45] That's the first Saturday in October, October 4th.

[1:05:47] If this episode comes out and that's already happened, I don't remember when things are

[1:05:51] coming out.

[1:05:52] Don't worry, because there's another show in November, Saturday, November 1st.

[1:05:55] It's the first Saturday of the month.

[1:05:57] Every month.

[1:05:58] Also, don't worry, because you can watch it every month, first of the month, every month

[1:06:04] through February.

[1:06:05] But if you can't watch it live the first Saturday of the month, don't worry.

[1:06:09] Your ticket gets you access to the video of the show.

[1:06:12] And those videos are going to stay up through the end of February.

[1:06:15] So you can see them whenever you want if you buy a ticket.

[1:06:18] But that's right.

[1:06:19] You have to buy a ticket.

[1:06:20] Just go to the Flophouse dot SimpleTix dot com.

[1:06:23] And you can buy tickets for individual shows or a season pass.

[1:06:27] Get six shows for the price of five.

[1:06:29] Go for it.

[1:06:31] And we're going to see so many movies we've never talked about on the show before.

[1:06:33] Jack Frost, Xanadu, Zardoz, Dr. Dolittle, the Rex Harrison version, and Plan Nine from

[1:06:39] Outer Space.

[1:06:41] We're building up to the most famous bad movie there ever was.

[1:06:43] We've never talked about it on the Flophouse before.

[1:06:45] And now you'll see us talking about it in TV mode.

[1:06:48] That's the Flophouse dot SimpleTix dot com.

[1:06:51] First Saturday of every month.

[1:06:52] Flop TV.

[1:06:53] Hey, cooling weather means swapping your summer clothes for fall staples that are warm, durable

[1:07:00] and built to last.

[1:07:02] Like stuff from Quince.

[1:07:04] Quince, my friends, and you are my friends, my podcast friends, has the kind of fall staples

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[1:07:47] I got a Quince cashmere sweater.

[1:07:51] I'm looking forward to the weather cooling so I can wear it.

[1:07:56] I mean, I'm looking forward to the weather cooling for all sorts of things, including

[1:07:58] that I don't like hot weather, but I do so love putting a sweater on.

[1:08:03] And this was a comfy and good-looking sweater at a low price point for the quality.

[1:08:09] So layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look.

[1:08:13] Go to quince.com slash flop for free shipping on your next order and 365-day returns.

[1:08:18] Now available in Canada too.

[1:08:21] Canadian friends take notes.

[1:08:22] That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash flop.

[1:08:28] Free shipping and 365-day returns.

[1:08:31] Quince dot com slash flop.

[1:08:35] Let's answer some letters from listeners just as a treat, you know?

[1:08:40] Yeah, why not?

[1:08:41] Yeah.

[1:08:42] A treat for us.

[1:08:43] This first letter is from Adam.

[1:08:45] Last name withheld.

[1:08:46] The first man.

[1:08:47] No last name.

[1:08:48] Mm hmm.

[1:08:49] Adam writes.

[1:08:50] Since you mentioned the movie Patch Adams in your last minisode, maybe this is the Adam

[1:08:54] from Patch Adams.

[1:08:55] Yeah.

[1:08:56] Yeah.

[1:08:57] He's going to he's going to fucking flame us.

[1:08:58] Yeah.

[1:08:59] Because John Adams, John Quincy Adams.

[1:09:00] Patch Adams.

[1:09:01] Yeah.

[1:09:02] I thought I might share the story of when I encountered the real Patch Adams.

[1:09:06] It's a story I never get to tell because no one watches or talks about that movie anymore.

[1:09:11] The year was 2000 and I was a sophomore in high school.

[1:09:17] The high school I went to had health careers program, had a health careers program, pardon

[1:09:21] me.

[1:09:22] And they decided to hire Hunter Patch Adams for a speaking engagement.

[1:09:27] I have to say, I don't think I ever knew his first name.

[1:09:29] No.

[1:09:30] I thought his name was just Patch.

[1:09:31] It's the first I'm hearing of it.

[1:09:32] Like Wolverine.

[1:09:33] Yeah.

[1:09:34] Just Patch.

[1:09:35] Yeah.

[1:09:36] Yeah.

[1:09:37] What if when Wolverine is in Madripoor, he's Patch Adams and he's just trying to make jokes

[1:09:38] all the time?

[1:09:39] Yeah.

[1:09:40] Puts a little nose on.

[1:09:41] I was not.

[1:09:42] Investor isn't what I do.

[1:09:43] And what I do is hilarious.

[1:09:44] I was.

[1:09:45] And what I do is mostly prop comedy.

[1:09:49] I was not in the health careers program.

[1:09:51] Hey, Bob, why are you in the hospital?

[1:09:52] Let me make you laugh.

[1:09:53] Yeah.

[1:09:54] He keeps robbing his rubber chickens with his claws.

[1:10:00] I don't understand health. I heal. I heal naturally all the time.

[1:10:05] All this time I thought it was laughter that was causing me to heal so fast. Actually, I'm a mutant.

[1:10:10] My mistake.

[1:10:15] I was not in the Health Careers program. I have an unbreakable funny bone.

[1:10:20] I was not in the... Call me Patch Adam Vantium.

[1:10:25] This is the character find of 2025.

[1:10:30] Patch Adam Vantium? Yeah.

[1:10:35] Yeah, that's Wolverine when he's a funny doctor. Yeah. I feel lightheaded.

[1:10:40] Hey, aren't you the superhero Wolverine? No, I got a patch of mine and a red nose on. Of course I'm not Wolverine.

[1:10:45] I was not in the Health Careers program, but apparently they wanted to pack the auditorium.

[1:10:50] I busted a bunch of kids out of class to see this talk.

[1:10:55] Something that I might have an objection to now that I'm a parent.

[1:11:00] I had seen the movie Patch Adams and loved it. I've not seen it since it came out and strongly doubt I would stand by those views today.

[1:11:05] I'm going to imagine that you were one of the people in the audience in the movie Cecil B. Demented

[1:11:10] when they gas a showing of Patch Adams.

[1:11:15] I was really excited to see the real life version of Robin Williams' lovable med student goof.

[1:11:20] Unfortunately, the real Adams was not a lovable goof of any sort,

[1:11:25] but rather a humorless surly older man.

[1:11:30] He talked for an uninterrupted hour alternating between broad critiques of the American health care system,

[1:11:35] attacks on Hollywood for ruining his life story, and anti-motivational telling it like it really is stories about his life and career.

[1:11:40] The only word to describe this seemingly endless experience was punishing.

[1:11:45] Yes, Stuart?

[1:11:50] No, I'm just saying it sounds awesome.

[1:11:55] What had I done to deserve this?

[1:12:00] I just woke up that day and went to school and now I feel like I'm being dressed down by this weird old guy for stuff I had nothing to do with.

[1:12:05] I'm going to imagine that you were one of the people in the audience in the movie Cecil B. Demented

[1:12:10] when they gas a showing of Patch Adams.

[1:12:15] I was really excited to see the real life version of Robin Williams' lovable med student goof.

[1:12:20] Unfortunately, the real Adams was not a lovable goof of any sort,

[1:12:25] but rather a humorless surly older man.

[1:12:30] I'm sure that his critiques of the health care system were dead on,

[1:12:35] but I don't think Adams did the cause of Medicare for All any favors that day.

[1:12:40] I'll never forget overhearing Adams talk about how he was a good friend of his.

[1:12:45] He was a good friend of his.

[1:12:50] He was a good friend of his.

[1:12:55] I don't think Adams did the cause of Medicare for All any favors that day.

[1:13:00] I'll never forget overhearing a teacher confusedly wondering aloud why he couldn't have told at least one joke.

[1:13:05] It is kind of his thing.

[1:13:10] Anyway, do any of you have experience with meeting a real life subject of a film?

[1:13:15] Thanks, Adam.

[1:13:20] I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that.

[1:13:25] Yeah. Sorry, Stuart.

[1:13:30] I probably had a bit. Let me see if I got a new one.

[1:13:35] I can't think of like a particular thing where I saw a movie

[1:13:40] then later met the person in the movie or anything like that.

[1:13:45] But what came to my mind was more of sort of a general like I saw the documentary.

[1:13:50] It started as a joke, which was about the Eugene Merman Comedy Festival.

[1:13:55] And so much of that movie watching it, the documentary was like,

[1:14:00] oh, like that was the New York comedy scene when I came to New York.

[1:14:05] Like I wasn't I was sort of off to the side of it.

[1:14:10] I wasn't a huge part of it, but they're like stages that I performed on.

[1:14:15] You know, it's like seeing Rafifi and like people did shows there and people that either like,

[1:14:20] you know, some of them I knew, but most of them are like people I'd seen on stage

[1:14:25] or knew someone who knew them or whatever.

[1:14:30] And it felt like a time capsule and going back to like a part of my life.

[1:14:35] I couldn't think of anything. I mean, the closest I can come is I think when I went to a panel at Comic-Con that Tommy Wiseau was on

[1:14:40] and he was everything you'd expect him to be from seeing the room like it was just everything.

[1:14:45] And like the room is not about him, but it is kind of about him.

[1:14:50] But otherwise, like I've never met, I don't think the subject of a movie where someone else plays that.

[1:14:55] I've met people who are in movies like I met Caravaggio once who plays himself in Back to School.

[1:15:00] But but like I've never I don't think I've ever met like someone who had a movie made about them,

[1:15:05] except for my dad's, my granddad, Sully, the pilot.

[1:15:10] No, no, I've never. The monster, Inc.

[1:15:13] Yeah, my granddad, the original monster that movie is based on.

[1:15:16] Now, what about you? Have you ever met someone who is that who is the subject of a fictional movie?

[1:15:19] I don't think I ever have. I mean, I've met the subject of a fictional movie that has been the subject of many, many movies.

[1:15:26] And that is the city of New York, baby.

[1:15:29] That's true. New York is a character in many movies.

[1:15:31] And you live there. Yeah, that's true.

[1:15:33] But no, I think like it's the same thing where I I can't think of.

[1:15:40] I feel like I feel like there must be there must be somebody, but no, I can't.

[1:15:45] I can't my brains. I'm drawn. I bet you if we thought really hard,

[1:15:49] we met somebody who was portrayed by somebody else in a movie.

[1:15:53] But I can't. Yeah, I'm having trouble thinking.

[1:15:55] But if I think that hard, I might get a nosebleed.

[1:16:00] Uh, here's something from Dennis.

[1:16:02] Last name withheld. Who writes Leary Dennis Leary.

[1:16:05] Yeah, right. I think you hear me.

[1:16:07] Walk it, knock it. And I think I'm coming in floppers.

[1:16:10] Yeah, you're Encino Dan.

[1:16:12] Many discussion where Stewart brought up his issues with lifestyle porn and media reminded me of one of my most hated recent movies.

[1:16:21] The 2022 Father of the Bride remake, which I watched with my wife.

[1:16:25] Father of the Bride remake. Is that a movie? I guess so.

[1:16:28] Did that happen? Yeah, apparently.

[1:16:30] Did you make this movie? Yeah, look it up.

[1:16:33] OK, look it up in that movie.

[1:16:35] They initially pitch an interesting conflict where the daughter of a highly successful immigrant chooses to work for a foreign aid nonprofit,

[1:16:42] upsetting her father who wants her to avoid the life of poverty.

[1:16:46] He so desperately worked to escape from only to immediately throw that premise out in the next scene when it is revealed.

[1:16:53] The father in law is a billionaire and the entire movie devolves into lifestyle porn.

[1:16:58] Oh, my question to you is you got to see Gloria Estefan.

[1:17:04] Yeah, I did not even know this movie existed.

[1:17:07] My question to you is what other movies have you seen that pose an interesting or serious premise only to then throw it out later in favor of pure schlock?

[1:17:17] Keep on rocking in the flop world.

[1:17:20] Dennis, last name withheld.

[1:17:22] This is a tough one for me because I feel like so often while talking about movies on the flop house, we touch on the moments where we're like, oh, that's pretty interesting.

[1:17:32] I could see where they could develop that, but they chose to not do that at all.

[1:17:35] They chose instead to, I don't know, focus on a story about a stolen Fabergé egg or something.

[1:17:42] Yeah.

[1:17:44] What was the interesting story that they could have focused on instead of the stolen Fabergé egg in that particular example?

[1:17:49] How a very successful mystery writer was going to come up with a plan for writing a book about an Easter bunny puppy.

[1:17:56] I guess you're right. That is the real that's the more interesting, intriguing premise.

[1:18:01] Yeah, I know that this has happened a lot.

[1:18:05] I'm having a real time hard time struggling with it.

[1:18:08] I wanted to read it even so because I think it's such an interesting question and maybe something will come to me in the future and we can revisit it or I'll put it in a flop secrets newsletter.

[1:18:19] For some reason, the only thing that's coming to mind is Event Horizon.

[1:18:25] Okay, I can buy that.

[1:18:27] Toward the beginning of that movie, I'm like, oh, this is cool.

[1:18:30] This is like a horror Solaris.

[1:18:32] This is a ship that is bringing sort of fantasies to life in a scary way and then it just – I think it's a cool vision of hell at the end.

[1:18:41] Don't get me wrong, but I think the movie kind of falls apart into nonsense.

[1:18:45] There's a lot of movies when they get to the act three especially where it's like, okay, now it's either a crazy person is running around or a murderous person is running around chasing people or it's got to be really action-y all of a sudden or like the movie that first came to mind.

[1:18:57] There's a portal.

[1:18:58] There's a portal that has to be closed or something.

[1:19:00] The movie that came to mind first to me was the movie In Time that we did on The Flop House with Justin Timberlake where it's like a world where time is used as money and you can take someone's life and make it part of your life.

[1:19:12] It's like an interesting satirical angle, but then it turns into like a revenge movie or it's like we're going to rob them before they – they won't even know what hit them.

[1:19:21] It turns into like Bonnie and Clyde or something and it just felt like, well, this is not really the best way to make use of this concept.

[1:19:27] I think anyway.

[1:19:29] I mean people can disagree.

[1:19:30] Maybe they think it's the best way to do that.

[1:19:32] In fact, while we think about it, please listeners, if you have an example that you think is particularly telling, feel free to drop it in the comments on the Instagram post for this episode and maybe we'll read those if there's some good ones.

[1:19:47] Yeah.

[1:19:48] I would say even – what was that?

[1:19:49] Yeah, I think that's a great idea that listeners should write in with their examples.

[1:19:51] What was the George Clooney, Julia Roberts movie that we did?

[1:19:54] The Ticket to Paradise.

[1:19:57] What was it called?

[1:19:58] Ticket to Paradise.

[1:20:00] That's right, yeah.

[1:20:00] Because even there, there's something about

[1:20:02] these divorced mom and dad,

[1:20:05] their daughter's marrying someone

[1:20:06] that she should not be marrying,

[1:20:07] and they're gonna rediscover their love of each other

[1:20:09] while breaking up their daughter's wedding.

[1:20:14] It's like a funny idea.

[1:20:15] Like that could be a really classic,

[1:20:16] like old-fashioned comedy, and they just don't.

[1:20:19] They kind of give up on that a little bit,

[1:20:21] partly because like the daughter's fiance

[1:20:23] is so incredibly perfect in every way, you know?

[1:20:26] Yeah.

[1:20:27] Yeah, there's like a modern impulse

[1:20:29] to be too nice or something,

[1:20:31] where it turns into like a hangout comedy

[1:20:33] rather than the screwball that you might expect

[1:20:36] from that premise.

[1:20:37] Yeah, yeah.

[1:20:39] Anyway, so yeah, great question.

[1:20:42] Hope that we get some answers from folks out there.

[1:20:45] Let's move on to recommendations,

[1:20:48] movies that we saw that we think

[1:20:50] are a better use of your time

[1:20:52] than, say, the way we've spent our lives.

[1:20:57] Other than the cruel bargain we made with the devil, yeah.

[1:21:00] We would live forever,

[1:21:01] but we'd have to do it watching these movies.

[1:21:02] Yeah.

[1:21:03] This is, I'm gonna recommend a movie

[1:21:05] that was universally, basically, beloved,

[1:21:10] so it doesn't necessarily need my voice added to the chorus,

[1:21:13] but I did watch it. Babylon.

[1:21:14] I did watch it on a,

[1:21:16] I did watch it on the plane.

[1:21:20] You're a nice thinker.

[1:21:21] Yeah, here, and I know how much listeners love

[1:21:24] Tales of Plane Pictures.

[1:21:25] Movie plane stories, yeah.

[1:21:28] On the way to Los Angeles, I watched Little Women,

[1:21:31] the Greta Gerwig recent version of Little Women.

[1:21:34] On that screen, they would be very little.

[1:21:36] Very little.

[1:21:39] I thought it was kind of funny that I picked a movie

[1:21:42] that made me, had me on the verge of tears,

[1:21:46] like every 15 minutes, essentially,

[1:21:48] until, of course, the end,

[1:21:50] where finally the tears started actually rolling.

[1:21:54] Yeah, you just edged the whole time and then blasted.

[1:21:57] I'm just like, I mean,

[1:21:59] I don't know why it should be embarrassing

[1:22:01] to have an emotional response to something, but.

[1:22:05] I think it's because you're on a plane.

[1:22:06] In public, I was like, oh, I'm loving this,

[1:22:09] but why did I choose this?

[1:22:11] Why did I do this to myself?

[1:22:13] I could've watched crap.

[1:22:14] I could've watched this at home,

[1:22:15] where then I could just cry all I wanted.

[1:22:17] Then only your wife would make fun of you.

[1:22:19] Yeah, but it's an amazing movie.

[1:22:22] I think Gerwig does some interesting

[1:22:26] and great things with adaptation,

[1:22:28] makes some great choices.

[1:22:30] Everyone's wonderful in it.

[1:22:32] It's just.

[1:22:33] Especially Odenkirk, right?

[1:22:35] Odenkirk just crushes it.

[1:22:38] I think he's great in it,

[1:22:39] but it is weird to see Bob Odenkirk just show up.

[1:22:43] It struck me the other day,

[1:22:44] because there was a video online that was like,

[1:22:47] Bob Odenkirk looks back on some of his past roles,

[1:22:49] and it was everything after Breaking Bad.

[1:22:52] Oh, there's whole generations that have no idea

[1:22:54] that he started in comedy,

[1:22:56] that he had one of the greatest sketch shows of all time.

[1:22:59] They just think of him as Saul or nobody, and that's it.

[1:23:02] That's it.

[1:23:03] It's bonkers to me.

[1:23:04] You're thinking of the Ben Stiller show, right?

[1:23:07] I mean, the Ben Stiller show's an underrated show,

[1:23:09] but no, that's not the one I'm thinking of, yeah.

[1:23:11] Anyway, what a wonderful movie,

[1:23:12] just full of warmth and love and emotion.

[1:23:16] Little Women.

[1:23:17] That's a great movie.

[1:23:17] Greg Gerwig's got such a great filmography.

[1:23:20] Eventually, her average is gonna dip,

[1:23:22] but she's directed what, three movies now?

[1:23:25] I don't know.

[1:23:26] Probably good for Labor. Three or four.

[1:23:27] Little Women.

[1:23:29] Barbie.

[1:23:30] She directed another one?

[1:23:31] Give her a Marvel, you know?

[1:23:32] That's what I was saying.

[1:23:33] Give her a Marvel.

[1:23:34] I think that, I mean, to be honest,

[1:23:38] she could do a great job with a Marvel.

[1:23:39] I don't want her to do that, but you know.

[1:23:42] I'm looking it up, but you-

[1:23:44] Stewart, why don't you recommend a movie?

[1:23:45] I thought Dan was saying, I am legend,

[1:23:47] and I'm like, I don't think that's her.

[1:23:48] Yeah.

[1:23:50] No, I want her to do a version of I Am Legend.

[1:23:53] Closer to the book.

[1:23:57] I mean, Dan is already last man on earth,

[1:23:59] which is pretty close to the book in some ways.

[1:24:01] Yeah, so I'm gonna recommend,

[1:24:04] I have been on a kick watching movies

[1:24:09] with the actress, the Chinese actress Tang Wei

[1:24:13] from Decision to Leave from a few years ago,

[1:24:16] which was one of my favorite movies.

[1:24:18] She's so great in that as a possible femme fatale.

[1:24:24] So I just recently picked up the Kino Lorber Blu-ray

[1:24:27] of Lust Caution, the Ang Lee movie.

[1:24:31] I've never seen Lust Caution.

[1:24:33] And I hadn't seen it either, and I'm like,

[1:24:35] I'm not gonna watch the streaming version,

[1:24:37] which is rated R.

[1:24:39] I'm going for the NC-17, please.

[1:24:42] And watching, you know, it's a movie set

[1:24:46] in occupied, Japanese occupied China.

[1:24:49] And Tang Wei plays a young actress turned revolutionary

[1:24:55] who goes undercover to infiltrate and seduce

[1:24:59] and hopefully kidnap and or kill a collaborationist

[1:25:05] played by the great Tony Leung.

[1:25:07] Everybody loves him.

[1:25:08] He's the best.

[1:25:09] He is one of the best, yeah.

[1:25:11] And there's also a lovely performance

[1:25:14] from Joan Chen who plays his wife.

[1:25:17] So Tang Wei becomes his mistress.

[1:25:19] And it's a movie that has some of the most intense

[1:25:25] and graphic sex scenes I've seen

[1:25:27] in a non-pornographic movie.

[1:25:31] And there's something so jarring about them.

[1:25:34] There's something so like intense and physical,

[1:25:37] particularly because so much of the rest of the movie

[1:25:40] is like very like buttoned up and careful

[1:25:46] and like the whole idea of like not wanting

[1:25:49] to reveal too much for fear that you'll get outed

[1:25:53] for who you are.

[1:25:55] So that when they have these-

[1:25:56] That's the caution part.

[1:25:58] Yeah, it's this like intense burst of like physical emotion

[1:26:03] and like there's a certain freedom

[1:26:05] that they can feel when they're alone.

[1:26:07] It's a really beautiful movie and yeah, it's great.

[1:26:11] Check it out.

[1:26:12] I have some Gerwig news.

[1:26:15] A roving Gerwig report.

[1:26:17] Oh, she just wrote the script for I Am Legend.

[1:26:21] Okay, thank you.

[1:26:23] Well, if you're not including the video

[1:26:25] for Dua Lipa, Dance the Night.

[1:26:30] I'm not counting that as a feature.

[1:26:32] She's directed four movies.

[1:26:35] Oh, what's the other one?

[1:26:36] I was correct that she co-directed something.

[1:26:38] I knew that she co-directed-

[1:26:39] Was it Princess Han?

[1:26:40] I don't know what and with whom.

[1:26:42] She co-directed Nights and Weekends with Joe Swanberg.

[1:26:45] That was her first-

[1:26:46] Oh, okay, I haven't seen that.

[1:26:47] I guess she just co-wrote Princess Han.

[1:26:48] But yeah, that, Lady Bird, Little Women,

[1:26:52] and Barbie, of course.

[1:26:54] And then she's got that Narnia Netflix thing.

[1:26:57] I know, she's got some great acting credits.

[1:27:00] That's her next credit.

[1:27:01] What a waste.

[1:27:02] I mean, get that money.

[1:27:02] I'm sure it'll be the best version of that.

[1:27:06] But yeah, I wish that we lived in a world

[1:27:09] where she was doing something else.

[1:27:10] Where she could, I mean, she was,

[1:27:12] maybe they're like, you could do that with Barbie.

[1:27:14] You could do that with Narnia.

[1:27:16] But we call it Barbia.

[1:27:18] Yeah.

[1:27:19] The Lion, the Witch, and the Barbie.

[1:27:21] Oh, Barbie could be the witch.

[1:27:22] How do we get you on board?

[1:27:23] She's like, I didn't invent Barbie.

[1:27:24] Like, it's not the only thing that I do.

[1:27:26] But to be honest, so I have a reputation these days

[1:27:29] as the busiest man in podcasting.

[1:27:31] No time to do anything.

[1:27:32] That reputation is accurate.

[1:27:34] I have a dearth of movies to recommend.

[1:27:38] But I will say, because the new Spinal Tap was coming out,

[1:27:43] my wife and I started rewatching the original Spinal Tap,

[1:27:46] which I had not watched in years.

[1:27:47] And you know what?

[1:27:48] I love it.

[1:27:49] Super funny.

[1:27:50] Totally lives up to my memories.

[1:27:51] Every time I see it, there's jokes that I notice in it

[1:27:53] that I didn't notice as much before.

[1:27:55] There's all this subtle performance stuff in it.

[1:27:57] And the jokes that I remember, I still laugh at.

[1:27:59] So you know what?

[1:28:00] If you wanna laugh and you like music,

[1:28:04] you could go longer than this is Spinal Tap.

[1:28:07] I have not seen the sequel.

[1:28:10] I don't have the highest hopes for it.

[1:28:13] But the original still works.

[1:28:16] I do like, between both of your recommendations,

[1:28:19] we have the two leads of Better Call Saul.

[1:28:22] It's true.

[1:28:22] Yeah, that's right.

[1:28:23] That's true.

[1:28:24] And Lust Caution has Harry Shearer in it, right?

[1:28:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:28:28] He disappears.

[1:28:32] Well, what a lovely change of pace

[1:28:35] to be on this side of the Zoom call.

[1:28:38] What?

[1:28:39] I would take that as a deep insult, Stuart.

[1:28:40] Oh no, I'm not going.

[1:28:42] Probably has something to do with how you smell.

[1:28:44] I'm not saying anything about it.

[1:28:45] I smell too good.

[1:28:46] I guess I don't know how it worked up.

[1:28:47] Yeah, yeah, you can't concentrate.

[1:28:49] It's just a way to keep the relationship fresh, you know?

[1:28:51] But I also know that, Dan,

[1:28:52] your room where you record is often very hot.

[1:28:55] This room is not.

[1:28:56] It is very hot.

[1:28:57] Not as hot, yeah.

[1:28:58] This is a temperate room.

[1:29:01] Yeah, it's super fucking hot.

[1:29:01] Good job, shorts.

[1:29:04] Fewer cats, though.

[1:29:05] That's the main problem with this room.

[1:29:07] It's 200% fewer cats.

[1:29:10] No, no, Stuart, Stuart, lovely, of course.

[1:29:12] I'm just, I'm glad to see our boy Elliot.

[1:29:15] Next time, I hope you're here as well.

[1:29:17] Yeah, that'd be great.

[1:29:19] And what else do I do at the end of the show?

[1:29:22] Thank people, thank Alex.

[1:29:24] Talk about the network.

[1:29:24] Other than inadvertently insulting someone.

[1:29:27] It's fine.

[1:29:28] Thank you, Alex.

[1:29:30] Alex Smith, of course, is our producer.

[1:29:32] He goes by the name HowlDotty

[1:29:33] on the vast corners of the internet.

[1:29:36] He does his own podcast, which I enjoy very much,

[1:29:39] where he talks to a man who is a possum,

[1:29:42] a big, a large man-sized possum.

[1:29:46] He does great music.

[1:29:47] Look him up.

[1:29:49] Also, thank you to our network, Maximum Fun.

[1:29:52] Go to MaximumFun.org.

[1:29:54] Check out the other great shows.

[1:29:56] Maybe become a member if you like what we do.

[1:30:00] that's that's about it for the Flophouse. I've been Dan McCoy. I've been Stuart

[1:30:06] Wellington here in New York City. And I've been Elliot Kalin bringing Dan

[1:30:11] over to Los Angeles where he'll never return from. Stay tuned to find out if he

[1:30:19] escapes. Bye, Gorsh.

[1:30:30] And Alex, I may just delete this audio. All right, sorry. Yeah, I'm fucking Bizarro

[1:30:38] over here. That's the thing when Bizarro apologizes to people, he goes, sorry, Bizarri.

[1:30:44] Yep. Well, when Bizarro would upload a podcast, he would accidentally download a

[1:30:49] podcast. It's true. He goes, me, listeners, am enjoying not hearing podcasts. He's like, Bizarro, just

[1:30:57] tell us what you're trying to tell us. It's so impossible to parse what you're

[1:31:01] trying to say. Uh-huh. Me listen to SmartFull. Okay, anyway. Maximum Fun, a

[1:31:09] worker-owned network of artists-owned shows supported directly by you.

Ep.#462 - Imaginary

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