Ep. #346 - Locked Down

Dan McCoy

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

Stuart Wellington

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

[0:07] Fuck.

[0:09] No, I'm done. 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, you told us? Hold on.

[0:17] I feel like an idiot.

[0:18] What?

[0:19] Everybody's listening now. I feel like a fool.

[0:21] Hold on.

Elliott Kalan

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

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

[0:30] Damn, what's going on?

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

[1:01] That's right. Illness equals sexy.

[1:04] As Susan Sontag said, so illness is a metaphor for sexiness.

Dan McCoy

[1:07] Is more nasal sexy? Is that an equation that you're postulating?

Elliott Kalan

[1:11] Ask an elephant, Dan. Boom. Roasted.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14] Yeah, for a second I thought Kathleen Turner was guessing on this podcast.

[1:18] Yes, thank you. Stuart knows where it's at.

[1:20] A warm husky tone.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22] What do we got here?

[1:23] Husky, we call it. Warm husky. We just call it husky.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26] I mean, they're usually warm. They're covered in a thick, downy coat of fur.

Dan McCoy

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

[1:33] Like White Fire.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34] Neil McDonough.

[1:35] Neil McDonough.

[1:35] Actor Neil McDonough.

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

Dan McCoy

[1:37] The husky of actors.

Stuart Wellington

[1:39] I mean, why have they not made him the villain in a fucking Animorphs movie?

[1:44] I mean, they haven't made an Animorphs movie as far as I know.

[1:47] Wake up Animorphs?

Elliott Kalan

[1:47] Wait, they haven't?

[1:49] Wait, Dan, you could have finally said, wake up, sheeple, and it would have been accurate.

[1:53] Because it's Animorphs.

[1:55] Oh, God.

Dan McCoy

[1:57] There's got to be a joke in there you can use for something, Elliot.

[2:00] You've got to think that one through, put in your book.

Elliott Kalan

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

Dan McCoy

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

[2:09] You actually have.

Elliott Kalan

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

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

[2:12] Okay.

[2:13] Like inventions.

Stuart Wellington

[2:14] So, if they haven't made an Animorphs movie, we can just TM all this, right?

[2:19] Yeah.

[2:19] And nobody can steal it?

Elliott Kalan

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

[2:22] They snoozed and they loosed.

Stuart Wellington

[2:24] Yeah, that's it.

[2:25] They snoozed and they lost.

Dan McCoy

[2:26] We're holding a flop house flag on Animorphs.

Stuart Wellington

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

[2:32] I called myself Edgar Allan Poe, and I snuck in and stole it.

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

Elliott Kalan

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

[2:42] Unfortunately, first, Dan, what do we do on this podcast?

Dan McCoy

[2:44] Yeah, on this podcast, we watch a bad movie and we talk about it.

[2:47] In this case, we're watching our second Doug Liman-directed film in a row.

[2:52] Wow.

[2:52] That's like a lie-man.

[2:54] It's officially lie-month.

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

[2:56] And he did Seventh Son and Jumper as well, so he's had his share of flop house films,

[3:02] although he's also had his share of very good movies like The Bourne Identity, I Like Go a lot.

[3:10] He did Edge of Tomorrow.

[3:12] Yeah, Live, Die, Repeat.

[3:13] Who knows?

[3:14] Who knows what Doug Liman?

Elliott Kalan

[3:15] Doug Liman is like a box of chocolates.

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

Stuart Wellington

[3:19] What I would also point out is that I think a notable presence in this movie is also the

[3:24] writer of the film, which is Stephen Knight, who was the writer of Serenity and a bunch

[3:29] of other wacky movies, many of which have been on this podcast.

Elliott Kalan

[3:32] Yeah.

[3:33] So this is the second...

[3:34] Is this the second Knight-Hathaway co-production?

[3:38] Mm-hmm.

[3:38] She must be his muse.

Dan McCoy

[3:39] Before people tweeted me, I might have been thinking of Stephen Knight as the... I think

[3:43] he may have been the writer of Seventh Son, and I was conflating the previous flop house

[3:48] things that we have looked at.

Elliott Kalan

[3:50] But you weren't getting confused with Charles R. Knight, the man who could paint through time.

[3:54] Yeah.

[3:54] One of America's greatest painters of dinosaurs.

[3:57] No.

[3:57] Probably not, no.

Dan McCoy

[3:58] But yeah, Stephen Knight wrote Serenity, one of the stranger movies we've done.

[4:05] But he also wrote Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises, two movies I like quite a bit.

Elliott Kalan

[4:12] And he created Peaky Blinders and co-created Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

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

Dan McCoy

[4:17] He wrote and directed Locke with Tom Hardy, which is the movie I think that...

[4:25] The dialogue in that movie is closest to the dialogue in this movie, I would say.

[4:31] Which is to say, overwritten.

[4:33] And you can agree or disagree about the times at which it works or not.

[4:38] Like, I didn't like Locke as much as a lot of people 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 Locked Down is the sequel to Locke?

[4:47] Yeah.

[4:48] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[4:49] Yeah.

[4:50] So both that movie and this one seem to have been written on a dare.

[4:54] Like, there's a real, like, there's a challenge aspect to it.

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

Dan McCoy

[5:01] Yeah, in his car, driving to try and, like, rectify some situations.

[5:05] TV Tom Hardy.

Elliott Kalan

[5:06] It was a regular Cosmopolis.

[5:07] And this one is a movie that was made entirely during lockdown, which is strange in that there

[5:15] are a number of scenes with multiple people where one person will be wearing,

[5:17] wearing a mask and everyone else will just not be wearing masks.

[5:20] Yes.

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

[5:21] Yes.

[5:22] England has been relatively lax.

[5:25] Yes.

[5:25] Individually with that kind of stuff.

Dan McCoy

[5:26] I don't know if, I mean, I hope, I certainly hope this is true.

[5:30] I read that there were no COVID infections associated with this movie, so they did a pretty good job, one would have to say.

[5:39] Yeah, I hope so.

[5:39] But, yeah.

[5:40] It is a question of, like, did we need to do this, on the other hand?

[5:45] Who knows?

Elliott Kalan

[5:45] I mean, 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.

[5:55] Okay, the movie starts with a little bit of a misdirect 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, Stuart, on the IMDb page, it lists, it lists Sonic as being in the movie.

[6:10] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[6:11] It says Sonic and then the role is hedgehog, but I just saw Sonic hedgehog and I'm like, what the fuck?

[6:17] And then I watched the whole movie and I'm like, I didn't see that blue fucking ring freak running around.

Dan McCoy

[6:22] Yeah, he was running so fast he couldn't see him.

[6:23] You know, cast in order of appearance, you do get Sonic first thing.

Stuart Wellington

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

[6:30] We've established that Sonic can move so quickly that he can go faster than your eye can follow him.

[6:35] So there's a chance he was running around doing stuff on in the background.

Elliott Kalan

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

[6:40] That's the thing.

[6:40] You don't know for sure that Sonic wasn't running fast through Schindler's List, last year at Marienbad, any movie.

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

Stuart Wellington

[6:48] That's the great thing about conspiracy theories is coming up with something that it's impossible to disprove.

[6:53] And so it just feeds itself.

[6:56] That's what Elliot's YouTube channel is all about.

Elliott Kalan

[6:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

[7:02] Yeah, that's true.

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

[7:07] Go through every movie ever made, frame by frame, prove to me Sonic is not in that movie.

Dan McCoy

[7:12] I'm just going to say this because otherwise someone's going to send it to us.

[7:17] K-A-Lon.

[7:19] How about that?

[7:20] Yeah.

[7:20] You think?

Elliott Kalan

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

[7:22] I don't.

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

Dan McCoy

[7:25] I'm just saying that I know the internet and someone will get angry that that was left on the table.

Elliott Kalan

[7:31] Fair.

[7:31] Thank you for not leaving that on the table instead, swiping it off the table with your hand so it would crash on the floor.

[7:36] 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 Chudal Ejiofor, 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.

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

[7:53] I don't get a long time.

[7:54] And they are in lockdown in London right after their relationship has fallen apart.

[7:58] We learn this as Paxton has a Zoom call with his half-brother and his half-brother's wife, but for a while I thought it was his brother and his sister, and then I thought it was his sister and her husband.

[8:08] It was very unclear to me for a while how he was related to these two, but they are played by Dulé Hill and Jasmine Simon, who are married in real life.

[8:15] So you know that that was okay for them to be working together 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, which is supposed to be charming, but it comes off as exhausting.

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

Stuart Wellington

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

Elliott Kalan

[8:32] Yeah.

[8:33] By the end of the movie, I will admit, I had somewhat fallen under his spell just because he is so consistent.

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

[8:41] Like, come on, man.

[8:42] But he's unhappy because his –

[8:43] And he's such a charismatic actor.

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

[8:46] Yes.

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

[8:48] Yeah.

[8:49] And I have to give a lot of credit to the two main actors in this who took characters that, on paper,

[8:57] should have been unbearable.

[9:00] Yes.

[9:00] And yet by the end of it, I was like, okay, I don't mind them so much, you know.

[9:04] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[9:05] I mean, I do – I don't know 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 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 is sort of the underdog, whereas Anne Hathaway, you know,

[9:27] is depicted as having –

[9:28] The overbird.

[9:28] Yeah, she's no overbird.

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

[9:33] And because she has such a good job, she has to do things like fire people, which is a miserable thing, obviously.

Elliott Kalan

[9:38] She's the character who has sold her soul for material success.

[9:44] And it's one of those things that like in real life, you do not sympathize with those people.

[9:49] But movies are constantly trying to get us to sympathize with those people.

Dan McCoy

[9:53] Well, you know, I would go a different direction in that like in real life, if I knew – you know, like everyone's pain is not like –

[10:02] we're not like putting them up against each other, right?

[10:05] I am.

[10:06] Like, well, I just think –

[10:07] In the pain sweepstakes.

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

Stuart Wellington

[10:13] That sounds like – that's a great – wait.

[10:15] First off, that's a great Saw movie headline.

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

Dan McCoy

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

[10:25] Like whose pain is worse.

[10:27] You know, people who have outwardly like wonderful lives can have, you know, like pain that commiserate to like what they experience that pain as.

[10:37] Like it is true 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 with –

[10:49] like I find it easier in real life to sympathize with someone, you know, just on the basis of who they are as a person.

[10:57] Rather than in fiction, I'm like, geez, it's hard to get me to like –

[11:01] if your worst problem is you're stuck in your like really rich apartment.

Stuart Wellington

[11:04] That is a beautiful home.

Elliott Kalan

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

[11:07] Yeah.

[11:07] Dan, I think what you – you made a very good point, which is it is easier to sympathize with someone who is a real human being.

[11:14] And there's a larger challenge when you are sympathizing with a fictional character who has it much better than most other people.

[11:21] Right.

[11:21] But because Anne Hathaway is great, she manages – and I'll just say it.

[11:25] I don't care.

[11:25] Yeah.

[11:26] By the end of the movie, I'm like, yeah, I do want her to be happy in her life.

[11:28] Anyway.

[11:29] Yeah.

[11:29] So worst of all, okay, their relationship is falling apart.

[11:32] They're stuck in this house because London just went into lockdown.

[11:35] The irony, of course, is that rich people in London did not follow the lockdown and instead continued to socialize and get sick and do whatever.

[11:42] And they're constantly 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.

[11:48] And Paxton is going to have to sell his motorcycle 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 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.

[12:06] And to this day, this brilliant poet of a man has not 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 time.

[12:16] That was just me editorializing because during the same period they're dealing with this and they're like, how do I fill my time?

[12:22] I'm like, was running around after two children constantly.

[12:24] But that's just, I don't need to get into that.

Stuart Wellington

[12:27] Yeah, yeah.

[12:27] You're like, I'm sick of this dual income, no kids bullshit, right?

Elliott Kalan

[12:31] Yeah, exactly.

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

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

[12:40] But it's really the fact that they're lying around all day being like, he's like, I think I'll start baking bread.

[12:44] And she's like, ugh, don't.

[12:45] And I was like, dude, like, I don't need it.

[12:49] Like, I go days, days and days without grooming.

[12:52] But anyway, we also learned that.

[12:54] That's a personal choice, though.

[12:55] 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 had a night together that Paxton's sister-in-law continues to think about.

[13:08] That's just a thing that they plan that comes up.

Dan McCoy

[13:09] It's just like a weird little side, like, character piece of humor, I think, more than anything.

[13:14] It doesn't really amount to much.

Elliott Kalan

[13:16] Paxton is heavily depressed.

[13:18] Linda catches him.

[13:19] He says, making a joke photo to text somebody.

[13:23] But she thinks that he is attempting to commit suicide using the exhaust of his bike.

[13:27] They talk about how depressed they are, their relationship is over.

Stuart Wellington

[13:29] Luckily, they don't further explore his possible suicidal thoughts throughout the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[13:34] It's much like there's a lot of television shows that start with a character failing to commit suicide and supposed to be kind of like halfway a joke.

[13:42] Don't like it.

[13:43] Not a fan.

[13:44] Not a good thing.

[13:44] I kept...

[13:45] That's way too...

[13:46] It's way too irrevocable a thing to be like, yeah, that happened anyway.

[13:50] Let's keep moving.

[13:51] You know.

Dan McCoy

[13:51] And they keep talking about how bad things were at Christmas.

[13:54] And I kept thinking that there was going to be an eventual reveal that he had, like, actually tried to commit suicide at Christmas.

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

[14:03] Yes, yeah.

[14:03] Yeah.

[14:04] Well, no.

[14:04] And that, like, even this joke selfie, the reason it's extra triggering to her is that it brings back that time.

[14:12] Whatever it is.

[14:13] Like, it doesn't.

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

Stuart Wellington

[14:20] Yeah, do what everyone else does.

[14:22] Just find a fucking meme and download it to your phone and then send it to your friend.

Dan McCoy

[14:27] Yeah, it's a lot of work for that selfie.

Elliott Kalan

[14:31] For a movie that is so firmly set in the here and now, the fact that nobody uses a meme or a bitmoji or anything in the entire movie is very surprising.

[14:40] Yeah.

[14:40] And there's almost no texting in the movie, right?

Dan McCoy

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

[14:49] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[14:50] Yeah, just on the screen.

[14:51] Just over the movie.

[14:53] Paxton, he gets into the habit of reading poems out loud to his neighbors.

[14:57] It's a kind of eccentric thing that people were doing during the big lockdown times.

[15:01] And he stops some teens in his yard who reveal that it used to be, like, a heroin house and there's still poppies in the yard.

[15:09] And they steal them sometimes.

[15:10] And he decides he's having trouble sleeping.

[15:12] And he licks one and goes to sleep and seems to have a pretty good night's sleep.

[15:15] I don't know.

[15:15] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[15:17] He's, like, barfing the next morning.

[15:19] Yeah.

[15:19] But the sleep was great.

[15:20] The morning was bad.

[15:21] The sleep was good morning.

[15:22] Yeah, morning barfing usually is shorthand for pregnancy.

[15:25] But I don't think he's pregnant.

Elliott Kalan

[15:27] No, in this one it does not turn out that Jude El Ejivor is pregnant.

[15:30] It's a story.

Stuart Wellington

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

Elliott Kalan

[15:33] Wow.

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

[15:36] Oh, yeah.

[15:37] Yeah.

[15:38] Linda, she zooms with her coworkers, tells them they've all been fired.

[15:42] Very disappointing news.

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

[15:48] Oh, that was Mark Gaddis?

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

[15:51] Well, everybody has, too.

Dan McCoy

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

[15:53] He usually...

[15:54] Really?

[15:55] Yeah.

[15:55] I don't know whether he dyes his hair and other things.

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

Stuart Wellington

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

[16:01] But I guess he's in that movie.

[16:02] You know, he's on a Zoom call.

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

[16:05] Yeah.

[16:05] And he has a beard in this.

Elliott Kalan

[16:06] And he doesn't always have a beard that heavy when he's performing.

[16:09] And glasses.

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

Stuart Wellington

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

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

[16:14] Stephen Merchant.

[16:14] He's super tall, too.

[16:16] So, yeah.

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

[16:18] Every now and then...

Elliott Kalan

[16:19] Yep, that's how it works.

[16:21] Thanks, Peter Jackson.

Stuart Wellington

[16:25] That's the greatest compliment you've ever given me, Dan.

[16:27] Thank you so much.

Elliott Kalan

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

[16:32] We have to get Stephen Merchant to play Gandalf.

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

Dan McCoy

[16:36] I thought you were going to say, if Peter Jackson was like, the computer told me tall makes

[16:42] others look small.

[16:43] We ran the numbers.

Elliott Kalan

[16:48] 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 could find.

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

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

[17:04] Okay.

[17:05] So, she has to fire all of her employees.

[17:08] That's terrible.

[17:08] She is the regional head of a fashion company.

[17:13] That seems to be owned by a larger corporation.

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

[17:16] She's in some kind of 21st century capitalist corporate stack.

[17:20] Yeah.

[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 of honor plate.

[17:32] A lot of responsibilities on her plate.

[17:33] No wonder she is super stressed.

[17:35] Yeah.

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

[17:39] Yeah, her co-workers are famous people.

[17:41] Her co-workers and suddenly her boss is Ben Stiller.

[17:43] And then she's Zooming with two people that she works with and it's Stephen Merchant and

[17:48] Mindy Kaling.

[17:48] And I was like, I don't understand what their jobs are or what they do.

[17:52] Taxton'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.

[18:04] And he's so funny in it.

Dan McCoy

[18:06] Well, okay, I think this is the moment to talk about something that we haven't talked about,

[18:10] but is perhaps the most important thing to talk about in this movie is the way the dialogue

[18:14] is written.

[18:15] Yes.

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

Elliott Kalan

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

Dan McCoy

[18:22] Thank you.

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

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

[18:29] But like...

Elliott Kalan

[18:29] 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 and the Barley?

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

[18:36] Oh, yeah.

[18:37] Well, I'm having time.

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

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

[18:42] What?

[18:43] But anyway...

Dan McCoy

[18:43] But I definitely...

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

[18:49] You know, I mean, obviously because of the limited number of sets that you could deal

[18:54] with, it has 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.

[19:07] Yes.

[19:08] That's why his character works so well.

Stuart Wellington

[19:10] Yeah.

[19:11] I feel like of the performers, Ben Kingsley probably takes the dialogue the best.

[19:16] I think Chiwetel J.

[19:17] Ejiofor does a pretty remarkable job of dealing with it.

[19:21] Yes.

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

[19:26] speeches that are a little bit too much, I think.

Elliott Kalan

[19:29] Well, and her...

[19:30] I think it's more that her character...

[19:33] I think the movie would have been...

[19:34] Would have felt...

[19:35] If Chiwetel Ejiofor was the heightened character and the other character's dialogue was maybe

[19:39] not quite as heightened.

[19:40] Yes.

[19:40] She comes off as even more of an outsider eccentric.

[19:43] Yeah.

[19:43] But there were times when...

[19:44] 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, it

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

[19:56] This is not...

[19:56] I mean, I never really bought these characters in a relationship together.

[20:00] The two performers, I could see it.

[20:02] But the two characters, it was like...

[20:04] Basically, so people who watched our Flophouse pandemic live shows may remember that during

[20:09] one of my presentations, I pitched an Anne Hathaway movie called 40 Night Stand, where

[20:15] she and Channing Tatum have a one night stand the night before lockdown, and now they're stuck

[20:18] in an apartment together.

[20:19] And this was kind of that.

[20:21] And I would have bought this movie more if they were people who did not have a relationship,

[20:26] but instead had fallen into a one night stand that was forced to extend.

[20:29] Because they were like, their characters just never seemed to...

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

[20:35] different people, which is possible, but hard for me to believe that either of them was

[20:39] once like a biker tough, you know, like a wild biker, which is what they are constantly

[20:44] telling you they were.

Stuart Wellington

[20:45] But he puts that bandana around his face.

[20:48] I think he looks pretty tough.

Elliott Kalan

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

[20:54] people went to Sturgis.

[20:54] I'm sorry.

[20:55] Not the kind of biker he was, not the kind of person she was, but maybe, I don't know.

[20:59] It's anyway, people change.

[21:00] So anyway, here's the thing.

[21:02] Ben Kingsley talks to Paxton.

[21:03] He says, here's the plot, Gov.

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

[21:12] is, they're worried about rioting 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.

[21:23] Unfortunately, because you have a criminal record, you can't do this under your real name.

[21:27] You wouldn't pass the security check.

[21:28] So I'm going to give you a fake ID with a fake name on it, and you're going to drive these.

[21:33] It's a real name.

[21:34] It is a real name.

[21:36] It's not his real.

[21:36] One of the realists.

[21:37] It is a very real name in that another person, as we find out later, the name is Edgar Allan Poe,

[21:41] which is like, it's very funny because it's like, I don't know how well-known Edgar Allan Poe is in England.

[21:47] But it seems that not many people blink an eye at it.

[21:52] But also, people have the same names as famous people all the time.

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

[22:00] I hate it.

[22:01] Or something like that.

Dan McCoy

[22:01] I really expected that to come up because it's such an obvious way to just wave it away if you get into trouble.

[22:08] But yeah, I don't...

Elliott Kalan

[22:09] Do you remember there was a commercial years ago about for something, when one of the James Bond movies came out.

Stuart Wellington

[22:13] Wait, was it the Where's the Beef commercial?

Elliott Kalan

[22:16] Yeah, it was the Where's the Beef commercial.

[22:17] Was it the one about squeezing the Charmin?

[22:19] All these guys named WT Beef were like, hey, that's my name.

[22:23] There was this James Bond ad where it was regular people saying, I'm James Bond, I'm James Bond, because their names were James Bond.

[22:30] Like, that was their birth name.

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

[22:37] But he's like, oh my God, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?

[22:40] And every single person he meets throughout is like, yeah, Edgar Allan Poe, sure, that's a real name.

[22:44] I've never heard of anyone like that.

[22:45] It's not weird to me.

[22:46] You're using your middle name as part of your name, sure, I get it.

Dan McCoy

[22:49] It's skipping a little ahead.

[22:51] I mean, we're already there.

[22:52] It's skipping a little ahead in the plot.

[22:53] When he learns it, you know, that's one of my favorite 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] The name tag's already been laminated.

[23:06] They can't change it.

Stuart Wellington

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

[23:15] Yes.

[23:15] I guess in the eyes of God or –

Elliott Kalan

[23:17] This is a chance to prove himself worthy of a promotion out of driving to do something.

[23:22] He'll be working in customer service meeting with clients.

[23:24] And so this is a chance for him to get over the criminal – ironically, he'll have to break the law in order to get past the blot on his record caused by his one criminal act.

[23:35] If he's caught, though, he will go to jail as someone who is using fraud to possibly steal things.

[23:40] And his boss will say, I didn't know anything about it.

[23:43] So that's his choice he has to make.

[23:45] Meanwhile, Linda's boss, Ben Stiller, in a very understated performance, he tells her that all their company –

[23:52] Were you hoping for like a Tropic Thunder level performance?

[23:55] Yeah.

[23:55] I want him to go big with it.

[23:58] You know, Stiller, he loves to play characters.

[24:02] He loves to play big, wild characters.

Dan McCoy

[24:04] You saying – like you just mentioning his understated in passing made me reflect on him and be like, yeah, that is one of the better Ben Stiller performances I've seen.

[24:13] Like I do think – like reigning him in, like I think it's pretty good actually here.

Elliott Kalan

[24:18] It's more on the Walter Mitty end of the scale than the Zoolander end of the scale.

[24:23] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[24:24] So she realized –

[24:26] Oh, man.

[24:26] Wouldn't it have been crazy if he confused those characters?

[24:31] He made Walter Mitty a Zoolander or the bad guy from Dodgeball?

[24:35] Could you imagine it?

Elliott Kalan

[24:37] I am right now.

[24:38] No, wait.

[24:38] Now I'm imagining it.

[24:39] Yep.

[24:40] Okay.

[24:40] The mustache.

[24:41] Yep.

[24:41] I can see.

[24:42] Yeah.

[24:43] Good stuff.

[24:44] So he says we need to put all our stuff in storage to Linda, which is the same stuff that Paxton is going to have to deliver later.

[24:51] The movie takes forever to reveal that it's the same stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[24:54] Sean Penn would have been furious if he showed up as his Zoolander character to the set of Walter Mitty.

[25:01] Sean Penn would have – he would have been livid.

[25:03] Yeah.

[25:03] Well, imagine how Will Ferrell would feel.

Elliott Kalan

[25:05] Yeah.

[25:06] That's true.

[25:07] He's like, I'm going to look ridiculous if I'm the only one acting at this level.

[25:10] Come on.

[25:12] And Linda reveals to Paxton that she's gone back to smoking and she kind of has – she talks about a breakdown she had on a trip to Paris that she never told him about for a business dinner.

Dan McCoy

[25:22] What – I'm sorry.

[25:24] This is one of the floweriest speeches and I kind of –

[25:28] At one point she's just naming flowers.

[25:30] I kind of zoned out on this one.

[25:32] Like what was the kind of breaking point of that?

Elliott Kalan

[25:37] Well, so she's really – she has this big dinner with the head of the company, which is not Ben Stiller, but this kind of German, vaguely evil German, which is such a redundancy.

[25:48] Even likable Germans are still – even Bruno Gantz.

[25:52] And if there's a more likable German than Bruno Gantz, I don't know him.

[25:55] But even he played Hitler.

[25:56] So, you know.

Dan McCoy

[25:57] What about the good German?

[25:58] I heard there was one of those.

[26:01] I saw a movie about it.

Elliott Kalan

[26:02] I haven't seen it.

[26:03] Wait.

[26:03] Is Wolfgang Puck German?

[26:05] Because that guy's great.

[26:06] I mean, Wolfgang sounds German, but Puck does not.

[26:09] That sounds Canadian.

[26:09] So I don't know.

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

[26:15] There's no way to find out.

[26:17] So she went to this business dinner, and it was made clear at this dinner that she is now at the level of her career where she can no longer close her eyes to the fact that she works for a bad guy who is dealing with bad people and doing things in kind of corrupt, sinister ways.

[26:33] And the guy asks for her to come see him after the dinner, and she has a breakdown in her room and breaks a mirror and steals a glass statue and then forgets it on the channel train.

[26:46] But later on, the boss is like, you know, I was going to seduce you that night, which she seems to have known already.

[26:51] Like, that was the night when she realized, oh, I'm not a kid who's, like, moving up in the world.

[26:55] I'm a grown-up who does a bad job, who works with bad people, you know.

[27:01] And ever since then, she's been living under that cloud, and she talks about a vision she had of some evil kind of smoke eel that now follows her, you know.

Dan McCoy

[27:11] Yeah, by the time I tuned back in on the speech, we got into the smoke eel, so I was confused.

Elliott Kalan

[27:17] Yeah, yeah.

[27:18] It briefly becomes a Miyazaki movie in her mind, and then becomes a Doug Liman, Stephen Knight joint.

Stuart Wellington

[27:24] Yeah, or the machine from beyond.

[27:26] Can we cycle back real quick?

[27:28] Let's do it.

[27:28] Let's cycle back like we're on a motorcycle in reverse, sure.

[27:30] We didn't really talk about the name Wolfgang.

[27:32] I know it's German, but, like, that's an awesome name, right?

[27:36] Because it's a gang of wolves?

[27:37] That's fucking badass.

Elliott Kalan

[27:39] Wolf is a name.

[27:40] They saw that wolf, and they raised it, because they're like, one wolf is cool.

[27:43] What about a gang of wolves?

[27:44] That would be amazing.

[27:45] What about a billion wolves?

[27:47] That's incredible.

[27:47] No, that would be Wolf Billion.

[27:50] Yesterday, my younger son, who is about to turn three, he had a barrel of monkeys, and he goes,

[27:56] Daddy, there's 10 million monkeys in here.

[27:59] And I loved the idea of this, the phrase, 10 million monkeys.

[28:04] So, yeah, a billion wolves is almost as good as 10 million monkeys.

[28:07] Okay, so Paxton finds out the name is Edgar Allan Poe.

[28:11] Paxton refers to Edgar Allan Poe as a novelist and poet, which is a bit of a stretch.

[28:15] He wrote one novel.

[28:16] Yeah, unfinished.

[28:16] He's known for his poems and short stories.

[28:17] Unfinished.

[28:18] Barely a full novel.

[28:19] It famously ends with a scene that makes no sense, and yet is haunting for that reason.

[28:25] So it's a bit stretching things, but I am a fan of Edgar Allan Poe's work.

[28:27] His life as a person again.

[28:29] We've got to separate it from his work, even though they are, in fact, inseparable.

[28:32] But anyway.

Dan McCoy

[28:33] He did solve all those crimes, though, if I recall from that movie we did on the show.

[28:39] That John Cusack one?

Elliott Kalan

[28:40] Yeah.

[28:40] Where he had a pet raccoon?

[28:43] That's the one.

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

[28:46] I don't even remember the crime he was solving.

[28:48] I assume it was a murderer of some kind.

Dan McCoy

[28:50] There were like copycat crimes of like Poe stories, I think.

[28:53] Right.

[28:54] Right.

[28:54] Someone was doing Poe murders.

Stuart Wellington

[28:56] Somebody got paid to write that.

[28:58] Good on them.

[28:58] They worked the system.

Elliott Kalan

[29:00] They did.

[29:01] They sure did.

[29:01] But the card's already been laminated, as we said.

[29:03] He's got to do it.

[29:04] He's worried he's going to get caught.

[29:06] And his work nemesis, Martin, who's trying to get him caught and hates him, he kind of teases

[29:12] Paxton with the idea that he could steal the stuff he's driving.

[29:14] That there's really nobody's going to know if he just steals it.

[29:17] No one would ever know.

[29:18] It's a fake name.

[29:19] They don't know.

[29:19] The goods are just going to the warehouse anyway.

[29:21] Yeah.

[29:21] He like lays out the plot again.

[29:23] I'm like, yeah, we know, dude.

[29:26] The movie is constantly telling the characters how easy it would be to steal this stuff.

[29:30] And it takes a very long time for them to realize that they should steal this stuff.

[29:34] Linda, she gets a promotion.

[29:35] She doesn't take it well.

[29:36] They say, you're going to go back to New York.

[29:38] You're going to get promoted.

[29:39] And she's like, well, I don't know if I want to do that.

[29:41] And Paxton's making his deliveries.

[29:44] Linda reveals to Paxton's sister that Linda is the one who is buying Paxton's motorcycle secretly

[29:49] to then give it to Paxton as a gift so that he hasn't lost everything in his life when

[29:54] they break up and lockdown is over.

[29:57] And she asks his half-brother to pretend it's him who's doing it so that he'll accept this

[30:01] bike.

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

Stuart Wellington

[30:14] Like, unnecessary.

[30:14] It doesn't really do anything.

[30:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[30:16] I think it is meant to be a character catalyst where Chiwetel Ejiofor realizes that she now

[30:24] 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.

Elliott Kalan

[30:31] And the bike very much represents the recklessness and freedom of their previous lives.

[30:38] Not just the freedom to leave the house, which he does constantly anyway.

[30:41] Considering it's lockdown, he's constantly leaving the house.

[30:44] Yeah.

[30:44] But also the freedom of youth 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.

[30:51] But it's...

[30:51] Anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[30:52] I mean, 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 doc.

[30:59] Oh.

Elliott Kalan

[31:00] Yeah.

[31:01] That makes sense.

[31:02] Because during lockdown, I don't know if you know this, he became kind of a national

[31:04] hero in England because he was like, COVID for me to poop on.

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

[31:15] We don't have to call him that because we're American, but English people have to call him

[31:18] that by law or else they go to jail.

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

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

[31:22] Did he...

Stuart Wellington

[31:23] When he was knighted, did he have a cigar in his mouth or no?

[31:26] It was very against protocol, but he did have the cigar in his mouth.

Elliott Kalan

[31:30] Yes.

[31:30] Yeah.

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

[31:35] And the queen laughed so hard that they named it a national holiday.

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

[31:41] Oh, wow.

[31:41] All swans, whales, and dolphins, I believe, are the property of the queen of England.

[31:45] So Triumph, and by which I mean Robert Smigel, 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 with no peerage or title.

Dan McCoy

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

[32:02] And it didn't work though.

Elliott Kalan

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

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

[32:08] I don't love being a royal.

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

Stuart Wellington

[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.

Elliott Kalan

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

Stuart Wellington

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

[32:22] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[32:23] They're not alive during the same time periods, but that's totally okay.

[32:27] There's the scene where John Major approaches her about forming a government, and she pulls

[32:33] that big latex glove on before she tells him, yes, he does have permission.

[32:37] Great scene.

[32:38] Great season of The Crown.

[32:39] Anyway, Linda's like, Paxton, I set up the security systems.

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

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

[32:46] You can go in and make it work, but we're going to have to break the law if you're going

[32:49] to make this delivery.

[32:50] Then there's a scene that is also unnecessary, where Linda talks to Stephen Merchant and Mindy

[32:54] Kaling about, ostensibly, the security at Harrods, but instead it becomes about somebody's

[32:59] marriage falling apart.

[33:01] It's just like a comedy scene.

Stuart Wellington

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

Elliott Kalan

[33:03] Just having a laugh.

[33:04] Just having a bit of a laugh.

[33:05] Why not?

[33:05] Come on.

[33:05] It's locked down.

[33:06] Give them that.

[33:07] That's when Linda gets her motivation to really break bad, or as the movie would have

[33:11] it, good.

[33:13] Linda gets a call from her boss, the big top boss from Germany, who essentially says,

[33:18] oh yeah, this famous diamond, this three million pound diamond, not weight, it's worth three

[33:24] million pounds.

[33:25] If it was a three million pound diamond, it would not be at a department store.

[33:27] It would still be at the center of the earth, unclaimed, 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, he never names the person, but he essentially makes it clear they're

[33:39] either a dictator or the relative of a dictator of an oppressive country.

[33:43] I just assumed it was Kim Jong-un, but it could be any, it could be the president of,

[33:47] is it Georgia?

[33:49] That guy's particularly bad, but he's, he wants to be-

Dan McCoy

[33:51] They're called governors, Elliot.

[33:53] That's a-

[33:54] Not?

[33:55] Oh boy.

[33:56] All right.

[33:57] The look on Elliot's face as he tried to process what I was saying.

Elliott Kalan

[34:04] And she says, well, I don't, and he goes, now that you're having this promotion, you

[34:07] need to, with your last job here, your last big job in London is you're going to take this

[34:12] diamond, you're going to put it in a box, and you're going to ship it to New York, where

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

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

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

[34:20] Yeah.

[34:20] It's just going to be, it might as well just be an empty box that has something in it

[34:23] that weighs as much as a diamond, and when he tries to-

Dan McCoy

[34:26] You know, this dictator loves when he gets stuff stolen from him, by the way.

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

Elliott Kalan

[34:33] He loves, he loves, he gets, he can only ejaculate when he finds out he's been ripped off.

[34:38] So take for that what you will, but no one will ever look at this diamond, and if he did

[34:42] find out, it would be the greatest orgasm of his life.

[34:45] So do with that what you, and she's like, well, it's good to steal from bad people, but

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

[34:51] 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, 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 on to her over Zoom.

[35:03] He says, I was going to seduce you, and we'll talk about it after your promotion.

[35:06] The only thing she can do is rage dance in the garden 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 and ended up in a petting zoo hanging

[35:16] out with some goats.

[35:17] Yeah.

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

[35:21] Yeah.

[35:21] They have post running from the police sex, and she is suddenly urged with a desire to

[35:27] 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, 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.

[35:39] We're going to go there.

[35:40] We're going to wait until we actually have the diamond in our hands before we decide

[35:44] whether or not we're going to steal the diamond.

[35:46] And this is the dumbest bit of suspense they could possibly build into it.

[35:50] Yeah.

[35:50] Because throughout the rest of the movie, they're having conversations with themselves.

[35:52] Should we do it?

[35:53] Should we not do it?

[35:53] We know they're going to do it.

[35:54] There's no movie if they don't do it.

[35:56] What would be more anticlimactic than for them to be like, no, property rights are paramount.

[36:01] We cannot steal this diamond.

Stuart Wellington

[36:03] The more they talked about, the more I'm like, is this movie going to end on the spinning

[36:07] top at the end of Inception type shit where you're like, is it or is it, did they get

[36:11] the real one or the fake one?

[36:12] Yeah.

[36:13] Does it even matter?

Elliott Kalan

[36:14] Or are they going to decide at the last minute not to steal it, but the cops think they're

[36:18] stealing it and kill them?

[36:20] And it's so like, oh, ironically, they were killed for a crime they didn't commit.

Dan McCoy

[36:24] And again, not a satisfying ending to this movie.

[36:30] Decidedly.

[36:31] Yeah.

[36:32] You mentioned in passing, I do want to say, even though the way it is written, I mean,

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

[36:42] It's not quite like how it would really be in life, even if someone was having a bit of

[36:48] a breakdown maybe.

[36:49] But I did find it very funny, the scene where Anne Hathaway was laying out things, but not

[36:55] quite wanting to say that she wants to steal the diamond yet.

[36:58] And 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.

Elliott Kalan

[37:09] No, I think that's a really good scene for Anne Hathaway because she has to keep swerving

[37:14] back and forth and she's doing a really good job of it.

[37:16] Yeah, it's very funny.

[37:17] It's a good version of the bad scene in The Happening where Malky Warburg, they're like,

[37:22] you want to kill me, don't you?

[37:23] And he goes, what?

[37:25] No.

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

Dan McCoy

[37:29] Hold on.

[37:29] Where's this movie going?

Elliott Kalan

[37:31] Hold on, because this is not something that's been in his character.

[37:33] He's been a science teacher trying to save his kids up till now.

Dan McCoy

[37:36] What if the movie just threw in the fact that he was a serial killer at that moment?

[37:42] Like, you didn't know that you were following a serial killer, Mark Wahlberg, through The

[37:46] Happening.

[37:47] That sounds like-

[37:48] And Sight loves his twists.

[37:49] And The Happening was happening to get back at him for all the murders, but it keeps acting

[37:54] happening to other people.

Elliott Kalan

[37:54] I mean, it seems like an overreaction for every plant in the world to kill every person because

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

[38:00] Yeah.

[38:00] That seems a bit much.

[38:02] A bit much.

Dan McCoy

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

Elliott Kalan

[38:05] I mean, that is only one of many problems with the scenario that you have just briefly sketched

[38:10] 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 that makes it into theaters where it's

[38:21] like, there's a plague, but a serial killer is on the loose.

[38:26] Where it's like, the serial killer's the hero, kind of, and you're like, I guess it's basically

[38:30] just the minus man, but with a plague.

[38:32] Anyway-

[38:32] Yeah, or the devil in the white city.

[38:34] Yeah, well, the devil in the white city, 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?

Stuart Wellington

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

Elliott Kalan

[38:46] They talked about it for years, but I mean, I think the time has passed when you're going

[38:49] to make a big movie 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?

Dan McCoy

[38:57] Yeah, the Columbian Exposition craze of 95?

[39:01] When the book came out.

[39:02] When the devil in the white city came out, it was a best-selling book.

Elliott Kalan

[39:05] But now I could 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] Lind on his bike, Paxton in his van.

Stuart Wellington

[39:14] This is the point where the movie feels like a commercial for fucking Harrods, right?

[39:18] For Harrods.

Elliott Kalan

[39:19] And for any listeners who are not familiar, Harrods is a huge department store in London.

[39:24] And yeah, they spend a lot of time wandering around Harrods talking about all the amazing

[39:27] stuff that's for sale at Harrods.

[39:30] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[39:30] Char and I, when we were in England, what, a year and a half ago, two years ago?

[39:35] It all blurs together.

[39:36] We actually went for like a tea service at Harrods.

[39:41] And it was very expensive.

Elliott Kalan

[39:43] Yeah.

[39:43] That's how they do it over there.

[39:46] And that exchange rate.

[39:47] I mean, come on.

[39:48] I remember once being in London and my wife and I, we were just walking all day and we

[39:54] were so hot.

[39:56] And the exchange rate was so bad that I was like, I'm just going to get a glass of Coke.

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

[39:59] 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, 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

[40:18] they're about to look at his badge.

[40:19] But there's definitely more people there.

[40:20] Because when they see his badge, nobody thinks it's a weird name anyway.

Dan McCoy

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

[40:29] contrivances to make this heist work, the biggest contrivance is that Linda has not told anyone

[40:36] about this, you know, like, decade-long relationship she has with, she will tell GF4's character,

[40:44] like, none of the people at work know that she even has a partner.

Stuart Wellington

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

[40:50] He's great.

Elliott Kalan

[40:51] You'd be shouting it from the rooftops or walking into the street and declaiming it as if it

[40:54] 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.

[41:04] 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 he 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?

Justin McElroy

[41:21] And he's just moving so fast that we can't see him?

[41:23] Is that a possibility?

[41:24] They didn't even have scenes together.

Elliott Kalan

[41:27] For instance, when I was making The Martian, it was another one where I was like, there's

[41:33] a lot of science-y stuff around here.

[41:35] 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.

[41:49] I have to admit, the reason I took the role in Locked In was I saw, first on the cast

[41:54] sheet was Sonic as the hedgehog.

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

[42:00] 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.

[42:09] 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 having

[42:29] 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 when you, 10 years ago, when you first met,

[42:46] it is impossible for you to, the relationship will die unless you continue to be in an unnatural

[42:51] state of youthful wildness.

Stuart Wellington

[42:53] It's like what you're always saying, Elliot.

[42:54] You're really hoping for the emotional maturity of like a Judd Apatow movie, right?

Elliott Kalan

[42:59] In my life, yes.

[43:00] That's exactly what I want.

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

[43:02] Yeah.

[43:02] 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.

Dan McCoy

[43:08] 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.

[43:21] You're like going and getting a picnic.

[43:23] You're like...

Elliott Kalan

[43:23] Having long conversations with each other.

[43:25] Yeah.

[43:25] 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 are inseparable during this time.

[43:33] 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 work for me.

[43:45] But I am...

[43:45] 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] Okay.

[43:55] 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.

[43:59] 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?

[44:08] 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] Wow.

Stuart Wellington

[44:16] Yeah.

[44:17] The diamond looks like it's the size of like a really big almond.

Dan McCoy

[44:21] Yeah.

[44:21] Yes.

[44:21] Yeah.

[44:22] Where I really did want to see like an Uncle Scrooge style.

[44:25] Yes.

[44:26] Almost as big as your head.

Elliott Kalan

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

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

[44:32] 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.

[44:40] But, you know, 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, et cetera.

[44:45] A little bit taller diamond.

[44:47] I wish.

[44:47] So they take the diamond.

[44:50] And now Paxton has to pull the replica from a display tank that is full of piranhas for

[44:55] some reason.

[44:55] This does not pay off as a suspense moment either.

Stuart Wellington

[44:58] Those are CGI, right?

[45:00] I think those are real piranhas.

[45:01] You think they put star actor Chiwetel J.

[45:05] Four's hand in a tank with piranhas?

Elliott Kalan

[45:07] I mean, the thing is, piranhas are not that dangerous unless they're hungry and you're backing

[45:12] them into a corner.

[45:13] Like you can be around piranhas.

[45:15] Or maybe not.

[45:16] Stuart's giving me a real dubious look.

[45:17] Stuart's giving me a real church lady doesn't believe me look.

[45:20] Okay.

[45:21] So he takes the diamond.

[45:24] 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.

[45:33] Mark Gattis shows up.

[45:34] And he says they got an anonymous tip.

[45:37] We know it's from Paxton's co-worker Martin that the driver was using a fake name and Mark

[45:41] Gattis has already called the police.

[45:43] Uh-oh.

[45:43] He needs to wet that dude up.

[45:46] What do you mean by that?

[45:47] I don't understand.

Stuart Wellington

[45:48] Somebody needs to smoke that idiot.

[45:50] I don't understand.

[45:52] Wait, I don't get it.

Dan McCoy

[45:53] I think Stuart wants the guy who snitched to be killed.

Elliott Kalan

[45:59] Is that the case?

[46:00] Like a large...

Dan McCoy

[46:02] I mean, he did seem to be a real asshole, but I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[46:05] Yeah, dude.

[46:06] He's like murdering him.

[46:07] Not Mark Gattis.

[46:08] You mean Mark?

[46:08] Mark Gattis is fine.

[46:09] No, the guy...

[46:09] Oh, the bad co-worker.

[46:12] Okay, well, him...

[46:12] I mean, if it helps you, he's not a real person, so he only existed for a moment on film,

[46:18] and now it completely doesn't exist anymore.

[46:20] So even worse than being killed, he leaves nothing behind him on life for that one scene,

[46:24] and he will never remain in our memories.

[46:27] So that helps, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[46:28] He exists only to be the villain in their story.

[46:31] He's like an Aaron Burr-type figure.

[46:32] Very sad, actually.

Elliott Kalan

[46:34] I mean, Aaron Burr, except Aaron Burr was a real person who had a life and did things

[46:37] in history, and now the other side of his story has been told in a little play

[46:40] 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 that's what you've probably heard of him for.

[46:50] Anyway, so he did that, right?

[46:52] I think he did the music for the Bring It On musical.

[46:54] Hold on.

[46:55] Let me take a look.

Stuart Wellington

[46:56] Maybe.

[46:56] I mean, I know there's talk about him doing the Fast and Furious musical with Vin Diesel,

[47:02] so...

[47:03] Is there talk of that?

[47:04] Yeah, because Vin said he wants to make a musical, and of course there's going to be

[47:08] the inevitable celebrity couple named Vin Manuel Miranda.

[47:12] Yeah, of course.

Elliott Kalan

[47:12] But how do you do...

[47:13] I guess the cars are in their minds.

[47:16] Yeah, Vin Manuel Miranda.

Dan McCoy

[47:16] Of all the major action movie series, that's the one I can most see as a musical.

[47:21] Like, to me, I'm like, yes, natural fit.

Elliott Kalan

[47:24] I would say...

[47:25] I would tweak it slightly.

[47:26] That's an opera.

[47:27] 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 loud singing.

Stuart Wellington

[47:33] You can't have a sung-through musical without it being an opera.

Elliott Kalan

[47:36] So, Lin Manuel Miranda did co-write the music and lyrics for the Bring It On musical.

[47:39] So, my memory was mostly correct.

[47:42] Okay.

[47:43] Anyway, Mark Gattis is there.

[47:44] He's like, the police are coming.

[47:46] And Donald's like, uh...

[47:47] I mean, Paxton.

[47:49] Donald is the guy.

[47:49] Is Mark Gattis' character.

[47:50] And he's like, oh, no, oh, no.

[47:52] 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,

[47:59] and we're going to stick it to our bosses.

[48:01] And Mark Gattis so quickly is on their side.

[48:04] And he has a monologue about how he's been liberated by COVID and the lockdown to become

[48:08] this romantic, free-thing person.

[48:10] And he realized they all have such terrible, bland lives, and it's so horrible.

[48:14] And now he's been radicalized and, like, goes on for a while.

Stuart Wellington

[48:17] 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.

[48:25] Like, have them make their big speech, and the whole time you're thinking he's taking it,

[48:29] and he's going to turn them in.

[48:31] And then he's just like, okay.

[48:33] No, yeah, it's fine.

[48:34] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[48:34] I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if Mark Gattis 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.

Dan McCoy

[48:41] It goes on for a while, but I did like the, you know, the cap to that scene where, like,

[48:46] Chiwetel or Geo 4 is 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.

[48:56] She's like, you know, let him have his moment.

[48:58] It'll be fine.

[48:59] We'll get out.

Elliott Kalan

[48:59] Because she knows also he's just a character on a screen.

[49:02] This is his moment.

[49:02] And then, again, less than dust in the wind.

[49:05] He's just frames of celluloid that will eventually burn up, like, nitrate sock.

[49:09] There are no small parts except this one.

[49:12] So let's let him have the most of it.

[49:14] There are only small actors, of which Mark Gattis is not one, as we've mentioned.

[49:17] Yeah, he's very tall.

[49:18] Yeah.

[49:19] You've just slumbered here while these...

[49:22] While Mark Gattis talked to dogs.

[49:24] Yeah.

[49:25] In the elevator with the merchandise, Paxton is paged to come to...

Stuart Wellington

[49:29] So, anything happened with the piranhas?

[49:30] Do they, like, dump the police in the piranhas?

[49:33] No.

Elliott Kalan

[49:33] His hand goes in the water, and I assume the piranhas will then flush down the toilet,

[49:37] 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,

[49:44] so they can look comically at the camera.

Dan McCoy

[49:46] For a second, you're like an old...

[49:47] Yeah, like Bugs Bunny or something.

[49:49] Yeah, on the turtlets.

Elliott Kalan

[49:50] They're going through the turtlets to...

[49:52] Now those piranhas are just there so that people can have Benny Hill-type gags in their own home.

[49:57] So, security starts paging Edgar Allan Poe.

[50:01] They're like, we gotta get out of here.

[50:02] Oh, no.

[50:03] They're running.

[50:03] It's paging.

[50:04] They see Stephen Merchant.

[50:05] He's like, Linda?

[50:05] And they run in the other direction.

[50:06] And then security reaches them just as they get to the door.

[50:10] Hey, you left your ID.

[50:12] I have it for you.

[50:13] You're gonna need it when you get to the airport.

Stuart Wellington

[50:14] Wap, wap, wah.

Elliott Kalan

[50:16] Turns out nobody knows who Edgar Allan Poe is.

[50:19] A stunning indictment of the British educational system.

[50:22] Yeah.

[50:22] But I guess England has its own poems and its own poets.

[50:26] I don't know why they need to know who Edgar Allan Poe is, but the movie certainly made it seem like someone would know who that was.

Stuart Wellington

[50:31] So, there's...

[50:32] The thing that's stuck in my head, though, is that they never...

[50:35] He never, like, takes the stuff he's supposed to pick up and take...

[50:40] So, they would just catch him.

[50:42] Exactly.

[50:43] He does not do the job.

[50:44] And he fails completely.

Elliott Kalan

[50:46] I guess he would just get fired from his job, right?

[50:49] I mean, you can't throw someone in jail for not doing their job unless their job is not murdering people.

[50:56] Yeah.

[50:56] And they fail to do that and they murder someone, then you throw them in jail.

[50:59] Well, you should at least.

[51:01] Yeah.

[51:01] You have to assume he's...

[51:02] Well, he doesn't care about losing his job because they've got this diamonds now, I guess.

Stuart Wellington

[51:05] But I feel like if they just leave all the shit and he doesn't take it to Heathrow, they're more likely to double-check it, right?

Elliott Kalan

[51:11] You would think so, especially since you see them going to the airport on the motorcycle.

[51:14] So, I assume they did send the fake diamond in the box.

[51:18] Yeah.

[51:18] So, yeah.

[51:19] 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.

[51:25] They're reckless.

[51:25] And to be honest, movie logic, would you rather see the two of them split up and then Paxton successfully deliver a bunch of boxes of stuff and unload them in a warehouse?

[51:35] Or would you want to see the two stars of our movie recklessly riding on a motorbike through deserted streets of London?

[51:41] The cold night air on their faces, 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 since it's based on moments like these.

[51:57] But just for that moment, isn't the movie – the movie is worth it for that, you know?

[52:02] And the next morning, Linda is like, lockdown's been extended, but they're together again, and she forgot it's his birthday, which I get.

[52:10] Lockdown, you know, it's hard.

[52:11] You forget what day it is.

[52:12] And Paxton walks out and this time recites a happy poem, or at least a love-based poem, to the neighborhood.

[52:19] And as Linda beams at him from a window, and during the credits, Paxton fulfills the tease he gave earlier in the movie and bakes bread.

[52:28] We just watch him baking bread through the credits.

[52:30] So that's a little lockdown joke.

[52:32] That's what people do during lockdown.

Dan McCoy

[52:33] Her birthday present to him is the flour, allowing him to bake bread.

[52:37] The flour he bought.

[52:37] That he bought.

[52:38] Yeah.

[52:39] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[52:40] I mean, as far as birthday gifts go, that's not the worst one I've ever gotten.

Elliott Kalan

[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.

Dan McCoy

[52:50] Specifically one movie called Hall Pass.

[52:52] Yeah, one movie called Hall Pass.

[52:54] Wait, that was a birthday gift?

Elliott Kalan

[52:56] I think it was an anniversary gift, maybe.

[52:58] But this was a – and there was that one season of Caribbean Enthusiasm where they did that, too.

Stuart Wellington

[53:04] Steve Merchanson, at least one of those two things, right?

[53:09] He's in the movie Hall Pass, right?

[53:10] Yeah?

[53:10] I don't – I've never seen it.

[53:12] Dan, check the tapes.

[53:14] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[53:15] Look, I was too busy watching these Check New Wave movies to watch Hall Pass.

[53:18] Yeah, Dan, just –

Dan McCoy

[53:19] Hold on my Criterion Blu-ray of Hall Pass.

Elliott Kalan

[53:24] Dan, don't bother with the commentary or the behind-the-scenes featurettes or anything.

[53:28] Just check the credit list in the booklet.

Stuart Wellington

[53:31] And double-check the –

[53:33] The Bogdanovich intro.

[53:34] Yeah, double-check the Blu-ray box that you don't have the Criterion Collection Blu-ray of Drillbit Taylor instead.

[53:39] Oh, sorry.

[53:41] Sometimes, you know, when you're watching them so much, they get mixed up in the cases.

Elliott Kalan

[53:44] It's amazing how Criterion – they're like, we're not going to put out Wes Anderson movies anymore.

[53:49] Only Owen Wilson movies.

[53:50] It realized that's who they were following all that time when they were putting those Criterion sets out.

[53:55] Yeah.

[53:56] So, yeah, but she was giving him the permission to bake bread without her making room.

[54:01] So that's Locked Down, the story of our lives.

Dan McCoy

[54:05] A guy and a gal locked down.

[54:09] Well, let's do final judgments about whether we – I think it's a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked.

[54:17] As I teased before, the movie broke me down over the course of it.

[54:23] Like, I don't know.

[54:24] I mean, won me over is another way to say it.

[54:28] Yeah.

[54:28] It won me over.

[54:29] Well, I do think it broke me down a little bit because it constructed a barrier to itself with a lot of the dialogue, I think.

[54:38] True, true.

[54:39] And the – I was trying to think of, like, why 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?

[54:48] I don't think that – but I think that maybe it's because the way it's directed doesn't necessarily reflect that.

[54:54] Like, it is, to me, a bit of an uneasy mix of, like, sometimes I'm like, oh, this is great, interesting dialogue.

[55:02] And sometimes I'm like, oh, God, movie?

[55:04] What the fuck are you doing?

[55:05] Yeah.

[55:06] And also, like, I find it, as I said earlier, easier to sympathize with a man who, like, made a mistake earlier in his life for good reasons

[55:17] and now has been punished for it all his life and looking for a way out, then, like, the character of Linda is more like, you know,

[55:26] how Linda got her groove back by stealing a diamond.

[55:29] Like, you know, it's just sort of vague dissatisfaction with life.

[55:33] 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, 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?

[55:50] It's kind of like – it's hard to – I don't know.

[55:55] But she's Anne Hathaway.

[55:56] I love Anne Hathaway.

[55:57] So over time, I loved her, too.

[56:00] And, yeah, I think I had fun.

[56:02] I kind of liked it.

Elliott Kalan

[56:03] This is a movie that at first I was like, is this going to be like a life itself type movie that takes itself so seriously

[56:09] 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 part of the issue is that it is so much – it seems at first like it's going to be a movie about how we live now

[56:24] and the experience of the pandemic and how it broke us down, and the heightened dialogue does not play well with that.

[56:30] But by the time you get, I would say, halfway through, certainly two-thirds of the way through,

[56:34] and it's like, oh, no, this is like a glossy, goofy movie that just happens to be set during lockdown

[56:40] because that gives the premise like – that creates a heist that's hard to do.

[56:44] Then I was like, okay, movie, I'm with you.

[56:46] So I actually came to like – I kind of liked it, too.

[56:49] It was – the beginning of it, though, was unpleasant going just because – for that reason.

[56:55] I was like, ugh, is this a movie that's going to tell me how I'm supposed to feel about this thing I just went through

[57:00] that 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.

Stuart Wellington

[57:06] I feel like that's the fear of a lot of like various pop culture trying to tackle the pandemic,

[57:13] like fear of that like the inevitable season of some television show that like is set during the pandemic.

[57:19] Like people don't want to – people 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 fall into to be like this thing is meant to give us a chance to like process life or like –

[57:35] 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.

[57:42] It is very overwritten.

[57:45] Yes.

[57:45] For what is just a goofy movie.

[57:47] Yeah.

[57:48] It's not the goofy movie again.

[57:50] I have to clarify that every time I bring that up.

Elliott Kalan

[57:52] Let's make it clear.

[57:53] Yeah.

[57:53] If anyone is watching this thinking it is the goofy movie starring Goofy and his son Goofit?

[57:58] I don't remember what it is.

[57:59] Max?

[57:59] It is not that.

[58:00] This is Lockdown starring Anne Hathaway and June 114.

Stuart Wellington

[58:03] It's also not Lockout, a.k.a. Space Jail starring Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace.

[58:08] What a movie.

[58:10] But I think it was a little bit too long.

[58:12] Like this movie is pushing two hours and you could trim out half an hour of that.

[58:16] Under no circumstance trim out Ben Kingsley.

[58:19] He's a treasure.

[58:20] I love him.

[58:21] In fact, find a way to put more of him in the movie.

[58:23] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[58:24] I mean to be honest, if it was about the guys who worked at the van place and Ben Kingsley

[58:29] having to like run these like borderline criminals and malcontents who –

[58:34] and they're the only people who can go out in public because they're essential workers.

[58:39] And like all of society is hinging on these kind of like outcasts and losers.

[58:43] That's like – it's like the TV show Taxi except they're the only ones allowed to leave the house because of a pandemic.

[58:48] Sounds like a pretty good movie.

[58:50] That sounds great.

[58:50] But yeah, I think 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.

Dan McCoy

[58:59] Yeah.

[58:59] Well, also I want to – like I wonder because this movie got, you know, at best pretty mixed reviews when it came out, which is why we thought it might be interesting to talk about.

[59:11] But like it –

[59:12] We were wrong.

[59:14] No.

[59:14] Well, I'm going to say like that if we had watched it when it came out, which was, you know, back in the winter, I wonder whether we would have liked it less for some of the reasons you're talking about of like it feeling so new.

[59:30] You know, whereas now like even this movie, which was made so recently, feels like a time capsule instead of something that like we have to be mad at, you know, because it's like –

[59:42] That's what we're experiencing.

Stuart Wellington

[59:43] Like I don't need to see like Terrence Malick's version of like a lockdown movie.

[59:48] Like no thank you, sir.

Elliott Kalan

[59:50] But for us living in the United States right now at this moment, it does already feel like a period piece, which is really interesting.

[59:56] And you're right.

[59:57] If we were watching it while – if we were watching it in 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?

[1:00:05] I think it might have been more unbearable.

[1:00:07] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:08] I'd be more apt to be like, fuck you, movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:11] I mean as it is, I was already like, masks.

[1:00:13] Why aren't you people wearing masks?

[1:00:15] And Chiletel J4 is 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.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:20] And 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 paper and Chiletel J4 goes,

[1:00:31] Oi, how many asses have you got?

[1:00:34] Like, it's great.

[1:00:35] Good stuff.

[1:00:37] Good stuff.

Justin McElroy

[1:00:43] One, two, one, two, three, five.

[1:00:45] Hi, everybody.

[1:00:46] My name is Justin McElroy.

[1:00:47] I'm Sydney McElroy.

[1:00:48] We're both doctors.

[1:00:49] Nope, just me.

[1:00:50] Okay.

[1:00:50] Well, Sydney's a doctor and I'm a medical enthusiast.

[1:00:53] And we create Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine.

Elliott Kalan

[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.

Justin McElroy

[1:01:07] Well, 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 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 Rhodes.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:37] Go ahead, caller.

Justin McElroy

[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.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:45] Yeah, man.

[1:01:46] Sounds like you need to listen to Heat Rocks every week.

Justin McElroy

[1:01:48] Myself and I'm Morgan Rhodes and my co-host here, Oliver Wong, talk to influential guests about a canonical album that has changed their lives.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:57] Guests like Moby, Open Mic Eagle, talk about albums by Prince Joni Mitchell and so much more.

Justin McElroy

[1:02:03] Yo, what's that show called again?

[1:02:05] Heat Rocks, deep dives into hot records.

[1:02:08] Every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:11] Well, let's take a moment to say thank you to our sponsors.

[1:02:17] The Flophouse is in line share supported by listeners by you, but we also have some great sponsors.

[1:02:26] And this week, the Flophouse is brought to you in part by Squarespace.

[1:02:31] 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.

[1:02:41] And Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful, customizable templates created by world-class designers.

[1:02:48] Everything optimized for mobile right out of the box.

[1:02:52] A new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions.

[1:02:56] And free and secure hosting.

[1:02:58] So head to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial.

[1:03:03] And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Elliott Kalan

[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] Okay.

[1:03:18] 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 wanted to start a website called sonicupload?com.

[1:03:34] Question mark is spelled out.

[1:03:36] Sonicupload?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.

[1:03:50] Or sneakers.

[1:03:51] Just like a little glimpse of sneakers.

[1:03:52] To see if Sonic was there at the time just running fast so 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 find those images.

[1:04:03] But can Squarespace help me make a site that people can upload stuff to?

Dan McCoy

[1:04:06] I 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.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:24] I mean, the Flash doesn't wear sneakers.

[1:04:26] It wears boots.

[1:04:26] Yeah, you also, you might accidentally catch the cast of the movie Sneakers.

[1:04:31] That's a good point.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:32] I should make sure that it says, like, HREF equals sneakers, but then not equals Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, the other members.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:41] That's a good point.

[1:04:43] Strathairn.

[1:04:44] What's the first one?

[1:04:45] David Strathairn, yeah.

[1:04:46] David Strathairn.

[1:04:47] That's who I was trying to think of.

[1:04:48] Michael Strathairn.

[1:04:49] Sidney Poitier.

[1:04:50] River Phoenix.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:52] Yeah, sure.

[1:04:52] Stacked.

[1:04:53] Is that all the sneakers?

[1:04:53] You got Marion McConnell.

[1:04:56] And Bill Sneakers.

[1:04:58] And Ben Grimsby.

[1:05:00] Yep.

[1:05:01] Ben Grimsby.

[1:05:03] That's when Ben Kingsley's a bad guy is Ben Grimsby.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:05] Yeah, sure.

[1:05:07] Okay, we also have another ad.

[1:05:09] This is a paid advertisement from BetterHelp.

[1:05:11] That's H-E-L-P.

[1:05:13] BetterHelp.

[1:05:14] Look, we're all dealing, this is a good episode for this one because we're all dealing with our mental health right now.

[1:05:19] Mental health is something that is at a premium.

[1:05:22] We're getting our shots to get rid of these viruses, but there's no mental health shop.

[1:05:27] And that's shot.

[1:05:28] There's a mental health shop.

[1:05:29] It's called a bookstore.

[1:05:31] Anyway, but there's no mental health shot.

[1:05:34] And so that's why there's services like BetterHelp.

[1:05:37] BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat sessions.

[1:05:42] They'll match you with a therapist in under 48 hours, and it's easy to change therapists if needed.

[1:05:46] Remember, you don't need a traumatic event to benefit from therapy.

[1:05:49] Maybe you're feeling anxious or depressed or your stress feels like it's too much to manage.

[1:05:53] It's okay.

[1:05:54] Whatever reason you have for seeking help is totally okay.

[1:05:58] Get some tools to cope and make life just a little bit easier.

[1:06:01] Now, I have no experience with BetterHelp as a service, but I do have a lot of experience with therapy as a process and service.

[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, man.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:16] Yeah, man.

[1:06:17] 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—

[1:06:24] I endorse it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:25] Yeah.

[1:06:25] Even if you don't have what you feel like is a problem that is, you know, dangerous or worrying or anything like that,

[1:06:33] 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

[1:06:42] and really have that space to be comfortable with expressing yourself and the things that you feel like you can't express in other situations.

[1:06:50] Therapy is supremely valuable for that.

[1:06:52] Yeah.

[1:06:52] It's just something that I would recommend.

[1:06:54] So why not try BetterHelp?

[1:06:55] Plus, BetterHelp is way more affordable than in-person therapy, but they say can be just as effective.

[1:07:01] See if it's for you.

[1:07:02] So the podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp, and the Flophouse listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash flop.

[1:07:09] That's BetterHelp as in Peter.com slash flop.

[1:07:15] That's H-E-L-P as in psychologist.com slash flop.

[1:07:20] Is that helpful?

[1:07:20] Is that helpful for the P sound to use that word?

[1:07:23] Yeah.

[1:07:23] Yeah, you did it great.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:24] Thank you.

[1:07:24] Thanks.

[1:07:27] So let us move on, shall we?

[1:07:31] If we can.

[1:07:33] Letters from listeners.

[1:07:35] Like who?

[1:07:36] Like you.

[1:07:37] Okay.

[1:07:38] This first one is from, I don't know whether it's Jillian, like Jillian Anderson, or Gillian, like our pal Gillian Flynn, but it is one of those.

[1:07:49] Last name withheld.

[1:07:50] I apologize.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:53] It's either Jillian Anderson or Gillian Flynn.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:55] I don't think, well, I don't think, I mean, it would be wonderful if it was.

[1:07:58] Is it Jillian Welch?

[1:07:59] Yeah, is it Jillian Welch?

[1:08:00] It's true.

[1:08:02] Is it Ann Jillian?

[1:08:03] Is it, is it, is it, is it, that's a left field choice.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:05] Is it Terry Gillian?

Dan McCoy

[1:08:07] It'd be.

[1:08:08] I hope not.

[1:08:09] Straighten up, straighten up Terry Gillian.

[1:08:11] Stop being such an old crank.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:13] Stop being such an old man.

[1:08:15] Get younger.

[1:08:16] Uh-huh.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:18] Yeah, what about a show where Terry Gillian,

[1:08:23] pretends that he's younger and interns at a magazine or a publishing house.

[1:08:28] Amazing.

[1:08:29] Oh.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:31] What a niche show that would be.

[1:08:33] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:34] The adventures of Barry Munch-

[1:08:35] Who's-in?

[1:08:36] Yeah.

[1:08:37] They're like, wow, for a millennial, you sure complain about cancel culture a lot.

[1:08:41] All right.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:45] Well, anyway, this letter goes as such.

[1:08:48] Dan, next time Elliot makes fun of your regional accent, feel free to belligerently claim that

[1:08:54] you and Abraham Lincoln would have had the same accent, both of you being sons of Illinois.

[1:08:58] How can Elliot-

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:59] Raised in Kentucky, I'll just interrupt.

[1:09:01] Claims to like Lincoln when he makes fun of the former president's accent.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:05] There's no way he can dispute this claim, considering Lincoln died a dozen years before the phonograph was invented.

[1:09:13] Phonograph?

[1:09:13] Okay.

[1:09:14] Um, I don't like watching movies, which makes your podcast perfect, by the way, but I love

[1:09:20] reading books.

[1:09:21] Recently, I read Powers of Darkness by Vladimir Asmonsson.

[1:09:26] It is the Icelandic translation of Dracula by Bram Stoker, but the translator decided to rewrite

[1:09:32] 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 than 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 that's from Gillian or Jillian.

[1:09:50] Last name with help.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:51] Thank you, Jillian.

[1:09:52] Unfortunately, a lot of our major movie franchises do seem to be going through fanfiction transformations,

[1:09:56] which are not fully helpful for them, but I see what you're saying.

[1:10:00] I see what you're saying.

[1:10:01] I'm not a huge fan of the fans call the shots philosophy, but guys, what do you think?

[1:10:06] What's something that could have used a little bit of a fanfiction filter?

[1:10:09] FFF, as they say.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:10] Well, not Fifty Shades of Grey, because they already made Twilight.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:14] Mm-hmm.

[1:10:14] I would say in the MCU, the Marvel movies, there was a popular fan shipping between Captain

[1:10:24] America and Bucky, and I think the later Captain America movies would have benefited from a romance

[1:10:30] between those two hunks.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:31] Well, I mean, I think in general, any of these fan properties, yeah, let's have more of the

[1:10:40] characters just having sex with each other a lot.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:42] Certainly, I mean, the Marvel movies could do with some more kissing, right?

[1:10:45] Yeah.

[1:10:45] There's like no kissing in those movies.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:48] Sexuality in this universe.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:49] Like, Thanos doesn't even kiss his fucking Infinity Gems or whatever, man.

[1:10:53] He loves those things.

[1:10:56] If I had that cool glove, I'd be kissing that shit all the time.

[1:11:00] Yeah, it's true.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:02] It'd be hard not to.

[1:11:03] It'd be very hard not to.

[1:11:04] Sure.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:07] I just had a couple of jokes.

[1:11:08] I don't really have any good answer to this.

[1:11:10] Did anyone?

[1:11:10] Tell us those jokes.

[1:11:11] No, I burned them already.

[1:11:14] Oh, okay.

[1:11:15] All right.

[1:11:15] Hey, guys, I watched...

[1:11:17] This is unrelated, so...

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:20] Wait, is this Hey Guys real, or is this a Hey Guys, like an intro to a stand-up bit?

[1:11:25] Hey, guys, some weird stuff happened the other day.

[1:11:27] I was watching this movie, and...

Dan McCoy

[1:11:30] I just had a question that I wanted to ask you.

[1:11:32] I'm going to write into the mailbag.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:34] Can I...

[1:11:35] I have another...

[1:11:36] I have a story I want to go with.

[1:11:38] So the thing about...

[1:11:39] On the subject of, like, fan fiction and stuff, I just recently watched Ready Player One while

[1:11:45] I was doing my workouts this week.

[1:11:47] It is way too long.

[1:11:48] Do not recommend.

[1:11:49] But...

[1:11:49] And it's chucked...

[1:11:51] It's, you know, it's filled to the brim with movie references.

[1:11:53] But weirdly enough, it was not the two most...

[1:11:56] It didn't rank in the top two most surprising movie references I saw in pop culture recently.

[1:12:02] Number two, of course, being...

[1:12:03] I wasn't expecting the first episode of Loki to feature a Scream reference, which is nuts.

[1:12:09] And I certainly...

[1:12:10] Number one, of course, is In the Heights.

[1:12:11] Wasn't expecting a usual suspects reference at the end.

[1:12:14] But you know what?

[1:12:15] Thumbs up.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:17] I mean, or also the Hamilton hold music in one scene when Hamilton was written after In the Heights.

[1:12:23] What's going on?

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:25] I mean, I feel like the usual suspects nod is even weirder because the whole time you're

[1:12:30] like, wait, did Usnavi...

[1:12:31] Is he, like, tricking these kids?

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:33] I mean, he is tricking those kids, kind of.

[1:12:36] But...

[1:12:36] Well, he's tricking the viewer.

[1:12:37] But...

[1:12:37] Yeah.

[1:12:38] Dan, spoiler alert.

[1:12:39] There's a trick in the Heights.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:40] No, I saw it in the Heights.

[1:12:41] Yeah, I liked it.

[1:12:43] It's good.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:44] Oh, wow.

[1:12:45] That's a, what, four-star review from Dan?

Dan McCoy

[1:12:49] Yeah, around there, I'd say.

[1:12:50] Yeah.

[1:12:50] Okay.

[1:12:51] Hey.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:51] I would say...

[1:12:52] I'd say, wait, before Dan gets into his story that he was going to tell before, if he's still

[1:12:55] going to tell it, I would say, I like fan fiction as a thing from fans.

[1:12:58] I think...

[1:12:59] I guess what I don't like is...

[1:13:01] I like it...

[1:13:01] What I like about fan fiction is when someone with passion for a property decides, I'm going

[1:13:06] to take it and I'm going to make it my own and put my spin on it.

[1:13:08] I don't like the version of it, which is the fan crowdsourced version, where there's

[1:13:13] like a big campaign to make something as kind of same-same as it once was, without a lot

[1:13:19] of changes.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:20] So you like it when they do a new twist on a character, like in Ready Player One, when

[1:13:24] the Iron Giant's running around, transforming its arm into like a laser blaster and starts

[1:13:28] shooting Mechagodzilla.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:29] I mean, that's not a new twist on the character.

[1:13:31] He does that at the end of Iron Giant.

[1:13:33] I mean, it's part of the choice the character makes is to stop shooting things with a laser.

[1:13:36] That's one of the things that's so beautiful about the movie.

[1:13:39] But more the way that, in my mind, something like The Last Jedi was, in a way, a

[1:13:43] fan fiction Star Wars thing, where it was, I'm going to take Star Wars and I'm going to

[1:13:46] do the Rian Johnson version of it.

[1:13:48] And The Rise of Skywalker is the opposite version, where it's like, vote on which character you

[1:13:54] want to see die and then come back again.

[1:13:55] Okay, everybody, the tally is in.

[1:13:57] You know, it's how you're going to get the McDonald's burger of franchise movies.

[1:14:01] But otherwise...

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:01] But Babu Frick and that monkey welder or whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:05] I don't know how that welding chimp and Babu Frick snuck in to that movie, but they made

[1:14:11] it worthwhile, I guess.

[1:14:13] So I'm going to say...

[1:14:14] You know what?

[1:14:16] The letter mentioned Dracula.

[1:14:17] I think the Universal Monsters are exactly it.

[1:14:20] That's the kind of thing that should have some sort of strange individual take on it.

[1:14:24] You know, that's what I want to see.

[1:14:26] Bring the weirdness back to the Universal Monsters.

[1:14:27] You know what?

[1:14:28] Hey, keep the Universal Monsters weird, everybody.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:29] Of all these Universal reboots, you know, largely unsuccessful, like, I think Invisible

[1:14:36] Man is the most...

[1:14:38] Like, that's the transformative one.

[1:14:39] That's the one who's like, okay, let's use this as an inspiration.

[1:14:44] You know, like, let's take the themes.

[1:14:45] Let's, you know, do it perhaps in a better way.

[1:14:49] You know, I...

[1:14:49] That feels like timely and also sadly timeless.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:53] I'm realizing now that I started, as a thought experiment, I started coming up with this the

[1:14:57] other night where I was like, what if they rebooted Forrest Gump for my generation?

[1:15:01] What would happen in it?

[1:15:02] And the first thing was Young...

[1:15:05] Is that Nirvana is staying over at Young Forrest Gump's house as...

[1:15:08] And Young Forrest Gump has, like, thick braces and mumbles.

[1:15:11] And Kurt Cobain's like, I like that.

[1:15:12] That's how I'm going to sing from now on.

[1:15:14] So that's...

[1:15:14] And I was like, 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...

[1:15:21] He's going to have a startup at some point.

[1:15:23] Like, I was just trying to think of the other things he could do, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:25] Yeah, he gives Zuckerberg the idea for Facebook, whatever.

[1:15:28] Yeah, yeah.

[1:15:29] He's like...

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:29] He's like looking at a book and be like, oh, this would be easier to read if it was made

[1:15:32] out of faces.

[1:15:33] And Mark Zuckerberg's like, huh?

[1:15:35] Like, that kind of garbage.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:36] Yeah.

[1:15:37] I like this bit for its own merits and also because it's kind of like the Flophouse version

[1:15:42] of the Mabim Bam thing where they're writing new lyrics to We Didn't Start the Fire.

[1:15:47] Yeah, there you go.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:48] Yeah, exactly.

[1:15:49] Like, he gets a job as a stock trader and hits the wrong button and there's the 2008

[1:15:53] crash and that kind of...

[1:15:54] Like, Farscump's just doing all this stuff, you know?

[1:15:57] You know that he, like, he needs to use the bathroom at the Capitol building so he walks

[1:16:02] through a door he's not supposed to and suddenly it's January 6th and insurrectionists are flooding

[1:16:06] in.

[1:16:06] And I guess what I'm saying is Farscump only makes bad things happen in this version.

[1:16:09] Yeah.

[1:16:10] With the exception of helping Irvana.

[1:16:11] Yeah, he's a Randall Flag type figure.

[1:16:13] He's more of a Randall Flag chaos truer.

[1:16:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:18] Pardon me.

[1:16:19] So, the thing I just randomly decided to ask you about.

[1:16:23] So, I saw on Twitter Matt Zoller's sites was going to be hosting a screening of Mad Max Fury

[1:16:34] Road preceded by the Chuck Jones short What's Opera doc.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:39] No, because I saw that he was selling books out of his garage over and over again.

[1:16:42] I get it, Matt Zoller's sites.

[1:16:44] I'll buy a book from you.

[1:16:45] What?

Dan McCoy

[1:16:46] I don't even know what you're referencing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:47] No, he promotes his online store a lot.

[1:16:51] Oh, okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:52] Well, so, you know, he was at the IFC Center, went there.

[1:16:58] Oh, I want to tell the audience, like I already texted you guys about this, but I want to tell

[1:17:01] the audience that, like the IFC Center, they had like this thing, like thanking everyone

[1:17:05] for coming back to the movies.

[1:17:08] And it would be like, you know, Spike Lee would come up and be like, thanks for coming back.

[1:17:12] You know, nothing like seeing a movie in the theater.

[1:17:14] And Miranda July would say the same thing.

[1:17:16] Glad you chose to do the right thing.

[1:17:17] I wish I was there instead of in my bathroom, which is like a thing she said.

[1:17:21] But then like the only people who mentioned their project was like David Fincher and Amanda

[1:17:28] Seyfried and Gary Oldman came up and they're like, from the creative team behind Mank, thanks

[1:17:34] for coming back to the movies.

[1:17:35] I'm like, oh man, if Ellie was here, this would really yank us Mank crank.

[1:17:39] Yeah, it's a real Mank crank.

[1:17:41] Yeah.

[1:17:41] But no, I saw the screening and it was great, obviously.

[1:17:48] Still both wonderful films.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:53] So is this a section where we do hot takes?

[1:17:55] What's going on?

[1:17:55] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:56] No, I was like, is there, is Mad Max Fury Road, as to Metal Heads, is it the most metal

[1:18:03] movie?

[1:18:04] Or is there a more metal movie, do you think?

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:07] I mean, Heavy Metal, it's right in the title.

[1:18:09] Yeah, it's true.

[1:18:10] Yeah, true.

[1:18:10] But it's, I mean, but Heavy Metal has this weird strain of like National Lampoon style

[1:18:15] hippie humor running through.

[1:18:19] I think, it's hard for me to think off the top of my head of another, I mean, like, I guess

[1:18:24] you would call the Tetsuo movie is more punk than metal, right?

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:27] Yeah, or like Valhalla Rising, I think, is basically a black metal music video.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:32] Yeah.

[1:18:33] I think those two are pretty, I mean, the fact that Mad Max Fury Road literally has a guy

[1:18:37] just shredding away on a guitar on a huge truck in front of a wall of amps, like, and

[1:18:43] there's fire coming out of the guitar.

[1:18:44] That's pretty, yeah.

[1:18:45] But Valhalla Rising is pretty metal, too.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:47] I mean, those are both movies that also, like, you don't, you kind of don't need any

[1:18:51] dialogue.

[1:18:52] If you just, if you just play it with a score, it's still great.

[1:18:55] Yeah.

[1:18:56] And you know what's going on because they're made by, well, certainly Mad Max is made by

[1:19:00] a visual genius of a director.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:02] Yeah.

[1:19:03] We do have one final letter.

[1:19:05] It's from Mike Lasting Withheld.

[1:19:08] After referencing it in your Jackie Chan episode, I looked up the Letterboxd reviews for

[1:19:12] The Great Bikini Off-Road Adventure.

[1:19:14] I think you'll be happy to know that most of the reviews for the film reference The Flophouse

[1:19:19] in some way or another as the reason for watching it.

[1:19:23] Well, that happens, man.

[1:19:24] Oh, man.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:25] When Elliot sets his children on his knee.

[1:19:28] Which leads me to my question.

[1:19:29] This is my legacy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:30] And they're like, I thought your legacy was one panel about Sauron and Spider-Man.

[1:19:33] No, no, no.

[1:19:34] This is my legacy.

[1:19:36] That I shared this with the world.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:38] Which leads me to my question.

[1:19:39] In your illustrious careers, do you think there are other films that you've brought into

[1:19:44] the cultural zeitgeist because of the podcast other than The Great Bikini Off-Road Adventure,

[1:19:49] of course?

[1:19:50] Well, I mean, of course, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:53] Why are you looking at me, Dan?

[1:19:55] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:55] I think that there's a highly unofficial trilogy in that it only exists as a trilogy in your

[1:20:03] mind.

[1:20:04] They're now associated.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:05] Yeah, I mean, if you go to the Wikipedia pages for Castle Freak, Head of the Family,

[1:20:10] or The Invisible Maniac, they all have links to the other movies.

[1:20:14] Or if you look any of them up on Amazon, they also say, customers frequently purchase these

[1:20:19] with this.

[1:20:21] Yeah.

[1:20:22] Because I recommend those movies many times on the podcast.

[1:20:25] If you're a new listener, yeah, watch them.

[1:20:28] They're great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:29] Yeah.

[1:20:30] I think I get a lot of people tweeting at me that they watched The Take of Hell in 123

[1:20:34] because I recommended it.

[1:20:36] And I got it.

[1:20:36] Someone on Twitter just recently, they watched The Gunfighter because I recommended it a

[1:20:40] while ago.

[1:20:41] So, you know, as long as we're bringing great movies like Castle Freak, The Gunfighter,

[1:20:46] and The Great Bikini Off-Road Adventure to the discerning views of those who might otherwise

[1:20:49] miss them, I guess we're doing the Lord's work.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:52] Yeah.

[1:20:53] And I just want to highlight, folks who have come to the live show where I've done, like,

[1:21:00] there's one presentation I've done that references this.

[1:21:03] 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

[1:21:20] among one of his favorite movies.

[1:21:24] I don't know if that's entirely accurate, but I guess that's my legacy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:29] I mean, who would know better than you, Dan?

[1:21:30] If you don't know if it's accurate, I'm going to have to take it at face value.

[1:21:33] Yeah.

[1:21:36] That's my legacy to the world.

[1:21:38] Yeah.

[1:21:39] I think, Dan, there's worse legacies.

[1:21:43] Wait, are there?

[1:21:44] Hold on.

Dan McCoy

[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.

[1:21:54] Movies that, I don't know, we like Lockdown, okay.

[1:21:57] You can watch these ones, too.

[1:21:59] Why not?

[1:22:02] Sorry.

[1:22:03] I was pulling up.

[1:22:04] The thing I want to recommend is a film called The Neutral Ground, which was actually made

[1:22:12] by someone who works at The Daily Show.

[1:22:14] CJ Hunt is one of the field producers, the people who are in charge of the remote pieces

[1:22:20] on the show.

[1:22:22] And a while back, he decided he wanted to do a documentary inspired by the amount of sort

[1:22:30] of controversy there was over the removal of Confederate landmarks in New Orleans and how

[1:22:42] long it took after it went through that they should be removed for any action to actually

[1:22:48] be taken.

[1:22:49] And then, you know, as anyone who has been in America or witnessed America over the time,

[1:22:55] like, he kind of got caught up in a larger story about how, you know, after periods of maybe

[1:23:04] greater racial progress, we find ourselves in periods of racial regress where white supremacy

[1:23:12] is, you know, bafflingly and sadly on the rise.

[1:23:17] And, you know, like, perhaps as a reaction to, or almost certainly as a reaction to the fact

[1:23:28] that, you know, people are getting human dignity for the first time maybe.

[1:23:33] And others do not care for it.

[1:23:34] But there's that.

[1:23:35] And there's also just the story of how the Confederacy sort of lied after the war, like, told its,

[1:23:47] you know, descendants a great lie.

[1:23:50] The wives of the Confederate soldiers who died sort of taking it upon themselves to rewrite

[1:23:57] the history of the Confederacy and of slavery in a way that, you know, 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.

[1:24:21] And I texted CJ.

[1:24:23] Sounds like a laugh riot.

[1:24:25] Well, the thing is, it actually is because he's quite funny.

[1:24:27] And there's a lot of it that, you know, has the vibe, sort of old style daily show field stuff, but also a lot more earnest because CJ himself, he's half black, half Filipino.

[1:24:42] And his father is sort of very attuned to, like, and very enraged about the erasure of America's racial history.

[1:24:52] And they have, you know, conversations about that.

[1:24:57] So, and it feels very honest as well as being funny.

[1:25:00] But I texted him.

[1:25:02] I asked him where it could be seen since it's mostly still in festivals right now.

[1:25:07] But it will debut nationwide for free on PBS on July 5th.

[1:25:14] And if you're in L.A., there's limited screenings at Lemile Glendale.

[1:25:20] Is that how it's pronounced?

[1:25:21] Lemley?

[1:25:22] Lemley.

[1:25:22] Lemley Glendale, July 2nd through 8th.

[1:25:26] 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.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:42] Mm-hmm.

[1:25:42] I think that's great.

[1:25:43] Speaking of documentaries, I wanted to recommend a documentary too, guys.

[1:25:46] Wow.

[1:25:47] Check New Wave has documentaries?

[1:25:49] What?

[1:25:49] I took a brief break from Check New Wave movies.

[1:25:53] I'm currently in the middle of watching All My Countrymen, All My Good Countrymen.

[1:25:56] 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.

[1:26:05] 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.

[1:26:15] The Sparks Brothers.

[1:26:17] Some listeners may know that The Sparks is one of—the Sparks.

[1:26:20] Well, forget it.

[1:26:21] Take away my fan card.

[1:26:22] Some people may know that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:23] Yeah, yeah.

[1:26:23] Name five of their songs.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:25] Yeah.

[1:26:26] I mean, I could name a lot more than that, but—you want some off their most recent album or the oldest one?

[1:26:31] Anyway.

[1:26:32] So, some people—listers may know that Sparks is one of my two favorite bands.

[1:26:37] What's the other favorite band?

[1:26:38] You'll just have to guess.

[1:26:39] But it's not a band that sounds like Sparks.

[1:26:42] But they had this documentary made about them by Edgar Wright.

[1:26:46] 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 is 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.

[1:27:04] And my wife's parents were in town when I went to go see this, and they were like, oh, is that a real band?

[1:27:09] 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.

[1:27:20] This band is 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 Spark show I went to in November of 2019 here in L.A.

[1:27:40] 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, former Flophouse guest Brendan Hay, I also went to that concert with him.

[1:27:51] So you can go see this movie.

[1:27:53] 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] Yeah, yeah.

[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.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:06] Yeah, I just wanted to do a test.

[1:28:07] You know, I only knew a couple of Sparks songs.

[1:28:09] But I went to see it because it looked interesting and I had a great time.

[1:28:13] And I took some birthday money to buy the soundtrack.

[1:28:17] So now I'll listen to Sparks in my own home.

[1:28:21] 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] That makes sense.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:33] Just go back and do a full discography.

[1:28:36] That's what I did with Enslaved about a year ago.

[1:28:38] And just go to the beginning and work your way up.

[1:28:42] 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, director Michael Mann.

[1:29:04] His debut Thief starring James Caan.

[1:29:08] It's great.

[1:29:10] I've only recently got around to watching it.

[1:29:12] 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.

[1:29:24] It's probably the best movie featuring Jim Belushi.

[1:29:28] Let's see.

[1:29:29] 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.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:35] 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.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:40] Man, you got to watch that movie again.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:43] You know how they say, you got to watch it once for the plot, twice for the pants.

Elliott Kalan

[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

[1:29:51] with a collage he made of his vision of his life.

[1:29:55] And it is frightening.

[1:29:57] And it's the moment in the movie where you're like, lady, you got to get away from this guy

[1:30:00] right now.

[1:30:00] I know he's the hero of the movie, but still.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:03] Yeah.

[1:30:04] During that scene, I'm like, what am I supposed to be feeling now?

[1:30:09] Scared for her?

[1:30:11] Confused?

[1:30:12] It was great.

[1:30:13] Yeah.

[1:30:13] It is a great movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:14] Yeah.

[1:30:15] Well, that's the end of this episode.

[1:30:18] But before we sign off, I want to say an extra special thanks to our producer, Jordan Cowling,

[1:30:25] who will be leaving us after this episode.

[1:30:29] Not because we want her to, but because she's going on to bigger and better things.

[1:30:34] So thank you so much for taking a lot of burden off my shoulders and doing it way better than I ever did.

[1:30:42] And doing the production stuff.

[1:30:45] And generally being more pleasant to deal with than Dan.

[1:30:48] Yeah.

[1:30:48] No, no.

[1:30:49] Not responding to texts with things that could be hostile.

[1:30:54] It's hard to tell.

[1:30:56] Who knows?

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:57] Yeah.

[1:30:57] She, I mean, Jordan, you're listening to this, but you became a real part of the Flophouse family,

[1:31:04] and we're going to miss you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:06] Yeah.

[1:31:06] We'll miss you a lot.

[1:31:07] Thank you so much.

[1:31:08] We're lucky that we got the time we had with you working with us, and I just wish it could

[1:31:12] have been longer, but good luck and best wishes from us, the Floppers.

[1:31:17] And I'm signing this on a photo of the three of us.

[1:31:20] Shiny game style, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:23] Yeah.

[1:31:23] Well, go to Maximum Fun.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:27] But it's not a glossy photo.

[1:31:29] It's a Polaroid.

[1:31:29] There's not a lot of room to write on it, so I really covered up most of the picture.

[1:31:32] Oh, man.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:33] That's a shame.

[1:31:35] Hey, if you like podcasts, good news.

[1:31:38] We're part of a whole network of them.

[1:31:40] Go over to MaximumFun.org.

[1:31:42] Good news, you've been listening to one.

[1:31:43] Boom.

[1:31:44] You got, gotcha.

[1:31:45] You got flopped.

[1:31:48] Twist ending.

[1:31:48] This was a podcast the whole time.

[1:31:50] Deal with it.

[1:31:50] If you liked this episode, tell your friends.

[1:31:54] Get the word out.

[1:31:55] And as always, thank you for listening.

[1:31:57] For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:59] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:32:02] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:32:03] That's right.

[1:32:04] Me.

[1:32:04] And goodbye.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:11] Man, I would love the twist of a movie.

[1:32:14] Basically, the movie would just be like, hey, fuck you.

[1:32:16] I twisted you.

[1:32:17] I gotcha.

[1:32:20] Where the movie says that?

[1:32:21] Yeah, like immediately, as soon as the twist happens, just like freeze frame and like zoom

[1:32:27] in on the characters' faces.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:34] FilmFun.org.

Justin McElroy

[1:32:35] Comedy and culture.

[1:32:37] Artist owned.

[1:32:38] Audience supported.

Ep. #346 - Locked Down

Chapters

Transcript

In this episode

Description