Ep. #323 - Deadly Lessons

Stuart Wellington

[0:00] On this episode we discuss deadly lessons.

[0:04] And the lesson is, watch this movie!

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

[0:37] Oh hey there Dan McCoy, it's me, Stuart Willington, your friend.

Elliott Kalan

[0:40] I'm Elliot Kalin. I also fall into the category of friend, not just to Dan, but also to Stuart.

[0:45] Three friends are we. Yes, friends are us.

Stuart Wellington

[0:49] And that's what this is. This is a podcast where three friends are friends and they talk about friend stuff.

[0:55] In particular, the way that friends sometimes watch movies and then talk about it.

[0:59] What do we do this week, Dan, on the Friendcast?

Dan McCoy

[1:02] Welcome to the Friendhouse.

[1:04] Well, during September at the Friendhouse, we celebrate Small Timber.

[1:10] Small Vamber.

[1:11] Which is a made-up holiday month where we watch.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18] There's a lot of religious people who will be very unhappy with you saying that, Stuart.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21] Oh, burn, they can come find me at Dan's apartment.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25] I mean, you do have a, but also, Stuart, you have like a public business that people can go to, to talk to you face-to-face.

Stuart Wellington

[1:31] And write mean Yelp reviews, apparently.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33] Oh, yeah. I'm sorry about that.

[1:36] I thought it would be a funny goof if I wrote a thousand mean Yelp reviews about your car.

Stuart Wellington

[1:39] Not a goof. Not a goof, Elliot.

Dan McCoy

[1:42] Okay, where was I?

[1:44] Oh, Small Timber.

[1:45] That's where we watch movies that are slightly smaller than we normally do.

[1:50] Now, this movie is probably the...

[1:51] And sometimes very old.

[1:52] Yeah, this is from 2006.

[1:54] This is probably the largest small movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:57] Well, this had a reported budget of $30 million.

[2:00] What?

[2:00] We want to make it a mid-sized movie these days.

Stuart Wellington

[2:02] I guess it's all on the screen, you know?

Elliott Kalan

[2:04] I mean, to be honest, it does look better than most of the Small Vember movies we see.

[2:09] I mean, like, just production value-wise, compared to something like Love on a Leash from last year,

[2:15] this is like, you know, Saving Private Ryan production value-wise.

Dan McCoy

[2:19] Well, did you look into the...

[2:20] I mean, they had, like, the cinematographers were like, there was a guy from Bad Boys,

[2:25] there was a guy from, what was the other thing?

[2:28] Bad Boys 2?

[2:29] No, no, Jesus, I should have had this...

[2:31] I thought I would remember this information, and now it's gone away.

Elliott Kalan

[2:34] Well, the secret is that this movie is a Crystal Sky production.

[2:37] Crystal Sky is the company that also makes the Baby Geniuses movies, among other things.

[2:42] And it was founded by Stephen Paul, who is also Jon Voight's manager,

[2:45] which is why Jon Voight is also involved in a lot of these things.

[2:48] But this seems to be...

[2:50] And I'm not quite sure.

[2:50] So according to IMDb, which is very...

[2:52] Not always the best source, it was co-written by Simon Paul,

[2:58] and it was co-written and directed and, I think, starring Stuart Paul.

[3:02] So it's like, was it just three brothers got together to make a movie?

[3:05] And if so, why is it not about three brothers who are always bickering and have to, I guess,

[3:10] bury their mom or something?

Stuart Wellington

[3:11] Their fourth brother, Aaron Paul, was too busy making Breaking Bad.

[3:14] Yeah, yeah.

[3:15] Sorry, guys.

Elliott Kalan

[3:15] And their fifth brother, Paul of Tarsus, was busy having died over a thousand years ago.

[3:20] You know, almost two thousand years ago.

[3:21] Yeah, that keeps it pretty busy.

Dan McCoy

[3:22] Oh, God.

[3:23] Yeah.

[3:23] This movie had two cinematographers.

[3:26] One, Douglas Milsom did Full Metal Jacket and The Last of the Mohicans, among other movies.

[3:34] The other, Howard Atherton, did Bad Boys, Fatal Attraction, Deep Rising.

[3:39] I know you love Deep Rising, Stu.

Stuart Wellington

[3:40] Yeah, because I got two eyes on the ability to watch movies.

Dan McCoy

[3:44] Yeah.

[3:44] So there's that, and the composer is Michel LeGrand, who did The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Elliott Kalan

[3:51] And was it edited by the editor of Jeepers Creepers?

[3:53] Yes, it was.

Dan McCoy

[3:56] So the guy, this is a vanity project, but it's a vanity project by a guy with a lot of Hollywood

[4:01] connections who was able to raise $30 million to put his nutty vision on screen.

Stuart Wellington

[4:08] And that madman is Stuart Paul, another one of us handsome Hollywood stewards.

[4:15] Me, Stuart Pankin, now Stuart Paul.

[4:18] The pantheon grows.

[4:19] Yeah, yeah.

[4:20] All the stewards.

[4:21] Gloria Stewart.

Dan McCoy

[4:22] The main guy looks kind of like a cross between Steve Guttenberg now and Thin Penn Jillette.

[4:29] Like, he's interesting.

Elliott Kalan

[4:31] I kind of consider him like a cross between Howard Stern and Neil Gaiman.

Dan McCoy

[4:35] Yes, those are good ones, too.

Stuart Wellington

[4:37] Yeah, he looks a lot like a stepdad who always wears sandals with socks.

Elliott Kalan

[4:41] But thinks he's really cool.

[4:43] Like, he goes to a lot of Steely Dan concerts.

[4:45] He's always rocking out in the garage and asking you to join him.

Dan McCoy

[4:48] And look, I don't want to, you know, I don't know the man personally.

[4:51] I don't want to say anything about what he might be like as a human being.

Elliott Kalan

[4:55] I mean, if you did, it would be incredibly unethical for you to then go on and slam his movie.

Dan McCoy

[4:59] But on screen, like, as the lead to this movie, you know, like, the movie has Jon Voight, Oscar winner Jon Voight, and then, like, a cabal of what I would say are competent actors.

[5:11] And then it has this lead performance, which is bereft of any sort of charisma or energy.

Stuart Wellington

[5:18] It's like a hole in the middle of the donut.

[5:21] Yeah.

[5:22] Jordan, can you just loop in the monologue that Daniel Craig does in Knives Out, please?

[5:30] Okay, guys, wait.

[5:31] Okay, now.

[5:32] Go, Daniel.

Dan McCoy

[5:32] Okay.

[5:33] Yeah, there you go.

[5:34] I don't know if you know how cutting works, Derek.

Stuart Wellington

[5:37] No, no, no.

[5:39] She's going to do it live, right?

Dan McCoy

[5:40] She's going to do an overlay is what you're saying.

[5:41] Okay, I get it.

[5:43] All right, well, let's pause for that.

[5:44] Yeah, so.

Elliott Kalan

[5:45] No, no, we already did it, Dan.

Stuart Wellington

[5:46] Yeah, we already did it.

Elliott Kalan

[5:47] We're not interrupting Daniel Craig.

[5:47] Still don't finish that bit.

[5:49] Why don't we?

[5:49] Anyway, why don't I just talk about this movie, huh?

[5:51] So anyway, this is technically, I'm going to allow it.

[5:54] As Judge Kalen, I'm going to allow this to be a small member movie.

[5:57] Jordan, please put in that gavel sound effect.

[5:58] I'll allow it.

[5:59] This is officially a small member, even though it's much bigger than others.

[6:02] And it comes from professionals.

Stuart Wellington

[6:04] Add in that little animation we made of Elliot crossing his arms and nodding his head.

[6:08] Yeah, yeah.

[6:08] Like he's a genie while the gavel's being slammed down.

Elliott Kalan

[6:11] And then the wind blows up my judge robes, and it's just heart boxer shorts underneath.

[6:16] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[6:17] But nobody laughs, because we all take Elliot very seriously.

Elliott Kalan

[6:21] Yeah, no, that's the authority I have as a judge, is even after seeing that I'm just

[6:24] wearing underpants under the robe, you're still like, yeah, but his mind is first rate,

[6:28] first rate legal mind.

Dan McCoy

[6:29] Well, I mean, if anything, we fear you more at that point, because the fact that you may

[6:34] feel embarrassed makes us scared to see what, you know, like, what vengeance you may wreak

[6:39] on us if we laugh.

[6:41] Yeah.

[6:41] Exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[6:41] Yeah, I'm an angry god.

[6:42] Yeah.

[6:42] Speaking of gods, this movie is somewhat about the existence of god, but not really.

[6:47] Let's get into it, shall we?

[6:48] And I'll mention that my notes for this movie are very long, so I've condensed them.

[6:53] They're not quite as short as I'd like them to be normally, but there's a lot that happens

[6:57] in this movie that I'm not going to go into.

[6:58] So if there's any details that you guys, that I'm skipping over, feel free to stop me and

[7:03] introduce them, because I cannot go into every detail.

Dan McCoy

[7:05] I do have one question, Elliot, is that, did you take notes on the Tubi commercials that

[7:10] you watched, because Tubi is the only place you can find this movie streaming?

[7:13] I did not.

Elliott Kalan

[7:14] This is already a long movie.

[7:15] It is over two and a quarter hours long, and yet Tubi is the only place you can watch

[7:20] it online, and they put commercials in frequently.

[7:22] So it was like, oh boy.

Stuart Wellington

[7:24] So I had to set up a Tubi account in order to watch this movie, and no, this is no slam

[7:30] against Tubi.

[7:30] I kind of want to leave my profile having only watched this movie.

[7:35] It does.

Dan McCoy

[7:38] Stuart, you can leave it after you find out what movies Tubi suggest to you now, after

[7:44] having watched only this movie.

[7:45] That's what I'm curious about.

Elliott Kalan

[7:46] Well, it immediately went from, on mine, it was just about to start playing Alex Cross

[7:51] before I shut down the website angrily, because I did not need to see Alex Cross again.

Dan McCoy

[7:56] Mine started playing Five Corners.

[7:57] What?

[7:57] I don't know what that's, Five Corners?

[7:59] I don't know why they chose that.

[8:00] I don't know.

[8:01] It started with the sequel to Four Corners.

[8:03] It was yesterday on the soundtrack by the Beatles, so they had Beatles money, I guess.

Stuart Wellington

[8:08] It was firing up, and Audrey's like, stop it, Dan, stop it, Dan, and then the two of you

[8:10] were both typing on the computer at the same time to try and stop the feed, and it wouldn't

[8:14] happen, and then Elliot came over and unplugged it, and you're like, Elliot, then he nodded his

[8:17] head, gavel sound, everybody laughs.

[8:20] Stuart, you'll be having no...

[8:20] Old person wins again.

Elliott Kalan

[8:22] We're taping this the day after Rosh Hashanah, and at last night's Rosh Hashanah dinner, I described

[8:27] to my in-laws that very scene.

[8:30] So, anyway, it's Blue Sky Productions...

[8:33] Oh, no, Crystal Sky, sorry.

[8:34] Crystal Sky Productions comes up.

[8:35] In Comic Sans.

[8:36] In Comic Sans.

[8:37] The logo is the cheapest-looking logo you can get.

[8:41] And we start hearing some voiceover by a guy who says that his mom says his mind is

[8:46] messed up.

[8:47] And for help, she's going to go to one Simon Conjurer, who's kind of a long-haired guy

[8:52] who, it's pronounced Conjurer, and he has kind of a New York accent.

[8:55] The rural Conjurer.

[8:57] Like I said, he reminds me of Howard Stern crossed with Neil Gaiman, but he's steeped in

[9:01] existential whimsy, as we'll learn.

[9:03] And we're introduced to him as he is teaching a classroom of children not to fear flying by

[9:07] literally talking them into having the magical ability to fly around the classroom, like

[9:11] they're little miniature airplanes.

[9:13] And the music that he's playing tells us we're in real Wonder Emporium territory.

[9:16] This is supposed to be magical and amazing, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[9:19] Yeah, it's the kind of score that Charles Band dreams of filling his castle halls.

Dan McCoy

[9:25] Well, it's also one of these movie classes.

[9:28] It is a movie, yes.

[9:30] One of these movie classes where you're like, wait, what is being taught here?

[9:34] Because it starts off like...

[9:36] Not to be frightened of flying on airplanes.

[9:37] Need to be frightened of flying, but then like he has a globe that he takes out that

[9:42] turns into a bird.

[9:44] Oh, yeah.

[9:45] And he's like, okay, we got to take care of the earth.

[9:47] And I'm like, and then he's asking the kids, what did we learn here today?

[9:51] And I'm like, yeah, what did we learn here today?

[9:53] Is this what my tax dollars are going to?

[9:56] Simon conjurer?

Elliott Kalan

[9:58] And later, the thing is also that later there's some trouble about whether the dean of his

[10:03] school is going to throw him out, I guess.

[10:05] And it's not clear if the...

[10:07] Is that the dean of this elementary school?

[10:09] Because usually they're called principals.

[10:11] Like, you don't usually have deans for elementary schools.

[10:13] And it's just very, I guess for like a private school, maybe this is a fancy private school.

[10:18] And it's one of those private schools where it costs a lot of money and celebrities send

[10:20] their kids there, but they don't actually teach them very much.

[10:23] You know?

[10:24] I mean, this is a dean that later on...

Stuart Wellington

[10:26] Not to jump too far ahead, but this is a dean who later on has the ability to command

[10:30] the police to arrest someone.

[10:32] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[10:33] That's part of being a dean.

[10:34] So, Simon, he has a reputation for curing the seemingly incurable.

[10:38] And the mom, Betsy, she says, oh, there was a man in my neighborhood who called himself

[10:41] Mr. Evil.

[10:43] He was a violent homeless man.

[10:45] But now that you talk to him, he just runs around distributing candy to people, to strangers,

[10:49] which I would say is another form of violence.

[10:51] If I was walking down the street, I do not want a stranger shoving candy into my hands,

[10:55] especially if he still calls himself Mr. Evil.

[10:57] But she has a son named, who calls himself Rebel, who hates everything.

[11:01] And this is the beginning of the movie's...

Stuart Wellington

[11:04] Apparently he doesn't hate on-the-nose nicknames.

[11:08] This is the beginning of the movie's lack of sense...

Elliott Kalan

[11:11] Thank you.

[11:12] This is the beginning of the movie's lack of sensitivity about emotional issues,

[11:16] and that we're told that he tried to jump off a building but was saved by landing in a mattress truck.

[11:22] So we're living in a cartoon world, for sure.

[11:24] Simon, he says there's only one thing to do.

[11:26] So next scene, he has kidnapped Rebel and handcuffed him to the inside of this big truck that he has

[11:32] that's full of video screens playing a self-help video that Simon made.

[11:36] And it's weird because we never see anything like this in terms of Simon ever again.

[11:42] It's like, why does he have this Simon-mobile full of screens playing his videos,

[11:46] and he's handcuffed a young man to it?

[11:48] It doesn't make sense.

[11:49] And they argue for a long time.

[11:51] Rebel gets free, and then Simon gives him some money and lets him crash his truck.

[11:54] And so Rebel agrees to go with Simon to his late-night self-help class.

[11:59] But first, we're going to have to meet the real star of the show.

[12:03] That's right.

[12:03] Jon Voight as Dr. CrazeX, a Pulitzer Prize-winning psychologist who either writes novels or self-help books.

[12:11] It's not clear.

[12:12] And guys, I want you to describe this performance for me.

Dan McCoy

[12:15] Well, first, I want to specify for the audience, if you're asking how CrazeX is spelled,

[12:20] it is spelled the traditional way, like crazy, but replace the Y with an X.

[12:25] And Jon Voight is wearing nose and face prosthetics like he is Orson Welles Reborn.

[12:34] But Orson Welles playing, I don't know, like Dr. Robotnik in a cartoon or something.

Stuart Wellington

[12:40] He is constantly stuffing his face with candy.

[12:43] And now we can all, I think we can all agree that Jon Voight, the person, not cool.

[12:47] Not a thumbs up dude.

[12:48] Not someone we approve of, no.

[12:50] But Dr. CrazeX in this movie brings a lot of energy.

[12:55] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[12:56] I would argue this is the only performance that comes close to successfully doing what the movie needs.

Elliott Kalan

[13:05] I mean, this is the biggest performance I think I've ever seen in a movie.

[13:09] It's so big and over the top.

[13:11] And he has an English accent, but he's always wheezing.

[13:14] And like, he's trying to do, I assume he's trying to do Sidney Green Street, basically.

[13:18] Like, this kind of jovial, big, fat, wheezing guy who's always eating candy and hopping around like a little imp.

[13:25] Like, there's, everyone else in this movie is striving to appear as if they're like a one-dimensional version of a real person.

[13:32] And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[13:33] I'm going to be a multi-dimensional version of a fake person.

[13:36] I'm going to give you the biggest, most energetic fake person that never existed.

[13:41] You know, and it is like a Bugs Bunny villain is hopping through this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[13:44] It feels like he has decided, I am going to make the most loathsome character that everyone hates.

[13:51] And I'm going to play it crazy.

[13:53] And I'm going to make sure that everyone treats me like crap.

[13:58] Like, that is his, like, it's this weird, like, masochistic desire where he's like, I want my kink today.

[14:03] Is everyone being mean to me?

[14:05] And I'm going to be a mean weirdo.

Dan McCoy

[14:07] Well, also, we haven't addressed the dialogue in this movie quite yet.

[14:13] But Simon Conjure...

[14:16] It's wonderful.

Elliott Kalan

[14:16] Wait, can I...

[14:18] Wait, you finish what you're saying and I'll say my favorite up to this moment in the movie piece of dialogue.

Dan McCoy

[14:21] Okay.

[14:22] Well, Simon Conjure in particular talks in a, like, this very literary, extravagant way.

[14:30] Like, he's proclaiming something off of a scroll most of the time.

[14:34] But, and it would be okay if one character in the movie talked that way.

[14:40] But, you know, from time to time, every character in the movie will talk in this very affected, strange, high-language manner.

[14:48] And Jon Voight is also the only one who comes close to making that dialogue work.

[14:52] Like, it makes sense coming out of a crazed performance.

Elliott Kalan

[14:55] It makes sense coming out of a character who seems to have, who seems to be a trickster of mythology.

[15:02] Who has, like, come out and is, and basically is a hop goblin of some kind.

[15:06] Like, but there's, Dan, I want to mention my favorite up to this moment piece of Simon Conjurer dialogue is,

[15:12] Betsy says, you've got to help my son.

[15:15] She says, I'll pay you anything.

[15:16] And he says, you can afford such?

[15:18] And it's like, what?

[15:20] Like, one, they haven't, they haven't named a price.

[15:24] But you can afford such?

[15:25] And then he agrees to do it for free.

[15:27] But it's also, this guy has such a, like, like, such a tri-state area New York, New Jersey accent.

[15:34] That it, you can afford such?

[15:36] And it's like, come on.

Stuart Wellington

[15:38] He is like, he's like the Gandalf of Borough Park.

[15:42] Yeah, yes, exactly.

Dan McCoy

[15:44] That should have been the title of the movie, yes.

[15:46] Like, he is a bad Renaissance player, cosplayer, with, like, long, curly hair.

[15:55] Yeah.

[15:56] Yeah, he's an interesting guy.

Elliott Kalan

[15:59] He's an interesting, interesting guy.

[16:02] And then later on, it's implied that he and Jon Voight have known each other since they were children, which makes no sense.

[16:10] Unless one of them was an exchange student.

[16:12] I don't understand.

[16:12] Oh, so Jon Voight, Dr. Krazaks, he's talking to Dean Elkwood, who is the dean of the school Simon teaches at.

[16:21] Again, it's not clear if it's the elementary school or if it is the school where his night classes, the college where his night classes are done.

[16:26] Yeah.

[16:26] And he says, Simon Conjurer is a menace.

[16:29] But he says that in 700 more words than I just said it.

[16:32] He goes on and on and on.

[16:34] And you need to fire him.

[16:35] Or I'll pull my name and my funding from this school.

[16:38] That's something that is never touched on again.

[16:40] That apparently he has some kind of leverage over this school.

[16:42] Why he would, I don't know.

[16:44] But anyway, she...

Stuart Wellington

[16:45] And the dean is kind of introduced initially on Krazaks' side, right?

[16:51] Well, it's implied...

[16:52] At least that was the impression I got.

[16:53] And then she reveals that she secretly was a former student of his.

Elliott Kalan

[16:57] And a former lover.

[16:59] And so the...

[17:00] She has a...

[17:01] We see her first smoking a cigar, which is usually movie shorthand for either this is an elderly comedian or an evil person.

[17:09] Or evil rich person.

[17:10] But it turns out it's neither.

[17:11] She's just a good-hearted school administrator who loves smoking cigars in her office, I guess.

[17:16] But yeah, she seems to be going along with him until he leaves.

[17:19] And then she goes, you really are crazy or something like that.

[17:22] She opens her drawer where there's a framed picture of her and Simon.

[17:25] Okay, so Simon and Rebel, they show up at Simon's Night School self-help group therapy class.

[17:30] And we go through...

[17:31] There's a group of people there who each have one specific vice.

[17:35] And we go through all of them in extreme detail.

[17:39] And it's like one guy has an overeating problem.

[17:42] One woman has an anorexia problem.

[17:43] One guy's a drug addict.

[17:44] Oh, no.

[17:44] One woman's a drug addict.

[17:45] One's an alcoholic.

[17:47] One is a depressive named Tears.

[17:48] They all have like offensive nicknames too.

[17:50] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[17:51] Oh, like...

[17:52] But I feel like they probably deal with all of the emotional problems.

[17:55] It comes with, you know, a fair amount of solemnity, right?

[17:58] Like they deal with it pretty reasonably.

Elliott Kalan

[18:00] It's a real source of jokes.

[18:02] In my notes, I refer to it as the barest minimum of sensitivity by the filmmaker.

[18:06] And the characters are...

[18:08] Their personalities are not really clear from one moment to the next.

[18:11] And there's so many of them.

Stuart Wellington

[18:12] It makes me yearn for the sensitivity of moving violations.

[18:16] And the only thing...

Elliott Kalan

[18:17] Or like the movie Nuts.

[18:20] Or Mixed Nuts.

[18:21] Or anything with Nuts in the title.

[18:22] There's a...

[18:23] I'm just going to say...

[18:24] And jumping into this classroom, it felt like reading an X-Men comic in the 90s and being

[18:28] like, wait, who are all these people?

[18:30] Hold on.

Dan McCoy

[18:31] Yeah.

[18:31] This is definitely like pitched about halfway between like Nightmare on Elm Street 3 Dream

[18:37] Warriors and like a bad sitcom about like an encounter group.

[18:43] And yeah, I just wanted to tell people, if you want to watch this movie, which is an experience,

[18:48] like just be aware of...

Elliott Kalan

[18:50] Watch it on Tubi because you can't see it anywhere else.

Dan McCoy

[18:53] If you're sensitive to insensitive portrayals of mental health issues, you might not enjoy that

[19:03] part of it.

[19:04] I mean, it's pretty offensive.

[19:04] And also there are things that are treated as pathologies that are not pathologies, like

[19:09] a young man being sexually, you know, uncertain about his sexuality, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[19:14] Yeah.

[19:14] It is not a movie to go to for a nuanced look at emotional problems.

[19:24] Yeah.

[19:24] Mental health.

[19:25] Yeah.

[19:25] It is.

[19:26] I mean, as you might guess from the title, Deadly Lessons, which is...

Stuart Wellington

[19:30] So yeah.

[19:30] And the classroom is filled with all of these people.

[19:33] And they...

[19:34] None of them seem to be happy to be there.

[19:37] So it made me...

[19:37] Like, maybe I missed something, but were they like court ordered to be there?

[19:41] Like, why...

[19:42] Did they all get kidnapped by him in his van?

[19:44] Yes.

[19:45] Were they all chained?

Dan McCoy

[19:47] Then, but apparently left behind where they were safe not to leave the classroom.

[19:52] Yeah.

[19:52] I'm going to chain you to the classroom.

[19:54] But what you do there is your own thing.

Elliott Kalan

[19:56] And you got to imagine that for the first person that he picked up and brought to the classroom,

[19:59] it was a long night.

[20:00] Yeah.

[20:01] Because they had to wait for him to get one by one every other person.

[20:03] What a...

[20:04] Wow.

[20:04] Like a weird Santa Claus.

[20:06] I mean, Dan, think about it.

[20:07] Let's think about it.

[20:08] Santa Claus, as he is, is pretty weird.

[20:10] Okay.

[20:11] So he's a big fat guy who chooses the chimney, perhaps the narrowest form of entrance to a

[20:16] house to go through.

[20:18] He delivers toys to, he says, all the children in the world, but I would beg to differ as a

[20:23] non-Christian child.

[20:24] He lives at the North Pole, not a pleasant place to live.

[20:27] I'll tell you why.

[20:28] One, cold.

[20:29] Two, polar bears.

[20:31] Three, he has a candy cane themed house, which is again, strange.

[20:35] That's a weird thing.

[20:36] He also has, and I'm setting across the weirdest thing about him, which I guess is not weird

[20:40] so much as evil, that he has enslaved both a group of little people to make toys for him

[20:45] and also a herd of reindeer.

[20:48] And the reindeers have this cruel culture based around taunting and verbally assaulting any

[20:53] members of the reindeer group who have different noses than the rest of the group.

[20:56] There's a lot about Santa Claus that's weird.

Stuart Wellington

[20:59] I'm kind of glossing over the thing that I think is weirdest is that he's played by Tim

[21:03] Allen.

[21:05] Well, I mean, only that Santa Claus was.

[21:08] What?

Dan McCoy

[21:09] I mean, that movie specifically...

[21:10] Tim Allen wasn't in the sequel?

[21:12] The movie specifically postulates that there have been several Santa Clauses over the course

[21:17] of history.

Elliott Kalan

[21:18] You're right.

[21:18] And if you kill one, you become one.

[21:20] There's nothing weird about that.

[21:23] It's such a...

[21:23] I mean, it's a ballsy move for a children's movie to start with the main character murdering

[21:27] Santa Claus.

[21:29] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[21:30] Imagine being in that pitch meeting.

Elliott Kalan

[21:33] Okay.

[21:34] Stay with me, guys.

[21:35] I'm going to pitch a movie to you.

[21:36] It's a children's movie.

[21:37] Now, five minutes in, you're going to think I'm a madman, but promise me you will wait

[21:42] till five more minutes.

[21:43] Give me five more after that because it will get whimsical.

[21:45] He's locked the door.

[21:46] We can't get out.

[21:49] He goes, now you'll have to listen to my pitch, Mr. Jones.

[21:53] Why?

[21:54] If you want the antidote to the poison you just swallowed.

[21:57] I guess it's Dr. Jones.

[22:01] It's not Mr. Jones.

Dan McCoy

[22:02] If you're the screenwriter to the Santa Claus, you know, write in.

[22:05] Let us know how close this scenario was to your actual pitch experience.

[22:10] Yeah.

[22:10] We'd love to know.

Elliott Kalan

[22:11] When you pitched, did you have to say, stay with me now?

[22:14] Stay with me?

[22:16] Okay.

[22:17] So among...

[22:18] And I just want to mention that among the students is a woman played by Skylar Shea,

[22:22] who flop fans may recognize as Chloe from Bratz, the movie.

[22:27] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[22:28] She's in a bunch of Baby Geniuses things.

[22:30] I looked her up on Wikipedia.

[22:32] She's apparently Jon Voight's goddaughter, which is why there's so much crossover between

[22:36] their projects.

Stuart Wellington

[22:38] And sometimes performers just click, you know?

[22:41] I get it.

Elliott Kalan

[22:41] Yeah.

[22:42] It's not like Robert De Niro is Martin Scorsese's godson.

[22:45] Or is he?

[22:46] I'm not saying that she doesn't have...

Dan McCoy

[22:48] Wait a minute.

[22:48] Maybe he is.

[22:49] ...the talent to make it on her own.

[22:50] I'm just saying that, you know, they probably like to work together.

[22:53] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[22:53] Yeah, probably.

[22:54] I mean, it's a...

[22:55] Because it's a family thing.

[22:56] You know, they've known each other for so long.

[22:58] It's a family affair.

[22:58] And that's why in this movie they share zero scenes together.

[23:02] Yeah.

[23:03] So Simon hands everyone in class big leather-bound books.

[23:06] These are real, like, grimoire-type ancient tomes.

[23:09] And it turns out to be a novel called Prophet Without a God.

[23:13] And the text in the book describes the students in the class.

[23:16] And it describes a teacher just like Simon's a conjurer, but it gives him a different name,

[23:20] which is a detail that the book seems to forget.

[23:23] And it just starts calling him Simon later on.

[23:25] But the teacher, it mentions, had lost faith.

[23:28] There was a God, which had driven him to an existential dread.

[23:31] The book also, they're all like, you wrote this.

[23:34] You wrote this and you just hand it out.

[23:35] And he goes, there's information in there that I don't know.

[23:37] Keep reading.

[23:38] And the book, then we go through as the book describes every single person in the class's

[23:43] tattoos or scars.

[23:44] And each one of them has to prove it's true by revealing their tattoos and scars.

[23:49] It goes on forever.

[23:51] And it doesn't end.

[23:52] And for some reason, Tears, the woman with depression, has to pull down her pants to show them her butt.

[23:57] Yeah.

[23:57] Because she thinks she has a tattoo.

[23:58] This whole scene, I was just like, why is this still going on?

[24:02] Why does the male model have to show us he only has one nipple?

Dan McCoy

[24:04] Also, this poor character.

[24:06] Yeah.

[24:06] The scene ends on this woman being bullied into mooning the class.

Stuart Wellington

[24:12] She's then assaulted while she's mooning them.

[24:15] Well, verbally.

[24:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[24:16] But the thing is, later on, you find out, blessedly, they do not show this.

[24:22] But the implication is that she was molested as a child.

[24:27] So looking back on that scene, it feels even worse.

[24:32] They're like, no, no.

[24:33] Pull your pants down.

[24:36] That's what would be bad enough on its own.

[24:37] I'm just saying, like, that character.

[24:39] Don't do that.

Elliott Kalan

[24:41] Yeah.

[24:41] When the character is bullied into showing everyone her butt, it's not the whimsical, magical moment that the soundtrack would have us believe it is.

Stuart Wellington

[24:47] Exactly.

[24:48] Guys, we're like 40 minutes into the movie, and I got to say, why the fuck do they pronounce it Conjurer, guys?

[24:55] As soon as I heard it, I was shouting, what the fuck?

[24:58] And I roused my sleeping wife, who was blissfully sleeping and not watching the movie.

Dan McCoy

[25:04] See, Stuart, Conjurer would be too on the nose and obvious.

[25:08] But Conjurer, now you got something.

Elliott Kalan

[25:10] It's possible that the filmmakers didn't know, like the movie Coven, how, like, the long thing in American movie, how it's like, well, he thinks that Coven sounds better than Coven.

[25:20] Like, I wonder if they just didn't know it was pronounced Conjurer.

[25:23] But it is annoying and strange every single time someone in the movie says Conjurer.

[25:28] At first, I thought it was Jon Voight's affectation.

[25:30] Like, I used to do a sketch with my old sketch partner, Brock Mahan, where it's about Goofus and Gallant all grown up.

[25:38] And Gallant has kidnapped Goofus and tied him up.

[25:41] And it's one of those things where it's like, all my life, I've lived in your shadow.

[25:44] And he keeps calling Gallant Galant because he's got this very affected accent.

[25:48] I thought it was that.

[25:49] But no, they just all say Conjurer.

[25:51] And it's a very, it's a weird choice.

[25:53] It's an interesting choice.

[25:53] But then again, I think there are no right choices in this entire movie.

[25:57] Sure.

[25:57] Like, there's no choice in it that I can mention.

Stuart Wellington

[25:59] I mean, there's a waterfall later that I think works out.

[26:01] But, you know, we'll go on.

Elliott Kalan

[26:02] Yeah, yeah.

[26:03] I mean, at the point, the part where Jon Voight's character lustfully fondles a penis's statue before lifting it up to reveal a hidden gun underneath.

[26:12] Maybe that was the right choice.

[26:14] But anyway.

[26:15] Or the...

Stuart Wellington

[26:15] It's a real Zardoz reference there.

Elliott Kalan

[26:18] The moment where someone pushes...

[26:19] Guns and penises.

[26:20] The moment where someone pushes a button and a pig is shot out through a tube into a snake's mouth.

[26:24] Maybe that was the right choice.

[26:26] We'll get to those scenes.

[26:27] But, okay.

[26:28] So, the book tells them that Dr. Krazak is on his way.

[26:31] He's going to frame Simon for murder.

[26:33] And they all run out right as Krazak and the cops come in.

[26:35] This book, after, as Stuart mentioned, there's roughly 25 minutes of them hanging out in this room.

[26:39] It's like you're watching a one-act play all of a sudden.

[26:42] They're all on Team Simon now.

[26:43] This book has swayed them.

[26:44] If they don't fix themselves and solve this mystery, they're going to be arrested as accessories for murder.

[26:50] What's this crime of murder?

[26:51] Well, we find out that one of the little kids from Simon's class has fallen to her death.

[26:56] It would be tasteless to just show a kid's body lying on the sidewalk while characters walked around talking about it, right?

[27:02] Let's go ahead.

[27:02] Let's do it.

[27:03] So, they do.

[27:04] And that kid is lying there for a long time.

[27:06] And there's little number markers on it, like you would put for, like, bullet casings at a murder scene.

[27:11] And I was like, what clues could these possibly be marking?

[27:16] Like, the places where her teeth fell?

[27:18] Oh, wow.

Stuart Wellington

[27:19] Oh, God.

[27:22] They fell out before she fell, Dan.

[27:24] She's a kid.

[27:25] She's a kid.

Elliott Kalan

[27:26] She was on the way down, and she was like, Tooth Fairy, save me.

[27:29] So, she was getting her loose teeth out just so Tooth Fairy could swoop in and save her.

[27:35] This is the only currency I have.

[27:37] I'm a child.

[27:38] There are these two detectives who are talking about the case, and they're like big, beefy guys with mustaches.

[27:42] They don't look alike enough to be twins, but they could definitely be brothers.

[27:46] And one of them says the classic line, I'm sick of murder.

[27:48] But they're on the case, I guess.

Stuart Wellington

[27:50] You think those two actors, every time they see like a Sonic commercial, they're like, that should have been us.

Elliott Kalan

[27:55] That should have been us.

[27:56] We could do that.

[27:57] Also, when they listen to car talk on the radio, anything where there's two guys, you know, they figure that should be there.

[28:02] But, yeah, I'm sick of murder is such a funny line to me.

[28:06] It's just like, what's that line in Plan 9?

[28:09] Something about like aliens or something like that.

[28:11] Can't stand them or something like that.

[28:13] Anyway, so now the movie falls, and this, I'm not going to do everything in detail.

[28:17] This movie falls into a rhythm of Team Simon goes from one location to another, frantically doing nothing.

[28:23] Like just kind of frantically getting somewhere and then just talking.

[28:26] And each of them takes a turn having an incredibly simplistic breakthrough where a phrase or an object suddenly reminds them of a repressed memory that caused their specific trauma.

[28:37] And as soon as they know about it, they're cured and their personal addiction goes away.

[28:41] Simon, meanwhile, does nothing, says nothing.

[28:45] Sometimes I forgot he was in the movie while these characters were having their breakthroughs.

Dan McCoy

[28:49] I would like to say, you know, like I have been blessed with a very easy life.

[28:56] But a propensity toward depression.

[28:59] And I would say that it is a falsehood that understanding why your brain works a certain way allows you to immediately drop that behavior.

[29:11] It is helpful, don't get me wrong.

[29:13] But you need to work after recognizing and like turn yourself around.

Elliott Kalan

[29:19] Going back to my Temple of Doom reference earlier, it's as if they said, Dr. Jones, you just took poison.

[29:24] And he goes, oh, well, now I know what's killing me.

[29:26] Thank you.

[29:26] I don't need the antidote anymore.

[29:28] Now they don't need the antidote.

[29:29] I can just walk away because I know it's poison that's inside me.

Dan McCoy

[29:31] And I think we should like obviously we should return to this.

[29:33] But just to clarify, like what you were saying, like the gang is basically on the run with their teacher because everyone thinks their teacher killed this child.

[29:44] And I guess and I guess they're like sticking with him because of these magic books that, you know, are a pretty good indication that maybe they should hang out with this guy.

Elliott Kalan

[29:54] I mean, if a magic book tells you to do something, either it's the right thing to do or it is very much the wrong thing to do.

[29:59] Yeah.

[29:59] Depending on the book.

[30:00] If that book is if it's bound in human skin, do not listen to that book.

[30:04] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[30:04] If it's if it's a death note, don't read.

[30:06] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[30:07] But Elliot's right.

[30:08] They do a whole lot of nothing.

[30:09] But the kind of general idea, I think, is like they're trying to find some some some something on Dr.

[30:15] Craze X to prove that Simon is innocent, that Craze X is behind everything.

Elliott Kalan

[30:20] And along the way, things will happen like the gang member Scorpio will accidentally catch some terrorists and have a breakthrough that he's violent because he was he was verbally abused by his father.

[30:31] And then it's over.

[30:32] He's fine.

[30:33] It's OK.

Stuart Wellington

[30:33] It's going to it's going to put him on the path to justice.

[30:36] Yes.

[30:37] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[30:37] He basically becomes he basically becomes a vigilante.

[30:39] He's like, I should only fight bad people, which is not a good lesson.

Stuart Wellington

[30:43] Yeah.

[30:43] That's what Curtis Lee will.

[30:44] That's what happened to him before he became a guardian angel.

Dan McCoy

[30:47] Yeah.

[30:48] It was not an anti violence message.

[30:50] It's just a pro violence against the right people message.

[30:52] Can you explain this terrorism thing to me?

[30:54] Because like so I guarantee you I can't, but I'll try.

[30:58] I must have missed a scene because suddenly they're in like the back of this truck.

[31:03] And I assume that this truck was driven by one of them.

[31:05] But no, apparently they, I guess, got into the truck of a couple of terrorists who had like bombs in the back.

[31:11] And then like Scorpio or Scorpion or whatever his name is.

[31:15] His name's Scorpio.

[31:17] Scorpio is like, screw this.

[31:18] I'm not going to get chased by the cops.

[31:20] And he goes through a door to, I guess, the front of the truck.

[31:24] To the cab of the truck.

[31:25] And I assume like beats up the people driving the truck because there's a hard cut then to the truck being stopped by the side of the road.

[31:33] Yep.

[31:33] And the police having been and everyone's in a crowd and they're not being arrested under suspicion of anything, even though they're in this terrorism truck.

[31:40] The police just take their word that they caught these bombers.

[31:44] Did I get this correct?

Elliott Kalan

[31:45] Yes, you're exactly right.

[31:46] And I had the exact same confusion.

[31:48] At first I thought that they had stolen a truck or had someone owned a truck.

[31:53] Since we know Simon Conjurer had a truck earlier.

[31:55] Maybe this is another one of his truck fleet.

[31:57] But no, apparently they must have either, as they were running out of the school, been kidnapped by terrorists in a scene that we were not blessed enough to see.

[32:04] Or they just jumped into a passing truck to get away.

[32:08] That truck happened to have terrorists in it.

[32:10] And that information is given to us after the fact when the truck has already been pulled over.

[32:14] I mean, they're being chased by the police.

[32:16] And Scorpio goes up to do something in the front seat.

[32:19] In the cab, yeah.

[32:19] And the next thing we know, the police are saying, well, you caught those terrorists and the truck is full of C4.

[32:24] There's a reward for you, Mr. Scorpio.

[32:27] You'll be getting that reward from, what, the mayor?

[32:30] And it is, I have the exact same thing.

Stuart Wellington

[32:32] By the way.

[32:33] Based on later in the movie when awards are meted out, I'm assuming he would just go to the local bodega where they have to fork over piles of cash to him.

[32:40] That's how the FBI's most wanted list works.

Elliott Kalan

[32:42] Yeah, if you get the award, they give you like a chit or a coupon that you bring to a bodega and they just give you $1 million.

Stuart Wellington

[32:46] That's why you always see Dog the Bounty Hunter hanging out in bodegas.

Elliott Kalan

[32:50] I mean, it's one of the two reasons.

[32:51] He also loves Slim Jims.

Dan McCoy

[32:53] Yeah, I feel like this bears a little more examination when it actually comes up in the plot.

[32:57] But in general, I want to say that this movie about sort of self-actualization and getting rid of your emotional scars also seems really concerned with money.

[33:08] Because there's this part where he gets a reward and there's bets.

[33:12] And at the end, Conjurer really cleans up on all these bets that have been made throughout the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[33:19] And that everyone in the group wins the lottery, too.

[33:21] Exactly.

[33:22] It's very strange.

[33:24] Well, there's only two lessons that we really learned from Simon Conjurer.

[33:26] And we have to read them on blackboards in the back of his room.

[33:30] And the first one we see, it says E equals MC squared.

[33:33] Enlightenment equals mind control.

[33:35] Which we'll find out maybe what his strategy is.

[33:39] And at the very end, we see that behind the blackboard, it says belief over justice equals magic.

[33:45] Which is, I've been trying to puzzle out what that means.

[33:48] And I don't understand.

[33:51] So, I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[33:53] How do you divide belief by justice, guys?

Elliott Kalan

[33:56] And what that has to do with magic, I'm not sure.

[33:59] Because I like magic.

[34:00] I've seen magic perform many times.

[34:02] And there's a certain amount of belief.

[34:04] Like, you have to say to yourself, for this trick, I'm going to believe that there's some special thing going on.

[34:09] And it's not just the magician distracting me while he throws the card away.

[34:12] But I don't know how justice factors into it.

Stuart Wellington

[34:14] And that card better not be a land.

[34:15] Because you're going to need that to bring other cards in.

Elliott Kalan

[34:18] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[34:19] Sure.

[34:19] Or an energy.

[34:20] If I'm going to want to do my GX attack once per game.

[34:23] So, I wonder if maybe it's a sly little statement of like, hey, justice doesn't exist.

[34:31] You can believe in it.

[34:32] But that's magical thinking.

[34:33] There's no justice in this world.

[34:34] But the movie seems to be telling us that there's nothing but coincidental justice in the grand plan of the world.

[34:39] If we harness.

[34:40] Anyway, the philosophy of the movie doesn't make sense.

[34:42] So, anyway.

[34:42] Our heroes are, they eventually end up at Craze X's apartment.

[34:46] I'm glad we went through the truck stuff.

[34:47] I was going to skip it eventually.

[34:49] Originally.

[34:50] But I'm glad we went through it.

[34:51] And Craze X's apartment, again, I want you guys to tell me to describe it.

[34:54] Is it like, it's like a Batman villain's apartment, right?

[34:56] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[34:58] Yeah.

[34:58] Instead of a giant coin, there's a giant penis that hides a gun.

[35:01] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[35:01] And they say it's, I couldn't tell if it was like the Lost Library of Alexandria.

[35:08] Or somehow it's supposed to be the Lost Library of Alexandria.

Elliott Kalan

[35:11] It's not clear.

[35:12] But his apartment is full of ancient artifacts and a very cold Hannibal-esque kitchen.

[35:17] And also what is a room that is either a complete replica of the Library of Alexandria or a time portal that takes you there.

[35:25] Because it's stocked with all the books.

Stuart Wellington

[35:27] And that's explained by a gambling addict, what, Plankhead or Platehead?

[35:31] Platehead.

[35:32] Who wears a crucifix around his neck that's so tight, I'm worried his head is just going to fall clean off.

Elliott Kalan

[35:41] Platehead.

[35:41] He got his name because he was an ambulance driver who fell out of an ambulance or something and had to put a plate in his head, which led to gambling.

[35:48] But anyway, I also want to remind people of what I mentioned earlier.

[35:50] There is a terrarium in the middle of the room with a pet snake in it with a big button that says like, you know, like edible delicacies or something like that.

[35:59] And if you push it, a squealing baby pig is shot out of a tube straight into the snake's mouth.

[36:05] I mean, what was the only moment in the movie where I was like, okay, movie, I didn't expect that.

[36:09] And that was pretty funny.

Dan McCoy

[36:12] Oh, there's a lot I didn't expect in the movie.

[36:14] But that was the only time it really worked.

[36:16] Although it doesn't come back in any way.

[36:19] No, never.

[36:20] There's no reason why this happens.

[36:22] I thought maybe, you know, there'd be a scene where it like just like there's a fight and it shoots out pigs at people.

[36:27] But no.

Stuart Wellington

[36:28] Dan, justify the existence of this, please.

[36:31] Yeah.

[36:31] You're rewriting the script.

[36:33] Chekhov's pig gun.

Elliott Kalan

[36:34] I mean, ironically, it's the one thing in the movie I feel like I can justify just on the basis of like, well, I never thought I'd see that in a movie.

[36:40] Yeah.

[36:42] So there's more miraculous breakthroughs because if you see a bicycle, it's going to remind you of how something bad happened with your family.

[36:51] Or if you see the ashtray that your uncle used to use when he told you you were ugly and that's why you became a male model who smokes and stuff like that.

Dan McCoy

[36:58] By the way, I got to just like take a pause to talk about the uncle who tells the kid that he's ugly.

[37:07] Because, you know, it's like, you know, like this little kid and they're in like, I don't know, like a tool shed or something like a shack.

[37:16] And this uncle looks like an old prospector type.

[37:20] He's like, you're never going to be anything, kid.

[37:23] You're ugly.

[37:24] And like he goes, as he's walking out, he just goes, you're ugly.

[37:27] And it all sounds like ADR done by someone who normally does voices for cartoons whenever this guy talks.

Elliott Kalan

[37:34] Yeah.

[37:34] And so then they eventually end up in the Library of Alexander room and Platehead goes on for a while about the great minds of antiquity.

[37:42] And this is when I was like, oh, this movie thinks that it is like kind of a lasagna or a layer cake of ideas that like there's this whimsical mystery comedy.

[37:51] And underneath that is this story of emotional growth, like a Celestine prophecy type thing, because underneath that are these big ideas that humanity has grappled with for millennia.

[38:00] Is there a God?

[38:01] Is there chance or is there meaning in the universe?

[38:04] But it really is none of those things.

[38:06] But like clearly the movie thinks it has more in its mind or else why have the character go on and on about the Library of Alexandria?

[38:11] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[38:12] It feels like it feels like when you're having a conversation with somebody that you just met and you're like just joking around.

[38:18] And then all of a sudden he starts getting the guy.

[38:20] It's always a guy.

[38:21] Starts getting super serious.

[38:22] And you're like, oh, no, let's keep this light.

[38:25] Let's keep this surface level, please.

[38:26] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[38:27] No.

[38:28] And the fool's errand that is trying to explain the particular feel of this movie.

[38:33] I also have a couple of touchstones.

[38:36] Some of it felt to me weirdly like Book of Henry, where there's this elaborate kind of magical plot that is dealing with issues that are far more sensitive than the movie is.

[38:49] And then it also kind of felt like this was all funded by some cult that you never heard of as a way to get people interested in their particular belief system.

Elliott Kalan

[39:02] I mean, if the movie ended with them all at the Church of Scientology, I would have been like, oh, OK, this makes sense.

[39:06] I get this now.

[39:08] Like now I understand what this is about.

[39:09] But it doesn't.

[39:10] It ends in an even more baffling way that makes no sense.

[39:14] But we'll get to that.

[39:16] So Simon finds hidden in one of Craze X's own books, which you got to give Craze X credit for this.

[39:21] He did not put his own books in the Library of Alexandria room, as far as I can tell, which shows the one thing, one restraint, one moment of restraint that Craze X or Jon Voight has.

Dan McCoy

[39:30] So you're imagining that he would just like go down the line and be like, oh, wait, what's the kite runner doing in here?

Elliott Kalan

[39:39] And finance for dummies.

[39:40] What was this doing in the Library of Alexandria?

[39:42] I mean, at a certain point, you just need bookshelf space.

[39:44] I mean, in my house, we try to separate by fiction and nonfiction into different shelves.

[39:47] But like, you know, you don't have the exact same number of fiction and nonfiction books.

[39:51] There's going to be some Lincoln books in the novels, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[39:53] Yeah.

[39:53] And I have to I have to separate my role playing manuals from my my comic books.

[39:58] And that's, you know, a pain in the ass.

Elliott Kalan

[39:59] Yeah.

[40:00] And Dan, I assume you have to you have to separate your 1970s playboys from your 1980s penthouses.

[40:06] Yeah.

[40:08] So and they're on a bookcase.

[40:10] That's the thing.

[40:10] You're out for display.

Dan McCoy

[40:11] I mean, you know, if you're not going to have pride about who you are, Elliot, then sure.

Elliott Kalan

[40:16] And I love that you went to that bookbinding place in Williams in Brooklyn.

[40:22] And you got them bound in leather editions that have the title of the magazine and the dates.

[40:27] And then on the back, you've actually written the centerfold names.

Dan McCoy

[40:30] Yeah.

[40:30] The weird thing is, after I did that, though, I glued all the pages together and carved out a spot for a flask.

[40:35] So it was a lot of work for that.

[40:38] Oh, boy.

Elliott Kalan

[40:38] But so Simon finds this in one of the books, the bracelet that belonged to the little girl who died.

[40:43] And then the class finds it on him and briefly suspects him.

[40:46] But he says, turn to the books.

[40:48] They turn to this book.

[40:49] And the book says something about how he took the bracelet and put it on his own person to test fate and the chaos of the universe to see if taking it got him into trouble.

[40:58] Anyway, whatever it means.

[40:59] It's nonsense and gobbledygook.

[41:01] It leads Chloe from Bratz to realize that Simon is a man in need of guidance.

[41:05] And hey, he needs them as much as they need him.

[41:08] Oh, yeah.

[41:09] Then she has a breakthrough about how her eating disorder stems from a time that she threw away her friend's Valentine's card.

[41:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[41:18] This one was arguably the least sensical justification for one of the problems they're seeking help with.

Elliott Kalan

[41:27] And she gets the longest explanation.

[41:29] And the more she talks, the less sense it makes.

Stuart Wellington

[41:31] Do you think the line that keeps being repeated, prophet without a god, is that referring to Simon Conjurer?

[41:39] Because initially, I assumed that it had something to do with the John prophets, the race of clone soldiers of the Earth Empire,

[41:47] who kind of worship the Earth Mothers as like a god, but not really.

[41:53] I mean, that's really not in their like mental programming.

Elliott Kalan

[41:55] No, I mean, I guess their only real god is comics.

[41:57] Conquest, right?

[41:58] It's the expansion of the empire of John prophet.

[42:01] Yeah, and they're doing their duty.

Stuart Wellington

[42:02] Yeah, that makes sense.

[42:03] Yeah, so it could be.

Elliott Kalan

[42:05] It could be the prophet without a god.

[42:06] I mean, again, you could think maybe Badrock becomes the god at the end since, you know, he awakens and is one of the, you know, tipping point moments.

[42:14] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[42:14] Or he and Troll converge and like create a new galaxy or something.

[42:20] But maybe it means old man prophet who, you know, created a race of free Johns to oppose the Earth Empire.

[42:27] I mean, I assume the movie's not saying that, but it might be.

Elliott Kalan

[42:31] I mean, considering the movie seems to have no either financial, corporate, or creative relationship to Brandon Graham's run on profit, the image comic, I don't know that they're actually based on each other.

Dan McCoy

[42:42] For a second, I thought maybe it was my book, P-R-O-F-I-T Without a God, which is just, you know, about how atheists can cash in.

[42:52] Oh, wow.

[42:52] Is that a how-to book?

[42:53] Yeah, it's like, you know, it's like a personal finance guide.

Elliott Kalan

[42:56] And I thought it was profit without a dog.

[42:59] I misheard it and misread it at first.

[43:00] Oh, wow.

[43:00] Which I thought was about how Moses lost his dog.

[43:04] It's a sad story.

[43:05] Wow.

[43:06] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[43:07] Well, I mean, you're wandering for 40 years.

[43:10] That dog's not going to stick with you the whole time.

Elliott Kalan

[43:12] Well, no.

[43:12] I mean, if he's a good dog, he will.

[43:14] But unfortunately, he was not a good dog and he ran off.

[43:16] Very sad story.

Stuart Wellington

[43:17] I'm pretty sure they're all good dogs.

Elliott Kalan

[43:19] I mean, if they all go to heaven, I guess by tautology definition, they must all be good dogs.

[43:23] Or else heaven has no boundaries.

[43:26] So that's when the detectives break into Crazax's apartment without a warrant to find clues.

[43:31] Everyone hides.

[43:32] Then Crazax comes in and the detectives hide.

[43:35] And Crazax looks for the dead girl's locket because in an earlier scene that I didn't mention about,

[43:38] Dean Elkwood implies to Crazax that she knows he's a murderer, leading him to have what I thought was a heart attack.

[43:43] But I guess it was just a panic attack.

[43:46] The locket isn't there.

[43:47] We know Simon Conjurer has it.

[43:48] But Crazax, in the Library of Alexandria room, does find Simon's book.

[43:53] He goes on for a while with a kind of goofy, paranoid monologue about the book and about whether he's going to read it or not because it might be a trap.

[44:00] He calls Simon the R-word at one point, which seemed, again, not okay.

[44:04] And he decides he'll read it at random to see what information he can find.

[44:09] And he chooses the sentence by spitting the chocolate in his mouth up into the air.

[44:12] And it spins around a bunch of times and then splats on a page.

[44:15] And he's like, that's the page I'll read.

[44:17] And he reads a scene that is set up as if it's the climax of the movie.

[44:22] But it's something that it seems like almost like he is having a fugue state and going into an alternate version of this movie.

[44:30] And he's having a rooftop confrontation with Simon.

[44:34] And Crazax has apparently kidnapped the Dean.

[44:36] And Simon and him, they've known each other since they were kids.

[44:39] Crazax says, you shot me in the side.

[44:41] And Simon says, you killed my wife.

[44:42] And it's like, when did any of this happen?

[44:44] It's not really clear if the wife they're talking about is the Dean or not.

[44:47] Apparently they both have been chasing.

Stuart Wellington

[44:48] It's like when you start a role-playing game and all the players have much more interesting backstories than the adventure you're actually playing.

Elliott Kalan

[44:54] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[44:56] They've both been chasing proof of the existence of God.

[44:59] And Crazax has decided there isn't one.

[45:00] And Crazax admits to Simon, yeah, I killed her because there's nothing worth living about in this world and to frame you.

[45:07] And he takes the girl's locket from Simon at gunpoint.

[45:10] Then he pulls a lever, which reveals a plank in the roof.

[45:14] And he takes out a pirate saber or a cutlass.

[45:17] And he forces Simon to walk it at sword point.

[45:19] And he pushes Simon off.

[45:20] And then Simon falls for a long time.

[45:24] Cut back to the apartment.

[45:25] Crazax slurps the chocolate off the book.

[45:27] Like he's just licking and slurping the chocolate off.

[45:29] And then while he's doing that Team Simon run out, having also seen in their minds what Crazax was just reading and imagining in his mind.

[45:37] So they know all the information that Crazax had in his mind.

[45:41] And Crazax...

Dan McCoy

[45:42] At this point, the listener to the podcast is, surely Elliot is just engaged on another flight of fancy improv as he is so keen on doing.

[45:51] But all of this is accurate to the film Deadly Lessons, a.k.a. what is it?

[45:56] The something of Simon Conjurer?

[45:58] I forget the alternate title.

[45:59] The legend.

[46:00] The legend, yeah.

[46:01] So, sorry for the break-in.

[46:03] But I just needed to reassure them that they have not come untethered.

Elliott Kalan

[46:07] No, no.

[46:08] Only we and the movie have.

[46:10] But it's one of those moments where, like, it's almost like the movie was like, how are we going to communicate that they know all this information now?

[46:17] They just saw what was in his head at that moment.

[46:20] And they're like, hey, it was like we could see it in our heads, too.

[46:23] They run out.

[46:24] That's when Crazax, of course, goes over to a nude statue with a huge penis, rubs the penis a bunch of times, then lifts it up to a place where there's a gun hidden, and then he runs off himself.

[46:35] And it is a...

[46:37] The movie, from this point on, it's like at that point, when we saw that rooftop thing, the movie broke.

[46:43] And at this point, it is no longer even following the pattern of a real story anymore.

[46:47] Like, up to that point, you could be like, okay, I get what they're doing.

[46:50] They're kind of going on this journey, and they're each having their moments, and I get it.

[46:54] Simon is a man looking for answers, too.

[46:55] He doesn't have all the answers.

[46:57] From this point on, it's not even really clear what's actually happening in the movie.

[47:01] They go to Dean Elkwood's house because they know from the vision they had of what Crazax read in the book, which, again, is like...

[47:08] It's not like Crazax said, I'm going to go kidnap the dean.

[47:11] He read in a book a scene where he mentions kidnapping a dean, and they assume that that's his plan.

[47:18] So the heroes go to Dean Elkwood's house, where she is having a sexy nude shower under an indoor waterfall.

[47:23] And how long does this shower go for, would you guys estimate?

Stuart Wellington

[47:26] Dan, I think Dan said not long enough in his text message.

Dan McCoy

[47:29] It goes on for quite some time.

[47:31] We did gloss over the fact that when you say our heroes go there, Simon goes there as well, who, last we saw, fell off a building.

Elliott Kalan

[47:40] No, no, Dan, but that was, he fell off a building in Crazax's mind in the scene from the book.

[47:46] Craz, that, none of that scene was actually happening.

[47:49] That was all what Crazax was reading in the book.

[47:51] So Simon's still with our heroes.

Dan McCoy

[47:52] But then, but wait, there's a flashback that explains how he survived falling later on.

[47:58] But that is just another scene.

Elliott Kalan

[48:00] Nope, that's just another scene in the book.

[48:02] It is, it's as if the, it's as if the book is a what if story about this movie at this point.

[48:09] Oh, I see.

Dan McCoy

[48:10] I thought we saw what, I thought we were literally seeing what happened and the movie didn't explain why Simon was still alive until a little later in the movie.

[48:19] Thinking that like we were just going to accept that he fell off a building and was okay.

[48:24] That is very possible.

Elliott Kalan

[48:26] You know what?

[48:26] I was going to push back and say, no, that's not what happened.

[48:28] But honestly, who am I to question the meaning of Deadly Lessons, Simon Conjurer?

[48:33] That could be what happened.

Dan McCoy

[48:35] But let's, okay, so.

Elliott Kalan

[48:36] Where was I when Simon Conjurer created the Leviathan?

[48:38] I wasn't there.

Dan McCoy

[48:40] Simon Conjurer comes in and starts talking to the Dean, like, you know, trying to get her to come with him.

[48:46] And she is.

Stuart Wellington

[48:47] Now this set, this bathroom with a waterfall.

[48:51] Now was it a bathroom or?

[48:53] It seems like it's a greenhouse where she takes showers.

[48:56] Yeah, she used to be showering at a fountain.

[48:58] I would imagine my, like, my girlfriend would have when I was, like, 12 years old.

[49:03] I'd be like, I'm going to date a girl with a waterfall for a bathroom.

[49:08] Which, you know, I'm only 12 years old.

[49:10] I have no concept of the upkeep that a waterfall greenhouse room is going to be.

[49:15] Like, it's such a pain in the ass.

[49:17] Oh, yeah.

[49:17] You've got butterflies all over the place.

[49:20] You have Jim Lee-style obscuring fog covering up all the good parts.

Elliott Kalan

[49:26] It really, the upkeep is expensive for all that stuff.

[49:28] That's why you've got to have a Dean's salary if you're going to afford that.

[49:31] But it is, it is a, it's a magical, mystical room.

[49:33] Yeah, Simon comes in and is like, we've got to get you to safety.

[49:36] And she, no, she must have sex with him right then and there.

[49:39] Yeah.

[49:39] And they talk about, so they used to be married or they're still married and they're estranged.

[49:44] They were in a committed relationship.

[49:48] And even though they're both totally into each other still, for some reason they were not.

[49:52] I mean, it's a huge conflict of interest for her to be married to one of the professors at her college or possibly elementary school.

Dan McCoy

[49:59] And in much the way that this movie feels like kind of a less poisonous Neil Breen movie with money,

[50:08] like this feels like the scene in the movie where the guy who's in charge of the movie is like,

[50:12] okay, I'm going to be fondled by this naked woman in the shower.

[50:18] And I felt even worse for this woman than I do the Neil Breen woman.

[50:22] Because in the Neil Breen, like in like Fateful Findings, like she's not nude.

[50:27] So at least the actress won that argument on set.

[50:31] I can only assume.

[50:32] Whereas here, it's like, no, no, no, no, no.

[50:36] It's very important to the story that we have you naked in the shower at this point.

Elliott Kalan

[50:40] It's also, and at a certain point, the obscuring objects just stop obscuring.

[50:44] And it's weird because this movie is like, the tone of this movie is so strange.

Stuart Wellington

[50:49] That's when you have to put up your own obscuring objects

[50:52] so that you don't have to see anything, Elliot.

[50:53] Like hands, fingers, a book, create fog or something in your room.

[50:58] Just like Jim Lee would want me to.

Elliott Kalan

[50:59] Yeah, yeah.

[51:00] Just rub chicken oil all over the screen so it gets all blurry.

Stuart Wellington

[51:03] Oh, like Ridley Scott shoots action scenes.

Elliott Kalan

[51:06] Because the tone of this movie, sometimes it feels like it's supposed to be like

[51:11] lighthearted wonderment and sometimes supposed to be goofy.

[51:14] But then it's hard to have a lighthearted, silly scene in a movie with a naked shower sex scene

[51:22] that is interrupted by a man with a gun ordering Simon to strip and then kidnapping a naked Dean Elkwood.

[51:29] Like the tone is all over, you know.

Dan McCoy

[51:31] Well, I said while watching, like, because up until that point, the closest thing this has to, like,

[51:36] a tone in what one might call mainstream typical media is, like, maybe like a tween fantasy

[51:47] where, like, all these, like, mostly younger people are in the support group and learning to cope

[51:52] and, like, crazy things are happening.

[51:55] But then, like, the nude scene comes in and you're like,

[51:58] oh, wait, this is an R-rated movie, which makes it even more baffling.

[52:01] Like, who did they think they were making it for, you know?

[52:04] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[52:05] It's a strange, I guess what I'm saying is I'm like, the, it fails to combine nudity and lighthearted whimsy

[52:12] in the successful way of a great bikini off-road adventure or something like that.

[52:17] You know, it fails, it is striving for and failing to reach what, what kind of, like, B-grade softcore porn does.

[52:23] Yes.

[52:24] Almost naturally.

[52:25] But anyway, and then we get to the scene where the two detectives have taken the book with chocolate on it

[52:31] to a scientist so he can use x-ray lasers to read the words covered by the chocolate.

[52:35] And that's where it describes Simon surviving his fall off the building by landing in a mattress truck that Rebel is also in.

Stuart Wellington

[52:40] And while they're, while they're getting the book.

[52:42] So maybe it was all a flashback, now that I think about it.

[52:44] And they're getting that analyzed.

[52:46] They point out that the, like, laser tech has, like, a big scar on the back of his head

[52:52] and the two detectives make note of it, but I don't think it ever comes up again.

Elliott Kalan

[52:57] No, I assumed it was supposed to be a joke that he had mishandled the laser at some point.

Stuart Wellington

[53:02] Oh, that would make sense.

Dan McCoy

[53:05] I mean, it's hilarious is why it makes sense.

[53:07] And it keys into the theme of the movie that everyone has some sort of marker on their body.

[53:12] Yeah.

[53:13] And also it's not how lasers work.

[53:14] I mean, we're all covered in scars.

Elliott Kalan

[53:15] Yeah.

[53:15] I mean, the worst, I mean, but the worst scars, the ones you can't see.

[53:19] Oh, wow.

[53:20] Cool.

[53:20] Actually, you know what?

[53:20] No, the worst scar is from Lion King.

[53:23] He kills his brother.

[53:25] That's a pretty good one.

[53:26] And takes over the lions and he leaves his nephew to die.

[53:29] That's the worst scar, I think.

[53:30] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[53:30] And Hulk's son is scar, right?

[53:34] Doesn't he, like, invade a planet or something?

[53:36] That's pretty bad.

Elliott Kalan

[53:37] Well, Hulk, okay, no.

[53:38] Hulk gets sent to a planet by the Illuminati, our heroes who are acting like bad guys because

[53:44] it was during that period when everyone was acting out of character.

[53:47] And the Hulk is called the green scar when he's on this planet.

[53:51] And then his son, I think, is Sakaar, maybe?

[53:53] Uh-huh.

[53:54] Maybe it's just Scar.

[53:54] You following this, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[53:56] Uh, I was just sitting around thinking about the scene in Jaws where they compare scars.

[54:02] Oh, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[54:02] What I like about this and talking about the Prophet comic is it's revealing that the fiction

[54:06] that I like is not that much clearer than The Deadly Lessons, The Legend of Simon Conjurer.

[54:11] Like, it's all pretty nonsensical.

[54:13] Yeah.

[54:14] But, uh, so they all have more breakthroughs.

[54:16] They run, they go back to class.

[54:18] There's a plate head is late because he bought some lottery tickets.

[54:22] And they realize Rebel is missing.

[54:25] Where's Rebel?

[54:25] What happened to him?

[54:26] And to be honest, Rebel has fallen into the background of the movie for quite a while.

[54:29] He was set up to be a major character and he's just kind of, like, not there that much.

[54:33] The class can...

[54:33] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[54:34] Also, Rebel narrates the movie at, like, I would say, maybe four times.

[54:40] Like, I'd forgotten that he narrated at the beginning at all until it, like, kicked in again,

[54:46] like, halfway through the movie.

[54:48] Yeah.

[54:48] And I thought, wait, this movie has narration?

[54:52] Unlike, say...

[54:52] It's very erratic.

Elliott Kalan

[54:53] Unlike, and, I mean, erratic and erotic if you're talking about that shower scene.

[54:58] So, unlike The Princess Bride where you get the feeling that Peter Falk is narrating the

[55:02] whole movie, but if you actually go through and look at it, he only appears a handful of

[55:06] times throughout the course of it because it's such a well-told movie.

[55:09] In this one, you instantly forget that Rebel is narrating and eventually that he's a character

[55:14] in the movie.

[55:14] So, they're like, where's Rebel?

[55:16] Where's Rebel?

[55:16] Well, let's consult the book.

[55:17] The book has all the answers, so they've already fallen to that level of a new religion

[55:22] where they can't do anything without consulting their magic book.

[55:25] And the book, it's not giving them any answers.

[55:28] In fact, the pages are all blank.

[55:30] And Simon reveals to them, they'll go like, what's this all about?

[55:34] What's this?

[55:34] For a long time.

[55:35] For like three or four minutes.

[55:36] And then Simon says, you were all having a mass hallucination.

[55:40] You imagined that that text was there.

[55:41] It never existed.

[55:42] And you were filling it in with the information that you knew from your own lives and the glimpses

[55:46] you had of your classmates' lives and the natural coincidences of the universe filled in the rest.

[55:52] But what does it matter?

[55:53] Because you're cured now.

[55:55] It's an explanation that doesn't really make sense.

[55:57] We don't have time to go into it because Crazax and the police burst in.

[56:01] And Simon is arrested.

[56:02] Then the two detectives burst in.

[56:04] And they go, hey, we have proof that Crazax did it.

[56:07] We have an eyewitness.

[56:08] Dan, which character from the movie is going to come back and be the eyewitness?

[56:14] Which character that we have seen before in the film, his existence foreshadowed,

[56:19] and us being like, oh, he saw it, is going to come back.

Dan McCoy

[56:21] Wait, wait.

[56:22] Did we see them before?

[56:23] I know who the character is, right?

[56:25] It's Rebel's dad, right?

Elliott Kalan

[56:26] What I'm getting to, Dan, which I was hoping you'd catch on to,

[56:29] is that we have never seen this character before.

[56:31] And in fact, we were told earlier in the film that he was dead and did not exist anymore.

Dan McCoy

[56:35] I am so confused by this movie that you can't play this game with me

[56:40] because I'll just be like, oh, I missed something.

[56:42] But yeah, no, he was supposed to be dead and he shows up.

Elliott Kalan

[56:44] That's how you set up a twist, guys.

[56:47] Is you give the audience no information whatsoever to expect anything to happen.

Dan McCoy

[56:52] This movie that was confusing at the beginning, you know, in the grand tradition of a lot of movies with twists,

[57:00] actually got more confusing when the twist was revealed because at this point I'm like, okay, wait, wait, wait.

[57:07] So all the Krasak stuff about this child murder actually happened and wasn't part of their hallucination?

Elliott Kalan

[57:14] Yes, it makes no sense.

[57:16] So at this point you're left to wonder what is real and what is not real in this movie.

[57:19] So the detectives say we have an eyewitness, this wealthy philanthropist who's actually Rebel's dad.

[57:24] He saw Krasak's push the girl off the roof from his helicopter,

[57:29] which happened to be landing at a nearby building at the same time.

Stuart Wellington

[57:32] And so we see a flashback of a helicopter footage beaming a spotlight on Jon Voight who is carrying a child around and then chucks it off a building.

[57:45] Yeah.

[57:45] And it's so funny.

[57:46] And crazy.

Dan McCoy

[57:47] I mean, like, this is like, well, it's funny.

[57:50] Yeah.

[57:50] Number one, because Jon Voight is like, but who could have seen me do this?

[57:54] Like maybe the spotlight helicopter.

[57:56] But number two, like, you think this movie is going to be like gentle and be like, oh, that child murder was just part of the thing.

[58:02] Don't worry.

[58:03] We didn't put child murder in this lighthearted thing.

[58:05] No, no.

[58:05] This extended scene of him carrying this kicking child who, blessedly, like the one thing that makes it okay, sort of, is that she clearly is not scared.

[58:16] Like if you look at the actress's face, she's having a ball kicking her legs in Jon Voight's aesthetic arms.

[58:20] She's probably Jon Voight's granddaughter or something.

[58:23] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[58:25] But yeah, you expect the movie to be like, don't worry.

[58:28] None of that bad stuff happened.

[58:29] Oh, no, no, no.

[58:29] A kid did die.

[58:30] A kid was murdered.

[58:31] Jon Voight's character is a murderer.

[58:33] And so Jon Voight, and Jon Voight goes, how could you tell it was me?

[58:36] I was wearing a hat and coat.

[58:37] Oops.

[58:38] And it's like, yep, he's a genius.

[58:40] All right.

[58:40] So he gets arrested.

[58:42] Everyone's happy.

[58:43] They've instantly forgotten that just earlier that night, a child was killed.

[58:48] Simon and Dean Elkwood, they kiss.

[58:50] And the eyewitness is like, yeah, I'm Rebel's dad.

[58:52] Turns out I'm rich and Rebel is a wonderful child.

[58:56] And so Rebel's angry with the world, right?

[58:58] No.

[58:59] But Rebel did tell me that he crashed your truck.

[59:01] So I'm going to pay you.

[59:02] I'm going to give you this check for it.

[59:04] And it's for a lot of money.

[59:05] It's like, wait.

[59:06] So hold on a second.

[59:07] Which of these things happen?

[59:09] And all the classmates are like, we did it.

[59:11] We're cured.

[59:11] And they leave.

[59:11] And Simon opens a letter, signed friend, giving him instructions on how to hypnotize the class to get them to breakthroughs.

[59:18] And Simon goes, Simon looks at the letter as if he has never seen it before.

[59:21] Like he is baffled by it.

[59:22] And he goes, Rebel?

[59:24] And then, this is when, wait.

[59:26] And Dan, I just mentioned before you said anything.

[59:28] This is when the movie collapses under its own weight.

[59:30] But Dan, what are you going to say?

Dan McCoy

[59:31] Well, I mean, like, okay.

[59:32] So there's these nested series of revelations.

[59:35] And each one tries to address the last one.

[59:39] But it only raises more questions.

[59:41] Because at this point, you're like, oh, okay.

[59:43] I guess Simon Conjurer is.

[59:46] Simon Conjurer.

[59:47] Conjurer, sorry.

[59:48] The word Conjurer.

[59:51] Yes.

[59:51] He is also basically going under the same treatment as his own, like, students.

[59:58] Like, some force is compelling him to do what he does.

[1:00:03] In part to heal him as well as heal these students.

[1:00:07] So surely when that is revealed, then things will be explained.

[1:00:11] But not really, as we'll see.

[1:00:13] That's all I wanted to say.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:14] Yeah.

[1:00:14] So Simon, I guess what we're supposed to take from it is that he hypnotized himself and the class based on these instructions.

[1:00:20] Given to him by we don't know.

[1:00:22] Because Rebel, we go to, now to the narration.

[1:00:26] And we see that Rebel is actually Roberto, a clean cut kid who's just palling around with the old people at the hospital and helping his mom the nurse with the patients there.

[1:00:35] He's such a lovely boy.

[1:00:36] And he talks about how, like, he made up the Rebel persona.

[1:00:39] He dreamed the whole Rebel persona.

[1:00:40] Which I don't know what that means.

[1:00:42] I don't understand how that sentence applies to what we've seen.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:44] He was, like, saying that, like, he doesn't know what was real, but he's putting it together now.

[1:00:49] I think he's, like, coming out of this, like, his own sort of haze of being this alter ego.

[1:00:55] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:56] Now, and here's one of those moments, too, where you're, like, you almost, like, for a moment I was, like, oh, is this, like, identity?

[1:01:01] And this was all happening in Roberto's mind.

[1:01:03] And he had to, like, pull himself together.

[1:01:06] But no, because then he goes in and his mother is talking to a sick woman who's very distraught.

[1:01:11] And his mother calms the woman down by talking her into floating around the room, flying like the kids from the classroom, which somehow heals her completely.

[1:01:19] And it's one of those things, too, where you're, like, okay, so his mom has the ability to talk people into surviving life-threatening illnesses.

[1:01:26] Why does she not use this more often?

[1:01:28] Like, why should I teach them?

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:29] Why does the woman so much that a different nurse walks into the room and is shocked that the, like, put, you know, taken aback by how healthy this person now is?

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:38] Yeah, so.

[1:01:39] Yeah.

[1:01:40] And it's like, did she learn that from Simon, or was he?

Dan McCoy

[1:01:43] Well, no, it seems like maybe she is.

[1:01:47] So, at first, I'm like, okay, are there, like, a bunch of people like Simon Conjurer in the world?

[1:01:55] Mutants, let's call them.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:56] Yeah, they've super-powered people.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:57] Mutants.

[1:01:58] These super-powered mutants who are bound by impulse to help people, and maybe, like, one of those is now helping Simon Conjurer himself, who's also one of these magical people.

[1:02:14] Because at first, I'm like, oh, does he have any magic powers at all, as soon as I see this letter?

[1:02:18] But then you see him later on doing his same, like, tricks, floating kid tricks to a new group of kids.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:26] So, we seem to be, it seems like the movie is going to tell us, actually, this was all in Roberto's head.

[1:02:31] Either he lives in a magical, realist world, or actually, his mom is the one who has this power, this magic.

[1:02:38] But then, Roberto tells us that the class still gets together regularly to support each other and keep them away from their addictions, so they're real.

[1:02:45] And that Simon has gone back to teaching little kids how to fly, so he's real.

[1:02:50] And then, in jail, Crazax is writing a new novel, and the title of that novel?

[1:02:54] Prophet Without a God.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:56] So, Crazax was real?

[1:02:57] So, Roberto's like...

[1:02:59] And he wrote the book, I guess, maybe, is implied that told them how to do this?

[1:03:05] Like, that's the part that, like...

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:07] And he looks like he's in jail at the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

[1:03:11] Oh, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:12] His cellmate appears to be the man in the iron mask, based on the jail that he's in.

[1:03:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:16] Yeah.

[1:03:17] And during this end montage, we get the scene referenced before, where they all win the lottery, and they're down at the local bodega, and the bodega guy is, like, pulling stacks of money out from behind the counter.

[1:03:29] Yeah.

[1:03:30] As if that's how, you know, your money is awarded when you win a major lottery prize, and not just, like, $2.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:37] It's such a...

[1:03:38] I mean, it's a pretty nice bodega.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:41] They can afford to give the guy who wasn't behind the counter a name tag.

[1:03:45] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:45] They also say that Play It had won, like, $34 million or something and donated it all.

[1:03:50] But it's...

[1:03:50] So the movie is like, hey, they have a magic book, and they're all receiving breakthroughs.

[1:03:57] Actually, it's not a magic book.

[1:03:59] They were just hypnotized by Simon Conjurer.

[1:04:02] Actually, Simon Conjurer doesn't know who hypnotized them.

[1:04:04] Actually, it was all a dream Roberto had.

[1:04:06] Actually, everybody's real.

[1:04:07] It wasn't a dream.

[1:04:07] Forget about it.

[1:04:08] The movie, like, it's not even nested reveals.

[1:04:12] It's like they're throwing hot dogs at the wall reveals.

[1:04:15] Like, that's what it feels like, is it feels like you're watching a movie made by someone throwing just food at the wall and be like, that's the thing now.

[1:04:22] Oh, that's it.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:23] Yeah.

[1:04:23] No, I mean, with just, like, a tweak, it would be a sketch parodying twist endings.

[1:04:30] Like, just a little tweak.

[1:04:31] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:32] It is.

[1:04:33] It was great.

[1:04:34] It is a crazy thing, as you said, Dan, that part of the twist reveal is that much of it was not real, but the murderer was.

[1:04:42] Like, the actual crime was real.

[1:04:45] So that's Deadly Lessons.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:48] That is Deadly Lessons.

[1:04:49] Hope you were able to follow it.

[1:04:51] I mean, if you were able to follow it, write in.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:54] I want you to tell me what is going on at the end of this movie or even the middle of the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:58] And if you wrote the movie you can't write in.

[1:05:01] No.

[1:05:02] Well, maybe.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:05] You just got to write in that fancy dialogue style.

[1:05:09] So, Final Judgments.

[1:05:11] This is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie you kind of like.

[1:05:14] I'm going to say, guys, now, as I alluded to before, this movie has issues with its presentation of mental health and of therapy to help mental health.

[1:05:30] And there is a slur against a mental disability later in.

[1:05:39] So, there's stuff in it that if you're sensitive to that, by all means, I'm not saying run out and watch it.

[1:05:45] But if you are able to view it with the inherent ridiculousness that the whole movie projects.

[1:05:53] I mean, the thing is, this movie is too silly for me to get that offended by it.

[1:05:59] Just because it is like, I don't know, a child's story.

[1:06:03] Like, it's like writing like, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.

[1:06:09] And in a world where we have to watch, like, your Robocop remakes and your 10,000 BCEs, to encounter something this just, like, rambling and strange and have it also be a $30 million movie is just a special treat.

[1:06:30] So, I'm going to say it's a good, bad movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:33] Yeah, keeping all those caveats in mind, I would also say, good, bad movie.

[1:06:37] Just be ready to be a little upset by its portrayal of mental health and therapy.

[1:06:44] But then just sit back and get ready for Jon Voight to literally, like, put the scenery in a blender and then chug it down as, like, a scenery smoothie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:54] Yeah, at some points it felt like Jon Voight was auditioning to be in, like, the next Spy Kids movie or something.

[1:07:00] That's not a slam on Spy Kids, but I feel like they have, like, an arch quality to them.

[1:07:07] Yeah, no, I totally agree with you guys.

[1:07:09] It is fairly insensitive about how it portrays everything, but it also is made, it's also made poorly.

[1:07:17] But also it looks kind of expensive, but it also looks like crap.

[1:07:21] The music is hilariously bad.

[1:07:24] There's a, and it is, like, that perfect vanity project where the writer director has cast himself, like, it feels like the script probably describes Simon Conjurer as, like, a handsome, you know, like, a handsome man who looks much younger than his 50 years or something.

[1:07:41] And he, like, showed up with the script and he's like, I don't know, we're having a lot of trouble finding a Simon Conjurer.

[1:07:47] I mean, I guess I could do it.

[1:07:49] I mean, I know the script.

[1:07:51] And everyone's like, uh, do you want to do it, dude?

[1:07:54] Why is your hair so wet?

[1:07:56] And he, yeah, he's, there's even a scene where Simon Conjurer gets in a brief fight with Scorpio, the violent guy.

[1:08:05] And he grabs him and throws him across the room up against a wall and he just explains it away that he has taught himself martial arts.

[1:08:13] It's so great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:14] It's crazy.

[1:08:15] That was one of the moments where I'm like, oh, so he has powers now.

[1:08:19] Is that the?

Dan McCoy

[1:08:19] Yeah, he was throwing him like he was wearing an Iron Man suit or something.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:22] Now, one thing that we didn't mention, which I'll mention quickly before we finish, is that, so the writer, director, and star of the movie, his name is not in the credits.

[1:08:31] He actually took his name off the film and I only just learned in looking up stuff now while you guys were talking that at the end of the credits, I guess, is his explanation for that.

[1:08:40] So I'm just going to let the credits roll on my end over here and I'll let you know when that explanation comes up as to why his name is not on the film.

S4

[1:08:51] Hey, you like movies?

[1:08:53] What about coming up with movie ideas over the course of an hour?

[1:08:55] Because that's what we do every week on Story Break, a writer's room podcast where three Hollywood professionals have an hour to come up with a pitch for a movie or TV show based off of totally zany prompts.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:05] Like that time we reimagined Star Wars based on our phones autocomplete.

[1:09:08] Luke Skywalker is a family man and it's Star Wars, but it's a good idea.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:12] How about that time we broke the story of a bunch of Disney Channel original movies based solely on the title and the poster?

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:18] Okay, Sarah Highland is a 50-foot woman.

[1:09:19] Let's just go with it, guys.

S4

[1:09:20] Or the time we finally cracked the Adobe Photoshop feature film.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:23] Stamp tool is your Woody and then the auto film is the new Buzz Lightyear.

S4

[1:09:28] Join us as we have a good time imagining all the movies Hollywood is too cowardly to make.

[1:09:32] Story Break comes out every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

[1:09:35] I don't know why I'm using this voice now.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:38] Welcome back to Fireside Chat on KMAX.

S5

[1:09:41] With me in studio to take your calls is the dopest duo on the West Coast, Oliver Wong and Morgan Rhodes.

[1:09:48] Go ahead, caller.

S4

[1:09:49] Hey, I'm looking for a music podcast that's insightful and thoughtful, but like also helps me discover artists and albums that I've never heard of.

S5

[1:09:57] Yeah, man.

[1:09:58] Sounds like you need to listen to Heat Rocks every week.

[1:10:00] Myself and I'm Morgan Rhodes and my co-host here, Oliver Wong, talk to influential guests about a canonical album that has changed their lives.

S4

[1:10:09] Guests like Moby, Open Mic Eagle, talk about albums by Prince Joni Mitchell and so much more.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:15] Yo, what's that show called again?

S5

[1:10:17] Heat Rocks.

[1:10:18] Deep dives into hot records.

[1:10:20] Every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:23] A quick word from Squarespace, who is kind enough to sponsor our show.

[1:10:30] Squarespace can be used to create a beautiful website to turn your cool idea into a nice home on the internet, blog or publish content, sell products and services of all kinds and much, much more.

[1:10:45] And Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful, customizable templates created by world-class designers.

[1:10:51] Everything optimized for mobile right out of the box.

[1:10:54] A new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions.

[1:10:59] Free and secure hosting.

[1:11:01] Head to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial 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

[1:11:16] Hey, Dan, I was wondering if, by the way, I went through the credits and I couldn't find the thing that I read was there, but he did take his name off.

[1:11:21] Anyway, so Dan, I have a website, an idea that I was wondering if I could get help from Squarespace to make that.

[1:11:27] Do you think they'd be able to?

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:28] Probably.

[1:11:29] Always the first time.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:29] So, anyway, you've heard of Facebook.

[1:11:32] Well, this movie, it made me realize there's a bigger problem involving books.

[1:11:37] So that's why I'm creating fudgebook.com.

[1:11:39] Do your books have chocolate in them?

[1:11:41] Like, are the pages covered in chocolate?

[1:11:44] How are you going to find some of them?

[1:11:44] Ellie, you've been to Dan's house.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:45] You've seen what his books are like.

[1:11:47] They're covered in chocolate.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:48] They're covered in chocolate.

[1:11:49] So how are you going to find other people in the books covered with chocolate community to figure out how to remove that chocolate from the books?

[1:11:55] Or, if you prefer your books that way, how to get more chocolate on your books?

[1:11:59] That's where fudgebook.com comes in.

[1:12:01] Fudgebook is your place on the internet for the fudgebook community.

[1:12:04] That's people who either like having chocolate on their books or don't like having chocolate on their books but have chocolate on their books.

[1:12:09] Maybe you want to trade your chocolate-covered copy of Stranger in a Strange Land to another person who doesn't have chocolate on their copy of Stranger in a Strange Land but would prefer to have a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land with chocolate on it.

[1:12:21] Well, that's where fudgebook.com comes in.

[1:12:22] It's like social media.

[1:12:24] It's the most social media because it's around the three things people love most.

[1:12:28] One, books.

[1:12:29] Two, chocolate or the removal of said chocolate.

[1:12:32] And three, communication.

[1:12:34] So that's fudgebook.com.

[1:12:35] Dan, do you think Squarespace will be able to help me with that?

Dan McCoy

[1:12:38] Probably.

[1:12:39] I mean, if you pay them.

[1:12:43] I mean, that's how business works, guys.

[1:12:44] Let's not pretend that...

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:46] Yeah, yeah, let's not sugarcoat it.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:48] Yeah, it's an exchange of money for services.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:51] Okay, fair point, fair point.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:54] Hey, I believe that you both have Jumbotrons this week.

[1:12:57] Am I right or am I wrong?

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:58] Oh, yeah, and I am raring to go-go-go-go with my j-j-jumbotron.

[1:13:03] Happy birthday to a man who hates attention.

[1:13:07] He will no doubt feel equally thrilled and mortified by this spotlight immortalizing him in the annals of his favorite podcast's history.

[1:13:18] Even though he's wrong about Chaplin and will always fight about Batman, we still manage a happy union.

[1:13:27] Happy birthday, Scott.

[1:13:29] This message is for Scott Crider.

[1:13:33] And the message is from Billy Harrison.

[1:13:36] Happy birthday.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:38] Sweet and embarrassing.

[1:13:40] I will say, fighting about Batman, better than fighting Batman.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:43] That's true.

[1:13:44] He has trained his body into a weapon to beat up criminals.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:47] Yep, he is a...

[1:13:48] He is a...

[1:13:49] He is violence as a tool for mental health.

[1:13:52] Anyway, so there's another Jumbotron.

[1:13:55] It goes like this.

[1:13:56] Ever feel like there's too much pop culture out there?

[1:13:58] Have you wanted to become a Stanley Kubrick film expert, but instead settled for watching The Office for the fifth time while 2001 collects dust?

[1:14:04] The Monkey Off My Backlog podcast is here to help you exercise your pop culture demons.

[1:14:09] Join hosts Andy, Tessa, and Sam each week as they offer advice and talk about checking movies, TV, books, video games, and more off their lists.

[1:14:17] Join the conversation and start tackling your own lists today.

[1:14:20] Listen and subscribe to The Monkey Off My Backlog podcast.

[1:14:22] That's at Monkey Backlog on Twitter, on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:29] Oh, man.

[1:14:29] Yeah, I've been dying to get through...

[1:14:31] Get to that last season of Dexter.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:38] Okay.

[1:14:38] Okay, and there's two other things we'd like to highlight before we get out of the sponsors and advertising.

[1:14:43] What do you think happens?

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:44] Do you think Dexter gets murdered himself because he's a serial killer?

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:47] Dexter murders Santa Claus.

[1:14:49] Now he's Santa Claus, and he has to kill bad children while giving gifts to good children.

[1:14:54] God damn it.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:55] That, like, if that series had ended that way, like, it would shoot to number one.

[1:14:59] Don't, no spoilers.

[1:15:00] I mean, no spoilers.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:02] I just told you what happens, but no spoilers.

[1:15:05] Yeah, but you didn't do a very good job describing it, so it didn't spoil it for me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:09] Well, sorry, his dark passenger drives him to kill Santa Claus.

[1:15:12] Is that better?

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:13] Thank you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:15] And, uh, so, guys, hey, remember when we used to do Flophouse live shows where we'd go to someone's city,

[1:15:21] and then we'd do a show on a stage for them?

[1:15:23] Do I?

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:24] We'd fly on a plane, we'd stay in a hotel, maybe in the same room together, you know, who knows.

[1:15:29] Yeah, and most of the trip would be based around...

[1:15:31] We would eat hotel food.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:31] Most of the trip would be based around trying to figure out how much time we had to eat breakfast before we had to do our work.

[1:15:36] Oh, man.

[1:15:37] We got so mad about that.

[1:15:38] Remember that, guys?

Dan McCoy

[1:15:39] Mm-hmm.

[1:15:40] So, we're all a little bit of a lingerer, a breakfast lingerer, so...

[1:15:44] I like to take my time, get a second cup, third cup.

[1:15:46] Yeah, I know.

[1:15:46] I just...

[1:15:47] It's a whole day of work.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:50] What if we could bring that live show energy, without the anxiety about breakfast, straight to your home?

[1:15:55] We did it once, a couple months ago.

[1:15:57] We did our Howard the Duck live Zoom cast, and we're doing it again.

[1:16:02] October 24th, 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

[1:16:05] That's right.

[1:16:06] It's a Shocktober live Flophouse Zoom.

[1:16:09] And we're going to be watching The Exorcist 2, The Heretic.

[1:16:13] Now, it's going to be just like that Howard the Duck show.

[1:16:15] We're going to do presentations beforehand.

[1:16:17] We'll have some kind of charity that we're promoting and want people to donate for.

[1:16:21] And it's going to be right in your home.

[1:16:22] You don't have to go anywhere, which is great because now is a difficult time to go anywhere.

[1:16:27] So that's October 24th, one week before Halloween.

[1:16:30] So, you know, it's still going to be scary spooky times because November 1st, the spook time is over and it's on to turkey time.

[1:16:35] October 24th, 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

[1:16:38] The Exorcist 2, The Heretic.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:40] And don't worry if for some reason you don't want to watch us in the moment live, you know, with no safety belts, no harness, just raw dog in the show.

[1:16:52] It's pretty scary when we do it, actually.

[1:16:56] If you don't want to do that, we're going to archive it so you can watch it live.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:59] Yeah, it's going to be streaming through our YouTube page and it will stay on the YouTube page.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:03] Yeah, the only advantage, and I would say it's not nothing, is if you watch it live, maybe you can organize a group watch with other listeners.

[1:17:14] Or last time we didn't have the comments enabled because we were scared of meanies.

[1:17:21] You know, we didn't want any meanies dropping by.

[1:17:22] Sure.

[1:17:23] But we had...

[1:17:24] They're all blue and everything.

[1:17:26] We had the YouTube live chat on for our screenplay reading of The Boy Next Door and that went just fine, so we'll probably allow it this time around.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:35] Oh, they tricked us.

[1:17:37] Dan's going to be watching the feed the whole time.

[1:17:39] He's going to be losing his shit.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:42] And we'll...

[1:17:43] Last time we had questions from Twitter that we answered and we'll probably do that again or maybe we'll use the comments.

[1:17:49] I don't know.

[1:17:49] But that's going to be through the Flophouse YouTube page, October 24th, 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

[1:17:54] The Exorcist 2, The Heretic.

[1:17:55] A movie none of us have seen, but it's supposed to be not very good.

[1:18:01] I have another thing that I'd like to plug that's just for me.

[1:18:03] It has nothing to do with Stuart and Dan.

[1:18:04] That's that.

[1:18:05] Okay.

[1:18:05] As I've mentioned before on the podcast, September 29th, I have a children's book coming out, Sharko and Hippo.

[1:18:11] It's by me.

[1:18:12] It's by me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:12] It's by Andrea Tsurumi.

[1:18:14] It's kind of like the Marx Brothers.

[1:18:15] If one of the Marx Brothers was a hippo and the other was a shark.

[1:18:19] It's a fun story.

[1:18:21] It's a picture book for kids.

[1:18:22] And it's got a lot of jokes about words that sound like other words.

[1:18:26] So if that sounds like fun to you, and I bet it does, Sharko and Hippo.

[1:18:29] Pre-order it now or pick it up from, you know, your independent bookstore's website or other websites.

[1:18:34] Go for it.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:36] Stuart, do you have anything to plug?

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:38] Yeah, I own a couple of bars, Hinterland's and Minnie's Bar in Brooklyn.

[1:18:41] You should come by and grab something to go or sit in the patio, please.

[1:18:45] It's a tough time out here.

[1:18:47] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:49] Okay.

[1:18:50] Well, letters.

[1:18:52] We all get them from time to time.

[1:18:54] Sometimes.

[1:18:54] Or write them.

[1:18:55] Yeah.

[1:18:55] You know, like maybe you're George Washington writing Martha from the front.

[1:19:00] Or maybe you're writing us about something.

[1:19:02] Or writing her from the back.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:03] Who knows?

[1:19:04] He's into all sorts of stuff.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:07] Jesus Christ.

[1:19:08] Okay.

[1:19:08] Well, I'll just keep rolling.

[1:19:11] This first letter.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:11] Hey, you know, guys, it can be a tough time, but it's always a good time for letters.

[1:19:17] Sometimes you can feel real sad, but you can't feel sad about letters.

[1:19:23] Although now that I think of it, sometimes letters can have bad news and real sad dudes

[1:19:29] can have letters be sad.

[1:19:32] Yes.

[1:19:33] Can have letters be mad.

[1:19:35] Yes.

[1:19:35] Sometimes letters are just real bad.

[1:19:38] And your grammar falls apart when you're singing about letters.

[1:19:43] Oh, yeah.

[1:19:43] I thought I was ripping up.

[1:19:45] Oh, boy.

[1:19:46] That's the problem.

[1:19:47] You can never tell.

[1:19:48] Letters.

[1:19:48] Just a hot steaming pile of letters.

[1:19:51] Get them while they're fresh off the grill.

[1:19:53] Letters.

[1:19:54] Letters today.

[1:19:55] Oh, now it's starting to warm up again.

[1:19:56] What's the special today?

[1:19:58] Letters.

[1:19:58] A hot bowl of letters for you.

[1:20:00] You've been driving cross country delivering toilet paper to people who need it because the

[1:20:05] store shelves are sometimes out.

[1:20:07] And now you get to sit down and have yourself a big hot platter of letters.

[1:20:12] It's like a TV dinner, but all of the things have letters in them.

[1:20:17] Where there would be green corn, there's letters.

[1:20:20] Where there would be meatloaf, there's letters.

[1:20:22] I feel like you missed the off ramp.

[1:20:24] It's letters.

[1:20:25] It's letters.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:26] You've got to keep going.

[1:20:27] Yeah, and you're sitting in the back of the lift and you're like, oh, where are we going?

[1:20:31] Am I going to have to pay for this?

[1:20:33] All right.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:33] So this first one's from late.

[1:20:35] A big plate of letters for you.

[1:20:38] Oh, God.

[1:20:39] This is from Nate, last name redacted.

[1:20:42] Uh-huh.

[1:20:43] Hi, peaches.

[1:20:44] Nathan Summers.

[1:20:45] I'm a long time tabletop.

[1:20:48] I'm a long time tabletop RPG player and wanted to pick your brain about D and D.

[1:20:54] movies.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:55] What's the best class?

[1:20:57] That's what he's going to ask.

[1:20:58] He's like, Dan, what's your elite combo?

[1:21:00] What's the best stats you ever rolled?

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:02] Well, clearly the best class is Simon Conjurer's night class where you fix all of your problems

[1:21:06] in one night.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:07] Oh, if I could only go to a Simon Conjurer.

[1:21:09] Nate is asking, there have been tons of successful high fantasy movies over the past few decades,

[1:21:14] but every single attempt at a D and D movie has failed.

[1:21:18] Why do you think the past D and D movies have failed?

[1:21:21] And what do you think a successful D and D movie would look like?

[1:21:26] Thanks for all the laughs.

[1:21:27] Nate, last name redacted.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:30] Now, I have thoughts on this, but I'd like to hear Stuart's thoughts first, because I feel

[1:21:33] like he's got more of a dog in this fight.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:35] Yeah.

[1:21:35] So, well, I think a couple things factor into this, and I think it partly is tied in also

[1:21:43] with why it's so hard to make a successful movie based on a video game.

[1:21:50] But I think with D and D, part of the, and this is going to be undercut a little bit by something

[1:21:56] else, but I think a big part of it is that part of the joy of games like D and D is that

[1:22:03] the people that are the audience are also playing in it, and they're creating their own story,

[1:22:09] and they're invested in it.

[1:22:12] And I think that's a big part of it.

[1:22:15] Like, I feel like the story that you make with your friends and your D and D group, you're

[1:22:19] going to have a bigger personal stake, and you're going to like it more.

[1:22:23] That's undercut a little bit by the success of actual play podcasts like the one we make.

[1:22:28] But I think part of the joy of those is also the fact that everybody involved is very passionate

[1:22:34] about it, and yada, yada, yada.

[1:22:37] And the market is often smaller.

[1:22:39] I don't know.

[1:22:40] I think that's a big part of it, though.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:42] I think that's definitely part of it.

[1:22:43] And another part I would say is that D and D is essentially a world for you to create a

[1:22:49] story and create your own characters.

[1:22:50] There's no characters that preexist necessarily, and there's no story.

[1:22:54] So if you're adapting it into a movie, it's like the thing that you're working with is

[1:22:58] not necessarily the most important thing that an audience that's not already into D and

[1:23:03] D is looking for.

[1:23:04] Like, when people go to a movie, the setting is something that they enjoy, but they're invested

[1:23:08] in the story and the characters, and D and D doesn't really come with story and characters.

[1:23:14] It's kind of like...

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:14] Yeah, except for like Lord Soth or something.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:16] Yeah, well, it's like if you're making like a SimCity movie, you'd be like...

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:19] Or visit Duarden or something.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:21] Yeah.

[1:23:21] If you're making a SimCity movie, you'd be like, okay, I guess it's a movie about building

[1:23:25] a city.

[1:23:25] Or like Elminster Sage or something.

[1:23:28] God.

[1:23:29] You're right.

[1:23:30] I forgot.

[1:23:30] D and D has a rich cast of characters.

[1:23:33] Like real household names.

[1:23:35] But none of those are characters that...

[1:23:36] Well, I mean, you don't have to have household names to make a movie.

[1:23:38] Like Guardians of the Galaxy was a huge hit.

[1:23:40] Yeah.

[1:23:40] And nobody knew who those characters were except me, because I loved Abnett Lanning's run

[1:23:43] on the title, which was kind of the main influence on the movie.

[1:23:45] But it's like a...

[1:23:47] If you're making a SimCity game, you'd be like, I guess it's about building a city,

[1:23:50] but I need to create the characters and the plot and what's going on.

[1:23:53] And they were able to...

[1:23:54] It's like...

[1:23:55] Isn't it like Marv in SinCity, though?

[1:23:58] Not SinCity.

[1:23:59] Stuart.

[1:24:00] SimCity.

[1:24:01] The game.

[1:24:01] Come on, Stu.

[1:24:02] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:02] Well, I mean...

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:03] I'm sorry.

[1:24:04] I'm sorry.

[1:24:05] I would say just two things.

[1:24:06] One is that I think the only people who have really been able to pull off something like

[1:24:09] that are the people behind the Lego movies, because they were taking something that was

[1:24:15] just blocks.

[1:24:17] It's not...

[1:24:17] There's no story to Legos, you know?

[1:24:19] And there's no characters to Legos, except I know there's that astronaut character and all

[1:24:23] that stuff.

[1:24:24] My son will run in and be like, actually, there's a lot of Lego characters.

[1:24:26] But they had to create, what is the tone of this movie?

[1:24:30] What is the characters?

[1:24:30] What are the stories?

[1:24:31] What's the...

[1:24:32] Because all they have to work off of was Legos are a thing you can build with.

[1:24:35] But...

[1:24:35] Yeah.

[1:24:36] And so you'd need people who really, like, can fill in that stuff.

[1:24:40] And if they're going to fill in all that, they might as well just make a movie that's

[1:24:43] not beholden to the Dungeons & Dragons license.

[1:24:47] I would say, though, I feel like the Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon show was fairly

[1:24:51] successful because they kind of translated the idea Stuart's talking about, where it was a

[1:24:56] group of people, a group of friends who were like, had to live out the roles in the game,

[1:25:01] you know?

[1:25:02] Yeah.

[1:25:02] And so it had a little bit of that feeling.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:05] Yet again, by not needing to take a breath and breathing through the gills on his neck,

[1:25:11] Elliot has scooped me.

[1:25:12] Because I was going to say that I think that the closest thing to his success was that.

[1:25:15] Because for that very reason, it was the idea that these adventurers were sucked into this

[1:25:21] game and, you know, like, had to take on these characteristics of these classes that existed.

[1:25:28] Because if you remove the interactivity, what are you left with?

[1:25:31] You're left with a world that was heavily influenced by Tolkien.

[1:25:35] And we already have good Tolkien movies with the story added, not just the world.

[1:25:41] And some songs.

[1:25:42] Yeah.

[1:25:43] Some great tunes that I assume Stu has on his iPod shuffle for runs at the gym.

[1:25:53] But yeah, I agree with everything people have said.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:55] I mean, I also said, I don't think any of the Dungeons and Dragons things have had owlbears in them.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:59] Yep.

[1:26:00] That's actually a good point.

[1:26:01] I mean, and also, like, like, Kieran Gillen's comic Die is basically kind of like a more modern take on that kind of a, the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.

[1:26:11] Like, you know, gamers sucked into the game.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:16] Moving on to a letter from Nadja.

[1:26:20] Last name with her.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:21] We forgot to answer the question on how to make a successful version of that.

[1:26:24] And obviously, that is Conan the Destroyer.

[1:26:28] The second of the Conan movies is the closest thing to an actual D&D session in, you know, in game form.

[1:26:35] Or in movie form.

[1:26:37] Nadja.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:38] It seems like the Dungeons and Dragons stuff, they're, like, they're, uh, it also, there's kind of like a, they're, like, running away from the things that Dungeons and Dragons fans like about Dungeons and Dragons.

[1:26:50] Yeah.

[1:26:50] Because it's like, we got to make a Dungeons and Dragons movie, but we don't want it to be, like, a nerdy movie.

[1:26:55] Yeah.

[1:26:55] Whereas, like, you just steer into it, like.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:57] It's like superhero comics for a while, or superhero movies for a while, where they're like, okay, so we're going to do a superhero movie, but we're going to make them look cool.

[1:27:06] And you're like, uh, they already look cool.

[1:27:08] I like the way they look at the comic book.

[1:27:10] Just make them look like that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:11] Well, when they finally realize, like, oh, Spider-Man has an amazing costume, we don't have to make changes too much to it, you know.

[1:27:17] Or, like, Captain America, there's a reason Captain America's been wearing the same clothes for 80 years.

[1:27:21] But, the, uh.

[1:27:23] Yeah, it's like the lottery.

[1:27:25] But then that can go crazy when you have Han Solo wearing the same clothes for 40 years, and it's like, I think he would change the vest at some point.

[1:27:31] But, the, uh, there's, like, a feeling of, um.

[1:27:35] Like, with the Lord of the Rings movies, that, like, one of the reasons they're so successful is because they really go for it on the level of the Lord of the Rings story.

[1:27:41] Yeah.

[1:27:42] And it's not like, okay, this is kind of a nerdy story, so let's put in some, let's undercut it with gags to bring other people.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:49] Yeah, like, I know the cave troll showed up.

[1:27:51] Cue the music.

[1:27:52] Cut my life in two pieces.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:56] So, instead it's like, oh, we love this story.

[1:27:58] Like, let's do this story to the hilt, you know.

[1:28:01] Yeah.

[1:28:01] That's what you do.

[1:28:02] You do a Dungeons & Dragons movie that's super taking Dungeons & Dragons seriously, and you hire Stuart to write it.

[1:28:08] Uh-huh.

[1:28:09] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:11] Yeah, me and my producing partner, Joe Manganiello.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:14] And you have all those household name beloved character stories mentioning, like Zazapoff and Digimon and Hieronymus Gorman.

[1:28:27] Abe Vigoda.

[1:28:28] Yeah, Abe Vigoda.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:31] So, this next letter goes like this.

[1:28:33] It's customary for me to tell a bedtime story to my three kids, ages three, five, and nine each night, and I tend to just make it up as I go instead of actually reading something.

[1:28:45] I try to come up with funny-sounding names for characters and couldn't resist using Rocket Crocodile.

[1:28:51] My kids keep demanding, tell us more about the crocodile, Daddy.

[1:28:54] So, R.C. has become the main protagonist recently.

[1:28:58] To keep it kid-friendly, I've decided to omit all the Gina Gershon stuff that Elliot stipulated in Rocket's origin story.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:04] As of last night's episode...

[1:29:06] What about the Carla Gugino stuff?

Dan McCoy

[1:29:08] I only assumed that it's still in there, based on the letter of the law.

[1:29:13] As of last night's episode, Rocket Crocodile has found himself trying to escape the pursuit of the villainous Sith donkey, Darth Mule, as he navigates a Star Wars-adjacent galaxy.

[1:29:27] And that's from Nadja, last name withheld.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:31] Now that Star Wars is under the same umbrella as Marvel, I guess Darth Mule would be part of the Spider-Ham universe, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:38] Yep. I hope they have that joke in the sequel.

[1:29:41] Yeah.

[1:29:42] I love that letter. I think that's super sweet, and you will be hearing from my lawyers.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:48] To tell you that you think it's super sweet.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:52] We'd like to ask the court to serve a writ of super sweetness.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:00] That rivals a 16th birthday party for its super sweetness.

[1:30:05] We're serving a writ of habeas awe.

[1:30:10] So, now we are on to the last segment where we recommend movies that we enjoyed for non-silly reasons.

[1:30:18] Let's say it that way.

[1:30:21] I'm going to say that I was curious about the new Charlie's Angels movie, directed by Elizabeth Banks, and starring Kristen Stewart and some other people who are less famous, so I've forgotten who they are.

[1:30:36] Apologies to them. They did a great job.

[1:30:37] There was no way for you to find out that information.

[1:30:39] No way at all.

[1:30:42] I thought it was a lot of fun.

[1:30:43] It was a movie that combined some genuine hangout comedy with much better and more clearly choreographed action movies than I was expecting out of a Charlie's Angels reboot.

[1:31:00] And Kristen Stewart is just a delight in the movie.

[1:31:04] She seems to be having so much fun.

[1:31:07] She gets saddled with so many, like, mopey roles sometimes that I think she was just relishing being this kind of offbeat action hero.

[1:31:17] And it got a lot more shit than I think it should have by far.

[1:31:23] I think mostly from maybe male movie critics who are like, this is, like, too overt in its feminist messaging or something.

[1:31:31] And I think that they are just not realizing how much of male-targeted action movies are male wish fulfillment and not examining that, like, you know, maybe you're not realizing that it's fine.

[1:31:46] It's fine for us both to get some of that stuff.

[1:31:51] But I just really enjoyed it.

[1:31:54] A lot more fun kind of action blockbuster than I thought it would be.

[1:31:57] Charlie's Angels.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:00] I'm going to recommend a movie I don't think has been recommended by us before.

[1:32:05] I'm going to recommend the recent movie Palm Springs starring Andy Samberg and I think I'm going to pronounce this right.

[1:32:13] Kristen Milioti?

[1:32:15] I don't know.

[1:32:16] Kristen Milioti, I think.

[1:32:18] Milioti.

[1:32:18] Okay, yeah.

[1:32:19] Yeah, it's, I feel like a very apt movie to watch at a time like this.

[1:32:24] Kind of a movie about being stuck in one place and being stuck in, you know, a repetitive cycle.

[1:32:31] It's a comedy, but it's also kind of dark.

[1:32:34] I don't want to go too much into the plot details because I think that's part of the fun of the movie.

[1:32:40] But everybody is very winning and it, I feel like it's a movie that deserves an Academy Award for casting characters based on their eyebrows matching up so that you can tell they're all related.

[1:32:56] I mean, if you're going to cast Peter Gallagher in a movie, you're like, everyone else has to also have great eyebrows.

[1:33:02] And speaking of Academy Awards, it also features Lifetime Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

[1:33:08] J.K. Simmons is in the movie as well.

[1:33:11] He is not playing his iconic role of J. Jonah Jameson, the role that won him that award.

[1:33:16] Nope.

[1:33:17] In my apartment.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:19] Not the movie that won him the award and also the supporting actor is not a lifetime award.

[1:33:24] It's awarded for a specific role.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:27] I mean, yeah, but you can win that award every year, right?

[1:33:30] For the same role, even if you're not in a movie based on with that character, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:33] Not how the award works, no.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:35] I mean, but I could watch that movie this year, so I don't see why he couldn't win it, Elliot.

[1:33:42] That's a good point.

[1:33:43] That's a good point.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:43] I mean, Elliot, from the past, you know, since the 80s or whenever that movie came out, Best Movie Named After a Type of Animal has gone to the bear over and over again.

[1:33:52] So I don't know what you're talking about.

[1:33:54] It's not an award.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:55] Not an award and also the movie won zero Academy Awards.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:58] I love the way that Elliot just stared at me blankly after I said that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:04] Yeah, so Palm Springs, the movie.

[1:34:07] Watch it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:09] I'm going to recommend a movie that I don't know if Stuart has seen, but if he hasn't seen, I would specifically recommend it to him because I think he would like it a lot.

[1:34:18] This is a movie from 1988 from New Zealand called The Navigator, a medieval odyssey.

[1:34:23] Oh, wow.

[1:34:24] It's currently streaming on Canopy.

[1:34:26] And there is an English village in the 14th century that is worried that the Black Death will soon be visiting them.

[1:34:33] And they decide that the only way to keep the plague away from their village is for a mission to set up a cross for them to take some – was it copper?

[1:34:47] Take copper to a forge to make a cross and put it up at a church in a big town.

[1:34:51] And so this group of guys being guided by a young boy who has visions and seems to be able to tell them where to go, go on this mission.

[1:35:01] And what happens to them, I don't want to say, even though every description of the movie kind of gives it away.

[1:35:05] But it goes into what could have turned into a ridiculous or goofy plot, but which actually felt – stuck with the tone that it starts with in the beginning, which is kind of like medieval austerity.

[1:35:19] So anyway, it's a medieval movie with a big twist in the middle that I won't tell you what it is, but it's The Navigator, a medieval odyssey.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:26] Okay, I'll check it out.

[1:35:27] That sounds awesome.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:28] You'll find out what the twist is instantly because it's in all the descriptions on anywhere you see about it.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:33] Before we get into our goodbyes, as Small Timber comes to an end, I want to thank in particular for this episode Peter Kaplowski, who is one of the guys who brought us to Toronto for a live show and is a film programmer who alerted us to the existence of Deadly Lessons.

[1:35:56] So I want to give credit where that's due.

[1:35:58] I want to thank our editor, Jordan Cowling, who does a great job for us every week.

[1:36:06] Oh, yeah.

[1:36:06] But as I said –

Stuart Wellington

[1:36:07] Jordan, to celebrate, can you just loop in that gavel sound with the Elliot nodding clip again?

[1:36:13] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:14] It's not really a celebratory sound, a gavel.

Stuart Wellington

[1:36:17] If you're hearing that, it's probably bad news.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:20] Well, it's a gavel that has an air horn attached to it.

[1:36:22] So every time you hear it –

Stuart Wellington

[1:36:23] Jordan, also edit out all of Elliot and Dan's bullshit just there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:26] I mean, I'm going to be left with nothing, Stuart.

[1:36:28] That's all that I do.

[1:36:30] Jordan really liked – the last mini that we did, it was a quick turnaround mini, and I could not stick a final bit that I was trying to do.

[1:36:39] So she had a lot of editing to figure out.

[1:36:42] So thank you very much, Jordan, for doing that.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:44] But as I said, Small Timber is coming to an end, but cry not, because Shocktober is just around the corner.

[1:36:50] And I wanted to tease that for all the people who are asking on Twitter and Instagram, we announced that one of our guests for Shocktober will be Gillian Flynn.

[1:37:01] It is, in fact, that Gillian Flynn of Gone Girl and Sharp Objects and Dark Places and other stuff.

[1:37:10] I could not be more excited.

[1:37:12] I know we could all not be more excited.

[1:37:14] So that's a tease.

[1:37:16] Unless something unforeseen happens, she'll be on to –

[1:37:20] I mean, I can't guarantee –

[1:37:21] A tease, Dan, I don't think –

[1:37:22] A tease followed by a threat.

[1:37:24] You don't need to hedge against acts of God, Dan.

[1:37:27] The world may, you know.

[1:37:30] Every morning, every night, I'm like, I can't guarantee that the sun will rise next morning.

[1:37:36] Hey, you know what, Dan?

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:38] If there's a catastrophe of some kind, I don't think people's first thought would be,

[1:37:43] well, Dan said there'd be another flophouse, so I'm going to hold him to it.

[1:37:46] While I'm running across the wasteland from these oil-hunting biker gangs because civilization has collapsed,

[1:37:55] I'm not going to hold a special piece of anger just for Dan because he told me there'd be a flophouse no matter what.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:00] You know, I used to think that it was ridiculous in Mad Max that, you know, this gasoline short society was so based around cars.

[1:38:08] But now that I've seen how dumb people are during the actual apocalypse that's going on, I'm like, okay, sure, it checks out.

[1:38:15] But none of you, Listers.

[1:38:17] You're all doing great.

[1:38:21] National Treasures, every one of you.

[1:38:24] This has been Dan, the Hedging Bets.

[1:38:28] Mr. Hedge, they call me.

[1:38:30] Tweet about us.

[1:38:31] Put us on iTunes.

[1:38:33] Well, don't put us on iTunes.

[1:38:34] We're already there.

[1:38:35] Just rate us.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:35] No, review us on iTunes.

[1:38:37] Review us on iTunes.

[1:38:38] Feel free to tweet about us.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:39] Positively, despite my recent babble.

[1:38:42] Please make it positive.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:43] Help us spread the word about this goofy show.

[1:38:46] Although I don't know why, after what we've been hearing lately.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:50] But on that note, for the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:38:54] I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:56] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:38:58] Bye.

[1:39:00] On this episode, we discuss deadly lessons.

[1:39:15] Featuring me, Tom Brokaw.

[1:39:18] Just kidding.

[1:39:19] It's Elliot.

[1:39:19] I'm back.

[1:39:20] Maximumfun.org

S5

[1:39:28] Comedy and culture.

[1:39:30] Artist owned.

[1:39:31] Audience supported.

Ep. #323 - Deadly Lessons

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