Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Surfer, Teen Confronts Fear.

[0:05] I don't even know, man. I don't even know.

[0:30] hey everyone welcome to the flop house i'm dan mccoy i'm stewart wellington my name is of course

[0:40] elliot kalin how did i get here well therein lies a tale for you see there is trouble in the land

[0:47] trouble across the land and so i turned my back on that trouble and said somebody else can solve

[0:52] this and i booted up my podcast recorder and i said hey dudes let's make a podcast thanks for

[0:57] being here elliot it's nice for you to ignore that trouble for us um the problem is the trouble

[1:03] starts with t and it rhymes with p and that stands for pool but there's no p in our pool

[1:07] please keep it that way right yeah well technically it's an ool notice there's no p in it thank you

[1:13] i really appreciate that you're ignoring the prophecy that says that you're the chosen one

[1:19] and you're the only one who can make what's wrong right again yeah so this guy arrived at my at my

[1:23] house and uh with a sword and with a sword forged from the body of a demon and he said that only i

[1:30] can safely bond with it and therefore defeat the the wizard or whatever and i was like i don't know

[1:36] despite the fact that the sword is inherently evil maybe your goodness exactly exactly it's a

[1:41] balance thing it's a balance of the cosmos like a like a yin yang right yeah and i was like who are

[1:45] you sir to tell me what my life is going to be thank you that's what i said i said excuse me

[1:51] bearded hermit clearly you've got plans yeah excuse me gray pilgrim certainly you've seen

[1:59] into the deep heart of the cosmos you've seen the hidden recesses of the mind of the creator

[2:04] but i have things to do today a bunch of dwarves showed up they sang a song and you're like thank

[2:09] you for washing my dishes but i'm gonna have to turn down your offer of adventure i've got stuff

[2:15] to do i mean it was the to feel the like oh i'm responsible for going on this adventure after i

[2:19] fed you guys multiple meals uninvited.

[2:22] Yeah, of course.

[2:25] You might get some jewelry out of it.

[2:27] I'm going to have to hang up

[2:28] every one of your cloaks of a different color

[2:30] and try to remember which color goes with which person.

[2:33] You're lucky I have 13 to 14 hooks to put coats on.

[2:36] Anyway.

[2:38] So for new listeners who obviously,

[2:40] you know, it's so obvious.

[2:42] Aren't familiar with The Hobbit.

[2:44] It's so clear what this podcast is about.

[2:46] It's almost foolish for me to explain,

[2:48] But I should say that this is a podcast where—

[2:51] It's almost condescending for you to do that.

[2:53] I know, I know.

[2:54] But I was told that a broadcasting conference, you know, you just got to reset.

[2:59] You got to make sure that things are welcoming.

[3:02] You don't start off with a bunch of gibberish about nothing.

[3:05] Uh-oh.

[3:07] This is a podcast where we watch a movie that was either a critical or a commercial flop,

[3:13] and then we talk about it.

[3:13] Now, this case, you know, the days are getting shorter.

[3:20] The temperature's getting colder.

[3:21] Are we dying, Dan?

[3:22] Mm-hmm.

[3:23] No, no.

[3:23] It's just fall.

[3:24] It's just fall.

[3:26] And, of course, that augurs theme months here at the Flophouse.

[3:30] The first one being, of course, small timber.

[3:33] Or, as Elliot Insists.

[3:35] Correctly calls it, smallvember.

[3:37] Yes.

[3:38] And that is when we watch smaller movies.

[3:42] Normally, we confine ourselves to major motion.

[3:46] Mini discs.

[3:47] Yeah.

[3:48] Yeah, we get a mini DV player out.

[3:51] We watch it on our PSP.

[3:53] We get an 8-millimeter cut down of Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, where they condense the movie to six minutes.

[3:59] We stare at a single frame of a movie, and we critique it.

[4:03] Oh, yeah.

[4:04] Now, yeah, look, we usually do big Hollywood movies, so huge.

[4:10] The biggest, yeah.

[4:12] So there are pictures that you, the listener, may be familiar with.

[4:17] Also because it doesn't feel good to make fun of someone's small passion project in the same way that Hollywood people, they can take it.

[4:25] They can take a punch.

[4:27] Lee Cronin can deal with it.

[4:29] Every once in a while, once a year, we give ourselves a dispensation to look at smaller, weirder films.

[4:36] It's a treat for ourselves.

[4:37] Like all traditional kind of Saturnalias or Bacchanals, for one day or two episodes in this case, we slip loose the bonds of normal law as a way of highlighting that we don't do this the rest of the year.

[4:51] Because these are activities for a set-aside special day, we are reinforcing we don't do this on the other days.

[4:57] Yeah, it's just medieval law.

[4:58] Yeah.

[4:58] And it's a good way for us to kind of recalibrate our distinctions, like our sense of what makes a good movie or a bad movie.

[5:05] Or what makes a movie.

[5:06] When you're like talking to a normal person somewhere and they're like, oh, you got to watch this movie.

[5:10] It's the worst I've ever seen.

[5:12] I'm like, brudda.

[5:14] If it played in a movie theater, it's highly likely.

[5:17] You sweet summer lamb.

[5:19] Oh, you have no idea.

[5:20] Yeah.

[5:21] Now this picture has the utterly normal title, Surfer, Colin, Teen Confronts Fear.

[5:27] Yep.

[5:28] It's not inaccurate.

[5:30] Dan, you said that title immediately evoked like Christian stuff to you.

[5:36] Yeah, well, if it has a subtitle that's number one, about a teen, speaking to the teens, trying to get at the teen's problems, and then saying something like confronts fear.

[5:47] Because this movie really does get at the teen's problems.

[5:49] It gets at the problems of modern teens.

[5:51] Yeah.

[5:52] I would imagine, before I had seen this movie, I would have imagined, you know, something that was made by a Christian production company to be shown at youth groups to be like, here's some problems that teens might be facing.

[6:06] you know let's even cool teens like surfers yeah yeah this is not totally unlike that in that it

[6:14] has a lot of talk about the bible at certain points but it is also totally unlike that in

[6:21] that it is uh one guy's uh personal passion project it feels like he has roped his teenage

[6:28] son into it's less a christian youth group movie and more the equivalent to that for the cult of a

[6:35] charismatic con man who will eventually

[6:37] commit suicide with all of his followers

[6:39] or die in a bloody gun battle with the

[6:41] federal government. This is the version of that

[6:43] for this. Yeah. Although I

[6:45] discovered that the, so the guy who plays the

[6:47] dad, who's also the director and writer

[6:50] and star, and he did the music, yeah.

[6:51] He is a physics

[6:53] professor, at least, or at least was at one point

[6:55] at USC. So he is not

[6:57] able to... Until he started teaching

[6:59] students that they could make a human body out of

[7:01] squids and electricity, yeah.

[7:05] Uh, perhaps we'll get, I mean, I don't know whether, maybe this is the point to talk about it, but I, when we were watching, I got Stuart to come over for it because I thought, I apologize Elliot, obviously if you were on our coast, you would have come too, but we would have let you wash the fucking dishes while we watched the movie.

[7:26] But this is the kind of movie that does work better if you see it with someone else.

[7:30] Oh, that's for sure.

[7:31] Yeah.

[7:31] There was a certain point when the guy was like half vomiting that I'm like, this really feels like Rick and Morty.

[7:39] It feels like he's like, you got to cut in front of your fear, Morty.

[7:44] Your fear is just a pathway to something.

[7:46] I made a squid in electricity, Morty.

[7:49] To be honest, to be honest, and people are not going to like me saying this.

[7:52] I found his performance, his lead performance more enjoyable and easy to take than the lead performances in Rick and Morty.

[7:58] Because part of what keeps me away from it is I would try to watch the first episode.

[8:03] It's like, Marty, you got to.

[8:05] They cut down on the vomiting in later seasons.

[8:10] Also, at this point, they have replaced Justin Roiland, who it turns out was not a good man with someone else doing a sound alike.

[8:21] I mainly experience Rick and Morty now through the images I would see in weed stores of, like, Rick and Morty hawking weed products or something.

[8:30] Sure.

[8:31] Or on, like, T-shirts you would buy on a boardwalk of them, like, I don't know, holding guns and wearing Knicks jerseys or something.

[8:38] Being Rastas.

[8:39] Yeah.

[8:39] Yeah, exactly.

[8:41] Well, we've – there's been a lot of prelude, but we should probably get into the meat of –

[8:44] Yeah, let's get into the – yeah, this plot-heavy vehicle.

[8:47] Let's get into the meat of Serpentine Confirmed Sphere.

[8:48] this is so yeah this is i i had not heard of this movie until we watched it and i think this was the

[8:53] right way for me to experience it with very little knowledge ahead of time it is very clearly like

[8:58] this is the kind of movie that a guy makes by himself starring him and his son using whatever

[9:05] locations he has and it has a bravura nearly single take um long conversational scene that uh

[9:15] that we'll get into,

[9:16] which is only partly...

[9:17] No, I'm saying that partly.

[9:18] It's made better by the fact

[9:19] that most of the dialogue in the scene

[9:21] is clearly ADR'd later,

[9:22] except for little bits of it,

[9:24] which were live recording, it seems.

[9:27] And it just gives the...

[9:29] I don't know.

[9:30] There are times when this movie feels

[9:31] like you were watching the bad lip-read takeoff

[9:34] or parody of this movie, you know?

[9:37] Well, it's also...

[9:38] It seems like such madness

[9:39] because, like, clearly this long monologue

[9:43] is not tightly scripted.

[9:45] Like, he is either half remembering the script that he wrote

[9:49] or he's improvising large chunks of it

[9:52] and then ADRing the improv that he did before.

[9:56] Because he's ADRing stumbles that he did to match his lip movements.

[10:00] It's amazing.

[10:02] Anyway, so we start out with the most...

[10:04] I do like how his accent shifts around a lot.

[10:06] Yes, sometimes he's talking, like I said,

[10:08] almost like Rick from Rick and Morty.

[10:10] And sometimes he has, like, this half English accent.

[10:13] I wasn't supposed to feel.

[10:17] They said I wasn't supposed to feel.

[10:19] Yeah, Rick is doing King Lear all of a sudden.

[10:22] So we open with – and I complain sometimes about movies that have too many production logos in the beginning.

[10:28] This one has none.

[10:29] It throws you right into the cheapest credits imaginable.

[10:32] Just whatever credit font came with the editing software over shots of a beachside town.

[10:37] There's a young guy who we will learn about a half way through the movie, two-thirds of the way through the movie.

[10:42] His name is Sage.

[10:43] Up to this point, he is the unnamed surfer character.

[10:45] He's getting ready to fish from a chair that's kind of set pretty far away from the water.

[10:51] And we hear him in voiceover say that he was a surfer and once he wiped out really badly and was saved by a lifeguard.

[10:57] And since then, he's been afraid of the water, but he still wants to be near the water.

[11:00] He's afraid of the ocean, but he wants to be near the water.

[11:02] How would you describe the emotion in this voiceover performance?

[11:05] I would say realistically unenthused.

[11:11] Yeah, the cadence is that of a person reading from a piece of paper, maybe the first time they have seen this piece of paper.

[11:22] And let's just to pull back the curtain.

[11:24] Clearly, this is a movie made by a guy who is an amateur filmmaker starring his son who is a competitive surfer.

[11:32] And the son seems to, it really does seem like the dad, and I'm just reading into it, maybe it's not true.

[11:37] It seems like the dad who usually is probably pushing his son in surfing is now pushing him to be an actor much as like Arch Hall Sr. would put his son Arch Hall Jr. to be a movie star.

[11:47] And it's a – it doesn't seem like the son is that interested in being there or doing this.

[11:52] There are many moments where the son looks like he would rather be somewhere else with his friends or just deathly afraid that anybody he knows would see this.

[12:00] Especially the entire first hour of this is essentially one long scene on the beach where the dad is monologuing at this team.

[12:09] Right at him, yeah.

[12:10] Who, yeah, looks uninterested in what's going on.

[12:13] And realistically, if they were not making a movie or like related, it seems like the kid would be like, yeah, that's cool, man.

[12:21] I got stuff to do.

[12:23] I gotta go.

[12:24] As a father, it is so hard for me to get my sons to do stuff with me.

[12:28] Like, I spent a lot of yesterday being like, let's play a board game.

[12:30] Let's play a game.

[12:31] Let's play a card game.

[12:32] Let's play basketball, whatever.

[12:33] The idea that I'd then be like, hey, let's go make a movie that you have to star in.

[12:38] My children would walk away.

[12:40] They would just walk away and leave home, I think.

[12:42] So, anyway.

[12:43] Tie up a bindle and start grinding the rails.

[12:45] So, there's some footage of him prepping bait, intercut with still images of his wipeout.

[12:50] And then he saves a middle-aged man from the ocean.

[12:53] This is a wordless sequence that takes a while where there's just a damp man in the waves from here to eternity makeout scene style.

[13:01] And he just pulls him out.

[13:03] And this is what we get.

[13:04] How would you describe this middle-aged man?

[13:07] Looks like a physics teacher who wants to make a movie.

[13:10] Long, stringy hair.

[13:11] Very – a lot of heavy emotion in his face.

[13:15] He doesn't – and this section, his performance is very funny.

[13:19] But the funniest performance he gives is later in the movie.

[13:22] And I don't want to talk about that just yet because he gives – there's a moment where he shows up on screen and I could not help laughing so hard at what is clearly meant to be a dramatic thing.

[13:32] But it is – it is – it's just – it is a big choice.

[13:35] And also a bit offensive.

[13:36] And incredibly offensive.

[13:38] So the – this is when the dad – the guy starts talking – the man starts talking to the surfer.

[13:45] And in dialogue that, as I said, is mostly 80-yard, even the stumbles and the things that he seems to be making up all the time is 80-yard.

[13:50] He says he's the surfer's father who died in a war but has returned in a form made of hard jelly, as he describes it.

[13:58] He can only exist for a few hours because he's there to help the surfer overcome his fear.

[14:02] And he explains that the surfer survived his wipeout because a seal's spirit entered his body at that moment and helped him to get out.

[14:10] And I am –

[14:13] You're explaining with such clarity, Elliot.

[14:15] Yes, what I'm going to be describing to you is cutting off – cutting out a lot of detail, a lot of nonsense that he says.

[14:20] Um, and, but it is a, I'm trying to get to the Bible verses, right?

[14:24] Well, that's the thing.

[14:24] We'll get to that.

[14:25] He's, he talks about the Bible, Bible stories, but it's like, not in a way I've ever heard

[14:29] a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim describe these stories.

[14:33] And so, uh, he's basically, he wants this first.

[14:36] He says, I want you to remember a dream that I had before you were born of you as a boy.

[14:41] And it's such a funny request to say, Hey, I had a dream before you were born about you.

[14:46] Can you remember it for a second?

[14:47] I need you to remember this dream you never had.

[14:50] Can I just say, like, the biggest, like, shocking twist for me in this movie was watching the credits at the end of...

[14:56] Because we get a flashback of him talking to young Sage and discovering that, like, young Sage was played by the son at a younger age.

[15:06] And so I'm like, what?

[15:09] Did they shoot this boyhood style?

[15:11] Yeah, yeah.

[15:12] This is Nirvana and the show that will be all of a sudden.

[15:15] To what degree was any of that planned to, like, have this interpolated into a movie later on?

[15:23] It's a labor of love.

[15:24] It's the kind of thing that you really put your life into.

[15:27] You know, you plan it a lot later.

[15:29] Because it's hard to imagine what—the scene doesn't really fit into this story, but it's hard to imagine what story that scene might have fit into.

[15:36] Yes.

[15:37] But the man has the surfer repeat a specific phrase, I wish, but I'm not able to affect the space of your time.

[15:42] And then they go into the dream where we see the surfer as a kid, and he speaks in rhyme about gods and spirits.

[15:49] We come back, and the surfer's like, yeah, dad, you can teach me.

[15:53] Teach me how to overcome my fear.

[15:55] And the dad launches into a series of very long, very weird monologues that make up the beef of this movie.

[16:01] Like this is the meat of the movie.

[16:02] First, dad tells him it's not shameful to be afraid because Adam was afraid after the devil lied to him.

[16:08] And that's what caused him to eat the apple that kicked him out of Eden.

[16:12] And he says, fear comes from the lie that God isn't inside you, which is a lie.

[16:16] Now, I would not say that I recall that being part of the story of Genesis, that Adam was afraid and that's why he ate the apple.

[16:25] I think temptation is really kind of the key to that.

[16:27] He's saying that the devil told Adam, you are not like God.

[16:30] And Adam didn't realize he had God inside him and is like God.

[16:33] And so he became afraid that he's not like God and had to eat.

[16:36] And again, this is an interpretation.

[16:38] That's the wonderful thing about the Bible.

[16:39] It's always open to interpretation.

[16:41] This is a very fear-based interpretation of the Bible.

[16:43] You know, he talks for this.

[16:46] Again, this is where I started to lose understanding.

[16:48] It was around here that Dan looked over to me

[16:50] and he's like, don't worry.

[16:52] They leave the beach at some point.

[16:54] But not for a long time.

[16:55] But it takes longer than you think.

[16:57] There was part of me that was like,

[16:58] is this the whole movie?

[16:59] Because he talks for a long time

[17:00] about how blood and ocean are both spirit.

[17:03] And when he was dead,

[17:04] he took surfers spirit surfing in the spirit world.

[17:07] And he goes, look at that rock.

[17:08] Look at it, stare at it.

[17:09] Look at it, stare at it.

[17:10] until he has a vision of surfing with his dad

[17:12] in the spirit world, which is just surfing footage.

[17:14] There's so much surfing footage in this movie.

[17:16] And it is, very clearly,

[17:18] this is footage of the real kids surfing.

[17:21] And there's just a lot of it.

[17:22] And voiceover of the dad is like,

[17:24] let the fear boil out of you.

[17:25] Let it boil out of you, son, boil!

[17:28] And it doesn't do anything.

[17:29] Yeah, one of the other funny things

[17:31] about the credits to the end is like,

[17:33] how many different cinematographers are listed?

[17:37] Because...

[17:37] It's all people who just took footage

[17:38] of his kids surfing, right?

[17:40] Yeah, no, well, this movie is stitched together from new material plus, like, footage of his kids surfing plus home movies that they took over vacation later on.

[17:51] There's some parts later that are just clearly vacation footage that they've put in.

[17:53] There's, like, stuff later on, Ellie will get to it, with a whale that I'm like, this was shot at a different time.

[18:01] So the dad free associates tomorrow talks about how surfers' identity, I'm just going to, his name's Sage, we don't know his name at that point,

[18:07] how the surfer's identity existed in a single cell

[18:09] in the ocean four billion years ago.

[18:12] And there's a lot of therapy talk

[18:14] that it feels like the dad is really making up

[18:16] as he goes along until he starts coughing up bile

[18:18] and he's like, I'm running out of time.

[18:21] God made this body out of squid and electricity.

[18:23] I only have three more hours.

[18:24] I think it's ink.

[18:25] It's ink, yeah, he says it's ink

[18:26] because he's made out of squids.

[18:27] And the idea of God being like,

[18:29] yeah, I'll send you back to help your son who's a surfer.

[18:31] I gotta make you out of squids and electricity.

[18:33] That's what I do.

[18:35] I forgot how you make humans,

[18:37] even though that's my whole thing,

[18:38] is I created everything.

[18:39] It's all squid and electricity these days.

[18:40] Oh, yeah.

[18:41] And they don't last.

[18:43] Old-time humans,

[18:43] which were made out of bones and stuff,

[18:45] they last 70, 80 years,

[18:47] sometimes 100 years.

[18:48] This new squid and electricity humans

[18:50] that Apple makes,

[18:51] every year you're supposed to toss them out.

[18:52] Land obsolescence.

[18:55] This is around where he starts

[18:56] gripping at the rocks

[18:58] on the cliff that's around them,

[18:59] and he's like,

[19:00] I wasn't supposed to feel.

[19:03] I'm in such pain.

[19:04] I'm made of squid.

[19:06] He's mad that we'll get to, oh, you know what?

[19:08] We'll get to the wasn't supposed to feel part.

[19:11] Hold on.

[19:11] So he says, I'm going to melt back into the ocean in a few hours.

[19:17] And Surfer's like, no, I'm still kind of stuck.

[19:18] I'm still feeling afraid.

[19:20] So Dad is like haranguing him about it's movements and energy and God

[19:24] and the movements are God and the energy is God

[19:26] and the energy is in your movements.

[19:27] And he talks about surfing.

[19:28] It definitely feels like this is the sort of thing where I don't know

[19:32] if you guys have ever talked to a person like this,

[19:35] but you're like, I feel like I'm in danger.

[19:37] I don't want to be here anymore.

[19:39] The surfer throughout this, I feel like,

[19:41] is wondering when it's time to run.

[19:44] Like, when does he run from this person?

[19:45] Or when does he have to fight back in some way?

[19:47] Yeah, he has the demeanor of someone who is like,

[19:51] okay, there's going to be a point in the conversation

[19:54] where I can leave safely and it's not going to anger this person.

[19:57] Yeah, like how long do I have to humor this stranger

[20:01] who's clearly having an episode before I can peel away?

[20:04] He's like a less funny Hugh Grant in Heretic, basically.

[20:10] Yes.

[20:10] Fewer Jar Jar impressions.

[20:12] A less funny and less well-organized Hugh Grant in Heretic.

[20:17] That Heretic is such a funny movie to me

[20:19] because Hugh Grant is like, he goes to such great lengths.

[20:21] And then even at the end, they're like,

[20:22] that's what you're trying to prove to us?

[20:24] This is fucking dumb.

[20:26] Like, you think we hadn't heard of this before?

[20:28] Like, you think this is new information?

[20:30] That was like, I think my Letterboxd review

[20:32] with something like,

[20:34] someone needs to tell him

[20:35] that you can be an atheist

[20:37] without all the construction work.

[20:39] Like you can just be an atheist.

[20:40] It's a very fun,

[20:41] and I assume this is,

[20:42] I don't know if this is intentional,

[20:43] maybe it was.

[20:44] I hope it was,

[20:44] but he's such a funny parody

[20:46] of the kind of guy

[20:47] who learns something

[20:48] that everyone else

[20:49] kind of knows already,

[20:51] but that he thinks

[20:51] he discovered

[20:52] and nobody else knows.

[20:53] So it was not until the end,

[20:55] I thought the movie was that guy.

[20:57] I thought Heretic was like,

[20:58] oh, so Heretic,

[20:59] they think they're really

[21:01] lifting the scales from our eyes.

[21:02] And it wasn't until the end when she's like, yeah, no shit, dude.

[21:05] Like, this is fucking, everyone knows this.

[21:07] I was like, oh, the movie knows what they're doing.

[21:09] Yeah, no, it's intentional.

[21:10] The reply guy of the movie.

[21:13] That is also a funny movie where, like, it's the rare movie that gets less interesting once it stops being just a guy monologuing at you.

[21:21] Yes, that's true.

[21:22] At a certain point, I'm like, eh, all right, yeah.

[21:25] But, well, that's probably because Hugh Grant is so good.

[21:28] He's so good at it, and he apparently wrote at least some of that or rewrote it because he's good at rewriting his own dialogue and stuff.

[21:37] But anyway, he's really good at that.

[21:39] So I think it's maybe his second best villain performance after Paddington 2, which is kind of the same character in some ways.

[21:46] And he's also a really great villain in what was that, Operation Fortune, Ruse de Guerre?

[21:51] Oh, I haven't seen it.

[21:52] He plays like an arms dealer, like a very chav arms dealer, and he's wonderful.

[21:58] I haven't seen that one.

[21:59] Now I got to see it.

[22:00] Every time he shows up, you're like, man, I need more of this guy.

[22:05] Makes me want to see the version of Mickey Blue Eyes where he's an actual gangster, and he's not just pretending to be a gangster.

[22:11] So Surfer's still stuck in his fear.

[22:13] Dad's haranguing him.

[22:16] The Surfer's like, we see more wordless surfing footage.

[22:19] They talk about surfing.

[22:20] The Surfer tells his dad he almost feels like surfing.

[22:22] but first dad is like here's what it's like to surf the big waves i want to surf the big waves

[22:27] of humanity's fear and their emotion and uh and he says there's always he said he starts talking

[22:32] about whales there's always a whale crying in the ocean because it's thinking of man's fear

[22:36] he tells the story of jonah which becomes a fear-based story and this is a version of the

[22:40] story of jonah that so dan i you you grew up in more of a more of a bible reading household than

[22:46] me in his version of story of jonah jonah tells the people in the boat throw me overboard to stop

[22:51] this storm the version of it i remember hearing is the people in the boat are like get the hell

[22:55] out of here and throw him in the boat not that he volunteers for it but how do you um i i don't

[23:01] remember like i could be wrong you know i that's an old testament story right like you better believe

[23:06] it i mean i just call that the bible or the torah i don't know i don't believe in the new testament

[23:10] so the difference the difference with we gentiles is like we tend to like not focus so much on that

[23:16] Unless we're like weird evangelicals who need an excuse to be like, God is angry.

[23:22] Even though Jesus came and said this is a new covenant with new rules, we still want to go by the old rules too.

[23:28] Yeah.

[23:29] So anyway, Dad says the purpose of fear is to help you find faith.

[23:33] And then he pulls the surfer into a black and white dream about a dead whale they found on the beach.

[23:38] And this must have been a real whale washed up, right?

[23:42] I can't imagine that they made a fake whale for this movie.

[23:44] They didn't make a fake whale.

[23:45] And also, like, I love that they're wearing, like, coats.

[23:49] Yeah, because it was probably cold that day.

[23:51] Clearly different.

[23:52] And, like, yeah, I read a little bit.

[23:55] I couldn't find a lot of research about Surfer Teen in Front Spirits.

[23:59] There's an interview with the director that I have not yet finished reading.

[24:03] Oh, really?

[24:03] Where he goes on about how the critics who didn't like the movie

[24:07] clearly have problems with their fathers,

[24:09] and that's why they didn't like the movie.

[24:10] And he gets into Freudian psychology.

[24:12] I did go looking for information just because this is so singular.

[24:16] I'm like, I need to understand.

[24:18] And part of what I found was a ScreenSlate article.

[24:21] They're saying that, like, yeah, they just heard that a whale was going to wash up somewhere.

[24:27] And the guy was like, we got to get the camera.

[24:29] We got to get down there.

[24:31] And so this was, like, I want to know what parts of this were shot first.

[24:35] And, like, what the plan was to then, like, stitch it all together into a movie.

[24:40] It's very Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

[24:42] Very Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be like,

[24:43] there's a dead whale.

[24:44] We got to do something with it.

[24:45] Get the camera.

[24:46] Come on.

[24:47] Cut its jaw.

[24:48] Take it home.

[24:48] This is LA.

[24:49] You know, there's just a line of influencers

[24:50] waiting to take their whale videos.

[24:53] Oh, yeah.

[24:54] You know it.

[24:54] Yeah.

[24:55] I just remember the other part of that

[24:56] where he was saying like,

[24:58] yeah, you know, like Sage,

[25:00] his disgust in that scene is very real

[25:03] because I don't think he'd been close

[25:05] to a dead whale before.

[25:06] I'm like, yeah, no shit.

[25:08] You don't.

[25:08] Why would he?

[25:09] Who has been?

[25:10] And his dad was like, hey, hey, get close to that dead whale.

[25:14] And in the scene, he's like, get close to it.

[25:17] Get really close to it.

[25:17] Look at it real close.

[25:19] Yeah.

[25:19] I want you to like smell every part of it.

[25:22] Smell it.

[25:22] Now lick it.

[25:23] Lick what it tastes like.

[25:24] Can you taste the brine and the rot?

[25:25] Are we really going to need this footage yet?

[25:27] You never know.

[25:28] You never know.

[25:28] Just press your body against it.

[25:30] Try to get inside its mouth.

[25:31] Just try to climb in its mouth.

[25:32] Yeah.

[25:34] No, it'll be hilarious.

[25:35] It'll be great.

[25:35] It'll be so funny.

[25:36] Because it looks like it swallowed you and then you killed it from the inside.

[25:40] Yeah, just jump out and say something funny like bazinga.

[25:43] Just crawl out and like look around and be like, oh, I thought I was taking the express.

[25:50] Climb out and flex like you're really strong.

[25:54] I want you to climb out and then –

[25:56] Floss in front of it.

[25:56] Here's what I'm going to do is you get inside it, but don't get too far inside

[25:59] because what I'm going to do is I'm going to punch it in the gut like I'm giving it the Heimlich

[26:02] and then I want you to jump out, leap out of the mouth like I've just given the Heimlich.

[26:06] And then go, where am I?

[26:10] And then look at the camera and say, boy, I've got a whale of a tail.

[26:15] They're never going to believe this, John.

[26:18] Son, put down the phone.

[26:19] Don't call Child Protective Services.

[26:20] We're just going to do this whale sketch.

[26:21] We're just going to do this little whale scene.

[26:23] Come on.

[26:24] Stop calling them.

[26:25] Stop calling them.

[26:26] All right.

[26:26] I just want you to stick your hand into its blowhole.

[26:28] Climb up on top.

[26:29] Stick your hand under its blowhole and say, how's your breathing now?

[26:34] Just dominate the whale.

[26:35] Just show the dead whale that you're dominating, that you could kill it if you needed to.

[26:38] If it wasn't already dead.

[26:40] Yeah, yeah, sure.

[26:42] Poor whale.

[26:44] Okay, here's the thing.

[26:44] Now, here are the props.

[26:45] I brought some props with me.

[26:47] Now, this is – take these balloons, and then I'm going to say, no, no, no, baleen, not baleens.

[26:52] That's the whole scene.

[26:53] Then you're going to, like, look at the camera like Jim from The Office.

[26:55] Just give it one of those looks.

[26:56] You know what I'm talking about.

[26:57] Anyway, and then you're going to walk away.

[26:59] Son, I got more whale material to do.

[27:01] Come on.

[27:02] Oh, God.

[27:04] And then when he's done, he puts the camera down and goes, okay, give me that knife.

[27:06] We're going to eat this tonight.

[27:07] And he's just like carving off whale steaks to bring home.

[27:11] So anyway, dad has the surfer remember the wave that almost killed him.

[27:16] And he goes, wiggle your fingers, the feelings in your fingers.

[27:18] Start with wiggling those.

[27:19] He has a flashback to lifeguards saving him.

[27:21] This is when I made a note.

[27:22] We were 34 minutes into the movie and it was almost entirely just the dad saying nonsense.

[27:27] And he's not done.

[27:28] He keeps talking.

[27:29] And so he talks much longer until eventually the surfer's like, yeah, I'll surf again.

[27:34] But what do you get out of it?

[27:35] What do you get out of a surf again?

[27:37] And this is when the dad throws a fit.

[27:39] He gets really angry.

[27:40] He's like pounding on the rock with his fist.

[27:41] And he says, spirit forms shouldn't be able to feel emotions, but they do.

[27:45] And this is when he's like, I wasn't supposed to feel.

[27:47] I wasn't supposed to be able to feel.

[27:50] And he's like howling like a wounded Yeti.

[27:53] It's amazing.

[27:54] It's really cool, yeah.

[27:55] He gives a big speech about waves and energy and emotion and surfing.

[27:58] And he wants to be reborn.

[27:59] This is where he's saying he wants to surf again and ride the wave of humanity's fears.

[28:02] And it'll help him do that if the surfer goes on a surf exam.

[28:05] And at this point, he's been talking for like 10 straight minutes since the whale scene, I think.

[28:09] So like, and even that was pretty deep into this sequence.

[28:12] And in the end, dad goes, here, here's a name.

[28:15] Here's an address.

[28:16] Here's an alphanumerical code.

[28:18] And here's some predictions about where the next big waves are going to be.

[28:21] And then he collapses into the surf and he rolls into the ocean to melt away off camera.

[28:27] And that is when we go to scene two.

[28:29] And we are now 49 and a half minutes into the movie.

[28:32] This is an hour and 41 minute movie.

[28:34] It's awesome, man.

[28:35] There's less than an hour left.

[28:37] We spent that on basically one scene.

[28:39] And after that, there's part of me that was like,

[28:42] well, there's no way this movie is going to give me anything worth watching.

[28:44] After that, I was wrong.

[28:45] There is a little bit.

[28:46] But this is definitely, the movie definitely takes a little bit of a dip

[28:49] in terms of this sheer manic, you know, bravado.

[28:55] Well, I mean, certainly in like the last, let's say, 20 minutes.

[28:59] Which is just surfing footage.

[29:00] Mostly surfing footage.

[29:02] Vacation and surfing footage.

[29:03] I got to admit, this is something I shouldn't do as a professional, as a podcast bad movie professional.

[29:07] But I definitely hit that two-time speed, you know, setting for a little while at the end of it.

[29:11] Did you enjoy that surf music that was playing?

[29:14] Yeah, you didn't want to listen to Goin' Alone?

[29:16] After the original song, Goin' Alone, that I listened to in total.

[29:20] Yeah.

[29:20] So, anyway.

[29:21] That was pretty good.

[29:22] I enjoyed that stuff.

[29:23] I will say, that's the best part of the movie, is that song, Goin' Alone.

[29:25] I have to admit.

[29:26] I think it's the best.

[29:27] It is the only thing in the movie that approaches that idea of potential quality.

[29:32] So the surfer goes to—

[29:34] There's a little scene later on with, I think, an admiral

[29:37] that I think was probably my favorite scene in the movie.

[29:39] Yeah, I mean, that scene—we'll get to that one.

[29:41] That is an amazing scene.

[29:42] So the surfer goes to the address the dad gave him.

[29:44] It's supposed to be a military building.

[29:46] It's clearly just a little office lobby or even a retail establishment.

[29:49] The security woman, he goes, I'm here to see Banks.

[29:52] And she goes, Banks? You mean Dr. Bankrow, the doctor who works here?

[29:56] I apologize, guys. I apologize.

[29:57] I skipped the second scene in the movie,

[29:59] which is the doctor giving a checkup to an older woman

[30:02] in what looks like to be a rehearsal space.

[30:04] And he's just checking her heart pressure.

[30:05] Are you telling me that most doctor's offices

[30:08] aren't covered in exposed brick walls?

[30:11] They usually don't have exposed brick walls,

[30:13] mismatched chairs,

[30:14] and a stand that is clearly holding up

[30:16] either a light or reflector to help light the scene.

[30:20] But I forgot, this is probably a five or six minute scene,

[30:24] very few words, of an older woman just in a wheelchair,

[30:27] just getting checked up with a doctor.

[30:28] And she keeps looking at the camera

[30:29] as if she is afraid of what's going to happen next.

[30:33] I was a little concerned about this scene

[30:36] that this woman didn't know that she was in a movie

[30:38] or why she was there.

[30:39] She is an actress.

[30:40] She is a professional actress.

[30:41] Okay, good.

[30:43] Oh, thank God.

[30:44] Because I was like, this has a level of realism

[30:47] that the other performances cannot approach.

[30:50] No, it is the best performance the entire movie

[30:52] because you do not realize that this is a professional actress

[30:55] who is doing this.

[30:56] The same way that I've talked about it before

[30:59] when I saw the play

[31:00] This Is Our Youth

[31:01] in London years ago

[31:02] and Jake Gyllenhaal

[31:03] was in it.

[31:04] There's a scene in that play.

[31:04] I'm sick of you talking about it.

[31:05] We've talked about it a lot of times.

[31:06] There's a scene in that play

[31:07] where his character

[31:08] knocks over a plate full of drugs

[31:09] and Jake Gyllenhaal

[31:11] did it so well

[31:11] that people in the audience

[31:12] I think thought it was a mistake

[31:13] and thought that he had messed up.

[31:15] But anyway,

[31:15] that's this performance.

[31:16] This woman does such a great performance

[31:18] of seeming like a woman

[31:19] who is not aware

[31:20] of where she is,

[31:21] does not want to be touched

[31:22] by a doctor

[31:23] and is not enjoying being there

[31:24] and doesn't understand

[31:25] why there's a camera

[31:26] watching it the entire time.

[31:27] And I will say

[31:28] this is a very jarring choice

[31:30] for a second scene.

[31:31] Yes.

[31:32] To suddenly be thrown into,

[31:33] because it's also one of those things

[31:34] where I'm like,

[31:34] which of these characters

[31:35] am I going to be following?

[31:37] The doctor,

[31:39] the woman,

[31:39] or neither?

[31:40] That's,

[31:41] I had no idea the entire,

[31:42] this is one of those movies

[31:43] where a good movie

[31:45] throws you in the air

[31:46] and catches you

[31:47] and you know the whole time

[31:48] the movie's going to catch me,

[31:49] but there's still that thrill

[31:50] of being up in the air

[31:51] and then falling back down again.

[31:52] This is one of the movies

[31:53] where you're like,

[31:53] I don't know if they're going to catch me.

[31:54] They may throw me in the air

[31:55] and then walk away

[31:56] and I'm just going to hit the ground

[31:57] and it's going to hurt, you know?

[31:58] And in a way, that is exactly what this movie is.

[32:01] So we see this old lady get a checkup.

[32:04] The surfer goes to the address.

[32:05] It's a military building.

[32:06] He learns that Banks is Dr. Bankrow.

[32:09] The security woman at the reception desk

[32:11] calls in Marx, a guy in camo.

[32:13] And there is a great other movie

[32:16] about the hierarchy in this office building,

[32:19] in this military office,

[32:20] because the guy in camo seems like he's in charge

[32:22] until the next scene with the doctor,

[32:24] where the Doctor is so passive-aggressively condescending

[32:27] to this guy the entire time.

[32:29] Anyway, he's in camo.

[32:30] He frisks the surfer.

[32:31] He takes his phone to have it scanned,

[32:32] and then he sends two guys who are in civilian clothes,

[32:36] and they have the funniest lines where they're like,

[32:38] I've spent all this time ironing my uniform,

[32:40] and then he tells us to put on civilian clothes,

[32:42] and it's such a funny way that they're like,

[32:43] we've got to explain why these guys are not in uniform.

[32:45] We'll just have a line about it.

[32:46] And they're using so much faux military slang

[32:50] that I'm like, come on, guys.

[32:52] yeah it's it's so they are trying so hard to seem like they're in the military and failing

[32:57] he goes hey we're gonna we're gonna scan this out of this building that is a reception area

[33:02] with glass bricks and that's clearly in the middle of burbank or pasadena it looks like

[33:07] you know an old battered wooden chair this does not look like a military operation i feel like

[33:14] it lacks the verisimilitude of the cockpit set of plan nine from outer space where they're sitting

[33:20] at music stands

[33:21] in hardback wooden chairs.

[33:23] Like, that felt more

[33:24] like the cockpit of a plane.

[33:26] This feels like

[33:26] a military installation.

[33:27] I mean, you can literally see,

[33:28] I don't know, like,

[33:29] maybe, is it like

[33:30] Highland Boulevard

[33:31] or Glendale Boulevard

[33:32] in, like, the road sign

[33:34] in the background?

[33:35] Yeah.

[33:36] I mean, it looks so,

[33:37] I don't, I'm not sure,

[33:37] it looks so much like

[33:38] Magnolia in Burbank,

[33:39] but it could be

[33:40] any of those places.

[33:41] So, the, they,

[33:43] he sent, he goes,

[33:44] we're going to scan the phone.

[33:44] You guys look outside

[33:45] for drones or suspicious things.

[33:47] They go outside,

[33:48] they check under cars

[33:49] We get like 10 minutes of them walking around.

[33:51] They walk around for a long time.

[33:52] They don't find anything.

[33:53] We never see these characters again.

[33:55] It doesn't matter.

[33:57] And the surfer finally goes,

[33:59] oh, my name is Sage,

[33:59] and I've got a message for Banks.

[34:02] And he gives it to Mark.

[34:03] He pulls out a gun.

[34:04] Bang, bang, bang.

[34:06] And it turns out Banks is the doctor

[34:08] we saw briefly earlier with that older woman.

[34:11] He takes a while.

[34:12] So it takes so long for Mark to give him this note.

[34:15] Banks reads it and gets very emotional.

[34:17] Says, I'll talk to Sage.

[34:18] I'll talk to him.

[34:19] And you know what?

[34:19] I'm going to give him the money to travel the world surfing.

[34:22] I'm going to give you that money because he says,

[34:25] and this is the first of a couple different explanations

[34:28] of what the deal is with Sage's dad.

[34:30] First explanation, I died in a war

[34:33] and I'm coming back made out of squids and electricity.

[34:36] This time he goes, oh, I knew your dad in the military.

[34:38] And guess what?

[34:39] He didn't die.

[34:40] He's still alive.

[34:41] Wheel him out, everybody.

[34:42] And they wheel him out.

[34:43] And he is in a catatonic state

[34:46] that is so offensively funny

[34:49] in the way that he has contorted his face and hands.

[34:52] Just like he has bonitis.

[34:54] There's one part where he like contorts for a while

[34:57] and then his arm is just like stuck up in the air

[35:00] for a long time.

[35:02] And he's got a look on his face that

[35:03] I don't want to be offensive myself,

[35:05] but for lack of a better word,

[35:07] for lack of a better way to describe it,

[35:08] it is the way that kids when I was growing up

[35:10] would pretend to be mentally challenged people.

[35:12] Like it has that look about it.

[35:14] And it is, and there's part of me that was like,

[35:16] I cannot believe he thinks

[35:17] he's getting away with this.

[35:19] That this is not going to be

[35:19] either hilarious or offensive

[35:21] or both, you know.

[35:22] Yeah.

[35:23] Anyway, there's a long scene of Banks,

[35:25] a very repetitive scene.

[35:26] It feels like they keep getting stuck

[35:28] on the same pages of the script

[35:29] and going back over and over again

[35:31] where Banks is like,

[35:32] go over, he doesn't remember you.

[35:34] He doesn't remember you.

[35:35] He doesn't know he's your dad.

[35:36] He doesn't know.

[35:37] Go over and say you love him.

[35:38] Go over and say you're his son.

[35:40] Go over, because you're his son.

[35:41] You're his son.

[35:42] He doesn't remember you,

[35:43] but you're his son.

[35:43] Go over and say, he goes,

[35:44] oh, I love you, dad.

[35:45] and Banks will then twitch and fall,

[35:47] or the dad will twitch and throw a fit

[35:48] and fall on the floor,

[35:49] and Banks is like,

[35:50] Marks, Marks, pick him up.

[35:51] Marks, get him back in the chair.

[35:53] Marks, put him back in the chair.

[35:54] Let's do it again, yeah.

[35:54] It's working, it's working.

[35:56] He goes, do it again.

[35:56] He doesn't remember you.

[35:57] He doesn't remember he has a son.

[35:58] Go, but you're his son.

[36:00] Go tell him that you love him.

[36:01] Tell him you're his son.

[36:02] I'm your son.

[36:02] He throws a fit again, falls out.

[36:04] Marks, put him back.

[36:05] Marks, get over here, Marks.

[36:06] Put him back in his chair.

[36:07] It is ridiculous.

[36:07] Also, every once in a while,

[36:09] they'll cut to a second angle of like,

[36:12] like the angle is that of a camera

[36:15] that like maybe they forgot was turned on.

[36:16] It doesn't make any sense.

[36:18] But it's also like the video quality

[36:20] is significantly worse

[36:21] than the already not great video quality.

[36:23] I'm like, why is this other camera here?

[36:26] But it's this scene goes on forever.

[36:28] At one point during it, Banks goes,

[36:30] this probably looks worse than it is.

[36:32] Like, I don't know.

[36:33] It looks pretty bad.

[36:35] And, but he keeps saying,

[36:36] but it looks better when he's made

[36:37] out of squid and electricity.

[36:39] thing yeah that's true he just keeps going but you're a son but you're a son you're a son finally

[36:44] now it's time for the for the for the training montage sage is gonna do it he's gonna surf around

[36:49] the world in order to help his dad surf humanity's fears to an original rock song called going alone

[36:56] which again is the best thing in the movie we see sage paddleboarding we see him running we see him

[37:00] weight training in a pool where he's got two weights oh yeah and he's completely submerged

[37:04] running back and forth along the bottom of the

[37:06] pool, which I might try.

[37:08] This seems like a really cool way to train, I don't know.

[37:11] But

[37:11] we get the full song of Going Alone, and I wish

[37:14] I remembered any of the lyrics.

[37:16] I looked up, so in the

[37:18] credits,

[37:22] it said that this is

[37:23] sung by Carol Connors.

[37:25] Oh, the wife of Kurt Connors,

[37:27] the lizard, yeah.

[37:28] Well, when I googled Carol Connors,

[37:30] this is either the American

[37:33] singer-songwriter who is the lead

[37:35] vocalist on To Know Him is to Love Him,

[37:37] or this is American

[37:39] pornographic film actress Carol Connors.

[37:41] I don't know which Carol Connors this is.

[37:43] It's hard to know which one

[37:45] a USC physics professor would

[37:47] get for his movie. Yeah, I don't know.

[37:49] And it's not Carol O'Connor.

[37:51] TV's beloved Archie Bunker, right?

[37:54] I'm not familiar with the

[37:55] work of either of those Carol Connors.

[37:56] I like this song as Stuart

[37:59] not as into it, but this is like

[38:01] it's like surf rock but kind of with like a goth it's like it's like a dark a dark emotional surf

[38:07] rock yeah yeah yeah like the song you'd play during dick dale's funeral exactly thank you

[38:13] exactly you put your because he is going alone at that point he's going alone into the gray havens

[38:18] the other side yeah yeah i mean we all die alone even dick dale you know you can't take it with

[38:24] you even can't take his guitar with him can you slow down the surf rock like not really it's kind

[38:30] You got to double pick everything.

[38:32] It's all jangly and shit.

[38:33] It's kind of not really a surf rock if it did.

[38:34] I mean, it's got to shred.

[38:35] Like the Dick Dale album says, better shred than dead.

[38:38] Unfortunately, now he no longer has that opportunity.

[38:40] He doesn't have that choice.

[38:43] God made it for him.

[38:45] We're all familiar with Miserlew, but now there's real miser-ee that we're feeling.

[38:50] Now that our beloved Dick Dale's gone.

[38:52] I love that you're doing material while doing his eulogy.

[38:56] They shouldn't have invited me to do Dick Dale's music.

[38:57] I genuinely like Dick Dale's music quite a bit.

[39:00] They shouldn't have invited me to do his eulogy because I'm going to throw some jokes in there.

[39:03] And I don't know him.

[39:04] I don't really know him.

[39:05] You're a comedy writer.

[39:05] They knew that.

[39:06] They knew who they hired to do the job, and they can't look at me and be like, oh, don't do what you do.

[39:12] I got two settings, on and off, and on is funny.

[39:15] So, you know, that's all I can do.

[39:19] I'm going to try to –

[39:20] That's what Elliot says when he walks into any room.

[39:23] Look, I got two settings, on and off, and on is funny, so deal with it.

[39:27] Deal with it, people.

[39:28] Come on.

[39:29] Sorry, the family, Dale.

[39:30] I know this isn't what you wanted, you know, for your patriarch's funeral, but this is what you got, you know?

[39:35] What is this, some kind of funeral?

[39:36] Okay, let's do it.

[39:39] Look, on my card, it doesn't say serious eulogies.

[39:42] It says comedian.

[39:43] I don't know why you hired me.

[39:44] I'd say you thought you were getting a different Elliot Kalin, but there are no other people with that name that I'm aware of.

[39:49] Actually, that's not true.

[39:50] I once Googled myself, and I Google myself all the time.

[39:53] I don't, not the one time.

[39:54] At night.

[39:55] Because I, yeah, well, I mean, at night when I'm looking at, when I'm puttering around

[39:57] and I need to find out who else hates my run on Harley, Harley Quinn, the, the, uh, the,

[40:02] uh, I, I would Google myself and I would find normal people.

[40:06] There was like a, there was a male model in Australia who had the same name as me spelled

[40:10] the same way, but it's a, but I've never found any more information.

[40:14] You guys probably get confused for each other.

[40:16] All the time.

[40:17] People say, good day, Elliot.

[40:18] We need you for that Vogue Australia shoot.

[40:21] And I'm like, you've got the wrong guy, you know?

[40:23] Anyway.

[40:23] But I'm in, I'm in.

[40:24] And then I get another call.

[40:25] Yes, our beloved

[40:27] father Dick died.

[40:30] Dick Dale, we need you to talk at his funeral.

[40:32] Of course, yes, I'll be right there.

[40:34] So we get an amazing scene.

[40:36] This is, I think,

[40:38] my second favorite scene in the movie

[40:40] after the long

[40:41] 40-minute monologue, or however it is,

[40:44] of Banks is sitting

[40:46] with a guy in a captain's hat

[40:47] who is clearly supposed to be in the Navy.

[40:50] Behind him is what I think

[40:52] is a green screen, right?

[40:53] Well, based on the bird that occasionally flies right at the screen on a loop.

[40:59] But I wasn't paying that as close attention because I was trying to get myself in the thing.

[41:03] And they're sitting on a wooden board that's on milk crates.

[41:08] Just really quickly, Elliot, congratulations.

[41:10] You destroyed this guy's SEO.

[41:12] I cannot find him.

[41:13] Oh, good, good.

[41:13] Thank you.

[41:14] You are the prime Elliot Kaelin.

[41:16] I think what put it over the top was that magic card based on my Sauron Spider-Man panel.

[41:20] I think that's what did it.

[41:21] Yeah.

[41:21] So many people sent that to me and they're like, this is the way to get this information to Elliot.

[41:27] Send it to the nerdiest flopper.

[41:29] I got to get a copy of that card.

[41:30] I don't know if it's out yet.

[41:32] But anyway, it's so funny because my older son, Sammy, he has magic cards.

[41:37] He's like, we got to go to the card store tomorrow and get that.

[41:40] And I'm like, well, I don't think it's out yet.

[41:41] But also like, what are we going to do?

[41:43] Just buy packs and hope we get it?

[41:44] And he's like, yeah.

[41:46] Oh, yeah.

[41:47] That was a mistake right there.

[41:49] Finally, the grift has come together.

[41:50] And I'll just keep all the other cards that aren't the card based on your work.

[41:53] So anyway, this is one of the – maybe one of the funniest lines in the history of movies.

[41:58] I wish I had written it down word for word, but it was too late, and I didn't do it.

[42:02] But it's something like, let me get this straight.

[42:05] So he was a brainwashed assassin who went on a covert ops mission and died on it, and now he has a son who's come back, and you want to give him government medical health insurance because his dad was in the military as a killer?

[42:17] And he's like, you got it.

[42:18] And I was like, and all of this is said as if this is information that has been doled out over the course of the movie.

[42:24] And it's not being dumped right in our laps.

[42:26] Well, I mean, it is the most egregious example of like, you're telling me I'm going to repeat back a thing that apparently we both know so the audience can hear it.

[42:37] And it's going to be so long.

[42:39] Like, it is amazing how long this line goes on.

[42:42] And then, of course, is this when Banks sweetens the deal by handing him a, like, tiny little flask of fucking Hennessy.

[42:49] The smallest little bottle.

[42:50] And he's like, Hennessy Cognac, special stuff.

[42:54] And it is such a small bottle.

[42:56] And I don't know what it's supposed to—

[42:57] It's also fucking Hennessy.

[42:59] I mean, it ain't cheap, but it's like, that's not a particularly big bottle.

[43:03] And it's also not hard—it's not like, oh, it's, yeah, Hennessy.

[43:06] You can't just walk into a store and buy that, you know?

[43:09] Okay, this is from like another country from 100 years old or like, you know, whatever.

[43:13] Like, it's just like, yeah, it's Hennessy.

[43:16] Like, it's, yeah.

[43:17] But also, he doesn't really need, it turns out, as the scene goes on,

[43:20] he doesn't really need to bribe him with liquor anyway.

[43:23] It's not like, yeah, like if the end of the holdover is he took a tiny little bottle of Hennessy from the dean or whatever.

[43:31] Now, so the situation here is, so I thought, so earlier Banks is like, I'll give you the money to serve the world.

[43:37] Here he seems to be trying to put the son on his dad's health insurance, which, correct me if I'm wrong, I could be wrong.

[43:44] He should be on already.

[43:46] Like it should be just a matter of, oh, yeah, he has a son.

[43:48] Let's put him on his dad's health insurance.

[43:49] Because as we've established, the dad is not dead.

[43:51] He's in the care of a military medical establishment.

[43:53] So it seems like all those tools should be there.

[43:56] And the title of the movie illustrates that he is still a minor effectively, right?

[44:01] He's a teen.

[44:02] Yeah, he's a teen.

[44:03] I mean he should be on that insurance probably until he's about 21 probably.

[44:06] but uh the and all the and all the different military advantage credit and loan opportunities

[44:11] that come with that um so this is stated though as if it's not new information uh this is the

[44:16] third explanation we begin for this dad now that he was not just in the military but was like a

[44:20] mate i don't i'm trying to remember if they say he was brainwashed or not but he was like

[44:24] an experimental assassin who was turned into this on a mission gone kind of on a mission but the

[44:31] The guy's like, I'll only do this if you can prove to me that he's his son.

[44:36] And also, I want to know if his prediction of where storms are going to hit is accurate.

[44:40] And Banks is like, it's totally accurate.

[44:42] And he hands him a manila folder full of envelopes.

[44:44] I could not read what it said.

[44:45] It says classified, but it's like written in marker.

[44:47] And he pulls them out and they just look at the documents for a while, not saying anything.

[44:53] It's just watching people read papers.

[44:55] And he's like, it's all here.

[44:57] It's all here.

[44:58] Let's do it.

[44:59] And Banks was like, I think what we're about to do is the best, most important thing we've ever done.

[45:03] And I was like, by the end of the scene, I had so much less understanding of what was happening and what they were trying to accomplish than at the beginning of the scene.

[45:10] And it's a small detail in an otherwise, of course, perfect movie.

[45:14] But when they put the paper back in the envelope, it's clearly just a sheet of blank paper.

[45:19] There's nothing on those things.

[45:22] This scene, it is so – it's funny when a movie that is clearly meant to be a meditation on the human condition suddenly starts to act like it is a movie with a plot.

[45:32] Like a taut thriller.

[45:34] A taut thriller about a government secret.

[45:36] And you're like, what?

[45:38] It's such a bizarre – this is when the movie refuses to catch you.

[45:42] When the movie throws you in the air and then just walks away and you hit the ground like, wait, he's a government assassin?

[45:46] I don't understand.

[45:47] And that leads to the creepiest scene in the whole movie to me.

[45:51] And this is the one scene where I'm like, okay, well, now I have a moral issue with this movie.

[45:55] Yeah, yeah, of course.

[45:56] This is when the movie goes from this guy's got some crazy ideas about fear and God.

[46:01] And you know who had some crazy ideas?

[46:02] His name was Jesus.

[46:04] And I want to tell you about him.

[46:05] And this is when it gets into like, oh, this is a negative philosophy.

[46:09] This is a bad thing.

[46:10] This is poisonous.

[46:11] And I'm just glad no one will ever see this movie in any sincere sense.

[46:14] This is kind of the moment where I'm like, now I don't mind making fun of this fucking guy's movie.

[46:20] So Sage meets with this guy who I don't think is given a name in the movie.

[46:24] He's super creepy, and he's like, oh, yeah, I was like a protege of your dad's during the war.

[46:29] And he talks about how his dad taught him that sometimes you have to kill.

[46:34] There's always a time to kill.

[46:36] And just like white blood cells kill bad bacteria, there are bad people that you just have to kill.

[46:43] And it's not a sin to kill bad guys because they're bad, so you have to kill them.

[46:47] And we're good.

[46:48] And we're good.

[46:50] And it was like – and this is something that is such a – well, I think part of the reason that I was so disgusted by this is because this is the rhetoric that our government does right now.

[47:00] Where Pete Hegseth just the other day had that thing where he's like, our job is to do bad things to bad people.

[47:05] It's like, fuck you, shithead.

[47:06] Your job is to protect the American people and hopefully people of other countries.

[47:09] Your job is not to enjoy the act of killing and to get your rocks off murdering people.

[47:15] Your job is to regrettably maybe kill sometimes in the act of defense or because you have to.

[47:20] But there's such a – this idea of like it's not a sin if you're killing a bad guy.

[47:24] It's always a sin.

[47:25] Like there's just – sometimes you have to commit a sin.

[47:27] But anyway, he says – but he also goes, anyway, my dad – your dad saved my life before he single-handedly blew up a ship and he died in the explosion of the ship.

[47:34] And it's like we know he didn't die.

[47:37] We saw him already.

[47:38] So what is going on?

[47:39] And then immediately without a transition, the guy is like, you have to serve for your dad.

[47:43] And he's like, yeah, I do.

[47:44] And I'm like, at what point, at this point,

[47:46] what are we supposed to understand

[47:48] is happening with his dad?

[47:50] Like, we've been given all these branching possibilities.

[47:52] Like, the Joker is telling us his origin story

[47:54] in different ways.

[47:55] Like, what are we supposed to understand

[47:57] about what's going on in this movie?

[47:59] And I just...

[48:00] I mean, we're supposed to know that he's awesome, right?

[48:02] Yes, that he is awesome.

[48:03] And that he's full of wisdom.

[48:05] It is so funny, too.

[48:06] It's such a dad fantasy, too, to be like,

[48:08] you know what?

[48:09] I have this wisdom that I have to share with my son.

[48:12] It is so deep.

[48:13] It's going to change his life.

[48:14] And you know what?

[48:15] I was the single best government assassin that ever existed.

[48:19] And I nobly gave my life, maybe not, in the act of blowing up a ship single-handedly.

[48:25] Because I'm also Rambo.

[48:26] I'm not just the greatest philosopher.

[48:28] I'm also Rambo.

[48:29] And I've also imparted to my son everything he needs to know.

[48:32] And now I don't need to hang out with him anymore.

[48:33] And now I can leave.

[48:35] And now I can leave and go somewhere else.

[48:36] It is a – I mean they could have called this movie Dad, Man Commits Fantasy to Film.

[48:42] There's so much – because even the act of seeing a beach whale and wanting to walk around it and look at it really close is a very dad thing to do.

[48:51] Like there's so –

[48:52] Son, come over.

[48:53] Come over and take a look at this.

[48:54] You're never going to see this again.

[48:55] Let's pop the hood on this bad boy and check it out.

[48:59] Just crawl in there.

[49:00] See how it's operating.

[49:01] Just crawl in there.

[49:02] What are you working with?

[49:03] You know he's looking at it, pretending he knows anything about what's inside.

[49:07] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[49:09] Oh, interesting.

[49:09] Yeah, the lungs are like that.

[49:10] Yeah, the lungs are like that.

[49:12] See this?

[49:12] Yeah, that's how it keeps the krill in

[49:15] because it eats krill.

[49:16] It's a big thing, but it eats these tiny things.

[49:18] It filters through his, I don't know.

[49:20] It's not teeth.

[49:21] There's something in there.

[49:22] Yeah, sometimes it's the krill.

[49:24] Everybody says this is a big fish.

[49:26] It's not a fish.

[49:27] It's a mammal like you or me.

[49:28] Not a fish, just like you.

[49:29] And you know there's a marine biologist

[49:30] who's lecturing about the whale,

[49:32] and he's going, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh-huh,

[49:35] as if he knew all those things already.

[49:38] And does anyone have any questions about the whale?

[49:40] Yeah, well, you know, a lot of people think whales are fish,

[49:42] but they're not fish.

[49:43] They're mammals.

[49:43] Thank you.

[49:44] Yeah, thank you for sharing that.

[49:45] I appreciate that.

[49:46] Thank you for that question, sir.

[49:48] Yeah, well, I'm,

[49:48] I actually, I have another,

[49:50] this isn't so much a question,

[49:51] but like my family

[49:51] originally comes from Wales.

[49:53] What?

[49:54] Okay, spelled differently.

[49:55] It's not related to this,

[49:56] but, you know, thank you for,

[49:57] and the tour guide or docent or whatever

[50:00] has to, has to accept this

[50:02] and assimilate it somehow

[50:04] into normal human conversation,

[50:06] you know?

[50:08] That's this guy.

[50:09] This movie is the,

[50:10] and I want to,

[50:11] I have to go back and really read through that interview with him.

[50:14] I didn't have the time to go through it in detail.

[50:16] Anyway, but this creepy guy who tells him

[50:20] there's always a time to kill,

[50:21] there's always a time when killing needs to happen,

[50:23] he pushes him back into the direction of surfing for his dad.

[50:26] And then in time-lapse, we get to,

[50:27] I think, the most interesting part of the movie, to be honest.

[50:30] Yeah, easily.

[50:30] In time-lapse, you're just watching someone

[50:32] make a new surfboard for Sage.

[50:33] And it's pretty cool to see how a surfboard gets made.

[50:35] And it's also clear that Sage is like two, three years younger

[50:39] than the rest of the movie.

[50:41] Again, this is clearly footage that was shot for,

[50:44] I don't know if it was this project or another project.

[50:45] Just for fun, yeah.

[50:46] It's hours of footage of a surfboard being made,

[50:48] which is cool to see all sped up because it's like,

[50:50] oh, I'm like, I didn't know that that's how they did it.

[50:52] You know, it's very, this is by far,

[50:53] if this was the whole movie, I'd be like,

[50:54] this is a great movie, I recommend it, you know.

[50:56] I'd recommend it as a YouTube video,

[50:58] how surfboards are made, but you know.

[51:01] Suddenly, Sage is in an Asian country.

[51:04] I'm not gonna-

[51:05] Bali, I believe.

[51:05] This is Bali, okay.

[51:07] And he's meeting monks.

[51:08] He's getting sick insects placed on his shirt.

[51:10] Again, looks younger than in the previous footage, and he's clearly just on vacation.

[51:15] And then he goes surfing.

[51:16] Well, that's the effect of him losing his fear.

[51:19] Yeah.

[51:20] That he has become younger.

[51:21] Fear is the mind killer.

[51:22] Yeah.

[51:22] You let the fear pass through you when you walk through, you're younger and have stick insects on you.

[51:27] Yeah, of course.

[51:28] That's why his father, who has no fear, looks super young all the time.

[51:31] And well.

[51:33] Very well.

[51:33] Looks very healthy and invigorated.

[51:37] Yeah.

[51:37] Normal.

[51:39] Looks leading man.

[51:41] Virile, yeah.

[51:43] So he's just a middle-aged man.

[51:46] He's just an older middle-aged man.

[51:47] That's it, you know.

[51:48] And now I'm going to find out

[51:49] that he was younger than me

[51:50] when he made this movie somehow.

[51:51] This is the thing I'm constantly finding out.

[51:53] I mean, that's one of the things

[51:55] that gets me so much about,

[51:56] like Pete Hegseth and why I've mentioned him

[51:57] many times in this podcast,

[51:59] mostly because he's a piece of shit and I hate him.

[52:01] And it horrifies me that he's in charge

[52:03] of the kinds of weapons that can kill lots of people.

[52:05] But also that he's like a year older than me.

[52:07] And I'm like, dude, how do you have the mindset of a 19-year-old when you're older than me?

[52:12] Like I don't understand.

[52:13] Anyway, you're one year old.

[52:14] I got some bad news for you.

[52:16] What?

[52:16] I interact with a lot of people in the world and there's a lot of people like that.

[52:19] Yeah, that's true.

[52:20] That's true.

[52:20] Anyway, what you're saying is I should make a movie about my wise philosophies just so I can share it with the world.

[52:25] I feel like this would be less poisonous.

[52:28] You could connect with your kids.

[52:29] I could connect with my kids and they would never forgive me for it.

[52:33] So one night we're in the middle.

[52:36] I thought the whole movie was just going to be surf footage.

[52:38] But then you have one night, Sage is sitting with some guys his own age, roughly.

[52:41] Oh, right.

[52:42] Talking about surfing, and they're like, the surfing's going to be pretty dangerous tomorrow.

[52:44] Those waves are going to be pretty big.

[52:46] Okay, then it's back to the surfing footage.

[52:48] And Sage is like, you know what, you got to go in and, you know, no fear.

[52:54] Hesitation is defeat.

[52:55] He's just like, he's just got to go in and dominate that wave.

[52:57] Just fuck that wave, you know, just do it.

[53:00] There's like such a long montage of just like dissolving from like one bit of surfing footage to another.

[53:05] But then, like, in the middle of it,

[53:06] like, they really briefly dissolve

[53:08] to, like, the military base again,

[53:10] but then back to the surfing footage.

[53:11] I was so confused.

[53:13] I'm like, why was that in there?

[53:16] I thought it was going to change.

[53:17] And all these sequences are bridged by dissolves.

[53:21] Yes.

[53:21] It's a lot of dissolves.

[53:22] Sometimes it's jet ski footage.

[53:24] Sometimes it's footage of other people surfing,

[53:26] but it's mostly footage of stage surfing.

[53:27] And that moment when the military installation,

[53:30] you see it again,

[53:30] it's one of those things where it's like,

[53:31] And I forget that everyone, when they hear a story, has a certain understanding of how a story works that they can react to emotionally.

[53:40] But in the act of creating a story, I forget, oh, not everybody knows how to do that.

[53:45] There are times when I'm like, my job is ridiculous.

[53:48] Anyone can do this.

[53:49] Like why do I get paid any money to like write jokes and make up stories about things?

[53:53] And then I see a movie like this and I'm like, oh, I guess not everybody can do it.

[53:56] Wait a minute.

[53:57] I do have a skill.

[53:57] But anyway, the surfing footage goes on for a long time, and this again where I started to like really ride that double playback button.

[54:08] And there's something like 15 or 20 minutes of just nonstop surfing and jet ski footage, and then it freezes on a still image of surfing.

[54:15] And above that, half-dissolved, superimposed, is footage of an American flag being folded as if at a military funeral.

[54:22] The end.

[54:23] And then the credits, they thank the members of a local Boy Scout troop.

[54:27] uh and i do remember that part but uh it's it is a credit is hands folding the flag that's right

[54:35] that's right it is there is so much surfing footage at the end of this and it's one of

[54:39] those things where there's a song playing and the song is playing you're like oh well when the song

[54:43] ends the surfing will end and the song ends new song starts up not done with the footage got to

[54:47] throw another song on there it's kind of relaxing you know this again could be just like a youtube

[54:51] video you toss on to like chill out yes it is it is i mean that's to be fair when you're watching

[54:57] it you are never under any assumption that the story will continue again you don't think he's

[55:01] ever in danger there's nothing dramatic about it it is just relaxing surfing footage with music

[55:05] over it the music doesn't have lyrics there's no vocals there's no dialogue so this really could

[55:10] just be background you go into like a like a tommy bahamas or a you know margaritaville this

[55:14] just could be on the screen playing yeah so yeah thank you elliot for taking on yes

[55:21] The teen has confronted fear.

[55:23] I think it helps that.

[55:25] So this is one that it shows how out of the loop I am in the bad movie world that I no longer kind of hear about these movies ahead of time until Dan says, oh, we should do this one.

[55:33] And going into it knowing not at all what to expect and just watching the dad's monologue unreal for minute after minute after minute for over a half hour, I was like, you know what?

[55:44] This is exactly the way I want to experience this, which is with no understanding of what is happening and no guess as to what could happen next.

[55:51] Well, that's a good – that is a good transition to final judgments where we say whether this is a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked.

[56:01] And to pull back the curtain on the decision process here, like I – this year I sort of used my extracurricular bad movie viewing group as like a vetting process of like –

[56:13] Dan is the most committed to the lifestyle out of us three of us.

[56:17] Some would argue I have the least going on outside of the podcast.

[56:20] Some, I mean, many might argue that.

[56:22] Yeah, that's okay.

[56:24] Emotionally, not at all.

[56:25] Emotionally, I think you have the most going on, yeah.

[56:26] Oh, thank you.

[56:28] What was I saying?

[56:29] Oh, I was using it as sort of a vetting process

[56:31] of like what would be good for the small timber.

[56:34] And like I had certainly heard this title before

[56:39] as like this is like-

[56:41] You saw the billboards, yeah.

[56:42] A good, freako, bad movie.

[56:45] But I didn't know anything about it.

[56:46] I didn't know anything about it before seeing it

[56:48] with my uh bad movie watching crew and i will say that like of the two movies that i suggested that

[56:54] we're doing the next one is the fun one the next one like i think is like genuinely fun while being

[57:03] like nutty this is the one that i was like well we got to do this because this is a singular

[57:08] experience yeah and um i'm gonna say it's a good bad movie but it is awesome but it is definitely

[57:15] a movie where you like it's a long monologue for a lot of it like this is for the real weirdos

[57:23] the sickos the truth this is not the one to show to your co-workers you're like oh i heard this is

[57:29] really funny yeah you gotta you gotta this isn't the one where like a guy again like a guy at the

[57:33] bar is like oh you gotta see this movie and be like no let me counter it you need to see this

[57:37] movie and then you question your life like if you like having your brain broken like which is part

[57:44] of why i like this kind of thing sometimes just to see something that is totally different it's

[57:50] like this is a good bad movie yeah it's like uh the the analogy i like is uh one i also use for

[57:55] describing the extreme heavy metal that i listen to which is that it's kind of like eating spicy

[58:00] food right and that like you watch your normal bad movies and you're like oh your regular like

[58:06] bad netflix thing that's a simple bad movie that's something with a little bit of heat

[58:09] But sometimes after, like, your palate gets desensitized, but you can also, like, tell the difference between different types of peppers and different types of chilies, that finally you can appreciate the ghost pepper of a movie like this, which is an appropriate metaphor because there is a ghost made out of eels and electricity.

[58:29] This is—you finally—

[58:31] Squids and electricity.

[58:32] You finally made me understand the music you put into it, if nothing else.

[58:36] The thing is, if you did not have this background,

[58:40] if you're just like, hey, you've probably seen a bad movie.

[58:43] Why don't you watch this one?

[58:44] It would be impossible.

[58:47] But I feel like if you're a real bad movie freak,

[58:49] yeah, this is a good bad one for you.

[58:51] Like, this is great.

[58:52] If you're watching this all by yourself, okay, good luck.

[58:57] But this is great with friends.

[58:59] As someone who watched it all by myself,

[59:01] it was still a good bad experience.

[59:04] But again, knowing that I'm going into,

[59:06] I mean, there's also knowing that I'm doing this for, for this podcast, but I think this

[59:10] is, yeah, when you're with your, when you're with your bad movie sicko friends, yeah, pop

[59:14] this one on, you guys will enjoy it.

[59:16] I mean, see the theater ideally, so you can get the real, I mean, if you go to the website

[59:20] for the movie, they will tell you where screenings are coming up for it because they are, they

[59:24] do, they do set up those screenings.

[59:25] So, uh, Brooklyn recently, we were not able to make it out for a screening, but, uh, the

[59:31] spectacle theater was showing this just recently.

[59:33] Yeah, so it's a – I would call this a good-bad movie, but I think, Stuart, that the spiciness index is a really good way to scale this.

[59:42] To prepare yourself.

[59:44] If you're a newbie, you might want to stick with The Room right now, and maybe you'll make it your way up to this one eventually, yeah.

[59:52] To the mountaintop that we happen to live on.

[59:56] Yeah, where we've been desensitized.

[1:00:00] At this point, in terms of spicy food, we're just hitting nails into our tongue because we're a bit desensitized to taste, yeah.

[1:00:14] Hey, romance readers, what are you looking for?

[1:00:17] Brothers, best friend, alien boyfriend, mothman, vampires.

[1:00:21] We got your cowboys, your dukes, your hot professors, your rock stars.

[1:00:25] We got your shifters, we got demons, we got sexy fairies.

[1:00:27] You want them morally gray? No problem.

[1:00:30] Can't pick? Don't worry, sweetheart.

[1:00:32] We've got Why Chooses Up the Wazoo.

[1:00:34] Reading Smut, the show where we read spicy books

[1:00:37] and figure out why people love them.

[1:00:39] Join us on Reading Smut every other Friday on Maximum Fun.

[1:00:42] Oh, that's a spicy book.

[1:00:46] Sleep is important, but it's difficult sometimes.

[1:00:50] I'm John Moe.

[1:00:51] On Sleeping With Celebrities, famous people help conk you out

[1:00:55] by talking in soothing voices about unimportant things.

[1:01:00] Maria Bamford on parking.

[1:01:02] I parked in a bus stop.

[1:01:04] That's just not right.

[1:01:05] I am not a bus.

[1:01:07] Roxanne Gay on airports.

[1:01:09] My favorite airport is Indianapolis.

[1:01:12] It has a really smart layout.

[1:01:14] Alan Tudyk on yardsticks.

[1:01:16] You hand somebody a yardstick, yardsticks become part of the family.

[1:01:21] Granted, it's a weird idea, but it's lots of fun and it works.

[1:01:26] Listen wherever you get podcasts.

[1:01:30] hello listeners just want to take a minute away from confronting fear to remind you that the flop

[1:01:35] house is going to be appearing live in person that's right dan stewart and me and joined by

[1:01:39] alex smith aka howell dotty in louisville kentucky september 18th at whirling tiger go to

[1:01:45] flophousepodcast.com slash events it's our first live show in a while i'm super excited about it i

[1:01:50] can't wait to get in front of an audience and perform our regular brand of nonsense and see

[1:01:55] what happens uh we're gonna be talking about the movie glitter starring mariah carey it should be

[1:01:59] Superfunds. That's September 18th at

[1:02:01] Whirling Tiger, Louisville, Kentucky. Go to

[1:02:03] flophousepodcast.com slash events.

[1:02:05] Can't make it to Louisville?

[1:02:07] All right. Well, we'll just have to come to you

[1:02:09] through your computer. Flop TV

[1:02:11] is coming back. It's season

[1:02:13] four. That's right. We're starting

[1:02:15] September 5th. That's a Saturday

[1:02:17] at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

[1:02:19] And then the show's going to be on the first

[1:02:21] Saturday of every month, September through

[1:02:23] February. This is our one-hour

[1:02:24] online video version of the podcast.

[1:02:27] This year, the theme is the worst of the best,

[1:02:30] best picture winners that maybe aren't very good.

[1:02:33] And we're gonna finish out the season

[1:02:34] by finally answering the question,

[1:02:36] is Out of Africa a real movie?

[1:02:39] Does it actually exist?

[1:02:40] Or is this some kind of psyop, kayfabe kind of thing

[1:02:44] that a lie that we've all been living under all this time?

[1:02:47] So that's Flop TV season four

[1:02:48] appearing on your computer screen.

[1:02:50] If you get tickets at theflophouse.simpletix.com,

[1:02:53] buy a ticket for an individual episode

[1:02:55] or buy a season pass that's six episodes

[1:02:57] for the price of five.

[1:02:58] Can't make it to the live broadcast?

[1:03:00] That's okay.

[1:03:01] Your ticket gets you access

[1:03:02] to the recording of that episode

[1:03:03] and those recordings will stay up on the site

[1:03:05] through the end of February.

[1:03:07] And of course, I have a couple of personal plugs,

[1:03:09] my regular stuff, my book, Joke Farming,

[1:03:10] How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense,

[1:03:12] which is all of my joke writing secrets in one place,

[1:03:15] is still available from the University of Chicago Press.

[1:03:17] Please pick it up and read it.

[1:03:19] There is also an audio book version.

[1:03:20] If you don't wanna use your eyes,

[1:03:22] you just wanna use your ears to absorb this information.

[1:03:24] My comic, Barbarian Behind Bars, from Mad Cave, is now out in a collected edition.

[1:03:29] It's a really fun, really violent story.

[1:03:31] I think you're going to like it, and I hope you pick it up.

[1:03:33] And, of course, I'm still writing a Harley Quinn monthly for DC Comics.

[1:03:37] Please pick that up, and I hope you enjoy it.

[1:03:39] And now, back to surfing footage.

[1:03:43] Let's answer some questions, some letters from listeners.

[1:03:47] Let's do it.

[1:03:48] I got a little bit of time.

[1:03:49] We've never done it before, but let's try it.

[1:03:51] I'm glad to hear that, Stuart, because we are still in the middle of taping the podcast.

[1:03:54] I'm glad.

[1:03:56] This one is from Dylan, last name withheld.

[1:03:59] McDermott?

[1:04:00] Probably.

[1:04:01] Who writes?

[1:04:02] We have to assume.

[1:04:04] Hey, floppers.

[1:04:04] Hey.

[1:04:05] What's up?

[1:04:06] Well, I can't answer that for Dylan,

[1:04:08] but I'll continue reading the-

[1:04:10] Do it in character.

[1:04:11] I was reading.

[1:04:15] Oh, wow.

[1:04:16] Oh, fuck.

[1:04:17] Got you, Dylan.

[1:04:18] Fuck.

[1:04:19] Dylan McDermott was just roasted

[1:04:21] because that didn't sound like it at all.

[1:04:23] Somebody get some fucking cow-mine lotion.

[1:04:25] I was recently watching the Stuart Gordon classic, Space Trucker.

[1:04:29] Sick.

[1:04:29] Yeah.

[1:04:29] And was instantly captured by the opening.

[1:04:31] Better than a movie called Space Trucker should be.

[1:04:33] Yeah.

[1:04:33] I was instantly captured by the opening gag of cages and cages of Martian square pigs ready for delivery.

[1:04:41] Something about the physicality of these goofy rubber pigs oinking and squealing really set something off in my brain.

[1:04:47] couldn't stop thinking about the work, skill, and effort

[1:04:50] that went into crafting them

[1:04:51] despite them only having about 10 seconds

[1:04:54] of total screen time.

[1:04:56] Do you have some other notable examples

[1:04:59] of throwaway gags or effects

[1:05:01] that really stood out or made a movie for you?

[1:05:03] Keep on flopping.

[1:05:05] Dylan, last name withheld.

[1:05:09] This is not a special effects thing.

[1:05:13] So I guess it does not go into the

[1:05:17] gags or effects category um a different meaning of the word gags i suppose it would it would you

[1:05:23] mean like choking someone yeah yeah uh no it's funny that you go to star wars because like the

[1:05:27] first thing that came to my mind in terms of like not a special effects gag but a joke gag was uh

[1:05:36] that really lodged my brain was in return of the jedi is it that one that creature that eats that

[1:05:41] other creature or no it's nothing else well you know what i couldn't remember whether that was in

[1:05:45] the special edition

[1:05:46] or was it in the original?

[1:05:50] That's the original.

[1:05:50] It's the establishing shot

[1:05:51] of Jabba's Palace

[1:05:52] and that thing just

[1:05:53] sticks out its tongue

[1:05:54] and that's the thing.

[1:05:55] Yeah, that's the original.

[1:05:55] Okay, well, that was

[1:05:56] the first thing.

[1:05:57] I thought that was

[1:05:58] in the special edition.

[1:05:59] I thought it was just there.

[1:06:00] No, that's an old one.

[1:06:01] That's an old one.

[1:06:01] Okay.

[1:06:02] Well, that was the first thing

[1:06:04] that came to mind,

[1:06:05] honestly, Elliot.

[1:06:06] And then I'm like,

[1:06:07] because I didn't know

[1:06:08] which edition it was in,

[1:06:09] I'm like,

[1:06:09] I don't want to talk about that.

[1:06:11] But I guess my brain

[1:06:12] was on Return of the Jedi,

[1:06:14] so I just thought

[1:06:14] as a joke moment

[1:06:17] that was like throw away

[1:06:18] the Rancor Keeper coming in

[1:06:21] and being so sad

[1:06:23] that his Rancor has been killed.

[1:06:25] That's a great moment, yeah.

[1:06:27] Just like a couple of seconds,

[1:06:29] but it adds so much depth

[1:06:30] to the movie.

[1:06:33] You know, it means something

[1:06:36] in a small moment.

[1:06:38] I mean, to keep with the theme,

[1:06:40] the joke in Spaceballs,

[1:06:43] the aliens joke,

[1:06:44] where the alien pops out of his chest

[1:06:46] and then does the little, what, frog,

[1:06:50] like, hello, my baby number.

[1:06:52] Michigan J-Frog.

[1:06:54] It's a very silly gag,

[1:06:55] but, like, they put a lot of work into it.

[1:06:57] That's actually John Hurt, right?

[1:06:58] They actually got John Hurt to be in there.

[1:07:00] Yes, yes.

[1:07:01] It's great.

[1:07:01] It's like, no, not again, yeah.

[1:07:04] That's a lot of work for kind of a dumb joke.

[1:07:06] I like it.

[1:07:06] It's a, yeah.

[1:07:08] A lot of effects for a dumb joke.

[1:07:09] I think whenever you do it,

[1:07:10] I mean, the thing that always gets me,

[1:07:12] this is not a movie thing,

[1:07:12] it because i thought about that that creature in return of the jedi because it's like that's

[1:07:16] that's puppetry and things like that but also they do that kind of stuff in the in the tv show

[1:07:20] the young ones a lot where they'll open a door to a room and suddenly there's a lion tamer in there

[1:07:24] and you see a lion tamer for like a little bit and then they close the door and that's it there's no

[1:07:29] like and it's like well they had to do a lot of there's a there's a moment in the beginning of

[1:07:32] the movie million dollar legs where a guy just walks across the screen with a bear on a leash

[1:07:38] to show you that this is like a foreign country and i remember talking to john oliver about that

[1:07:42] movie and he was like they had to get a bear like they had to bring it there like that's work you

[1:07:47] know yeah no that's i mean like i always love that kind of stuff because the the joke is funny or the

[1:07:56] or the moment is striking but then there's just the metal level of like yeah they put so much

[1:08:02] effort into a thing that arguably is unnecessary or stupid and that makes it more valuable to me

[1:08:09] yeah yeah it's it is funnier when when a lot of work is put into a throwaway thing yeah yeah for

[1:08:17] sure um this is from parker last name withheld but it's not posy sorry it's it's parker louis

[1:08:25] lose yeah from the desk of plc lose uh hi floppers hey hey parker hey hey i have been

[1:08:37] What does Parker sound like?

[1:08:39] Hey.

[1:08:40] Oh, okay.

[1:08:41] I'm into it.

[1:08:42] I have been greatly amused

[1:08:44] by your ongoing stand-up and cheer bit

[1:08:47] you've incorporated into the Flophouse ethos.

[1:08:49] We incorporated it, yeah.

[1:08:54] Recently, when watching my neighbor...

[1:08:57] Goddamn.

[1:08:59] Now I'm throwing up.

[1:09:00] Recently, while watching...

[1:09:00] No, my neighbor Totoro.

[1:09:03] Recently, when watching my neighbor Totoro

[1:09:07] for the 20th time with my two-year-old,

[1:09:10] I thought to myself...

[1:09:11] That's a hard sentence to say.

[1:09:13] Totoro, 20th time, two-year-old.

[1:09:16] That's an English actor's warm-up thing.

[1:09:19] Totoro, Totoro.

[1:09:21] Oh, my neighbor Totoro.

[1:09:24] Oh, I was talking to Totoro.

[1:09:26] 20 times with my two-year-old.

[1:09:29] Totoro, he don't say much,

[1:09:30] but 20 times my two-year-old was talking to Totoro.

[1:09:32] I missed the cat bus,

[1:09:34] and so I was walking through terrain

[1:09:36] with my neighbor Totoro.

[1:09:37] I says to Totoro, I says, ta-ta, Totoro.

[1:09:40] Ta-ta, Totoro.

[1:09:41] No time for ye.

[1:09:44] I thought to myself that when Satsuki boards the catbush

[1:09:47] and rushes off to save her sister Mai,

[1:09:50] that it was a genuine, honest-to-God stand-up and cheer moment.

[1:09:54] So my question to you guys is,

[1:09:55] what is your favorite genuine stand-up and cheer moment in a movie?

[1:10:00] Keep flopping those flops.

[1:10:02] Love ya's.

[1:10:03] This is a hard question because the fact is

[1:10:05] there are so many genuine stand up and cheer moments in movies it's what make movies amazing

[1:10:10] is that there are so many of them where there's a moment in it that is and what makes the stand up

[1:10:15] and cheer gag about the flash entering the speed force so such a strong joke for us is because

[1:10:21] there are movies where you want to stand up and cheer this is not even superhero movies even

[1:10:26] superheroes i mean one of them i hate to go to the superhero world but one of them is the scene

[1:10:29] in spider-man 2 when spider-man fights dr octopus on the train and then he's about to fall off the

[1:10:34] train and all those hands catch him and pull him on and it's not so much a like i think for me it's

[1:10:39] not so much stand-up and cheer it's like there are movies that make me like tear up a little bit at a

[1:10:43] big moment and so like yeah there's a moment or like in et when elliot realizes that et is still

[1:10:48] alive after he thinks that he's died that's a stand-up and cheer moment for me but it's also

[1:10:52] one where i'm like crying a little bit in the iron giant the older brother like bonks his head he's

[1:10:57] so like happy that's such a great moment in et but it's like the uh there's a there's a there's a

[1:11:03] like a great great movies have a have a lot of those types of moments you know and it's a

[1:11:07] i don't know what it wants that to come to you and it's it's it's the it's the the uh the the

[1:11:12] chutzpah of them being like oh yeah the flash entering the speed force a moment no one cares

[1:11:16] about or remembers yeah it doesn't mean anything you know uh one that came to my mind um was that

[1:11:23] in college uh my first roommate shout out to matt bartmoss uh he's not listening but hi uh

[1:11:31] You have to shout pretty loud then, yeah.

[1:11:33] He had the Wallace and Gromit movies,

[1:11:35] at that time, the three shorts on VHS,

[1:11:39] and I had never seen Wallace and Gromit,

[1:11:40] and he knew that I also grew up in an Anglophile household.

[1:11:44] He's like, oh, you would love these things.

[1:11:46] This is going to be right up your alley.

[1:11:48] He had a screening of The Wrong Trousers

[1:11:52] with a bunch of our other friends on our dorm hall

[1:11:54] who had also not seen a Wallace and Gromit thing,

[1:11:57] And at the end of the climactic chase

[1:12:02] where like, you know,

[1:12:04] Gromit is laying down track

[1:12:06] for the toy train

[1:12:08] to chase Feathers McGraw around,

[1:12:12] you know, like,

[1:12:12] and everything resolves itself magically

[1:12:16] all at once at the very end.

[1:12:18] Like the room burst into spontaneous applause.

[1:12:22] So that one stuck out for me.

[1:12:24] I was watching Dirty Dancing

[1:12:26] with my wife recently.

[1:12:26] that's her favorite movie

[1:12:27] we watch it

[1:12:28] we've watched it many times

[1:12:29] yeah it's incredible

[1:12:29] every now and she's just like

[1:12:30] I'm gonna watch it

[1:12:31] when he

[1:12:31] when Patrick Swayze

[1:12:32] pulls baby out of the corner

[1:12:33] like that's a stand up

[1:12:34] and cheer moment

[1:12:34] it's great

[1:12:35] it's great

[1:12:35] it's a wonderful moment

[1:12:37] yeah

[1:12:37] it's the part in Return of the King

[1:12:40] where at the end

[1:12:41] during the coronation

[1:12:42] is it the wedding

[1:12:43] or coronation

[1:12:44] where

[1:12:44] you know me

[1:12:45] you're better than me man

[1:12:46] this is your bailiwick

[1:12:47] everyone's

[1:12:48] everyone's taking a knee

[1:12:49] and

[1:12:50] actually you know

[1:12:52] I'm not gonna

[1:12:53] I mean there's so many moments

[1:12:54] in Lord of the Rings

[1:12:55] but I think for me

[1:12:55] the one that always gets me

[1:12:56] is the opening of Two Towers

[1:12:57] where Gandalf falls down

[1:12:59] into the pit after the Balrog.

[1:13:00] Every time it gives me a rush

[1:13:02] to see this little gray pilgrim

[1:13:05] falling down after a massive fire demon.

[1:13:07] That's when Stuart stands up and cheers.

[1:13:08] That's when I stand up and cheer.

[1:13:10] Gandalf is dead.

[1:13:12] Well, I'm like,

[1:13:13] the thing is,

[1:13:14] we thought Gandalf was dead.

[1:13:16] We thought Gandalf was dead,

[1:13:17] but you see him do the craziest thing

[1:13:20] where he's like,

[1:13:21] I'm not just being dragged down there.

[1:13:23] He's being dragged down there with me.

[1:13:26] real Rorschach

[1:13:28] yeah yeah

[1:13:29] well he's got some

[1:13:31] crazy politics

[1:13:32] yeah yeah

[1:13:33] have you heard him

[1:13:34] talk about white shores

[1:13:35] before

[1:13:35] yikes

[1:13:36] Gandalf's like

[1:13:37] someday all the

[1:13:38] hobbits

[1:13:39] and all the

[1:13:40] gnomes

[1:13:40] dwarves will cry out

[1:13:41] for me to save them

[1:13:42] and I'll say no

[1:13:43] it is true that

[1:13:44] Gandalf believes

[1:13:45] he's gotten better

[1:13:46] as he's gotten whiter

[1:13:47] so

[1:13:48] I remember having

[1:13:52] a conversation with

[1:13:53] years ago

[1:13:54] when Watchmen

[1:13:54] was just a comic

[1:13:55] having a conversation

[1:13:56] with a friend of mine

[1:13:57] about who was the hero

[1:13:58] of that book

[1:13:59] and he was like

[1:13:59] well it's obviously Rorschach

[1:14:00] like Rorschach's the hero

[1:14:01] and I was like

[1:14:01] are you crazy

[1:14:02] and it was like

[1:14:03] one of these moments

[1:14:03] where I like saw

[1:14:04] I mean or like

[1:14:05] 16 or something

[1:14:06] yes

[1:14:07] but like just

[1:14:08] but even then

[1:14:08] seeing into my friend

[1:14:10] and being like

[1:14:10] oh there's something in you

[1:14:11] that does not connect with me

[1:14:12] no I mean like

[1:14:13] I mean obviously

[1:14:14] Rorschach has like

[1:14:15] a lot of issues

[1:14:16] but I think the confusion

[1:14:17] that

[1:14:18] well no I'm like

[1:14:18] he does have a lot of issues

[1:14:20] he's got a real screw loose

[1:14:21] I think that the confusion

[1:14:23] comes like from people

[1:14:24] my mom's Italian

[1:14:25] my dad's Jewish

[1:14:25] I think the confusion comes from people being like, well, that character has moral clarity.

[1:14:31] And you're like, yeah, but he's got too much moral clarity.

[1:14:34] He has principles and also that he is, he has principles and he stands up to them as

[1:14:37] opposed to like, you know, because I'm a nerdy, weak guy, I was always like, oh, well, Night

[1:14:41] Owl is clearly the hero of this book, but like Night Owl is soft, you know, in a way

[1:14:45] that's easy to denigrate.

[1:14:46] So, you know, he ends up with the girl.

[1:14:49] I mean, come on, you know.

[1:14:50] Yeah.

[1:14:51] But like the part of the point of it is like sometimes your, your, your own clarity leads

[1:14:55] you to the wrong place you know yes you could say it's what much of the book is about because

[1:14:59] it's also ozzy mandis's problem so my recommendation is watchmen the comic although i i to be honest i

[1:15:05] read my one of my favorite comic book podcasts screw it we're just gonna talk about comics uh

[1:15:08] hosted by the heinz brothers uh they did a watchmen season and i was reading along as they

[1:15:14] were rereading it as they were doing it and it was the first time in years that i had looked at

[1:15:18] watchmen and like you know what this is a pretty sour book this is a little too sour for me right

[1:15:23] now you know yeah too dour dour and sour uh the two brothers um no the two brothers are

[1:15:30] will and kevin hines okay yeah um but which one would be dour and which one would be sour if they

[1:15:35] if you had so hard to choose yeah yeah um i also listened to that uh series uh it was good um let

[1:15:44] us recommend movies you and i a movie for the evening sun something etc like who knows what

[1:15:52] this evening sun is going to do it could do anything could explode it could rise you don't

[1:15:55] remember the circle around yeah yeah um but you know what the sun does that they do in the evening

[1:16:00] right yeah but it's like yeah it sets but that's not what the fucking poem says no but that's what

[1:16:07] it does yeah the horizon is really moving this is something it's a conversation i've had with my

[1:16:11] it is really moving yeah this is this is a this is my version of so when my i was a kid my dad

[1:16:17] would always have a conversation with me about how amazing modern telecommunications technology is

[1:16:21] like can it's astounding you know in the old days you'd have to take a ship and you'd carry a letter

[1:16:26] across the ocean this was his dad talked to me and i realized my dad it's astounding time is fleeting

[1:16:31] madness takes control that's what my dad would say and then we'd have to of course we then we'd

[1:16:35] have to take a step to the left and then it jumped to the right yeah and uh i would go look at that

[1:16:39] whale but my version of that with my kids is the basic the basic importance of the fact that we

[1:16:46] are on a planet that turns and goes around the sun that and creates seasons that every single

[1:16:51] aspect of human life and civilization.

[1:16:53] And not only that, but animal and plant life

[1:16:55] is based around that fact

[1:16:56] that the Earth turns and orbits the

[1:16:59] sun. And my kids are so bored by this conversation.

[1:17:01] I mean, you're blowing my mind.

[1:17:03] It's not for children.

[1:17:05] You're blowing my mind,

[1:17:07] but I have like had three gummies today.

[1:17:09] Oh, wow.

[1:17:12] Well, I took

[1:17:13] one and then I'm like, did I have

[1:17:15] a gummy already? Probably not.

[1:17:17] And then you're like, those two gummies are probably

[1:17:18] lost to the third one and then i was like i'm i'm hunky let me throw another gummy one gummy's my

[1:17:26] limit it has to be pretty low gummy these days um wish there was a way for me to do it without

[1:17:30] gummies don't like gummy things yeah there you can do chocolate i could that's true every year

[1:17:36] every year as i whenever i have my birthday i go i go to my wife i go is this the year that i start

[1:17:40] getting high she's like i don't think so i mean i feel like it might help you go to sleep yeah

[1:17:46] Yeah, that's true.

[1:17:47] Like, turn your brain off and just fucking float.

[1:17:49] It depends.

[1:17:50] The effect's fair.

[1:17:51] You can try it.

[1:17:52] I'm not saying, like, I'm not saying commit to the lifestyle.

[1:17:55] Don't, like, buy a bunch of fucking, don't, like, start wearing a fucking drug rug.

[1:18:00] Yeah, get a Baja.

[1:18:01] She comes home and I've replaced all the lamps with lava lamps.

[1:18:04] I'm like, this is what we do now.

[1:18:06] All the artists, blacklight posters.

[1:18:08] I finally get Floyd, man.

[1:18:12] Okay.

[1:18:13] These are all Floyd.

[1:18:14] Let's talk about the planet's rotations.

[1:18:16] they're like oh it's not that different

[1:18:19] well what I've always said to my kids

[1:18:20] these are all old stoner things by the way

[1:18:22] I wonder what new stoners do

[1:18:23] I don't know what new stoners do

[1:18:24] they probably just sit and play video games all day

[1:18:26] yeah they fucking bed rot and doom scroll

[1:18:28] so the one of the thing that I've always said

[1:18:31] and we'll get to recommendations I apologize

[1:18:33] sorry bed rot and doom scroll

[1:18:34] is like my favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain

[1:18:37] I was going to say those are my favorite pieces of ice

[1:18:41] in Netrunner

[1:18:42] yeah the uh that what my kids i've had i've started to talk to my older son about drugs a

[1:18:46] little bit and just to you know be aware of them and he knows i don't do them and i and my line

[1:18:52] with them is i'm like well i don't i have such a loose grip on my understanding of reality already

[1:18:56] there's already enough times when i think i see something out of the corner of my eye and i have

[1:18:59] to turn and there's nothing there i don't need to add more of that into my life you know i'm already

[1:19:04] teetering on the edge of madness i don't need to give myself a shove you know guys i i i sometimes

[1:19:10] leave the okay so don't read those books those Sutter Cain books I mailed you Sutter Cain he's

[1:19:16] my favorite author why are my eyes bleeding sometimes I leave the wok uncleaned a little

[1:19:22] bit on the stove because you know like I have to I have to re-season it after I clean it you know

[1:19:28] it's one of those types of and I like perch it on top of the um the uh the Dutch oven which also

[1:19:34] lives on the stove a lot of time just because they're so big ours is the same our skillet and

[1:19:38] our dutch oven basically on the stove top which you know but the the blackness of the lock and

[1:19:43] and the um the handle pointing up every time i see it out of the corner of my eye i think that

[1:19:49] one of our cats is sitting on the stove over there um pointless story but i'm glad

[1:19:56] i liked it i liked that a lot let's let's recommend we spent a lot of time talking

[1:20:03] about surfer teen confronts fear.

[1:20:04] We owe ourselves some human connection.

[1:20:07] Yeah, let's just talk about stuff from our lives, man.

[1:20:09] Yeah, come on.

[1:20:11] Confront that fear.

[1:20:12] The thing is that there's always whales

[1:20:13] at the bottom of the sea howling for cowardly men.

[1:20:16] They're always crying.

[1:20:17] There's always one crying, yeah.

[1:20:20] I know why the whales cry.

[1:20:21] When one washes up on a beach,

[1:20:24] it's because a coward did not go down there

[1:20:26] and get chomped on.

[1:20:28] Yeah.

[1:20:28] Oh, wow.

[1:20:29] That's what he says, right?

[1:20:30] That's basically what he says.

[1:20:31] That's a lot of weight on me, a coward.

[1:20:32] Yeah.

[1:20:32] There's other cowards.

[1:20:33] It's not just you, Dan.

[1:20:34] Yeah.

[1:20:35] Classic, classic straight white man.

[1:20:37] We mentioned something and you assume it's about you.

[1:20:40] Yeah, I'm sorry for centering myself on this whale tragedy.

[1:20:42] Yeah, it's okay.

[1:20:44] It's about the whales, Dan.

[1:20:47] Let's recommend a movie that we have seen.

[1:20:51] It gets us playing into that whale savior narrative.

[1:20:54] Yeah.

[1:20:55] Let's recommend some movies, shall we?

[1:20:57] Yeah, I went out and I saw.

[1:20:58] Like a movie that you saw.

[1:21:00] So why don't you talk?

[1:21:00] You've seen movies, Dan.

[1:21:01] Why don't you tell us a movie you saw that you liked?

[1:21:03] Oh, boy, have I.

[1:21:04] I saw a movie.

[1:21:06] You would not believe the movies I've seen.

[1:21:08] I saw a movie.

[1:21:09] Yeah, sea beams glittering off Alpha Centauri or shit, you know?

[1:21:12] Attack ships on fire.

[1:21:14] Yeah, that kind of shit.

[1:21:16] If Roy Batty watched Teen Confronts Fear, he would be like, ugh.

[1:21:19] I feel like he'd really get it.

[1:21:21] He'd be like, I'm ready to go now.

[1:21:22] I'm ready to melt away like tears in the rain.

[1:21:26] I saw it in a theater, but it's an old movie.

[1:21:28] What?

[1:21:29] How is that possible?

[1:21:30] How did they do that?

[1:21:31] Did you go back in time?

[1:21:33] It's the new 4K remaster.

[1:21:35] I think you said old.

[1:21:37] What?

[1:21:37] It's the 4K.

[1:21:38] The remaster is new.

[1:21:39] The 4K remaster of the, I guess, director's cut of Manhunter.

[1:21:45] Oh, okay.

[1:21:46] The Michael Mann picture based on Red Dragon.

[1:21:48] It must have been so hard when Michael Mann was making that

[1:21:51] because he would think that they were hunting him all the time.

[1:21:53] Yeah, it must have been...

[1:21:54] He would run away.

[1:21:57] Now, so Manhunter, the original, is one of those almost perfect movies.

[1:22:03] So how did this fare?

[1:22:05] Well, the thing is, like, I love Manhunter, but I've seen it, like, this may be the fourth time I've seen it in over, like, the course of 40-ish years.

[1:22:13] Your life, yeah.

[1:22:13] So I am not into Manhunter.

[1:22:15] And those first 10 years, I'm guessing, you didn't see Manhunter.

[1:22:18] So really, it's like 30-some-odd years, yeah.

[1:22:21] Dan's thinking, like, was I seven when I watched Manhunter the first time?

[1:22:24] It's kind of possible, but, you know, how things were.

[1:22:27] On your fifth birthday, did we go to see Manhunter or did we go to see the Care Bears movie?

[1:22:31] Land Before Time.

[1:22:32] Yeah, Land Before Time.

[1:22:34] No, I'm not so versed on Manhunter, despite loving it, to be able to, like, point to the differences.

[1:22:45] There is one scene at the end that I'm like, oh, I'm pretty sure this is new.

[1:22:49] And that's, like, the best I could do.

[1:22:52] But it was an ad for Amazon.

[1:22:55] But I can report, like, I have seen real Manhunter fans post online that the theatrical cut is better.

[1:23:03] Whatever.

[1:23:05] I enjoyed seeing Manhunter in the theater.

[1:23:07] It did not really change the experience that much for me that it was a slightly different cut.

[1:23:13] But everything that's great about the movie was still great.

[1:23:16] It's got such immaculate vibes.

[1:23:20] It's got such great music, such great cinematography.

[1:23:23] Got Tom Noonan.

[1:23:24] Can't go wrong.

[1:23:25] I'm William Peterson.

[1:23:27] But the thing that really struck me watching it this time actually was...

[1:23:33] That the Tooth Fairy is not the hero.

[1:23:35] Yeah, I was like, he's a cool dude.

[1:23:39] He's got strong rules that he follows.

[1:23:43] No, especially considering how, like, Baroque and over-the-top...

[1:23:49] Oh, I'd say it's not Baroque at all.

[1:23:50] ...serial killers movies became later.

[1:23:53] Yes.

[1:23:53] the the genre that this movie essentially created uh like this is so restrained despite like the

[1:24:02] kind of mtv style of it it is so restrained like i noticed like like we don't start with on-screen

[1:24:10] violence we start with the effects of violence like we see william peterson like will graham

[1:24:15] going through a crime scene you know after the violence has already occurred and experiencing

[1:24:21] it like how it must have happened like

[1:24:23] thinking it through but

[1:24:25] we just see a bunch of blood on the walls

[1:24:27] it's not like we gotta start

[1:24:29] this movie off with a bang and it's so much more

[1:24:31] effective to like have this slow burn

[1:24:33] it is like

[1:24:35] halfway through the movie before we

[1:24:37] see Tom Noonan's

[1:24:39] character Dollar Hyde

[1:24:40] the red dragon the tooth

[1:24:43] fairy whatever however you want to refer to it

[1:24:45] he's got a lot of names

[1:24:46] and it is a

[1:24:49] really sort of like

[1:24:50] reasonable procedural like will graham is making a few like leaps but it's not one of these like

[1:24:58] later like he like somehow knows exactly what the killer is thinking like it's more like

[1:25:04] he has put himself in this mindset and he makes leaps that seem logical to us the audience you

[1:25:12] know and a lot of the other stuff surrounding that stuff is just like fbi procedural stuff

[1:25:20] that seems really, like, legit.

[1:25:22] And I like how it's really kind of a grounded movie

[1:25:28] in addition to being a really stylish one.

[1:25:30] And you were saying this special edition,

[1:25:32] they went back and digitally added Anthony Hopkins

[1:25:34] in place of Brian Cox.

[1:25:36] The one problem this movie had.

[1:25:38] As they were always intended from the beginning.

[1:25:40] Yeah.

[1:25:42] Anyway, that's my recommendation.

[1:25:44] You guys go.

[1:25:44] Yeah, I really want to see it.

[1:25:46] I am going to recommend a movie

[1:25:48] that might still be out.

[1:25:50] When does this episode come out?

[1:25:51] Small-vember.

[1:25:52] Small-vember.

[1:25:53] It should still be out.

[1:25:54] I am recommending the new Jane Shunbrun movie,

[1:25:57] Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

[1:26:00] At Camp Miasma.

[1:26:02] This, I was lucky enough to get to go to see

[1:26:05] an early screening of this while I was up in Toronto.

[1:26:07] Thank you, friend of the podcast, Peter Koplowski,

[1:26:10] for getting me in.

[1:26:12] I was such a huge fan of Jane's first two movies.

[1:26:17] Specifically, I saw that TV Glow really crushed me, and I feel like that movie, they're able to get across the experience of transitioning, drawing from this collection of references that makes so much sense.

[1:26:36] Like, I feel like you could hand that movie to anybody who has been obsessed with it, like, a niche thing, and they would get it.

[1:26:43] Like, they'd be like, okay, this all makes sense.

[1:26:45] Thank you.

[1:26:45] But it's also, like, kind of a sledgehammer and sad.

[1:26:49] So going into this, going into Camp Miasma, I really didn't know what to expect.

[1:26:54] And it's, what is so great about Camp Miasma is that it's, like, so joyful and playful.

[1:27:01] And it's basically about sex as told through and like coming to understand sex and connect with it through the language of slasher movies, which, yeah, it's it was really great and weird and silly and playful and funny.

[1:27:21] And it's great.

[1:27:23] And it's got some really great performances.

[1:27:24] And Kevin McDonald shows up.

[1:27:26] And there's a couple of there's like there was definitely at least one needle drop that I felt like I was the oldest person in the audience, which I probably was.

[1:27:35] It was like an audience of all very young, cool, queer kids.

[1:27:38] And then grandpa over here chuckling that Kevin McDonald showed up.

[1:27:43] But, yeah, it's really cool.

[1:27:45] And I'm looking forward to I'm going to go see it again this week.

[1:27:49] And I think I'm going to run over to the Museum of the Moving Image here in New York where they have an exhibit of some of the props, which one of the things that this movie has clearly has a love of slasher movies is through some of the props that they have there.

[1:28:02] So check it out.

[1:28:03] Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

[1:28:05] Yeah, I really want to see that one.

[1:28:07] I'm going to recommend – I haven't gotten to see a lot of movies lately.

[1:28:11] Story of my life.

[1:28:12] But there was a movie that I rewatched recently, and it feels like it actually dovetails with Surfer Teen Confronts Fear pretty well, where I'm like, this movie, most of it is someone standing there while another person talks about their philosophy of life in the strangest possible way, and they don't get a chance to respond.

[1:28:35] Like, the surfer never really gets a chance to respond.

[1:28:37] So is there a good version of this movie where someone is explaining their strange kind of life and philosophy and the other person does get to respond?

[1:28:47] And I realized, oh, there is a good version of this, and I just rewatched it, and that's My Dinner with Andre from 1981 directed by Louis Mall starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn as kind of versions of themselves where this is the movie when I was growing up.

[1:28:59] It was like this was – if Ishtar was your go-to reference for bad movie, this was your go-to reference for like boring smart person movie.

[1:29:07] And so I put off watching it for a long time.

[1:29:09] When I finally watched it, I was old enough to get it.

[1:29:11] It's an amazing movie.

[1:29:12] It's a really fantastic movie.

[1:29:13] And it's just two guys having dinner,

[1:29:16] talking about their views on where art and life intersect

[1:29:19] and their anxieties about those things.

[1:29:21] And I remember Andre Gregory is so poised

[1:29:24] throughout the movie,

[1:29:25] even as he's saying bonkers things.

[1:29:27] And Wallace Shawn is so like agitated in his performance.

[1:29:31] And yet watching at this time,

[1:29:32] it made me realize that Wallace Shawn is the character

[1:29:34] who really stands by his guns

[1:29:36] and seems to like have a strong way of thinking.

[1:29:39] Whereas Andre Gregory,

[1:29:40] even though he talks in a very poised way,

[1:29:42] kind of just whatever Wallace Shawn says,

[1:29:45] he's like, yeah, yeah.

[1:29:45] But also it could be, you know,

[1:29:47] yeah, you're right.

[1:29:47] And it could be like this,

[1:29:48] like he's much more malleable,

[1:29:50] even though he at first seems to be the more senior

[1:29:52] and the more poised and the more wise of the two.

[1:29:55] And there's just so much in it,

[1:29:57] not just about the way they're talking,

[1:29:58] what they're talking about,

[1:29:59] but like the dynamic between the two of them

[1:30:02] and what's going on underneath that.

[1:30:04] And it's just, it's a really wonderful movie.

[1:30:06] And really fascinating.

[1:30:07] And I was like, oh, surfer teen confronts fear is like the shitty version of My Dinner with Andre made by somebody who doesn't really have anything interesting to say and doesn't really know how to imbue that with human emotion or human worries or things like that.

[1:30:21] I would say if anyone out there is like, you know, like you sort of you were intimidated by the idea of watching My Dinner with Andre, like you're listening to a podcast.

[1:30:33] You like hearing people just have, like, conversations that weave around.

[1:30:40] I didn't even think about that.

[1:30:42] It does feel very much like a movie version of it,

[1:30:44] like a proto-podcast between these two guys,

[1:30:46] except that there's a real...

[1:30:49] There's a design to it.

[1:30:49] There's a structured, dramatic structure to it.

[1:30:54] I was trying to think of another word other than the structure.

[1:30:56] Like, a form to it.

[1:30:57] What?

[1:30:58] I said, no need.

[1:30:59] Yeah, that's true.

[1:31:00] There is a dramatic form to it, and they are playing characters.

[1:31:02] That's a script that Dan sends us before every episode that we adhere to carefully.

[1:31:06] That we have to do word for word for word.

[1:31:08] Yeah, and then redo an ADR later.

[1:31:10] I don't know why we're ADR-ing an audio podcast, but that's the way it works.

[1:31:13] Trying to match lips, baby.

[1:31:15] But also one of the fun things about My Dinner with Andre is that they are talking about theater and life and things like that.

[1:31:20] But the stories that Andre Gregory tells are bonkers.

[1:31:24] And Wallace Shawn, just watching him kind of at a certain point, like, what are you talking about?

[1:31:28] Like, what is this?

[1:31:29] Like, it's a—it is very fun, and it is entertaining.

[1:31:33] And so it's a—I highly recommend it.

[1:31:35] If you've ever put it off because you thought it was going to be boring,

[1:31:38] at least watch the first 30 minutes, you know,

[1:31:41] and then I think you'll watch the rest of it, too.

[1:31:42] It's not a long movie.

[1:31:44] It's really fun.

[1:31:45] Yeah, you hit on something—like, they really play up.

[1:31:48] Like, you know, you might think it was boring because it's just people talking,

[1:31:52] but it's a dynamic between two people.

[1:31:56] They play up the odd coupleness of like Andre Gregory is this like wandering adventurer

[1:32:02] and Wallace Shawn just like wants to stay home in his New York apartment and have his

[1:32:06] comforts, you know, like that's part of it.

[1:32:08] That's part of the fun.

[1:32:09] Perfect podcast.

[1:32:10] It is a perfect podcast.

[1:32:12] I mean, I feel like the best podcasts are the ones where you have two weird dudes talking

[1:32:16] about stuff.

[1:32:17] But they're weird in different ways.

[1:32:19] Yeah.

[1:32:19] They have to overlap just enough.

[1:32:21] You can read all about it in Joke Farming in my podcast chapter.

[1:32:24] Oh, that's true.

[1:32:25] Yeah.

[1:32:26] Um, you made it into Elliot's book, uh, Stuart, were you aware of this?

[1:32:30] We're in there.

[1:32:31] I haven't finished reading his book.

[1:32:33] I am?

[1:32:34] I'm like page three or something.

[1:32:35] It's okay, we haven't even started.

[1:32:36] My, my dad, this is the kind of stuff my dad says all the time.

[1:32:39] He goes, he goes, how are sales on the book doing?

[1:32:41] Has anyone else read the whole thing or just me?

[1:32:43] Am I the only person who read it all the way through?

[1:32:45] And I'm like, come on, man.

[1:32:47] Weird.

[1:32:48] Your, your therapist hears that shit and is like, ching ching.

[1:32:52] We found a rock to kick over.

[1:32:54] He does that kind of stuff all the time.

[1:32:55] It's really funny.

[1:32:56] um okay well uh yeah my dad did a thing um this recent vision where after complaining about

[1:33:04] everyone else in the family he's like but that's like your aunt's a judgmental person i'm not and

[1:33:09] i was like bitch um wow we're confronting a lot of things along with fear and thank you for uh

[1:33:19] confronting server team confronts fear with me uh for for a second time for me this is my second

[1:33:25] go around uh yeah i'm glad i could be there with seemed longer somehow uh anyway uh thank you we

[1:33:32] didn't have to go it alone yeah thank you to maximum fun go to maximum fun.org check out all

[1:33:39] the other great podcasts on our podcasting network thank you to mr alex smith uh that you still have

[1:33:47] time to see him with us in louisville when this releases get tickets if you're in the area uh

[1:33:54] We're talking glitter, folks.

[1:33:56] Glitter.

[1:33:57] Glitter.

[1:33:59] Performing as Howl Dottie.

[1:34:01] And maybe if you go,

[1:34:03] you'll finally learn how to spell Howl Dottie

[1:34:05] so you can Google it.

[1:34:07] I mention it on every episode,

[1:34:09] and I'm like,

[1:34:09] people are going to have trouble finding Alex.

[1:34:11] I don't mean to threaten anyone here,

[1:34:13] but I will say,

[1:34:15] if you're thinking,

[1:34:16] eh, they're going to release the episode at some point,

[1:34:18] I'll wait until they release it.

[1:34:20] Well, there's an above-zero chance

[1:34:23] we are going to fuck something up

[1:34:24] and lose the audio.

[1:34:25] That's true.

[1:34:26] It wouldn't be the first or second time.

[1:34:27] At any time.

[1:34:29] Yeah.

[1:34:30] So, yeah, we hope to see you there

[1:34:32] if you're in the area.

[1:34:32] But anyway, for The Flophouse,

[1:34:34] I have been Dan McCoy.

[1:34:35] Hey, I'm your one and only.

[1:34:38] That's Stuart Wellington, baby.

[1:34:40] And I'm Elliot Kalin,

[1:34:41] just wandering the universe

[1:34:43] on this planet that turns

[1:34:45] and also orbits at the same time.

[1:34:47] Think about it.

[1:34:48] Yeah, squid and electricity.

[1:34:53] hell you're you're summarizing i'm sorry i got my notes set up for it genuinely you know it just it

[1:35:04] it it came you came up in the rotation i didn't like juke the stats or anything i was like phew

[1:35:10] i don't have to summarize the moment oh shit yeah this one's uh it's tough yeah i i got i mean i did

[1:35:18] I did some pre-work in organizing my notes.

[1:35:20] Okay.

[1:35:22] Let's roll into it.

[1:35:26] I'll let Stuart finish his slice of mango.

[1:35:30] Mango, mango.

[1:35:30] Can we turn Stuart into the one who canonically is wasting Flophouse time with mango now?

[1:35:36] I don't know.

[1:35:39] We can switch that over.

[1:35:41] I'll talk to the kids about it because that's a favorite of theirs.

[1:35:45] Okay.

[1:35:47] Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.

Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear

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