Ep.#458 - Snow White, with Rebecca Alter

Dan McCoy

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[0:27] Now, the show.

[0:30] On this episode, we discuss Snow White.

Stuart Wellington

[0:32] Snow White, a beautiful achievement in the art of animation.

[0:37] And then there is this movie.

[0:40] Meow.

[0:41] Stewart's got claws.

[1:00] Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:10] I'm Elliot Kalin. And who are we joined by today, Daniel?

Dan McCoy

[1:13] We are joined by Rebecca Alter, who is a staff writer at Vulture, my favorite pop culture site these days.

[1:23] Hello, Rebecca.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24] Aw, thank you.

[1:25] Thank you.

[1:26] I like that qualified recommendation these days.

[1:29] Well, you know.

[1:29] Hey.

Dan McCoy

[1:31] There's been great ones in the past, the golden years of the AV club.

Stuart Wellington

[1:36] Dan was just like being careful in case fucking Columbo wandered in and was like, oh, well.

[1:41] Now, you used to read the AV club a lot.

[1:43] Actually, it says here, you said that you like the dissolve the most.

Dan McCoy

[1:46] The dissolve is great, yeah.

[1:47] But these days, yeah, I go to Vulture first and foremost, so.

Elliott Kalan

[1:52] All right.

[1:53] I'll buy it.

[1:54] I'll buy it.

[1:54] Rebecca, thanks so much for joining us today.

[1:56] Now, were you chomping at the bit to get at Snow White?

[2:00] Is that why this is the episode that you're joining us for?

S4

[2:03] Actually, I think originally I suggested Unfrosted way back, and then I fully got like laryngitis and could not speak.

[2:12] And I think I left Dan a voice note being like, I can't talk.

Stuart Wellington

[2:16] Yeah.

[2:16] Yeah, that's true.

[2:17] I remember that.

[2:18] And you had watched Unfrosted like three times in preparation.

S4

[2:21] Oh, yeah.

[2:21] I thought this was a good movie.

[2:24] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:25] Yeah, you thought you were coming on the Unfrosted Minute where we go through Unfrosted a minute at a time.

[2:29] Yeah, yeah.

[2:30] Wow.

Stuart Wellington

[2:30] What a torturous existence that would be.

[2:33] Sisyphus is like, oh, thank God.

Dan McCoy

[2:36] I did appreciate that you left a voice note to prove that you had laryngitis.

[2:43] So you weren't just like, I don't know.

[2:45] I saw Unfrosted.

[2:46] I decided to pull the ripcord on this one.

[2:48] See ya.

[2:49] You know, it was like, no, I'm sick.

[2:52] You know.

S4

[2:53] Yeah.

[2:53] Doctor said I had nodes.

Elliott Kalan

[2:55] Nodes.

[2:56] Oh, no.

[2:57] The doctor said under no circumstances can you talk about Unfrosted.

[3:01] It would be meaningful in your condition.

S4

[3:04] Yeah, they were just hired by Jerry Seinfeld to shut me up.

Elliott Kalan

[3:07] Yeah.

[3:08] Yeah.

[3:08] Big Seinfeld.

[3:09] has a lot of tentacles in the American medical establishment.

[3:12] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[3:12] Yeah.

[3:13] A year after Unfrosted was released.

[3:15] We was like, we got to close the door of the bad word of mouth on this one.

[3:19] Yeah.

[3:19] Staunch the bleeding.

[3:21] Well, yeah.

[3:22] We, so we did a makeup.

[3:25] We decided to watch Snow White.

Stuart Wellington

[3:28] And what do we do in this podcast, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[3:29] Well, this is a podcast where we watch a bad movie.

[3:33] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[3:33] There's at least a hundred great ones out there.

[3:36] We are not one of them.

[3:37] That is so much is clear.

Dan McCoy

[3:39] And then we talk about it.

[3:41] This was, of course, the latest in Disney's hunger for shitting all over their animated classics.

[3:51] Well, I was going to call it the strip mining of their legacy.

Elliott Kalan

[3:53] And I thought that was too harsh.

[3:55] But you went even farther.

Stuart Wellington

[3:57] Mm-hmm.

[3:57] I mean, now, was this one that you suggested, Dan?

[4:01] Or, Rebecca, is this one that you were like, I can't wait to watch this thing?

S4

[4:05] It's actually both.

[4:06] Dan suggested it.

[4:07] And I was sort of like, I can't wait to watch this.

Stuart Wellington

[4:09] Okay.

[4:10] Thank you both then, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[4:14] I mean, you write a lot about theater and Vulture, among other things.

[4:19] And this clearly has a desire to, like, tap into, like, oh, there's a resurgent of love for musicals.

[4:27] And we're going to combine the old songs that you loved from the original with some really terrible new ones.

Elliott Kalan

[4:35] Well, and they're going to pump up the old ones.

[4:36] Like, they added beats to those old ones.

[4:39] Yeah.

S4

[4:40] Yeah.

[4:40] Well, it's Pasek and Paul, who are the mastermind songwriters behind such beloved things as Dear Evan Hansen.

Elliott Kalan

[4:48] Oh, okay.

[4:49] Yeah.

[4:49] Dan like that one, right?

S4

[4:50] So that's kind of, yeah.

[4:52] So they've got a great movie track record.

Elliott Kalan

[4:54] As seen in a previous Flop House episode, Exciting Elliot.

[4:56] I guess also La La Land.

[4:57] That was the editorial.

Stuart Wellington

[4:58] Oh, La La Land.

[4:59] That one's going to stand the test of time.

[5:01] Now, did you guys feel...

Elliott Kalan

[5:02] So, and the screenplay, or I guess it's a musical, you could say the book of this film.

Stuart Wellington

[5:06] It's really a Schrodinger's Comet you made.

Elliott Kalan

[5:10] And the screenplay was written by Aaron Cressida Wilson, who also wrote Secretary and...

[5:17] I see connections.

[5:18] Other movies along those lines.

[5:20] And so I was...

[5:20] Whoa.

[5:21] That was something I didn't realize until afterwards.

[5:22] And I was like, I assume that they wanted to bring someone who could write a strong female voice.

[5:26] But I really wish they had leaned into the secretary aspect a little bit more in this version of Snow White, you know?

S4

[5:32] And it's about Gal Gadot secretarying Snow White.

Elliott Kalan

[5:36] I guess so.

[5:37] There is a...

[5:38] I mean, was I the only one who...

Stuart Wellington

[5:39] That's been added to Webster, right?

[5:41] Secretarying somebody?

[5:41] Yeah.

[5:42] Or at least Urban Webster.

[5:43] It replaces secretary, I think, which is when you make someone be a racehorse for sexual reasons.

[5:48] Yeah.

[5:49] Yeah.

[5:49] I mean, there is a fucking saddle in secretary.

Dan McCoy

[5:54] I guess it all connects.

[5:56] It does.

[5:57] Pull out the yarn.

Elliott Kalan

[5:58] Well, I'm going to be handling the plot today.

[6:00] So speaking of the yarn, let's spin a tale.

Stuart Wellington

[6:03] So do you guys have a lot of experience?

[6:05] Like, do you have like a good relationship with the original?

[6:08] A good relationship?

[6:10] Yeah.

[6:11] Or the like Snow White and the Huntsman's?

[6:14] There's like three of those, right?

[6:16] There's a bunch of those, yeah.

[6:16] Yeah, there's Mirror, Mirror.

[6:18] Mirror was one of them.

[6:19] Yeah.

[6:19] That was the kind of...

[6:21] Have any of them been like bangers?

[6:24] Have any of them been awesome?

[6:25] I mean, the original Snow White...

[6:26] That first Disney Snow White, the cartoon one, is pretty good.

Dan McCoy

[6:29] Gorgeous movie.

[6:30] Like, it has elements that I understand why for this movie.

[6:35] They're like, okay, well, let's update this or whatever.

[6:39] Although in almost every case that they do it, I think they do it poorly.

[6:44] So you're in a position where you're like, I wish I was watching that retrograde version of this story.

[6:52] But yeah, otherwise, I don't know.

S4

[6:55] Well, it's also...

[6:56] It's so sad because the original was the first feature-length animated...

[7:01] But I know technically that's not true.

[7:03] And like, there were...

[7:05] There was some like alternative styles of animation in the 20s or whatever.

[7:08] But this is considered like the first...

[7:10] It's the first feature-length Disney anyway.

[7:12] And that animation is like more sophisticated than the animation in this movie,

[7:18] which to be clear is like 95% still animation.

[7:21] It's just like bad animation.

Stuart Wellington

[7:24] No offense to anybody who worked on it.

[7:25] I'm sure you all tried really hard, guys.

[7:28] And gals.

[7:29] And they, thems.

Dan McCoy

[7:29] I'm sure they're not offended now.

[7:31] But no, we were watching it and Audrey was like,

[7:35] this is what it would look like if you just fed the old Snow White into an AI

[7:41] and was like, make a live-action-looking version of it.

Elliott Kalan

[7:45] Well, that's the saddest aspect of it to me.

[7:47] And I feel like we're jumping ahead past the movie into Final Judgments in some ways.

[7:50] But well, is that the visual style of the original is so beautiful and unique for what it is.

[7:57] And the visual style of this just feels like it's that same general, heavily CG,

[8:03] everything's kind of oranges and browns and a certain type of blue and weird rounded shadings.

[8:09] And the lighting doesn't look like it exists in a real world,

[8:12] but instead in a sort of like fake simulated world.

[8:17] It has that kind of AI visual style feel to it,

[8:20] which is very strange to come from Disney, which at its best is innovative.

Stuart Wellington

[8:24] And it's uncanny and soulless, etc., etc.

S4

[8:27] Well, I think these live-action remakes are so spiritually similar to AI for me,

[8:35] even though they're not.

[8:36] There's something about remake this thing, feed it through compute.

[8:42] Like, there's something so anti-creative, like just the impulse to make these at all.

[8:49] Yeah, it's just too bad.

Elliott Kalan

[8:51] It's just too bad that this is what they have to do because the original idea mines went dry years ago.

[8:56] Yeah, the dwarves mined them all.

[8:58] The Earth's resources for original ideas.

[9:00] I mean, they said that we were hitting peak original idea during the spec screenplay boom of the 90s,

[9:05] and they were right.

[9:05] It's been just going down ever since then.

[9:07] And now we have to look for alternative sources such as remakes.

Stuart Wellington

[9:10] It is weird because this is a movie where, like, the running theme is that there's this, like,

[9:14] bountiful world we live in, and you can harvest it to a certain amount.

[9:18] And you're talking about a situation where they have strip-mined all the ideas completely.

Elliott Kalan

[9:22] Yeah, well, they were talking about how you can harvest the bountiful goodness of the Disney back catalog.

Dan McCoy

[9:26] Oh, that's what they wanted.

[9:28] Well, speaking of this bountiful goodness, that takes us right in there

[9:31] because that's the first unnecessary song of the film.

Elliott Kalan

[9:35] I mean, every song is unnecessary if you think about it, but why not have them in?

[9:39] But let's talk about the movie, shall we?

[9:41] I'll take you through a little movie called Snow White.

[9:43] So we start with, as always, a hedgehog sleeping on a storybook,

[9:48] and some squirrels open up the storybook.

[9:50] This is clearly hearkening back to me.

Stuart Wellington

[9:52] They got, like, real animals to do this shit?

Elliott Kalan

[9:54] They've got real animals that they trained,

[9:56] and then they put makeup on them to make them look like CGI animals.

Stuart Wellington

[9:59] So they're all wearing CGI prosthetics.

[10:01] Little makeup, little mocap suits, yeah.

[10:03] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[10:04] The mocap suits and mohair suits.

[10:06] And so these squirrels open the book,

[10:09] clearly hearkening back to the early Disney movies,

[10:11] which started with those storybook openings.

[10:13] And the storybook has a voiceover that tells about how there was a virtuous king and queen.

[10:18] No such thing, in my opinion.

[10:19] But a virtuous king and queen who want a child.

[10:21] They get a princess during a snowstorm.

[10:24] And the implication is that the princess—

Stuart Wellington

[10:26] Yeah, yeah, he looks out the window and he's like,

[10:27] I think I have a name for this little thing.

[10:29] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[10:30] The implication is that the princess kind of, like, that they found it in the snowstorm,

[10:34] not that it was born in a snowstorm,

[10:35] because it's, you know, they don't want to talk about, like,

[10:37] it was a hard labor in a carriage in a snowstorm, you know.

Dan McCoy

[10:40] There's so much placenta in that carriage right now.

Elliott Kalan

[10:42] Oh, they just dripped out the lining and they had to refurbish the whole interior of the carriage.

[10:46] Yeah, you never get that smell out.

[10:48] And they name her Snow White because she was born in the snow.

[10:51] And they teach her about love and generosity.

[10:52] And they sing that song about it, about the bountiful goodness, if that grows in the earth.

[10:56] And they also look into a wishing well.

[10:58] And this song goes on for a long time.

[11:00] This is a long song.

Stuart Wellington

[11:01] There's a little choreo, though.

[11:03] You get some stuff to look at, right?

[11:04] There's a lot choreo, but it's very ugly.

Elliott Kalan

[11:07] Very choreo.

[11:08] It's very clapping.

[11:09] And I feel like what they, well, a lot of clapping and stomping at different points.

[11:13] And there's, they are going for.

[11:15] Oh, hey.

[11:16] I feel like you can watch a Disney movie now and you know exactly what kind of song they're trying to get with each of their songs.

[11:21] And I think they're trying, the content is a little different,

[11:25] but they're trying for the feeling of the opening of Beauty and the Beast,

[11:27] where Belle is singing about being in that town.

[11:29] You see all the people in the town.

[11:30] And it's so amazing.

[11:32] It's such an amazing song.

[11:33] And it's such a great sequence.

Stuart Wellington

[11:34] Then the coolest dude in the fucking world shows up, Gaston.

[11:37] And then we get a really cool song finally.

Dan McCoy

[11:40] Yeah, finally.

[11:41] That is absolutely what they're trying to do.

[11:43] But the thing about that song is it's not just a big opener.

[11:46] It is establishing things about the story.

[11:50] Whereas.

Dan McCoy

[11:50] And the characters, yeah.

[11:51] Yeah.

[11:51] This is like a completely extraneous extra song.

Elliott Kalan

[11:54] Well, you could say it's a thematic song that it's trying to set the theme for the movie.

[11:58] But the movie doesn't play off that theme.

[11:59] Yeah.

[12:00] Really at all.

[12:01] So it is very extraneous in some ways.

[12:03] But we also get to see that Snow White's a nice little girl who hands out pies and things to people.

[12:09] Yeah.

[12:10] Because Monarchy, it rationalized itself by providing a pittance to the people that it leeches off of.

Dan McCoy

[12:16] You know.

[12:16] But also this pie thing, I realized later on, it's like, oh, the point of like the pie focus.

[12:22] We could tom thumb over here.

[12:24] I'm going to stick in my thumb and pull out some screenplay stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[12:29] Glad you're sticking your thumb in.

[12:30] I thought you were Jason Biggs for a moment.

Dan McCoy

[12:33] How dare you, sir?

[12:36] Yeah.

[12:36] Hi, Chris.

[12:37] No, this.

[12:39] I realized later on, like, this is to like layer in like the thematic significance of the apple later on.

[12:45] Yes.

[12:46] Yeah.

[12:46] And I'm like, we don't need the backstory for why an apple is what is being used, you know, to put her to sleep.

[12:53] Like the apple could just be an apple.

Elliott Kalan

[12:54] A really strange stance for backstory loving Dan McCoy to take.

[12:59] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[13:00] Well, they don't think modern audiences would understand why a young woman would take a bite out of an apple unprompted when handed to her by a weird old crone.

[13:09] Instead, they're like, shouldn't it be like a bag of Takis or something?

[13:12] Yeah, like a Snickers or.

[13:13] At least that would explain why it like turns into a skull sometimes.

[13:17] It's like a lenticular bag of Takis.

[13:19] That's how they make it glow blue.

Dan McCoy

[13:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[13:22] So we flash forward.

[13:24] Snow White's mom dies.

[13:26] Has to.

[13:26] It's a Disney movie.

[13:27] Her dad marries a beautiful evil witch with a magic mirror.

[13:30] Everything about this woman screams evil all the time in a way that should, like, ideally would, again, they want it to sit in the classic Disney villain world where the villains are just kind of like outwardly villains that are super melodramatic.

[13:44] And let's face it, almost always coded as either gay or like in some way melodramatically queer or something like that or burlesque or something like that.

[13:53] And here, the queen takes over the kingdom and sends the king off to war.

[13:59] And you're like, yeah, she's evil, right?

[14:01] Like everybody gets that she's super evil.

[14:03] And I guess the implication is just that she is like, this dad is so thirsty for this queen that he's going to do whatever.

[14:10] And I wonder if – maybe I'm the only one who's picking up –

[14:14] Dude, she's the fairest in the land.

[14:15] She's the fairest.

[14:16] This, like, much higher – maybe it's that secretary writing in there.

[14:20] A much higher psychosexual dynamic running through – subtext running through this.

[14:25] And, like, that her need to be the fairest in the land feels at a certain point to me.

[14:29] It becomes so much like that she wants Snow White so badly.

[14:33] You know, and it's a – and it's not that she wants to be the most beautiful and most powerful so much as, like, she needs to possess her in a way.

[14:38] Maybe I'm imagining that.

Dan McCoy

[14:39] I feel like I'm falling down on my job as purposeoid number one because, like, I did not pick up on any of that.

[14:46] Oh, okay.

[14:46] Well, then –

[14:47] Did we switch places?

[14:49] I mean, I improved it a little bit.

[14:50] Did we touch us all at the same time?

[14:51] I mean, it might just – maybe.

Elliott Kalan

[14:52] It might just be because I've been writing the Harley Quinn book and they're literally – the bad guy is, like, lusting over – she's lusting over Harley all the time.

[14:59] So maybe I'm just imagining the Harley-Althea relationship in the queen and Snow White.

[15:03] That could be it.

Stuart Wellington

[15:04] I mean, ultimately, that's one of the things that I miss the most when they translate these animated movies

[15:09] to these digital slot movies is the, like, horniness that's injected by, like, lonely animators.

[15:18] Like, you watch, like, Hunchback of Notre Dame and you're like, damn, these guys are fucking hard.

[15:22] Oh, yeah.

[15:23] Well, I mean, like, because you got that whole song about how hot –

[15:25] It's great.

[15:26] Fucking rules.

Elliott Kalan

[15:27] Hot that they made the lead actresses.

[15:29] So we have, like, eight minutes of voiceover.

[15:31] It goes on for a long time, this voiceover, to tell the story.

[15:34] But we finally leave the voiceover when Snow White, she's become a servant, imprisoned in the castle by the queen.

[15:40] She is mopping up when a handsome thief – we'll learn his name Jonathan, no less name – shows up and steals some fruit from the kitchens.

[15:47] He briefly privilege shames Snow White and tells her to stop just thinking about helping others and start actually helping others.

Stuart Wellington

[15:54] Y'all, what do you think about this guy?

[15:57] I don't like that he has, like, a little hoodie on under his jerkin.

[16:02] And I also don't like his, like, fuckboy behavior, dude.

[16:06] Like, he's constantly shaming Snow White.

[16:09] And I'm like, but she's, like, in the running for Ferris in the Land and she's a princess.

[16:13] And she's, like, the daughter of the dude you love.

[16:16] Well, also, the fact that when he sees her, she's literally mopping the floor.

Elliott Kalan

[16:19] So it's not like she's doing something particularly princessy, you know?

Dan McCoy

[16:22] He does not know that she's the princess at this time.

[16:24] He thinks that she lives in the castle, but he does not know that she's –

[16:28] Then it seems even weirder for him to shame her because he thinks she's just a servant in the castle.

Stuart Wellington

[16:33] It makes sense because then it's, like, it's his own insecurities later on when he finds out she is the princess.

[16:37] And he's like, oh, I liked you, but now you're the princess and you're out of off limits or whatever.

[16:42] Okay, I get it, man.

[16:43] I like this character.

Dan McCoy

[16:47] Classic.

[16:48] I like this character in theory.

[16:50] Like, they're basically just porting over Robin Hood and sticking him in as, like, the love interest rather than just a prince, you know?

[16:59] And, like, it gives at least something for this guy to care about.

[17:05] It gives him a thing, yeah.

[17:07] Yeah, and, you know, like, in a movie that still buys into the idea of, like, benevolent rulers, like, at least it gives some sense of, like, I don't know, the underclass.

[17:20] But he is a boring guy.

Elliott Kalan

[17:22] He's a boring – he's very handsome.

[17:24] He's got a great voice.

[17:24] But I feel like the character's – but also the character keeps sliding back and forth between, I do this for the king.

[17:30] Actually, I'm just a thief.

[17:31] I don't believe in anything.

[17:32] But I do love the king.

[17:34] No, I'm just a thief.

[17:35] I don't have any ideals.

[17:36] Is he a theater guy?

[17:37] Is this actor a theater guy?

[17:38] Yes, he is a theater guy.

[17:39] Yes, I believe so.

Dan McCoy

[17:40] What's his name?

[17:40] Andrew Burnap?

Elliott Kalan

[17:41] That's Andrew Burnap.

[17:42] He's done a lot of Shakespeare.

[17:44] Okay.

[17:45] He got a Tony Award for The Inheritance.

[17:48] Oh.

S4

[17:49] Yeah.

[17:50] We also glossed over the fact that we also got a backstory, which I'm sure we all needed, about why Snow White has a bob.

Stuart Wellington

[17:58] Wait, really?

[17:59] I missed that part.

S4

[18:00] Well, because in the original, she just sort of has a chic little bob and it goes unmentioned.

Stuart Wellington

[18:04] A cool modern haircut for the time.

S4

[18:07] And in this, they have to be like, well, we need to explain.

Elliott Kalan

[18:11] What's the explanation?

S4

[18:12] That Gal Gadot cuts it off with a sword.

[18:16] Oh, right.

Elliott Kalan

[18:16] As a show of dominance, she cuts Snow White's hair.

[18:20] You know, as a way of saying, you're mine now.

[18:23] I possess you.

[18:24] With all the rights and privileges that entails.

[18:27] It's all in there, Jen.

[18:28] It's all in there.

[18:28] A horny animator.

[18:30] I guess it's weird when you're a horny live actioner.

[18:33] That's the troubling thing.

[18:35] You would believe that's more normal.

S4

[18:38] Yeah, then you're just any director.

[18:40] I guess that's true.

Elliott Kalan

[18:41] You're every director that's ever worked in film.

[18:43] Yeah.

[18:44] So she asks the queen.

[18:45] She goes, I got to help the people.

[18:47] They're struggling.

[18:48] Queen, can I bake some apple pies for people?

[18:51] And the queen is like, no.

[18:52] The people need a hard leader who's made of steel.

[18:55] And she sentences the thief, Jonathan, to freeze to death by being tied to the front gates of the palace.

[19:01] And Snow White's like, give him clemency.

[19:02] And Snow White sings a song about wanting to escape her fate.

[19:05] And is she going to be the girl that her dad said she could be or something?

[19:09] And she frees the thief.

Stuart Wellington

[19:10] Before you freak out, these old fairy tales were full of fucked up shit.

[19:14] Yes.

[19:15] Freezing a thief is pretty normal.

Elliott Kalan

[19:18] But this song.

[19:20] Yeah, you're in a fairy tale.

[19:21] You freeze a couple thieves just by 9 a.m.

[19:23] Yeah.

[19:24] Then by noon, it's a lot of cutting kids' fingers off and pulling the eyes out of fishermen.

[19:28] Yeah.

[19:29] The road is littered with frozen thieves.

[19:31] There's just a guy walking around with a sausage stuck to the end of his nose saying, kill me.

[19:34] Kill me, please.

[19:35] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[19:36] This song essentially also replaces Someday My Prince Will Come.

[19:41] Yeah.

[19:41] And I understand the desire to do this because they want to give the female lead more agency and not be just like, I'm waiting around for some dude to come.

[19:54] But I would argue that the song that they replaced it with is not a good pick for that because it's like singing like waiting on a wish.

[20:03] And it's like, okay, so you're still waiting for some like magical outside force to help you rather than you doing something.

[20:09] Like if that's the goal of the place of the song.

[20:11] But that's the lesson she's learning in the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[20:13] She's the lesson she's learning in the movie.

[20:14] Is that you can't do it.

[20:14] You can't just wait for a wish.

[20:15] You got to make a wish happen.

Dan McCoy

[20:17] Yeah.

[20:17] I guess so.

[20:17] Like the movie Wish.

[20:18] I guess so.

[20:18] The Disney movie.

[20:19] Wish.

[20:19] Uh-huh.

[20:21] Another great mining of just sort of the idea of Disney IP.

[20:27] Yeah, that was.

Elliott Kalan

[20:27] It's so funny where they're like, we're going to celebrate 100 years of Disney.

[20:30] But just kind of making a thing that feels like other Disney stuff.

[20:33] But it's not.

[20:33] It doesn't reference it at all.

[20:35] You know.

[20:35] Yeah.

[20:36] Anyway, so I hate to interrupt you guys.

[20:38] But let's get back to the story.

[20:40] So she frees the thief and he runs off and he goes, you know, you can leave the castle with me.

[20:46] And she's like, nah, I'm not gonna.

[20:48] But the queen saw Snow White do this.

[20:51] And she has her magic mirror.

[20:53] The magic mirror, which is the most CGI-looking element in the whole thing.

[20:57] I don't mind that, though.

[20:58] I don't mind it so much.

[20:59] But I wish that they like, I don't know, made it look cool.

[21:02] The magic mirror in the original movie looks so cool.

[21:05] Like it's such a eerie, spooky thing, you know.

Dan McCoy

[21:07] I agree with that.

[21:08] But I also feel like all of the stuff surrounding the mirror and the evil magic is the stuff that looks best in the movie.

[21:14] Because it is borrowing most directly from the way the original movie looked.

[21:19] So even though it's a pale copy, I'm just like, oh, well, this, you know, this looks cool.

Elliott Kalan

[21:24] And so she asked the mirror, who's the fairest of them all?

[21:27] And the mirror is like, not you.

[21:28] And she's like, what?

[21:30] And so as in the story, she takes a huntsman.

[21:33] She spits out her drink.

[21:35] Yeah.

[21:36] All over the mirror.

[21:37] In some way, she goes, who's the fairest of them all?

[21:39] Not you, my queen.

[21:40] Oh, okay, great.

[21:41] That's good.

[21:41] Whoa.

[21:43] It's all over the mirror.

[21:44] The mirror has a magic hand that comes out and wipes his face for a deadpan.

[21:47] She has to clean the mirror with Windex.

Dan McCoy

[21:50] And the mirror's like, oh.

[21:53] Don't get it in my mirror eyes.

[21:54] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[21:55] The, I would love all that.

[21:57] I mean, why is there never, has there must have been like a big slapstick goofy version of Snow White at some point, right?

S4

[22:02] Well, there was a Betty Boop one that came out around the same time as the Disney one that was very slapstick.

Elliott Kalan

[22:07] I bet it was pretty slapstick.

[22:09] And I bet Cab Calloway was probably in it.

[22:11] That must have been great.

S4

[22:12] Oh, you know, they had the rotoscope machine going on.

[22:15] Oh, yeah, for sure.

Elliott Kalan

[22:16] That's, I remember as a kid seeing those cartoons and not knowing how they were made and just being, loving them,

[22:21] but being so confused by how suddenly the animation suddenly became so smooth.

[22:25] And again, also how the cartoons would suddenly stop for Coco the Clown to become a jazz singer and just sing a swing song.

[22:32] And then go right back to the movie again, to the story again.

[22:35] I'd be like, what is going on here?

Dan McCoy

[22:36] It would get so eerie.

[22:37] You're like, the movement suddenly became so natural, even though his legs are getting so long and short.

[22:44] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[22:45] Oh, man, like a regular Pedro Pascal.

[22:47] So she orders the huntsman, take Snow White to the apple orchard.

[22:53] Then you're going to kill her and bring her heart back in a box, which is, I guess, where the, I guess that's the inspiration for the Nirvana song Heart Shaped Box, right?

[23:01] Yeah.

[23:01] Probably, yeah.

S4

[23:02] Can I pause here quickly to say that I've brought you guys an offering?

Elliott Kalan

[23:06] Oh.

[23:07] This better be a human heart.

[23:08] Oh, this is amazing.

[23:09] Oh, what is?

S4

[23:11] It's a Disney promotional live action Snow White popcorn bucket.

[23:16] Oh, wow.

Elliott Kalan

[23:16] It looks like the box from the movie that the heart is in.

Stuart Wellington

[23:21] So, how much, you could fit a fair amount of popcorn in that piece.

[23:25] Dan is already like, how would I have sex with this thing?

[23:27] Exactly.

[23:28] What?

Dan McCoy

[23:29] Calm down, dude.

[23:32] Yeah.

[23:33] You may have seen Rebecca online doing some popcorn bucket reviews.

[23:38] She's on the popcorn feed.

[23:39] Oh, what's your favorite?

[23:39] All-time favorite.

S4

[23:40] Journalism is really thriving, you guys.

[23:44] Well, I just got to play with the Galactus one.

[23:48] Oh, cool, cool, cool.

[23:49] Which is approximately 20 inches tall and two feet wide and its eyes glow.

Stuart Wellington

[23:54] I mean, that's a lot of popcorn right there.

S4

[23:56] My arm goes all the way down it.

Elliott Kalan

[23:58] That's incredible.

[23:59] Wow.

[24:01] So, it's like as close as you can get to a bottomless pit of popcorn.

S4

[24:04] Pretty much.

[24:05] But, yeah, this, the Snow White box, it's a bit more humble.

Dan McCoy

[24:11] I kind of like the box shape.

[24:13] I feel like that would be, in some ways, a lot easier to eat out of.

[24:16] And I like the strap, so it's kind of like a trough.

[24:18] Yeah.

[24:19] Anything that falls while you're trying to eat it just goes right back in the box.

[24:24] It's a virtuous cycle.

[24:27] You could fit, like, two hearts in there.

[24:30] Thank you.

[24:30] All future guests, now take note.

[24:33] Bring offerings.

Elliott Kalan

[24:36] It's delightful.

[24:37] So, the huntsman takes Snow White to pick apples, but he can't be able to kill her.

[24:40] She's just too nice and too fair.

[24:42] He tells her, run away.

[24:44] And she runs in the dark forest, and she's pushing past trees, and owls and bats are flying at her.

[24:47] And I kind of like this part.

[24:48] I mean, I love this sequence in the original movie.

[24:50] Yeah.

[24:50] This is one of the places where I think the unreality or the uncanny valley reality of the AI-type visual style works a little bit more because it feels so hallucinogenic.

[25:02] It feels so phantasmagoric.

Stuart Wellington

[25:03] It's a moment where they're like, hey, it's similar to some of the stuff with the mirror where they're like, hey, we can kind of do anything with this technology.

[25:12] Let's, like, play around with it instead of trying to desperately try and make it look real.

[25:18] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[25:19] And this is when the movie most closely resembles Valerie's Week of Wonders, you know, the Czech fantasy film.

[25:26] So, I was like, oh, that's good.

[25:27] Okay.

[25:28] Of course.

[25:28] So, she eventually, she falls through.

Stuart Wellington

[25:30] I think they said they were intentionally referencing that, right?

[25:33] Oh, yeah.

[25:33] Probably, probably.

[25:34] In the press material.

Elliott Kalan

[25:35] So, she falls through a pond.

[25:36] She befriends a ton of CGI woodland creatures.

[25:39] There's just, like, a shit ton of chipmunks and squirrels and deer and little birds and stuff.

[25:43] And she follows this deer to a cottage and rabbits lead her into the cottage.

[25:48] So, if the police arrest her for breaking and entering, she'd be like, the animals did it.

[25:51] It wasn't me.

[25:52] Yeah.

[25:52] And she falls asleep across some very short beds.

[25:57] Who could these beds belong to?

[25:59] I mean, there are names written on the beds.

Stuart Wellington

[26:01] Names are, like, carved into them.

[26:03] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[26:04] This is when we enter the, what would have been the titular Seven Dwarfs, if this was still called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was just called Snow White.

[26:12] And, of course, they sing Hi-Ho, but it's, like, a supersized version of the Hi-Ho song.

[26:16] Like, it's got so many more verses.

[26:17] They go to a mine.

[26:18] They're racing around in mine carts.

Stuart Wellington

[26:20] I think, like, Pitbull has a fucking verse, right?

[26:22] I think so, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[26:25] It says, Hi-Ho, Seven Dwarfs, Feet Pitbull.

Dan McCoy

[26:28] Yeah.

[26:28] It's about living in Miami.

Elliott Kalan

[26:30] I don't know.

[26:30] You lost him in the mine.

Dan McCoy

[26:34] I want to say about these songs, though, even the, look, I don't like the new songs.

[26:38] I feel like an old man saying it.

[26:40] Like, the ones that are funnier, I like better.

Elliott Kalan

[26:43] To be a man in your 40s and to be like, this song in a children's movie is not as good as the song in the older children's movie.

Dan McCoy

[26:50] Yeah, I don't like these pop-style show tunes.

[26:52] I want the old style.

[26:54] I don't, I just, yeah, I'm not as fond of it.

[26:58] I mean, these are songwriters.

[26:59] I apologized to them, I guess, out in the world.

[27:03] I generally don't like that much.

[27:06] But even the older songs that I do like, I found the orchestrations of them really bad.

[27:14] Like, there was something bad about it.

[27:16] Like, the way it was mixed.

[27:17] I mean, I don't know any of that stuff.

[27:18] It just didn't sound, okay.

S4

[27:19] I thought there was a very prominent banjo in the mix that I was picking up on and enjoying.

Dan McCoy

[27:23] There's nothing wrong with that.

[27:25] There's nothing wrong with prominent banjo.

[27:26] Well, I think that was.

[27:27] During Hi-Ho.

[27:27] I remember the banjo, and that was one of the few things I was like, oh, this is fun.

[27:32] This feels right for these dwarf characters.

Elliott Kalan

[27:34] I'll say Hi-Ho, I felt like, was one of the more successful song that he does in this.

[27:38] If only because, like, it's still fun.

[27:40] The energy's up the whole time.

[27:41] It goes on for a long time.

[27:42] But, like, and they're using it to introduce the different characters' personalities because

[27:46] otherwise it would be impossible to tell what Grumpy is like or Sleepy or Sneezy.

[27:52] There's no way of knowing what they're like.

[27:53] I mean, sure, there's their names, but.

Dan McCoy

[27:56] Unlike in Sibley's song, they didn't add, like, a little crude, like, extra verse in there.

[28:01] I was like, Ellie's going to hate this.

[28:04] You didn't clock that.

[28:04] They had, like, some sort of off-color joke right in the middle of the revamped, you know,

[28:10] ding-dong, silly song.

Elliott Kalan

[28:12] Oh, I don't remember that part.

[28:13] You know, I was also, I was taking notes and doing the dishes while watching this.

[28:16] So maybe not have picked up all the nuances.

[28:18] So, but I did notice they race around in mine carts like it's Donkey Kong Country.

[28:21] Love that.

[28:22] Love a mine cart race.

[28:23] Can't get enough of those.

[28:25] And I will say this about the dwarfs.

[28:26] They look scary.

[28:28] Did you guys feel this way?

[28:29] Like, I feel like their design is very off-putting and very, like,

[28:34] very, just, I imagine a child being scared by them.

S4

[28:39] They're abominations.

[28:40] Like, it's truly one of the worst-looking things I've ever seen.

[28:44] And it's not bad like it's lazy because it's a very specific character design.

[28:49] A lot of work went into this.

[28:50] A lot of work.

[28:51] I've never seen anything quite like this before.

[28:53] And I found them really repulsive.

[28:56] Like, even their skin was full of these big pores.

[29:00] But it, and it looked waxy.

[29:02] And their faces were, it was horrible.

Dan McCoy

[29:05] They look like lawn gnomes, like, come to life in, like, in a hyper-realistic way.

Elliott Kalan

[29:12] I mean, it looks like, there's AI.

[29:15] YouTube is always trying to tell me that I want to watch what would cartoon characters look like if they were real.

[29:21] You know, that people use AI for.

[29:23] And it looks like, it does look like that.

[29:25] It looks like you took a lawn gnome and you said, hey, I make this real.

[29:27] And it kind of gave you one of those.

[29:29] And it's, yeah, there's like a hyper-detail to it.

[29:32] But their faces are all kind of stretched.

[29:34] And I wonder if there was also the desire to not make them look too much like real human beings.

[29:41] Because then it becomes a matter of, are we othering, you know, people.

[29:44] There was a whole thing.

Dan McCoy

[29:45] Like, Peter Dinklage in particular was like, you should not use little people for this.

[29:51] Because, like, you're, like, turning them into some sort of other creature, you know.

[29:56] And that's a bad idea.

[29:58] So they were originally, I think, going to.

[30:01] And then they swung far in the other direction.

[30:03] Like, okay, like, let's make these exaggerated CGI gnome-like dwarves.

S4

[30:08] But there's a way to make a little gnome, old man, little gnome man very cute.

Stuart Wellington

[30:14] Yeah, look at fucking Hoggle, baby.

S4

[30:17] Or, you know, like David the Gnome.

Stuart Wellington

[30:19] Yeah, or David the Gnome.

[30:20] Right, he's a cute little bearded little old man.

[30:22] David the Gnome is incredibly cute.

S4

[30:24] Give them little rosy cheeks and make them very cute.

Stuart Wellington

[30:26] I was saying Hoggle from Labyrinth, you know.

[30:28] Oh, right, right.

[30:29] I forgot the character's name.

Elliott Kalan

[30:31] David the Gnome, I think the only thing you're up against.

[30:33] Is that it's maybe the most boring cartoon in the history of television.

[30:37] Yeah, but it's cute looking.

[30:39] I remember as a kid watching Nickelodeon and David the Gnome would come on and be like,

[30:42] Well, I have to watch this because it's television, but I'm not going to enjoy it at all.

Dan McCoy

[30:46] Yeah, you cross your arms.

[30:48] Rebecca looks like she's receding into herself.

[30:51] Like, how dare you?

[30:52] Well, I need to be honest.

S4

[30:53] I've never seen one second of David the Gnome.

[30:56] I just noticed that it's a touch movie.

[30:56] You just Googled cute gnome.

[30:59] It's one of those things.

[31:00] It's one of those things.

[31:00] Cute gnome's near me.

Elliott Kalan

[31:02] You've just seen the Rule 34 interpretations of David the Gnome.

[31:06] I will say it's one of those shows that if my kids watched it, I'd be like, this is great.

[31:10] It's gentle.

[31:11] Like, it's not loud.

[31:13] It's not frantic.

[31:13] But as a kid, I was like, let's amp it up.

Stuart Wellington

[31:15] Come on.

[31:16] Get a shot of energy into this.

Elliott Kalan

[31:19] So there's also –

[31:21] What if David had a machine gun?

[31:23] You know, now that David the Gnome is in the public domain, he can finally be a killer.

[31:28] So the dwarfs also, they have – we meet their personalities.

[31:33] They have magic hands that glow when they locate precious gemstones.

[31:37] That's the thing that never really does anything.

[31:39] It's just a thing they do for a moment.

[31:42] They go home from a day of mining, just a day of tearing the bounty of Mother Earth out of her guts to replace it with empty hollow tunnels and a fractured substrata.

Stuart Wellington

[31:52] I mean, honestly, those tunnels are pretty spacious.

[31:56] Like, from what I know about mining, they have it pretty good there.

Elliott Kalan

[32:00] And to be honest – and they're just doing that with pickaxes.

[32:02] So, I mean, they talk about how they've been working together for centuries.

[32:04] It takes a long time to dig a tunnel that is roughly the size of the interior of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a pickaxe.

[32:11] Like, that's amazing.

Stuart Wellington

[32:12] But they did that.

[32:12] And they're also probably union members.

Elliott Kalan

[32:15] Well, that's the thing.

[32:16] We never see them take a vote on anything.

[32:19] We never see them talk to their reps.

[32:20] So I'm not sure.

Dan McCoy

[32:21] What are they doing with all those jewels?

[32:23] Because that seems to be a rich cache of emeralds and rubies and such.

[32:29] And they don't seem to be wealthy.

[32:30] They're all living together as roommates in a little shack in the woods.

Elliott Kalan

[32:34] So the subtext is I think that it's not so much that they want the jewels and they want to be rich so much as they want to keep other people from accumulating things because it would make them feel lesser if other people had more.

[32:46] So they just hoard all those gems and don't let anyone else have it.

[32:49] They're very selfish.

[32:50] Very selfish characters.

[32:52] But that's the world we live in, Snow White.

[32:53] Anyway, let the scales fall from your eyes.

[32:56] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[32:57] Originally, when they were naming them, they're like, well, their primary characteristic is selfish.

[33:00] But that's all of them.

[33:01] So we need to differentiate them a little more.

Elliott Kalan

[33:03] Just greedy one, greedy two, greedy three.

[33:06] So they get to the house.

[33:10] They find Snow White sleeping.

[33:11] They run around scared.

[33:12] Oh, no.

[33:13] And they accidentally leave Dopey alone in the room with her.

[33:15] He's the dwarf who cannot talk, who in this version looks a lot like Alfred E. Newman, which I find very funny.

Dan McCoy

[33:20] He looks like a combination of horrible, ugly CGI gnome man and Tom Holland Spider-Man.

[33:33] Yeah, there's a lot of Tom Holland in there.

Elliott Kalan

[33:35] Yeah, I can see that.

Dan McCoy

[33:36] You rammed them together.

[33:36] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[33:37] And he's not bald in this version, right?

[33:39] He has hair?

S4

[33:40] No, he's got a full head of brown sort of Tom Holland color hair.

[33:44] Yeah, yeah.

[33:45] But I do find him, I found him the most unsettling.

[33:49] There's something about, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[33:50] Because he has the most human-like features.

[33:52] The others have slightly more exaggerated features.

S4

[33:53] And he's always making quote-unquote cute expressions, but that's very repulsive with the aforementioned issues with how their skin looks up close, which is very scary.

Elliott Kalan

[34:03] There's always a problem with a character that really wants you to love it, and it's not quite connecting.

[34:09] Whereas the Dopey in the original one, he's always tripping over things, and he's got those long sleeves and everything.

[34:15] You can't help but love him.

[34:16] Come on, he's bald.

[34:16] Part of the problem with this.

[34:18] He's like a bald little gnome.

[34:20] How could he not like him, you know?

Dan McCoy

[34:21] The conception of this Dopey, part of the problem is like, and this is going to sound like an anti-woke screen, which is obviously, I'm going to go off everybody.

[34:29] He knew it was coming to this.

[34:30] He knew it was going to happen.

[34:31] Despite what Stuart and Elliot try and say is not my vibe.

[34:36] But I think that the idea is like, oh, we can't make Dopey Dopey.

[34:42] That would feel wrong now.

[34:45] But the original Dopey is just like a lovable Harpo-style goof.

Elliott Kalan

[34:50] Well, I always assumed he was called Dopey because he was a heroin addict.

Dan McCoy

[34:53] Right, right, right, right.

[34:54] This was pushing like so far into like, this is like, I don't know, the Holy Fool sort of thing, but it is trying so hard to like tug at your heartstrings that it's, it's...

[35:04] The Holy Fool was originally the title for Baby's Day Out, right?

Stuart Wellington

[35:07] Yeah.

[35:08] I think it was, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[35:09] Guys, which is your favorite, Dorf?

[35:11] I think you can guess which mine is.

Elliott Kalan

[35:13] Oh, yeah, sure.

[35:14] Well, my favorite is Dorf from Dorf Goes Fishing and Dorf Plays Golf.

[35:17] Yeah.

[35:17] Tim Donway.

[35:18] Yeah.

[35:18] Yeah, he's cool.

[35:19] Mine's Gimli.

Stuart Wellington

[35:21] I meant Among These Dwarfs.

[35:23] Oh.

[35:24] Okay.

[35:25] Now I have to rethink.

[35:28] Probably there's a doctor one, right?

[35:31] Yeah.

[35:31] A doctor.

S4

[35:31] Although he clarifies in this that he's not really a doctor.

[35:34] But he has forceps.

[35:36] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[35:37] Yeah.

[35:37] I mean, again, there's a lot.

[35:38] Again, that's the secretary stuff coming in.

Dan McCoy

[35:40] Yeah, yeah.

[35:40] I like – the closest I come to liking one of these is Grumpy because I think Grumpy – like he's less horrific than the others.

Elliott Kalan

[35:50] Even in the original, Grumpy and Dopey are clearly the two that you're meant to like invest some energy into.

[35:55] Dopey because he's super cute and Grumpy because he's the one who has a change of heart.

[36:00] He's the one who doesn't like Snow White and then by the end is crushed that she's been hurt.

[36:05] So it's the – whereas the others are just kind of around like bashful.

[36:08] Who gives a shit?

[36:09] You know?

[36:10] Pipe up, dude.

[36:13] Come on.

[36:13] And there's the one – who was – was it Happy who was always hungry?

[36:16] Like there's no – there's none of them are named Hungry.

[36:18] Oh, there's no Hungry.

[36:19] But the one – he was like at the end, I think it's him who gets some food and he's like,

[36:22] mm, yeah.

[36:22] Like he's always talking about food.

[36:24] That's his origin story.

[36:24] That's not your thing.

[36:26] Huh.

Stuart Wellington

[36:27] So anyway –

[36:28] And there's like a sleepy one, right?

[36:31] Sleepy.

[36:32] He's always falling asleep.

[36:33] Yep.

[36:34] And do you know what the one who's sneezing is called?

[36:38] I like it.

[36:39] Mike.

Elliott Kalan

[36:41] So she gets left behind with Dopey, but she's gentle to him and they guess, oh, she's on the run.

[36:46] She's in trouble.

[36:47] But against Grumpy's wishes, they agree to hide her at the house.

[36:51] Meanwhile, the queen's mirror is like, dude, Snow White's still alive, dude.

[36:55] And the queen sings her bad guy song.

[36:57] Every bad guy gets a song in Disney movies.

[36:59] How did you guys feel about this bad guy song, which is usually my favorite song in a Disney movie.

[37:03] Oh, man.

Stuart Wellington

[37:04] Like the aforementioned Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Elliott Kalan

[37:06] Yeah.

[37:06] I mean, Hellfire is the best song in Notre Dame.

[37:08] I love porn.

[37:09] I mean, there's a number of great songs in Little Mermaid, but I love porn, Fortunate Souls.

[37:13] Like there's –

[37:13] Yes.

[37:14] You get great songs from Disney.

[37:15] I mean, the Scars song in the original Lion King.

[37:18] I love it.

[37:19] You know, be prepared.

Dan McCoy

[37:20] There's a split decision for me on here.

[37:23] This is one of the newer songs that as a song didn't bother me as much.

[37:27] I thought the song was okay, but Gal Gadot is not really much of a singer, so that was the problem, I think.

S4

[37:34] This was the highlight of the movie for me because I do think it's where Gal Gadot's limitations as a performer are thrown into the starkest relief.

[37:44] And the whole time – the whole movie, she's making like a smirk.

[37:48] She's playing with her long nails, and she really thinks she's eating.

[37:53] But she does think that she's doing that good of a job, and she simply – like it's horrible.

[38:02] Yeah.

[38:02] And that's very fun and delightful.

Elliott Kalan

[38:06] So this is the high point from a schadenfreude point of view.

S4

[38:10] It just – well, an entertainment point of view.

[38:13] And it's so cruel to her because it's making her – this song, especially the lyrics, it's asking of her to say so many things so fast.

[38:23] And actually sing so many things so fast.

[38:25] And she's –

[38:27] Did she do her own singing for this?

Stuart Wellington

[38:29] They don't have a stunt voice, do they?

[38:31] It sounds like it.

[38:32] I would assume.

[38:33] They would have gotten a better stunt voice.

[38:35] Yeah.

[38:35] Also, I would imagine that part of her taking this role is that she's like, I want to sing.

[38:41] I want to show off my pipes.

S4

[38:43] I guess so, yeah.

[38:44] And it's a song about – what's it called again?

[38:47] It's something about – she says ambitious girls must be vicious girls at some point.

[38:52] It's – the song's like, I'm evil.

Stuart Wellington

[38:54] Yeah.

[38:55] Yeah.

[38:55] I mean, that is the villain song is highlighting why they're evil or how they're evil or how being evil is awesome.

[39:02] Yeah.

[39:02] This is called All is Fair.

Elliott Kalan

[39:04] It's basically – it's great to be evil.

[39:06] When you're beautiful, you can get away with whatever you want.

[39:08] You know, that's the most important thing.

[39:10] That's what I always say.

[39:12] That's why Stuart started weightlifting.

[39:14] He was like, wait a minute.

[39:15] Hold on.

[39:15] I can finally be evil.

[39:18] Keats was wrong.

[39:19] Beauty is the truth.

[39:20] Beauty is power.

[39:21] The power to take the world and make it your play thing.

[39:24] You know, yeah.

[39:25] So she gets this whole big song.

[39:27] She sends her soldiers out to find Snow White.

[39:30] And this is when we get into the dwarf antics part of the story where they're just knocking things over.

[39:36] They're fighting among themselves.

[39:38] And Dopey gets upset by all this rambunctiousness.

[39:40] And Snow White talks to him gently.

[39:42] And he kind of silently admits he's afraid to speak.

[39:45] And she teaches him how to whistle instead.

[39:48] And she helps the dwarves get along.

[39:49] And they all clean the house together.

[39:51] That's not annoying.

[39:53] They do – this is their whistle while you work sequence.

S4

[39:57] It is weird that for so many of these live action remakes, a big thing about them has been like, oh, we need to rehabilitate these female characters to make them better role models.

[40:05] All of these girls are suddenly going to be really – the princesses all do STEM now.

[40:10] And they're all independent.

[40:11] And this one is still very much mostly about baking pies and housework.

Elliott Kalan

[40:17] Yeah, I think they're trying to do a hard thing of making her kind of a more politically aware character without losing the kind of Disney princess in a sense.

[40:28] And I feel like there's a – they're missing an opportunity to play into a different kind of – a different kind but a more retrograde sort of female heroism.

[40:37] That's more the traditional thing of the female character who is not like tough but instead wins people over through love and inherent goodness.

[40:47] And that's what they're trying to do with her.

[40:48] And that's what they're trying to do with her.

[40:49] But they also want to make her like a character who is projecting kind of strength and defiance.

[40:54] And I feel like there's a little bit of tension between those two things that she could – her strength is in her – I guess in the old-fashioned version of the story.

[41:01] Her strength is in purely her goodness.

[41:03] It's a very kind of like Christian morality, Christian parable type of strength.

[41:06] And here they also want to make her like a political rebel and it's hard to do those things at the same time.

Dan McCoy

[41:11] I just realized that before I was wrong, it was not during Silly's song that they had the off-color new lyric.

[41:19] It was in this song.

[41:20] It was – I looked it up.

[41:21] It was, wait, I think that brush is mine.

[41:24] You should have hung a sign.

[41:25] If you don't hush, I'll take this brush and shove it where the sun don't shine.

[41:29] I'm like, we don't need that.

Elliott Kalan

[41:30] I thought you were going to say the lines were, whistle while you work, while you need and clean and tuck.

[41:36] You know that you can also whistle while you – hey, what's that over there?

[41:40] I thought that was the lyric you were talking about.

[41:42] It was fine.

[41:43] I feel like as far as putting off-color things into Disney – injecting Disney movies, that's – what you just said, Dan, is one of the lesser ones, but I still don't like it.

[41:50] Sure, but it's also just –

S4

[41:51] What it's implying.

Elliott Kalan

[41:53] Unnecessary.

[41:53] It's so much – I feel – yeah, that's true.

[41:56] But I feel like the – I was more worried by – in The Lion King when in the original version of Hakuna Matata, they don't let him say farted.

[42:04] But then in the new version of it, he goes, what?

[42:05] I was going to say farted.

[42:06] Fart, right?

[42:07] I can't say farted?

[42:08] And it was like, there's no joke if you do it that way.

[42:10] Like the joke doesn't even exist, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[42:14] Did you gauge your children's reactions?

[42:16] Because I know your two boys –

Elliott Kalan

[42:18] To which – to this movie or to that version of The Lion King?

Stuart Wellington

[42:21] To that version of The Lion King.

[42:22] Do they like the farted joke?

Elliott Kalan

[42:23] They found it – I mean, they were so kind of bored by – I mean, my younger son just loves watching animal stuff.

[42:28] He was kind of into it.

[42:29] But they were mostly kind of bored.

[42:31] And we went to see Mufasa.

Stuart Wellington

[42:33] You should have just shown him like Microcosmos or something.

[42:35] I mean, he loves Microcosmos.

[42:37] Yeah, we've shown him that.

[42:37] And you play the Flaming Lips record at the same time.

Elliott Kalan

[42:41] Yeah, not usually.

[42:42] But when we went to see it, we went to see Mufasa in the theaters when that came out because we were out of town and I need to take the boys to do something.

[42:48] And that was one where they were both – they had both lost interest I think 25 minutes into the movie, you know?

[42:52] But I made them stay the full amount of respect for the work.

Stuart Wellington

[42:55] That's Mufasa.

[42:57] He's going to die in another movie.

Elliott Kalan

[42:59] He's trampled.

[43:01] I was like, this is interesting.

[43:02] They're retconning away the idea that Scar is clearly queer.

[43:06] They're really working hard to make him a heterosexual character, you know?

[43:12] So – and also – but I think they all enjoyed that Mads Mikkelsen got to have a song where he went bye-bye a bunch of times.

[43:17] So anyway –

Dan McCoy

[43:20] Because it was Mads Mikkelsen.

[43:21] They understood that.

[43:22] Yeah, yeah.

[43:23] They were like, it's great that he's doing it.

Elliott Kalan

[43:25] The star of the Pusher movies.

[43:29] So Snow White goes off to find the rebel thieves that Jonathan leads in the woods to see if her dad is still alive.

[43:36] Because they say that – he says he works for the king or he's fighting for the king or whatever.

[43:40] And she finds Jonathan.

[43:41] He's a cynic.

[43:41] He sings the Princess Problems song about how she's entitled, I guess.

[43:46] She literally has been almost murdered and had to run away from home.

[43:51] But he's still pretty – he's real snarky to her about it, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[43:55] What did you guys feel about this song?

[43:56] And this is a duet where they like – you know, they play off each other, right?

Elliott Kalan

[43:59] Yeah.

[43:59] It's a two-hander.

[44:00] Yeah.

[44:01] Yeah, again, the slightly more comic songs.

[44:03] I guess actually it's two people, so it's really more of a four-hander.

Dan McCoy

[44:06] Four-hander, yeah.

[44:06] Yeah.

[44:07] Well, yeah.

[44:09] No, that adds up.

[44:10] The math works.

S4

[44:13] He's gently negging her.

[44:15] She's starting to get interested in him and in the communist cause.

[44:20] Yeah.

[44:21] So it's moving the plot along a bit.

Elliott Kalan

[44:23] It's very Love Island, the way they're interacting, right?

[44:26] That he's just being like, you stink.

[44:28] And she's like, I love this guy now.

[44:30] This is who I have to be with.

[44:33] No, I think it's supposed to be the old, they don't get along, but we know they're going to fall in love later or something like that.

[44:39] But they talk to each other.

[44:40] The castle guards show up.

[44:41] And then Jonathan and his brigand gang fight them.

[44:45] And Snow White –

Stuart Wellington

[44:46] They're more like merry men than brigands, really.

[44:48] They're like kind of goofy.

Elliott Kalan

[44:49] I've never seen them like really steal from anybody, although they do have the classic cart full of valuables that Robin Hood and his merry men always have.

[44:58] And Snow White – I was confused by this.

[45:00] So Snow White –

Dan McCoy

[45:02] Oh, she's played by Rachel Ziegler.

Elliott Kalan

[45:04] Oh.

[45:05] Now I understand.

[45:06] Because I was like, how did West Side Story get into this movie?

[45:09] Yeah.

[45:10] Time machine.

[45:12] So she went back in time from the 1950s to fairy tale times.

[45:16] And a different location.

[45:18] And a different location.

[45:19] I mean, most time machines can change location.

[45:21] Are you saying this is also what the west side of Manhattan was like before Lincoln Center?

[45:25] It was just forests, castles.

[45:27] Yeah, that's right.

[45:28] Mines.

[45:29] Just gem mines everywhere.

[45:31] She runs off and then she tricks the soldiers into chasing her dress, which actually has birds in it.

[45:37] And then we cut to her riding away on a horse or something and she's still wearing her dress.

[45:43] So I was like, did she have two dresses?

[45:44] That's what confused me.

Stuart Wellington

[45:45] Did they show like in their like wheelbarrow full of stuff?

[45:51] Did the brigands have like spare costumes and crap?

[45:55] Oh, maybe.

[45:55] Maybe that's it.

[45:56] Yeah.

[45:58] Because I was like –

[45:59] What do you guys think of the live action Snow White dress?

[46:03] Because there's something about the like crinoline skirt doesn't – it looks very cheap to me.

S4

[46:09] It looks totally party city.

[46:11] It's very goofy doofy.

[46:12] Most of these movies try to, you know, interpolate the vibe of the original dress.

[46:19] And this just did a direct one-to-one, which looks very –

Elliott Kalan

[46:22] It's an issue I have actually, to be honest, with a lot of the Marvel movie costumes where – especially the Asgardian costumes and stuff like that, where it should look like it's made out of leather or metal.

[46:31] But they all just kind of look like they're made out of plastic, you know?

[46:33] And this feels kind of similar.

[46:34] Like it does feel – it does feel kind of off the rack.

[46:37] Although I like the colors in it.

[46:38] The colors are bright and bold, you know?

Dan McCoy

[46:40] Yeah, I like the colors.

[46:41] I think that it's all like such like shiny satiny stuff that that's what's giving it that like – I don't know.

[46:48] Like we got some like plasticky fabric from –

Elliott Kalan

[46:51] Yeah, that's the issue I really had more with the queen's headdress.

[46:55] I love a big spiky headdress.

[46:57] I love Galactus.

[46:58] I love Hela.

[46:59] I love Maleficent's headdress.

[47:02] But hers like – it looked like – again, it looked like it was kind of plasticky.

[47:06] Like it looked like it was just made out of not a material.

[47:09] This is me being the stupidest version of nerd.

[47:11] It doesn't look like the kind of material that the real queen of this fairy kingdom would have at the time.

S4

[47:17] Yeah, it looks like what you wear under a mesquite helmet maybe to protect your ears from the windchill.

[47:24] And it just – the dress stands out extra because they've dulled the colors of all the dwarves' clothing.

[47:30] And also, as you mentioned earlier, all of these – the brigands are all looking like out of a Disney Channel original movie.

[47:37] They're wearing like flannel and hoodies.

Stuart Wellington

[47:41] They're like –

[47:41] Yeah, yeah.

[47:41] They look very 90s.

[47:43] They're like a – like very church camp.

[47:45] Like, hey, we're bad boys, but we're also cool.

[47:47] You know, like we're cool, but we're also like wholesome, I guess.

S4

[47:50] Yeah, they're fighting for the king, the one true king.

Dan McCoy

[47:52] Yeah, exactly.

[47:53] Yeah.

[47:55] I have a CD.

[47:55] It's some pretty cool rock music you should hear.

[47:58] It's all about his return.

[48:00] It's about Jesus, but you never know.

[48:02] Dan, were you ever in a production of Godspell?

[48:06] No, but I do know all the songs.

[48:07] Yeah, yeah.

[48:08] But do you know how to spell God?

[48:09] But I could be.

Stuart Wellington

[48:10] Yeah.

[48:10] Any directors listening?

Dan McCoy

[48:14] You got a good baritone for prepare you the way of the Lord?

[48:18] Yeah, come on.

Elliott Kalan

[48:18] I have to admit, Godspell is a musical I don't know any of the songs to.

[48:22] I've never seen it.

[48:23] Not familiar with it at all.

[48:24] And this is because someone who's going tonight, the night we're recording this, to the Hollywood

[48:27] Bowl to see Jesus Christ Superstar for probably the fourth time that I've seen it in some

[48:31] form or another.

[48:31] So I'm up for a Christian-based musical.

Dan McCoy

[48:35] It's good music.

[48:36] It's Stephen Schwartz.

Elliott Kalan

[48:37] It's good stuff.

[48:38] Check it out.

[48:39] Okay.

[48:39] That's what I'll do.

[48:40] I'll check it out right after this.

[48:41] That's Dan's recommendation.

[48:42] At your local library.

[48:44] Go to your local library.

[48:47] Say, give me Godspell.

[48:48] They'll say, hold on.

[48:50] I need it.

Dan McCoy

[48:51] In what form?

[48:52] Hold on.

[48:53] I'm on the phone here.

[48:54] Do you want the soundtrack?

[48:55] Do you want the movie?

[48:57] Do you want it?

S4

[48:57] There is a Patter song in it that I do think you specifically would love though.

[49:01] Oh, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[49:02] I'll have to try it out.

[49:03] I'll listen to it at some point.

Stuart Wellington

[49:04] Do you guys have a preferred version of it?

[49:06] Like if listeners want to check out Godspell.

[49:09] The Toronto cast.

Elliott Kalan

[49:10] It had every funny person in it.

[49:12] That legendary Toronto production?

[49:13] Yeah.

[49:14] That's my main touch point for Godspell is that hearing about that Toronto production where

[49:18] it was like, where every famous person from Canada was in it.

[49:22] It was like Martin Short and Eugene Levy and, you know.

[49:25] Ryan Gosling.

[49:25] Mayor Rob Ford.

[49:27] Yeah.

[49:27] Mayor Rob Ford.

[49:28] Yeah.

[49:28] Pierre Trudeau.

[49:29] Justin Trudeau.

[49:30] Wayne Gretzky.

[49:31] Yeah.

[49:32] Robert Davies.

[49:32] Yeah.

[49:33] Everybody was.

[49:33] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[49:34] He was so good on Saturday Night Live.

Elliott Kalan

[49:37] So anyway, Snow White has impressed the bandits, impressed Jonathan by how she tricked the soldiers.

[49:43] And he admits, you know, it's nice.

[49:45] I actually do have ideals.

[49:46] I do want the king to come back.

[49:47] And that's when he gets hit by a crossbow bolt that I guess was meant for Snow White.

Stuart Wellington

[49:51] Yeah, he throws himself in front of it so she doesn't get shot with a crossbow.

Elliott Kalan

[49:55] The soldiers, I guess, I guess they escape because Snow White takes him to Doc.

[50:00] This is when Doc points out he actually has, I guess, a PhD in mineralogy.

[50:04] He doesn't.

[50:05] Doc is really more of an honorary title.

[50:07] He's not a medical doctor.

Stuart Wellington

[50:08] There's a postgraduate school in.

Elliott Kalan

[50:11] I have to assume.

[50:13] I mean, with the idea of Doc being someone other than a medical doctor, where is he getting

[50:16] that idea from?

Stuart Wellington

[50:17] Yeah, maybe he was born on the docks.

Elliott Kalan

[50:20] That's what it is.

[50:21] Yeah, yeah.

[50:22] He goes, no, actually, I'm called Doc because I always wear Dockers.

Dan McCoy

[50:27] So you're Doc Martens.

Elliott Kalan

[50:28] I was wearing Doc Martens and I have a docksint.

[50:31] Oh, so every other way you could be Doc except being a doctor.

[50:34] You got that right.

[50:35] That's for sure.

[50:38] I also will talk about Dockodiles, which is like a crocodile, but it's a doctor.

[50:45] What the fuck?

[50:47] Really?

[50:47] It seems like that's not a real thing.

[50:48] You're just adding stuff to it.

[50:49] Oh, yeah, of course.

[50:50] We'll do that, too.

Dan McCoy

[50:52] Once you get into branding, you just kind of have to push it as far as you can go.

Elliott Kalan

[50:55] Here's my app.

[50:56] It's called TickDock.

[50:57] Wait a sec.

[50:58] Do you have an app?

[50:58] Apps exist in this world?

[51:00] Just this one.

[51:01] I'm an appetizer.

[51:02] An appetizer you eat before the meal.

Dan McCoy

[51:04] People mostly download it thinking it's doctor's advice about if you have a tick on you.

[51:08] That's not what it is, though.

[51:10] That's not it at all.

S4

[51:11] People trying to download Dick Talk.

Stuart Wellington

[51:15] Sounds like you have a lot of complaints.

[51:17] I'll add them to the docket.

Elliott Kalan

[51:20] Now I'll take my docket ship to the moon.

[51:22] That's not a thing.

[51:23] These are not things, Doc.

[51:26] And then everyone goes-

[51:27] Yeah, Doc is short for Doc.

[51:28] Man.

S4

[51:28] Well, he's the leader.

[51:29] Maybe he's docking their pay.

[51:31] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[51:31] And that's when Dopey reveals he can't talk and he goes, Snow White, just humor him.

[51:36] It's what we do.

[51:37] He actually gets very violent when we don't play into his doctor fantasy.

[51:41] So she gives a speech that unites the brigands and the dwarfs together.

[51:46] They, of course, throw a dance party.

[51:48] And during the dance, there's a big musical number where Snow White starts falling in love with Jonathan.

[51:51] And Jonathan's falling in love with Snow White.

[51:53] They're saying, maybe we don't have to be alone.

[51:55] Maybe we can walk this path together.

[51:56] They sing about it.

[51:57] But their moment-

[51:59] Do you guys buy it?

Stuart Wellington

[51:59] Do you think they get chemistry?

[52:02] Uh, no.

Elliott Kalan

[52:04] I mean, I'd call it again like Disney Channel chemistry.

[52:06] Like, it feels like they have chemistry because they're both two attractive people.

[52:09] They're in the movie together.

Dan McCoy

[52:10] Singing a song together.

[52:11] Singing a song together.

[52:12] The two attractive people are like, there's no one else in this movie.

[52:15] I guess we got a date.

Stuart Wellington

[52:20] Isn't there like a love connection between a couple of the brigands, too?

[52:23] Yeah, two of the brigands.

[52:23] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[52:24] One has a crush.

Elliott Kalan

[52:26] This character, Quag, the master of the crossbow, who we-

[52:28] I love how they set that up.

[52:30] They set that shit up and then it pays off.

[52:32] It's such Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 type shit where it's like, here's a character

[52:36] that no one cares about their arc.

[52:38] And now they get to pay it off at the end when he actually gets a crossbow.

[52:41] But he's involved with one of the other brigands, right?

[52:43] Yeah, I think.

[52:45] But yeah, Jonathan is like, who am I going to date?

[52:48] A CGI squirrel?

[52:49] Sure, Snow White.

[52:49] We're in love now.

[52:50] Okay.

[52:51] So their kiss is first interrupted by everyone looking at them, but then interrupted by the

[52:55] soldiers showing up.

[52:57] And Snow White gives Jonathan her locket saying, go find the king and show him this.

[53:02] Or it's a necklace or something.

[53:03] Go find the king and give him this.

[53:04] He'll understand.

[53:05] The bandits run off and distract the soldiers.

[53:07] Jonathan gets captured and he gets brought to the queen who recognizes that necklace.

[53:11] And now she's going to use it in a plan to finally do what the huntsman didn't and kill

[53:16] Snow White.

[53:16] How is she going to do it?

[53:17] First, she mixes up a potion that makes her an old crone and then she makes a poison apple.

[53:22] Why she doesn't...

[53:23] This is a reprise of the All's Fair song, a new version of it.

[53:27] Why she doesn't make the poison apple and then become an old crone, I find very funny because

[53:33] it seems like she's probably more comfortable in her own physically fit body than as an old

[53:37] hunched crone.

[53:38] But she decided to save that, the hard work for after she's in her crone form.

[53:43] She makes this poison apple.

[53:44] She locks Jonathan in the dungeon with the huntsman and she goes off to find Snow White.

[53:49] Snow White is about to embark on a quest to find her dad.

[53:52] She, of course, waits until after making the dwarves breakfast and then going...

[53:55] She sees them off to work before she leaves, which is an interesting...

[53:59] Which I think is such a funny touch.

[54:00] It's like, I have to find my father.

[54:02] Nothing else is more important than that.

[54:03] But let me make sure you have all your shit for you so you can go mine together.

[54:06] Do you have your pickaxe?

[54:08] Tie your shoes.

[54:09] Okay, now I'm going to go.

[54:10] The Evil Queen shows up with that necklace and says, oh, Jonathan gave this to me or something.

[54:15] I have a message.

[54:15] I support the king too.

[54:16] I remember so well.

Stuart Wellington

[54:17] You think Gal Gadot was like, I'm giving substance vibes here.

Elliott Kalan

[54:21] Yeah, she's waiting on that Oscar knob.

[54:24] This is when I'm finally going to get my Oscar.

[54:25] Finally.

[54:26] Her career has been...

[54:27] I mean, she's been in major movies for like 10 years now or something like that.

[54:32] But yeah, she was like, this is my moment when I play this dual characters part.

[54:39] So she says, hey, you used to hand out apple pies and I want to help you.

[54:44] So here's an apple.

[54:45] It'll really help me feel like I'm helping you.

[54:47] And so Snow White, it's one of those moments where she's like such a nice person that she's

[54:50] going to make this lady feel better by taking a bite out of her apple.

Dan McCoy

[54:54] Oh, cool.

[54:55] Yeah, this apple will help.

[54:57] Oh, great.

[54:57] This one that's like smoking.

[54:59] This apple with a skull on it.

[55:02] A red delicious, huh?

[55:02] The best, least mealy apple.

Elliott Kalan

[55:08] And so...

[55:09] Delicious.

[55:10] Jonathan, the woodland creatures go warn the dwarfs.

[55:14] I don't know why the birds don't just swoop down and knock that apple out of Snow White's hand.

[55:17] Instead, they go to the mine and warn the dwarfs so the dwarfs can try to race back in time.

[55:22] But they're too late.

[55:23] Snow White has bit the apple.

[55:24] She falls into a coma just as the queen reveals, hey, hey, it's me, the queen, and I killed

[55:28] your dad.

[55:29] See ya.

[55:30] And even though she knows...

Dan McCoy

[55:33] I'll just leave your body here for everyone to find.

Elliott Kalan

[55:36] Even though she knows that the spell can be broken by true love's kiss, and she knows that

[55:41] Snow White has a true love, the queen does not take Snow White's body and like throw it

[55:45] on a funeral pyre or something like that.

[55:47] Instead, she just leaves it in the woods for people to take care of.

Stuart Wellington

[55:50] Yeah, put that in the goof section.

Elliott Kalan

[55:54] Well, I mean, it's classic Bond villain stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[55:58] Why does Jason Voorhees kill each person individually and not just explode the entire crystal lake

[56:03] with an atom bomb?

[56:03] No, here's what I'll...

Elliott Kalan

[56:04] I'll say why this is not that kind of criticism.

[56:06] One, Jason Voorhees is a mindless killing machine with no plan other than to murder.

[56:11] The queen is like, my political survival rests on getting...

[56:15] Oh, not my political survival.

[56:16] The only thing that matters to me, which is being the fairest of them all.

[56:19] Emotional health.

[56:19] Emotional health, guys.

[56:20] My emotional health, which is tied up in my body image.

[56:23] This is not a healthy way to maintain my emotional health, but I'm an evil queen.

[56:26] I have these issues.

[56:27] I'm working on them with my therapist, who is a magic mirror, who tells me all the time

[56:31] that I'm not good enough, so maybe I need a new therapist.

[56:34] Instead, this is the most important thing to her.

[56:36] Instead of finishing the job, she's just like, I gotta go.

[56:38] Goodbye.

[56:39] It's also, I guess the irony that is, I guess is subtext that we're just supposed to pick

[56:43] up, and if it is, then maybe it's okay, is that in order to achieve her goal of being

[56:46] the most beautiful of all, she has to commit ugly deeds which physically make her no longer

[56:51] beautiful, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[56:52] Yeah, she just like really needs like a group of gals, you know, where they can like talk

[56:57] shit and they'll like big each other up.

Elliott Kalan

[56:59] It should be her, Maleficent, Ursula, and who's another evil Disney gal?

[57:06] And Cruella de Vil.

[57:07] They should get together, they should hang out, and they should just support each other.

[57:10] And it should be called the real evil wives of the Disney universe.

[57:14] Are they not doing that?

[57:15] Why is Disney not doing this already?

Dan McCoy

[57:17] Yeah, I feel like you could sell this to Disney Plus right now.

Elliott Kalan

[57:19] I should be selling this to Disney Plus right now.

[57:21] You guys should be, we should, let Disney Plus, if you're listening.

Dan McCoy

[57:25] Yeah, this is the only way you can do it, though, which I've heard that you can't outside pitch

[57:30] to Disney.

[57:30] You have to be invited to pitch to Disney, and it's all like, damn, I'm trying.

[57:33] You have to be invited into the vault.

Elliott Kalan

[57:35] So I heard about this from somebody, you're invited into the vault, vault's head is there,

[57:40] plugged into all these machines, and you've got to pitch the head on it first.

[57:45] Ironically, he's not the final decision maker.

[57:47] He's the first barrier you've got to get through.

Dan McCoy

[57:49] And to get back out of the vault, you have to push Winnie the Pooh through the vault door

[57:55] where he's gotten stuck because he ate too much honey.

S4

[57:58] Exactly.

[57:58] And swim through Scrooge's coins.

[58:00] Oh.

Dan McCoy

[58:02] The dream.

Elliott Kalan

[58:03] Is that the dream, Tim?

[58:06] I feel like it would be really uncomfortable.

Stuart Wellington

[58:08] Well, in the universe where you can do it like Scrooge.

[58:10] Then you have to dance with a hologram of Michael Eisner.

[58:13] Beat him in a hip hop dance contest.

[58:16] Wow.

Elliott Kalan

[58:17] So the mirror tells the queen, well, you're the fairest again.

[58:21] You did it.

[58:21] And the queen is like, yes.

[58:23] Flawless victory.

[58:24] A hundred percent.

[58:26] And the problem is that she set herself a goal that she can never be fully accomplished.

[58:30] She can never relax.

[58:31] She's like a gunslinger in the old west.

[58:32] There's constantly beautiful young women being born.

[58:34] Sort of do.

[58:35] Who are going to challenge her.

[58:35] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[58:36] This kind of is her, the substance.

Elliott Kalan

[58:38] Yeah.

[58:39] Yeah.

[58:39] I mean, I get, like, there's a, there's an evil queen movie to be made just like Maleficent

[58:43] where it's like all about how she's been, she's been gaslit into believing that her worth

[58:47] is in her beauty and she can't ever, she has to constantly fight aging and it's, it's an,

[58:51] it's a losing battle forever and she becomes a tragic figure and she's doing worse

[58:55] and worse things to, in order to make that, into order to try to keep on this tread,

[58:59] this beauty treadmill.

Stuart Wellington

[59:00] I'll pitch this to, this will be, this will be the grown up version.

[59:02] Yeah, this guy can't stop fucking pitching over here.

Elliott Kalan

[59:03] I can't help pitch.

[59:04] I'm just an idea factory, you know?

[59:06] I can't help pitching.

[59:07] I can't help pitching on IP I don't control and have nothing to do.

[59:10] Oh, actually, the fact, it's fucking Snow White.

[59:12] So yes, that is IP I could control.

[59:13] It's public domain.

[59:15] So yeah, I just can't use any addresses.

[59:17] Yeah, make her a killer.

[59:19] Yeah, that's true.

[59:19] Now she's, I mean, she is a killer already, not Snow White, but the evil queen, she said,

[59:23] go kill her, pull her, pull her heart out.

[59:25] Anyway, the animals and the dwarfs are real sad.

[59:27] Even grumpy cries for the comatose Snow White.

[59:31] It's a, it's a sad moment.

[59:33] The huntsman and Jonathan, they're in the dungeon.

[59:35] They work together to unchain themselves and escape the dungeon.

[59:39] And Jonathan steals a horse and the birds lead him to Snow White and he kisses her and she wakes up.

Stuart Wellington

[59:44] Yeah, the dwarfs are all sitting Shiva around her.

Elliott Kalan

[59:47] That's exactly what it is.

[59:49] Yep.

[59:50] They've covered the mirror mirror on the wall.

[59:52] You know?

[59:54] And the, I think they did a pretty good job, I will say, of making that kiss not creepy between Jonathan and the unmoving Snow White, you know?

[1:00:06] Because that is a moment that I'm sure, I'm sure is a possible problematic thing.

[1:00:11] And it comes off more as a goodbye kiss consummation of the, of the love they didn't get to have than a, oh, this beautiful one.

[1:00:17] Oh, goody, she's out.

[1:00:19] Well, in the original story, when Prince Charming just comes across a sleeping lady in the woods and kisses her.

[1:00:23] What's this I see?

[1:00:24] Huh.

[1:00:26] Which is kind of what happens in, in Sleeping Beauty too, right?

[1:00:29] It's the same basic thing or no?

Dan McCoy

[1:00:32] Uh, I mean, they know each other by then, right?

[1:00:34] It's such a classic fantasy, guys.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:36] I guess so.

[1:00:37] To be awoken from a coma by a kiss from a stranger?

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:40] Yeah, that's, that's the side of the fantasy I'm thinking of.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:45] Is that what Kiss from a Rose is about?

[1:00:47] The Seal song?

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:48] Have you read those lyrics?

[1:00:49] I have no idea what that song is.

[1:00:51] Those lyrics are very complicated and confusing.

[1:00:53] Something about a grave.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:54] So someone's dead, I guess.

[1:00:55] It's not even grave.

[1:00:57] On the gray.

[1:00:59] Oh.

[1:00:59] Like a kiss on the, right.

[1:01:00] So the DVD.

[1:01:01] Copy of the gray.

[1:01:02] There used to be a graying tower by the sea.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:06] Yeah, yeah, he's, yeah, it's, it's all very, uh, Edgar Allan Poe.

[1:01:08] Light in the dark side of me.

[1:01:10] Yeah.

[1:01:11] And so, uh, uh, she wakes up.

[1:01:13] She declares they need to overthrow the king.

[1:01:15] And suddenly Dopey talks the first time and he says, well, we're not afraid.

[1:01:19] Bum, bum, bum.

[1:01:20] Uh, Snow White returns to her kingdom slash village.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:22] So how, how, how late in this process do you think that they,

[1:01:25] they had planned on doing a, like, getting armed up montage of like the dwarves, like,

[1:01:30] grabbing shit a la, like, hot fuzz or something?

[1:01:33] Because I feel like that is the kind of joke that they were planning on putting in here.

[1:01:37] Of them, like.

[1:01:38] Uh, you think so?

[1:01:38] Getting their equipment and shit ready and, like, bandoliers and stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:42] I don't, I don't know.

[1:01:43] I don't know that that was ever a part of it.

[1:01:44] I mean, they don't really have that much equipment.

[1:01:45] They just have pickaxes.

[1:01:46] That's it.

[1:01:47] You know.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:48] I thought you were going to say, how angry do you think the other dwarves are when they're like,

[1:01:51] Dopey, you could talk this whole goddamn time?

[1:01:55] The fuck have you been doing?

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:57] No, sorry.

[1:01:57] Nobody asked me to.

[1:01:59] It's like in the old X-Men comics, they learn Wolverine's name is Logan.

[1:02:02] And they go, your name is Logan?

[1:02:03] He goes, nobody asked me.

[1:02:04] And it's like, really?

[1:02:05] For months, you didn't ask this dude you live with if he had a name other than Wolverine?

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:09] When you filled out your W-2 to be a member of the X-Men, you wrote Wolverine.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:14] So you're saying that when you, when you went to a bar and he got carded, his license says Wolverine on it?

[1:02:19] Come on, guys.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:20] I couldn't talk at any time.

[1:02:22] Only when it was funny.

[1:02:23] That's what he said.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:25] I forgot.

[1:02:26] What's that from?

[1:02:26] That's Roger Rabbit.

[1:02:27] That's right, Roger Rabbit.

[1:02:29] Handcuffs.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:30] The, uh, that's right.

[1:02:31] Um, so.

[1:02:32] And that's the thing.

[1:02:33] These fucking Disney movies are basically like bad, like, remember when Roger, well, yeah.

[1:02:39] Remember when Roger Rabbit came out and we were like, oh my God, I can't believe they're able to do this.

[1:02:43] And now that they can do it and it's so bad.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:46] He's another one of old man, old man Stu's tales of former special effects.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:51] Stuart turned into the Chris Farley show for a second.

[1:02:54] Remember Roger Rabbit?

[1:02:55] That was awesome.

[1:02:56] No, but I'm just saying, like, I don't know.

S4

[1:02:58] These live action remakes aren't live, they're Roger Rabbit.

[1:03:02] Yeah, they're all Roger Rabbit.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:03] I think that's the issue.

[1:03:04] But there's no fucking weasels.

[1:03:06] No, there's no weasels.

[1:03:07] I'm getting worked up here.

[1:03:08] The one critter they didn't make.

[1:03:10] Exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:11] Let's not get sort of too angry, but one of the major issues is, yes, no weasels, which is a problem.

[1:03:15] But also.

[1:03:16] Not one Pauly Shore.

[1:03:18] One of the wonderful things about Roger Rabbit, the many wonderful things in it.

[1:03:22] One of the things about Roger Rabbit is Roger Rabbit's are wonderful things.

[1:03:25] Their bottoms are, the tops are made of rubber.

[1:03:27] Their bottoms are made of springs.

[1:03:28] The, is that they're not trying to make the cartoons look real.

[1:03:31] They just give them like a little bit more shading.

[1:03:33] And that's the fun of it, is seeing people interacting with cartoons, right?

[1:03:36] There's nothing really that fun in seeing a person interacting with a mostly realistic, but not totally all the way there, kind of like cartoon character.

[1:03:45] Just enough that it's creepy.

[1:03:47] Yeah.

[1:03:47] Yeah, just enough.

[1:03:48] And if you're trying to make it look super real, I get it.

[1:03:50] Like, then you go in the Jurassic Park mode where those are not supposed to be cartoon dinosaurs running around.

[1:03:55] They're supposed to be real dinosaurs.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:56] Man, what if there was a cut of Jurassic Park where it was fucking straight up 2D cell-shaded dinosaurs?

[1:04:00] I love that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:01] The original one when they brought Don Bluth in to do the special effects.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:04] We've got this original.

[1:04:05] We cloned it from this Windsor McKay cell.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:09] So they used – they hadn't done all the DNA, so they used some of the DNA from Gertie the dinosaur.

[1:04:14] Now all the dinosaurs are turning into cartoons.

[1:04:16] It would be like the end of Cool World, but not bad, you know?

[1:04:20] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:20] I mean, it would just make the scene where Sam Neill is struggling with his glasses to see the dinosaur so much better.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:30] I would love that.

[1:04:32] And then at the – oh, then some of the dinosaurs are 2D.

[1:04:35] Some are not 2D.

[1:04:36] Some are 3D.

[1:04:36] So you can get like – you get a mix of them together.

[1:04:39] I would love to see that.

[1:04:40] The 2D raptor is chasing them and a 3D – no, a 3D raptor is chasing them and a 2D Tyrannosaurus Rex shows up to bite it.

[1:04:46] And now you understand how that Tyrannosaurus Rex could sneak up on them because he's only two dimensions, you know?

[1:04:50] Two dimensions.

[1:04:51] And sound is a dimension.

[1:04:54] When he turns, all you can see is maybe a thin little line.

[1:04:57] That's it.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:57] I thought that was just a line approaching us.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:00] Wait, let's get around the side of it.

[1:05:01] Ah, a T-Rex.

[1:05:02] Yeah.

[1:05:03] Well, T-Rex can only see movement because he doesn't have that dimension.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:08] Flatland, Jurassic Park crossover we've been looking for.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:11] Oh, finally.

[1:05:12] Yeah.

[1:05:12] I mean that's – Jurassic Park, it does say loosely based on Flatland at the beginning, right?

[1:05:17] Yeah.

[1:05:19] That'd be amazing.

[1:05:20] So they go back to the village, the kingdom.

[1:05:22] Snow White starts inspiring people to sing and follow her and she confronts the queen and the queen hands her a dagger and says, go ahead.

[1:05:28] Take the throne back.

[1:05:29] Kill me.

[1:05:30] And Snow White will not do it.

[1:05:32] She's too good a person.

[1:05:33] So the queen says, guards, kill her here in front of everybody, which seems like you're just being inflammatory at that point.

[1:05:39] Like that's – if you're asking for a riot, then kill Snow White in front of the townspeople.

[1:05:43] But Snow White recognizes each of the guards by name and talks about the people they used to be.

[1:05:49] And they remember who they were and how they used to be good people and they all turn on the queen.

[1:05:54] And the queen tries to stab Snow White but the brigands show up and Quagg, master of the crossbow, who has not used a crossbow this whole movie, he finally gets to use a crossbow to shoot the blade out of the queen's hand or whatever.

[1:06:06] And all of Snow White's allies are there.

[1:06:09] She's managed to unite all of the townspeople, the animals of the forest, the dwarves of the mines, the brigands of the also forest.

[1:06:16] They're all here.

[1:06:17] And it's all about – she's built consensus.

[1:06:19] She's a unity builder.

[1:06:20] It's a coalition.

[1:06:22] And the queen runs the mirror because, of course, her first priority is always who's the fucking fairest of them all even when her power is going away.

[1:06:29] And the mirror is like, Snow White is good-hearted, so she will always be the fairest of them all.

[1:06:35] And I'm like – so that – so I guess because she was –

[1:06:37] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:38] How did she – how was she the fairest for so long then?

[1:06:42] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:42] For the long time, the sheer hotness of the evil queen still outstripped the inner beauty of Snow White.

[1:06:50] I see.

[1:06:50] At a certain point.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:52] I think that mirror has no magic and is just jumping on whatever bandwagon seems like it's going to get it to the next place.

[1:06:57] You know.

[1:06:57] That mirror is the J.D. Vance of this story.

[1:07:00] Just kind of like, yeah, I'll sell out my family.

[1:07:02] Sure.

[1:07:02] For power, of course.

[1:07:04] To be next to a –

S4

[1:07:04] That's what the dwarves look like.

[1:07:06] The J.D. Vance memes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:07] Yes.

[1:07:08] Yeah, they do.

[1:07:09] They look like across between the J.D. Vance meme and the filter you can use on – I forget if it's FaceTime or what, where it's called like nervous or something like that, where it stretches your face out in a weird way.

[1:07:19] Like the – anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:21] Is there a filter that just adds like a million pores to your skin?

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:25] There should be.

[1:07:26] There should be.

[1:07:26] They do have very porous skin.

[1:07:29] You got to breathe when you're in the mines.

[1:07:30] Well, that's the thing.

[1:07:31] When you're in the mine, all that dust gets into your pores and you got to sweat it out.

[1:07:35] And so I feel for those dwarves.

[1:07:36] Yeah.

[1:07:37] Yeah.

[1:07:38] Yeah.

[1:07:39] Who I think are never – I don't think they're ever referred to as dwarves in the movie, right?

[1:07:44] I don't know if they ever used that word.

[1:07:45] Maybe they're just called the seven.

[1:07:47] Higgledy-piggledy.

[1:07:49] So anyway, the queen runs to the mirror and the mirror is like, you've never been the fairest.

[1:07:53] I've been gaslighting you this whole time telling you you're so fair.

[1:07:55] And she smashes the mirror, which then causes her to like decay into ash and all the ash gets pulled into the mirror universe before the mirror reforms itself.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:05] And Eloy runs up just to like watch this shit happen.

[1:08:07] Because she wants to see her enemy's final defeat.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:10] Yeah, yeah.

[1:08:11] Because there's no – in the Snow White world, even for – Snow White's good-hearted, but there's still no sweeter treat than to watch the destruction of your greatest foe.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:19] She yells, say hi to Kiefer for me.

[1:08:23] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1:08:25] What a – that's a deep touch, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:27] Yeah, yeah.

[1:08:27] Because that movie existed in the Snow White world, like the same way Moby Dick exists in the world of Bone.

[1:08:33] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:33] Imagine there's a little Stanley panel that pops up directing listeners back to the mirrors episode.

[1:08:38] Yeah, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:39] Dance and Dan.

[1:08:40] That's the name you use for it.

[1:08:42] Oh, nice.

[1:08:43] So – and this ending apparently was not the original ending, but it kind of smacks of we had to throw a new ending on there.

[1:08:51] What was the original ending, Elliot?

[1:08:53] I don't know.

[1:08:55] That's the extent of my knowledge.

[1:08:56] Perhaps –

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:57] If you were going to write a different ending for this movie, what would you have done?

[1:09:00] Oh, the queen would win, for sure.

[1:09:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:09:02] I guess that makes sense.

[1:09:03] Yeah.

[1:09:04] So –

[1:09:05] Yeah, but that would probably play super well, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:08] It would play – I mean, in the world we live in now, I feel like half the audience wants the queen to – I mean, that's the thing.

[1:09:12] When the queen is like, you need strength, not delicacy, I feel like half the audience is like, I like – she's saying the things we're all thinking.

[1:09:18] Yeah, yeah, we do need someone like that.

[1:09:20] As long as her soldiers are keeping the outsiders out because the world – because our country has become a perverse, extreme version of its worst instincts.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:28] But anyway –

[1:09:29] Luckily, it's not just our country.

[1:09:30] A lot of countries are being bad.

[1:09:31] That's true.

[1:09:31] A lot of countries right now.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:33] It turns out taking human brains that evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago to not be constantly bombarded by information and then putting them in a world where they are constantly bombarded by information and then for like a year locked in their houses with no way to communicate with the outside.

[1:09:50] World, but this endless information feed drives people a little over the back.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:54] And just blast it with 5G or whatever.

[1:09:56] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:57] Yeah, that's it.

[1:09:58] And also it's the contrails.

[1:09:59] Let's not forget the contrails, everybody.

[1:10:01] And the Novocaine in the water.

[1:10:02] Not Novocaine.

[1:10:03] The contrails?

[1:10:04] Yeah.

[1:10:04] Chemtrails?

[1:10:05] Chemtrails.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:06] Contrails is the actual thing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:08] Yeah, yeah.

[1:10:08] That's – what's in the – it's not Novocaine in the water.

[1:10:11] It's – what am I talking about?

[1:10:12] Fluoride.

[1:10:13] Fluoride.

[1:10:13] Thank you.

[1:10:14] Novocaine in the water would be pretty sweet.

[1:10:15] Great.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:16] Oh, man.

[1:10:16] I feel so numb to all the horrors of the world.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:20] Oh, this is wonderful.

[1:10:21] It turns out we haven't been putting Florida in.

[1:10:23] We've been putting Xanax in the water all this time.

[1:10:25] And things are working out pretty well.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:25] Yeah, DVD copies of the hit action comedy Novocaine.

[1:10:28] In the water?

[1:10:29] In the water.

[1:10:30] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:30] Jack Quaid, baby.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:31] So, anyway, the queen is gone.

[1:10:36] Ding dong.

[1:10:36] The witch is dead.

[1:10:37] And we reveal at the end the narrator who was trying to be in the beginning was dopey the whole time.

[1:10:42] And everybody dances.

[1:10:43] They're all dressed in white.

[1:10:44] And maybe it's Snow White's wedding.

[1:10:46] I don't – is that what they're hinting at or it doesn't matter?

[1:10:48] I don't know.

S4

[1:10:49] It's either wedding or afterlife.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:52] Yes.

[1:10:52] Oh, yeah.

[1:10:52] Where it's like a fancy person's tennis party.

[1:10:56] They're all in whites.

[1:10:57] They're all in whites.

[1:10:58] And they do a lot of stomping and clapping.

[1:11:00] Everybody's there.

[1:11:01] They're having a great time.

[1:11:02] I think Jonathan and Snow White kiss probably.

[1:11:05] And the storybook closes and the hedgehog that uses it as a bed waves goodbye to us, the audience.

[1:11:10] And I skipped ahead.

[1:11:11] There's no credit sequence.

[1:11:13] There's no like Snow White will return in Age of Ultron or anything like that.

[1:11:17] I couldn't bear to look.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:18] I like this afterlife idea.

[1:11:20] I'm imagining Rebecca's online like with her fan theories about Snow White.

[1:11:25] It's like Snow White actually dies at this point in the movie.

[1:11:28] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:28] When Snow White recognizes the guards, that's actually a fantasy when one of the guards stabs her in the back.

[1:11:34] Yeah.

[1:11:34] And everything after that point is a dream in her final moments.

[1:11:37] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:39] I mean, very clearly she was like kind of dead before that.

[1:11:43] So why did they bring her back to life just to kill – I don't know.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:46] So that was Snow White 2025.

[1:11:50] We sure needed a new one.

[1:11:52] That was this year?

[1:11:53] I think so.

[1:11:53] That was earlier this year, yeah.

[1:11:54] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:55] Okay.

[1:11:56] And I'm proud of us.

[1:11:57] And it's already available to watch on streaming?

[1:12:00] That's crazy.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:01] What wonders is this world filled with?

[1:12:03] After being such a hit in the theaters?

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:06] I mean, this movie was released in March.

[1:12:08] So it's like – this is not that crazy a gap in some ways for a movie that didn't last super long.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:14] A March release is usually a good sign, right?

[1:12:16] Mm-hmm.

[1:12:17] Has that changed?

[1:12:18] Everyone wants to leave the house.

[1:12:20] That's one thing I know about March.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:21] At this point, no theatrical release date I feel like is a particularly good one because people have gotten so out of the habit of going to the theaters.

[1:12:28] You never know.

[1:12:29] Summer is still better than not, you know.

[1:12:30] Yeah.

[1:12:31] Yeah.

[1:12:31] Hey, Tom Cruise, calm down.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:33] I do think that February and March in particular are still the dumping grounds of films.

[1:12:41] But okay.

[1:12:42] Well, let's do our final judgments whether this is a good bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

[1:12:49] I am going to say bad, bad.

[1:12:51] I think that this movie – I feel like people are trying in this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:59] Yeah.

[1:13:00] A lot of work went into this movie.

[1:13:01] This is not a half-assed movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:03] I think that Rachel Ziegler does her best with it.

[1:13:10] Like, she's trying.

[1:13:12] I think that the supporting cast, even if I don't like them that much in general, are all trying.

[1:13:20] I think that they're trying to do something new with it rather than just be a total rehash.

[1:13:25] And yet, I feel like basically all the choices are bad.

[1:13:29] And I didn't enjoy watching it.

[1:13:32] What do you have to say, Stuart?

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:35] Yeah, this is a bad, bad.

[1:13:38] Yeah.

[1:13:38] I would imagine the problems stem from the very top.

[1:13:45] The choice to do a live-action digital version of this story is unnecessary.

[1:13:51] It's already been done a million times.

[1:13:54] And it speaks to just like the most boring impulses.

[1:13:59] Yeah, it's not very good.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:01] Yeah, I think, unfortunately, I'm going to have to agree because, as we said, like a lot of work went into this.

[1:14:06] People are trying really hard.

[1:14:08] But it – you never – I'm not a fan of these live-action remakes of the Disney animated movies anyway.

[1:14:12] But this one in particular, yeah, it feels like at many points you're like, why are they doing this?

[1:14:16] Like what is – when we could have a live-action The Rescuers Down Under right now?

[1:14:20] I don't understand why.

[1:14:21] Thank you.

[1:14:21] This is what you're pouring your resources in.

[1:14:22] Somebody finally says it.

[1:14:24] Where's my live-action Oliver and Company?

[1:14:26] Like what's going on?

[1:14:27] It does – it feels like a lot of work being poured into something that does not – the concept itself doesn't really necessarily deserve the work that's being poured into it.

[1:14:36] And maybe as a result of that, everything just kind of comes off bland and unnecessary and kind of boring and, you know, not fun.

[1:14:45] What do you think?

S4

[1:14:47] I'm also going to say bad, bad.

[1:14:49] I agree.

[1:14:49] Rachel Ziegler was sort of born to play a Disney princess and I wish she was given a better vehicle for it.

[1:14:54] Look at the size of her eyes.

[1:14:54] Come on.

[1:14:55] Was she bigger than those CGI doves?

[1:15:01] She is – if you haven't seen her old YouTube videos from when she was in a high school production of Shrek,

[1:15:06] the musical and she was vlogging the entire process, she's an incredible, you know, musical princess.

[1:15:12] And this just isn't the vehicle for it.

[1:15:15] I do appreciate like freaks though and those dwarves were so freakish to behold.

[1:15:21] Like it was more interesting than like the Mufasa lions that just look like lions.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:29] At the very least, these characters, as much as I found their designs off-putting, they had faces that could register emotion as opposed to, yeah,

[1:15:35] that the new Lion Kings were like, this character is supposed to be singing about Hakuna Matata and it's just a blank lion face with no emotion whatsoever and a blank warthog face.

[1:15:44] And you're like – and the animals were all kind of tawny browns of different shades because animals are designed to not stick out from their environment for the most part.

[1:15:51] So they're not colorful.

[1:15:53] So yeah, there's a – so I guess if you're looking at it from a point of view of – from there, then this is a great movie.

[1:16:01] I wonder who would – here's my question before we go.

[1:16:04] Yeah.

[1:16:04] Who would you want to see as the queen?

[1:16:06] Clearly, Gal Gadot was cast because she's super – at the moment she was big.

[1:16:10] Now her – for political reasons, she is not quite what she was in terms of a desirable superstar.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:16] And I would argue a certain lack of juice.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:20] Yeah, that too.

[1:16:21] But I think who would you – who would you want to see as the evil queen?

[1:16:24] Because I feel like that's such a pivotal role and it feels like they don't have the person carrying it who could carry it, you know.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:31] Who?

[1:16:32] I was not ready for this, so I will just keep talking for a moment while other people think.

[1:16:36] Oh, wow. Okay.

[1:16:37] This is what we call vamping.

S4

[1:16:40] I think like get like a jinx monsoon in there.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:43] Yeah.

[1:16:43] Oh.

[1:16:44] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:45] Somebody with, you know, who can play it big.

[1:16:50] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:50] You definitely want someone who can do it enormously.

[1:16:53] Yeah.

[1:16:55] All right.

[1:16:55] Ryan Reynolds.

[1:16:58] I mean, it's going to be Chris Pratt.

[1:17:00] He does all these characters, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:02] I mean, he did all the dwarves, right?

[1:17:04] I didn't check the credits, but I'm just assuming that –

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:07] He didn't do any of them.

[1:17:08] Yeah.

S5

[1:17:15] Hello.

[1:17:15] I'm John Luke Roberts and I would love for you to give my podcast, Soundy, with John Luke Roberts, a try.

[1:17:21] It's basically a parody of every type of podcast imaginable made up with loads of brilliant comedians.

[1:17:26] It was named the Best Scripted Sketch Show by the BBC Audio Drama Awards, was a finalist for Best Comedy Podcast at the New York Radio Festival,

[1:17:33] and it has just been nominated for Best Comedy at the British Podcast Awards.

[1:17:38] Surely, if there are three things you can trust, they're the BBC, New York and Britain.

[1:17:42] So give Soundy with John Luke Roberts a go today.

[1:17:45] Available from Maximum Fun in all the best podcast apps.

S6

[1:17:51] Hi.

[1:17:51] I'm Alexis.

[1:17:52] And I'm Ella.

[1:17:53] And we're the hosts of Comfort Creatures.

[1:17:54] We could spend the next 28 seconds telling you why you should listen, but instead, here's what our listeners have said about our show, because really, they do know best.

[1:18:01] The show is filled with stories and poems and science and friendship and laughter and tears sometimes, but tears that are from your heart being so filled up with love.

[1:18:08] A cozy show about enthusiasm for animals of all kinds, real and unreal.

[1:18:12] If you greet the dog before the person walking them, or wander around the party looking for the host's cat, this podcast is for you.

[1:18:18] So come for the comfort and stay for Alexis's wild story about waking up to her cat, giving birth on top of her.

[1:18:24] So if that sounds like your cup of tea.

[1:18:25] Or coffee, Ella, we're not all Brits.

[1:18:27] Then join us.

[1:18:28] Every Thursday at MaximumFun.org.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:32] A quick live show plug.

[1:18:34] The Flophouse is coming to Chicago on November 16 at 7 p.m.

[1:18:39] We will be at Sleeping Village in the Avondale neighborhood of Chicago with our usual shenanigans of some comedy presentations, followed by discussion of the 1990 comedy Taking Care of Business, starring Chicago's own Jim Belushi.

[1:18:56] If you've never seen us in person, since we've tended to mostly do shows on the coasts, now is your chance.

[1:19:01] So go to tinyurl.com slash Chicago Flop to get your tickets now.

[1:19:10] That's tinyurl.com slash Chicago Flop, and that'll redirect you to where you can buy some tickets.

[1:19:19] This podcast, The Flophouse, is brought to you in part by Squarespace.

[1:19:23] Hey, you want to get paid, right?

[1:19:25] Well, Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid online, you goof.

[1:19:31] Get paid online with on-bet, get paid on time even, with on-brand invoices and online payments.

[1:19:38] Everything's on these days.

[1:19:40] Plus, streamline your workflow with built-in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools.

[1:19:47] And Squarespace offers, also offers, in fact, a complete library of award-winning website templates designed by pros and with options for every use and category.

[1:20:00] Try and find a use and category without an option, I dare you.

[1:20:04] Intuitive, drag-and-drop editing, beautiful styling options, unrivaled visual design effects, no experience required.

[1:20:14] So, head to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial, and when you are ready to launch, use offer code FLOP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:27] This podcast is also brought to you by Quince.

[1:20:30] Thinking about freshening up your wardrobe?

[1:20:33] Well, why drop a bundle on it when you can use Quince to fill out that wardrobe with some great basic clothing?

[1:20:42] Things like cozy cashmere and cotton sweaters, breathable flow-knit polos, and comfortable lightweight pants that somehow work for both weekend hangs and dressed-up dinners.

[1:20:53] Now, an important element about Quince is that they work directly with the artisans and the designers, cutting out the middlemen so they're able to give you all your clothing at a reasonable price.

[1:21:05] And specifically, they only work with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices to provide you premium fabrics and finishes.

[1:21:14] Now, Dan, you recently got a shipment from Quince.

[1:21:17] What do you think?

Dan McCoy

[1:21:18] I did.

[1:21:19] I got a charcoal cashmere sweater.

[1:21:23] I haven't—

[1:21:24] That's amazing.

[1:21:25] I have not been wearing it.

[1:21:25] It's going to look great on.

[1:21:26] I haven't been wearing it around a lot because it's been hot, hot, hot here in New York City, as Buster Poindexter warned us about.

[1:21:34] But I have tried it on.

[1:21:36] It looked lovely.

[1:21:37] The cashmere was soft, you know, and at a much lower price than you would get that kind of a quality sweater.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:46] Maybe after recording, you can put it on and do a little fashion show for me.

[1:21:49] I'll dance around.

[1:21:50] Okay.

[1:21:50] So, keep it cool and classic.

[1:21:53] With long-lasting staples from Quince.

[1:21:56] Go to Quince.com slash flop for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

[1:22:05] That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash flop to get free shipping and 365-day returns.

[1:22:14] Quince.com slash flop.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:15] The Flophouse is also brought to you sometimes – actually, the Flophouse is always brought to you by listeners like you who pledge every month and we thank you for it.

[1:22:22] But it's also, in addition, sometimes brought to you by listeners like you who take out Jumbotron ads.

[1:22:29] That's right.

[1:22:29] We've got a Jumbotron today.

[1:22:31] And this message is for first name withheld Elliot.

[1:22:35] No relation.

[1:22:36] And this message is from you from summer 2025.

[1:22:40] So, I believe that this is first name withheld Elliot writing themselves a message.

[1:22:45] And they say,

[1:22:46] What's up, big dog?

[1:22:47] Hope you're thriving even though this summer your dad died and you turned 25.

[1:22:51] Keep on asking dumb questions, insisting people spell your name right.

[1:22:54] Two L's, two T's, please.

[1:22:55] And listening to the peaches even though starting 10 years ago ruined you for life.

[1:23:00] Thanks to Hallie and her guest hosts for always making me laugh.

[1:23:03] Rorau, et cetera.

[1:23:05] And this, I feel like there's a story behind this message.

[1:23:09] And I hope that whatever that story is, has come to the right, not ending, but come to the right point in the future.

[1:23:16] This reminds me of something.

[1:23:17] This reminds me of something I did many years ago was there was a website where you could write a letter to yourself, an email, and then set it to be delivered at some point in the future.

[1:23:25] And I did something very similar where I wrote a letter to myself and said it had been delivered five years later.

[1:23:30] And it was a very meaningful experience for me, you know, to get the sudden message from myself from that time.

[1:23:36] So I hope that First Name with Halle, Elliot, this has the same sort of meaningfulness to you.

[1:23:40] Would you like to send yourself a message through the Flophouse?

[1:23:43] You can do that.

[1:23:44] Just go to MaximumFun.org slash Gemmotron.

[1:23:47] And you can do the same thing yourself.

[1:23:49] Elliot, do you have any plugs?

[1:23:51] I have one amazingly important plug.

[1:23:53] And then I have a few lesser plugs.

[1:23:55] The lesser plugs are just for my stuff.

[1:23:57] Harley Quinn, it comes out every month from DC Comics.

[1:24:00] I write it.

[1:24:00] Volume one of the Collected Editions just came out.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:03] I just procured said volume.

[1:24:06] I am halfway through it.

[1:24:08] I probably would have devoured the whole thing in one big gulp.

[1:24:11] But Audrey was like, hey, there's this mystery show I want to watch.

[1:24:15] And I'm like, Audrey, you're sick.

[1:24:17] Let's watch the mystery show.

[1:24:19] But I've been enjoying what I've been reading so far.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:23] Yeah.

[1:24:23] And of course, there's my other podcast, Clueless, on the Smartless Network.

[1:24:26] But I've got an even bigger thing to talk about, guys.

[1:24:29] Something that involves all three of us.

[1:24:32] The Flophouse boys are setting aside their rancor and the feuding that have kept us apart for all this time.

[1:24:40] And we are reuniting for another season.

[1:24:42] Don't fact check that.

[1:24:43] Don't fact check that.

[1:24:43] Yeah.

[1:24:44] We are reuniting for another season of Flop TV.

[1:24:47] Flop TV season three starts this September.

[1:24:51] You guys, if you've seen Flop TV, you know what it is.

[1:24:54] It is the one-hour kind of internet television version of the Flophouse.

[1:24:58] You get a presentation.

[1:24:59] You get a video segment.

[1:25:00] We talk about a movie.

[1:25:01] We answer questions.

[1:25:02] It's super fun.

[1:25:03] We love doing it.

[1:25:04] And each season, we get slightly better at it.

[1:25:07] But in the Flophouse way of getting worse at other things while we get better at those things.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:10] It's a little bit like our kind of our love letter to like cable access shows.

[1:25:15] Yeah.

[1:25:15] That's a good way to put it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:17] That's a good way to put it.

[1:25:18] And this season, we've got an all new theme.

[1:25:20] This is season three, Flopsterpiece Theater.

[1:25:23] We are going to be looking at a hallmark legendary flop from each of the decades from the 2000s all the way back to the 50s going backwards in time.

[1:25:35] So in September, we're going to watch The Adventures of Pluto Nash.

[1:25:38] In October, it's going to be Jack Frost, the Michael Keaton one where he comes back from the dead.

[1:25:42] Not the Jack Frost, not the killer snowman one.

[1:25:45] In November, it's Xanadu.

[1:25:47] In December, it's Zardoz.

[1:25:48] That's our Zuh Zuh double month mini theme.

[1:25:52] In January, it's going to be Dr. Doolittle, the movie that killed a certain type of big budget musical forever.

[1:25:58] Eddie Murphy, man.

[1:26:00] No, not that Dr. Doolittle.

[1:26:02] Robert Downey Jr.

[1:26:03] No, the Rex Harris and Dr. Doolittle.

[1:26:04] And in February, we're going to do the Grandfather of Flops, Plan 9 from Outer Space.

[1:26:11] We're not going to be watching these movies with you.

[1:26:12] We'll be talking about these movies the way we normally do.

[1:26:15] These are not watch-alongs.

[1:26:16] But it's going to be super fun.

[1:26:17] It's the first Saturday of every month from September through February.

[1:26:21] And you can buy tickets for it right now.

[1:26:23] Go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

[1:26:26] Again, that's theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

[1:26:29] You can buy either individual tickets or a season pass.

[1:26:32] They get you a little discount.

[1:26:33] It's a six-show bundle, six shows for the price of five.

[1:26:36] It's like you get one free show.

[1:26:38] I'm really looking forward to this season.

[1:26:39] I think it's going to be super fun.

[1:26:41] I'm excited to talk about movies that we've never covered on the show,

[1:26:44] but which loom large in the world of bad movie-dom.

[1:26:48] And who knows what surprises are in store.

[1:26:51] Certainly not me because we haven't figured them out yet.

[1:26:53] But you guys, I'm sure you're excited too, right?

[1:26:55] How do you feel about this new season of Flop TV?

Dan McCoy

[1:26:58] I feel great.

[1:26:59] I was conceptualizing my special report for the first episode just the other day

[1:27:07] and laughing inside at all the shenanigans I'm about to unleash.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:12] Oh, can't wait.

[1:27:13] I've been working on my presentation for that first episode.

[1:27:15] Yeah, you guys are not going to know what's going to hit you.

[1:27:17] Well, you do.

[1:27:18] It's a presentation.

[1:27:18] You know what's going to hit you.

[1:27:20] Stu, how are you feeling?

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:21] I can't wait.

[1:27:22] Especially because a lot of these are movies I've never seen.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:25] So I'm going to be very curious when we watch Zardoz,

[1:27:29] a movie that has a lot in it to make fun of,

[1:27:31] but a fair amount that I also really enjoy.

[1:27:34] So we'll see what happens.

[1:27:36] But that's theflophouse.simpleticks.com.

[1:27:39] Join us the first Saturday in every month, September through February.

[1:27:44] And the episodes will stay online through the end of February

[1:27:47] so that you can catch up on what you've missed.

[1:27:50] Just because you missed an episode doesn't mean you shouldn't buy a ticket to it

[1:27:52] because you'll be able to watch it online, just not live.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:57] Yeah.

[1:27:58] And I have a small plug as well.

[1:28:01] My wife and I—

[1:28:02] What?

[1:28:02] Yep.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:04] Stuart, I've heard your plug is not that small.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:07] Oh, guys.

[1:28:08] You've been paying attention to the internet.

[1:28:10] So, guys, my wife and I have a new business venture.

[1:28:15] We've talked about it before,

[1:28:16] but we are opening a studio gym in Sunset Park, Brooklyn,

[1:28:20] called Jiggle Studio.

[1:28:22] It's a gym space that has classes,

[1:28:25] everything from step aerobics to kickboxing to Pilates to pound

[1:28:33] and a variety of other types of activities.

[1:28:36] It's a really cool body-positive workout space

[1:28:40] that's focused on fun and movement

[1:28:42] and not being worried about weight or anything like that.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:45] Stuart, what's pound?

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:46] Pound is one of those exercises where you, like,

[1:28:49] you use sticks and you, like, pound on shit.

[1:28:51] You pound on the ground.

[1:28:53] I'm not an instructor, though,

[1:28:54] so take that with a couple of cents.

[1:28:58] But if you are interested at all

[1:29:00] or you just want to check it out

[1:29:01] or maybe buy some merch to help support,

[1:29:03] just go to jigglestudio.com

[1:29:05] or follow us on Instagram at jiggle underscore studio BK.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:11] Let's answer some questions, letters from listeners.

[1:29:17] This first letter is from Jonathan, last name withheld.

[1:29:21] Who writes?

[1:29:21] Oh, the prince.

[1:29:22] Yeah, it's him.

[1:29:25] With a weirdly anachronistic question for the prince,

[1:29:28] but Jonathan writes,

[1:29:31] Hi, Elliot.

[1:29:32] Back when tweeting was still a thing,

[1:29:35] I asked you a question about the power broker

[1:29:36] that you said you might be able to revisit

[1:29:38] once you got to that part of the book

[1:29:40] during your podcast with Roman Mars.

[1:29:43] My question was about the bonds

[1:29:44] that Governor Rockefeller pushed through

[1:29:46] to help upgrade NYC's transit and the LIRR.

[1:29:50] From my memory of the power broker,

[1:29:52] the book didn't address the final outcome of that bond.

[1:29:55] Do you recall what came of it?

[1:29:56] By the decades of neglect that followed,

[1:29:59] I think it's safe to assume it went nowhere,

[1:30:00] but I hope you can shed some light on it.

[1:30:03] I wonder if Robert Moses had some role in killing it

[1:30:05] or funneling the money to his pet project.

[1:30:08] Thank you for the Flophouse laughs

[1:30:09] and the power broker learning.

[1:30:11] Although this letter seems to be mostly geared towards

[1:30:14] a separate podcast.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:16] He should have written into 99% Invisible,

[1:30:18] but yeah, I don't think they do a lot of letters segments.

[1:30:22] So there's two different bond issues

[1:30:24] that you may be referring to,

[1:30:25] but I think you mean the 1971 bond issue,

[1:30:27] which did not pass.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:30] Well, you heard it here.

[1:30:31] Okay, we got an answer.

[1:30:32] First?

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:33] That's an answer, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:34] I mean, you specifically probably heard it here first.

[1:30:36] It's probably, you could have heard it here somewhere else.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:38] I mean, that information has been around for 50-some odd years,

[1:30:41] ever since it happened, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:42] Yeah, the records are extant.

[1:30:45] This is from Bree, last name withheld.

[1:30:48] This one's for like all of us, right?

[1:30:49] Not just Elliot?

[1:30:50] Actually, it's mostly for Stuart.

[1:30:53] I just get to kick back this time.

[1:30:56] Dear Stuart, did this bond issue pass?

[1:30:59] I'm like, oh, fuck.

[1:31:02] Hey, Peaches, when it comes to comic strips,

[1:31:04] we all know Dan loves the Archie comics so much,

[1:31:07] he named one of his kitties after them.

[1:31:09] Now, I'm just going to take a brief pause

[1:31:11] and say that while I am fond of the Archie comics,

[1:31:13] I named Archie the cat after Archibald Leach,

[1:31:17] Cary Grant's real name.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:19] But the Archie comics are about him.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:22] Yes, of course.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:23] Yeah, before he was Cary Grant,

[1:31:24] he was always mixed up with Betty and Veronica.

[1:31:28] And Moose.

[1:31:29] Moose, Dilton Doily, of course Jughead.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:32] But for the purposes of this.

[1:31:33] Reggie, Principal Weatherby.

[1:31:35] The joke of this letter.

[1:31:36] Miss Grundy.

[1:31:37] Dan loves the Archie comics.

[1:31:39] And that Elliot is basically the creator of Ziggy.

[1:31:42] During the recent...

[1:31:43] At this point.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:44] During the recent...

[1:31:45] I poured more creative energy into it

[1:31:47] than I think certain other people.

[1:31:48] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:49] During the recent Garfield episode,

[1:31:51] Stuart insists that he has a strong affinity

[1:31:52] for that fat orange cat.

[1:31:54] However, I've been listening to the back catalog,

[1:31:57] and I think there's a dark horse...

[1:31:59] I've got to get out of the receipts.

[1:32:00] There's a dark horse storming around the track of Stuart's heart.

[1:32:04] Over the course of 456 episodes,

[1:32:07] Stuart references the ever-relevant newspaper

[1:32:10] and anthropomorphic bird-focused comic strip,

[1:32:13] Shoe,

[1:32:14] no fewer than seven times.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:16] I think you just did, like,

[1:32:17] during the last recording that we did.

[1:32:19] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:19] That doesn't seem...

[1:32:20] That doesn't seem like a lot of times to reference something

[1:32:23] until you think about how that something is the comic strip,

[1:32:25] Shoe.

[1:32:26] So I guess my question is,

[1:32:28] Stuart,

[1:32:29] why Shoe?

[1:32:30] Keep on flopping in the free world, Bree.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:33] So, real quick,

[1:32:34] we have a guest today.

[1:32:35] Rebecca,

[1:32:36] are you a big fan of Shoe?

S4

[1:32:38] I don't know if I'm familiar with Shoe.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:40] Yeah, I'm barely familiar with it as well.

[1:32:42] I believe it's a comic strip about birds that are journalists.

[1:32:47] Yes.

[1:32:47] They live in trees,

Dan McCoy

[1:32:48] but they are newspaper birds.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:52] And they often hang out at a bar that is also in a tree.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:54] Yes.

[1:32:55] So this is a comic strip

[1:32:56] that's similar to Elliot's reaction to David the Gnome.

[1:33:00] This was the sort of thing that I would come across

[1:33:02] when reading the newspaper,

[1:33:04] just the comic section.

[1:33:06] I wouldn't read the actual newspaper.

[1:33:07] I'm not like Dan doing the fucking bridge puzzle every week.

[1:33:11] So I would be looking,

[1:33:13] and I'd always, like,

[1:33:13] I'd come upon Shoe and I'm like,

[1:33:15] well, I've already read all the comics I actually like.

[1:33:18] Let me try and figure this one out.

[1:33:20] I've already done the Slylock Fox puzzle.

[1:33:23] I've already read Rose's Rose.

[1:33:25] I've already read, what, Bloom County.

[1:33:28] I guess I'll read Shoe.

[1:33:29] And I never got it and didn't think it was funny ever.

[1:33:33] And I didn't like the way it was drawn either.

[1:33:36] But it is called Shoe,

[1:33:38] which is confusing.

[1:33:39] So I find it to be a fascinating touchstone

[1:33:43] and something to refer to when I'm just,

[1:33:46] my brain is blank and I'm just pulling a comic strip out of it.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:51] Yeah.

[1:33:51] And Shoe, I feel like it's one of those, like,

[1:33:53] vaguely political comics

[1:33:55] that doesn't actually take much of a political stance about anything.

[1:33:59] Like Wizard of Ed?

[1:34:00] Like, yeah.

[1:34:01] Or Croc?

[1:34:03] Pro Wizard.

[1:34:06] Yeah.

[1:34:07] I just, like,

[1:34:07] Shoe would, like,

[1:34:08] reference current events without a particular point of view.

[1:34:11] I think because it's...

[1:34:12] Unlike the far-right bird comic Mallard Fillmore.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:16] That's the thing.

[1:34:17] It's easy to get Mallard Fillmore and Shoe mixed up

[1:34:19] because they're both birds

[1:34:21] and they're both journalists.

[1:34:25] And they...

[1:34:25] But one is, you know,

[1:34:26] more of the kind of Johnny Carson style.

[1:34:29] I'm doing a joke about the news,

[1:34:30] but it doesn't really have a point of view.

[1:34:32] Whereas, yeah,

[1:34:32] Mallard Fillmore is more conservative.

[1:34:33] But Shoe...

[1:34:34] So I'm looking at the Shoe Wikipedia entry now.

[1:34:37] Shoe is a comic strip.

[1:34:38] Again, similar to Stuart.

[1:34:39] I would read it when I was a kid

[1:34:40] just because I read everything on the comics page

[1:34:42] except Prince Valiant.

[1:34:43] No, thank you.

[1:34:44] I'll look at the pictures.

[1:34:45] I like the haircut.

[1:34:46] I'm not reading that huge block of text.

[1:34:48] It's like a Snow White haircut.

[1:34:49] Yeah.

[1:34:49] And yeah, yeah.

[1:34:50] And I'm looking at it now

[1:34:52] and I'm like,

[1:34:52] oh, there's so many characters in Shoe

[1:34:54] and they all have descriptions here on Wikipedia.

[1:34:56] And it's like,

[1:34:57] if you asked me,

[1:34:57] I wouldn't even be able to tell you

[1:34:59] which one was Shoe, you know?

[1:35:01] But each one of them has a name,

[1:35:03] has a personality.

[1:35:05] It just goes...

[1:35:06] And that Shoe is not only

[1:35:07] a long-running comic strip.

[1:35:08] It's one of the comic strips

[1:35:09] that continued after the death

[1:35:11] of its original creator.

[1:35:12] That's how in-demand Shoe was.

[1:35:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:35:14] So Shoe fans,

[1:35:16] write in.

[1:35:16] What is it you love about Shoe?

[1:35:18] Yeah, please.

[1:35:20] Mallard Fillmore fans,

[1:35:21] do not write in.

[1:35:22] I am not interested in your opinions.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:24] Go away.

[1:35:26] So let's get into some recommendations.

[1:35:31] Movies that we've seen recently

[1:35:34] or not so recently.

[1:35:36] It doesn't matter.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:37] So Dan has seen like 10 zillion movies lately.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:40] It's true.

[1:35:41] It's a weird...

[1:35:42] I mean, it's not that weird,

[1:35:44] but for some reason,

[1:35:45] it's been a lot.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:46] So I'm going to jump in first.

[1:35:48] Okay.

[1:35:48] I, Dan and I went to a movie

[1:35:50] the other night.

[1:35:51] We went to an early screening

[1:35:53] of Together,

[1:35:54] a new body horror codependency movie.

[1:35:57] So of course,

[1:35:58] I went with my most codependent relationship,

[1:36:00] Dan.

[1:36:02] And it was almost too real for me.

[1:36:07] It is...

[1:36:08] It stars a real life married couple,

[1:36:10] Alison Brie and Dave Franco.

[1:36:12] And they play a couple that is dysfunctional

[1:36:15] and they get isolated.

[1:36:17] And then they start to come together

[1:36:20] in a, let's say, scary way.

[1:36:23] It's really fun.

[1:36:24] It was written, directed,

[1:36:26] and most of the VFX work

[1:36:28] were all done by Michael Shanks,

[1:36:31] who I must point out is a Flophouse listener

[1:36:33] and invited us to the screening

[1:36:34] and then let us fill him full of tequila afterwards.

[1:36:39] And it's a lot of fun.

[1:36:41] I think it is...

[1:36:42] I think it works.

[1:36:43] It manages to...

[1:36:45] The metaphorical stuff works.

[1:36:46] And the relationship stuff works.

[1:36:49] And I think it's great.

[1:36:50] And it's gross and fun

[1:36:51] and oddly, like, kind of sweet.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:54] Yeah.

[1:36:55] I'm glad that you mentioned

[1:36:56] that we got to hang with the writer-director

[1:36:58] who was a hell of a nice guy

[1:36:59] because, you know, like,

[1:37:02] it could be easy to be like,

[1:37:03] well, you just liked the glamour of the...

[1:37:05] But even before we got to really meet him,

[1:37:08] I really enjoyed this movie.

[1:37:10] I know you did too.

[1:37:11] Like, it was a blast.

[1:37:13] It's very good.

[1:37:15] Yeah, it's fun.

[1:37:16] I...

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:17] I'm just excited to see you guys transition

[1:37:20] into the Ain't It Cool News stage of the podcast

[1:37:23] where you get invited to screenings

[1:37:24] and talk about how great the hell is going to be here.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:26] We got to sit next to the Godzilla premiere and...

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:28] Yeah.

[1:37:29] It was...

[1:37:30] I mean, it was very cool getting to watch Dan

[1:37:32] get to meet Alison Brie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:34] Dan did one of his classic things

[1:37:36] where he doesn't know that I don't know what's going on.

[1:37:39] So he texted me and he goes,

[1:37:40] yeah, so Alison Brie touched my shoulder

[1:37:41] at this screening last night.

[1:37:43] I'm like, what the hell are you talking about?

Dan McCoy

[1:37:44] We did talk about how we're going to go to this thing,

[1:37:48] but it was...

[1:37:49] LA and everybody was upset that he's not meeting all the celebs.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:52] I just don't understand...

[1:37:53] I don't understand how Dan just lives this glamorous lifestyle

[1:37:56] of constant being invited to screenings

[1:37:58] and meeting famous people.

[1:37:59] Meanwhile, I live in my bedroom.

[1:38:00] I never get to leave.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:02] Yeah, she and Dave Franco seemed very sweet

[1:38:05] when we briefly met them afterwards.

[1:38:10] Yeah, I saw...

[1:38:12] It'll be out by the time we see it,

[1:38:15] but I saw another advanced screening

[1:38:17] through a critic friend of mine

[1:38:19] of The Naked Gun,

[1:38:21] The New Naked Gun,

[1:38:22] and really enjoyed it.

[1:38:24] I...

[1:38:25] You know, there's a lot of talk about

[1:38:28] how much sort of weight is on this movie

[1:38:30] being one of the only pure comedies

[1:38:34] that has been a wide release movie in a long time.

[1:38:39] It's funny that a movie this silly

[1:38:41] is kind of going to bear the weight of,

[1:38:44] like, what's the future of pure comedy

[1:38:46] in theatrical screenings,

[1:38:48] but I really thought it was great.

[1:38:51] It was extremely funny,

[1:38:53] and for me,

[1:38:55] the stuff that worked best

[1:38:57] was sort of like the classic...

[1:38:59] Like a new take on classic

[1:39:01] Zucker, Abrams, Zucker,

[1:39:03] Naked Gun, airplane-style jokes.

[1:39:06] It didn't work quite as well for me

[1:39:08] when it got into, like,

[1:39:09] we're going to lampoon modern excesses

[1:39:11] of, like, Hollywood blockbusters

[1:39:15] because that stuff has gotten

[1:39:17] so down the road of self-parody already

[1:39:20] that, like, it didn't do as much for me.

[1:39:22] Did they do any, like, bullet time jokes?

[1:39:24] Not that, but they did, like,

[1:39:26] a lot of jokes about, like,

[1:39:27] just how ridiculous action stars

[1:39:30] have gotten these days,

[1:39:32] and it worked pretty well

[1:39:34] because it's Liam Neeson doing it,

[1:39:35] and, you know,

[1:39:36] it evokes all of his, like,

[1:39:38] taken nonsense or whatever,

[1:39:39] but just on the classic, like,

[1:39:43] dumb joke after dumb joke

[1:39:45] after dumb joke level,

[1:39:47] it was really funny,

[1:39:48] and there were a couple of jokes

[1:39:50] that really made my audience

[1:39:51] just go nuts,

[1:39:53] so I had a good time.

[1:39:56] Rebecca, do you want to go?

S4

[1:39:57] Sure.

[1:39:58] I was also apparently

[1:40:00] at that screening,

[1:40:01] but in a...

[1:40:01] Oh, no!

[1:40:02] I'm sorry.

[1:40:03] No, no.

[1:40:03] I was pointing at Elliot

Dan McCoy

[1:40:05] to be like,

[1:40:05] ha-ha.

[1:40:06] Yeah, I know.

[1:40:07] He snaked me.

[1:40:08] Yeah.

S4

[1:40:09] Well, also snaked me

[1:40:11] because I was going to say

[1:40:12] Naked Gun 2

[1:40:12] because I saw it the same...

[1:40:14] Naked Gun 2 sequel?

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:16] Yeah, yeah.

[1:40:16] Naked Gun 2 1⁄2.

S4

[1:40:17] The Naked Gun also,

[1:40:19] but I will say

[1:40:20] when I got home

[1:40:21] from that screening,

[1:40:22] which I loved,

[1:40:23] my roommate was like,

[1:40:24] hey, I'm going to watch

[1:40:25] Last Days of Disco,

[1:40:26] and I said,

[1:40:26] okay, sounds like

[1:40:27] a good enough double feature,

[1:40:28] and I've never seen

[1:40:29] Last Days of Disco.

[1:40:30] So, watched that,

[1:40:33] and it was totally lovely.

Dan McCoy

[1:40:35] Was it a good double feature, though?

S4

[1:40:37] Yeah, it made no sense.

[1:40:40] Sure.

[1:40:40] I know, I was trying to think

[1:40:41] of if there's any sort of thread

[1:40:44] that I could use

[1:40:45] to tie them together,

[1:40:46] but truly, no.

[1:40:48] Last Days of Disco is funny,

[1:40:49] but in a very different way.

Dan McCoy

[1:40:51] Yeah, a very grounded way.

[1:40:53] Maybe,

S4

[1:40:54] when did the first

[1:40:56] Naked Gun come out?

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:58] 88, 89,

[1:41:00] something like that?

S4

[1:41:01] Well past

[1:41:02] the Last Days of Disco.

[1:41:03] Yeah, that's

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:04] Whit Stillman, right?

[1:41:05] Last Days of Disco?

[1:41:06] Yeah.

[1:41:06] So, like,

[1:41:07] I'd love to see

[1:41:07] a Whit Stillman Naked Gun,

[1:41:08] very understated, you know?

Dan McCoy

[1:41:10] Just like, yeah,

[1:41:11] sort of like

[1:41:11] witty repartee.

S4

[1:41:13] Chloe Sevigny

[1:41:14] in the Leslie Nielsen spot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:16] Yeah.

[1:41:17] I mean,

[1:41:17] let's pitch this to Disney+.

[1:41:19] What are we doing?

[1:41:19] Come on.

S4

[1:41:20] And Cruella de Vil is there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:24] Yeah, we can make it IP somehow.

[1:41:27] So, I'm gonna,

[1:41:28] I'll finish out the right.

[1:41:30] I love that kind of a pitch

[1:41:30] where you're like,

Stuart Wellington

[1:41:31] yeah,

[1:41:32] and

[1:41:32] the country bears.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:36] Well, that's,

[1:41:37] so I've heard stories about,

[1:41:38] I always forget whether it was

[1:41:39] Hannah or Barbera

[1:41:41] who was in charge of pitching,

[1:41:43] but that he would go into,

[1:41:44] because one did the pitches

[1:41:45] and one kind of ran

[1:41:46] the actual animating,

[1:41:48] but that he would go

[1:41:50] into pitch meetings

[1:41:50] and he'd be adjusting

[1:41:51] the pitch on the fly

[1:41:53] based on what the executives

[1:41:54] were responding to.

[1:41:55] And then afterwards,

[1:41:56] he'd have to go back

[1:41:56] and be like,

[1:41:57] I know this is the show

[1:41:58] we talked about pitching.

[1:41:59] This is the show

[1:41:59] we're doing right now

[1:42:00] because it's what they bought.

[1:42:01] And I just,

[1:42:02] I wish that,

[1:42:02] I wish that I could be

[1:42:03] in a situation like that

[1:42:04] where I'm like,

[1:42:04] and then of course

[1:42:05] there's an alligator,

[1:42:07] no,

Dan McCoy

[1:42:08] a bear,

[1:42:09] and,

[1:42:09] and that's how Jabberjaw

[1:42:11] ended up being the drummer

[1:42:13] for a team band.

[1:42:14] I'm like,

Stuart Wellington

[1:42:15] okay,

[1:42:15] so that's why Captain Caveman

[1:42:17] has two young teenage girls

[1:42:19] following him around.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:21] So,

[1:42:22] I'm going to recommend,

[1:42:23] I think this movie,

[1:42:25] a movie version of this

[1:42:26] has been recommended before,

[1:42:27] but I don't know

[1:42:27] about the TV version.

[1:42:28] So,

[1:42:28] I'm actually recommending

[1:42:29] a TV show,

[1:42:30] but I haven't gotten

[1:42:30] to watch a lot of movies lately,

[1:42:32] but I did have some time

[1:42:33] where I was watching episodes

[1:42:34] of The Trip,

[1:42:35] the Steve Coogan,

[1:42:36] Rob Brydon TV show

[1:42:37] that was edited into a movie

[1:42:39] that was released in theaters.

[1:42:41] And I've always really loved the movie

[1:42:42] and watching the TV show,

[1:42:44] I loved it too.

[1:42:44] There's a lot more stuff in it

[1:42:45] and there's a lot more

[1:42:46] kind of serious stuff in it,

[1:42:48] but also a lot of their funny jokes

[1:42:49] and I just love seeing those guys.

[1:42:52] As the series,

[1:42:53] as the,

[1:42:53] I know as the movies get on,

[1:42:55] they like get less,

[1:42:56] a little bit less mean

[1:42:57] to each other

[1:42:57] because at a certain point,

[1:42:59] they've been through

[1:42:59] so many trips together.

[1:43:00] But in this one,

[1:43:01] just the palpable,

[1:43:03] fictional,

[1:43:04] I assume,

[1:43:05] kind of like frustration

[1:43:06] they have with each other

[1:43:07] I find is very fun.

[1:43:08] Especially Steve Coogan's,

[1:43:09] in the movie version,

[1:43:10] I feel like Rob Brydon

[1:43:12] comes off as this nice guy

[1:43:13] and Steve Coogan comes off

[1:43:14] as kind of like a jerk.

[1:43:15] And in the TV show,

[1:43:17] Rob Brydon comes off

[1:43:18] as so much more irritating

[1:43:19] than he does in the movie

[1:43:20] in a way that is very funny to me.

[1:43:22] So,

[1:43:22] I recommend watching the,

[1:43:24] it's six episodes,

[1:43:25] they're very short.

[1:43:26] I'm sorry,

[1:43:26] four,

[1:43:26] yeah,

[1:43:27] six episodes,

[1:43:27] very short

[1:43:28] and I recommend The Trip,

[1:43:29] the TV show.

Stuart Wellington

[1:43:30] in England,

[1:43:32] Elliot,

[1:43:32] that's a normal length

[1:43:33] of a TV show.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:35] Six episodes would be

[1:43:35] an actual television show.

[1:43:36] I mean,

[1:43:37] we're getting there.

[1:43:38] America is getting there

[1:43:39] pretty quickly,

[1:43:39] you know,

[1:43:40] that we're going to have

[1:43:40] six episode seasons.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:43] Well,

[1:43:43] that's it.

[1:43:44] That's another episode

[1:43:45] of this show

[1:43:46] that has no seasons

[1:43:47] but a lot of episodes.

[1:43:49] A whole hell of a lot of episodes.

[1:43:50] That's what they call

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:51] the master of the segue.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:56] First off,

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:57] No loose thread untied,

[1:43:58] they say about Dan McCoy.

[1:44:00] The master of the crossbow.

Dan McCoy

[1:44:03] It's just a compulsion I have.

[1:44:06] Of course,

[1:44:07] I would like to thank,

[1:44:08] first of all,

[1:44:08] Rebecca for being here.

[1:44:10] Is there anything

[1:44:10] you would like to plug

[1:44:12] or put out into the world

[1:44:13] before we go?

S4

[1:44:14] Oh,

[1:44:14] yeah.

[1:44:15] Go to vulture.com.

[1:44:18] Go there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:19] And click on the articles

[1:44:20] and then read them.

S4

[1:44:22] Yeah.

[1:44:22] Oh,

[1:44:22] yeah.

[1:44:22] I mean,

[1:44:23] that's just gravy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:44:25] Or click on them

[1:44:26] and don't read them

[1:44:26] because it's really

[1:44:27] the clicks that they...

[1:44:28] Yeah,

[1:44:28] what do you track?

[1:44:29] What are the tracking elements?

[1:44:31] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:32] Tracker on CBS Now.

S4

[1:44:34] Thank you for having me.

[1:44:35] Dan,

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:35] don't send people to CBS.

[1:44:37] Send them to Vulture.

[1:44:37] What are you doing?

[1:44:38] Yeah.

S4

[1:44:39] Yeah,

[1:44:39] our direct competitor.

Dan McCoy

[1:44:41] CBS is prime time.

[1:44:43] I mean,

[1:44:43] I don't want to send them

[1:44:43] to CBS right now.

[1:44:44] I'm very mad at CBS

[1:44:45] but I couldn't resist

[1:44:48] a Tracker reference.

[1:44:49] He's taking America by storm.

[1:44:51] That guy.

[1:44:52] He tracks people.

[1:44:54] Nobody tracks better.

Stuart Wellington

[1:44:54] Such a popular show.

[1:44:56] Colter Shaw,

[1:44:57] a.k.a. Tracker.

[1:44:59] That's it.

[1:44:59] That's my whole bit.

Dan McCoy

[1:45:00] Yeah.

[1:45:01] Not a bit,

[1:45:02] so much as a description.

[1:45:03] Just a fact.

[1:45:04] Oh,

[1:45:04] I thought his name was Tracker.

[1:45:06] You would think,

[1:45:06] His name should be Tracker.

[1:45:08] He should be named Colton Tracker.

[1:45:09] He has a cool name,

[1:45:10] Colter Shaw.

[1:45:13] Yeah,

[1:45:13] well,

[1:45:13] thank you for being here.

[1:45:15] Thank you for,

[1:45:16] yeah.

[1:45:16] I think it's because

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:17] Elsbeth is out

[1:45:18] and you're like,

[1:45:19] okay,

[1:45:19] that's her name.

[1:45:20] It's not like,

[1:45:20] it's like kind of lawyer

[1:45:22] or whatever her job is

[1:45:23] on the show.

[1:45:23] I mean,

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:24] there's a long,

[1:45:26] large history of TV shows

[1:45:27] named after their main characters.

[1:45:28] I don't think it's just Elsbeth

[1:45:29] that is causing this misunderstanding.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:32] Wait,

[1:45:33] Elsbeth isn't the first one?

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:34] It's not like,

[1:45:35] it's not like in Seinfeld,

[1:45:36] he's a Seinfeld.

[1:45:37] That's not his job that he does.

[1:45:39] That's his name,

[1:45:39] you know?

[1:45:40] In those other shows,

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:41] Becker doesn't Becker.

[1:45:42] He is a Becker.

[1:45:43] Actually,

[1:45:43] that one's actually complicated

[1:45:44] because adding an ER

[1:45:46] makes it sound like

[1:45:47] that's like an old-timey profession.

[1:45:48] Yeah,

[1:45:48] that he's someone who becks.

[1:45:50] Yeah,

[1:45:50] that's his,

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:50] his profession is that he becks.

[1:45:51] He's a Becker,

Dan McCoy

[1:45:52] yeah.

[1:45:52] Speaking of Seinfeld,

[1:45:53] I'm sorry that you'll never see

[1:45:55] Unfrosted now

[1:45:56] that you missed your chance,

[1:45:58] but we're glad

[1:45:58] that you could be here today.

S4

[1:46:01] Oh,

[1:46:01] I've listened to this podcast

[1:46:02] truly for now

[1:46:04] over a decade.

[1:46:05] Yes.

[1:46:06] This is very,

[1:46:06] very cool.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:08] Now you get to see

[1:46:08] how dumb we are in person.

S4

[1:46:11] This feels like a 4DX.

[1:46:15] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:16] Because Dan spits a lot.

[1:46:18] Yeah.

[1:46:19] And shakes chairs.

[1:46:21] Well,

[1:46:22] thank you,

[1:46:22] and thank you to our network,

[1:46:24] Maximum Fun.

[1:46:24] Go to MaximumFun.org

[1:46:26] to listen to other great shows

[1:46:28] on our network,

[1:46:29] and also thank you to Alex Smith,

[1:46:32] our producer.

[1:46:33] He goes by the name

[1:46:34] Howell Doughty,

[1:46:36] when he makes music

[1:46:37] and his own podcast

[1:46:38] and does Twitch streams.

[1:46:39] Check those out.

[1:46:41] And just thank you for listening.

[1:46:43] For The Flophouse,

[1:46:44] I've been Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:46:45] I've been Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:47] I've been Elliot Kalin,

[1:46:48] and we've been joined by

Stuart Wellington

[1:46:49] Rebecca Alter.

[1:46:51] Bye.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:00] I enjoyed your post

[1:47:02] about

[1:47:03] Pedro Pascal

[1:47:05] being the guy

[1:47:06] whose legs are long

[1:47:06] in movies.

S4

[1:47:08] Two is a trend.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:09] Yeah.

[1:47:09] That makes it his thing.

[1:47:11] Yeah.

[1:47:11] Wait, who's this?

S4

[1:47:13] Pedro Pascal.

[1:47:14] Did you see The Materialist?

Stuart Wellington

[1:47:14] Of course I did.

[1:47:15] Yes.

S4

[1:47:16] So when he reveals

[1:47:17] he had leg lengthening surgery,

[1:47:18] I was like,

[1:47:19] that's also your power

[1:47:21] in the other movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:47:21] Yeah, that's true.

[1:47:22] Yeah, yeah.

[1:47:24] That's really funny.

[1:47:25] I just love that The Materialist

[1:47:28] raises the possibility

[1:47:29] that there at one point

[1:47:30] was like a tiny Pedro Pascal.

S4

[1:47:32] I do like when he sort of

[1:47:33] kneels down.

Stuart Wellington

[1:47:35] That's so great.

[1:47:35] You're like, oh,

[1:47:36] this is what he would have been like.

[1:47:37] Uh-huh.

[1:47:39] Immediately got the ick.

[1:47:41] Deleted all my folders

[1:47:42] of pictures of Pedro Pascal.

[1:47:44] Maximum Fun.

Dan McCoy

[1:47:48] A worker-owned network

[1:47:49] of artist-owned shows

[1:47:51] supported

[1:47:51] directly

[1:47:52] by you.

Ep.#458 - Snow White, with Rebecca Alter

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