Ep.#460 - Lumina, with Ashlie Atkinson

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

[0:03] Alien, Arrival, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

[0:10] Now, Lumina.

[0:14] Right? Did I do it right?

[0:16] A lot of gravitas.

[0:17] Yeah, that was great. You really sold the importance of the movie, yeah.

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

[0:46] Hey, thanks for welcoming me, Dan. I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:49] I'm Elliot Kaelin, appearing by permission of myself.

[0:52] And we are joined today by a very special guest.

[0:55] This is a close friend of mine, occasional bartending colleague of mine.

[0:59] We have an actor from things like The Gilded Age.

[1:03] And just like that, Black Klansman, Mr. Robot.

[1:07] And, of course, the upcoming The Lost Bus.

[1:11] That's right, Ashley Atkinson. How are you doing, Ashley?

[1:13] Hey, and hello to all my ex-boyfriends who apparently all listen to this fucking book.

[1:18] Oh, wow.

[1:19] Ashley, I think you're big nerds.

[1:20] Definitely, definitely.

[1:23] You dropped my name, I think, name drop, like it's a name to be dropped.

[1:27] You mentioned my name on this podcast like a few years ago, I think, when Black Klansman came out.

[1:33] And I heard from so many fucking ex-boyfriends.

[1:37] Well, I met you for the first time like formally the other night at karaoke where you confessed that when I sang She's an Angel by They Might Be Giants, you were singing along up front.

[1:48] So I think that there's a lot of nerdishness to go around.

[1:51] I understand why maybe you attract the sort of people who listen to this podcast.

[1:56] You get what you give, you know.

[1:58] Definitely.

[1:59] Well, thank you so much.

[2:00] I've tried to get Ashley on here, but she has such a busy filming schedule.

[2:05] We finally made it work.

[2:06] Gotta find that bus.

[2:07] What a movie.

[2:08] Still lost.

[2:09] I'm so thrilled.

[2:10] I had to refrain from making a fart noise when you said that.

[2:13] Just a real.

[2:14] Alex, just add it in.

[2:15] Add it in, Alex.

[2:16] Use your soundboard.

[2:18] Use the soundboard we bought you for Christmas, Alex.

[2:20] It has all the fart sounds on it.

[2:22] It's all farts.

[2:23] That's all it is, right?

[2:24] Yeah.

[2:25] The weird thing is that version was more expensive than the one that had non-fart sounds.

[2:29] Yeah.

[2:30] Well, they know what people want.

[2:31] Yeah.

[2:32] Yeah.

[2:33] Yeah.

[2:34] That gets put in on the factory.

[2:35] So Lumina.

[2:36] Lumina.

[2:37] Okay.

[2:38] Yeah.

[2:39] So today we're watching.

[2:40] This is the smart.

[2:41] Smart.

[2:42] Oh, man.

[2:43] The photo real Dan McCoy over here.

[2:44] This is the start of Smallvember.

[2:45] That's right.

[2:46] Dan, what's small?

[2:47] First off, what do we do on this podcast?

[2:48] Order of operations.

[2:49] First principles.

[2:51] This is a podcast where we watch a movie that's a critical or a commercial flop or both.

[2:56] And then we talk about it.

[2:58] And while normally we punch up, we pick the big dogs and we start a fight.

[3:03] At the risk of my career as I've found a number of times at this point.

[3:07] Yeah.

[3:08] Yeah.

[3:09] Yeah.

[3:10] You're like one of the one people I know who has a job right now.

[3:12] I said risk, Dan.

[3:14] I said risk.

[3:15] Not destruction.

[3:16] Yeah, exactly.

[3:18] But if without this podcast, Elliot would have so many jobs, Dan.

[3:21] If anyone out there who hires wants me to roast them, I'm available.

[3:27] I'm the I would be the king of Hollywood if not for this podcast causing them to slam their doors in my faces.

[3:32] Yeah.

[3:33] I have more than one face.

[3:34] Yeah.

[3:35] I feel like Dan is opening up doors toward weird kinks when he's like, yeah, what?

[3:38] You can pay me to roast.

[3:41] And I don't actually mean weird.

[3:43] Whatever you're into is fine as long as it doesn't hurt anybody.

[3:45] I'm a couple months away from that.

[3:46] That's fine.

[3:47] Don't kink shame, Stuart.

[3:48] I would love the idea if Dan was paid to roast people as a kink for them and he had to put sex worker on his taxes to explain what he does.

[3:56] Why?

[3:57] Why would you love that?

[3:58] I mean, I feel like it's a totally normal profession.

[4:00] I think that's actually been an aspiration for Dan McCoy.

[4:03] So we are as I said, we are punching down this month.

[4:07] That's right.

[4:08] It is small Vember.

[4:09] That's where we take a look at some small passion projects, independent films.

[4:13] And we riff on them.

[4:14] And we well, we try and find a bright side.

[4:17] And we also try to find those hidden gems, those the rooms, those what?

[4:23] Birdemic.

[4:24] What's Slow Bullet is Elliot's favorite movie.

[4:26] Yeah, it's my favorite movie.

[4:28] Yeah.

[4:29] Three movies that we've never done on the podcast.

[4:30] And also two of which were also famous on their own.

[4:33] We did not discover those.

[4:34] Yeah.

[4:35] Well, I mean, we but we would like to.

[4:38] Those are examples of films that we could elevate to that level.

[4:41] Maybe we helped to augment the fame of Neal Breen.

[4:45] Let's say that.

[4:46] Maybe we helped to bring Neal Breen to it to a larger audience.

[4:48] Now, Ashley, do you have much experience with things like Neal Breen or other teeny tiny bad movies that have become cult classics like The Room?

[4:57] Oh, I love The Room.

[4:58] I mean, I watch a lot of teeny tiny movies.

[5:02] I'm also like a little nervous about doing this only because I tend to do a lot of teeny tiny movies.

[5:10] And I just know that when I call out somebody on this, I'm going to end up.

[5:15] Sure.

[5:16] On a set like Pittsburgh with them in four years.

[5:20] And they're going to be like, ah, yeah.

[5:22] So I feel like I don't I don't run in those circles, but I feel like for the most part, the people who work in film who listen to our podcast, take it in stride.

[5:31] And if they don't, then they're probably not the kind of people you'd want to work with.

[5:34] Yeah, I will.

[5:35] I will say I was on.

[5:36] I don't know if I told the story on the podcast or not, but I certainly told Dan and Stu.

[5:39] I was on a I was on a an airplane when a someone recognized me and it turned out because they were a producer on one of the movies that we had we had done.

[5:48] But he was very affable about it and very nice about it.

[5:52] But I also feel like that was a movie.

[5:53] If I'm recalling correctly, one that we actually kind of like was one of the movies that Dan admitted made him cry while he was watching it.

[5:59] So, you know, so you have rats, country bears.

[6:03] I honestly I'm a little more scared of of this movie because I've heard of some behavior from the the director engaging people on the Internet about this film.

[6:15] So that OK, well, that that I'm worried about.

[6:17] I'm worried about only because I'm only I'm doing research.

[6:20] I didn't realize when I watched the movie that some big name behind the scenes, people are some very accomplished behind the scenes.

[6:26] People worked on this movie.

[6:27] But the cinematographer and the editor for this movie are like real people, like real professional people.

[6:32] I mean, they're all real people.

[6:33] No, some of them are some of them are simulations and holograms.

[6:36] Yeah.

[6:37] They're also litiginous.

[6:39] Oh, yeah.

[6:40] Oh, man.

[6:43] They're going to own the least of the flop house.

[6:45] Yeah, I'll get into that briefly when I get I give some background that I heard from.

[6:50] So I do want to point out that this movie is directed by a guy named Gino McCoy.

[6:54] And it looks like most of the producers are his family.

[6:56] Now, I promise not to get mad.

[7:00] But, Dan, are you Gino McCoy?

[7:03] Is Dan McCoy and Gino McCoy the same person?

[7:07] Very similar.

[7:08] And were you just tricking us to watch your movie?

[7:09] What a clever pseudonym that would be.

[7:12] Well, I guess there's a K in it.

[7:13] There's a K to throw people off the scent.

[7:16] So I promise not to get mad.

[7:18] K-O-Y.

[7:19] A spelling that I'm like I get as an accident from people sometimes who are not familiar with the name.

[7:24] And previously it's always made me kind of annoyed because I'm like that's not a like that's not a spelling of McCoy.

[7:30] Like that's not one that and I'm like, oh, well, I guess it exists.

[7:34] I guess it because I think of probably everybody here.

[7:38] Your name is the easiest to spell correctly.

[7:41] Yeah.

[7:42] Ashley is spelled, I would say, nontraditionally.

[7:45] Oh, yeah.

[7:46] There's a lie at the end.

[7:47] That's my opinion.

[7:48] No.

[7:49] Elliot with two T's.

[7:51] Stewart.

[7:52] You know, sometimes.

[7:53] Nobody knows ever how to pronounce her spell.

[7:55] Yeah.

[7:56] Colon.

[7:57] Yeah.

[7:58] It's not how it's pronounced.

[7:59] Or colon.

[8:00] Yeah.

[8:01] They don't they don't usually say colon, but they could.

[8:02] There's no law against it.

[8:03] And usually people try and spell Stewart like it's a last name.

[8:06] And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

[8:08] I'm not French Stewart or French Stewart Wellington, which would be what?

[8:12] You would also be stuffed in a baguette.

[8:15] Give us a taste of what French Stewart Wellington would sound like if you were French.

[8:18] Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

[8:23] Delicious.

[8:25] Mouthwatering.

[8:27] I took French class and every time I only for two years and every time I would start, you know, speaking, I would always go, oh, oh, oh.

[8:35] And it would get mad.

[8:36] That's why I immediately deduct 50 points from your grade.

[8:39] Oh, wow, man.

[8:40] Gryffindor lost that.

[8:41] You're like, I thought that was J.K.

[8:43] Fuck that shit.

[8:44] I took French in Arkansas and you got extra points for the all that was pretty much all of my studies.

[8:50] I took two semesters of German in college and they were and they always praised my accent.

[8:54] And I was like, well, I just think to myself, how would Peter Lorre say it?

[8:57] And the professor did not like that.

[8:59] But also, like, there's enough.

[9:01] I feel like you have had enough exposure, like Yiddish.

[9:03] And I think Yiddish has some correlation.

[9:06] Similar.

[9:07] But the accent's not quite that.

[9:08] Not quite the same.

[9:09] You know, it's that there's similar words, but delivered in a more like, oh, like Yiddish is always delivered.

[9:14] Like, am I right?

[9:16] You know what I'm talking about?

[9:17] You know, what do you think about this?

[9:18] Yeah.

[9:19] So there's always eyebrows raised at some point.

[9:21] So aliens, guys, aliens.

[9:25] What a movie.

[9:26] James Cameron takes maybe a perfect movie alien and manages to find a different spin on it that in many ways is just as good.

[9:33] I prefer the first one.

[9:34] But the second one's also a masterpiece.

[9:36] Guys, what do you say about aliens?

[9:38] Yeah.

[9:39] So Michael Bean, the bean machine, the bean dream.

[9:41] Love him.

[9:42] Can't get enough.

[9:43] Bill Paxson, yum, yum, yum.

[9:44] Give me more of that guy.

[9:46] Give me a hot glass of bean juice.

[9:48] And I thought it was coffee you're asking for.

[9:51] No, no, not at all.

[9:53] No.

[9:55] It wasn't for me.

[9:56] I don't know.

[9:57] What?

[10:00] Uh, yeah, this is the, we just put Ashley in the hot seat.

[10:05] I feel like that's a, that would be a tough one to argue a tough stance to

[10:09] argue that aliens isn't good.

[10:12] Yeah.

[10:12] I think that would, I think that'd be hard.

[10:13] I mean, some, I'm sure there's someone, I mean, Armond Dwight, bring him in.

[10:15] I'm sure he'll make that argument, you know, but I, yeah, it's a hard argument.

[10:19] So I saw a friend make a negative, uh, just gave aliens three stars

[10:24] on Letterboxd and my eyes.

[10:26] I hope you excommunicated them.

[10:28] I'm not going to argue with someone on the internet, particularly a friend,

[10:31] but my eyes did pop out of my skull a little bit and I had to

[10:36] America is some Americans think that aliens is a three-star movie.

[10:39] Terrible.

[10:40] How do we reach these people?

[10:42] Speaking of aliens though, Stuart, I think you were going to talk about a

[10:46] movie that has aliens in it eventually.

[10:50] I am talking about, uh, Mac and me

[10:53] about a man's relationship with Mac and cheese.

[11:00] Um, no, I'm talking about, uh, this week we are reviewing Lumina from nine, uh,

[11:05] from 19, 2024, uh, this was a micro budget movie, I'm assuming, uh, that

[11:11] was written and directed by a boy.

[11:14] It's either a micro budget movie or it's one of those movies that somehow

[11:17] it has an enormous budget, but the money all went to not the movie, uh,

[11:22] I would, I don't know which I didn't do.

[11:23] Well, it apparently went to like hiring those professionals you talked about

[11:26] because I texted you guys being like, you know, like, it's not a good movie.

[11:30] The screenplay in particular doesn't work, but it looks okay for

[11:34] the money that was spent on it.

[11:35] And it like, like everything's framed well and like, you know, looks

[11:41] relatively good for the level of production is, and it cuts together.

[11:45] I'm like, oh, I see.

[11:47] The cinematographer like works on only God forgives and eyes.

[11:51] Why is an academy award winner?

[11:56] And yeah.

[11:57] What's his name?

[11:59] Tom Noble.

[12:00] Yeah.

[12:01] Okay.

[12:01] He, he edited, uh, Thelma and Louise, another movie that, uh, spends

[12:05] a lot of time in a desert, you know?

[12:07] Yeah.

[12:07] That's like, ah, I know this landscape.

[12:10] Uh, I will say like by the end of the movie, I definitely, when it was getting

[12:14] into the, finally you're seeing alien things, I was like, okay, this is like.

[12:17] A higher level of production than I expected from the first three quarters

[12:22] of the movie, which is mostly sure.

[12:24] I'm hanging around, you know?

[12:26] Yeah.

[12:26] No, that's a real nice house that they're in.

[12:29] I, I, I'm never, I'm never impressed by how nice a house is in the movie

[12:33] because there's a lot of nice houses in porn and I don't think that's where

[12:37] the budget is going necessarily.

[12:38] No.

[12:38] Well, apparently the budget somehow also went to, we'll get into it later, I

[12:42] think, but, uh, into distribution that then did not pan out, hence the lawsuit.

[12:49] But, you know, I can't tell if this movie is bad or if I just

[12:53] don't understand Los Angeles.

[12:55] Like I really.

[12:57] Was it, was it the LAPD cop with an English accent that threw you off?

[13:02] That guy was great.

[13:03] But also, you know, things like this guy's living in this beautiful house

[13:06] with a pool, with a girl whose relationship to him is never defined.

[13:11] And you have no idea what either of them do for a living.

[13:13] And I was like, is that we're, we're plotting or is that just Los Angeles?

[13:19] It sounds like Elliot's cousin, uh, Kato Kaelin.

[13:23] I mean, I think there, there is a, there is a, there's a thriving subculture

[13:26] still of LA hangers on who live inside big houses that belong to their friends.

[13:31] But I think it was very funny when someone walks into the main character's

[13:34] house and he goes, well, what a house, what do you do?

[13:36] And he goes, don't worry about it.

[13:38] So the screenwriter could not be bothered to think of a job for this

[13:41] main character to have, you know, right.

[13:43] Exposition, George, who also immediately calls, uh, the girls smoky.

[13:48] And I was like, I'm so glad someone's acknowledging that this

[13:51] girl's whole job is vaping.

[13:52] Yeah.

[13:52] I mean, she's like ripping serious clouds the whole time.

[13:56] But let's, let's talk about it.

[13:57] Cause I also had the same question of, I didn't know, it was hard to

[13:59] understand what the relationship was between some of these characters, but

[14:02] Stu, maybe you can illuminate us on that.

[14:04] Talking about characters.

[14:05] Let's look at this rich tapestry of characters.

[14:08] So we have our hero, Alex or Lex to his friends.

[14:13] Uh, he's is this like non-specific, uh, young rich guy who I believe

[14:18] is mentioned to have a trust fund.

[14:20] He lives in a big LA mansion and he lives with Patricia who is constantly,

[14:26] uh, filming things for their phone and vaping.

[14:29] Uh, she does not other than that have any other, uh, real role other than

[14:33] occasionally giving us exposition on, uh, the other characters and sometimes

[14:37] judging the other characters, judging and what is there?

[14:39] And so what are Alex and Patricia's relationship?

[14:44] Do you know, can we write them a letter?

[14:48] I genuinely couldn't tell Patricia's relationship to anyone.

[14:51] Her allegiances.

[14:52] She seemed to shift from moment to moment to moment.

[14:55] Like, I'm not sure.

[14:56] Is she friends with Tatiana?

[14:58] Is she friends with Delilah?

[15:00] Also these names, like no one's named Jen in this universe.

[15:04] It's like, no, everyone has really ridiculous names.

[15:06] I, when a George showed up and I'm like, ah, nice, refreshing.

[15:09] Yeah, conspiracy George.

[15:11] I originally presumed that she didn't live there, but was like in from out of

[15:16] town because there's this party going on later on and like, she was just staying

[15:20] there over, but then later on, it seemed to be like months later, he's still there.

[15:27] The beard shows.

[15:28] When time maybe the funniest, the funniest fake beard I've seen in forever.

[15:34] And it really lifted my spirits at a time when I needed it.

[15:37] I thought he looked cuter with the beard.

[15:39] I was like, oh, that works for you.

[15:40] I think it does work for him.

[15:42] He was a little meat headed before the beard, but here's my theory, which is

[15:46] not borne out by anything in the text.

[15:48] Okay.

[15:49] I mean, he did look like he should be, he should, he should be working with

[15:52] Molotov to, to undermine the czarist structure, you know, but that's why I like

[15:57] him.

[15:58] The, uh, the, I think the, this is my theory.

[16:01] It again is not in the text.

[16:03] It's not that I think Alex, Patricia and Delilah were college friends and Patricia,

[16:10] she's come out to LA to make it in some industry and she's been staying with

[16:14] Alex, but she never really hit, it really didn't really take off her career.

[16:17] So she's still staying with Alex.

[16:18] And so probably like a vape influencer.

[16:21] Yeah, exactly.

[16:22] Yeah.

[16:23] Influencer Jason.

[16:24] Testing out like various flavors.

[16:27] I don't, what do people like?

[16:30] And, uh, they really like lead.

[16:32] They really like lead getting into their system for me.

[16:34] And so Tatiana is the outsider to that group.

[16:37] Yeah.

[16:37] Now you mentioned Delilah and Tatiana.

[16:39] Let's find out who they are.

[16:41] Delilah is Alex's ex-girlfriend who still has feelings for him.

[16:45] She is convinced and no matter what happens throughout the course of the

[16:48] movie, her main goal at all times is to get Alex to come back to her.

[16:54] Uh, even when there's aliens chasing them and she is constantly looking at him the

[16:58] way my wife looks at me when I started explaining my character build in the

[17:01] game, Elden Ring, where she's very turned on.

[17:04] She's very like, Oh, wow, you put all your points into strength,

[17:08] vigor, and stamina.

[17:09] How original.

[17:10] You and Charlene's relationship is so much different than I thought it was.

[17:13] Yeah, I know.

[17:14] It's behind closed doors.

[17:15] You never know.

[17:15] Yeah.

[17:16] Yeah.

[17:16] Um, and then, uh, and Patricia introduced her as delusional Delilah.

[17:20] Yep.

[17:21] Um, and then we have Tatiana who's the new girlfriend and the party is being

[17:24] thrown to kind of introduce her to all of Alex's friends and she is blonde and has

[17:30] a history of being abducted, abducted by aliens.

[17:32] Which we don't know right away.

[17:34] That is something that is revealed.

[17:35] It's not like she's introducing herself to people with that information.

[17:38] Yeah, that's true.

[17:38] She doesn't seem to introduce herself to anyone.

[17:40] It's a party for her and, uh, to introduce her.

[17:43] Yet everyone in that living room knows her name.

[17:45] There's a whole sequence where she's walking and everybody's like, Tatiana,

[17:48] Tatiana.

[17:49] And she's like, Hey, Hey, yeah, I like your dress too.

[17:52] You know, all these women follow the sort of lifetime movie rule of hair, you know,

[17:57] where it's like new girlfriend, like acceptable girlfriend has blonde, straight

[18:01] hair.

[18:02] Uh, there's the bad ex-girlfriend that's trouble with like the brunette.

[18:08] Yeah.

[18:09] And then of course, like the absolutely drop dead gorgeous woman of color who is

[18:13] somehow friend zoned and will never be a romantic prospect for absolutely no

[18:20] reason.

[18:20] They just got to give her a couple of quirks and she'll just hang around.

[18:23] Yeah.

[18:23] She, she's very prop heavy.

[18:25] We also, well, she needs to be because no one's given the personality, you

[18:30] interviewee where they're like, Hey sir, uh, let me introduce this.

[18:33] Uh, let me interview this male stripper.

[18:35] And he's like hanging his little G strings on the bartender.

[18:38] Like, yeah, no, she came in the other day.

[18:41] It's like, you can do that later.

[18:43] You don't, yeah, you don't have to do that.

[18:44] Any personality that any of the characters given is based on something external to

[18:48] them.

[18:48] Whether it be a vape, a beard, an ox cable later on, except for George.

[18:55] I feel like George is the one guy with any personality because he's the conspiracy

[18:59] theorist.

[18:59] He's a little bit of a joker and he also works with children.

[19:03] He volunteers his time.

[19:04] That's true.

[19:04] That was, that was the biggest shocking twist of the movie in a movie that involves

[19:09] alien, secret alien abductions was that when he's like, yeah, I do a lot of

[19:12] volunteering with children.

[19:14] Okay.

[19:14] So George hasn't shown up yet.

[19:15] We have this party where we're just walking around one of those, uh, like LA

[19:19] style mansions that you're like, am I in like the waiting room for some kind of

[19:24] high end doctor's office?

[19:25] Well, like, is this a hotel that someone is squatting in and they just made at

[19:28] their house?

[19:29] Yeah.

[19:30] And a lot of music is played and I have to say that there's a song, uh, with

[19:35] lyrics about a Cincy girl.

[19:37] And I was like, there's no way that this song is not by the director of this

[19:41] movie.

[19:42] There's no other reason this would be in here.

[19:44] And I looked it up and sure enough, all of the music is by Gina.

[19:47] What is a Cincy girl?

[19:48] Cause I didn't, I thought it was like a sensei girl, like splinter for the Ninja

[19:51] turtles.

[19:52] Like, no, it means it's not sensitive.

[19:55] It's not like a slang term Cincinnati.

[20:00] the captions on because I thought it was I was like that's a weird way to pronounce sexy and

[20:03] I looked up and I'm like no but the captain's on oh no it's sensi what is this what does this mean

[20:07] in sy is how it's spelled in the title of the song and on the captions so

[20:12] sensi yeah yeah so you just get that feeling and you have to check what the song's about okay

[20:18] so um after the party uh lex actually I used shazam to try to identify the song and my phone exploded

[20:24] it hung itself yeah okay so uh so at the party we you know the character dynamics get reinforced

[20:36] Delilah tries to make a move on Alex yada yada yada afterwards Alex none of them seem to like

[20:41] each other very much they are none of them who don't like each other she has a has been has had

[20:47] a um an unrequited love for Alex for years she doesn't really seem to like him very much he

[20:52] doesn't seem to like her that much it's a there's not a lot of affection between these friends and

[20:56] so I wonder if this is maybe this alien stuff was just an elaborate way to like end to end a

[21:00] friendship like they couldn't find the words so this has all the vibes of a guy who's like I'm

[21:08] gonna make a movie and I'll put all my friends in it and uh I don't know you can be the vapor

[21:13] and you can be the ex-girlfriend and yada yada yada like it's very thinly drawn without much

[21:19] background these characters don't have a rich inner life no okay I mean yeah we're still on the

[21:26] first page of notes um so uh after the after the party uh Tatiana goes out to the pool to go

[21:33] for a swim and of course this is when we cut to a lady jogger jogging outside the property and

[21:39] then aliens attack the lady jogger is only shown briefly just so she can have a single reaction shot

[21:45] to the uh to the abduction blast or whatever so I don't know I'm guessing it's again this is

[21:50] another friend of the family who showed up with a you know a high tight ponytail um okay uh so

[21:56] there's a the cops show up was there anything about this sequence that felt normal to you guys

[22:02] no before that before that before the cops show up uh which do not feel normal I will say that

[22:06] uh Delilah and uh there's a moment where Delilah and Patricia are talking to each other and Delilah

[22:11] is like I just want that bitch to disappear about Tatiana and that's when the the light blast

[22:17] abducts uh or seemingly vaporizes Tatiana you mentioned the jogger but I didn't know whether

[22:22] you actually mentioned the fact that Tatiana like turns into like uh Avengers uh in infinity wait

[22:29] which one is the one Infinity War yeah where they all turn into they'll turn into dust yeah she like

[22:34] does she turn into dust right before she's blasted uh the one the liquid in the wine

[22:40] glasses starts to like float up in a pretty cool special effect that was actually pretty I like a

[22:45] lot I like the image you know the cgi obviously was not very good but the image in and of itself

[22:50] it's also it's it's one it's in something that happens in movies a lot that I always find very

[22:55] funny where um it's in it's the Jurassic Park kind of like water droplet when a t-rex is coming thing

[23:01] where you see a little thing react to a huge force but not but big things are not reacting

[23:07] to it yeah so it's like oh it has the power to pull up this wine but nothing else oh no person

[23:12] okay got it the same way how in Jurassic Park the transverse rex it shakes water that's how that's

[23:17] how big his steps are but at the end he's able to tiptoe in and surprise them and eat a raptor

[23:22] he's so sneaky yeah exactly but that's tennis yeah yeah he's on his tippy tippy toes I mean

[23:29] I just really liked that you knew that something was going to happen because those women were

[23:34] seated on that couch in a way that women have never spoken to each other in their entire lives

[23:38] it's like so it's a very uh gendered way of sitting where it's like I was always told it

[23:44] as a young woman I was told if you want to speak to a man you should sit next to him but face

[23:50] something else instead of facing another person instead of facing them head on because that's

[23:55] how women talk to each other is looking at each other yeah men I guess you have to sit at a

[24:00] baseball game and like look out at the field and then you can have a heart-to-heart talk get it

[24:06] cars are good these are all things I was told get a real taste of that profile yeah but they are

[24:11] sort of sitting there and Tajiana is framed in between them in a very Bo Derek sort of moment

[24:18] going into that pool you know and I was like well that's nice it is I never thought about you're

[24:24] right when I have a heart-to-heart talk with somebody I do take them to a natural history

[24:27] museum or somewhere else where there's a diorama we can both look at at the same time yeah a

[24:32] planetarium I'm a walk and talk guy so I find an office somewhere and we walk down hallways and I

[24:37] I give some rapid fire delivery that is like kind of funny but not super like not laugh out loud

[24:43] funny and sometimes sometimes you'll take like one piece of information and cut it between split it

[24:46] between three different people so it sounds like dialogue even though it's just exposition about

[24:50] how the legislative process works yeah it's really great I'm I'm pretty talented so uh okay

[24:56] so again the windows get blasted open Tatiana disappears there seems to be like a puddle of

[25:03] smoking lava or something I can't tell what's going on um but they're obviously everybody's

[25:08] freaked out Alex is running around yelling where Tatiana like where is Tatiana the police show up

[25:12] of course this is where we had the introduction of I think all of our favorite character that's

[25:16] right yes cop with the English accent yes the English this was this was the moment and a couple

[25:20] of characters in this movie have English accent Tatiana does and does Delilah also I'm trying to

[25:25] remember I think she does right but this was the moment where I was like wait a minute I thought

[25:29] this was taking place in LA they talked a lot about LA but this police officer clearly has an

[25:34] English accent and I've never encountered an English accented LAPD officer where did someone

[25:40] come from another like another uh a European country and then become an LAPD officer like

[25:45] it's just not a it's not a thing I've encountered but uh so really and also his attitude is very

[25:50] funny he's so quick to like either it's somewhere between hostility and not caring which I think

[25:56] that seems accurate for an LAPD officer in a lot of ways but yeah so shortly shortly after we have

[26:02] this introduction to this great character who then disappears from our lives forever

[26:07] it reminds me of there was some movie we watched years ago where there was a person I think holding

[26:11] a little dog in the background and we were just like the movie should be about them

[26:16] uh I think it's right around now that Alex hears the audio of Delilah wishing Tatiana would just

[26:23] disappear yeah and he takes that immediately uh takes offense to it and he throws her out of his

[26:28] life she's like calm she's like Lex and he's like never call me that again that's only for friends

[26:34] also super cool that Patricia boomeranged it yeah it's on a loop yeah and she's like I can't

[26:41] seem to turn it off it's like come on you just press the thing that that turns off the screen

[26:45] on the phone like we don't know how to turn your volume down or whatever like but he also reacts

[26:50] as if like after what you did and it's like yeah like I understand in this situation you're in like

[26:57] that is very a hurtful thing to hear and you're mad that she said it but she didn't do like make

[27:02] the lady disappear the implication seems to be that yeah he now blames her if you hadn't wished

[27:06] upon that star when you said that yeah but it's LA you know maybe they believe in just manifestation

[27:13] to that degree that's very possible if this is like at the party I saw you splitting the wishbone

[27:20] if these characters were really into crystals I feel like the whole movie would make a lot

[27:23] more sense to me all their actions yeah uh-huh so uh time passes how do we know time passes

[27:31] well uh the house remains exactly the same Patricia remains exactly the same living in the

[27:37] house but there's something different is it is there something about Alex did he get like a

[27:44] smudge on his face no no no his hair has gotten kind of messed up but his beard has gotten crazy

[27:50] he has a massive beard uh it looks like he is entering a world's biggest beard competition

[27:56] looks like he is playing Moses in a church play like it's an enormous biblical patriarch fake

[28:03] beard it's like a Grecian formula Moses it's still like very like black still black very dark oh no

[28:10] this is this is a young hot Moses yeah for sure yeah yeah it worked for me I was really like now

[28:16] who's this guy also the pool is really maintained for somebody who's been sitting outside it like

[28:22] well for six months doing that I mean he must have he's got people to do that yeah he's got

[28:26] people to do that yeah he just gets um uh Chris Pine from Pool Man to come over and get it you

[28:32] know put into shape yeah he's the best yeah I mean he was uh that's that was the story right

[28:36] is that Chris Pine worked as a pool man for years preparing for his directorial debut yeah yeah

[28:42] um for 10 years when he wasn't acting he was cleaning pools undercover yeah yeah yeah going

[28:46] to langers and cleaning pools so um time has passed I will say it is as Stuart you're right

[28:52] that like the um the the time has passed you mentioned the house has not changed and when

[28:56] you did it reminded me of the the beautiful sequence in uh Virginia Woolf's to the lighthouse

[29:01] where she's talking about the house kind of remain it being untouched and remaining the same

[29:06] the dust that changes this thing crease a little bit as all these events are happening with the

[29:11] family in parentheticals and you know what maybe that's what they're going for with this scene is

[29:15] that so little has changed around the world about the world they live in except for except for this

[29:21] beard which is the one element of time in an otherwise unchanging world where people are

[29:26] just one small element you know and not necessarily the way that time should be measured by the lives

[29:30] of humans do you think that's what they're trying to get at yeah I think so my favorite part until

[29:34] the lighthouse is when they get to that lighthouse and aliens go buck wild on them

[29:39] it's on the last page it's on the last 10 pages yeah yeah

[29:44] uh okay so someone's like I fixed to the lighthouse they finally get to the lighthouse

[29:48] and there's aliens there where they get to the lighthouse it's the lighthouse from the

[29:53] movie the lighthouse and they're like this is a weirder lighthouse than we expected

[29:57] yeah uh okay so uh he has

[30:00] Alex has fallen deep into a, like a conspiracy hole.

[30:04] He has been having these dreams that give him visions,

[30:08] dreams of him being abducted

[30:09] or walking through a deep underground military base,

[30:13] which is repeatedly referred to

[30:15] in the description of the movie as dumb,

[30:18] which I found a very funny choice.

[30:20] And what does dumb stand for?

[30:24] Deep underground military base.

[30:25] Yep, you got it.

[30:27] For a movie that like does not seem to have

[30:31] a lot of sort of a diegetic sense of humor,

[30:35] it's very odd that they made this choice.

[30:39] I was like, oh, is this camp?

[30:41] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[30:43] Hard to say.

[30:43] The, so Alex has like put together a big,

[30:48] like a big collage of newspaper clippings and red string.

[30:52] And he invites his friend George,

[30:55] who is the aforementioned conspiracy nut friend,

[30:58] who also is shocked by how nice a house Alex has.

[31:03] George comes over and they just kind of hang out

[31:05] on the couch and start looking at articles

[31:07] on the internet of alien abductions, like you do.

[31:11] I was really shocked by how modge podged

[31:14] and well done, well appointed the conspiracy room was.

[31:18] Yeah.

[31:19] But he did seem to run out of things

[31:20] that I want to believe poster was on there

[31:22] at least six times.

[31:24] It was a lot of, it was very much not meant

[31:27] to be looked at closely, that evidence board,

[31:31] because it was a lot of like just kind of random pages

[31:34] from like the weekly world news and things like that.

[31:36] And there wasn't a sense of,

[31:38] oh, he's putting together a research story here.

[31:41] It was more like, we got to put alien stuff on these walls.

[31:43] Come on guys, we shoot tomorrow morning.

[31:45] There also is no indication that he's good at this.

[31:50] They're bad at it.

[31:51] They are mostly bad at it.

[31:52] Later on when like he gets into a fist fight,

[31:55] I'm like, why would this guy like know how to fight?

[31:58] Like why?

[31:59] I mean, we know nothing about his background.

[32:01] We can fill it in.

[32:02] Maybe he's former special services,

[32:03] secret service.

[32:04] Yeah, it's just one of these movies

[32:05] where someone turns into an action hero

[32:07] because the person making the movie has seen movies.

[32:09] It's like, yeah, they're going to fight.

[32:11] Like that happens.

[32:12] Yeah, he'll choke out this special forces guy

[32:14] in full tactical body armor.

[32:15] Yeah.

[32:16] It is, it is the glasses and the hat

[32:17] and all of a sudden he's a.

[32:20] Yeah, we have a Liam Neeson's.

[32:23] Okay, so as I said,

[32:25] Alex is spurred on for this conspiracy theory

[32:28] by these dreams he's having.

[32:30] We have shots of him writhing in the covers,

[32:32] kind of sweaty,

[32:33] having these visions where he's walking around a dumb,

[32:37] wandering around.

[32:38] That's again, deep underground military base.

[32:41] And at one point.

[32:42] Is this when Patricia goes to wake him up

[32:43] and he starts to choke her?

[32:44] Yes, Patricia goes to wake him up

[32:45] and he chokes her and they have,

[32:47] let's say a falling out briefly.

[32:50] I mean, if you're going to live in someone's house

[32:53] for months and you're not contributing,

[32:56] maybe you're asking the question.

[32:58] That's a hot take.

[32:59] Yeah, I actually don't even believe in it.

[33:02] I did sort of go.

[33:03] Your value is based on how much you bring to the table.

[33:07] I really liked how they delineated

[33:09] dream Alex from real Alex.

[33:11] That was one of the clearest things to me in this film,

[33:14] particularly because Alex in bed is screaming

[33:18] and Alex in dream is just sort of chilling,

[33:20] walking around this space.

[33:22] They both have crazy beards, right?

[33:24] Yes, they both do,

[33:25] but one is in blue light and one is in very sort of green.

[33:30] For a movie where a character is presented

[33:32] with multiple hairstyles and beard styles,

[33:34] it is weird that he always,

[33:37] it's like he always views himself as a man

[33:39] with a big, crazy beard.

[33:40] Yeah, even when he doesn't have a beard,

[33:41] he carries himself as a bearded man.

[33:43] That's what I was going to say.

[33:44] Do you think. Internal beard, yeah.

[33:45] My guess is that they could probably get a better beard.

[33:48] Do you think this beard was one of the contributors?

[33:50] Was it one of the producers?

[33:51] Like it put some funding into the movie

[33:53] and that's why they had to put this beard in.

[33:55] It was like a Kickstarter award.

[33:57] You get to pick the beard.

[33:58] Donate your beard.

[34:00] Put your beard in the movie.

[34:04] Okay, so do you think,

[34:06] and do you think the actor who played Alex

[34:07] was like walking around with that beard

[34:09] for months and months,

[34:10] wearing it even when not on camera?

[34:12] He's like, I just got to get into the role.

[34:14] And his wife's like,

[34:15] or her husband is like,

[34:16] oh, I hate this stupid beard.

[34:18] And he's like, I think I'm going to keep it.

[34:21] I really hope that actor's gay.

[34:23] Like for some reason you said that and I just,

[34:25] ah, made me like him 20% more.

[34:30] We're giving him a rich inner life here,

[34:31] unlike the characters in the film.

[34:33] I mean, I'm sure the actor

[34:34] probably does have a rich inner life,

[34:35] being a human being.

[34:37] For sure.

[34:38] Well, I've met some humans without a rich inner life.

[34:41] From what I hear,

[34:43] I hear that LA is full of people

[34:45] without rich inner lives.

[34:46] Oh, thanks Aldous Huxley.

[34:48] Yeah, appreciate the take on LA.

[34:52] Okay, so at some point Delilah returns.

[34:54] Nathaniel West over here, look at him.

[34:57] Oh wait, there's the one shot

[34:58] of the bloody nose though.

[34:59] Oh yeah.

[35:00] Where like all of a sudden

[35:01] there's just a fuck ton of blood on Alex's hands.

[35:05] And then next shot, gone.

[35:08] No explanation.

[35:10] No nothing.

[35:11] Every movie is filled with moments like that,

[35:12] where I kept rewinding things to be like,

[35:15] did I fucking miss something?

[35:16] Was I looking at my phone for a second?

[35:18] And the thing is,

[35:19] I was looking at my phone for a second,

[35:20] but I didn't miss anything.

[35:21] But you were looking at your phone

[35:22] to look at the plot summary of Lumina

[35:24] because there were definitely-

[35:24] Yeah, that's what I was doing.

[35:27] There are gaps in the movie

[35:28] that maybe they're meant to be

[35:29] the functional equivalent of the lost time blips

[35:32] that alien abductees have,

[35:33] where they don't remember something.

[35:35] Oh.

[35:36] The characters would refer to something that happened

[35:38] and be like, I don't remember that happening in the movie.

[35:41] I think it's because it didn't happen in the movie.

[35:43] Right.

[35:43] Yeah, or it happened in a cut scene or something like that.

[35:46] I did appreciate though,

[35:47] because when George came in,

[35:48] I was like, who's this guy?

[35:49] I really appreciated Patricia's phone call,

[35:51] where she said, you know that guy that was at the party?

[35:55] You kept talking a bunch of bullshit.

[35:57] He's here.

[35:58] I was like, okay, thank you.

[35:58] Okay, thank you, yeah.

[35:59] This is an established constant in this world.

[36:03] Because the rule is you can't expository yourself, right?

[36:05] You can't have exposition related to yourself.

[36:06] Hey, Alex, it's me, your friend George.

[36:08] I'm into conspiracy stuff.

[36:10] I was at your party, spouting some bullshit.

[36:11] You know.

[36:12] Exactly.

[36:13] Feels awkward coming from him.

[36:14] Exposition George could not take that one.

[36:16] No.

[36:17] But he serves his time later in the film.

[36:19] So.

[36:20] It reminds me of the kind of,

[36:21] that's the kind of question a kid asks in Sunday school.

[36:24] It's like, could exposition George

[36:26] ever deliver exposition about himself on senior?

[36:28] No, well, there's no limits to his power of exposition,

[36:32] but you know, it's at the same time.

[36:34] Yeah.

[36:36] So around now, they all team together

[36:38] and despite their differences,

[36:40] they decide we're gonna go try and find Tatiana

[36:43] and get to the bottom of these alien conspiracies theories.

[36:47] Yeah.

[36:47] And I believe they're, you guys can correct me,

[36:49] I believe their first stop is they have to

[36:52] meet a internet acquaintance of George named Tom.

[36:57] And apparently pick up some Bakersfield meth, I guess.

[36:59] Yes.

[37:01] So they hop in there, do they already have the RV?

[37:05] No, they buy the RV later.

[37:06] The RV they buy when they, once they get to Morocco.

[37:08] Makes a, oh, they buy it in Morocco.

[37:11] Well, just cause it's mentioned,

[37:12] someone makes a, are we going to Wally World joke.

[37:15] I'm like, that was a, that was a station wagon.

[37:19] Let's get our jokes correct here.

[37:21] Yeah.

[37:22] There is a Wally World in Morocco though.

[37:24] So, yeah, I see.

[37:25] Well, that's why they're asking about it

[37:25] because Wally World Morocco

[37:27] is actually the only one still in operation.

[37:29] The only one still standing, yeah.

[37:31] So, they meet with-

[37:32] But you're right, Dan, I also bristled at-

[37:34] He has that.

[37:35] That's also because there's not a lot of jokes

[37:37] in this movie.

[37:37] So it felt very weird for them to suddenly make one

[37:40] to have it be a reference to an older movie.

[37:42] And also for that reference to not be accurate

[37:45] to what they're driving.

[37:46] It would make more sense for them

[37:47] to make like a Spaceballs reference,

[37:48] you know, something with a Winnebago in it

[37:50] or something like that.

[37:51] Or everyone's favorite movie, RV,

[37:52] you know, that big hit, RV.

[37:54] Everyone's favorite movie, yeah.

[37:56] Give me the top four cast.

[37:59] Well, Robin Williams was in RV.

[38:01] Okay, so he's probably number one.

[38:02] And Barry Sonnenfeld directed it.

[38:05] And we have reached the limits of my RV knowledge.

[38:08] Okay, so that's the poster.

[38:11] You don't know a lot considering

[38:12] that's everyone's favorite movie according to the polls.

[38:15] Let me guess.

[38:16] So I'm just gonna paint a picture

[38:17] of what the poster probably looks like.

[38:19] We have the title.

[38:20] Obviously, you gotta have the title of the movie

[38:21] on the poster.

[38:22] Is it like the RV like tipping off the side

[38:25] of like a cliff or something?

[38:26] It's on like a giant folder or something.

[38:28] Here, I'm gonna look it up.

[38:28] Yeah, yeah, it's on a giant-

[38:29] And then he's, it's a big-headed Robin Williams,

[38:33] I'm picturing.

[38:34] If this was a movie from the 60s

[38:36] and Jack Davis did the painting, yeah.

[38:39] It's an RV that is balanced precariously

[38:42] on the point of a mountain.

[38:43] Now, wait, is this the one where Steve Carell's head

[38:46] is on a plate covered in syrup like it's pancakes?

[38:48] No, that's Dan in real life, I believe.

[38:50] Oh, yeah, Dan in real life.

[38:52] Speaking of Dan's in real life, we watched a movie.

[38:54] So Dan, here's the rest of the cast of RV.

[38:58] So there's also-

[38:58] This is important.

[38:59] Jeff Daniels, Cheryl Hines, Christian Chenoweth,

[39:02] Will Arnett, a lot of people in this one.

[39:04] Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[39:05] Yeah, okay, that's five stars.

[39:08] Okay.

[39:09] I will say I've read, I think,

[39:10] both of Gary Sondheldt's memoirs.

[39:12] I don't remember him talking about RV particularly in them.

[39:15] Okay.

[39:16] What did he say about nine lives?

[39:17] He doesn't touch that one either.

[39:20] What did he say about Joan Cusack in Adam's Family Values?

[39:27] He doesn't talk much about Adam's Family Values

[39:29] in the ones I've read.

[39:30] You know what, maybe I've only read the first one.

[39:32] Damn shame.

[39:34] Throws his copy in the garbage.

[39:35] Surprisingly, a fair amount about Wild Wild West.

[39:38] More than you would expect.

[39:38] Yeah, I mean, I feel like that probably

[39:40] looms large in his brain.

[39:44] Okay, so speaking of stars,

[39:46] this is where we reach star of the silver screen himself,

[39:50] Eric Roberts, playing the character Tom,

[39:53] who is wearing some kind of hybrid duster thing

[39:57] and a very clean pair of Timbalands.

[40:00] Um, I'm just an Eric Roberts brought his own hat to the sets.

[40:04] His outfit for, yeah, yeah.

[40:05] They, they actually just pass them on the street and we're like, Hey, you want to make

[40:08] a movie?

[40:09] I'm not doing anything tonight.

[40:12] Sure.

[40:13] I've got a movie at 11 that I'm shooting and one at three, but I just finished shooting

[40:19] a movie and I have another one in three hours.

[40:21] Yeah.

[40:22] But if I can wear the same outfit and I can make sure that everyone knows that I have

[40:25] lots of sex in the first 45 seconds, my spirits do it.

[40:31] Yeah.

[40:32] So he, he brings a real intense energy that this movie was honestly lacking.

[40:38] And we, he shows them his hidden little base that's in a junkyard where he has what fabricated

[40:44] some kind of alien spaceship.

[40:46] This doesn't really go anywhere.

[40:48] And then he, uh, he kind of turns on them and starts attacking them and they escape

[40:53] while he fires, uh, gunshots at them.

[40:56] Um, and it's revealed that he most likely is a human being who has been brainwashed

[41:02] by aliens.

[41:03] Is that correct?

[41:04] It was like working for the government, making a spaceship, but then the funding got cut

[41:07] or something, but he got to keep the spaceship, which does not seem to me the way the government

[41:12] would operate normally.

[41:13] I feel like, yeah, I was, I was trying to understand the scene and then I got the mistake.

[41:18] Yeah.

[41:19] And then at the end of the movie, I'm like, Oh, whatever was happening, never gets cleared

[41:24] up.

[41:25] So it wasn't important.

[41:26] Yeah.

[41:27] But George did make sure that you know that it's reverse engineering.

[41:31] That's the one thing that you make sure that you're doing it.

[41:34] And also I guess, so yeah, it doesn't really ever get cleared up, but there's, it's the

[41:40] government, not aliens, but the government is in cahoots with aliens.

[41:44] Or the government is, has, has been collecting alien stuff because they're like Roswell was

[41:48] just the beginning.

[41:49] You know?

[41:50] Yeah.

[41:51] I mean, I feel like there's now, um, I think let's pause the movie for a second because

[41:56] I think, um, I think this is an important time for us to talk about, uh, alien conspiracy

[42:00] theories and how they're tied in with the government.

[42:03] First off, do you guys now, no judgments here.

[42:05] This is a judgment free zone.

[42:06] Do you guys believe in aliens?

[42:08] Yes.

[42:09] Okay.

[42:10] Like Dan?

[42:11] Uh, first off, I like, uh, your energy.

[42:13] Look, I'm an actor.

[42:14] I've got fuck all the lose.

[42:19] I was delaying because I'm like, did Dan Aykroyd like, like bribe Stuart to bring this topic

[42:25] up?

[42:26] Or what?

[42:27] I feel like so much of the movie, it's built on that idea of like, this is like the whole

[42:32] idea of the faith in that aliens exist.

[42:35] And also that there is another entity that is keeping aliens from us.

[42:40] Yeah.

[42:41] Yeah.

[42:42] That there's a coverup involved.

[42:43] But also that for whatever reason, the government is covering up that existence.

[42:47] Yeah.

[42:48] For the average person.

[42:49] For instance, I, I can believe and accept the idea that there is alien life out there.

[42:53] It is most likely not hyper advanced while also being hyper, uh, tough and animalistic.

[42:59] Well, that's, that's, that's hard for me to believe.

[43:01] We get to later.

[43:02] I have the same issue.

[43:03] I have a lot of alien movies where it's like, okay, so they build spaceships that can travel

[43:07] interstellar distances and they do these science experiments, but they don't wear clothes.

[43:11] They don't seem to have a language.

[43:12] They're just claw monsters with teeth that eat things that just run after people and

[43:16] to tear them apart and eat them.

[43:18] Yeah.

[43:19] Also somehow able to build all this stuff and have science and also want to fuck with

[43:23] us.

[43:24] You know what I mean?

[43:25] If you can do all that, like, so similarly, I believe like there's probably alien life

[43:31] out in the universe, but does it exist in the same, can it get to us in the same window

[43:38] of, uh, you know, uh, galactic time, like the, the age of the universe that we humans

[43:45] are existing in?

[43:47] I don't think so probably.

[43:49] So the, but the thing that I have more trouble accepting is the idea that aliens exist.

[43:55] They have attempted contact with humans and that the United States government and I guess

[43:58] the government around the world is very good at kind of hiding that information from us.

[44:03] Now, what is it about?

[44:04] I, cause I feel like we live in a period of extreme government competence.

[44:08] What is it about the gut?

[44:09] What is it about the world we live in that would make you think the government wouldn't

[44:12] be able to pull this off?

[44:14] You know?

[44:15] Yeah.

[44:17] I think, uh, yeah, there's just, there's just, I just had this feeling that the people in

[44:19] charge, I don't know, maybe I've just like picked this up over my years of working that

[44:22] like, you know, I feel like the people in charge actually don't really know fucking

[44:27] anything.

[44:28] I dare say it feels they're all just self-interested weirdos just doing their own part of it.

[44:34] They're self-interest weirdos.

[44:35] Also, there would be so much like that would need so much cooperation and so much at the

[44:41] same way that, um, people are like the government killed John F. Kennedy and it's like pretty

[44:45] unlikely that we wouldn't have heard about it in some form up to this point.

[44:50] Like there's, there's a, it's very, that the people are like, yeah, I'm going to take this

[44:54] secret with me to my grave.

[44:55] Like people don't, maybe people used to do that, but nowadays it's like, no, can I get

[44:59] a book deal off of this?

[45:00] Can I get on TV from this?

[45:01] You know?

[45:02] So back in the days when scandals took down presidents, uh, the, the government botched

[45:07] a fucking break in a thing that should have been just easy to get away with and they didn't

[45:12] do it.

[45:13] So I don't think they're going to keep the alien secret.

[45:15] Where is the deep, deep politics part of the podcast?

[45:18] Yeah, yeah.

[45:19] This is when we turn into, we turn into a, it's now it's now suddenly it's like a, like

[45:22] a Vox podcast.

[45:23] Yeah.

[45:24] We're the Chappell flop house.

[45:25] Um, the, uh, but yeah, the idea that like, yeah, if there were, if the government had

[45:29] access to a whole bunch of aliens, you know, there would be like a Slack channel of these

[45:33] nutsacks sending pictures of dead aliens with like a fucking tag, like, Oh, look at this.

[45:39] LOL.

[45:40] Like that kind of shit.

[45:41] I mean, now they'd accidentally send it to the wrong person.

[45:43] They'd, they'd, they'd have a, they'd add a reporter to that, to that Slack channel

[45:47] or some, some kind of mid-level contractor would tell the people that he Twitch video

[45:52] game plays with that, uh, that he's got aliens in his garage or something like that.

[45:56] You know, it would, it would not be a secret anymore for sure.

[45:59] But also the, the idea that there's the idea in the past would be like, Oh, the government

[46:02] is using the alien technology and doesn't want people to know where it came from.

[46:06] And that's why we have microwave ovens and things like that.

[46:09] And yet I've yet to see, unless our technology is a plan by aliens to ruin our lives so that

[46:15] they can then take over that much more easily.

[46:17] It seems like the technology we have is not so impressive that we need aliens to get,

[46:20] they were like, let's create pyramids.

[46:22] So humans can fuck up their life.

[46:25] I mean, that's the other thing where they're like, how could all these different races

[46:29] invent pyramids?

[46:30] It must be aliens.

[46:31] Like pretty, it's just stack stuff on each other and you have a thick base at the bottom

[46:34] and triangles are the most, if you're building something and gravity is involved, like you're

[46:40] going to get a pyramid, that's what's going to happen.

[46:42] Uh, but also they don't, they don't have like a million fucking things shooting into their

[46:47] eyeballs from their phone every day.

[46:49] They can just focus on building one thing.

[46:51] Also they enslaved a bunch of people.

[46:53] Not all pyramids were built by slaves, Dan.

[46:56] I didn't say that.

[47:00] Thank you for correcting the thing that I didn't say.

[47:04] But yeah, so I think we can all agree that in real life we probably don't believe that

[47:08] the government is necessarily doing it, covering it up because they're doing too good a job

[47:12] if they are.

[47:13] Yeah.

[47:14] So now back to the movie.

[47:15] Now that they've escaped from Tom, they realize that the men in black are on the escape from

[47:18] Tom.

[47:22] They've escaped from Tom and they realize that they're being followed by men in black,

[47:27] which they're like, you know, I might be going crazy, but I think this van's following us.

[47:32] I'm like, that's not a van.

[47:33] That's an SUV.

[47:34] Once again, the identification, misidentification of vehicles in the film.

[47:38] Technically an SUV is a light truck for regulation purposes.

[47:41] The director is car blindness.

[47:43] Yeah.

[47:44] So, sir, can you tell us about the car that hit your car with the hit and run?

[47:50] I can't.

[47:51] I can't.

[47:52] It's probably got four wheels, probably.

[47:57] OK, so they realize that the men in black are on their trail, so they need to they need

[48:02] to they need to hide themselves.

[48:04] So I think this is when they all go shopping and they go to the mall and they go buy some

[48:09] new clothes.

[48:10] Wait, talking, speaking of Barry Sonnenfeld, I will say, if the government is covering

[48:13] up aliens than when we were earlier, that one of the most brilliant psyops that the

[48:19] government then could have pulled off is to turn men in black from a sinister presence

[48:23] whose job is to keep people ignorant into a lovable presence whose job is to protect

[48:28] humanity from bad aliens, which is in the old stories was never what they were.

[48:31] They were always just about destroying evidence of UFOs and things like that.

[48:35] But they are intimidating people, like an inhibiting people.

[48:38] Yeah.

[48:39] And in the in the movies, thanks to Hollywood, thanks to Hollyweird, now men in black are

[48:44] a lovable Will Smith guy, you know, burning his career to the ground right now.

[48:49] I'm saying that Hollywood and the government are working together to.

[48:53] Well, maybe that's what Gino McCoy was really after, was to sort of like retake the lore

[48:59] of men in black and turn it into something menacing.

[49:01] That was a very good shot as down that street.

[49:05] First of all, I was like, I don't think they're on that street, but it was a pretty cool shot.

[49:10] Of the lone man in black standing there.

[49:13] Yeah. The mysterious man in black just standing next to an SUV.

[49:16] Yeah. I was like, oh, that's spooky.

[49:18] Yeah. Yeah. How'd he get there?

[49:19] Mm hmm.

[49:22] Probably the SUV.

[49:23] Yeah. He took it.

[49:24] He took an Uber and then he waited for the Uber to leave to pose menacingly.

[49:29] So he's like, get out of here.

[49:30] Get out of here. I got I might be slightly the timing here might be wrong for me because

[49:35] my brain got a little muddled.

[49:36] At some point they fly to Morocco.

[49:38] Yes. They're going to go see after Tatiana's or Tatiana's parents in Morocco.

[49:43] The Tatiana's parents are in Morocco.

[49:44] Oh, so they're like, they look like they live in a medieval times building.

[49:48] Yes. You know, they're like, we should go see Tatiana's parents.

[49:52] We got to go to Morocco. And they did shoot in Morocco.

[49:54] Right. So give the movie credit for that on location.

[49:57] You know, I like that we don't see anything about them.

[50:00] flying, but we see them at a fucking grocery store, you know what I mean?

[50:03] Like they're coming out of the mall, but we don't get any.

[50:07] Do you see one?

[50:08] We do have some like footage of an airplane flying, right?

[50:12] Yeah, but I think I don't think they they don't think they hired

[50:14] another plane to shoot.

[50:15] Of course they did not.

[50:18] OK, so they meet with Tatiana's parents who are obviously broken up,

[50:20] but they also add some context that Tatiana has always had these dreams

[50:25] of being abducted by aliens.

[50:27] Here's some art she drew from her memories of her being strapped to a table.

[50:32] It was pretty funny when they show the piece of child's art

[50:34] and they're like, that's from her memories.

[50:36] Yeah, that was pretty that was pretty funny.

[50:37] Yeah, there's a line in here that I know Ashley also had a problem with.

[50:41] I'm so mad.

[50:42] Where the mom's like, how is any of this going to help find our daughter?

[50:45] I'm like, what?

[50:46] This is like literally directly going to lead to where your daughter is.

[50:51] Yeah. George is like, did she ever describe this?

[50:54] This, you know, secret underground, the dumb.

[50:58] And her dad's like, yes, for the time she was missing the longest.

[51:02] And then the mother just exhorts, you know, what is this going to do

[51:06] to help find her?

[51:07] It's like, bitch, that's the first solid.

[51:09] They're fucking movie.

[51:12] Are you serious?

[51:14] This is what we wish we could have told that English police officer

[51:16] who works in Los Angeles on an exchange program.

[51:18] Some guy. Yeah, that would have been a real lead.

[51:21] It would have been great if he showed up in Morocco

[51:23] wearing like a big, like Panama hat or something like that.

[51:26] Really? Yeah, yeah.

[51:28] All like Lawrence of Arabia.

[51:30] This scene with the parents.

[51:32] I mean, so many scenes, this movie, the Eric Roberts scene,

[51:34] a lot of conversations.

[51:35] It feels I had so much trouble.

[51:37] My mind has so much trouble gripping what was going on,

[51:40] like holding on to the dialogue or picking up information

[51:43] because it's so elliptically kind of like someone say poorly written

[51:49] and information is suddenly dropped on you without any lead up

[51:53] or anything like that.

[51:54] But then the conversations otherwise will just kind of like circle

[51:57] the drain of actual actual talk.

[51:59] It was very I don't know if you guys are having this trouble,

[52:02] but I felt like I'd watch a scene and halfway through the scene, I'd be like,

[52:05] I don't I don't know that I'm registering any of this.

[52:07] Like, it just kind of feels like like I'm walking through a haze of words

[52:11] that don't quite make sense. Yeah, OK.

[52:13] I agree. But I also thought maybe that's Los Angeles.

[52:16] I've definitely had meetings with my agents in L.A.

[52:19] that felt very similar to that, where I walked away going,

[52:23] I don't think I got any concrete information out of that. Yeah.

[52:27] So while in Morocco, they stop at a gas station and they buy an RV,

[52:31] Alex buys an RV while Delilah and Patricia get an argument

[52:37] where they're like kind of accusing each other of trying to take advantage

[52:41] of Alex and his money.

[52:42] And so Delilah has made it very clear to Patricia

[52:45] that she's going to play along with Alex's fears about aliens

[52:48] because she sees this as the way to get her get become his new girlfriend.

[52:52] You know, such a catch at this point.

[52:53] And he's such a he's such a guy who I mean, he's shaved his beard at this point.

[52:56] So he lost the one thing that was that was great about him.

[52:59] But but this guy who has spent months

[53:01] sitting around a pool pining for his disappeared girlfriend

[53:05] and is now kind of driven in this obsessive way

[53:08] to make everyone fly to Morocco and drive around in the desert in an RV.

[53:11] She's like, I got to keep this guy like I got to get with him.

[53:15] You know, I mean, at least he's got hobbies.

[53:17] You know, he's got something going on.

[53:19] It's interesting.

[53:20] And it's not just playing video games.

[53:22] Yeah, I just playing Elden Ring.

[53:23] Definitely like a Timu Justin Theroux at that point.

[53:26] Like they really got him squared down.

[53:32] Timu Justin Theroux.

[53:33] I feel like that's like a whole type of man.

[53:36] Definitely. OK.

[53:37] So they ride around in the desert for a little bit.

[53:42] They stop at a desert oasis.

[53:45] Did you skip the part, though, where they go in the two girls

[53:48] go into the place?

[53:50] They find a woman.

[53:51] Yeah, that's like laughs at like an elderly woman

[53:54] just looks at them and does a creepy laugh for a long time.

[53:57] And they both kind of just look at each other and back out of the room

[53:59] and get up and leave.

[54:00] Yeah, they reacted like they went to a haunted house.

[54:03] And that was like, they're like, oh, what a wacky experience.

[54:07] OK, now for the hey ride.

[54:08] I also don't know what they expected.

[54:10] I don't know what they expected when they went into the building.

[54:13] I don't know what they expected to have happen.

[54:15] And I don't know why that happened.

[54:16] And I don't know why they, you know, it's I think they're very

[54:19] it's one of those moments where it's like there's fully 25 to 30 seconds

[54:23] given to why they go in, which is to get out of the heat.

[54:26] I know that's right. That's right.

[54:28] They could have just gone in and had this experience.

[54:31] But then they come out and you get the sense that those scenes

[54:34] right next to each other were filmed months apart, right?

[54:37] Because they just giggle on their way out like they've been in a tickle fight.

[54:44] This I will say and I'll give that's a good direction, by the way.

[54:48] It's like I'll give this a pretend.

[54:50] Well, imagine you're in a tickle fight, tickle fight before.

[54:53] So just take yourself back there.

[54:55] Your motivation, your motivation is that you've just left a tickle fight.

[54:59] You're a little wistful that's over, but you're also physically glad it's over

[55:02] because you just can't laugh that hard anymore from the tickling.

[55:05] A little side aching, but grateful for the experience.

[55:08] Exactly. I will say if this scene had happened in a different kind of movie,

[55:13] I'd be like, love this scene.

[55:14] If this was if this was some kind of Eastern European horror movie,

[55:17] I'd be like, I love this scene where they walk in.

[55:19] An old lady just laughs at them and they walk out again.

[55:22] But in this movie, it didn't quite work for me.

[55:24] That's too bad.

[55:26] OK, so again, there was there's definitely a moment at night

[55:30] where they are arguing about an aux cable and they need to play some music.

[55:34] I can't remember if this happens before or after they all of a sudden

[55:38] George is outside of the vehicle and he runs over

[55:42] and they find this desert oasis thing at night.

[55:45] I think it's after the oasis, because the aux cable leads to the song

[55:49] starts playing that and they have to sing and they sing along.

[55:52] Yeah. Yeah. And they're like, we didn't ask for this song,

[55:53] but it's kind of catchy and it's clearly another Geno McCoy banger.

[55:56] One hundred percent.

[55:57] This I went through a roller coaster of emotions during the scene

[56:00] because at first I'm like, why are we spending so much time

[56:03] on whether they have an aux cable to play music, just play some music?

[56:06] And then I'm like, oh, it's to set up

[56:08] the fact that he's going to play another one of his songs.

[56:10] And then at first, all the characters don't like the song.

[56:13] And I'm like, oh, Geno McCoy, you're being honest with, you know,

[56:16] or at least humble once.

[56:18] No, but they get really get into it.

[56:20] But then they get into it, they turn around.

[56:21] They're like, you know what?

[56:22] This is the greatest song I've ever heard.

[56:24] I wonder if that screech right before it that happens

[56:27] is sort of like a mind control thing that makes them really love the song,

[56:31] because there is that really discordant sound that comes out.

[56:34] Yeah. Yeah.

[56:35] Oh, that's cool.

[56:36] The radio waves are being controlled by what's ever.

[56:39] It really feels like it's setting you up for the aliens to attack in that moment.

[56:43] But it's that it's setting you up for this song, which then it's like,

[56:46] so is he saying the music different kind of music comes from the aliens?

[56:49] Is that what it is?

[56:50] Yeah. Serving with the aliens by Joe Satriani.

[56:54] So, yeah, maybe maybe this track was is actually like that loud sound.

[56:58] It was like the bonus hidden track at the end of the last track

[57:02] on Gina McCoy's record, where like on that last song,

[57:05] after you listen to the last song, you then like wait 20 minutes

[57:08] and then there's like a crazy sound and then you get a bonus secret song.

[57:11] Yeah, that's what people love. Right. People love.

[57:13] Or here's my read of the rest of this movie.

[57:15] That screech.

[57:16] That's the moment when their their van crashed

[57:18] because they were so busy looking about.

[57:20] The rest of the movie is them in the last moments.

[57:23] What they imagine before they die.

[57:24] You know, yeah, it's a real loss.

[57:26] The morphine dream. Yeah, great.

[57:29] OK, so at one point they stop at a nighttime desert oasis.

[57:33] They meet up with a weird hippie couple, Sonny and Cher, who convince Alex

[57:37] to take his clothes off and go kind of skinny dipping for a moment.

[57:42] And then they leave these characters.

[57:44] Again, this is where the movie almost becomes a movie

[57:47] I can respect on a B-movie level.

[57:48] It makes no sense. It's dumb.

[57:51] The Sonny character just grunts.

[57:52] He's like a caveman wearing clothes.

[57:54] And the Cher character, for no reason, pretty much takes off her dress

[57:58] and goes, get in this water with me.

[57:59] We got to get into the water.

[58:00] And it doesn't these characters show up later

[58:04] and it doesn't mean anything when they show up later either.

[58:06] But the nonsensical cartoonish quality of these characters, it's like,

[58:10] oh, yeah, we're Sonny. I'm Sonny. This is Cher.

[58:12] And I'm sure this is Sonny.

[58:13] And it's like and someone's like Sonny and Cher.

[58:15] It's like it's like they wandered into a different, sillier

[58:18] kind of like weirder movie.

[58:20] And I'm like, all right, let's spend more time in this movie.

[58:22] They're in the same movie with Eric Roberts.

[58:24] And I don't like, yeah, they're all sort of it's it feels very Bakersfield to me.

[58:29] I don't know how I can really explain it any further.

[58:32] Sonny and Cher are definitely not their real names, you know,

[58:36] and I really respect them being like, uh, yeah,

[58:40] we're not even going to pretend that we're going to be authentic with you.

[58:44] Yeah. I also feel like Sonny and Cher were not the names on the script.

[58:48] And they're just like, uh, come up with a name real quick while we're shooting.

[58:52] Maybe these two these two, there's such a there's such a Manson family vibe to them.

[58:56] And it's the kind of thing where I'm like, I want more genuinely.

[59:00] I want more of this kind of strange, sinister vibe in this movie.

[59:03] For sure. Because otherwise this movie just feels very flat and bland and boring.

[59:09] You know, so we then things time for things to get heating up.

[59:13] So there while traveling at night on the road, they almost run over a goat

[59:18] and then all of a sudden something smashes into the windshield.

[59:23] I couldn't tell if it was the goat or something else.

[59:25] And then I was having trouble with this, too,

[59:27] whether it was like the goat's head, I think.

[59:29] But or maybe it's an alien thing or it's a tiny weapon of some.

[59:33] It's very hard to get out.

[59:34] Yeah. So I watched that part a couple of times and I could never quite get it.

[59:37] There seems to be some kind of a UFO.

[59:39] And they they try to get away in their RV.

[59:43] But then the RV crashes and rolls down a hill.

[59:46] We have a I would say probably a complicated

[59:50] stunt shot of, oh, yeah, the the RV rolling around

[59:54] and the people like bouncing around on the inside.

[59:56] I was really impressed by that.

[59:58] That was the one that was this was the.

[1:00:00] One effect in the movie, this is an okay,

[1:00:01] like kind of sci-fi channel level type,

[1:00:05] or maybe a little bit less effects.

[1:00:06] But this, when they-

[1:00:07] Later on, it's very much like Alone in the Dark

[1:00:10] video cut scene in a video game.

[1:00:12] Yes.

[1:00:13] When they're actually-

[1:00:14] FMV cut scene, yeah.

[1:00:15] When they're actually, when you're inside the RV

[1:00:17] and it was spinning-

[1:00:18] The roll, yeah!

[1:00:18] I was like, they must have made a room

[1:00:20] and that they could turn.

[1:00:21] Yeah, it was really cool, actually.

[1:00:23] Yeah, it looks really good, yeah.

[1:00:24] Ashley, you've been in a lot of sets.

[1:00:25] Have you ever been in a rolling RV?

[1:00:27] I have not, and I was really disappointed

[1:00:30] when I thought I thought, fuck it list, man.

[1:00:33] Yeah, let's add it.

[1:00:34] But it's funny, because it is-

[1:00:35] Maybe in the next season of Gilded Age.

[1:00:37] Oh my God!

[1:00:38] Your lips to Julian Fellow's ears.

[1:00:43] I really, I was like, this is a really effective scene

[1:00:46] and I didn't want any of it.

[1:00:49] Like, I really didn't want to see George hurting

[1:00:53] and upset the way that I was like,

[1:00:57] no!

[1:00:59] I've become so attached to George.

[1:01:00] You care about this character, yeah.

[1:01:02] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[1:01:04] I didn't want to see that guy in pain.

[1:01:06] I did not need realistic cuts and injuries

[1:01:10] on these cyphers of people.

[1:01:11] Like, I really just-

[1:01:13] So they climb out of the wreckage of their RV

[1:01:16] and they are all injured and they're disoriented

[1:01:20] and there seems to be aliens still around.

[1:01:22] Up on a bluff, they see Sonny and Cher,

[1:01:24] who then get blasted by some kind of alien ray

[1:01:28] and then they, in order to get-

[1:01:30] Alien ray, original alien ray, the pizza guy?

[1:01:32] Yeah, yeah.

[1:01:36] Amos Ray.

[1:01:37] Yeah, so they try to take cover from the aliens

[1:01:40] by running toward a nearby, like, fort or castle.

[1:01:45] And they hide in there and it turns out

[1:01:48] that that's actually the cover part

[1:01:50] of a deep underground military base.

[1:01:54] They descend into the bowels of this base

[1:01:56] and this is where it's a pretty standard sci-fi channel,

[1:02:00] like, sci-fi, I don't know,

[1:02:02] like, science installation type base.

[1:02:05] Yeah, like a scientific military thing

[1:02:08] where there's, like, hallways with gratings above you

[1:02:11] and there's, like, doors with glowing stuff behind them.

[1:02:15] Lines on the wall that glow.

[1:02:16] Glowing lines on the wall.

[1:02:18] Eventually you're gonna find-

[1:02:19] Yeah, recessed lighting.

[1:02:20] Yeah, eventually you're gonna find tanks

[1:02:23] with things floating in them, you know,

[1:02:24] and also-

[1:02:25] That are clearly the next step of human evolution.

[1:02:28] As George says, the next step of human evolution.

[1:02:30] I don't know what he's basing that on

[1:02:31] because they just kind of look like blobs,

[1:02:33] like, just blobs and blobs.

[1:02:35] Guys in suits.

[1:02:36] One of the top 10 places you're gonna find

[1:02:37] tanks full of things floating.

[1:02:39] Top 10, yeah.

[1:02:40] That and, like, what, seafood restaurants?

[1:02:42] Yeah, seafood restaurants and Chinese restaurants.

[1:02:44] Underground government installations.

[1:02:46] Dentist offices, dentist office waiting rooms.

[1:02:50] Okay, any place where they have, like,

[1:02:53] count how many pickled eggs are in the jar

[1:02:55] and if you get it right, you get all the eggs.

[1:02:57] The empire strikes back.

[1:02:59] Jeff Koons Retrospectives.

[1:03:01] That's just gonna be basketballs floating in tanks.

[1:03:03] But again, it counts, you know.

[1:03:05] Does it count as floating in tanks

[1:03:07] if it's one of those places that's, like,

[1:03:09] paragliding or whatever, but it's indoors,

[1:03:11] like, indoor skydiving places?

[1:03:13] No, that's a good question.

[1:03:14] We get it a lot.

[1:03:15] No, actually, it does not count as a tank, yeah.

[1:03:17] Okay, let me cross it off.

[1:03:18] We in the tank administration.

[1:03:20] We in the tank-floating listing ranking community.

[1:03:24] So walking around this-

[1:03:25] As the Guinness representative

[1:03:27] for tank-floating operations,

[1:03:30] I'll have to say no, Stuart.

[1:03:31] That does not fit our parameters, yeah.

[1:03:33] So walking around this place,

[1:03:35] I think at one point Patricia has a vision

[1:03:37] of, like, alien silhouettes.

[1:03:39] A patrician, yeah.

[1:03:40] Yeah, alien silhouettes and blood flowing around her,

[1:03:43] what, like, faux reptile skin boots.

[1:03:47] And then they eventually realize

[1:03:50] they're being tracked by,

[1:03:52] it seems like Men in Black Special Forces-type guys.

[1:03:56] George and Alex easily dispatch these two soldiers.

[1:04:00] Incredibly easily overtake them, yeah.

[1:04:03] And then they-

[1:04:03] It never occurs to the soldiers

[1:04:04] to use the enormous guns

[1:04:05] that they're holding in their hands.

[1:04:06] Guys, if one of you got abducted by aliens,

[1:04:11] my friends and I would, A, not be able to find you,

[1:04:14] and, B, please don't get hurt, please.

[1:04:17] Maybe they're being held at the local cineplex

[1:04:20] for the bad movie retrospective I'm attending.

[1:04:24] But also, don't expect me to be able to beat anyone up

[1:04:27] in order to save you.

[1:04:30] There's two things I can't do.

[1:04:31] If they're not at the bar, I'm not finding them.

[1:04:32] Yeah, yeah.

[1:04:34] Or maybe they're at the comic shop.

[1:04:38] Okay, so they burst into-

[1:04:40] I'll check this hammock.

[1:04:42] All right.

[1:04:43] Yeah.

[1:04:44] Don't see him yet.

[1:04:45] Better spend a little more time checking.

[1:04:48] I was mad the guys got the guns,

[1:04:49] and poor Patricia's just got her phone still.

[1:04:53] Yeah, but she's getting all this.

[1:04:55] George is, as George says out loud,

[1:04:57] he's gonna get rich from this material,

[1:04:59] which I'm like, how do you own it?

[1:05:01] She's the one filming it.

[1:05:02] Right, way to, like, take-

[1:05:03] Is she under contract?

[1:05:04] Yeah.

[1:05:05] I mean, it's a little, it reminds, it's a little,

[1:05:06] I mean, but it reminded me a little bit

[1:05:07] of an issue I had in NOPE,

[1:05:09] when they were like, all we need is a picture of that thing

[1:05:12] and we'll be millionaires.

[1:05:13] And I'm like, who's gonna pay you them?

[1:05:15] I don't understand.

[1:05:16] What's the business plan?

[1:05:18] I don't think that's a problem with the script.

[1:05:19] I would argue that's a problem with their thinking.

[1:05:22] No, no, that's true.

[1:05:23] I still feel like it fits within that world.

[1:05:25] I'm like here.

[1:05:26] The-

[1:05:27] I'm just saying Illumina, NOPE, basically the same movie.

[1:05:29] Anyway, continue.

[1:05:30] Yeah.

[1:05:32] Just as good.

[1:05:33] Okay, so they burst into a room

[1:05:36] and they find Tatiana strapped to a table

[1:05:39] being like overlooked by some kind of alien creature

[1:05:43] who they immediately blast.

[1:05:45] And then another alien shows up.

[1:05:46] They blast that alien to-

[1:05:47] They know how to use those guns.

[1:05:49] Yeah.

[1:05:49] With no training.

[1:05:50] Again, they are amazing.

[1:05:51] I couldn't even close the gate

[1:05:53] at your bar two nights ago, Stuart.

[1:05:56] I was like, nobody showed me how to do this.

[1:05:58] Gotta call you at 6 a.m.

[1:06:00] Yeah, that's true.

[1:06:02] I'll give the, let's say that Alex,

[1:06:05] during what it turns out was his,

[1:06:06] the abductions he was dreaming about,

[1:06:08] maybe they trained him in the use of this alien weaponry

[1:06:11] at some point.

[1:06:12] Because we realize at this point,

[1:06:13] now reunited with Tatiana,

[1:06:15] that Alex has had the same dreams

[1:06:18] because he also was being abducted.

[1:06:21] And that's where they met

[1:06:22] and that's why they have such a deep and abiding

[1:06:25] love for each other.

[1:06:26] Clearly a strong connection.

[1:06:26] Like, she's his sensi-girl.

[1:06:29] Exactly.

[1:06:30] That's why they have such a strong connection.

[1:06:32] That's why Delilah will never be able

[1:06:33] to interrupt that connection,

[1:06:35] which is perfect because she falls off like a railing

[1:06:38] and aliens drag her over.

[1:06:39] I felt so bad for this character

[1:06:41] who got roped into this dumb ass alien hunt and then dies.

[1:06:46] It doesn't get a weapon ever, right?

[1:06:48] She's just trying to stand by her man.

[1:06:49] You know what I mean?

[1:06:50] And then all of a sudden we see her spinal column.

[1:06:54] Yeah, that's true.

[1:06:55] Should have been blonder.

[1:06:57] So sensi, sensi, so I guess if that's the LinkedIn,

[1:07:00] it's like special extraterrestrial neurological super.

[1:07:06] Yep.

[1:07:06] Yeah.

[1:07:08] You got it.

[1:07:09] Oh wait, can I give the George exposition?

[1:07:12] I wrote this fully out.

[1:07:14] Oh yeah, yeah.

[1:07:15] So it says there's a blip where you see them covered in goo

[1:07:19] holding hands and then it cuts back

[1:07:21] and George says, it all makes sense.

[1:07:24] Both of y'all are connected to each other.

[1:07:26] That's how you were miraculously able to find her.

[1:07:30] Both you guys having nightmares about the same place.

[1:07:33] It all adds up.

[1:07:35] It does all add up.

[1:07:37] It does all add up.

[1:07:39] They're like, we need a line of dialogue

[1:07:40] that gets across how this all adds up.

[1:07:42] And then they split it with Tatiana,

[1:07:45] who then says, because you were also abducted by aliens.

[1:07:50] Yeah, because when we first started seeing them

[1:07:52] covered in goo, I'm like, wait a minute,

[1:07:54] did I miss something?

[1:07:55] And no, I guess we all missed something.

[1:07:58] We missed the signs were there all along.

[1:08:01] And it's Delilah.

[1:08:03] Delilah, unfortunately gets her spine ripped out.

[1:08:07] Well, she shouldn't have wished

[1:08:08] that another girl would disappear.

[1:08:10] Yeah, Sub-Zero style, right?

[1:08:12] I think so, yeah.

[1:08:13] Yeah, that's some Hays Code stuff.

[1:08:14] Being like, if you wish another girl's gonna disappear,

[1:08:17] you will have your spinal column exposed.

[1:08:20] That's the rule.

[1:08:20] Okay, so they run through the base.

[1:08:22] Yep, they're being pursued by yelling aliens.

[1:08:24] The aliens they shoot.

[1:08:25] Are they the same kinds of aliens,

[1:08:27] the aliens that are chasing them?

[1:08:29] I couldn't tell if it was, if they were the same

[1:08:31] or different, because the ones that are chasing them

[1:08:32] are very clearly like, they look like,

[1:08:34] kind of like the Xenomorph, a little bit.

[1:08:36] Kind of like Venoms.

[1:08:37] Yeah, like Venoms, exactly.

[1:08:38] They've got long tongues and stuff.

[1:08:40] But the ones that they shoot,

[1:08:41] I thought that they looked a little different.

[1:08:42] And I could buy it if there's the scientist aliens

[1:08:45] and their enforcer, you know, alien or something.

[1:08:47] But from that point on,

[1:08:48] all we see are the Venom Xenomorph types,

[1:08:50] which again, I don't see them as being the kind

[1:08:53] that can build a spaceship.

[1:08:54] They don't even have clothes, you know, so.

[1:08:56] But they're like spinning triangles in their hand.

[1:08:58] You know, like there's a shot

[1:09:00] of this huge alien.

[1:09:02] It seemed, I don't know,

[1:09:03] maybe the proportions were just off,

[1:09:04] but it seemed enormous, this alien,

[1:09:06] just sort of like levitating something in its palm.

[1:09:10] And I was like, why does that guy need a Land Rover

[1:09:12] if he can do that?

[1:09:13] Can't he just sort of get there?

[1:09:16] Elliot, is it more advanced to have clothes?

[1:09:18] Come on, let's all get naked right now.

[1:09:20] Just do it, guys.

[1:09:21] I knew I was here for a minute.

[1:09:26] So we got, so they run through the base.

[1:09:29] They find a room that like a decontamination chamber

[1:09:33] that has a bunch of like spacesuits

[1:09:34] that all fit them perfectly.

[1:09:36] They put those spacesuits on.

[1:09:37] And then I think they like teleport to another room.

[1:09:43] Yeah.

[1:09:43] I don't, I can't remember all the mechanics.

[1:09:45] Then they walk outside and they're on,

[1:09:48] it seems like they're on some kind of alien desert planet.

[1:09:51] Yeah, they definitely.

[1:09:51] They're on another planet.

[1:09:52] It doesn't look that different

[1:09:53] from the Moroccan desert they were just in,

[1:09:54] but they are clearly talking about it

[1:09:56] as a different planet.

[1:09:57] And George is like, low oxygen,

[1:09:59] don't take your helmet.

[1:10:00] off, you know, and then they run and they're being pursued.

[1:10:03] And I think they go into another alien base that's on this planet.

[1:10:07] And then then they start shooting, describing a video game level.

[1:10:10] I mean, it's all just a bunch of action that doesn't really add up.

[1:10:15] And then George gets shot and he falls down and he bleeds a lot.

[1:10:19] And they're like, we're all going to die here.

[1:10:21] And then they keep running.

[1:10:22] And then somehow Patricia, like, breaks her leg

[1:10:26] and then an alien breaks her neck.

[1:10:28] And I'm like, oh, that's on. Yeah.

[1:10:30] And then that seems like that seems like a an unnecessary

[1:10:34] and also mean way for the alien to kill her to then to snap her neck.

[1:10:38] It seems like what is this? Come on. What's going on?

[1:10:40] And then Tatiana and Alex

[1:10:43] end up in the desert, surrounded by evil aliens.

[1:10:47] And then what? They like explode or something.

[1:10:49] No, it's like there's like a there's like a chase.

[1:10:54] They have like a Humvee chase.

[1:10:55] They have a Humvee chase. Oh, yeah.

[1:10:57] Which is hinted at in the first moment of the film.

[1:11:00] Yeah. Right.

[1:11:00] We finally get the resolution of what that scene is about

[1:11:04] with the little dinosaur lizard guy.

[1:11:06] Oh, that's right.

[1:11:06] In the very opening, the movie, we're on that alien planet

[1:11:09] and we see someone drive up in a little car and there's like,

[1:11:11] he finds a broken phone and yeah, they're surrounded

[1:11:14] and they take their masks off to kiss, even though it's a low oxygen planet.

[1:11:19] And they kiss. Right.

[1:11:20] And then like it like they it's sort of unclear

[1:11:24] what happens, whether the very end is like just like a fantasy

[1:11:30] happy ending, like they're like they appear to be back on Earth

[1:11:34] kissing together.

[1:11:35] Oh, yeah, that could be like them,

[1:11:39] you know, fantasy dying moments,

[1:11:41] or maybe they get zapped back to Earth somehow in that moment.

[1:11:45] Like it's it's unclear.

[1:11:46] I thought they got zapped back to Earth, you know, because she's been abducted

[1:11:49] a ton, which for somebody who's been abducted a ton,

[1:11:52] that girl's got a lot of quid in her, you know what I mean?

[1:11:56] She's very much I'm peacing out.

[1:11:59] This hurts. Yeah.

[1:12:00] Take off your helmet so I can stroke your face.

[1:12:03] And then she's like, where's the beard?

[1:12:05] I'm missing the giant beard.

[1:12:06] I heard you would look good with a beard.

[1:12:08] Have you ever thought about that?

[1:12:09] Oh, you missed a lot.

[1:12:10] You're right. They are in Malibu at the end.

[1:12:12] I've forgotten.

[1:12:13] Does she doesn't she have like a big dumb hat on or something?

[1:12:16] Yeah, that's how you know it's Malibu.

[1:12:18] I mean, like either way, I can't decide which ending annoys me more.

[1:12:22] Whether like these two bland lovers survive having killed their friends

[1:12:27] who were dumb enough to follow them on this adventure

[1:12:31] or everyone dies in the movie has even less of a point than it already.

[1:12:35] Dan, did you did you watch the mid credit scene or no?

[1:12:38] You know, I did see the mid credit scene.

[1:12:41] I don't know whether Stewart did.

[1:12:43] So first off, before we get to a mid credit scene,

[1:12:45] which, of course, I did not watch, there is a

[1:12:49] there is a after this final moment in Malibu.

[1:12:52] We cut to text on the screen.

[1:12:55] Oh, this is the best.

[1:12:56] This was this is maybe this is my favorite moment.

[1:12:58] This is the moment that we were I went, No, what?

[1:13:01] I said that out loud.

[1:13:02] Yeah, I'd be so happy.

[1:13:04] Text on the screen explaining the phenomena of alien abductions

[1:13:08] and how there's been so many, but so many go unreported

[1:13:11] because of the potential stigma.

[1:13:13] It gives the statistic that it is estimated that one out of every 200

[1:13:17] people has been abducted by aliens.

[1:13:19] Yeah, one out of every 200.

[1:13:21] That is bonkers.

[1:13:23] Yeah, that means that many people, you know, have been abducted.

[1:13:27] Many of the people listening to this podcast have been abducted.

[1:13:31] But that was I was like, that is an obscenely low number

[1:13:35] for that group.

[1:13:36] Like one, if it was like one out of every million people, I'd be like,

[1:13:39] even that seems like a pretty prevalent alien abduction.

[1:13:42] But one out of every 200, are they abducting people constantly?

[1:13:46] What's going on? Come on.

[1:13:47] They said one point six million in 2022.

[1:13:51] Yeah, that's that is more people than are

[1:13:55] like erased on that show, the leftovers, you know?

[1:13:59] Yeah, that's it.

[1:14:00] At that point, you're getting into the kind of thinking

[1:14:03] that was in like the 80s, satanic panic, where they were like, oh, yeah, yeah.

[1:14:06] All these preschools all across America are drugging kids

[1:14:09] and then flying them around the world so they can participate in sacrifices

[1:14:12] and then bringing them back

[1:14:13] so that they can be picked up at the end of the day by the really flying them

[1:14:16] around. That was the idea.

[1:14:17] That's part of the idea.

[1:14:18] Yeah, they were traveling in the middle of the day.

[1:14:20] They're traveling them.

[1:14:21] But it's a one out of every 200.

[1:14:23] I was like I was if it's and I started feeling bad because I was like,

[1:14:26] if it's one of every 200 and I didn't get abducted, I feel left out.

[1:14:30] Yeah, they're doing right.

[1:14:32] Choosing me. Yeah, they just didn't want a bad hang for aliens.

[1:14:35] Ellie, can you explain this mid-credit sequence, though?

[1:14:37] Yeah, I didn't see this. What happened?

[1:14:39] So, by the way, the credits are very much like somebody took like a Canva

[1:14:43] credits program and just were like, hit play, insert some names

[1:14:48] like all the images they show are not of characters from the movie

[1:14:51] or of things that happened in the movie.

[1:14:53] No. Well, speaking of not characters in the movie and not things that happened,

[1:14:56] the mid-credit scene is less.

[1:14:57] It's more of a mid-credits joke than a scene where there's a couple guys

[1:15:02] and an alien sitting in like kind of chairs and Eric Roberts.

[1:15:07] And they're sitting there.

[1:15:08] And was it Eric Roberts or just someone in Eric Roberts?

[1:15:11] No, it was Eric Roberts.

[1:15:13] OK, as if he moves stormtroopers.

[1:15:15] Yeah, well, yeah. And they could afford more Eric Roberts.

[1:15:19] This scene was shot in the daytime and the rest of Eric Roberts

[1:15:22] stuff is all shot at night.

[1:15:23] But the they're sitting around like a grill

[1:15:26] and they're mainly just kind of hanging out.

[1:15:28] And then at one point someone goes, who invited the alien?

[1:15:30] And that's the end of it.

[1:15:31] And I was like, I don't I don't know what I'm supposed to be getting from this.

[1:15:35] I guess it must be fun or funny, but I did.

[1:15:37] It just it felt like it so clashed with everything else.

[1:15:40] The movie seemed to be trying to do, you know.

[1:15:44] Before we get on to Final Judgments, I do want to as teased before.

[1:15:47] So this is a special report from Alex Guter of Hollywood Entertainment,

[1:15:52] who Hollywood Entertainment put together the Clifford reunion.

[1:15:55] We saw Bam and mentioned in the past he was in town recently

[1:15:59] with some other weird.

[1:16:00] Are you is he is he give you permission to name him as your source?

[1:16:03] Yes, he did.

[1:16:05] I had some I hadn't met him before, but he was very nice.

[1:16:09] Had some drinks with him afterwards.

[1:16:10] He was talking about like, oh, this is it.

[1:16:14] He's like, there's this movie you should do.

[1:16:15] And he started describing it like that's the next movie we're literally doing.

[1:16:19] But he had some information that I'm going to bullet point for time.

[1:16:25] But so he encountered this.

[1:16:28] He heard from the theater manager friend about this nutty Eric Roberts movie.

[1:16:32] And the director and the director's producer slash mother

[1:16:35] had been emailing the theater with criticism about how it was being promoted.

[1:16:40] And like nitpicking things like there are photos of like

[1:16:43] where the posters were being displayed and stuff like that.

[1:16:46] And the filmmakers had started sending folks to the theater

[1:16:50] to monitor whether or not the tickets sold

[1:16:53] corresponded to the number of people in the theater, because

[1:16:57] apparently they thought that their box office should have been higher.

[1:17:01] And there's more interest for this out there

[1:17:03] because this trailer had gone viral on TikTok

[1:17:07] and they didn't understand how that hadn't converted to.

[1:17:09] But since seats and Alex says that when he went to see the movie,

[1:17:14] he said two for Illumina and the ticket seller like was like, what is taking it back?

[1:17:20] And Alex said, oh, is it sold out?

[1:17:22] And the ticket taker laughed and got serious and said, wait, are you here

[1:17:26] with the company because they've been sending people to monitor

[1:17:30] how many people are in there

[1:17:33] because they're like, they got to be ripping us off, which is the

[1:17:37] what is going on with that aforementioned lawsuit?

[1:17:41] And apparently this the screening they saw

[1:17:44] started with the electronic press kit being shown.

[1:17:49] And during that time, they were the only two people in the theater during that time.

[1:17:53] Sure enough, someone came in and photographed them in the theater.

[1:17:57] And awesome.

[1:17:58] And so cool.

[1:17:59] The APK listed someone's credits.

[1:18:01] He says he can't be sure he's remembering this correctly,

[1:18:04] but thinks that the APK listed someone's credits as having received honors

[1:18:08] at their university and some other credits included actor since age four

[1:18:12] and well-known model. Oh, bless.

[1:18:15] And and afterward, he monitored letterboxes

[1:18:19] and other letterboxes and other places where people put up their reviews,

[1:18:24] where the director was getting into arguments with detractors.

[1:18:27] Meanwhile, mysterious, similar sounding positive reviews

[1:18:31] were appearing about how much better this movie was than the just released

[1:18:35] long legs. And like, why aren't?

[1:18:38] Why is there so much focus on long legs?

[1:18:40] I didn't love long legs.

[1:18:41] Long legs is a billion times better than this.

[1:18:45] But anyway, thank you, Alex, for the report.

[1:18:50] He guaranteed to take the heat for us if Gina McCoy sued us.

[1:18:55] So I appreciate that.

[1:18:56] Yeah, it's there's a it seems like a fair, a fair amount of

[1:19:01] oh, man, are we going to have to, like, go in front of Congress and defend our

[1:19:04] budget? Oh, you're on your own defense.

[1:19:09] That's the thing. I'll have to be like Congress.

[1:19:11] I cannot defend anything about our podcast.

[1:19:13] I apologize.

[1:19:15] It's a it certainly seems like a movie that they put

[1:19:18] they they paid someone to plant

[1:19:23] good things about in places or maybe they're doing their own because

[1:19:27] when you look it up online, there's two different types of articles about it.

[1:19:30] There are reviews which are bad.

[1:19:32] And then there are articles about like this cult class, this

[1:19:36] international new cult classic that it's a mind bending story with.

[1:19:40] And it's like, all right, well, this this feels like it's straight out of

[1:19:43] publicity kit, you know, a press kit or something like that.

[1:19:46] But I guess there's the lawsuit involves that they it was shown on a lot fewer

[1:19:48] screens than they thought it should be.

[1:19:51] But I got to say to watching this movie, I'm like that this was shown

[1:19:54] in any movie theater screens.

[1:19:55] They they they've achieved what they wanted to achieve.

[1:19:57] Like this is everything about it screams.

[1:20:00] You watch this on to be because it's got a cool thumbnail image and then you're like, what am I doing?

[1:20:05] What is this thing? Yeah

[1:20:07] Like us. Yeah, exactly

[1:20:11] Yeah, it's speaking of bad movie sickos. There's a thing we do in the flop house, which is called the final judgments where we say

[1:20:17] This is a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie. We kind of liked

[1:20:21] I don't I honestly don't know where you guys are gonna go with this. I'm going to say like for me a good great movie

[1:20:30] Watching with my family tonight. This is a definitely definitely a fun one to talk about

[1:20:36] I found the energy level of this movie to be way too low for me to think it was a good bad movie

[1:20:42] At least watching it alone horrific. It's

[1:20:46] Like Eric Roberts definitely brings the energy this movie should have but doesn't for most of the times

[1:20:52] So I personally I'm gonna go ahead and say bad bad, even though it is a fun one to discuss

[1:21:00] Stuart why don't you yeah

[1:21:01] I mean

[1:21:01] I would say this verges on what I would call a good bad movie and what we call a good bad movie here at the

[1:21:07] flop house

[1:21:11] That is I feel like this is I don't I feel like there's

[1:21:16] Been some conversation about whether or not this is kind of like in the vein of something like the room

[1:21:20] I don't think it's quite as silly and it also the runtime is too long

[1:21:25] But it is very silly and weird

[1:21:28] and

[1:21:29] Despite having some fun moments. It's it's big. It's a bad. This is a bad movie

[1:21:33] I don't think I can't imagine there's an argument about like that

[1:21:37] People are actually discussing whether this is a good movie

[1:21:39] But it's a question of whether or not how is this bad enough to be a classic bad movie? Yes, I agree to me

[1:21:45] It's it's a bad bad movie because it's so that it's just very slow and I found it very dull and very like I've got

[1:21:51] Very sleepy while watching it. Like it was a very whereas your your classic the rooms is or Birdemics

[1:21:58] I feel like are a constant parade of surprises and things where you're like, what is this? Why are they doing this?

[1:22:04] wait a minute what and there's an energy to it and

[1:22:06] Yeah, it's just such a low-energy movie and like more fun to talk about than it is to watch

[1:22:10] But maybe it'd be more fun to watch with other people than to watch it as I did by myself

[1:22:14] So, I don't know. What do you think Ashley? Yeah, I felt I think I'm gonna actually come down on good bad movie

[1:22:21] and I think when it's not

[1:22:23] The problem was actually with how it was marketed to me if I had gone in completely blind

[1:22:29] Instead of thinking that this was about and you wouldn't able to see the movie at all. That's

[1:22:34] Gonna completely blind, but I would have had you know, McCoy's music pure enough

[1:22:39] It's just that feeling. I mean, it's all vibes, but I I

[1:22:44] was so sold on the underground military base that doesn't show up until the last 20 minutes of the film if I had sort of

[1:22:53] Ascertained from the opening scenes that this was sort of a low-energy st. Elmo's fire

[1:23:02] Where almost a crackling embers, it's not quite a fire. Yeah. Yeah

[1:23:09] Say st. Elmo's low radiator heat

[1:23:14] That I think I would have been able to get behind it a little more I watched it with my husband and

[1:23:21] We did have fun talking about it

[1:23:24] I also think that for all the low energy some of these actors are working

[1:23:29] Really hard to try to establish things that are not on the page

[1:23:34] Mm-hmm, and there are moments where I can see

[1:23:38] That they're trying to build camaraderie and relationships

[1:23:43] And so I just want to shout out to those actors because I have been in a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes movie

[1:23:50] before

[1:23:52] Wow inside man the Spike Lee movie

[1:23:58] We're gonna fistfight

[1:24:03] Know a movie called an invisible sign starring Jessica Alba as a math teacher. Oh shit. That sounds like a feature

[1:24:09] Wow, that's me. I mean, I I would love there are some also really great performances in that but

[1:24:16] Yeah, I'm gonna go with good bad. Okay, it's a little slow

[1:24:20] It's a lot slower, but yeah, but I

[1:24:24] attained

[1:24:26] Even but if I said wait what and rewound a lot classic phrase

[1:24:30] I mean sometimes that sometimes that's the best sign and when I'm a movie like this is when you have to rewind it like what

[1:24:36] Was that what but other times it's like I don't understand what just happened

[1:24:40] I'm like damn. What's that song rewind it? I want to grab the aux cable. I'm gonna hear that song

[1:24:44] I gotta hear that song. I gotta hear that that sensi girl

[1:24:47] Shout out to that elevator song that Geno McCoy has where he's where the guy hits the button

[1:24:54] It's one of the most dramatic moments in the movie

[1:24:57] Reaches out and hits the button. It's so close to some classical music that I did

[1:25:04] Shazam it to see if they'd spent all their money on

[1:25:08] Some orchestration. Mm-hmm. Nope, Geno McCoy's

[1:25:13] Yeah, musical chameleon

[1:25:17] You

[1:25:20] Know we've been doing my brother my brother me for 15 years and

[1:25:24] Maybe you stopped listening for a while

[1:25:26] Maybe you never listen and you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years

[1:25:30] I know where this has ended up, but no, no, you would be wrong

[1:25:35] We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific

[1:25:40] Scandal or just turned into a big cryptic thing. Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works

[1:25:46] The only NFTs I'm into are naughty funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother my brother and me

[1:25:52] We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening, and if not, we just leave it out back

[1:25:58] It's rotten. So check it out on maximum fun or wherever you get your podcast

[1:26:04] All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show. Let's learn everything. So let's do a quick progress check

[1:26:10] Have we learned about quantum physics? Yes episode 59

[1:26:14] We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet halfway

[1:26:16] Yes, we have same episode actually have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters episode 64

[1:26:23] So how close are we to learning everything bad news? We still haven't learned everything yet

[1:26:31] No, no, it's good news as well. There is still a lot to learn

[1:26:36] I'm dr. Ella Hubbard. I'm regular Tom Lum. I'm Caroline Roper and on let's learn everything

[1:26:41] We learned about science and a bit of everything else too. And although we haven't learned everything yet

[1:26:45] I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode. Join us every other Thursday on maximum fun

[1:26:50] This podcast is sponsored in part by

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[1:27:55] and now some

[1:27:57] Flophouse specific

[1:27:59] Plugs if you live in the Chicago area, we've added a late show after our first November show sold out

[1:28:06] We're going to be talking about canine starring a slobbering good-natured animal and also a dog

[1:28:11] The show's at Sleeping Village on November 16 at 9 30 p.m

[1:28:16] Go to sleeping dash village.com for tickets to that

[1:28:21] Also the flop TV system system the flop TV season rather has already begun

[1:28:28] But it is not too late to get tickets because all episodes will be available on demand

[1:28:33] For ticket holders for the entirety of our F TV season which lasts through February of 2026

[1:28:41] The first Saturday of every month. We're doing a streaming show

[1:28:44] That's what flop TV is a streaming show covering significant critical and or commercial flops decade by decade

[1:28:51] Starting in the 2000s and going all the way back to plan 9 from outer space in the 1950s

[1:28:58] though there's

[1:29:00] presentations silly pre-tapes a live chat all sorts of fun and you can get

[1:29:05] Individual tickets for seven bucks or a price break by getting a season pass to six shows for $35

[1:29:13] Plus, you know ticketing fees because unfortunately we aren't set up to handle that stuff ourselves

[1:29:18] So if you're interested go to the flop house dot simple tics

[1:29:23] Calm that is TI X for ticks their tickets and more info about the season at the flop house dot simple tics

[1:29:30] calm and

[1:29:32] Because we haven't mentioned this in a while if you go to flop house podcast calm you can subscribe to our newsletter

[1:29:39] Flop secrets where you can get the scoop on what we're up to as a group

[1:29:44] Individually as well as some additional writing from me Dan

[1:29:47] Sometimes we'll add answer more letters there stuff that we can't get you on the show. I'll post behind the scenes stuff

[1:29:54] It's just a good way to keep in touch and we only send it twice a month. So hopefully

[1:30:00] No one gets bored.

[1:30:02] Let's let's answer some questions

[1:30:06] from listeners, letters from listeners.

[1:30:09] I wait. Are they letters or questions?

[1:30:10] Dan, I'm confused.

[1:30:12] Well, usually we call this letters from listeners,

[1:30:15] and I just sort of forgot what we do on the show,

[1:30:18] even though it's been nearly two decades.

[1:30:23] This I do love that.

[1:30:25] Something I think our listeners appreciate is no matter how many years we do this,

[1:30:28] a refusal to take things for granted and fall into habits

[1:30:31] that would help us to get through the show and remember

[1:30:34] what's going to happen next and what we do.

[1:30:36] You know? Yeah.

[1:30:37] We treat every show like it's our first.

[1:30:38] That's beautiful.

[1:30:39] This first one is from Michael.

[1:30:41] Last name withheld. Who writes?

[1:30:43] Dear Flophouse, one of my greater concerns about the dangers of A.I.

[1:30:48] isn't so much about professional artists getting pushed out,

[1:30:51] but that amateur artists may just decide to use A.I.

[1:30:54] slop instead of dealing with the frustration of developing their skills

[1:30:58] and working through being bad at art in order to become good at it.

[1:31:02] And that's a shame because I like a lot of amateur art

[1:31:05] and seeing newer artists develop, even if their work isn't as good

[1:31:09] as they want it to be.

[1:31:10] So my question for you is, what are some things that you like

[1:31:13] about newer artists still figuring things out?

[1:31:17] That's from Michael. Last name withheld.

[1:31:19] And in the case of movies, like one of the things I like

[1:31:25] and it's not necessarily like these are bad artists.

[1:31:28] These are often like very good artists.

[1:31:31] But the early work is filled with

[1:31:35] so much show offiness almost because they don't know

[1:31:39] whether they're going to make another movie.

[1:31:40] So they're like every idea they've had, they stick it in there,

[1:31:43] whether or not it is necessarily like of a piece with what they're trying to do.

[1:31:48] And maybe later works are more, you know, quote, mature.

[1:31:54] But there's so much energy in a lot of early movies.

[1:31:58] And that's something I appreciate.

[1:31:59] And I also just want to say, like, I really appreciate the like

[1:32:04] the general like premise of this letter, because I do feel like

[1:32:08] you have to be bad before you're good.

[1:32:11] You have to embrace being bad before you're good.

[1:32:14] Like that's one of the most important things to do is like know that

[1:32:18] that's just part of the process.

[1:32:19] You're working through a lot of bad stuff to get to the good.

[1:32:22] And I hope that people out there take that to heart.

[1:32:26] Yeah, I mean, the podcast podcast has always been kind of perfect.

[1:32:29] And we've never had a slip up.

[1:32:31] Never. We've never had any growing pains.

[1:32:35] That's another way of saying that we have not developed at all

[1:32:38] over the past 17, 18 years.

[1:32:40] Well, emotionally, yeah, we have changed.

[1:32:43] There's a lot of stuff I would change.

[1:32:45] Yeah, I mean, like I love amateur art.

[1:32:47] Usually it's short films that you can find on a website called Pornhub.

[1:32:52] And I mainly like it when you can see something in the background,

[1:32:55] like a cat or there's one where like you could see like

[1:32:59] through the like window to the porch, you can see a grill.

[1:33:04] And in the comments section, some guy was like, actually, that's

[1:33:07] that type of girl you should probably put in a garage or something

[1:33:09] because I can't really handle being out.

[1:33:10] I suppose the elements are so funny.

[1:33:12] I love it.

[1:33:13] I love the comment section on porn videos because it's either like

[1:33:17] like people are asking for Minecraft kind of helpful or like unrelated.

[1:33:22] Or it is like stuff you would never want to know,

[1:33:24] like the exact time code at which someone achieved orgasm.

[1:33:28] Right. Here's the money shot.

[1:33:30] Also, dude, have you checked your thyroid?

[1:33:32] It looks a little like you might have this condition.

[1:33:38] Yeah, the exact time.

[1:33:39] Could you don't record the exact time code you bust in case

[1:33:41] you accidentally have a child and then you're going to want to tell them

[1:33:44] exactly the moment you created the diary of such things?

[1:33:48] Oh, you need to know that information so you can label

[1:33:51] the ejaculate when you put it in your archives.

[1:33:53] Yeah, we took a weird turn.

[1:33:55] Oh, yeah, that's yeah. Whose fault was that?

[1:33:58] Right. Yours. Yours, Stuart.

[1:34:03] But I will say there is something very exciting

[1:34:05] about seeing someone clearly as talent, but maybe hasn't yet

[1:34:09] gotten so comfortable with their skill that they're taking it for granted

[1:34:13] or they're not excited by it anymore, that they are often an artist.

[1:34:17] Early work is where they are trying out their ideas that are new to them

[1:34:20] or at the very least, they are imitating old ideas in a way

[1:34:23] that is bringing their own flair to it.

[1:34:26] So some really exciting and seeing an artist develop and seeing them

[1:34:29] the energy and excitement of someone recognizing that they're becoming

[1:34:32] their own self, you know, before that self becomes,

[1:34:36] you know, stuck, static, you know, you know, just becomes what it is.

[1:34:40] Certainly sometimes when you're seeing somebody's

[1:34:42] somebody whose enthusiasm might outpace their skill set.

[1:34:47] Yeah, or even or just that they're enthusiastic.

[1:34:48] Like there's a type of it doesn't happen to all creative professionals,

[1:34:51] but a lot of creative professionals.

[1:34:53] There's there's that excitement of like, I'm doing this thing,

[1:34:56] like this thing that I want to do, I'm doing before it becomes a job

[1:34:59] or something that they can take for granted.

[1:35:01] Oh, of course I do this thing. This is what I do.

[1:35:02] You know, this is the craft that I that I've made my life.

[1:35:05] That is the the thing of like, I'm so excited that I'm

[1:35:08] I'm doing this craft that I've that I've wanted to do.

[1:35:10] And there's an energy to that that is really exciting.

[1:35:13] It's the kind of thing that like there's a lot of,

[1:35:17] you know, when you're listening to punk bands like the early stuff

[1:35:20] a band puts out where it's like they're not as good as their instruments,

[1:35:23] but they're so excited about doing what they're doing.

[1:35:25] You know, it hasn't yet become a thing that they not take for granted

[1:35:29] in a bad way, like this again, but take for granted as in like

[1:35:33] that thrill of we may not do this ever again. Right.

[1:35:36] Has gone away. Yeah.

[1:35:36] Like we may never be asked to do this.

[1:35:39] You know, there's a correlation.

[1:35:40] There's this Ira Glass thing that he said a long time ago

[1:35:43] about how people's taste like you have a like artists have a taste level,

[1:35:48] but they're not going to hit that taste level for a while.

[1:35:51] But your your work is not as good as your taste

[1:35:55] when you're starting out and enduring through that

[1:35:59] discomfort of you liking things

[1:36:03] that are better than what you can make is part of what the journey

[1:36:07] for the work is.

[1:36:09] I think it's really exciting.

[1:36:10] I love working with first time filmmakers.

[1:36:13] I think that there is they've got all of these

[1:36:15] the Harper Lee to kill a mockingbird of it all, where it's like

[1:36:18] they've been germinating this idea for a really long time

[1:36:22] and they're really excited to get it out there.

[1:36:26] But they're also deeply collaborative.

[1:36:28] And some well, some of them are deeply collaborative.

[1:36:31] But there's also the sense that

[1:36:34] anything can be a horse, you know what I mean?

[1:36:37] You're sort of like cobbling together.

[1:36:40] Uh, the often the low budget circumstances of the movie

[1:36:45] you're trying to make with the idea that you've had in your head for 15 years.

[1:36:48] And I really love how that works because they're not, you know,

[1:36:52] most of these films, a low budget first time

[1:36:55] filmmaker indies are not getting sound stages where they're building sets.

[1:37:00] Right. Like they're borrowing a chicken restaurant

[1:37:04] that they worked in and they're a dream filming.

[1:37:08] A movie I did, Compliance with Craig Zobel, like his second film.

[1:37:11] We literally worked in a chicken restaurant overnight, all overnights.

[1:37:16] Two weeks of overnights. Right.

[1:37:18] Because they would shut down the KFC.

[1:37:21] We would come in and change the signage and then we would shoot until 6 a.m.

[1:37:26] Did you change it to Popeyes?

[1:37:28] Yeah, exactly. To to Bojangles.

[1:37:32] Actually. Yeah, I love this rolling reveal of movies

[1:37:35] that I've seen you in unawares in the past.

[1:37:39] See that? And you'll see it.

[1:37:41] I'm ruining people's suspension of disbelief.

[1:37:43] Left, right and center.

[1:37:44] Just it's really exciting.

[1:37:46] The non rolling reveal of Dan had having not done research. Sure.

[1:37:50] I I know some of it.

[1:37:54] I know it gives an agent like Klansman.

[1:37:57] Dan, I'm just giving you the kind of roast that you're going to be giving

[1:37:59] to people when they pay you for it, for their kink. Yeah.

[1:38:01] Mm hmm. Let's do one more letter here.

[1:38:05] This is from Anne Marie.

[1:38:07] Last name withheld. Who writes?

[1:38:09] My husband and I were recently watching a mystery show

[1:38:12] which prominently featured a woman being pregnant as a plot point

[1:38:16] evidenced by her vomiting in earshot of a witness.

[1:38:20] Now, I know in movies and TVs, a woman vomits.

[1:38:22] They must be pregnant. Yeah.

[1:38:24] I was ready to be unless they're vomiting a tiny spot of blood

[1:38:26] into a handkerchief, in which case they have consumption.

[1:38:28] Yeah. Oh, man.

[1:38:30] Is that vomit?

[1:38:31] I was ready to be a real nurse holiday.

[1:38:34] I was ready to be angry on Stewart's behalf at the laziness of this trope

[1:38:38] until the end of the episode, which featured a twist

[1:38:40] where it turned out that she wasn't pregnant at all.

[1:38:43] She'd just gotten such horrific and disgusting personal news.

[1:38:46] She could only react by throwing up.

[1:38:48] That's how you ever had a movie or TV show subvert a trope

[1:38:53] you hated into something much more interesting.

[1:38:56] Love, Anne Marie.

[1:38:58] Like I know that there's.

[1:39:00] Better answers out there, but for some reason, what's coming into my head

[1:39:04] is like a movie that's all about subverting a trope.

[1:39:08] When I first saw my best friend's wedding, I really appreciated

[1:39:14] that it was not a movie that like cavalierly had a hero

[1:39:18] ruining a wedding and we're all supposed to root for them

[1:39:21] like over the course of the movie.

[1:39:23] You're like, oh, OK.

[1:39:25] No, no, this is not good behavior that's going on.

[1:39:28] And by casting America's sweetheart in that role, it's true.

[1:39:33] I think the first one that comes to mind is the I

[1:39:37] I think the original might be in there as well.

[1:39:40] But in the Gore Verbinski, the ring, the moment where the character

[1:39:45] has worked so hard to try and appease this ghost and the there's a spoiler.

[1:39:49] But her son is like, why did you help her?

[1:39:52] Like, I love that reaction where he's like, why did you do that?

[1:39:55] It's so funny.

[1:39:57] I think for me, it's a whole subset.

[1:40:00] of the, Kathy Bates has actually made this

[1:40:05] the latter part of her career,

[1:40:07] which is the middle-aged invisible woman

[1:40:11] being utilized in a way that's really spectacular.

[1:40:14] We first see it in Six Feet Under,

[1:40:17] where Kathy Bates' character shoplifts,

[1:40:21] and they ask her why, and she's like,

[1:40:23] because I realized that middle-aged fat women

[1:40:25] are invisible, and so I just started deciding

[1:40:29] to do some shit, you know, I'm gonna pull some shenanigans,

[1:40:33] and she goes through, and then they make

[1:40:36] the revamp of Matlock all about that, this idea,

[1:40:40] but it harkens to the 60s, 70s Ruth Gordon

[1:40:46] old lady shenanigans.

[1:40:49] Where she can get away with whatever

[1:40:50] because she's an old lady, yeah.

[1:40:51] Right, exactly.

[1:40:53] And then she like raps, and you're like,

[1:40:54] okay, hello.

[1:40:55] Wow, yeah, she raps about Rosemary's baby.

[1:40:58] And it would go something like, Elliot.

[1:41:04] No, don't encourage this.

[1:41:06] With who did she lie, just look at those eyes,

[1:41:08] that kind of stuff, yeah, yeah.

[1:41:09] Yeah.

[1:41:10] I knew it, I knew it.

[1:41:13] My name is Satan, and I'm here to say.

[1:41:17] Let me tell you about a couple that got a new place.

[1:41:22] Suddenly there's devil all up in her face.

[1:41:25] He is in her face, that's why.

[1:41:28] Yeah, man.

[1:41:28] I love it.

[1:41:31] Oh my God.

[1:41:34] Ruining a whole genre.

[1:41:35] This is gonna help his acting career,

[1:41:36] but you gotta ask, hey, what you doing over here?

[1:41:38] Okay.

[1:41:39] Okay, so that was Letters.

[1:41:40] I just wanna touch on it real quick.

[1:41:43] A couple episodes ago, we were talking about

[1:41:45] summer movie memories, and I asked you all

[1:41:47] to chime in in the comments on the Instagram post.

[1:41:51] Some actual follow-up on the show.

[1:41:52] Actual follow-up, I'm pretty professional.

[1:41:55] What else?

[1:41:56] Follow-up.

[1:41:57] So we had a ton of great responses,

[1:41:59] but I just wanna share two of my favorites.

[1:42:01] I'll share them with you now.

[1:42:02] The first is from Kate Kleinworth,

[1:42:04] and her memory is that my mom used to drop

[1:42:07] me and my little sister off at movie matinees

[1:42:09] during the summer, giving us each a $5 bill

[1:42:11] for tickets and a snack.

[1:42:13] Once, she accidentally gave us $20 by mistake

[1:42:17] to go see The Rocketeer.

[1:42:19] This was like a million dollars in today's money.

[1:42:23] My sister and I stared at the money,

[1:42:24] at each other, and then ran to concessions.

[1:42:26] We bought Junior Mints.

[1:42:27] We bought those giant Reese's Cups.

[1:42:29] We bought popcorn.

[1:42:30] We got Coke.

[1:42:31] We got Sprite.

[1:42:31] We spent every single penny.

[1:42:33] It was the best time ever at the movies,

[1:42:35] something my sister and I both look back on fondly

[1:42:37] to this day.

[1:42:38] Neither of us remember a single thing

[1:42:40] about The Rocketeer.

[1:42:41] And I'm like.

[1:42:42] That's your loss.

[1:42:43] That's your loss, but I'm like,

[1:42:44] that totally makes sense.

[1:42:45] Also, when I was a kid, if I was given $20,

[1:42:47] I'm like, there is not even gonna be a single penny left.

[1:42:50] I'm going to spend every single thing,

[1:42:52] which is something my father still complains about.

[1:42:54] So I think that's lovely.

[1:42:58] That is a great movie memory, and snacks, snacks, snacks.

[1:43:01] Okay, here's another good one.

[1:43:02] This is from Schmunk241.

[1:43:05] When I was about 12 or 13, I went to the cinema.

[1:43:07] So that's a clue.

[1:43:08] We got a UK listener on our hands.

[1:43:12] I went to the cinema.

[1:43:12] You're a pretentious person.

[1:43:14] I went, yeah, I went to the cinema

[1:43:17] to see The Scorpion King.

[1:43:19] Maybe not so pretentious.

[1:43:21] You know what?

[1:43:22] Let's go back to UK on this one.

[1:43:23] I was not a discerning viewer at the time.

[1:43:25] I'd read it about it in Empire Magazine.

[1:43:28] Okay, well, hold on a second.

[1:43:29] That's another tip off.

[1:43:32] I was not a discerning viewer at the time, but even.

[1:43:34] I hopped on a double-decker bus to get there.

[1:43:36] Okay, that's another clue.

[1:43:39] Sherlock Dan, you on this one?

[1:43:42] I don't know, were there crumpets for sale in the.

[1:43:44] Did he say which side of the road it was on?

[1:43:46] Yeah.

[1:43:49] I was not.

[1:43:51] Okay, no clue there.

[1:43:51] Let's move on.

[1:43:53] I was not a discerning viewer at the time,

[1:43:54] but even I hated it.

[1:43:56] Cut to a week later and my mate tells me he snuck.

[1:43:59] All right, another clue.

[1:44:01] How is this going to help us find Tatiana?

[1:44:05] And my mate tells me he snuck into a Resident Evil showing

[1:44:09] and asked if I wanted to go see it too.

[1:44:11] My first R-rated movie.

[1:44:13] I was excited and maybe a little scared, but I said yes.

[1:44:17] So we're in the theater.

[1:44:18] We buy a couple of tickets to a showing

[1:44:20] of some random movie called The Scorpion King

[1:44:23] and we're ready to go.

[1:44:24] We sit down outside,

[1:44:25] just waiting for our moment to sneak in,

[1:44:28] which passes and we proceed to chicken out,

[1:44:30] which is how I ended up seeing The Scorpion King

[1:44:32] twice in theaters, like a true Scorp-head.

[1:44:34] Aw.

[1:44:37] Those were lovely.

[1:44:38] Thank you so much.

[1:44:39] Yeah.

[1:44:40] So finally on The Flophouse,

[1:44:42] we like to not wallow in negativity.

[1:44:45] We like to recommend a few.

[1:44:46] For too long.

[1:44:47] We wallowed in it for a while.

[1:44:49] For the lion's share of the podcast, some would say,

[1:44:51] but let's recommend some.

[1:44:53] Dan, we gotta stop giving the lions

[1:44:55] such a big share of the podcast.

[1:44:57] I'm scared of it.

[1:44:58] I know you're scared of it.

[1:45:01] He could tank our careers.

[1:45:04] Movies that we-

[1:45:05] It's the MGM lion.

[1:45:06] He knows a lot of people in this town.

[1:45:07] We've seen and would recommend,

[1:45:10] perhaps in opposition to many of the films we watch

[1:45:13] for the podcast, I would like to recommend,

[1:45:16] I saw Deep Cover.

[1:45:19] Hell yeah.

[1:45:20] It was going off-

[1:45:20] Yeah, Deep Cover's great.

[1:45:21] It was going off the Criterion channel.

[1:45:23] I'm like, I gotta see it while I can.

[1:45:26] The opening credits of that movie

[1:45:28] are so fucking hard as hell, man.

[1:45:30] That movie rocks.

[1:45:31] It's from 92, directed by Bill Duke.

[1:45:33] It stars Lawrence Fishburne and, of course,

[1:45:36] Jeff Goldblum as a sleazy lawyer.

[1:45:41] Both of them kind of at the height

[1:45:42] of their movie star powers in that movie, I think.

[1:45:47] It's got a lot of crime thriller thrills,

[1:45:51] but it's also a very kind of more thoughtful movie

[1:45:55] about the drug war and about, it does not exalt cops.

[1:46:01] It shows them to be part of the same system

[1:46:06] that causes a lot of pain.

[1:46:08] And yeah, it's a beautiful looking movie.

[1:46:11] It's so beautifully shot.

[1:46:13] And all this from a guy whose head got blasted apart

[1:46:17] by a predator and predator, Bill Duke.

[1:46:18] He really came back from the head being blasted apart

[1:46:21] by the predator and predator, yeah.

[1:46:21] They glued it back together.

[1:46:25] Stuart, do you wanna go?

[1:46:26] I'm gonna recommend a movie I saw a little while ago

[1:46:28] from a year or two ago called The Order.

[1:46:31] This is a movie based on a true story

[1:46:33] about a, I believe, FBI involvement in the 70s

[1:46:40] where they're cracking down

[1:46:41] on a white supremacist organization

[1:46:43] that funds their operation by robbing banks.

[1:46:47] The movie stars Jude Law in kind of amazing,

[1:46:52] rundown, grizzled, dirtbag Jude Law.

[1:46:55] And I kind of love it.

[1:46:56] It's totally working for me.

[1:46:57] Mustache, two thumbs up.

[1:46:59] And he is opposed by the leader

[1:47:02] of the white supremacist organization

[1:47:04] is played by Nicholas Holt,

[1:47:05] who is really trading on those baby face,

[1:47:10] innocent looks to be this evil jerk.

[1:47:16] It's really good if you're looking

[1:47:18] for just kind of like a small,

[1:47:21] super tense little thriller.

[1:47:23] Elliot, would you like to?

[1:47:24] Oh, sure.

[1:47:25] I was gonna go next.

[1:47:26] I'll recommend a movie that,

[1:47:28] so we watched Lumina on Tubi.

[1:47:30] And I was like, I wanna watch another movie

[1:47:33] that's not Lumina, but I'm still on Tubi.

[1:47:35] Oh, wait a minute.

[1:47:36] This movie I wanted to see is on here.

[1:47:37] What's this movie?

[1:47:38] It's the one we've all been waiting for.

[1:47:39] That's right.

[1:47:40] It's called Heroic Times.

[1:47:41] This is a Hungarian animated movie from 1984.

[1:47:44] That is a, it's an adaptation of a 19th century epic

[1:47:48] about a medieval knight in Hungary in the 14th century.

[1:47:53] And it is so beautifully animated.

[1:47:55] It looks so gorgeous.

[1:47:56] It's like watching paintings moving.

[1:47:59] And it's all about, it's a,

[1:48:01] being an Eastern European movie,

[1:48:03] it cannot just be about a hero of medieval times.

[1:48:05] It has to be about how this guy becomes a knight

[1:48:07] and then destroys his life and becomes disillusioned

[1:48:10] with the very idea of nobility and serving the king.

[1:48:15] It's a short movie.

[1:48:17] It's like a little bit less than an hour and a half.

[1:48:19] It looks gorgeous.

[1:48:20] I think it's really good.

[1:48:21] It's called Heroic Times.

[1:48:23] Now, before Ashley goes,

[1:48:25] I checked the Letterboxd list

[1:48:28] where you can find all of our recommendations

[1:48:31] just to confirm that Stuart has recommended

[1:48:33] the order before.

[1:48:34] So I'm gonna assume that your recommendation

[1:48:36] for this week will be It's Alive 3,

[1:48:39] Island of the Alive, which we saw together.

[1:48:41] Oh yeah, I'll also recommend It's Alive 3,

[1:48:43] Island of the Alive.

[1:48:45] Michael Moriarty gives possibly

[1:48:46] the most unhinged performance I've ever seen on screen.

[1:48:50] And you know what, Monster Babies,

[1:48:52] you gotta see them.

[1:48:53] They freak me out.

[1:48:54] Yeah.

[1:48:55] That's the one where it's implied

[1:48:57] that the Monster Babies are having Monster Babies, right?

[1:48:59] Yeah, it's not.

[1:49:00] It's more than implied.

[1:49:01] More than implied, I guess they're in.

[1:49:02] Yeah, I guess they are just tags.

[1:49:04] We don't have pretty much tags.

[1:49:06] I think it says it on the poster.

[1:49:08] We blessedly do not see Monster Babies

[1:49:10] copulating with one another.

[1:49:13] Speak for yourself, Dan.

[1:49:16] Anyway, Ashley.

[1:49:17] I paid for my ticket, I'm gonna see it.

[1:49:20] Ashley, do you have anything to recommend?

[1:49:21] Oh yeah, for sure I do.

[1:49:23] I hope you guys haven't recommended this before.

[1:49:25] I mean, if you have, you have great taste.

[1:49:28] I think with my one shot at this,

[1:49:31] because I can't imagine ever coming back here.

[1:49:33] Wow, okay, fair.

[1:49:34] No, I'm just kidding.

[1:49:35] Wow, wow.

[1:49:36] Oh, I assumed, because I would not be invited, you know.

[1:49:39] So the way I got naked at the prompt

[1:49:43] and ran around and stuff, I figured.

[1:49:45] Ran around?

[1:49:47] Yeah, we cut out a lot.

[1:49:48] Alex cut out a lot of stuff that was going on, yeah.

[1:49:51] I've got to recommend We Are The Best.

[1:49:54] It's We Are The Best, exclamation point.

[1:49:57] Swedish film by Lukas Moodison in.

[1:50:00] 13, which is about a group of pre-teen girls in the 80s

[1:50:06] who form a punk band, mostly to talk about

[1:50:13] their burgeoning feelings and their frustrations,

[1:50:16] but also to piss off the metal guys that are taking over

[1:50:19] the rec center's one rehearsal room.

[1:50:22] It's great, it's really motivational, irreverent,

[1:50:26] really inspiring, and I don't love using that word,

[1:50:35] because I think it's been hallmarked a lot

[1:50:38] in Lifetime movies a lot, but it really is.

[1:50:40] These kids are so punk rock, they get there,

[1:50:43] they meet a girl who's the only one that can play

[1:50:46] her real instrument, and is also from a fundamentalist

[1:50:49] Christian family, which scans, to me,

[1:50:52] and they're like, well, we can't play shit,

[1:50:55] we're gonna shave your head, and let's all go,

[1:50:57] and it's delightful, it's small, it's fun, it's sweet,

[1:51:04] it's tough, it's coming of age.

[1:51:07] Mira Barkson, who plays the main lead singer of this group,

[1:51:13] and sort of the Kathleen Hannah driver of this band,

[1:51:19] is fantastic, I've seen her in nothing else.

[1:51:23] I actually did not know a single actor in this cast,

[1:51:27] but they're all pretty great, and I just love it.

[1:51:31] It makes me happy, makes me wanna go blow shit up.

[1:51:34] That's like five recommendations.

[1:51:36] Yeah.

[1:51:37] We did great, guys.

[1:51:38] Yeah, we went above and beyond.

[1:51:39] Extra credit.

[1:51:40] Yeah.

[1:51:41] Well, thank you so much for being here.

[1:51:42] Before we sign off, is there anything

[1:51:44] you wanna plug at all, or?

[1:51:47] Oh, me?

[1:51:48] Yeah.

[1:51:48] I was like, Elliot, do you have something you wanna plug?

[1:51:50] He always has stuff to plug.

[1:51:52] I got plenty to plug, so you can plug your own stuff.

[1:51:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:51:55] Oh, great, I've got a movie coming out

[1:51:56] called The Lost Bus.

[1:51:58] It is directed by Paul Greengrass.

[1:52:02] It was very cool to work with Paul Greengrass.

[1:52:05] It's a movie about the 2018 Campfire Fire,

[1:52:08] which was the deadliest wildfire in California history,

[1:52:12] and it stars Matthew McConaughey,

[1:52:15] America Ferreira, Yul Vasquez, and myself.

[1:52:19] Matthew McConaughey plays a true person

[1:52:22] named Kevin McKay, who was a school bus driver

[1:52:25] who had not been working as a bus driver very long,

[1:52:27] who is prevailed upon to rescue 22 kids

[1:52:32] whose parents worked too far outside

[1:52:34] of the evacuation zone during the Paradise wildfires,

[1:52:39] and then he battles his way through fire

[1:52:41] with America Ferreira for hours and hours

[1:52:44] and hours and hours.

[1:52:45] Now, I haven't seen the poster,

[1:52:46] but here's my suggestion.

[1:52:47] You take a bus and put it on a rock or something.

[1:52:51] Yeah.

[1:52:51] On the top of a mountain.

[1:52:52] Yeah.

[1:52:53] Balancing.

[1:52:54] Yeah, balancing, yeah.

[1:52:55] I think that captures the tone

[1:52:56] you're probably looking for.

[1:52:57] For sure.

[1:52:58] Yeah, I think so.

[1:52:58] Actually, they did make a fake,

[1:53:00] the letterboxd for it was very funny for a while

[1:53:02] because somebody did make a poster

[1:53:05] in advance of the actual poster,

[1:53:07] which was a very cartoon bus

[1:53:08] with sort of superimposed Matthew McConaughey

[1:53:12] and America Ferreira heads on it.

[1:53:14] It's pretty spectacular.

[1:53:16] And I don't know if there's been another trailer,

[1:53:18] but the trailer I did see,

[1:53:20] I think you're the only voice we hear.

[1:53:22] Yeah.

[1:53:23] I'm not visible, which is how I prefer it.

[1:53:27] I'd rather not be perceived visually in my trailers.

[1:53:31] That's a challenge for an actor,

[1:53:32] but I appreciate that.

[1:53:34] I consider my limitations as freeing.

[1:53:38] It's very liberating.

[1:53:39] But yeah, I've had to tell all of my relatives,

[1:53:42] you have to watch this with the sound up

[1:53:44] or you're gonna be confused why I sent it to you.

[1:53:47] That's great.

[1:53:50] Okay, well, thank you, Ashley,

[1:53:52] and thank you to our network, Maximum Fun.

[1:53:55] Go over to maximumfun.org

[1:53:57] and check out all the other great shows on the network.

[1:54:00] Thank you to Alex Smith, our producer.

[1:54:03] He goes by the name HowlDotty online,

[1:54:05] where he makes music.

[1:54:06] He does Twitch streams.

[1:54:08] You can find his podcast, which is very funny.

[1:54:12] But that's it for us.

[1:54:13] For The Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:54:16] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:54:18] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:54:19] And I'm Ashley Atkinson.

[1:54:21] Okay, bye.

[1:54:23] Bye.

[1:54:24] Bye.

[1:54:25] Bye.

[1:54:26] Bye.

[1:54:27] Bye.

[1:54:28] Bye.

[1:54:29] Bye.

[1:54:30] Bye.

[1:54:31] Bye.

[1:54:32] Bye.

[1:54:33] Bye.

[1:54:34] Bye.

[1:54:35] Bye.

[1:54:36] Bye.

[1:54:37] Bye.

[1:54:38] Bye.

[1:54:39] Bye.

[1:54:40] Bye.

[1:54:41] Bye.

[1:54:42] Bye.

[1:54:43] The tip of the shitberg.

[1:54:45] Yeah, exactly.

[1:54:46] There's a whole another shitberg underneath.

[1:54:50] Maximum fun.

[1:54:51] A worker owned network.

[1:54:52] Of artists owned shows.

[1:54:54] Supported.

[1:54:55] Directly.

[1:54:56] By you.

Ep.#460 - Lumina, with Ashlie Atkinson

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