Ep. #349 - Space Jam: A New Legacy

Dan McCoy

[0:00] On this episode we discuss Space Jam, A New Legacy.

Elliott Kalan

[0:04] Starring Thebron James. I translated his name from the French.

Dan McCoy

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

Stuart Wellington

[0:37] Hey, listen to that pro intro. That's Dan McCoy and I'm Stuart Wellington, his right-hand man.

Elliott Kalan

[0:42] Look at that professional right-hand man backing up that professional intro guy.

[0:46] And here's Elliot Kalin, kind of an amateur when it comes to talking into microphones.

[0:50] But the kind of amateur that is a pro.

Dan McCoy

[0:53] That kids love and parents tolerate.

Elliott Kalan

[0:58] Hey, I'm kid-tested, also kid-failed. I did not pass the test when the kids put me to the test.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05] And what kind of a test was that? Like a push-up contest?

Elliott Kalan

[1:08] It was a push-up contest with a toddler, and he easily bested me.

[1:13] I was having so much trouble, and he can't even stand for longer than a couple minutes at a time, but his push-ups were amazing.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20] Because that's the thing, Ant-Man told us that toddlers have the proportional strength of an ant,

[1:24] so they're going to be super strong despite their small size.

[1:27] Did Ant-Man tell us that about toddlers?

[1:29] Yeah, I don't remember that.

[1:30] Oh, it was Baby, I Blew Up the Kid.

[1:32] Yeah, that's, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:33] Baby, I Blew Up the Kid.

[1:35] Baby!

[1:36] The Christmas standard, Baby, I Blew Up the Kid.

[1:39] Baby!

Elliott Kalan

[1:41] Baby, I Blew Up the Kid.

[1:44] We all remember the iced tea commercial where Frank Snodder takes a sip and he goes,

[1:48] I Blew Up the Kid, Baby!

Stuart Wellington

[1:50] Okay, stop fucking around, guys.

[1:51] What do we do here?

Dan McCoy

[1:53] This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:57] That's what they call all business Wellington.

Dan McCoy

[1:59] And then we talk about it.

[2:02] And this time we watched Space Jam, A New Legacy.

[2:05] That's the second Space Jam movie.

[2:09] Thank you.

[2:09] You know, I assume they'll just keep making them and making them.

Elliott Kalan

[2:12] Every 20 years we get a new Space Jam.

[2:14] That's the implicit precedent that's been set.

[2:17] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[2:17] Yeah.

[2:18] And just like me, this movie is all business.

[2:21] The business of representing the properties of Warner Brothers Studios.

[2:25] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:26] Guys, nothing really prepared me.

[2:27] Before Stuart goes into summary, nothing, all the things I had read about how it was full

[2:31] of Warner Brothers IP, nothing prepared me for what this movie is.

[2:34] So I'm looking forward to hearing how Stuart describes it.

Dan McCoy

[2:38] It was the Space Jam equivalent of like one of those Oscars montages that's like, remember

[2:43] movies?

Stuart Wellington

[2:44] So let's, I think we should set the scene, I guess, the stage, the basketball stage.

Elliott Kalan

[2:51] Well, I just want to see, one thing before that I want to say, sorry to cut you off.

[2:55] I was trying to explain this movie to my son and I said, I think I haven't, not since

[3:00] Cats have I seen a movie where I was like, people made these choices at every step of

[3:04] the way.

[3:05] Someone chose for the movie to be this way.

[3:07] But sorry, sorry, Stuart, set the stage or rather like you were saying.

Stuart Wellington

[3:10] No, that was a great, that was a great interruption.

[3:13] So we're on the, we're on the basketball stage.

[3:17] And so I have never seen the original Space Jam movie, which is weird because I am, yes,

[3:23] wearing a novelty jersey from the original movie Space Jam saying that I'm a member of the

[3:28] Toon Squad.

[3:29] In fact, that I'm Michael Jordan.

[3:30] Even though he's not the Toon, that's the weird thing, you know?

[3:33] He's a ringer.

[3:34] Yeah, he's not a Toon in it.

[3:34] Yeah, he's a ringer.

[3:35] So have you guys seen it?

Elliott Kalan

[3:37] He's an honorary Toon because he has Toon ancestry.

[3:38] So he applied for the passport.

[3:41] They gave him honorary Toon citizenship.

[3:43] You know, you can do that these days.

Stuart Wellington

[3:45] So have you guys seen, have you guys seen Space Jam?

Dan McCoy

[3:48] I did back in the day.

[3:50] I was a little too old to be one of the people who is an adult now running around being like,

[3:57] no, no, no, Space Jam's a great movie.

[3:59] Because that opinion, I'm sorry, is incorrect.

[4:02] I know that one is led, you know, like we usually take this stance that, you know, we can all enjoy

[4:09] what we enjoy.

[4:10] And you can enjoy what you enjoy.

[4:12] That is fine.

[4:12] Yeah.

[4:13] You can, you may enjoy Space Jam.

[4:15] That is, I would prefer that you get joy out of an item than to not.

[4:21] But it is objectively a mess of a movie.

Stuart Wellington

[4:24] Yeah, anything that helps get you through this fucking gray haze of a life.

[4:28] I mean, if it's Space Jam, you know, go with God.

Elliott Kalan

[4:31] Yeah, come on.

[4:32] If it's helping you reach tomorrow, then more power to you.

[4:35] But Dan, can you think of a better movie based on a commercial for shoes?

Dan McCoy

[4:38] Did they ever make that, a movie of that commercial?

[4:42] Worshine's the movie?

[4:43] No, it never got me.

[4:44] Where Spike Lee was like a little doll man?

[4:47] Did that ever get made into?

Elliott Kalan

[4:49] No, you mean what, the Little Penny, Anthony Hardaway commercials?

[4:53] Oh, is that what it was?

[4:54] Well, there was, because Spike Lee did, Spike, well, maybe you were because Spike Lee.

[4:56] Did you direct that?

[4:58] No, I don't.

[4:58] Spike Lee directed commercials where he played Mars Blackman, his character from She's Gotta

[5:02] Have It.

[5:03] Okay.

[5:03] That's the amazing thing about those commercials is that Spike Lee imported himself as a character

[5:08] from an independent film into like Nike commercials.

[5:11] I think they were.

[5:12] So that's, but they're the commercial.

Stuart Wellington

[5:13] And he shot a lot of those, like he shot some of those like black and white, right?

[5:17] Yeah, yeah.

[5:17] They were like, they were very artistic, which was pretty great.

Elliott Kalan

[5:20] Those are basketball, those are shoe commercials that take place in the She's Gotta Have It universe,

[5:23] which is amazing.

[5:24] You know, like that's, if ever an artist was able to bend the powers of mercantilism to

[5:31] shape his own needs, you know, that's amazing.

[5:34] But I don't, but I think the movie came first.

Dan McCoy

[5:36] Yeah, I, by the way.

Elliott Kalan

[5:38] You might be thinking of the, I think Spike Lee unrelated, a Little Penny commercials.

Dan McCoy

[5:42] Yeah.

[5:43] By the way, I'm sorry that I came in so hot in Space Jam.

[5:46] I'm, I, I'm a little tired of, I think the internet thing of like insisting X or Y thing

[5:53] that a person has nostalgia for is like, like actually really great.

[5:59] Like you can enjoy a thing for nostalgic reasons.

[6:02] I do it all the time without like being like this, this is also like well done.

[6:07] I mean, I sympathize with it.

Elliott Kalan

[6:08] Unfortunately, as a child, I had impeccable taste.

[6:10] So the things I'm nostalgic for are genuinely great.

[6:13] So I sympathize with it, but it's not an experience.

[6:16] It's not an experience that I have.

[6:17] So.

Stuart Wellington

[6:17] And as long as you can continue experiencing those things that you loved in the exact same

[6:22] way, slightly different, but not actually different, then you're happy.

[6:26] It just has to be the exact same adventures.

[6:27] Yes.

[6:27] It just has to say that it's new.

Elliott Kalan

[6:29] As long as the entertainment media that you are ingesting now reinforces all of the things

[6:33] that you took as basic assumptions about the world when you were a child, everything's

[6:37] going great.

[6:38] You don't have to worry about it because new things are challenging.

[6:40] No changes.

[6:41] Yeah.

[6:41] No changes.

[6:42] But there's a lot of changes between Space Jam and Space Jam and New Legacy.

[6:45] Oh, there are.

Stuart Wellington

[6:46] Well, wait.

[6:46] Before we address that, Ellie, I don't think you answered my question.

[6:49] Have you seen the first Space Jam?

Elliott Kalan

[6:50] Yes.

[6:51] I had the, it was, my answer is going to be redundant to Dan's.

[6:53] I saw it back when it came out.

[6:55] I was also a little too old to be really caught up in it.

[6:58] As someone who has a really, and I'm sure Dan feels the same, a very deep emotional connection,

[7:03] like love for the Warner Brothers characters.

[7:05] There is a part of me that has that, what we were just making fun of where when I see the

[7:09] Looney Tunes characters not being handled the way I like them to be handled, it is uncanny

[7:14] valley repulsive to me.

[7:15] So Space Jam, the original movie is like fine.

[7:18] The one, the one, there are a couple of things that connect these two movies.

[7:21] One, you have a big basketball star who has to play on a team full of Looney Tunes versus

[7:25] a team of monsters.

[7:26] That's the same thing.

[7:27] Two, pop culture references that are already past their sell-by date.

[7:31] In the original Space Jam, there's like a Pulp Fiction reference.

[7:35] In this one, there is a Matrix reference, which that is a reference that was dated when Shrek

[7:40] did it.

Elliott Kalan

[7:40] Can we do that again now?

Dan McCoy

[7:40] But let us, I mean that, but you know, the original Space Jam came out like, I mean,

[7:47] there are a lot of Pulp Fiction references.

[7:49] A year after Pulp Fiction, I think, yeah.

[7:50] Yeah, yeah.

[7:50] It's not the 20 year gap that we're talking about for a Matrix one.

[7:53] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[7:54] I mean, it's both too long for it to be a current reference and also not long enough for

[7:59] it to be a classic reference.

[8:01] But the original Space Jam was about a great athlete and beloved characters coming together

[8:06] to sell shoes.

[8:07] Whereas this one is very different.

[8:08] It's about a great athlete and beloved characters coming together to sell a semi-connected IP universe

[8:14] owned by a specific corporate studio.

Stuart Wellington

[8:17] Yeah.

[8:17] Yeah, it seems a little more vague.

[8:19] Yeah.

[8:19] But it doesn't matter.

[8:20] So let's get into the meat of this sandwich.

[8:22] And also Bill Murray was in the old one for some reason.

[8:24] Uh-huh.

[8:25] And he is not in this one.

[8:27] Or he might be in the background.

[8:28] There's a lot of shit going on.

[8:29] Okay, so movie opens.

Elliott Kalan

[8:31] Bill Murray at this point, he's owned by Warner Brothers.

[8:32] See, I think he is in the background there somewhere.

[8:34] He and King Kong are high-fiving at some point, probably.

Stuart Wellington

[8:37] Uh-huh.

[8:38] So we open.

[8:39] We have a young LeBron James who is talking to his mom.

[8:42] And his mom is explaining that she can't make it to his basketball game because she's

[8:45] got to work.

[8:46] Yeah.

[8:47] And he's bummed out.

[8:49] Then I make note that there's a music cue for Ghetto Superstar.

[8:52] I think that's the date when this is happening.

[8:54] I'm not sure.

Elliott Kalan

[8:55] I mean, I remember that.

[8:56] I mean, this is set in 1998.

[8:58] That's a year before I graduated from high school.

[8:59] And I remember that song being all over the place around then.

[9:01] So accurate.

[9:03] You know, you can't fault Space Jam and New Legacy for not being accurate.

[9:06] You know, find me a scene in it where there's an error of some kind on the historical record.

[9:10] That's true.

[9:11] I haven't found it looking through it.

[9:12] I have not found it.

[9:13] You know.

[9:13] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[9:15] Young LeBron gets distracted by a magical Game Boy and it messes up his basketball focus.

[9:19] So he throws that Game Boy in the trash.

Elliott Kalan

[9:21] Describe the Game Boy being magical because it does seem a little magical, but it's never

[9:26] really explained.

[9:26] It doesn't come back.

Stuart Wellington

[9:28] Yeah.

[9:28] Well, he's handed this Game Boy, which I feel like is, would have been like an artifact

[9:33] at the time that he received it by 1998.

Elliott Kalan

[9:34] Well, his friend says, I just got a color one so you can have my old one.

Dan McCoy

[9:38] Oh, okay.

[9:39] That explains my next question because I was like.

[9:41] Ness question?

[9:42] Ho, ho, ho.

[9:44] Now he throws away the Game Boy later.

[9:46] I'm like, I thought that was his friend's Game Boy.

[9:48] But even so, it's trash.

[9:50] Why are you throwing away an operative Game Boy just because your coach tells you you got

[9:56] to keep your head in the game?

[9:57] Like, give that Game Boy to another friend.

Elliott Kalan

[9:59] I'll tell you why.

[10:00] Because his coach, you might have recognized as Avon Barksdale from The Wire.

[10:03] So he better get his head in the game or his head's going to have some bullets in it.

[10:06] So let's just watch out.

[10:08] Because even the temptation of legal money in legal real estate is not enough for Avon

[10:14] to get himself off those corners.

[10:16] If he's your basketball coach, you've got to take what he says seriously because otherwise

[10:19] you're going to get killed and boarded up in an abandoned Baltimore building.

Stuart Wellington

[10:22] So that's why.

[10:23] I mean, I think he, I think Avon is just arrested.

[10:25] He doesn't get murdered in the show.

[10:27] But, you know, we'll check it out.

Elliott Kalan

[10:28] No, no, but he murders a lot of people.

[10:30] Oh, he does.

Stuart Wellington

[10:31] Yeah, he's a murderer.

[10:32] Yeah, I guess you're right.

[10:32] I got distracted by your thing.

[10:34] I was thinking about the joke I was going to make.

[10:36] That's part of being a podcaster.

Elliott Kalan

[10:38] You were thinking about, spoiler alert, later cameo appearance by Michael B. Jordan, who also

[10:44] was in the first season of The Wire.

[10:45] Tragically.

Stuart Wellington

[10:46] I don't think.

[10:46] Oh, yeah.

[10:47] Cameo appearance in the movie.

[10:48] Okay.

[10:48] So, okay.

[10:50] So he throws the Game Boy in the trash.

[10:52] Does not need that thing.

[10:53] Or does he?

[10:54] We'll find out later.

[10:56] He, we get some career highlights.

[10:58] He doesn't.

[10:59] We get some career highlights for LeBron James over the opening credits, which is good for

[11:03] me because I have not followed basketball other than watching the Last Dance documentary

[11:07] over and over, which, by the way, if you haven't watched, you should go watch it.

[11:10] The Last Dance is great.

[11:11] And also talks about Space Jam and kind of places it within Michael Jordan's history.

[11:15] It's great.

Elliott Kalan

[11:16] Now, were you guys thrown off at all by how the first, like, 10 or 15 minutes of the movie,

[11:19] maybe the first 20 minutes is just about LeBron James and how great he is?

[11:23] And there's no Looney, except for that one Game Boy game, there's no Looney Tunes for

[11:26] a long time.

[11:27] And I was like, this is really like a, this is a LeBron James heavy movie.

[11:31] Like, they're really selling me that LeBron James is the hero of the universe.

[11:35] Did that get to you guys at all?

Dan McCoy

[11:36] I wouldn't say that it, it got to me, but I will say that much like our previous movie,

[11:43] Jiu Jitsu, where I, I became less interested once the alien showed up.

[11:50] Another sentence, I never thought I'd say I became less interested in the movie once the

[11:53] Looney Tunes showed up.

Stuart Wellington

[11:56] Interesting.

[11:56] Okay.

[11:57] So, uh, okay.

[12:00] So, uh, after the opening credits, we're in modern day.

[12:03] We're at, uh, LeBron's amazing, uh, mansion.

[12:06] Uh, he is the, at this point, he is the best basketball player in the world, but he's not

[12:10] the best father in the world.

[12:12] Right guys?

Elliott Kalan

[12:14] Well, he's not a bad dad.

[12:15] He's not a bad dad, basketball dad, but he clearly, he wants his kids to follow in his

[12:20] Nike wearing, probably.

[12:22] He is a harsh taskmaster.

[12:22] Taskmaster.

[12:24] And.

[12:24] Yes, he is a harsh taskmaster.

Stuart Wellington

[12:25] And not just to follow in his footsteps, but also do it his way.

[12:29] Yes.

[12:29] A way that focuses on fundamentals, no hot dogging, uh, and hard work.

[12:34] Because when you're on the basketball court, that's work, which is weird because normally

[12:37] you would think it's a game.

[12:39] You should be having fun, but not for, not for King James here.

[12:42] Um.

Elliott Kalan

[12:43] It's hard to be a king.

[12:44] Heavy, heavy is the head that wears the crown that's made out of a basketball that's been

[12:47] cut in half.

[12:48] Uh, because basketballs don't, it's hard to fit that on your head and it's just awkward,

Dan McCoy

[12:52] you know?

[12:52] It just sort of, I mean, at that point, obviously deflated.

[12:56] So like.

[12:57] I mean, that's the thing.

[12:58] It sort of looks like you're wearing just like a piece of rubber on top of your head.

Elliott Kalan

[13:01] It's like a floppy rubber beret.

[13:03] It doesn't look like a crown anymore.

[13:04] And it throws the weight of your head off your balance.

[13:07] Yeah.

[13:07] So to play while wearing that is amazing.

[13:10] Which he does every night.

Stuart Wellington

[13:12] At first you'd think it would look kind of like the crown that Jughead wears.

[13:15] Yeah.

[13:15] But I don't even know how you do that.

[13:17] Like, it's like trying to get your hair to look like Tetsuo from Akira.

[13:19] Like, you just can't do it.

[13:20] It's impossible.

[13:20] I don't even try it.

Elliott Kalan

[13:21] I've tried and failed so many times.

Stuart Wellington

[13:23] I go to every barber and I'm like, I show him the picture and he's like, can't do it.

Elliott Kalan

[13:27] Here's an example of what I want you to do.

[13:29] And you just show a cut out picture from Akira and he's like, let me sit you down.

[13:33] This is the talk I have to have with people.

[13:34] I can't do it.

[13:35] No one can.

[13:36] It's impossible.

[13:37] Only one person has ever had that haircut.

[13:39] And he shows you a photograph of Katsuhiro Otomo with that hair.

[13:41] And you're like, that was his magic power.

Dan McCoy

[13:44] Yeah.

[13:44] I show my barber a picture of Jughead's hat and I say, make my hair look like this.

[13:49] And he says, that's a kind of a hat that I guess people wore at one time.

[13:53] Not frequently, but...

Elliott Kalan

[13:55] That kind of hat, so this is something I learned a long time ago.

[13:58] It's what you do is you take a baseball cap and you turn it inside, an old style baseball cap,

[14:02] you turn it inside out and like cut some parts of it.

[14:05] Because one of the Bowery boys wears a hat like that.

[14:07] It's like an old hat turned inside out.

[14:10] But also, I have to assume it was a step at some point that Jughead is the prodigal prince

[14:14] of some far off nation.

[14:16] And that's why he has a crown all the time.

[14:18] Uh-huh.

Stuart Wellington

[14:18] Yep.

[14:18] The prince of hamburger land.

Elliott Kalan

[14:20] So, his son, Dom...

[14:22] So wait, he's Ronald McDonald's son?

[14:25] It all makes sense now.

[14:26] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[14:27] Yeah.

[14:27] So his son, Dom, wants to build...

[14:30] Not Ronald McDonald's son.

[14:31] We're talking about the son of LeBron James.

[14:33] Wants to build video games.

Elliott Kalan

[14:34] And we're not talking about Vin Diesel's character from the Fast and the Furious movies.

Dan McCoy

[14:37] And we're also not talking about LeBron James' real son.

[14:41] He has real children.

[14:42] These are not them.

[14:43] These are fictionalized LeBron James children.

Elliott Kalan

[14:46] It is very strange to see a guy playing himself in a movie with a family loosely based on his family.

[14:54] That is weird.

[14:56] It's very weird.

[14:57] And you gotta feel bad for his kids who I assume auditioned for the roles, did not get callbacks.

[15:02] And had to see other kids playing them.

Dan McCoy

[15:04] You gotta focus on the fundamentals, kids.

[15:06] You gotta get back on that acting court and beef up your chops.

[15:10] Yeah.

[15:10] Yeah, I'm not feeling that.

Stuart Wellington

[15:12] So his son, Dom, wants to build video games instead of playing basketball.

[15:16] And that's not just a dream.

[15:18] That's something he does.

[15:19] He has built a fully functional video game prototype that he has put up on the web and other people are playing.

[15:25] I don't know what platform he's using, but he is already like...

[15:29] He's a prodigy at this point.

Elliott Kalan

[15:31] Yeah.

[15:31] And he wants to go to video game camp, but LeBron wants to go to basketball camp.

Stuart Wellington

[15:35] He is...

[15:36] LeBron is very invested in his children's schedule, which I feel like for somebody that busy and famous, he probably would be like,

[15:45] Oh, wait, what are you doing next week?

[15:46] And then the kid would be like, yeah, I'm going to this.

[15:48] And he's like, I thought you were going to that.

[15:50] And he'd be like, no, I talked to mom.

[15:52] He's like, oh, okay.

[15:53] Yeah.

[15:53] Like, he doesn't have...

[15:54] Like, I'm just saying he probably...

[15:55] Stu, Stu, I hate to break it to you.

Elliott Kalan

[15:57] I hate to break it to you.

[15:58] That's what my life is like, and I'm neither busy nor famous.

Stuart Wellington

[16:02] So we cut to the most exciting character in the movie.

[16:06] That's right.

[16:06] Don Cheadle playing Al G. Rhythm.

[16:08] He really is.

[16:09] Who is a...

Dan McCoy

[16:09] He is kind of the most exciting character in the movie.

[16:11] He's incredible.

[16:12] He's great.

[16:13] He's having so much fun.

[16:14] I love it.

[16:14] And Al...

[16:15] I mean, we got to take a moment.

[16:17] Like, Al G. Rhythm, obviously a pun on algorithm, although it does not sound like that.

[16:22] It sounds like you're talking about the plant.

[16:24] Yes.

[16:24] The algae.

[16:25] A rhythmic plant.

[16:27] An aquatic plant with rhythm.

Elliott Kalan

[16:30] Or Ali G., a non-Warner Brothers owned character, I have to assume.

[16:33] Yeah.

[16:34] They do keep calling him Al G.

[16:35] And it is...

[16:36] It shows how few people own fish tanks in the production of this movie that no one was like,

Stuart Wellington

[16:40] this sounds weird.

[16:41] Yeah.

[16:43] They're like, yeah, just say it a couple more times.

[16:45] Aren't you hearing it?

[16:46] It's pretty clear.

[16:47] Okay.

[16:47] So we meet Al G. Rhythm, who is the manifestation of an algorithm that lives within the universe

[16:57] of the Warner Brothers servers called Serververse.

[17:01] So we go to Warner Brothers Studios.

[17:02] Obviously, if you guys are like me, the whole time you're like, where are those fucking animaniacs?

[17:06] Well, they don't show up.

[17:07] Not even in the background.

[17:08] There's no fucking good feathers.

[17:10] Get out of here.

Elliott Kalan

[17:11] It is strange that it is a noticeable snub that the animaniacs do not show up in the movie.

[17:17] Yes.

[17:17] You got to imagine what executive's wife they slept with, that they are now persona non gratas

[17:22] on the Warner Brothers lot, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[17:24] Yeah.

[17:25] I'm surprised they didn't like fuck with a lament configuration and the fucking Warner Brothers

[17:29] and Dot pop out or something.

[17:31] But let's go on.

[17:33] Now, Al G. Rhythm is hanging out with Pete, who is like a little cartoon, like assistant

[17:38] robot thing.

[17:39] What was he supposed to do?

Elliott Kalan

[17:39] Like he's just a robot, right?

Dan McCoy

[17:41] Like he's not supposed to be a real thing.

[17:43] Yeah.

[17:43] He looks like a Clippy style thing, but if Clippy wasn't like a paperclip, but just kind

[17:49] of a blob.

Stuart Wellington

[17:49] Yeah.

[17:50] Yeah.

[17:50] Like a character that probably could have gone through like one or two more designs.

[17:56] So, and he is scheming to use LeBron to, this is where it got a little bit fishy for Stuart

[18:02] because maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention.

[18:04] He's trying to use LeBron to like enter the real world or like take over the world, somehow

[18:09] using LeBron's brand to like tie in with Warner Brothers brand.

[18:14] I don't quite get it.

Elliott Kalan

[18:14] This part is very not make sense-y.

[18:17] And yeah, he's like, there's this new technology that I'm going to use to escape the serververse

[18:22] because I'm going to be famous on my own.

[18:24] I'm not going to need to rely on the Warner Brothers brand anymore.

[18:27] And the only way to do that is to harness LeBron James's fame and make it kind of like

[18:31] a team up between me and LeBron James.

[18:34] And I will piggyback on him into becoming famous.

[18:37] And now again, this is a, this is a personification of a computer algorithm.

[18:41] The, like the movie seems to have forgotten almost instantly that he has a computer program

[18:45] and not a real Don Cheadle that is living inside of a computer box.

[18:48] And so, but the idea is that he is somehow going to, yeah, he's somehow going to insert

[18:53] LeBron James into the Warner Brothers product line in a way that makes him famous.

[18:59] It's not, it's one of those things where it's like, Stuart, you were right to get lost because

[19:02] it's not, doesn't make sense.

[19:03] And they didn't put it, it's not well done, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[19:06] Okay.

[19:06] Before we get to the fruition of this plan, uh, we're back at the mansion.

[19:10] Dom tries to show LeBron a working version of his video game.

[19:13] It's called Dom Ball.

[19:14] It is in his own words, like basketball, only better.

[19:18] It's got power-ups.

[19:19] It's like a one-on-one basketball game.

[19:21] Uh, you can get style points for doing things.

[19:24] You can get style points.

[19:25] So there's a completely different scoring system.

[19:27] Uh, and LeBron takes the controller.

[19:30] He thinks he knows how to play the game because he is a basketball fellow.

[19:34] Um, and he tries to use one of his own moves, a move that is apparently illegal to use in

[19:39] some States.

[19:39] And by doing it, it causes the system to crash, uh, and all, all kinds of hell breaks

[19:45] loose.

[19:46] And it erases Dom's character from the game.

[19:48] It's a beautiful computer setup though.

[19:50] It is like, like six monitors.

[19:52] It's crazy.

[19:52] It's a professional computer setup.

[19:54] It is, it is a Neil Peart level of, uh, of like drum equipment type bullshit.

Dan McCoy

[20:00] He uses his phone to scan in his pet tarantula at one point for use in the game.

Elliott Kalan

[20:07] I mean, look, he's, his dad's rich.

[20:08] He can buy, and his dad has clearly up till now, not been paying that much attention.

[20:12] So, you know, this kid's just using his dad's credit card to just buy whatever computer

[20:15] Silicon graphics workstation.

[20:17] Yeah.

[20:17] Give me one.

[20:18] What's the computer NASA uses?

[20:19] Yeah.

[20:19] That one.

[20:20] Give me one.

Stuart Wellington

[20:20] Running a Warhammer store on the upper East side.

[20:22] I was that guy selling stuff to kids using their parents' credit cards.

[20:26] Um, like John Katz, Mercedes kid.

[20:29] Like, I don't care about that fucking guy.

[20:30] I'll sell his kid whatever Warhammers.

[20:32] Um, okay.

[20:33] So, uh, we, that's some New York politics.

[20:37] Everybody.

[20:38] Um, when, uh.

Elliott Kalan

[20:40] Very specific show of Stewart's ability to put aside his own political preferences to

[20:44] sell to miniatures of orcs and ogres to kids.

Stuart Wellington

[20:48] I mean, I was taking his money.

[20:49] I was repurposing his money to, um.

Elliott Kalan

[20:51] Oh, no.

[20:52] You were, you were using, again, like, much like, much like Spike Lee, you were using the

[20:56] market to your own political and cultural ends in a way that is beautiful.

[21:00] I am a lot of Spike Lee.

Stuart Wellington

[21:03] Um, okay.

[21:04] So, uh, as LeBron exits the room, I had in my notes.

Elliott Kalan

[21:07] I mean, you're both, you're both people that I have been in elevators with.

[21:09] You and Spike Lee's.

[21:10] Oh, wow.

Elliott Kalan

[21:10] That's another similarity.

[21:11] Yeah, sure.

[21:12] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[21:12] Did you tell him that the absolute Brooklyn flavor that he endorsed is fucking trash?

[21:17] I didn't.

[21:18] This was long before then.

[21:19] Wow.

[21:19] It tastes like apples.

[21:20] Who wants that shit?

Elliott Kalan

[21:21] I was a student at NYU and we happened to be in the same elevator and I was wearing a taxi

[21:24] driver t-shirt and he looked at it quite dubiously and then looked away.

[21:29] Yeah.

[21:29] So, did not appreciate that sartorial choice on my point.

Stuart Wellington

[21:32] Now, I have in my notes that as LeBron's leaving his son's bedroom, he does a pretty

[21:37] terrible dab.

[21:38] I mean, I feel like they could have done a second take on that.

Elliott Kalan

[21:40] Okay.

[21:41] I think it's, I think it's kind of a, they're, they're painting LeBron as a, as a, he is both

[21:45] the most amazing, most graceful, most talented athlete in the history of the world and kind

[21:50] of a goofy, relatable dad.

[21:52] You know, it's like if Kevin James and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, uh, why am I forgetting his

[22:00] name?

[22:00] Uh, the.

Dan McCoy

[22:01] I don't know, but I'm glad that, uh, you took the ball.

Elliott Kalan

[22:04] It's like, it's like, it's like if Kevin James and Jim Thorpe were one person, that's

[22:08] LeBron James in this movie.

[22:09] Okay.

[22:09] And also Kevin James and LeBron James are brothers.

[22:11] They have the same last name, James.

[22:12] So, you know.

Dan McCoy

[22:13] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[22:13] And that's why Kevin James is always plotting to kill LeBron James and steal his crown.

Dan McCoy

[22:19] LeBron in this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[22:20] Because he's the king of queens, but he wants to be the king of basketball.

[22:23] Like LeBron James is.

[22:24] Guys, it all makes sense.

[22:25] The more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

[22:28] Wow.

Stuart Wellington

[22:29] Elliot's starting to put stuff up on his whiteboard.

[22:31] There's red string.

[22:32] Hold on.

Elliott Kalan

[22:32] Let me just get some yarn to connect this picture of LeBron James to this picture of

[22:35] Kevin James.

[22:36] Hold on.

[22:36] Oh, it's a one-to-one connection.

[22:38] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[22:39] It's a whiteboard.

[22:40] Just use a marker, man.

Elliott Kalan

[22:41] No, no.

[22:42] Yarn.

[22:43] I can't.

[22:43] Guys, I'm trying to erase the yarn and it's not erasing.

[22:46] Hold on.

[22:46] What am I doing wrong?

Dan McCoy

[22:47] Just a note on LeBron James as a performer.

[22:50] Like I said earlier.

Elliott Kalan

[22:51] That sounds like your monograph for your doctorate.

[22:54] A note on LeBron James.

Dan McCoy

[22:55] No, I said earlier that this is the rare movie I was less interested in when the Looney

[22:59] Toons showed up.

[23:00] And part of it is, again, yes, I too am the thing that I was making fun of earlier where

[23:05] I'm like, this is not the way the Looney Toons are supposed to be.

[23:08] But in these early scenes, at least there's some semblance of relatable humanity.

[23:17] And LeBron James, not a good actor, but there were a couple of moments where they use his

[23:22] sort of ultra-serious intensity to comic effects that I enjoyed.

[23:29] Like I enjoyed him like interacting with the kid and sort of like if there was a joke where

[23:36] he like kind of like at his expense of being like so intense, like there was a little fun

[23:42] and he had some presence.

[23:44] But whenever he's then later on called upon to emote, you know, if you've seen a Saturday

[23:51] Night Live where a sports star is hosting, you will be unsurprised at the quality of the

[23:57] work there.

Elliott Kalan

[23:58] Yeah, I think he is not.

[23:59] He is by no means like an actor, but yeah, LeBron James.

[24:04] I think you're right.

[24:04] He has like a presence.

[24:05] He has charisma.

[24:06] There's a reason that like he's the best part of Trainwreck, but a lot of it is just

[24:10] him reacting to what's going on, like just being a sidekick basically, you know.

[24:14] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[24:15] Wait a minute.

[24:15] Isn't Tilda Swinton in Trainwreck?

[24:18] Is Tilda Swinton in Trainwreck?

[24:20] Yeah, I think so.

[24:20] I think she plays the boss at the magazine.

[24:22] I think she's the best part of Trainwreck.

[24:23] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[24:24] Well, she's the best part of whatever she's in.

[24:25] So that's a different story.

[24:26] But the, the, but he, in this, it's like you can't, LeBron James works like you're

[24:32] saying, Dan, when someone is playing off of him, not so much when he is forced to pretend

[24:36] that a cartoon rabbit is talking to him.

[24:39] Yeah.

[24:39] Like, and so that he's not, that's not his forte, which is again, it's okay.

[24:43] He's the best basketball player in the world.

[24:44] It's very difficult.

[24:45] Yeah, exactly.

Dan McCoy

[24:46] You know?

[24:46] It is hard to pretend, like, like that, that also punches up how, like how good a job Don

[24:51] Cheadle is doing because you know that he just stood in a green room for months on end.

[24:57] Yeah.

[24:57] Doing all of this shit.

Elliott Kalan

[24:59] And I think it comes as no surprise to anybody that Don Cheadle is an amazing actor and

[25:02] LeBron James is a great basketball player with a certain level of charisma.

[25:05] He was in the movie.

[25:06] Yeah.

[25:07] I mean, you, you, I don't know about you guys.

[25:08] I, I certainly was rooting for Don Cheadle most of the movie because he's like, you can

[25:12] feel like he's the only character, he's the only character in the movie where I was like,

[25:15] he genuinely wants this.

[25:16] This is the, he, like, I believe him, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[25:19] Bring him into the real world.

[25:20] He seems great.

Elliott Kalan

[25:21] Yeah.

[25:21] And to do that playing a character who is not a character, but a, again, like the idea

[25:25] of an abstract program in a computer that chooses what shit you're going to watch next on the

[25:29] WB streaming platform, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[25:32] I think there's an interview with Tilda Swinton about Trey Wreck where she's being interviewed

[25:35] about how she got into character because she plays this like, uh, she plays like a magazine

[25:40] executive and she is dressed up.

[25:42] It's almost, it feels like a fucking Halloween costume for her because she's like dressed up

[25:45] like, like a high fashion, like magazine editor and with like a spray tan and all

[25:51] this shit.

[25:51] And her response to the questions was like, she's like, yeah, you can just go out and

[25:55] buy these things.

[25:57] Like she was so like flabbergasted as that.

[25:59] Like, she's like, yeah, anyone could look like this.

[26:01] It's easy.

[26:02] It's very funny.

Elliott Kalan

[26:04] Okay.

[26:04] Tilda Swinton, I love for her, for her, the, like if tomorrow the newspapers are just like

[26:10] Tilda Swinton gets into spaceship, flies off, returns to home planet.

[26:13] I'd be like, yeah, buy it.

[26:15] She's great.

[26:16] She's generally one of those people who seems to like come from, just comes from another dimension,

[26:19] you know, which is nice.

Stuart Wellington

[26:21] Okay.

[26:22] So, uh, due to the machinations of algae, uh, LeBron and his, uh, LeBron and his son,

[26:29] his agent go to the Warner brothers studio to get pitched on, uh, the idea of inserting

[26:34] a cartoon LeBron into basically every single Warner brothers movie or property.

[26:39] And he is pitched by Steven Yuen and, uh, and Sarah Silverman, uh, who have this one scene

[26:44] and you know, they make the most out of it.

Elliott Kalan

[26:46] It's an amazing, it's an amazing waste of talent to have the two of them playing these

[26:50] roles.

[26:51] And if ever, if ever, if ever you should have brought in, this is the time to bring in

[26:54] like two improv people and then you shoot them for seven hours, just throwing out wild

[27:00] lines that you can choose to cut into it.

[27:01] Like they, like you don't need people as good or as well known as, as these two to be playing

Stuart Wellington

[27:06] these parts, but Hey, they got paid for it.

[27:08] Why not?

[27:08] Yeah, absolutely.

[27:09] Um, this, uh, LeBron turns them down.

[27:13] He thinks it's a bad fit.

[27:14] He makes jokes about the idea of a athlete, uh, having to act is always bad.

[27:18] Uh, a little, a little wink at the audience.

[27:21] That's us.

Elliott Kalan

[27:21] Um, especially because what we've just seen is a trailer inside this movie for the rest

[27:26] of the movie, which is a strange, it's strange for the movie to introduce its premise, which

[27:29] is we're going to insert LeBron James into the Warner brothers catalog and have LeBron James

[27:33] say, no, that's a dumb idea.

[27:35] Let's do it.

[27:36] That's the movie.

[27:37] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[27:38] Who would watch that garbage?

[27:40] Only idiots is what I think.

[27:42] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[27:43] At the, at the beginning, at the beginning of the Godfather, someone says to Don Corley

[27:46] on the go, do you want to go see this movie about this mob family?

[27:48] He goes, that sounds stupid.

[27:50] Who would want to watch a dumb thing like that?

[27:51] Morons.

Dan McCoy

[27:52] Only slack shot morons would sit in a theater or at home watching HBO max to see this garbage.

Elliott Kalan

[28:00] Hey, Sam Neill, do you want to, do you want to watch a movie about a theme park where

[28:02] dinosaurs go are real and they go crazy?

[28:05] That sounds boring.

[28:06] No.

[28:07] Anyway, let's get on this helicopter and go to Isla Dinosaur and find out.

[28:11] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[28:12] Okay.

[28:13] So, uh, this, uh, LeBron James turning him down and insulting him drives Al G Rhythm to

[28:19] take a desperate action.

[28:21] And he, uh, uh, uh, Dom and LeBron into visiting the server room where they are then zapped

[28:27] into the Warner Brothers server verse.

[28:30] So they are, have now entered, uh, they have entered virtual reality.

[28:34] Their bodies have gone with them.

[28:36] Yes.

[28:36] Everything about them is now in, uh, is in this computerized server thing.

Elliott Kalan

[28:42] So, so much like the, much like the teleportation in the book Rogue Moon by Aldous Brudris, their original

[28:48] bodies, their original souls have been destroyed as they are copied bit by bit into a digital

[28:54] form, which will again later be transferred back into a physical form.

[28:57] But the originals are dead.

[28:58] They, you, they have been copied, but you have to assume that their lives have ended.

[29:02] They are now in a heaven and these are duplicates of them running around.

[29:05] The movie does not address this.

Dan McCoy

[29:05] If you believe in a heaven.

[29:06] Yeah.

[29:06] Watching LeBron beta at this point.

[29:10] Exactly.

[29:11] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[29:12] Cause at this point, of course you're like, is this the end of LeBron James?

[29:15] And of course, no, this is not the end because death is just another path along our journey

[29:21] that the dull gray curtain of this world is pulled back and you see green shores, silver,

[29:29] uh, silver, silver bells.

[29:31] I don't know.

[29:33] Some other shit that Gandalf said.

[29:34] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[29:34] Yellow stars, rainbows, purple moons, all that stuff.

[29:38] Green clothes.

[29:40] Yeah.

[29:40] Horseshoes are probably slate gray.

[29:44] Horseshoe gray.

[29:45] Horseshoe gray.

[29:46] Horseshoes.

[29:46] What if they were like, they were like moon blue moons, horseshoe gray, horseshoes, star

[29:51] yellow stars.

[29:52] Back up.

[29:53] Back up.

[29:53] Hold on.

[29:55] A little lucky.

[29:56] No.

[29:56] And of course LeBron has to, I guess, play basketball against Osiris or something.

[30:00] Is that what happens now?

[30:01] Yep.

[30:01] Uh-huh.

[30:01] Yeah.

[30:02] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[30:02] Uh, so this is when I wrote my notes.

[30:05] I don't think we're going to space.

[30:07] Oh.

[30:08] Now don't, don't try and correct me and say cyberspace is the same shit because it ain't.

[30:12] It is not.

[30:13] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[30:13] Um.

[30:14] So you're saying the title has, the title already has failed on the space aspect of it.

[30:18] Yes.

[30:19] What if it doesn't provide the requisite jam?

[30:21] The words space jam have no meaning.

[30:24] Yeah.

[30:24] I see Stuart as.

[30:25] Why, do I trust this movie now?

[30:27] I see Stuart as one of the kids in The Simpsons going, we're going to go see an R-rated movie.

[30:31] Naked Lunch.

[30:32] Yeah.

[30:33] Yeah.

[30:33] Naked Lunch.

[30:34] And they walk out and he goes, I'm going to think of two things wrong with that title.

[30:37] Uh-huh.

[30:38] Uh, okay.

[30:39] So, um, Al Kidman.

[30:41] Oh, no, wait.

[30:41] I got my jokes mixed up.

[30:42] I'm sorry, guys.

[30:43] I got my jokes mixed up.

[30:44] Bart and Fink.

[30:45] Bart and Fink.

[30:46] They walk out of Naked Lunch and say two things wrong with the title.

[30:48] It's Bart and Fink that they're excited about going to see.

Stuart Wellington

[30:50] Yeah.

[30:51] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[30:51] So Al kidnaps Dom and forces LeBron to play in a basketball game with him.

[30:57] And the stakes are, I guess, if LeBron wins, he gets to leave and he gets his son back.

[31:02] Yes.

[31:02] And if he loses the basketball game, what happens?

Elliott Kalan

[31:05] They stay in the serververse forever.

[31:08] Okay.

[31:08] And that's it.

[31:09] And also, they're doing it in front of all of LeBron.

[31:10] I mean, that's pretty fucked up.

[31:11] That's pretty bad.

[31:12] Yeah, that's pretty bad.

[31:13] They're doing it in front of all of LeBron's Instagram followers.

[31:15] So also, he loses a lot of face.

[31:17] Right.

Dan McCoy

[31:17] Yeah.

[31:18] And this is the point.

[31:19] I mean, Audrey pointed out pretty early that there's a key flaw in Algy Rhythm's plan,

[31:26] which is that he is-

[31:27] I haven't noticed it.

[31:28] Tell him to say what it is.

[31:29] He has put LeBron's child as a key part in the opposition to LeBron.

[31:39] And so all LeBron has to do at any point is to win back his own son to his side to remove that sort of lodestone in Algy Rhythm's plot, which he takes a really long time to do, but does do eventually.

Stuart Wellington

[31:55] So, but the thing is, Dan, I think you're forgetting an important part of Dom Paul is style points.

[32:00] And I feel like he, that Algy Rhythm is trying to get style points on this victory.

[32:06] Oh, I see.

[32:06] He's not just trying to win.

[32:07] He's trying to stunt on LeBron James.

[32:09] That's true.

Dan McCoy

[32:10] He wants to crush him by stealing his son.

[32:12] Exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[32:13] I mean, yeah.

[32:14] Honestly, if someone stole my son, it would crush me.

[32:16] It's a realistic fear that someone's going to come along and either just pick up my son and run away.

[32:22] An algorithm is going to take your son.

[32:23] Or that an algorithm will convince him to hate.

Stuart Wellington

[32:24] Yeah, that if your son was taken to Apocalypse and turned into, wait, what's he turned into?

[32:28] Like an escape artist?

[32:29] I don't, I don't recall.

[32:30] Wait, what are you talking about?

[32:31] Cyclops' son?

[32:33] I would, Apocalypse.

[32:33] Or Cable's son.

[32:34] Isn't that the planet that fucking Darkseid's from?

Elliott Kalan

[32:37] Oh, well, we were talking about different.

[32:38] I think about Apocalypse, the X-Men villain, because he stole Cyclops' son and turned him into Cable.

[32:42] What's up with all this stealing sons?

[32:44] With Apocalypse and New Genesis, that wasn't a steal, that was a trade, the pact it's called.

[32:48] That the war between New Genesis and Apocalypse would end because Highfather and Darkseid had exchanged sons.

[32:53] I can't believe I put a fucking nickel in him over here.

[32:55] Scott Free, the son of Highfather, would be raised by Darkseid, or rather raised in the school of torture under Granny Goodness.

[33:02] Well, whereas Orion, the son of Darkseid, would be raised by Highfather, always fighting the anger inside of him, which he doesn't know is there because of the evil seed of Darkseid.

[33:12] Now, this would have to be a secret pact.

[33:14] Only the two rulers would know.

[33:16] If the sons ever found out, it would undo the fragile peace between the war-torn industrial world of Apocalypse and the peaceful bucolic world of New Genesis.

[33:26] And so, the stage is set for New Gods number one.

[33:30] We begin on New Genesis.

Stuart Wellington

[33:33] We'll get to it after Space Jam.

[33:35] We have a different new thing that's a new legacy of Space Jam.

[33:38] So, LeBron, he needs to recruit a team of basketball players.

[33:42] He's got a limited amount of time.

[33:43] At some point, we see a clock, I think.

Elliott Kalan

[33:45] Yeah, there's a countdown clock to the game, which they forget about for long periods of time.

Stuart Wellington

[33:49] Al is like, I'm going to give him the rejects to choose from.

[33:52] So, he opens up a portal, and LeBron James gets sucked into kind of like outer space where he flies past-

[33:59] Wait a minute.

Elliott Kalan

[34:00] Hold on a second.

Stuart Wellington

[34:01] He's falling through space, and it's filled with planets.

[34:05] Stuart, I think he did go to space.

[34:08] I get it.

[34:08] You might be right.

[34:09] And that space is populated by planets, and each planet, each world is populated by different Warner Brothers properties.

[34:16] So, he flies past like Harry Potter planet.

[34:19] He flies past like Casablanca planet.

Elliott Kalan

[34:22] There's a Casablanca planet.

[34:23] He flies past Wizard of Oz planet, and that took me for a moment because I was like, that's an MGM movie.

[34:28] But at some point, Ted Turner bought the MGM library, so he owns it now.

Dan McCoy

[34:32] So, it's the same way-

[34:34] It's the IP that you acquired as well as the stuff you had a-

Elliott Kalan

[34:36] It's the same way that Jack Kirby is now a Disney legend, despite having never worked for Disney, because Disney did buy his characters, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[34:44] And then, of course, he finally lands on the reject planet that is Toon World.

[34:50] Not Cool World, which is the reject Toon World.

[34:53] Which is, yeah.

[34:55] Do not go there.

[34:57] And he, so he lands and is immediately turned into-

[35:00] You didn't go there.

Dan McCoy

[35:01] Just don't have sex with a doodle if you're annoyed.

[35:03] But, wait a minute.

Stuart Wellington

[35:05] Now you're putting kind of rules on me?

Dan McCoy

[35:08] I mean, I don't know how I'm going to feel when I get to Cool World.

[35:11] It's not the coolest world.

[35:12] It could be.

Elliott Kalan

[35:13] Dan, tell me one thing that might go wrong if I have sex with a doodle.

Dan McCoy

[35:18] Well, ultimately, I guess not much.

[35:21] I think you, like, turn back and forth between being real and a Toon for a while.

[35:26] Yeah, I mean, it didn't work out.

[35:27] I mean, the barrier between the Toon World and the-

[35:29] Is it terrible about the HIV epidemic?

[35:31] What do you think?

[35:32] Probably not.

Elliott Kalan

[35:34] It doesn't end up great for Gabriel Byrne.

[35:37] Let's just say that.

[35:37] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[35:38] I mean, there's a lot of cool music, though.

[35:40] And, like, a bunch of, like, foxes with, like, bug eyes are, like, bouncing around the

[35:45] corner of those.

[35:45] That's pretty cool.

Stuart Wellington

[35:46] Yeah, sure.

[35:47] Like, just look at all the movies Gabriel Byrne's in.

[35:49] Yeah.

[35:49] He and Sean Bean, they always get the short end of the stick.

[35:52] They very rarely end up with a happy ending.

[35:55] Yeah, sure.

[35:56] Okay.

[35:57] So, he lands on Toon World.

[35:59] He is turned into a toon by this.

[36:01] And we get the first of many inflatable toon jokes, which is great, you know, if you're into

[36:06] that.

[36:08] He gets terrorized by the one occupant of Toon World, that is Bugs Bunny.

[36:15] Sorry.

Dan McCoy

[36:16] I gotta talk about how Bugs terrorizes LeBron.

[36:19] Because this is, this was, like, just, like, kicking it off with me being, like, mad about

[36:25] the way the character is being used.

Elliott Kalan

[36:26] Now, you mean mad about in the mad about you way, where you loved it.

Dan McCoy

[36:30] No, I, because, I mean, like, I can't remember the exact, like, Chuck Jones quote, but the

[36:36] whole rule with Bugs Bunny is, like, Bugs Bunny is going to mess with you once you mess

[36:42] with Bugs Bunny.

[36:43] Like, Bugs Bunny, like, that is what keeps you sympathizing with Bugs in the cartoons.

[36:52] Like, Bugs is not a Daffy who might just harass you for no reason.

[36:56] But, like, LeBron shows up, and Bugs is immediately, like, chasing him around with, like, a cartoon

[37:01] steamroller, stuff like that.

Stuart Wellington

[37:03] What did he do to irk this mad trickster god?

Elliott Kalan

[37:06] And they, I'm gonna chime in and say, I won't go on it, but I felt the same way that the Bugs

[37:12] Bunny here, he's not visually off-model, but he's very personality-wise off-model.

[37:16] He is, he is very much just kind of like a fuck-things-up-for-fuck-things-up-sake type of character.

[37:22] But also, once the other Toons come in, he's presented as, like, a screw-up.

[37:26] Like, a guy who's a screw-up and is always messing things up and can't get things right.

[37:30] Whereas, like, the Bugs Bunny I grew up with, again, it's okay to have a different Bugs Bunny.

[37:33] The Bugs Bunny I grew up with was the coolest guy in the world.

[37:36] And what would happen is, he would be enjoying himself.

[37:38] Someone would come in and try to kill him.

[37:40] And he would throw, you know, he'd throw anvils at them for a while.

[37:43] But each time, he would, like, even if he was overpowered at some point.

[37:47] What do you do with Panache?

[37:47] He never seemed like, yeah, exactly, Panache.

[37:49] He never, he was never, like, a guy who seemed to struggle to get the respect of his friends,

[37:54] which is very much what, like, that, or would pine after Lola Bunny and she'd be like,

[37:58] it's not happening, Bugs.

[37:59] Like, that, it's a very weird shade to paint onto Bugs Bunny, you know.

[38:04] I don't know that Bugs Bunny, as much as Lola Bunny, can handle the psychological depth

[38:07] of being a guy who has had failures in his past that he has to atone for.

Stuart Wellington

[38:11] And that's the thing, like, we're introduced to him and he immediately explains that Toon World

[38:16] used to be populated by all his friends, and then Algy Rhythm showed up and offered them the world.

[38:22] Offered them worlds uncounted.

[38:25] Countless worlds, yeah.

[38:26] And all the toons left, leaving him all alone.

Dan McCoy

[38:30] And I was like, my reaction to this honestly was like, Bugs, you could have left too.

[38:33] Like, why are you acting like you're the victim here?

[38:36] Because someone came, offered your friends great stuff.

[38:38] Your friend's like, I'm going to take this great stuff.

[38:41] Like, you could have gone, but also across the board, just, let's just say from the start,

[38:46] all of the Looney Tunes have gone through a process of at least sort of 70 to 80% blandening.

Elliott Kalan

[38:54] Yes, they have very little personality.

[38:57] Dan, I think you might be taking issue of the fact that Bugs Bunny is being crafted as kind

[39:01] of a toon fundamentalist who believes there's only one proper way to be a toon and does not

[39:05] approve of any other way of life.

Dan McCoy

[39:07] Or like a toon incel where he's like blaming the world for his loneliness.

Elliott Kalan

[39:13] Yeah, when he could, he could reach out.

[39:15] But you're right, they, like, the characters don't have a lot of personality.

[39:18] Daffy has some because it's impossible to remove Daffy.

[39:20] Daffy's, if anything, probably got the strongest personality of any Looney Tunes character.

[39:24] But certainly, like, the other characters each get kind of like a line or two to present themselves.

[39:30] And like, Yosemite Sam is not particularly angry at any point.

[39:34] Elmer Fudd's not particularly dumb.

[39:36] I mean, Granny's all about the fucking Matrix, dude.

[39:38] Just like the old Granny.

[39:40] Boy, oh boy.

[39:40] The old Granny we do with loves.

[39:42] Okay.

[39:42] And I'm like, where are all my favorite characters?

[39:45] Where's Beaky Buzzard?

[39:46] I don't understand.

Dan McCoy

[39:47] Where are Hubie and Birdie?

Stuart Wellington

[39:49] Wait, is Mark Anthony and Pussyfoot, are they Looney Tunes characters?

[39:53] Yeah, they are.

[39:54] Where the fuck are they?

Elliott Kalan

[39:55] I love them.

[39:56] Yeah, come on.

[39:57] Where's the sheepdog and the coyote that are always fighting each other, you know?

Dan McCoy

[40:01] Give me the really small kangaroo.

Elliott Kalan

[40:05] Yes.

[40:05] Yeah, hippity hopper, sure.

[40:07] Yeah.

[40:08] Okay, so.

[40:09] Where's that little elephant that people see in that one where they all think they're drunk?

[40:14] So in LeBron's quest.

[40:16] Where's the dodo from Wacky Land?

[40:19] Where are the three bears?

[40:20] What's going on?

[40:21] Bugs sees an opportunity.

[40:22] Where's that super racist black kid that's in that one cartoon that Warner Brothers does not show anymore?

[40:27] It's a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

[40:28] Don't look it up.

Dan McCoy

[40:28] I'm pretty sure I know where that kid is.

[40:30] For him to bring.

[40:30] He's locked in the Warner Brothers vault.

Elliott Kalan

[40:32] That's the part of the serververse that even Don Cheadle is like, don't let it open.

[40:35] Don't let it out.

[40:35] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[40:36] Sorry, sorry, Stuart.

[40:37] What are you trying to do?

Stuart Wellington

[40:38] No, I'm just saying that in LeBron James Quest, Bugs sees an opportunity.

[40:41] Bring all his friends together.

[40:42] They're going to do this thing.

[40:44] That's right.

Elliott Kalan

[40:44] It's another getting the band back together kids movie where the movie is playing off of a kid's non-existent nostalgia for characters created before they were born.

[40:52] We saw it in Country Bears.

[40:53] We saw it in the Muppets.

Stuart Wellington

[40:54] Are you saying that there's references that are probably not appropriate for children in this movie?

[40:58] Because there's a few later on.

Elliott Kalan

[41:00] I would say the Fury Road sequence is one that children will be baffled and probably frightened by.

[41:05] Sure.

Stuart Wellington

[41:06] Yeah.

[41:06] Okay, so Bugs and LeBron steal Marvin the Martian spaceship.

[41:10] Gotta say, I've always been a big fan of Marvin the Martian, and it's good to see him for a little bit, I guess.

[41:15] No, you don't.

[41:17] I mean, yeah, he's barely in it.

[41:18] I mean, considering.

Elliott Kalan

[41:19] He was the main bad guy in the original, right?

[41:21] Well, he was the main bad guy in the commercial that it was all based on.

[41:24] Oh, okay.

[41:24] Space Jam, the original movie, he was a different bad guy.

[41:27] Oh, okay.

[41:28] Yeah, it was an original character.

Stuart Wellington

[41:29] Oh, okay.

[41:30] So, they got a, LeBron starts coming up with a list of, and at this point, once again, LeBron is still an animated character.

[41:37] He starts coming up using a whiteboard, coming up with all the Warner Brothers property characters that they could put together to make a basketball team.

[41:45] Superman, Batman, King Kong, Trinity from the Matrix, et cetera, et cetera.

[41:50] Clute, all of them.

[41:51] Clute, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[41:52] And, I mean, just to sort of make a larger point about what's going to happen next, like, they try and get all these people, but, like, the Looney Tunes have gone to all these planets, and they end up just, like, grabbing the Looney Tunes.

[42:06] And they make, like, kind of a stab, at least in World One, about, like, why, like, they can't get Superman, but they get Daffy and Porky there.

[42:15] But, like, it's never quite clear to me, like, why they don't get any of these people that would actually be good teammates to help, you know, like.

[42:25] Bugs is sabotaging.

[42:26] I guess that's what we're supposed to.

[42:28] Because it's Bugs, because Bugs is sabotaging, Dan, yeah.

[42:31] We're supposed to take that away, but it's, like, you have to really read between the lines.

Elliott Kalan

[42:35] LeBron James, the greatest basketball player of all time and the hero of the movie, is too weak to stand up to the arguments of a cartoon rabbit who does not, instead of bringing in Superman, wants to bring in his friend a duck.

Stuart Wellington

[42:45] I mean, I feel like that's kind of Bugs Bunny's whole thing.

[42:49] Like, no matter how strong or powerful you are, he can trick you.

Elliott Kalan

[42:52] Yeah.

[42:52] Well, here's what happened.

[42:53] So, LeBron James said, Superman.

[42:55] Bugs said, Daffy.

[42:56] LeBron, Superman.

[42:57] Bugs.

[42:58] Daffy.

[42:58] Bugs.

[43:00] Superman.

[43:00] LeBron.

[43:01] Daffy.

[43:01] And Bugs goes, okay, if you want Daffy, we can have Daffy.

[43:04] Just pulled his old trick on him, you know?

[43:05] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[43:06] Okay, so they visit a number of different worlds that are Warner Brothers properties.

[43:10] We get the DC world that is kind of like the animated, like Batman animated series style animation.

[43:16] It's like the Justice League Unlimited type DC world.

[43:19] Yeah, yeah.

[43:19] They go to the world of Mad Max, which looks like just backup footage of Fury Road.

Dan McCoy

[43:24] Yeah, let's slow down here for a second.

[43:26] When you say the world of Mad Max, these are shots from the movie Mad Max, like actual shots from Fury Road.

[43:33] Yep.

[43:34] That they have like rotoscoped in Looney Tunes in different places over the footage of Fury Road.

[43:40] And like a movie that had only been sort of like mildly irritating to me before this suddenly became infuriating.

[43:48] Because I was just thinking about like if I were George Miller and I saw this bullshit being pulled, like I would really like start having fantasies about going in and like secretly burning down Warner Brothers buildings or something.

[44:02] Because like this is, I don't know, it's like you're taking your shitty movie.

[44:06] Not technically a threat, anybody.

[44:07] And like drawing all over my good movie.

Elliott Kalan

[44:10] You say he would do it if he was George Miller, which he's not.

[44:12] I am not going to do that.

[44:14] Legally, you cannot.

[44:15] Dan, I'm going to be the most devilish of advocates.

[44:18] And I'm going to say two things.

[44:20] One, George Miller made the exact movie he wanted to make, got it released, was nominated for a lot of awards, made money off it.

[44:28] It came out.

[44:28] People loved it.

[44:29] I would say if I was a WB exec, we gave you the money to at least distribute this movie.

[44:34] It's a small price to pay that we're going to use a little, that we're going to deface a little bit of it by throwing Wile E. Coyote in there.

[44:42] Number two, I would say.

[44:43] I'm not saying they don't have the right to do it.

[44:45] No, no.

[44:45] And I'm saying number, so for George Miller to be mad, it's like you want to make this movie?

[44:48] You don't want to make this movie.

[44:49] Number two.

[44:50] And then I'm going to undo my own argument.

[44:52] Number two.

[44:53] If I was – I kept saying to my wife, if I was writing this movie and they said you can use any Warner Brothers property, I would also go hog wild throwing Warner Brothers stuff into this movie.

[45:03] I'd have the Errol Flynn Robin Hood.

[45:05] I'd have James Cagney as a gangster.

[45:07] Again, this is stuff that is glaring by its omission because that was Warner Brothers bread and butter for a decade.

[45:12] But like I would have the dancers from the gold diggers of 1933.

[45:15] I'd throw all my favorite stuff in.

[45:17] So I understand –

[45:18] I'm going to zip through what we do get.

[45:21] Okay.

[45:22] Well, I understand the temptation.

[45:23] But on the other hand, it is pretty dumb.

[45:26] And it's also like it is weird in a kid's movie to introduce them to the idea of a movie that they've never seen.

[45:32] They don't know it.

[45:33] And they do a hammer-handed thing with it.

[45:35] Stuart, tell us who else we see.

Stuart Wellington

[45:36] Yeah, so what we get?

[45:36] We get a whole bunch of child-appropriate material.

[45:40] We get the Mad Max world.

[45:41] We get like a Casablanca world.

[45:43] We get a Game of Thrones world.

[45:44] We get Rick and Morty.

[45:46] We get The Matrix.

[45:48] We get Awesome Powers.

[45:49] And then we get Wonder Woman.

[45:50] All these things, like none of those are below PG-13, right?

Elliott Kalan

[45:54] No, I don't think so.

[45:55] I mean Casablanca would be probably a PG movie now just because by the standards of the MPAA, there's no swearing or nudity in it.

[46:02] There's gunshots.

[46:03] Yeah, yeah.

[46:04] Probably a bunch of kids.

[46:05] Really selling me on Casablanca.

[46:06] But I also said the way that they do it all is so – well, the thing is like when I was a kid, I knew of Casablanca because it was referenced so heavily.

[46:14] Like I knew the general idea of play it, Sam, or play it again – the misquoted phrase, play it again, Sam.

[46:21] But like the idea of throwing in stuff like – I don't know.

[46:24] Throwing in stuff like Fury Road, you guys know.

[46:26] Flop House listeners know.

[46:27] I'm not a big fan of kids' movie jokes that rely on knowledge of adult things.

[46:30] But also the jokes are so nonexistent.

[46:33] Foghorn Leghorn is riding a dragon with blonde hair and he goes, I'll say, I'll say winter is coming.

[46:38] And it's like that's not a fucking joke.

[46:39] It's not a joke.

[46:40] Like that's – that is a –

[46:42] Do better, Foghorn.

[46:43] Yeah, well, it's like an epic movie level or like reference as a joke.

[46:47] And the audience is supposed to be like, I never thought I'd see Foghorn Leghorn riding a dragon.

[46:51] Also, who's Foghorn Leghorn?

[46:55] So it's a – but I was also confused by the fact that there's two different Wonder Woman worlds, which is – like Wonder Woman is in the DC universe, but she has her own world too.

[47:02] I don't get it.

Dan McCoy

[47:04] Yeah.

[47:04] Well, let's talk about the Wonder Woman world because they pick up Lola Bunny there.

[47:08] And there was – you know, Lola Bunny, a character invented for –

[47:12] Here we go again.

[47:13] The original Space Jam.

Elliott Kalan

[47:14] Yeah, and Dan is not happy about it.

[47:17] There's only – Dan's like, there's only one woman in the Looney Tunes world and that's Granny.

[47:20] Thank you very much.

Dan McCoy

[47:22] Well, I mean, notoriously like –

[47:24] Or Bugs dresses a woman.

[47:25] Over-sexualized.

[47:27] Like the only thing about Lola Bunny in the original Space Jam was like, we're putting a sexy lady bunny in here and she's going to be sexy, sexy and all the tunes are going to be like, ooh, look at that hot, sexy lady bunny.

[47:40] And that was the only personality that the female bunny got.

Elliott Kalan

[47:44] But Dan, they're just trying to balance out the obvious physical sex appeal of Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, Elmer Flynn.

[47:52] Sure, sure, sure.

Dan McCoy

[47:53] But this movie obviously like, okay, great.

[47:57] You know, we're trying to live in a more enlightened time.

[48:01] Let's not over-sexualize this bunny woman that we've put in our basketball tune movie.

[48:07] And so we're like, okay, let's take away the fact that she's a sex pot and not replace it with a character.

[48:18] Like the fact that she's introduced on like Wonder Woman – like Themyscira, like doing like the Wonder Woman, you know, obstacle course or whatever.

[48:28] Like that is like the nod to like, see, we made her a strong female and now she's going to be in the background of the rest of the movie and have like four or five lines.

Elliott Kalan

[48:36] She's very much – she's the female character in a movie who is coded as competent and serious.

[48:43] And that also means she is boring and not likable and mainly scolds the other characters.

[48:47] Like see, we didn't make – yeah, we made her a strong woman.

[48:51] That's why she mostly tells the other players what they're doing wrong.

[48:55] Yeah.

[48:55] Anyway.

[48:56] It's disappointing.

[48:56] Anyway, so what you're saying is it would have been better if we had that ha-cha-cha sex bunny bunny.

[49:01] Yeah, that's what I mean.

[49:02] Where all the characters are just – they're going boy-o-o-ing.

[49:05] Huh?

[49:05] What?

[49:06] And she like distracts the – yeah, she distracts the opposite team by bending over to pick up the ball, showing her visible thong above her basketball shorts.

[49:14] Why would she wear that while playing?

[49:16] How does she fit it over her tail?

[49:17] That was me.

Dan McCoy

[49:18] Other teams too busy jizzing all over the place.

[49:20] That was me tweeting on the – tweeting on the internet, what did you do with my sexy Lola?

[49:26] That was – yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[49:26] You want that shower scene between sexy Lola bunny and granny where they – you know, it's just the two of them alone.

Stuart Wellington

[49:31] What is it, the New York Times film reviews?

[49:33] Oh, no, no.

[49:34] It was the New Yorker.

[49:35] New Yorker.

Elliott Kalan

[49:35] Anthony Lane is like, this animated children's movie doesn't give me a boner.

[49:40] F minus.

[49:41] What a fucking idiot.

Stuart Wellington

[49:42] Okay.

[49:43] So meanwhile, Algy is tricking Dom into helping him out by being like just a super supportive friend or father figure.

[49:51] Like he's helping him out.

[49:52] And Dom starts explaining his video game Dom Ball, which then he kind of – Algy kind of steals Dom's phone, hands it to his servant Pete, who then plugs himself into a USB port and then like has an orgasm.

[50:09] It's pretty weird.

[50:11] Okay.

[50:12] Then we get a training montage.

[50:15] That's where the Toons are trying to learn how to play basketball.

[50:19] And they're doing all their normal shenanigans, dropping anvils and stuff on each other.

[50:25] And LeBron's like, no, I don't like this.

[50:27] We need to play more traditional basketball.

[50:30] I'm going to teach you.

[50:30] And you've got to stop being loony.

[50:32] That's where Buggs does make the joke.

[50:34] He's like, oh, you're that kind of king.

[50:35] I thought that was kind of fun.

Dan McCoy

[50:36] Yeah.

[50:36] Focus on the fundamentals.

[50:37] None of this hot dog and anvil dropping.

[50:40] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[50:42] So the evil plan is to beat LeBron at a game – they're not playing basketball.

[50:46] Algy, surprise them.

[50:47] They're going to be playing Dom Ball.

[50:49] And he upgrades Dom into being the captain of the team, and he makes all of his stats super high.

[50:57] So he can do everything.

Dan McCoy

[50:58] Yeah, he puts all the sliders to 100%.

[51:00] Puts all the sliders up.

[51:01] What kind of game is this where you can put everything to the top level?

[51:04] That seems unfair.

Elliott Kalan

[51:05] Dom Ball, Dan.

[51:05] It's Dom Ball.

[51:06] If your name is in the title of the game, you're going to get special freedom.

[51:10] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[51:11] Okay.

[51:11] And then he also takes scans of various famous basketball players and turns them into anamorphs.

[51:18] That's – and he turns them all into his special team of ringers called the Goon Squad, who we'll see more of later.

Elliott Kalan

[51:25] Now, I have a question.

[51:26] Are they really anamorphs since they're kind of – they don't turn fully into animals.

[51:30] They're just kind of like animal-human, you know, hybrid mashups.

[51:34] Hybrids.

Stuart Wellington

[51:34] No, I was just trying to talk about anamorphs for a second.

[51:38] Oh, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[51:38] I know you love anamorphs.

[51:40] You like – they really speak to you on a deep level, which is something I totally understand.

[51:44] And I think it's great.

[51:46] It's great, Stuart, that you found the fictional universe that works for you.

[51:49] Again, I just feel like we don't want to classify them improperly as anamorphs.

[51:52] Have an anamorph fan watch the movie and be like, they got all this Warner Brothers IP in here.

[51:56] I bet they got the anamorphs in there too.

[51:58] Sorry.

[51:58] They're not actually anamorphs.

Stuart Wellington

[51:59] I don't want to mislead people.

[52:02] So Algy shows up at the Toons training facility on Toon World and he turns all the Toons and LeBron into photorealistic things.

[52:12] Oh, boy.

[52:13] So at this point we're like, these aren't your daddy's Toons anymore.

[52:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[52:16] Can we just take a moment?

[52:18] I'm sorry.

[52:19] No, please.

[52:19] Interrupt me.

[52:21] I cannot tell whether that's ironic or not anymore.

Elliott Kalan

[52:25] Why does he have to choose?

[52:26] It could be both.

Dan McCoy

[52:27] Yeah.

[52:28] I don't like these, the way these Toons look once they're CGI, I'm sure there would be a way to do this.

Stuart Wellington

[52:39] Wait, they're CGI?

[52:40] I thought they were practical, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[52:42] I mean, that's the weird thing is.

[52:44] They look.

[52:45] Like Meet the Fables.

[52:46] They look real in the wrong way.

[52:51] Like Bugs looks like a moving, like a living, like sort of stuffed animal.

[52:57] And Porky has like sort of the waxy skin of a Madame Tussauds sculpture.

[53:04] Like these are not creatures that were meant to be in three dimensions.

[53:10] Dan, let me just ask you.

[53:11] They're two-y things.

Elliott Kalan

[53:12] Let me just ask you.

[53:13] When you're watching the Hunter trilogy or What's Opera Doc or Fast and Furious or Duck Amok,

[53:20] don't lie to me.

[53:21] You've been thinking this would be so much funnier if they had photorealistic hair and feathers.

[53:25] Yeah.

[53:27] I'd be laughing more if I could see every whisker waving in the wind individually.

Dan McCoy

[53:32] I am saying, yeah, I do not think they were reconceptualized for 3D in a way that makes them look, say, not unpleasant.

[53:41] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[53:42] It's very first CGI Sonic on this rather than second CGI Sonic, which is still fairly unpleasant.

Stuart Wellington

[53:48] Yeah.

[53:49] I mean, to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm, they were so concerned with if they could do it, they didn't stop and think if they should do it.

[53:57] Yeah.

[53:57] And I think according to all three of us, they shouldn't have.

Elliott Kalan

[54:00] No, I mean, it is rare that I will say this, but watching Space Jam New Legacy really made me revisit and be happy about the creative choices made in the Tom and Jerry movie,

[54:10] where I thought they did a great job of animating those characters.

[54:13] They interacted with the photorealistic world without turning them into photorealistic animals, you know, and I wish they had done that here.

Stuart Wellington

[54:21] Yeah, I guess this is our big apology tour right now for Tom and Jerry.

[54:24] You're right.

[54:25] It turns out that was a great movie.

Elliott Kalan

[54:26] Sorry to everyone who watched it as a kid and is now a grownup a year later and is like, actually, it was really great.

Stuart Wellington

[54:32] Yeah.

[54:33] So now you can't have a basketball game and not have an audience, so Algie summons every season.

[54:39] I mean, the Olympics are proving that you can, but continue.

Elliott Kalan

[54:42] Yeah, I'll go with the premise.

[54:43] Yeah.

[54:43] Really?

Stuart Wellington

[54:43] I haven't watched any of it.

[54:45] What's happening, Elliot?

Elliott Kalan

[54:46] It's just like the regular Olympics, but there's no audience.

Stuart Wellington

[54:49] Oh, okay.

[54:50] So all the characters from every Warner Brothers property all come charging over the hill.

[54:56] You see all of your favorites.

[54:58] Dan, you see Jabberjaw.

Dan McCoy

[54:59] You see Iron Giant.

[55:02] Of course you see Iron Giant.

[55:03] No shit.

[55:04] The other shitty movie that put all this stuff together.

Elliott Kalan

[55:07] They should have taken the Iron Giant out because all I could think about was Ready Player One.

[55:10] But like Space Ghost is there.

[55:12] But then they've got some oddball choices.

Dan McCoy

[55:14] The Gremlins run by.

[55:16] I was very angry because it made me think of how much I love the Gremlins.

Elliott Kalan

[55:20] I mean, it's weirder that Baby Jane is in the background from whatever happened to Baby Jane.

[55:24] That's true.

[55:26] In this kid's movie, you have like Pennywise watching a basketball game and the mask.

[55:31] And I'll tell you this.

Dan McCoy

[55:32] And the Droogs from Clockwork Orange.

[55:34] They're criminals.

Elliott Kalan

[55:36] I was reading.

[55:36] I think the fairest thing about this movie that I've read is on the Wikipedia entry, it talked about how there was going to be a Pepe Le Pew scene and that was cut.

[55:44] But then some people thought it was – were confused why Pepe Le Pew scene was cut.

[55:48] But the Droogs who raped someone in their movie are very visible in the audience throughout almost the entire basketball game.

Dan McCoy

[55:55] They're like front row.

[55:57] Like even if you're going to put them in, like why would you make that choice?

[56:01] We got to highlight a Clockwork Orange for all the viewers.

Elliott Kalan

[56:05] We should make it clear that these are not characters from – these are not shots from the movies that have been repurposed like earlier.

[56:12] These are very much the Halloween costume package theme park versions of these characters.

[56:17] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[56:18] That's what's crazy is it feels like they didn't have the intellectual property to use these characters.

[56:23] So they use slightly different ones.

[56:25] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[56:25] This isn't Mr. Freeze.

[56:27] This is Mr. Froze.

[56:28] How could you sue us?

[56:30] Come on.

[56:31] Yeah.

[56:31] Ice Cube villain.

[56:33] This isn't Pennywise.

[56:35] This is Nickel Dumb.

[56:36] Come on.

Dan McCoy

[56:37] He's not – but it is –

[56:40] This is mechanical citrus fruit.

Stuart Wellington

[56:43] I'm glad that we're using this as like a backdoor pitch to have us write the names for those like Spirit Halloween costumes.

Elliott Kalan

[56:50] I mean if they want to hire us I'd be happy to do it.

[56:52] Italian plumbing brothers.

[56:54] It's not Batman.

[56:56] It's Night Rodent Hero.

[56:57] Come on.

[56:58] But I will say this is – it's fairly quick.

[57:02] Large metal man.

[57:03] Large metal man.

[57:04] I never thought I'd say this.

[57:05] I never thought I'd say this that the novelty of watching Mr. Freeze, Baby Jane, Pennywise, The Mask, and a flying monkey from The Wizard of Oz watching a basketball game and enjoying it like crazy.

[57:14] The novelty of that wears off pretty quickly.

[57:17] Yeah.

[57:17] You get the – no matter what's happening in the game, the characters in the audience are so constantly jumping up and down excited in their seats and you know that they just brought random people – like random extra performers.

[57:27] So I assume auditioned for these roles.

[57:29] They brought them in, dressed them in the cheapest like White Walker costumes that you could find and told them, okay, jump around and pump your fists in the air for three hours straight.

[57:40] We're just going to roll on it.

[57:41] We're going to use these shots.

Stuart Wellington

[57:42] You guys are both more Hollywood type so you can explain the movie magic to me.

[57:46] So you're saying they didn't show them a basketball game with photorealistic tunes versus a goon squad to get them pumped up.

Elliott Kalan

[57:54] No, somewhere there is – there are files with thousands of hours of footage of people in against the green screen dressed in terrible knockoff costumes just pretending that they're super excited about it.

Dan McCoy

[58:06] Alone or in small clumps to be composited.

Elliott Kalan

[58:09] Yes.

[58:09] Somebody had to get dressed up in a poor replica of Danny DeVito's makeup from Batman Returns so that he could jump around and pump his fists in the air yelling ad-libbed things about basketball so that they could then get inserted.

[58:22] Oh, that's so great.

[58:23] So they could insert it next to, as mentioned, one of the nuns from The Devils.

Stuart Wellington

[58:26] What?

[58:26] Yes.

[58:27] With Zoom backgrounds being all the rage, I don't see why they didn't try and make money by selling that footage.

[58:33] So let's get back to this.

[58:35] Let's get back to the plot here.

Elliott Kalan

[58:37] The best is when the characters behind them do look like they're interacting with each other and it's like Pennywise and another character are in an argument about something.

[58:46] That's the movie I wanted to see.

Stuart Wellington

[58:52] Now, just these Warner Brothers characters, that's not enough of an audience for Al at least.

[58:56] He starts sucking in people that are looking at their phone so that they are trapped in Toon World.

[59:03] They are, you know, they're digitized.

[59:05] They look just like themselves.

[59:06] And they are forced to watch the game.

[59:09] No one questions it.

[59:10] They just immediately go with the flow.

[59:13] We get a sports announcer who I'm not familiar with and Lil Rel, who's great.

[59:19] And they are like officiating.

[59:20] They're not officiating.

[59:21] They're like they're broadcasting the game.

[59:24] They're doing the play-by-play.

[59:25] The rest of LeBron's family gets sucked in and they're watching it.

[59:29] They briefly try it with LeBron.

[59:30] He tries to explain what's going on.

[59:32] I think they figure it out.

[59:34] And then Al introduces his – but what we learn now is that large portions of the human race have now been digitized and their lives are on the line.

[59:44] So this is no joke.

Elliott Kalan

[59:46] If LeBron and the Toon Squad loses, then everybody has to stay in Algy Rhythms' world.

[59:51] And I guess he's just going to exploit them as new IP?

[59:55] Like just random people are just going to have movies made about them?

[59:58] I don't know his plan is.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:01] And then Al introduces his team of monsters or Monstars called the Goon Squad.

[1:00:06] They're not the Monstars.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:07] The Monstars are the other team from the first movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:09] Yeah, who can be seen in their small form I guess every once in a while.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:14] But they're pre-transformation form.

[1:00:15] They're seen in the audience.

[1:00:17] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:17] Yeah.

[1:00:17] Which is interesting.

[1:00:18] So the first Space Jam movie would be in this universe, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:24] Yes.

[1:00:24] So in theory, the opposing team could have – I mean, it would have been amazing.

[1:00:28] It would have been amazing if Michael Jordan from Space Jam was in the audience watching this, just going, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:00:33] High-fiving King Kong and sharing tacos with – sharing nachos with Space Ghost.

[1:00:38] Or tearing up while looking at an iPad.

[1:00:40] That's the Michael Jordan I know and love.

[1:00:43] Michael Jordan is in the audience just having a beer with Al Jolson from The Jazz Singer, just enjoying this movie alongside all the other Warner Brothers properties.

[1:00:52] Oh, no.

[1:00:52] I wanted to – a point I want to make – I apologize, Stu.

[1:00:54] A point I want to make was if you've ever taken the Warner Brothers studio tour, it's a lot like this where at the start a very bored Ellen DeGeneres who has clearly been green screened into the Warner Brothers studio a lot.

[1:01:06] She's like, let's take a look at some of the scenes from the Warner Brothers movies we've loved.

[1:01:10] And they're almost all movies from the past 15 years.

[1:01:13] It's like the Harry Potter movies and like the other recent hits.

[1:01:17] And then you'll get a shot from Casablanca.

[1:01:19] And it's like – it is amazing to me the cultural staying power of Casablanca, that that is a movie that is 80-some-odd years old.

[1:01:25] And it is the only one from pre-1995 that Warner Brothers seems to highlight at all really.

[1:01:34] And this is a studio that's over 100 years old.

[1:01:36] Like they have over 100 years of movies to point to.

[1:01:38] And yet people's cultural memory goes back to just Casablanca and everything that they saw recently.

[1:01:45] And so this movie is like that.

[1:01:47] Like there's not a lot of Warner Brothers characters pre The Matrix basically except for some reason.

[1:01:53] I guess if they hadn't made that feud show then Baby Jane wouldn't be showing up in the background either.

[1:01:58] But I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:00] Oh, it's so funny.

[1:02:01] Okay, so he introduces his team of the Goon Squad led by LeBron's son Dom.

[1:02:07] He has been, I guess, like kind of like –

[1:02:09] Could have called them the Dom Patrol.

[1:02:11] That's another Warner Brothers IP.

[1:02:13] I feel like he's like kind of brainwashed at this point.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:17] Yeah, well, I mean the thing is like LeBron makes such a short attempt at being like,

[1:02:23] Dom, hey, he's pitting you against us.

[1:02:27] This is not good.

[1:02:28] And then he like goes back to his wife Dom's mother like, I don't know.

[1:02:33] I don't know what I can do.

[1:02:34] I'm like, you like tried for like 30 seconds.

[1:02:37] You didn't even explain the stakes like, hey, he's going to trap all these people in here if I don't win this game.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:43] I feel like she would be rooting for her son over LeBron.

[1:02:47] I don't know why.

[1:02:48] Interesting.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:48] I mean it's every mother's dream to see their husband defeated by their son because half of the son is them.

[1:02:56] And so it's like you, this person who is 100% not me, has been defeated by someone who is at least 50% me.

[1:03:02] Like that's how you win the battle of parenthood.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:04] I get it.

[1:03:04] That's the math of parenthood.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:06] I think he's not brainwashed so much as like he's genuinely mad at his dad and Don Cheadle is taking advantage of that.

[1:03:11] And as someone who has been mad at his dad at various points, I know neither of you guys have ever had issues with your fathers.

[1:03:16] But it's like I totally get it that at a certain point you're like I want to do the thing that my dad does best, that he's most famous for, and I'm going to do it in my way in a way that he loses to me.

[1:03:26] Because that's also – according to Freud, that's the basis of all son psychology.

[1:03:32] And then he's just going to carry off his mom to the marital chamber and say I claim my prize now.

[1:03:37] Now I'm the father in the family.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:38] Let's not walk further down that path.

[1:03:40] That's not featured in the movie, just to be clear.

[1:03:42] No.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:43] Just to know that's not a scene in the film.

[1:03:45] So the game begins.

[1:03:46] People all over the world are watching it on LeBron's Instagram.

[1:03:50] The goon squad immediately takes a lead.

[1:03:53] They start scoring astronomical amount of points because, once again, this is not basketball.

[1:03:56] They're playing dom ball.

[1:03:58] And there's style points and there's all different kinds of ways to score points.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:01] By the half, they're up by 1,000 points.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:04] They're up by 1,000 points.

[1:04:05] And the tunes are kind of following directions from LeBron who, again, wants them to focus on playing normal basketball, following the fundamentals.

[1:04:15] But as I've addressed, one of the opposing players is like a spider woman.

[1:04:19] The other, it turns from water to fire in an instant.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:22] It's a snake woman who has to be like traveling.

[1:04:24] She's like traveling all the time because she can't dribble.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:28] It's true.

[1:04:28] Yep.

[1:04:29] There also doesn't appear to be a referee in the game, right?

[1:04:31] Oh, wait, I guess Pete is kind of the referee, but he cheats the whole time for the team squad.

[1:04:35] Pete is dressed as the referee.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:35] Well, when the referee is the henchman of the owner of the opposing team, it's an unfair game.

[1:04:43] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:43] It certainly takes LeBron James, though, a long time to realize, oh, wait, we cannot win this game by traditional basketball means.

[1:04:53] Like, that does not appear to be the way to win this game.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:55] Set in his ways is the LeBron James of this movie.

[1:04:58] Yeah.

[1:04:58] But, Dan, come on.

[1:05:00] They got him up a tree.

[1:05:01] They're throwing rocks at him.

[1:05:02] He's got to figure out how to get down from that tree.

[1:05:04] Screenwriting 101.

[1:05:06] Fundamentals.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:07] By the way, the whole, like, the last 50 minutes of this movie is the game, which I honestly, like, can't complain too much about.

[1:05:17] Like, I don't want them to, like, spend that much time getting to the game.

[1:05:21] Like, this movie, like, this movie, look, if you want a weird basketball game between toons and monsters and stuff, like, the movie will deliver on that promise.

[1:05:33] But it also is like, wow.

[1:05:35] They really are doing, like, almost a full hour of this basketball game.

[1:05:40] Yeah, there's a ton.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:41] It's not what I want from a movie.

[1:05:43] But if you're making a movie called Space Jam that involves LeBron James and the Looney Tunes, then this is what you're promising.

[1:05:49] And they, unfortunately, deliver, in a sense.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:53] Yeah, so it's looking grim.

[1:05:55] Yep.

[1:05:55] Are there any particular relief?

[1:05:56] I would not up to the scene.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:57] There's a scene that comes up soon where it made me genuinely angry, but we haven't gotten to it yet.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:02] Okay, so, as we said, by the end of the half, the goon squad is well in the lead.

[1:06:07] The toons are losing, and they go to their locker room, kind of defeated.

[1:06:11] They have a little bit of a halftime pep talk, which features a surprise appearance by Michael Jordan.

[1:06:18] Michael B. Jordan, who seems to have a little bit of fun, and then he bounces.

[1:06:22] He's out of there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:24] Here's where they missed.

[1:06:24] Not to hit on keeping the dead horse of the inherent racism of much of American pop culture, but I wanted that they're like, Sylvester, how did you not know?

[1:06:34] Because Sylvester's like, I found Michael Jordan, and then Michael B. Jordan walks out.

[1:06:37] They're like, how did you not know they weren't the same people?

[1:06:38] And I wanted Sylvester to go, I'm racist.

[1:06:41] I don't know.

[1:06:42] I can't tell them apart.

[1:06:43] I'm a racist.

[1:06:44] It was probably in the script, Elliot.

[1:06:45] Yeah, they just –

[1:06:46] Probably.

[1:06:47] Because if you're going to –

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:48] They shot one take of that, and it just didn't test well.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:50] Because if you're going to burn a Warner Brothers character by having them admit to being racist, why not, Sylvester?

[1:06:55] Of all of them.

[1:06:55] Yeah.

[1:06:55] Does anyone like Sylvester?

[1:06:57] No.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:57] Especially he'll say racist with a lisp, and everyone will laugh.

[1:07:00] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:01] Oh, that'll be hilarious.

[1:07:01] Again, yeah, they should have done it.

[1:07:02] It reminds me of – there's a lot of Looney Tune characters that are not – that are beloved because of their association with the Looney Tunes, and I feel like he's one of them.

[1:07:10] And it reminded me of when they decided to cut Pepe Le Pew from the movie.

[1:07:14] There was an article that came out that was like, Warner Brothers announces no new Pepe Le Pew vehicles for the next year.

[1:07:19] And I was like, they could have run this article any point in my life.

[1:07:23] Like, there has never been a demand ever for a Pepe Le Pew vehicle.

[1:07:28] Like, why don't you – do not give Warner Brothers credit for any of that decision.

[1:07:32] You know?

[1:07:34] So after Michael B. Jordan leaves, LeBron seems to learn his lesson.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:50] He explains that the tunes can finally be Looney again.

[1:07:52] He gives Bugs the play marker.

[1:07:55] He realized that basketball should be fun.

[1:07:58] It shouldn't be work.

[1:07:59] And he gives up a little bit of his control to the tunes, and I think that's going to pay off in big dividends.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:07] It certainly pays off right away as Porky Pig gets into a rap battle.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:10] Yep.

[1:08:11] We learn the true meaning of style points as almost immediately they get into a rap battle where –

Dan McCoy

[1:08:17] Why did that happen?

[1:08:18] I like blinked for half a second.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:22] Oh, I believe Don Cheadle said something that rhymed, and it kind of indicated that they were entering the rap battle world of the WB universe.

[1:08:31] And Porky Pig is introduced in his new persona, the Notorious P.I.G., and he does a little bit of rapping.

[1:08:38] Everybody's loving it.

[1:08:40] Everybody's tapping their toes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:42] They said the first movie is based on a commercial.

[1:08:45] This scene will be based on those T-shirts that were real popular for a while where the Looney Tunes characters were all wearing like oversized jerseys and lots of rings and chains.

[1:08:53] You used to see them a lot.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:54] A very mild sort of like mid-tempo basic rap, but everyone thinks it's the best rap that they've ever heard.

[1:09:01] So much so that there's no response.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:03] Yeah, true.

[1:09:04] Yeah, Don Cheadle is silenced by Porky Pig's rhymes.

[1:09:07] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:07] Yeah, he's so shocked that it happened.

[1:09:09] The Toons are allowed to be Looney.

[1:09:12] They get to use, and we get to see all of our favorite bits, you know, Tweety Bird waiting for the train to arrive.

[1:09:19] Granny, again, does Matrix stuff.

[1:09:22] We're introduced, Dom is taken out of the game.

[1:09:25] They sideline him, which is a kind of weird choice.

[1:09:28] And they bring in a new Goon Squad player, Kronos, who can slow time down.

[1:09:37] Once again, it doesn't seem like it's part of the rules, but it's not regular basketball.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:41] It's because every movie now needs a scene where somebody's running around real fast and everyone else is slowed down so they're able to manipulate things.

[1:09:47] It's just so fucking funny.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:49] It's so fucking funny and like cool.

[1:09:52] Like it's just cool.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:52] Ellie, can I guess?

[1:09:53] Did we pass the thing that made you angry and can I guess what it is?

[1:09:57] Guess what it is.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:58] I think we may have passed it.

[1:09:59] Guess what it is.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:59] Is it the fact that the coyote paints something on a wall and the Roadrunner runs into it?

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:07] No, that is not it.

[1:10:08] I'm touched that you think that that would make me mad.

[1:10:10] I did get a little irritated when Bugs Bunny pulled that on LeBron early on because I'm like that's a Wile E. Coyote Roadrunner joke.

[1:10:16] But no, you might feel a little bad.

[1:10:19] The thing that made me mad was when LG is yelling at Dom and LeBron is watching this and doing nothing.

[1:10:25] And I was like fuck you.

[1:10:26] You do not deserve to be a father at that moment, LeBron.

[1:10:29] Wow.

[1:10:29] You're watching your son.

[1:10:30] Your son is being verbally abused by a computer program and you're sitting and watching and doing nothing because your head's in this dumbass game.

[1:10:38] Step up and defend your son in front of this asshole, dick.

[1:10:41] So that got me really mad.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:42] Again, Elliot, it might help you to know that the actor playing his son is not his actual son.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:46] No, but even in the fictional – I know it wasn't really happening.

[1:10:50] Even in the fictional world of this universe, the idea of being as – and maybe this is because I'm a dad.

[1:10:56] Being a father and seeing an authority figure yelling at my son basically and telling him, you suck.

[1:11:02] You're not good at this.

[1:11:03] You don't deserve to do this.

[1:11:05] I would have to get up off my opposing bench and walk over and tell him to stop at the very least rather than being like, ooh, well, this is just motivating me to win this cartoon basketball game.

[1:11:15] It just made me so mad that LeBron sat there and watched while that happened.

[1:11:19] Anyway, back to the cartoon basketball game.

[1:11:22] It was the genuine emotional reality of like having been a kid, having been a kid who would get into arguments with authority figures and having my parents stand up to me to see LeBron James, the hero of the movie, not do that was very painful to me.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:36] No, no, okay.

[1:11:36] I wasn't expecting a genuine emotional trigger.

[1:11:40] I thought it would be, again, a silly –

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:43] No, but I like that after the many years of knowing me, you thought that I just got mad because the wrong person ran into a painted scene.

[1:11:50] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:51] Yeah, and again, like we get a bunch more bits.

[1:11:55] The tunes start to win.

[1:11:56] We do get – as a Hoosier, I greatly appreciated seeing Don Cheadle doing a Bobby Knight joke, famous basketball coach of Indiana University.

[1:12:05] There was a bit – they try and bring the time-stopping Kronos character.

[1:12:10] He tries to do his thing again.

[1:12:12] Toons reveal their secret weapon is Granny who does some like Matrix moves and she also messes with his time turner, sends him to the fucking beach from old and the guy gets super old like a robot.

[1:12:24] And falls apart, right?

[1:12:26] It's amazing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:27] She kills him.

[1:12:29] She consigns him to an early death and is like, wow, this is a rough game.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:33] Yeah.

[1:12:34] It becomes like steampunkier as he gets old.

[1:12:36] I kind of like that idea.

[1:12:37] Yeah, it's great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:39] So wait.

[1:12:40] So I only heard – I've only heard secondhand about this old person beach.

[1:12:43] What is it exactly?

[1:12:43] It's a beach where you turn into an old person?

[1:12:45] Yeah, Dan.

[1:12:45] What's the deal here?

Dan McCoy

[1:12:47] I haven't seen this.

[1:12:49] I'm not familiar, but I believe, yeah, it's the least popular tourist attraction.

[1:12:54] Sure.

[1:12:55] They basically just have to like dump people on the beach and be like, hey, maybe you'll like this beach.

[1:13:00] I don't know.

[1:13:01] It turns people old.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:02] I mean, can you dump them on so that they're like, well, I'm really dying to hit my 16th birthday so I can drive.

[1:13:09] Right, right.

[1:13:09] I'm only 14.

[1:13:10] Can you just dump me on it long enough so I get to be 16?

[1:13:13] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:14] What if I'm just on the beach for like a couple minutes?

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:16] Does it ageify your driver's license?

Dan McCoy

[1:13:19] I mean like –

[1:13:20] Ageify.

[1:13:21] Maybe if you like go on and you're like – you're in a harness and like a helicopter like pulls you off the beach at the exact right moment.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:29] I mean you could – if someone is willing to risk getting old to collect that sand because I assume the power is in the sand and people could take – like kids could take it a little bit of a time instead of having to deal with the old antiquated analog Zoltar technology that they needed to use in the past to get old.

[1:13:44] So that they could finally go into the city, get a job and then touch a woman's boobs.

[1:13:49] Now you can just get a little bit of that sand and you can have the same effect.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:52] I think they did more than that, my friend.

[1:13:54] I mean I'm just going by what's on screen.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:56] But anyway, it used to be if you wanted to age fast, you had to go to Rye Playland and that is not conceivable for most people.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:04] Now, do you think that the old beach would also serve a purpose for say – I don't know, like parents who are like I am dying to have my fucking kids out of the house.

[1:14:15] I want to send them to college.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:16] Yes, very much so.

[1:14:17] I can't do these difficult middle school, high school years.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:21] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1:14:22] Let's just ageify this kid up, send them away to whatever college we can afford or a trade school preferably.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:28] Well, because that's the thing.

[1:14:29] Usually you would save up their whole lives for college, but if you're aging them quickly, you don't have as much time for the compound interest to help.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:34] Can you put your bank account on the ageified?

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:36] That's a good question.

[1:14:37] What if you deposited some sand in a safety deposit box with the bank age and then your money gets older and therefore more of it?

Dan McCoy

[1:14:44] Stuart's plan is for people who hear the song Cats in a Cradle and are like, yes, yes, this is what I want.

[1:14:49] That's all for they can get there someday.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:51] Now the question is when you get old, do you get the memories of the time that you passed or you're just instantly that age?

[1:14:57] Because you don't want to send to college like an eight-year-old in an 18-year-old's body.

[1:15:02] That is trouble.

[1:15:03] That is tea rubble.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:04] That sounds like a couple of my college performance reports.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:08] Okay, possible.

[1:15:10] I'm just saying they need to have a generation of Jacks starring Robin Williams, and that's a problem.

[1:15:13] You don't need a generation of those.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:15] Generation of Jacks.

[1:15:16] Jack, not in this movie in any way.

[1:15:18] Okay, so.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:19] I don't know if that's a Warner Brothers property, but.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:21] So around here, the tunes have basically tied the game.

[1:15:25] LeBron and his son patch things up.

[1:15:27] They hug.

[1:15:28] And again, I paused it, and I was like, there's 20 minutes left?

[1:15:34] So Al G.

[1:15:36] Here's the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:36] Whenever I watch one of these movies now, I pad in roughly seven to ten minutes of credits.

[1:15:40] Yeah, yeah.

[1:15:41] Because with all the special effects, it's long credits.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:43] So Al G.

[1:15:45] Realizes he's lost his captain.

[1:15:46] He's lost his Time Turner fellow.

[1:15:48] His team needs a new captain.

[1:15:49] It's going to have to be him.

[1:15:51] So he uses a variety of technology to make himself into a giant CGI Don Cheadle.

[1:15:58] They play some basketball.

[1:16:00] He scores a dunk on LeBron, and then he makes a training day reference, which is great.

[1:16:05] And then he follows it up with it.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:06] Yeah, look, for people who are not going to watch this movie, and I do not recommend it, let us explicitly say the reference.

[1:16:14] Because it is one of the times I'm like, okay, I like that.

[1:16:17] Where, like Don Cheadle says, the famed line from Training Day, King Kong ain't got nothing on me.

[1:16:22] And King Kong, who is in the audience, just does a little huffy, like, arm cross.

[1:16:26] Yeah.

[1:16:27] And to see that beautiful giant ape do such a delicate movement was pretty funny.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:34] Yeah, I mean, let's hand it to the animators.

[1:16:36] Let's take them, let's do a round of applause for them guys.

[1:16:38] Good work on that gag.

[1:16:39] Alex, throw that round of applause in there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:41] And, you know, who, I wonder who got the lucky dream of getting to go home every day being like, I spent today working on the facial expressions for an animated Don Cheadle.

[1:16:49] Like, I am, this is what I wanted.

[1:16:51] Yeah.

[1:16:52] I will say, there's a lot, there's, like any modern movie, there's a mixed bag of really great effects that work out great and effects that are not working out so well.

[1:16:59] I was talking to my brother-in-law, who works, who is a Disney technology animator, and he was saying that, he hadn't seen the movie, but I was describing to him and he said, I bet you, he said, not knowing it, I bet you they farmed out the effects to a lot of people.

[1:17:11] They have a lot of different effects houses.

[1:17:13] And that's why some things work and some things don't quite work.

[1:17:15] And I wonder if that's true.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:17] So, they realize they don't have much time left.

[1:17:20] The point scoring is kind of strange because with the whole style points thing, it's kind of difficult to determine how close the actual game is or, like, how they're going to win or how they're not going to win.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:28] It's so weird because at any moment you could suddenly get 500 points.

[1:17:31] So, yeah, I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:32] It was hard to maintain the level of, you know, tension that I was expecting.

[1:17:38] So, LeBron decides.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:40] Considering the stakes are all of you will be trapped as ghosts in the machine forever if you lose.

[1:17:46] The basketball game stakes are very hard to read.

[1:17:49] When you can stick Wile E. Coyote into a multiplying machine and suddenly get 800, 900 points, it's, you know, it's hard to know how much time means.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:57] It was definitely, like, whose line is it anywhere scoring.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:01] I mean, the fact that Clive Anderson was seen working the board.

[1:18:04] Yeah, that was a nice touch.

[1:18:06] I assume he's a Warner Brothers property.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:08] Yeah, so LeBron suggests that he is going to risk deletion, risk becoming, like, a glitch by performing his illegal step-back maneuver that he had previously done while playing the game.

[1:18:20] And everyone's like, no, you're going to die.

[1:18:21] And he's like, I'm not a tune.

[1:18:23] I can do whatever I want.

[1:18:25] But then, of course, in the middle of the game, Bugs decides to do it himself.

[1:18:29] And you're like, no, Bugs, don't.

[1:18:31] Sacrifice yourself, I guess.

[1:18:33] I don't know what the stakes are.

[1:18:35] So, LeBron catches the ball.

[1:18:36] As we find out later, Stuart, the stakes are incredibly high and also non-existent.

[1:18:40] Yeah.

[1:18:41] LeBron catches the ball.

[1:18:42] He scores a basket.

[1:18:43] The Toons win.

[1:18:45] Everybody gets zapped home.

[1:18:47] Bugs is glitched.

[1:18:48] The game is over.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:49] And algorithm is posterized.

[1:18:53] He is turned into a poster.

[1:18:54] And that's it.

[1:18:55] He's just a poster now.

[1:18:56] He's dead forever.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:57] Bugs has a full-on death scene.

[1:18:58] Let's not.

[1:18:59] Like, Bugs is, like, being, like, held by Lola Bunny.

[1:19:02] He says, that's all, folks.

[1:19:04] He, like, turns into a sky bunny.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:05] He turns into a star that ascends into the, you know, he turns into a star that flies up to heaven.

[1:19:11] Yeah.

[1:19:12] And I'm like, what did this movie just do?

[1:19:14] Uh-huh.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:15] You're like, is this the end?

[1:19:16] And I'm like, no, Dan, this is not the end.

[1:19:18] It's also.

[1:19:19] Death is just another step along our journey.

[1:19:21] Oh, boy, Stuart, that's a dangerous message to send out.

[1:19:25] The dull gray curtain of this world is pulled back and all is silver glass.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:28] And Tune World is seen behind.

[1:19:31] I think it's the fact that, and again, as someone, I have a, I feel like I have a real emotional love of Bugs Bunny and those characters.

[1:19:39] I have a real deep connection to them.

[1:19:40] They mean a lot to me.

[1:19:42] And yet, there was, I had the same reaction where I'm like, wait, am I supposed to be, like, worried that Bugs Bunny is dying?

[1:19:49] Like, I don't, this is not since there was that, there was that animated heroes fight drugs special when I was a kid where, like, Bugs and Raphael or Michelangelo and a bunch of the, all the Saturday morning lineup characters.

[1:20:01] And Cerebus, right?

[1:20:03] Yeah, and Cerebus.

[1:20:03] Yeah, and Cerebus was in there.

[1:20:05] Yeah, Larry Martyr's Bean World characters were all in there.

[1:20:08] Sure.

[1:20:08] Maggie and Hopi.

[1:20:09] Yeah, they're all concrete.

[1:20:12] Yeah.

[1:20:12] Oh, shit.

[1:20:14] Yeah.

[1:20:14] Anyway, they, when I was like, wait, does Bugs Bunny.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:18] Concrete's a superhero, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:20] Well, he's a superhero in a world without villains.

[1:20:22] You know, he has superpowers, but he mostly uses it to rescue people or write memoirs.

[1:20:27] But the idea when I was young that, like, wait, Bugs Bunny cares if I do drugs or not?

[1:20:32] Like, this doesn't square with my understanding of the character.

[1:20:35] That's how I felt with this where I was like, wait a minute.

[1:20:37] I'm supposed to be worried that Bugs Bunny is dying now?

[1:20:39] I don't understand.

[1:20:41] I wasn't worried that he was truly dead, but it seemed wild that it happened.

[1:20:47] It was, and what, ironically, it was like, they're going for the same emotion that the

[1:20:51] speechless image after Mel Blanc died had, where it showed a microphone with nobody standing

[1:20:58] on it and all the, and the Looney Tunes characters were, like, bowing their heads in grief.

[1:21:02] And it was like, they're kind of going for that.

[1:21:04] But, like, that was about the death of a real person who existed.

[1:21:06] This is like, I don't, there's not part of me that, and as the movie, I was like, but

[1:21:10] he's a cartoon, right?

[1:21:11] So they could just draw more of him.

[1:21:12] And the movie then bears you out on that.

[1:21:14] But anyway, continue.

[1:21:15] So Bugs Bunny dies, he ascends to heaven as a star.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:18] Okay.

[1:21:18] So we now, you know, again, the gray curtain of the world pulls back.

[1:21:24] And we are back in the real world multiple weeks later.

[1:21:27] LeBron is taking his son Dom to basketball camp.

[1:21:29] So we think he's carrying a basketball.

[1:21:31] So that's, you know, that's a prop.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:34] You got to bring your own basketball to basketball camp.

[1:21:36] Really limits who can go, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:40] So it turns out he tricked his son.

[1:21:42] He's not taking him to basketball camp.

[1:21:44] He's taking him to, what, video game creation camp?

[1:21:46] I don't remember what they call it.

[1:21:47] Yeah, it's a video game coding camp.

[1:21:50] And he's like, okay, you won't be needing that basketball.

[1:21:52] And his son's like, I'm going to keep it.

[1:21:53] And he's like, oh, wow, the students become the master.

[1:21:56] His son leaves.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:57] And then you've got to imagine the rest of that coding camp is just him bouncing that basketball off of other kids' heads going, nerd, nerd.

[1:22:04] I'm a jock, nerd.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:05] Yep.

[1:22:06] And then Bugs Bunny shows up.

[1:22:08] And we get a little bit of outro goofs where Bugs is like, you can't kill me.

[1:22:12] I'm immortal.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:12] He goes, you got to know.

[1:22:15] You can't kill a Looney Tunes.

[1:22:16] It's like, Looney Tunes don't die.

[1:22:18] And it's like, what?

Dan McCoy

[1:22:19] What was the death scene about then, Bugs?

[1:22:22] That was what, like, if you're going to.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:24] It's a cycle, like fucking Ragnarok, Dan.

[1:22:26] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:27] It's just like the death of Balder.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:28] It happens over and over again.

[1:22:29] That's what I'm saying.

[1:22:30] I wasn't.

[1:22:31] He's just like Balder.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:33] I certainly wasn't mad at the movie for removing the stakes that I didn't think were there in the first place.

[1:22:38] I didn't think the movie was going to kill off Bugs Bunny, beloved character Bugs Bunny.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:44] The movie ended, and then just at the end said, Bugs Bunny, 1941 to 2021.

[1:22:49] And Warner Brothers, then the next scene is the head of Warner Brothers being, that's right.

[1:22:53] We are retiring the Bugs Bunny character.

[1:22:54] He will never appear in anything again.

[1:22:57] And they take all the Bugs Bunny memorabilia, and they bury it in the desert.

[1:23:00] And they pour concrete over it.

[1:23:02] They go, Bugs Bunny is now only a myth and a memory.

[1:23:05] He belongs.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:05] Not concrete the character, though.

[1:23:07] You can't bore him.

[1:23:08] They don't pour Paul Chadwick's concrete on there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:11] No, no, they don't.

[1:23:11] Now he belongs to the ages.

[1:23:13] No, I didn't think.

[1:23:14] We are.

[1:23:15] But aren't you giving up millions of dollars by ending any Bugs Bunny thing?

[1:23:20] Yes, we are.

[1:23:21] But we feel like.

[1:23:21] You're showing him the respect that he deserves.

[1:23:24] To do justice to his sacrifice and the choice he made in Space Jam, A New Legacy, we will never bring him back.

[1:23:30] But aren't you, what if a future Warner Brothers executive decides to bring him back?

[1:23:35] Impossible.

[1:23:35] We are also destroying all the original Bugs Bunny cartoons, every piece of documentation.

[1:23:40] And we are making a legal oath.

[1:23:43] Everyone at Warner Brothers that this will never happen.

[1:23:46] And if someone does try to bring him back in the future, this judge has declared through an injunction that we can kill that person in order to maintain Bugs Bunny's honorable sacrifice.

[1:23:54] And in exchange, we will build this statue with an eternal flame to Bugs Bunny.

[1:24:00] Thank you, Bugs Bunny, for sacrificing your life.

[1:24:02] Thank you.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:02] Again, the statue is not a physical representation of Bugs Bunny because those are illegal now.

[1:24:07] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:07] It's just fire.

[1:24:09] It's just fire roughly.

[1:24:10] It's a carrot with fire on top of it.

[1:24:12] And then when they leave the podium, Joe Biden walks up.

[1:24:16] As President of the United States, I am declaring all flags will fly half-mast forever in honor of Bugs Bunny's sacrifice.

[1:24:22] To recognize that he will never appear again and that he is the ultimate hero of all reality.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:28] I know what you're thinking.

[1:24:30] Flagstaff creators, don't just make your staff twice as big.

[1:24:33] No, no, no, no.

[1:24:35] Same size.

[1:24:36] We're doing half-mast.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:37] Because I am creating a new department of Flagstaff height that will go across the country checking all Flagstaffs to ensure they are regulation height.

[1:24:44] And the height of Flagstaff, Arizona.

[1:24:46] Will actually be lowered.

[1:24:48] Flagstaff, Arizona will also be halved.

[1:24:50] No roofs on any of the buildings.

[1:24:52] All two-story houses are now one story.

[1:24:54] All one-story houses are now half-story houses.

[1:24:57] And now half-stories.

[1:24:58] You have to go into the ground to get to them.

[1:25:00] Or if you're very short, maybe that'll work.

[1:25:01] In addition, the words Bugs and Bunny are now stricken from the English language in America and punishable by death.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:08] You may only say insects or rabbits.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:12] Yes, and his absence from life will be recognized with an absence from memory and also the collective culture.

[1:25:19] An open wound, a lacuna that will never be filled in order to bear our immortal grief, our incredible eternal grief at the sacrifice chosen to be made by Bugs Bunny in Space Jam, A New Legacy on HBO Max now and in theaters.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:36] Before you ask, yes, to give you an example, the movie Lady Bugs will forever be known as Lady.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:42] Yes, very true.

[1:25:43] To honor his sacrifice.

[1:25:44] Bugs Bunny from the encyclopedia Brown novels is now just meanie or perhaps rabbits meanie.

[1:25:49] Bugs Malone, similar.

[1:25:51] Rabbits Malone.

[1:25:52] Let's talk about Bunny.

[1:25:54] You will no longer be allowed to call someone your Honey Bunny.

[1:25:56] They will be your Honey Rabbit or just Honey.

[1:25:59] Any other questions?

[1:26:00] Any other questions here?

[1:26:01] Yes, the Trix Rabbit.

[1:26:03] His name is Trix Rabbit, not Trix Bunny.

[1:26:05] He will remain the same.

[1:26:06] We are not eliminating the animals of rabbits, but the word bunny is no longer around.

[1:26:11] But wouldn't it be recognizing Bugs Bunny if we did eliminate all rabbits?

[1:26:14] You're right.

[1:26:15] Let's do it.

[1:26:16] No more rabbits in the United States.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:17] What about a bug's life?

[1:26:18] There's an apostrophe in there.

[1:26:20] Does it the same?

[1:26:21] Because it's not spelled the same as Bugs Bunny.

[1:26:23] Good question.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:24] It is spelled the same with an apostrophe.

[1:26:26] That's just a plural possessive.

[1:26:28] That will now be called an insect's life.

[1:26:30] All prints will be changed at Disney's expense.

[1:26:33] They understand, as a brother's studio, they understand the great sacrifice Warner Brothers

[1:26:38] is making representing the great sacrifice Bugs Bunny made, again in the hit film Space Jam

[1:26:42] and New Legacy, which now, according to the Constitution, is reality.

[1:26:46] We are living in a simulation based on Space Jam and New Legacy.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:50] It is all the 4,000 page binders we've handed out to each one of you.

[1:26:56] No, I wasn't expecting any of that to happen, but I did expect some bit more of an explanation

[1:27:05] than like, eh, I didn't die.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:08] Oh, no.

[1:27:08] Yeah, you expected something other than, it was all a goof.

[1:27:11] He doesn't even say it was a goof for a joke.

[1:27:12] He just says, nothing can kill us.

[1:27:14] And also the fact that Bugs Bunny is not dead and is now walking around the real world with

[1:27:18] no explanation.

[1:27:20] It's terrifying.

[1:27:20] It's just IP in the Warner Brothers servers and he's like, all my friends came with me.

[1:27:24] Hope you got bunk beds at your house.

[1:27:25] It's like, wait a minute.

[1:27:27] So can these characters just enter our reality whenever they want?

[1:27:30] Or is Jason going to walk through that portal?

[1:27:32] Like, there are a lot of scary things.

[1:27:34] Like, we saw the Droogs and King Kong at the game.

[1:27:37] Are they suddenly in the real world?

[1:27:38] That's frightening.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:40] We're going to have to create some sort of Ultron to protect the world from what's coming now.

[1:27:44] I guess so.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:45] Seems like a mistake.

[1:27:45] Different company, but that's okay.

[1:27:47] So that is, I guess that wraps up.

[1:27:49] That's going to put a pin on Space Jam and New Legacy.

[1:27:52] We're probably the 500th podcast to cover this movie.

[1:27:56] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:56] Dan, you listened to a couple.

[1:27:57] Did we say all the exact same bits and jokes?

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:00] Did they also talk about Bugs Bunny's death and the ramifications?

Dan McCoy

[1:28:04] Not the ramifications.

[1:28:06] Not at length.

[1:28:07] My Bim Bam did about half of an episode on it.

[1:28:10] Oh, okay.

[1:28:11] I know Blank Check did three hours or something.

[1:28:13] Jesus Christ.

[1:28:14] New Legacy.

[1:28:15] But, well, that's par for the course.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:17] Hey, guys, I think that's okay.

[1:28:20] You know what?

[1:28:21] A lot of people have done book reports on The Great Gatsby.

[1:28:23] Go ahead and read it.

[1:28:24] Do a book report on it.

[1:28:25] It's a great book.

[1:28:26] Obviously, a work of art of this magnitude demands multiple interpretations and multiple analyses.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:32] So do we have to go more than three hours then?

[1:28:34] We actually, yeah, I guess so.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:36] I guess we have to double.

[1:28:37] Okay, Stuart, start summarizing the movie again.

[1:28:39] We open in media res.

[1:28:41] LeBron is alive.

[1:28:43] We did.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:43] I do want to watch.

[1:28:44] But he's a little kid.

[1:28:45] We saw Griffin for a little while last night and the glint in his eye when he, the glint

[1:28:50] in his eye that we would have to go through and the weariness in his heart that he had seen

[1:28:55] it was something to see.

[1:28:58] Okay.

[1:28:59] Let's move on to final judgments.

[1:29:03] Whether it's a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked.

[1:29:10] I'm going to say, yes, Elliot.

[1:29:13] I was like, I similarly thought of Cats in the sense that this is like one of the most misbegotten,

[1:29:20] giant budget Hollywood movies that I can remember in my lifetime.

[1:29:26] Unlike Cats, it is not a shot of pure joy.

[1:29:29] Oh, no.

[1:29:29] It's just misery after misery.

[1:29:32] It reminded me of like when I was like a kid, when I was like 12 or 13, I remember thinking

[1:29:38] like, oh, what an awesome movie it would be if like all my favorite monsters were in the same

[1:29:42] movie together.

[1:29:43] Like if like, uh, there's a, like some, the plot was like somebody figured out how to bring

[1:29:48] uh, like the gremlins out from gremlins and put them with, uh, Jason Voorhees and the

[1:29:54] xenomorph and like they had to fight them.

[1:29:57] And this movie is proof that, uh, that's why, you know, children, maybe not the best, uh,

[1:30:04] storytellers, uh, a bad idea that should stay in a child's mind.

[1:30:07] It did not pan out as a film.

[1:30:10] Uh, I'm just going to say it was bad, bad.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:14] Yeah.

[1:30:14] I recently, so I recently watched Ready Player One and I mean, I think there's some obvious

[1:30:18] comparisons cause they both just like mush all kinds of garbage together.

[1:30:22] Um, and I feel like, yes.

[1:30:26] And I was kind of hoping that, that Space Jam, The New Legacy, because it kind of takes everything

[1:30:31] less seriously, it would be more palatable to me, but no, it's just, it's just kind of,

[1:30:37] it's kind of a weird mess of a movie.

[1:30:39] Obviously Don Cheadle's performance is great and he's fun.

[1:30:43] Uh, and, uh, yeah, it's just, it's a bad, bad movie.

[1:30:47] I don't, I don't recommend it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:48] I think, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a bad, bad movie.

[1:30:52] All that be, I agree with you guys on what you said.

[1:30:53] There seems to, it's like we're, we're learning that there's a diminishing return to heaping

[1:30:58] beloved characters on top of each other into a sort of, um, pile of, of characters.

[1:31:04] Like that there's a reason that, um, like you take, like Godzilla is great.

[1:31:10] King Kong is great.

[1:31:11] You put them both in a movie.

[1:31:12] Somehow the movie is not quite as good.

[1:31:13] Like there is a demultiplying effect, a, uh, dividing effect, I guess, when you have all

[1:31:18] these characters in there.

[1:31:19] And, but you know, I can't, again, I can't fault the creators of the movie, everyone involved

[1:31:24] in this movie.

[1:31:25] If you, if you came to me and you said, you're going to make a movie, it's the Looney Tunes

[1:31:28] and every Warner Brothers character in one movie.

[1:31:30] Like the only, the only, uh, stipulation is it has to be basketball.

[1:31:33] I'd be like, sign me up.

[1:31:34] I don't care how it turns out.

[1:31:36] Like just to be able to sit down and write the words, Bugs Bunny dunks the basketball through

[1:31:40] the basket as the droogs watch on in ecstasy.

[1:31:44] Like, but, uh, it's really not a, if you, if you love the first space jam, go back and

[1:31:50] watch it again.

[1:31:51] Uh, you know, and if you love the Looney Tunes, go watch like Looney Tunes cartoons.

[1:31:54] There's better versions of every single thing in this movie, including LeBron James.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:58] Or watch, or watch The Last Dance.

[1:32:00] Yeah.

[1:32:01] And if you like combining IP, just buy any t-shirt off the internet.

[1:32:06] And yeah, that'll be great.

[1:32:07] There you go.

S5

[1:32:12] Video games.

S4

[1:32:15] You like them?

S5

[1:32:16] Maybe you wish you had more time for them.

[1:32:18] Maybe you want to know the best ones to play.

[1:32:20] Maybe you want to know what happens to Mario when he dies.

S4

[1:32:22] In that case, you should check out Triple Click.

[1:32:25] It's a podcast about video games.

S5

[1:32:27] A podcast about video games, but I don't have time for that.

[1:32:30] Sure you do.

[1:32:31] Once a week, kick back as three video game experts give you everything from critical takes on the

[1:32:35] hottest new releases, to scoops, interviews, and explanations about how video games work,

S4

[1:32:40] to fascinating and sometimes weird stories about the games we love.

S5

[1:32:44] Triple Click is hosted by me, Kirk Hamilton.

[1:32:46] Me, Jason Shrier.

S4

[1:32:47] And me, Maddie Myers.

S5

[1:32:48] You can find Triple Click wherever you get your podcasts and listen at MaximumFun.org.

[1:32:53] Bye!

[1:32:53] Are you riddled with guilt over your TBR pile?

S6

[1:33:01] Are you filled with shame about a book that you just can't seem to finish?

[1:33:04] Are you having regrets because grad school killed your love of reading?

[1:33:09] Wear reading glasses and we're here to help.

[1:33:12] I'm Mallory.

[1:33:12] And I'm Bria.

[1:33:13] Let us absolve you of all your reading guilt.

[1:33:16] Stuck on a book you don't like?

[1:33:17] We'll help you dump it.

[1:33:18] Can't figure out what to read next?

[1:33:20] We'll recommend something in your wheelhouse.

[1:33:22] Can't decide where to buy your books from?

[1:33:24] We'll point you in the right direction.

[1:33:26] No matter what you read or how you read it.

[1:33:28] We'll help you do it better.

[1:33:30] Reading glasses.

[1:33:31] Every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:34] Hello.

[1:33:35] This is Dan dropping in from my present, this episode's future, your past, to tell you.

[1:33:44] We hadn't announced it at the time we recorded.

[1:33:47] So we're adding this on after the fact that we are doing a streaming live show.

[1:33:54] The world is still too uncertain for us to get out on the road and see you all in person like we might want to do and hope we will be able to do at some point.

[1:34:07] But for right now, we are returning to you over the internet, our natural habitat, to talk to you about Super Mario Brothers or Super Mario Brothers, depending on your preference.

[1:34:24] It's going to be discussing that famous flop from 1993 starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as the titular brothers and Dennis Hopper as the bad guy.

[1:34:40] It's $10.

[1:34:43] It's a ticketed show.

[1:34:45] $10.

[1:34:46] You can get tickets by going to theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

[1:34:52] That's Tix with a T-I-X.

[1:34:56] The Flophouse.simpleticks.com.

[1:35:01] It will be on Saturday, September the 25th at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Central.

[1:35:10] We're trying to split the difference between time zones.

[1:35:13] But if you can't watch it live, I've got to say it's fun to watch it live.

[1:35:18] There's chat functionality.

[1:35:20] You can chat with other Flophouse listeners.

[1:35:23] But if you can't watch it live, worry not.

[1:35:27] Your ticket gets you access to the show for another week after the actual show was done.

[1:35:37] And it's got great stuff.

[1:35:39] Along with talking about Super Mario Brothers, we also have our PowerPoint presentations like we do on tour.

[1:35:49] With the added bonus of having them all slowed down because of the internet.

[1:35:56] So our timing is off and you can laugh at us for that.

[1:35:59] We got some Ask the Floppers.

[1:36:03] You can throw some questions at us via Twitter and we'll respond.

[1:36:08] There's other stuff we're going to do.

[1:36:10] Other fun stuff that we don't want to spoil that high of time.

[1:36:14] But if you are interested in this, again, you can go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

[1:36:21] And for a mere $10, acquire your ticket for Saturday, September 25th at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

[1:36:31] Not Pacific.

[1:36:32] Whoa.

[1:36:33] What was that?

[1:36:34] And we hope that we'll see you there.

[1:36:37] And oh, there'll be a little show-exclusive merch that will be also available during that period.

[1:36:44] If you like having t-shirts and if you like having t-shirts that other people don't have because they weren't there, this is for you.

[1:36:54] But anyway, we hope you can make it.

[1:37:00] Time for some ads or one ad, in fact.

[1:37:04] The Flophouse is sponsored in part by Storyblocks.

[1:37:08] What?

[1:37:09] Bring your stories to life.

[1:37:10] Yes, Stuart.

[1:37:11] Without sacrificing your vision with Storyblocks.

[1:37:15] Storyblocks' unlimited all-access plan gives you unlimited downloads of the over 1 million-plus assets in their library.

[1:37:23] You can try out multiple options quickly and find the perfect fit so you can create more and spend less.

[1:37:30] Stay on budget while telling the best version of your story with the most affordable subscription plans and tools on the market that scale to meet your needs.

[1:37:40] And Restock is their commitment to increase representation in stock media by hiring creators from marginalized communities to create content that is more reflective of the diverse world we live in.

[1:37:52] I use Storyblocks to do something from our live show.

[1:37:56] It was very easy to use.

[1:37:58] Very easy to find the assets, download them.

[1:38:01] They all looked beautiful.

[1:38:03] You, too, can explore their library and subscribe today at storyblocks.com slash flop.

[1:38:09] That's storyblocks.com slash flop.

[1:38:13] Before we move along, do you guys have anything you want to plug or anything?

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:18] Well, I do own a couple of bars in Brooklyn, Hinterland's Bar and Minnie's Bar.

[1:38:22] I would recommend checking both of them out.

[1:38:24] They're great, provided that in the time between recording this and releasing it, the restrictions haven't changed.

[1:38:32] And for everyone who's already been supporting and ordering t-shirts from Hinterland's Bar merch at gmail.com, thank you.

[1:38:40] It's been really helpful.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:41] And Maniac of New York, the trade paperback is coming out soon.

[1:38:47] It is available for – I think it's still available for preorder through Diamond.

[1:38:50] I'm not sure.

[1:38:51] But tell your local comic book store to get one for you, the collection of the first series of Maniac of New York.

[1:38:58] There's an all-new introduction by me in it.

[1:39:00] There's a lot of stuff in the back where Andrea, the artist, Andrea Moody, shows you how he did the art.

[1:39:06] It should look great.

[1:39:07] And, of course, it's a spine-chilling tale of murder and blood and civic dysfunction.

[1:39:14] Mm-hmm.

[1:39:15] That is chilling.

Dan McCoy

[1:39:16] The most chilling of all.

[1:39:18] But now, let us move on to – what?

[1:39:21] Let us move on to letters.

[1:39:25] Letters from listeners like you, the listeners.

[1:39:29] Yep.

[1:39:30] This is from –

[1:39:31] Sure.

[1:39:31] Let us move on.

Elliott Kalan

[1:39:33] Oh.

[1:39:33] Let us move on to letters.

[1:39:37] Letters and let.

[1:39:39] They both start the same.

[1:39:40] Just like Tracy Letts, the star of the game.

[1:39:44] There's Tracy Letts out on the court throwing the ball, having a ball.

[1:39:49] That's right.

[1:39:50] It's NBA superstar Tracy Letts.

[1:39:52] And we're reading letters about him.

[1:39:55] Tracy Letts, the MVP.

[1:39:58] Look at those rings on his meaty fists.

[1:40:01] He's the greatest that ever played Tracy Letts.

[1:40:04] He's the best in the basketball game.

Dan McCoy

[1:40:06] August Osage County?

[1:40:07] Tracy Letts?

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:09] Maybe you don't know that when he's not writing plays.

[1:40:11] Killer Joe.

[1:40:12] Acting in Lady Bird.

[1:40:13] He's an NBA star.

[1:40:15] Oh.

[1:40:15] Tracy Letts, number one NBA player.

[1:40:19] Tracy Letts.

Dan McCoy

[1:40:21] Well, I was just reading someone who had missed –

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:22] Coach, Coach, I have to miss the game.

[1:40:25] I'm going to be in a production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

[1:40:28] Well, Tracy, normally I'd say no.

[1:40:30] But I got to let you go because you're just that good.

[1:40:33] We can lose you for one game, but don't make it two.

[1:40:36] Don't worry, Coach, I'll be back.

[1:40:39] As soon as I read Edward Albee's immortal words on stage.

[1:40:43] I'm Tracy Letts.

[1:40:44] And I've got my dream.

[1:40:46] Basketball by day and Broadway by night.

[1:40:49] But is there more to this?

[1:40:51] Is there more to life than basketball and Broadway?

[1:40:55] Yes, there is.

[1:40:57] Hi, I'm the movie Love and Basketball.

[1:40:59] I'm here to tell you there's something else to life.

[1:41:02] It's called love.

[1:41:03] And there's also basketball, too.

[1:41:05] Hold on.

[1:41:06] Tracy Letts then said,

[1:41:07] Can I be in love and play basketball and be on Broadway?

[1:41:11] No, said Love and Basketball.

[1:41:13] You've got to choose to.

[1:41:14] Either love and basketball or love and Broadway.

[1:41:17] There's a reason there's no movie called

[1:41:18] Love and Basketball and Broadway.

[1:41:22] What's Tracy Letts going to do?

[1:41:24] What's he going to choose with this hard choice?

[1:41:28] Love or basketball or Broadway.

[1:41:30] He can't have it all.

[1:41:31] He can only have basketball and either love or Broadway.

[1:41:35] Because that's Tracy Letts, NBA superstar.

[1:41:39] Ba-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na.

[1:41:43] Da-na-na-na-na-na.

[1:41:44] Tracy Letts.

[1:41:45] Dan, what are we doing in this part of the show?

[1:41:47] I forgot.

Dan McCoy

[1:41:47] Oh, that's letters.

[1:41:50] Oh, right, right, right.

[1:41:51] That's, I think that was the connection.

[1:41:55] This is from Jeff, last name withheld, who writes,

[1:41:59] Good morning, or whatever, Peaches.

[1:42:01] Hearing you talk about You, Me, Madness,

[1:42:04] and reading reviews of Space Jam, A New Legacy,

[1:42:07] got me thinking about Vanity Projects.

[1:42:10] Vanity Projects get a bad rap because so many of them

[1:42:13] are clearly more about stroking the creator's egos

[1:42:16] rather than making a compelling story.

[1:42:19] But do you have any Vanity Project films

[1:42:21] that you've enjoyed in the past?

[1:42:24] Does Citizen Kane count as a Vanity Project?

[1:42:27] Side note, my favorite Vanity Project

[1:42:29] remains the comic book Superman vs. Muhammad Ali.

[1:42:32] While Ali didn't write it himself,

[1:42:34] that thing is so crazy and so clearly flattering to Ali

[1:42:37] that I cannot help but smile as I read it.

[1:42:39] Keep on flopping.

[1:42:41] Jeff, last name withheld.

[1:42:43] Yeah, I mean, I don't, I mean, like,

[1:42:45] I see what you're saying with, uh...

[1:42:47] I wouldn't call something like Space Jam,

[1:42:49] A New Legacy, a Vanity Project.

[1:42:50] It is based around a personality.

[1:42:52] It is based around the idea that, um, you know,

[1:42:57] this person has become so famous in their given area

[1:43:04] that we must put them in a movie.

[1:43:07] But, you know, like, a Vanity Project traditionally,

[1:43:10] I think, is more along the lines of something

[1:43:12] that is sort of driven by the creator.

[1:43:16] And I don't know.

[1:43:18] I mean, because I think that a Vanity Project,

[1:43:21] like, if something is successful,

[1:43:23] we just think of it like,

[1:43:25] oh, man, that person's a writer, director, actor.

[1:43:28] Like, they can do it all.

[1:43:30] And it, like, ceases being a Vanity Project.

[1:43:32] Like, the implied part of Vanity Project is

[1:43:35] the vanity is thinking that they're good enough

[1:43:38] to do all of this and not recognizing that they aren't.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:41] Yeah, like, how is the room a Vanity Project

[1:43:44] and, like, any Woody Allen movie from his prime period

[1:43:48] not a Vanity Project?

[1:43:50] You know, like, it's, like, once, yeah,

[1:43:52] the idea that once something is of a high enough quality

[1:43:54] that it justifies a person,

[1:43:56] it justifies that they do have that talent,

[1:43:58] does it stop being a Vanity Project then?

[1:44:00] Because I want to, I was thinking along similar lines.

[1:44:02] I was talking about the documentarian Russ McElwee,

[1:44:07] or who made the,

[1:44:08] Ross McElwee?

[1:44:09] McElwee, who does, like, Sherman's March

[1:44:11] and stuff like that.

[1:44:12] And his documentaries are very much about his life

[1:44:16] and about what is going on in his head.

[1:44:18] And if he was, is it the fact that he's a talented documentarian

[1:44:21] and his movies are touching and brilliant

[1:44:23] that makes them not Vanity Projects?

[1:44:25] Because otherwise, if you made a documentary literally about,

[1:44:28] I'm going to go and try to find a girlfriend in the South

[1:44:32] and meet a bunch of people that I used to know,

[1:44:33] or I'm going to make a movie about how I'm having a kid right now

[1:44:36] and what it's like when my wife is pregnant,

[1:44:38] like, those are, it would seem like that's the definition

[1:44:40] of a Vanity Project.

[1:44:41] So what is it?

[1:44:42] Is it just that Vanity Projects are bad versions of those?

[1:44:45] What do you guys think?

Stuart Wellington

[1:44:46] Stu?

[1:44:46] Dan already raised the questions.

[1:44:47] Now, Stu, you've got to answer it.

[1:44:49] But, like, would you say something like Adaptation

[1:44:51] or Synecdoche, New York are Vanity Projects?

[1:44:53] Because they're, like, so keyed into the screenwriter's,

[1:44:57] like, neuroses?

[1:44:58] It's a good question because at the same...

[1:45:00] And director, right?

[1:45:00] He directed those?

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:01] Well, he directed Synecdoche.

[1:45:02] He didn't direct Adaptation.

[1:45:04] Spike Jonze directed that.

[1:45:05] Yeah.

[1:45:05] And, like, and he doesn't star in either of them.

[1:45:07] But, like, it's a good question.

[1:45:08] It's, like, when almost all...

[1:45:11] Because there's also the people who will tell you

[1:45:12] true art is when the artist digs deep in themselves

[1:45:15] and says something honest about themselves

[1:45:17] and the world and how they see it.

[1:45:19] So, like, that's a sort of level of Vanity too.

[1:45:21] Like, is Vincent van Gogh's self-portrait

[1:45:22] a Vanity Project?

[1:45:24] Probably not because he didn't seem to like himself

[1:45:26] very much.

[1:45:26] But, like...

[1:45:27] But, like, at what point...

[1:45:29] At what point does someone...

Dan McCoy

[1:45:31] Elliot, you don't have to like yourself

[1:45:32] too much to be vain.

[1:45:35] I mean, to be honest,

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:36] you can be very vain without liking yourself.

[1:45:38] The...

[1:45:39] It's...

[1:45:39] I think there's a...

[1:45:40] Yeah, it's like, when...

[1:45:41] When does it stop being art

[1:45:43] that you are looking inward

[1:45:44] and start being a Vanity...

[1:45:45] I guess maybe it's when the thing is...

[1:45:47] Like, Frank D'Angelo is a Vanity Project guy

[1:45:49] because his movies are just about

[1:45:51] how great he is as a person.

[1:45:52] It's not like,

[1:45:53] this is how I see the world

[1:45:54] and I just had to get my thoughts

[1:45:57] and feelings out there.

[1:45:58] It is,

[1:45:59] I'm going to be the greatest guy in the world

[1:46:00] and everyone's going to tell me

[1:46:01] what a great singer I am

[1:46:02] and how tough I am

[1:46:03] and how cool I am

[1:46:04] and I'm going to save the day.

[1:46:05] And even when I'm a criminal vampire,

[1:46:08] I'm still somehow the hero of the movie

[1:46:09] and everybody loves me.

[1:46:11] And James Caan wants me to bite him.

[1:46:12] So, like, that...

[1:46:13] I guess that's...

[1:46:14] It's vanity when it's all about how...

[1:46:15] Like, the moment in...

[1:46:16] At the beginning of the room

[1:46:17] when they're like,

[1:46:18] Johnny, you're so wonderful.

[1:46:19] What a great boyfriend.

[1:46:20] Like, that's Vanity Project, you know.

[1:46:22] But otherwise, yeah, it's hard to tell.

[1:46:24] I mean, as we said earlier,

[1:46:26] Spike Lee literally made a...

[1:46:27] He literally...

[1:46:27] They hired him to make Nike commercials

[1:46:29] and he put himself in them

[1:46:30] playing a character from one of his movies.

[1:46:32] Like, is that a Vanity Project?

[1:46:34] Possibly, you know.

[1:46:35] But it's also a Nike commercial.

Stuart Wellington

[1:46:37] Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's...

[1:46:40] The question is,

[1:46:41] do we like that we genuinely like?

[1:46:44] Because I feel like

[1:46:45] there's a lot of...

[1:46:47] I have gotten a fair amount of pleasure

[1:46:49] from a bunch of dumb Vanity Projects.

[1:46:51] Yeah, that's true.

[1:46:52] Many of the ones we've already mentioned

[1:46:53] I've enjoyed on some level.

[1:46:55] I mean, obviously,

[1:46:57] my favorite Vanity Project

[1:46:58] is my current workout regimen

[1:46:59] because it feeds my own vanity.

Dan McCoy

[1:47:04] My favorite Vanity Projects

[1:47:06] are some of the albums Prince produced.

[1:47:11] Classic Vanity Projects.

Stuart Wellington

[1:47:12] Or the carpentry work.

[1:47:14] Because Vanity!

[1:47:16] Elliot, Vanity!

[1:47:17] I got it.

[1:47:17] The artist Vanity.

[1:47:18] No, I got it.

[1:47:19] I got it, yeah.

[1:47:20] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:20] And so, yeah,

[1:47:21] I think my favorite Vanity Project

[1:47:22] is probably the book

[1:47:23] The Devil's Candy,

[1:47:23] which is about the making

[1:47:24] of Bonfire of the Vanities.

[1:47:25] Great.

[1:47:25] Okay, done.

Dan McCoy

[1:47:29] Hey, this is another letter.

[1:47:31] Oh, okay.

[1:47:31] I lost...

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:33] I'll allow it.

[1:47:33] I mean, I believe it, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:47:35] I lost the writer's name.

[1:47:37] Well, we'll cover it when we get...

[1:47:38] We'll cover it when we get

[1:47:39] to the letters section of the podcast, right?

[1:47:40] I know, this is the letters section.

[1:47:42] Oh, okay.

[1:47:42] You're choking in it.

Dan McCoy

[1:47:44] I lost the writer's name.

[1:47:46] So let's just say this is from LeBron James.

[1:47:50] Thank you so much for writing it.

[1:47:51] I'm sorry.

[1:47:52] Yeah, I apologize for...

[1:47:53] I just cut off.

[1:47:55] Hello.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:56] And we certainly...

[1:47:57] It's lost to the mists of history now.

[1:47:59] There's no way of finding the original.

[1:48:00] I...

[1:48:00] It was thrown in that pit

[1:48:01] when Bugs Bunny's memorabilia

[1:48:03] was buried and burned.

Dan McCoy

[1:48:04] Look, I have to...

[1:48:05] I...

[1:48:05] My...

[1:48:06] My...

[1:48:07] I have so little space left.

[1:48:09] I have to delete things sometimes, so...

[1:48:12] But I apologize to the writer of the letter.

Stuart Wellington

[1:48:14] See, there was a browser window open

[1:48:15] that had all the information

[1:48:16] and Dan went up to the little X button

[1:48:18] and hit it and now it's gone forever.

[1:48:20] No, no, no.

[1:48:20] Gone forever, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:48:21] Hello, Flophouse.

[1:48:22] Have you ever had an incorrect first impression

[1:48:25] of a film or other media

[1:48:27] that still affects your thinking about it

[1:48:28] long after you've corrected your understanding?

[1:48:32] Stuart's Warhammer episode

[1:48:33] reminded me of how my first exposure

[1:48:35] to 40K

[1:48:37] was a video game demo

[1:48:39] that made me think

[1:48:40] the setting was about

[1:48:41] a heroic but hopelessly outnumbered

[1:48:44] band of alien space communists

[1:48:46] fighting the evil religious fascists

[1:48:49] of a long-dead god emperor.

[1:48:50] Not knowing that those are the heroes of the game.

[1:48:53] Yeah.

[1:48:53] Several lore dives quickly taught me

[1:48:55] this wasn't the case,

[1:48:56] but whenever I play

[1:48:58] or think about the series,

[1:48:59] I wonder what it would be like

[1:49:01] if the setting really was all about...

[1:49:03] All right, Stuart, you say these words.

Stuart Wellington

[1:49:06] All about Shasso, Case...

[1:49:09] Oh, it's from Tau Fire Warrior.

[1:49:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:49:11] That was a good game.

Dan McCoy

[1:49:12] Ragtag team of socialists

[1:49:14] working to free the masses

[1:49:15] of the Imperium

[1:49:16] from the emperor

[1:49:17] and his evil space marines.

[1:49:20] P.S.

[1:49:20] I watched Castle Freak

[1:49:21] for the first time

[1:49:23] on Tubi, of all things.

[1:49:24] You're welcome.

[1:49:24] And suddenly,

[1:49:25] head of the family

[1:49:26] was at the very top

[1:49:28] of the recommended list.

[1:49:29] Yeah.

[1:49:30] Thanks.

[1:49:30] Come on.

[1:49:30] Stuart's...

Stuart Wellington

[1:49:31] That's my legacy, baby.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49:33] Yeah.

[1:49:33] Yeah, Stuart molded the algorithm

[1:49:36] to his own needs

[1:49:37] just like Spike Lee did

[1:49:38] with that commercial.

[1:49:39] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:49:39] And like Don Cheadle,

[1:49:40] Al G. Rhythm did

[1:49:41] in the movie

[1:49:42] Space Jam and New Legacy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49:43] Yeah, you're the real life

[1:49:44] Al G. Rhythm.

[1:49:47] I'm sure this is something

[1:49:49] that I don't have

[1:49:50] a fully formed answer to,

[1:49:52] but I will say two things.

[1:49:54] One is that my kids believe

[1:49:56] that Bosk plays an outsized role

[1:49:58] in the Star Wars series

[1:50:00] because of a Bosk children's book

[1:50:02] that they have,

[1:50:03] and I think they'll always

[1:50:03] carry that with them,

[1:50:04] the idea that my younger one

[1:50:06] who's about to turn three,

[1:50:07] he's like,

[1:50:08] I want to see a video

[1:50:08] of Bosk talking,

[1:50:09] and I'm like,

[1:50:10] I don't know if that exists

[1:50:11] anywhere.

[1:50:13] Like he's only on screen

[1:50:14] for like a second,

[1:50:15] but we have a whole book

[1:50:16] about him,

[1:50:17] so I know you think

[1:50:18] he's a major character,

[1:50:19] and I think they'll always think

[1:50:20] to a certain extent

[1:50:21] that Star Wars is about Bosk.

[1:50:22] I may have told the story

[1:50:24] on the podcast before

[1:50:24] about the movie High Spirits

[1:50:26] and how I was a kid

[1:50:27] when that came out,

[1:50:28] and I have this vivid memory

[1:50:30] of a kid,

[1:50:31] another kid at school

[1:50:31] telling me,

[1:50:32] oh, I saw that movie,

[1:50:33] and this is what happens in it,

[1:50:34] and telling me the most horrific,

[1:50:36] sexually violent tale

[1:50:38] I had ever heard

[1:50:39] up until that point.

[1:50:40] And that involved

[1:50:41] a man stabbing a woman

[1:50:43] to death

[1:50:43] while they were having sex,

[1:50:44] and then that woman

[1:50:45] comes back years later

[1:50:46] and starts stabbing

[1:50:47] other people,

[1:50:48] and I was like,

[1:50:48] and I've never seen

[1:50:49] the movie since then

[1:50:50] because I know

[1:50:50] that's not what it's about,

[1:50:51] but it still frightens me.

[1:50:52] The idea of seeing that

[1:50:53] still scares me,

[1:50:54] so that's what's keeping me

[1:50:55] from seeing the otherwise

[1:50:56] standard classic film

[1:50:58] High Spirits.

[1:50:59] Nice.

Stuart Wellington

[1:51:00] Criterion Collection

[1:51:01] High Spirits.

[1:51:02] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:03] Do you have anything,

[1:51:04] sir?

[1:51:04] I have a,

[1:51:05] but...

Stuart Wellington

[1:51:05] Yeah, I mean,

[1:51:06] I feel like,

[1:51:07] I feel like all my impressions

[1:51:08] are based on me,

[1:51:10] like,

[1:51:10] usually disliking an actor

[1:51:12] for whatever reason

[1:51:13] at the time of watching

[1:51:14] the movie,

[1:51:15] and then getting over it

[1:51:17] because I'm an adult,

[1:51:19] and I shouldn't just hold

[1:51:20] on to dumb grudges

[1:51:21] that are unrelated,

[1:51:22] but...

[1:51:23] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:23] I don't have,

[1:51:25] again,

[1:51:25] sorry that I don't think

[1:51:26] that any of these are exact,

[1:51:28] but it puts me in mind

[1:51:29] of Audrey,

[1:51:30] I discovered that she

[1:51:32] was under the impression

[1:51:34] that Mandy was a similar movie

[1:51:36] to Stuber

[1:51:37] because...

[1:51:39] And she had based this...

[1:51:41] Wow.

[1:51:41] She had based this

[1:51:42] because she was like,

[1:51:43] oh, I saw a picture

[1:51:44] of Nicolas Cage

[1:51:46] in a car,

[1:51:48] and I'm like,

[1:51:49] yeah,

[1:51:49] but he's covered in blood,

[1:51:50] and I know what your image

[1:51:52] you're thinking is.

[1:51:52] Probably drives an Uber.

[1:51:54] Yeah.

[1:51:54] Or a Stuber.

[1:51:56] Yeah,

[1:51:57] but she had thought

[1:51:58] that he,

[1:51:59] yeah,

[1:51:59] it was a movie

[1:51:59] about him driving a car around.

[1:52:02] Like,

[1:52:02] well,

[1:52:03] kind of,

[1:52:03] I guess,

[1:52:04] but...

[1:52:05] I definitely,

Stuart Wellington

[1:52:06] I definitely,

[1:52:06] like,

[1:52:06] when I watched,

[1:52:07] when I watched the Joel Edgerton

[1:52:09] and Tom Hardy movie

[1:52:10] Warrior about Nick Nolte,

[1:52:12] the MMA movie,

[1:52:13] I was definitely

[1:52:14] under the impression

[1:52:15] when I watched it

[1:52:16] that it was based

[1:52:17] on a true story,

[1:52:18] and it wasn't until afterwards

[1:52:19] that I was like,

[1:52:20] oh, no,

[1:52:20] it's all made up.

[1:52:22] Yeah.

[1:52:22] But while I was watching,

[1:52:23] I'm like,

[1:52:23] this is a fantastic story.

[1:52:24] I can't believe it happened.

[1:52:26] It really,

Elliott Kalan

[1:52:26] it really is more powerful

[1:52:28] if it's based on a true story.

[1:52:30] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:52:30] Yeah.

[1:52:30] That's why they do it

[1:52:31] at the beginning

[1:52:31] of every episode of Fargo.

Elliott Kalan

[1:52:33] Yes.

[1:52:33] It's also the fact

[1:52:34] that it's basically

[1:52:34] a serious version

[1:52:36] of Here Comes the Boom.

Dan McCoy

[1:52:37] That's true.

[1:52:38] You know,

[1:52:39] you know,

Dan McCoy

[1:52:39] you know,

[1:52:39] well,

[1:52:40] great answers.

[1:52:41] All let's go on

[1:52:43] to recommendations.

Stuart Wellington

[1:52:44] I do like that

[1:52:44] those two titles

[1:52:45] are like the complete opposite

[1:52:46] ends of the spectrum

[1:52:47] of like vague.

[1:52:49] You're like Warrior.

[1:52:51] Every,

[1:52:51] any movie could be called

[1:52:52] Warrior,

[1:52:53] basically.

[1:52:53] Yeah,

[1:52:53] every movie.

[1:52:54] Here Comes the Boom,

[1:52:54] not that many.

Elliott Kalan

[1:52:58] Any,

[1:52:58] any movie,

[1:52:59] any movie with,

[1:53:00] any movie with,

[1:53:01] any movie with improper

[1:53:02] mic framing

[1:53:03] could be called

[1:53:05] Here Comes the Boom.

[1:53:06] Oh,

[1:53:07] that's one for the

[1:53:08] behind the scenes crew fans.

[1:53:09] Oh,

[1:53:10] shit.

Dan McCoy

[1:53:12] Okay.

[1:53:13] Deal with it.

[1:53:16] Maybe third time's the charm

[1:53:17] and we can move on

[1:53:18] to recommendations,

[1:53:19] movies that we saw.

[1:53:20] I don't think so.

[1:53:22] Sorry,

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:23] no recommendations yet.

Dan McCoy

[1:53:24] Anyway.

[1:53:25] Uh-oh.

[1:53:27] I'm going to recommend

[1:53:28] a movie I watched

[1:53:29] that I came across

[1:53:32] on Hulu.

[1:53:33] I was like,

[1:53:34] oh,

[1:53:35] there's a movie

[1:53:36] called Hideaway.

[1:53:38] It's got Jeff Goldblum

[1:53:39] in it.

[1:53:40] And then I'm like,

[1:53:41] wait,

[1:53:41] this movie is

[1:53:42] directed by the director

[1:53:44] of Lawnmower,

[1:53:45] the Lawnmower Man

[1:53:46] and Virtuosity.

[1:53:47] And it's got,

[1:53:48] it's Jeff Goldblum

[1:53:50] and Christine Lottie

[1:53:53] and Alicia Silverstone

[1:53:54] and Jeremy Sisto

[1:53:55] in it.

[1:53:55] And it's like,

[1:53:56] what is this movie?

[1:53:57] And I started watching it,

[1:53:59] the plot being that like,

[1:54:01] no spoilers

[1:54:02] because this.

Stuart Wellington

[1:54:03] Before you get into

[1:54:04] the plot,

[1:54:04] Dan,

[1:54:04] who might,

[1:54:05] who might have written

[1:54:06] the original text

[1:54:07] that the film is based on?

Dan McCoy

[1:54:08] Dean Kuntz

[1:54:09] is based on a Dean Kuntz book.

[1:54:11] So I'm like,

[1:54:11] this looks like

[1:54:12] a prime slice

[1:54:14] of 90s

[1:54:17] horror thriller cheese.

[1:54:19] Did you guys have

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:20] the same experience

[1:54:20] I had when you were like,

[1:54:22] you knew who Stephen King was

[1:54:23] and then around 13,

[1:54:24] you saw a Dean Kuntz novel

[1:54:25] and you were like,

[1:54:26] what is this?

[1:54:27] Is this like,

[1:54:28] this is like from an alternate universe

[1:54:29] where people don't know

[1:54:30] Stephen King exists?

[1:54:31] Like,

[1:54:31] what's going on?

Dan McCoy

[1:54:32] To this day,

[1:54:33] I've not read a Dean Kuntz novel.

[1:54:35] What?

[1:54:35] Can you give me any reports

[1:54:36] on this?

[1:54:37] They're fine.

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:37] I've read a bunch.

[1:54:38] They're fine.

[1:54:39] They're like,

[1:54:39] I mean,

[1:54:40] I haven't read any years.

Stuart Wellington

[1:54:41] I've specifically read

[1:54:42] the book Hideaway.

[1:54:44] I also read,

[1:54:45] what,

[1:54:45] The Watchers,

[1:54:45] the one about like,

[1:54:46] Yeah,

[1:54:46] The Watchers is as big,

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:47] the dogs from the lab

[1:54:49] or whatever.

[1:54:49] Oh,

[1:54:50] Jesus.

[1:54:50] It's called Plain Dogs, Elliot.

[1:54:52] You know,

[1:54:52] that's a different thing.

[1:54:54] He's fine.

[1:54:56] I mean,

[1:54:56] Stephen King is an author

[1:54:57] who like,

[1:54:58] is often mediocre

[1:54:59] but at his best is great

[1:55:00] and Dean Kuntz is an author

[1:55:02] who's like,

[1:55:03] pretty straightforward and mediocre.

[1:55:04] He's not bad,

[1:55:04] but it's not,

[1:55:05] you know,

[1:55:05] you might as well

[1:55:06] just go read Stephen King.

[1:55:07] You know,

[1:55:07] it's not like you're going to run out

[1:55:08] of Stephen King books to read.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:10] Dean Kuntz wanted his name

[1:55:11] taken off

[1:55:12] the movie version of Hideaway.

[1:55:14] So again,

[1:55:15] like Stephen King.

[1:55:16] Make of that what you will.

[1:55:17] But,

[1:55:18] I,

[1:55:19] no big spoilers

[1:55:20] because it happens

[1:55:21] literally at the beginning

[1:55:22] of the movie

[1:55:22] but Jeremy Sisto

[1:55:23] does some sort of

[1:55:25] satanic ritual

[1:55:26] to kill two thirds

[1:55:27] of his family

[1:55:27] and then kills himself

[1:55:29] and he gets sent

[1:55:32] to a great CGI afterlife

[1:55:34] that you would expect

[1:55:35] from the director

[1:55:36] of The Lawnmower Man

[1:55:38] and Virtuosity

[1:55:39] a very early CGI hell

[1:55:42] and meanwhile

[1:55:44] Jeff Goldblum

[1:55:45] also dies briefly

[1:55:47] gets sent there.

[1:55:49] Oh boy,

[1:55:50] when they get brought back

[1:55:51] from the other side

[1:55:51] they all got mixed up somehow.

[1:55:54] Jeff Goldblum

[1:55:55] has all these

[1:55:55] disturbing visions.

[1:55:57] What's going on?

[1:55:58] Women keep ending up dying.

[1:56:00] What's happening?

[1:56:01] And,

[1:56:01] it is just,

[1:56:03] look,

[1:56:04] it is not

[1:56:04] quite as loopy

[1:56:07] as you would hope

[1:56:09] from all of these people

[1:56:10] being involved in the movie.

[1:56:11] It does,

[1:56:12] slump a lot

[1:56:14] in the middle.

[1:56:15] Oh,

[1:56:15] Alfred Molina is also in it.

[1:56:17] Always great to see him.

[1:56:18] Sure.

[1:56:19] If you have any affection

[1:56:21] like I do

[1:56:22] for this particular

[1:56:23] brand of schlock,

[1:56:24] especially the

[1:56:25] like,

[1:56:26] cheesy

[1:56:27] but now

[1:56:28] like,

[1:56:29] so many years have passed

[1:56:30] that they come back around

[1:56:31] to like,

[1:56:31] psychedelically beautiful

[1:56:32] CGI effects.

[1:56:35] Yeah,

[1:56:36] it's a fun little movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:56:37] I saw that shit

[1:56:38] in the movie theater,

[1:56:39] Dan.

[1:56:39] I was so excited.

[1:56:41] My eyes were blown away

[1:56:42] by the special effects

[1:56:44] demo reel

[1:56:44] that they provide for you.

[1:56:46] It's amazing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:56:47] There's something,

[1:56:47] I mean,

[1:56:48] it's because we grew up then

[1:56:48] but there's something

[1:56:49] so comforting to me

[1:56:50] about the way

[1:56:51] 90s movies are bad

[1:56:52] in a very specific way,

[1:56:54] you know?

[1:56:54] And I'm like,

[1:56:55] that's how you make

[1:56:56] a dumb movie.

[1:56:57] This is how you do it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:56:59] Thank you,

[1:56:59] brain scan.

[1:57:00] I'll have another.

[1:57:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:57:02] Screamers,

[1:57:02] yes please.

Dan McCoy

[1:57:03] And I just want to take a moment

[1:57:05] to recognize the irony

[1:57:06] of me

[1:57:07] beginning the episode

[1:57:09] by decrying

[1:57:10] nostalgia

[1:57:10] and viewing

[1:57:12] original Space Jam.

[1:57:15] You know,

[1:57:15] I'm a hypocrite

[1:57:16] like everyone.

[1:57:17] We're not like,

Stuart Wellington

[1:57:17] we're not like

[1:57:18] normal guys.

[1:57:19] Like,

[1:57:19] we're like cool guys.

[1:57:20] Like,

[1:57:20] we understand that our nostalgia

[1:57:22] is toxic

[1:57:23] and that we can stop

[1:57:24] anytime we want.

[1:57:25] We like crap

Elliott Kalan

[1:57:26] for the right reasons,

[1:57:27] not for the wrong reasons.

[1:57:28] We're cool guys.

[1:57:28] As long as it's done well.

[1:57:30] Yeah, come on.

[1:57:31] Anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[1:57:33] Cool, cool.

[1:57:34] I am going to recommend,

[1:57:36] I'm going to shift gears

[1:57:37] here a little bit.

[1:57:38] Shift them.

[1:57:38] And I'm going to recommend

[1:57:40] a beautiful,

[1:57:41] amazing movie

[1:57:42] that was nominated

[1:57:42] for an Academy Award

[1:57:43] so it does not need

[1:57:44] my support

[1:57:45] but you should listen

[1:57:46] to me anyway.

[1:57:47] a movie called

[1:57:48] Wolfwalkers

[1:57:49] that's on Apple Plus.

[1:57:51] It was nominated

[1:57:52] for what,

[1:57:53] best animated film.

[1:57:54] I think it lost a soul

[1:57:55] which is also great.

[1:57:57] But Wolfwalkers

[1:57:58] is a beautiful

[1:57:59] historic fantasy

[1:58:00] about,

[1:58:02] well,

[1:58:04] it's about,

[1:58:04] you know,

[1:58:05] like a frontier town

[1:58:06] in Ireland

[1:58:06] and they are dealing

[1:58:08] with a wolf problem

[1:58:09] in the woods

[1:58:10] and a,

[1:58:12] the,

[1:58:13] it's a little girl

[1:58:14] who wants to hunt

[1:58:15] the wolves

[1:58:15] and help her father

[1:58:16] who's a hunter

[1:58:17] who's voiced

[1:58:17] by Sean Bean.

[1:58:19] But then they realize

[1:58:20] that the,

[1:58:21] that there's more

[1:58:22] to these wolves

[1:58:23] than meets the eye.

[1:58:24] They are not Transformers.

[1:58:25] Well,

[1:58:25] they kind of are actually.

[1:58:27] But it's,

[1:58:28] it's beautiful.

[1:58:29] The animation style

[1:58:30] is,

[1:58:31] it feels very unique

[1:58:32] and fresh.

[1:58:32] It's great.

[1:58:34] It's,

[1:58:35] yeah,

[1:58:36] it's lovely.

[1:58:37] It's great.

[1:58:37] I highly recommend it.

[1:58:38] I feel like it's appropriate

[1:58:40] for,

[1:58:40] to show most kids.

[1:58:41] It's a little scary

[1:58:42] and there's some violence,

[1:58:44] but it's,

[1:58:45] man,

[1:58:46] it's just such a gorgeous

[1:58:46] little movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:58:48] How did it,

[1:58:48] and what happens

[1:58:49] in the big basketball game

[1:58:50] at the end?

Stuart Wellington

[1:58:51] That's the thing.

[1:58:52] So the big basketball game

[1:58:53] involves LeBron James again.

[1:58:56] Okay.

[1:58:57] And Marvin the Martian

[1:58:58] shows up this time

[1:58:59] finally getting his due.

[1:59:00] And that dog of his

[1:59:02] who also wears

[1:59:03] the same clothes

[1:59:04] as he has.

[1:59:05] Yes.

[1:59:05] What's,

[1:59:06] what's his name?

[1:59:07] His name is.

[1:59:07] Or her name,

[1:59:08] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:59:09] Is it?

[1:59:09] I should know that

[1:59:10] and I don't remember it.

[1:59:11] Let me look it up.

Dan McCoy

[1:59:12] It's too bad that Pluto

[1:59:13] is taken for a cartoon dog.

[1:59:16] That's 100% true.

Elliott Kalan

[1:59:18] So they show up.

[1:59:18] Oh, K9.

[1:59:19] He's just called K9.

[1:59:20] So.

[1:59:21] That's kind of boring.

[1:59:22] Discipline.

Stuart Wellington

[1:59:22] Co-starred with Jim Belushi

[1:59:23] in that.

[1:59:24] Yeah,

[1:59:24] I mean,

[1:59:24] I don't want to spoil too much,

[1:59:25] but yeah,

[1:59:26] it's a pretty good basketball game.

Elliott Kalan

[1:59:27] Okay,

[1:59:27] I'll have to see that

[1:59:28] basketball movie,

[1:59:28] Wolfwalkers.

[1:59:31] a documentary

[1:59:32] that I also saw on Hulu,

[1:59:34] just like Dan watches

[1:59:36] movies on Hulu too.

[1:59:37] And this is the movie,

[1:59:38] Summer of Soul,

[1:59:39] that came out

[1:59:40] just recently.

[1:59:42] Oh, wow, yeah.

[1:59:43] And it's mostly made up

[1:59:44] of footage from the 1969

[1:59:46] Harlem Cultural Festival.

[1:59:47] And it was a big,

[1:59:49] multi-week,

[1:59:50] you know,

[1:59:50] multi-weekend festival

[1:59:51] where a ton of amazing performers

[1:59:54] performed in 1969.

[1:59:56] And then the movie,

[1:59:58] you know,

[1:59:58] it uses that as a way

[2:00:00] to talk about

[2:00:01] what that moment meant

[2:00:03] for being black in America

[2:00:04] at the time

[2:00:05] and both the changes

[2:00:06] that the black community

[2:00:08] was going through

[2:00:08] and the both hopes

[2:00:09] and fears at the time.

[2:00:10] And they make a little bit of hay

[2:00:12] about this was this big festival

[2:00:14] and it didn't,

[2:00:14] it was happening around

[2:00:15] the same time as Woodstock

[2:00:16] and did not get,

[2:00:16] at the same time as Woodstock,

[2:00:17] and did not get

[2:00:18] the same attention

[2:00:18] and what that means.

[2:00:19] But they don't make that

[2:00:22] the whole linchpin

[2:00:22] of the movie,

[2:00:23] which is great.

[2:00:24] Instead,

[2:00:25] they really let the footage

[2:00:28] speak for itself

[2:00:28] for the most part.

[2:00:29] And the footage is amazing.

[2:00:30] The performances are amazing.

[2:00:31] The performances are astounding.

[2:00:33] And they did a great job

[2:00:35] probably restoring

[2:00:36] this older footage.

[2:00:37] It looks great.

Stuart Wellington

[2:00:38] It was all like

[2:00:39] just sitting in a basement

[2:00:40] somewhere, right?

[2:00:40] In Questlove.

[2:00:41] That's the story, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:00:43] Well, some of it had,

[2:00:44] some of it had been leaked

[2:00:45] onto the internet

[2:00:45] before apparently.

[2:00:46] So, well,

[2:00:47] it's not all totally discovered,

[2:00:48] but a lot of it is.

[2:00:50] And it's just really fantastic.

[2:00:52] And even if you watch it

[2:00:53] just as a concert movie,

[2:00:55] it's well worth it.

[2:00:56] But it works really well

[2:00:57] as kind of like a snapshot

[2:00:58] of the time type thing

[2:00:59] and talking to some of the people

[2:01:00] who were there

[2:01:01] and stuff like that.

[2:01:01] So, I really enjoyed it a lot.

[2:01:04] And as people who follow me

[2:01:05] on Twitter may realize,

[2:01:06] may have seen that,

[2:01:07] the thing that struck me

[2:01:08] the most in some ways

[2:01:09] was how many people

[2:01:10] in it are wearing sombreros.

[2:01:11] That apparently in 1969,

[2:01:13] sombreros and kind of

[2:01:14] fringed cowboy jackets

[2:01:15] were briefly very popular.

[2:01:18] And so, watch it

[2:01:20] and feel like you are

[2:01:21] looking at a world

[2:01:23] that does not exist anymore

[2:01:25] and cannot exist again.

[2:01:25] This strange analog world

[2:01:27] of sombreros

[2:01:28] and fringe jackets

[2:01:29] and like huge boxy

[2:01:31] TV cameras and stuff.

[2:01:33] So, Summer of Soul.

[2:01:34] It's available.

[2:01:35] I think it's in theaters too.

[2:01:36] So, why not go watch it

[2:01:37] in a theater

[2:01:37] if you feel safe doing that

[2:01:39] and, you know,

[2:01:40] give money to the producers.

[2:01:42] But I liked it a lot.

Dan McCoy

[2:01:45] Well, that was quite a journey.

[2:01:48] A new legacy.

Stuart Wellington

[2:01:49] Yep, we started

[2:01:49] a new legacy today.

Dan McCoy

[2:01:52] Before we go,

[2:01:53] I'd like to thank,

[2:01:53] thank,

[2:01:54] I'd like to thank,

[2:01:55] I'd like to thank

[2:01:56] that I'm thankful

[2:01:56] for our producer,

[2:01:58] Alex Smith,

[2:01:59] who makes us sound great.

[2:02:02] I'd like to recommend

[2:02:04] that you go over

[2:02:04] to MaximumFun.org.

[2:02:07] Our podcast network,

[2:02:09] MaxFun,

[2:02:09] carries a lot of great shows.

[2:02:12] If you like podcasts,

[2:02:14] I'm sure you'll find

[2:02:15] at least one other thing.

[2:02:16] If not several,

[2:02:17] you will enjoy

[2:02:18] by checking them out.

[2:02:21] If you haven't recommended

[2:02:22] The Flophouse

[2:02:23] to someone

[2:02:23] who you think

[2:02:24] might like it,

[2:02:25] why not give it a try?

[2:02:26] We always appreciate

[2:02:28] when you guys

[2:02:29] help us grow.

[2:02:30] But for The Flophouse,

[2:02:33] I've been Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[2:02:34] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[2:02:36] And I'm Elliot Kalin

[2:02:38] in the part of

[2:02:39] Tracy Letts,

[2:02:40] MVP superstar

[2:02:41] of the NBA.

[2:02:42] Mm-hmm.

[2:02:47] Now we're talking about

[2:02:48] Der Space Jam

[2:02:49] Ein Legacy Neue.

Stuart Wellington

[2:02:51] Oh, wow.

[2:02:52] Now I want to see

[2:02:53] like a print

[2:02:53] for like a Brecht play,

[2:02:55] but for a Space Jam.

Elliott Kalan

[2:02:56] I mean,

[2:02:57] this movie has so much

[2:02:58] distancing in it.

[2:02:59] So there's so many

[2:03:00] distancing effects

[2:03:00] in the audience.

[2:03:01] It's kind of like

[2:03:01] a Brecht play.

[2:03:02] But I assume

[2:03:03] there's a German version

[2:03:04] where they swap out

[2:03:04] LeBron James

[2:03:05] for Werner Herzog.

[2:03:06] And he's like,

[2:03:07] ah, I must get

[2:03:08] my son back,

[2:03:09] but Bogs,

[2:03:10] Bogs,

[2:03:11] how will I win

[2:03:11] this basketball game?

[2:03:13] You know.

[2:03:14] Anyway,

[2:03:15] let's start the episode.

[2:03:16] I don't want to,

[2:03:16] let's not waste this stuff.

S5

[2:03:17] MaximumFun.org

[2:03:20] Comedy and culture.

S7

[2:03:22] Artist owned.

[2:03:23] Audience supported.

Ep. #349 - Space Jam: A New Legacy

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