Ep. #318 - Hudson Hawk, w/ Roman Mars

Dan McCoy

[0:00] On this episode we discuss Hudson Hawk.

Elliott Kalan

[0:03] The story of Sully Sullenberger and the miracle on the Hudson.

[0:07] The miracle of course being the creation of the movie Hudson Hawk.

[0:11] Directed by Sully Sullenberger.

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

Dan McCoy

[0:47] Oh, hey Dan. It's me, Stuart.

Elliott Kalan

[0:51] Uh-huh. Okay, thanks.

[0:52] And your last name also?

[0:54] Wellington.

[0:55] Good. Okay, you're coming along great, Stuart, and I'm glad we put all that practice in beforehand.

[1:00] And I'm Stuart's, you know, miracle worker style tutor, Elliot Kalin.

[1:03] But today we've got some exciting guesting with us today because joining us...

[1:09] Great.

Dan McCoy

[1:10] We've got one of our biggest, most blockbuster guests and we're really, you know, out of the gate.

[1:15] We're stumbling.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16] It's like when a horse is just like ready to go and then they open the gate and all four of the horse's legs immediately fall off.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23] Yeah, it's because somebody pushed the little button underneath the horse and it just collapsed.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26] Yeah, exactly, yeah.

[1:28] Our guest...

[1:28] Oh, because it's one of those toy horses with like the rubber man legs?

[1:32] Okay, sure.

[1:33] Our guest tonight...

[1:35] Tonight.

[1:35] When are you listening to this?

[1:36] Probably during the early morning hours.

[1:38] Our guest is Roman Mars, host of 99% Invisible.

[1:42] That's right.

[1:43] One of the top podcasters in podcasting and someone I personally am very excited to have on

[1:48] because 99% Invisible is one of my favorite shows and was one of the first podcasts I listened to where I was like,

[1:54] oh, this is what a podcast is supposed to be like.

Dan McCoy

[1:58] Not just three jackasses gabbing.

Elliott Kalan

[2:00] Yeah, not just three gabbing jacks, but like a real show where I'm like learning things and feeling things.

[2:06] So, Roman, thank you so much for joining us.

S4

[2:07] Oh, it is my pleasure.

[2:08] I've been a listener for a very long time, so it's a real privilege to be here.

[2:13] There's my professionalism coming out right there.

[2:14] Oh, no, that's just Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[2:16] Dan is contagious and he connects all of us.

Stuart Wellington

[2:18] Somebody clapped him so they edit that part out.

Elliott Kalan

[2:21] What I like also is we now have, I think, the most extreme poles of voice tone ever on the show

[2:26] with Roman's kind of like deep, dulcet, you know, kind of, you know, beautiful sound

[2:31] and my kind of like what if a praying mantis could talk kind of voice, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[2:37] And I sound like an orc that's been hit on the head.

Elliott Kalan

[2:41] Only because you're like, oh, it looks like meat's on the menu.

[2:43] Wait, what's a menu?

[2:45] How do I, an orc in Middle Earth, know what a menu is?

Stuart Wellington

[2:47] Yeah, suddenly I've achieved consciousness and I'm going to wander off to start, I don't

[2:52] know, painting horns and ants in the woods.

Dan McCoy

[2:55] And Dan, what does your voice sound like?

[2:58] I mean, I'm sort of a Roman that's more of an Eeyore, I think.

[3:04] Oh, wow.

[3:04] Okay.

[3:04] Maybe.

[3:05] Okay.

[3:05] A joyless Roman.

[3:06] I can see that.

Elliott Kalan

[3:09] Speaking of joyless Romans, we're going to talk about Hudson Hawk today.

[3:14] But for sure, I believe you had something you wanted to talk about.

Stuart Wellington

[3:18] Yeah.

[3:19] I want to bring up the fact this episode, in addition to having a blockbuster guest, is happening

[3:23] at a blockbuster time for the podcast.

[3:26] Not the world.

[3:26] The world's bad right now.

[3:28] But the podcast is, we're in the middle of the MaxFun drive.

[3:32] This is one of those chill, cool, low pressure MaxFun drives that take like two extra weeks

[3:37] to do.

[3:39] And that's when we're going to talk about why, during this time, we talk about why our

[3:42] show is important.

[3:43] And we encourage you, if you like the show, to support it with your dollars.

[3:47] And part of what makes the show, part of what makes the show great, and also MaxFun in

[3:52] general, is that the, it's, MaxFun is supported almost exclusively by listeners like you.

[4:00] Listeners who reach deep into their pockets and support, support the show with their hard

[4:05] earned dollars.

[4:06] And that keeps us from being controlled by corporate interests.

[4:12] How am I doing, guys?

S4

[4:14] I think you're doing great.

[4:15] I would like to step in.

[4:15] Here's what you got to do.

[4:16] You got to bring the call to action up front.

[4:18] So you got to tell people what to do to join, like right now is the time you're going to

[4:21] need to do this.

Stuart Wellington

[4:22] Okay.

[4:23] Okay.

[4:23] No, that's, that's all, all, this is all good input.

[4:27] So what you should do, you're listening to this and you're like, man, I want to be one

[4:31] of those badasses that Stuart is talking about right now.

[4:34] So I will go to maximumfund.org slash join and select a level that is, that I am comfortable

[4:42] with based on my, I don't know, financial stability.

[4:45] Because right now things are tough, but you know what isn't tough?

[4:48] Supporting things that are great, like our show or, you know, okay.

[4:52] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[4:54] You bring up the pandemic and if you're anything like I am, maybe you're a little lonely during

[5:00] the pandemic and if you're anything like I am, maybe you labor under the delusion that

[5:05] your favorite podcasters are your ear buddies.

[5:08] And so it's, it's great to hang out with your ear buddies.

[5:12] Uh, and I hope that, you know, during this hard time, we provide at least some semblance

[5:17] of a service to listeners and, uh, we're happy that you're still listening to us and, uh, you

[5:23] know, we have, we're happy that you help us produce these things.

S4

[5:27] As a listener and donor, I would, I can testify to that, that that is absolutely the truth.

[5:32] You do give comfort in these times.

[5:33] And especially when you're talking about the times of a pandemic, but there's so few things

[5:38] you can control.

[5:39] And especially when you talk about advertising bottoming out in the world, this is something

[5:44] you can control because maximum fund is supported by you, the listener.

[5:49] So you can just donate at maximumfund.org slash join.

[5:53] And you can control this moment.

[5:55] You can control this thing.

[5:56] You can control this.

[5:57] This is the one thing you can reach in and give a little bit of what you have to like support

[6:03] a whole network of people creating art that don't have to depend on the whims of advertisers.

Elliott Kalan

[6:11] I feel like we just got so totally schooled.

[6:13] We're just getting, this is like one of those ads for a masterclass YouTube and they're like,

[6:17] meet your new teacher, Roman Mars.

[6:19] He's going to teach you how to podcast.

Dan McCoy

[6:20] Yeah, it's like Don Draper just walked into the room.

[6:24] Don Draper just pulled out like a slide, a slide tray and schooled us.

[6:30] And we didn't even know.

Stuart Wellington

[6:30] I just turned my phone on and started recording what Roman was saying so I could remember

[6:35] it for the future.

Elliott Kalan

[6:38] Yeah.

[6:39] So maximumfund.org slash join is what we want to say, right?

[6:43] Yep.

[6:43] That's what you want to say.

[6:44] Okay, guys.

[6:45] Yeah.

[6:45] And now that we've gotten that out of the way, the audience is rushing to their computers

[6:48] or perhaps the web browser on their phone to become a new or upgraded Maximum Fund member.

[6:58] Guys, let's talk about a little movie that Roman decided to bring into our lives.

[7:02] This is a movie that I have heard about for years and years and years, but I had never

[7:06] actually watched it.

[7:07] And so I'm curious, Mr. Mars, why this one in particular?

S4

[7:13] Well, I think it's held this sort of bit of fascination for me because when it came

[7:18] out, I was, I think I was around 15 or 16 when it came out.

[7:21] And this is an age where I was prepared to hate anything and everything that existed in

[7:25] popular culture.

[7:26] And I saw it on video and I knew people hated this movie.

[7:31] And so I was ready to kind of join in on it.

[7:33] But this is the first time I felt like I knew that people were hating it for the wrong reasons

[7:38] because they hated it because they wanted it to be Die Hard 3.

[7:42] And, but it wasn't trying to be Die Hard 3.

[7:44] It was trying to be an R-rated live action Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

[7:47] And I felt like this was, it was totally missed on the public.

[7:50] And so I was fascinated by it.

[7:52] And I kind of just sort of always thought about it afterward.

Dan McCoy

[7:55] Yeah.

[7:56] And the advertising didn't do it any favors because they were trying to sell it as an action

[8:00] movie, which I can't blame them because I don't know how they would have sold it as the movie

[8:04] it is.

Elliott Kalan

[8:05] Because they could sell it as a comedy, I guess.

[8:06] I mean, I'm looking at the poster right now and it says in big letters, catch the excitement,

[8:09] catch the adventure, catch the hawk.

[8:11] And then Bruce Willis.

[8:12] And then Hudson Hawk is in kind of the second smallest letters on the poster.

[8:16] But Hawk is in huge letters.

[8:18] So it's almost like they want people to just think it's called Hawk or maybe catch the hawk.

Dan McCoy

[8:22] To piggyback off that Hawk the Slayer madness.

[8:26] And Lady Hawk.

[8:27] In the nation.

Elliott Kalan

[8:27] And Lady Hawk.

[8:28] Lady Hawk and Hawk the Slayer had burned up the screens five to ten years before this.

[8:33] And they wanted to jump on that Hawk wagon.

[8:36] Hawkwind had, you know, of course by 1991 was long replaced by Motorhead in the hearts of

[8:42] Lemmy fans everywhere.

[8:43] But, you know, they thought, hey, maybe we can get some Hawkwind fans in there.

[8:46] And let's not forget, someone must like Hawkman.

[8:49] Somebody somewhere must like that character.

[8:51] Hudson Hawk is going to get it.

[8:53] Yeah, I was reading some of the reviews from the time this movie came out.

[8:56] And I was baffled at how much the reviews kind of didn't seem to understand what was going

[9:00] on in the movie, like what the movie was doing.

[9:02] But maybe, maybe it's because, and I have a theory about this, maybe it's because at the

[9:08] time there were a lot of action comedies.

[9:11] And so it was hard for them to look.

[9:13] And looking at it back now, I'm like, oh, this is like, I mean, this is like if someone

[9:18] watched Tangling Cash when it came out, they're like, ugh, another one of these.

[9:22] And it doesn't make sense.

[9:23] And it's dumb.

[9:24] Forget it.

[9:24] But looking at it now, you're like, this is a refreshing slice of madness that I have.

[9:29] That is nothing like the things that are being made right now.

Dan McCoy

[9:31] Well, and I think that when I first tried to watch this, I knew it was a bad movie.

[9:35] And I was trying to watch it for being a bad movie or not a bad movie necessarily.

[9:40] We'll get to that.

[9:41] But like a critical and commercial flop.

[9:44] And even as like viewing ironically, it confounded me.

[9:49] And now I feel like I've cast away all preconceived notions.

[9:54] And I can see that it's almost like more in the spirit of like, I don't know, like our

[9:58] man Flint or something like a, like a super campy.

[10:01] Like globetrotting adventure.

[10:04] And I don't know.

[10:06] But like, I do want to say, let's not pretend that everything about this movie is the product

[10:12] of calculation.

[10:13] Because I, my friend, I'll shout out my friend, Kevin Cecil, who sent me a introduction that

[10:20] he did to this movie when he presented it.

[10:23] Yeah.

[10:23] I think it was either at the Nighthawk or the Alamo.

[10:25] I can't recall.

[10:26] But, but this movie, like the character of Hudson Hawk is based on a song that like Bruce

[10:33] Willis, Bruce Willis was playing harmonica in like the House of Blues or somewhere like

[10:37] that.

Elliott Kalan

[10:37] He was playing harmonica when he was still a bartender.

Dan McCoy

[10:40] No, no, no.

[10:40] I'm saying that he was playing harmonica at this place.

[10:44] Uh-huh.

[10:44] And like, he just got up and started joining in with the band unasked for.

[10:48] Oh yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[10:48] I'm just saying this is not, this was not, this was before he was famous that this happened.

[10:52] So it wasn't, it probably wasn't like the stage of the House of Blues.

[10:54] It was like a band playing at a bar somewhere, you know?

Dan McCoy

[10:57] Uh, well, I mean, my point is he did it without, like, it's not like he was in the band.

[11:02] So it could have been either one.

[11:04] What was he, what did he have to drink that night?

[11:05] But the band called him up on stage.

[11:06] I need to know more.

[11:07] Oh God.

[11:08] The reason I bring it up.

[11:09] Well, this wouldn't have gotten so fucking convoluted if Elliot didn't jump in with

[11:13] irrelevancies.

[11:14] No, no.

Elliott Kalan

[11:14] The reason I bring it up is because this is something that, this is an idea that was in

[11:17] Bruce Willis' head for a long time.

[11:20] This character of Hudson Hawk, the celebrity thief, you know?

Dan McCoy

[11:23] Yeah, Elliot, that was the thing that I was explaining.

[11:25] You didn't need to jump in and hijack it.

Elliott Kalan

[11:27] Sorry.

[11:28] I apologize.

[11:28] I was a real Hudson Hawk there, cat burglaring in to take control.

Dan McCoy

[11:33] Yeah, the point is, uh, he like came up with this character with one of his like blues buddies.

[11:39] And, uh.

[11:40] Like in the hit movie, The Blues Buddies.

[11:42] Yes.

[11:42] And this was before, uh, as you say, uh, Bruce Willis was famous in any way, but he like

[11:48] always said, like, he was going to make this movie about this character that they came up

[11:52] with for a song long ago and, uh, turned this into a movie.

[11:56] And then meanwhile, like Stevie D'Souza, like wrote the script for this, the diehard guy.

[12:01] But then they brought in Daniel Waters who wrote Heathers and Demolition Man and Batman Returns

[12:06] and then less awesome things like The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.

[12:10] I assumed to like weird up the script a little, but then Bruce Willis kept rewriting all the stuff on set to his own like whims, his like Bruno whims.

Elliott Kalan

[12:19] It was a little bit like with Doolittle where it's apparently Robert Downey Jr. would just come to the set and be like,

[12:24] hey, what if I gave an enema to a dragon?

[12:26] And they're like, okay, like it's your movie.

[12:29] Go ahead.

[12:29] We're going to, I guess that's what's going to happen in this movie now that people are going to pay money to go see that we're going to release in theaters as a professional thing.

[12:36] But Dan, I think, uh, probably there's a lot of, we'll get, we'll get, we'll talk more about the behind the scenes shenanigans because this was a very difficult shoot.

[12:44] But I will say, as you said, not everything was kind of like, uh, was according to plan.

[12:49] But how could that be when the first time it was released on Blu-ray in 2013, it was included as a set with Hollywood Homicide starring Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett,

[12:58] which is clearly exactly where it was meant to be with some random movie no one cared about from 12 years later.

[13:05] Guys, let's talk about, wait, okay.

Dan McCoy

[13:07] I just, I just wanted to say to the listener, uh, I feel like there's been a lot of concern about how much more irritable we are with one another of late, uh, from listeners.

[13:20] They like the show because of the friendship.

[13:22] I just want to say it's because of the friendship that we can be irritable to one another and then just ignore it five seconds later.

Elliott Kalan

[13:30] I have to imagine, Dan, I have not heard any, any worries or complaints.

[13:33] Oh, yeah.

[13:34] Look at all these letters, sacks and sacks full of letters addressed to Santa Claus, which I guess is me asking,

[13:39] at Santa Claus for Christmas, can you please have Elliot be meaner to Dan?

[13:42] And I'm like, all right, if, if Chris, if Chris Kringle, noted anti-Semite, wants me to do it, then sure, okay.

[13:51] I mean.

[13:52] Go ahead.

Dan McCoy

[13:54] I'm speaking to the sensitive listener, Elliot, the one like me who, uh, worries about things that have, have no bearing on his life.

Elliott Kalan

[14:00] Okay, that's fair. Now, we should get into the movie since I do have seven and a half pages of notes about what happens in the next vlog.

[14:06] Oh, no.

[14:06] So this is going to be, buckle up, boys.

[14:08] Okay, so, uh, the movie begins as the best movies do with a giant illuminated tone telling the story of Da Vinci's,

[14:16] how Da Vinci was supposed to build an enormous bronze horse statue.

[14:19] That's a true story. He was, uh, commissioned to do that.

[14:23] I think eventually they did build that statue, like, sometime in the last 15 years or so, based on his original plans.

[14:29] But, as they explain, bronze got scarce because of all the wars.

[14:33] You need bronze for wars because nothing wins wars like bronze.

[14:37] And so he's, so he makes a big, uh, what I would call steampunk, but I'm wrong about that,

[14:43] because, according to Wikipedia, it's clockpunk technology. It predates steam.

[14:48] Oh.

[14:48] So, uh, by which I mean it predates the Peter Gabriel song, Steam.

[14:52] Uh, so it's, it's a clockwork machine that turns, he wants to turn lead into bronze, but, uh-oh, he did it wrong.

[15:00] Using his three magic, metal-y, crystal-y, jaggedy pieces that when you put them together into a puzzle and you hit him with a laser,

[15:08] it turns lead into gold.

[15:11] Bump, bump, bump.

[15:12] And we spend a lot of time watching Dr. Da Vinci, watching Leonardo Da Vinci, uh, who is not a doctor.

[15:18] Do not take medical advice from him.

[15:20] Oh, wait, hold on. Now we gotta sell this to CBS.

Dan McCoy

[15:23] Okay, CBS.

[15:24] Like, the rest of the podcast is beating out the pilot to Dr. Da Vinci.

Elliott Kalan

[15:28] Dan, honestly, like, if we could sell that to CBS tomorrow, that's what separates us from rich, famous television producers,

[15:36] is I say Dr. Da Vinci, and I'm like, that's stupid, he wasn't a doctor.

[15:38] And they would be like, yes, it's Leonardo Da Vinci, but he's a doctor. This is perfect.

[15:43] It's like, house meets, uh, what's that, what's an old-timey thing? Meets the Da Vinci Code.

[15:49] Sell it. Dan, why are we not selling this right now?

S4

[15:51] Ugh, I don't know.

[15:53] Anyway.

[15:53] This is a whole section of the movie that I did not remember, actually, at all.

[15:57] Like, I did not remember how it opened.

[15:58] This Da Vinci Code nonsense is, like, completely was, like, seeing it with fresh eyes.

[16:03] It's so absurd.

Elliott Kalan

[16:04] And it takes, it's so, it takes a long time, and it was obviously very expensive.

[16:08] Yeah.

[16:08] And the movie does not need it.

[16:11] Uh, there's, like, a little bit of, like, kind of jokey voiceover.

[16:13] And then it's just, in Italian with no subtitles, Da Vinci walking through his workshop just yelling things at people,

[16:19] and then putting on sunglasses so he can watch the laser turn bronze into, turn lead into gold.

[16:25] And then he tricks someone into testing a glider.

[16:28] That'll come up later.

[16:29] We have to see that glider work because we need to know that someone has a glider.

[16:33] And he walks past, he's painting Mona Lisa, but he hasn't painted in the smile yet.

[16:37] And she smiles and she's got terrible teeth.

[16:39] Oh, boy.

[16:40] That's a joke for the art crowd.

[16:41] That's a highbrow joke.

Dan McCoy

[16:43] And then, uh, there's gonna be a second tooth joke soon.

[16:46] But, uh, I wanna say, uh, perhaps part of the reason this was roundly rejected by the public is,

[16:52] uh, I, you know, I was watching this with Audrey who had no prior sort of context for the movie or idea of what to expect.

[16:59] And it was very confusing to, A, start with Leonardo da Vinci, and then, B, uh, have everyone in the movie sort of off the bat talking about, like, old-timey tough guys.

[17:11] And it was just, like, she had a reaction that I, I didn't understand, but I think other people, like, perfectly reasonable to have was, like, what is this movie?

[17:22] Where is it set?

[17:23] Like, when is it set?

[17:24] Like, what type of thing is this?

[17:27] And I think that people who don't see a lot of movies are less comfortable with, uh, not knowing exactly what type of movie they're seeing.

[17:36] I can see that.

Elliott Kalan

[17:36] Well, I think also there's certain types of movies that you expect to come in certain forms.

[17:40] I think this is a corollary to what you're saying.

[17:42] Much as my, uh, my I know who killed me theorem, which is that if I know who killed me had been in Italian, people would be like, oh, look what it does with color.

[17:50] It doesn't matter that the plot doesn't make sense.

[17:51] Oh, look at it.

[17:52] It's a, it's a dreamscape.

[17:53] I think if Hudson Hawk was a Hong Kong movie with Hong Kong actors, the clashing of tones and the craziness, people would be like, I love it.

[18:01] It's crazy.

[18:02] It's like a goofy cartoon.

[18:03] But to have an American movie with American actors and a lot of, it's a huge name cast and British actors to have them all in it.

[18:09] It's like, what is going on here?

[18:11] Whereas the same movie from another country, I think people might've been like those goofballs in that other country.

[18:17] They make these crazy movies.

[18:19] Oh boy.

S4

[18:20] You know, I remember when I watched it the first time I was into, I was watching a lot of Monty Python movies and it sort of fit squarely into that in my head.

[18:30] And one of the reasons why I think my brain accepted it at that time and was rejected by other people at that time was the same sort of thing.

[18:38] Like it felt, if I got it, I didn't think it was altogether successful, but at least I got what was going on.

Elliott Kalan

[18:44] Yeah.

[18:44] I mean, it is not altogether successful.

[18:46] And there's one scene in particular, which I think is, we'll get, it's probably the scene everyone is assuming is, I think maybe one of the worst scenes in the history of film, but we'll get to it.

[18:54] So, so now flash forward 500 years later and we're introduced to cat burglar, Eddie, the Hudson Hawk.

[19:01] Now is his last name, okay, his last name is Hawkins.

[19:04] Okay.

[19:04] Because sometimes the characters call him Eddie, sometimes they call him Hawk, and sometimes they call him Hudson.

[19:10] And I was very unsure at any point, which of those words was actually part of his real name.

[19:15] But he's a, he's a famous cat burglar.

[19:17] We meet him on the day he's getting out of jail and he's so smooth.

[19:20] And you know that because he's got three earrings in one ear, none in the other, I believe.

[19:24] And he's got a black fedora and a black trench coat and a black t-shirt and black slacks and black shoes.

Dan McCoy

[19:29] By the way, those clothes, the clothes that.

[19:31] And a Cadillac.

Elliott Kalan

[19:33] Yeah, thanks.

[19:33] The boys of Time Bomb.

[19:34] You're saying, Stuart, that the boys of Time Bomb.

[19:36] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[19:39] I just wanted to say that the releasing officer makes fun of him for wearing the same clothes.

[19:45] When presumably these are the clothes that he came in with when he was arrested.

[19:50] Like, I don't think that you can be like, oh, check out Mr. Prisoner over here wearing the same thing that he came in with.

[19:57] Oh, crazy.

[19:57] What a loser.

S4

[19:59] Can't even online shop?

[20:02] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[20:03] Don't you get the J. Cruz catalogs in behind bars?

[20:05] Come on.

[20:06] Come on, guy.

[20:07] Come on.

[20:07] Instead of the real real.

Stuart Wellington

[20:11] Consignment for less.

S4

[20:12] But this is also the first moment where I realized, again, I forgot that this is an R-rated movie.

[20:17] Like, the parole officer says fuck for the first time.

[20:19] And then I was like, oh, well, they used up their fuck for the first time.

[20:22] And there's got to be no fucks from here on out.

[20:24] But it is full of fucks after that.

Elliott Kalan

[20:26] This movie, you could say it doesn't give a fuck, but it actually gives dozens of them.

[20:30] Yeah.

[20:31] It has no business being an R-rated movie.

S4

[20:33] It makes no sense whatsoever.

Elliott Kalan

[20:35] This should be a PG-13 movie.

[20:37] But it shows it's 1991.

[20:38] And in 19...

[20:38] Like, it's interesting to see how things shift.

[20:42] Like, in the 80s, you could have a PG-rated comedy that had nudity in it.

[20:46] In the 90s, if you were making an action movie, people were just going to swear the shit out of that action movie.

[20:51] But now, like, even if you're making a horror movie, they're going to want it to be a PG-13 movie.

[20:56] And, like, it's just interesting the way that that goes back.

[20:59] Like, you'll watch movies from back then, and you're like, this would not fly now.

[21:03] But also, the swearing is so gratuitous.

[21:05] Any movie where a big plot point is the character being able to sing old standards with his buddy.

[21:11] Like, there's not really a reason why it should be an R-rated movie, and they should be swearing all the time.

[21:15] Not only a big plot point, the best plot point.

[21:19] This is where you and I maybe are again on opposite poles.

[21:23] So, Eddie, his parole officer, immediately tries to threaten him into robbing an auction house.

[21:29] And he's like, come on, it's my first day out of jail.

[21:31] You want me to go back to being a criminal again?

[21:34] But he's a real...

[21:34] Wait, that's your Bruce Willis?

[21:36] Oh, sorry.

[21:37] Bruce Willis.

[21:37] Well, the thing is, I can't do 90s Bruce Willis.

[21:39] I can do now's Bruce Willis, where he's like, hey, yeah, I don't think I'm gonna be going back there anymore.

[21:45] I can do, like, current sad all the time Bruce Willis.

[21:48] But I don't think I can do, like, the Bruce Willis back when his thing was jokes.

[21:52] I can do the Bruce Willis now when his thing is that he's always on the verge of crying.

Dan McCoy

[21:55] I mean, I think old Bruce Willis had the same sort of lack of enthusiasm for stuff.

[22:01] He was just a lot smugger about it.

[22:03] So if you can just sort of combine those two things.

Elliott Kalan

[22:06] Okay, he is very smug, and I think that's the other thing that turned people off instantly is that Bruce Willis is so incredibly smug in this, especially for a character who never really seems to be in real danger and always gets what he wants.

[22:17] I mean, that's what makes him smug is he always ends up on top.

[22:20] And sometimes that's funny when it happens here, but there are times when it's like the movie is so, like, you love this guy.

[22:29] He's so funny.

[22:29] Look at him.

[22:30] He's your favorite.

[22:31] Don't you want to, like, be him?

[22:33] Don't you want to do him and be him?

[22:34] Don't you want to be him and do him so it's two of him doing each other?

[22:38] And, like, wouldn't that be the best?

[22:40] And it's very—

Dan McCoy

[22:41] And I think that's you feeling the influence of Bruce Willis, like, co-writer and, you know, driving creative force behind this in the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[22:51] He does have some of the worst quips I've ever heard in a not worst movie in the world action movie.

[22:58] He has, like—and I have to assume he ad-libs some of them, but they're terrible.

[23:01] They're just terrible jokes.

S4

[23:02] But also the time—at the time, I was more bought into him.

[23:07] He's kind of like—Bruce Willis at this time is kind of like, you know, like a kid who's, like, two years older than you.

[23:12] Like, you're 13, he's 15, and he has a popped collar, and he's, like, super cool, and you think he's amazing, and you just want to be him.

[23:20] And then you get, like, two years older, and you're like, that guy was a loser.

[23:24] Like, that guy sucks.

[23:26] But at the time, he's just fascinating.

[23:28] And so he has that—like, my tolerance for his smugness has dropped precipitously in the 30 years since this movie came out.

Elliott Kalan

[23:36] I think that says a lot about your maturing as a person, and I'm proud of you, Rumble, that you didn't stick with that love of Bruce Willis as, like, the ultimate dude.

[23:44] Oh, man, look at this guy.

[23:45] And you're probably on to, like, what, like, more of a Jeff Bridges type of admiration.

[23:50] Yeah, of course.

[23:50] Yeah, I feel like once you reach a certain age, you transfer from Bruce Willis to Jeff Bridges, and you're like, oh, I should have always felt this way.

[23:56] But you can't.

[23:57] It's impossible.

[23:57] No.

[23:58] Like, Jeff Bridges, one, he doesn't make that many movies that kids and teenagers see.

[24:02] And number two, it's just kind of a deeper sort of dudeness that eventually we'll get old, and we'll find Jeff Bridges to be smug.

[24:09] And that's when it's all Charles Durning all the time.

[24:11] And we just know that Charles Durning is just, like, the coolest guy with the smoothest moves.

Dan McCoy

[24:16] I mean, that's the most logical progression.

Elliott Kalan

[24:19] It goes Bruce Willis, Jeff Bridges, Charles Durning.

[24:22] The descent of man right there.

[24:24] Yeah, exactly.

[24:24] And then you die, and you go all the way back around, and you're like, Eric von Stroheim has it going on in all these movies for his evil German.

[24:31] Amazing.

[24:32] Okay.

[24:32] Anyway, so, Eddie, he gets out of jail.

[24:34] Right as he's leaving the doors, his best friend, that's right, Tommy Fivetone, Danny Aiello, pulls up in his fancy old car.

[24:42] He hands him an espresso, which, as he knows, is the thing that—or it's a cappuccino.

[24:47] The thing that he knows that Eddie wants more than anything else, and I have to imagine, he must have gotten it before driving up to the prison, so it must be so lukewarm by now, if not cold.

[24:55] But Bruce Willis just cannot wait to have this cold coffee in a diner cup.

[25:00] They go back to Five Tones, Tommy's Bar, which Bruce Willis is, I guess, a co-owner of, maybe?

[25:06] Which, uh-oh, in the time he was in prison, it went from a cool kind of, probably not guys who are connected, but guys who want to be connected, you know, kind of the old neighborhood type guys.

[25:17] It turned into a real yuppie hangout that even has the most horrible food Bruce Willis can imagine, reindeer goat cheese pizza.

[25:25] Now, let's stop for a moment.

[25:26] Is it goat cheese pizza with reindeer meat, or is it that when you make reindeer cheese, you also call it goat cheese because it's more similar to goat cheese in consistency than cow cheese?

[25:35] Dan, you're the culinary expert.

[25:37] Please explain.

[25:38] What is reindeer goat cheese pizza?

Dan McCoy

[25:40] You know, I guess this would—all right.

[25:45] When I heard it, I thought it was referring to a type of cheese.

[25:49] The whole thing was referring to a type of cheese.

[25:50] And I thought that because later in the movie, Bruce Willis says, go back to your reindeer goat cheese.

[25:57] Okay.

[25:57] As if that was the thing and not like the pizza was not an important part of that.

[26:02] But reindeer meat with goat cheese definitely would make more logical sense.

[26:09] I will say that this is how also you know what time period this is because the worst threat America was facing was yuppies and the ascent of yuppies.

Elliott Kalan

[26:18] Well, it's kind of like how when we watched Howard the Duck, that live show is up on our YouTube channel.

[26:22] When we watched Howard the Duck, it was like just a joke that a restaurant would serve sushi.

[26:27] The idea of a fusion restaurant that had sushi in it was like instant joke, and that dates that movie.

[26:33] Now, according to IMDb Trivia, Bruce Willis also mentions reindeer goat cheese pizza in The Last Boy Scout.

[26:38] So does that mean these movies are in the same cinematic universe?

[26:41] The reindeer goat cheese pizza cinematic universe or RGCPCU?

Stuart Wellington

[26:46] I feel like he must have had one bad experience with reindeer goat cheese.

[26:51] And he's like, I mean, I don't know where he'd get it, but.

[26:55] Do you think there's a chance that it was just reindeer cheese?

[26:59] It just happens to be the greatest of all time reindeer cheese.

Elliott Kalan

[27:03] Oh, that could be it.

[27:05] It was sold to him as greatest of all time cheese from a reindeer and he never let it go.

[27:09] Okay, yes, now it makes perfect sense.

[27:11] Thank you, Stuart, for explaining that to me.

[27:14] Now, here is where a mobster gets Bruce Willis' attention by shooting the espresso cup out of his hand.

[27:21] The fact that that bullet would not be stopped by the cup, but would instead keep going and kill someone is never attended to.

[27:28] Similar, much later in the movie, Bruce Willis, a bullet bounces off his belt buckle, which is crazy.

[27:34] And it's not like he has a big, crazy belt buckle.

[27:36] It's just a regular men's belt buckle.

[27:38] That would have killed him.

Dan McCoy

[27:39] Yeah, and this also sets up the character arc for the entire movie, which is Willis' search for cappuccino being thwarted at every turn.

[27:49] This is kind of a birds of prey egg sandwich situation.

[27:51] Yeah, this was very frustrating.

[27:54] This was.

Elliott Kalan

[27:54] Yeah.

[27:56] Every time he wants a cappuccino, he just gets.

[27:58] It's a real discreet charm of the bourgeoisie that's going on in the background of this movie where he just cannot get that cappuccino.

Dan McCoy

[28:04] You know, I've been talking about stress dreams with a lot of people lately for, I don't know what the reason I'd be talking about stress dreams right now.

[28:11] But I was saying that my most common type of stress dream is there is a relatively simple task that I need to perform, I want to perform, and things keep getting in my way.

[28:23] I'm going to need an example.

[28:25] I need an example of one of these simple tasks.

[28:28] Yeah, paint a word picture.

[28:30] Like, I, oh, there was one where it was just like, I have to, like, look up something, and I can't, like, I can't get the computer to work.

[28:41] I can't, like, find, like, a reference book.

[28:43] Like, all this, like, I, I mean, I forget my dreams pretty quickly because they're also extremely elaborate, like, Baroque nonsense that keeps shifting genre.

[28:53] We often forget elaborate things, yeah.

[28:56] Oh, I, I see what's happening here.

[29:00] I get, I get the bit.

Stuart Wellington

[29:02] So, uh, and my Venmo for this session is, uh.

Dan McCoy

[29:06] Okay.

[29:07] All right.

[29:08] Well, I mean, fair enough.

[29:09] You did the work.

Elliott Kalan

[29:10] Dan, I'm going to write you a prescription for 100 milligrams of Nobody Cares.

[29:14] So if you could take this 10 times a day.

[29:21] Fair enough.

[29:22] I'm just kidding.

[29:23] I'm fascinated by your subconscious.

[29:24] It's a crazy place.

[29:25] Okay, so, uh, turns out the cup was shot out of his hand by some thugs led by these mobsters, the Mario brothers.

[29:30] Get it?

[29:30] It's a joke.

[29:31] Uh, one of the, their two Mario brothers, Frank Stallone is the brains of the group, which gives you an indication of the level of these mobsters.

[29:37] Uh, they threaten him.

Dan McCoy

[29:38] Yeah, and you'll recognize Frank Stallone because he looks exactly like his brother, uh, only a little less droopy.

Elliott Kalan

[29:44] I mean, he looks like a guy who got surgery to look like Sylvester Stallone.

[29:47] That's, uh, he, uh, they want him to pull off this heist of the auction house, the same one that the parole officer was trying to get him to.

[29:54] And Danny Ayo, he smashes a wine bottle over one of their heads, uh, and they leave, but they are still threatening him.

[30:00] So he's got to, he's got to go do this, this heist.

[30:03] He just got out of jail as he continues to remind everybody throughout the movie.

[30:07] Uh, as they're preparing, uh, they're going over the robbery plan and Danny Ayo is quizzing Eddie on the lengths of different songs.

[30:12] This is his amazing skill besides being a cat burglar is he knows the exact length to the second of every song that you ask him.

[30:20] Uh, according to IMDb goofs, he's often wrong in his answers, but the movie takes them as totally correct.

S4

[30:26] You're treating that as if those two things are unrelated, but there are joined facts.

[30:30] The reason why he's such a good cat burglar is because he knows all the length of these songs because that is his timing watch is the length of the songs.

Elliott Kalan

[30:38] I wonder if that's something that is a way of them trying to like make him into a fantasy figure is it's like, well, I could never be a cat burglar, but I do know how long that song is.

[30:46] Like all these music nerds are like, Hey, maybe I could do it too.

Dan McCoy

[30:51] Um, I, the thing that, uh, I, it's going to seem so weird for me to object to the reality of this in Hudson Hawk, the movie Hudson Hawk.

[30:59] But, uh, the thing that bothered me is I feel like if this was a guy who's like, I know the length to the second of every Sinatra song or old standard, like, yeah, sure.

[31:10] But it seems like he knows every song in that, like he's asked about Mariah Carey singing the national anthem at, uh, the Superbowl.

Elliott Kalan

[31:19] Well, they mentioned in the goofs that, uh, on IMDb that, uh, he says that it takes, uh, he, they say, how long has Whitney Houston sing the national anthem?

[31:26] And he goes seven minutes. And in actuality, it was like someone else saying it at that Superbowl and it was two and a half minutes.

[31:31] And then it's only after I read that goof that I was like, yeah, seven minutes is a crazy amount of time to sing the national anthem.

[31:36] Like, is she singing every verse, even the bad ones, even like the ones that, that are offensive.

[31:42] Like what is going, and like, I know when you're like a soul or, or, or a hip hop type singer, you really extend those syllables and you can really extend a song.

[31:50] But like that seems like for the national anthem, you got to believe that the Superbowl producers were tapping their watches and they're like, she's, she's eating into it.

[31:56] Like we cannot, and we, and we need to, and we need to have the premiere of friends right after the Superbowl.

[32:02] We said in the commercials right after the Superbowl, like just pull her mic.

[32:06] She can't even finish. We'll just, we'll just end on, uh, on rockets red glare.

[32:09] And then we don't need the rest of the song. Like, come on.

Stuart Wellington

[32:12] Now Elliot was, was finding out that piece of information.

[32:14] Was that the straw that broke the camel's back? And you're like, I don't know what to trust anymore.

[32:18] Do you like it?

[32:19] Yes. Yes.

[32:20] Is this my computer or is it a cake? Like, is it that sort of thing?

Elliott Kalan

[32:25] I'm just like the guy in, the guy in Maltese Falcon who almost got hit by a girder.

[32:28] I walked away from my family, walked away from my job.

[32:30] I just said, I live in a world where there are no standards and I've got to, I've got to start over anew.

[32:36] And that's why I got to tell everybody, this is my last episode of the Flophouse.

[32:39] Next week I'll be starting, I'll be starting my new podcast.

[32:42] Hey, what?

[32:43] Which is me just kind of not knowing what things are going on.

[32:46] Just kidding.

[32:47] This is my last episode of the podcast.

[32:48] I'm going to do probably a thousand more episodes.

Dan McCoy

[32:51] Yeah.

[32:51] I would say too, I would be perfectly happy for this to be moved over to incorrectly regarded as goofs under the assumption that the hawk is just fucking with him.

[33:02] If not for, as Roman says, the fact that this is integral to his cat burglaring, like to know the lengths of these songs.

S4

[33:09] It is also integral to me enjoying the movie at all.

[33:13] Yeah.

[33:13] To tell you the truth.

Elliott Kalan

[33:14] Okay, interesting.

[33:15] This is what unlocked the movie for me.

[33:17] Is it's ridiculousness of this premise.

[33:19] What's funny is when that, when the bullet shatters his coffee cup and he just like does a Jack Benny slow burn look, that's when I started realizing, I don't think this movie is on the level.

[33:28] I think this movie might be messing with me.

[33:30] But then this next scene really pulls it off.

S4

[33:33] But it's really one of those things that shows you the mix of tone in that sometimes violence is just goofy, the coffee cup exploding, and sometimes violence is a bunch of syringes in your face.

[33:45] And it's sort of like the tone of this thing just bounces back and forth in these incredible ways that is crazy.

Elliott Kalan

[33:52] And it gets increasingly cartoony at an increasing pace.

[33:56] Like I'm sure somebody could do the algebraic formula that talks about the increasing rapid rate of cartoonists as the movie goes on.

[34:02] And by the end of it, I was just like, all right, like I can't even, like I don't even, I cannot pretend to care what happens to these characters.

[34:09] As we'll see when James Coburn's martial arts abilities cause Bruce Willis to be trapped in a just swiveling at the waist loop.

Stuart Wellington

[34:17] He stun locks him in that animation, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[34:19] Yeah.

[34:20] So they go and they do, they're going to do this elaborate job.

[34:23] They got to use pool lifesavers to get on a rope and walk across this building.

[34:29] And the whole time, and they've got to switch the security tapes so that the guards don't notice.

[34:34] And the whole time they are having a ball.

[34:36] They are laughing.

[34:37] They are joking.

[34:38] There is no suspense on them.

[34:39] They are so, this is when the smugness really got to me.

[34:42] Cause it was like, they are so confident in their abilities to pull off this heist that at no point do they ever betray that they're even taking it seriously or care that much about it.

Dan McCoy

[34:52] Well, there's also this constant patter of like kind of busting each other's balls.

[34:57] That's all of it's in the form of jokes.

[34:59] Like Bruce Willis clearly thought that these were all jokes, but none of them are really funny.

[35:05] None of this like, yeah, this banter that they're constantly doing.

Elliott Kalan

[35:08] It's all just comes down to him being like, hey, you're fat, Danny Ayo.

[35:10] Hey, hey.

[35:12] No, no, you're looking good.

[35:13] You're looking good.

[35:13] You're fat.

[35:13] So, hey.

[35:15] Like that's basically the level.

S4

[35:16] And it has the classic heist trope of not telling each other what they're going to do during this elaborate heist.

[35:22] Which is something that always amazes me.

Elliott Kalan

[35:24] Especially since we had a scene right before this where they're supposed to be going over the plan for the heist.

[35:29] But they keep surprising each other.

[35:31] And it's almost like they're a heist couple that has been doing this for so long.

[35:35] They're so bored with each other.

[35:36] The only way they can keep the spark alive is to constantly surprise each other in the heist room.

[35:40] And just kind of keep pulling tricks so that they keep each other on their toes.

[35:44] You know, like it's like, oh, let's role play during this heist.

[35:48] Let's say during this heist that I'm the school principal and you're a naughty student.

[35:51] Okay.

[35:51] But we're still stealing a horse statue from an auction of tacky horse art.

[35:55] Right?

[35:55] Yes, of course.

[35:56] That's exactly what we're doing.

[35:57] But maybe I handcuff you, but they're like fuzzy handcuffs.

[36:00] Like that's what it feels like.

[36:01] They really got to get the spark back in.

Dan McCoy

[36:03] Yeah.

[36:03] And they've got this elaborate song-based timing thing.

[36:06] And I kept wondering, like, so does the timing of the song figure in, like, the way that they're going everywhere really slowly because they're dancing along to their own singing?

[36:16] And does it, like, figure in the fact that after the heist they just kind of stand around congratulating each other for a while?

Elliott Kalan

[36:22] This is the problem is that the song, the idea of a heist time to a song is a really neat idea.

[36:27] And you could build a real neat sequence about it.

[36:30] But it fails for these reasons.

[36:31] One, smug up the wazoo.

[36:33] They're so smug about it.

[36:35] Two, they're singing, would you like to swing on a star?

[36:37] Which is, I'm just going to say it, a dumb song.

[36:40] It's a standard, but I think it's a really dumb song.

[36:42] Three, it doesn't, like you're saying, it does not line up with any of the things that they're actually doing.

[36:47] And four, it's not the same length as the heist.

[36:49] So they do end up having all this dead time at the end where they're just kind of killing time when they should be leaving, you know?

Dan McCoy

[36:56] Yeah.

[36:57] And I am glad that you brought up the song, Would You Like to Swing on a Star?

[37:02] Because I was thinking about it after the movie.

[37:04] I'm like, I like that song.

[37:06] I think the tune, for instance, is great.

[37:09] And the chorus I like quite a bit.

[37:12] But there's two problems with it.

[37:14] One, it posits that you, the listener, doesn't know what various animals are and need them explained to you.

[37:22] And two, it gives this world where your two options are either being turned into an animal or swinging on a star.

[37:31] Which I don't think, I can't relate to that truth.

Elliott Kalan

[37:33] To be honest, there's a fantasy movie in the world that that song describes where you reach the age of like, what, 13?

[37:40] And you have a choice of either becoming a celestial being who cannot interact with the physical world.

[37:45] Like you swing on stars.

[37:47] That's how you control your trajectory as a spirit being through space.

[37:50] And you get to see all these amazing wonders.

[37:51] You're part of the ether and part of the firmament of the heavens.

[37:54] But you can't enjoy regular life.

[37:56] Or you become the lowest of brute animals.

[37:58] And you can take part in the physical pleasures of life.

[38:01] Feet eating, rutting, pooping.

[38:03] But you'll never know any of the higher pursuits of, you know, the cosmos.

[38:08] And so, I mean, that's, I mean, maybe it's not a movie.

[38:11] Maybe it's like a short story.

[38:12] But, I mean, maybe that's what the song is about.

[38:15] But as it comes out now, it's just two guys who, like every Italian man of a certain age, believes he can sing just like Tony Bennett.

[38:23] And it's just belting it out while kind of like half chuckling to himself.

[38:28] And they're like, it really seems to get in the way of the robbery.

[38:31] I guess that's what the problem is that I have with it.

[38:33] But they do manage to steal the scale model of Da Vinci's horse.

[38:37] Their mischief gets noticed.

[38:38] They've got to run from the guards.

[38:39] Bruce Willis bongs their heads together.

[38:41] And it makes like a bonk Hanna-Barbera sound effect, which is the kind of thing I always love.

[38:45] But you've got to prepare me for it in some way.

[38:48] It can't come out of nowhere.

[38:49] I've got to know this is, like, it's, just let me know ahead of time.

[38:54] It's the kind of movie where I'm going to be able to hear, where you might hear, see someone run and hear bongo noises at the same time.

[38:58] I just need to know.

Stuart Wellington

[38:59] For instance, the heist could be taking place in, like, Toontown or something, right?

Elliott Kalan

[39:03] Exactly.

[39:04] Or, like, for instance, when in the moment in Godzilla Final Wars, when Rodan's wings flap and create a wind, and a cop's hat and a pimp's hat fly off their heads, and you hear zing!

[39:13] By that point, you know this is the kind of movie where there might be a sound effect when someone's hat flies off their head.

[39:17] It's not totally taking you by surprise.

[39:20] But I digress.

[39:21] They manage to escape by jumping off the skyscraper, an awning that rips almost instantly manages to break their fall.

[39:28] And rather than having all their bones shattered or dying, they end up in the apartment of Eddie's Pearl Officer.

[39:33] He's delivering the horse.

[39:34] And that's when, uh-oh, a new character enters.

[39:37] The first of an increasing series of goofy characters as a kind of butler assassin.

[39:43] An English butler assassin comes in.

[39:45] And he dresses like a butler and has a bowler hat.

[39:48] And he has an English accent.

[39:50] So everyone just assumes he's a butler.

[39:51] And he does turn out to be a butler.

[39:53] So I thought it was just a quip that Bruce Willis was making.

[39:55] But no, he was accurately identifying in the wild this life form, the English butler.

[40:00] He accepts the horse and then smashes it.

[40:03] Inside is one of the pieces of the gold-making machine.

[40:07] Then, for some reason, he uses a retractable knife in his sleeve to kill Hawks Pearl Officer by just slashing his throat open.

[40:13] Don't know why he did that.

[40:15] And then he leaves.

[40:17] And he doesn't kill the other witnesses.

[40:19] He just does that.

[40:21] Now, this was also the first moment in the movie where it was like real hardcore violence.

[40:25] And again, the tone of it was like, again, if this was a Hong Kong movie, I'd be like, yep, I'm ready to see someone's head explode.

[40:30] And then see a scene where someone cries over their best friend being in the hospital.

[40:33] And then a scene where someone's slipping on paint and they just fall down and get all paint messy.

[40:37] But again, in an American movie, I was like, whoa, that was more extreme than I thought it was going to be.

[40:41] How did you guys take it?

[40:42] How did it affect you guys?

[40:43] Roman, sitting in the theater, we were like, whoa, cool.

[40:45] Were you like, what?

[40:47] Or were you just like, huh?

[40:48] Or were you just like not paying attention?

[40:49] Or maybe you'd gotten up to the bathroom at that point.

[40:51] I don't know.

[40:52] Fill me in.

S4

[40:53] I mean, I don't know if I was shocked at the time, but I definitely feel it today where it was just like that doesn't.

[40:58] You know, like I was pretty down with any type of violence that could happen at the time.

[41:03] Yeah.

[41:03] And so now I notice it as being sort of incongruous.

[41:06] But the whole scene starts with him.

[41:09] You know, they jump through the awning and then it cuts to him falling through onto the Barca lounger in the apartment.

[41:18] And so, and again, this is one of those things where I'm like, I don't know if I want more of that movie, but at least it's something.

[41:24] You know, like there's, you know, and then he comes in with the knife and slits a throat and you're just like, what the fuck is going on?

Elliott Kalan

[41:32] And there's a better version of that exact bit later in the movie.

[41:36] But there was a moment where I was like, wait, did he fall through an awning or did he fall through the roof of an apartment?

[41:40] Or did, is there an apartment under the sidewalk, under the awning?

[41:44] And he fell through it like it's a very confusing cut.

[41:46] But yeah, it's like, this is a, it's a movie that, it's almost like a movie that's like, it's like an optometrist.

[41:52] And they're like, you like it like this or do you like it like this?

[41:54] Better number one or better number two?

[41:56] Better if it's a heist thriller or better if it's a goofy comedy?

[41:59] Better if it's super violent or better if it's a, it's like Hanna-Barbera sound effects.

[42:03] Better if they say the swear words a lot or better if the jokes are like things that a 10-year-old would enjoy.

[42:08] It's, it's, I guess what I'm saying is Hudson Hawk has something for everybody.

[42:11] Put it on the DVD box.

[42:13] Elliot Kalin on the blockhouse.

Stuart Wellington

[42:15] Has David Caruso shown up yet?

Elliott Kalan

[42:17] No.

[42:18] He is about to.

[42:19] He's about to.

[42:19] The next day, the robbery has been.

[42:21] The weird thing is Stuart asked that about every movie.

[42:23] Yeah.

[42:24] Yeah.

[42:26] Next day, the robbery has been covered up.

[42:29] The auction is still going on for this horse statue.

[42:31] Eddie goes to the auction to see what's going on.

[42:33] He asks, he's like, how much does a tuxedo cost?

[42:35] And then you see him in the most 1991 tuxedo.

[42:39] It is glorious.

[42:39] Roman, you're the design expert.

[42:40] Please explain this.

S4

[42:41] He shows up like a member of the revolution, a princess revolution.

[42:45] And it is just glorious.

[42:47] And if you could, you know, if there's a still of an image that represents 1991, you know,

[42:54] like this is it.

[42:55] It is beautiful.

[42:56] This, it has a nice padded shoulders.

[43:00] No tie because who has time for that nonsense when it comes to a tuxedo.

[43:04] And, oh, it is cut beautifully.

[43:07] It is absurd.

[43:08] Socks for days.

[43:09] Like it has loafers, really low loafers and just socks that just are like the great planes.

[43:16] It is just glorious.

Elliott Kalan

[43:18] It's a, it's a beautiful tuxedo.

Stuart Wellington

[43:20] And he's not the only one who's dressed up because there's also a, it's the kind of, it's the kind of tuxedo you might wear.

[43:25] If you were escorting Cindy Crawford to a Planet Hollywood opening, you know, that's, I mean, that, that seems like a very specific scenario.

S4

[43:35] And he seems to be the only one wearing a tuxedo.

[43:37] So I don't know why this is required of this particular job.

Elliott Kalan

[43:41] It's like, I wish there was a joke about it where it was like, he thinks that every auction is like a black tie event.

[43:47] So he's in a tuxedo and everyone else is in just kind of like suits.

[43:49] But no tie.

[43:50] But there's also, yeah, well, with no tie, of course.

[43:52] Yeah.

[43:52] But there's also a bunch of people who, we're not sure who they are, but they're also very, they're also dressed up like Dick Tracy villains circa 1991 in the back.

[44:01] One of them being, that's right, the star of Jade, David Caruso.

[44:07] We'll get to him.

[44:09] They ask, they-

Dan McCoy

[44:10] I was trying to explain who David Caruso was.

[44:12] And I'm like, okay, well, if you haven't seen NYPD Blue and you have no idea what Jade, the movie, left NYPD Blue for is, I don't know.

[44:25] And then I'm like, oh, yeah.

[44:25] Later on, I'm like, oh, yeah, he's in that CSI show.

[44:28] That's the current David Caruso context.

Elliott Kalan

[44:31] I mean, and even that is like a 12-year-old David Caruso context.

[44:34] It would be hard to explain to someone what a big deal it was that David Caruso left NYPD Blue after one season to make Jade.

[44:43] Like, I was a kid, and I remember it being something that I was aware of, that a show I had never watched, the star of it who I had never heard of before, was leaving to make a movie I would never see.

[44:55] And yet somehow this was-

[44:55] The erotic action thriller, Jade.

[44:57] And it was a big deal that he was going to be in the Esther House follow-up to Basic Instinct.

[45:03] Like, oh, man.

[45:04] It was a simpler time, by which I mean a time when the decisions of white men were just of a higher importance, an inflated importance, some would say, an unreal, unnecessary importance.

[45:16] So he goes to the auction house, and he knows that this horse is a fake because he stole the horse.

[45:21] And yet auction expert Andy McDowell attests that the horse is real by holding it briefly for a moment.

[45:29] Holding it briefly.

S4

[45:29] This is the first of a series of time in which people touch priceless artifacts with their bare hands, which really stressed me out a lot.

Elliott Kalan

[45:40] Oh, yeah.

[45:41] But later when he steals a Leonardo da Vinci codex, and he's just pulling it, he shoots it with a dart and then pulls it with a grappling hook up into the air.

[45:48] And I was like, that thing is falling apart.

[45:50] There's no way.

[45:51] Yeah, yeah.

[45:52] Yeah, but it's-

Dan McCoy

[45:52] Also, before he knows that Andy McDowell is the appraiser, he kind of tries to hit on her by saying something about, oh, I guess if you want to get into art, you have to look like a constipated warthog or something like that.

[46:05] And I'm like, okay, first off, that's a terrible pickup line.

[46:08] But second, like, she's at the art auction.

Stuart Wellington

[46:11] Why would you think that insulting people at an art auction would be the way to go?

Dan McCoy

[46:15] Because he's Bruce E.W.

Stuart Wellington

[46:16] Yeah, he's gambling that she's there ironically.

Elliott Kalan

[46:21] And it's clear that she notices the horse.

[46:23] And also the gloves, that could have helped to build the suspense.

[46:26] Like, he's like, uh-oh, she's going to know it's a fake as she's putting the gloves on and getting ready.

[46:31] But they don't do that.

[46:31] She just picks it up.

[46:32] She knows it's a fake.

[46:33] She looks at him and then says, oh, no, it's real.

[46:35] It's the real Da Vinci horse statue.

[46:37] That's when who bursts in but the best character, one of the two best characters in the whole movie.

[46:44] Darwin Mayflower, the eccentric, mean billionaire played by the great immortal Richard E. Grant.

[46:50] And this is the book, this movie, I've been wanting to read Richard E. Grant's memoirs for a long time.

[46:56] And it wasn't until I watched this movie and in doing research realized an entire chapter of his book is about Hudson Hawk that I ordered it.

[47:02] I was like, I have to read it now.

[47:05] He's so good.

[47:06] He is so good at it.

[47:08] He's like, he's the only person in the movie who I feel like, him and Sandra Bernhardt are the only people who are accurately getting the tone of the movie.

[47:13] Absolutely.

[47:14] Which is big and dumb.

[47:16] He just walks in and yells, a hundred million dollars.

[47:20] Clams.

[47:21] A hundred million clams?

[47:22] Is that what he said?

[47:22] Oh, I forgot.

Dan McCoy

[47:23] I will make the objection.

[47:25] I do think that they're the two people who get the tone.

[47:28] And I really like Sandra Bernhardt in like, kind of as a persona, as like a performer.

[47:36] I don't think that her acting is very good here in Hudson Hawk.

Elliott Kalan

[47:38] Are you saying the part of the evil billionaire who wants to destroy the world by undermining the gold market with a 15th century machine that she didn't pull that off realistically?

[47:50] That you never believed the situation?

Dan McCoy

[47:51] I just think that she sometimes has some like complex lines that she has to spit at the camera and they always sound like they're lines.

[47:58] Rather, where Richard E. Grant is, you know, like amazing.

Elliott Kalan

[48:02] If you're getting me, if you're trying to get back me into a corner where I argue that Sandra Bernhardt is as good an actor as Richard E. Grant, I'm going to avoid that corner.

[48:08] I'm not going in there.

[48:10] I'm not.

[48:10] All right.

[48:10] Call me, call me baby because you're not backing me into that corner.

S4

[48:13] There's a stiffness to her that I feel like is a choice, but it is definitely odd.

[48:19] Yeah.

[48:19] Whereas he is really hamming it up in a way that still feels like it comes from the character in some ways.

[48:25] Yeah.

[48:26] You can see her choices, but I still think both of them, like I would drop the Mayflowers as villains into any movie.

[48:32] Yeah.

[48:33] As far as I'm concerned.

[48:34] They're so good.

Stuart Wellington

[48:34] Apparently.

[48:35] They're like a Team Rocket of this movie.

[48:39] Yeah.

[48:39] Pokemon.

[48:39] Apparently.

[48:40] You guys like Pokemon?

[48:41] Yeah.

[48:42] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[48:42] Team Rocket.

[48:42] Yeah, we get it.

[48:43] It's a guy and a girl.

[48:43] They're evil.

[48:44] They're trying to catch them all.

[48:45] Yeah, we understand.

Stuart Wellington

[48:46] And they have a cat character, Kit Kat.

[48:49] I think I'm seeing a connection here, guys.

[48:52] Let me get back to my connection board over here and draw some red string.

Elliott Kalan

[48:57] Okay.

[48:59] So they are incredibly evil billionaires.

[49:02] I think you're right, Dan, that Sandra Bernhardt is much more stiffly performative in a way that I agree Roman, I think, is on purpose.

[49:08] Whereas Richard E. Grant, you imagine he could just ad-lib in this character for 100 hours?

Stuart Wellington

[49:13] Richard E. Grant has a way of performing where he looks like he's shocked that he's allowed to get to do this.

[49:21] He's like so excited.

[49:22] He's like, I can't believe it.

S4

[49:25] And he's so physical.

[49:26] Like he jumps from like off a table and he thrusts his pelvis and stuff.

[49:31] He's just delightful.

[49:32] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[49:32] Like he's making choices.

[49:33] You guys seem like the physical manifestation of the phrase joie de vivre.

Elliott Kalan

[49:38] Well, he seems like he's the guy also like that he is.

[49:43] It's kind of like Nicolas Cage in Kiss the Vampire in that it's like we're making this movie.

[49:48] It's crazy that I'm making this movie.

[49:50] So I'm going to go all out all the time.

[49:52] Like it's almost like he's pushing himself to have as much fun as possible because he hates the movie that he's in so much.

[49:57] Can you just call that movie Kiss the Vampire?

[49:59] A kiss of the vampire.

[50:01] Kiss the Vampire was a booth that I had at a carnival.

[50:03] Did not go well.

[50:06] People did not want to kiss that vampire.

[50:09] My mistake is instead of getting one of the sexy vampires I got in Nosferatu and people were not crazy about it.

[50:14] You got to get a Blade II vampire.

Dan McCoy

[50:17] Yeah.

[50:18] You're like, come on.

[50:19] Come on, Orlok.

[50:20] Put on some makeup or something.

[50:22] Get that pale.

Elliott Kalan

[50:24] You know.

[50:24] Hide those ears maybe.

[50:26] Put some rouge on those cheeks.

[50:27] Wear a wig.

[50:29] Here's something that I learned while reading about the movie afterwards is that so originally the villain in the early drafts was a guy.

[50:34] Then they changed it to a woman and apparently according to the thing I was reading, they tried to get Audrey Hepburn to come out of retirement to play the villain in this movie, which would have been bonkers.

[50:44] It would have been incredibly bonkers.

[50:46] Yeah.

[50:46] But instead they couldn't.

[50:47] So Bruce Willis was like, let's just have the man villain and the woman villain be in the same movie.

Dan McCoy

[50:52] I mean, I feel like the fact that they wanted her plus the fact that James Coburn is in this movie.

[50:56] Maybe they were also that points to a charade influence on what they were trying to do.

Elliott Kalan

[51:00] I could see that.

[51:01] I think it's a – I mean, that was also at the time when like those are the movies that the stars of this – the people making this movie grew up on those movies.

[51:08] You know.

[51:08] Yeah.

[51:08] So they wanted to – I should mention we're recording this on the day that Olivia de Havilland has – the news of her passing came around.

[51:14] And that was a moment for me that I was very – it really hit me hard that like that era of Hollywood is dead.

[51:19] Like a couple weeks ago I made Sammy watch The Adventures of Robin Hood, the Errol Flynn version, which he really liked a lot.

[51:25] And while we're watching it, Olivia de Havilland's in the movie and I'm like, she's still alive.

[51:29] Can you believe that?

[51:30] And she was like, that's amazing.

[51:31] I cannot tell him that anymore because at 104, she's dead.

[51:34] You know what they say?

[51:36] Fame.

[51:36] Ain't it a bitch?

[51:37] And by they, I mean A.J. Benza in old promos for E! True Hollywood Story.

[51:41] Now, guys, here's what happens.

Dan McCoy

[51:44] I don't think fame is the problem rather than the inexorable progression of time.

[51:48] The curse of fame.

Elliott Kalan

[51:49] She'd still be alive today if it wasn't for fame.

[51:51] It always gets you in the end.

S4

[51:52] It would have hit 105 if it wasn't just for that fame that she had.

[51:54] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[51:55] Yeah, exactly.

[51:55] Well, here's the thing is that she was actually on a plane flight that was supposed to crash, but she escaped.

[52:00] And death has been trying – Tony Todd has been trying to track her down ever since then.

[52:04] And it's been 80 years and he finally got her.

Dan McCoy

[52:06] I think we're going in a less sensitive direction suddenly.

Elliott Kalan

[52:10] So anyway, Sandra Bernhardt walks in.

[52:13] She outbids her partner for no reason.

[52:16] They waggle their tongues at each other.

[52:17] Instantly, I was like, I love these characters.

Dan McCoy

[52:21] With one dollar, which I don't think you can sort of –

Elliott Kalan

[52:25] I think with one million dollars.

[52:26] I think it was 101 million.

Dan McCoy

[52:28] Oh, okay.

[52:28] Yeah.

[52:28] I mean, you could still say –

[52:29] I was like, what?

[52:30] I thought they were doing –

[52:31] A Price is Right thing.

Elliott Kalan

[52:34] Yeah, 100 million and one.

[52:36] It's like 100 million and one and 50 cents.

[52:38] And the auctioneer is like, please, can we –

[52:40] I know we're starting at 100 million.

[52:41] This is already more than the item was listed as.

[52:44] But still, let's not get caught in the weeds here.

[52:48] So the guard notices Eddie, but Andy McDowell trips him.

[52:51] The auctioneer's gavel then explodes as he hits it on the ground, causing chaos.

[52:56] Eddie manages to save Andy McDowell from a falling pillar and then gets hit by a statue that swings on a wire.

[53:01] I guess it was suspended in the air above the room for some reason.

[53:04] It was probably swinging from a star.

[53:06] Yeah, probably.

[53:07] It was swinging from a star and then it made the wrong choice and became a horse.

[53:10] So he wakes up in an ambulance.

[53:12] And now, we'll get to the Andy McDowell character later.

[53:14] What I also learned is that Isabella Rossellini was supposed to play this part, which also makes – it makes a ton more sense.

[53:19] Totally.

[53:19] Seeing as she is supposed to be Italian.

[53:21] So he wakes up in an ambulance with the Mario Brothers mobsters.

[53:26] He manages to slam a whole thing full of hypodermic needles into the dumb brother's face, which for some reason causes the driver of the ambulance to lose control.

[53:36] I couldn't quite understand why that happened.

Stuart Wellington

[53:37] Oh, he grabbed his gun and started firing.

[53:39] That's when he lost control.

Elliott Kalan

[53:40] Oh, that's what it was.

[53:42] Eddie escapes on a gurney right onto the Brooklyn Bridge.

[53:46] And we lead to my – I think actually my favorite moment in the movie when a woman in a convertible is driving by him on the square of Brooklyn Bridge.

[53:52] She just goes, hey, are you going to die?

[53:55] I love that.

[53:56] And I don't remember if he has a quip or not, but I love that moment.

[53:59] It's just like, yes.

[54:00] This is a movie where the bystander is, if anything, mildly entertained.

[54:04] This man might die next to her.

Stuart Wellington

[54:07] And he like – somebody throws a cigarette out their window and he catches it and smokes it.

[54:11] And then he like –

[54:12] Yeah.

[54:12] He has to throw change through the toll booth because he accidentally goes in the exact change lane.

Dan McCoy

[54:17] That was a really good joke.

[54:19] I got to give it to Hudson.

[54:21] He's on this runaway gurney headed toward the toll booth and he has to pick – like change out of his pocket and hurl it so he doesn't get knocked off.

[54:29] Yeah, ruined only by the fact that there is no toll booth there.

Elliott Kalan

[54:32] They somehow ended up on the – going into the – I think the battery tunnel from the Brooklyn Bridge.

[54:37] But anyway, the – he just keeps quipping the whole time.

[54:40] Finally, his gurney stops at the exact place where a group of CIA agents – that's right, David Caruso and his gang are waiting for him.

[54:47] They're all named after candy bars.

[54:49] David Caruso is named Kit Kat because he's mute.

[54:52] Don't know how they're connected.

[54:53] The big guy is named Butterfingers because he's clumsy even though he's strong.

[54:57] How he became a CIA agent is amazing because he's so dumb and constantly messing things up.

[55:02] And there's two other CIA agents also.

Dan McCoy

[55:04] They also seem like they really need to take a long time explaining that they're named after candy bars.

[55:09] Yes.

[55:09] I mean especially considering that we all saw them with candy bars in their pockets because they're so on brand earlier in the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[55:17] Kit Kat manages to have pre-printed dialogue cards he hands to people that exactly fit the situation that they're in at the moment.

[55:23] It's a joke that should work but it never – until the last one I feel like it never quite works.

[55:29] Who walks out?

[55:30] It's their boss, James Coburn, who introduces himself as George Kaplan.

[55:34] That's a little nod for the movie fans out there since George Kaplan is Dan.

Dan McCoy

[55:40] He is the made-up spy in North by Northwest.

[55:44] You got it.

[55:45] The one that people think Cary Grant is.

Elliott Kalan

[55:46] And it's like this movie is saying, hey, we're the heirs to that kind of filmmaking.

[55:50] And I'm like, I don't remember a Cary Grant like knocking two guards' heads together and making a bonk sound.

Dan McCoy

[55:55] Okay, sure, whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[55:56] Like when he was hanging off Mount Rushmore, I don't remember him being like, hey, should we sing –

[56:02] is this a good time to sing Me in My Shadow?

[56:04] Like I don't think so.

Dan McCoy

[56:05] Now, Elliot, be honest.

[56:07] North by Northwest with a coconut bonk.

[56:09] Better or worse?

Elliott Kalan

[56:11] I think it's a lateral move, Dan.

[56:12] I got to tell you.

[56:13] I think it doesn't ruin what is a near-perfect adventure movie.

[56:17] But I don't think it improves it, you know.

[56:21] So they knock him out and then he falls into a crate of packing peanuts.

[56:27] He then is taken out of the crate.

[56:29] He wakes up in an empty house in Rome.

[56:32] And it's like this character is – in the classic film noir tradition is constantly getting knocked out and waking up places.

[56:38] And it's almost like the movie forgot they did it already because they keep having that happen to them.

[56:43] The killer butler is there.

[56:44] He takes him into Mayflower's high-tech limo.

[56:47] It's so high-tech that he has like some kind of ticker tape message fax machine that he then can stuff into a shredder.

[56:53] And the shredder just shoots the shreds out into the streets of Rome.

[56:56] It's like, where can I get that car?

[56:58] Guys, did they ever make that?

[57:00] Is it real?

[57:01] Roman, you strike me as a real gearhead.

[57:02] Is that a real car?

S4

[57:04] Not as far as I know.

[57:05] I have no idea.

[57:06] But the shredding is like – is glorious.

[57:08] It's a perfect supervillain.

[57:10] You know, like –

[57:11] And then he even says, I'm the villain.

[57:13] Like, it just looks so great.

Elliott Kalan

[57:15] He's so aware of what he's doing.

[57:18] Now, the moment they showed up in Rome – again, you're 15 years old or so.

[57:21] You're watching this movie.

[57:23] Were you like, finally, a movie that speaks to me?

S4

[57:27] I don't know.

[57:28] I mean, I feel like I was totally confounded by it when it happened.

[57:32] So, at this point, I think it bludgeoned me into just like accepting what was going to happen next at this point.

Elliott Kalan

[57:38] Okay.

[57:38] And by this point, you're like, I've seen what this movie has to offer me.

[57:41] No, I don't think you have, unfortunately.

[57:42] Not at all.

[57:43] Because they go to what I guess is like the Mayflower's office or conference room, but it's very clearly the lobby of a large building that they've made look like an office or conference room.

[57:53] Right.

[57:54] Where he's meeting with his board, which includes like a kid, I think.

[57:57] Like, there's like a Wes Anderson-esque touch to who is at the board of this corporation.

[58:03] Sandra Bird is sitting in the middle of the table, kind of barking out the lyrics to I've got the power on her Walkman.

[58:09] We never actually hear the song, but she's just kind of saying it out loud.

[58:12] And also her dog, Bunny, is there, right?

[58:16] Who is a little dog who's always chasing after his ball ball, which in a hilarious mix-up, he gets, what, lodged under Bruce Willis' testicles while he's handcuffed to a chair or something.

[58:27] And he's just, the dog is just sniffing around in his crotch.

[58:30] It's a real Benini-style humor moment.

Stuart Wellington

[58:32] Yeah, and the joke is that Bruce Willis, instead of being concerned, actually is enjoying it, right?

Elliott Kalan

[58:38] Yeah, yeah.

[58:39] Actually, you know what it is?

[58:40] It's the trailer.

[58:40] So before I had ever seen any Sacha Baron Cohen stuff, I was visiting my college girlfriend who was studying in England.

[58:46] And we went to see a movie, and they showed the trailer for a D'Olly G movie beforehand.

[58:50] And I was not aware of this character.

[58:51] I had seen the bus ads all over London.

[58:53] Every bus had an ad where he was just pointing guns at the person looking.

[58:57] I had no idea who this character was, didn't know.

[58:59] And the entirety of the trailer was him waking up thinking a woman was fellating him, but it was actually his dog.

[59:05] And then realizing he was enjoying it and going back to sleep.

[59:07] And I was like, don't care for it.

[59:08] Not my kind of material, thank you.

[59:11] So this is what that was like.

Stuart Wellington

[59:13] Elliot puts down the newspaper he's reading.

[59:16] Ships his head.

Elliott Kalan

[59:18] And then Bruce Willis then has one of my favorite lines in the movie.

[59:22] He goes, I guess we see who wears the penis in the family.

[59:25] Which is such a dumb quip that I was like, all right, I'll give you points for it.

[59:28] That's a dumb quip.

Dan McCoy

[59:30] Also, I read, I think it was a New York Magazine article about the making of this movie.

[59:37] And apparently, Bruce Willis wanted to say something more along the lines of like, I guess who has the dick.

[59:44] We know who has the dick or something like that.

[59:47] And he kept doing it.

[59:48] And they're like, okay, could we try one where you say, I guess we see who wears the penis in the family.

[59:54] Because like, at least that's not a good joke, but it's a play on a phrase rather than like, what the other thing would be.

[1:00:01] And he did it literally one time after they did like 12 takes.

[1:00:05] And they like, use the one where he actually said the line.

[1:00:08] Because that's what's Bruce Willis.

[1:00:09] So that's Bruce Willis for you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:10] That's what's called a one-er, which is the single perfect take that comes after 12 bad takes.

[1:00:16] Roman, I want you to know, we usually don't do this much research before episodes.

[1:00:19] And I think we were intimidated that you were coming on.

[1:00:21] And so we actually wanted to know something about this movie.

[1:00:24] The Mayflowers, oh yeah, we put real work into this, which you wouldn't know from when you first joined us on the Skype call.

[1:00:31] And we had no idea what we were doing.

[1:00:32] And we're making it up as we went along.

[1:00:34] So the Mayflowers want world domination.

[1:00:36] They threaten him.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:37] But they're like, world domination is based on like chaos, right?

[1:00:41] They want to throw the world into chaos.

[1:00:42] Because they've already made so much money.

[1:00:45] There's no challenge in that anymore.

[1:00:47] And I feel like in 1991, no villain is scarier than one that wants to upset the capitalist order.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:55] Oh yeah, well, because that was at a time when it was still a time when every kid's movie was about the loss of control of a corporation or whether a businessman was going to be able to find his soul.

[1:01:04] So people just took it for granted back then that capitalism rocked.

[1:01:08] And, you know, that capitalism rules and human empathy rules.

[1:01:12] That's just the way they felt back then.

[1:01:13] So they're like, if you don't go and steal this Da Vinci Codex from the Vatican, we're going to throw your friend Tommy, Danny Aiello, in jail.

[1:01:21] And he's like, Danny, he would never be able to survive it.

[1:01:23] He's too old now.

[1:01:24] So Eddie goes to the Vatican.

[1:01:26] He cases the joint.

[1:01:27] He uses a bratty kid's stuffed animal.

[1:01:30] She's literally just slamming a stuffed animal into a banister.

[1:01:34] And you'd think the Swiss guard would take her down almost instantly.

[1:01:36] Like the Vatican seems like a pretty heavily guarded place in real life.

[1:01:39] But instead, there's just three goofy guards, just like the auction house in America.

[1:01:43] And, yes, are they eating spaghetti while they're watching the cameras?

[1:01:46] Yes, of course they're eating spaghetti.

[1:01:48] Because it's Rome.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:50] Can I ask you something, you guys, about this young girl with the stuffed animal?

[1:01:59] I looked that actress up.

[1:02:00] She was 12 when she made this.

[1:02:04] But to me, she looked about 30.

[1:02:07] Did you guys have this issue?

[1:02:09] At all?

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:10] I didn't.

[1:02:11] But you know what?

[1:02:11] People back then dressed older.

[1:02:14] People, like, if you watch Seinfeld now, the characters are supposed to be younger than me.

[1:02:18] But they dress like my grandparents.

[1:02:20] And I think people now dress young.

[1:02:22] Like, you can go to work as a middle-aged man like me, let's say, wearing a t-shirt and jeans.

[1:02:27] But back then, like, people dressed older than they were.

[1:02:29] Not as much as in the 50s when teenagers wore suits.

[1:02:33] But, you know, slightly older.

[1:02:34] Speaking of dressing older.

[1:02:35] Stu was covering.

[1:02:36] Go ahead.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:37] No, I was just saying, Stu was covering his face in his hands.

[1:02:40] And I'm not quite sure why he was so dismayed by my question.

[1:02:43] But it was just, it was weird to me because I was like, why is that old person pretending to be a child?

[1:02:50] Like, why did they cast that old person?

[1:02:53] Like, is this the producer of the movie?

[1:02:55] Yeah.

[1:02:55] Like, wanted a weird cameo?

[1:02:57] Like, what's going on?

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:58] I think Stuart did some more research and knows that that girl actually had Jack's disease.

[1:03:02] Oh, no.

[1:03:02] And, you know, even though she was 12, she was physically 48.

[1:03:05] Like, I didn't want to tell you guys.

[1:03:08] Robin Williams in the hit film, Jack.

[1:03:10] I apologize.

[1:03:10] Speaking of dressing older.

S4

[1:03:12] I mean, this is where you really start to notice Bruce Willis' penchant for high-waisted pants in this scene.

[1:03:17] Like, he has a blue t-shirt tucked into.

[1:03:22] He looks like he's dressed like a six-year-old mafia boss in this scene.

[1:03:27] And you realize, oh, yeah, he always wore high-waisted pants.

[1:03:29] It's just because he had a black t-shirt on, he didn't quite notice it as much.

[1:03:32] Oh.

[1:03:33] And the wardrobe is just fantastic in this movie.

[1:03:37] In fact, so much so that it gets its own credit before the cast and crew are, you know, announced at the end of the movie.

[1:03:45] It is really glorious.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:48] It's funny that you bring up the high-waisted pants because I feel like that's another connection.

[1:03:52] We mentioned Birds of Prey earlier.

[1:03:54] And I was kind of thinking about Birds of Prey when I was watching this movie because Birds of Prey feels like it has a connection to that, like, 90s, like, glitter bomb action comedy thing.

[1:04:05] And yet, that movie also features Chris Messina wearing high-waisted pants as Zazz.

[1:04:11] And I remember watching that movie and being like, could I pull those off?

[1:04:16] The answer is no.

[1:04:17] But I thought about it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:19] And also, a hawk is a bird of prey.

[1:04:21] Stuart, put it all up on your connections board.

[1:04:23] Hudson Hawk, Pokemon, Birds of Prey.

[1:04:25] They're all related.

[1:04:26] Okay, I'm going to work on that.

[1:04:27] It's all connected to your cell phone.

S4

[1:04:27] I guess, tell me when I talk again.

[1:04:29] I mean, have you checked for the presence of reindeer goat cheese inside Birds of Prey?

[1:04:34] I have not seen it.

[1:04:35] But if you do, then that's, it seals it.

[1:04:38] It's all connected.

[1:04:38] Oh, yeah, same.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:39] All part of the reindeer goat cheese in that universe.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:41] We talked about the fact that along with this being written or co-written by the person who wrote Heathers, the director did Heathers.

[1:04:50] No, we have not talked about it.

[1:04:51] It's also the director of Heathers.

[1:04:51] One of my favorite movies.

[1:04:53] But he also directed Stuart's least favorite movie, 40 Days and 40 Nights.

[1:04:59] Now, since Hudson Hawk is clearly one of your favorite movies, Stuart, where does Michael Lehman now rank in your estimation?

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:08] Oh, well, I mean, that's a huge hit.

[1:05:11] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:12] I mean, Stuart, remember my favorite movie, The Taken of Pelham on 2-3, was directed by Joseph Sargent, who also directed Jaws 4, The Revenge.

[1:05:20] So it's okay to like a movie by someone who made a bad movie.

S4

[1:05:23] It's 40 Days and 40 Nights.

[1:05:24] That's the Josh Hartnett one.

[1:05:26] Yeah.

[1:05:27] And I've heard you talk about it.

[1:05:30] But does that take place in San Francisco?

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:33] I mean, it takes place at like a tech company, so I can only assume.

S4

[1:05:37] Because I was living in Petro Hill in San Francisco, and I think that was the movie that they shut down my street to film.

[1:05:45] Oh, man.

[1:05:46] And then even, maybe even paid it.

[1:05:47] I could have put a stop to that movie for you, Stuart.

[1:05:49] I'm so sorry.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:51] I'm radicalizing Roman against that movie as well.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:54] That reminds me of the day I couldn't walk down a street in New York because they were shooting Little Nicky starring Adam Sandler as the Death Son of the Devil.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:05] Luckily, the final product made it all worth it, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:07] Luckily, when I finally saw the movie, I was like, that was worth inconveniencing me a little bit.

[1:06:12] Okay, so Andy McDowell's also there.

[1:06:14] She's leading a tour of the Vatican, which at this point is, we got to be like, what is her job?

[1:06:19] She is like an art authenticator, and she leads tours of the Vatican.

[1:06:22] Eddie uses that stuffed animal from that middle-aged little girl and sets off the security things, which involves like these, like telescoping gates that close around this codex.

[1:06:32] And some gas gets sprayed out.

[1:06:35] Which don't look particularly scary.

[1:06:36] Like, they move fairly slowly, right?

[1:06:39] Yes, and also they look like you could just kind of snap them all.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:42] Yeah, they kind of look like the crystals in the Fortress of Solitude almost.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:46] Yeah, very snappable, yeah.

[1:06:49] Andy McDowell takes Eddie into the Vatican's secret postal subway tunnels, which could be a real thing.

[1:06:55] I don't know.

[1:06:55] It's not that out of the question, you know.

S4

[1:06:57] They do have a subway in Vatican City, but the one that they show is the mail rail in London, actually.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:06] Oh, okay.

[1:07:08] I guess they didn't get permission from the Vatican to shoot.

S4

[1:07:11] Well, I think the one in the Vatican is actually like a normal, like it's actually the world's shortest subway, apparently.

[1:07:18] It's like less than a mile.

[1:07:18] Oh, it's a real like commuter subway.

[1:07:19] But that's not what they're showing.

[1:07:21] That's actually a passenger railway.

[1:07:23] Like the smaller gauge mail railway is a thing from London.

[1:07:28] And I think that's what they're showing in that scene.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:30] They agree to have dinner that night.

[1:07:32] Andy McDowell seems to find Bruce Willis irresistible, even though he is smug and gross and she just saw him try to rob something.

[1:07:41] They're going to have dinner that night.

[1:07:42] And that's when we learn she's a secret agent for the Vatican.

[1:07:46] I mean, Eddie doesn't know that yet, but we know.

[1:07:48] And she's a secret agent.

[1:07:49] She reports that he's planning to rob the place to her boss, who is a cardinal.

[1:07:53] This is, again, one of those moments where when I found it, it was supposed to be Isabella Rossellini.

[1:07:56] I was like, this again makes so much more sense.

[1:07:59] It would be so much better with her.

[1:08:00] Yeah.

[1:08:00] I totally see her as a secret agent.

S4

[1:08:01] It was totally fine, but it totally would.

[1:08:03] It would have made much more sense that way.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:05] I mean, I'm going to be honest.

[1:08:06] Andy McDowell, I think, is my third favorite performer in the movie.

[1:08:10] Because she really sells it, especially at the end when she is faking being out of her mind.

[1:08:15] I think she really does a lot of work into it.

S4

[1:08:17] Her madcap energy, like her sort of sitcom madcap energy and everything like that is totally solid.

[1:08:21] Like there's nothing wrong with it.

[1:08:22] It just would have made, the tone of it would have made more sense with an absurdist Isabella Rossellini performance, I think.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:28] Yeah.

[1:08:29] Yeah.

[1:08:29] Other than Sex, Lies, and Videotape, I'm not like a big fan of early Andy McDowell.

[1:08:34] Like I think she's become a very good sort of character actor lately.

[1:08:38] I liked her in Ready or Not recently.

[1:08:42] But like, you know, I mean, I think she, in Groundhog Day, for me, the best you can say about the movie is like she does not make it bad.

[1:08:50] And I didn't like her in Four Weddings and a Funeral that much.

[1:08:52] But here, like, yeah, I thought she was very funny in a lot of it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:58] She's good in a movie called Shadrach that came out years ago.

[1:09:01] Yeah.

[1:09:01] But the, see, right after I watched this, I actually ended up watching Ready or Not.

[1:09:05] And it was like, Andy McDowell then and now.

[1:09:08] I like it.

[1:09:09] When I get to see an actor at different points in their career, one after another.

[1:09:12] That's the power of movies.

[1:09:13] But now I've got to wait like another 20 years until I can have that effect again when I watch Ready or Not.

[1:09:17] And then I don't like the remake of Cocoon that she's in.

[1:09:21] You know.

[1:09:21] Ready or Not, the next generation.

[1:09:23] Yeah, when they bring her back as a cameo.

[1:09:25] Yeah, still ready.

[1:09:26] And she comes back, I guess, as like a ghost.

[1:09:28] I don't know.

[1:09:28] Anyway, Eddie tries to call Danny Aiello, but he can't get him on the phone.

[1:09:32] Why is that?

[1:09:33] Because as we see in the background behind Eddie, Danny Aiello's in Rome already, just getting into a fancy car.

[1:09:39] And the CIA is like, Eddie, you've got to rob the Vatican tonight.

[1:09:42] You've got to do it.

[1:09:43] There's a little bit of comedic violence.

[1:09:45] And anyway, let's get to the robbery, shall we?

[1:09:48] Eddie mails himself to the Vatican using his cat burglar tricks, which essentially is putting himself in a box and mailing it to the Vatican and getting on that train and then just popping his hat out of the crate while he's on that train.

[1:09:58] It's a shot that I actually really love where he's got this wild-eyed look on his face while he's on this train.

[1:10:04] The Italian guards, again, just as bad as the American guards.

[1:10:07] Eddie steals the codex with a fishing hook, as we mentioned, that would almost certainly destroy this 500-year-old manuscript.

[1:10:13] To be flung through the air on a fishing hook.

[1:10:15] But maybe they had it rebound recently or maybe, I don't know.

[1:10:20] I mean, old paper is stronger than new paper.

[1:10:22] Yeah, they laminated the whole thing.

[1:10:24] It's on real lambskin.

[1:10:25] It's not on that newsprint that they use for books now.

[1:10:29] He narrowly escapes getting caught, jumps off a, what, like a double-decker bus or something and lands in the chair at the table where Andy McDowell is sitting.

[1:10:36] And that was the moment in the movie where I was like, that worked for me.

[1:10:40] Like, to have him go on this madcap chase and end up exactly where he was supposed to be.

[1:10:43] I'm like, all right, movie.

[1:10:44] Now I get what you're doing and I'm going to force myself to be on board.

[1:10:51] The CIA agents are at another table, which bothered me.

[1:10:54] Bruce Willis asked for pasta in impeccable Italian and then asked for ketchup, too.

[1:10:58] I don't know.

[1:10:59] It doesn't, I think, just to piss off the waiter.

[1:11:01] It doesn't track at all.

S4

[1:11:02] I don't know why.

[1:11:03] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:03] And there's no payoff.

[1:11:05] Like, I was expecting him to use the ketchup or something.

S4

[1:11:07] It seemed like a thing that was going to have a payoff and, like, they were going to use the bottle to do something.

[1:11:11] Like, thwart the CIA agents in the next table.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:14] I mean, I wonder if there's a scene where they do that.

S4

[1:11:17] And they cut it.

[1:11:18] It feels like something that, it feels like half of a joke.

[1:11:20] Like, legitimately.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:22] There's a number of things in the movie that do feel like half a joke.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:25] Does he save that ketchup and then use it as fake blood when they fake him killing Danny Aiello later?

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:32] Spoiler alert, Sue.

[1:11:33] We're not up to it.

[1:11:34] But yes, probably.

[1:11:35] They do use it.

[1:11:36] Yes, I think that's exactly it.

S4

[1:11:36] It's such a tenuous connection that you can never sort of connect it between that moment and the next moment.

[1:11:41] Is that actually what happens?

[1:11:43] They do say it.

[1:11:44] He says ketchup.

[1:11:45] Like, Danny Aiello says something about the ketchup on his chest.

[1:11:48] But it's still...

[1:11:48] You're right.

[1:11:49] And there's nowhere else they could have gotten ketchup in between.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:52] Not only is there nowhere else he could have gotten ketchup,

[1:11:54] but he doesn't know at that moment that Danny Aiello is in the city.

[1:11:57] It's the idea that he's planning to fake someone's death at some point.

[1:12:01] It's like what happens in...

[1:12:03] When Christopher Priest was writing the Black Panther comic book,

[1:12:07] and Black Panther always had these amazing schemes that he would out-scheme other people.

[1:12:11] And it got to the point where it was like,

[1:12:12] okay, so do you just know everything that everyone's going to do 15 moves ahead?

[1:12:16] Because there's no way you could have planned for that.

[1:12:18] Or in...

[1:12:18] What's the...

[1:12:20] Which is the Bond movie with Javier Bardem?

[1:12:23] Is that Quantum of Solace?

[1:12:24] Or is it...

[1:12:25] Skyfall.

[1:12:27] Skyfall.

[1:12:28] The moment in Skyfall when they're in the sewers

[1:12:30] and that subway train comes through and blocks James Bond,

[1:12:33] and it's like,

[1:12:33] so did you cloud everything around the subway schedule?

[1:12:37] Because you're acting like that was not a lucky break.

[1:12:39] Like, you're acting like that was part of the plan.

[1:12:41] But it's unbelievable.

[1:12:44] Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, unbelievable.

[1:12:47] Jordan, just put in that sound hit, please, from EMF's Unbelievable.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:50] Yeah, we wanted to pay EMF some licensing, right?

[1:12:53] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:54] So let's...

[1:12:55] I mean, just the other day, Dan, you were like,

[1:12:56] what can we do for EMF in this hard time?

[1:12:58] I know they're probably hurting.

[1:13:00] I mean, things are so unbelievable right now that nobody is listening to that song.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:04] Yeah, well, they can't tour.

[1:13:06] I mean, no one can tour right now.

[1:13:07] Because they only have the one song.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:08] What, are they going to perform it once and then get off the stage,

[1:13:11] come back to the same song as an encore, and then leave?

[1:13:13] No one's paying Ticketmaster or Live Nation subcharges for that.

[1:13:18] You know, it's impossible.

[1:13:20] So I guess what I'm saying is,

[1:13:21] this Max Bond Drive, please reach out to EMF,

[1:13:23] see what you can do for them.

[1:13:26] So Annie McDowell is giving Eddie a massage at her apartment,

[1:13:30] learns that he was in prison,

[1:13:33] explains his nickname,

[1:13:35] which is that the wind that comes off the Hudson is called the Hawk,

[1:13:38] because it's so cold, I guess.

[1:13:40] And so he was given the name Hudson Hawk,

[1:13:42] what, because he's a cool customer?

[1:13:43] It's not super clear.

S4

[1:13:45] Yeah, that's also a Chicago story.

[1:13:46] That's not, the Hudson isn't notorious for its coldness.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:50] Well, I will say that the wind coming off the Hudson can be cold sometimes.

[1:13:55] But you're right, it's not as cold as Chicago winds.

[1:13:58] But that's what they call New York, the Windy City.

[1:14:00] So she's like, oh, I like it that you were in jail.

[1:14:04] She takes, she goes back to her place.

[1:14:06] They go back to her place.

[1:14:07] She's giving a massage.

[1:14:08] They start making out when she gets a signal from her boss

[1:14:10] through the form of a crucifix on her wall that lights up

[1:14:13] and then just has voices coming out of it,

[1:14:15] which is a hilariously not subtle way for a secret agent to get a message.

[1:14:20] It may be while they're entertaining someone in their apartment

[1:14:23] who doesn't know that they're a secret agent.

[1:14:24] It seems like there's no way to like turn it off or anything.

[1:14:27] And she sees the codex in his bag.

[1:14:29] And she's like, wait, you did rob the Vatican tonight?

[1:14:31] Don't know why she's surprised.

[1:14:33] Meanwhile, this is the weirdest joke in the movie.

[1:14:35] And I could not understand it.

[1:14:37] The CIA agents are outside on a stakeout watching.

[1:14:40] And one goes, hey, what's happening up there?

[1:14:41] And Butterfinger, the big dumb one goes, want me to rape them?

[1:14:44] And I was like, what?

[1:14:45] Did I hear that right?

[1:14:47] Like, but the subtitle said it too.

[1:14:48] And it was one of the, it was just like another 1991 joke where I'm like,

[1:14:52] this is not a joke that would fly at any other point in history,

[1:14:57] maybe except at a time when like, it was, I don't know,

[1:14:59] it was okay to be a douche.

[1:15:00] Like, I don't understand.

[1:15:01] Dan, explain it.

[1:15:02] You love, you love jokes about sensitive subjects.

[1:15:04] I'm sorry.

[1:15:05] I was busy looking up.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:06] I was, I was busy looking up EMF on Wikipedia just to make sure that like,

[1:15:12] there were a thing we could like,

[1:15:13] a cause we could support and that there was no big tragedy.

[1:15:17] One of their bases did pass away from a drug overdose.

[1:15:25] But when was that?

[1:15:26] But, let's see here.

[1:15:29] It's, it was during the third or the second reunion.

[1:15:34] I mean, wait.

[1:15:35] It boggles my mind.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:36] They've broken up and reunited three times apparently.

[1:15:39] But this isn't something that happened like a couple months ago.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:42] No, no, no, no, no.

[1:15:43] Also, they did a lot of relief work for AIDS.

[1:15:49] So, I think it's, I think it's good for us to support EMF.

[1:15:52] Yeah.

[1:15:52] Let's all thank EMF.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:54] I mean, Dan, you know,

[1:15:54] I wasn't really suggesting that people like send EMF money.

[1:15:57] What?

[1:15:59] I hate to, I appreciate that you did our due diligence on this one, but.

[1:16:03] Yeah.

[1:16:03] But I'm glad you realized,

[1:16:05] I'm glad you ascertained that EMF falls in that meaty middle of things that are

[1:16:08] neither too good nor too bad for us to make fun of.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:11] So, but the joke that you just mentioned,

[1:16:13] there's a couple other jokes earlier in the movie that are,

[1:16:17] I think, and later in the movie that are kind of insensitive.

[1:16:20] And I think it just,

[1:16:21] it speaks to a time where the entire like editorial board was just a bunch of

[1:16:25] white guys being like, doesn't offend me.

[1:16:27] That's fine.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:28] Yeah.

[1:16:29] Yeah.

[1:16:29] There was a,

[1:16:30] there's a moment early in the film where it's like one of the guards is,

[1:16:35] is making a joke at the expense of a Chinese person.

[1:16:38] Oh, I forgot about that.

[1:16:40] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:40] And it's like, it's like, you're like, Oh, this is bad.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:42] And then they do one of those Asian music.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:45] Yeah.

[1:16:46] That was like, okay, come on movie.

[1:16:48] I should have made a note about that.

[1:16:49] That was, that was bad.

[1:16:50] That's the, uh, the,

[1:16:53] it's like I was explaining gremlins to Sammy the other day.

[1:16:55] And I got to the part about the,

[1:16:56] the Asian tourists with the camera.

[1:16:58] And I was like, uh,

[1:16:59] can I remove that from the movie?

Dan McCoy

[1:17:02] There was a time in history when it was hilarious that it was one of those,

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:06] they liked cameras.

[1:17:07] It's one of those stereotypes.

[1:17:08] I've never really understood,

[1:17:09] I guess.

[1:17:09] Cause I was a kid at the time,

[1:17:11] but I'm like, what, what, what,

[1:17:12] like what kind of stereotype is, well, you know,

[1:17:14] those types of people,

[1:17:15] they love visiting other places and bringing home memories with them.

[1:17:18] Let's make fun of that.

[1:17:19] They love to expand their horizons by travel and they love to remember the

[1:17:23] moment in a photo.

[1:17:24] That's hilarious.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:25] I think, I think it was exactly that Elliot,

[1:17:27] that like that was the first time kind of in a history that there was an

[1:17:32] influx of more Asian tourists to America.

[1:17:35] And just the simple fact that they took cameras around,

[1:17:38] which any human would do on their vacation,

[1:17:41] then became a stereotype.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:43] It's very, it's a, it's sometimes there's stereotypes that I just,

[1:17:46] I just, they're, I guess they're rooted in that,

[1:17:48] in that one moment of history.

[1:17:49] Anyway.

[1:17:49] So I guess what I'm saying is guys,

[1:17:52] I can no longer wholeheartedly endorse gremlins too.

[1:17:54] I can only endorse every other thing about that movie,

[1:17:57] except for that one character.

[1:17:58] So anyway, she,

[1:18:01] McDowell,

[1:18:01] any McDowell drugs,

[1:18:02] Eddie tells the CIA that she wants to see Kaplan.

[1:18:05] Cause everybody's working together and knows,

[1:18:07] I don't know why she,

[1:18:07] she like acts surprised that he committed the robbery,

[1:18:10] even though everyone in Rome seems to be working together and knows that Eddie

[1:18:13] is committing this robbery.

[1:18:15] And they go, Oh no, it's a,

[1:18:16] and James Coburn's like, it's a sting operation.

[1:18:19] We're going to catch the,

[1:18:20] the Mayflowers.

[1:18:21] And then for summary,

[1:18:22] and it goes, okay,

[1:18:23] now we've got to get you back to Rome,

[1:18:24] but don't worry,

[1:18:24] we have a body double.

[1:18:25] And David Crusoe is wearing the same dress as Andy McDowell and a wig for no

[1:18:29] reason.

[1:18:29] Again,

[1:18:29] this is like the first half of a joke and it's never paid off.

[1:18:32] There's no,

[1:18:33] there's no,

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:33] like,

[1:18:33] there's no reason she needs a body double.

[1:18:36] No,

[1:18:36] we're never seen a situation where like he could,

[1:18:39] he can,

[1:18:39] uh,

[1:18:39] convince someone he's hurt.

[1:18:40] It doesn't make sense.

[1:18:42] Andy McDowell talks to her boss in confessional.

[1:18:44] Uh,

[1:18:44] and we find out she's not just a secret agent.

[1:18:47] She's a nun.

[1:18:48] That's right.

[1:18:49] She's a battle nun or a warrior nun,

[1:18:51] whatever that independent comic from years ago was.

[1:18:53] It's now a Netflix TV show.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:55] Really?

[1:18:55] It is.

[1:18:55] Yeah.

[1:18:56] Yeah.

[1:18:56] It just,

[1:18:56] it just launched like a week or two ago.

[1:18:58] It's crazy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:59] Oh,

[1:18:59] I didn't know about that.

[1:19:00] That was one of those things I would see in the back of the previews catalog.

[1:19:03] And I'd be like,

[1:19:04] I don't know that I'll ever find out what this really is.

[1:19:06] Uh,

[1:19:07] the Vatican wants to keep the gold machine from wrecking the world economy because,

[1:19:11] I mean,

[1:19:11] it makes sense.

[1:19:12] The Vatican owns a lot of gold.

[1:19:13] Uh,

[1:19:14] but if there's anything that,

[1:19:16] uh,

[1:19:16] the teachings of Jesus tell us,

[1:19:18] it is that it's very,

[1:19:19] very important to have a functioning global economy based on precious metals.

[1:19:23] And that,

[1:19:24] that he's,

[1:19:25] I remember he says,

[1:19:26] I think at one point,

[1:19:27] uh,

[1:19:27] to Peter,

[1:19:28] he said,

[1:19:28] you will be the rock on which my church is built.

[1:19:30] And through which we will regulate capitalism to ensure that people can still make loads of money through the accumulation of commodities.

[1:19:36] And Peter was like,

[1:19:37] let me get all this down.

[1:19:38] This is a big job.

[1:19:39] Hold on a second.

[1:19:42] Uh,

[1:19:42] so the Mayflowers,

[1:19:44] they're mad at Hudson Hawk.

[1:19:45] Uh,

[1:19:46] I don't remember why they get the last gold machine bits,

[1:19:48] uh,

[1:19:49] from the codex,

[1:19:50] right?

[1:19:50] It's like every Da Vinci thing he steals,

[1:19:52] they have to break to get the machine parts that are inside of it.

[1:19:55] Uh,

[1:19:56] and Minerva kills her henchmen,

[1:19:58] uh,

[1:19:58] kind of as a joke,

[1:19:59] uh,

[1:20:00] Hudson Hawk steals something,

[1:20:01] uh,

[1:20:02] that I don't remember seeing,

[1:20:04] later on,

[1:20:05] we find out what it is,

[1:20:05] I guess.

[1:20:06] And the next couple of minutes are just everyone taking turns,

[1:20:09] overacting hysterically,

[1:20:10] largely,

[1:20:11] where like Hudson Hawk gets out of his handcuffs and starts dancing with Minerva and just shouting at them while they stand there watching him.

[1:20:17] And then he stops and watches as Richard E.

[1:20:19] Grant overacts and just flops around for a while.

[1:20:21] It's,

[1:20:21] the scene makes no sense.

[1:20:22] It's like the worst improv exercise I've ever seen.

[1:20:25] And they were just like,

[1:20:26] keep it in the movie,

[1:20:26] whatever.

[1:20:27] Okay.

[1:20:29] Uh,

[1:20:29] the,

[1:20:30] uh,

[1:20:30] and so the Mayflowers,

[1:20:31] as I say in my notes,

[1:20:32] they explain their plan to make gold and undermine the world so they can dot dot dot question mark.

[1:20:37] Uh,

[1:20:37] it's never really clear what the end game is.

[1:20:40] Uh,

[1:20:40] and now he's got to go rob the Louvre to get a model of Da Vinci's helicopter flying machine.

[1:20:45] And he's like,

[1:20:46] how much globetrotting robbery am I going to have to do?

[1:20:49] That's when he,

[1:20:50] he's like,

[1:20:50] I don't want to do this anymore.

[1:20:51] And they say,

[1:20:51] take it up with our partner.

[1:20:53] It's Danny Aiello.

[1:20:55] He set Hawk up somehow.

[1:20:58] Not sure how he did it.

[1:20:59] Not sure what they needed him for.

[1:21:01] It's not clear.

[1:21:02] He's played.

[1:21:02] No,

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:03] except I guess in doing the first robbery with him,

[1:21:05] it's unclear what he has to do with any of it.

[1:21:06] They fight.

[1:21:07] He seems to get shot during the fight and they're both taken away in an ambulance.

[1:21:11] Hey,

[1:21:11] guess what guys,

[1:21:12] as Stuart said,

[1:21:13] it was a fake fight.

[1:21:14] The oldest gag in the books,

[1:21:16] the old pretend to fight with your partner so that you can knock over the guy holding a gun on you.

[1:21:20] Uh,

[1:21:20] and Eddie is like,

[1:21:21] look at this.

[1:21:22] I stole part of the gold machine.

[1:21:23] And they're like,

[1:21:23] you did it.

[1:21:24] We saved the day.

[1:21:26] Well,

Dan McCoy

[1:21:26] but also here's what I don't understand because like it was a genuine,

[1:21:30] uh,

[1:21:32] betrayal.

[1:21:33] Eddie just forgives him for it because,

[1:21:36] uh,

[1:21:36] Danny Aiello is like,

[1:21:38] no,

[1:21:38] this is wrong.

[1:21:39] I shouldn't have done this.

[1:21:40] Like,

[1:21:41] like he,

[1:21:41] like,

[1:21:41] here's my guess.

[1:21:42] Changes at the,

[1:21:43] so off camera.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:44] Danny Aiello,

[1:21:45] who's a super charming guy.

[1:21:47] And I miss him every day.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:49] Here's my guess.

[1:21:49] Dan's baffled by when they set up this fake,

[1:21:52] uh,

[1:21:52] death scheme.

[1:21:54] Here's what they did.

[1:21:54] It's a range.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:55] They were fighting and Bruce Willis is mad.

[1:21:57] Danny Aiello started singing.

[1:21:58] Like,

[1:21:59] I only have eyes for you or something.

[1:22:01] And Bruce Willis sang along with him or like,

[1:22:03] uh,

[1:22:03] fly me to the moon.

[1:22:04] That's what it would have been saying.

[1:22:05] Fly me to the moon.

[1:22:06] They joined us to do it.

[1:22:06] And then,

[1:22:07] and then Bruce goes,

[1:22:08] Hey,

[1:22:09] plan 49 B.

[1:22:11] And I'll go,

[1:22:11] yeah,

[1:22:12] 49 B.

[1:22:13] And that's all they know because they got their crook shorthand.

[1:22:16] And they,

[1:22:16] that,

[1:22:16] they know that's the fake of fight so that I can pretend to be shot so that the Vatican ambulance can take me away plan.

[1:22:21] Because that's just how good they are,

[1:22:23] Dan.

[1:22:23] That's just,

[1:22:24] okay.

[1:22:24] Okay.

[1:22:24] I mean,

[1:22:25] I guess I'm the idiot.

[1:22:26] But no,

[1:22:27] I mean,

[1:22:27] I wouldn't say idiot.

[1:22:28] I would say moron,

[1:22:28] but you know,

[1:22:29] that's fair.

[1:22:29] Okay.

[1:22:31] We like to keep it to medical terms here.

[1:22:33] Yeah.

[1:22:34] Yeah.

[1:22:34] Thank you.

[1:22:35] Uh,

[1:22:35] they're celebrating at Andy McDowell's apartment.

[1:22:37] Eddie tries to get Andy McDowell to sleep with him,

[1:22:40] even though her bed is just behind like a thin see-through scrim.

[1:22:43] So I guess like Danny Aiello would just watch the whole time or just like stay really focused on the TV and pretend his friend was not having sex feet away from him.

[1:22:51] Or maybe they're just the kinds of friends like in Wolf of Wall Street who have sex in front of each other.

[1:22:55] I don't know.

[1:22:56] That never gets answered because Andy McDowell makes them sleep on the couch.

[1:23:00] Uh,

[1:23:01] the next morning the CIA shows up,

[1:23:02] wakes them up,

[1:23:03] injects them with a poison that paralyzes them from the next down,

[1:23:06] uh,

[1:23:07] so that they can,

[1:23:08] you would think,

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:09] you would think that this scene would hamper their ability to,

[1:23:13] overact.

[1:23:14] But no,

[1:23:15] no,

[1:23:15] no.

[1:23:16] They do the most neck and face acting you can imagine.

[1:23:20] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:21] All of the energies,

[1:23:22] all the chi from the rest of their body is channeled up into their face.

[1:23:26] Yeah.

[1:23:27] Not since the,

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:27] not since the head shaking demons from Jacob's ladder has there been such head and neck over,

[1:23:32] overacting motion in a,

[1:23:33] in a movie.

[1:23:34] Uh,

[1:23:35] uh,

[1:23:35] James Coburn is there and he's like,

[1:23:37] hey,

[1:23:37] you don't have to rob the Louvre.

[1:23:38] I did,

[1:23:38] I did it instead of you.

[1:23:40] We killed a bunch of guards.

[1:23:41] Here's the helicopter model.

[1:23:42] Breaks it open.

[1:23:43] Here's the gold machine.

[1:23:43] And it's like,

[1:23:44] Hey,

[1:23:45] why did they come here to tell them this?

[1:23:47] It seems unnecessary.

[1:23:48] It seems like it can only hurt their plan to get Hudson Hawk and Tommy,

[1:23:53] who are about to go home to get them back mixed up in the plot.

[1:23:57] Why would you do it?

[1:23:58] I don't know.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:59] They just dropped by to explain to the audience.

[1:24:02] No,

[1:24:02] there won't be a third heist.

[1:24:03] Don't worry.

[1:24:05] We got bored of the heist.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:06] We're not going to make you do that movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:08] So is this the scene where they introduce,

[1:24:10] they introduce a weapon.

[1:24:11] That's like a bazooka that fires these rockets that stick to things and have a timer on them.

[1:24:17] And I do love that they introduce this,

[1:24:20] uh,

[1:24:20] this bullshit weapon.

[1:24:21] And then it shows up multiple times for the rest of the movie.

[1:24:25] Like it's,

[1:24:26] it's very like Wolfenstein or doom or whatever.

[1:24:29] Well,

[1:24:29] but here's the,

[1:24:30] here's the question.

[1:24:31] I have no.

[1:24:31] I mean,

[1:24:31] just unlimited.

[1:24:32] Well,

[1:24:33] that's,

[1:24:33] yeah,

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:33] that was my question is where do they get,

[1:24:35] even if they held onto it,

[1:24:36] where do they get the probably very unique ammo,

[1:24:38] these suction cup time bomb missiles,

[1:24:41] but also the timer doesn't seem to matter that much.

[1:24:44] Cause they shoot one onto the wall and has a two minute timer.

[1:24:47] Then they,

[1:24:47] another one accidentally gets shot to a CIA agent's forehead.

[1:24:50] And as a two minute timer,

[1:24:51] the forehead one goes off first and then the heroes run away.

[1:24:54] And then the other one,

[1:24:55] I guess goes off.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:56] It's yeah,

[1:24:56] no,

[1:24:56] it goes down to,

[1:24:57] yeah,

[1:24:57] the timer is at zero.

[1:24:58] And then they're like,

[1:24:59] Hey,

[1:24:59] maybe we should jump out the window.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:01] All bomb timers give you a little bit of leeway.

[1:25:04] Once it hits zero.

[1:25:05] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:06] That's the,

[1:25:07] they call that the margin of error in any explosive.

[1:25:10] Uh,

[1:25:10] the Mayflowers,

[1:25:11] they kidnap,

[1:25:11] uh,

[1:25:12] Andy McDowell.

[1:25:12] They want her to decipher Da Vinci's plans so they can build the gold machine.

[1:25:16] That never really matters.

[1:25:18] Cause they've already built the gold machine.

[1:25:20] Uh,

[1:25:20] and,

[1:25:21] but she pretends that she is still,

[1:25:22] uh,

[1:25:23] babbling gibberish from the drug they injected her with.

[1:25:25] This is,

[1:25:26] I think was a pretty funny bit for me and that she thinks she's a dolphin and has to talk to other dolphins.

[1:25:30] And Andy McDowell really gives it her all.

[1:25:32] Eddie and Tony,

[1:25:32] they use that,

[1:25:33] uh,

[1:25:34] that bazooka that shoots suction cup time bombs to storm Castle Da Vinci where they are.

[1:25:39] Now,

[1:25:39] I don't believe Castle Da Vinci was ever a real place.

[1:25:41] I don't,

[1:25:42] my understanding was Leonardo Da Vinci was always in the employ of different kind of,

[1:25:46] feudal lords and barons because he needed money because he was not part of the landed gentry.

[1:25:51] Guys,

[1:25:51] prove me wrong.

[1:25:52] Dan,

[1:25:53] I know you're a Da Vinci scholar.

[1:25:54] Tell me what I'm wrong about that.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:56] Uh,

[1:25:56] no,

[1:25:56] I don't,

[1:25:57] I don't know that.

[1:25:58] But,

[1:25:58] um,

[1:25:58] there was a question that came up,

[1:26:00] uh,

[1:26:01] toward,

[1:26:01] when we were watching the movie,

[1:26:03] uh,

[1:26:04] in Shays McCoy,

[1:26:05] uh,

[1:26:06] here.

[1:26:06] And,

[1:26:07] um,

[1:26:07] it was,

[1:26:08] was there a war going on at the time?

[1:26:11] And I was like,

[1:26:11] Elliot would know this.

[1:26:12] Cause they're like,

[1:26:13] when they're saying we need bronze for the war.

[1:26:15] I mean,

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:16] I mean,

[1:26:16] Da Vinci was constantly building or designing military weapons,

[1:26:20] I guess.

[1:26:20] And like,

[1:26:20] there was warfare going on,

[1:26:22] but it wasn't like,

[1:26:23] it wasn't like a,

[1:26:24] you know,

[1:26:24] there was skirmishes between different kind of like warring,

[1:26:28] uh,

[1:26:29] like either city states or,

[1:26:30] or feudal vassals and things like that.

[1:26:32] It wasn't like Italy is at war with Germany.

[1:26:34] Cause Italy as a nation did not exist at the time.

[1:26:36] Not until like,

[1:26:37] like the late 18th,

[1:26:38] late 19th century.

[1:26:39] Oh yeah.

[1:26:40] I mean,

[1:26:40] it's possible.

[1:26:41] I mean,

[1:26:42] it's also,

[1:26:42] I mean,

[1:26:42] they did,

[1:26:43] it's true that they did not build that horse.

[1:26:44] I don't know if that's the reason why I don't remember,

[1:26:46] but that the Los Forza or whatever it's called,

[1:26:48] that horse he designed,

[1:26:49] which was supposed to be the largest equine statue in the world.

[1:26:52] It was not built until modern times.

[1:26:54] So like that part of it is released in real life.

[1:26:57] The model for the horse was destroyed.

[1:26:59] They still had his blueprints,

[1:27:00] but they,

[1:27:00] but the model is not real.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:01] So it was destroyed because there was part of his gold making machine in it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:06] Exactly.

[1:27:06] Yes.

[1:27:06] That's,

[1:27:07] that's the truth of that.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:08] I wanted to,

[1:27:09] yeah,

[1:27:09] I wanted to get to the bottom of the most important thing about this movie,

[1:27:12] Hudson Hawk's accuracy to a Renaissance history.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:15] As people will know,

[1:27:16] when we finally released that battle angel episode,

[1:27:17] you love to know backstory about wars.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:21] Tell me more,

[1:27:22] please.

[1:27:22] What I,

[1:27:22] what I love about this movie is that the big conclusion takes place at a

[1:27:27] fucking castle.

[1:27:28] You know,

[1:27:29] as soon as that happens,

[1:27:30] I'm like,

[1:27:30] I'm in baby.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:32] If look,

[1:27:32] you're like,

[1:27:32] what did Charlie bands produce this?

[1:27:34] Come on.

[1:27:34] Is,

[1:27:35] uh,

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:35] yeah,

[1:27:35] it's like,

[1:27:37] it's just like if looks could kill or I don't know,

[1:27:41] uh,

[1:27:41] other movies that have castles that I'm like,

[1:27:43] uh,

[1:27:44] romancing the stone.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:46] That's the two.

[1:27:48] Yeah.

[1:27:48] Uh,

[1:27:49] so they storm the castle while singing side by side.

[1:27:52] Cause they,

[1:27:53] but again,

[1:27:53] the song,

[1:27:54] the timing doesn't matter.

[1:27:55] It's not like that.

[1:27:55] They have an intricate plan for this other than split up and blow things up as you walk along.

[1:28:00] Um,

[1:28:01] but they're,

[1:28:02] they're having a ball.

[1:28:03] Uh,

[1:28:03] the Mayflowers kill.

[1:28:05] They,

[1:28:05] they,

[1:28:05] so Kit Kat,

[1:28:06] the David Crusoe character,

[1:28:07] I guess the joke was supposed to be that he's like a master of disguise because he's painted to look like a Roman statue with a spear for no reason.

[1:28:15] Like,

[1:28:15] I don't know who he's fooling because everyone knows he's there.

[1:28:17] And they say,

[1:28:18] guard the,

[1:28:19] guard the seat,

[1:28:20] the,

[1:28:20] the nun spy.

[1:28:21] And he puts a spear up to her and they're like,

[1:28:23] actually,

[1:28:23] and they kill him.

[1:28:25] what was,

[1:28:26] what was the point of that whole ruse?

[1:28:27] Like,

[1:28:27] why even bother that,

[1:28:28] that first step?

[1:28:30] Just go ahead.

[1:28:30] Cause the Mayflowers are just killing the CIA agents.

[1:28:33] Uh,

[1:28:34] meanwhile,

[1:28:35] uh,

[1:28:36] there,

[1:28:36] the good guys are throwing bombs everywhere.

[1:28:38] Uh,

[1:28:39] and Eddie.

[1:28:40] So this is when Eddie ends up in a fight with James Coburn,

[1:28:42] who it turns out he still knows Kung Fu from his days as like an hour man,

[1:28:46] Flint in like Flint,

[1:28:48] uh,

[1:28:49] secret agent.

[1:28:49] And do you have,

[1:28:51] this is,

[1:28:52] yeah,

[1:28:52] Stuart,

[1:28:52] describe what happens here.

[1:28:53] This is the,

[1:28:54] I think the cartooniest part of the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:56] So they're,

[1:28:57] they're doing a fight on the top of the,

[1:28:58] on the roof of the castle.

[1:29:00] Uh,

[1:29:00] and James Coburn,

[1:29:02] uh,

[1:29:02] is doing a pretty complicated combo with,

[1:29:05] you know,

[1:29:06] he's got his,

[1:29:06] uh,

[1:29:07] he's got his combo links down.

[1:29:08] He understands the frame data and he manages to lock Hudson Hawk in this stun lock animation up against the wall,

[1:29:14] basically,

[1:29:14] where he just keeps bending backwards and bending forwards over and over.

[1:29:18] So that even after he stops his combo,

[1:29:20] he drops his combo.

[1:29:21] You're like,

[1:29:22] what,

[1:29:22] what a loser.

[1:29:23] Why'd he drop his combo?

[1:29:24] Why doesn't he practice those B and B's?

[1:29:25] But,

[1:29:26] uh,

[1:29:26] he's,

[1:29:26] he's still locked in that animation.

[1:29:28] Of course,

[1:29:29] doing that makes him bend over to pick up his hat,

[1:29:32] which has fallen on the ground.

[1:29:33] And at this point,

[1:29:34] we know Hudson Hawk loves his fucking cool hat.

[1:29:37] So he bends over to grab that hat.

[1:29:39] James Coburn goes for a jump.

[1:29:41] And you're like,

[1:29:42] you're going to do a jump kick right now.

[1:29:44] And this point of the match,

[1:29:45] you're just leaving yourself open to a counterattack.

[1:29:47] Like what?

[1:29:48] I'd be sure you can see you or does one of those,

[1:29:50] uh,

[1:29:50] those,

[1:29:51] uh,

[1:29:51] guile kicks.

[1:29:52] So he jumps off the,

[1:29:54] over what?

[1:29:54] Over the barbican?

[1:29:55] Like what's the,

[1:29:56] uh,

[1:29:56] what's that thing called?

[1:29:57] He jumps off the ramparts.

[1:29:59] He jumps over the ramparts with his,

[1:30:01] uh,

[1:30:01] with his kick.

[1:30:02] And then of course lands on a car,

[1:30:03] but he's fine.

[1:30:04] He's fine.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:05] So,

[1:30:05] uh,

[1:30:05] I thank you for putting that to layman's terms that we could all

[1:30:08] understand.

[1:30:08] That was incredibly helpful.

[1:30:10] Uh,

[1:30:10] there is one funny moment where James Coburn is doing all these

[1:30:12] spinning high kicks and then gets dizzy.

[1:30:16] that's kind of a funny joke.

[1:30:17] He would get dizzy doing that.

[1:30:18] Um,

[1:30:19] he lands on top of a car where Danny Aiello is fighting

[1:30:22] Richard E.

[1:30:22] Grant.

[1:30:23] The car is being driven by the butler.

[1:30:25] Uh,

[1:30:26] and they,

[1:30:26] I don't remember why,

[1:30:27] for some reason,

[1:30:28] the runaway limo explodes.

[1:30:30] Uh,

[1:30:31] so,

[1:30:31] and,

[1:30:32] and,

[1:30:33] and anyway,

[1:30:34] you're like,

[1:30:34] okay,

[1:30:34] the movie is over,

[1:30:36] right?

[1:30:36] Good.

[1:30:37] The movie is over.

[1:30:38] They defeated the bad guys.

[1:30:39] Oh,

[1:30:40] oh,

[1:30:40] contraire,

[1:30:40] my friend,

[1:30:41] that was the end of act two because the Mayflowers,

[1:30:46] they capture Eddie and Anna.

[1:30:48] I don't know how they survived.

[1:30:50] It doesn't make any sense.

[1:30:51] Uh,

[1:30:51] Eddie assembles the gold machine crystals for them.

[1:30:54] Don't know how he knows how to do that.

[1:30:56] It's something that,

[1:30:56] I guess,

[1:30:57] you were supposed to have to read a little Da Vinci Codex to know how to do that.

[1:31:00] Yeah.

[1:31:00] But Eddie is just a master thief who knows the lengths of all the songs,

[1:31:03] so,

[1:31:03] of course,

[1:31:03] he can reconstruct the work of a Renaissance master.

[1:31:06] Um,

[1:31:07] the bad guys gloat.

[1:31:08] Sandra Bernhardt,

[1:31:09] they both get great speeches,

[1:31:10] great little mini speeches here that I love,

[1:31:12] where Richard E.

[1:31:13] Grant is like,

[1:31:14] civilization,

[1:31:15] art,

[1:31:15] human achievement,

[1:31:16] those are trophies on my desk.

[1:31:18] And,

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:18] uh,

[1:31:19] and,

[1:31:19] and Sandra was like,

[1:31:20] everyone thinks they're the center of the world.

[1:31:22] There's a traffic problem.

[1:31:24] why does this happen to me?

[1:31:26] It,

[1:31:26] but for us,

[1:31:26] that's not a fantasy for us.

[1:31:28] It is our reality.

[1:31:30] I love that they are just like Marvel villains,

[1:31:33] just stating their philosophies outright in the middle of the scene.

[1:31:36] Uh,

[1:31:37] but it turns out,

[1:31:38] uh,

[1:31:38] Oh,

[1:31:38] Roman,

[1:31:39] was any playing fair when he gave them the pieces of the gold machine?

S4

[1:31:42] Absolutely not.

[1:31:43] Because even though we have no idea how he can put this crystal together,

[1:31:46] he even knows how to put the crystal together wrong and have it stay together and be given to them to blow up the machine.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:54] Yeah.

[1:31:55] I mean,

[1:31:55] it's more likely that he just did it wrong,

[1:31:57] I guess,

[1:31:58] but the movie makes it seem like he did it on purpose.

[1:32:00] But I wonder if he,

[1:32:01] if he was like,

[1:32:01] they were like,

[1:32:02] Hey,

[1:32:02] you messed up the machine on purpose.

[1:32:04] yeah,

[1:32:05] that's me.

[1:32:06] Old,

[1:32:06] uh,

[1:32:06] Eddie Hawkins,

[1:32:07] you know,

[1:32:08] uh,

[1:32:08] the machine explodes,

[1:32:10] uh,

[1:32:10] Mayflower Minerva die in the chaos.

[1:32:12] Uh,

[1:32:12] Mayflower is,

[1:32:13] uh,

[1:32:13] is electrocuted Minerva.

[1:32:15] I guess she's killed when molten gold,

[1:32:17] molten lead spatters all over.

[1:32:19] It's not super clear.

[1:32:20] Uh,

[1:32:20] it's the kind of thing where in a movie like this,

[1:32:22] I could see her coming back just as a half lead,

[1:32:24] half flesh creature,

[1:32:26] but it doesn't happen.

[1:32:27] Uh,

[1:32:27] like a lady stone heart kind of person,

[1:32:29] you know,

[1:32:30] uh,

[1:32:31] Eddie fights Alfred.

[1:32:31] That's exactly what that character's like.

[1:32:34] Yeah.

[1:32:34] Isn't she made out of stone?

[1:32:36] That's why it's called that.

[1:32:37] Like,

[1:32:37] like,

[1:32:38] so in the game of Thrones books,

[1:32:39] I forget which one of it is.

[1:32:39] I think it might be,

[1:32:40] I think it might be.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:41] She's like,

[1:32:42] she's like,

[1:32:42] she's like geomancy too much and it turns her body into stone.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:44] Yeah.

[1:32:44] In volume six,

[1:32:45] a pummeling of pasta,

[1:32:47] she falls into a swamp and she's kind of half fossilized,

[1:32:50] like half petrified,

[1:32:51] and then claws her way out.

[1:32:52] Yeah.

[1:32:53] Uh,

Dan McCoy

[1:32:53] I,

[1:32:54] I,

[1:32:54] I would,

[1:32:54] I would describe,

[1:32:56] uh,

[1:32:57] Stuart's grin as tight when,

[1:32:59] uh,

[1:33:00] Elliot makes fun of the game.

[1:33:02] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:04] Yeah.

[1:33:05] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:06] Yeah.

[1:33:06] No,

[1:33:06] no,

[1:33:06] the game of Thrones is the first one.

[1:33:07] It goes game of Thrones,

[1:33:09] uh,

[1:33:10] a chat with checkers.

[1:33:11] Oh,

[1:33:11] sure.

[1:33:11] Yeah.

[1:33:12] They talk to a cat named checkers,

[1:33:13] uh,

[1:33:14] a dance with dogs,

[1:33:16] uh,

[1:33:17] kick with the kangaroo.

[1:33:19] And then,

[1:33:19] uh,

[1:33:20] uh,

[1:33:20] llama,

[1:33:21] llama,

[1:33:21] nighty night.

[1:33:22] And,

[1:33:22] uh,

[1:33:23] I think,

[1:33:23] um,

[1:33:24] what other,

[1:33:25] what other unfortunate events happen in the series,

[1:33:27] Stuart?

[1:33:28] Like a,

[1:33:29] a classy conundrum.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:32] So,

[1:33:32] he's anger laughing now.

[1:33:35] I've never seen that before.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:36] And then at some point,

[1:33:37] at some point,

[1:33:37] a pigeon wants to drive a bus.

[1:33:39] Anyway,

[1:33:39] that's the series.

[1:33:40] So,

[1:33:40] uh,

[1:33:41] they,

[1:33:42] Anna tries to shoot,

[1:33:43] she's firing guns to try to save Eddie from the butler,

[1:33:45] but she just manages to shoot Eddie in the arm and also shoot his belt buckle,

[1:33:49] which of course saves his life as mentioned earlier.

[1:33:51] Eddie somehow uses the blades coming out of Alfred's wrists to chop off Alfred's own head in a very story of Ricky type of moment.

[1:33:58] And the quip,

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:59] he won't be going to the hat convention in Charlotte.

[1:34:02] July.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:03] And now I love that joke.

[1:34:05] I love that.

[1:34:05] Here's why.

[1:34:06] One,

[1:34:06] it's based on nothing.

[1:34:09] The character,

[1:34:10] I think wears a hat once.

[1:34:12] And,

[1:34:12] and the specificity.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:14] Hudson Hawk loves hats.

[1:34:16] Ellie.

[1:34:16] Well,

[1:34:16] this thing,

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:17] the specificity of July makes me think that this is a real event Hudson Hawk is going to and thinks everybody else knows about.

[1:34:24] And so they'd be like,

[1:34:25] ha ha.

[1:34:25] Yeah,

[1:34:25] we get at the hat convention,

[1:34:27] but I wish there was a beat of Andy Mitell being like,

[1:34:28] is there a hat convention?

[1:34:29] Like I understand.

[1:34:31] It's so,

[1:34:32] it's such a,

[1:34:32] it's such a weird,

[1:34:34] a weirdly specific off base quip.

[1:34:36] Yeah.

[1:34:38] Anyway,

[1:34:39] there's only one way.

[1:34:39] Oh,

[1:34:40] they also kill Minerva's dog for no reason.

[1:34:42] With what,

[1:34:43] like a crossbow bolt or something?

[1:34:44] I don't remember.

[1:34:44] No,

[1:34:45] it's a ball.

[1:34:45] Yeah,

[1:34:46] fires a ball and knocks him out the window.

[1:34:47] Oh,

[1:34:47] right.

[1:34:49] He,

[1:34:49] he shoots him with a,

[1:34:50] with a tennis ball cannon.

[1:34:51] Yeah,

[1:34:51] that's right.

[1:34:52] Out a window.

[1:34:52] And you,

[1:34:53] and you,

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:53] you describe that with all the sympathy of being a noted animal lover.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:58] I mean,

[1:34:58] I care about all living things.

[1:35:00] I did say there was no reason to do it,

[1:35:01] you know,

[1:35:02] but.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:02] What I like about this action sequence.

[1:35:03] I mean,

[1:35:03] I,

[1:35:04] I do not advocate violence against any,

[1:35:06] uh,

[1:35:07] form of animal or human.

[1:35:09] Uh,

[1:35:09] uh,

[1:35:09] but,

[1:35:10] the dog was attacking them.

[1:35:12] Let's not say there was no reason.

[1:35:14] There was a,

[1:35:14] they had a motivation.

[1:35:15] Now they should not have killed the dog.

[1:35:17] Let me be clear about that.

[1:35:18] Yeah.

[1:35:18] Uh,

[1:35:19] yeah,

[1:35:20] it's not like Hudson Hawk on the way out was like,

[1:35:21] and fuck you dog.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:23] I mean,

[1:35:24] I might've liked it more if he said,

[1:35:25] if he did that and then just kick the dog out of the window.

[1:35:27] But okay.

[1:35:28] So there's only one way to escape this castle.

[1:35:30] Hey guys,

[1:35:31] was there a special Da Vinci device that we saw in the opening of the movie that we have not seen nor heard about since then?

[1:35:39] I think there was.

[1:35:40] And what was it?

[1:35:41] What was it?

[1:35:41] Think back.

[1:35:42] Think back.

[1:35:43] It really glared.

[1:35:44] It was glaring in the first scene because there was no reason for it to be there.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:48] It was one of those gliders,

[1:35:50] those gliders,

[1:35:50] right?

[1:35:51] Da Vinci gliders.

[1:35:52] One of those gliders,

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:53] one of those batwing gliders.

[1:35:55] They managed to fly it off and it's almost,

[1:35:57] okay.

[1:35:58] So in Howard the Duck,

[1:35:59] there's a very long sequence where Howard and Tim Robbins are riding around in a little,

[1:36:02] what,

[1:36:03] gyroplane.

[1:36:04] It takes forever.

[1:36:05] Imagine the exact opposite of that is Andy McDowell and Bruce Willis get on this glider.

[1:36:09] There is one moment or two of them being worried.

[1:36:11] And then they're like,

[1:36:12] we did it.

[1:36:12] And they land.

[1:36:13] And it was like,

[1:36:14] wait,

[1:36:14] was this supposed to be funny or exciting?

[1:36:16] I don't know.

[1:36:16] It's like,

[1:36:16] it's,

[1:36:17] and it's like,

[1:36:18] and it looks terrible.

[1:36:19] So I imagine that in the edit,

[1:36:20] they were like,

[1:36:20] this looks awful.

[1:36:21] Like,

[1:36:21] let's just not have a lot of this.

[1:36:23] And also the movie should have been over 10 minutes ago when they killed the bad guys the first time.

[1:36:28] But anyway,

[1:36:29] they land in a picturesque Italian village and kiss.

[1:36:32] Hey,

[1:36:33] guess who happens to be there by the logic of the movie?

[1:36:35] It's Tommy.

[1:36:36] He's there and he's alive.

[1:36:37] And they joke about how ridiculous it all is.

[1:36:39] And guess what?

[1:36:41] Eddie finally gets that cappuccino.

[1:36:43] He's wanted so long.

[1:36:45] And the voiceover at the beginning of the movie,

[1:36:46] which was not anywhere else in the movie,

[1:36:48] comes back and goes,

[1:36:48] and Eddie finally got his coffee.

[1:36:50] And they close the big tome and it's the end of the movie.

[1:36:53] Like,

Dan McCoy

[1:36:53] I just,

[1:36:53] I do want to say,

[1:36:55] I mean,

[1:36:56] you mentioned it in passing,

[1:36:57] but I really did enjoy the jokes surrounding Danny Isle's reappearance.

[1:37:01] Cause he's like,

[1:37:02] oh,

[1:37:02] you should have exploded in that car.

[1:37:04] airbags.

[1:37:04] And like,

[1:37:05] yeah,

[1:37:05] but the fire is like,

[1:37:06] there was a sprinkler in the car.

[1:37:07] Do you believe it?

[1:37:08] And they're all just like,

[1:37:09] they're,

[1:37:10] they're literally all like,

[1:37:11] yeah,

[1:37:11] sure.

[1:37:11] Why not?

[1:37:12] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:13] They are so openly,

[1:37:15] not even caring about the fact that he was just in a car explosion.

[1:37:18] Like,

[1:37:18] Oh,

S4

[1:37:19] I think that the rest of the movie would have done better with that tone of knowing that you're in a dumb movie.

[1:37:27] Yes.

[1:37:28] Like it,

[1:37:28] but it,

[1:37:29] but there again,

[1:37:30] it's just sort of sticks out as being so odd,

[1:37:32] you know,

[1:37:32] like,

[1:37:33] it's like the,

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:34] it's a movie.

[1:37:35] It's kind of like a,

[1:37:36] a,

[1:37:36] like an er Austin powers in a way where it's like,

[1:37:39] we're going to do a throwback.

[1:37:40] It's going to be really goofy.

[1:37:42] The characters are going to stretch the reality of the movie to such an extent that by the end of it,

[1:37:46] nobody believes in that reality,

[1:37:47] but they're still having a good time,

[1:37:49] but they like,

[1:37:49] couldn't,

[1:37:50] they just couldn't stick the landing or the takeoff or the flight in between.

[1:37:54] And the in-flight meal wasn't very good.

[1:37:56] And also they ran out of soda,

[1:37:57] like halfway through the flight.

[1:37:59] And also when they brought you a bag of peanuts,

[1:38:01] there was a hole in the bag and a spider had crawled into the bag and you opened it up.

[1:38:06] And the guy next to you was like,

[1:38:07] Oh,

[1:38:08] spider.

[1:38:08] I hardly know her.

[1:38:10] that doesn't make sense.

[1:38:10] Is it joking?

Dan McCoy

[1:38:12] Like that's,

[1:38:13] uh,

[1:38:13] I think that's a perfect lead in to final judgments about whether this was a good,

[1:38:19] bad movie,

[1:38:19] a bad,

[1:38:20] bad movie or movie.

[1:38:21] You kind of like,

[1:38:22] uh,

[1:38:23] guys,

[1:38:23] like I said,

[1:38:24] I,

[1:38:24] um,

[1:38:25] tried to watch this a couple of times before when I was younger and just sort of like lost interest.

[1:38:31] Um,

[1:38:31] and now I don't know why,

[1:38:33] cause there's constantly stuff going on.

[1:38:35] Uh,

[1:38:36] I think that there's like multiple,

[1:38:37] uh,

[1:38:38] factors at play.

[1:38:39] Like I said,

[1:38:40] I didn't have any,

[1:38:41] I didn't bring any preconceived notions this time to it.

[1:38:44] Unlike Roman,

[1:38:46] I don't find Bruce Willis's smugness more inseparable.

[1:38:50] Uh,

[1:38:51] as I grow older,

[1:38:52] I,

[1:38:52] I find that I have a ironic appreciation for it as part of the persona of who Bruce Willis is now.

[1:38:58] Okay.

[1:38:59] Whereas when I,

[1:39:00] you'll get to the Jeffridge stage eventually.

Elliott Kalan

[1:39:02] Guys,

[1:39:02] I'd never seen this movie like Ishtar.

[1:39:04] It just lived in my mind as a,

[1:39:06] uh,

[1:39:06] as a movie with a bad reputation.

[1:39:08] And unlike Ishtar,

[1:39:09] which I do not like at all.

[1:39:11] I,

[1:39:11] by the end of it,

[1:39:12] I was like,

[1:39:12] you know what?

[1:39:13] Hudson Hawk,

[1:39:13] you're a movie.

[1:39:14] I kind of like,

[1:39:15] you're not good,

[1:39:17] but I have to like the things that made this totally unswallowable,

[1:39:22] for the audiences of 1991 are the exact things that are refreshing to me about it now,

[1:39:26] where it's like,

[1:39:27] whatever you can say about this movie,

[1:39:29] it was not made by a studio committee trying to be as safe as possible.

[1:39:32] Like this is a bonkers movie.

[1:39:34] And knowing that it is the close,

[1:39:36] much like nothing but trouble is the clearest mirror of the warped psyche of Dan Aykroyd.

[1:39:41] Knowing that this is kind of the movie that plays in Bruce Willis's head when he thinks about making a movie,

[1:39:46] that kind of adds a little bit of extra meaning to it for me.

Dan McCoy

[1:39:49] It was unfairly maligned at the time.

[1:39:51] And I feel like now there are a bunch of people who claim that it's this misunderstood masterpiece,

[1:39:56] which is just contrarian hipster nonsense.

[1:39:59] It does exist in the middle.

[1:40:01] I think that like people,

[1:40:04] there's a weird lack of nuance to people's opinions nowadays,

[1:40:09] perhaps because of the internet,

[1:40:10] where they can't justify liking something if it's not actually awesome.

[1:40:15] Like it's like,

[1:40:15] no,

[1:40:16] you're right.

[1:40:16] You're wrong.

[1:40:17] This movie is amazing.

[1:40:18] I wouldn't say this movie is amazing,

[1:40:19] but this movie is a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

[1:40:22] And I kind of liked it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:40:24] Yeah,

[1:40:25] I would say,

[1:40:26] I don't know.

[1:40:26] I feel like this is probably the closest.

[1:40:29] I feel like this is a solid,

[1:40:31] good,

[1:40:31] bad movie.

[1:40:32] There's parts of it that I like.

[1:40:34] There's parts of it that are not,

[1:40:37] not so good.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:39] You were going to do an Italian accent there and you didn't do it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:40:42] You know,

[1:40:43] I'm trying to be better about that,

[1:40:44] you know,

[1:40:45] uh,

[1:40:47] it's appropriate.

[1:40:47] Yeah.

[1:40:48] It was,

[1:40:48] you know,

[1:40:48] it was a character.

[1:40:49] I'm doing a character.

[1:40:50] Um,

[1:40:51] yeah,

[1:40:51] I,

[1:40:52] I definitely have,

[1:40:54] uh,

[1:40:54] I,

[1:40:55] I have a lot of affection for this movie.

[1:40:57] If this movie was a person,

[1:40:59] I would hand it my Nintendo switch and say,

[1:41:02] would you play Nintendo with me?

[1:41:04] Yeah,

S4

[1:41:06] That's fair.

[1:41:07] I,

[1:41:07] I think I'm right where you guys are.

[1:41:09] It's like,

[1:41:09] I think 30 years ago,

[1:41:10] it was a movie I kind of liked.

[1:41:12] I think now I think of it more as a good,

[1:41:14] bad movie because my tolerance for Bruce Willis's smug face has dropped a lot since then.

[1:41:19] But it's also like,

[1:41:20] it is going for it.

[1:41:21] And you got to admire that.

[1:41:23] It was,

[1:41:23] it was during that phase of where action movie writers and directors kind of like,

[1:41:28] um,

[1:41:29] last action hero and,

[1:41:31] uh,

[1:41:31] where they were bored with action movies,

[1:41:33] but like the audience was not bored with action movies yet.

[1:41:36] So they were doing these commentaries on action movies.

[1:41:39] But,

[1:41:39] um,

[1:41:40] the audience was like,

[1:41:41] I like action movies.

[1:41:42] I want our Schwarzenegger to go back to where he was.

[1:41:45] They're like,

[1:41:45] wait,

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:46] can I not watch Bruce Willis just be a cat burglar?

[1:41:48] Like,

[1:41:48] does it have to be like in a crazy world?

S4

[1:41:50] Like,

[1:41:51] and so it sort of has this interesting kind of time capsule in that,

[1:41:55] in that sense.

[1:41:56] But yeah,

[1:41:56] I,

[1:41:56] I think it's,

[1:41:57] it's pretty enjoyable.

[1:41:58] I watched it twice in preparation for this.

[1:42:00] And that was about my,

[1:42:02] like,

[1:42:02] I don't,

[1:42:03] I'm not going to be seeing it again for another 30 years,

[1:42:06] but it is,

[1:42:07] it is in that it's really right down the middle to me to a good,

[1:42:10] bad movie,

[1:42:11] you know,

[1:42:12] and a movie I kind of liked.

Dan McCoy

[1:42:18] Uh,

[1:42:18] okay.

[1:42:19] Well,

[1:42:20] Elliot is gonna talk a little bit more about the max fund drive in a

[1:42:24] moment,

[1:42:25] but to give you a,

[1:42:26] uh,

[1:42:27] break from his voice before he starts,

[1:42:29] I'm going to say a quick word for Squarespace,

[1:42:32] uh,

[1:42:33] which you can use to create a beautiful website to turn your cool idea

[1:42:38] into a site.

[1:42:38] People might enjoy out there in the world,

[1:42:40] blog or publish content,

[1:42:41] sell products and services of all kinds and much more.

[1:42:45] And Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful,

[1:42:48] customizable templates created by world-class designers with everything

[1:42:53] optimized for mobile,

[1:42:54] right out of the box.

[1:42:55] You can use it on your phone,

[1:42:56] tablet,

[1:42:57] whatever,

[1:42:58] a new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions,

[1:43:02] free and secure hosting,

[1:43:03] and much more call to action.

[1:43:06] This is it guys.

[1:43:07] This is the call to action.

[1:43:09] You gotta go to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial.

[1:43:15] And when you're ready to launch,

[1:43:16] use the offer code flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or

[1:43:22] domain.

[1:43:23] Was I not supposed to read call to action?

[1:43:25] Maybe let's,

[1:43:27] let's move on.

[1:43:28] It's on the page.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:28] Now,

[1:43:29] now,

[1:43:29] now Romans,

[1:43:31] uh,

[1:43:31] Squarespace ads particularly are beautiful to behold on 99% invisible.

[1:43:35] Uh,

[1:43:36] and so I just,

[1:43:37] it was very,

[1:43:38] it was very entertaining for me to watch.

[1:43:40] Uh,

[1:43:40] it was kind of like watching like a professional NFL player watching like a

[1:43:44] peewee football match.

[1:43:45] And the kids realized suddenly that there was a peewee footballer there and

[1:43:48] just started running a little faster.

[1:43:50] Uh,

[1:43:50] just at the very end.

S4

[1:43:51] I was just amazed that you actually do these like in line,

[1:43:55] like live to tape,

[1:43:56] which is like,

[1:43:57] you,

[1:43:57] you do realize that you can record things like at separate times and like put

[1:44:01] them in.

[1:44:01] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:44:02] Never heard of it.

[1:44:03] Never heard of it.

[1:44:04] Yeah.

[1:44:04] We do things for that.

[1:44:06] We wouldn't have to have our,

[1:44:07] uh,

[1:44:08] guests just sit around for them.

[1:44:10] I guess.

[1:44:10] No,

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:11] we do things Steve Allen style all live.

[1:44:13] I know.

S4

[1:44:14] I love it.

[1:44:15] It was watching the magic unfold like that.

[1:44:17] It was really something.

[1:44:18] It was really something.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:19] Now,

[1:44:20] normally I would then make up some kind of silly,

[1:44:23] uh,

[1:44:24] website that maybe Squarespace could help me with.

[1:44:26] That's based somewhat on the movie.

[1:44:28] Like,

[1:44:28] uh,

[1:44:28] for instance,

[1:44:29] is my girlfriend,

[1:44:30] a nun.com.

[1:44:31] Your site to find out whether your girlfriend is secretly a nun and also a

[1:44:35] secret agent,

[1:44:36] mostly the nun thing,

[1:44:37] but we don't have time for that because here's a website I'm going to tell

[1:44:39] you about.

[1:44:39] It's called maximum fun.org.

[1:44:41] You don't want to do a,

Stuart Wellington

[1:44:42] you don't want to do a ad for spaghetti.

[1:44:44] Thermoses or something.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:47] Oh yeah.

[1:44:47] We never even talked about spaghetti.

[1:44:48] There is.

[1:44:49] All right.

[1:44:49] Uh,

[1:44:50] okay.

[1:44:50] Oh,

[1:44:50] sorry.

[1:44:51] Okay.

[1:44:51] So here's a website called find me coffee.com.

[1:44:54] Hey,

[1:44:54] have you ever just landed in a glider in a little Italian village and you're

[1:44:57] not sure if they serve coffee there?

[1:44:58] Just log on to find me coffee.com.

[1:45:00] It'll show you where the coffee is anyway,

[1:45:02] but maximum fun.org slash joins the site.

[1:45:04] I want to talk about because again,

[1:45:05] it is pledge time.

[1:45:07] We've been hearing a lot from our great listeners,

[1:45:09] uh,

[1:45:09] and how much this show means for them.

[1:45:12] I mean,

[1:45:12] a lot of tweets about it and it's been really wonderful and it's been really,

[1:45:15] um,

[1:45:17] you know,

[1:45:17] just uplifting to us to find out how people feel about the show and how much

[1:45:22] it means to them and especially economically uplifting to find out how much it

[1:45:26] means to them in monetary form.

[1:45:28] So here's the ask.

[1:45:30] We're going to be asking of you.

[1:45:31] We're going to ask you to think about,

[1:45:33] Hey,

[1:45:33] what can you afford in this time as mentioned before?

[1:45:35] And also you didn't need the mention because you know,

[1:45:37] it's a hard time.

[1:45:38] It's a hard time right now.

[1:45:39] It's not an easy time to be throwing money at the guys talking about Hudson Hawk and

[1:45:44] making Dan mad on a,

[1:45:46] on a weekly now basis,

[1:45:47] but we appreciate you in continuing or increasing your support.

Dan McCoy

[1:45:53] Here's now I'm imagining,

[1:45:54] uh,

[1:45:54] my enemies,

[1:45:55] whoever they may be out in the world,

[1:45:57] secretly funding this podcast.

[1:45:59] Uh,

[1:45:59] just so I can,

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:00] eventually Dan will literally blow his top and then we'll have our revenge.

[1:46:06] Um,

[1:46:07] we need your support.

[1:46:08] Uh,

[1:46:08] it helps us,

[1:46:09] helps us keep going with the podcast.

[1:46:10] It's something that,

[1:46:11] uh,

[1:46:11] helps me.

[1:46:12] I know just being personally convinced my family to let me sit in a room,

[1:46:16] uh,

[1:46:16] twice a week away from them for a choice week,

[1:46:18] once every once a week,

[1:46:19] sit in a room away from them and take time.

[1:46:21] I should spend,

[1:46:22] uh,

[1:46:22] you know,

[1:46:23] taking care of my family or playing with them or whatever.

[1:46:25] Are you sure?

[1:46:26] I feel like they're like,

Stuart Wellington

[1:46:28] uh,

[1:46:29] yeah,

[1:46:29] why don't you take some dad time?

[1:46:32] Why don't you take some me time with your buddies?

[1:46:35] I mean,

[1:46:36] That's fair.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:37] But so,

[1:46:37] so,

[1:46:38] aside from the main reason you should become a member,

[1:46:40] which is to keep all this great Flophouse content coming to you,

[1:46:43] uh,

[1:46:43] with our mini episodes now,

[1:46:44] we're giving you,

[1:46:45] I would say twice the content,

[1:46:46] but our regular episodes are so long that it's more like 35% more content,

[1:46:50] uh,

[1:46:50] with the mini episodes.

[1:46:51] Uh,

[1:46:52] here's the other reason you joined.

[1:46:53] because you can now get not just bonus content,

[1:46:57] which is hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of shows from Maximum Fun shows that you can't listen to otherwise.

[1:47:02] Not just our show,

[1:47:03] although our show does have lots of bonus content,

[1:47:06] including a,

[1:47:07] some would say,

[1:47:07] prolonged,

[1:47:08] uh,

[1:47:08] role-playing adventure starring us,

[1:47:10] run by Stuart,

[1:47:11] uh,

[1:47:11] in which we travel to the outer bounds of space over 10 or so hours.

[1:47:16] I don't know.

[1:47:16] It's a long,

[1:47:17] it's a long one.

[1:47:18] Uh,

[1:47:18] but a lot of exciting stuff happens when we meet some crazy creatures.

[1:47:21] Uh,

[1:47:21] in addition to that,

[1:47:23] you can also get,

[1:47:25] that's right,

[1:47:26] the classic new one every year.

Stuart Wellington

[1:47:29] I can't believe Elliot's fucking riding me so much this episode.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:32] I know.

[1:47:33] Huh?

[1:47:34] You can also,

[1:47:35] you also get,

[1:47:36] if you go to the $10 a month limit,

[1:47:38] because that's the thing,

[1:47:39] you can,

[1:47:39] you can be a $5 a month donor or a contributor,

[1:47:41] let's say,

[1:47:42] you can be a $10 a month contributor,

[1:47:43] you can go as high as $50 or $100 a month,

[1:47:45] and each one of those levels has its own gifts.

[1:47:47] That also includes the gifts from the previous levels,

[1:47:50] but at $10 a month,

[1:47:51] you get the pins.

[1:47:52] That's right,

[1:47:53] everyone's favorite thing about the MaxFun Pledge Drive,

[1:47:55] it's the pins.

[1:47:56] Every show has its own pin,

[1:47:58] you get to choose what show you want to wear the colors of on your,

[1:48:02] you know,

[1:48:02] jean jacket,

[1:48:03] or maybe on your backpack,

[1:48:04] uh,

[1:48:05] so that when you go to school,

[1:48:06] everyone's like,

[1:48:06] hey,

[1:48:07] cool flop house pin.

[1:48:08] What is it?

[1:48:09] And you're just like,

[1:48:09] eh,

[1:48:09] it's,

[1:48:09] you know,

[1:48:09] it's Rocket Crocodile.

[1:48:10] Amazing that you didn't recognize the character,

[1:48:12] but you knew it was a flop house pin,

[1:48:13] even though it doesn't say flop house on it,

[1:48:15] and they're like,

[1:48:15] hey,

[1:48:16] that's because we're MaxFun listeners,

[1:48:17] kind of.

[1:48:18] Anyway,

[1:48:18] uh,

[1:48:19] so,

[1:48:19] did you get the answer for number four on the algebra homework?

[1:48:21] And you're gonna be like,

[1:48:22] aren't we still gonna talk about the pin?

[1:48:23] And they're like,

[1:48:24] we're done talking about the pin.

[1:48:25] We got more important things to talk about.

[1:48:26] Do you think Shirley likes me?

[1:48:28] I don't think so.

[1:48:29] You're,

[1:48:29] you're crazy,

[1:48:30] dude.

[1:48:30] So those pins are yours at the $10 a month level.

[1:48:34] Uh,

[1:48:34] every,

[1:48:35] you get to choose which one.

[1:48:36] There's a lot of great pins for a lot of great shows.

[1:48:38] There's Shirley Jackson.

[1:48:39] Yes,

[1:48:40] there is.

[1:48:40] Yeah.

[1:48:41] Shirley Jackson came to speak at their school.

[1:48:45] And the guy's convinced she has a crush on him.

[1:48:48] Uh,

[1:48:49] and,

[1:48:50] uh,

[1:48:50] he's like,

[1:48:51] hey,

[1:48:51] I could always live in the castle.

[1:48:53] Come to me.

Dan McCoy

[1:48:54] Speaking of castles,

[1:48:56] uh,

[1:48:56] Hudson Hawk,

[1:48:57] we've always lived in the castle.

[1:48:59] Stuart,

[1:49:00] you do the math.

[1:49:00] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:49:01] Put it on your board.

[1:49:02] It's not on my board,

[1:49:03] Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49:07] And,

[1:49:07] uh,

[1:49:08] so,

[1:49:08] uh,

[1:49:09] according to this,

[1:49:10] according to this document,

[1:49:11] and Dan,

[1:49:12] tell me if I'm wrong at any point,

[1:49:13] because we're in week three,

[1:49:14] right?

[1:49:15] According,

[1:49:15] this will be released.

[1:49:16] We are in week three.

[1:49:16] According to this document,

[1:49:17] this week,

[1:49:19] if,

[1:49:19] uh,

[1:49:19] all our $10 a month members have the option to purchase additional pins from the store,

[1:49:24] not just the one that you chose,

[1:49:25] and the proceeds from those additional pins go to charity.

[1:49:28] There are so many great ones.

[1:49:29] I know,

[1:49:29] I'm going to take advantage of it.

[1:49:30] I'm going to buy a bunch of them.

[1:49:31] I want that switchblade sisters one,

[1:49:32] and I want,

[1:49:33] uh,

[1:49:33] the iPodius one.

[1:49:35] Anyway,

[1:49:35] there's a bunch of good ones.

[1:49:36] I know I'm going to get them.

[1:49:37] I'm already a,

[1:49:38] I'm already a max one member,

[1:49:39] but I always choose the flop house spin because,

[1:49:41] uh,

[1:49:42] even though I think it's weird that I have to buy a pin from my own podcast,

[1:49:45] I still want to support the network.

[1:49:47] Come on.

[1:49:47] Lots of great shows.

[1:49:48] So,

[1:49:48] you go to maximumfund.org slash join.

[1:49:50] You sign up for the $10 a month level,

[1:49:53] and you can get that pin that you want,

[1:49:55] and also additional pins.

[1:49:57] Hey,

[1:49:57] you don't have to do $10 a month,

[1:49:58] but if you do,

[1:50:00] that's what you get.

[1:50:00] There's lots of other levels.

[1:50:01] There's lots of other gifts.

[1:50:03] I would advise you to,

[1:50:04] yeah?

Dan McCoy

[1:50:05] Ellie,

[1:50:05] I just want to say two things while this is going on.

[1:50:07] Um,

[1:50:08] number one,

[1:50:09] there was a point where you're talking about pins,

[1:50:10] where it sounded like when I accidentally hit two times speed on my

[1:50:15] podcast when,

[1:50:16] uh,

[1:50:16] listening.

[1:50:17] Um,

[1:50:17] you just,

[1:50:18] I don't know.

[1:50:18] It was like,

[1:50:19] I don't know.

[1:50:20] Uh,

[1:50:20] you shifted into a micro machines guy and I was very impressed.

[1:50:23] Oh,

[1:50:23] number two,

[1:50:24] as long as we're talking about,

[1:50:25] uh,

[1:50:26] max fun things that happened,

[1:50:28] uh,

[1:50:29] I just want to quickly plug.

[1:50:30] If you go to the max fun YouTube page,

[1:50:32] uh,

[1:50:33] I did a,

[1:50:34] uh,

[1:50:34] charity dinner for meals on wheels with some other max fun podcasters

[1:50:38] that you can see,

[1:50:39] uh,

[1:50:40] it,

[1:50:40] you know,

[1:50:41] it streamed live,

[1:50:42] but you can always donate to meals on wheels and watch the YouTube

[1:50:45] dinner party.

[1:50:47] Back to you,

[1:50:47] Elliot in the studio.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:49] Uh,

[1:50:49] so please,

[1:50:51] I would advise you to go to maximum fun.org slash join now while you

[1:50:55] are thinking about it.

[1:50:56] I know that it took me weeks and weeks to remember to donate to a

[1:51:00] recent charity that I wanted to donate to.

[1:51:01] I donate to charities regularly,

[1:51:02] but this particular one,

[1:51:03] I kept forgetting.

[1:51:03] Don't let that happen to you.

[1:51:05] Go to maximum fun.org slash join.

[1:51:07] Now,

[1:51:07] are you in a car driving listening to this?

[1:51:09] Pull over,

[1:51:10] pull over and get your phone out.

[1:51:12] Are you on public transportation?

[1:51:13] Even better.

[1:51:13] You don't have to pull over.

[1:51:14] Just keep going.

[1:51:15] So if you're at,

Dan McCoy

[1:51:16] this is the chill max fun.

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:18] Yeah.

[1:51:18] If you're at,

[1:51:19] look,

[1:51:19] if you're on a plane right now,

[1:51:20] urgency,

[1:51:21] urgency,

[1:51:21] he's doing right.

[1:51:22] Parachute out of that plane,

[1:51:22] get a signal.

[1:51:23] If you're at a funeral right now,

[1:51:25] I don't know why you're listening to this at a funeral,

[1:51:26] but like you're already listening to your phone.

[1:51:28] Just whip,

[1:51:28] just take it out and make the donation.

[1:51:30] Uh,

[1:51:31] just go.

[1:51:32] If you're at a wedding right now,

[1:51:33] same thing.

[1:51:34] Uh,

[1:51:34] you should do it now before you forget.

[1:51:35] And I want to say thank you.

[1:51:37] It's,

[1:51:37] it means a lot to us that anyone is interested in listening to what is,

[1:51:43] let's just face it,

[1:51:44] nonsense.

[1:51:44] And that it means enough to people for them to really reach into their

[1:51:48] pockets and help us out in making us happen,

[1:51:51] making it happen.

[1:51:52] Uh,

[1:51:52] this is a strange time.

[1:51:54] This show I know has provided a real outlet for me.

[1:51:56] It seems like for a lot of our listeners,

[1:51:58] it's also provided a kind of special outlet where they can escape the cares

[1:52:02] and woes of the world.

[1:52:03] And like the prisoners at the end of Sullivan's travels,

[1:52:06] uh,

[1:52:07] laugh for a few moments before returning to the drudgery and hell that is

[1:52:10] life.

[1:52:10] So please,

[1:52:11] uh,

[1:52:12] why not help keep that brief shining moment of pleasure in an otherwise

[1:52:16] blasted and tear filled veil that we live in.

[1:52:18] Yeah.

[1:52:19] And just join us at maximum fund.org slash join,

[1:52:22] become a member.

[1:52:23] If you're already a member,

[1:52:24] consider upgrading.

[1:52:25] And if you're not a member,

[1:52:26] if you don't become a member,

[1:52:27] thank you still for listening,

[1:52:29] but still consider becoming a member.

[1:52:31] Like,

[1:52:31] come on.

[1:52:31] So let's,

Dan McCoy

[1:52:32] let's do a quick little postmortem of that little pledge break there.

[1:52:36] I feel like the pitches to this week have been a little more

[1:52:39] psychological than I'm comfortable with.

[1:52:41] Like,

[1:52:42] uh,

[1:52:42] just like,

[1:52:43] I mean,

[1:52:43] whether it be like playing on people's psychological,

[1:52:46] uh,

[1:52:47] weaknesses right now,

[1:52:48] or,

[1:52:48] um,

[1:52:49] just sort of veering into kind of a nihilistic view of everything.

[1:52:53] That would be my,

Elliott Kalan

[1:52:54] this is also how my home life goes.

[1:52:56] Like,

[1:52:56] like,

[1:52:56] uh,

[1:52:57] Sam will be like,

[1:52:57] I love you,

[1:52:58] daddy.

[1:52:58] And I'm like,

[1:52:58] do you love me?

[1:52:59] Cause,

[1:53:00] uh,

[1:53:00] and then I shake a tip jar.

[1:53:01] I'm not seeing a lot in the old TJ.

[1:53:04] And then he's got to put some,

[1:53:05] he's got to put some bills in there.

[1:53:06] And I'm like,

[1:53:06] Oh,

[1:53:06] you do love me.

[1:53:07] Or like,

[1:53:08] he'll put some coins.

[1:53:08] I'm like,

[1:53:09] Oh,

[1:53:09] I guess Sammy doesn't love me as much as he did yesterday.

Stuart Wellington

[1:53:11] Cause then he's just doing a flex and you're like,

[1:53:14] fuck you,

[1:53:14] dude.

[1:53:15] Like,

[1:53:15] exactly.

[1:53:16] I'm trying to buy my attention.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:18] And next,

[1:53:18] next week for the pledge drive,

[1:53:20] we'll do reverse psychology.

[1:53:20] We'll be like,

[1:53:21] Hey,

[1:53:22] it's pledge drive.

[1:53:22] We don't even want you to pledge.

[1:53:24] Don't,

[1:53:24] don't worry.

[1:53:25] Don't even do it.

[1:53:25] Don't become a member.

[1:53:26] And they'll be like,

[1:53:27] fuck you,

[1:53:27] I'll do whatever I want.

[1:53:29] And they'll become members.

[1:53:30] Right?

Dan McCoy

[1:53:30] Maybe.

[1:53:31] Okay.

[1:53:31] I don't like this new psychological warfare direction.

[1:53:34] We're going in.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:35] So Dan,

[1:53:36] what do we do next?

[1:53:37] Oh yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:53:38] The next thing we do on the show is do a couple of letters from listeners.

[1:53:42] Listeners like you,

[1:53:43] if you want to write us a letter,

[1:53:46] go to the website and figure it out.

[1:53:48] I don't like saying it on the air cause we get so many letters.

[1:53:52] And it's way too much for me to read.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:54] If I can for a moment do a postmortem on that.

[1:53:59] I feel like that was for someone who was ready to open the door on a kinder,

[1:54:04] gentler era of the flop house episode.

[1:54:06] Yeah.

[1:54:07] It seems like you really slammed that door shut in the faces of listeners by saying,

[1:54:12] and I quote,

[1:54:13] Hey,

[1:54:13] this is how you send us a letter.

[1:54:14] Go to hell.

[1:54:15] Seems like,

[1:54:16] seems like a bit much.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:19] No,

[1:54:19] I love,

[1:54:20] I love that you guys care.

[1:54:21] I,

[1:54:22] there have been so many touching letters over the years.

[1:54:24] I'm just really tired.

[1:54:26] I apologize.

[1:54:27] No,

[1:54:27] not good.

[1:54:27] Does it?

[1:54:28] It's okay.

[1:54:28] So,

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:28] so let me just take a moment and say,

[1:54:31] Hey,

[1:54:31] we're sorry from the flop house.

[1:54:33] We're sorry for Dan from the flop house.

[1:54:36] I'm sure that Stuart and I have said things today that may have caused a bit of dismay for listeners of the flop house.

[1:54:44] But even more than that,

[1:54:45] I'd just like to take this moment to chat and say,

[1:54:49] we're sorry for Dan from the flop house.

[1:54:52] We love when you write to us.

[1:54:53] It really makes us smile.

[1:54:55] We'd run for miles and miles and miles for a letter from you.

[1:54:59] And I don't,

[1:55:00] I know Dan makes it sound like torture that you reach out to us and empty your hearts with affection and love for the flop house.

[1:55:07] But Dan's just uncomfortable with feelings and emotions.

[1:55:10] It's the way he was raised in Eureka,

[1:55:13] Illinois.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:16] Yeah.

[1:55:17] You know what?

[1:55:17] I apologize to everyone.

[1:55:19] I feel like between this and Topeka,

[1:55:21] I've taken a hard left turn into meanness over the last few episodes.

[1:55:25] I'm sorry.

[1:55:26] Wow.

Stuart Wellington

[1:55:27] Did you get that feedback from the over full letters bag that you have that is crushing your body?

[1:55:33] Can barely tolerate.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:35] Yeah.

[1:55:36] Okay.

[1:55:36] Well,

[1:55:36] my last name with health.

Elliott Kalan

[1:55:38] This does remind me of years ago when Ringo Starr released that video message where he was like,

[1:55:43] fans,

[1:55:43] I love you.

[1:55:44] Peace and love.

[1:55:44] You're the best.

[1:55:45] Do not write me any more letters.

[1:55:46] I will not write back.

[1:55:47] Peace and love.

[1:55:47] Do not write me letters.

Dan McCoy

[1:55:49] Well,

[1:55:50] he,

[1:55:50] I mean,

[1:55:50] he,

[1:55:50] you know,

[1:55:51] set himself an unreasonable thing when he said that he would write back.

[1:55:57] He like wrote back to everything for years.

[1:55:59] I mean,

[1:55:59] that was foolish of him.

[1:56:00] Which is insane.

[1:56:00] Yeah.

[1:56:02] Okay.

[1:56:02] My last name with health writes,

[1:56:04] Peaches,

[1:56:05] as Stuart has noted earlier,

[1:56:07] a movie is a horror movie if a character dies,

[1:56:09] which makes me think that Waking Ned Devine is the best horror movie of all time.

[1:56:14] On that note,

[1:56:15] what is your favorite genre defying or cross genre movie?

Elliott Kalan

[1:56:20] You guys.

[1:56:21] I'll,

[1:56:22] I'll say there's a,

[1:56:23] one of my favorite movies that I actually want to watch again soon,

[1:56:26] but I have to buy a new copy because I lent my DVD to somebody and they lost it,

[1:56:30] is a movie called The Fall directed by Tarsim Singh that stars Lee Pace.

[1:56:34] And it's kind of hard to describe.

[1:56:37] It's like kind of a fantasy,

[1:56:39] but it's not a fantasy movie and it's kind of adventure,

[1:56:42] but it's not quite an adventure movie.

[1:56:43] And it's kind of a drama,

[1:56:44] but it's,

[1:56:45] it's a strange movie.

[1:56:46] And it's this movie where it,

[1:56:48] that's set in a silent era of Hollywood.

[1:56:50] And this stunt man is in a hospital because he broke his leg in a stunt,

[1:56:53] trying to impress his ex-girlfriend.

[1:56:54] And he befriends this little girl and starts telling her this fantasy story.

[1:56:58] And we're seeing her imagining of what he's telling her.

[1:57:01] And the story is so building off of the way they feel at any given moment.

[1:57:06] And it's a movie that is very hard to classify,

[1:57:09] but I really love it.

[1:57:10] And it's one that means a lot to me.

[1:57:12] So I would say the fall,

[1:57:13] which is not my recommendation for this week,

[1:57:15] but I do recommend it.

[1:57:16] Anyway,

[1:57:16] back to you guys.

S4

[1:57:18] I think like that one,

[1:57:21] my,

[1:57:21] I think my favorite movie of all time,

[1:57:23] if I had to,

[1:57:23] had to pick one is probably Jaws.

[1:57:25] And I think,

[1:57:26] because I think it's probably one of the best horror movies,

[1:57:29] the best buddy cop movie,

[1:57:30] the best adventure movie,

[1:57:32] the best disaster movie.

[1:57:33] It's a good family drama.

[1:57:34] I like ones,

[1:57:36] I like movies that actually mix it up a lot in terms of genres.

[1:57:39] So.

Stuart Wellington

[1:57:40] Yeah.

[1:57:41] Obviously I'd say audition,

[1:57:43] the Takeshi Miike movie.

[1:57:45] Cause the first half is like a weird,

[1:57:47] uh,

[1:57:48] romance,

[1:57:48] like romance drama.

[1:57:49] And then the second half is,

[1:57:51] uh,

[1:57:52] I don't want to talk about it too much.

[1:57:54] Uh,

[1:57:55] or,

[1:57:55] I mean,

[1:57:56] uh,

[1:57:56] I've talked about this movie a lot on the show,

[1:57:58] but,

[1:57:58] uh,

[1:57:59] the guest I think is great because you don't kind of don't know what it is for a lot of the movie.

[1:58:04] It like,

[1:58:05] it's,

[1:58:06] it's so funny and weird.

[1:58:07] And then also it gets actiony and scary.

[1:58:10] That's great.

[1:58:12] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:58:12] That's good.

[1:58:13] Uh,

[1:58:14] I,

[1:58:15] I'm just going to sort of make a more broad,

[1:58:17] uh,

[1:58:18] uh,

[1:58:18] statement about,

[1:58:19] I think that a lot of these sort of,

[1:58:21] uh,

[1:58:22] Korean new wave of films,

[1:58:25] uh,

[1:58:26] fall into this where like,

[1:58:27] it seems like they can make genre movies there,

[1:58:32] like thrillers or horror films.

[1:58:34] Or,

[1:58:35] or,

[1:58:36] or just,

[1:58:36] you know,

[1:58:37] kind of,

[1:58:38] I don't know,

[1:58:38] like science fictiony things that,

[1:58:42] uh,

[1:58:42] don't feel the need to adhere to one tone.

[1:58:45] Like,

[1:58:46] I think that there's a lot of,

[1:58:48] uh,

[1:58:49] problem that American audiences often have if like tone varies wildly.

[1:58:54] Um,

[1:58:54] but I don't know,

[1:58:56] maybe it's just because of what you said earlier that we're willing to accept,

[1:58:59] uh,

[1:59:00] different things from different cultures.

[1:59:01] I don't know,

[1:59:02] but like,

[1:59:03] um,

[1:59:03] they don't seem to reject in South Korean films,

[1:59:06] how often,

[1:59:08] you know,

[1:59:08] they'll throw a stew of like,

[1:59:10] me,

[1:59:11] horrifying,

[1:59:12] or throw Stuart in there.

[1:59:14] No,

[1:59:14] I've like horrifying events,

[1:59:16] horrifying violence,

[1:59:17] but then they'll have,

[1:59:18] uh,

[1:59:19] very broad comedy,

[1:59:20] or they'll have,

[1:59:21] uh,

[1:59:22] uh,

[1:59:22] characters,

[1:59:23] uh,

[1:59:24] you know,

[1:59:24] reacting to things in ways that are both emotionally,

[1:59:27] uh,

[1:59:28] honest and melodramatic simultaneously.

[1:59:31] And,

[1:59:31] uh,

[1:59:32] I find that so much more fascinating than something that feels beholden to one tone the whole,

[1:59:38] whole way.

Elliott Kalan

[1:59:39] I'm always curious about whether those movies are successful in their home countries.

[1:59:43] Uh,

[1:59:44] like there's like a,

[1:59:45] that reminded me of a movie I should have used as another answer to this,

[1:59:48] which is save the green planet,

[1:59:49] which is a South Korean movie that's like a thriller and also a comedy and also like a plea for,

[1:59:56] for ecological,

[1:59:57] uh,

[1:59:58] conservation.

[1:59:59] And it's such a strange movie.

[2:00:00] And I know that that was not a success in South Korea.

[2:00:03] And I wonder if movies that are,

[2:00:04] that come over here and get kind of cult followings here.

[2:00:07] And we start to think that that's kind of like what they do over there,

[2:00:10] whether those movies are actually mainstream movies over there.

[2:00:13] Sometimes they are,

[2:00:14] sometimes they aren't.

[2:00:14] Certainly,

Dan McCoy

[2:00:15] certainly like Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho,

[2:00:17] like two of the biggest names,

[2:00:19] like they are hugely successful.

[2:00:20] That's true.

Elliott Kalan

[2:00:21] But I'm always like,

[2:00:22] I have to look up like a movie like the good,

[2:00:24] the bad and the weird,

[2:00:24] like how,

[2:00:25] how well that did or not.

[2:00:26] Cause it's,

[2:00:27] cause that's another crazy movie.

Dan McCoy

[2:00:29] Uh,

[2:00:30] so Ike writes,

[2:00:32] uh,

[2:00:33] President Eisenhower.

[2:00:36] Uh,

[2:00:37] how do we feel about Ike guys?

Elliott Kalan

[2:00:39] Uh,

[2:00:40] some people like them.

[2:00:41] Uh,

[2:00:42] I feel like that to put it just on a like and don't like polar access is a little bit hard when you're talking about a president.

[2:00:48] Yeah.

[2:00:49] Who had such a mixed bag in some ways on the one hand,

[2:00:52] he sent,

[2:00:53] he sent,

[2:00:54] uh,

[2:00:55] troops to,

[2:00:55] to integrate Southern schools.

[2:00:57] On the other hand,

[2:00:58] he did it reluctantly and he was not happy that the Supreme court forced his hand.

[2:01:02] Do you judge a man by his motives or by his actions?

[2:01:06] That's beyond my pay grade.

[2:01:07] I'll just say this.

[2:01:08] As far as presidents who looked like big babies,

[2:01:10] he was one of the best.

Dan McCoy

[2:01:14] Well,

[2:01:15] uh,

[2:01:15] President Eisenhower writes,

[2:01:17] uh,

[2:01:18] I finally watched a movie that has scared me my entire life since I watched it for the first time as a kid.

[2:01:23] I'm speaking of course of 1979,

[2:01:27] the Muppet movie in,

[2:01:29] in young,

[2:01:30] my defense,

[2:01:31] it's still terrifying.

[2:01:32] However,

[2:01:32] I was able to sleep afterwards.

[2:01:34] So big improvement.

[2:01:35] I'm writing to ask whether any of you have movies that you watched as kids that you couldn't or still can't watch because they scared you so badly.

[2:01:42] Bonus points.

[2:01:43] If it's not a traditionally scary movie,

[2:01:46] although,

[2:01:46] uh,

[2:01:47] I stand that,

[2:01:48] uh,

[2:01:49] I stand behind that animal is one of the most horrifying creatures to ever grace the screens.

[2:01:54] Oh,

[2:01:54] Sammy would argue with that.

[2:01:55] Thank you for your time and your podcast.

[2:01:58] Ike,

[2:01:58] last name with help.

Elliott Kalan

[2:01:59] Sammy would argue with that,

[2:02:00] Mr.

[2:02:00] President.

[2:02:00] Although I do know he,

[2:02:02] he would get scared when the giant animal comes out at the end when he eats all those things.

[2:02:05] Those grow pills.

[2:02:06] Although for me,

[2:02:07] the scariest scene in that movie is the one with Mel Brooks where they,

[2:02:09] they're stuffing Kermit into that device.

[2:02:12] not funny.

[2:02:13] It's just like really distressing.

[2:02:15] And Mel Brooks is doing that weird German accent,

[2:02:18] but he's like,

[2:02:18] just looks like regular Mel Brooks.

[2:02:20] Like that whole,

[2:02:20] that whole scene.

[2:02:21] It's,

[2:02:22] I want,

[2:02:22] every time I watch it,

[2:02:23] I skip that scene.

[2:02:24] I'm like,

[2:02:24] don't need it.

[2:02:24] This is too distressing for me.

Dan McCoy

[2:02:26] Well,

[2:02:26] actually,

[2:02:27] I mean,

[2:02:27] like I,

[2:02:28] I had actually forgotten that,

[2:02:29] uh,

[2:02:30] the Muppet thing was in there when I was formulating my answer to this,

[2:02:33] uh,

[2:02:33] question because the three,

[2:02:35] the two things that I came up with are not actually movies,

[2:02:38] but they're TV things that I remember scaring me that weren't supposed to be

[2:02:42] scary as a kid.

[2:02:43] One of them was at the beginning of the Muppet show when they're like,

[2:02:46] boom,

[2:02:47] boom,

[2:02:48] boom.

[2:02:48] And the like biggest monsters start walking out of their little doors toward

[2:02:52] the camera.

[2:02:53] That freaks me out.

[2:02:54] I'd be freaked out.

[2:02:56] Uh,

[2:02:56] I mean,

[2:02:57] I was obviously primed to be freaked out cause I just watched twin peaks,

[2:03:00] but I'd be extra freaked out by the Mark Frost,

[2:03:03] like production logo at the end.

[2:03:05] That was all like sizzling electricity.

[2:03:08] Uh,

[2:03:09] for a sudden loud noise afterwards,

Elliott Kalan

[2:03:11] for a moment,

[2:03:11] I thought that you were primed to be freaked out by the Muppet show because you had just

[2:03:14] walked twin peaks.

[2:03:15] That's like,

[2:03:16] I misunderstood for a moment.

[2:03:18] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[2:03:18] Uh,

[2:03:19] and lastly,

[2:03:20] the thing that would terrify me the most when I was a kid was the emergency broadcast

[2:03:28] system test.

[2:03:29] Cause my brother at some point was like,

[2:03:31] Oh,

[2:03:31] you know,

[2:03:31] like this is,

[2:03:32] you know,

[2:03:32] they,

[2:03:32] that's the,

[2:03:33] the government put in place in case like there's a nuclear war or something like

[2:03:37] that.

[2:03:37] I'm like,

[2:03:37] what?

[2:03:38] And so every time,

[2:03:39] even though they would say it's only a test,

[2:03:41] it would freak me out.

[2:03:42] I think it's partly just like the fact that anything,

[2:03:45] anything could interrupt television.

[2:03:48] One of the most important pillars in my childhood.

[2:03:52] Well,

[2:03:52] that's something we have the audacity to break into the signal.

Elliott Kalan

[2:03:55] When I was a kid,

[2:03:56] I would like,

[2:03:57] or like a teenager,

[2:03:58] you know,

[2:03:58] if I stayed up till four in the morning or something watching TV,

[2:04:02] and there was always the moment when I would go to the local PBS channels to watch the

[2:04:07] end of day where they would play.

[2:04:09] It must've been something they made in the early eighties or late seventies where it's

[2:04:12] images of Americana as the,

[2:04:14] as there's like a MIDI version of the star spangled banner that plays.

[2:04:17] And I just remember,

[2:04:18] and it's like super like seventies,

[2:04:21] early eighties video where like,

[2:04:22] there's a lot of blur,

[2:04:23] like,

[2:04:24] and burn in when it moves from image to image.

[2:04:27] And then it would just end the song and immediately cut to color bars.

[2:04:29] And that would be it for about two hours.

[2:04:31] And I was,

[2:04:32] it just frightened me so much for a similar reason where it was like,

[2:04:34] Oh,

[2:04:35] okay.

[2:04:35] There's,

[2:04:36] there's nobody at the wheel right now.

[2:04:37] Like that channel just doesn't exist.

[2:04:39] Like anything could happen right now.

[2:04:41] And we're in a no man's and also it meant like,

[2:04:44] well,

[2:04:44] I've stayed up so late that I am no longer tired and we'll get no sleep tonight,

[2:04:47] which was the other scary thing.

[2:04:48] So I think if I watched that on my own now,

[2:04:49] I'd get that feeling of like the fright of,

[2:04:52] well,

[2:04:52] what am I going to do for the rest of the night till the sun comes up?

[2:04:55] What do you guys think?

S4

[2:04:57] I would say my,

[2:04:58] my,

[2:04:58] my scariest one is,

[2:05:00] I know this is a sacred in this house,

[2:05:02] but,

[2:05:02] um,

[2:05:03] uh,

[2:05:03] is gremlins.

[2:05:04] I saw gremlins in the theater.

[2:05:05] I thought it was the scariest movie I'd ever seen.

[2:05:08] I got none of the humor.

[2:05:09] I just got the grimness of it and the,

[2:05:11] and the grossness of it.

[2:05:13] And I've never seen it again.

[2:05:15] It,

[2:05:15] it lives in my mind as the scariest movie that exists.

Elliott Kalan

[2:05:19] I mean,

[2:05:19] it's a legitimately scary movie.

[2:05:21] Like it's,

[2:05:22] I always have to remind myself like,

[2:05:23] Oh yeah,

[2:05:23] like the gremlins kill people.

[2:05:25] And even when you see the gremlins killed on screen,

[2:05:27] like it's really gross.

[2:05:29] Yeah.

[2:05:29] But,

[2:05:29] but,

[2:05:30] but then you see that part,

[2:05:31] really,

[2:05:31] there's that part where the gremlins are hanging out at the bar and they're just having a blast,

[2:05:34] you know,

[2:05:34] mutant madness.

[2:05:35] It's great.

S4

[2:05:35] I just never found the humor and the,

[2:05:38] like I was too young to sort of get the humor of it and the madcapness of it.

[2:05:42] And I just remember,

[2:05:43] uh,

[2:05:44] her dad dying in the chimney,

[2:05:46] trying to be Santa Claus.

[2:05:50] And,

[2:05:51] and then the grossness of the different gremlins that when they,

[2:05:53] when they are turned nasty and stuff.

[2:05:55] And I,

[2:05:56] I've,

[2:05:56] I've never seen gremlins too.

[2:05:57] I've never seen any of the other ones.

[2:05:59] Like my kids are 13 now and,

[2:06:03] uh,

[2:06:03] we've talked about different,

[2:06:04] um,

[2:06:05] they,

[2:06:05] they used to really be pushing horror movies and horror,

[2:06:08] you know,

[2:06:08] like more and more extreme.

[2:06:09] And they really wanted to try them out.

[2:06:11] And,

[2:06:12] uh,

[2:06:12] I drew the line of gremlins.

Elliott Kalan

[2:06:15] it's funny that dad,

[2:06:18] dad,

[2:06:19] can we watch gremlins?

[2:06:20] No,

[2:06:20] we're watching anthrophages.

[2:06:21] That's what we're watching.

[2:06:22] There's no,

Dan McCoy

[2:06:22] that dad dying,

[2:06:25] uh,

[2:06:25] Phoebe Cates,

[2:06:26] dad dying,

[2:06:26] uh,

[2:06:27] monologue scene disturbed me so much as a kid.

[2:06:30] And it was like such an interesting process growing up and seeing gremlins over and over again.

[2:06:33] And like,

[2:06:35] uh,

[2:06:35] like slowly getting that the joke of the scene is that there is no joke to it,

[2:06:41] that they're like in the middle of it,

[2:06:43] just telling this very grim,

[2:06:46] sad story.

[2:06:48] Uh,

[2:06:48] I mean,

Elliott Kalan

[2:06:49] there is a little bit of a joke in the idea that her dad thought this would be a great idea.

Dan McCoy

[2:06:53] Yeah.

[2:06:53] Like it's a terrible idea.

[2:06:55] It's this horrible,

[2:06:56] like,

[2:06:57] like urban legend horror tale almost.

[2:07:00] And,

[2:07:00] uh,

[2:07:01] but just the fact that it's played,

[2:07:03] basically straight for this miserable thing in the middle of a horror comedy is funny in and of itself.

[2:07:11] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[2:07:11] I was a pretty weird kid.

[2:07:13] I remember being really,

[2:07:14] uh,

[2:07:15] scared when I saw a clip of the movie,

[2:07:18] The Shining.

[2:07:21] Yeah.

[2:07:22] Wow.

[2:07:22] What?

[2:07:22] You,

[2:07:22] you were a little out there.

[2:07:24] You were a little out there as a kid.

[2:07:25] Uh,

[2:07:25] and obviously Large Marge,

[2:07:28] like Large Marge.

[2:07:29] Oh,

[2:07:29] Large Marge.

[2:07:29] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:07:31] Yeah.

[2:07:31] Large Marge was the scariest thing.

[2:07:33] Large Marge and that taxi cab ghost in Ghostbusters were the two things that consistently I would cover my eyes for as a kid.

Stuart Wellington

[2:07:38] I think there was a,

[2:07:39] there's an episode of,

[2:07:40] I think it was the Hogan family that opens,

[2:07:43] like it's a Halloween episode and it opens with the characters as zombies.

[2:07:47] That was pretty scary.

Dan McCoy

[2:07:50] I remember also,

[2:07:52] now that I think about it,

[2:07:53] being genuinely scared by the Crypt Keeper,

[2:07:55] even though now I look at him as like silly and lovable.

[2:07:57] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:07:57] Cause when you're a kid,

[2:07:58] I know when I was a kid,

[2:07:59] I thought he was a real guy.

[2:08:01] Like I didn't necessarily,

[2:08:01] I didn't think he was a real zombie.

[2:08:03] I thought he was like a,

[2:08:03] I thought he was a real person who's,

[2:08:05] who they put makeup on his face and I couldn't quite figure out whether he was a puppet or not.

[2:08:10] And that really frightened me.

[2:08:11] It's the uncanny valley.

[2:08:13] Yeah.

[2:08:13] Of course now I love him.

[2:08:15] Now he's a great guy.

[2:08:17] And,

[2:08:17] uh,

[2:08:17] your best friend.

[2:08:18] Now we're best,

[2:08:18] now we're best buds,

[2:08:19] me and Krypti.

[2:08:20] But,

[2:08:20] uh,

[2:08:21] yeah.

[2:08:22] Kids are scared of stuff.

[2:08:23] Large Marge is the scariest thing in the world when you're a kid though.

[2:08:25] And as an adult,

[2:08:26] I watched it and I was like,

[2:08:27] this is,

[2:08:27] this could be on Pee Wee's Playhouse.

[2:08:29] Like it's so goofy,

[2:08:29] but,

[2:08:30] and no,

[2:08:31] and like,

[2:08:31] I would know it was happening.

[2:08:32] Like that's one of those things where as a kid,

[2:08:34] you watch it again and you're like,

[2:08:35] I know this is going to happen and I know it's going to be scary.

[2:08:38] And the anticipation is so frightening.

[2:08:40] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[2:08:40] Yeah.

[2:08:41] you work yourself up.

[2:08:42] You,

[2:08:43] you start to vomit.

[2:08:44] It's horrible.

[2:08:45] You're just peeing all over yourself,

[2:08:47] pooping all over yourself.

Elliott Kalan

[2:08:47] And your mom is like,

[2:08:49] you're not watching this movie again.

[2:08:50] I will not allow it.

[2:08:51] This happens every time.

[2:08:53] but mom,

[2:08:54] he's got to get his bike back.

[2:08:55] Yeah.

[2:08:55] I got,

[2:08:56] I got to see that one moment where Gidra shows up.

Dan McCoy

[2:09:01] Okay.

[2:09:02] So let's,

[2:09:03] uh,

[2:09:03] move on into the final,

[2:09:05] uh,

[2:09:06] segment of the show,

[2:09:07] which is recommendations.

[2:09:08] And we'll do it quick because,

[2:09:10] uh,

[2:09:10] we've wasted so much of podcasting legend,

[2:09:13] Roman Marx's time.

[2:09:14] I apologize,

Elliott Kalan

[2:09:15] Roman.

[2:09:15] You were like,

[2:09:16] you were like,

[2:09:16] no problem in and out.

[2:09:17] I'm sure they shoot,

[2:09:18] they,

[2:09:18] they taped this show in a professional way,

[2:09:20] not all in a run for two hours.

[2:09:22] Plus.

[2:09:23] No,

[2:09:23] my pleasure.

[2:09:24] Um,

[2:09:24] we should have warned you.

Dan McCoy

[2:09:25] So I want to recommend,

[2:09:26] uh,

[2:09:27] relic,

[2:09:28] which is,

[2:09:28] uh,

[2:09:29] new to video on demand.

[2:09:30] As so many things are these days,

[2:09:32] uh,

[2:09:32] starring Emily Mortimer.

[2:09:34] You mean the relic?

[2:09:35] Uh huh.

[2:09:36] No,

[2:09:36] I mean relic,

[2:09:37] the new 2020 film.

[2:09:39] No,

Elliott Kalan

[2:09:40] talking about relic.

[2:09:41] I think you're talking about screamers.

Dan McCoy

[2:09:44] No,

[2:09:44] it's a,

[2:09:45] it's a,

[2:09:46] it is a New Zealand,

[2:09:47] Canada co-production with a,

[2:09:50] uh,

[2:09:50] English lead actor.

[2:09:52] And,

[2:09:52] uh,

[2:09:53] it is about,

[2:09:54] um,

[2:09:55] you know,

[2:09:55] a,

[2:09:55] a grandmother.

[2:09:57] Well,

[2:09:57] the main character's mother,

[2:09:58] the,

[2:09:59] uh,

[2:09:59] secondary,

[2:10:00] uh,

[2:10:00] the daughter's grandmother,

[2:10:02] you know,

[2:10:02] three generations.

[2:10:03] Let's just say that the grandmother is,

[2:10:05] uh,

[2:10:06] this is the quick one.

[2:10:07] Deteriorating.

[2:10:08] She is deteriorating in health.

[2:10:10] Uh,

[2:10:10] they go out to her house to take care of her,

[2:10:13] to look for her,

[2:10:13] like she's disappeared at the beginning of the movie.

[2:10:15] Um,

[2:10:16] and it is a movie that is,

[2:10:18] uh,

[2:10:19] a horror film based on sort of the metaphor of the horror of seeing your parents deteriorate in that way.

[2:10:28] And,

[2:10:29] um,

[2:10:30] I think at first when I was watching it,

[2:10:32] I'm like,

[2:10:32] Oh,

[2:10:32] this is another one of these elevated horror movies that over relies maybe on,

[2:10:37] uh,

[2:10:38] lack of incident and building dread.

[2:10:40] And,

[2:10:41] uh,

[2:10:41] also maybe suffers from being a little close to hereditary and that it's,

[2:10:45] you know,

[2:10:45] this sort of generational horror.

[2:10:47] But then as it went on,

[2:10:48] I realized that it was like its own great thing.

[2:10:51] The third act does some really scary stuff with sort of the geography of the house.

[2:10:56] That's fun.

[2:10:57] And then toward the end of the movie,

[2:10:59] it just sort of pushes the metaphor so far that like the movie kind of becomes poetic and your emotions shift in a way that I've never seen a horror movie pull off.

[2:11:11] So it's,

[2:11:11] it's,

[2:11:12] it's very interesting relic.

Elliott Kalan

[2:11:15] Uh,

[2:11:16] I'll go next real quick.

[2:11:17] I'm going to recommend a movie that I had mentioned on a previous mini as one that I was kind of going back and forth on recommending.

[2:11:23] And that's a 1972 Western called Buck and the Preacher starring Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte.

[2:11:28] And it's the first movie that Sidney Poitier directed and,

[2:11:31] uh,

[2:11:32] taking over the direction after being dissatisfied with the work of Joseph Sargent,

[2:11:36] director of my favorite movie,

[2:11:37] the taking poem one,

[2:11:37] two,

[2:11:37] three,

[2:11:38] and of course,

[2:11:38] jaws for the revenge.

[2:11:40] uh,

[2:11:40] and it's a Western where there's a,

[2:11:42] uh,

[2:11:42] a number of,

[2:11:44] uh,

[2:11:44] former slaves or former enslaved people are moving West to try to escape from becoming,

[2:11:49] uh,

[2:11:50] enforced kind of tenant farmers.

[2:11:52] And these,

[2:11:53] uh,

[2:11:54] militias from the South are trying to forcibly push them back,

[2:11:58] trying to kind of scare and bully them into coming back and,

[2:12:01] uh,

[2:12:02] working as tenant farmers.

[2:12:03] And they hire Sidney Poitier's character,

[2:12:06] uh,

[2:12:06] as a guide to help them through the West to get to where they'll be safe.

[2:12:09] And Harry Belafonte is kind of like a con man preacher who,

[2:12:13] uh,

[2:12:14] teams up with them and decides to help them at a certain point.

[2:12:18] And it was really interesting to see a Western movie that kind of treated white people,

[2:12:25] black people,

[2:12:26] and also native Americans.

[2:12:27] And it,

[2:12:28] it commits the crime of having native Americans played by non-native actors,

[2:12:31] you know,

[2:12:32] uh,

[2:12:32] but they do a good job of bringing dignity to those roles.

[2:12:36] Portraying them as kind of like all different groups that are at odds with each other,

[2:12:40] but are not in homogeneous blocks and are also not,

[2:12:44] uh,

[2:12:45] there's a thing you see a lot in certain types of Westerns.

[2:12:48] Where the hero runs into a bunch of native Americans and their buddies.

[2:12:52] well,

[2:12:52] you know,

[2:12:53] this guy is a good guy because the native characters all love it.

[2:12:56] Like in Maverick,

[2:12:56] that happens basically.

[2:12:58] And in this,

[2:12:58] this one,

[2:12:59] there's this relationship between Sidney Poitier's characters and the natives where it's like,

[2:13:04] they know each other,

[2:13:05] they're aware of each other,

[2:13:06] but they're still in this kind of tentative tension because these are groups of people who,

[2:13:10] even though they're starting to more and more exist in the same space,

[2:13:14] they have more complicated relationships than a movie would usually,

[2:13:18] portray.

[2:13:18] And they kind of all want different things from this world that they're in.

[2:13:22] it's a,

[2:13:23] there are a couple of really good action scenes in it,

[2:13:25] in it.

[2:13:25] And it doesn't quite all the way come together.

[2:13:28] Although Harry Belafonte is very funny in it.

[2:13:31] And a lot of times,

[2:13:31] and the soundtrack,

[2:13:33] uh,

[2:13:33] which is by,

[2:13:34] uh,

[2:13:35] the jazz musician,

[2:13:36] Benny Carter is fantastic and uses like a Jews harp in the best way that I've heard it outside of a Morricone score.

[2:13:43] And so it's a,

[2:13:44] it's a kind of interesting Western that isn't totally on point in terms of,

[2:13:48] uh,

[2:13:49] pulling everything together at the end,

[2:13:50] but I think it's worth watching.

[2:13:51] And it's called Buck and the Preacher.

Stuart Wellington

[2:13:54] Who's up next?

[2:13:54] Uh,

[2:13:55] I can go.

[2:13:55] Uh,

[2:13:56] I am going to recommend,

[2:13:57] uh,

[2:13:58] a movie that has gotten quite a,

[2:14:00] quite a bit of good press,

[2:14:02] but I want to talk about it anyway.

[2:14:03] It's called Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

[2:14:08] Uh,

[2:14:08] it is a,

[2:14:10] uh,

Elliott Kalan

[2:14:10] is playing at my house a lot lately.

[2:14:14] The way you said it was just for a movie.

Stuart Wellington

[2:14:16] Yeah.

[2:14:16] It's,

[2:14:17] uh,

[2:14:17] so it's a French movie and it is a period piece about a doomed romance filled with subtle longing.

[2:14:26] And it's,

[2:14:28] uh,

[2:14:29] I,

[2:14:29] when I,

[2:14:30] I remember when I first went into it,

[2:14:31] I was expecting it to be fairly dry,

[2:14:33] but it really isn't.

[2:14:34] Uh,

[2:14:35] it manages to balance that,

[2:14:37] uh,

[2:14:37] the tone of that kind of a doomed romance with,

[2:14:40] uh,

[2:14:41] like a feeling of,

[2:14:42] uh,

[2:14:43] like teenagers left alone in a house while the parents are out of town,

[2:14:47] like a,

[2:14:47] uh,

[2:14:48] don't tell mom the babysitter's dead vibe.

[2:14:50] Uh,

[2:14:50] and I think it's really fun.

[2:14:51] There's a lot of really great little incidents.

[2:14:53] Uh,

[2:14:54] the characters are fun and it has,

[2:14:57] uh,

[2:14:58] probably it has like,

[2:15:00] it has such a great sad ending.

[2:15:01] It's just awesome.

[2:15:02] It's great.

[2:15:02] I've watched it a bunch of times.

[2:15:04] Uh,

[2:15:04] I think it was,

[2:15:05] it was on Hulu.

[2:15:06] Just like,

[2:15:06] uh,

[2:15:07] just like,

[2:15:07] don't tell mom the babysitter's dead.

[2:15:09] It has that great.

[2:15:10] Yeah,

[2:15:10] exactly.

[2:15:10] And like,

[2:15:11] don't tell mom the babysitter's dead.

[2:15:13] You get,

[2:15:13] you get like the proof of title in the movie.

[2:15:16] Like you're not,

[2:15:17] they don't tease you with anything.

[2:15:18] You get it.

[2:15:19] You see that portrait.

Elliott Kalan

[2:15:20] Yeah.

[2:15:21] Yeah.

[2:15:21] And the mom,

[2:15:22] they never,

[2:15:22] the mom never finds out that the babysitter died.

[2:15:24] Right.

Stuart Wellington

[2:15:24] Well,

[2:15:25] I mean,

[2:15:25] the babysitter dies in the first,

[2:15:26] like five minutes of that movie.

[2:15:28] They don't fuck around and don't tell mom the babysitter's dead or,

[2:15:31] I mean,

[2:15:31] do they,

[2:15:32] lady on fire.

[2:15:32] What?

[2:15:33] But they don't tell the mom.

[2:15:34] They never tell the mom.

[2:15:35] Right.

Dan McCoy

[2:15:36] Yeah.

[2:15:36] Well,

[2:15:37] I mean,

[2:15:37] does she just like,

[2:15:38] I feel like maybe she discovers like right at the very end of the movie.

[2:15:41] Yeah.

[2:15:42] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[2:15:42] She finds a decomposing hand and she's like,

[2:15:45] Oh,

[2:15:46] wow.

Elliott Kalan

[2:15:48] Yeah.

[2:15:48] When she's,

[2:15:49] when she's digging that,

[2:15:50] when she's digging a hole to bury the treasure that she was off in the other movie that's

[2:15:54] happening in the fringes of don't tell mom the babysitter's dead.

Dan McCoy

[2:15:56] Yeah.

[2:15:57] She was over in Goonies.

S4

[2:16:01] So I was trying to think of another,

[2:16:03] like a light crime comedy that's more successful than Hudson Hawk.

[2:16:07] And this is actually one of my favorite movies.

[2:16:09] It's called quick change.

[2:16:10] It's I think a genuinely funny,

[2:16:13] you know,

[2:16:15] heist movie with Bill Murray that he actually co-directed.

[2:16:19] And it's,

[2:16:20] I think it's really underrated.

[2:16:21] I think it's one of Bill Murray's best movies.

[2:16:23] And I know Jesse Thorne and I have bonded over this movie in particular because I wouldn't

[2:16:29] be surprised.

[2:16:30] Like he's coming to the show.

[2:16:31] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:16:31] He's probably going to tell us about old baseball players.

[2:16:33] You scooped him on this one.

S4

[2:16:35] The other benefit of this is I get to scoop Jesse Thorne,

[2:16:37] my nemesis,

[2:16:39] and tell you just how great quick change is.

[2:16:42] Because it's like,

[2:16:43] I watched it with my son,

[2:16:45] one of my sons a few weeks ago,

[2:16:47] and he totally got it.

[2:16:49] He was into it.

[2:16:50] And it was,

Stuart Wellington

[2:16:50] it was a movie I had on a video cassette and I watched it many,

[2:16:54] many times growing up.

[2:16:56] But for some reason I can't remember specific incidents,

[2:16:58] just like the feeling.

[2:17:00] Like I remember,

[2:17:01] like at the end where they're like walking down that street,

[2:17:03] it's like,

[2:17:04] they're like last chance to get away.

[2:17:06] I don't know.

[2:17:06] It's great.

Dan McCoy

[2:17:10] I'm going to say a last word about the Max Fun Drive in a moment,

[2:17:13] but I just want to say,

[2:17:14] so at the end of Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead,

[2:17:17] and this is,

[2:17:17] this is worth the,

[2:17:19] I'm glad we have some closer on this.

[2:17:21] Glad we have some closer.

[2:17:22] The mom asks where the babysitter is.

[2:17:27] And as the credits roll,

[2:17:29] the scene cuts away to the cemetery,

[2:17:31] where two morticians look over a gravestone that reads,

[2:17:34] nice old lady inside,

[2:17:36] died of natural causes.

[2:17:38] And that's,

[2:17:38] I think that's a pretty good joke.

[2:17:40] Don't tell mom the babysitter's dead.

Elliott Kalan

[2:17:41] The gravestone says that?

[2:17:43] Yeah,

[2:17:43] the gravestone says that.

[2:17:44] I don't know.

[2:17:44] Do the kids buy a tombstone or?

[2:17:47] That's the confusing part.

[2:17:48] I mean,

Elliott Kalan

[2:17:48] what else do you think kids eat?

[2:17:48] Also,

[2:17:49] no,

[2:17:51] no,

[2:17:51] not a tombstone pizza,

[2:17:52] Stuart.

[2:17:53] Oh boy.

[2:17:54] Also,

Dan McCoy

[2:17:55] Wikipedia says that there's two morticians at the gravestone.

[2:17:59] I doubt that that's actually who's there.

[2:18:01] Yeah,

[2:18:01] it's not a fucking mortician conference.

Elliott Kalan

[2:18:04] Maybe,

[2:18:05] maybe the morticians like to stop by the cemetery to make sure they're taking good care

[2:18:08] of their work,

[2:18:09] you know?

[2:18:09] Let's make sure this was buried the right way.

[2:18:11] We put a lot of work into,

[2:18:12] into stuffing this old lady full of chemicals.

[2:18:15] Just want to make sure that this,

[2:18:16] and you know,

[2:18:17] they leave a rock on the stone,

[2:18:19] you know,

[2:18:19] just to let people know that they're there.

[2:18:20] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[2:18:22] Okay,

[2:18:22] guys.

[2:18:23] Well,

[2:18:23] it's been a long day,

[2:18:25] so let's get to the end.

[2:18:28] Guys,

[2:18:28] here's,

Elliott Kalan

[2:18:28] here's the lesson that we learned is I need to edit my notes ahead of time.

[2:18:33] Yeah.

[2:18:34] I do.

Dan McCoy

[2:18:35] I do want to say one more word.

[2:18:38] In support of the MaxFunDrive,

[2:18:40] you can go to maximumfun.org slash join.

[2:18:43] If you haven't had a chance to become a member yet or upgrade your membership,

[2:18:47] that is where you can go.

[2:18:49] I just want to say one last word,

[2:18:52] which is that I don't love asking for money,

[2:18:56] even when we're not in the middle of several world crises.

[2:19:00] So,

[2:19:00] you know,

[2:19:01] it's a difficult thing.

[2:19:02] I,

[2:19:02] I also like stability and I chose a job comedy writing that I'm sure I'm going to age out of very soon.

[2:19:08] So I've made a lot of bad choices considering that we are listener supported, but that is the point.

[2:19:15] We are listener supported.

[2:19:17] As much as I may dislike coming to you hat in hand,

[2:19:20] we have to do it.

[2:19:21] And it's ultimately a good thing because as we've said before,

[2:19:25] being funded by people like you means that we can put on this show,

[2:19:30] which no one normally would pay for.

[2:19:33] Let's be honest guys.

[2:19:34] Wow.

[2:19:34] But you,

[2:19:35] but you like it.

[2:19:36] You like it.

[2:19:38] So you get the chance to keep entertainment that may not exist otherwise going.

[2:19:44] And for that,

[2:19:45] we are very grateful.

[2:19:47] If you're a person who donates,

[2:19:50] if you're not,

[2:19:51] if you're don't have the means,

[2:19:52] believe me,

[2:19:54] we understand.

[2:19:55] We just thank you for listening as well.

[2:19:58] Spread the word about the show.

[2:20:00] Spread the word about the drive.

[2:20:02] Thank you again so much for those who have given or plan to give to keep the show going.

[2:20:09] And just thanks.

[2:20:10] That's the main message we wanted to say here at the end.

[2:20:14] And thank you to Roman Mars for coming and being a guest on this bumpy ride,

[2:20:21] much like the movie Hudson Hawk.

Elliott Kalan

[2:20:23] Roman,

[2:20:24] is there anything that you would like to tell us about or plug before you go?

S4

[2:20:28] Oh,

[2:20:29] sure.

[2:20:29] So I do a show called 99% Invisible.

[2:20:31] It's about architecture and design,

[2:20:32] but really it's kind of about everything in the built world and how it sort of,

[2:20:36] what it speaks to us as what we,

[2:20:37] what it's important to us as humans.

[2:20:39] And actually we have our first book coming out on October 6th.

[2:20:44] October 6th,

[2:20:45] it's co-authored by Kurt Kolstad,

[2:20:47] who works on the staff as a digital director.

[2:20:49] And it's called the 99% Invisible City.

[2:20:52] And so we hope people buy it and enjoy that.

[2:20:55] I'm intrigued.

Dan McCoy

[2:20:56] I love that stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[2:20:58] Okay.

[2:20:59] Well,

[2:20:59] I'm going to buy that book.

[2:21:01] I'm going to buy that book.

[2:21:02] So listeners,

[2:21:03] if you want to be like me and own at least one book that I own,

[2:21:07] you should also buy it too.

S4

[2:21:09] And if you want to be like me and I've been a regular donor to Maximum Fun for over a decade,

[2:21:15] I think you should go to MaximumFun.org slash join.

[2:21:19] Because I think that putting your,

[2:21:22] you know,

[2:21:22] future and in the hands of the listeners of MaxFun is a great choice.

[2:21:27] I think it's a very important choice,

[2:21:30] Dan.

[2:21:30] I think I'm proud of you for doing it because I think that these people will catch you.

[2:21:34] I think they will hold you and take care of you and let you be who you are and let you make the things you make.

[2:21:39] That's all I've ever wanted.

[2:21:40] That's what they want to do right now.

[2:21:43] That's what they,

[2:21:44] that's what they want to do right now.

[2:21:46] And they're going to come,

[2:21:47] they're going to join me in this effort by going to MaximumFun.org slash join and just take care of these men who are really,

[2:21:55] who,

[2:21:56] who put so much,

[2:21:57] I feel like Romans could be like a supervillain,

Dan McCoy

[2:22:00] like one of those supervillains that just like knows your psychological profile immediately.

[2:22:05] Oh yeah,

[2:22:06] yeah,

[2:22:06] sure.

[2:22:06] You know,

[2:22:07] uses it against you.

[2:22:08] That's amazing.

S4

[2:22:11] But I think it's a,

[2:22:12] it's a beautiful system and a great choice and it's nothing to be embarrassed about.

[2:22:16] It's nothing to apologize for.

[2:22:17] This is really,

[2:22:19] really like the greatest thing that we want is for us all to take care of each other in the way that we can.

[2:22:24] And this is what is so beautiful about pledge drives is because they are about us giving what we can,

[2:22:30] whatever we can to create something greater together.

[2:22:32] So go to MaximumFun.org slash join to join me,

[2:22:37] join me.

[2:22:38] Cause not just them,

[2:22:39] like what I need is not just,

[2:22:41] I need not only them supported.

[2:22:43] You,

[2:22:43] you're part of the team that I'm,

[2:22:44] I'm part of because I'm one of these people that gives money to them.

[2:22:47] So it only works if we all join in together by going to MaximumFun.org.

[2:22:51] I feel like,

Stuart Wellington

[2:22:52] I feel like a couple of younglings sitting around the Jedi master over here.

[2:22:55] Right?

[2:22:56] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:22:57] It's like we're,

[2:22:58] we're,

[2:22:58] we all,

[2:22:59] it's like we were all auditioning to be dancers in a show.

[2:23:02] And then Roman was like,

[2:23:03] okay,

[2:23:03] well let me show you how that step is supposed to be done.

[2:23:05] And then just like pulled it off so beautifully while reading a newspaper.

[2:23:09] how did impossible.

Dan McCoy

[2:23:11] Yeah.

[2:23:12] Thank you so much for coming on the show and doing our job.

[2:23:15] Uh,

[2:23:15] but now we need to say goodbye so I can get out of this hot room and Roman can do

[2:23:21] important things.

[2:23:21] And I don't know,

[2:23:22] you guys can go,

[2:23:23] uh,

[2:23:23] do whatever the shit is that you do.

Stuart Wellington

[2:23:25] Go try and save my business.

[2:23:26] Yeah.

[2:23:27] I'm going to go do that.

[2:23:28] Oh,

Elliott Kalan

[2:23:28] okay.

[2:23:28] Uh,

[2:23:29] try,

[2:23:29] try and save my family.

[2:23:31] Like the titular steward.

[2:23:33] Uh,

[2:23:33] and I'd also,

[2:23:34] no way,

Dan McCoy

[2:23:35] which one of you is saving Elliot's family?

[2:23:37] Oh,

[2:23:37] we can't tell our voices apart now.

Elliott Kalan

[2:23:39] Oh,

[2:23:40] wow.

[2:23:41] Wow.

[2:23:41] He's just,

[2:23:41] he's just so in,

[2:23:42] so hypnotized by Roman.

[2:23:44] He doesn't know what's going on anymore.

[2:23:45] Uh,

[2:23:46] well,

[2:23:46] Dan,

[2:23:46] uh,

[2:23:46] before we go,

[2:23:47] I just like to thank everybody for listening in and let them and say,

[2:23:49] Hey,

[2:23:50] if you have a chance to tweet or Instagram or whatever about us,

[2:23:53] go ahead and do so.

[2:23:53] And I also want to give a special thanks to our editor,

[2:23:56] Jordan Cowling,

[2:23:57] who has her work cut out for her with this very long episode.

[2:24:01] Bye everyone.

[2:24:05] Bye.

Dan McCoy

[2:24:09] Uh,

[2:24:10] Roman,

[2:24:10] your job is just to say four when the time arrives.

[2:24:14] Okay.

[2:24:15] One,

[2:24:16] two,

[2:24:17] three,

[2:24:18] four,

[2:24:19] five,

Elliott Kalan

[2:24:21] six,

[2:24:22] four.

Dan McCoy

[2:24:24] What the,

[2:24:25] why are you?

[2:24:26] I got distracted by something.

[2:24:27] You're the one who wants me to do two goddamn rounds.

[2:24:29] We never do them.

[2:24:30] And then you immediately derail it.

[2:24:32] We never do them.

[2:24:33] So I got lost.

[2:24:34] I said I would do it long style this time.

[2:24:35] I didn't believe you.

[2:24:36] I didn't believe you.

S4

[2:24:39] Maximumfun.org.

[2:24:41] Comedy and culture.

S5

[2:24:42] Artist owned.

[2:24:43] Audience supported.

[2:24:44] I'm sorry.

Ep. #318 - Hudson Hawk, w/ Roman Mars

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