Ep. #346 - Locked Down

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Locked Down.

[0:03] Based on the works of Jon Bon Jovi, I w-

[0:07] Fuck.

[0:09] No, I'm done.

[0:10] I'm never doing one of these again.

[0:12] You guys pressured me into doing something I didn't want to do.

[0:15] Wait, hold on.

[0:17] I feel like an idiot.

[0:19] Everybody's listening now.

[0:20] I feel like a fool.

[0:22] Dan, let's do it.

[0:24] Dan, what's going on?

[0:30] Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse.

[0:53] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:54] Hey, it's me, Stuart Wellington.

[0:57] This is Elliot Kalan.

[0:58] If you're noticing that my voice sounds sexier than usual,

[1:00] it's because I have a little bit of a cold.

[1:01] That's right.

[1:02] Illness equals sexy, as Susan Sontag said.

[1:05] So illness is a metaphor for sexiness.

[1:07] Is more nasal sexy?

[1:09] Is that the equation that you're postulating?

[1:11] Ask an elephant, Dan.

[1:13] Boom.

[1:13] Okay, I guess.

[1:14] Yeah, for a second, I thought Kathleen Turner

[1:16] was guesting on this podcast.

[1:18] Yes, thank you.

[1:19] Stuart knows where it's at, yeah.

[1:20] A warm husky tone.

[1:23] What do we got here?

[1:24] We call it warm husky.

[1:25] We just call it wusky.

[1:26] I mean, they're usually warm.

[1:27] They're covered in a thick downy coat of fur.

[1:30] They have those eyes, like, what's his face?

[1:33] Like white fire.

[1:34] Neil McDonough.

[1:35] Actor Neil McDonough.

[1:36] Oh, Neil McDonough, that's right.

[1:37] The husky of actors.

[1:39] I mean, why have they not made him the villain

[1:42] in a fucking Animorphs movie?

[1:45] I mean, they haven't made an Animorphs movie,

[1:46] as far as I know.

[1:48] Wait, they haven't?

[1:49] Wait, Dan, you could have finally said, wake up, sheeple,

[1:52] and it would have been accurate, because it's Animorphs.

[1:55] Oh, God.

[1:57] There's got to be a joke in there you

[1:59] can use for something, Elliot.

[2:01] You got to think that one through, put it in your book.

[2:03] Put it in my book of joke ideas, half-formed joke ideas.

[2:07] I know that you have that book, Elliot.

[2:09] You actually have it.

[2:09] I do, but I don't put joke ideas in there.

[2:11] I put ideas for other things, like inventions.

[2:14] So if they haven't made an Animorphs movie,

[2:17] we can just TM all this, right?

[2:18] And nobody can steal it?

[2:20] Yeah, we own Animorphs now.

[2:23] They snoozed and they loosed.

[2:25] They snoozed and they loosed.

[2:26] Flophouse flag on Animorphs.

[2:29] They left the back door open, and I used a secret identity.

[2:33] I called myself Edgar Allen Poe, and I snuck in and stole it.

[2:36] Oh, that's a great segue.

[2:39] Stuart, that's such a great segue into the movie.

[2:42] Unfortunately for us, Dan, what do we do in this podcast?

[2:44] Yeah, on this podcast, we watch a bad movie,

[2:46] and we talk about it.

[2:47] In this case, we're watching our second Doug

[2:49] Lyman-directed film in a row.

[2:51] Wow.

[2:52] That's Lyman.

[2:54] It's officially Lyman.

[2:55] That's when we watch two Doug Lyman movies.

[2:57] You know, he did Seventh Son and Jumper as well.

[3:00] So he's had his share of Flophouse films,

[3:02] although he's also had a share of very good movies,

[3:04] like The Bourne Identity, I Like Go a lot,

[3:10] what he did Edge of Tomorrow.

[3:11] Yeah, Live, Die, Repeat.

[3:13] Who knows?

[3:14] Who knows what's Doug Lyman?

[3:17] Doug Lyman's like a box of chocolates.

[3:18] You never know what you're going to get.

[3:19] What I would also point out is that I

[3:22] think a notable presence in this movie

[3:24] is also the writer of the film, which

[3:26] is Stephen Knight, who was the writer of Serenity

[3:29] and a bunch of other wacky movies,

[3:30] many of which have been on this podcast.

[3:32] Yeah, so is this the second Knight-Hathaway co-production?

[3:38] She must be his muse.

[3:39] Before people tweeted me, I might

[3:41] have been thinking of Stephen Knight as the,

[3:43] I think he may have been the writer of Seventh Son.

[3:45] And I was conflating the previous Flophouse things

[3:48] that we have looked at.

[3:51] But you weren't getting confused with Charles R. Knight,

[3:53] the man who could paint through time,

[3:54] the one of America's greatest painters of dinosaurs?

[3:57] No.

[3:57] Probably not, no.

[3:58] But yeah, Stephen Knight wrote Serenity,

[4:02] one of the stranger movies we've done.

[4:05] But he also wrote Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises,

[4:10] two movies I like quite a bit.

[4:12] And he created Peaky Blinders and co-created

[4:15] Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

[4:16] So that's the gamut of television right there.

[4:19] He wrote and directed Locke with Tom Hardy,

[4:22] which is the movie I think that the dialogue in that movie

[4:28] is closest to the dialogue in this movie,

[4:31] I would say, which is to say overwritten.

[4:33] And you can agree or disagree about the times

[4:37] at which it works or not.

[4:38] I didn't like Locke as much as a lot of people

[4:40] did, even though it's more successful,

[4:44] I think, than this overall.

[4:45] But we can get into it.

[4:46] And Locke's down is the sequel to Locke?

[4:47] Yeah.

[4:49] Yeah.

[4:50] So both that movie and this one seem

[4:52] to have been written on a dare.

[4:54] There's a real challenge aspect to it.

[4:58] Because that one, it was just a guy on his phone, right?

[5:01] Yeah, in his car, driving to try and rectify the situation.

[5:05] See thee, Tom Hardy.

[5:06] It was a regular Cosmopolis.

[5:08] And this one, it's a movie that was made entirely

[5:12] during lockdown, which is strange in that there

[5:14] are a number of scenes with multiple people

[5:16] where one person will be wearing a mask

[5:18] and everyone else will just not be wearing masks.

[5:20] Yes.

[5:20] Which threw me off until I remembered

[5:22] England has been relatively lax individually

[5:26] with that kind of stuff.

[5:27] I don't know if, I mean, I certainly hope this is true.

[5:30] I read that there were no COVID infections associated

[5:35] with this movie.

[5:35] So they did a pretty good job, one would have to say.

[5:39] But yeah, it is a question of like,

[5:42] did we need to do this, on the other hand?

[5:45] Who knows?

[5:46] It's like Everest.

[5:47] You do it because it's there.

[5:48] Yeah.

[5:49] In this case, it wasn't there until they made it.

[5:50] But you know what I mean?

[5:51] Anyway, lockdown.

[5:52] Should we talk about what the movie is about?

[5:54] Sure, let's do it.

[5:55] Let's do it.

[5:56] Okay.

[5:56] The movie starts with a little bit of a misdirect

[5:59] as we see a hedgehog wandering around in a yard.

[6:02] Sorry, the movie is not about that hedgehog.

[6:04] And I think that's why Stewart, on the IMDb page,

[6:07] it lists, it was, it lists Sonic as being in the movie.

[6:10] Yes.

[6:11] It says Sonic, and then the role is hedgehog.

[6:14] But I just saw a Sonic hedgehog,

[6:16] and I'm like, what the fuck?

[6:17] And then I watched the whole movie,

[6:18] and I'm like, I didn't see that blue fucking ring freak

[6:21] running around.

[6:22] But then at the end of the movie,

[6:24] you know, cast and order of appearance,

[6:25] you do get Sonic first thing.

[6:27] It's, yeah, it's certainly possible.

[6:30] We've established that Sonic can move so quickly

[6:32] that he can go faster than your eye can follow him.

[6:35] So there's a chance he was running around

[6:37] doing stuff on in the background.

[6:38] I mean, he could be in any movie.

[6:40] That's the thing.

[6:41] You don't know for sure that Sonic

[6:42] wasn't running fast through Schindler's List,

[6:45] last year at Merriam-Bad, any movie.

[6:47] He was possibly in every movie.

[6:48] That's a great thing about conspiracy theories

[6:50] is coming up with something that it's impossible

[6:52] to disprove, and so you, like, it just feeds itself.

[6:56] Somebody-

[6:57] That's what Elliot's YouTube channel's all about.

[6:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[7:00] It's my YouTube channel, K-Anon.

[7:03] Yeah, that's true.

[7:04] Now, guys, that's my challenge to Flop House listeners.

[7:08] Go through every movie ever made, frame by frame,

[7:10] prove to me Sonic is not in that movie.

[7:12] I'm just gonna say this because otherwise

[7:15] someone's gonna send it to us.

[7:17] K-Alon, how about that?

[7:20] Yeah, yeah, that's better.

[7:23] I don't.

[7:23] Look, I mean, I'm not saying whether it's better or worse.

[7:25] I'm just saying that I know the internet

[7:27] and someone will get angry that that was left on the table.

[7:31] Fair, thank you for not leaving that on the table,

[7:33] but instead swiping it off the table with your hand

[7:35] so it would crash on the floor.

[7:37] So let's forget about that hedgehog.

[7:39] We don't need to know much about it.

[7:40] We're dealing with Paxton and Linda.

[7:43] Paxton, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor,

[7:45] and Linda, played by Anne Hathaway.

[7:48] They are a married couple.

[7:50] No, they're not married.

[7:51] They're just in a long-term relationship, right?

[7:52] They're just so long, yeah.

[7:53] I don't get long-term.

[7:54] And they are in lockdown in London

[7:55] right after their relationship has fallen apart.

[7:58] We learned this as Paxton has a Zoom call

[8:01] with his half-brother and his half-brother's wife,

[8:04] but for a while I thought it was his brother and his sister,

[8:06] and then I thought it was his sister and her husband.

[8:08] It was very unclear to me for a while

[8:09] how he was related to these two,

[8:10] but they are played by-

[8:12] Julie Hill.

[8:13] Julie Hill and Jasmine Simon,

[8:14] who are married in real life.

[8:15] So you know that was okay for them to be working together

[8:18] because they already share a house.

[8:21] He is depressed.

[8:22] He's furloughed.

[8:23] He's a bit of an eccentric,

[8:25] which is supposed to be charming,

[8:26] but it comes off as exhausting.

[8:28] And I'm not, maybe it is supposed to be exhausting.

[8:29] Certainly at the beginning, it's fairly exhausting.

[8:32] Yeah, by the end of the movie,

[8:33] I will admit I had somewhat fallen under his spell

[8:36] just because he is so consistent.

[8:38] But at the beginning, I was like,

[8:40] geez Louise, like, come on, man.

[8:42] But he's unhappy because his relationship-

[8:44] He's such a charismatic actor.

[8:46] Like you can put him in anything.

[8:46] Yes, I mean, he's an amazingly charismatic actor.

[8:48] Yeah, and I have to give a lot of credit

[8:52] to the two main actors in this

[8:55] who took characters that on paper

[8:58] should have been unbearable.

[9:00] And yet by the end of it, I was like,

[9:02] okay, I don't mind them so much, you know?

[9:04] Yeah, I mean, I don't know

[9:08] whether it is the Stockholm syndrome of lockdown.

[9:09] I do grow to like them.

[9:11] I do find that Anne Hathaway's character

[9:14] for reasons of scripting is harder to sympathize with

[9:19] because the way it's constructed,

[9:21] you know, Chiwetel Ejiofor's character

[9:23] is sort of the underdog,

[9:24] whereas Anne Hathaway, you know, is depicted as having-

[9:28] The overbird.

[9:29] Her main problem is she has such a good job.

[9:33] And because she has such a good job,

[9:35] she has to do things like fire people,

[9:36] which is a miserable thing, obviously.

[9:39] She's the character who has sold her soul

[9:42] for material success.

[9:44] And it's one of those things that like in real life,

[9:47] you would not sympathize with those people.

[9:49] But movies are constantly trying to get us

[9:51] to sympathize with those people.

[9:53] Well, you know, I would go a different direction

[9:55] in that like in real life, if I knew...

[10:00] You know, like, everyone's pain is not, like, we're not, like, putting them up against each

[10:04] other, right?

[10:05] I am.

[10:06] In the pain sweepstakes.

[10:09] As my therapist says, in the game of who suffers more, no one wins.

[10:13] That's a great, that's a great, wait, first off, that's a great Saw movie headline.

[10:17] Dan, let's talk about your therapist again, what's going on?

[10:21] I think it's valid, like, in the game of who suffers more, like, nobody wins, like, whose

[10:26] pain is worse.

[10:27] Yes.

[10:28] People who have outwardly, like, wonderful lives can have, you know, like, pain that

[10:34] commiserate to, like, what they experience that pain as, like, it is, it is, it is true

[10:38] suffering that I don't want to, like, downplay.

[10:41] However, I find it, just in the context of fiction, I find it easier to, like, sympathize

[10:47] with, like, I find it easier in real life to sympathize with someone, you know, just

[10:55] on the basis of who they are as a person, rather than in fiction, I'm like, geez, it's

[10:59] hard to get me to, like, if your worst problem is you're stuck in your, like, really rich

[11:04] apartment.

[11:05] That is a beautiful home.

[11:06] It's a beautiful house.

[11:07] Yeah.

[11:08] Well, here, Dan, I think what you've, you've made a very good point, which is, it is easier

[11:11] to sympathize with someone who is a real human being, and there's a larger challenge when

[11:15] you are sympathizing with a fictional character who has it much better than most other people.

[11:21] Right.

[11:22] So, because Anne Hathaway is great, she managed it, and I'll just say it, I don't care, she

[11:25] made, by the end of the movie, I'm like, yeah, I do want her to be happy in her life.

[11:29] Anyway.

[11:30] Yeah.

[11:31] So, worst of all.

[11:32] Okay.

[11:33] Their relationship is falling apart.

[11:34] They're stuck in this house because London just went into lockdown.

[11:35] The irony, of course, is that rich people, rich people in London did not follow the lockdown

[11:39] and instead continued to socialize and get sick and do whatever, and they're constantly

[11:43] getting into trouble for it.

[11:44] But these two have decided to stick with lockdown.

[11:46] They've just split up right before it, and Paxton is going to have to sell his motorcycle

[11:51] because without Linda's salary, he cannot support this lifestyle.

[11:54] He's a driver of vans because when he was a younger man in his biker days, he intervened

[12:00] to save the life of a very small man and beat someone up really badly and went to jail,

[12:04] and that has stained his record, and to this day, this brilliant poet of a man has not

[12:11] been able to get a better job.

[12:12] I have in my notes here, I have no sympathy for their enormous house and endless free

[12:15] time.

[12:16] That was just me editorializing because during the same period, they're dealing with this

[12:20] and they're like, how do I fill my time?

[12:22] I'm like, was running around after two children constantly, but that's just, that's, I don't

[12:25] need to get into that.

[12:27] Anyway.

[12:28] You're like, I'm sick of this dual income, no kids bullshit, right?

[12:31] Yeah.

[12:32] I mean, I mean, his income is so low that is essentially a single income household,

[12:36] but her income is so high that they're making essentially a salary.

[12:40] So but but the fact that it's really the fact that they're lying around all day being like,

[12:43] he's like, I think I'll start baking bread and she's like, oh, don't.

[12:45] And I was like, dude, like, I don't even like, I go days, days and days without grooming.

[12:52] But anyway, we also learned that the personal choice, though, that's a separate thing.

[12:57] We learned that also that at some point in the past, Linda and Paxton's sister-in-law

[13:03] had a night together that Linda said that Paxton's sister-in-law continues to think

[13:07] about.

[13:08] That's just a thing that they plan that comes up like a weird little side, like character

[13:12] piece of humor.

[13:13] More than anything, it doesn't really matter much.

[13:16] Paxton is heavily depressed.

[13:18] Linda catches him.

[13:20] He says making a joke photo to text somebody, but she thinks that he is attempting to commit

[13:25] suicide using the exhaust of his bike.

[13:28] They talk about how depressed they are, their relationship.

[13:30] Luckily, they don't further explore his possible suicidal thoughts.

[13:34] No, it isn't.

[13:35] It's much like there's a lot of television shows that start with a character failing

[13:39] to commit suicide and supposed to be kind of like halfway a joke.

[13:42] I don't like it.

[13:43] Not a fan.

[13:44] Not a good thing.

[13:45] It's way too irrevocable a thing to be like, yeah, that happened anyway, let's keep moving.

[13:52] They keep talking about how bad things were at Christmas, and I kept thinking that there

[13:55] was going to be an eventual reveal that he had like actually tried to commit suicide

[14:00] at Christmas.

[14:01] That he actually did it and he's a ghost now.

[14:03] Yes.

[14:04] Yeah.

[14:05] Well, no.

[14:06] And that like even this joke selfie, the reason it's extra triggering to her is that it brings

[14:12] back that time.

[14:13] Whatever it is like that, it doesn't.

[14:15] It's just that he's depressed enough that she thinks maybe he could be thinking about

[14:20] it.

[14:21] Yeah.

[14:22] Do what everyone else does.

[14:23] Just find a fucking meme and download it to your phone and then send it to your friend.

[14:26] Yeah.

[14:27] It doesn't work for that selfie.

[14:31] For a movie, for a movie that is so firmly set in the in the here and now, the fact that

[14:36] nobody uses a meme or a bitmoji or anything in the entire movie is very surprising.

[14:41] There's almost no texting in there, right?

[14:43] Do you want like that little like hand pounding Skype motion to show up at one point or something?

[14:50] Yeah.

[14:51] Yeah.

[14:52] Just on the screen.

[14:53] Just over the movie.

[14:54] Paxson, he gets into the habit of reading poems out loud to his neighbors, kind of eccentric

[14:58] thing that people were doing during the big lockdown times.

[15:01] And he stopped some teens in his yard who are revealed that it used to be like a heroin

[15:07] house and there's still poppies in the yard and they steal them sometimes.

[15:10] And he decides he's having trouble sleeping and he licks one and goes to sleep and seems

[15:14] to have a pretty good night's sleep.

[15:15] I don't know.

[15:16] Yeah.

[15:18] He's like barfing the next morning.

[15:19] Yeah.

[15:20] But maybe that's the morning was bad.

[15:21] Yeah.

[15:22] Morning barfing usually is shorthand for pregnancy, but I don't think he's pregnant.

[15:27] No.

[15:28] In this one, it does not turn out that Jude Eligible is pregnant.

[15:30] It's a Stealth Junior sequel.

[15:33] Wow.

[15:34] So this is Stealth Junior prequel.

[15:36] Oh, yeah.

[15:37] Yeah.

[15:38] Yeah.

[15:39] So she zooms with her coworkers, tells them they've all been fired.

[15:43] Very disappointing news.

[15:44] Mark Gatiss takes it particularly badly.

[15:47] Oh, that was Mark Gatiss?

[15:49] He's gotten so old.

[15:50] Well, everybody has to.

[15:52] It took me a while to recognize him.

[15:53] He usually...

[15:54] Really?

[15:55] Yeah.

[15:56] I don't know whether he dyes his hair and other things.

[15:58] He usually has much darker hair.

[15:59] And he's so tall.

[16:01] But I guess he's in that movie, you know, he's on a Zoom call.

[16:04] It's hard to tell.

[16:05] Yeah.

[16:06] And he has a beard in this.

[16:07] He doesn't have a beard that heavy when he's performing.

[16:09] And glasses.

[16:10] It's almost like he's incognito.

[16:11] And Steven, what's his name's in it?

[16:13] And that guy's way tall.

[16:14] Steven Merchant.

[16:15] Yeah.

[16:16] He's super tall, too.

[16:17] Yeah.

[16:18] So, yeah.

[16:19] It makes everyone else seem small.

[16:20] Every now and then...

[16:21] Yep, that's how it works.

[16:22] Yep.

[16:23] Thanks, Peter Jackson.

[16:24] That's the greatest compliment you've ever given me, Dan.

[16:27] Thank you so much.

[16:28] It'd be so funny if Peter Jackson was like, the computer art, the computer sizing isn't

[16:32] working.

[16:33] We have to get Steven Merchant to play Gandalf.

[16:34] He's the only one who can look regular size next to Hobbits.

[16:37] I thought you were going to say, if Peter Jackson's like, the computer told me tall

[16:41] makes others look small.

[16:44] We ran the numbers.

[16:46] Yeah.

[16:47] In a world before computers, you had to have to cast regular height people or average height

[16:54] people as the Hobbits.

[16:55] And then the tallest actors you can find.

[16:57] So it's like Steven Merchant, Richard Keel, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

[17:01] They're playing all the parts, otherwise.

[17:04] Yeah.

[17:05] Okay.

[17:06] So she has to fire all of her employees.

[17:08] That's terrible.

[17:09] She is the regional head of a fashion company that seems to be owned by a larger corporation

[17:16] that also seems to...

[17:17] She's in some kind of 21st century capitalist corporate stack.

[17:20] But she's the head of the London office, which seems to include everything from major administration

[17:25] to also designing the displays at Harrods for their goods.

[17:30] She has a lot on her plate, a lot of responsibilities on her plate.

[17:33] No wonder she's super stressed.

[17:35] Meanwhile, and there's a lot of famous people suddenly pop up on Zoom in this movie.

[17:39] Her coworkers are famous people.

[17:41] Her coworkers and suddenly her boss is Ben Stiller.

[17:44] And then she's Zooming with two people that she works with, and it's Steven Merchant and

[17:48] Mindy Kaling.

[17:49] And I was like, I don't understand what their jobs are, what they do.

[17:52] Paxton's boss, meanwhile, Ben Kingsley, who is far and away, he was the character I enjoyed

[17:57] watching the most in this movie.

[17:59] He is a devoutly...

[18:00] His character from Sexy Beast was devoutly religious and ran a van company.

[18:05] And he's so funny in it.

[18:07] I think this is the moment to talk about something that we haven't talked about, but is perhaps

[18:11] the most important thing to talk about in this movie is the way the dialogue is written.

[18:15] Because it is extremely heightened dialogue of a kind that like...

[18:19] It has to be a tall enough for Steven Merchant and Mark Gatiss to deliver.

[18:22] Thank you.

[18:23] Maybe I'll tip my hand by saying like over time, this movie sort of slowly won me over

[18:27] just so I got used to it.

[18:30] I'm so glad you said that, because I was going to say it later, and I was worried this was

[18:32] going to be a...

[18:33] What was it called?

[18:34] Thistle in the Barley?

[18:35] What was that movie that we watched?

[18:36] Oh, yeah.

[18:37] Wow, I'm running out of time.

[18:38] Yeah, where Dan was like, it's a beautiful reaffirmation of humanity.

[18:41] And me and Stu were like, oh, what?

[18:43] But anyway.

[18:44] But I definitely, I could see myself enjoying this so much more if I saw it as a play, because

[18:49] it...

[18:50] I mean, obviously, because of the limited number of sets they could deal with, it has

[18:55] to feel like a play.

[18:56] It has to feel like shiitake the way it was produced.

[19:00] But also, it is such heightened language.

[19:03] And I think that Ben Kingsley is the one who can do that the best.

[19:08] Yes.

[19:09] That's why his character works so well.

[19:10] Yeah, I feel like of the performers, Ben Kingsley's probably takes the dialogue the best.

[19:16] I think Chiwetel Ejiofor does a pretty remarkable job of dealing with it.

[19:22] I mean, I think Anne Hathaway brings a lot to the character, but she's given some speeches

[19:27] that are a little bit too much, I think.

[19:29] And I think it's more that her character, I think the movie would have felt if Chiwetel

[19:36] Ejiofor was the heightened character, and the other character's dialogue was maybe not

[19:39] quite as heightened.

[19:40] So he comes off as even more of an outsider eccentric, which there were times when...

[19:45] The times when she is given kind of the plainest dialogue is when she can shine through the

[19:48] best.

[19:49] And the times when it feels like her character is trying to match his verbal intensity.

[19:53] It was like, I don't buy this character talking this way.

[19:56] This is not...

[19:57] I mean, I never really bought these characters in a relationship together.

[20:00] The two performers, I could see it, but the two characters, it was like, basically, so people who

[20:06] watched our Flophouse pandemic live shows may remember that during one of my presentations,

[20:10] I pitched an Anna Hathaway movie called 40 Night Stand, where she and Channing Tatum have a one

[20:16] night stand the night before lockdown, and now they're stuck in an apartment together.

[20:19] And this was kind of that, and I would have bought this movie more if they were people who had,

[20:25] did not have a relationship, but instead had fallen into a one night stand that was forced

[20:29] to extend, because they were like, their characters just never seemed to, maybe unless

[20:32] they had been together for so many years that they had diverged into such different people,

[20:36] which is possible, but hard for me to believe that either of them was once like a biker tough,

[20:41] you know, like a wild biker, which is what they are constantly telling you they were.

[20:45] But he puts that bandana around his face. I think he looks pretty tough.

[20:50] Like, they talk about meeting at Sturgis, and I was like, I don't believe either of

[20:53] these people went to Sturgis. I'm sorry. Not the kind of biker he was, not the kind of person

[20:58] she was, but maybe I don't know. It's anyway, people change. So anyway, here's the thing.

[21:02] Ben Kingsley talks to Paxton, he says, here's he says, here's the plot, Gov.

[21:07] All these department stores, including Harrods, where Anne Hathaway's company's

[21:11] luxury stuff is, yeah, they have they're worried about writing because of the end of civilization.

[21:16] So they're taking all the goods, and they're going to ship them into warehouses.

[21:20] You are my best driver. Unfortunately, because you have a criminal record, you can't do this

[21:26] under your real name, you wouldn't pass a security check. So I'm going to give you a fake ID

[21:30] with a fake name on it. And you're going to drive a real name.

[21:35] It is a real name. It's not. It is a very real name in that another person, as we find out later,

[21:39] the name is Edgar Allan Poe, which is like, it's very funny, because it's like, I don't know how

[21:45] well known Edgar Allan Poe is in England. But it seems that not many people have they don't know

[21:50] and not many people blink an eye at it. And also, people have the same names as famous people all

[21:56] the time. So he could just say, Edgar Allan Poe, and they'd say, yeah, my parents gave me that name.

[22:00] I really expected that to come up because like, it's such an obvious way to just wave it away if

[22:07] you get into trouble. But yeah, it was a commercial years ago, about for something when one of the

[22:12] James Bond movies came out. Wait, was it the Where's the Beef commercial? Yeah, it was the

[22:16] Where's the Beef commercial. All these guys named WT Beef were like, hey, that's my name.

[22:23] There was this, there was this James Bond ad, where it was regular people saying, I'm James

[22:27] Bond, I'm James Bond, because their names were James Bond, like that was their birth name.

[22:32] And so it's like, if you like, it's not crazy that someone would have the same name as a

[22:36] historical figure. But he's like, Oh, my God, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? And every single

[22:41] person he meets out is like, yeah, Edgar Allan Poe. Sure. That's a real name. I've never heard

[22:44] anyone like that. It's not weird to me. You're using your middle name as far as part of your

[22:48] name. Sure. I get it. It's skipping a little. You know, I mean, we're already there. It's

[22:52] gonna be a little ahead of the plot when he learns it. You know, that's one of my favorite

[22:55] scenes with Ben Kingsley, where Ben Kingsley is just like, so pugnaciously, like does not care.

[23:01] And his main problem just seems to be like, it's been laminated already.

[23:04] Name tags already been laminated. They can't change it.

[23:07] And he so and the thing is that he he, this is like a chance for Paxton to kind of like,

[23:14] reform himself, I guess, in the eyes of God, or this is a chance to prove himself worthy of a

[23:19] promotion out of driving to do something. He'll be working in customer service meeting with clients.

[23:24] And so he this is a chance for him to get get over the criminal. Ironically, he'll have to

[23:30] break it break the law in order to get past the blood on his record caused by his one criminal

[23:34] act. If he's caught, though, he will go to jail as someone who is using fraud to possibly steal

[23:40] things under you know, and his boss will say I didn't know anything about it. So that's his

[23:44] choice to estimate. Meanwhile, Linda's boss, Ben Stiller, tell in a very understated performance.

[23:50] He tells her that all they're hoping for like, like a Tropic Thunder level.

[23:55] I want him to go nut you know, go big with it. You know, go go as you know,

[24:00] but you know, stiller he loves to play characters.

[24:04] You saying like you just mentioned is understated in passing made me reflect on it like,

[24:08] yeah, that is one of the better Ben Stiller performances I've seen.

[24:12] Like, I do think like, yeah, but like reigning him in like, like, I think it's pretty good

[24:16] actually here. It's more on the Walter Mitty end of the scale than the Zoolander end of the scale.

[24:22] Yeah. So she realized she would have been crazy if he confused those characters.

[24:30] He made Walter Mitty and Zoolander or the bad guy from Dodgeball.

[24:34] Could you imagine it? I can't. No, wait. Now I'm imagining it. Yep. Okay. The mustache. Yep.

[24:41] I can see. So he says, we need to put all our stuff in storage to Linda,

[24:48] which is at the same, the same stuff that Paxton is going to have to deliver later.

[24:51] The movie takes forever. I mean, I mean, Sean Penn would have been furious if he showed up as

[24:57] his Zoolander character to the set of Walter Mitty. Sean Penn would have, he would have been

[25:02] livid. Yeah. Well, imagine how Will Ferrell would feel. Yeah, that's true. That's true. He's like,

[25:07] I'm going to look ridiculous if I'm the only one acting at this level. Come on.

[25:12] And Linda reveals to Paxton that she's gone back to smoking and she kind of has,

[25:16] she talks about a breakdown she had on a trip to Paris that she never told him about

[25:20] for a business dinner. What? I'm sorry. I, this is, this is one of the floweriest speeches.

[25:27] And I, at one point she's just naming flowers. I kind of zoned out on this one. Like

[25:32] what was the kind of breaking point of that? Well, so she's really, so he has this big dinner

[25:40] with the head of the company, which is not Ben Stiller, but this kind of German, vaguely,

[25:45] vaguely evil German, which is such a redundancy. Even likable Germans are still, even, even Bruno

[25:51] Ganz. And if there's a more likable German than Bruno Ganz, I don't know him, but even he played

[25:56] Hitler. So, you know, but. What about the good German? I heard there was one of those. I saw a

[26:01] movie about it. I haven't seen it. Is Wolfgang Puck German? Because that guy's great. I mean,

[26:07] Wolfgang sounds German, but Puck does not. That sounds Canadian. So I don't know,

[26:10] but I know Puck from Alpha Flight is Canadian, so I don't know Wolfgang Puck.

[26:16] There's no way to find out. So she, she went to this business dinner and it was made clear at this

[26:22] dinner that she is now at the level of her career where she can no longer close her eyes to the fact

[26:27] that she works for a bad guy who is dealing with bad people and doing things in kind of corrupt,

[26:32] sinister ways. And the guy asks for him, for her to come see him after the dinner.

[26:38] And she has a breakdown in her room and breaks a mirror and steals a glass statue and then forgets

[26:44] it on, on the channel train. And, but in later on the boss is like, you know, I was going to seduce

[26:49] you that night, which she seems to have known already. Like that was the night when she realized,

[26:52] oh, I'm not a kid who's like moving up in the world. I'm a grownup who does a bad job. Who's

[26:58] who works with bad people, you know, and she, and ever since then she's been living under that cloud

[27:03] and she talks about a vision she had of some evil kind of smoke eel that, that, that now follows

[27:10] her, you know, on the, on the speech, we got into the smoke eel so that I was confused. Yeah. Yeah.

[27:17] That's it briefly becomes a Miyazaki movie in her mind and then, and then becomes another Doug

[27:22] Lyman, Steven Knight joint. Yeah. Or the machine from, from beyond. Can we cycle back real quick?

[27:27] Let's do it. We didn't really talk about the name Wolf gang. I know it's German, but like,

[27:34] that's an awesome name, right? Cause it's a gang of wolves. Wolf is a name. They saw that wolf

[27:40] and they raised it. Cause they're like one wolf is cool. What about a gang of wolves? That would

[27:44] be amazing. That would be wolf billion. Well, that's yesterday. Uh, uh, my younger son who is

[27:52] about to turn three, he had a barrel of monkeys and he, he goes, daddy, there's 10 million monkeys

[27:58] in here. And I love the idea of this, the phrase 10 million monkeys. Uh, so yeah, a billion wolves

[28:05] is almost as good as 10 million monkeys. Okay. So, um, uh, so Paxton finds out the name is

[28:10] Edgar Allan Poe. Uh, Paxton refers to Edgar Allan Poe as a novelist and poet, which is a bit of a

[28:14] stretch. He wrote one novel. He's known for his poems and short story unfinished, barely a full

[28:19] novel. It ends famously ends with a scene that makes no sense. Uh, and yet it's haunting for

[28:24] that reason. Uh, so it's a bit stretching this, but I am a fan of Edgar Allan Poe's work. His

[28:28] life as a person, again, we got to separate it, uh, from his work, even though they are in fact

[28:31] inseparable. But anyway, um. He did solve all those crimes though, if I recall from that movie we did

[28:38] on the, on the show. That John Cusack one? Yeah. Where he had a pet raccoon?

[28:43] That's the one. That's all I remember about it.

[28:45] I don't even remember the crime he was solving. I assume it was a murderer.

[28:49] They were like copycat crimes of like Poe stories, I think. Right. Right. Poe murders.

[28:56] Somebody got paid to write that. Good on them. They worked the system.

[29:00] They did. They sure did. Uh, but the card's already been laminated. As we said, he's got

[29:03] to do it. He's worried he's going to get caught. Uh, and his work nemesis, Martin, who's trying

[29:09] to get him caught and hates him. He kind of teases Paxton with the idea that he could steal the stuff

[29:14] he's driving. That there's really, nobody's going to know if he just steals it. No one would ever

[29:17] know. It's a fake name. Uh, they don't know where the goods are just going to warehouse anyway.

[29:21] Yeah. He like lays out the plot again. I'm like, yeah, we know, dude.

[29:25] Uh, the, the movie is constantly telling the characters how easy it would be to steal this

[29:29] stuff. And it takes a very long time for them to realize that they should steal this stuff.

[29:34] Uh, Linda, she gets a promotion. She doesn't take it well. They say, you're going to go back

[29:37] to New York. You're going to get promoted. And she's like, well, I don't know if I want to do

[29:40] that. Uh, and Paxton's making his deliveries. Uh, Linda reveals to Paxton's sister that Linda

[29:47] is the one who is buying Paxton's motorcycle secretly to then give it to Paxton as a gift

[29:52] so that he doesn't, hasn't lost everything in his life when they break up and lockdown is over.

[29:56] Um, and she asks his half brother to pretend.

[30:00] It's him who's doing it so that he'll accept the spike.

[30:02] That is a subplot that later on, the brother does it,

[30:05] and Linda, and Paxton sees through it instantly.

[30:07] There's no reason for any of it.

[30:09] I don't know why it's there.

[30:10] I don't get it.

[30:11] It's like the opium scene.

[30:13] Like, unnecessary, doesn't really do anything.

[30:16] It is, I think, it is meant to be a character catalyst

[30:20] where Chiwetel Ejiofor realizes that she now pities him,

[30:25] and he doesn't want to be an object of pity.

[30:28] He wants to be a tough jewel thief.

[30:31] And the bike very much represents the recklessness

[30:34] and freedom of their previous lives.

[30:38] Not just the freedom to leave the house,

[30:39] which he does constantly anyway.

[30:41] Considering it's lockdown,

[30:42] he's constantly leaving the house,

[30:44] but also the freedom of youth

[30:46] and not being trapped in your jobs and whatever.

[30:48] Anyway, so it's that.

[30:49] It's a thematic thing, I guess, but it's, anyway.

[30:52] It says triumph on the side of the bike.

[30:55] I mean, you know.

[30:57] Well, but that's a reference to the insult comic dog.

[30:59] Oh.

[31:00] Yeah.

[31:01] That makes sense, that makes sense.

[31:02] Because he, during lockdown, I don't know if you know this,

[31:03] he became kind of a national hero in England

[31:05] because he was like, COVID for me to poop on.

[31:07] And Boris Johnson was like, finally,

[31:09] someone said what all Britons feel in their heart.

[31:11] Triumph, you deserve this knighting.

[31:12] And the queen knighted him over Zoom.

[31:14] So he's now Sir Triumph.

[31:16] We don't have to call him that because we're American,

[31:17] but English people have to call him that by law

[31:19] or else they go to jail.

[31:20] That's how it works, right?

[31:21] Oh, that's crazy.

[31:22] Did he, when he was knighted,

[31:24] did he have a cigar in his mouth or no?

[31:27] It was very against protocol,

[31:29] but he did have the cigar in his mouth, yes, yeah.

[31:32] And then he said, this is an honor for me to poop on.

[31:35] And the queen laughed so hard

[31:36] that they named it a national holiday.

[31:38] And she gave him a swan, which she owns all of in England.

[31:41] All swans, whales, and dolphins, I believe,

[31:43] are the property of the queen of England.

[31:45] So Triumph, by which I mean Robert Smigel,

[31:49] that was one of those.

[31:49] The weird thing is they didn't knight Robert Smigel.

[31:51] They knighted the puppet.

[31:52] The puppet is Sir Triumph.

[31:53] Robert Smigel remains an American citizen

[31:55] with no peerage or title.

[31:58] Yeah, the queen kept trying to push him out of Triumph's butt

[32:02] and it didn't work out.

[32:05] Well, she did study as a proctologist

[32:06] and she was like, finally, I can get back to my true love.

[32:09] I don't love being a royal.

[32:09] I love proctology and the health of the human anus.

[32:12] But it's-

[32:13] Yeah, that season of The Crown was dope, right?

[32:15] Where she's going to proctology school.

[32:17] Yeah, that was amazing.

[32:18] The scene where she has to-

[32:20] It's a crossover with the Nick, right?

[32:22] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[32:24] Not alive during the same time periods,

[32:26] but that's totally okay.

[32:27] There's the scene where John Major approaches her

[32:31] about forming a government

[32:32] and she pulls that big latex glove on

[32:34] before she tells him, yes, he does have permission.

[32:37] A great scene, great season of The Crown.

[32:39] Anyway, Linda's like, Paxton,

[32:41] I set up the security systems.

[32:42] You're going to get caught here,

[32:44] but there is a way we can do it.

[32:46] You can go in and make it work,

[32:47] but we're going to have to break the law

[32:49] if you're going to make this delivery.

[32:50] Then there's a scene that is also unnecessary

[32:52] where Linda talks to Stephen Merchant

[32:53] and Mindy Kaling about, ostensibly,

[32:55] the security at Harrods,

[32:56] but instead it becomes about somebody's marriage

[32:59] falling apart.

[33:00] It's just like a comedy scene.

[33:02] Yeah, it's a comic relief.

[33:03] Just having a laugh.

[33:04] They're just having a bit of a laugh.

[33:05] Why not?

[33:05] Come on, it's lockdown.

[33:06] Give them that.

[33:08] That's when Linda gets her motivation

[33:09] to really break bad,

[33:10] or as the movie would have it, good.

[33:13] Linda gets a call from her boss,

[33:15] the big top boss from Germany,

[33:17] who essentially says, oh yeah,

[33:18] this famous diamond, this three million pound diamond,

[33:23] not, wait, it's worth three million pounds.

[33:25] If it was a three million pound diamond,

[33:26] it would not be at a department store.

[33:27] It would still be at the center of the earth, unclaimed,

[33:29] because you cannot move a diamond

[33:30] that weighs three million pounds.

[33:32] That would be crazy.

[33:34] This three million pounds worth diamond.

[33:36] They're selling it to,

[33:37] he never names the person,

[33:38] but he essentially makes it clear

[33:39] they're either a dictator

[33:41] or the relative of a dictator of an oppressive country.

[33:43] I just assumed it was Kim Jong-un,

[33:45] but it could be anybody.

[33:46] It could be the president of,

[33:47] is it Georgia?

[33:49] Well, that guy's particularly bad,

[33:50] but he's, he wants to-

[33:51] He's the governor's, Elliot.

[33:53] That's-

[33:55] Not?

[33:55] Oh boy, all right.

[33:57] The look on Elliot's face.

[34:00] Oh boy.

[34:01] As he tried to process what I was saying.

[34:04] And she says, well, I don't,

[34:06] and he goes, now that you're having this promotion,

[34:07] you need to, your last job here,

[34:10] your last big job in London

[34:11] is you're gonna take this diamond,

[34:13] you're gonna put it in a box,

[34:14] and you're gonna ship it to New York

[34:15] where it is just gonna be brought straight to a vault.

[34:17] No one's gonna look in the box.

[34:18] No one's ever gonna see it.

[34:20] It's just gonna be,

[34:21] it might as well just be an empty box

[34:22] that has something in it

[34:23] that weighs as much as a diamond.

[34:25] And when he tries to-

[34:27] You know, this dictator loves

[34:29] when he gets stuff stolen from him, by the way.

[34:32] I just wanted to mention that.

[34:33] He loves, he gets,

[34:34] he can only ejaculate

[34:36] when he finds out he's been ripped off.

[34:38] So take for that what you will,

[34:40] but no one will ever look at this diamond.

[34:42] And if he did find out,

[34:43] it would be the greatest orgasm of his life.

[34:45] So do with that what you,

[34:46] and she's like, well,

[34:47] it's good to steal from bad people,

[34:49] but I don't want to give him sexual pleasure.

[34:51] Vicariously, I don't know what to do.

[34:52] It's a real dilemma.

[34:54] You know, it's a real Hobson's choice,

[34:56] but it's not really,

[34:57] I don't remember what that is.

[34:58] So, other than a delightful movie with Charles Loudon.

[35:01] And then he starts to come onto her over Zoom.

[35:03] He says, I was gonna seduce you,

[35:04] and we'll talk about it after your promotion.

[35:06] She, only thing she can do is rage dance in the garden

[35:08] to Adam and the Ants.

[35:10] So, Paxton comes back from riding his bike.

[35:13] He's high on life because he outchased the police

[35:15] and ended up in a petting zoo,

[35:16] hanging out with some goats.

[35:17] Yeah.

[35:19] Yeah, there's that scene, right?

[35:21] Yeah, they have post running from the police sex,

[35:24] and she is suddenly urged with a desire

[35:27] to steal this diamond.

[35:28] The next morning, Linda's acting,

[35:30] this is the morning of the big delivery day, right?

[35:33] So, Linda's acting weird and anxious,

[35:35] and then she's like, okay, I admit it.

[35:36] Here's my plan for stealing a diamond.

[35:38] It would be so easy.

[35:39] Okay, we're gonna go there.

[35:41] We're gonna wait until we actually have the diamond

[35:43] in our hands before we decide whether or not

[35:45] we're gonna steal the diamond.

[35:46] And this is the dumbest bit of suspense

[35:48] they could possibly build into it.

[35:50] Because throughout the rest of the movie,

[35:51] they're having conversation with themselves.

[35:52] Should we do it?

[35:53] Should we not do it?

[35:54] We know they're gonna do it.

[35:55] There's no movie if they don't do it.

[35:56] What would be more anticlimactic than for them to be like,

[35:58] no, property rights are paramount.

[36:01] We cannot steal this diamond.

[36:03] The more they talked about, the more I'm like,

[36:05] is this movie gonna end on the spinning top

[36:08] at the end of Inception type shit?

[36:09] Where you're like, is it or is it,

[36:11] did they get the real one or the fake one?

[36:12] Yeah, yeah.

[36:13] Does it even matter?

[36:14] Or are they gonna decide at the last minute

[36:17] not to steal it, but the cops think they're stealing it

[36:19] and kill them.

[36:20] And it's so like, ironically,

[36:22] they were killed for a crime they didn't commit.

[36:25] And again, not a satisfying ending to this movie.

[36:29] Decidedly.

[36:31] Yeah.

[36:33] You mentioned in passing, I do wanna say like,

[36:36] even though the way it is written,

[36:39] I mean, it's a little overwritten.

[36:42] It's not quite like how it would really be

[36:45] in life, even if someone was having a bit of a breakdown,

[36:48] maybe, but I did find it very funny,

[36:50] the scene where Anne Hathaway was like laying out things,

[36:55] but like not quite wanting to say

[36:56] that she wants to steal the diamond yet.

[36:58] And he can say, like,

[37:00] he knows that she's acting very strangely,

[37:03] but her reaction is like, no, what are you talking?

[37:05] You're the one who's weird.

[37:09] No, I think that's a really good scene for Anne Hathaway

[37:12] because she has to keep swerving back and forth

[37:16] and she's doing a really good job of it.

[37:16] It's a good version of the bad scene in the happening

[37:20] where Mark Wahlberg, they're like,

[37:23] you wanna kill me, don't you?

[37:23] And he goes, what?

[37:24] No, no.

[37:26] And you're like, wait, does he wanna kill this old lady?

[37:29] Hold on.

[37:30] Where's this movie going?

[37:31] Hold on, because this is not something

[37:32] that's been in his character.

[37:33] He's been a science teacher

[37:34] trying to save his kids up till now.

[37:36] What if the movie just threw in the fact

[37:39] that he was a serial killer at that moment?

[37:42] Like you didn't know that you were following

[37:44] a serial killer, Mark Wahlberg, through the happening.

[37:47] And Knight loves his twists.

[37:49] And the twist.

[37:50] Maybe the happening was happening

[37:51] to get back at him for all the murders,

[37:53] but it keeps happening to other people.

[37:54] I mean, it seems like an overreaction

[37:56] for every plant in the world to kill every person

[37:58] because one dude is a serial killer.

[38:00] That seems a bit much, a bit much.

[38:03] Well, plants don't understand human society.

[38:05] I mean, that is only one of many problems

[38:08] with the scenario that you have just briefly sketched out.

[38:12] That's only one thing I'm bumping on about it.

[38:15] But that feels like such a early aughts indie movie

[38:20] that makes it into theaters,

[38:21] where it's like there's a plague,

[38:23] but a serial killer is on the loose.

[38:26] Where it's like the serial killer's the hero, kind of,

[38:28] and you're like, I guess it's basically

[38:31] just the Minus Man, but with a plague.

[38:32] Anyway, so-

[38:33] Yeah, or the Devil in the White City.

[38:34] Yeah, well, the Devil in the White City,

[38:36] the serial killer's not the hero.

[38:38] Like, he's a very bad guy.

[38:41] They never made the movie of that, did they?

[38:42] The Devil in the White City, or did they?

[38:43] I don't think, I mean, they probably still will.

[38:46] They talked about it for years,

[38:47] but I mean, I think the time has passed

[38:49] when you're gonna make a big movie

[38:50] about the Columbian Exposition of Chicago.

[38:53] Like, but you know what?

[38:55] It'll be a miniseries.

[38:55] Wait, what was the time for that, Alex?

[38:58] The Columbian Exposition craze of 95?

[39:01] When the book came out,

[39:02] when the Devil in the White City came out

[39:03] was a best-selling book,

[39:05] but now I can see them doing it as a miniseries.

[39:06] But that's not going direct to theaters, you know?

[39:09] Yeah.

[39:10] So they both go to Harrods separately.

[39:12] Linda on his bike, Paxton in his van.

[39:14] This is the point where the movie

[39:16] feels like a commercial for fucking Harrods, right?

[39:18] For Harrods, and for any listeners who are not familiar,

[39:20] Harrods is a huge department store in London.

[39:24] And yeah, they spend a lot of time

[39:26] wandering around Harrods

[39:27] talking about all the amazing stuff

[39:28] that's for sale at Harrods.

[39:30] Yeah, Char and I, when we were in England,

[39:33] what, a year and a half ago, two years ago?

[39:35] It all blurs together.

[39:37] We actually went for a tea service at Harrods,

[39:41] and it was very expensive.

[39:43] Yeah, that's how they do it over there.

[39:46] And that exchange rate, I mean, come on.

[39:48] I remember once being in London,

[39:51] and my wife and I, we were just walking all day,

[39:54] and we were so hot,

[39:56] and the exchange rate was so bad

[39:57] that I was like, I'm just gonna get a glass of Coke.

[39:59] I'm just gonna get a glass of soda.

[40:00] And I paid for it and I was like, I think I just paid $20 for this glass of soda.

[40:03] This is ridiculous.

[40:06] So anyway, they, Linda, it's a surprising number of people there are not wearing masks

[40:11] and the security is lax.

[40:13] Linda just keeps vouching for Paxton and getting him through or distracting people at the moment

[40:17] they're about to look at his badge, which doesn't matter because when they see his badge,

[40:21] nobody thinks it's a weird name anyway.

[40:22] Oh, also, I would like to mention that she can do this because of,

[40:27] in a script with many contrivances to make this heist work, the biggest contrivance

[40:33] is that Linda has not told anyone about this, you know, like decade-long relationship she

[40:41] has with, she'll tell a GeoForce character, like none of the people at work know that

[40:46] she even has a partner.

[40:47] If I had a relationship with him, I would tell everybody.

[40:50] You'd be shouting it from the rooftops or walking into the street and declaiming it

[40:54] as if it was poetry.

[40:55] Yeah.

[40:56] I mean, I think he'd be probably like, Stuart, I'm so glad you're proud of our relationship.

[41:00] I don't want you to refer to me as Baron Mordo anymore.

[41:02] That's a character I played once, not even the one that was closest to me.

[41:06] You weren't Baron Mordo in Children of Men?

[41:09] I was not Baron Mordo in Children of Men.

[41:12] I know the question you have.

[41:13] Again, I always wonder whether Sonic was in that movie and whether it was just moving

[41:16] so fast we couldn't see him.

[41:18] And I would often talk to Sir Michael Caine and say, do you think Sonic's here right now?

[41:21] He's just moving so fast that we can't see him.

[41:23] They didn't even have scenes together.

[41:29] You know, for instance, when I was making The Martian, it was another one where I was

[41:32] like, there's a lot of science-y stuff around here.

[41:34] Sonic could be hiding behind it.

[41:36] Is it possible he's just moving so fast that he's not in it?

[41:39] It was harder, again, in Amistad, harder to think Sonic might be there because it was

[41:44] such a brown and kind of pale palette for that movie that a blue hedgehog would really

[41:49] stick out, you know?

[41:50] I have to admit, the reason I took the role in Locked In was I saw first on the cast sheet

[41:54] was Sonic as the hedgehog.

[41:56] And I said, finally, my chance to meet this adorable blur and find out whether we've

[42:00] already shared the screen with each other.

[42:02] Alas, it was not the case, unless, as I was saying, he was in the movie just moving so

[42:06] quickly that I couldn't see him.

[42:08] I only have human eyes.

[42:09] It's all I can't see faster than a hedgehog can run, obviously.

[42:13] So anyway, she's never told anybody about her boyfriend.

[42:19] You're right, which is an enormous contrivance.

[42:22] And anyway, they're walking through the tunnels at Harrods.

[42:24] They have a picnic, just taking expensive food that has not been packed up yet, and

[42:29] having a roof picnic.

[42:30] And she talks about how their relationship is ending because they're not wild anymore.

[42:34] They stopped being wild.

[42:36] Because this is one of those movies that rejects the very idea of maturing and evolving

[42:40] relationships.

[42:41] It's like, you have to feel the way you felt 10 years ago when you first met.

[42:46] It is impossible for you to.

[42:48] Relationship will die unless you continue to be in an unnatural state of youthful wildness.

[42:53] It's like what you're always saying, Elliot, you're really hoping for the emotional

[42:56] maturity of like a Judd Apatow movie, right?

[42:59] In my life, yes, that's exactly what I want.

[43:01] That's what I'm looking for.

[43:02] Yeah, I want constant bits.

[43:03] I want my relationship to be built on constant bits.

[43:05] Nothing else.

[43:06] Just like the Katie Lang song, Constant Bits.

[43:09] But this is the section of the movie where I kept being like, you guys are supposed to

[43:14] be pretending like you don't know each other.

[43:16] And like you're standing so close to one another in rooms.

[43:20] You're like going and getting a picnic.

[43:23] You're having long conversations with each other.

[43:25] Yeah, having a picnic.

[43:26] And she has to pretend this is just the driver she hired at the last minute to help remove

[43:29] this stuff.

[43:30] And they're inseparable during this time.

[43:32] And they're not moving anything yet.

[43:34] It's like maybe she routinely takes drivers for picnics at Harrods.

[43:39] But so it's a lot of what they're doing is supposed to be cute, and it doesn't quite

[43:44] work for me.

[43:44] But by this point, I was somewhat falling under the spell of these characters and wanted

[43:48] them to get away with this diamond, even though they ostensibly have still not made up their

[43:52] minds about whether they're going to steal this diamond or not.

[43:54] OK, they bond through the whole time.

[43:56] They're revealing secrets to each other.

[43:58] They finally have a kiss on the roof.

[44:00] And then they take the diamond, which is much smaller than you'd expect, which is always

[44:04] the case with diamonds.

[44:05] Security hands it to them.

[44:06] And it's roughly the size of like, what, like a child's novelty eraser, you know?

[44:11] And diamonds are always much smaller than I think they're going to be.

[44:14] And I encounter a lot of diamonds in my life.

[44:16] Yeah, the diamond looks like it's the size of like a really big almond.

[44:21] Yes, yeah.

[44:22] Where I really did want to see like an Uncle Scrooge style, like, yes, almost as big as

[44:27] your head.

[44:28] Like the size of a watermelon.

[44:30] Like you had a huge diamond.

[44:32] Uh, and when diamonds get to a certain size, they stop being the value starts getting difficult

[44:37] because you can't sell a diamond that huge.

[44:39] But, you know, uh, this one, I wish it was just a little bit bigger.

[44:43] I wish it was a little bit taller.

[44:44] I wish it was a baller center.

[44:45] I'm going to look at collar diamond.

[44:47] I wish.

[44:48] So, uh, they take the diamond and now Paxton has to pull the replica from a display tank

[44:54] that is full of piranhas.

[44:54] For some reason, this does not pay off either.

[44:57] Those are CGI, right?

[45:00] I think those are real piranhas.

[45:03] They put star actor to tell J4's hand in a tank with piranhas.

[45:07] I mean, the thing is, piranhas are not that dangerous unless they're hungry and you're

[45:12] backing them into a corner.

[45:13] Like you could, you can be around piranhas, uh, or maybe not.

[45:16] So it's giving me a real dubious.

[45:17] Look, it's giving me a real church lady doesn't believe me.

[45:20] Look, okay.

[45:21] Uh, so he takes the diamond, uh, they deliberate over whether to switch it.

[45:26] They don't know.

[45:27] And then they do it.

[45:28] And Paxton starts to get jittery.

[45:30] They're home free now.

[45:31] They just have to leave.

[45:32] Uh oh, Mark Gatiss shows up and he says they got an anonymous tip.

[45:37] We know it's from Paxton's coworker, Martin, that the driver was using a fake name.

[45:40] And Mark Gatiss has already called the police.

[45:43] Somebody needs to wet that dude up.

[45:46] What do you mean by that?

[45:47] I don't understand.

[45:48] Somebody, somebody needs to smoke that idiot.

[45:50] I don't understand.

[45:52] Wait, I don't get it.

[45:53] I think, uh, Stuart wants the, uh, the guy who snitched to be killed.

[45:59] Is that the case?

[46:00] Like a large, I mean, he did seem to be a real asshole, but I don't know.

[46:05] Yeah, dude.

[46:05] Oh, not Mark Gatiss.

[46:07] You mean Mark Gatiss is fine.

[46:09] No, the guy, the bad, the bad coworker.

[46:11] Okay.

[46:12] Well him.

[46:12] Yeah.

[46:12] I mean, I, if it helps you, he's not a real person.

[46:16] So he only existed for a moment on film and now he's, it completely doesn't exist anymore.

[46:20] So even worse than being killed, he leaves nothing behind him on life, but that one scene

[46:24] and no, he will never remain in our memories.

[46:26] So that helps.

[46:27] Yeah.

[46:28] He exists only to be the villain in their story.

[46:30] He's like an Aaron Burr type figure.

[46:32] Very sad, actually.

[46:34] I mean, Aaron Burr, except Aaron Burr was a real person who had a life and did things

[46:37] in history.

[46:38] And now the other side of the story has been told in a little play called Hamilton.

[46:40] I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's by the guy who also wrote the hugely

[46:45] successful bring it on musical.

[46:46] So the, uh, that's, that's what you probably heard of him for anyway.

[46:50] So he did, he did that, right?

[46:52] I think he did the music for the bring it on musical.

[46:54] Hold on.

[46:54] Let me take a look.

[46:56] Maybe.

[46:56] Uh, I mean, I know there's talk about him doing the, uh, the fast and furious musical

[47:01] with Vin Diesel.

[47:02] So is there talk of that?

[47:04] Yeah.

[47:05] Cause Vin said he wants to make a musical.

[47:07] And of course there's going to be the inevitable celebrity couple named Vin Manuel Miranda.

[47:12] Of course.

[47:12] But how do you do them?

[47:13] I guess it's the cars are in their minds.

[47:15] I don't like all the major action movie series.

[47:20] That's the one I can most see as a musical.

[47:21] Like to me, I'm like, yes, natural fit.

[47:24] I would say I would tweak it slightly.

[47:26] That's an opera.

[47:26] That's not a musical.

[47:27] That's an opera.

[47:28] I don't want any spoken dialogue.

[47:30] I want it all sung.

[47:31] It's either explosions or, or loud singing through musical without being an opera.

[47:36] Lin-Manuel Miranda did co-write the musical lyrics for the bring it on musical.

[47:39] So my memory was mostly correct.

[47:42] Okay.

[47:43] Uh, anyway, Mark Addis is there.

[47:44] He's like, uh, the police are coming.

[47:46] And Donald's like, uh, I mean, uh, Paxton Donald is the guy is my guest here.

[47:50] I was like, oh no, oh no.

[47:51] And Linda, she says, Hey, we're stealing this diamond.

[47:55] We're in love.

[47:56] You're going to cover us for us because we're in love and we're going to escape and we're

[47:59] going to stick it to our bosses.

[48:01] And Mark Addis so quickly is on their side and had talks.

[48:05] He has a monologue about how he's been liberated by COVID and the lockdown to become this romantic

[48:09] free thing person.

[48:10] And he realized they all have such terrible, bland lives.

[48:13] And it's so horrible.

[48:14] And now he's been radicalized and like goes on for a while.

[48:17] And it really could have done with like just a second take where they just play for comedy

[48:23] as opposed to this, like big speech, like have them make their big speech.

[48:27] And the whole time you're thinking he's taking it and he's going to turn them in and they

[48:31] just like, okay, yeah, it's fine.

[48:34] I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if Mark Addis was like, I need to do more in this movie.

[48:37] Write me a monologue where I get to twirl around and like throw papers and stuff.

[48:41] It goes on for a while, but I did like the, you know, the cap to that scene where like

[48:45] two or three of us, like we got to get out of here.

[48:49] And Anne Hathaway's character like knows that like she has to let him play it out.

[48:55] If like they want to get out, it was just like, you know, let him have his moment.

[48:58] It'll be fine.

[48:58] We'll get out.

[48:59] Because she knows also he's just the character on a screen.

[49:01] This is his moment.

[49:02] And then again, less than dust in the wind.

[49:04] He's just, he's just frames of celluloid that will eventually burn up like nitrate sock.

[49:09] Yes, there are no small parts except this one.

[49:12] So let's let him have the most of it.

[49:13] There are no, they're only small actors of which Mark Addis is not one.

[49:16] As we've mentioned, he's very tall.

[49:18] Yeah.

[49:19] You've just slumbered here.

[49:20] Well, these, well, Mark Addis talked to talk to, um, in the elevator, uh, with the merchandise,

[49:27] uh, anything happened with the piranhas?

[49:30] Do they like, no, his hand goes in the water and I assume the piranhas will then flush

[49:36] down the toilet and they're in the sewers of London right now.

[49:39] Just every now and then coming up through toilets to bite people on the bum so they

[49:44] can look comically at the camera.

[49:46] Yeah.

[49:46] You're like an old, you're like Bugs Bunny or something.

[49:49] On the turtlets.

[49:50] They're going through the turtlets to, uh, now, now those piranhas are just there so

[49:54] that people can have Benny Hill type gags in their own home.

[49:56] Uh, so, uh, they, security.

[50:00] It's paging Edgar Allen Poe. They're like, we got to get out of here. Oh, no, they're running. It's paging. They see Stephen Merchant.

[50:05] He's like Linda and they run in the other direction and then security reaches them just as they get to the door. Hey

[50:10] You left your ID. I have it for you. You're gonna need it when you get to the airport

[50:16] Turns out nobody knows who Edgar Allen Poe is a stunning indictment of the British educational system that they

[50:23] I guess England has its own poems like poets

[50:26] Why I don't know why they need to know who Edgar Allen Poe is

[50:28] But the movie certainly made it seem like someone would know who that was

[50:31] So there's the the thing that's stuck in my head though

[50:34] Is that they never he never like takes the stuff?

[50:38] He's supposed to pick up and take so they would just catch him

[50:42] Exactly. He does not do the job and he fails. I mean, I I guess I guess you just get fired from his job, right?

[50:49] I mean, yeah, you can't you can't throw someone in jail for not doing their job unless their job is not murdering people

[50:56] And they fail to do that and they murder someone then you throw him in jail, yeah, but

[51:01] Yeah, you have to assume he's like, well, he doesn't care about losing his job because they've got this diamonds now

[51:04] I guess but I feel like if they just leave all the shit and he doesn't take it to Heathrow

[51:08] They're more likely to double-check it, right?

[51:11] You would think so, especially since they you see them going to the airport on the motorcycle

[51:14] So I assume they did send the die the fake diamond in the box

[51:18] So yeah, it really bothered me that he didn't complete the job because it was the most easy way for them to get caught

[51:24] But look, they're wild now. They're reckless and to be honest movie logic. Would you rather see the two of them split up and then?

[51:30] Paxton

[51:32] Successfully deliver a bunch of boxes of stuff and unload them in a warehouse

[51:35] Would you want to see the two stars of our movie?

[51:38] Recklessly riding on a motorbike through deserted streets of London the cold night air on their faces, you know

[51:43] Realizing that they're in love again because for this specific moment, they are once again outlaws and criminals

[51:49] When they eventually have to do things like take out the garbage and cook dinner and things like that their love of course will crumble

[51:54] Since it's based on moments like these but just for that moment isn't the movie the movie is is worth it for that

[52:00] You know and the next morning Linda is like lockdowns been extended, but they're together again, and she forgot it's his birthday

[52:08] Which is which is which I get locked down, you know, it's hard you forget what day it is

[52:12] and Paxton walks out and this time recites a

[52:15] Happy poem or at least a love-based poem to the neighborhood and as Linda beams at him from a window

[52:22] And during the credits Paxton fulfills the T's he gave earlier in the movie and bakes bread

[52:27] We just watch him baking bread. Yeah through the credits because yeah a little lockdown joke

[52:33] Present to him is the flower to allow a big bread the flower that he bought. Yeah. Yeah

[52:40] I mean as far as birthday gifts go, that's not the worst one. I've ever gotten

[52:45] Well, there have been movies about people getting like hall passes on their birthday so they can sleep with another person without guilt

[52:50] This was a movie called hall pass. Yeah one movie office. This is this

[52:55] Birthday gift. I think it's the anniversary gift. Maybe okay, but this was a and there was that one season of

[53:01] Caribbean enthusiasm

[53:03] That that that Steve Merchants in at least one of those two things, right?

[53:07] He's in the movie hall pass, right? Yeah, I don't I've never seen I don't check the tapes

[53:13] Look, I was too busy watching these check new wave movies to watch hall pass. Yeah, Dan just

[53:20] Criterion blu-ray of

[53:23] Dan don't bother with the commentary of the behind-the-scenes feature at starting just don't just look check the credit

[53:29] Check the credit and double-check double-check the

[53:34] Double check the blu-ray box that you don't have the criterion collection blu-ray of drill bit Taylor instead

[53:41] Sometimes you know when you're watching them so much they get mixed up in the cases

[53:44] It's amazing how how criterion stop there like we're not gonna put out Wes Anderson movies anymore only Owen Wilson movies

[53:50] It realized that's that's who they were following all that time when they were putting those criterion

[53:56] So

[53:57] Yeah, but she was giving him the permission to bake bread

[54:00] Without her make room. So that's locked down the story

[54:07] Locked down. Okay. Well, let's do final judgments about whether we

[54:12] Think it's a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie. We kind of liked as I teased before

[54:20] The movie broke me down over the course of it. Like I

[54:24] Don't want one one me over is another way to say it. Yeah, it won me over

[54:29] Well, I do think it broke me down to a little bit because what could because it constructed a barrier to itself

[54:35] with a lot of the dialogue I think true and

[54:39] The I was trying to think of like why it it didn't always work for me because I like it when a movie gets heightened

[54:46] Like why does everything have to be totally realistic? I don't think that but I think that maybe it's because

[54:51] The way it's directed doesn't necessarily reflect that like it is to me a bit of an uneasy mix of like sometimes

[54:59] I'm like, oh, this is great. Interesting dialogue. And sometimes I'm like, oh god movie. What the fuck are you doing? Yeah

[55:06] and also like I find it as I said early easier to sympathize with a man who like

[55:13] made a

[55:14] mistake earlier in his life for good reasons and now has been punished for it all his life and looking for a way out then like

[55:22] the character of Linda is more like

[55:25] you know how Linda got her groove back by stealing a diamond like, you know, it's just sort of

[55:31] Vague dissatisfaction with life and like I'm not saying that's not something that is worth being concerned about but also like I don't know

[55:39] I had a good job during lockdown

[55:42] So I don't think I would make a movie about how hard I had it during the lockdown

[55:46] Because everyone else had a much worse time during lockdown, you know, it's kind of like it's hard to I don't know her

[55:55] But she's Anne Hathaway. I love Anne Hathaway. So over time I I loved her too. And yeah, I think I had fun

[56:02] I kind of like it

[56:03] This is a movie that at first I was like is this gonna be like a life itself type movie that takes itself?

[56:08] So seriously and is so much about how we live and relationships and all that stuff that it becomes unbearably hilarious

[56:16] And instead I think I think part of the issue is that it is so much

[56:19] it is it it seems at first like it's gonna be a movie about how we live now and the experience of the pandemic and

[56:25] How it broke us down and the heightened dialogue does not play well with that

[56:29] It's like but by the time you get I would say halfway through we're certainly two-thirds the way through and it's like oh, no

[56:36] this is like a glossy goofy movie that just happens to be set during lockdown because that gives the premise like that that creates a

[56:43] Heist that's hard to do

[56:44] Then I was like, okay movie. I'm with you. So I actually came to like I kind of liked it, too

[56:49] it was it was the beginning of it though was

[56:53] Unpleasant going just because for that reason I was like is this a movie that's gonna tell me how I'm supposed to feel about this

[56:59] Thing I just went through yeah, I do not need this movie's help in processing

[57:02] But once it became clear that that's not what the movie was. I was like, oh, okay

[57:06] I feel like that's the that's the fear of a lot of

[57:10] like various pop culture trying to tackle the pandemic like

[57:14] fear of that like the inevitable season of some television show that like is set during the pandemic like people don't want to

[57:20] Yeah, I don't necessarily want to be reminded of it

[57:23] And also like you said like I think it's such an easy trap to to fall into you to be like this

[57:29] This thing is meant to to give us a chance to like process life or like yeah

[57:36] But no, I mean, I think I would say I agree with both of you

[57:40] The movie kind of won me over it is it is very overwritten

[57:45] Yeah, or what is just a goofy movie? Yeah, it's not the goofy movie again

[57:50] I have to clarify that every time I bring that up. Let's make it clear

[57:53] If anyone is watching this thing, it is the goofy movie starring goofy and his son

[57:57] Goofy, I don't know what it's max. It is not that this is lockdown

[58:02] You know, it's also not lockout aka space jail starring Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace the

[58:10] But I think it was a little bit too long like this movie is pushing two hours and you could trim out half an hour

[58:16] That under no circumstance trim out Ben Kingsley. He's a treasure. I love him

[58:20] In fact find a way to put more of him in the movie. I don't know

[58:23] Yeah

[58:24] to be honest if it was about

[58:25] The guys who worked at the van place and Ben Kingsley and Ben Kingsley having to like run these these

[58:31] Like borderline criminals and malcontents who during up during it and they're the only people who can go out in public

[58:37] Because they're essential workers that and like all of society is hinging on these kind of like outcasts and losers

[58:43] That's a that's like it's like a TV show taxi, except they're the only ones allowed to leave the house because of a pandemic

[58:49] That sounds great. But uh, yeah

[58:52] Once it became clear how little this movie had on its mind and how unambitious it was going to be I liked it much more

[58:59] Yeah, well also I want to like I wonder

[59:01] Because this movie got you know at best pretty mixed reviews when it came out

[59:08] Which is why we thought it might be interesting to talk about but like it

[59:12] We were wrong

[59:14] Well, I'm gonna say like that if we had watched it when it came out, which was you know back in the winter

[59:20] I wonder whether we would have liked it less for some of the reasons you're talking about of like it

[59:28] feeling so new

[59:30] You know, whereas now like even this movie

[59:34] Which was made so recently feels like a time capsule instead of something that like we have to be mad at you know

[59:40] Yes, it's like we're

[59:43] Experiencing like I don't need to see like Terrence Malick's version of like a lockdown movie. No. Thank you, sir

[59:49] Yeah, but for us living in the United States right now at this moment

[59:53] It does already feel like a period piece, which is really interesting and you're right if we were watching it

[59:58] Wow, what if we were watching in?

[1:00:00] January and still being like, I don't know when we're going to get like, I don't know when I'm going to get vaccinated.

[1:00:05] Like, when is this going to end? I think it might have been more unbearable.

[1:00:08] Yeah, I'd be more apt to be like, fuck you, movie.

[1:00:11] I mean, as it is, I was already like, masks, why are you people wearing masks?

[1:00:14] And of course, just putting like a bandana around his face.

[1:00:17] And I'm like, what are you doing, man?

[1:00:19] Like, that's not good enough.

[1:00:20] But and I did I did post a screenshot on Twitter.

[1:00:23] But I do like that when he's waiting in line to get stuff from the grocery store and a guy walks by carrying a bunch of toilet

[1:00:29] paper and she'll tell J4 goes, boy, how many asses have you got?

[1:00:34] Like, it's great. Good stuff.

[1:00:37] Good stuff.

[1:00:43] One, two, one, two, three.

[1:00:45] Hi, everybody. My name is Justin McElroy.

[1:00:47] I'm Sydney McElroy. We're both doctors.

[1:00:49] And no, just me.

[1:00:50] OK, well, Sydney's a doctor and I'm a medical enthusiast.

[1:00:53] And we create Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine.

[1:00:57] Every week, I dig through the annals of medical history to bring you the wildest, grossest, sometimes dumbest tales of ways we've tried to treat people throughout history.

[1:01:07] And lately, we do a lot of modern fake medicine because everything's a disaster.

[1:01:12] But it's slightly less of a disaster every Friday.

[1:01:14] Right here on MaximumFun.org as we bring you Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine.

[1:01:19] And remember, don't drill a hole in your head.

[1:01:26] Welcome back to Fireside Chat on KMAX.

[1:01:30] With me in studio to take your calls is the dopest duo on the West Coast, Oliver Wong and Morgan Rhoades.

[1:01:37] Go ahead, caller.

[1:01:38] Hey, I'm looking for a music podcast that's insightful and thoughtful, but like also helps me discover artists and albums that I've never heard of.

[1:01:45] Yeah, man. Sounds like you need to listen to heat rocks every week.

[1:01:48] Myself and I'm Morgan Rhoades and my co-host here, Oliver Wong, talk to influential guests about a canonical album that has changed their lives.

[1:01:57] Guests like Moby, Open Mic Eagle, talk about albums by Prince, Joni Mitchell and so much more.

[1:02:03] Yo, what's that show called again?

[1:02:05] Heat Rocks, deep dives into hot records every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

[1:02:11] Well, let's take a moment to say thank you to our sponsors.

[1:02:17] The Flophouse is in in lion's share, supported by listeners, by you.

[1:02:22] But we also have some great sponsors.

[1:02:26] And this week, the Flophouse is brought to you in part by Squarespace.

[1:02:32] With Squarespace, you can turn your idea into a new website.

[1:02:36] You can blog or publish content, sell products and services of all kinds and much, much more.

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[1:03:03] And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code flop to save 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[1:03:11] Hey, Dan, I had an idea for a website and I was wondering if Squarespace might be able to help me with it.

[1:03:16] Lay it on me, brother.

[1:03:17] OK, I wanted to use the power of machine deep learning, like computer deep learning and its ability to cycle through images fast and process those images.

[1:03:27] To find out if Sonic the Hedgehog is running through these movies real fast.

[1:03:30] So I want to start a website called Sonic Upload Question Mark dot com.

[1:03:34] Question Mark is spelled out.

[1:03:35] Sonic Upload Question Mark dot com.

[1:03:37] And it's a place where anyone can upload any footage and a computer algorithm will then process that footage and detect whether or not there is a hint of blue blur or perhaps the glint of a ring being taken or sneakers.

[1:03:51] Just like a little glimpse of sneakers to see if Sonic was there at the time, just running fast that we can see.

[1:03:55] Now, I know Squarespace can't help me with making that computer algorithm.

[1:03:58] That's the big hurdle.

[1:03:59] The one that uses deep process learning to to find those images.

[1:04:03] But can Squarespace help me make a site where people can upload stuff?

[1:04:06] They certainly could help you create a site, you know, host your idea.

[1:04:11] Yes, the algorithm, I think, might take a little more programming.

[1:04:14] I'm a little concerned that if you have it, if one of the markers you're looking for is simply sneakers, you know, there are other like the flash you might capture in that situation.

[1:04:25] I mean, the flash doesn't wear sneakers.

[1:04:26] Yeah, you also you might actually catch the cast of the movie Sneakers.

[1:04:31] That's a good point.

[1:04:32] I should make sure that it says like H Href equals sneakers, but then not equals Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, the other good point.

[1:04:43] Straythairn.

[1:04:45] David Straythairn, yeah.

[1:04:46] David Straythairn, yeah.

[1:04:48] Michael Straythairn, yeah.

[1:04:49] Cindy Poitier, Rupert Phoenix.

[1:04:52] Yeah, sure.

[1:04:53] Is that all the sneakers?

[1:04:54] Yeah, Mary.

[1:04:54] What a great cast.

[1:04:55] That's McConnell.

[1:04:56] She's and Bill Sneakers and Ben Grimsby.

[1:05:01] Yep.

[1:05:03] That's when Ben Kingsley's the bad guys.

[1:05:04] Ben Grimsby.

[1:05:06] Yeah, sure.

[1:05:07] OK, we also have another ad.

[1:05:09] This is a paid advertisement from Better Help.

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[1:05:14] Look, we're all dealing.

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[1:05:22] We're getting our shots to get rid of these viruses, but there's no mental health shop and that's shot.

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[1:06:07] And I've always found it to be when you find the right therapist, really vital and necessary at different times in my life.

[1:06:13] Dan mentioned he's in therapy already this episode earlier.

[1:06:15] Yeah, yeah, man. Dear Lord, I should have been doing it much earlier and taking it much more seriously.

[1:06:23] Even if you don't have what you feel like, yeah, even if you don't have what you feel like is a is a problem that is,

[1:06:30] you know, dangerous or worrying or anything like that, just to have the time to be able to deal with yourself and to talk about the things that are important to you without judgment from another person and really have that space to be comfortable

[1:06:45] with expressing yourself and the things that you feel like you can't express in other situations.

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[1:07:01] See if it's for you.

[1:07:02] So the podcast is sponsored by Better Help and the Flophouse listeners get 10 percent off their first month at betterhelp.com.

[1:07:09] Slash flop, that's better help as in Peter dot com slash flop.

[1:07:15] That's help as in psychologist dot com slash flop.

[1:07:20] Is that helpful?

[1:07:20] Is that a helpful for the peace out to use that word?

[1:07:23] No, you did a great.

[1:07:24] Thank you. Thanks.

[1:07:27] So let us move on, shall we?

[1:07:31] It's the letters, letters from listeners like who?

[1:07:36] Like you.

[1:07:37] OK, this first one is from I don't know whether it's Jillian, like Jillian Anderson or Gillian, like our pal Gillian Flynn.

[1:07:48] But it is one of those last name withheld.

[1:07:50] I apologize.

[1:07:53] Dan, it's either Jillian Anderson or Gillian.

[1:07:55] I don't think I don't think it would be wonderful.

[1:07:58] Well, is it Jillian Welch?

[1:08:00] It's true.

[1:08:02] Is it and Jillian is a left field choice.

[1:08:06] Is it Terry Gillian?

[1:08:08] It'd be straightened up, straightened up.

[1:08:10] Terry Gillian.

[1:08:11] Stop being such an old.

[1:08:13] Stop being such an old man.

[1:08:15] Get younger.

[1:08:19] Yeah. What about a show where Terry Gillian pretends that he's younger and interns at a magazine or a publishing house?

[1:08:28] Amazing.

[1:08:32] What a nice show that would be.

[1:08:34] Yeah. The adventures of very much who's in.

[1:08:36] Yeah. They're like, wow, for a millennial, you're you sure complain about cancel culture a lot.

[1:08:45] All right. Well, anyway, this letter goes as such.

[1:08:48] Dan, next time Elliott makes fun of your regional accent, feel free to belligerently claim that you and Abraham Lincoln would have had the same accent.

[1:08:56] Both of you being sons of Illinois, raised in Kentucky.

[1:09:00] I'll just interrupt when he makes fun of the former president's accent.

[1:09:05] There's no way he can dispute this claim, considering Lincoln died a dozen years before the phonograph was invented.

[1:09:12] So I don't like watching movies, which makes your podcast perfect, by the way.

[1:09:19] But I love reading books.

[1:09:21] Recently, I read Powers of Darkness by Vladimir Asmussen.

[1:09:27] It is the Icelandic translation of Dracula by Bram Stoker.

[1:09:31] But the translator decided to rewrite the story.

[1:09:34] It's faster, more erotic, and Dracula is much scarier slash grosser.

[1:09:39] I find it a better version of the original.

[1:09:41] It made me think what movie would be better if it went through a fanfic transformation?

[1:09:48] And I mean, unfortunately, I'm listening.

[1:09:51] Thank you, Gillian.

[1:09:52] Unfortunately, a lot of our major movie franchises do seem to be going through fan fiction transformations, which are not.

[1:09:57] Fully helpful for them.

[1:09:59] But I see.

[1:10:00] what you're saying i see what you have not i'm not a huge fan of the fans call

[1:10:03] the shots uh...

[1:10:04] philosophy but guys we think what something that could could have used a

[1:10:07] little bit of a uh... fan fiction filter

[1:10:09] well not as they say shades of gray because they already made twilight

[1:10:14] movement i would say uh...

[1:10:16] there was in the uh... the in the mcu the marvel movies there is a there is a

[1:10:20] popular fan shipping

[1:10:23] between captain america and bucky

[1:10:25] and i think i think the later captain america movies would have benefited

[1:10:29] from a romance between those two hawks

[1:10:31] money i think in general any of these uh... these fees

[1:10:35] these fan properties

[1:10:37] let's have uh...

[1:10:39] this is half more of the characters is having sex with each other a lot

[1:10:42] certainly i mean the marvel movies could do with some more kissing right yeah i

[1:10:46] have no idea where those movies sexuality in this universe thanos doesn't even kiss his

[1:10:51] fucking infinity gems or whatever man he loves those things

[1:10:56] provided by the cool glove i'd be kissing that shit all the time yes

[1:11:02] uh... hard not to

[1:11:03] we very hard not to

[1:11:07] i said a couple of jokes that i have a good answer this to the ones that was

[1:11:10] those jokes and i don't know how you have heard of already

[1:11:13] okay

[1:11:15] and i guess i watched uh...

[1:11:17] this is

[1:11:18] this is probably the greatest with this is this a guy's real resist i think i

[1:11:23] think i think it's really a stand-up it

[1:11:25] this is because i have some weird stuff happened the other day i was watching

[1:11:28] this uh... this movie and

[1:11:30] i just had a question i wanted to ask you i'm gonna write into the mailbag

[1:11:35] tonight can i i i don't know if i have a story i want to to go with the uh... so

[1:11:38] the thing about uh... on the subject of like

[1:11:41] fan fiction stuff i just recently uh... watched ready player one was doing my

[1:11:46] workouts this week

[1:11:47] it is way too long do not recommend

[1:11:49] but uh... and it's chocked it's you know it's filled to the brim with movie

[1:11:52] references

[1:11:53] but weirdly enough it was not the two most it didn't fit it didn't rank in the

[1:11:58] top two most surprising movie references i saw in pop culture recently

[1:12:02] number two of course being i wasn't expecting the first episode of loki to

[1:12:05] feature a scream reference which is nuts

[1:12:09] and i certainly number one of course is in the heights wasn't expecting a usual

[1:12:13] suspects reference at the end but you know what

[1:12:17] i mean and all or also the the uh... the hamilton hold music in one scene

[1:12:21] when

[1:12:21] hamilton was written after in the heights what's going on

[1:12:25] i mean i feel like the usual suspects uh... not is even weirder because the

[1:12:29] whole time you're like we did whose navi is he like tricking these kids

[1:12:34] i mean he is taking those kids kind of but while they're striking the viewer

[1:12:37] but

[1:12:38] dan spoiler alert there's a trick in no i don't like it's

[1:12:42] yeah i i like it

[1:12:44] no one

[1:12:46] what four-star review from dan

[1:12:49] yeah i would say

[1:12:52] i think we can afford to get into a story that is going to tell before he's

[1:12:55] going to tell it

[1:12:55] i would say i'd like fan fiction as a thing from fans

[1:12:58] uh... i think i guess what i don't like is

[1:13:01] i like it what i like about fan fiction is when someone with passion for

[1:13:04] property

[1:13:05] decides i'm gonna take it and i'm gonna make it my own put my spin on it

[1:13:08] i don't like the version of it which is the fan crowdsourced version

[1:13:13] there's like a big campaign to make something as

[1:13:17] same same as it

[1:13:18] as it once was that a lot of changes

[1:13:20] so you know you like it when they'd like to a new twist on a character like in

[1:13:23] ready player one when the iron giants running around turn transform its arm

[1:13:27] into like a laser blaster insert shooting that he was a lot so i mean

[1:13:30] that's not a new twist on the character he does that at the end of iron giant i

[1:13:33] mean it's part of that

[1:13:34] that the choice the character makes us to stop shooting these delays are that's

[1:13:37] one of these is so beautiful about the movie

[1:13:38] uh... but more the way that in my mind something like the last jet i was in a

[1:13:43] way fan fiction

[1:13:44] star wars thing where it was on a text or words and i'm gonna do the ryan

[1:13:47] johnson version of it

[1:13:48] and uh...

[1:13:49] the latin the rise of skywalker is the opposite version where it's like

[1:13:52] vote on which character you want to see die and then come back again okay

[1:13:56] everybody the tally is in you know it's a getting at the mcdonald's burger of

[1:14:00] of franchise movies

[1:14:01] but i don't want to break in that that that monkey monkey and i don't know how

[1:14:06] that that

[1:14:07] welding champion bobby frick

[1:14:08] snuck into that to that movie but they made it they made it worthwhile i guess

[1:14:12] uh... so i'm gonna say

[1:14:15] you know what

[1:14:16] the letter mentioned dracula it's hard to think the universal monsters are

[1:14:19] exactly it

[1:14:20] that's the kind of thing that that should have some sort of like strange

[1:14:23] individual take on it

[1:14:25] that's what i want to say yeah you're just back to you know what you know what

[1:14:28] you hate universal monsters weird everybody of all these universal

[1:14:32] reboots you know largely

[1:14:34] unsuccessful

[1:14:35] like i think invisible man is the most what like that's the transformative one

[1:14:39] that's the one who's like okay let's use this

[1:14:42] as an inspiration

[1:14:44] you know what that's take the themes let's you know

[1:14:46] do it

[1:14:47] perhaps in a better way you know i

[1:14:50] the feels like

[1:14:51] timely it also sadly i'm realizing

[1:14:54] i'm realizing now that i started as a thought experiment i started coming up

[1:14:57] with this the other night where i was like what if they rebooted forrest gump

[1:15:00] for my generation what would happen

[1:15:03] the first thing was

[1:15:04] young is that nirvana is staying over at young forrest gump's house

[1:15:08] and young forrest gump has like thick braces and mumbles and crickelbane's like i like

[1:15:12] that that's how i'm going to sing from now on

[1:15:14] so that's and i was like

[1:15:15] okay obviously he would accidentally hold the door open for the columbine

[1:15:18] shooters when he's a teenager

[1:15:19] and like he's going to have he's going to he's going to have a startup at some

[1:15:23] point like i was just trying to think of the other things he could do you know

[1:15:25] yeah he gives zuckerberg the idea for facebook whatever yeah yeah he's like

[1:15:29] he like he's like looking at a book and be like oh this would be easier to read if it was

[1:15:32] made out of faces and mark zuckerberg's like huh? like that kind of garbage

[1:15:36] yeah i like this bit

[1:15:38] uh... for its own merits and also because it's kind of like the flop house

[1:15:42] version of the ma-bim-bam thing where they're

[1:15:44] writing new lyrics to we didn't start the fire yeah there you go yeah exactly

[1:15:49] like he's he he gets a job as a stock trader and hits the wrong button and

[1:15:52] there's the two thousand eight crash and that kind of like forrest gump's just

[1:15:55] doing all this stuff you know

[1:15:58] you know that he like he needs to he needs to use the bathroom at the capitol

[1:16:01] building so he walks through a door he's not supposed to and suddenly it's

[1:16:03] january 6th and insurrectionists are flooding in and i guess what i'm saying is that forrest gump only makes bad things happen

[1:16:08] in this version with the exception of helping him on a

[1:16:11] yeah he's a randall flag type figure yeah he's more of a randall flag chaos strewer yeah

[1:16:17] uh... pardon me

[1:16:19] uh... so the thing i just randomly decided to ask you about

[1:16:23] so i

[1:16:25] i uh... i saw on twitter matt zoller's sites was gonna be

[1:16:30] hosting a screening of uh... mad max fury road

[1:16:35] uh... preceded by the chuck jones short what's opera doc because i saw that he

[1:16:40] was selling books out of his garage over and over again i get it matt zoller sites

[1:16:44] i'll buy a book from you

[1:16:46] i don't even know what you're referencing he promotes he promotes his uh... he promotes his

[1:16:50] online store a lot

[1:16:52] well uh... so you know i was at the ifc center

[1:16:56] uh... went there

[1:16:58] i should tell i want to tell the audience like i already texted you guys

[1:17:01] about this but i want to tell the audience that

[1:17:02] like the ifc center they had like this thing like thanking everyone

[1:17:06] for coming back to the movies and uh...

[1:17:09] and it would be like you know spike lee would come up and be like thanks for coming back you

[1:17:12] know nothing like seeing a movie in the theater and miranda july would say the

[1:17:15] same thing glad you chose to do the right thing i wish i was there instead of in my

[1:17:19] bathroom which is like a thing she said and uh... but then like

[1:17:23] the only people who mentioned their project was like

[1:17:26] david fincher and amanda seyfried and uh... gary oldman came up and i like

[1:17:31] from the creative team behind mank thanks for coming back to the movies

[1:17:35] and i thought man if ellie was here this would really yank his mank crank

[1:17:39] yeah it's a real mank fank

[1:17:41] but

[1:17:42] but no i saw the i saw the screening and it was great uh... obviously

[1:17:47] uh... uh...

[1:17:49] still both wonderful films uh...

[1:17:53] so is this a section where we do hot takes

[1:17:57] no it's like is there

[1:17:58] is mad max fury road as to

[1:18:01] metalheads

[1:18:02] is it the most metal movie or is there a more metal movie do you think

[1:18:07] i mean heavy metal it's right in the title yeah it's true yeah true but it's

[1:18:11] i mean heavy metal has this weird strain of like uh... national impugn style

[1:18:15] hippie humor

[1:18:17] running through

[1:18:18] uh...

[1:18:19] i think it's hard for me to think off the top of my head i mean like

[1:18:24] i guess you'd call the tetsuo movie is more punk than metal right

[1:18:27] yeah like valhalla rising i think is

[1:18:29] is basically a black metal music video

[1:18:33] i think i think those two are pretty i mean

[1:18:34] the fact that that mad max fury road literally has a guy just shredding away on a guitar

[1:18:39] on a huge truck in front of a wall of amps like that and there's fire

[1:18:43] coming out of the guitar that's pretty yeah but valhalla rising is pretty metal too

[1:18:47] i mean those are both movies that also like you don't

[1:18:50] you kind of don't need any dialogue if you just if you just play with a score

[1:18:54] it's still great

[1:18:55] yeah and and you know what's going on because they're made by

[1:18:58] uh... will certainly mad max made by a visual genius of a director

[1:19:03] uh... we do have one final letter it's from mike last name withheld

[1:19:08] uh... after referencing it in your jackie chan episode i looked at the

[1:19:11] letterboxd reviews for the great bikini off-road adventure

[1:19:15] i think you'll be happy to know that most of the reviews for the film

[1:19:18] reference the flop house in some way or another as the reason for watching it

[1:19:23] which leads me to

[1:19:25] when elliot sits his children on his knee

[1:19:28] which leads me to my question this is my legacy and they're like i thought your legacy was one

[1:19:32] panel about soran and spider-man no no no

[1:19:35] this is my legacy that i shared this with the world

[1:19:38] uh... which leads me to my question in your illustrious careers do you think

[1:19:41] there are other films

[1:19:42] that you've brought into the cultural zeitgeist because of the podcast

[1:19:47] other than

[1:19:48] the great bikini off-road adventure of course well i mean of course

[1:19:52] you know uh...

[1:19:53] what why are you looking at me dan i think that there's a

[1:19:57] there's a

[1:19:59] highly unauthorized

[1:20:00] It's an official trilogy in that it only exists as a trilogy in your mind, that are now associated.

[1:20:06] Yeah, I mean, if you go to the Wikipedia pages for Castle Freak, Head of the Family, or The Invisible Maniac,

[1:20:12] they all have links to the other movies. Or if you look any of them up on Amazon, they also say,

[1:20:18] customers frequently purchase these with this.

[1:20:21] Yeah.

[1:20:23] Because I recommended those movies many times on the podcast. If you're a new listener, yeah, watch them. They're great.

[1:20:29] Yeah. I think I get a lot of people tweeting at me that they watch The Taking of Helm 1, 2, 3, because I recommended it.

[1:20:36] Someone on Twitter just recently watched The Gunfighter because I recommended it a while ago.

[1:20:41] So, you know, as long as we're bringing great movies like Castle Freak, The Gunfighter, and The Great Bikini Off-Road Adventure

[1:20:47] to the discerning views of those who might otherwise miss them, I guess we're doing the Lord's work.

[1:20:52] Yeah. And I just want to highlight folks who have come to the live show where I've done –

[1:21:00] there's one presentation I've done that references this, so those folks will know this already.

[1:21:05] But news to most, if you go to the Bikini Car Wash Company IMDB page, under the trivia,

[1:21:14] some soul has written, Daily Show writer and podcast host Dan McCoy lists this motion picture among one of his favorite movies.

[1:21:23] Now, I don't know if that's entirely accurate, but I guess that's my legacy.

[1:21:29] I mean, who would know better than you, Dan? If you don't know if it's accurate, I'm going to have to take it at face value.

[1:21:33] Yeah.

[1:21:37] That's my legacy to the world.

[1:21:39] I think, Dan, there's worse legacies. Wait, are there? Hold on.

[1:21:45] Yeah.

[1:21:46] Yeah, sure.

[1:21:48] So this is the final part of the show where we recommend movies, movies that – I don't know.

[1:21:56] We like Lockdown OK. You can watch these ones too. Why not?

[1:22:00] Mm-hmm.

[1:22:03] Sorry. I was pulling up.

[1:22:05] The thing I want to recommend is a film called The Neutral Ground, which was actually made by someone who works at the Daily Show.

[1:22:15] C.J. Hunt is one of the field producers, the people who are in charge of the remote pieces on the show.

[1:22:24] A while back, he decided he wanted to do a documentary inspired by the amount of sort of controversy there was over the removal of Confederate landmarks in New Orleans

[1:22:41] and how long it took after it went through that they should be removed for any action to actually be taken.

[1:22:49] And then as anyone who has been in America or witnessed America over the time, he kind of got caught up in a larger story about how after periods of maybe greater racial progress,

[1:23:06] we find ourselves in periods of racial regress where white supremacy is bafflingly and sadly on the rise and perhaps as a reaction to –

[1:23:25] or almost certainly as a reaction to the fact that people are getting human dignity for the first time maybe and others do not care for it.

[1:23:35] But there's that and there's also just the story of how the Confederacy sort of lied after the war, like told its descendants a great lie,

[1:23:50] the wives of the Confederate soldiers who died sort of taking it upon themselves to rewrite the history of the Confederacy and of slavery in a way that –

[1:24:02] he goes and he talks to these people and they have this horrible, naive ignorance about the world that is basically a brainwashing that has been sold them.

[1:24:15] And so it's a very interesting story and I texted CJ.

[1:24:25] Well, the thing is it actually is because he's quite funny and there's a lot of it that has the vibe sort of old-style Daily Show field stuff but also a lot more earnest because CJ himself,

[1:24:40] he's half black, half Filipino and his father is sort of very attuned to and very enraged about the erasure of America's racial history and they have conversations about that and it feels very honest as well as being funny.

[1:25:02] I texted him. I asked him where it could be seen since it's mostly still in festivals right now but it will debut nationwide for free on PBS on July 5th and if you're in LA, there's limited screenings at Lemelie Glendale, July 2nd through 8th.

[1:25:27] And if you want to look it up, there's neutralgroundfilm.com and at itsnotneutral on social media.

[1:25:36] I just wanted to give it like an extra plug because it's not something that I think we get to see a lot otherwise.

[1:25:41] I think that's great. Speaking of documentaries, I wanted to recommend a documentary to you guys.

[1:25:46] Wow. Check New Wave has documentaries?

[1:25:49] I took a brief break from Check New Wave movies. I'm currently in the middle of watching All My Countrymen, All My Good Countrymen.

[1:25:57] Anyway, but that's not the movie I'm recommending tonight.

[1:25:59] There are other Check New Wave movies that I will recommend in the future but I decided to take a break from those and go to an actual movie theater and see an actual movie, the first time I've seen one since I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood over a year ago.

[1:26:10] Anyway, this was the movie that I was looking forward to the most this year and it did not disappoint me.

[1:26:15] That's right, the Sparks Brothers. Some listeners may know that the Sparks is one of – the Sparks.

[1:26:20] Well, forget it. Take away my fan card. Some people may know that.

[1:26:23] Yeah, yeah. Name five of their songs.

[1:26:25] Yeah. I mean I could name a lot more than that but – you want some of their most recent album or the oldest one?

[1:26:31] Anyway, so the – some people, listeners may know that Sparks is one of my two favorite bands.

[1:26:37] What's the other favorite band? You'll just have to guess but it's not a band that sounds like Sparks.

[1:26:42] But they had this documentary made about them by Edgar Wright. They cooperated with it.

[1:26:47] There was a lot of information about them that I was not familiar with and a lot of old footage of them that was really great to see.

[1:26:53] And even if you're not familiar with the band, which it's possible you're not because even though, as the movie talks about, they have 25 albums from about 50 years of recording but they are still not a band that's particularly well-known.

[1:27:05] My wife's parents were in town when I went to see this and they were like, oh, is that a real band?

[1:27:10] I thought it was a movie about a fake band, which seems to be what a lot of people think.

[1:27:13] No, it's a real band.

[1:27:15] It does a really good job of telling their story and kind of explaining why they're interesting, this band based around two brothers who have essentially been operating as a sort of pop music art collective for the past 50 years.

[1:27:30] And it was really, really good.

[1:27:31] I liked it a lot.

[1:27:32] And this will not probably attract other people to it, but at the very end, there's some footage from a Sparks show I went to in November of 2019 here in L.A.

[1:27:41] And it was very exciting.

[1:27:42] It was a nice reminder of good memories.

[1:27:45] And the person I went to go see the movie with, a former Flophouse guest, Brendan Hay, I also went to that concert with him.

[1:27:51] So you can go see this movie.

[1:27:54] And when that part comes up at the end, imagine me and Brendan watching the movie and remembering this great concert that we went to.

[1:27:59] Inception.

[1:28:00] Oh, wow.

[1:28:01] Yeah, wheels within wheels.

[1:28:03] So that's the Sparks Brothers in theaters now.

[1:28:06] Yeah, I just wanted to do a test.

[1:28:08] I only knew a couple of Sparks songs, but I went to see it because it looked interesting and I had a great time and I took some birthday money to buy the soundtrack.

[1:28:16] So now I'll listen to Sparks in my own home.

[1:28:20] You didn't just go ahead and buy all 25 albums?

[1:28:23] Yeah, it seemed daunting from the scope of that documentary, how much stuff is out there.

[1:28:29] So I was like, I'll just take the ones they played for me.

[1:28:32] Just go back and do a full discography.

[1:28:36] That's what I did with Enslaved about a year ago and just go to the beginning and work your way up.

[1:28:41] So I am not going to recommend a documentary.

[1:28:45] I'm going to recommend a heist movie, which is thematically appropriate because we reviewed a heist movie, everybody.

[1:28:50] So I get extra points.

[1:28:52] I'm going to recommend the major motion picture debut of the best man of the movies.

[1:29:01] That's right.

[1:29:02] Director Michael Mann.

[1:29:04] His debut Thief starring James Caan.

[1:29:09] It's great.

[1:29:10] I only recently got around to watching it and watching it, I'm like, oh, yeah, this influenced a ton of movies.

[1:29:17] It's got a wonderful score.

[1:29:19] It's on HBO Max.

[1:29:21] It's beautiful.

[1:29:22] It's rainy.

[1:29:23] It's a very Chicago-y movie.

[1:29:25] It's probably the best movie featuring Jim Belushi.

[1:29:29] Let's see.

[1:29:30] Yeah, check it out.

[1:29:31] James Caan wears the hell out of some pants in it.

[1:29:33] Thumbs up.

[1:29:34] Thief.

[1:29:36] I mean, Thief is a great movie.

[1:29:38] James Caan's pants.

[1:29:39] I don't know if they're like that.

[1:29:40] Man, you've got to watch that movie again.

[1:29:42] You know how they say, you've got to watch it once for the plot, twice for the pants.

[1:29:47] Yeah.

[1:29:48] There's a scene in that movie where he's on a date and he shows the woman he's on a date with like a collage he made of kind of like his vision of his life, and it is frightening.

[1:29:57] And it's the moment in the movie where you're like, lady, you've got to get away from me.

[1:30:00] right now. I know he's the hero of the movie, but still.

[1:30:03] Yeah, during that scene I'm like, what am I supposed to be feeling now?

[1:30:09] Scared for her? Confused? It was great. Yeah, what a great movie.

[1:30:14] Yeah. Well, that's the end of this episode, but

[1:30:18] before we sign off, I want to say an extra special thanks

[1:30:22] to our producer, Jordan Cowling, who will be leaving us after this episode,

[1:30:28] not because we want her to, but because she's going on to

[1:30:31] bigger and better things. So thank you so much

[1:30:35] for taking a lot of burden off my shoulders

[1:30:38] and doing it way better than I ever did in doing the production stuff.

[1:30:44] And generally being more pleasant to deal with than Dan.

[1:30:48] Yeah, no, not responding to texts with things that could be

[1:30:53] hostile, it's hard to tell, who knows. Yeah, Jordan, you're

[1:30:59] listening to this, but you became a real part of the

[1:31:03] Flop House family, and we're going to miss you.

[1:31:06] Yeah, we'll miss you a lot. Thank you so much. We're lucky that we got the

[1:31:09] time we had with you working with us, and I just wish it

[1:31:12] could have been longer. But good luck and best wishes from us,

[1:31:16] the floppers. And I'm signing this on a photo

[1:31:19] of the three of us. Johnny Cage style, yeah.

[1:31:25] Well, go to Maximum Fund. But it's not a glossy photo, it's a Polaroids.

[1:31:29] There's not a lot of room to write on it, so I really covered up most of the

[1:31:32] picture. Oh man, that's a shame. Hey, if you like

[1:31:36] podcasts, good news, we're part of a whole

[1:31:39] network of them. Go over to maximumfund.org.

[1:31:42] Good news, you've been listening to one. Boom, you got flopped.

[1:31:47] Twist ending. This was a podcast the whole time. Deal with it.

[1:31:50] If you liked this episode, tell your friends.

[1:31:53] Get the word out. And as always, thank you for listening. For the Flop House,

[1:31:58] I've been Dan McCoy. I've been Stuart Wellington. And I'm

[1:32:02] Elliot Kalin. That's right, me. And goodbye.

[1:32:11] Man, I would love the twist of a movie. Basically, the movie would just be like,

[1:32:15] hey, fuck you, I twisted you, I gotcha.

[1:32:20] Or the movie says that. Yeah, like immediately as soon as the twist

[1:32:24] happens, just like freeze frame and like zoom in on the

[1:32:27] character's faces.

[1:32:33] Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned.

[1:32:38] Audience-supported.

Ep. #346 - Locked Down

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