Ep. #349 - Space Jam: A New Legacy

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

[0:04] Starring TheBrawnJames.

[0:06] I translated his name from the French.

[0:08] Hey everyone, and welcome to The Flop House.

[0:36] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:37] Hey, listen to that pro intro.

[0:39] That's Dan McCoy, and I'm Stuart Wellington, his right-hand man.

[0:42] Look at that professional right-hand man backing up that professional intro guy, and here's

[0:46] Elliot Kaelin, kind of an amateur when it comes to talking into microphones, but the

[0:50] kind of amateur that is a pro at it.

[0:54] Kids love and parents tolerate.

[0:58] Hey, I'm kid-tested, also kid-failed.

[1:01] I did not pass the test when the kids put me to the test.

[1:05] And what kind of a test was that?

[1:07] 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, you know, a couple

[1:18] minutes at a time, but his push-ups were amazing.

[1:19] Because that's the thing, Ant-Man told us that toddlers have the proportional strength

[1:23] of an ant, so they're going to be super strong, despite their small size.

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

[1:29] Oh, it was baby, I blew up the kid.

[1:32] Baby, I blew up the kid.

[1:36] The Christmas standard, baby, I blew up the kid.

[1:39] Baby!

[1:41] Baby, I blew up the kid.

[1:44] We all remember the Iced Tea commercial where Frank Sinatra takes a sip and he goes, I blew

[1:48] up the kid, baby!

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

[1:51] What do we do here?

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

[1:57] It's called All Business Wellington.

[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.

[2:08] You know, I assume they'll just keep making them and making them.

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

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

[2:17] And just like me, this movie is all business.

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

[2:25] Guys, nothing really prepared me.

[2:29] All the things I had read about how it was full of Warner Brothers IP, nothing prepared me

[2:33] for what this movie is.

[2:35] I'm looking forward to hearing how Stewart describes it.

[2:38] It was the Space Jam equivalent of one of those Oscars montages.

[2:42] It's like, remember movies?

[2:44] I think we should set the scene, I guess.

[2:49] The stage, the basketball stage.

[2:51] I just want to say, I was trying to explain this movie to my son.

[2:58] And I said, I think I haven't, not since Cats, have I seen a movie where I was like,

[3:02] people made these choices at every step of the way.

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

[3:07] But sorry, Stewart, set the stage.

[3:09] No, that was a great interruption.

[3:12] So we're on the basketball stage.

[3:16] And so I have never seen the original Space Jam movie.

[3:22] Which is weird because I am, yes, wearing a novelty jersey from the original movie Space Jam.

[3:27] Saying that I'm a member of the Toon Squad, 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] Yeah, he's not a Toon, yeah, he's a ringer.

[3:35] He's an honorary Toon because he has Toon ancestry.

[3:38] So he applied for the passport, they gave him honorary Toon citizenship.

[3:42] You know, you can do that these days.

[3:44] So have you guys seen Space Jam?

[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

[3:56] like, no, no, no, Space Jam is a great movie.

[3:58] Because that opinion, I'm sorry, is incorrect.

[4:02] I know that one is led...

[4:05] You know, we usually take this stance that we can all enjoy what we enjoy.

[4:09] And you can enjoy what you enjoy.

[4:11] That is fine.

[4:12] You may enjoy Space Jam.

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

[4:20] But it is objectively a mess of a movie.

[4:23] Yeah, anything that helps get you through this fucking gray haze of a life.

[4:27] I mean, if it's Space Jam, you know, go with God.

[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?

[4:38] You...

[4:39] Did they ever make a movie of that commercial?

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

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

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

[4:49] What, the Little Penny Anthony Hardaway commercials?

[4:52] Oh, is that what it was?

[4:53] Well, there was...

[4:54] Because Spike Lee did...

[4:55] Do you direct that?

[4:57] No, I don't.

[4:58] Spike Lee directed commercials where he played Mars Blackman,

[5:00] his character from She's Gotta Have It.

[5:02] So that's the amazing thing about those commercials is that Spike Lee imported himself

[5:06] as a character from an independent film into like Nike commercials.

[5:10] I think they were.

[5:11] So that's...

[5:12] But they're the commercial...

[5:13] And he shot a lot of those...

[5:14] Like he shot some of those like black and white, right?

[5:16] Yeah, yeah.

[5:18] Very artistic, which was pretty great.

[5:20] 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...

[5:25] If ever an artist was able to bend the powers of mercantilism to shape his own needs,

[5:32] you know, that's amazing.

[5:33] But I don't...

[5:34] But I think the movie came first.

[5:36] Yeah, I...

[5:37] By the way, I'm...

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

[5:42] Yeah.

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

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

[5:52] that a person has nostalgia for is like actually really great.

[5:58] Like you can enjoy a thing for nostalgic reasons.

[6:01] I do it all the time without like being like this is also like well done.

[6:06] I mean, I sympathize with it.

[6:07] Unfortunately, as a child, I had impeccable taste.

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

[6:12] So I sympathize with it, but it's not an experience that I have.

[6:16] And as long as you can continue experiencing those things that you loved in the exact same way,

[6:21] slightly different but not actually different, then you're happy.

[6:24] It just has to be the exact same adventures.

[6:26] It just has to say that it's new.

[6:28] As long as the entertainment media that you are ingesting now reinforces all of the things

[6:32] that you took as basic assumptions about the world when you were a child,

[6:35] everything's going great.

[6:37] You don't have to worry about it because new things are challenging.

[6:39] No changes.

[6:40] Yeah, no changes.

[6:41] But there's a lot of changes between Space Jam and Space Jam New Legacy.

[6:44] Oh, there are.

[6:45] Well, wait.

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

[6:48] Have you seen the first Space Jam?

[6:50] Yes.

[6:51] 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.

[6:57] As someone who has a really – and I'm sure Dan feels the same way –

[7:00] a very deep emotional connection, like love for the Warner Bros. characters,

[7:04] there is a part of me that has that – what we were just making fun of

[7:08] where when I see the Looney Tunes characters not being handled the way I like them to be handled,

[7:12] it is uncanny valley repulsive to me.

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

[7:18] 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

[7:25] versus 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.

[7:39] Can we do that again now?

[7:42] But the original Space Jam came out like – I mean there are a lot of Pulp Fiction references.

[7:48] A year after Pulp Fiction.

[7:49] Yeah, yeah.

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

[7:54] It's both too long for it to be a current reference

[7:57] and also not long enough for it to be a classic reference.

[8:00] But the original Space Jam was about a great athlete

[8:04] and beloved characters coming together to sell shoes, 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

[8:13] owned by a specific corporate studio.

[8:15] Yeah, it seems a little more vague.

[8:18] 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, and he is not in this one.

[8:26] Or he might be in the background.

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

[8:29] Okay, so movie opens.

[8:30] I think 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.

[8:36] Uh-huh.

[8:37] So we open.

[8:38] We have a young LeBron James who is talking to his mom,

[8:41] and his mom is explaining that she can't make it to his basketball game because she's got to work.

[8:45] And he's bummed out.

[8:47] 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.

[8:55] I remember that.

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

[8:57] 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.

[9:02] You can't fault Space Jam and New Legacy for not being accurate.

[9:05] Find me a scene in it where there's an error of some kind on the historical record.

[9:09] That's true.

[9:10] I haven't found it.

[9:11] Looking through it, I have not found it.

[9:13] Young LeBron gets distracted by a magical Game Boy, and it messes up his basketball focus.

[9:18] So he throws that Game Boy in the trash.

[9:20] Describe the Game Boy being magical because it does seem a little magical,

[9:24] but it's never really explained.

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

[9:27] Well, he's handed this Game Boy, which I feel like would have been like an artifact at the time that he received it, by 1998.

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

[9:37] Oh, okay.

[9:38] That explains my next question because I was like—

[9:40] Ness question.

[9:42] Ho, ho, ho.

[9:43] Now he throws away the Game Boy later.

[9:45] I'm like, I thought that was his friend's Game Boy, but even so—

[9:48] It's trash.

[9:50] Why are you throwing it away?

[9:52] The only cartridge he has is that Bugs Bunny game.

[9:54] Game Boy, just because your coach tells you you've got to keep your head in the game.

[9:57] I'll tell you why, Dan.

[9:58] Give the Game Boy to another friend.

[10:00] I'll tell you what, because his coach, you might recognize as Avon Barksdale from The Wire.

[10:04] So he better get his head in the game or his head's going to have some bullets in it.

[10:07] So let's just watch out because even the temptation of legal money in legal real estate is not enough for Avon to get himself off those corners.

[10:16] He's going to – if he's your basketball coach, you got to take what he says seriously because otherwise you're going to get killed and boarded up in an abandoned Baltimore building.

[10:23] So that's why.

[10:24] I mean I think he – I think Avon is just arrested.

[10:26] He doesn't get murdered in the show, but we'll –

[10:29] No, but he murders a lot of people.

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

[10:32] That's what I'm saying.

[10:33] I got distracted by your thing. I was thinking about the joke I was going to make.

[10:37] That's part of being a podcaster.

[10:38] You were thinking about – you were thinking about – spoiler alert – later cameo appearance by Michael B. Jordan who also was in the first season of The Wire, tragically.

[10:46] I don't think – oh, yeah, cameo appearance in the movie.

[10:48] Okay, so he throws the Game Boy in the trash, does not need that thing, or does he? We'll find out later.

[10:56] He – we get some career highlights for LeBron James over the opening credits, which is good for me because I have not followed basketball other than watching The Last Dance documentary over and over, which by the way, if you haven't watched, you should go watch it.

[11:11] The Last Dance is great and also talks about Space Jam and kind of places it within Michael Jordan's history.

[11:15] It's great.

[11:16] Now, were you guys thrown off at all by how the first like 10 or 15 minutes of the movie, maybe the first 20 minutes is just about LeBron James and how great he is and there's no – except for that one Game Boy game.

[11:26] There's no Looney Tunes for a long time 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 hit you guys at all?

[11:37] I wouldn't say that it got to me, but I will say that much like our previous movie, Jiu-Jitsu, where 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 Looney Tunes showed up.

[11:55] Interesting.

[11:58] So after the opening credits, we're in modern day.

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

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

[12:13] Right, guys?

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

[12:16] He's not a bad dad, basketball dad, but he clearly – he wants his kids to follow in his Nike-wearing probably –

[12:22] He's a harsh taskmaster.

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

[12:26] And not just to follow in his footsteps but also do it his way, a way that focuses on fundamentals, no hot-dogging, and hard work because when you're on the basketball court, that's work, which is weird because normally you would think it's a game.

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

[12:42] It's hard to be a king.

[12:44] Heavy is the head that wears the crown that's made out of a basketball that's been cut in half because basketballs don't – it's hard to fit that on your head, and it's just awkward.

[12:53] I mean at that point, obviously deflated, so it looks like you're wearing just a piece of rubber on top of your head.

[13:02] Yeah, it's like a floppy rubber beret.

[13:04] It doesn't look like a crown anymore, and it throws the weight of your head off your balance.

[13:08] So to play while wearing that is amazing, which he does every night.

[13:12] At first you'd think it would look kind of like the crown that Jughead wears, but I don't even know how you do that.

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

[13:20] You just can't do it.

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

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

[13:27] Here's an example of what I want you to do, and you just show a cut-out picture from Akira, and he's like, let me sit you down.

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

[13:35] I can't do it.

[13:36] No one can.

[13:37] It's impossible.

[13:38] Only one person has ever had that haircut, and he shows you a photograph of Katsuhiro Otomo with that hair, and you're like, that was his magic power.

[13:45] I show my barber a picture of Jughead's hat, and I say make my hair look like this, and he says that's the kind of a hat that I guess people wore at one time, not frequently.

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

[13:58] What you do is you take a baseball cap and you turn it inside – an old-style baseball cap.

[14:03] You turn it inside out and cut some parts of it because one of the Bowery boys wears a hat like that.

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

[14:11] But also I have to assume it was established at some point that Jughead is the prodigal prince of some far-off nation, and that's why he has a crown all the time.

[14:18] Yep, the prince of hamburger land.

[14:20] So his son Dom is –

[14:22] So wait.

[14:23] He's Ronald McDonald's son?

[14:25] It all makes sense now.

[14:26] Yeah.

[14:27] Yeah, so his son Dom wants to build – not Ronald McDonald's son.

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

[14:33] We're not talking about Dom, Vin Diesel's character from the Fast and the Furious movies.

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

[14:41] He has real children.

[14:43] These are not them.

[14:44] These are fictionalized LeBron James children.

[14:46] It is a very – it is very strange to see an actor – 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, and you've got to feel bad for his kids who I assume auditioned for the roles, did not get callbacks, and had to see other kids playing them.

[15:04] You've got to focus on the fundamentals, kids.

[15:06] You've got to get back on that acting court and beef up your chops.

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

[15:12] So his son Dom wants to build video games instead of playing basketball, and that's not just a dream.

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

[15:20] 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 – he's a prodigy at this point.

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

[15:35] He is – LeBron is very invested in his children's schedule, which I feel like for somebody that busy and famous, he probably would be like, oh, wait.

[15:45] What are you doing next week?

[15:47] And then the kid would be like, yeah, I'm going to this, and he's like, I thought you were going to that, and he'd be like, no, I talked to mom.

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

[15:54] He doesn't have – I'm just saying he probably –

[15:56] Stu, I hate to break it to you.

[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.

[16:03] So we cut to the most exciting character in the movie.

[16:06] That's right.

[16:07] Don Cheadle playing Algy Rhythm, who is a –

[16:10] He is kind of the most exciting character in the movie.

[16:12] He's incredible.

[16:13] He's great.

[16:14] He's having so much fun.

[16:15] I love it.

[16:16] And Al – I mean we got to take a moment.

[16:18] Like Algy Rhythm, obviously a pun on algorithm, although it does not sound like that.

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

[16:28] An aquatic plant with rhythm.

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

[16:34] They do keep calling him Algy, and it shows how few people own fish tanks in the production of this movie.

[16:39] No one was like, this sounds weird.

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

[16:46] Aren't you hearing it?

[16:47] It's pretty clear.

[16:48] So we meet Algy Rhythm, who is the manifestation of an algorithm that lives within the universe of the Warner Brothers servers called Serververse.

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

[17:03] Obviously, if you guys are like me, the whole time you're like, where are those fucking Animaniacs?

[17:07] They don't show up, not even in the background.

[17:09] There's no fucking Goodfeathers.

[17:10] Get out of here.

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

[17:17] Yes.

[17:18] You've got to imagine what executive's wife they slept with that they are now persona non grata on the Warner Brothers lot.

[17:24] Yeah.

[17:25] I'm surprised they didn't fuck with a lament configuration and the fucking Warner Brothers and Dot pop out or something.

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

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

[17:39] What was he supposed – like he's just a robot, right?

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

[17:43] Yeah, he looks like a clippy style thing, but if clippy wasn't like a paperclip but just kind of a blob.

[17:49] Yeah.

[17:50] Yeah.

[17:51] Like a character that probably could have gone through like one or two more designs.

[17:55] Mm-hmm.

[17:56] So – and he is scheming to use LeBron to – this is where it got a little bit fishy for Stewart 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 using LeBron's brand to like tie in with Warner Brothers brand.

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

[18:15] This part is very not make-sensey, and yeah, he's like – there's this new technology that I'm going to use to escape the serververse 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' fame and make it kind of like a team-up between me and LeBron James, and I will piggyback on him into becoming famous.

[18:38] And now again, this is a personification of a computer algorithm.

[18:41] Like the movie seems to have forgotten almost instantly that he has a computer program and not a real Don Cheadle that is living inside of a computer box.

[18:49] But the idea is that he is somehow going to – yeah, he's somehow going to insert 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, Stewart, you were right to get lost because it doesn't make sense, and they didn't put – it's not well done.

[19:06] Okay, before we get to the fruition of this plan, 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.

[19:15] 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] 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] And LeBron takes a controller.

[19:30] He thinks he knows how to play the game because he is a basketball fellow, and he tries to use one of his own moves, a move that is apparently illegal to use in some states.

[19:40] And by doing it, it causes the system to crash and all kinds of hell breaks 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 six monitors.

[19:52] It's crazy.

[19:53] It's a professional computer setup.

[19:55] It is a Neil Peart level of drum equipment.

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

[20:07] I mean, look, his dad's rich. And his dad has clearly up till now not been paying that much

[20:11] attention. So you know this kid's just using his dad's credit card to just buy whatever

[20:15] computer. Silicon Graphics Workstation? Yeah, give me one. What's the computer NASA uses?

[20:19] Yeah, that one. Give me one. Running a Warhammer store on the Upper East Side,

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

[20:27] Like John Cat's Mercedes kid. Like, I don't care about that fucking guy. I'll sell this

[20:31] kid whatever Warhammers. Okay, so that's some New York politics, everybody.

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

[20:45] miniatures of orcs and ogres to kids. I mean, I was taking his money. I was repurposing his money

[20:51] to a Warhammer company. Oh, no, you were using, again, much like Spike Lee, you were using the

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

[21:01] Lee. Okay, so as LeBron exits the room, I had in my notes... You're both people that I have been

[21:08] in elevators with, you and Spike Lee, so that's another similarity. Yeah, sure. Did you tell him

[21:13] that the absolute Brooklyn flavor that he endorsed is fucking trash? I didn't. This was long before

[21:19] then. It tastes like apples. Who wants that shit? I was a student at NYU, and we happened to be in

[21:23] the same elevator, and I was wearing a taxi driver t-shirt, and he looked at it quite dubiously and

[21:28] then looked away. So I did not appreciate that sartorial choice on my point. Now, I have in my

[21:33] notes that as LeBron's leaving his son's bedroom, he does a pretty terrible dab. I mean, I feel like

[21:38] they could have done a second take on that. I think it's kind of a... They're painting LeBron

[21:43] as a... He's both the most amazing, most graceful, most talented athlete in the history of the world,

[21:50] and kind of a goofy, relatable dad. It's like if Kevin James and... Why am I forgetting his name?

[22:01] I don't know, but I'm glad that you took the ball. It's like if Kevin James and Jim Thorpe were one

[22:07] person. That's LeBron James in this movie. And also, Kevin James and LeBron James are brothers.

[22:11] They have the same last name, James. And that's why Kevin James is always plotting to kill LeBron

[22:16] James and steal his crown. LeBron in this movie... Because he's the king of queens, but he wants to

[22:22] be the king of basketball, like LeBron James is. Guys, it all makes sense. The more I think about

[22:25] it, the more it makes sense. Wow. Elliot's starting to put stuff up on his whiteboard. There's red

[22:31] string. Hold on. Let me just get some yarn to connect this picture of LeBron James to this

[22:34] picture of Kevin James. Hold on. Oh, it's a one-to-one connection. Yeah. It's a whiteboard.

[22:40] Just use a marker, man. No, no. Yarn. Yarn. Guys, I'm trying to erase the yarn and it's not

[22:45] erasing. Hold on. What am I doing wrong? Just a note on LeBron James as a performer.

[22:50] Like I said earlier... That sounds like your monograph for your doctorate. A note on LeBron

[22:54] James. No, I said earlier that this is a rare movie I was less interested in when the Looney

[22:59] Tunes showed up. And part of it is, again, yes, I too am the thing that I was making fun of earlier

[23:05] where I'm like, this is not the way the Looney Tunes are supposed to be. But in these early

[23:11] scenes, at least there's some semblance of relatable humanity. And LeBron James, not a

[23:18] good actor, but there were a couple of moments where they use his ultra-serious intensity

[23:26] to comic effects that I enjoyed. I enjoyed him interacting with the kid and if there was a joke

[23:35] where he kind of at his expense of being so intense. There was a little fun and he had some

[23:44] presence. But whenever he's then later on called upon to emote... If you've seen a Saturday Night

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

[23:58] Yeah, I think he is by no means an actor. But yeah, LeBron James, I think you're right. He

[24:04] has a presence. He has charisma. There's a reason that he's the best part of Trainwreck,

[24:09] but a lot of it is just him reacting to what's going on. Like just being a sidekick, basically.

[24:15] Wait a minute. Isn't Tilda Swinton in Trainwreck?

[24:18] Is Tilda Swinton in Trainwreck?

[24:20] Yeah, I think so. I think she plays the boss at the magazine. I think she's the best part

[24:23] of Trainwreck. Well, she's the best part of whatever she's in, so that's a different story.

[24:30] LeBron James works like you're saying, Dan. When someone is playing off of him,

[24:34] not so much when he is forced to pretend that a cartoon rabbit is talking to him.

[24:39] And so that's not his forte, which is again, he's the best basketball player in the world.

[24:44] It's very difficult. Yeah, exactly.

[24:46] It is hard to pretend. That also punches up how good a job Don Cheadle is doing,

[24:52] because you know that he just stood in a green room for months on end doing all of this shit.

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

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

[25:07] I don't know about you guys. I certainly was rooting for Don Cheadle most of the movie,

[25:11] because you can feel like he's the only character in the movie where I was like,

[25:15] he genuinely wants this. I believe him. Bring him into the real world. He seems great.

[25:21] I think you do that playing a character who is not a character, but again, the idea of an

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

[25:29] WB streaming platform. I think there's an interview with Tilda Swinton about Trainwreck

[25:34] where she's being interviewed about how she got into character because she plays like a magazine

[25:40] executive, and she is dressed up. It feels like a fucking Halloween costume for her,

[25:44] because she's dressed up like a high fashion magazine editor with a spray tan and all this

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

[25:56] these things. She was so flabbergasted. She's like, yeah, anyone can look like this. It's easy.

[26:02] Very funny. Tilda Swinton, I love for her, like if tomorrow the newspaper is just like,

[26:10] Tilda Swinton gets into spaceship, flies off, returns to home planet. I'd be like, yeah,

[26:14] buy it. She's great. She's generally one of those people who seems to like come from,

[26:18] just comes from another dimension, you know, which is nice.

[26:21] Okay. So due to the machinations of algae, LeBron and his son, his agent go to the Warner Brothers

[26:30] studio to get pitched on the idea of inserting a cartoon LeBron into basically every single

[26:37] Warner Brothers movie or property. And he is pitched by Steven Yuen and Sarah Silverman,

[26:43] who have this one scene and, you know, they make the most out of it.

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

[26:51] If ever you should have brought in, this is the time to bring in like two improv people,

[26:56] and then you shoot them for seven hours, just throwing out wild lines that you can

[27:00] choose to cut into it. Like they, like you don't need people as good or as well-known as,

[27:05] as these two to be playing these parts, but hey, they got paid for it. Why not?

[27:08] Yeah, absolutely. This LeBron turns them down. He thinks it's a bad fit. He makes

[27:14] jokes about the idea of a athlete having to act is always bad. A little, a little wink at

[27:20] the audience. That's us. Especially because what we've just seen is a trailer inside this movie

[27:25] for the rest of the movie, which is a, it's strange for the movie to introduce its premise,

[27:29] which 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. Let's do it. That's the movie. Yeah. Who would watch that garbage?

[27:40] Only idiots is what I think. Yeah. At the, at the beginning, at the beginning of The Godfather,

[27:45] someone says to Don Corleone, they go, do you want to go see this movie about this mob family?

[27:48] He goes, that sounds stupid. Who would want to watch a dumb thing like that? Morons.

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

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

[28:04] are real and they go crazy? That sounds boring. No. Anyway, let's get on this helicopter and go

[28:09] do I Love Dinosaura and find out. Okay. So this LeBron James turning him down

[28:17] and insulting him drives algae rhythm to take a desperate action. And he tricks Dom and LeBron

[28:24] into visiting the server room where they are then zapped into the Warner Brothers server.

[28:29] So they are, have now entered, uh, they have entered virtual reality. Their bodies have

[28:35] gone with them. Everything about them is now in, uh, is in this computerized server thing.

[28:42] So much like that, much like the teleportation in the book, Rogue Moon by Aldous Brodris,

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

[28:53] into a digital form, which will again later be transferred back into a physical form.

[28:57] But the originals are dead. They, you, they have been copied, but you have to assume that

[29:01] their lives have ended. They are now in a heaven and these are duplicates of them running around.

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

[29:10] Exactly. Yeah. 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,

[29:30] silver, silver bells. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yellow stars, rainbows, purple moons, all that stuff.

[29:40] Yeah. Horseshoes are probably slate gray. Horseshoe gray. Horseshoe gray horseshoes.

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

[29:50] star, yellow stars, lucky. And of course LeBron has to, I guess, play basketball again.

[29:58] So Cyrus or something.

[30:00] is that what happens now? Yep. Yeah. Okay. So this is when I wrote my notes. I don't think we're

[30:06] going to space. Now don't try and correct me and say cyberspace is the same shit because it ain't.

[30:12] It is not. Yeah. So you're saying the title already has failed on the space aspect of it.

[30:18] Yes. What if it doesn't provide the requisite jam? The words space jam have no meaning.

[30:24] Yeah. Do I trust this movie now? I see Stuart as one of the kids in the Simpsons going,

[30:29] we're going to go see an R rated movie naked lunch. Yeah. And they walk out and he goes,

[30:35] I can think of two things wrong with that title. Uh, okay. So, um, I'll kidnap. I got my jokes

[30:42] mixed up. I'm sorry, guys. I got my jokes mixed up. Barton Fink. They walk out of naked lunch and

[30:47] say two things around the title. It's Barton Fink that they're excited about going to see.

[30:50] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 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 the sun back and he

[31:03] loses the basketball game. What happened? They stay in the server verse forever.

[31:08] Okay. And that's it. And also they're doing, I mean, that's pretty fucked up. That's pretty bad.

[31:12] Yeah. That's pretty bad. They're doing, they're doing in front of all LeBron's Instagram followers.

[31:15] So also he loses a lot of face. Right. Yeah. And, uh, this was the point, I mean,

[31:20] Audrey pointed out pretty early that there's a key flaw in, uh, the algae rhythms, uh, plan,

[31:26] which is that I haven't noticed it. Tell me, tell me, say what it is.

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

[31:40] And so all LeBron has to do at any point is to, uh, win back his own son to his side, uh,

[31:47] to remove that sort of lodestone in algae rhythms plot, which, uh, he takes a really long time to

[31:54] do, but does do eventually. So, but the thing is, Dan, I think you're forgetting an important

[31:58] part of Dom Paul is style points. And I feel like he, that algae rhythm is trying to get style

[32:05] points on this victory. He's not just trying to win. He's trying to stunt on LeBron James.

[32:09] That's true. He wants to crush him by stealing his son. Exactly. I mean, honestly, if someone

[32:14] stole my son, it would crush me. I love it. It's a realistic fear that someone's going to come along

[32:19] and either just pick up my son and run with him is going to take your son or that your son was

[32:24] taken to apocalypse and turned into a, wait, what's he turned into like an escape artist.

[32:29] I don't, I don't read. Wait, what are you talking about? Cyclops's son.

[32:32] I would tell him that a planet that fucking dark sides from, Oh, well, we were talking about

[32:37] different. I think that the apocalypse, the X-Men villain, cause he stole Cyclops's son,

[32:40] turned him into cable with all this stealing sons with apocalypse, new Genesis. That wasn't a steal.

[32:46] That was a trade. The pact it's called that the war between new Genesis and apocalypse would end

[32:50] because high father and dark side had exchanged nickel in him over here. Scott free, the son of

[32:57] high father would be raised by dark side or rather raised in the school of torture under granny

[33:01] goodness. Uh, well, whereas Orion, the son of dark side would be raised by high father, always

[33:06] fighting the anger inside of him, which he doesn't know is there because of the evil seed of dark

[33:12] side. Now this would have to be a secret pact. Only the two rulers would know if the sons ever

[33:17] found out it would undo the fragile peace between the war torn industrial world of apocalypse and

[33:23] the peaceful bucolic world of new Genesis. And so the stage is set for new gods. Number one,

[33:30] we began a new Genesis. So let's, let's get to, we'll get to it after space jam. We have a

[33:35] different new thing. That's a new legacy of space jam. So LeBron is, uh, he needs to recruit a team

[33:41] of basketball players. He's got a limited amount of time. At some point we see a clock, I think.

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

[33:49] Al is like, I'm going to give him the rejects to choose from. So he opens up a portal and Ron, uh,

[33:55] LeBron James gets sucked into kind of like outer space where he, hold on a second. He's, he's

[34:02] falling through space and it's filled with planets. Stewart. I think he did go to space.

[34:08] I get, you might be right. And that space is, is populated by planets and each planet,

[34:12] each world is populated by different Warner brothers properties. So he flies past like

[34:18] Harry Potter planet. He flies past like Casablanca planet. There's a Casablanca planet. He flies

[34:23] 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 libraries. So it's like,

[34:33] it's the same way that you're acquired as well as, you know, it's the same way that Jack Kirby

[34:38] is now a Disney legend, despite having never worked for Disney because Disney did buy his

[34:42] characters, you know, uh, and then of course he finally lands on the, the reject planet.

[34:48] That is tune world. Uh, not cool world, which is the reject tune world, which is, which is,

[34:55] do not go there. Uh, and he, uh, so he lands in his immediately,

[35:01] just don't have sex with a doodle if you're annoyed, but wait a minute.

[35:06] Now you're putting kind of rules on me. I mean, I don't know how I'm going to feel when I get to

[35:10] cool world, coolest world. It could be Dan to get, tell me one thing that might go wrong if I have

[35:16] sex with a doodle. Uh, well ultimately I guess not much. I guess, I think you like turn back

[35:22] and forth between being real on a tune for a while. And then it didn't work out. I mean,

[35:27] the barrier between the tune world about the HIV epidemic, probably not. It doesn't end up,

[35:35] it doesn't end up great for a Gabriel Byrne. Let's just say that. Yeah. I mean, there's a

[35:38] lot of cool music though. And like a lot of movies with like bug eyes are like bouncing

[35:44] around the corner of those. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Just look at, look at all the movies.

[35:48] Gabriel Byrne's in he's he and Sean Bean, they always get the short end of the stick.

[35:52] They very rarely end up with a happy ending. Yeah, sure. Okay. Uh, so he lands on tune world.

[35:59] He is turned into a tune by this and we get the first of many inflatable, uh, tune jokes,

[36:04] which is great. You know, if, if you're into that, uh, he gets, uh, terrorized by the one

[36:11] occupant of tune world that is Bugs Bunny. Uh, sorry, I gotta, I gotta talk about how

[36:17] bugs terrorizes LeBron because this is, this was like classic kicking it off with me being like

[36:24] mad about the way the character is being used because you mean mad about in the mad about you

[36:28] way where you loved it. Uh, no, I, because I mean like, I can't remember the exact like

[36:35] Chuck Jones quote, but the whole rule with Bugs Bunny is like Bugs Bunny is going to mess with

[36:41] you once you mess with Bugs Bunny, like Bugs Bunny, like that is what keeps you sympathizing

[36:48] with Bugs, uh, in the, in the cartoons. Like Bugs is not a daffy who might just harass you for no

[36:55] reason, but like LeBron shows up and Bugs is immediately like chasing him around with like a

[37:01] cartoon steamroller, stuff like that. What did he do to, to irk this mad trickster God? And they,

[37:08] I will, I'll, I'm going to chime in and say, I won't go on it. Like I felt the same way that

[37:11] the Bugs Bunny here, he's not visually off model, but he's very personality wise off model. He is,

[37:17] 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 tunes come in, he's presented as like a screw up, like a guy who's

[37:27] a screw up and is always messing things up and can't get things right. Whereas like the Bugs

[37:31] Bunny I grew up with again, it's okay to have a different Bugs Bunny. The Bugs Bunny I grew up

[37:33] with was the coolest guy in the world. And what would happen is he would be enjoying himself.

[37:38] Someone would come in and try to kill him and he would throw it, you know, he'd throw anvils at

[37:42] them for a while, but each time he would like, even if he was overpowered at some point, he

[37:47] never seemed like, yeah, he never, he was never like a guy who was seen to struggle to get his,

[37:52] the respect of his friends, which is very much what like that, or would pine after Lola Bunny.

[37:57] And she'd be like, it's not happening Bugs like that. It's a very weird shade to paint onto Bugs

[38:02] Bunny. You know, I don't, I don't know that Bugs Bunny, as much as I love him, can handle the

[38:06] psychological depth of being a guy who has had failures in his past that he has to atone for.

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

[38:16] used to be populated by all his friends. And then Algae Rhythm showed up and offered,

[38:21] offered them the world, offered them worlds uncounted.

[38:25] Countless worlds, yeah.

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

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

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

[38:37] offered your friends, great stuff. Your friends was 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 the Looney Tunes have gone through a process of at least sort of 70 to 80% blandening.

[38:54] Yes, they have very little personality. Dan, I think you might be taking issue with the fact

[38:59] that Bugs Bunny is being crafted as kind of a tune fundamentalist who believes there's only

[39:03] one proper way to be a tune and does not approve of any other way of life.

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

[39:13] Yeah, when he could, he could reach out. But you're right, they like,

[39:16] the characters don't have a lot of personality. Daffy has some because it's impossible to remove

[39:19] Daffy. 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,

[39:28] to present themselves. And like Yosemite Sam is not particularly angry at any point.

[39:34] Elmer Fudd's not particularly dumb. I mean, Granny's all about the fucking

[39:37] Matrix, dude. Just like Bill Granny. Bill Granny can do with love.

[39:43] And I'm like, where are all my favorite characters? Where's Beaky Buzzard? I don't understand.

[39:47] Where are Hubie and Bertie? Wait, is Mark, is Mark Anthony and Pussyfoot,

[39:52] are they Looney Tunes characters? Where the fuck are they? I love them.

[39:56] Yeah, come on. Where's the sheepdog and the, and the, and the.

[40:00] Coyote that are always fighting each other, you know, give me the really small kangaroo

[40:05] Yeah, hippity hopper. Sure. Yeah. Okay. So 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, where's the dodo from wacky land? We're the three bears what's going on?

[40:21] Bugs, where's that super racist black kid? That's in that one cartoon that Warner Brothers does not show anymore. It's a

[40:28] Pretty sure I know where that kid

[40:32] That's the part of the server verse that even done Cheadle is like don't let it open don't let it out. Yeah

[40:37] No, I'm just saying that in LeBron James quest bug sees an opportunity to bring all his friends together they're gonna do this thing

[40:43] That's right

[40:44] It's another getting the band back together kids movie where the movie is playing off of a kid's

[40:49] Non-existent nostalgia for characters created before they were born. We saw in country bears. We saw in the Muppets

[40:54] You know, are you saying that there's references that are probably not appropriate for children in this movie because there's a few later on

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

[41:06] Okay, so bugs and LeBron steel Marvin the Martian spaceship gotta say I've always been a big fan of Marvin the Martian and it's good

[41:13] To see him for a little bit, I guess

[41:15] No, you don't you don't I mean, yeah, he's barely in it. I mean considering he's 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 Space Jam the original movie

[41:25] It was he was a different bad guy. Oh, okay. He has an original character. Okay, so

[41:31] They got a LeBron hat 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

[41:41] Property characters that they could put together to make a basketball team Superman Batman King Kong

[41:47] Trinity from the Matrix, etc. Loot all of them. Yeah

[41:52] yeah, I mean just to sort of make a larger point about what's gonna happen next like

[41:57] They try and get all these people but like the the Looney Tunes have gone

[42:02] to all these planets and they end up just like grabbing the Looney Tunes and

[42:07] They make like kind of a stab at least in world one about like why like they can't get Superman

[42:12] but they get Daffy and Porky there, but like

[42:16] It's never quite clear to me like why they don't get any of these people that would actually be good

[42:23] teammates to help

[42:24] You know like bugs is sabotage. I guess

[42:29] Sabotaging Dan. Yeah, I

[42:30] suppose we're supposed to take that away, but is

[42:33] like you have to really read between the lines LeBron James the greatest basketball player of all time and the hero of the movie is

[42:39] too weak to stand up to the arguments of a cartoon rabbit who does not instead of bringing Superman wants to bring in his friend a

[42:44] Duck, I mean I feel like that's kind of Bugs Bunny's whole thing like no matter how strong or powerful you are. He can trick you

[42:52] Yeah, well, here's what happened. So LeBron James said Superman Bugs said Daffy LeBron Superman Bugs Daffy Bugs

[42:59] Superman LeBron Daffy and Bugs goes. Okay, if you want Daffy we can have Daffy just pulled his old trick on him, you know

[43:05] Yeah, okay. So 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 like the the animated like Batman animated series style

[43:16] It's like the Justice League Unlimited type DC world. Yeah. Yeah, they go to the world of Mad Max

[43:21] Which looks like just backup footage of Fury Road

[43:24] Let's slow down here for a second when you say the world of Mad Max

[43:27] This is these are shots from the movie Mad Max like actual Fury Road

[43:33] Yeah, and that they have like rotoscoped in Looney Tunes in different places

[43:38] Over the footage of Fury Road and like like a movie that had only been sort of like mildly

[43:45] Irritating to me before this suddenly became infuriating because I was just thinking about like if I were George Miller and I saw this

[43:52] Bullshit being pulled like I would really like start having fantasies about going in and like like like

[43:59] secretly burning down Warner Brothers buildings or something because like this is I don't know it's like you're taking you're not

[44:06] Anybody drawing all over my good movie you say you would do it if he was George Miller, which he's not so

[44:14] Legally

[44:15] Dan I'm going to I'm going to be the most devilish of advocates and I'm gonna say two things one. Yeah, George Miller

[44:22] Made the exact movie he wanted to make got it released was nominated for a lot of awards middle made money off it

[44:28] It came out 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 gonna use a little bit. We're gonna just we're gonna just

[44:39] Deface a little bit of it by throwing Wile E. Coyote in there number two

[44:42] I would say they don't have the right to do no no and I say number two so for George Miller to be mad

[44:47] It's like you want to make this movie or you don't miss movie number two

[44:50] Yeah

[44:50] And I'm gonna and I'm gonna undo my own argument number two if I was I kept saying to my wife if I was writing

[44:55] This movie and they said you can use any Warner Brothers property

[44:58] I would also go hog wild throwing Warner Brothers stuff into this movie every I'd have

[45:03] The Errol Flynn Robin Hood I'd have James Cagney as a gangster again

[45:07] 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. I throw all my favorite stuff in so I

[45:18] I'm gonna zip through what we do get

[45:21] Okay, well I understand the temptation, but on the other hand it is

[45:25] Pretty dumb, 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

[45:31] Seen they don't know it. Yeah, and they do a ham-headed thing with it Stewart. Tell us who else

[45:35] Yeah, so what we get we get we get a whole bunch of child appropriate material

[45:40] We get a the Mad Max world we get like a Casablanca world we get a Game of Thrones world

[45:44] We get Rick and Morty we get awesome matrix

[45:47] We get awesome powers, and then we get Wonder Woman all these things like none of those are below pg-13, right?

[45:54] No, I don't think I mean Casablanca would be it probably a PG movie now

[45:58] Just because by the standards of the MPAA. There's no swearing or nudity in it. You know

[46:04] probably

[46:07] The way that they the way they do it it all is so well the thing is like when I was a kid

[46:11] I knew of Casablanca because it was reference so heavily

[46:14] You know that like I knew the the general idea of play it Sam, you know played again

[46:18] You know the the misquoted phrase played again Sam

[46:20] But like the idea of throwing in stuff like I don't throw in stuff like Fury Road you you guys know flop house listeners

[46:26] No, 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 non-existent foghorn leghorn is riding a dragon with blonde hair

[46:36] And he goes I'll say I'll say winter is coming, and it's like that's not a fun

[46:39] Not a joke like that that is a do better

[46:43] Yeah, well, it's like an epic movie level or not or like reference as a joke you know in the audience

[46:48] Let's be like I never thought I'd see foghorn leghorn riding a dragon also who's

[46:53] Yeah

[46:54] So it's a but I was also confused by fact that there's two different Wonder Woman worlds

[46:58] Which is like one woman's in the DC universe, but she has her own world, too. I don't get it

[47:04] Yeah, well let's talk about the Wonder Woman world because they pick up Lola bunny there

[47:08] And there is you know Lola bunny a character invented here. We go again

[47:14] Yeah, and Dan is not happy about it. 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 well. I mean notoriously like or bugs dressed as a woman

[47:26] Oversexualized like the only thing about Lola bunny and the original space jam was like we're putting a sexy

[47:33] Lady bunny in here, and she's gonna be sexy sexy and all the tunes are gonna be like ooh look at that hot

[47:39] sexy lady bunny, and that was the only personality that the

[47:43] Female bunny God, but Dan. They're just trying to balance out the obvious physical sex appeal of

[47:48] Daffy Duck Porky Pig

[47:50] Yosemite Sam Elmer, you know sure sure sure

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

[47:58] We're trying to live in a more enlightened time. Let's not

[48:03] Oversexualized this bunny woman that we've put in our basketball tune movie, and so we're like okay

[48:09] Let's take away the fact that she's a sex pot and

[48:14] Not replace it with a character like it's like the fact that she's introduced on like Wonder Woman

[48:21] I

[48:23] Like them a skirra like doing like the Wonder Woman

[48:26] You know obstacle course or whatever like that is like the nod to like see we made her a strong female

[48:32] And now she's gonna be in the background of the rest of the movie like four or five lines

[48:36] She's very much that she's that she's the female character in a movie who is

[48:40] Coded as competent and serious and that also means she is boring and not

[48:45] Likeable and mainly scolds the other characters like see we didn't make we made her. Yeah, we made her a strong woman

[48:50] That's why she's that's why she mostly tells the other players what they're doing wrong

[48:54] Yeah, it's disappointing anyway, so what you're saying is would have been better if we had that hot cha-cha sex bunny bunny

[49:01] Where all the characters are just just they're going boy. Oh, you're going. Oh

[49:06] And she like the people yeah

[49:08] She distracts the opposite team by bending over to pick up the ball showing her visible thong above her basketball

[49:14] Yes, why would you wear that while playing? I had it over her tail. That was me other teams too busy

[49:19] That was me all over the place

[49:22] Tweeting on the internet. What did you do with my sexy sexy Lola?

[49:25] That was you want that shower scene between sexy Lola bunny and granny where they you know about it

[49:30] The New York Times film

[49:36] Anthony Lane is like this animated children's movie doesn't give me a boner f-minus

[49:42] Okay, so meanwhile algae is tricking Dom

[49:46] Into helping him out by being like just a super supportive friend or father figure like he's helping him out and Dom starts explaining

[49:54] his his video game dom ball, which then

[49:57] He's he kind of algae

[50:00] kind of steals Dom's phone, hands it to his servant, Pete,

[50:04] who then plugs himself into a USB port

[50:07] and then like has an orgasm.

[50:09] It's pretty weird.

[50:11] Okay, then we get a training montage.

[50:15] That's where the toons are trying

[50:16] to learn how to play basketball.

[50:19] And they're, you know,

[50:21] they're doing all their normal shenanigans,

[50:23] 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 got to stop being loony.

[50:32] That's where Bugs 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.

[50:36] Yeah, focus on the fundamentals.

[50:38] None of this hot dog and anvil dropping.

[50:42] So the evil plan is to beat LeBron at a game.

[50:45] They're not playing basketball.

[50:46] LG surprised them.

[50:47] They're going to be playing Dom ball.

[50:49] And he upgrades Dom into being the captain of the team.

[50:55] And he makes all of his stats super high.

[50:57] So he can like do everything.

[50:58] He puts all the sliders to 100%.

[51:00] What kind of game is this where you can put everything

[51:03] to the top level?

[51:04] That seems-

[51:05] Dom ball, Dan.

[51:06] It's Dom ball.

[51:06] If your name is in the title of the game,

[51:08] you're going to get special treatment.

[51:10] Yeah.

[51:11] Okay.

[51:12] And then he also takes scans

[51:14] of various famous basketball players

[51:16] and turns them into anamorphs.

[51:18] That's, and that,

[51:19] and he turns them all into his special team

[51:21] of ringers called the Goon Squad,

[51:24] who we'll see more of later.

[51:25] Now I have a question.

[51:26] Are they really anamorphs?

[51:28] Since they're kind of,

[51:28] they don't turn fully into animals.

[51:30] They're just kind of like animal-human,

[51:32] you know, hybrid mashups.

[51:33] Hybrids.

[51:34] No, I was just trying to talk about anamorphs for a second.

[51:38] Oh, okay.

[51:38] I know you love anamorphs.

[51:40] You like, they really speak to you on a deep level,

[51:42] which is something I totally understand.

[51:45] And I think it's great,

[51:46] it's great, Stuart,

[51:46] that you found the fictional universe that works for you.

[51:49] Again, I just feel like we don't want to classify them

[51:51] improperly as anamorphs.

[51:52] Have an anamorph fan watch the movie

[51:54] and be like,

[51:55] they got all this Warner Brothers IP in here.

[51:56] I bet they got the anamorphs in there too.

[51:57] Sorry, they're not actually anamorphs.

[51:59] Yeah, I don't want to mislead people.

[52:02] So Algee shows up at the Toons training facility

[52:06] on Toon World,

[52:07] and he turns all the Toons and LeBron

[52:10] into photorealistic things.

[52:12] Oh, boy.

[52:13] So at this point, we're like,

[52:15] these aren't your daddy's Toons anymore.

[52:16] Yeah.

[52:17] Can we just take a moment?

[52:18] I'm sorry.

[52:19] No, please, interrupt me.

[52:21] I cannot tell whether that's ironic or not anymore.

[52:25] Why does he have to choose?

[52:26] It could be both.

[52:27] Yeah.

[52:31] The way these Toons look once they're CGI,

[52:36] I'm sure there would be a way to do this.

[52:38] Wait, they're CGI?

[52:40] I thought they were practical, Dan.

[52:42] I mean, that's the weird thing is-

[52:42] Yeah, they're all puppets.

[52:44] They look-

[52:45] Like Meet the Fables.

[52:46] They look real in the wrong way.

[52:50] Like, Bugs looks like a moving,

[52:54] like a living, like sort of stuffed animal,

[52:57] and Porky has like sort of the waxy skin

[53:00] of a Madame Tussauds sculpture.

[53:04] Like, these are not creatures

[53:06] that were meant to be in three dimensions.

[53:10] They were designed-

[53:11] Dan, let me just ask you-

[53:12] As 2D things.

[53:12] Let me just ask you,

[53:13] when you're watching the Hunter trilogy

[53:15] or What's Opera Doc or Fast and Furious or Duck Amuck,

[53:21] don't lie to me.

[53:22] You've been thinking,

[53:22] this would be so much funnier

[53:23] if they had photorealistic hair and feathers.

[53:26] Yeah.

[53:27] I'd be laughing more if I could see every whisker

[53:29] waving in the wind individually.

[53:32] I am saying, yeah,

[53:33] I do not think they were reconceptualized for 3D

[53:37] in a way that makes them look, say, not unpleasant.

[53:41] Yeah.

[53:42] It's very first CGI Sonic on this,

[53:45] rather than second CGI Sonic,

[53:47] which is still fairly unpleasant.

[53:48] Yeah, I mean, to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm,

[53:51] they were so concerned with if they could do it,

[53:54] they didn't stop and think if they should do it.

[53:57] Yeah.

[53:58] And I think, according to all three of us,

[53:59] they shouldn't have.

[54:00] No, I mean, it is rare that I will say this,

[54:03] but watching Space Jam New Legacy really made me revisit

[54:06] and be happy about the creative choices made

[54:08] in the Tom and Jerry movie,

[54:10] where I thought they did a great job

[54:12] of animating those characters.

[54:13] They interacted with the photorealistic world

[54:16] without turning them into photorealistic animals,

[54:20] you know?

[54:20] And I wish they did that here.

[54:21] This is our big apology to her right now,

[54:23] for Tom and Jerry.

[54:24] You're right.

[54:25] It turns out that was a great movie.

[54:26] Sorry to everyone who watched it as a kid

[54:28] and is now a grownup a year later.

[54:30] And is like, actually, it was really great.

[54:32] Yeah.

[54:33] So now you can't have a basketball game

[54:36] and not have an audience.

[54:37] So Algae summons every single-

[54:39] I mean, the Olympics are proving that you can,

[54:41] but continue.

[54:42] Yeah, I'll go with the premise, yeah.

[54:43] Really?

[54:44] I haven't watched any of it.

[54:45] What's happening, Elliot?

[54:47] It's just like the regular Olympics,

[54:48] but there's no audience.

[54:49] Oh, okay.

[54:50] So all the characters

[54:52] from every Warner Brothers property

[54:54] all come charging over the hill.

[54:56] You see all of your favorites.

[54:58] Dan, you see Jabberjaw.

[54:59] You see-

[55:01] 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.

[55:08] They should have taken the Iron Giant out,

[55:09] 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.

[55:14] The Gremlins run by.

[55:15] The Gremlins run by.

[55:16] I was very angry,

[55:17] because it made me think of how much I love the Gremlins.

[55:20] I mean, it's weirder that Baby Jane is in the background

[55:23] from whatever happened to Baby Jane.

[55:24] That's true.

[55:26] That in this kid's movie,

[55:27] you have like Pennywise watching a basketball game

[55:30] and the mask.

[55:31] And I'll tell you this-

[55:32] The Droogs from Clockwork Orange.

[55:34] They're criminals.

[55:36] I was reading,

[55:36] I think the fairest thing about this movie that I've read

[55:39] is on the Wikipedia entry,

[55:41] they talked about how there was going to be

[55:42] a Pepe Le Pew scene and that was cut.

[55:44] But then some people thought it was,

[55:46] were confused why a Pepe Le Pew scene was cut.

[55:48] But the Droogs who rape someone in their movie

[55:51] are very visible in the audience

[55:53] throughout almost the entire basketball game.

[55:55] They're like front row.

[55:57] Like even if you're gonna put them in,

[55:59] like why would you make that choice?

[56:02] But it's-

[56:02] We gotta highlight a Clockwork Orange

[56:04] for all the viewers.

[56:06] We should make it clear that these are not,

[56:09] these are not characters from,

[56:10] these are not shots from the movies

[56:11] that have been repurposed like earlier.

[56:12] These are very much the Halloween costume package

[56:15] theme park versions of these characters.

[56:17] Yes.

[56:18] That's what's crazy is it feels like

[56:20] they didn't have the intellectual property

[56:22] to use these characters.

[56:23] So they use slightly different ones.

[56:25] Yeah.

[56:25] They're like, this isn't Mr. Freeze.

[56:27] This is Mr. Froze.

[56:28] How can you sue us?

[56:30] Come on.

[56:31] Yeah.

[56:32] Ice cube villain.

[56:33] This isn't Pennywise.

[56:35] This is Nickeldom.

[56:36] Come on.

[56:37] He's not.

[56:38] But it is-

[56:40] This is mechanical citrus fruit.

[56:43] I'm glad that we're using this as like a backdoor pitch

[56:46] to have us write the names

[56:47] for those like spirit Halloween costumes.

[56:50] I mean, if they want to hire us,

[56:51] I'd be happy to do it.

[56:52] Italian plumbing brothers.

[56:54] This is not Batman.

[56:56] It's Night Rodent Hero.

[56:57] Come on.

[56:58] But I will say, this is a,

[57:00] it's fairly quickly.

[57:02] Large metal man.

[57:05] I never thought I'd say this,

[57:05] that the novelty of watching Mr. Freeze,

[57:08] Baby Jane, Pennywise the mask,

[57:10] and a flying monkey from the Wizard of Oz

[57:11] watching a basketball game

[57:13] and enjoying it like crazy.

[57:14] The novelty of that wears off pretty quickly.

[57:16] And you get the,

[57:18] no matter what's happening in the game,

[57:19] the characters in the audience

[57:20] are so constantly jumping up and down,

[57:23] excited in their seats.

[57:24] And you know that they just brought random people,

[57:26] like random extra performers.

[57:27] So I assume audition for these roles.

[57:29] They brought them in,

[57:30] dressed them in the cheapest,

[57:32] like White Walker costumes that you could find

[57:36] and told them,

[57:36] okay, jump around and pump your fists in the air

[57:39] for three hours straight.

[57:40] And we're just going to roll on it.

[57:41] We're going to use these shots.

[57:42] You guys are both,

[57:43] you guys are both more Hollywood type.

[57:45] So you can explain the movie magic to me.

[57:46] So you're saying they didn't show them

[57:48] a basketball game with photorealistic tunes

[57:51] versus a goon squad to get them pumped up.

[57:54] No, somewhere there is,

[57:55] there are files with thousands of hours of footage

[57:59] of people in against the green screen,

[58:01] dressed in terrible knockoff costumes,

[58:04] just pretending that they're super excited

[58:06] or in small clumps to be composited.

[58:09] Yes.

[58:09] There's somebody had to get dressed up

[58:11] in a poor replica of Danny DeVito's makeup

[58:14] from Batman Returns

[58:15] so that he could jump around and pump his fists in the air,

[58:18] yelling ad-lib things about basketball

[58:21] so they could then insert it.

[58:22] Oh, it's so great, man.

[58:23] So they could insert it next to,

[58:24] as mentioned, one of the nuns from the devils.

[58:26] What?

[58:27] Yeah.

[58:28] With Zoom backgrounds being all the rage,

[58:30] I don't see why they didn't try and make money

[58:32] by selling that footage.

[58:33] But so let's get back to this.

[58:35] Let's get back to the plot here.

[58:37] So-

[58:38] The best is when the characters behind them

[58:40] do look like they're interacting with each other

[58:42] and it's like Pennywise and another character

[58:44] are like in an argument about something.

[58:46] You know, that's the movie I wanted to see, you know?

[58:50] So, and now just these Warner Brothers characters,

[58:54] that's not enough of an audience, for Al at least.

[58:56] He starts sucking in people that are looking at their phone

[59:01] so that they are trapped in Toon World.

[59:03] They are, you know, they're digitized.

[59:05] They look just like themselves

[59:07] and they are forced to watch the game.

[59:09] No one questions it.

[59:10] They just immediately go with the flow.

[59:14] We get a sports announcer who I'm not familiar with

[59:17] and Lil Rel, who's great.

[59:19] And they are like, they're not officiating.

[59:21] They're like, they're broadcasting the game.

[59:24] They're doing the play-by-play.

[59:26] The rest of LeBron's family gets sucked in

[59:28] and they're watching it.

[59:29] They briefly chat with LeBron.

[59:31] He tries to explain what's going on.

[59:32] I think they figure it out.

[59:34] I don't know.

[59:35] And then Al introduces his,

[59:37] but what we learn now is that large portions

[59:40] of the human race have now been digitized

[59:42] and their lives are on the line.

[59:44] So this is no joke.

[59:46] If LeBron and the Toon Squad loses,

[59:49] then everybody has to stay in Algorithm's world.

[59:51] And I guess he's just going to exploit them as new IP,

[59:54] like just random people

[59:56] are just going to have movies made about them.

[59:59] I guess.

[1:00:00] And then Al introduces his team of monsters, or monstars, called the Goon Squad.

[1:00:06] They're not the monstars. The monstars are the other team from the first movie.

[1:00:09] Yeah, who can be seen in their small form, I guess, every once in a while.

[1:00:14] Yeah, but they're pre-transformation form. They're seen in the audience.

[1:00:17] Which is interesting. So the first Space Jam movie would be in this universe, right?

[1:00:24] Yes. So in theory, the opposing team could have...

[1:00:27] It would have been amazing if Michael Jordan from Space Jam was in the audience watching this,

[1:00:31] just going, yeah, yeah, yeah, high-fiving King Kong and sharing nachos with Space Ghost.

[1:00:38] Or tearing up while looking at an iPad. That's the Michael Jordan I know and love.

[1:00:42] Michael Jordan's in the audience just having a beer with Al Jolson from The Jazz Singer,

[1:00:48] just enjoying this movie alongside all the other Warner Brothers properties.

[1:00:53] A point I want to make. I apologize, dude. A point I want to make was,

[1:00:56] if you've ever taken the Warner Brothers Studio Tour, it's a lot like this,

[1:01:00] 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 the other recent hits.

[1:01:17] And then you'll get a shot from Casablanca.

[1:01:19] And it's amazing to me the cultural staying power of Casablanca.

[1:01:23] That is a movie that is 80-some-odd years old, and it is the only one from pre-1995

[1:01:31] that Warner Brothers seems to highlight at all, really.

[1:01:34] And this is a studio that's over 100 years old.

[1:01:37] They have over 100 years of movies to point to.

[1:01:39] 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] 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.

[1:02:00] That's so funny.

[1:02:01] OK, so he introduces his team of the Goon Squad, led by LeBron's son, Dom.

[1:02:07] He has been, I guess, kind of like –

[1:02:10] I would have called them the Dom Patrol.

[1:02:11] That's another Warner Brothers IP.

[1:02:13] I feel like he's kind of brainwashed at this point.

[1:02:17] Yeah.

[1:02:18] The thing is, LeBron makes such a short attempt at being like,

[1:02:24] Dom, hey, he's pitting you against us.

[1:02:27] This is not good.

[1:02:29] And then he 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 tried for like 30 seconds.

[1:02:37] You didn't even explain the stakes.

[1:02:39] Like, hey, he's going to trap all these people in here if I don't win this game.

[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] I mean it's every mother's dream to see their husband defeated by their son because half of the son is them.

[1:02:55] And so it's like you, this person who is 100 percent not me, has been defeated by someone who is at least 50 percent me.

[1:03:02] That's how you win the battle of parenthood.

[1:03:04] I get it.

[1:03:05] That's the math of parenthood.

[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.

[1:03:12] 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] 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.

[1:03:23] And I'm going to do it in my way in a way that he loses to me 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 of the family.

[1:03:39] Let's not walk further down that path.

[1:03:41] That's not featured in the movie just to be clear.

[1:03:43] No, 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.

[1:03:49] The Goon Squad immediately takes a lead.

[1:03:53] They start scoring astronomical amount of points because, once again, this is not basketball.

[1:03:57] They're playing dom ball and there's style points and there's all different kinds of ways to score points.

[1:04:02] By the half, they're up by 1,000 points.

[1:04:04] They're up by 1,000 points.

[1:04:06] And the tunes are kind of following directions from LeBron who again is – wants them to focus on playing normal basketball following the fundamentals.

[1:04:16] But as I've addressed, one of the opposing players is like a spider woman.

[1:04:20] The other, it turns from water to fire in an instant.

[1:04:23] He's a snake woman who has to be like – she's like traveling all the time because she can't dribble.

[1:04:28] It's true.

[1:04:29] Yep.

[1:04:30] There doesn't – also doesn't appear to be a referee in the game, right?

[1:04:32] Oh, wait.

[1:04:33] I guess Pete is kind of the referee, but he cheats the whole time for the Goon Squad.

[1:04:36] Well, when the referee is the sidekick – is the henchman of the owner of the opposing team, it's an unfair game.

[1:04:43] Yeah.

[1:04:44] It 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.

[1:04:56] Set in his ways is the LeBron James of this movie.

[1:04:58] Yeah.

[1:04:59] But Dan, if that's – come on.

[1:05:01] They got him up a tree.

[1:05:02] They're throwing rocks at him.

[1:05:03] He's got to figure out how to get down from that tree.

[1:05:04] It's screenwriting 101, fundamentals.

[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.

[1:05:22] Like this movie – look, if you want a weird basketball game between toons and monsters and stuff like that, the movie will deliver on that promise.

[1:05:33] But it also is like, wow, they really are doing like almost a full hour of this basketball game.

[1:05:40] Yeah, there's a ton.

[1:05:41] It's not what I want from a movie, but if you're making a movie called Space Jam that involves LeBron James and the Looney Toons, then this is what you're promising, and they unfortunately deliver in a sense.

[1:05:52] Yeah.

[1:05:53] Yeah, so it's looking grim.

[1:05:55] Yep.

[1:05:56] Are there any particular –

[1:05:57] We're not up to the scene.

[1:05:58] There's a scene that comes up soon where I may be genuinely angry, but we haven't gotten to it yet.

[1:06:02] OK.

[1:06:03] 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, Michael B. Jordan, who seems to have a little bit of fun, and then he bounces.

[1:06:23] He's out of there.

[1:06:24] Here's where they missed – not to hit on keeping the dead horse of the inherent racism of much of American pop culture, but I wanted – they're like, Sylvester, how did you not know – 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?

[1:06:39] 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.

[1:06:44] I'm a racist.

[1:06:45] It was probably in the script, Elliot.

[1:06:46] Probably.

[1:06:47] They just – they shot one take of that, and it just didn't test well.

[1:06:51] If you're going to burn a Warner Brothers character by having them admit to being racist, why not Sylvester of all of them?

[1:06:56] Does anyone like Sylvester?

[1:06:57] No.

[1:06:58] Especially he'll say racist with a lisp, and everyone will laugh.

[1:07:01] Oh, that will be – again, yeah, they should have done it.

[1:07:03] It reminds me of – there's a lot of Looney Tunes 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.

[1:07:13] There was an article that came out that was like Warner Brothers announces no new Pepe Le Pew vehicles for the next year, and I was like they could have run this article any point in my life.

[1:07:23] There has never been a demand ever for a Pepe Le Pew vehicle.

[1:07:28] Why don't you – do not give Warner Brothers credit for any of that decision.

[1:07:34] So after Michael B. Jordan leaves, LeBron seems to learn his lesson.

[1:07:49] He explains that the Toons 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, and he gives up a little bit of his control.

[1:08:02] To the Toons, and I think that's going to pay off in big dividends.

[1:08:06] It certainly pays off right away as Porky Pig gets into a rap battle.

[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 –

[1:08:17] Why did that happen is what I like blinked for half a second.

[1:08:22] Oh, I blinked.

[1:08:23] 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.

[1:08:37] Everybody is loving it.

[1:08:39] Everybody is tapping their toes.

[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 Bugs –

[1:08:48] where the Looney Tunes characters were all wearing like oversized jerseys and lots of rings and chains.

[1:08:53] You see them a lot.

[1:08:54] It's a very mild sort of like mid-tempo basic rap, but everyone thinks it's the best rap I've ever heard.

[1:09:01] So much so that there's no response.

[1:09:03] Yeah.

[1:09:04] Don Cheadle is silenced by Porky Pig's rhymes.

[1:09:07] Yeah, he's so shocked that it happened.

[1:09:09] The Tunes are allowed to be loony.

[1:09:11] They get to use – and we get to see all of our favorite bits, Tweety Bird waiting for the train to arrive.

[1:09:18] Granny, again, does Matrix stuff.

[1:09:22] Dom is taken out of the game.

[1:09:25] They sideline him, which is a kind of weird choice, 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.

[1:09:41] It's because every movie now needs a scene where somebody is 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.

[1:09:50] It's so fucking funny and, like, cool.

[1:09:52] Like, it's just cool.

[1:09:53] Ellie, can I guess?

[1:09:54] Did we pass the thing that made you angry, and can I guess what it is?

[1:09:57] Guess what it is.

[1:09:58] I think we may have passed it.

[1:09:59] Guess what it is.

[1:10:00] Is it the fact that the coyote paints something on a wall and the roadrunner runs into it?

[1:10:07] No, that is not it. I'm touched that you think that that would make me mad.

[1:10:11] I did get a little irritated when Bugs Bunny pulled that on LeBron early on,

[1:10:14] because I'm like, that's a wily coyote roadrunner joke.

[1:10:16] But no, you might feel a little bad, but the thing that made me mad was when LG is yelling at Dom,

[1:10:23] and LeBron is watching this and doing nothing, and I was like, fuck you.

[1:10:27] You do not deserve to be a father at that moment, LeBron.

[1:10:29] You're watching your son. Your son is being verbally abused by a computer program,

[1:10:34] 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. So that got me really mad.

[1:10:43] Again, Elliot, it might help you to know that the actor playing his son is not his actual son.

[1:10:47] No, but even in the fictional – I know it wasn't really happening.

[1:10:51] 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,

[1:11:02] you suck, you're not good at this, you don't deserve to do this, I would have to get up off my opposing bench

[1:11:07] and walk over and tell him to stop at the very least rather than being like,

[1:11:11] 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.

[1:11:23] It was the genuine emotional reality of having been a kid who would get into arguments with authority figures

[1:11:29] and having my parents stand up to me to see LeBron James, the hero of the movie, do that.

[1:11:34] It was very painful to me.

[1:11:36] No, no, OK. I wasn't expecting a genuine emotional trigger. I thought it would be, again, a silly –

[1:11:43] No, but I like that after the many years of knowing me, you thought that I just got mad

[1:11:47] because the wrong person ran into a painted scene.

[1:11:51] Yeah, and again, we get a bunch more bits. The Toons start to win.

[1:11:56] We do get – as a Hoosier, I greatly appreciated seeing Don Cheadle doing a Bobby Knight joke,

[1:12:02] 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 Matrix moves

[1:12:18] and she also messes with his time turner, sends him to the fucking beach from old,

[1:12:22] and the guy gets super old like a robot.

[1:12:25] It's hilarious.

[1:12:26] It falls apart, right?

[1:12:27] It's amazing.

[1:12:28] She consigns him to an early death and it's like, wow, this is a rough game.

[1:12:33] Yeah. It becomes like steampunkier as he gets old. I kind of like that idea.

[1:12:38] Yeah, it's great.

[1:12:39] So wait. So I've only heard secondhand about this old person beach.

[1:12:43] What is it exactly? It's a beach where you turn into an old person?

[1:12:45] Yeah, Dan. What's the deal here?

[1:12:47] I haven't seen this. 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. It turns people old.

[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.

[1:13:10] I'm only 14. Can you just dump me on it long enough so I get to be 16?

[1:13:13] Yeah, yeah.

[1:13:14] What if I'm just on the beach for like a couple minutes?

[1:13:16] Does it ageify your driver's license?

[1:13:19] 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.

[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.

[1:13:36] And people could take – like kids could take it a little bit at 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 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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[1:14:16] Yes, very much so.

[1:14:17] I can't do these difficult middle school, high school years.

[1:14:21] Let's just ageify this kid up, send him away to whatever college we can afford or a trade school preferably.

[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.

[1:14:34] Can you put your bank account on the ageify?

[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?

[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 awful.

[1:14:50] They can get there someday.

[1:14:52] 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 because you don't want to send a college like an 8-year-old in an 18-year-old's body.

[1:15:02] That is trouble.

[1:15:03] That is tea rubble.

[1:15:04] That sounds like a couple of my college performance reports.

[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.

[1:15:15] Generation of Jacks.

[1:15:16] Jack, not in this movie in any way.

[1:15:19] I don't know if that's a Warner Brothers property.

[1:15:21] So around here, the tunes have basically tied the game.

[1:15:24] LeBron and his son patch things up.

[1:15:27] They hug, and again I pause it and I was like there's 20 minutes left.

[1:15:32] So Algee –

[1:15:36] Here's the thing.

[1:15:37] Whenever I watch one of these movies now, I pad in roughly 7 to 10 minutes of credits because with all the special effects, it's long credits.

[1:15:43] So Algee 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.

[1:15:50] 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.

[1:15:57] They play some basketball.

[1:16:00] He scores a dunk on LeBron, and then he makes a training day reference, which is great, and then he follows it up with it.

[1:16:06] Hold on.

[1:16:07] Yeah.

[1:16:08] Look, for people who are not going to watch this movie and I do not recommend it, let us explicitly say the reference because it is one of the times I'm like, okay, I like that.

[1:16:17] Where Don Cheadle says the famed line from Training Day, King Kong ain't got nothing on me, and King Kong, who is in the audience, just does a little huffy arm cross.

[1:16:26] Yeah.

[1:16:27] And to see that beautiful giant ape do such a delicate movement was pretty funny.

[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.

[1:16:42] 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] This is what I wanted.

[1:16:51] 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 too early.

[1:17:10] They farmed out the effects to a lot of different effects houses, and that's why some things work and some things don't quite work, and I wonder if that's true.

[1:17:16] So they realized 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 they're not going to win.

[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.

[1:17:32] It was hard to maintain the level of tension that I was expecting.

[1:17:38] So LeBron decides –

[1:17:40] Considering the stakes are all of you will be trapped as ghosts in the machine forever if you lose, the basketball game stakes are very hard to read.

[1:17:49] So when you can stick Wile E. Coyote into a multiplying machine and suddenly get 800, 900 points, it's hard to know how much time means.

[1:17:57] It was definitely like whose line is it anywhere scoring.

[1:18:00] 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.

[1:18:08] Yeah.

[1:18:09] 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 is like, no, you're going to die.

[1:18:22] And he's like, I'm not a toon.

[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 and you're like, no, Bugs, don't sacrifice yourself I guess.

[1:18:33] I don't know what the stakes are.

[1:18:36] As we find out later, Stuart, the stakes are incredibly high and also nonexistent.

[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.

[1:18:50] Algorithm is posterized.

[1:18:53] He is turned into a poster and that's it.

[1:18:55] He's just a poster now.

[1:18:56] He's dead forever.

[1:18:57] Bugs has a full-on death scene.

[1:18:59] Let's not – like Bugs is being held by Lola Bunny.

[1:19:03] He says, that's all, folks.

[1:19:04] He like turns into a sky bunny.

[1:19:06] He turns into a star that ascends.

[1:19:08] He turns into a star that flies up to heaven.

[1:19:11] And I'm like, what did this movie just do?

[1:19:15] You're like, is this the end?

[1:19:17] And I'm like, no, Dan, this is not the end.

[1:19:19] Death is just another step along our journey.

[1:19:21] Oh, boy, Stuart.

[1:19:22] 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.

[1:19:29] And soon world is seen behind.

[1:19:32] It's the fact that – and again, as someone – I have a –

[1:19:36] 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.

[1:19:41] They mean a lot to me.

[1:19:42] And yet there was – I had the same reaction where I'm like, wait.

[1:19:46] 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 animated Heroes Fight Drugs special when I was a kid where like Bugs and Raphael or Michelangelo and a bunch of –

[1:19:59] all that's said anymore.

[1:20:00] line-up characters. And Cerebus, right? Yeah, Dave Zim's Cerebus was in there. Yeah, Larry

[1:20:06] Martyr's Bean World characters were all in there, sure. Maggie and Hopi. Yeah, they're all Concrete.

[1:20:14] Yeah. Anyway, when I was like, wait, does Concrete... Concrete's a superhero, right?

[1:20:20] Well, he's a superhero in a world without villains. He has superpowers, but he mostly

[1:20:25] uses it to rescue people or write memoirs. But the idea when I was young that like,

[1:20:30] wait, Bugs Bunny cares if I do drugs or not? Like, this doesn't square with my understanding

[1:20:34] of the character. 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? 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] And ironically, it was like, they're going for the same emotion that the speechless image

[1:20:53] after Mel Blanc died had, where it showed a microphone with nobody standing on it and all

[1:20:58] the Looney Tunes characters were like, bowing their heads in grief. And it was like, they're

[1:21:03] kind of going for that. But like, that was about the death of a real person who existed. This is

[1:21:07] like, I don't, there's not part of me that, and as the movie, I was like, but he's a cartoon,

[1:21:11] right? So they could just draw more of him. And the movie then bears you out on that. But anyway,

[1:21:15] so Bugs Bunny dies, he ascends to heaven as a star.

[1:21:18] Okay. So we now, again, the gray curtain of the world pulls back and we are back in the real

[1:21:25] world. Multiple weeks later, LeBron is taking his son Dom to basketball camp. So we think he's

[1:21:30] carrying a basketball. So that's a prop. You got to bring your own basketball to basketball camp,

[1:21:36] really limits who can go. So it turns out he tricked his son. He's not taking him to basketball

[1:21:43] camp. He's taking him to what video game creation camp. I don't remember what they call it.

[1:21:47] It's a video game coding camp. And he's like, okay, you won't be needing that basketball.

[1:21:51] And his son's like, I'm going to keep it. And he's like, oh, wow. The students become the master.

[1:21:56] His son leaves. And then of course, you've got to imagine the rest of that coding camp is just

[1:21:59] him bouncing that basketball off of other kids' heads going, nerd, nerd. I'm a jock, nerd.

[1:22:05] Yep. And then Bugs Bunny shows up and we get a little bit of outro goofs where Bugs is like,

[1:22:11] you can't kill me. I'm immortal. He goes, you got to know, you can't kill a Looney Tunes.

[1:22:17] Looney Tunes don't die. And it's like, what? What was the death scene about then, Bugs?

[1:22:22] That was what, like, if you're going to... It's a cycle like fucking Ragnarok, Dan.

[1:22:26] Yeah. It's just like the death of Balder. It happens over and over again.

[1:22:29] That's what I'm saying. He's just like Balder. I certainly wasn't mad at the movie for removing

[1:22:36] the stakes that I didn't think were there in the first place. I didn't think the movie was

[1:22:39] going to kill off Bugs Bunny, beloved character, Bugs Bunny.

[1:22:44] The movie ended and they're just at the end and said, Bugs Bunny, 1941 to 2021. Then the next

[1:22:50] scene is the head of Warner Brothers being, that's right, we are retiring the Bugs Bunny

[1:22:54] character. He will never appear in anything again. And they take all the Bugs Bunny memorabilia and

[1:22:59] they bury it in the desert and they pour concrete over it. They go, Bugs Bunny is now only a myth

[1:23:04] and a memory. Not concrete the character, though. You can't pour him. He's a physical

[1:23:09] being. No, no, they don't. Now he belongs to the ages. No, I didn't think.

[1:23:15] We are. But aren't you giving up millions of dollars by ending any Bugs Bunny thing?

[1:23:20] We yes, we are. But we feel like showing him the respect that he deserves to do justice to

[1:23:25] 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 aren't you? What if a future Warner Brothers executive decides to bring him back?

[1:23:35] Impossible. We are also destroying all the original Bugs Bunny cartoons,

[1:23:38] every piece of documentation. And we are making a legal oath, everyone at Warner Brothers,

[1:23:44] that this will never happen. And if someone does try to bring him back in the future,

[1:23:48] this judge has declared through an injunction that we can kill that person in order to maintain

[1:23:52] Bugs Bunny's honorable sacrifice. And in exchange, we will build this statue with

[1:23:57] a with a with an eternal flame to Bugs Bunny. Thank you, Bugs Bunny, for sacrificing your life.

[1:24:02] Thank you. Again, the statue is not a physical representation of Bugs Bunny

[1:24:06] because those are illegal now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just fire.

[1:24:09] It's just it's just fire with fire on top of it. And then and then they leave the podium.

[1:24:15] Joe Biden walks up as president United States. I'm declaring all flags will fly half mass

[1:24:20] forever in honor of Bugs Bunny's sacrifice to represent to recognize that he will never

[1:24:25] appear again and that he is the ultimate hero of all reality. I know what you're thinking.

[1:24:29] Flag, Flagstaff creators, don't just make your staff twice as big.

[1:24:35] Same size. We're doing half mass because I am creating a new department of Flagstaff height

[1:24:40] that will go across the country checking all Flagstaff to ensure they are regulation.

[1:24:44] The height of Flagstaff, Arizona will will actually be lowered. Flagstaff,

[1:24:49] Arizona will also be halved. No roofs on any of the buildings. All two story houses are now

[1:24:53] one story. All one story houses are now half story and now half stories. You have to go

[1:24:58] into the ground to get to them. Or if you're very short, maybe that'll work. In addition,

[1:25:02] the words Bugs and Bunny are now stricken from the English language in America and

[1:25:07] punishable by death. You may only say insects or rabbits. Yes. So this is his absence. His absence

[1:25:14] from life will be will be recognized with an absence from memory and also the collective

[1:25:19] culture, a an open wound, a threat, a lacuna that will never be filled in order to bear our

[1:25:26] immortal grief, our incredible eternal grief at the sacrifice chosen to be made by Bugs Bunny in

[1:25:32] Space Jam, a new legacy on HBO Max now and in theaters before you ask. Yes. To give you an

[1:25:38] example, the movie Lady Bugs will forever be known as Lady. Yes, very true. But the encyclopedia

[1:25:45] Brown novels is now just meanie or perhaps rabbits, meaning Bugs Malone, similar rabbits Malone.

[1:25:52] Let's talk about bunny. You will no longer be allowed to call someone your honey bunny.

[1:25:56] They will be your honey rabbit or just honey. Any other questions? Any other questions here?

[1:26:01] Yes. The Trix rabbit. His name is Trix rabbit, not Trix bunny. He will remain the same. We are

[1:26:06] not eliminating the animals of rabbits, but the word bunny is no longer around. But recognizing

[1:26:12] Bugs Bunny, if we did eliminate all rabbits, you're right. Let's do it. No more rabbits.

[1:26:17] What about a bug's life? There's an apostrophe in there. Does it the same? Because it's not spelled

[1:26:23] the same as good question. It is spelled the same with an apostrophe. That's just a that's just a

[1:26:27] plural possessive that will now be called an insect's life. All prints will be changed at

[1:26:32] Disney's expense. They understand it as a brother's studio. They understand the great

[1:26:37] sacrifice Warner Brothers is making, representing the great sacrifice Bugs Bunny made again in the

[1:26:41] hit film Space Jam 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. It is all the 4,000 page

[1:26:52] binders we've handed out to each one of you. No, I wasn't expecting any of that to happen,

[1:27:00] but I did expect some bit more of an explanation than like, eh, I didn't die.

[1:27:08] Yeah, you expected something other than it was all a goo. He doesn't even say it was a goo for a

[1:27:12] joke. He just says nothing can kill us. And also the fact that Bugs Bunny is not dead and is now

[1:27:17] walking around the real world with no explanation. He was just IP in the Warner Brothers servers.

[1:27:22] And he's like, all my friends came with me. Hope you got bunk beds at your house. It's like,

[1:27:26] wait a minute. So can these characters just enter our reality whenever they want?

[1:27:30] Or is Jason going to walk through that portal? Like what? There are a lot of scary things. Like

[1:27:34] we saw the Droogs and King Kong at the game. Are they suddenly in the real world? That's

[1:27:39] frightening. We're going to have to create some sort of Ultron to protect the world from what's

[1:27:43] coming now. I guess so. Different company, but that's okay. So that is, I guess that wraps up.

[1:27:49] That's going to put a pin on Space Jam and New Legacy. We're probably the 500th podcast to

[1:27:55] cover this movie. Dan, you listened to a couple. Did we say all the exact same bits and jokes?

[1:28:00] Did they also talk about Bugs Bunny's death and the ramifications?

[1:28:05] Not the ramifications. I'm a bit bamped in about half of an episode on it. So

[1:28:11] I know Blank Check did three hours or something. Jesus Christ.

[1:28:14] I knew Legacy, but well, that's par for the course.

[1:28:17] Hey guys, I think that's okay. You know what? A lot of people have done book reports on The

[1:28:22] Great Gatsby. Go ahead and read it and do a book report on it. It's a great book.

[1:28:26] Obviously a work of art of this magnitude demands multiple interpretations and multiple analyses.

[1:28:32] So do we have to go more than three hours then?

[1:28:34] We actually, yeah, I guess so. I guess so.

[1:28:37] Okay, Stuart, start summarizing the movie again. We open in media res. Ultron is alive.

[1:28:44] But he's a little kid. We saw Griffin for a little while last night and the glint in his eye

[1:28:49] when he, the glint in his eye that we would have to go through and the weariness in his heart that

[1:28:54] he had seen it was something to see. Okay, 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 like, yes, Elliot, I was like, I similarly thought of Cats in the sense that

[1:29:16] this is one of the most misbegotten, giant budget Hollywood movies that I can remember

[1:29:25] in my lifetime. Unlike Cats, it is not a shot of pure joy. It's just misery after misery.

[1:29:32] It reminded me of when I was a kid, when I was 12 or 13, I remember thinking like,

[1:29:38] oh, what an awesome movie it would be if all of my favorite monsters were in the same movie

[1:29:43] together. Like if like, uh, there's like some, the plot was like somebody figured out how to bring,

[1:29:49] uh, like the gremlins out from gremlins and put them with, uh, Jason Voorhees and the xenomorph

[1:29:55] and like they had to fight them. And this movie is proof that, uh,

[1:30:00] That's why, you know, children, maybe not the best storytellers.

[1:30:05] A bad idea that should stay in a child's mind did not pan out as a film.

[1:30:11] I'm just going to say it was bad, bad.

[1:30:14] Yeah, I recently – so I recently watched Ready Player One and, I mean, I think there's some obvious comparisons

[1:30:19] because they both just like mush all kinds of garbage together.

[1:30:23] And I feel like –

[1:30:25] Like the trash compactor.

[1:30:26] Yes, and I was kind of hoping that Space Jam A New Legacy, because it kind of takes everything less seriously,

[1:30:33] it would be more palatable to me.

[1:30:36] But no, it's just kind of a weird mess of a movie.

[1:30:40] Obviously Don Cheadle's performance is great and he's fun.

[1:30:44] And yeah, it's just – it's a bad, bad movie.

[1:30:48] I don't recommend it.

[1:30:49] I think – yeah, it's a bad, bad movie.

[1:30:53] I agree with you guys on what you said.

[1:30:54] There seems to – it's like we're learning that there's a diminishing return to heaping beloved characters on top of each other into a sort of pile of –

[1:31:04] like that there's a reason that like Godzilla is great, 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.

[1:31:14] Like there is a demultiplying effect, a dividing effect I guess when you have all these characters in there.

[1:31:20] But I can't – again, I can't fault the creators of the – everyone involved in this movie.

[1:31:25] If you came to me and you said you're going to make a movie, it's the Looney Tunes and every Warner Brothers character in one movie.

[1:31:30] The only stipulation is it has to be basketball.

[1:31:33] I'd be like, sign me up.

[1:31:35] 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 the basket as the Droogs watch on in ecstasy.

[1:31:45] But it's really not – if you love the first Space Jam, go back and watch it again.

[1:31:50] 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.

[1:31:58] Or watch The Last Dance.

[1:32:00] Yeah, and if you like combining IP, just buy any t-shirt off the internet and that will be great.

[1:32:06] Yeah, there you go.

[1:32:12] Video games.

[1:32:15] You like them?

[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.

[1:32:22] In that case, you should check out TripleClick.

[1:32:25] It's a podcast about video games.

[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 hottest new releases

[1:32:36] to scoops, interviews, and explanations about how video games work

[1:32:40] to fascinating and sometimes weird stories about the games we love.

[1:32:44] TripleClick is hosted by me, Kirk Hamilton.

[1:32:46] Me, Jason Shire.

[1:32:47] And me, Maddie Myers.

[1:32:49] You can find TripleClick wherever you get your podcasts and listen at MaximumFun.org.

[1:32:53] Bye!

[1:32:58] Are you riddled with guilt over your TBR pile?

[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?

[1:33:10] We're Reading Glasses and we're here to help.

[1:33:12] I'm Mallory.

[1:33:13] And I'm Bria.

[1:33:14] Let us absolve you of all your reading guilt.

[1:33:16] Stuck on a book you don't like? 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, we'll help you do it better.

[1:33:30] Reading Glasses, every Thursday on MaximumFun.

[1:33:34] Hello, 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, so we're adding this on after the fact

[1:33:50] 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

[1:33:59] 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,

[1:34:15] to talk to you about Super Mario Brothers or Super Mario Brothers, depending on your preference.

[1:34:25] It's going to be discussing that famous flop from 1993 starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo

[1:34:35] as the titular brothers and Dennis Hopper as the bad guy.

[1:34:41] And it's $10. It's a ticketed show. $10.

[1:34:46] You can get tickets by going to theflophouse.simpletix.com.

[1:34:52] That's TIX with the T-I-X. TheFlophouse.SimpleTix.com.

[1:35:00] 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, but if you can't watch it live,

[1:35:15] I've got to say it's fun to watch it live.

[1:35:18] There's chat functionality. You can chat with other Flophouse listeners.

[1:35:24] 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.

[1:35:36] And it's got great stuff along with talking about Super Mario Brothers.

[1:35:43] We also have our PowerPoint presentations like we do on tour

[1:35:51] 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.

[1:36:00] 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, other fun stuff that we don't want to spoil ahead of time.

[1:36:14] But if you are interested in this, again, you can go to TheFlophouse.SimpleTix.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.

[1:36:33] Whoa, what was that?

[1:36:35] And we hope that we'll see you there.

[1:36:37] And oh, there will 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

[1:36:50] because they weren't there, this is for you.

[1:36:54] But anyway, we hope you can make it.

[1:36:59] Time for some ads, or one ad, in fact.

[1:37:03] The Flophouse is sponsored in part by Storyblocks.

[1:37:08] What?

[1:37:09] Bring your stories to life, yes, Stuart, without sacrificing your vision with Storyblocks.

[1:37:14] Storyblocks' unlimited all-access plan gives you unlimited downloads of the over one million-plus assets in their library.

[1:37:24] You can try out multiple options quickly and find the perfect fit so you can create more and spend less.

[1:37:31] Stay on budget while telling the best version of your story

[1:37:34] 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

[1:37:45] by hiring creators from marginalized communities to create content

[1:37:49] that is more reflective of the diverse world we live in.

[1:37:53] I used Storyblocks to do something from our live show.

[1:37:56] It was very easy to use, 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?

[1:38:18] Well, I do own a couple of bars in Brooklyn, Hinterland's Bar and Minnie's Bar.

[1:38:23] I would recommend checking both of them out.

[1:38:25] 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.

[1:38:42] 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.

[1:38:51] I'm not sure.

[1:38:52] 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.

[1:39:15] That is chilling.

[1:39:17] The most chilling of all.

[1:39:19] But now, let us move on to – what?

[1:39:22] 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.

[1:39:32] Let us move on.

[1:39:34] Let us move on to letters.

[1:39:37] Letters and let, they both start the same.

[1:39:41] It's 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, and we're reading letters about him.

[1:39:55] Tracy Letts, the MVP.

[1:39:58] Look at those rings on his meaty.

[1:40:00] That's right. He's the greatest that ever played Tracy Letts.

[1:40:04] He's the best in the basketball game.

[1:40:06] August Osage County? Tracy Letts?

[1:40:09] Maybe you don't know that when he's not writing plays or acting in Lady Bird, he's an NBA star.

[1:40:15] That's right. Tracy Letts, number one NBA player. Tracy Letts.

[1:40:21] Well, I was just reading someone who had missed...

[1:40:23] 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, 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 as soon as I read Edward Albee's immortal words on stage.

[1:40:43] I'm Tracy Letts, and I've got my dream, basketball by day and Broadway by night.

[1:40:49] But is there more to this? Is there more to life than basketball and Broadway?

[1:40:55] Yes, there is. Hi, I'm the movie Love and Basketball.

[1:40:59] I'm here to tell you there's something else in life. It's called love.

[1:41:03] And there's also basketball, too. Hold on.

[1:41:06] Tracy Letts then said, can I be in Love and Play Basketball and be on Broadway?

[1:41:11] No, said Love and Basketball. You got to choose to either Love and Basketball or Love and Broadway.

[1:41:17] There's a reason there's no movie called 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, love or basketball or Broadway?

[1:41:30] He can't have it all. He can only have basketball and either love or Broadway.

[1:41:35] Because that's Tracy Letts, NBA superstar.

[1:41:44] Tracy Letts. Dan, what are we doing in this part of the show? I forgot.

[1:41:48] Oh, it's letters. I think that was the connection.

[1:41:53] This is from Jeff, last name withheld, who writes, good morning or whatever, peaches.

[1:42:01] Hearing you talk about You Mean Madness 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 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 that you've enjoyed in the past?

[1:42:23] Does Citizen Kane count as a vanity project?

[1:42:27] Side note, my favorite vanity project remains the comic book Superman vs. Muhammad Ali.

[1:42:32] While Ali didn't write it himself, 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. Jeff, last name withheld.

[1:42:44] Yeah, I mean, I don't, I mean, like, I see what you're saying with...

[1:42:48] I wouldn't call something like Space Jam, A New Legacy, a vanity project.

[1:42:51] It is based around a personality.

[1:42:53] It is based around the idea that, you know, this person has become so famous in their given area

[1:43:05] that we must put them in a movie.

[1:43:08] You know, like, a vanity project traditionally, I think, is more along the lines of something that is

[1:43:13] sort of driven by the creator.

[1:43:17] And I don't know, I mean, because I think that a vanity project, like, if something is successful,

[1:43:24] we just think of it like, 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.

[1:43:33] The implied part of vanity project is the vanity is thinking that they're good enough to do all of this

[1:43:39] and not recognizing that they aren't.

[1:43:42] But what do you guys think?

[1:43:43] Yeah, like, how is The Room a vanity project 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, the idea that once something is of a high enough quality

[1:43:55] that it justifies a person, it justifies that they do have that talent.

[1:43:59] Does it stop being a vanity project then?

[1:44:02] I was thinking along similar lines.

[1:44:03] I was talking about the documentarian Russ McElwee.

[1:44:08] Ross McElwee?

[1:44:09] McElwee, who does, like, Sherman's March and stuff like that.

[1:44:13] And his documentaries are very much about his life and about what is going on in his head.

[1:44:19] And if he was – is it the fact that he's a talented documentarian and his movies are touching and brilliant

[1:44:24] that makes them not vanity projects?

[1:44:26] Otherwise, if you made a documentary literally about 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

[1:44:34] or I'm going to make a movie about how I'm having a kid right now

[1:44:37] and what it's like when my wife is pregnant.

[1:44:39] Like, those are – it would seem like that's the definition of a vanity project.

[1:44:42] So what is it?

[1:44:43] Is it just that vanity projects are bad versions of those?

[1:44:45] What do you guys think?

[1:44:46] Stu?

[1:44:47] Dan already raised the questions.

[1:44:48] Now, Stu, you've got to answer it.

[1:44:49] But, like, would you say something like Adaptation or Synecdoche, New York are vanity projects

[1:44:53] because they're, like, so keyed into the screenwriter's, like, neuroses?

[1:44:58] It's a good question because at the same –

[1:45:00] And director, right?

[1:45:01] He directed those?

[1:45:02] Well, he directed Synecdoche.

[1:45:03] He didn't direct Adaptation.

[1:45:04] Spike Jonze directed that.

[1:45:05] And he doesn't star in either of them.

[1:45:07] But, like, it's a good question.

[1:45:09] It's like when almost – because there's also the people who will tell you true art is when the artist digs deep in themselves

[1:45:15] and says something honest about themselves 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 a vanity project?

[1:45:24] Probably not because he didn't seem to like himself very much.

[1:45:27] But, like, at what point does someone –

[1:45:31] Ali, you don't have to like yourself too much to be vain.

[1:45:35] I mean, to be honest, you can be very vain without liking yourself.

[1:45:38] I think there's a – yeah, it's like when does it stop being art that you are looking inward and start being a vanity –

[1:45:46] I guess maybe it's when the thing is – like, Frank D'Angelo is a vanity project guy

[1:45:49] because his movies are just about how great he is as a person.

[1:45:52] It's not like this is how I see the world and I just had to get my thoughts and feelings out there.

[1:45:58] It is I'm going to be the greatest guy in the world and everyone is going to tell me what a great singer I am

[1:46:02] and how tough I am and how cool I am and I'm going to save the day.

[1:46:05] And even when I'm a criminal vampire, I'm still somehow the hero of the movie and everybody loves me.

[1:46:11] And James Caan wants me to bite him.

[1:46:12] So, like, I guess that's – it's vanity when it's all about how –

[1:46:15] like the moment in – at the beginning of the room where they're like, Johnny, you're so wonderful.

[1:46:19] What a great boyfriend.

[1:46:20] Like that's a vanity project.

[1:46:22] But otherwise, yeah, it's hard to tell.

[1:46:24] I mean as we said earlier, Spike Lee literally made us – he literally –

[1:46:27] they hired him to make Nike commercials and he put himself in them playing a character from one of his movies.

[1:46:32] Like is that a vanity project?

[1:46:34] Possibly, but it's also a Nike commercial.

[1:46:36] Yeah, I mean I feel like it's – the question is do we like that we genuinely like?

[1:46:44] Because I feel like there's a lot of – I have gotten a fair amount of pleasure 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 I've enjoyed on some level.

[1:46:55] I mean obviously my favorite vanity project is my current workout regimen because it feeds my own vanity.

[1:47:04] My favorite vanity projects are some of the albums Prince produced.

[1:47:10] Or the carpentry work.

[1:47:13] Because vanity.

[1:47:15] Elliot, vanity.

[1:47:16] The artist vanity.

[1:47:17] I got it.

[1:47:18] No, I got it.

[1:47:19] I got it, yeah.

[1:47:20] So yeah, I think my favorite vanity project is probably the book The Devil's Candy, which is about the making of Bonfire of the Vanities.

[1:47:25] Great.

[1:47:26] Okay, done.

[1:47:29] Hey, this is another letter.

[1:47:31] Oh, okay.

[1:47:32] I lost –

[1:47:33] I'll allow it.

[1:47:34] I mean I believe it, yeah.

[1:47:35] I lost the writer's name.

[1:47:38] We'll cover it when we get to the letters section of the podcast, right?

[1:47:41] This is the letters section.

[1:47:42] Oh, okay.

[1:47:43] You're choking in it.

[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.

[1:47:52] I'm sorry.

[1:47:53] Yeah, I apologize.

[1:47:54] I just cut off.

[1:47:55] Hello.

[1:47:56] And we certainly – it's lost to the mists of history now.

[1:47:59] There's no way of finding the original.

[1:48:00] It was thrown in that pit when Bugs Bunny's memorabilia was buried and burned.

[1:48:04] Look, I have to – I have so little space left.

[1:48:09] I have to delete things sometimes.

[1:48:11] But I apologize to the writer of the letter.

[1:48:14] See, there was a browser window open that had all the information, and Dan went up to the little X button and hit it, and now it's gone forever.

[1:48:20] Gone forever, yeah.

[1:48:21] Hello, Flophouse.

[1:48:23] Have you ever had an incorrect first impression of a film or other media that still affects your thinking about it long after you've corrected your understanding?

[1:48:32] Stuart's Warhammer episode reminded me of how my first exposure to 40K was a video game demo that made me think the setting was about a heroic but hopelessly outnumbered band of alien space communists fighting the evil religious fascists of a long-dead god emperor.

[1:48:51] Not knowing that those are the heroes of the game.

[1:48:53] Several lore dives quickly taught me this wasn't the case.

[1:48:56] But whenever I play or think about the series, I wonder what it would be like if the setting really was all about – all right, Stuart, you say these words.

[1:49:04] All about Sha-so-case – oh, it's from Tau Fire Warrior.

[1:49:11] Yeah, yeah, that was a good game.

[1:49:12] A ragtag team of socialists working to free the masses of the Imperium from the emperor and his evil space marines.

[1:49:20] P.S. I watched Castle Freak for the first time on Tubi of all things.

[1:49:24] You're welcome.

[1:49:25] And suddenly head of the family was at the very top of the recommended list.

[1:49:29] Yeah.

[1:49:30] Thanks.

[1:49:31] That's my legacy, baby.

[1:49:33] Yeah, Stuart molded the algorithm to his own needs just like Spike Lee did with that commercial.

[1:49:39] And like Don Cheadle, Algee Rhythm did in the movie Space Jam and New Legacy.

[1:49:43] Yeah, you're the real-life Algee Rhythm.

[1:49:46] I'm sure this is something that I don't have a fully formed answer to, but I will say two things.

[1:49:54] One is that my kids believe that Bosk plays an outsized role in the Star Wars series.

[1:50:00] Because of a a Bosque children's book that they have and I think they'll always carry that with them the idea that

[1:50:05] My younger one who's about turn three

[1:50:07] He's like I want to see a video of Bosque talking and I'm like, I don't know if that exists and anywhere

[1:50:13] Like he's only on screen for like a second, but we have a whole book about him

[1:50:17] So I know you think he's a major character

[1:50:19] And I think they'll always think to a certain extent that Star Wars is about Bosque

[1:50:22] I I may have told the story on the podcast before about the movie high spirits and how I was a kid when that came

[1:50:27] out and I

[1:50:29] Vivid memory of a kid another kid at school telling me

[1:50:32] Oh, I saw that movie and this is what happens in it and telling me the most horrific

[1:50:36] sexually violent tale

[1:50:38] I had ever heard up to that point and that I'll involve like

[1:50:41] involved a man stabbing woman to death while they were having sex and then that woman comes back years later and starts stabbing other

[1:50:47] Other people and I was like and I've never seen the movie since then because I know that's not what it's about

[1:50:51] It still frightens me the idea the idea of seeing that still scares me

[1:50:54] So that's what's keeping me from seeing the otherwise standard classic film high spirits

[1:51:00] Criterion collection high spirits

[1:51:05] Yeah, I mean I feel like I feel like all my impressions are based on me like usually disliking

[1:51:12] disliking an actor for whatever reason at the time of watching the movie and then getting over it because

[1:51:18] I'm an adult and I shouldn't just hold on to dumb grudges. So they're unrelated

[1:51:22] Yeah, I I don't I don't have again, sorry that I don't think that any of these are exact but it puts me in mind of

[1:51:30] Audrey I discovered that she was under the impression that Mandy was a similar movie to Stuber

[1:51:38] because

[1:51:39] And she had based this Wow. She had based this because she was like, oh I saw a picture of

[1:51:45] Nicolas Cage in a car and I'm like, yeah, but he's covered in blood

[1:51:50] I know what your image probably drives an uber. Yeah

[1:51:56] Yeah, but she had thought that he yeah, it was a movie about him driving a car around like well kind of I guess but

[1:52:04] I definitely I definitely like when I watched when I watched the Joel Edgerton Tom Hardy movie warrior about

[1:52:11] McNulty the MMA movie

[1:52:13] I was definitely under the impression when I watched it that it was based on a true story and it wasn't till

[1:52:19] Afterwards that I was like, oh no, it's all made up. Yeah

[1:52:22] I'm like, this is a fantastic story. I can't believe it happened

[1:52:25] It really it really is more powerful if it's based on a true story. Yeah

[1:52:30] That's why they do it at the beginning of every episode of Fargo. Yes

[1:52:33] It's also the fact that it's basically a serious version of here comes the boom. Mm-hmm

[1:52:38] You know, well great answers all let's go on to

[1:52:43] Recommendation. I do like those two titles are like the complete opposite ends of the spectrum of like vague

[1:52:49] Like warrior every any movie could be called warrior. Yeah

[1:53:01] Any movie with improper mic framing could be called here comes the boom

[1:53:07] For the behind-the-scenes crew fans, oh shit

[1:53:12] Okay deal with it

[1:53:15] Maybe third times the charm and we can move on to recommendations movies that I don't think so

[1:53:22] Sorry, no recommendations yet

[1:53:27] I'm gonna recommend a movie I watched

[1:53:31] That I came across on Hulu I was like, oh

[1:53:35] There's a movie called hideaway. It's got Jeff Goldblum in it and then I'm like wait this movie is

[1:53:43] Directed by the director of lawnmower the lawnmower man and virtuosity and it's got it's

[1:53:49] Jeff Goldblum and

[1:53:52] Christine Lottie and Alicia Silverstone and Jeremy's sister in it and

[1:53:56] What is this movie and I started watching it the plot being that like?

[1:54:01] No spoilers because this before you get into the plot in who might who might have written the original

[1:54:07] Text that the film is based on Dean Coontz is a based on a Dean Coontz

[1:54:10] I'm like this looks like a prime slice of

[1:54:16] 90s

[1:54:17] horror thriller cheese

[1:54:19] Have the same experience I had when you were like you knew who Stephen King was and then around 13

[1:54:24] You saw a Dean Coontz novel and you're like, what is this?

[1:54:27] Is this like this is like from an alternate universe where people don't know Stephen King exists like what's going on to this day?

[1:54:33] I've not read a Dean Coontz. No, what give me any reports on this. They're fine. I've read a bunch. They're fine

[1:54:39] They're like I've read years. I've specifically read the

[1:54:43] Book hideaway. I also read what the Watchers the one about yeah, the Watchers

[1:54:47] This is big with the dogs from the lab or whatever. It's

[1:54:50] It's called play dogs. You know, that's a different thing

[1:54:54] He's fine. It's like I mean Stephen King is an author who like is often mediocre

[1:54:59] But at his best is great and Dean Coontz is an author who's like pretty straightforward mediocre

[1:55:04] He's not bad, but it's not you know, if you might as well just go read Stephen King, you know

[1:55:07] It's not like you're gonna run out of Stephen King books to read

[1:55:11] Wanted his name taken off the movie version of hideaway. So so again like Stephen King make of that what you will but I

[1:55:19] No big spoilers because it happens literally the beginning of the movie

[1:55:22] but Jeremy's sister does some sort of satanic ritual to kill two-thirds of his family and then kills himself and

[1:55:30] he gets sent to a great CGI afterlife that you would expect from

[1:55:36] The director of The Lawnmower Man and virtuosity is a very early CGI hell

[1:55:43] And meanwhile, Jeff Goldblum also dies briefly

[1:55:48] Gets sent there. Oh boy when they get bright brought back from the other side. They all got mixed up somehow the

[1:55:54] Jeff Goldblum has all these disturbing visions. What's going on? Women keep ending up dying what's happening and

[1:56:01] It is just

[1:56:03] Look, it is not quite as loopy as you would hope from all of these people being involved in the movie it does

[1:56:13] Slump a lot in the middle. Oh Alfred Molina is also in it always great to see him

[1:56:18] but if you have any affection like I do for this particular brand of schlock, especially the like

[1:56:26] Cheesy but now like so many years have passed that they come back around to like psychedelically beautiful

[1:56:33] CGI effects

[1:56:35] Yeah, it's it's a fun little movie. I saw that shit in the movie theater Dan

[1:56:39] I was so excited my my eyes were blown away by the special effects demo reel that they provide for you

[1:56:46] It's amazing. There's something I mean, it's because we grew up them

[1:56:49] But there's something so comforting to me about how about night the way 90s movies are bad in a very specific way, you know

[1:56:54] I'm like, that's how you make a dumb movie. This is how you do it. Thank you brain scan. I'll have another

[1:57:01] Screamers. Yes, please

[1:57:04] Just want to take a moment to recognize the irony of me beginning the episode by decrying

[1:57:10] and viewing

[1:57:12] original space jam

[1:57:15] You know, I'm a hypocrite like everyone

[1:57:16] We're not like we're not like normal guys

[1:57:19] Like we're like cool guys

[1:57:20] Like we understand that our nostalgia is toxic when that we can stop anytime we want like we like crap for the right reasons

[1:57:27] Not for the cool guys as long as it's done. Well, yeah, come on anyway

[1:57:33] Cool. Cool. I am going to recommend. I'm gonna shift gears here a little bit shift

[1:57:38] I'm gonna wreck I'm gonna recommend a beautiful amazing movie that was nominated for an Academy Award

[1:57:43] So it does not need my support, but you should listen to me. Anyway, I'm gonna recommend a movie called Wolf Walker

[1:57:49] That's on Apple Plus. It was nominated for what best animated film. I think it lost a soul

[1:57:55] Which is also great, but Wolf Walker's is a beautiful

[1:57:59] historic fantasy

[1:58:01] about

[1:58:03] well, it's about you know, like a frontier town in Ireland and they are dealing with a wolf problem in the woods and

[1:58:12] It's a little girl who wants to hunt the wolves and help her father who's a hunter who's voiced by Sean Bean

[1:58:19] But then they realize that the that there's more to these wolves than meets the eye they are not transformers

[1:58:25] Well, they kind of are actually

[1:58:27] But it's it's beautiful. The animation style is it feels very unique and fresh. It's great

[1:58:34] it's

[1:58:35] Yeah, it's lovely. It's great. I highly recommend it. I feel like it's appropriate for to show most kids. It's a little scary

[1:58:43] And there's some violence, but it's man. It's just such a gorgeous little movie

[1:58:48] How did it and what happens in the big basketball game at the end? That's the thing. So the big basketball game involves LeBron James again

[1:58:56] okay, and

[1:58:57] Marvin the Martian shows up this time finally getting his due and that dog of his who also wears the same clothes as he has

[1:59:05] What's his name?

[1:59:07] I don't know. I

[1:59:10] Should know that and I don't remember it. Let me look it up

[1:59:13] Pluto is taken for

[1:59:15] A hundred percent true. So they show up a nine. He's just called K9

[1:59:22] Start with Jim Belushi. Yeah, I mean, I don't spoil too much. But yeah, it's a pretty good basketball game

[1:59:27] Okay, I'll have to see that basketball movie Wolfwalkers

[1:59:30] I'm gonna recommend a

[1:59:32] Documentary that I also saw on Hulu just like Dan watches movies on Hulu too

[1:59:37] And this is the movie summer of soul that came out just recently

[1:59:41] And

[1:59:43] Is mostly made up of footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival and it was a big multi-week

[1:59:49] You know multi weekend festival where a ton of amazing performers performed in 1969 and then the movie

[1:59:58] you know it it uses that as

[2:00:00] to talk about what that moment meant for being black in America at the time and both the

[2:00:05] changes that the black community was going through and the both hopes and fears at the

[2:00:09] time. And they make a little bit of hay about this was this big festival and it didn't it

[2:00:14] has happening around the same time as Woodstock and did not get at the same time as Woodstock

[2:00:17] and did not get the same attention and what that means. But they don't make that the whole

[2:00:22] linchpin of the movie, which is great. Instead, they really let the footage speak for itself

[2:00:28] for the most part. And the footage is amazing. The performances are amazing. The performers

[2:00:31] are astounding. And it all they did a great job, probably restoring this this older footage.

[2:00:37] It looks great. And it was all like just sitting in a basement somewhere. Right. And Questlove

[2:00:41] attracted that story. Yeah. Well, some of it had some of it had been leaked onto the

[2:00:45] Internet before, apparently. So, well, it's not all totally discovered, but a lot of it

[2:00:49] is. And it's just really fantastic. And even if you watch it just as a concert movie, it's

[2:00:55] well worth it. But it works really well. It's kind of like a snapshot of the time type

[2:00:59] thing and talking to some of the people who were there and stuff like that. So I really

[2:01:03] do it a lot. And as people follow me on Twitter may realize, may have seen that the thing

[2:01:07] that struck me the most in some ways was how so how many people are wearing sombreros that

[2:01:11] apparently in nineteen sixty nine sombreros and kind of fringed cowboy jackets were briefly

[2:01:16] very popular. And so watch it and feel like you are looking at a a world that that does

[2:01:24] not exist anymore and cannot exist again. This strange analog world of sombreros and

[2:01:28] fringe jackets and like huge TV cameras and stuff. So Summer of Soul, it's available.

[2:01:34] I think it's in theaters, too. So when I go watch it in the theater, if you feel safe

[2:01:38] doing that and, you know, give money to the producers. But I liked it a lot. Well, that

[2:01:45] was quite a journey. A new legacy. Yep. We started a new legacy today. Before we go,

[2:01:53] I'd like to think I'd like to think I'd like to think that I'm thankful for our producer,

[2:01:58] Alex Smith, who makes us sound great. I'd like to recommend that you go over to Maximum

[2:02:06] Fun dot org. Our podcast network Max Fun carries a lot of great shows. If you like podcasts,

[2:02:14] I'm sure you'll find at least one other thing, if not several, you will enjoy by checking

[2:02:19] them out. If you haven't recommended The Flophouse to someone who you think might like

[2:02:24] it, why not give it a try? We always appreciate when you guys help us grow. But for The Flophouse,

[2:02:33] I've been Dan McCoy. I've been Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalin in the part of Tracy

[2:02:39] Letts, MVP superstar of the NBA. Now talking about Der Space Jam, ein Legacy Neue. Oh,

[2:02:52] wow. Now I want to see like a print for like a Brecht play. But for a space jam, I mean,

[2:02:57] this movie has so much distancing in it. So there's so many distancing effects. The audience

[2:03:00] is kind of like a bread plate. And but there is a I assume there's a German version where

[2:03:04] they swap out LeBron James for Bernard Herzog. And he's like, Oh, I must get my son back.

[2:03:09] Bugs. Bugs. How will I win this basketball game? You know? Anyway, let's start the episode.

[2:03:15] I don't want to let's not waste this stuff. Maximumfun.org comedy and culture, artist

[2:03:22] owned audience supported

Ep. #349 - Space Jam: A New Legacy

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