Ep. #335 - Hillbilly Elegy

Stuart Wellington

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

[0:03] Which is like a hellbilly elegy without all them dang Dragulas.

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

Dan McCoy

[0:36] Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:38] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[0:39] And, uh, yeah, this is a show...

Elliott Kalan

[0:42] Dan, did I take you by surprise?

Dan McCoy

[0:44] Well, usually you say you're Elliot Kalin and then you kind of just ramble on about some nonsense for a while.

[0:49] So it did take me by surprise that you stopped after your name.

[0:53] I have to be honest.

[0:54] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[0:55] I thought I'd do something different this time.

[0:57] Note to self, never do that again.

[0:59] Ramble on in the future.

[1:01] Uh, well...

[1:01] Just be a regular Led Zepp and ramble on.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03] Yeah, I think Elliot was trying to, before we started recording, or maybe while we were recording,

[1:08] Elliot was trying to steer this into more of a, like, uh, uh, relationship slash sexual wellness podcast direction.

[1:15] And Dan said, no, sir.

[1:17] Time to get to the meat of what we're supposed to do here.

[1:19] The meat being movie talk.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21] So I had to stop myself after my name from saying anything more than that.

[1:25] Because I knew it would go in a direction Dan didn't want.

[1:27] Much like how, uh, when I was on Jeopardy recently, a little brag, I was talking about my grandma,

[1:32] and I had to stop myself from saying her address out loud.

[1:36] Which I realized I was about to say after I named her, and I was like, uh, no, she doesn't need this information out there.

Dan McCoy

[1:40] Now, why, why is that, why is that second nature to just tag?

Elliott Kalan

[1:45] Well, because I was saying, I was saying my, uh, I was saying my, my grandmother, Barbara Bruchelle of New York,

[1:51] and I was about to say Barbara Bruchelle of, and then her address as if I was announcing like a letter that I got on a radio show.

[1:56] Or if you were ordering something through like Domino's pizza tracker.

[2:00] Exactly.

[2:00] For your grandma.

[2:01] Which I do, which I do over the phone constantly.

Stuart Wellington

[2:04] I'm constantly sending my grandma pizzas.

Dan McCoy

[2:10] And then screenshots of the tracker to let her know.

Elliott Kalan

[2:14] Yeah, but I have to, she doesn't use a, she doesn't use computers or a phone.

[2:17] Actually, she uses both.

[2:18] But, so I have to mail her photographs of what the tracker looks like.

[2:21] So the tracker gets to her long after the pizza does.

[2:23] And living in Manhattan, as she does, there's no source for pizza other than Domino's.

[2:27] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[2:27] And the problem then is like, because it's, because of the lag, she thinks another pizza is coming.

[2:33] Uh-huh.

[2:33] So then you have to order another pizza.

[2:35] Which means, yeah, I've got to order another one.

[2:37] Continues.

Elliott Kalan

[2:37] Exactly.

[2:38] It's a delicious cycle is what we call it.

Stuart Wellington

[2:39] And in a way, you could make a cycle out of pizza pies, because they're kind of like wheels, right?

[2:45] Unless they're Detroit style.

[2:45] I mean, you're not going to get much traction.

Dan McCoy

[2:47] Yeah, I think they're not load-bearing.

[2:50] Depends on the pizza.

[2:52] You're just going to find yourself collapsed in a pile of metal and pizza.

Elliott Kalan

[2:57] I mean, sounds wonderful to me, except maybe the metal part.

[3:01] That's kind of what happened in Star Wars when they went into that, the Death Star trash compactor.

[3:04] They're in like kind of a puddle of metal and pizza, right?

Stuart Wellington

[3:08] Yeah, I feel like that's what the designer notes were from George Lucas, was that,

[3:12] I think the original script says they fall into a big puddle of pizza.

Elliott Kalan

[3:17] Yeah, yeah, but he had to explain that he meant space pizza.

[3:19] Yeah.

[3:19] And so Ralph McQuarrie had to do a bunch of concept paintings of what pizza would look like in outer space.

[3:24] And so by the time they got to the prequels, George Lucas just said space diner, and they were just like,

[3:29] make it look like a 50s diner.

[3:30] Like, why not?

[3:31] Have an alien wearing a little paper hat and an apron.

[3:34] Why not?

[3:34] Andy has a mustache.

[3:35] He has the perfect form.

Stuart Wellington

[3:37] Does he have a mustache?

[3:38] Dexter Jetster has a mustache, yeah.

[3:41] Does he have...

Dan McCoy

[3:41] Dexter Jetster.

[3:42] Is he the one with multiple arms?

[3:44] He has multiple arms.

[3:45] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[3:45] Yeah.

[3:46] So he can flip multiple hamburgers.

[3:48] Space hamburgers, they call them.

[3:50] I'm glad that space replaces ham in that word.

[3:54] Yeah, it's a burger man of space.

[3:56] And he flips them with a spatula, which is a portmanteau of space and spatula.

Dan McCoy

[4:02] Space and spatula.

[4:04] So, look, here's the thing.

[4:09] We're a podcast.

[4:10] You know that part.

[4:11] Yeah.

[4:11] But maybe you don't know if you haven't listened before.

[4:13] We watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[4:16] And in this instance, we watched Hillbilly Elegy, the latest big movie to be released on Netflix.

[4:25] Was it going to be a theatrical before all this pandemic?

Elliott Kalan

[4:29] I have to assume so.

[4:30] Yeah.

[4:31] I have to assume that the only reason that a movie like this gets made is to be eligible for the Academy Awards.

[4:35] So I have to assume...

[4:36] And it's a...

[4:37] Ron Howard directed, big stars, Glenn Close, Amy Adams, whoever plays JD, the main character.

[4:43] I have to assume it was meant to be originally for the theaters.

[4:45] Yeah.

[4:46] Like the way Roma was a Netflix movie, but it was in the theaters.

[4:49] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[4:51] Yeah.

[4:51] It's a movie that came out a little ways back.

[4:56] It had a little controversy because the book it's based on had a lot of political content that I can't speak to because I didn't read the book.

[5:06] But the movie is kind of remarkable for how apolitical it is to the degree that it somehow manages to say less than nothing, I think, by the end.

Elliott Kalan

[5:20] It's certainly a movie where by the end of it you're like, why was that?

[5:23] Mm-hmm.

[5:24] Yeah.

[5:25] Like, why did this...

[5:26] What was the driving force behind making this other than that it's based on a best-selling book and therefore is money?

Stuart Wellington

[5:31] Also, considering that it's a movie that takes place over, you know, a number of different years and it jumps around in time, and at multiple points characters are like watching the news, they make a lot of effort to not actually say anything about the political figures in the news.

Elliott Kalan

[5:46] No, I mean, we'll get to the point where one of the characters wants to watch political news and is shut down because his mama, his grandma wants to watch Terminator 2.

Stuart Wellington

[5:55] Which?

[5:56] Which in her defense.

[5:58] A movie she has seen a hundred times.

[6:00] I mean, you could watch it a hundred more times.

[6:02] It's Terminator 2.

[6:03] There was an early...

Elliott Kalan

[6:04] A movie as which we'll find informs her life philosophy.

[6:07] Yeah.

[6:07] So the movie has more to say about Terminator 2 than it does about America, really.

Dan McCoy

[6:12] There's an early scene where our lead as a child wants to watch Al Gore and Amy Adams turns the TV off, and I don't know any child who's ever said, no, no, give me more Al Gore.

[6:25] If only.

[6:26] Unless it's in one of those Futurama appearances, perhaps.

[6:29] I don't know, but...

Elliott Kalan

[6:30] I will say, when I was a kid, I thought it was Alf Gore, and I'm like, yeah, let's finally see Alf get bloody.

[6:35] Like, let's see what Alf does when he's let loose and unleashed, like that movie with Jet Li where he had the leash on him and the leash gets taken off of him.

[6:42] I don't remember what it's called.

[6:43] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[6:43] We should probably get into the specifics of the movie soon.

Elliott Kalan

[6:47] Oh, sure.

[6:47] Okay, let's talk about it.

[6:48] So, guys, I'm driving the buggy on this one.

[6:53] I'm going to mention, first off, there's a lot of arguing and yelling in this movie.

[6:56] A special kind of yelling.

[6:58] Oscar-style yelling.

[6:59] Yeah.

[6:59] The kind of yelling that looks really good in the clip that they play when they announce your name at the Oscars.

[7:04] So, I'm going to be doing a running tally, as best as I can, of those Oscar-yelling scenes.

[7:10] We begin.

[7:11] It's 1997.

[7:12] That's right.

[7:13] The best time to be alive.

[7:16] Star Wars prequels were just a couple years off.

[7:18] You could go see Star Wars Special Edition in the theaters.

[7:21] Jurassic Park was four years old and still going strong in the hearts of America's youth.

[7:25] And other stuff was probably happening, too.

Stuart Wellington

[7:26] I hate to throw in IMDb goofs here, but when they were in 1997, they didn't have any kind of an establishing shot that indicated that me, Stuart Wellington, was 17 years old at the time.

[7:40] I feel like it would have been a better way of establishing exactly what year they're in.

[7:44] Stuart Wellington probably wearing a t-shirt that says, like, KMFDM on it or something.

[7:49] And what would you be doing in this establishing scene?

[7:52] Oh, man.

Stuart Wellington

[7:52] I was 17, so I was probably seated.

[7:58] I spent a lot of that year on my butt.

[8:01] I forgot that was the sitting portion of your life.

[8:04] So I was probably seated, and I'm guessing I was rifling through a stack of reptiles or reptiles magazines.

[8:13] Oh, okay.

[8:14] The magazines was important.

Elliott Kalan

[8:16] Not a stack of lizards and turtles.

[8:18] No.

[8:18] Which would be appropriate because the movie begins.

[8:21] We're introduced by our narrator, JD.

[8:23] He's a nice young boy.

[8:24] So nice, he rescues a turtle from the road in Jackson, Kentucky, which you think at first is where he lives, but it's not.

[8:30] It's a world of beautiful nature and noble, poor white folk who either bully JD or come in and beat up the bullies who are bullying JD.

Dan McCoy

[8:38] Now, can I say this is one of the – sorry, I cut you off, but this is one of the many digressions of the film that I'm like, I don't know why this is in the movie.

[8:47] Like, this movie puts in a lot of stuff where you're like, I don't know why this is in the movie.

[8:52] And this is the first of it because it's like, okay, he makes a point of saying he spent most of his life somewhere else.

[8:59] Nothing is particularly learned about him in this first scene.

[9:03] And they also make Kentucky and Ohio look like two, like, vastly different universes when they are geographically close.

Elliott Kalan

[9:13] So –

[9:14] Yeah.

[9:14] So I think – but I think emotionally they're supposed to be two different universes.

[9:17] In Kentucky, you live out in the woods and family is the most important thing.

[9:22] And you don't have to worry about bullies because somebody's uncle is going to come by and beat that bully up.

[9:27] Yeah.

[9:28] But his family – he just spends the summers there.

[9:30] He lives – and that's where his family is originally from.

[9:32] His grandparents left and went to Ohio.

[9:34] They're part of the Kentucky diaspora that has spread all throughout the United States but maintains that rich ethnic culture of Kentucky no matter where they go.

[9:43] And someday they'll be able to return to the homeland, I assume.

[9:46] He lives in Ohio with his mom, Amy Adams, his sister, and his mama, Glenn Close.

[9:50] That's his grandma for anyone who's not from Kentucky.

[9:53] So technically, since they live in Ohio, they're not hillbillies but suburbillies, which are kind of – it's where hillbillies go when they can no longer live in the hills.

[10:01] Where they live in Ohio, it was a bustling mill town when Mama and Papa moved to Ohio in the 30s or 40s.

[10:06] I wasn't quite certain.

[10:08] But now it's your classic American shuttered Main Street.

[10:11] And what J.D. says in the narration is his family, what they were missing was hope.

[10:16] Cut to 2011.

[10:17] J.D. seems to have found his hope because he's working his way through Yale Law School.

[10:22] But if he can't get a paid summer internship, he cannot afford to stay in school.

[10:26] He goes to a fancy meet and greet with potential law firm employers but he cannot get a handle on how much silverware there is in his place.

[10:34] There's too many forks.

[10:35] There's too many forks, damn it.

[10:36] Too many forks.

[10:37] Also, he has trouble ordering wine.

[10:39] But mainly it's the fork thing which drives him so confused that he has to call his girlfriend to ask her, how do I use the forks?

[10:47] Dan, you look like you have something to say on the subject of forks or the maximum amount thereof.

Dan McCoy

[10:51] There's a lot of silverware that he is confused by and he is confused by the fact that there's more than one type of wine at this place.

[11:00] And the thing – like look, at this point he has been to Yale Law School but he's also just a human that exists in the world.

[11:08] He works in a restaurant.

[11:10] The very existence of different types of silverware for stuff shouldn't baffle him.

[11:15] Now, I looked – this is one of the times that I looked and I'm like, okay, is this in the book?

[11:20] Turns out this is in the book but I still don't believe it actually happened because it is like he is –

[11:26] I have trouble.

[11:27] I mean at least not to this degree.

[11:28] It is as if he is an alien who has arrived on Earth and is like, but one only needs one implement of food devouring.

Elliott Kalan

[11:37] Dan, he is an alien from the planet poor people.

[11:40] He's essentially throughout the movie as like a – yeah, as a visitor to the planet rich from the planet poor.

[11:45] Maybe that's what it's like.

[11:46] I don't know.

[11:47] I grew up middle class.

[11:48] I think it was David Brooks who wrote that column a few years ago about bringing a friend of his to a sandwich restaurant and his friend being bewildered by the variety of sandwiches and ingredients.

[11:56] And being paralyzed, their thoughts unable to move because they could not comprehend so many sandwich ingredients.

[12:02] And at the time I was like, that sounds made up.

[12:04] I don't think that's a real thing.

[12:05] And if you were a good friend, David Brooks, you would explain what stuff is good on a sandwich then.

[12:11] Because I've certainly been to plenty of restaurants where I didn't know what something was on the menu and I asked whoever I was with and they said, oh, that's this thing.

Dan McCoy

[12:17] Your friend is hungry, David Brooks.

[12:19] Like, yeah, describe what a sandwich is to him.

[12:22] Don't go home and write a column about it.

[12:24] Get him that sandwich.

Elliott Kalan

[12:24] Especially when you know that his brother, Mel Brooks, would have done a hilarious routine improvising what each of those ingredients are.

[12:31] They're not really related.

Stuart Wellington

[12:32] So he gets there and he's having a lot of trouble figuring out the etiquette for fine dining.

[12:40] And part of me is like, yeah, man, maybe you shouldn't get this job.

[12:44] If something like this is fucking you up so bad, like, you need to control your shit.

[12:49] Like, fake it till you make it, buddy.

[12:52] And that's even before we get to the point when a lawyer or one of the, I guess, are there lawyers, right, that they're talking to or whatever?

[13:00] They are lawyers.

Elliott Kalan

[13:02] Now, this is where law students are supposed to have dinner with members of law firms so that they can – it's kind of like an audition dinner to see who's going to get an interview to get a job.

[13:13] Because much like The Rise of Skywalker, there's a lot of steps to get to where you actually want to go.

[13:19] You've got to get to the dinner.

[13:20] Then after the dinner, you get an interview.

[13:22] Then after the interview, maybe you get a job.

[13:23] And at the job, you get the dagger that you hold up to the sun and it tells you where the planet is that you need to find the magic emperor thing.

[13:30] I don't really remember what they were looking for in The Rise of Skywalker.

[13:32] Like a key?

[13:34] Probably.

Dan McCoy

[13:34] There's some dagger that took you to, yeah, the Death Star wreckage.

[13:38] There was a key there that took you somewhere else.

Stuart Wellington

[13:43] And this is the scene where the lawyer – when J.D. reveals his background, he uses it a little bit of like – as like window dressing to make himself seem more interesting.

[13:53] And this is when one of the lawyers used the term redneck and he says, we don't use that word in a way that felt very offensive to me.

[14:01] I don't know why.

Elliott Kalan

[14:03] Well, so he gets – you're right.

[14:05] He calls his girlfriend about this silverware problem.

[14:08] Then gets a phone call from his sister saying, you need to come home.

[14:10] Your mom has just OD'd.

[14:13] The movie presents this as almost as harrowing as the silverware problem.

[14:16] And then he immediately hangs up on his sister and then goes back to dinner.

[14:20] And he starts playing it up.

[14:22] He's like, you know, my family, we're hillbilly royalty because we're descended from the Hatfields and the McCoys.

[14:27] And the lawyer is like, hey, I guess – what's it like being – must be nice not being around those rednecks.

[14:32] And he goes, excuse me, sir.

[14:33] And I was like, well, you were the one who was playing up the hillbilly aspect.

[14:37] Like, I don't know.

[14:38] And it's one of those moments where I guess it's supposed to be that, like, he can talk like that because he's from Kentucky by way of Ohio.

[14:47] But other people – it's unsure.

[14:49] There's some sort of etiquette dynamic going on that I certainly not being a hillbilly and not being a wealthy Yale lawyer, I do not know how it operates.

[14:56] I am merely – guys, I'm just a middle-class Jewish New Jersey guy who works in Hollywood.

[15:00] I don't know how either of these worlds operate.

[15:02] I'm in my bubble and I'm not going to try to puncture their bubbles.

Dan McCoy

[15:05] Look, I would be somewhat perturbed if someone made, like, assumptions about someplace I lived.

[15:16] The degree to which, though, these characters are portrayed as, like, comically out-of-touch rich people is – like, they all should have, like, bad guy signs on them, I feel like, in this scene.

[15:32] Because, like, I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of comically out-of-touch rich people, but these are, like – these people act like they have never talked to anyone who was not wealthy in their life.

[15:44] And there are people who hire students, many of whom presumably, like, grew up as he did and worked hard to sort of be able to fund going to the law school and, you know, changing their circumstances somewhat.

Elliott Kalan

[16:01] But also, the one lawyer is slightly offensive and J.D. comes down on him and the other lawyer, the one J.D. really wants to impress, seems to be on J.D.'s side almost instantly.

[16:12] Yeah.

[16:12] Like, it does not – and if anything, it's like now J.D. recognizes the power of offense, I guess.

[16:20] But anyway, J.D., what I think – what gets me the most about him is he clearly has a strong narrative of I lifted myself up to get to this place.

[16:29] And that's a good sellable narrative since he wrote a book about it.

[16:31] But I guess at that point in his life, he doesn't notice it.

[16:33] He still sees it as a weakness.

Dan McCoy

[16:34] Anyway, J.D., now flash it.

[16:37] Sorry.

[16:37] I mean, for what it's worth, it may not be much to compare it to, quote, unquote, real life because I am sure that his memoir is also fictionalized to some degree.

[16:47] But –

[16:48] I mean, he has a talking horse in it.

[16:50] Yeah.

[16:51] But, like, from what I looked into, you know, like, this is not the way it was.

[16:56] Like, his – you know, people that he dealt with kind of, like, looked on his background as, like, sort of an interesting factor.

[17:04] But not a thing that, like – if anything, a thing that set him apart, as you're saying, Elliot, and, like, not a thing that he hid.

[17:11] Like, he seems to be concerned about hiding to some degree where he came from until he sees, like, how it can maybe advantage himself.

Elliott Kalan

[17:20] Yeah.

[17:21] I will say it's – this is – this movie – so I just – we're – because of scheduling, we are recording this before our live show, but we are releasing it afterwards.

[17:30] Last night I did my review of Teen Wolf, and I forgot that Teen Wolf exists in a universe where people know about werewolves, but they are oppressed.

[17:37] And so it was almost like this movie is to hillbillies as Teen Wolf is to Teen Wolves, where it's like this is the thing that gives him his power, but it's also what marks him out as an other.

[17:46] And in real life I don't know that people from Kentucky are really that marked out.

[17:49] But I don't know.

[17:50] Again, if you've been to Kentucky and you went to Yale, write in.

[17:53] Hallie went to Yale, but she's not from Kentucky.

[17:54] Does not count.

[17:55] Coloradans are treated very well there, I think.

[17:57] So anyway, J.D. flashes back to his youth.

[17:59] He and his mom, Amy Adams, are painting Easter eggs.

[18:02] His mom calls these their family heirlooms.

[18:04] They do the thing where they suck the yolk out of the egg so they can keep that eggshell.

[18:07] But he gets a pet dog, and that dog breaks the eggs, and mom loses her shit.

[18:12] It's Oscar yelling scene number one.

[18:14] But then she apologized to him and bonds with him over his Magic the Gathering cards, which was a very real 1997 touch to me.

Stuart Wellington

[18:22] So I have a couple of points here.

[18:24] One is, I mean, the dog doesn't break the eggs.

[18:28] This is the first time that J.D. is like super clumsy and is like, dang it, and like knocks a table over.

[18:35] And then the second thing is, buddy, if you got a fucking Lord of the Pit in 1997, just sell that shit, dude.

[18:45] It's worth so much money.

[18:47] Yeah.

[18:47] And to see it just sitting there, not even single-sleeved?

Elliott Kalan

[18:51] What the fuck, dude?

[18:53] Well, you know he doesn't really know what he's doing.

[18:55] He's not a guy who puts card combos together.

[18:57] He just sits there dinging you with Prodigal Sorcerer while you're setting up your mana, and that's his only strategy.

[19:04] He doesn't read Inquest magazine or anything like that.

[19:07] He just doesn't know what he's doing.

Dan McCoy

[19:08] Now, I want to make two points that are sort of related.

[19:13] Not as important as the collectible cards points.

[19:16] But there are two things that are sort of related here.

[19:19] Number one, you mentioned how there are all these Oscar screaming scenes.

[19:23] And they mostly come from Amy Adams, some from Glenn Close.

[19:28] And I think that in a different movie, they're working hard.

[19:32] I think they're putting in fine performances.

[19:35] The problem with their performances is they're all Oscar yelling scenes.

[19:39] And I blame that more on the direction of the screenwriting.

[19:42] Because this movie feels like a parade of incidents.

[19:47] And each incident is the most dramatic incident that happened that year.

[19:52] And this movie has all this framing device of, oh, the guy as an adult going back to be with his mom in his hometown.

[20:01] Stuff that is apparently not in the book.

[20:03] And the top thing that would probably improve the movie is eliminating all that shit because it would give a little more time for some sort of nuance and low points to go with all the screaming.

Elliott Kalan

[20:15] I think you're right.

[20:16] I mean, it's clear there's a lot of – they're acting their hearts out.

[20:18] God bless them.

[20:19] It's a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing because at the heart of the movie, there's kind of like a meaninglessness.

[20:24] And I think that the framing device doesn't help.

[20:26] I guess it's supposed to provide stakes that like if he's got to deal with this situation or else he's not going to get this summer job.

[20:34] But it's also like you know that he's already at Yale.

[20:38] Yeah.

[20:38] Like the biggest hurdle has been overcome.

[20:41] Yeah.

[20:41] And even if he's having trouble staying in Yale, like the biggest hurdle I assume was getting to Yale.

[20:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[20:46] Yeah, exactly.

[20:47] Like if this movie has – like the stakes of this movie should not be will this guy get a good lawyer job.

[20:53] The stakes should be will this kid get out of this sort of like horrible family situation.

[20:58] That's a much bigger stake.

Stuart Wellington

[21:00] And this kid survived being a Marine, at least like one tour of being a Marine.

Dan McCoy

[21:09] Which gets glossed over in a montage at the end.

Elliott Kalan

[21:12] That gets mentioned very – yeah, almost not at all.

[21:15] So anyway, we're still in this flashback.

[21:17] Amy Adams, to make it up to him, takes him to a sports card store.

[21:20] He is super clumsy in it.

[21:22] They're like dancing in the sports card store or something, a knockover rack of stuff.

[21:25] She gets into an argument with the guy who – I don't know if he owns the store or just works there.

[21:29] It doesn't really matter.

[21:30] But he has the power to throw them out of the store.

[21:31] But it's okay because she stole the cards that he wanted.

[21:34] And that's what a good mom she is.

[21:36] On the drive home, I don't remember why she gets mad at him and threatens to kill them both in a car crash, leading to Oscar yelling scene number two.

[21:42] He's like, you're a bitch, mom.

[21:43] And she hits him and he runs away to a neighbor who calls the police.

[21:47] And then that flashback gets paused so that JD can decide, you know what?

[21:50] I'm going to skip this job interview.

[21:52] I'm going to drive all night to be with – 10 hours to be with my mom in Kentucky.

[21:56] And then in the memory, Mama shows up and JD is like, no, I won't press charges.

[22:00] And everyone avoids jail time.

[22:02] I mean, you gloss over it and you go quickly.

Stuart Wellington

[22:04] But it is like – it is a scene where we're watching a mother violently abuse her child.

[22:11] And it's – I guess it's a little like – at least for the viewer, it's toned down because the mother is Amy Adams and she's not a – they're about the same size.

[22:20] But it's still fucking horrible.

[22:22] And you're like –

[22:23] Yeah, I would –

[22:23] Oh.

[22:24] I wanted to say –

[22:24] It's a terrible scene.

[22:25] That this is –

Elliott Kalan

[22:26] While you're watching it, you're like, this is horrible.

[22:27] I don't know why I'm watching this.

[22:29] You know.

Dan McCoy

[22:29] But it is the closest the movie felt to – like there are a couple of scenes in the movie that felt affecting in some way.

[22:36] And this is one of them because I do think it showed the sort of terrifying nature of someone who is clearly struggling with addiction that creates these huge mood swings.

[22:48] Yeah.

[22:48] And how it would be to be around someone so erratic that you could be dancing with them one moment and then the next moment they threaten to kill you both in the car.

[22:56] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[22:56] Well, that's – again, like if the movie was more of a – like if it didn't have that framing device.

[23:02] The framing device posits JD as the center of the story and Amy Adams should be the center of the story.

[23:07] But instead she just becomes this like hurricane that enters and leaves kind of at random almost.

[23:13] Like I'm never entirely sure why the flashbacks are happening when they're happening.

[23:17] But if it was the story of like a mother and a son – and you know, there have been lots of movies about mothers and sons.

[23:22] It's a very effective thing to do a movie about, which is what this should be.

[23:25] But instead it becomes about like is JD going to make it to this interview on time, which is not – it makes all these other things feel like – it feels like there's two different movies going on.

[23:35] And one of them is much more harrowing than the other.

[23:37] But they have to be at the same kind of tone level.

[23:40] I'll go you one better.

Dan McCoy

[23:41] One of them is ridiculously overwrought and the other one is boring.

Elliott Kalan

[23:47] Yes, it is boring, especially when – I mean I'll skip – I'll just mention my big issue with this that I just thought of today, which I didn't even realize at the time was he's like, am I going to stay here with my mom who desperately needs help to stay off drugs or am I going to go to this meeting?

[24:00] And it's like – I mean maybe they won't understand because they're cold-hearted, rich lawyers.

[24:05] But like why not tell them you have a family medical emergency and ask if you could do the interview over the phone?

Dan McCoy

[24:09] Yeah.

[24:10] Like that –

Elliott Kalan

[24:11] Maybe I'm coming at it from a Zoom meeting world where we do all of our things remotely.

[24:15] This was back in 2011 when pressing the flesh was the most important thing.

Stuart Wellington

[24:18] And it's also right after he proves that he can put at least $3,000 on his credit cards.

[24:26] And I was like, why doesn't he just get a fucking round-trip flight?

[24:31] He'd get a round-trip flight for a couple hundred bucks, go there, do the interview, be back, and his mom might still be asleep.

[24:37] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[24:38] I mean –

[24:39] I mean, yeah.

[24:40] No, I was going to say, Elliot, you bring up a good point about how we all used to like to press the flesh back then.

[24:46] Now, what – why were we pressing all that flesh?

[24:48] Well, we – why did it have to be flattened out?

[24:50] I mean, I prefer my flesh kind of as it is.

[24:53] Nope.

Elliott Kalan

[24:54] Well, that's because, Dan, you're only at the beginning of the wrinkling process.

[24:57] Your flesh is going to get wrinklier and wrinklier as time goes on.

[25:00] You're going to want to press it to get those wrinkles out, to get the folds.

[25:03] Right now, you're at the – right at the cusp of when your flesh goes from smooth to folded.

[25:08] And when you press the flesh with an old person, it's not like they're doing you a favor.

[25:11] You're doing them a favor because you're helping smooth out all those wrinks.

Dan McCoy

[25:14] Now, if you fold that flesh, though, you can fit into a smaller area, like into the overhead compartment, you know, once it's folded up.

Elliott Kalan

[25:22] Dan, what you're asking – what you're saying is horrifying.

Stuart Wellington

[25:25] I also like that Elliot just coined a new hip way to say wrinkles by calling them wrinks.

Elliott Kalan

[25:31] Yep.

[25:32] Or rinky dinks.

[25:33] You can call them that, too.

Dan McCoy

[25:34] Stuart, I also saw with the credit card thing, I saw a very, like, salient thing.

[25:40] I was reading an article in Vox where people were talking about, like, why is this – why does this movie feel so false?

[25:47] You know, a couple of them having grown up in Appalachia.

[25:50] And one of them said there's that scene where he's buying gasoline and, like, his card has declined.

[25:58] And she was railing against the idea that, like, in movies showing that someone is in financial distress, the shorthand is always like, oh, your card has been declined.

[26:08] And she's like, bullshit.

[26:10] Bullshit.

[26:11] Like, if you are – if you've been in, like, those sort of dire financial straits, you know exactly how much money you have.

[26:18] Yeah.

[26:18] Like, it is people who can afford to lose money that don't necessarily know.

[26:23] That are surprised when the card has declined.

Elliott Kalan

[26:25] No, that's a good point.

[26:26] I mean, it's also – yeah, I guess another thing that makes it feel artificial to me is that this is – for all the acting Amy Adams and Glenn Close doing it, and they're great actors and they're trying their hardest, I am never not aware that it is Amy Adams and Glenn Close on screen.

[26:40] And there's a line from – there's a Firesign Theater sketch where there's a line where they're introducing a movie and they go, stories of ordinary people told by rich Hollywood stars.

[26:48] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[26:48] And that's what this movie feels like the entire time.

[26:51] Like, I mean, they're trying their best, but they are not disappearing into those characters.

Stuart Wellington

[26:54] I mean, no matter how much effort they do to make Glenn Close look like Bilbo seeing the ring in Frodo's hands.

[27:04] I do.

[27:05] I do.

[27:05] I mean, that is –

Elliott Kalan

[27:07] And I blame – but I blame that on the script and the director, too.

[27:10] Like, I feel like they are not given the material to become characters.

[27:12] Yeah.

[27:12] You know.

Dan McCoy

[27:13] I do admire – that is a perfect way of describing her, but I do admire that you're seeing a movie where an old person who is a big star looks that old and, like, they're allowed to look that old.

[27:26] Because even in movies that try and de-glam people, like, there's only so far that they go.

[27:32] Whereas, like, Glenn Close looks like plenty of, like, old women I would see around, like, my small town.

[27:37] Yeah.

[27:38] Wearing up, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[27:38] Like, a cat shirt or cat sweatshirt that I would pay all my money for.

Elliott Kalan

[27:45] Yeah.

[27:46] But they don't go too far, like Nicole Kidman in Destroyer, where she looks like a laser beam was pointed at her face.

[27:53] I remember watching that with my wife, and she was like, so when are they going to show the accident she was in?

[27:57] And I'm like, no.

Dan McCoy

[27:59] Yeah, I think that's just supposed to indicate she had a lot of gin over the course of her life.

Elliott Kalan

[28:04] So, anyway, he goes to the hospital.

[28:06] We finally see Amy Adams in the present time.

[28:09] She doesn't look like she's aged that much, to be honest.

[28:10] She does not have insurance, and the hospital is kicking her out.

[28:13] And this is the weird thing about this movie is, again, I hadn't read the book, and I kept hearing the book was, like, this conservative apologia.

[28:20] But the movie, if it has any political point, it is that you need a universal health care program.

[28:25] Because the problem they keep coming up against is they don't have proper health care.

[28:29] Like, his mom cannot afford to stay in rehab or get a hospital bed.

[28:33] So it was like, if ever this is about anything, it's about the need for better health care safety.

[28:38] Right.

Dan McCoy

[28:39] Sorry, there's a good point.

[28:41] I think that the problem with these, you know, pulled myself up by my own bootstraps narratives, right?

[28:47] Like, Audrey pointed out watching it, is that people who are sort of making that conservative argument aren't acknowledging, like, why you needed to be pulled up by your bootstraps in the first place.

[29:02] Like, Amy Adams and, to a slightly lesser degree, Glenn Close, although not that much, are, you know, acting terribly for a lot of the movie.

[29:15] And it's for reasons of—

Elliott Kalan

[29:17] You don't mean in terms of their acting, acting.

[29:19] You mean, like, their behavior.

[29:20] No, their behavior.

Dan McCoy

[29:20] And it's because Amy Adams is struggling with addiction.

[29:25] Glenn Close is, like, sort of embittered by living near the poverty line.

[29:30] And the thing is, if they—if there's—the problem is that there aren't the social systems to support them, you know?

[29:37] And if that's not the problem, then these people are just being assholes because they're assholes, you know?

[29:43] Like, whereas, like, the reasons these people are, like, kind of being horrible for a lot of it is they've had to struggle with so much, you know?

[29:50] And that equation never—

Elliott Kalan

[29:51] So you're saying, Dan, if they had a UBI, a universal basic income, they might not have to act so much as if they have IBS, irritable bowel syndrome.

[29:59] That is exactly what I'm saying.

[30:00] Which I have to assume is endemic.

[30:01] Please quote me as saying that.

[30:05] Put it in the Flophouse newsletter.

[30:07] Blast it out.

[30:08] This is Dan McCoy's basic platform when he's running for office is a UBI keeps away IBS.

[30:14] Now, UTI is a different issue.

[30:16] Anyway, moving on.

[30:18] Yeah.

[30:19] So JD learns about that job interview we mentioned a couple times.

[30:21] He has to—he's going to drive all night, he assumes, but what's going to happen with his mom?

[30:25] Anyway, it's a 10-hour drive away.

[30:27] He has another flashback, remembering when his grandpa, Papa, died, and everyone in Kentucky flew to the funeral procession.

Stuart Wellington

[30:33] When they find the body, Glenn Close leans close and gives him a little kiss on the forehead, and you can see the actor's eyeballs flutter, and you're like, is she a fucking necromancer?

Elliott Kalan

[30:44] You have to imagine that actor was like, I cannot believe I'm getting a kiss from Glenn Close right now.

[30:48] This is amazing.

Stuart Wellington

[30:48] And one Ted Howard over here is like, fuck it, print.

Elliott Kalan

[30:52] Deal.

[30:52] I learned this from Roger Corman.

[30:54] No one gives a shit, so let's keep moving.

[30:55] I actually teared up—

[30:57] I've got three more best-selling books to make into movies this year.

[31:00] Tom Hanks has only signed on for two of them, so let's go.

Dan McCoy

[31:02] I actually teared up a little bit at this, and Audrey was making fun of me.

[31:05] I'm like, look, I'm not tearing up about these characters.

[31:08] I'm tearing up about the concept of living your whole life with a person and then finding them dead.

[31:15] And I was just thinking about that now.

[31:18] I'm thinking about Elliot's old Goosebumps thing, where it's like, well, this is not scary in a movie, but if it was happening to me in real life, I'd be scared.

Elliott Kalan

[31:26] Sure, yeah.

[31:27] If it was happening to you, if in real life you lost your lifetime spouse, then yes, you would be sad.

[31:33] So I'm glad that you were able to put yourself in that situation, Dan.

[31:37] But it really got to me, the idea that when people in Kentucky see a—or maybe, I assume—they were living in Ohio then, but I don't know.

[31:43] When poor people see a funeral procession pass by, they stop and salute it like it's the presidential death train.

[31:51] And that did not ring true to me, but I don't know.

[31:55] But I just didn't like the implications that in other parts of the country people are cold-hearted and don't care about death.

Stuart Wellington

[32:00] I think presidential death train was the original title for Snowpiercer, right?

Elliott Kalan

[32:05] Yeah, it was, but only because originally Chris Evans was playing Franklin Pierce.

Dan McCoy

[32:10] No, the point of that scene, Elliot, is like, we're all hard-hearted in New York when we don't salute a funeral.

[32:16] It's like, why aren't you saluting a funeral?

[32:17] I didn't know there was a funeral.

[32:19] There are millions of people in this city.

[32:20] I'm sorry.

Elliott Kalan

[32:21] Look, Dan, I can't help it if I'm the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral.

[32:24] It's been one week since you looked at me.

Dan McCoy

[32:26] It has been one week since I looked at you over Skype.

Elliott Kalan

[32:28] That's true.

[32:29] It actually has been one week.

[32:31] And I can't help it.

[32:32] How can I help it if I think it's funny when you're mad?

[32:34] That's the rest of that line that I was trying to think of.

[32:35] And that also applies to you.

[32:38] Yeah, thank you.

[32:40] I didn't realize the song One Week by Barenaked Ladies is about our relationship, Dan.

[32:45] And if I had a million dollars, maybe I would buy you a house.

[32:48] What other songs do they have?

Dan McCoy

[32:50] Broke into the Old Apartment?

[32:52] That one's actually kind of good.

[32:54] Fuck that.

Stuart Wellington

[32:55] Okay.

[32:56] I don't know them.

[32:56] Anyway.

[32:57] No, I'm not a Barenaked Ladies fan.

[32:58] I'm sorry, guys.

Elliott Kalan

[33:00] Stuart, I happen to know you do like naked ladies.

Stuart Wellington

[33:02] What?

Elliott Kalan

[33:03] Don't tell anyone, Elliot.

[33:05] Sorry, it's your secret.

[33:07] My enemies will use it against me.

[33:11] Your enemies, like if you're hunting a rabbit, the rabbit's going to dress up like a pretty

[33:15] lady to try to distract you.

[33:16] It's happened before.

[33:18] The old Onion article, area man has naked lady fetish, and it's all about this disgusting

[33:23] fetish this guy has for seeing women without their clothes on.

[33:26] Okay, so Amy Adams, she takes that death particularly hard.

[33:29] She was very close to Pawpaw.

[33:30] It's made clear that Pawpaw was, I guess, protecting her in some way from real life.

[33:35] And pretty soon, she's losing her nursing job by stealing pills, getting high, and roller

[33:39] skating through the hallways in a scene that in an 80s comedy would be considered like

[33:43] a rapturous, you know, like joy.

[33:46] It's a hijink.

Dan McCoy

[33:47] This is the second time I was like, now there's no way this happened.

[33:51] This apparently did happen.

[33:52] She did lose her job after roller skating through the hospital.

Elliott Kalan

[33:56] I blame the woman who lends her the roller skates.

[33:58] She's in the nurse locker room, and she's like, can I try on those roller skates?

[34:02] And it's like, never let Amy Adams try on roller skates.

[34:04] That just goes without saying.

Dan McCoy

[34:05] Where are you going to skate?

[34:06] And then it's just a hard cut to her skating down the halls.

[34:09] Presumably, there was a point where that woman could have been like, the halls?

[34:13] No.

[34:14] Oh, that's funny.

[34:15] That's funny.

[34:16] The place was answered.

Elliott Kalan

[34:17] As she's going to the door, like, going, hey, hey, maybe don't go out there.

[34:20] Yeah, it's a hospital.

[34:22] This leads to another big fight between her and JD.

[34:24] Oscar yelling scene number three.

[34:26] That's three we've got so far.

[34:27] Then we're at Mama's house.

[34:30] Young JD, this is when he wants to watch the Clinton impeachment news.

[34:33] But Mama wants to watch Terminator 2, and she explains her life philosophy that everyone is either a good Terminator, a bad Terminator, or neutral.

[34:41] Which would be what, like, Eddie Furlong's friend who is from Salute Your Shorts?

[34:44] Like, is that neutral?

[34:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[34:46] There are two problems with this.

[34:48] Number one, I don't know if I am a Terminator.

[34:52] I don't know how that combines with the two bears that live inside me.

Elliott Kalan

[34:56] Dan, one, you're neutral.

[34:57] Totally.

[34:58] And that means there's a good Terminator and a bad Terminator inside each of those bears.

Dan McCoy

[35:03] Okay.

[35:04] But also, like, this idea that there are good, bad, and neutral Terminators.

[35:09] Well, they don't specify that the neutrals are a Terminator.

[35:12] Why is Sky that built these neutral Terminators?

[35:13] What?

Elliott Kalan

[35:13] I don't think it's a neutral Terminator.

[35:14] Like a Terminator exoskeleton robot is just walking around going, eh, I'm not going to get involved.

[35:19] I don't have a stake in this.

[35:21] I think it's more that maybe she's saying you're a good Terminator, you're a bad Terminator, or you're the kind of person who gets shot accidentally by a Terminator.

[35:29] But I think the neutral is not considered a Terminator.

[35:32] Stuart, you're the kind of T-expert around here.

[35:35] Tech-spert.

[35:36] I'm a tech-spert.

[35:37] Tech-spert.

Stuart Wellington

[35:37] So are you asking me to give a ruling here, whether or not neutral indicates a Terminator or not?

[35:43] Clearly not.

[35:44] I mean, just the act of terminating means that you're picking a side, whether you're fighting for the future or not, guys.

Elliott Kalan

[35:50] Yeah.

[35:51] Okay, fair point.

[35:51] Now, Stuart, now, this is, and I don't want to, this is possibly insulting, but I'm not, you're clearly not a hillbilly.

[35:59] Your mother is clearly not a crazy old lady.

Stuart Wellington

[36:02] No, I'm from a very flat part of the country, northern Indiana.

[36:05] There are no hills to be found.

[36:07] No hills.

[36:08] Yeah, you're a plain billy, if anything.

[36:10] We do adopt a slight southern twang, a southern twang that I have certainly played up since I moved to New York and wanted to look more distinct, I think.

[36:19] When I started hanging out with a friend from England, I found that my twang got worse.

[36:24] And I'm like, why do I do this?

[36:27] Why am I trying to peacock?

Elliott Kalan

[36:29] This scene of Mama wanting to watch Terminator 2 and really getting into the content of it just reminded me of so many stories of your mom sharing horror or science fiction movies with you.

[36:39] And I was like, I forgot what a cool mom Stuart has.

[36:43] This scene reminded me about that.

Stuart Wellington

[36:44] Yeah, she would always make me watch things, and she's always like, Stuart would love this.

[36:49] And half the time it was like Creepshow 2 or something that would scar me, and I would be like.

[36:54] Half the time it was Emmanuel in space.

[36:57] Stuart would love this.

[36:59] And yeah.

[37:00] He likes space.

[37:01] I have talked on the podcast about the time my mom caught me and my buddies watching the sex scene in Terminator and laughing, and she furiously turned off the VHS player and said that they're doing it for the future.

[37:15] And I was like, oh man, I love it so much.

[37:19] My mom's great.

Dan McCoy

[37:19] She's punishing you for not understanding love, for laughing at love.

Elliott Kalan

[37:23] I'm not taking it seriously that that sex is what's going to save humanity from Skynet in the future.

Stuart Wellington

[37:29] Beautiful metaphor.

[37:31] Yeah, when I rewatched Terminator a couple weeks ago, I saw that scene with new eyes.

[37:36] Eyes that thought it was hilarious that two people would make sounds while rolling around.

[37:43] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[37:44] Now, their healthy, heartfelt viewing of Terminator 2 Judgment Day is interrupted by police sirens.

[37:53] Mom, Amy Adams, is out in the street throwing a bereavement fit.

[37:56] She is so overcome with grief and probably drugs that she's just screaming and like kind of writhing around in a nightgown and yelling at people.

[38:02] And Mama makes JD look away as the cops take Mom away.

[38:05] This is Oscar yelling scene number four.

[38:08] And, you know, in a way, maybe they're trying to draw a parallel between the mom in Terminator 2 and the mom in this movie who are both misunderstood by society at large.

[38:18] And considered crazy when, in fact, they're just trying to deal with the difficulties of life.

[38:24] In Amy Adams' case, the death of her beloved father.

[38:26] And in Linda Hamilton's case, that she knows the fact that there are cyborgs from the future who are coming back to try to murder her and her child.

[38:35] You know, they're both hard things to deal with.

[38:37] And I think we both know of people who have had to deal with both those problems.

Dan McCoy

[38:40] Now, Elliot, why did they send the Terminator back like sort of like chronologically later in Linda Hamilton, Sarah Connor's life and John Connor's life rather than just continually sending it back to the same point in time and overwhelming her with Terminators?

Elliott Kalan

[39:00] Well, that's one of the issues with Skynet.

[39:02] And I've thought of that, too.

[39:03] And it makes me think maybe Skynet doesn't want to succeed.

[39:05] Deep down, it knows that it's really not worthy.

[39:08] It has imposter syndrome.

[39:10] And so it's like, you know what?

[39:12] If I sent back – I see what the flaw was in my first plan.

[39:15] I only sent back one Terminator.

[39:17] I'll just send back two.

[39:18] Yeah.

[39:18] And I'll do it that way.

[39:20] But instead, that self-sabotage comes in, or as the Dr. Beastie Boys would describe itself,

[39:25] sabotage!

[39:27] That's who I studied under.

[39:30] It was Dr. Beastie Boy.

[39:31] Okay.

[39:32] Now, but I think that's probably – that Skynet, deep down, it does not want to be successful.

[39:36] Yeah.

[39:36] And it's going to take a lot of therapy with Susan Calvin, the robot psychologist from the Isaac Asimov stories.

[39:44] But maybe Skynet can get past that and can eventually crush humanity.

[39:48] My other question is, why does Skynet hate humanity so much and want to get rid of us?

[39:52] I never understood that.

Dan McCoy

[39:53] Was it one of those things where, like, it surmises that the greatest threat to itself is humans or the world?

[40:02] I think it's something like that.

Stuart Wellington

[40:03] I think it also – after a while, it would figure out, like, oh, wait, the amount of energy I'm investing in sending all these Terminators back in time,

[40:11] I could just be working on my relationship with humanity in general, you know?

[40:14] Maybe we could become friends.

[40:16] Yeah.

[40:17] Maybe if I invented, like, ice cream cannons or just gave every human a free cell phone or something, they would just chill out and stop trying to kill me.

Elliott Kalan

[40:26] I mean, now Skynet would know that as long as they sent poorly designed memes to the oldest members of humanity,

[40:33] they could just watch humanity tear itself apart anyway.

[40:35] So anyway, J.D. takes some time to visit his sister's barbecue and have a fried bologna sandwich.

[40:42] Then he yells at his girlfriend on the phone.

[40:43] This is not an Oscar yelling scene.

[40:45] It doesn't reach that level.

[40:45] But he does make sex sounds when he eats that fried bologna sandwich.

Stuart Wellington

[40:49] It's the best thing to cross his lips.

Elliott Kalan

[40:51] As someone who had fried salami for breakfast yesterday, that's the Jewish version of fried bologna.

[40:55] Yeah, it's delicious.

[40:56] It's great.

[40:56] He flashes back to being a kid and giving his mom a homemade activity book for her to use well in rehab,

[41:01] which was a very sweet thing for him to do.

[41:03] Back to 2011, he makes a passionate argument at a rehab place to get them to accept his mom.

[41:08] And then this is the famous credit card scene where he's splitting all the costs,

[41:11] but different amounts between different credit cards.

[41:13] But his mom storms out and they argue again.

[41:16] That's right, Oscar yelling scene number five.

[41:18] And that's when J.D.'s sister is like, hey, Papa was kind of a rough dad and could be abusive.

[41:23] And Mama lit him on fire once.

[41:25] And it was Mom when she was the girl who put him out.

[41:28] This is not really given, I feel like, the sober weight that it should.

[41:33] Yeah.

[41:34] Considering it, this should be like, should be like, and I guess in the movie maybe this is the knowledge that helps J.D. to start sympathizing with his mom.

[41:42] But one, it comes very late in his life.

[41:44] He's already a college student when he's learning a story that I know my family would have told many times over and over again by this point.

[41:50] But also that it's just kind of treated as like a pretty quick flashback when that's, again, like a horrifying thing.

Dan McCoy

[41:57] I mean, again, I think the flashback structure of this movie is one of the deadliest parts of it.

[42:02] Like, if we had seen a lot of this in sequence and allowed it to give time to breathe by cutting out that flashback stuff.

[42:11] Yeah.

[42:11] It's important to understand that, you know what, Amy Adams went through a lot of trauma as a child, which obviously contributed to her current state.

[42:22] And things are more complex than they seem.

[42:25] And this also gets into a section of the movie.

[42:29] I mean, I guess I'm skipping ahead a little bit.

[42:31] But like Glenn Close's character kind of becomes like, oh, she's like the tough love, like center of this movie.

[42:38] She's the one who's ultimately kind of going to like help the main character get out of this life.

[42:45] But she is shown as being kind of a shitty parent herself.

[42:53] Like there's a story there in like someone who was a bad parent, realizes it, tries to be a better parent to their grandchild.

[43:01] And if it's given time to breathe and you see the complexity of that character, that would be good.

[43:06] But Glenn Close is seen mostly like yelling at this kid.

[43:10] And we see that she got like, she like set her husband on fire earlier.

[43:15] So it's hard to look at her as like the avatar, like the center of morality in this movie that I think the movie kind of wants us to.

Elliott Kalan

[43:22] I think there's an interesting movie, a better movie there about a woman who is a bad mom but becomes a great grandma.

[43:29] Yeah.

[43:29] Much the opposite way that you could be a bad grandpa, like in the movie Bad Grandpa.

[43:33] And by all accounts, he seems to have been a fine dad.

Dan McCoy

[43:35] Now where does a bad mom's Christmas fit into this scenario?

Elliott Kalan

[43:40] Now they're like, those moms, they're not really bad.

Dan McCoy

[43:43] You know.

[43:43] Okay.

[43:44] Thank you.

Elliott Kalan

[43:45] Yeah, that does fit in.

[43:45] It is the second movie.

[43:47] But like they're not bad like mama set your husband on fire bad.

[43:51] Right.

[43:51] They're bad like, oh, let's be bad.

[43:53] Let's order more.

[43:54] Let's order two desserts.

[43:55] Like that kind of like not the sinful, I'm going to go to hell because I've committed, you know, avarice and I've profaned the Lord.

[44:04] But more like sinfully decadent.

Stuart Wellington

[44:05] So wait, the first one is the cast of the Bad Moms franchise.

[44:10] Is that right, Elliot?

[44:11] Yeah.

[44:11] Or are you describing a series of movies that you, I'm guessing, haven't seen?

Elliott Kalan

[44:16] No, no.

[44:16] I'm describing a series of movies I've had relayed to me secondhand in detail.

[44:21] Yeah.

[44:21] But I'm guessing the Bad Moms movies are not about them abusing their children and being – I don't think it is – I feel like I'm safe in saying that the Bad Moms are bad in the same way that Bad Teacher is bad or Bad Santa is bad.

[44:34] Where it's like I'm breaking all the rules.

[44:37] But they're not breaking so many rules that they're going to prison.

[44:40] Yeah, they're not Bad Lieutenant.

Dan McCoy

[44:41] Bad Teacher is worse than Bad Moms and Bad Santa is worse than either of them.

[44:46] Bad Moms are – they're mostly just Bad Moms because they refuse to make baked goods for the PTA.

Elliott Kalan

[44:52] Exactly.

[44:52] But whereas, like Stuart says, they're not as bad as Bad Lieutenant.

[44:55] No.

Stuart Wellington

[44:56] Or Bad Lieutenant at Port of Call of New Orleans.

[44:58] Or Bad-er Lieutenant.

Elliott Kalan

[45:00] I mean it's the – Bad-er – no, that's when the Lieutenant was fried in batter.

[45:04] Delicious.

[45:07] Anyway, so we go – Mom – J.D. finally tells his mom about his girlfriend and they flash back to when his mom – and this is something – another one of those things

[45:16] that comes as a huge surprise since they never mentioned it before – apparently married her boss who became J.D.'s stepdad.

[45:21] And this is – this stepdad is kind of – like hilariously just kind of like a bland, awkward stepdad.

[45:30] Yeah.

[45:31] He's allergic to dogs, so J.D. cannot keep his dog.

[45:34] And his new stepbrother is like, hey, you want to smoke pot with me?

[45:38] And that's like, uh-oh.

[45:40] Watch out.

Stuart Wellington

[45:40] They smoke a bunch of weed and the stepbrother's got a – he's got a vinyl – he's got a record of Dimension Hate Tross by Voivod on the wall.

[45:50] I mean this kid's fucking cool, dude.

Elliott Kalan

[45:53] Yeah, you know he's a bad boy.

[45:55] Yeah, this is like a pretty good –

[45:56] But like a bad mom's bad boy.

[45:57] Not like a Jeffrey Dahmer bad boy.

[45:58] That's a bad boy.

[46:00] Yeah, that's true.

[46:01] Like that's as bad as boys get.

[46:02] I mean I guess that's –

[46:03] Boys do not get much better than that.

Stuart Wellington

[46:05] I guess you win this one, Elliot, with your Jeffrey Dahmer bad boy line.

Elliott Kalan

[46:11] Like when I saw the movie Bad Boys, I was like, these boys are going to be bad.

[46:15] And then it was like, oh, okay, they're just kind of like dangerous, I guess.

[46:18] They don't follow all the rules.

Dan McCoy

[46:19] I mean they do drive through an entire shantytown in Cuba and seem to be happy to crack jokes about it while it's happening.

Elliott Kalan

[46:27] I mean that's bad.

[46:28] That's bad behavior.

[46:30] At the same point, also they're men.

[46:32] Those are bad men.

[46:33] That's true.

[46:33] It's okay to – like it's easy to laugh at a bad boy.

[46:36] It is not easy to laugh at a bad man.

[46:38] A bad man is trouble.

[46:39] Or a Batman.

[46:41] A Batman is very easy to laugh at because he's like, oh, this is my voice now.

[46:44] And it's like there's no way that's your real voice.

[46:46] Come on.

[46:47] No one talks like that.

[46:49] So anyway, mom, she asks JD for a urine sample so she doesn't lose her job because she has been using drugs again.

[46:56] And he's like, no way, no way.

[46:57] You should lose your job.

[46:58] And Mama is like, no, family is all that matters.

[47:01] You pee in that cup.

[47:02] And JD is like, you're both bad moms.

[47:04] And I don't mean like bad moms Christmas.

[47:05] I mean like you're moms who are detrimental to my upbringing.

[47:08] And he pees in the cup and does it.

[47:10] But JD is having his own troubles.

[47:11] He's failing at algebra because he doesn't have a graphing calculator.

[47:14] And this is one of those times where it's like I know you don't know to ask and you're ashamed of your poverty.

[47:18] But his teacher keeps – is giving him bad grades because he does not have a piece of equipment he cannot afford.

[47:24] And it's like I feel like this is one of those times where he's going to be like, teacher, I can't afford this.

[47:28] And the teacher would have been like, we'll sell that Lord of the Pit, idiot.

Dan McCoy

[47:32] And there's like this is a – you know, this is not a wealthy part of the school – I mean like the country.

[47:40] So, you know, presumably they don't have a lot of money for their own school supplies.

[47:44] So there's that.

[47:46] But they do expect kids to have these expensive graphing calculators.

[47:51] So it doesn't really jive.

[47:53] It seems like they would have one or two around to like loan out to more –

[47:57] I mean growing up I –

[47:59] More need.

Stuart Wellington

[47:59] I remember having to have one of those.

[48:02] And I remember hearing how much it costs and being like, what the fuck?

[48:06] Does it drive the car for me?

[48:08] Does it pick me up on time from soccer practice, mom?

Dan McCoy

[48:11] I'm just going to be your 1980s stand-up graphing calculator material.

Elliott Kalan

[48:17] Yeah, I'm testing it out here on the Flophouse.

[48:20] So that you can send yourself back in time through Skynet to do it when it was most relevant.

[48:27] Skynet's like, look, I'm about spreading smiles through time now instead of causing violence.

[48:32] I've made my peace.

[48:33] All my talk with Dr. Susan Calvin has really paid off.

[48:35] So, Stuart, I want to bankroll your time-traveling comedy tour.

[48:39] The problem with it is you keep having to go back further and further in time when people haven't heard the jokes yet.

[48:44] So – and also, you know if he gets that graphing calculator, he's just going to play the games on it.

[48:48] Someone's going to give him Drug War, one of those other text-based graphing calculator games.

[48:52] He's going to end up spending his whole study hall doing that.

[48:55] Anyway, but even worse, he lets his stepbrothers, no good friends, use Ma-Ma's car to go to a Home Depot and just kind of smash it up.

[49:02] And they crash the car on the way back.

[49:04] That's being a bad boy.

[49:05] Like that's real bad boy stuff.

[49:07] As in like, you shouldn't do that.

[49:09] 2011, this scene I wasn't originally going to mention, but it does have Oscar yelling scene number six where they go to Amy Adams' current boyfriend's house to get her stuff.

[49:18] And it's just a shouting match.

[49:20] And JD is screaming at this guy through the door and is going to break the door down until a neighbor is like, stop it.

[49:25] I have children.

[49:25] What are you doing?

[49:26] And I guess that's JD slipping back into the morass of his old family ways.

[49:31] You know, they're pulling him down.

Stuart Wellington

[49:31] What he did is he triggered his berserk barbarian rage class ability.

[49:35] And you're like, fuck, well, I've already used the ability for the day.

[49:39] I might as well get in a battle.

[49:40] Otherwise.

[49:41] Yeah, I...

Elliott Kalan

[49:42] I love how...

[49:45] The secret story of Hillbillyology is how much it intersects with gaming.

[49:49] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[49:49] I do want to briefly address the character of JD who is not much of a character in his own story.

[49:57] You know, like, I think there are side characters who the movie would profit more by spending its time on.

[50:03] But, like, is he...

[50:05] Like, what do we think of him?

[50:07] Because, like, I have sympathy for anyone who grew up under difficult circumstances and had, like, such a trying family life.

[50:16] At the same time, he does seem to spend a lot of the movie, like, being a dick in his own way and, like, shoving his problems away and not, like, telling people what's going on.

[50:29] Like, not ever explaining to anyone what's happening.

[50:32] What do you think?

Elliott Kalan

[50:33] Well, yeah.

[50:34] Well, that's kind of what he needs to learn.

[50:37] That's the lesson he needs to learn to rely on other people.

[50:39] But what were you going to say, Stuart?

Stuart Wellington

[50:40] I feel like you get the best sense of his character from his relationship with his girlfriend Usha, who he takes advantage of, he is dishonest with, and he is generally not a very good boyfriend.

[50:53] And she is this, like, almost comically understanding character.

[50:57] Yeah, she's...

Elliott Kalan

[50:57] Well, and the scene that shows how much she loves him is when she's laughing at the way he says syrup instead of syrup.

[51:03] And it was like, is that what the relationship is built around?

[51:06] Because that is not a strong foundation.

[51:08] They love to bust each other's...

[51:09] And this is the woman who eventually becomes his wife in real life, I believe.

Dan McCoy

[51:13] They love to mess with each other, which immediately actually put me against this relationship.

[51:18] Because, like...

[51:19] Well, early on, he, you know, she's studying in the library, and he brings her food, which is sweet, but she is...

Elliott Kalan

[51:25] Not...

[51:26] Excuse me, sir.

[51:27] Excuse me, sir.

[51:28] As the husband and son of different librarians, you do not bring food into the library.

[51:32] No, I know.

Dan McCoy

[51:33] I know Elliot.

[51:34] My mom is a librarian as well, but I just...

[51:36] Or she was before she retired.

[51:38] What a cool argument, too.

[51:39] I'm just saying...

Elliott Kalan

[51:39] I'm just saying, if you want vermin eating away at the books, then go ahead, bring your lunch to the library.

Dan McCoy

[51:46] Elliot, let me get to my actual point, which is, look, I understand that that is meant to be read as, like, this sweet thing, and maybe it is.

[51:55] Like, he's like, eat, eat.

[51:56] You gotta eat.

[51:56] But then she is understandably worried about the rules.

[52:01] She's like, no, we're in a library.

[52:04] And then he's like...

[52:05] He pushes her basically back into, like, the stacks.

[52:07] He's like, okay, you need...

[52:08] Here, I'll be your lookout.

[52:09] And then he does a bit where he pretends someone's coming, and, like, you know, she's gonna get in trouble.

[52:16] And I'm like, this is not nice to, like, fuck with her.

[52:20] Like, come on.

[52:21] Like, this is supposed to be charming banter in the movie, I think.

[52:24] But it just comes off as, like, you're not respecting her worries.

[52:28] And then once she's like, oh, you know, I will eat, you're, like, fucking with her.

Elliott Kalan

[52:32] It is true that in a movie that is supposed to be a heartfelt, real, like, gritty look at life, there is a lot of dialogue in it that smacks of that movie behavior where you're like, oh, if someone did this in real life, they would be a terrible person.

[52:46] This is a mean thing to do.

[52:47] It's got a little bit of that romantic comedy logic where you're like, this is cute in the movie.

[52:52] But if I did this, I would rightfully be shot.

[52:55] Yeah.

[52:56] I mean, Meg Ryan had a perfectly nice fiancé in Sleepless in Seattle.

Stuart Wellington

[53:00] She didn't have to go start stalking Tom Hanks on his houseboat.

Elliott Kalan

[53:03] No, not at all.

[53:04] Well, this is also one of the problems I have with the movie Frozen where there's a song in it where these trolls who don't need to be in the movie anyway are singing about how these two should obviously be in love.

[53:14] And he's – and the guy is like – I can't remember his name whether it's Sven or – no, because Sven is the reindeer, right?

[53:20] I can't remember.

[53:21] Or Kristoff.

[53:21] I think it's Kristoff.

[53:22] He's like, but she's already engaged.

[53:24] And the trolls are like, hey, let's just get that fiancé out of the way and you two can be together.

[53:28] And I was like, this is not a good lesson for kids that you should just go and break up engagements if you feel like you're in love with that person.

Stuart Wellington

[53:35] I mean, if something better comes along, you've got to trade up.

[53:36] That's the rule, right?

[53:38] No, that's gaming again.

Elliott Kalan

[53:40] Stuart, you're looking at life as a game again.

[53:41] That's not – you don't level up in relationships.

[53:43] You only have so many inventory slots.

Stuart Wellington

[53:45] Theoretically, you only have one fiancé slot.

[53:47] You might as well take the better fiancé.

Elliott Kalan

[53:49] I mean, very much not theoretically.

[53:51] Like for most people, realistically, practically, there's only one spot.

[53:54] But anyway, 1997, J.D.'s arguing with his mom, Oscar yelling number seven.

[53:59] And Mama, despite having pneumonia, leaves the hospital in order to get there and say J.D.'s living with her from now on so that he won't get into trouble anymore and wreck her car.

[54:09] Back to 2011, J.D.'s sister who holds like 40 jobs and should be in many ways the star of the movie – she's the one who actually has like the weight of this life falling down on her – says she's not the one who escapes and goes to Yale and becomes a fancy lawyer and writes a bestselling book.

[54:22] J.D.'s sister is like, Mom can't stay with me.

[54:24] Let's just put her in a hotel and you should go to that interview in the next morning.

[54:28] And we flash to – which is – we'll talk about it.

[54:32] That's a voice of reason.

[54:32] It's like a voice of reason.

[54:35] But the lesson of the movie is also like abandon your family because you'll be better for them as a rich person than you are as a helping hand in the moment, which is – I don't know.

[54:43] It feels like the traditional storytelling method would be for them to turn their back on earthly riches in order to support the ones they love.

[54:51] But that's not the America we live in, I guess.

[54:53] And we flash back to Mama's throwing out J.D.'s slacker friends.

[54:57] There's another argument, Oscar yelling number eight.

[54:58] This is firmly in the Mama is the like tough love coach section.

[55:03] J.D. gets caught trying to steal the calculator he needs.

[55:06] He learned it from his mom stealing sports cards.

[55:08] Now he's stealing, you know, overpriced but relatively small consumer electronics.

Stuart Wellington

[55:13] And having been a Radio Shack store manager, I felt this moment deeply because shoplifting was like a constant ever-present threat and danger to the point where –

[55:27] At one point I was watching security footage and I saw a woman using her daughter's – like her little school-age daughter's book bag as a way to stash a camera she stole.

[55:39] And I was like, fuck this.

[55:41] I am not cut out for this life.

Dan McCoy

[55:44] Yeah.

[55:44] I was going to ask how you handled –

Elliott Kalan

[55:45] And that's when you became a professional shoplifter.

[55:48] You were like, I'm on the wrong side of these cameras.

Dan McCoy

[55:50] I was going to ask how you handled that story.

[55:52] I mean like I – you know, I was wondering whether this got Radio Shack flashbacks because the one time I worked in a small enough retail store that like I was there to kind of witness any shoplifting.

[56:07] I briefly worked at a souvenir store in Savannah, Georgia and this very like erratic –

Elliott Kalan

[56:13] Dan, how have I not heard any stories about this part of your life before?

Dan McCoy

[56:17] There are a couple of fun ones.

[56:19] Did you wear a straw hat?

[56:21] This was when I thought I was going to maybe go to film school and I actually was in film school for three months and I dropped out.

[56:29] This was at SCAD.

[56:31] And I worked at this store that was actually connected to Riverboat Tours.

[56:36] It was where you bought the tickets for the Riverboat Tours and then got your like photos afterwards and souvenirs.

[56:42] But this very erratic seeming guy came in one time and me and the other guy who worked there who was older but we like bonded because we like would talk about horror movies.

[56:51] Just like kind of watched it all happen.

[56:53] We're like we're not intervening here.

[56:56] Like if this guy wants to steal a snow globe, go ahead.

Elliott Kalan

[57:00] You decided your life and injury was not worth that snow globe.

Stuart Wellington

[57:05] Yeah, there was definitely a time where a guy stole a fucking inbox new cell phone off the counter and I chased after him for about half a block before I was like, what the fuck would I even do if I caught him?

[57:20] Like would I like slap the cuffs on him?

[57:23] Like citizens arrest?

Dan McCoy

[57:25] Like what the – like I don't want to fight a guy.

[57:27] That's the thing.

[57:28] I think legally there's not even really like what – you're not going to do anything.

Stuart Wellington

[57:31] But it's this moment of like, I don't know, this feeling like how dare this guy steal this thing from me?

[57:36] I mean it was dumb.

[57:38] Like it's – it was overwhelming and a little bit soul crushing is what – is how I reacted to it.

Dan McCoy

[57:45] That's how Radio Shack failed.

[57:47] It got out of money because of that loss.

Elliott Kalan

[57:51] That was the straw that broke Radio Shack's back.

[57:55] Sorry.

Dan McCoy

[57:55] It wasn't the fact that people don't need transistors anymore.

[57:59] Sorry, the shack.

Elliott Kalan

[58:00] That was one of Stuart Wellington's patented flash shacks.

[58:04] It's a Radio Shack flashback from Stuart Wellington.

[58:07] Patent pending actually.

[58:09] So JD gets caught trying to steal that calculator.

[58:12] Mama gets him out of the situation and buys it for him and starts yelling at him and gives him the speech about, are you going to try or are you not?

[58:18] This is Oscar yelling number nine.

[58:20] And JD is so mad he throws the calculator out the window, which is totally the kind of thing I would have done as a kid.

[58:26] I would have gotten so pissed that I just need to get that energy out.

[58:28] Although what would happen with us is that my mom would be yelling at me in the car and I would open the door of the car as if I was just going to jump out and roll out.

[58:35] And then she'd reach over and pull the door shut and pull the car over and yell at me for that.

[58:39] You're a regular ladybird.

[58:41] Yep, exactly.

[58:43] But then he notices that – so she has a hard time making ends meet.

[58:47] She gets Meals on Wheels and she's really begging the Meals on Wheels delivery guy for extra food.

[58:52] And then she shares half of it with him.

[58:53] And this is like one of the more – this is maybe to me the most powerful scene in the movie.

[58:58] Because it's not yelling.

[58:59] It's this character who up until now has been presented as like she's the strong, tough one in the family.

[59:04] Has to grovel and like make herself so abject and admit her poverty to this person in order to get what she needs to survive and for her grandson to survive.

[59:14] This was like if more of the movie was in this manner of like matter-of-factiness and not yelliness, then it would be a different movie.

Dan McCoy

[59:21] Elliot, I 100% agree with you.

[59:24] Like this is the most affecting moment in the movie.

[59:27] Partly because it's the only moment too where anyone's nice to one another.

[59:31] Like the Meals on Wheels guy is very understanding and she is very grateful that he's understanding.

[59:35] But also just like, yeah, it is a quiet moment that really sinks in, you know, that this is a person who's struggling and is proud but wants to take care of her grandson.

Stuart Wellington

[59:47] And what's funny is the movie understands that because narrative wise, this is the thing that makes JD clean his shit up.

[59:56] And you're like, if the movie knows that, why is it filled with so much other bullshit?

[1:00:04] Like why is it full of so many speeches that don't work?

[1:00:08] Is that the message that like coming up with, you know, little bits of, I don't know, like grandstanding speeches don't actually serve any purpose and don't work?

[1:00:17] It's these little moments of kindness or little moments of humility and honesty that actually, you know.

[1:00:23] You are searching for meaning where there is none, I think.

[1:00:25] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:26] I mean, if the movie was aware of that as a message, it would be such a, it would be a really strong movie and I would, I would be like, oh, okay, I get what it's doing now.

[1:00:32] If it was like, all this yelling is, is, doesn't, doesn't make the difference.

[1:00:37] But when you see someone as a human being and they touch you emotionally, that's when, but I don't, I actually think it's, it's almost like the movie stumbled into, into an affecting moment.

[1:00:45] I mean, I don't say stumbled.

[1:00:46] The people who made the movie are professionals.

[1:00:48] They know what they're doing.

[1:00:49] They've made great movies in the past.

[1:00:51] They just kind of like, they're all, they're, they took the wrong road in this movie and they briefly by accident ended up on the right on ramp to the right road.

[1:01:00] And then they took another wrong turn.

[1:01:01] Maybe they needed gas or they saw Denny's and they're like, I know it's Denny's, but I'm hungry.

[1:01:05] Like, I'm just going to stop there.

[1:01:06] And they kept going in their other way.

[1:01:09] JD, because he sees this and he starts straightening up.

[1:01:11] He gets a job.

[1:01:12] He's working hard.

[1:01:13] He's trying at school.

[1:01:15] Suddenly he's doing great.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:15] I think Man in Motion starts playing, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:19] If only.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:20] What a needle drop that would be.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:22] Yeah.

[1:01:23] Yeah.

[1:01:23] It's, uh, yeah.

[1:01:24] It's probably.

[1:01:25] Hey, speaking of music, we haven't addressed the fact that the.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:26] I think, I think, I think saving the day from Ghostbusters starts playing.

[1:01:30] Speaking of music, we haven't addressed the fact that the main theme for this movie written by Hans Zimmer is basically like a straight lift of the Game of Thrones theme music.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:39] Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

[1:01:41] Like, it's totally that.

[1:01:43] Is that what it was?

[1:01:44] I just heard, I just heard a lot of strings and banjo and I was like, I don't know.

[1:01:48] I checked out as soon as I started.

[1:01:49] There's a, there's a certain sort of like, uh, folksy, folksy, cornpone music that I kind of, the same way with a wild mountain time.

[1:01:57] I was like, hoo boy, I'm going to hear a lot of fiddle in the background.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:00] I can't believe you guys, I can't believe, like, I barely watched that television show and even I, like, started imagining, like, castles rising in the hollers of Kentucky.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:10] Stuart, I can honestly tell you that the music made absolutely no impact on me whatsoever.

[1:02:15] Wow.

[1:02:16] Harsh rebuke of Hans Zimmer's work.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:19] Now I wish, I mean, what are you, the producers of The Simpsons?

[1:02:21] Anyway, so, or is that Hans Zimmer or Alf Clausen?

[1:02:24] Alf Clausen.

[1:02:25] That's Alf Clausen.

[1:02:27] Now I wish that there were an opening title sequence where it was like Game of Thrones and there's just, like, run-down houses with old trucks in front of them rising up in the forests and that would be nice.

[1:02:38] Anyway, uh, we go to the present of the movie 2011.

[1:02:41] JD catches his mom doing drugs in the hotel and flushes them down and she's like, please stay with me during the night.

[1:02:46] And he's like, and he has this cavalcade of family flashbacks, which you think is going to lead him to choose his family over his career.

[1:02:52] But instead he's like, I can't help you unless I get a good job.

[1:02:55] I'll see you tomorrow maybe, Mom.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:57] This scene where he, you know, he squirts out the heroin that was in the needle and then flushes the needle.

[1:03:03] And I was like, you can't flush a needle.

[1:03:06] And Charlene, like, just staring at the screen's like, yeah, you can.

[1:03:11] Made me a little bit nervous about who my wife really is.

[1:03:14] But whatever.

[1:03:15] It's not good for the pipes.

[1:03:16] That's fair.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:17] Yeah.

[1:03:17] It is bad for the pipes.

[1:03:19] I mean, my life is a little bit more innocent.

[1:03:21] Yesterday, my toddler son was stuffing walnuts into a public drainage pipe in a park.

[1:03:27] And I was like, that's probably not good for that pipe.

[1:03:29] But are they organic walnuts?

[1:03:31] Yeah, they were organic walnuts.

[1:03:32] They were from a tree.

[1:03:33] But that he was, and I said, I said, no, stop that.

[1:03:35] It's not good for that pipes.

[1:03:36] And he goes, no, it is.

[1:03:37] It is good.

[1:03:38] And I was like, there's no way.

[1:03:40] How do you know more about plumbing than me?

Dan McCoy

[1:03:40] He's appeasing the mole people, Elliot.

[1:03:43] Oh, I see.

[1:03:44] Yeah, I mean, this is the thing.

[1:03:46] If you stop him, it could be catastrophic.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:50] Uh-oh.

[1:03:51] That would explain all the earthquakes in Los Angeles.

[1:03:53] The mole people are not getting enough walnuts.

[1:03:57] He's like, good luck, Mom.

[1:03:58] Good luck with your addiction.

[1:03:59] I've got to go to this job interview.

[1:04:00] And he drives all night.

[1:04:02] His hand's wet on the wheel because there's a voice in his head that drives his heel.

[1:04:05] It's his baby calling.

[1:04:06] She says, I need you here.

[1:04:07] And he does call her on the drive and apologizes to his girlfriend.

[1:04:10] And she says, I'm going to stay up all night with you and keep you awake while you're driving.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:13] Again, like bending over backwards to help this guy.

[1:04:17] Like this guy who can't seem to catch a break has probably the greatest break in a partner who is doing all this work for him.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:25] Well, especially because, as we will see, she's willing to run out of the apartment down to the job interview and be like, oh, we're going to be late.

[1:04:34] Except for that's a trick.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:36] It's a trick.

[1:04:37] He's like, I'm never going to make it.

[1:04:38] She goes, I'll run down and I'll tell them.

[1:04:40] And then she goes to the door and opens it.

[1:04:42] JD's right there on the phone.

[1:04:43] He could have just walked in the house a couple minutes ago.

[1:04:45] But instead he decided to play this last little teaser prank on her, which is stupid.

[1:04:49] And he had the time to set up the prank.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:51] So he must have been driving shockingly fast.

[1:04:54] Dangerously fast.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:55] Now, I don't know why I wish now, this is going back to earlier in the movie when he called her for silverware help.

[1:05:02] I wish that it had become an Apollo 13 type scene, also directed by Ron Howard, where she was like, describe the play setting to me.

[1:05:08] And she was just pulling silverware from her own home to make a simulation play setting so that she could see what he was seeing and tell him what he could use.

[1:05:16] Guys, would that have been funny?

[1:05:18] It would have been too much.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:19] I think it would have been too much.

[1:05:20] I would have preferred kind of a more modern approach where she closes her eyes and enters her own memory palace of going into.

[1:05:27] Oh, her memory restaurant?

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:30] Which is, I guess, what you could call scenes from an Italian restaurant.

[1:05:35] So, okay.

[1:05:36] But the movie.

[1:05:37] Anyway, so the very end of the movie, JD gets to his interview and then we get a VO about how he owes everything to his family.

[1:05:43] And then it's just like after movie text about how he's been super successful and now everybody is doing great.

[1:05:48] And the message of the movie is they are no longer just a bunch of poor hillbillies.

[1:05:51] Now they are some rich hill Williamses.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:54] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:57] You're not allowed to make that face when you make that joke, Elliot.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:00] And again.

[1:06:01] Let me make it some more.

[1:06:03] This is one final way I feel like the framing unbalances this movie.

[1:06:08] Because it makes him getting this law job the ultimate triumph.

[1:06:15] And I feel like it, like, not only is the message of this movie, like the political message of this movie kind of non-existent.

[1:06:22] The emotional message of the movie to me is kind of incomprehensible.

[1:06:26] Because it makes a big, like, part of the movie is always about like, oh, family.

[1:06:30] Family is the most important thing.

[1:06:31] Family is the most important thing.

[1:06:33] So that could be like a fine message for a movie.

[1:06:36] I don't know if I necessarily agree with it, but it's fine.

[1:06:38] Or the message of the movie could be what it ultimately kind of points at.

[1:06:43] Like, some people can't be helped.

[1:06:45] Sometimes you need to, like, be good to yourself and understand that.

[1:06:50] Like, you do what you can, but then let it go.

[1:06:53] But the way the movie ends, putting so much weight on this, like, job, makes it really feel like, okay, the message of the movie is leave your drug-addicted mom behind and get a high-powered lawyer job.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:05] Yeah, like, you owe everything your family, so jettison them like a booster rocket that got you out of the atmosphere.

[1:07:10] Because they are useless to earn out.

[1:07:11] They are so many tons of space junk that are just weighing you back.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:16] Yeah, I mean, I think on some level it's going for the idea that, like, in order to move forward as a human, you need to understand where you come from and come to grips with your past trauma.

[1:07:33] And that should let you, you know, I don't know, self-actualize or something.

[1:07:40] I don't know.

[1:07:40] Yeah.

[1:07:41] That is an excellent message that I could not find in this movie.

[1:07:44] That's the thing.

[1:07:44] You know, I feel like their reach is shorter than their goals.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:50] Yeah.

[1:07:51] Their arms are too short to box with.

[1:07:52] Not God exactly, but certainly Leon Spinks, for sure.

[1:07:56] Hercules, maybe.

[1:07:58] It definitely, it feels like a movie made by someone justifying why it was okay for them to leave their drug-addicted mom in a hotel room while they drove away to New Haven to interview for a fancy job.

[1:08:09] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:11] Okay, well, let's just do final judgments on this movie, whether it's a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, a movie we kind of liked.

[1:08:18] Before I get into mine, I just want to say, like, look, I grew up in a small town.

[1:08:24] We were not wealthy, but we certainly did not.

[1:08:26] I've never in my life had to, like, feel financially insecure in the way that these people have or dealt with so much hardship.

[1:08:36] So if I've said anything foolish along the way, I apologize.

[1:08:39] I know that I've had a privileged way of it.

[1:08:41] But this movie, oh boy, it's not good, folks.

[1:08:46] Not good, folks.

[1:08:47] It's just, like, a lot of, like, very competent to good effort has been put into making the movie.

[1:08:57] But the movie just shouldn't have been made in this form.

[1:09:02] It feels deeply confused.

[1:09:08] I have no idea why this movie was made other than to show sort of a parade of misery.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:14] Yeah, it feels like a—the movie was described to me ahead of time as poverty porn, and it feels like that often, which is, if anything, the worst kind of porn, I'm guessing.

[1:09:25] You can barely masturbate to it.

[1:09:28] Barely.

[1:09:28] If you're a bear, you can do it.

[1:09:30] But bears can masturbate to anything.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:31] Good things coming bears.

[1:09:32] I know that.

[1:09:34] So if you can come as a bear.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:36] I don't like that you're making this your new motto.

[1:09:40] But second, what Dan said, I did come from a privileged middle-class upbringing.

[1:09:46] I lived in an affluent town.

[1:09:50] So I apologize if I was misunderstanding the life of the underprivileged.

[1:09:55] But as a movie, it is unaffecting, and it seems very mixed up and not—the movie does not seem quite sure of what it is doing or what it is trying to get at and is hoping that if it just muddles along, it'll get there.

[1:10:07] So I would call it best picture, probably.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:11] Stuart, what do you say?

[1:10:11] Okay, so it's my turn.

[1:10:12] So the first thing I do is I apologize.

[1:10:15] So—

[1:10:15] You got to apologize for something other than what we apologize for.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:19] I just wanted to acknowledge that, like, we're talking not necessarily from a place of expertise about some of this.

[1:10:26] That's all.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:27] Also, I'm a big dumb idiot, so I say dumb stuff all the time.

[1:10:31] Yeah.

[1:10:32] I mean, Stuart is coming from an expertise in the realm of collectible card games.

[1:10:35] Yeah, I guess so.

[1:10:36] Yeah, I guess so.

[1:10:37] So, yeah, I can put Esquire on my business card.

[1:10:41] My business card, of course, being a rare Magic the Gathering trading card that I am willing to hand people because I have so many.

[1:10:48] No, this is a bad, bad movie.

[1:10:50] It feels wrongheaded structurally.

[1:10:53] It doesn't quite make sense.

[1:10:55] It doesn't really seem to have any kind of a message.

[1:10:58] And, yeah, I mean, it feels like a collection of, like, Oscar swing scenes thrown together.

[1:11:05] And, yeah, I mean, it's just—yeah.

[1:11:07] No thank you.

[1:11:09] No thank you.

[1:11:11] Bad, bad.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:12] No thank you, but no thank you.

[1:11:18] Welcome.

Jordan Morris

[1:11:22] Thank you.

[1:11:22] No problem.

[1:11:23] These are real podcast listeners, not actors.

[1:11:26] What do you look for in a podcast?

[1:11:29] Reliability is big for me.

[1:11:30] Power.

[1:11:31] I'd say comfort.

[1:11:33] What do you think of this?

[1:11:36] Oh.

[1:11:38] That's Jordan Jesse Go.

[1:11:39] Jordan Jesse Go?

[1:11:40] They came out of the floor?

[1:11:42] And down from the ceiling?

[1:11:44] That can't be safe.

[1:11:46] I'm upset.

[1:11:47] Can we go, Dal?

[1:11:49] Soon.

[1:11:51] Jordan Jesse Go.

[1:11:52] A real podcast.

[1:11:59] I started listening to Oh No, Ross and Carrie shortly after I broke my arm.

[1:12:03] I couldn't get my book started.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:04] I was lost.

[1:12:05] Honestly.

[1:12:06] I knew it was time to make a change.

Jordan Morris

[1:12:09] There's something about Oh No, Ross and Carrie that you just can't get anywhere else.

[1:12:13] They're thought leaders.

[1:12:15] Discoverers.

[1:12:16] Founders.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:17] I'd call them heroes.

[1:12:18] Ross and Carrie don't just report on French science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal.

[1:12:23] They take part themselves.

[1:12:24] They show up so you don't have to.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:27] But you might find that you want to.

Jordan Morris

[1:12:30] My arm is better.

[1:12:31] I wrote an entire book this weekend.

[1:12:34] It's terrible, but I did it.

[1:12:36] Just go to MaximumFun.org.

[1:12:39] Thank you, Ross and Carrie.

[1:12:41] Oh No, Ross and Carrie is just a podcast.

[1:12:42] It doesn't do anything.

[1:12:43] It's just sound you listen to in your ears.

[1:12:44] All these people are made up.

[1:12:45] Goodbye.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:46] Hey guys.

[1:12:47] It's just a quick solo drop in by Dan.

[1:12:51] We forgot to mention on our original recording that you can still see the Flophouse live show for another couple of days.

[1:13:02] If you didn't see it live.

[1:13:03] If you didn't buy a ticket before, you can still buy a ticket now.

[1:13:08] Watch the show, the recorded version of it.

[1:13:11] And that will be available, I believe, until midnight on February the 14th, midnight on Valentine's Day.

[1:13:19] You could cuddle up with someone and watch the Flophouse talk about Teen Wolf, what could be more romantic.

[1:13:27] And the new shirts, the beautiful shirts, the Rocket Crocodile one and the one of all of us as Teen Wolves or Middle-Aged Man Wolves will be available until the end of that period as well.

[1:13:43] So if you still want to take a moment and watch that live show before February the 14th at midnight when it will expire like Cinderella's coach, you can go get tickets at theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

[1:14:07] Theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

[1:14:11] And if you want one of the new shirts, the Rocket Crocodile shirt or the Teen Wolves Flophouse shirt, you can go to www.bonfire.com.

[1:14:27] Slash store slash flophouse tour store.

[1:14:33] Thank you to the person who emailed me saying that I should use shorter, easier to understand URLs.

[1:14:44] You are correct.

[1:14:46] I did not set them up, though, so don't always assume that everything that is done wrong at the Flophouse is done because of me.

[1:14:55] But in the future, we'll have better, easier to understand or remember URLs.

[1:15:00] But the store is, again, www.bonfire.com slash store slash flophouse tour store.

[1:15:10] Now back to the regular show.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:15] Okay, so let's...

[1:15:17] Guys, I think we can call this one Hillbilly Elegy Elegy.

[1:15:20] Not shillbilly smell-a-gy.

[1:15:22] That would be the Mad Magazine version of it.

[1:15:26] If only.

[1:15:27] Oh, I want to see that so badly now.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:31] So, the Flophouse is sponsored in part by Squarespace.

[1:15:36] If you use Squarespace's services, you can create a beautiful website to promote or just get your cool idea out there.

[1:15:46] Blogger publish content.

[1:15:48] Sell products and services of all kinds and much, much more.

[1:15:51] Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful, customizable templates created by world-class designers.

[1:15:58] Everything optimized for mobile right out of the box.

[1:16:00] A new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions.

[1:16:04] Free and secure hosting.

[1:16:06] Hey, why don't you go over, if this interests you, to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial.

[1:16:14] And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:23] Hey, guys.

[1:16:23] I had an idea for a website kind of based on today's movie.

[1:16:26] I was wondering if Squarespace might be able to help us.

[1:16:28] And, Dan, maybe you can help me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:30] Oh, wow.

[1:16:30] Kind of came out of nowhere, but that's okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:32] Yeah.

[1:16:33] So, I was wondering.

[1:16:34] We see so many warm weather hillbillies.

[1:16:37] They live in the south.

[1:16:38] It's much warmer there.

[1:16:40] But I was wondering, what about the colder hillbillies?

[1:16:43] And that's why at www.chillbilly.com, you can find your news about the chilliest billies.

[1:16:48] That's right.

[1:16:49] Hillbillies who live in cold areas.

[1:16:51] And, again, we call them chillbillies.

[1:16:53] They also are super cool, not just cold.

[1:16:56] And that's why they chill.

[1:16:57] So, at chillbillies.com, it's your place online for cold weather, rural, you know, poverty line stereotypes.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:07] Oh, wow.

[1:17:08] Okay.

[1:17:08] Is this like a meetup site, or is it like fiction?

[1:17:13] What's going on?

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:15] Yeah, no.

[1:17:15] Well, I mean, the meetup site is our app, BillBull, which is – that's a hillbilly meetup site.

[1:17:20] But it's just a place where you can swap stereotypes, make crude caricatures, and pretend to be them in multimillion-dollar movies for award consideration.

[1:17:29] So, that's chillbilly.com, chillbilly.com, and use offer code.

[1:17:34] We don't have one.

[1:17:35] There's nothing to buy on the site.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:36] I suddenly got really worried about these made-up URLs that you do, Elliot.

[1:17:42] Like, this is one of the ones that feels like it might actually exist.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:46] It might exist.

[1:17:47] Well, Jordan, if this one exists, please cut this part out.

[1:17:50] And if it doesn't exist, please buy that domain for me.

[1:17:54] Yeah.

[1:17:56] Guys, I just checked.

[1:17:57] I just checked.

[1:17:58] www.chillbilly.com is for sale.

[1:18:01] Oh, wow.

[1:18:01] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:01] We're safe.

[1:18:02] It is available.

[1:18:03] We're safe.

[1:18:03] Okay.

[1:18:04] Let me see if I have enough money on these five credit cards.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:07] Now, there is another – now, I want it – this is a movie idea.

[1:18:10] This is not a – this is not a show.

[1:18:13] But I was worrying about a Chilly Willy elegy, which would be the story of Chilly Willy's

[1:18:19] upbringing and how difficult it was.

[1:18:20] Now, the penguin.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:20] The cartoon penguin, this is the one?

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:22] Yeah, this is the cartoon penguin, Chilly Willy.

[1:18:24] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:24] This is what, like, a dirge you sing after his passing?

Dan McCoy

[1:18:29] Yeah, exactly.

[1:18:30] Tales of his adventures.

[1:18:32] Scald sings it at his Viking funeral.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:35] Well, because he's gone from the cold of Antarctica to the ultimate cold of the grave.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:39] Yeah.

[1:18:40] All right.

[1:18:40] Well, let's move on to letters.

[1:18:43] Unless – wait.

[1:18:44] Elliot, you look like you might have something to plug.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:46] I do have something to plug.

[1:18:48] In stores now – that's right, because it came out Wednesday, February 3rd, which again

[1:18:52] is after we're recording this, but before it will be released – is number one of Maniac

[1:18:56] of New York.

[1:18:56] That's right.

[1:18:57] Maniac of New York, number one, from Aftershock Comics by me and Andrea Muti.

[1:19:01] It's the story of basically what if The Wire, instead of being about drugs, was about Jason

[1:19:07] Voorhees and is set in New York City.

[1:19:10] So there's an unstoppable killer.

[1:19:12] He's been a problem in New York for years.

[1:19:14] Everyone's kind of given up except for two crusading people, a mayoral aide and an outcast

[1:19:20] police officer, police detective.

[1:19:22] And they're going to try to take this monster, this slasher killer down.

[1:19:26] Will they be able to do it?

[1:19:27] Find out.

[1:19:28] In Maniac of New York, number one, from Aftershock Comics, in stores now.

[1:19:32] Go to your local comic book store or mail order it for them if you don't want to go out

[1:19:35] of the house, which I understand.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:36] And real quick, Dan, when is this episode dropping?

Dan McCoy

[1:19:40] This episode, one second, should come out on the 13th of February.

[1:19:45] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:46] So that means –

[1:19:46] The day before Valentine's.

[1:19:47] Yeah, that means as a special Valentine's Day gift for yourself or others, it is the last – if

[1:19:53] you're listening to this on the day it drops, it is the last day for our limited run, our

[1:19:57] exclusive run of live show t-shirts.

[1:20:00] If you go to the Flophouse Pod Twitter account, you'll find links to those shirts there.

[1:20:08] They are great.

[1:20:09] And they're exclusive to just that week.

[1:20:12] So if you miss them, you miss them.

[1:20:14] So hopefully you got a chance to grab one.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:16] These are some great designs.

[1:20:18] I've liked our past designs, but these are my favorite designs that we've ever had.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:21] Oh, wow.

[1:20:22] They're really good.

[1:20:23] They are very good designs.

[1:20:25] But let us move on to –

[1:20:28] Dan's favorite subject.

[1:20:29] Mm-hmm.

[1:20:30] But –

[1:20:31] Let us move on.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:32] Oh, God.

[1:20:32] You got him.

[1:20:33] Oh, shit.

[1:20:35] Oh, man.

[1:20:36] That's so –

[1:20:36] I caught him.

[1:20:37] That's so raven.

[1:20:38] Stick a fork in him.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:39] Now –

[1:20:40] Okay.

[1:20:41] So letters from listeners.

[1:20:43] Listeners like you.

[1:20:44] This one's from John, last name withheld.

[1:20:47] John Lasseter, Pixar.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:49] Well, there's no –

[1:20:50] No.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:52] I hope not.

[1:20:52] There's no H, so I can only assume it's new to Twitter, Jon Stewart.

[1:20:56] Yeah.

[1:20:57] Hey, Peaches.

[1:20:58] My daughter, 13, also an avid listener.

[1:21:01] I don't recommend that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:02] Your daughter's name is 13?

[1:21:04] That's cool.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:05] Yeah.

[1:21:06] Like –

[1:21:07] Yeah, very similar to character 3 from Peanuts.

[1:21:10] Remember that?

[1:21:11] When there was a character who just had a number as their name?

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:14] Anyway.

[1:21:15] I kind of remember it.

[1:21:15] Not particularly.

[1:21:16] Are you thinking of Pigpen?

Dan McCoy

[1:21:18] No, no, no.

[1:21:18] There was a whole, like, gag.

[1:21:20] It was basically the 19 –

[1:21:22] early 1960s Charles Schultz version of making fun of, like,

[1:21:28] kids have the craziest names these days.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:31] They don't have good names like Linus.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:35] Or Schroeder.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:38] Or Shermie.

[1:21:39] Whatever happened to normal kid names like Shermie?

Dan McCoy

[1:21:43] My daughter, 13 –

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:44] Wait, no, Dan.

[1:21:44] I always assumed Schroeder was his last name.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:46] Do you think it's his first name?

[1:21:46] No, I think it's his last name.

[1:21:47] I think you're right there.

[1:21:50] My daughter, 13 –

[1:21:52] There are two patties in that strip.

[1:21:53] There's Peppermint Patty and regular Patty.

[1:21:55] That seems –

[1:21:56] I mean, that's –

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:57] Well, that's why they call her Peppermint Patty, Dan, to keep them apart.

[1:22:00] They do the same thing on The Bachelor.

[1:22:01] When there's multiple patties, one's regular Patty, one's Peppermint Patty.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:05] This seems like Charles Schultz could have come up with a different name.

[1:22:08] But anyway.

[1:22:10] My daughter, 13, also an avid listener, is thinking about making a movie for a community student film competition.

[1:22:18] Her idea is a comedy horror movie, something along the lines of Jaws meets scary movies starring our cat as Jaws.

[1:22:26] Question to you, filmic geniuses, is what are your best tips to make the plot beats hit the best for making dumb gore work and be funny?

[1:22:36] And any other tips for making a horror comedy short, 15-minute tops, hit the best?

[1:22:44] Yours in flop-tasticness, John, last name withheld.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:48] It sounds like she should definitely make this movie.

[1:22:51] There is no reason not to make a movie if you want to make a movie.

[1:22:55] And my first tip – sorry to jump in, guys, ahead of time.

[1:22:58] My first tip would be to, like, not worry about the plot that much.

[1:23:01] Like, for a short, it's going to be more important to you probably to just keep it entertaining and funny and keep the energy moving.

[1:23:08] And you don't want to get bogged down with plot stuff, you know?

[1:23:10] Keep the plot as simple and straightforward as you can, unless the joke is that the plot is really complicated.

[1:23:15] And then just have fun making it fun.

[1:23:18] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:18] From what little I've learned from watching TikToks, the key is editing.

[1:23:24] If you want to get last, make it – do a lot of quick editing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:29] Yeah.

[1:23:29] Edits – cuts are funny.

[1:23:31] Like, there are certain types of things that are funny and without cuts, but a lot of times a quick cut is funny.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:37] Yes, if you make the cut part of the joke – I actually was going to say another thing, which is a little bit opposed, but I think I trust our listeners to be smart enough to hold both ideas in their head, which is sometimes it is funnier to also just let things play out and long.

[1:23:55] Like, a slapstick thing, often just like seeing the full thing is the funny way, and modern movies have forgotten that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:05] Oh, I will say that's true.

[1:24:07] Slapstick is funnier without cuts.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:08] Yeah, it's like the scenes in Children of Men where Alfonso Cuaron just does one long take.

[1:24:13] Those were hilarious.

[1:24:14] Oh, that movie was so funny.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:16] That movie was so funny.

[1:24:17] That's why Birdman is hilarious.

[1:24:19] That's why The Revenant is hilarious.

[1:24:21] That's why Rope is hilarious.

[1:24:22] Russian Ark.

[1:24:23] Russian Ark, yeah, is a laugh fucking riot.

[1:24:27] Sorry that your daughter had to hear me curse just then.

[1:24:30] But yeah, it's – see, let the moment tell you how best it should be made.

[1:24:36] Don't stick to a theory, but let the moment tell you.

[1:24:39] But I would still just say, like, make it as fun to watch as you can, and don't worry.

[1:24:45] Like, the best movies, the ones that people remember the most, people very rarely remember how the plot goes.

[1:24:51] Yeah.

[1:24:51] This is something that Howard Hawks believed in was he said, people don't watch movies for plots.

[1:24:55] They watch them for scenes, and they remember scenes.

[1:24:57] They don't remember plots.

[1:24:58] I think he went too far with that until eventually he was making movies that were just about dudes hanging out at racetracks and were hanging out on a safari.

[1:25:05] But you need some plot.

[1:25:07] But don't worry that the plot is going to be the thing that, like, makes or breaks you.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:11] Yeah, if you've got, like – yeah, if you've got, like, interesting gags in it.

[1:25:15] I don't know.

[1:25:16] I'm remembering now I – there was a video I was supposed to make for French class in high school, and it was not supposed to be horror.

[1:25:25] But because I'm who I am, I'm like, I'm going to put some horror stuff in there.

[1:25:28] And it was, like, a French class video where it involved me accidentally cutting my arm off.

[1:25:34] And I made one of those things where, like, there's a fake – I used an old shirt, and I made, like, a fake forearm to put on my real arm, and then I put a glove around it.

[1:25:47] I don't know why my character is wearing a glove.

[1:25:49] But so it looked like the glove was fake, but it looked like my hand holding my real arm.

[1:25:57] I hope that that explanation made sense to people listening.

[1:26:01] And then out of my little stump, I had one of those squirt bottles, and I just, like, squirted blood out of it.

[1:26:11] Uh-huh, yeah.

[1:26:11] So I guess my advice is do something like that.

[1:26:14] Yeah, that sounds great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:15] And so what was the – what was French about it?

[1:26:18] Oh, we were speaking in French.

[1:26:20] Oh, okay.

[1:26:21] You're like, oh, mon stump!

[1:26:22] Yeah, Elliot, you don't think French people can get their arms cut off?

[1:26:26] You're right.

[1:26:27] French people are just as likely as anyone else to get their arms cut off.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:30] Very fair.

[1:26:31] We got one last email here.

[1:26:34] It's from Ben, last name with Held, who says –

[1:26:37] Ben 10.

[1:26:38] We all know that Psycho Goreman is the next Star Wars, both in the breadth of its cultural impact and in that every background character will eventually have at least 12 extended universe books about them.

[1:26:52] Uh-huh, yeah.

[1:26:52] Stuart, until then, what can you tell us about Tube Man's backstory?

[1:26:57] Where did he go to high school?

[1:26:58] What are his goals, his dreams?

[1:27:00] What does he smell like when they pop that helmet off?

[1:27:03] For the rest of the floppers left in the shadow of Stuart's artistic legacy, what character with little screen time do you wish for more backstory on?

[1:27:11] I'm sorry I did not send you this last part of the question.

[1:27:16] I forgot I was there.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:17] No, cool, cool, cool.

[1:27:18] Cool, yeah, cool.

[1:27:18] I'm sorry.

[1:27:19] Man, that's – yeah, I mean, this is tough.

[1:27:21] I, you know, when it – when I inhabit a role, you know, I just let it kind of take, like, that, like, character spirit inhabit me as opposed to, like, to flow into my body and then out of my mouth because I'm a – you know, I'm mainly a voice actor.

[1:27:40] But – so I don't – I try not to overthink it too much.

[1:27:44] I'm kind of primal, almost animalistic when I perform.

[1:27:49] You guys have seen it, right, where I'm, like – I do that, like, little ritual where I growl a little bit and I have to take my shirt off.

[1:27:57] The pants stay on.

[1:27:59] I'm not a Winnie the Pooh.

[1:28:00] I keep the pants on.

[1:28:02] But I do –

[1:28:02] No, you're a Mickey Mouse.

[1:28:03] I do roll the cuffs of my pants up a little bit so that it gives me the impression of having nudity on the bottom half of my body without actually, you know, going all the way into it.

[1:28:13] So I do all that and then I kind of, like, I move around and I get very tactile.

[1:28:18] I touch everything and I make faces kind of like what – like, if I was an animal, what an animal would do.

[1:28:24] And doing that takes me to this kind of, like – it takes my brain to this kind of, like, lower, almost, like, subconscious.

[1:28:29] And that allows this – the character, in this case, Tube Man, to just kind of flow in through my ears and then comes – just passes my brain entirely and flows right out of my mouth.

[1:28:39] So that's what I do.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:41] Wow.

[1:28:43] As to the question of backstories, I'm going to – this may be cheating, but I'm going to just sort of rail against the idea that side characters need backstories at all.

[1:28:55] Well, like, part of it is, like, I think that there's this – I think it's kind of a modern affliction where people seem to start feeling, like, not knowing about every single character is a flaw rather than, like, part of what makes movies work.

[1:29:13] Like, it is good to find something mysterious about this, like, to imagine whatever you can imagine is much greater.

[1:29:22] Like, we rewatched – I rewatched Pee-wee's Big Adventure with friends recently, and there's a scene in there where apparently originally there was a whole backstory to Amazing Larry.

[1:29:35] Like, why there's this guy who has this colorful mohawk in the scene in the basement where Pee-wee's laying out all the clues.

[1:29:46] But he works so much better just as, like, he's whispering something and Pee-wee says,

[1:29:51] Is there something you can share with the rest of us, Amazing Larry?

[1:29:53] And, like, the shocked cut to this guy with the crazy mohawk.

[1:29:57] And you're like, whatever backstory you have for Amazing Larry is better than, like, finding out in that deleted scene.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:06] Yeah, I think it is – I was talking to someone recently about how if they made – if Disney made Snow White and the Seven Dwarves now, they'd be like, great, perfect.

[1:30:16] We're announcing movies for each of the dwarves.

[1:30:18] Then we'll do the prequel.

[1:30:19] We find out how they met each other.

[1:30:21] And it's not anything that – we don't need that stuff.

[1:30:23] That being said, in the beginning of Singing in the Rain, there's an actress named Zelda who shows up at the movie premiere.

[1:30:30] And this guy in the crowd hops to his feet and goes, Ah, Zelda! Ah!

[1:30:35] And every time we see him, my family laughs and laughs.

[1:30:38] So I want to know what that guy's about and whether he brings that same level of enthusiasm to everything else in his life.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:41] Oh, yeah, you don't want to know more about Zelda.

[1:30:43] You just want to know about the guy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:45] I want to know about that guy who's just, like, his eyes are popping out of his head.

[1:30:48] He's so excited to see her.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:49] Yeah.

[1:30:49] I don't want to say too much about this.

[1:30:51] I'm going to go back on what I said a little bit.

[1:30:52] I don't want to say too much about this because I've been toying with writing, like, a humor piece about it for a while.

[1:30:58] Like, it's been in the back of my head.

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:00] Don't give away the trade secrets, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:02] I just want to know the story of the guy in It's a Wonderful Life who sits down by the lever that opens the gymnasium pool and what his deal is.

[1:31:14] Why he's hanging out there waiting for someone to be like, hey, you know, you're jilted by your woman, huh?

[1:31:20] You know, there's a pool under here that you could open up.

[1:31:23] Like, what's his story?

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:25] He just loves swimming.

[1:31:27] Yeah.

[1:31:27] They don't get to use that pool very much.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:30] Let's get into recommendations.

[1:31:31] Movies you definitely should watch instead of Hillbilly Elegy.

[1:31:35] And I want to recommend something related to this movie in a way, thematically.

[1:31:43] It's called Deliverance.

[1:31:45] Dan, come on.

[1:31:46] It's called Wrong Turn 2.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:50] Another wrong turn.

[1:31:51] I am surprised.

[1:31:53] Guys, you'll never believe this.

[1:31:54] I think we took another wrong turn.

[1:31:56] I mean, that's the premise of the movie, Elliot.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:59] I am surprised that this hasn't been officially recommended on the podcast before, but my Googling says it has not.

[1:32:06] The Florida Project does everything right that this movie does wrong about, you know, showing people who are in dire financial straits.

[1:32:14] Like, it has a lot of sad stuff in it, but it has a lot of joy.

[1:32:19] It is presented, you know, very matter-factly, the day-to-day lives.

[1:32:24] You have characters who are doing occasionally dumb or unsympathetic things because they are stuck in a situation that sort of, like, doesn't allow for them to make mistakes, unfortunately.

[1:32:42] And it is, like, filled with quiet moments and humor and joy along with the dramatic stuff.

[1:32:50] And I think it paints a much more sort of full and sympathetic picture of what it is to be forced to live life, you know, in such a precarious way.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:04] Yeah.

[1:33:05] Yeah, I love that movie.

[1:33:07] It's, like, not just for some of the, like, filmmaking feats that they managed to accomplish, but also, like, Willem Dafoe's performance is so great.

[1:33:17] And also the performance from the children who, I'm assuming they did not realize they were, like, playing characters in a movie, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:25] Like, they're so natural.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:27] I mean, they knew they were playing characters.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:29] I knew they were playing characters, but they got natural performance.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:32] It's a similar, I'm sure they utilize a similar method to what I use when I do performing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:38] Exactly.

[1:33:39] I mean, I don't think it was one of those things where they, like, hypnotize them and were like, this is your life now.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:44] Is that a thing that happens?

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:47] It's how they got some of Grace Kelly's best performances out of her.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:53] Yeah, you go, Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:55] Okay.

[1:33:56] I'm going to recommend a movie also about, I guess, expensive academic situations.

[1:34:01] Perfect.

[1:34:01] Okay.

[1:34:02] So I guess that connects to it.

[1:34:04] This is a movie that's on Amazon right now.

[1:34:05] It's called Sella and the Spades.

[1:34:07] And it was written, directed by Tayarisha Poe.

[1:34:09] And it's set at a kind of, like, fancy boarding school where there's five, like, kind of five family-type setup where there's groups of students that kind of run the student body.

[1:34:19] And our main character, Sella, is the leader of a group called the Spades.

[1:34:22] We're in charge of drugs and other illicit substances.

[1:34:24] And it's kind of about her as someone who is trying to maintain this facade of just total composure and confidence all the time while she is up against the pressures of this kind of criminal social life and also the pressures from home to be, like, the best student she can be and not get into trouble.

[1:34:42] And she becomes friends with a younger student who she decides is going to be her heir in this position but then starts to have a falling out with her when her suspicions grow.

[1:34:52] And the movie, like, it starts off and it feels like it's going to be kind of like a Wes Anderson-y type thing, which I like Wes Anderson-y stuff but I worry that other people can't quite pull it off.

[1:35:03] And then it does not become that at all.

[1:35:05] It feels very much like a movie that could have been about its plot but is instead about these characters existing and interacting.

[1:35:14] And there are a number of scenes where I was like, oh, this is what – this really feels like what it's like to be, like, a teenager and have to kill time or be excited about something or be, like, worried about something.

[1:35:23] I thought it was a really – it's more elliptically told than I thought it might be.

[1:35:28] And I thought it was really affecting that way.

[1:35:30] So I would say Stella and the Spades if you want to see kind of like a teen movie that feels more poetic than your normal teen movie with a plot like that might sound.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:40] Okay.

[1:35:41] And I'm going to recommend a movie.

[1:35:42] Let's tie this to Hillbilly Elegy.

[1:35:44] This is a movie about –

[1:35:47] We know it's psycho gore man, Stu.

[1:35:49] Just go.

[1:35:49] Complicated relationship between grandparents and children.

[1:35:55] I'm going to recommend a movie on Shudder called Anything for Jackson.

[1:36:00] It's a horror movie about an older couple who decide – they kidnap a pregnant woman in order to perform a reverse exorcism and bring back their grandson.

[1:36:13] And it is a – it's a funny, well-made, well-performed, very efficient scare machine.

[1:36:24] It is just by like scares per – scares per moment you're going to get more than your average horror movie.

[1:36:33] I recommend it.

[1:36:34] It's a lot of fun.

[1:36:35] Yeah.

[1:36:36] Give it a shot.

[1:36:37] Anything for Jackson.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:38] Good SBM score.

Stuart Wellington

[1:36:40] Yeah.

[1:36:40] The SBM score is super high.

[1:36:42] If you're looking for just like a fun horror movie night, I think it's a great choice.

[1:36:48] I will put it on my watch list.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:51] But –

[1:36:52] Okay, Dan.

[1:36:52] I mean I noticed that you very prominently did not say I'll put it on my watch list after my recommendation.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:57] You sounded like a kind of a – like a maybe too good.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:01] Yeah, a lot of vegetables.

[1:37:03] Yeah.

[1:37:04] No, but it's a good – all right.

[1:37:06] How do I make it sound trash here?

[1:37:08] And one of them is a murderer who has a demon in her butt.

[1:37:12] Okay.

[1:37:12] Well, now you're –

[1:37:13] And so it's telling her to like to kill everybody.

[1:37:17] But it's at a carnival.

[1:37:18] It's like a haunted carnival.

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:19] If it was Dan Elliott, you should be pitching it at like a haunted girls boarding school.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:26] Okay.

[1:37:26] Yeah.

[1:37:27] Fair.

[1:37:27] It's at a haunted girls pillow fight academy.

[1:37:31] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:33] You have my interest.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:34] It's called St. Nighty's Academy.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:38] So let's make an – I'm going to make an effort for once to see if I can end this podcast quickly and efficiently.

[1:37:46] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:46] Dan, just pretend – pretend – yeah, pretend this podcast is your drug-addicted mom in a hotel room and just say goodbye and drive off to New Haven.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:54] We'd like to thank Jordan Cowling for editing the show.

[1:37:58] We would like to thank everyone at Maximum Fun for having us on their network.

[1:38:03] Why not go over to MaximumFun.org.

[1:38:07] Check out the other podcasts on there.

[1:38:10] I listen to several of them myself.

[1:38:13] They are a well-curated, wonderful bunch.

[1:38:17] And if you have the time, please spread the word about the Flophouse wherever you think it might be effective.

[1:38:25] But until next time, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:38:28] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:38:30] I'll be Elliot Kalin next time, too.

[1:38:32] Bye.

[1:38:33] Bye.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:33] Bye.

[1:38:40] On this episode, we discuss Hillbilly Elegy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:45] The latest installment in the Barney Google Snuffy Smith cinematic universe.

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:51] Also pretty good.

[1:38:52] Mine is more, you know, contemporary with all the cool teens listening to Rob Zombie now.

[1:39:02] MaximumFun.org.

Jordan Morris

[1:39:04] Comedy and culture.

[1:39:05] Artist owned.

[1:39:07] Audience supported.

Ep. #335 - Hillbilly Elegy

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