Ep. #316 - Between Worlds, w/ Erin Foley-Chan

Dan McCoy

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

[0:02] Between Worlds.

Stuart Wellington

[0:04] The number one search result for...

[0:06] Stop, you're my stepdaughter.

[0:08] And you're a ghost.

[0:30] Hey! Welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:41] Wow, Dan McCoy coming in hot, coming in a little colder.

[0:44] Me, Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:46] And here, coming in as cold as possible.

[0:50] Oh, it's old Elliot Kalin blowing in from the north wind.

[0:55] Ooh!

[0:58] Ooh!

[0:59] Am I a ghost now? I was wind before, but now I appear to be a ghost.

[1:03] Chain rattles, chain rattles.

[1:05] Is the wind blowing the chains, or is it a ghost rattling the chains?

[1:08] Perhaps our guest today can tell us.

[1:10] Dan, who's our guest?

Dan McCoy

[1:11] Our guest is my friend Erin Foley-Chan.

[1:16] You may know her as the head writer for the big fantasy debate on Facebook.

[1:21] Or perhaps supervising producer for the big fib on Disney+.

[1:25] She's done comedy stuff for years and years and years.

[1:29] Except for the parts where she wasn't doing comedy stuff.

[1:32] And I'm glad that we have her on.

[1:35] Erin Foley-Chan.

S4

[1:36] Hello!

Dan McCoy

[1:38] Yay!

[1:38] Hey!

S4

[1:39] I am running in here at 98.6.

[1:42] Nice and comfy.

[1:44] Not too hot, not too cold, just regular average.

[1:47] Middle porridge.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49] Although I did tell Sammy yesterday, I did inform him that the inside of your mouth is a blistering, 98.6 degrees.

[1:56] But that a...

[1:57] My mouth?

[1:59] No, what was the product where your mouth is much, much cooler?

Stuart Wellington

[2:02] Why was he asking about my mouth?

[2:04] Yeah, no.

[2:05] It was talking about Stuart's mouth.

Dan McCoy

[2:06] I also like the notion that it is blisteringly hot in your mouth.

[2:11] That the heat inside your mouth is, I assume, causing blisters within your own mouth.

Elliott Kalan

[2:16] This was some kind of cold mint.

[2:18] I forgot what it was now.

[2:19] But they would say...

[2:20] And it would show someone with fire all around them, and they would go...

[2:23] As if 98.6 degrees in your mouth was the same as a boiling pot of water.

Dan McCoy

[2:28] Yeah, and not your body temperature.

[2:31] I've never gone around and been like...

Stuart Wellington

[2:32] Did he see a picture of my mouth?

[2:35] Or did you tell him a story about it?

Elliott Kalan

[2:38] He has a lot of questions about your mouth, Stuart.

S4

[2:41] Papa, what temperature is Stuart's mouth?

Elliott Kalan

[2:44] You've met him.

[2:45] Yeah, that's what he sounds like.

Dan McCoy

[2:47] Now, I know Erin because she actually was the coach for my bad improv group, practice group,

[2:59] back in the old days, when I was first in New York and doing that UCB grind.

Elliott Kalan

[3:05] You guys were great.

Dan McCoy

[3:07] You don't have to say that anymore.

Elliott Kalan

[3:10] Oh, that's right.

[3:12] That's an interesting coaching technique, if all you do is tell them they're great.

[3:17] Everything is perfect.

S4

[3:18] Don't change.

[3:20] Don't learn or grow.

[3:21] You're there.

Dan McCoy

[3:22] Yeah.

[3:22] And then we reconnected years later when she was going to school at Columbia,

[3:29] and I was working there in a closet.

[3:34] And we had some good times having meals and complaining about the comedy world.

Elliott Kalan

[3:42] Now, to explain to the listeners, Dan was working in a closet because you were working as a mop at the time, right?

Dan McCoy

[3:47] Yeah.

[3:48] Well, I wish I was a mop.

[3:51] I aspired to be one.

[3:52] I started out as a Swiffer.

[3:55] So.

Stuart Wellington

[3:56] I mean, I feel like a Swiffer is kind of an upgrade against a mop.

Dan McCoy

[3:58] He's like the frozen.

[3:59] Me too.

[3:59] A mop was invented by what?

Stuart Wellington

[4:00] Mickey Mouse?

Elliott Kalan

[4:01] Yeah.

[4:02] A mop was invented by Mickey Mouse with a magic spell.

[4:04] Whereas the Swiffer was invented by J.R. Swiffer, who went on to be the father of J.R.R. Tolkien,

[4:11] who in turn was the father of J.K. Rowling.

[4:13] Now, Stuart, I think I can.

Stuart Wellington

[4:14] Who is trash.

[4:16] So it.

[4:16] Yeah.

[4:17] Yeah.

[4:17] Thanks for bringing up trash, Elliot.

[4:19] I think.

[4:19] We'll just take.

[4:20] We'll just pick up the trash you brought up.

[4:22] I'll take it outside and throw it in a fucking garbage can.

Elliott Kalan

[4:25] Why don't you throw it in my.

[4:27] Why don't you throw it in the broken garbage cans I have that the city of Los Angeles will

[4:31] be replacing on Wednesday.

[4:32] And I'm so excited about.

[4:34] Nice brag.

Dan McCoy

[4:35] I don't know why I feel compelled to push back against this, but I maybe it's because

[4:39] I feel that I can teach Stuart a lesson about how the new ways aren't necessarily the best

[4:44] ways.

[4:45] Like a Swiffer is a much less effective method of getting one's one's floor clean than a

[4:51] mop.

[4:51] Is it more convenient?

[4:53] Yes.

[4:53] Do I want to use a mop?

[4:54] No.

[4:55] But when it comes to doing its job, a mop is tops.

S4

[5:00] So that's a boss's perspective, though.

[5:02] From the actual device, would you rather be sweeping up dry garbage or wet garbage?

[5:08] Mm hmm.

[5:09] Mm hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[5:09] Yes.

[5:10] Let's look at it from the artificial labor point of view.

[5:13] The thing that with the object.

[5:15] What's the object thing?

[5:16] Well, that's why on today's Everything is Alive, we'll be talking to a mop and a Swiffer.

[5:21] Yeah.

[5:21] My name's Marty.

[5:22] I'm a mop.

[5:24] I guess I've always been a mop.

[5:25] I didn't apply for the job.

[5:28] Oh, wow.

[5:29] Yeah.

[5:29] And it's me, Jimmy Swiffer.

[5:31] You know, Swiffers are newer than mops, but I still think we do a good job.

[5:36] Thank you.

[5:36] That was Everything is Alive.

[5:39] By Jonathan Sauer.

S4

[5:41] Some episodes are really horrifying.

Elliott Kalan

[5:43] Yeah, they are.

[5:45] There's the one.

[5:45] Did they ever do one about an egg?

[5:47] I can't remember if it's because I would like to do an episode where it's an egg and it's

[5:50] like, just don't break me.

[5:52] I live every day.

[5:53] I live in fear that someone's going to smash me.

Dan McCoy

[5:55] Hold on.

[5:55] Did they ever do one about an egg?

[5:57] Are you talking about that?

[5:58] Is this a real show or?

Elliott Kalan

[6:00] Yeah.

[6:00] Everything is Alive.

[6:01] It's a real podcast.

[6:02] What?

[6:03] Yeah.

[6:04] It's a real podcast where items are alive.

[6:05] You got to listen to it sometime.

[6:07] Hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[6:08] Did they do a toilet one?

Elliott Kalan

[6:09] I don't think they've done a toilet.

[6:11] They did do soap at one point.

[6:12] Look, you go listen to it.

[6:13] They do a great job.

Dan McCoy

[6:14] Now, who is this podcast geared to?

Elliott Kalan

[6:18] People who want to anthropomorphize their objects so that they feel bad about using them for

[6:22] the jobs that they're meant to be used for.

Dan McCoy

[6:24] That's what I was wondering because I could sort of see this for a child, but for an adult,

[6:29] I'm like, well, you're just lying to me and making me feel bad about the things I'm using

[6:32] these things for.

[6:33] No, no.

Elliott Kalan

[6:33] It makes you think about the world from a different perspective.

[6:36] It's well worth it.

[6:36] Okay.

[6:37] So this is a podcast called The Plot Clash.

[6:39] We review other podcasts that some of the co-hosts are not sure are real podcasts.

[6:43] Dan, that's what we do on this podcast, right?

Dan McCoy

[6:45] Incorrect.

[6:45] This is a podcast where we watch a movie that we have been led to believe is a flop either

[6:51] critically or commercially.

[6:53] Not a mop.

[6:54] Then we watch it, and then we get on the inner tubes to talk about it into your ears.

[7:01] Oh, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[7:01] Actually, that's good.

[7:02] People don't really realize that we're actually all recording while in inner tubes on lazy

[7:06] rivers at different parts of the country.

[7:07] Yep.

[7:08] Yep.

[7:09] So.

[7:12] We lose more microphones this way.

Dan McCoy

[7:14] Okay.

[7:14] Well, you know, I think this has been the best opening to a show maybe ever.

[7:20] Not just our show, but in the world.

[7:23] So we can't do any better.

[7:24] So let's just get on to the thing that we do.

[7:27] Yeah.

[7:28] Which is.

[7:29] Let's talk about this movie.

[7:30] Now, this movie is Between Worlds.

[7:34] It stars Nicolas Cage.

[7:35] And of course.

[7:37] Wait a minute.

Stuart Wellington

[7:38] What season is it, Dan?

[7:39] What special time of year would make us watch this movie?

[7:42] Yeah, well, normally.

[7:44] That's right.

[7:45] Is that St. Nick flying across the sky?

[7:47] Oh, yeah.

[7:49] It's Cagemas in July.

Elliott Kalan

[7:51] St. Nick is flying across the sky wearing a t-shirt and shorts because he's July time.

Stuart Wellington

[7:57] I mean, I feel like he's pretty sure he's wearing leather everything and a crazy alligator t-shirt.

[8:03] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[8:03] That's true.

[8:04] And his face is painted like a skull.

S4

[8:06] Is that noise the jingling of jingle bells or is it the jingling of chains of a ghost?

Elliott Kalan

[8:13] Well, we turn to you, expert.

[8:15] Aaron Foley-Chain to tell us.

[8:17] Now, you're a chain audio expert and chains are often used to keep people in cages.

[8:23] So that's why we have you on today for Cage of St. July.

[8:25] Now, how did you become an expert on the sounds chains make and what is causing the chains to make those sounds?

S4

[8:30] Well, you know, I was born into it.

[8:33] I didn't ask for it to happen to me.

[8:35] I certainly wouldn't have chosen it for myself.

[8:37] But I come from a long line of chain audio experts.

[8:42] My mama was a chain expert.

[8:44] My papa was a chain expert.

[8:46] Chain experts all the way down.

[8:48] Yeah.

[8:48] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[8:49] Yeah.

[8:50] And the name Chan sounds like chain.

S4

[8:52] Yeah.

[8:52] And I am trapped in this life of chains.

Dan McCoy

[8:57] Yeah.

[8:58] What was I going to say?

Elliott Kalan

[8:59] Now, speaking of chains and cages, Nicolas Cage is the star of the movie.

[9:02] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[9:02] We do this thing in December called Cagemas where we, as Stuart indicated, celebrate the life and teachings of St. Nicolas Cage.

[9:10] And we also do Cagemas in July, which is a thing that I believe I've forgotten about for the last couple of years.

Elliott Kalan

[9:17] And it's named after everyone's second least favorite Preston Sturgis movie, Christmas in July.

[9:22] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[9:24] I'd have to go to the list to make that judgment.

Elliott Kalan

[9:28] Everyone's least favorite is the one about the invention of ether gas for dentistry.

[9:34] Okay.

[9:35] And the second least favorite is Christmas in July.

Dan McCoy

[9:38] Is that a drama and not one of his comedies?

Elliott Kalan

[9:41] It is a drama, I think.

[9:43] Yeah.

[9:44] It's called, what, the great moment or something like that?

[9:47] The, oh boy.

[9:51] Never been kissed is what you're thinking of.

[9:53] Yeah, never been kissed.

[9:54] That's what it was.

[9:55] Yeah, the great moment.

Dan McCoy

[9:56] I both remember liking Christmas in July and also that I remember nothing about it other than I liked it.

[10:06] So.

Elliott Kalan

[10:06] Now, a lot of the Christmas in July twists on whether or not coffee makes you sleepy or helps you wake up.

Dan McCoy

[10:13] It's the bunk, something about that?

Elliott Kalan

[10:17] If he can't sleep, it's not the coffee.

[10:19] It's the bunk.

[10:20] Yeah.

[10:21] That's the slogan that the guy, anyway, we're not here to review Christmas in July.

[10:23] Oh, this is great.

Stuart Wellington

[10:24] Is that the movie we're talking about?

Elliott Kalan

[10:25] Sorry, we're here to talk about Christmas in July.

[10:27] Between worlds.

S4

[10:27] The really fun thing about this is trying to guess in the moment what's going to get cut and what's going to make it in.

Elliott Kalan

[10:34] Oh.

[10:35] Nothing gets cut until I say something that someone might take the wrong way, in which case we cut that stuff.

[10:40] And then I do a little, and then we cut it out.

[10:44] Yeah.

[10:44] So between worlds, this was a big budget summer tentpole release, right?

Dan McCoy

[10:48] No.

[10:49] Actually, that links right directly into what I have in my notes here, which is the first thing you see in this film is, of course.

Elliott Kalan

[10:57] Oh, we should mention Dan's doing the summary this episode, so it's going to be a bumpy ride.

[11:02] Let's take it, Dan.

[11:04] Fasten your ear belts.

Stuart Wellington

[11:05] We are off-roading.

Dan McCoy

[11:07] Wait until I do something wrong before saying that, Elliot.

[11:10] Don't.

[11:11] Fair point.

[11:12] Okay.

[11:12] So the first thing we see.

[11:13] You're setting me up for failure.

[11:14] We see a couple of production companies you've likely never heard of.

[11:18] I do believe I have seen these before, but probably just because we do this podcast and we have become a connoisseur of little-known production companies.

Elliott Kalan

[11:26] I mean, the first one is Saban Films, which, of course, is high on Saban.

[11:30] Yes, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[11:30] He's a big name.

Dan McCoy

[11:32] I missed that one, but there was like Voltage and something else.

Elliott Kalan

[11:36] Voltage Pictures, you may know the movie Don John, I think, was one of theirs.

[11:41] Oh, okay.

Stuart Wellington

[11:42] Yeah.

[11:42] That's the one where it's bad to jack off.

[11:45] That's the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[11:46] Yes, that's the one where internet porn almost ruins Joseph Gordon-Levitt's ability to interact with human women.

Stuart Wellington

[11:53] The thing I remember about that movie is they spent a lot of time.

[11:57] The one thing that movie really gets right is fellows taking off their button-down shirts to eat their Italian meals just wearing their white undershirts.

[12:06] Their sleeveless underarm shirts.

[12:07] Yeah.

[12:08] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[12:09] I mean, Voltage also made The Hurt Locker.

[12:11] They made Dallas Buyers Club.

[12:12] Yeah.

[12:13] But then they haven't done anything at that level for a little while.

Dan McCoy

[12:16] Okay.

[12:17] Well, now that we've finished that trip down Voltage Lane, we are introduced...

[12:23] You brought it up.

[12:24] We are introduced to Nicolas Cage, who in this film plays Joe.

[12:30] Now, Joe, this guy is a trucker with world-class greasy long hair and beard.

[12:38] And he wears several rings on his hands, and he has a hat that says Turkey and the Wolf.

[12:45] Is that available for purchase anywhere?

[12:47] I assume.

[12:48] Maybe at the Voltage Pictures website?

Stuart Wellington

[12:49] Between Worlds merch.

Dan McCoy

[12:52] Yeah.

[12:53] Yeah.

[12:54] The first we hear Joe saying something is he owes some money to someone that he's talking to on the phone.

[13:00] So right away, we get the sense that Joe is living the high life.

[13:03] He's at the top of his game.

Elliott Kalan

[13:05] As if you couldn't tell by looking at him and seeing his kind of like homeless man meets caveman aesthetic, Joe is not in a good place.

[13:14] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[13:15] Yeah, it's tough to tell whether or not he's a sleazebag or he's just a guy in a difficult position, and we'll find out that the former is the case.

[13:24] So then...

[13:25] Oh, I don't know about that.

[13:26] He's got a little bit of both.

[13:27] He's a scoundrel.

Elliott Kalan

[13:31] I think he starts off as less of a scoundrel than he ends up.

S4

[13:35] That's true.

[13:36] His performance really ramps up.

Elliott Kalan

[13:39] The first half of the movie, I'm like, oh, okay, Nicolas Cage is playing one of his nice guy roles.

[13:43] In the second half of the movie, I'm like, he's insane.

[13:47] He has completely gone off around the bend.

Stuart Wellington

[13:50] Yeah, and right from the jump, we see this is going to be a high energy performance.

[13:55] Like, he is in this movie.

[13:57] There's no question.

Elliott Kalan

[13:58] This is not one of his like Euro thriller roles where he's just kind of sleepwalking through it.

[14:03] Like, he's really throwing himself in there.

Stuart Wellington

[14:04] Yeah, this isn't Kill Chain.

Elliott Kalan

[14:06] Yeah, yes.

[14:07] I would say...

[14:08] Thank you.

[14:08] Exactly.

[14:09] Thank you.

[14:09] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[14:09] I would say that this character would be a man who has been, you know, driven around the bend by circumstance and a sympathetic figure.

[14:21] But for one big factor that I think that we shall get to later.

[14:28] Yeah, probably.

[14:30] I can't do it.

[14:32] So, cut to a big butt crack on the screen.

[14:36] And this is a gentleman who is working at the gas station in the 7-Eleven.

[14:44] And Joe comes in paying for food.

[14:46] He says some wacky Nicolas Cage stuff before hearing something in the restroom.

[14:53] A disturbance.

[14:54] And he goes in and he sees this woman who is played by Franca Patente, who you may know from Run Lola Run or The Bourne Identity.

[15:06] She's the titular run of Run Lola Run.

Stuart Wellington

[15:09] And the identity in Bourne Identity.

Dan McCoy

[15:12] Well, she's one of...

[15:13] In a way.

[15:14] She is one of the runs.

[15:16] The other one is Run DMC plays run number two.

Elliott Kalan

[15:19] Right, right front.

[15:20] Yeah.

[15:21] It's Franca Patente, Run DMC, and Lola Montez.

[15:26] Finally, together in one film.

Dan McCoy

[15:28] And so, he sees this woman being choked by a large man in the restroom.

[15:36] And, you know, rightfully assumes that she is being attacked.

[15:42] And he intervenes.

[15:44] He chases the man off.

[15:46] Beats him up a little bit.

Elliott Kalan

[15:47] I think you mean understandably assumes.

Dan McCoy

[15:50] Understandably assumes.

[15:51] Because he turns out not to be right.

[15:52] Well, yeah.

[15:53] I was, in fact.

[15:55] Thank you, Elliot.

[15:56] You saw that I could not think of the word.

[15:58] And you corrected me, even though we had passed that point.

[16:02] But, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[16:04] I mean, but not by very much.

Dan McCoy

[16:06] Yeah.

[16:07] Well, anyway.

[16:08] She is instead mad that this choking has been interrupted.

[16:12] And she starts yelling that Nick Cage has ruined it.

[16:18] And I want to say, here right off the bat, I want to say that the style of the movie is weird.

[16:24] The style is weird.

[16:26] And as the movie went on, I got more on its wavelength and vibe and started to enjoy the style.

[16:34] But I can't tell whether it's just making that adjustment or that the early scenes were done a lot worse.

[16:42] Like, it's hard to say in my mind.

[16:44] Because in these early scenes, I was like, everyone's talking so strangely and talking past each other.

[16:50] And nothing they're saying seems to connect with anything.

[16:52] And the framings are strange.

[16:55] And then it all kind of resolved for me as it went along.

[16:58] But I don't know whether you had this experience or not.

S4

[17:01] I think the tone felt off the whole time for me.

[17:05] I mean, I got what the movie was going for as we got into the second act.

[17:10] But I really, I was taking this movie more seriously than it wanted me to, I think.

Elliott Kalan

[17:19] Yeah.

[17:19] On Wikipedia, they mentioned that the director, Maria Polera, that says she initially wrote

[17:25] the film as a standard thriller, but later made it, quote,

[17:27] a much more surreal drama in the vein of David Lynch.

[17:29] And that kind of explains a lot of it to me.

[17:31] Which is someone being like...

Stuart Wellington

[17:33] Are you talking about the Angelo Badalamente, like, music?

Elliott Kalan

[17:38] Well, and also the fact that, like, Leader of the Pack will start playing.

[17:41] It feels like someone looked at a David Lynch movie and was like, what does he do?

[17:46] Okay, it's like kind of weird.

[17:48] And there's a lot of, like, 50s music.

[17:50] Okay, got it.

[17:52] And instead of it coming naturally from them and, like,

[17:55] even in a David Lynch movie, he'll start off the movie with something that tells you,

[17:58] this is going to be a weird movie.

[18:00] Yeah.

[18:01] Like, the best example that is probably in Blue Velvet, where, like, everything looks fine.

[18:05] And then there's that ear with all the ants on it.

[18:06] And it's like, okay, I'm going to tell you exactly what this movie is right at the beginning.

[18:11] And she doesn't do that.

[18:12] And it feels like someone trying to do that kind of thing, but it's not coming naturally to them.

Stuart Wellington

[18:17] Yeah.

[18:17] It feels like if this movie was made by somebody who wanted to capture the feeling of Twin Peaks,

[18:23] but only the James Hurley riding around on a motorcycle stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[18:28] I mean, everyone's favorite parts of Twin Peaks.

Dan McCoy

[18:30] Now, Elliot, it somewhat surprises me that that Wikipedia line unlocked the mystery for you

[18:36] and not the scene where they were sitting and the Angelo Baldamenti score sounded exactly like his theme for Audrey.

[18:44] Like, just slightly tweaked so as not to, I guess, infringe upon his own copyright.

[18:49] Like, it could not have been more Twin Peaks-y than music.

Elliott Kalan

[18:53] Yeah.

[18:53] I mean, it wasn't until I read that that I was like, well, I mean, I didn't.

[18:57] I read that relatively early because I was also like, what's going on with this movie?

[19:01] Hold on.

[19:02] I'm going to have to take a look and see.

[19:03] Because unlike you guys, I didn't get to watch it all in one sitting.

[19:06] Dad life.

Dan McCoy

[19:09] Hashtag dad life.

Elliott Kalan

[19:09] Hashtag dad life.

[19:10] Yeah.

[19:11] Got to watch your movies in pieces.

Dan McCoy

[19:12] Yeah, but I will say that up top that there's a theme by Angelo Baldamenti that sounds like he just picked it out of his B-sides for Twin Peaks.

[19:22] And then there's a lot of score that sounds like people trying to do other Lynch scores.

[19:31] But anyway, so he saves this woman.

Elliott Kalan

[19:33] Now, why was she so mad that he interrupted her choking?

Dan McCoy

[19:37] Well, before I get exactly to that, I want to say that, like,

[19:42] she says that he's ruined it.

[19:45] They have, like, a lot of shouting out in the parking lot where at one point she, like, asks him whether he has kids.

[19:53] And he goes, yeah, I got a wife and kids.

[19:55] Oops, they're dead.

[19:57] And I'm like, wow, this is a lot for you to be loading on this woman right away, Nicolas Cage.

S4

[20:04] That moment was great for me, though, because I, from the trailer, I thought this was going to be a more understated performance from Cage.

[20:12] And very early on, he just went full gonzo.

[20:18] And I appreciated it because then I just buckled up and I was ready for this movie to go off the rails.

Elliott Kalan

[20:23] Oh, and, like, I feel like I was like, that's a big moment from him.

[20:28] And then there are scenes later on where I was like, hmm, this is one of the understated moments.

Stuart Wellington

[20:32] During that scene, I can almost see Franca Potenta, like, watching Nicolas Cage and like, okay, I got to figure out how to match this guy for this scene.

Elliott Kalan

[20:41] Because she is, she's really, like, underplaying things, in the beginning at least, in a way that I really liked, Franca Potenta.

[20:48] Like, she feels so much more real in this movie than anybody else, which it turns out is not the way the movie wants anything to happen.

[20:54] But there's, but I actually liked her a lot in this.

Dan McCoy

[20:58] Yeah.

[20:58] I mean, I, she's always great.

[21:01] And one of those people where you're like, okay, well, I wish that past a certain point, her career kept going the way it did at its peak.

[21:09] But, um, anyway, she, now we're all, now we're all bummed.

Elliott Kalan

[21:13] Who's someone whose career went past, went the way at their peak that it kept going and you didn't want it to happen?

Dan McCoy

[21:18] Wait, that they kept having a peak?

Elliott Kalan

[21:21] Someone who kept having successes and you were like, ugh, why can't this person's career just go downhill?

Dan McCoy

[21:25] Uh, our president.

[21:26] Boom.

[21:27] Let's move on.

[21:27] Anyway.

[21:28] Wow.

[21:29] Topical.

[21:29] Relevant.

[21:30] Let's keep going.

[21:31] I'm making a stand.

[21:33] Um, so, she asked for a ride to the hospital because her daughter, uh, has been in an accident while, uh, racing her motorcycle.

[21:42] And when, when, when, uh, she asked for this hospital ride, Cage hears some sirens and he seems,

[21:48] he's spooked by them.

[21:49] Even though, like, the thing he said was he, earlier was like, 911's already been called,

[21:54] like, when rescuing her.

[21:56] So, I don't know whether he was lying about that.

[21:58] It seems like a weird incongruity that he suddenly is like, ooh, the fuzz.

[22:02] I gotta get out of here.

[22:04] But, um.

[22:05] Somebody file that one under goofs.

[22:07] Mm-hmm.

[22:08] Uh, so, her daughter is in a coma at the hospital at that moment.

[22:13] And, uh, Franca goes into this monologue about how she almost died as a kid.

[22:18] And, uh, I believe this is what we saw over the credits where she's in, like, a frozen lake.

Elliott Kalan

[22:24] Over the credits, we see kind of two young girls, like, adolescent girls, floating in a frozen lake.

[22:28] And one of them seems awake and the other one seems not.

[22:31] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[22:32] So, what, what this has given her is the ability to, uh, go over to the other side.

[22:38] But only when she cannot breathe.

[22:40] Only when she is, say, being choked.

[22:43] Um.

[22:44] And, you know, Nicolas Cage accepts this pretty well.

[22:47] I think he seems on board with it.

[22:49] Hmm.

[22:50] Um.

[22:51] And so, we go to the hospital.

[22:53] And, uh, Franca's daughter, uh, starts to code.

[22:57] And the mom says, hey, Nicolas Cage, my new friend, you gotta choke me.

[23:03] You gotta choke me so I can go fix this.

[23:06] And I kind of am not sure what exactly she was supposed to have done on the other side.

[23:10] But it saves her daughter.

[23:11] It's, it's never clear.

Stuart Wellington

[23:14] Yeah.

[23:14] She, like, I think she, like, ushers the spirit back into the body.

[23:18] Like, that's kind of her role.

[23:19] She just points.

[23:20] And, yeah.

[23:22] And, uh, and so, of course, Nicolas Cage chokes her in a stairwell.

[23:25] And every, it feels like every time somebody gets choked, they have to get lifted up off the ground.

[23:31] Which is, I don't know, weird.

[23:33] It's, uh.

Elliott Kalan

[23:34] It's like they're all being choked by superheroes.

[23:36] Yeah.

[23:36] That is, uh, yeah.

[23:37] Um.

[23:38] So, they have, uh.

[23:40] Do you think, do you think she's pulling, she's pulling that move where she gets choked

[23:43] and then she ends up in the afterlife and she's like, where's a supervisor I can talk to?

[23:47] Excuse me.

[23:48] Excuse me.

[23:49] Like, Charon is about to row her daughter across the River 6 and she's like, where's your manager?

[23:53] Can I talk to your manager, please?

[23:55] And he's like, oh.

Stuart Wellington

[23:56] Hades is pretty busy right now.

[23:58] He's got these marriage problems.

Elliott Kalan

[24:00] Actually, I'm the manager.

[24:02] Sure you are.

[24:02] Can I, let me talk to you.

[24:04] Um.

[24:05] Yeah, Hades is like, Hades is like, Charon, can you not deal with this?

[24:09] I only get so much time with, with Persephone.

[24:11] Can you just like, take care of this?

Dan McCoy

[24:13] Uh, so as, uh, Franca is going out of the room, the nurse is talking to her and says like,

[24:20] it worked, but be careful.

[24:21] She's been to the other side now.

[24:23] And I'm like, would just everyone understand the rules of this?

[24:27] Like, why is this nurse coming out?

Elliott Kalan

[24:29] I mean, this is, this is the kind of common thing where non-white people have a, have a,

[24:34] have a stronger connection to the mystical realms than white people.

[24:38] And this nurse kind of had a no, it's, it's a real.

Stuart Wellington

[24:40] It's in the South.

[24:41] So there's like maybe a voodoo component.

[24:44] I don't know.

[24:44] She did.

S4

[24:45] She had an accent.

[24:46] We're not really sure what this nurse's deal is, why she knows that that's what Franca left

[24:51] the room and she's like, well, she obviously went to get choked.

[24:54] Um, like we don't know how she knows what's going on, but she does.

Elliott Kalan

[25:01] She is, it is a, it is a fairly racist stereotype.

[25:05] Wait, use the character.

[25:06] She's like a, she's like a Caribbean possibly nurse.

[25:09] And so of course she's all up on voodoo, I guess.

[25:13] And like can, can sense what's going on with souls.

[25:16] And it's a, uh, and when she comes back later, I was, uh, she comes back later.

[25:21] And I was like, oh, so I didn't dream that moment where a random nurse was, was just keeping

[25:25] tabs on, I guess has a CB radio tuned into the spirit police band.

[25:30] But it's a, yeah, it's a, it's a, there's a long line of those things.

Dan McCoy

[25:34] It does seem later on when she comes back and she's like, okay, well, gotta go to the local

[25:39] Miss Cleo to fix this, I guess.

[25:42] Um, yeah, it was, it was weird.

Stuart Wellington

[25:45] Uh, so during this time, uh, Nicholas Cage is like a weird interaction with the daughter

[25:49] as she comes out of her coma.

[25:51] Does that happen around now or is that later?

[25:52] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[25:52] Well, he has some, he has some visions of his, uh, of his dead wife, right?

Dan McCoy

[25:56] Yeah.

[25:57] Well, there's, he has dreams that seem to mix the wife and daughter together, foreshadowing.

[26:02] And, um, and the daughter wakes up and immediately like takes a Nick Cage, like, you know, a duck

[26:09] imprinting on her mother, like, uh, but with like a sex, a sex thing, not like a, you know

[26:14] what?

[26:15] That was a terrible, terrible metaphor.

[26:16] Point is she loves, she loves this guy right off the bat.

S4

[26:22] Did anyone else think that Nicholas Cage was psychic?

[26:25] Because the way that the cuts happened throughout the film, there would be a kind of sneak peek

[26:31] of something else that happens later flashing in front of him where he'd be like, oh yeah,

[26:37] let's do that thing.

[26:38] And then it would actually happen.

[26:40] I thought that he was psychic too, that there was some kind of a connection, but then, um,

[26:45] it was just the movie that was psychic and knew what was going to happen.

[26:47] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[26:48] I got the feeling it was one of those situations where he wasn't like psychic in general, but

[26:53] he had been found himself like caught up in this supernatural scenario where he was bound

[26:59] by destiny.

Stuart Wellington

[27:00] Yeah.

[27:01] Do you think there was a moment where he sat down with the filmmaker and was like, so I

[27:04] it's in this movie next where I saw what happened next.

Elliott Kalan

[27:09] I could just do that in this one too, right?

[27:12] Why don't I just like, wouldn't it make my character more interesting if he knew what was

[27:15] going to happen?

[27:16] And then it's like, he's guilty of everything because he could have kind of stopped it or

[27:20] whatever.

[27:21] Anyway, you only have me for five days and I'm kind of running out the clock with this

[27:25] conversation.

[27:26] So are you going to shoot some scenes?

[27:28] You're going to let me just kind of use up all the time you booked me for because then

[27:30] you got to pay for more time.

[27:32] And the director's like, I can't believe I'm talking to Nicholas Cage.

[27:34] This is amazing.

Dan McCoy

[27:36] Yes.

[27:37] And so Franca, uh, gets a ride home from Nick Cage and invite.

Elliott Kalan

[27:42] Oh yeah.

[27:42] That's yeah.

[27:43] It gets a ride from Nick Cage is right.

[27:45] Well, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[27:45] She invites him in and he is a quick flash.

[27:49] Maybe he is psychic of them having sex.

[27:52] Like it's like a really quick flash.

[27:54] And then he's like, yeah, sure.

[27:55] Why not?

[27:56] Uh, so I guess that's a joke.

[27:58] Um, and, uh, while she's getting stuff, uh, Nicholas Cage keeps falling asleep and having

[28:04] these little visions, which I guess is because he's a trucker and he's tired all the time

[28:09] as a trucker.

S4

[28:09] He's a crossroad trucker who is constantly popping caffeine pills and drinking from a flask.

Stuart Wellington

[28:16] Yes.

[28:17] Yeah.

[28:17] It was a very, I think he even, I think he, the first thing he does after he saves Franca

[28:22] Potenta from being choked is he offers her like no-dos or something.

[28:26] Yeah.

[28:27] Yay.

[28:28] Which is a normal way to interact with other people, guys.

Elliott Kalan

[28:31] She's also a trucker.

[28:32] So like, I get, that's just trucker etiquette, you know?

[28:34] Oh, right.

[28:35] Right.

[28:35] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[28:35] Well, it is a.

[28:37] Yeah.

[28:37] I don't know the culture.

[28:38] Alarming portrait of, uh, long haul truckers.

[28:41] Probably accurate due to the, uh, forces that make them do those long hauls and have to,

[28:46] uh, drive so much, but frightening.

Elliott Kalan

[28:49] I love, I want that to be the quote on the DVD box now from between worlds.

[28:52] Probably accurate.

[28:53] Dan McCoy, the flop house.

Dan McCoy

[28:55] I just know that there's a lot of pressure on them to do like, uh, anyway.

[28:59] Um, so she gives him whiskey, uh, and suddenly he doesn't want to have sex for a moment, but

[29:06] then they have very aggressive sex right away.

[29:09] Like, this is, uh, you know, you gotta work up to that.

[29:12] It's out of practice, you know?

S4

[29:13] Zero percent chance that she enjoyed a second of it.

Elliott Kalan

[29:18] This is, this is by far the most graphic sex movie I think Nicolas Cage has ever made.

[29:26] Right?

[29:27] Uh, oh, maybe.

[29:29] Oh, well.

[29:30] Is there one you can think of where he is, where he is in, his sex is more intense and

[29:35] vigorous and also it is so clear that in some of the scenes he's not wearing clothes?

[29:40] Uh.

S4

[29:40] What about leaving Las Vegas?

[29:42] Yeah.

[29:42] Leaving Las Vegas.

[29:43] He, I remember there was a H.J. scene.

[29:48] It was a handjob.

[29:49] That's what H.J. is.

[29:50] Oh.

[29:50] Cool, thanks.

[29:51] Um, I do remember the H.J.

[29:53] I don't, the handy, but I don't remember anything else from that movie at all.

Elliott Kalan

[29:58] I just, he is, he is so, he is so like either covering a woman's body or covered by a woman's

[30:03] body in the scenes in this movie in a way I'm not used to seeing from it.

Dan McCoy

[30:06] What about Zandaly, Elliot?

[30:08] Zandaly?

[30:09] I've never seen Zandaly.

[30:10] The erotic thriller that also has Judge Reinhold in it.

Elliott Kalan

[30:14] Um.

[30:15] I've only seen the clips on YouTube that say worst accent ever, Zandaly.

[30:19] And, uh, what's his face, Zach Galligan?

[30:22] Um.

[30:22] Now, here's, now here's the thing about this movie.

[30:24] Here's where I started thinking, hey movie, there's a good movie here.

[30:28] About Nicolas Cage and Franco Patonte as like two people who have been really beaten down

[30:34] by life and are kind of grudgingly and kind of reluctantly finding love with each other.

[30:39] And aren't quite sure what to make of it.

[30:41] And aren't quite sure what to make of each other.

[30:43] And are fearful of getting close with someone again.

[30:46] That is not what this movie is though.

[30:48] This movie kind of teased me with a character study that I would have really liked.

[30:51] And which I think the two of them could have handled really beautifully.

[30:54] And then it went back into supernatural shenanigans.

[30:57] But for this brief moment, I was like, movie, you showed me what might have been.

Stuart Wellington

[31:01] I mean, they, I mean, they even addressed, they even addressed that Franco Patente is a German national

[31:06] who moved to, uh, moved to the south, uh, Mobile, Alabama after marrying a Marine.

[31:12] And that his, her, uh, her ex-husband's, you know, uh, trauma, uh, drove them apart.

[31:18] Especially when he found out that she could bring dead people back to life.

Dan McCoy

[31:21] Yeah, that really threw him off.

[31:23] I got a counterpoint to what you just said, Elliot.

[31:25] Which is, um, the movie you just described sounds really boring.

[31:29] And there's no ghosts in it.

[31:31] So.

Elliott Kalan

[31:33] Okay, interesting.

[31:34] I mean, the movie I've described, there are many good movies about two people who've been hurt by life

[31:38] who are trying to find love.

[31:40] They might be haunted, but there are no ghosts.

[31:44] Exactly.

[31:45] Exactly.

[31:45] Thank you.

[31:46] They're haunted by their pasts as opposed to haunted by a ghost that, it's, it's weird.

[31:52] It feels like, it doesn't feel like, so, so, uh, Penelope Mitchell is, plays the daughter

[31:56] who, as we'll find out is, has, has, has Joe's wife inside her.

[31:59] But it was almost like the ghost was doing a bad impression of Joe's wife.

[32:03] That was like, I, it felt really weird.

[32:06] It was like, does, does, does this ghost really know who she's talking to or any of those

[32:10] things?

Dan McCoy

[32:10] Uh, okay.

[32:11] Well, uh, before we move on though, I w I do want to say it's been a while since you've

[32:15] brought it up, but with regard to the, uh, number of sex scenes in this involving Nicolas

[32:20] Cage, I found this, uh, from the director.

[32:23] There's an interview with the director.

[32:24] It's not that illuminating because, um.

Elliott Kalan

[32:27] Dan, everything is illuminating though.

Dan McCoy

[32:29] Uh, yes.

[32:30] Uh.

Elliott Kalan

[32:31] I know it's called everything is illuminated, but come on.

[32:33] Okay.

[32:34] Anyway.

Dan McCoy

[32:34] Uh, yeah, it's a reach.

[32:35] You get personal credit.

[32:36] I do have this one quote I wanted to read, which goes, we kept adding sex scenes.

[32:40] Like we had Nicolas Cage with three different ladies in the movie and we just had eight or

[32:44] nine sex scenes.

[32:45] We just kept adding them and adding them.

[32:47] It works pretty well.

[32:48] But when you see the end result of the movie, it works.

[32:50] But when you're telling everyone, wait, wait, we have two more sex scenes here.

[32:53] They're going, what?

[32:56] So that's.

[32:58] Um.

S4

[32:59] I wonder how many of those sex scenes were added day of shooting where they were like,

[33:03] can we actually just do a reset and do another one of these?

Elliott Kalan

[33:06] They're like, it's raining and we don't have any.

[33:09] We only have outdoor scenes to shoot.

[33:11] I guess strip them off, Nick.

[33:13] Time for you to have some love.

Dan McCoy

[33:14] You got a dynamo like Nicolas Cage on set.

[33:16] You got to get as many sex scenes taped as you can and figure it out later.

Elliott Kalan

[33:21] Especially when Nicolas Cage is in, let's just say it, perfect shape.

[33:25] Well, okay.

[33:25] I don't want to.

Dan McCoy

[33:27] On the one hand, I look, he's got a perfectly fine, like middle-aged man's body, like a

[33:32] normal middle-aged man's body.

[33:34] I don't want to shame anyone.

[33:35] But there is like a funny part later on where like, uh, Cage is like flirting with

[33:41] Francois and he's like, oh, you know, I sleep in the nude and he's like taking a shirt

[33:45] on.

[33:45] I was like, that, is that a problem?

[33:46] And she's like giggling and she's like waving her hand over his entire torso.

[33:50] It's like, yeah, this is a problem.

[33:52] And it's impossible not to take it as like, yeah, Nick Cage, you don't look great in this

[33:56] movie compared to like the way we have seen you at times.

Elliott Kalan

[34:01] And he's so, he's also just so like kind of greasy and oily in the movie.

[34:06] He looks like he has never showered in, I think he does take a shower in one scene and

[34:10] he comes out still looking like he has never bathed.

[34:12] He does get hosed down.

[34:14] Yes.

[34:16] Thoroughly hosed down.

[34:18] That's, there's that scene.

[34:19] Well, when we get to it, I'll talk about it.

[34:21] But it reminded me of a scene in the Nicolas Cage, Elijah Wood movie, what the pact?

[34:24] Is that what it's called?

[34:26] And where, where he is just doing, you just see him doing a dance to entertain his coworkers.

[34:31] And I'm like, this is when I like Nicolas Cage the most.

[34:33] When he's like just doing silly stuff to fill out a montage.

[34:37] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[34:37] Well, anyway, getting back to, we left off, Stuart was right.

[34:40] Franca Patente gave her the whole story about her life.

[34:45] And then there's a title card that says three days later.

[34:49] And Cage has stuck around.

[34:51] It's a little weird that there's this one title card in the movie, by the way, for such

[34:55] a short, short span of time.

[34:57] I hope it is done for effect, because otherwise it's a strange choice.

[35:01] But he still.

S4

[35:02] It feels like it was added later when they were watching it and they were like, would she

[35:06] really be coming home the next day from the hospital?

[35:09] Yeah.

[35:10] Let's make it.

[35:10] And also he was on his way to deliver his truckload to Biloxi and is now three days late

[35:18] to deliver, which is going to be a problem.

Stuart Wellington

[35:22] And I did a little research.

[35:24] That's an under hour drive.

[35:27] That drive from Mobile to Biloxi is under an hour.

[35:30] He could have gone and come back easily.

Elliott Kalan

[35:33] There's no reason he couldn't have said, okay, you have lunch.

[35:36] I'll be back in a little bit after I drop this off.

[35:38] Oh, that is amazing.

[35:40] Stuart, I'm glad you did some geographic detecting there.

[35:43] That was some real Carmen San Diego stuff.

Dan McCoy

[35:45] So, okay, the daughter.

Stuart Wellington

[35:47] So earlier when Dan called him a long haul trucker, I don't know if that's happening.

[35:51] You should say haul trucker.

[35:52] I think that's more of a courier.

Dan McCoy

[35:55] I was relying on the movie's missing scene.

[35:57] I didn't go to the external source of a map.

Elliott Kalan

[36:01] It's so funny if he stops and they're like, we ordered this pizza three days ago.

[36:06] How are you just delivering it now?

Dan McCoy

[36:10] So, okay, the daughter's come back from the hospital.

[36:13] Nick has stuck around.

[36:15] He's putting her to...

[36:15] And stunk around.

[36:17] You have to assume.

[36:18] Based on...

[36:19] Yeah.

[36:20] But he's putting her to bed.

[36:21] He says, the more you rest, the better you'll feel.

[36:24] And the better you feel, the more you'll heal.

[36:27] And I think the line is both meant to be funny and it is still dumb.

[36:34] And she lunges at him saying that he's always leaving her and she wants a kiss goodbye.

[36:40] And there's some driving guitar in the background.

Elliott Kalan

[36:43] Mm-hmm.

[36:44] That hard rock suddenly jumps in.

Dan McCoy

[36:46] And, you know, Franca has a little soul searching.

[36:49] She blames herself for her daughter falling in with a bad crowd that wants to street race.

[36:54] And they don't even want to, like, you know, rob banks or anything to finance it.

[36:58] Nope.

[37:00] And...

[37:01] I mean, they are drug dealers.

[37:02] Oh, really?

[37:02] Is that why they're robbing them later on?

[37:04] I missed that part of it.

[37:05] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[37:05] Yeah.

[37:06] That was...

[37:06] You might have missed one of the several times when Franca referred to them as drug dealers.

S4

[37:11] Well, they seem like such...

[37:11] She does steal drugs from him, too.

Dan McCoy

[37:13] They are the most likable characters, though.

[37:15] They just seem like a couple of well-meaning goofballs.

Elliott Kalan

[37:19] Franca Patente is clearly the most likable character in the movie.

[37:22] She's just a mom trying to get the job done, even if that means being strangled.

Dan McCoy

[37:25] I guess I am reacting to the degree to which their actual attitude seems to clash with what, like, danger there.

S4

[37:35] They are the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of this movie.

[37:37] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[37:38] Yeah, that's true.

[37:39] And you like that punk music that they're listening to in their house.

[37:41] They listen to some black flag there.

Stuart Wellington

[37:43] Yeah.

[37:44] Yeah.

[37:44] That's what teenagers do, is they listen to Black Flag and smoke weed and then dance to it?

Elliott Kalan

[37:49] Yeah.

[37:49] A little bit.

[37:49] With a woman who is there for a second and then walks away and we never see her again and maybe they imagined her?

[37:55] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[37:55] I love all of it.

[37:57] I would...

[37:57] If anything, she chose the right time to leave.

[37:59] Maybe she was a plant.

[38:00] Maybe she was, like, the lookout.

[38:01] She's like, okay, they're good and high and all worked up from their Black Flag music.

[38:06] I'm going to sneak out and you can go bust them in the head.

S4

[38:08] Maybe she was there to buy weed and they were like, well, first we got to dance.

[38:11] She's like, oh, God, I always have to dance with Rick before I leave.

Dan McCoy

[38:18] So, Cage is leaving.

[38:20] He's comforting Franca.

[38:22] He takes a swig of the prescription medicine behind her back, which was a little funny moment.

[38:28] And his boss is, in my opinion, extremely reasonably mad that he's three days late delivering this shit.

Elliott Kalan

[38:36] I think he is very reasonably mad.

[38:38] Does not want to pay.

[38:40] Yeah.

[38:41] He's docking him for his time and Nicolas Cage is acting like this is a huge injustice.

Dan McCoy

[38:45] Well, he, in fact, says, that's dog shit.

[38:47] It's not even bullshit.

[38:49] It's dog shit.

[38:51] And to compound the problems, repo men come and take his truck that has all his personal stuff from his dead wife and daughter in there.

[39:02] Anyway, so Cage returns to the house with the ladies because he's got no place else to go, in the words of an officer and a gentleman.

[39:16] And he's walking around.

Elliott Kalan

[39:18] Now, who said it, the officer or the gentleman?

Stuart Wellington

[39:23] Check your notes.

[39:26] You're allowed to use notes for this part of the test.

Elliott Kalan

[39:28] Yeah, this is not from memory.

[39:30] Did you put it on, did you program it into your TI-82 calculator?

[39:33] Sorry, no, sorry.

Stuart Wellington

[39:34] No, just as boobless.

Dan McCoy

[39:35] I was looking at my notes and I, like, skipped ahead.

[39:38] I skipped ahead, but I didn't really skip ahead of anything that important.

[39:42] Like, just the daughter acting weird around the house and the friends wanting to come in and see her.

[39:49] Although, it's funny, there's a line that I like which endeared these two doofus drug dealers to me where...

Stuart Wellington

[39:56] Most likable characters in the movie, says Dan.

Dan McCoy

[39:59] Franca is, like, blaming them for, you know, everything that happened and saying that, like, they suck and the one guy doesn't realize they're talking about him.

[40:08] And the other guy explains, like, no, she means us.

[40:11] And he goes, we kind of suck, but we're not that influential.

[40:14] And I love that.

Stuart Wellington

[40:18] Oh, wow, that's kind of mean.

[40:21] Oh, wow, looking into a mirror, that's rough.

[40:23] Yeah, so this is the moment where, like, it seems like the movie that you guys were looking for, the idea that you were looking for, Elliot, where, like, he...

[40:31] It looks like Nicolas Cage has burned through his last bridge.

[40:36] He has nowhere else to go.

[40:38] He convinces Franca Potenta's character to let him stay there.

[40:41] They have, like, a kind of fun scene of them sitting around smoking weed and being weird and laughing about the concept of goo-goo eyes.

[40:49] And then the whole time, the daughter, Billy, is watching it, making kind of weird faces.

[40:57] And then they start, Nicolas Cage and Franca Potenta start having a very strange lovemaking session on the couch.

Elliott Kalan

[41:04] This is, I have to assume this is all Nicolas Cage ad lib.

[41:07] I have to assume.

Stuart Wellington

[41:09] And the daughter is, Billy, is still watching the scene.

[41:12] And I feel like at this point she's the audience surrogate.

Elliott Kalan

[41:15] Like, she's like, what am I watching?

[41:17] What is Nicolas Cage requesting specifically from Franca Potenta in this scene?

[41:22] I don't have my notes, Elliot.

[41:24] That he talked to...

[41:25] That she talked to him like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

Stuart Wellington

[41:28] Right.

[41:29] Oh.

Elliott Kalan

[41:29] He's saying, he's saying, say, say, fuck me, fuck me, like Linda Blair.

[41:33] Come on, say it like in The Exorcist.

[41:34] You know, like in The Exorcist.

[41:35] And it's such a weird request.

[41:37] And again, I don't want to kank shame anybody.

[41:38] If your thing is pretending that I guess you're Max von Sydow and your partner is Linda Blair and she's a possessed girl and you're actually doing it with the devil,

[41:47] that's totally okay.

[41:48] But it is a strange thing to suddenly be brought in as an interest for Nicolas Cage's character.

Dan McCoy

[41:52] I think that what you're saying is, Elliot, is it's beyond specific into like obscure and strange.

[42:01] And oddly foreshadowing what happens in the movie.

[42:06] Yeah, well that too.

[42:07] I was not surprised to learn that about half of this movie was improvised dialogue-wise.

S4

[42:13] It seems, yeah, Nicolas Cage I think was just, they did the thing like they covered the camera.

[42:19] He didn't know when it was running and when it wasn't.

[42:21] And he just like went wild.

Elliott Kalan

[42:23] Oh, I bet he would have loved that.

[42:25] Yeah.

[42:25] So he doesn't know what they're capturing and what they're not.

[42:27] Now this is when Billy enters what I would refer to as her underpants portion of the movie.

Dan McCoy

[42:32] I do want to read what I have in my notes, which is that she spies on them as they're fixing the truck.

[42:38] And then she walks aggressively bra-lessly down the hall looking at her family photos as if she doesn't recognize them.

[42:45] Like, look, I mean, I understand.

[42:47] If you're at home, you don't want to wear a bra.

[42:50] I get it.

[42:51] I do not have to.

S4

[42:52] Like it's pandemic times.

[42:52] Like nobody's wearing bras.

[42:54] I will say this, though, about that scene specifically.

[42:57] I had a strong reaction to that because the actress who plays Billy, she's not perfectly symmetrical.

[43:06] And I really appreciated that they just kind of let her be asymmetrical.

[43:14] And because that's many, many women's bodies are asymmetrical in that way.

[43:18] Their breasts are different sizes, hang different lengths.

[43:20] And it was like oddly really affirming and felt very body positive.

Stuart Wellington

[43:26] Is the line, they're sisters, not twins?

[43:29] I can't remember what the comedian said.

Dan McCoy

[43:31] I like, you know, I find it heartwarming by extension that you are finding something heartwarming in the movie.

S4

[43:39] I liked it.

[43:40] It was nice.

[43:41] I was really, this is like a really feminist movie.

[43:46] I mean.

Elliott Kalan

[43:48] Oh, yeah.

[43:49] Right up there with Mustang and yeah, sure.

[43:51] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[43:51] So Billy is behaving strangely.

[43:53] She's clearly not behaving like a teenage girl would.

[43:55] Or maybe not.

[43:57] I'm, you know.

[43:58] But there's something up.

Elliott Kalan

[43:59] I mean, teenage girls, I think, don't so much routinely trick drifters into seeing them nude.

[44:06] Well, right.

Dan McCoy

[44:06] That's the very next thing is that Nicolas Cage goes to pee and sees this daughter's butt as she looks at herself nude in the mirror.

[44:16] And, you know, she kind of like looks around at him and acknowledges that he's seen her and it's disturbing.

Stuart Wellington

[44:24] And this is probably around when I started saying stop it to my TV over and over.

S4

[44:29] The first half of this movie really feels like it's just the daughter staring kind of menacingly.

[44:37] But we don't really know why.

[44:39] And nobody's saying specifically what's happening.

[44:41] They're just kind of dancing around it.

[44:42] And it's just her kind of given looks.

Elliott Kalan

[44:45] Yeah.

[44:45] And what's interesting about the movie is there's no slow drip of information, really.

[44:49] It's like, what's this mystery?

[44:51] And then it seems like everybody in the movie suddenly knows, oh, yeah, yeah, his wife's ghost is in her body.

[44:56] Like, there's no – everyone is just kind of on board suddenly at some moment.

[45:00] The switch is flipped, you know.

Dan McCoy

[45:01] And directly after that –

[45:03] Spoiler alert.

[45:04] Directly after this is one of the key scenes in the films where Nick Cage and the daughter are watching TV where Franco Patente is like –

[45:16] It looks like she's got like a piglet that she's cooking.

[45:18] I couldn't even –

Elliott Kalan

[45:19] It seems like it was some kind of – maybe it was a whole rabbit.

[45:23] I thought it was a rabbit or a squirrel.

[45:25] I thought it was a rabbit.

[45:26] Some beast with the head on that has been plucked clean of skin and fur that's just on a big pan that she's sticking in the oven.

Dan McCoy

[45:32] She's dealing with this while they're watching television and the daughter is inappropriately stroking Nick Cage's jeans and then throws like a blanket over his lap to disguise the handjob that we must only assume that he is receiving at that point.

[45:53] And he makes the world's least strong effort to get up and avoid this happening by saying, oh, I can help you in the kitchen.

[46:02] And she's like, no, no, no, it's fine.

[46:04] I don't need it.

[46:04] And he stays there and it happens.

[46:06] And this is the scene that I was referring to.

[46:08] She's like, well, I tried.

[46:09] Earlier, where he's like, one could posit a film where Nicolas Cage is a sympathetic man who is brought low by the fact that his dead wife appears to them in the form of the daughter of the woman he has gotten involved with.

[46:28] And there's conflict over that and like missing her and guilt over her.

[46:33] And then like there's a horrifying reveal that we'll get to later at the end of this movie, except for the fact that Nicolas Cage, even before he knows that this is his wife, is like, oh, I guess I'll accept this handjob.

Elliott Kalan

[46:47] Dan, if you had ever seen – there's a series of short documentaries online that posit this very scenario.

[46:56] And if you had ever seen those, you would be impressed at his restraint in that it does not go all the way to full intercourse while his ostensible new girlfriend is cooking in the other room.

[47:08] You would think within clear sight.

[47:10] And yet in these documentaries, the other person in the room in the kitchen area never seems to notice what's happening just behind the couch.

[47:17] And so these documentaries are available all over the internet.

[47:19] I can't remember exactly who produced them just now.

Stuart Wellington

[47:23] Those documentaries, I feel like, are more an ad for kitchen islands and their ability to cover an entire person's body.

Elliott Kalan

[47:31] But, yeah, I mean, you'd be amazed at how common this apparently is, this same scenario, because I've seen so many of these little short documentaries online.

[47:38] They're on lots of different hubs.

Stuart Wellington

[47:40] Lots of different hubs, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[47:43] Many hubs in which you can find these, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[47:45] Yeah, I feel like this is also a point when I think it really strikes home that no blankets on laps should be a more common rule.

[47:58] Get that off of there, FDR.

[48:00] What are you doing down there?

Elliott Kalan

[48:03] So that's what was going on in his wheelchair.

[48:05] I see, Dan.

[48:05] Okay, sure.

[48:06] You would think even if nothing was actually going on there, it would be weird if Nicolas Cage and Billy were sharing a blanket.

[48:13] It's just a weird thing.

Stuart Wellington

[48:14] Yeah, you got to warm up on a cool Alabama night.

Dan McCoy

[48:21] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[48:23] You're right.

Elliott Kalan

[48:23] His lack of resistance to this is skeevy.

Dan McCoy

[48:28] Yeah, I mean, and again, it could be – that could be the point that the movie is making, that this guy is like not a nice guy full stop despite the fact that he's had all these hardships in the world.

[48:41] But it just feels like a weird choice.

Elliott Kalan

[48:44] But there's a version – again, there's a version of this movie that has no supernatural stuff in it where he is a guy who is not a bad guy but he has no impulse control and he makes bad decisions all the time.

[48:53] And he's trying to start a relationship and he keeps screwing it up because he can't get out of his own way because he's his own worst enemy.

[49:00] Like there are movies like that and they're very good movies.

[49:02] I know you think they're boring because they don't have ghosts in them.

[49:04] But, you know, they happen.

Stuart Wellington

[49:06] Although in a way, isn't a ghost just trauma, like a cycle of trauma repeating itself over and over?

[49:13] Yeah, but even in the movie you're describing, Elliot, his behavior wouldn't be –

[49:16] Or 13 cycles of trauma.

[49:17] Would not be sympathetic is what I'm saying.

Elliott Kalan

[49:19] Oh, no, no.

[49:19] It would be – the overall gestalt of a man who cannot stop himself from doing the wrong thing would be sympathetic.

[49:25] But in the moment, you'd be like, come on, what are you doing?

[49:28] Come on, don't do that.

[49:29] Come on.

[49:30] Which is – here I was like, movie, don't do this.

[49:32] Come on, movie.

[49:33] Movie, don't do this.

Stuart Wellington

[49:35] Yeah, stop it.

[49:37] Yeah.

S4

[49:37] I do think this was a turning point where I stopped trying to root for him as a character.

Elliott Kalan

[49:45] That's fair.

[49:45] I think that's very fair.

[49:47] Yeah.

[49:47] Okay, well, so –

[49:49] This is kind of like the Cheddar Goblin moment of Mandy where you're like, dude, I know something terrible happened to you,

[49:55] but look at the commercials that air on TV in this crazy world you live in.

[49:59] Like, go for it.

[50:01] How can you be mad when there's a Cheddar Goblin on your TV?

Dan McCoy

[50:04] I don't understand that analogy.

[50:07] So Nick fixes –

[50:08] Neither do I, Dan, and I made it.

[50:10] The daughter's motorcycle.

[50:12] And meanwhile, the daughter's being mean to Franca about her dad leaving.

[50:17] And Nick is – we cut to him swinging Jack Daniels directly out of the bottle and he's yelling on the phone because they will not give his personal possessions back,

[50:26] the photos of his wife and daughter and such because they're in the truck.

[50:30] And this is where we learn the backstory of their death.

[50:34] He went away on a job.

[50:36] And the wife, we presume at this point, accidentally set the house on fire with her cigarette and killing his five-year-old daughter as well as the wife.

[50:50] And I got to say, like, throughout this movie, I like Cage's performance.

[50:55] And this is legitimately affecting acting from him.

[50:59] Like, the character is nutty and ill-thought-out.

[51:04] And the movie is wacky.

[51:06] But I think he is doing his best with that material to make it, you know, have some pathos.

Elliott Kalan

[51:14] Oh, I would always rather see Nick Cage going for it wholeheartedly than see him holding back.

[51:20] And, like, the thing that makes this movie, like, watchable to me is the fact that he is just letting himself loose rather than walking through it.

[51:31] Yeah, I think the two leads are pretty good.

Stuart Wellington

[51:33] Like, they put effort in on some level.

[51:36] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[51:38] I think it probably helps that – like you were saying, Dan, if a lot of it was ad-libbed, then he was probably like,

[51:41] okay, good, then I get to be the author of this to a certain extent.

[51:44] And that means I actually have to put energy into it.

[51:47] He's not playing Ghost Rider, which is ironic because he has sex with a ghost in this movie.

Dan McCoy

[51:53] It is ironic.

[51:54] Erin, did you want to say something?

[51:56] Sorry, I feel like –

S4

[51:56] You know, I have no memory of what I was going to say, but let's assume it was great.

Dan McCoy

[52:02] I just didn't want to skip over it.

[52:04] It was wiped out of your head by Ghost Rider.

S4

[52:06] I think I was going to say that Franca Patente was putting real energy into creating a character and grounding that character.

[52:13] In this kind of wacko world that she was coming at it from a real place of a mother whose daughter almost died.

[52:20] And then Nicolas Cage took that same amount of energy and put it into his facial expressions and his voice modulations.

[52:28] They both were at 100% in different ways.

Dan McCoy

[52:31] Yeah.

[52:34] So Franca goes and she pays the guy to get these memories of Nick Cage.

[52:40] Meanwhile, he is not upholding his end of the bargain.

[52:46] Of the social contract.

[52:48] Of the contract.

[52:48] He is not repaying her kindness well because he continues to lust over Franca's daughter who is lounging at home in her underwear coming on to him.

[53:00] And she calls him Majors and he's like, how do you know my last name?

[53:04] And I'm like, have you not told these people your last name?

[53:08] He's been with them for weeks.

[53:10] Yeah.

[53:12] But he's freaked out because she says that she is Mary, his dead wife, confirming what we already all suspected at this point.

[53:24] And I don't know.

[53:26] I guess the nurse sort of talks about it being like, oh, you know, spirits just hang out around people and that's how this happens.

[53:34] But it did kind of, I don't know.

[53:37] I thought it was funny that like, okay, you know, Nicolas Cage happens to like walk into this girl's hospital room.

[53:45] And because I guess his dead wife has just been walking behind him for years, however long she's been dead.

[53:51] Like she's like, now's my chance and jumps in.

[53:54] It seems like a crazy way for this to work.

Stuart Wellington

[53:56] I mean, it pretty clearly is a situation where Franca Potenta's character just botched her summoning role.

[54:03] And instead of summoning her daughter's ghost back, she summoned the wrong ghost.

[54:08] Like sometimes that happens.

[54:09] Like sometimes if you fuck it up bad enough, you'll summon like a minor demon or something.

[54:13] That demon will pretend to be your daughter for a little bit.

[54:15] Luckily, I don't think that's the case here.

[54:17] Unless you think Mary, his wife, was a demon.

[54:19] A demon.

[54:20] That would be crazy.

[54:21] You may have to figure out what that is.

[54:24] Yeah.

[54:24] Then you'll have to hire like Angel to take care of it.

[54:27] And, you know, it's tough.

S4

[54:28] There was so many moments where I think for a little bit more time and yes, a little bit more budget, they could have blown this world out in a really interesting way.

[54:38] Where every time she goes into this kind of summoning, strangling kind of state to see all the spirits that are around.

[54:47] Like you're in a hospital.

[54:49] Why would there just be Mary Majors there?

[54:52] I feel like that room would be packed with people.

[54:55] And to make it seem like, oh, well, I have to be sure that I'm concentrating enough to get Billy specifically to come into the body or something.

[55:02] It just seemed real.

[55:05] And also the wife looked to me a lot like Billy and I had trouble.

[55:09] They just seemed, they both had blonde curly hair.

[55:12] It just, you know, I feel like it could have been a more interesting thing to know more about Franco Patente's gifts and what exactly she does and how she does it.

Elliott Kalan

[55:24] Well, I have two things to say to that.

[55:25] One, I imagine it is because they look so similar that Franco Patente just shoved the first blonde ghost that she saw back in her daughter's body and it turned out to be Lydia Hearst.

[55:34] In her second Flophoused movie, the first being The Haunting of Sharon Tate.

[55:39] And two, it would have been really cool, I guess, to see like, yeah, what the afterlife is like.

[55:43] And maybe there's like a waiting room and like Sylvia Sidney is there and she's smoking up a lot of cigarettes.

[55:48] And she's got to talk to like a guy with a little shrunken head and like maybe Alec Baldwin and Gina Davis and has to like kind of help them to get back into the person world.

[55:58] And just like, you know, I've never seen that in a movie before.

S4

[56:01] If only if Mary had had better like guidelines of what to do after she died, if there were some kind of compendium that could guide her to what to do.

Elliott Kalan

[56:10] And maybe in the time that they were away, Joe's truck had been bought by some like yuppies from the city.

[56:16] And they really like art housed it up, you know, and they're having like a party for their friends and their daughter is there and their daughter's like real goth.

[56:24] And maybe Michael Keaton shows up in his famous role of clean and sober.

[56:29] He's trying to kick the drugs from his system.

[56:31] But first, he's got to help these ghosts.

Dan McCoy

[56:33] Oh, yeah.

[56:34] I, you know, I both agree with what you have to say, Aaron.

[56:38] But I also am kind of charmed by the degree to which this movie is like, okay, in a normal if like if this was a horror thriller, that's what would happen.

[56:47] But we are only interested in this ghost thing in so much as it is an engine to drive our like tawdry family melodrama.

[56:58] Like and it reminded me of before everything went to hell.

[57:02] We saw Color Out of Space at Alma Draft House.

[57:07] They did like a simulcast of or probably a rebroadcast, actually.

[57:11] I don't know of like Nick Cage and Richard Stanley talking about that movie, which is like a crazy H.P.

[57:18] Lovecraft movie.

[57:19] And Nicolas Cage was talking about how much he loves family.

Stuart Wellington

[57:22] Hosted by the two normalist guys.

[57:24] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[57:24] But the funny thing to me was like, like, they're like, what attracted you to this?

[57:27] And he goes, well, I always have loved family dramas or something like that.

[57:31] And I'm like, oh, Nicolas Cage just thinks of all these crazy things as family dramas.

[57:36] Like that's, that's what he loves.

Stuart Wellington

[57:38] This is normal to him.

[57:40] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[57:41] Mm hmm.

[57:42] He lives a very interesting life.

[57:45] Anyway, he did.

[57:47] He did.

[57:47] He did own pet snakes that he had to get rid of because they tried to hypnotize him.

[57:54] So, so, so she's being, she's all, I'm your wife.

[57:57] I'm your wife.

[57:58] And whereas a normal person would be like, what?

[58:00] No, that's impossible.

[58:01] He's like, I'm with you 100%.

[58:04] Let's do it right now.

Stuart Wellington

[58:05] He was looking for permission and she gave it to him.

Elliott Kalan

[58:07] Yeah.

[58:08] He's like, you know what?

[58:08] I think people will buy that.

[58:10] I believe that.

[58:11] So, okay, sure.

Stuart Wellington

[58:12] And there's a certain amount of like, she's, she's, it feels like she's trying to seduce him.

[58:16] I mean, she's in her underpants except for his denim shirt.

[58:20] And she just keeps talking about his dead child and his abusive father.

[58:25] And I'm like, is that what gets him going?

[58:28] That's crazy.

Elliott Kalan

[58:29] I mean, he's really into exorcist play.

[58:31] So possibly.

[58:31] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[58:32] Yeah.

[58:32] I mean, look, if you think he should have put up more resistance to the idea that he should

[58:38] have sex with the daughter of his girlfriend, you will not get an objection from me.

[58:44] I think he should have put up all the resistance.

[58:47] But I do, I do, I do think that there is an interesting moment of like, she convinces him

[58:52] and like, they're like, I think he has a performance has this moment of like fear and emotional confusion

[59:00] and like, just like not understanding how this could be possible, but knowing that it is, that

[59:04] would be really affecting if again, he hadn't already accepted a handjob from this person.

[59:11] Yeah.

[59:11] In a previous scene.

Stuart Wellington

[59:13] I mean, he even says, he even says, I don't deserve this.

[59:17] And I'm like, yeah, I don't think you do.

[59:19] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[59:21] I think maybe it's a slippery slope.

[59:24] He didn't realize he was going down when he accepted the first job.

[59:27] I see.

[59:28] But it just shows he hasn't seen enough of these little short documentaries that are online.

[59:32] It's like, I kind of can't avoid them.

[59:34] They seem to be everywhere, but.

S4

[59:36] They pop up.

[59:37] They're always popping up.

Elliott Kalan

[59:38] They literally pop up.

[59:39] Yeah.

[59:39] And it's like, it'll be like a dollar only.

[59:42] And I'm like, all right, I have a dollar for the finest in new reality, nonfiction filmmaking.

[59:47] Okay, sure.

[59:49] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[59:49] Anyway, they hear the mom returning.

[59:53] Franca takes a little moment to sit in the driveway looking through the personal stuff.

[59:56] And then she comes in and Cage is understandably acting very weird.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:03] And then there's.

[1:00:04] More than normal.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:07] And then there's the great scene where.

[1:00:09] Now, I'm not entirely sure whether this is meant to have actually happened or is part of the dream sequence that follows.

[1:00:15] But Franca is watching Nick Cage and her daughter spray one another with a hose.

[1:00:23] And Nicolas Cage.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:24] This is 100% happening.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:26] Okay.

[1:00:26] Well, Nicolas Cage has a leather pants on and a big belt buckle and sunglasses.

[1:00:31] And he's like thrusting his pelvis out while she sprays water on him.

[1:00:35] Like it's like a, like a 1980s, like Playboy video ad or like, like it is crazy.

[1:00:42] These two are having some fun in the sun splashing around with his hose.

[1:00:48] Now, when you say Playboy video, you mean, you mean Playboy documentary.

[1:00:50] Yeah, a documentary about.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:52] And he talks about.

[1:00:53] He suggests it's a.

[1:00:55] He suggests it's a golden shower, which is, you know, a fun thing to do when he's spraying you with water to assume that he in his head, he's thinking about urine.

[1:01:02] It is.

[1:01:03] Ice cold urine.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:07] So refreshing.

[1:01:08] I kind of wonder.

[1:01:09] It's like, is this is this what he thinks the character would say?

[1:01:13] Or is it the kind of thing that Nicolas Cage would say while he's spraying you with a hose?

[1:01:17] And I'll.

[1:01:17] Unfortunately, I'll go to my grave never knowing the answer to that question.

[1:01:20] But.

[1:01:22] But I take this as something that's happening.

[1:01:24] And he is so they've just totally stopped pretending around Franco.

[1:01:29] Yeah.

[1:01:29] That they are not in a relationship because he's so over.

[1:01:32] He's so out of his mind with bliss because he's finally found his wife again.

[1:01:37] And maybe when his wife was alive before, she wasn't into being sprayed with a hose.

[1:01:42] But now she's like, I died once.

[1:01:43] What's the worst that can happen?

[1:01:44] Sure.

[1:01:45] Let's spray each other with a hose.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:46] She was all burned up in a fire.

[1:01:48] She probably wants to get sprayed with water all the time.

[1:01:51] Right.

[1:01:51] Very good point.

[1:01:52] Very good point.

[1:01:53] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:53] That's very distressing to me for reasons I can't quite understand.

[1:01:59] No, I this if there's any reason to see the movie.

[1:02:04] Like if there's a single single reason, it's the scene.

[1:02:07] Yes.

[1:02:07] Look, look, look, look up on YouTube if it if it's out there in the world.

[1:02:11] It's got to be.

[1:02:13] Anyway, so after this, it's very gifable.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:16] Somebody should gif it.

[1:02:17] Yeah.

S4

[1:02:18] It was super fun to watch.

[1:02:20] It was very enjoyable to watch.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:22] Well, this is the scene I was talking about where.

[1:02:23] So there's this in that in that Nicolas Cage, Elijah Wood movie.

[1:02:26] He has to go undercover as a casino worker so that they can like rob this casino.

[1:02:30] And there's this montage where it's just him ingratiating himself with his new coworkers.

[1:02:34] And he's telling them some story at lunch and they're all laughing and he's getting up and dancing for them to make them laugh.

[1:02:39] And it just looks like Nicolas Cage is having so much fun being like a real goofball.

[1:02:43] And it's like, I wish he played more goofballs that are not tormented or tortured goofballs, but are just like goofballs.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:49] It's also like, it feels like this scene feels like if like one of those like gross Hardee's commercials with models like suddenly turned into an ad for Crocodile Mile, like the water like spraying all over the place.

[1:03:03] Anyway, so Franca dreams that she comes upon them having sex, but wakes up clutching her chest in fear.

[1:03:12] And mom and daughter have uncomfortable conversation where they are not very subtly fighting over Joe.

[1:03:19] And the daughter calls her dad her mom's husband.

[1:03:24] You know, a tip off there.

[1:03:27] And Franca tries to rekindle the fire by sucking on Nicolas Cage's finger a little bit in bed, but his mind is down the hall.

[1:03:37] And like a lot of these, like I'm reading my notes that are, you know, obviously arranged chronologically, the traditional way to arrange notes on a story.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:47] You mean you didn't cut up your notes and throw them in the air and then tape them together however they felt?

Dan McCoy

[1:03:51] But the point is I will read like a scene that comes after another scene.

[1:03:55] I'm like, surely that scene didn't happen that quickly after the past scene.

[1:03:59] Like it feels so disjointed reading them as like individual scenes.

[1:04:02] I'm like, because the next scene is the daughter picking up a knife and starting acting like she's going to kill her mom.

[1:04:09] And like, and she's saying she's going to come between us, you know, like, and it's like, wow, that is, that comes right in the heels of this like sex dream fake out.

[1:04:19] Like, it seems like there's just no connective tissue to this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:23] Yeah, it seems like that.

[1:04:24] So like she has a, Franca Potenta has a dream where her new boyfriend is having sex with her daughter.

[1:04:30] And then the movie kind of just rolls into it like a weird series of sex montages, right?

[1:04:35] Yes.

[1:04:36] Well, that's.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:37] And the mom, she goes to talk to the nurse.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:39] Yeah, that's what I, first what happens is Franca goes and meets with the nurse who, as we said, knows everything about soul transference.

[1:04:46] And I guess Franca has decided that she like has realized what's going on, that someone else's soul is in the daughter.

[1:04:51] And meanwhile, at home, the daughter and Nick Cage are fucking in several different rooms.

[1:04:58] As Stuart says, it's clipped up in a montage that makes it clear that this is just like it's happening all over the place.

[1:05:03] And Nick Cage is reading to her from a book that is called Memories by Nicolas Cage.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:12] And I'm trying to, the way I remember it.

[1:05:14] At her request.

[1:05:15] Which might, she goes, she goes, read me memories.

[1:05:17] And now what I, I remember the name on the front of the cover being misspelled, that Nicholas is spelled with an H, but maybe I'm misremembering that.

[1:05:25] So maybe that's his nom de plume, Nicholas Cage with an H.

[1:05:28] But Dan, you said you did some research on this.

[1:05:30] And this, this montage is him having sex with Billy and him having sex with Mary.

[1:05:35] Okay.

[1:05:35] In the birth of his truck.

[1:05:37] In the back of his truck.

[1:05:38] Yeah.

[1:05:39] So it's a little bit him and Billy in the house and a little bit him and Mary in the truck.

[1:05:43] And it is, this is the other reason to watch this movie is just the, the, the sheer manic energy that Nicolas Cage is pouring into these scenes.

[1:05:52] And there's a part where they're having sex and he just goes, whoa.

[1:05:55] Like someone does in a movie when they've just had a really powerful line of cocaine.

[1:05:59] And you're, and it's like, is that what he's like in bed?

Dan McCoy

[1:06:01] And he's reading these things that I, I, you know, it says memories.

[1:06:05] So I assumed that this was supposed to be a memoir in the world of the movie, but I, it's referred to as poetry in the behind the scenes stuff that I've read.

[1:06:13] So he's.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:14] At first I thought it was a, I thought it was a screenplay for Katsuhiro Otomo's memories.

[1:06:20] Yeah.

[1:06:20] But he doesn't at any point mention about four space guys finding a weird ghost space station.

[1:06:26] No.

[1:06:26] Or another guy becoming a living biological weapon.

[1:06:29] Or a city that's entirely built around just feeding ammunition into guns.

[1:06:34] No, none of that.

[1:06:35] But no, but what is happening.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:36] Stuart, as someone who is currently three and a half volumes into rereading Akira, I understand exactly what you're talking about.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:42] When in the, what is happening in the world of the film is merely that Joe is having sex while reading aloud erotic poetry by the actor, Nicolas Cage, who also exists.

S4

[1:06:53] And we see him having sex with Mary in the birth of the truck, also reading it, that that is her kink that she has carried over into the land of the dead and back again.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:04] I mean, the thing is that like, that is kind of every guy's fantasy is a woman who wants to hear the poetry that he's written.

[1:07:11] Yeah.

[1:07:12] Because often it is not the case.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:14] Uh, so anyway, yeah, the, well, the little research I did.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:18] Dan and Stuart do some deep soul searching after Elliot mentions that.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:22] I mean, not poetry specifically, but I know what he's talking about.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:25] Um, well, no, and I, I know Dan would rather have a, have a woman who likes to listen to his, his mysteries where he and his two best friends, that's right, Archie the cat and the ghost of his previous cat Lulu solve mysteries.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:37] No, I just, I just want to like, you know, I want my, uh, male ego flattered by someone pretending to give a shit when I talk about how return of the living dead, uh, relates to a night of the living dead because of the copyright, uh, problems that John Russo had with George Romero.

[1:07:57] And, uh, but I know in my heart that this is all bullshit nonsense that no one should care about.

[1:08:03] And it is wrong to expect my partner to care about it either just because I'm an idiot.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:10] And for me, it's, I just want to be able to explain the intricately crafted dungeon that I've built for four unlucky adventurers and all the devious traps I've set before them.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:20] So I think that we are laying our, uh, our like male ego monstrousness bare on this podcast in a way that we never have before.

[1:08:29] But, uh, anyway.

S4

[1:08:30] I mean, from the female ego perspective, I also often give my husband things I've written to read and tell him at the outset, just tell me it's great.

[1:08:42] That's the note that I want from you.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:44] Yeah, I mean, that's the best.

[1:08:46] Look, speaking, uh, uh, from the other side, I love instruction.

[1:08:50] If I'm told to tell you it's great, I will tell you it's great.

[1:08:54] Um, Nicolas Cage, uh, this is about the, uh, memories.

[1:09:00] And, uh, this is what I found online.

[1:09:02] He was asked about reading, uh, the Nicolas Cage book memories in the, in this, uh, movie.

[1:09:07] And he said, well, I thought it was extremely funny.

[1:09:10] And anytime you can break the fourth wall, pushing the envelope in terms of traditional or narrative is an experiment worthy of trying.

[1:09:16] I'd never done anything like that to read a book by the actor who's playing the character.

[1:09:20] I was inspired by the novels of Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn.

[1:09:25] I always thought they were not only sensual, but hilarious in terms of the braggadocio of Henry Miller.

[1:09:31] That he would go into great detail about his adventures in the sensual realm.

[1:09:35] And I wanted to bring a little of that kind of humor to Between Worlds with that concept.

[1:09:40] So that was the thinking.

[1:09:42] Success.

[1:09:42] Of Nick Cage.

[1:09:43] Yeah, he did it.

[1:09:43] Who wrote those.

[1:09:44] Nailed it.

[1:09:45] Success.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:45] He wrote those poems.

[1:09:46] Out of the park.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:48] Looking, looking at that same interview, Dan, just reading slightly ahead, they ask him if, if that was a real memoir, what anecdote would be in it?

[1:09:53] And he tells a long story about how much he loves Prince.

[1:09:57] Which is not something I ever knew about him.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:00] That's great.

[1:10:01] Okay, so getting back to the actual plot of the story.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:07] So this is after the very long sex montage, which again is something I never expected to see in a Nicolas Cage movie.

[1:10:15] And I got, I don't know if it was the enjoyment that I was supposed to get from it, but I did get genuine, some kind of enjoyment from it.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:21] Yeah.

[1:10:21] And so, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:22] But it comes to a tragic end, right, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[1:10:24] Yes, they hear Franca pulling up into the driveway.

[1:10:28] Nick Cage, as Joe, he goes, what was that?

[1:10:31] And Billy says, it was the cat.

[1:10:33] And he goes, you don't have a cat.

[1:10:35] You don't have a cat.

[1:10:37] And Franca gets mad, finding them having sex with one another and things.

[1:10:43] In the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:43] And the term is understandably mad.

[1:10:46] Understandably mad.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:47] And the movie rapidly escalates from here.

[1:10:52] This is when it shifts into a different gear.

[1:10:56] Nick Cage.

S4

[1:10:57] She also, she just spent $500 getting him his box of memories back.

[1:11:01] Yes.

[1:11:01] Because that was what, the truck boss wouldn't let him have it unless he gave $500 of the debt he owed.

[1:11:06] And I get the sense that $500 is a lot of money to these people, to this family.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:11] They are not, they are not podcasters.

[1:11:12] $500 is a real chunk of change.

[1:11:15] It's not super easy to come by.

S4

[1:11:16] Like it is to us.

[1:11:17] And so, yeah, I feel like the insult to injury that she also just spent $500 of her hard-earned money while he was boning her daughter.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:26] Yes.

[1:11:27] No, she is the only truly sympathetic person on screen.

[1:11:30] Let us, yeah, stipulate that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:32] Except for the two, except for those two goofy drug dealers that you like so much.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:35] I mean, they provide a needed service to the community, Elliot.

[1:11:41] And so.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:42] They are essential workers, and that's why that their illicit underground drug deal ring keeps, is allowed to keep running during the quarantine.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:49] So, Nicolas Cage, Franco's mad, Nick Cage comes out to try and explain in the tiniest banana hammock underwear that is like this patterned thing.

[1:11:59] I was not able to catch the pattern.

[1:12:00] Stuart, do you know what it was?

[1:12:02] You're nodding.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:02] I mean, it looked like some kind of a jungle cat print.

[1:12:06] It looked very cool.

[1:12:07] Yeah.

[1:12:07] It fit perfectly with his black t-shirt, many bracelets and rings, and a black t-shirt with a shiny alligator face emblazoned upon it.

[1:12:17] And, well, anyway, he's trying to explain to Franco why he's done this.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:23] And he says the line at one point, I'm sorry to say this.

[1:12:26] Billy is dead.

[1:12:27] That is Mary.

[1:12:29] And so I guess everything's cleared up.

[1:12:31] So they'll live happily ever after once he's...

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:34] I mean, if anything, you kind of got to applaud his effort.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:38] I mean, he's very direct.

[1:12:41] And she says, you got to fix this.

[1:12:44] And he says, what do you expect me to do?

[1:12:46] Kill my wife?

[1:12:47] That's more of a Jimmy Stewart.

[1:12:49] But you get the idea.

[1:12:51] And right then, Billy comes out and bludgeons Franco in the head and knocks her out cold.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:59] Yeah.

[1:12:59] It's moments after Franco Patente looks at Nicolas Cage and says, put your fucking pants on.

[1:13:04] You're gross.

[1:13:05] And he says, like, why would you say that?

[1:13:07] What makes you say that?

[1:13:08] And then the camera pulls back to give you a full view.

[1:13:12] And you're like, yeah, that's cool.

[1:13:15] That's an intentional joke.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:17] Yeah.

[1:13:18] I think there's more...

[1:13:19] Looking at...

[1:13:19] In retrospect, I think there's more legit...

[1:13:22] More actual meant jokes in this movie than I thought first watching it.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:25] Oh, no, I think a lot of it's intentional.

[1:13:27] Whether you can say it's successful is another thing, but...

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:31] I mean, the fact that I wasn't sure whether they meant it or not maybe means it's less than successful.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:35] So, anyway, we cut to Billy's doofus friends being stoned and listening to Black Flag and dancing around, as we said earlier.

[1:13:42] Billy knocks at the door to rob them.

[1:13:46] I kind of zoned out for half a second.

[1:13:47] I'm not sure what went wrong, but Nicolas Cage storms in and beats the dudes with a bat.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:54] There's a struggle with one of the friends, and that friend is shot and killed accidentally.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:58] Hopper pen.

[1:13:58] Yeah, I just missed the part where, like, why Nick Cage jumped in with his bat.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:04] Oh, because they never say it outright.

[1:14:06] We're supposed to just know that they're going to rob them.

[1:14:08] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:08] Yeah.

[1:14:09] At this point, I think they're at the phase of the adventure where they just go around bonking people on the head to knock them out.

[1:14:14] Okay.

[1:14:15] Almost like a bonks adventure.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:20] Unfortunately, the graphics are less than turbo.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:23] So, one of the doofuses gets killed, the one who says they're not that influential.

[1:14:29] And the other guy shows up with a gun to threaten Franca, like, asking, like, hey, what the fuck's up with your boyfriend coming in with your daughter and robbing our drug stash?

[1:14:40] Which is, you know, a fair question.

[1:14:42] And killing someone in the mix.

[1:14:45] Yep.

[1:14:45] Not just someone.

[1:14:47] His best friend.

[1:14:48] Yeah.

[1:14:48] And business partner.

[1:14:49] Meanwhile, Billy, possessed by Mary.

[1:14:52] Mary's taking Nick Cage back to their old house where he has visions of his dead daughter and burned bodies and such.

[1:15:00] And it was very confusing to me as to what part our visions are not or whether, like, half the house is burnt and half got rebuilt or half never got burnt.

[1:15:09] Like, there's, like, a part of the house that seems totally fine that he's in except for there's, like, a smoke-damaged jack-in-the-box that he picks up.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:17] And he focuses a lot of emotional energy on this jack-in-the-box.

[1:15:20] Yeah.

S4

[1:15:20] It becomes, yes.

[1:15:21] Now, when you rent a location to film, you have to return it to the state it was in before you arrived when you leave.

[1:15:31] And so I think it's just a lot easier to just burn the inter, like, the hallway when you first walk in.

[1:15:36] You just treat the foyer, make that look burned, and then just put some trash on the ground in the other rooms to say, well, this is general fire.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:47] Fire trash.

[1:15:48] I thought you were going to say that when you rent a space.

[1:15:50] Some debris from the fire.

[1:15:51] It's easier to just burn half of it.

[1:15:53] Yeah, just burn half of it.

[1:15:54] And you have to rebuild half the house.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:56] Save half your money.

[1:15:57] Yeah, sure.

[1:15:58] Yeah.

[1:15:58] And I think they even find the bed that his wife supposedly burned up in or something, and it's just, like, pushed slightly.

[1:16:07] Like, the bed's made better than the one in my apartment.

[1:16:10] Oh, nice.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:12] I don't know.

[1:16:13] I said nice.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:13] So, maybe, well, I mean, maybe he put his, yeah, I don't know who is, what is nice in that situation.

[1:16:18] Maybe.

[1:16:19] All of our friendly attitudes.

[1:16:23] Maybe he put the truck up as collateral for a loan to get the best bed on the market.

[1:16:29] Yeah, yeah.

[1:16:30] The unburnable bed.

[1:16:31] So.

[1:16:32] Yeah, the between Z's bed, it's called.

S4

[1:16:34] I wasn't sure if he was having visions of his daughter or if that was just, again, the movie doing these cuts.

[1:16:40] Because it was never clear to me when, like, is it a vision or is it just the movie trying to be weird?

[1:16:48] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:48] Yeah.

[1:16:49] I was like.

[1:16:50] The true mission of madness.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:52] It was hard to tell her whether it was real or Maxell.

[1:16:55] It was hard to tell if she was born with her.

[1:16:56] Maybe it's Maybelline.

[1:16:57] It was just very, it was, it was very confusing.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:00] Elliot, I told you about accepting money under the table and then trying to slip these ads into the podcast.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:06] I don't know what you're talking about it.

[1:17:08] Make it your way.

[1:17:09] Burger King?

[1:17:10] Is that what they say?

[1:17:11] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:14] So, meanwhile, back at the ranch, a living drug dealer is talking to Franca and he's like, a ghost is taking over Billy's body?

[1:17:23] How do we find them?

[1:17:25] And she says, you gotta choke me.

[1:17:27] Okay.

[1:17:28] He's like, I'll allow it.

[1:17:31] So, back at the burnt house, Cage, in the burned wing of the burnt house, Cage has started up a generator and puts a string of lights on to create a romantic atmosphere.

[1:17:42] And Cage is drunkenly talking about how he didn't feel he deserved her ever.

[1:17:46] He doesn't deserve anyone.

[1:17:48] He's a mess.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:49] He's a real, he's an emotional mess by this point.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:52] And the Ghostbusters.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:54] Which, to be fair, put yourself in his situation.

[1:17:57] You're a grieving widower.

[1:17:58] You're already in trouble with the guys who you have a loan on to buy your truck.

[1:18:03] And now you finally found a friend, maybe even a lover.

[1:18:07] And suddenly your wife's ghost is taking over that lover's daughter and forcing you into a life of crime.

[1:18:13] And now she's taking you back to your old house.

[1:18:15] And you're like, ugh, this is not the way I wanted her to see the house.

[1:18:18] I was supposed to clean it up when she came back to life.

[1:18:21] And, you know, it's just, it's a lot to carry.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:23] This is a man who has been emotionally destroyed, understandably.

[1:18:27] Again, a little easier to sympathize, but for that handjob that he accepted.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:37] Anyway, so.

[1:18:38] Dan, far be it from me to defend that action.

[1:18:41] I would not.

[1:18:43] But, you know what?

[1:18:44] You gotta find your small joys where you can in this life, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:47] So.

[1:18:48] Even villains are the heroes of their own story, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:51] I mean, you gotta imagine some of the villains know that they're the villains, right?

[1:18:54] Like, when a villain is like, hmm, I'm going to destroy the world.

[1:18:57] You have to know that they have to be like, hmm, well, this doesn't really benefit anyone, including me.

[1:19:02] Maybe I am the villain.

[1:19:03] So anyway, Fracca.

[1:19:05] Like Ultron.

[1:19:06] I guess Ultron must think he's the hero, right?

[1:19:07] For robots.

[1:19:09] Uh-huh.

[1:19:10] That's true.

[1:19:11] But what about like, what about like, like, yeah, Thanos thinks he's the hero.

[1:19:15] Yeah.

[1:19:15] Okay, sure.

[1:19:16] Yeah.

[1:19:17] You gotta find one.

[1:19:18] There's gotta be some villain.

[1:19:19] Like, Mephisto must know that he's not the hero, right?

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:22] Uh, yeah.

[1:19:23] He's not like, uh, yeah, check the comic book cover, dude.

[1:19:26] It says Mephisto Tales, right?

[1:19:29] Anyway.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:31] Uh, Franca and the...

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:33] Like, you gotta assume the penguin knows that he's a bad guy, right?

[1:19:36] The penguin isn't like, hmm, from another point of view, Batman's the villain and I'm the hero.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:40] I mean, they try to make him really sympathetic in Batman Returns.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:44] I mean, to a point, but nothing really, nothing really forgives him just biting someone's nose off.

[1:19:49] I mean, he runs for mayor, though.

[1:19:49] Should I?

[1:19:49] You're right.

[1:19:50] And no one bad can run for mayor.

S4

[1:19:51] Politics is a dirty game no matter how you slice it.

[1:19:54] No matter who knows you bite off.

[1:19:55] Why would you slice politics, though?

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:56] I've set my laptop on fire.

[1:19:57] Like, why are you slicing up politics?

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:59] Start a new life.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:00] Um...

[1:20:01] Even as a kid, I remember being thrown by how quickly they dropped the mayoral race storyline in that movie.

[1:20:07] Well, also...

[1:20:08] And I was like, we're not even gonna see whether he won?

Dan McCoy

[1:20:10] I, like, I...

[1:20:11] You gotta admit, I ride the city like a...

[1:20:14] What was it?

[1:20:14] A hawk from hell?

[1:20:16] A hound from hell?

[1:20:16] I don't even remember what he says, but...

[1:20:18] I don't remember what he says.

[1:20:18] It seems like...

[1:20:19] I mean, especially now in the days of Trump, but, like, even at the time, I always felt like,

[1:20:23] well, this is a weird, like, cryptically phrased, like, one sentence that he has caught the penguin saying.

[1:20:32] And Batman, broadcasting it to the people of Gotham, immediately turns them against the penguin,

[1:20:36] who they had loved moments before.

[1:20:39] Oh, yeah.

[1:20:39] I think it's great.

[1:20:40] Yeah.

[1:20:41] Um...

[1:20:41] Anyway, so...

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:42] You know what Batman is in that moment?

[1:20:44] A troll.

[1:20:45] Oh, wow.

[1:20:46] Yeah.

[1:20:47] Like, he lives under a bridge?

[1:20:48] He lives under a bridge, his hair is all spiky, and he's going on a world tour.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:51] And if he spends too much time out in the sun, he'll turn to rock entirely, but that's great,

[1:20:56] because then Bilbo can sneak away.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:59] There's a lot of different trolls that we're throwing into this mix right now.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:02] So, Franca and the drug dealer show up, or as I now like to call them, the real Ghostbusters,

[1:21:08] and they have a plan at this burnt house.

[1:21:11] We don't know what it is yet.

[1:21:13] Turns out the plan is just coming in and pulling a gun on Nick Cage,

[1:21:17] but then Billy has a gun, too, and she pulls it on Franca and says,

[1:21:22] nobody's shooting that sad bastard but me.

[1:21:26] And this is the big reveal of something that I'm sure we all kind of suspected was true,

[1:21:31] since this ghost seems like a real cavalcade of red flags, this ghost, the way this ghost behaves.

[1:21:40] But it turns out that the reason she was worried about Nick Cage leaving for work all the time

[1:21:47] was that she knew that she couldn't trust herself alone,

[1:21:51] and she deliberately killed her daughter to hurt him.

[1:21:55] And I think she meant to kill herself, too, but not burn the place down.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:00] She says she meant to kill herself, but not ruin the equity they had built up in the house.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:04] So the place burned down on accident after this murder-suicide.

[1:22:09] And Cage is totally broken at this point.

[1:22:12] He hears the voice of his dead daughter wanders off,

[1:22:15] which provides enough distraction that, like, I think Franca tries to go for the gun and Billy shoots her.

[1:22:21] But now, uh-oh, big mistake. Huge.

[1:22:23] You've activated her supernatural power.

[1:22:27] Because ghosts work on commissions.

[1:22:29] Now that Franca is betwixt life and death, she's between worlds, if you will.

[1:22:35] She will pull the wife out of Billy.

[1:22:37] I won't.

[1:22:37] And trap her in another world.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:39] Much like Obi-Wan Kenobi, now that she's struck down,

[1:22:42] she'll be more powerful than Billy could ever imagine.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:45] Or Mary, I should say.

S4

[1:22:46] So it turns out she has the ability to take people out of bodies

[1:22:50] as well as ushering people into them.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:53] Yeah.

[1:22:53] Yeah, yeah.

[1:22:54] Oh, yeah.

[1:22:55] I didn't even think about it.

[1:22:56] She didn't even have to throw her through the ghost door in the lock and key comics.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:00] Nope.

[1:23:01] Just says, hey, get out of here.

[1:23:03] And then suddenly she's gone.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:04] Ghost door way of the samurai.

[1:23:08] Mm-hmm.

[1:23:08] Yeah, ghost door entryway of the samurai.

[1:23:11] Nicolas Cage's brain is broken at this point.

[1:23:13] He's clutching onto the jack-in-the-box, yelling Sarah.

[1:23:18] Billy wakes up, cries about her mom,

[1:23:20] who is too far gone to save, it seems.

[1:23:25] The leader of the pack by, I think, the Shangri-Las.

[1:23:28] Is that who did leader of the pack?

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:30] I believe so, yes.

[1:23:31] I don't know if it's their version of it or if it's a cover.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:33] Okay, well, it starts playing.

[1:23:34] That's actually playing.

[1:23:35] And Cage pours gas all over himself,

[1:23:39] lights a cigarette, setting himself a flame,

[1:23:41] and stubs the cigarette out on his own burning body.

[1:23:44] Over his heart.

[1:23:46] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:46] This seems like a point where I think they put on the flame effects a little too soon.

[1:23:51] I think he was supposed to light himself by putting the cigarette out on his body,

[1:23:54] but instead he's already engulfed in flame when he does that,

[1:23:57] so I think they added the flames a little early.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:59] I think it's a great joke where he's like,

[1:24:02] well, I'm literally engulfed in flames,

[1:24:04] but I've got to put this cigarette out.

[1:24:06] I wouldn't want to burn the house down.

S4

[1:24:09] He has zero reaction to being engulfed in flames.

[1:24:12] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:12] Oh, it does not hurt him at all.

[1:24:14] It seems to be, if anything at least, it makes him feel better.

[1:24:18] He's glad he can feel something.

[1:24:20] Yeah.

[1:24:20] Well, now he's a ghostwriter.

[1:24:21] Maybe this is a guy who learns from his mistakes,

[1:24:24] and he's like, okay, what can I pick up from this experience?

[1:24:27] One, do not trust my wife because she does not have my best interest at heart.

[1:24:32] Let's keep that clear.

[1:24:33] Number two, if I'm ever in this situation again,

[1:24:36] do not accept that handjob under the blanket.

[1:24:38] And number three, I can't let lit cigarettes just lie around

[1:24:41] because that caused the problem in the first place,

[1:24:43] so I better put it out right now.

[1:24:45] Ironically, he's on fire, so I guess the cigarette just burns up faster.

[1:24:48] But it's a, yeah, the fire effects,

[1:24:51] it's just very funny to see how nonchalant he is with all this fire all over him.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:55] So obviously what should have happened is he should have then jumped into the body

[1:24:59] of the happy-go-lucky drug dealer that he had killed,

[1:25:02] and then he would get to go on an adventure later, right?

[1:25:06] Oh, sure, sure, yeah.

[1:25:07] No?

[1:25:08] Nobody likes my idea?

[1:25:09] I mean, I was just, I just thought I'd throw it out there.

[1:25:12] Just spitballing, yeah.

[1:25:13] I'm not a professional writer, so I thought maybe you guys could give me some notes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:17] I mean, what's this adventure?

[1:25:18] What adventure is he going on in this new body?

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:21] I mean, I hadn't really thought that far ahead.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:24] Because there's four different types of primordial story.

[1:25:26] Let's go through them.

[1:25:27] Okay, thank you.

[1:25:27] Man versus Man, Man versus Nature, Goes Bananas, or Goes to Monte Carlo?

[1:25:32] Okay.

[1:25:33] So it's got to be one of those four.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:35] Okay.

[1:25:36] I mean, Man versus Man I think we've already covered.

[1:25:40] And Goes Bananas I think already happened too, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:43] But he hasn't been to Monte Carlo yet.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:45] He hasn't been to Monte Carlo.

[1:25:47] But could he also be fighting nature in Monte Carlo?

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:51] I have to assume they have some nature there.

[1:25:53] Yeah.

[1:25:54] Maybe even if it's just a plant in the lobby of a casino.

[1:25:57] So Dan, Billy and Mike, they drive away.

[1:25:59] And then what happens?

Dan McCoy

[1:26:00] Then we've got a short pan over some burnt dolls, child's dolls, and a family photo with more of that Twin Peaks-y music.

[1:26:10] And there's a fade to black.

[1:26:12] And then we hear it's either Joe's dad or maybe it's supposed to be his mom's boyfriend.

[1:26:20] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:21] I believe it's supposed to be his dad.

[1:26:23] Because they mentioned earlier that his dad used to hit him.

[1:26:25] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:25] Well, we hear his dad yelling at his mom about Joe and how shitty Joe is and threatening to burn the whole house down.

[1:26:36] And Joe comes out and shoots his dad with a shotgun.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:40] And now here's something I want to point out here is that this is clearly a flashback.

[1:26:44] It's Joe's youth.

[1:26:45] And yet they are in an exceedingly modern kitchen.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:48] That created a lot of problems for me, honestly, because I didn't know when it was supposed to be happening.

[1:26:52] I assumed it was a flashback.

[1:26:53] But I'm like, it doesn't really look.

[1:26:56] I mean, like, he's got a Walkman headphone.

[1:26:59] So I guess it's a long time ago.

[1:27:00] But at the same time, the house doesn't look old at all.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:04] No.

[1:27:05] And having just my wife and I finally watched the last episode of the season of The Marvelous Miss and Maisel after a long break between episodes.

[1:27:12] And there are so many scenes where they have period cars and costumes and things for no reason.

[1:27:17] I found it very refreshing that the makers of this film did not bother to make it a period-specific kitchen.

[1:27:23] And we're just like, where's the kitchen of the house that we are already staying in?

[1:27:27] Let's just shoot this there.

[1:27:28] Come on.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:28] I got a question for you three.

[1:27:31] And that is this.

[1:27:32] Is this scene in the movie so we're like, oh, that's why Joe hates when family members burn down houses, potentially killing other family members?

[1:27:42] Did the movie think that we needed a motivation for his youth for him to be upset about his wife burning down his house?

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:49] I think probably it was to show that Joe's life has been a nonstop cycle of violent trauma.

[1:27:55] But maybe they're setting it up for the prequel between worlds to the rise of Joe.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:01] I think that when this scene was all finished up, they sent it over to the movie maker.

[1:28:08] They're like, and they got epilogue and prologue confused.

[1:28:12] And they're like, is this?

[1:28:14] I think it goes at the end?

[1:28:16] That's what happened.

S4

[1:28:18] Yeah, I do get the sense that it was supposed to be in a different part of the movie.

[1:28:22] And they ended up cutting it.

[1:28:24] And then they were like, well, this is too good to waste.

[1:28:27] Let's throw it in at the end instead of a blooper.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:29] The thing is, it doesn't really illuminate anything about anything.

[1:28:34] But it has this place of importance.

[1:28:37] So you're like, OK, this must mean something.

[1:28:40] But it's so opaque what it means.

[1:28:42] We were watching it, and Audrey was like, does this mean that his dad spirit has been following him around?

[1:28:49] I'm like, oh, I never thought of that.

S4

[1:28:51] What if his dad had been pulled into Billy?

[1:28:54] I don't know.

[1:28:55] Oh, boy.

[1:28:56] Well, I think because they also filmed the young Franco Patente scene where she's the little girl underneath the ice of the lake.

[1:29:05] And that also didn't offer anything except kind of a moody opening credit sequence.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:12] It was a striking visual.

[1:29:14] Sure.

[1:29:14] Yeah.

[1:29:15] It didn't advance the plot.

S4

[1:29:16] I feel like that they probably just filmed scenes of both of the leads as kids and then figured out where to put them later.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:24] Yeah.

[1:29:24] I think that's probably true.

[1:29:25] Unless maybe Nicolas Cage saw the first cut of the movie and was like, wait, so Franco gets a kid flashback and I don't get a kid flashback?

[1:29:33] Can I get a kid flashback?

[1:29:34] I'm going to pull my support of the movie.

[1:29:36] I was supposed to go on all the talk shows to promote this movie.

[1:29:40] But I don't have a kid flashback and Franco gets a kid flashback?

[1:29:43] Like, that's not fair.

[1:29:44] I'm a bigger star.

[1:29:45] I should get the bigger kid flashback.

[1:29:47] Why don't I get a kid flashback?

[1:29:49] Because I want a kid flashback.

[1:29:51] And they're like, Nick, you saw the script.

[1:29:54] Yeah, but there were no kid flashbacks in the script.

[1:29:57] But we didn't think we should write out the title sequence in the script.

[1:30:00] Yeah, but that's a kid flashback.

[1:30:02] Like, that's an official kid flashback.

[1:30:04] Ask anybody.

[1:30:05] Ask a professional.

[1:30:06] Ask someone off the street.

[1:30:08] They'll tell you it's a kid flashback and I want a kid flashback.

[1:30:11] Why don't I get a kid flashback?

[1:30:13] Nicolas Cage, kid flashback.

[1:30:15] Where's my kid flashback?

[1:30:16] Because I haven't gotten a kid flashback and Franco got a kid flashback.

[1:30:20] That's not fair.

[1:30:22] Kid flashbacks.

[1:30:23] Everyone should get kid flashbacks or no one gets kid flashbacks.

[1:30:26] So you either give me a kid flashback or you take out Franco's kid flashback.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:30] Assuming that's exactly what happened to me.

[1:30:32] I've never gone so far from, like, finding something actively unfunny and irritating to not be able to stop laughing.

[1:30:43] The greatest triumph.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:44] The greatest trick the devil ever pulled.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:48] Final judgments is this section of the podcast where we talk about whether we thought it was a good-bad movie, a bad-bad movie, or a movie we kind of liked.

[1:30:58] Does anyone raring to go with a hot take on Between Worlds or whatever it's called?

S4

[1:31:04] I do not have a hot take.

[1:31:06] I think this movie is for sure good-bad.

[1:31:11] It's very silly.

[1:31:13] I rewound several parts to watch them again.

[1:31:18] There were several moments where my husband and I just turned at the exact same moment and made eye contact with each other, which is always, I think, a good sign that something is very ridiculous.

[1:31:30] It's so much fun to watch.

[1:31:31] I would rewatch this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:34] I agree.

[1:31:35] I'm going to also say that it was a good-bad movie.

[1:31:38] There's a lot of potential red flags for viewership, and the movie avoids them and ends up being—if there can be a silly laugh-out-loud movie about a ghost that wants to seal someone's life and also a murder-suicide, then this is that movie.

[1:31:56] It's a—I think there's some—and also, if you have any—if you've got a teenager and it's hard to talk to them about the act of physical lovemaking, just show them this movie, and they'll finally understand what it's all about.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:08] I—yeah, here's the—to that point, to that end, Elliot, like, this is a difficult movie to, like, unreservedly, like, recommend that anyone see because it does have a lot of things that could potentially upset people depending on, you know, what upsets you personally.

[1:32:26] I mean, like, there is—there is, yeah, suicide.

[1:32:29] There is child death.

[1:32:30] There is murder—child murder and suicide.

[1:32:34] There is, like, this quasi-almost incestuous relationship, even though, like, he's not with Frank and Potenti.

[1:32:42] It has that structure.

[1:32:44] And even though the actress who is playing Billy is 28, she is, I believe, kind of playing younger, and Nicolas Cage is the age he is, so that is, like, unpleasant, too.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:54] You mean ageless and eternal?

Dan McCoy

[1:32:56] Yeah, exactly.

[1:32:56] Uh-huh.

[1:32:57] May he live forever in his New Orleans crypt.

[1:32:59] But if you can't accept all of those things in the space of, like, an overheated melodrama, which is what this is, like, I almost even—like, I'm between good, bad, and kind of liked.

[1:33:16] And the reason I even skew almost towards that is it feels like—it gives you the feel, for me, of when I was a kid and I'd stay up late watching these, like, late 80s, early 90s thrillers.

[1:33:30] And, like, not even necessarily being into them because they were even too sleazy, but, like, wondering, like, what is this world?

[1:33:39] Like, why did someone make something so, like, sweaty and sleazy and being fascinated by it?

[1:33:44] What's Zalman King thinking?

[1:33:46] Yes, and having, like, one of those movies get into, like, the fly transporter and get mixed with Wild at Heart, like, I respond to it.

[1:33:54] I think I'm probably responding to it—I mean, all the language I'm using, I'm responding to it as someone who likes movies, and it's, like, approaching it through almost the window of other movies, so I don't know how it would work for someone who doesn't care as much about that stuff.

S4

[1:34:09] Yeah, if you don't like movies, you might not like this movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:12] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:13] I feel like there's already a certain—

[1:34:15] It's a good save.

[1:34:16] There's a certain filter for watching a movie on purpose because it's bad that weeds out a lot of the people who would not be into this movie, probably.

[1:34:24] Stuart, what do you have to say about it?

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:26] Yeah, I'm going to go on the side of good-bad.

[1:34:28] I feel like a lot of the—I did spend a large chunk of the movie telling my TV to stop it, but I feel like if it was in, like, a group setting where you're with a bunch of friends, all excited to watch a bad movie, some of the creepier sex stuff might—would come off as funnier, as opposed to as creepy as it is, with just me sitting in my apartment alone, sweaty from a hot workout.

[1:34:52] What are you wearing, Stuart?

[1:34:53] What are you wearing, Stuart?

[1:34:55] You know, a nice pair of slacks and a sweatshirt.

[1:34:59] Slacks to work out?

[1:35:01] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:02] It's business casual workout.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:03] I'm a grown-up.

[1:35:04] Grown-ups wear slacks.

[1:35:07] And there's points when, like, I feel like there's—I feel like if this movie, if you had swapped the daughter character with, like, Franco Potente's, like, elderly mother that she had to save, I feel like that might have been a more interesting movie.

[1:35:23] And maybe less gross.

[1:35:25] Well, definitely less gross, but I don't know.

[1:35:27] That's, you know, that's for Between Worlds 2, I guess.

[1:35:30] Mm-hmm.

[1:35:31] Mm-hmm.

S5

[1:35:31] I started listening to Oh No, Ross and Carrie shortly after I broke my arm, and the doctor had told me I'd never walk again.

[1:35:45] I couldn't get my book started.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:46] I was lost.

[1:35:47] Honestly.

[1:35:48] I knew it was time to make a change.

S5

[1:35:51] There's something about Oh No, Ross and Carrie that you just can't get anywhere else.

[1:35:55] They're thought leaders.

[1:35:57] Discoverers.

[1:35:58] Founders.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:59] I'd call them heroes.

[1:36:00] Ross and Carrie don't just report on French science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal.

[1:36:04] They take part themselves.

S5

[1:36:06] They show up so you don't have to.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:08] But you might find that you want to.

S5

[1:36:11] My arm is better.

[1:36:13] I can walk again.

[1:36:14] I wrote an entire book this weekend.

[1:36:17] It's terrible, but I did it.

[1:36:19] Just go to MaximumFun.org.

Stuart Wellington

[1:36:22] Thank you, Ross and Carrie.

S5

[1:36:24] Oh No, Ross and Carrie is just a podcast.

S4

[1:36:25] It doesn't do anything.

[1:36:26] It's just sounds you listen to in your ears.

[1:36:28] All these people are made up.

[1:36:28] Goodbye.

S5

[1:36:29] Hey, if you like your podcast to be focused and well-researched and your podcast hosts

[1:36:33] to be uncharismatic, unhorny strangers who have no interest in horses, then this is not

[1:36:37] the podcast for you.

[1:36:39] Yeah, and what's your deal?

[1:36:40] I'm Emily.

[1:36:41] I'm Lisa.

[1:36:42] Our show's called Baby Geniuses.

[1:36:44] And its hosts are horny adult idiots.

[1:36:46] We discover weird Wikipedia pages every episode.

[1:36:49] We discuss institutional misogyny.

[1:36:51] We ask each other the dumbest questions and our listeners won't stop sending us pictures

[1:36:55] of their butts.

[1:36:56] We haven't asked them to stop, but they also aren't stopping.

[1:36:59] Join us on Baby Geniuses.

[1:37:01] Every other week on MaximumFun.org.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:07] Okay.

[1:37:08] Well, let's move into the next segment.

[1:37:11] Quickly do some sponsors for the show.

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[1:38:32] So that was me reading an ad.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:36] Oh, wow.

[1:38:37] You did a great job, Dan.

[1:38:38] And here's another one.

[1:38:39] You did a really good job.

[1:38:40] Is that what you wanted, was praise?

[1:38:42] Please.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:43] Almost constantly.

[1:38:46] So here's an ad for Squarespace, which I know Elliot loves.

[1:38:51] It's a great way to...

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:52] I just have a lot of ideas.

[1:38:53] But can you talk about Squarespace?

[1:38:54] And then I'll tell you what my great idea is this time.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:57] Sure.

[1:38:58] You can create a beautiful website to promote or display your cool idea, blog or publish content,

[1:39:05] sell products and services of all kinds, and much, much more.

[1:39:09] Whatever you might want to do on the internet.

[1:39:11] Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful, customizable templates created by world-class designers.

[1:39:18] Everything optimized for mobile right out of the box.

[1:39:20] A new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions.

[1:39:25] Free and secure hosting.

[1:39:26] Free and secure hosting.

[1:39:27] Hey, go to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial.

[1:39:33] And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[1:39:42] I bungled a lot of that.

[1:39:43] But the important thing is to remember, offer code flop.

Elliott Kalan

[1:39:48] Now, Dan, leaving the bungling aside, I had an idea and I was wondering if Squarespace might be able to help me make it into a real website and a real business.

Dan McCoy

[1:39:56] Almost certainly, Elliot, but indulge us.

Elliott Kalan

[1:39:59] Because I don't know if they're going to want to touch this one, but I'd really appreciate if they did.

[1:40:02] Okay.

[1:40:03] It's all happened to us.

[1:40:04] We've all been in this situation.

[1:40:06] You're dead.

[1:40:07] You're a ghost.

[1:40:07] You find yourself in some young lady's body and you just want to find love with the greasy trucker that you used to be in love with when you were alive, but now it's a little awkward.

[1:40:18] What do you do?

[1:40:19] Well, that's where adultghostfinder.com comes in.

[1:40:22] Adult Ghostfinder is the place where a ghost looking for love can match up with people who are looking for love with ghosts.

[1:40:29] It's all right there in our slogan where ghosts looking for love find people looking for love with ghosts.

[1:40:36] Adultghostfinder.com.

[1:40:37] Here's the thing.

[1:40:38] You don't have to be a ghost to love a ghost and you don't have to be a person to love a person.

[1:40:43] You could be a ghost or a person or maybe you're the ghost of a person or maybe you're the person of a ghost, such as in this film.

[1:40:50] It doesn't matter.

[1:40:50] We don't judge.

[1:40:51] We're just here to help ghosts find people and ghosts find ghosts and people find ghosts but not people find people.

[1:40:58] That's gross at adultghostfinder.com.

[1:41:00] You're not interested in ghosts?

[1:41:01] We're not interested in you.

[1:41:03] You know what?

[1:41:03] Get out of here, fleshling, with your anti-ghost prejudices.

[1:41:07] Not interested?

[1:41:08] You can take that elsewhere.

[1:41:09] This is for ghosts and the people who are interested in ghosts and ghosts that are interested in people and ghosts that are interested in ghosts.

[1:41:15] So that's adultghostfinder.com.

[1:41:17] Dan, you think that Squarespace could help me?

Dan McCoy

[1:41:18] I think it's great and I think that that is the product or service that people will remember coming out of this ad break and not either of the people who are paying us.

[1:41:28] So thank you for that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:29] Well, ExpressVPN and Squarespace.

[1:41:32] Please go use them.

Dan McCoy

[1:41:33] Stuart, you got a Jembo trying to read, right?

Stuart Wellington

[1:41:36] Hell yeah, I do.

[1:41:37] It goes like this.

[1:41:40] On the Discord and Rhyme podcast, a motley crew of music nerds, or perhaps a Def Leppard.

[1:41:48] That's a reference to the English band Def Leppard.

[1:41:53] Discusses an album per episode.

[1:41:56] No track left out.

[1:41:57] Fighting the forces of chaos in today's era of buffet listening.

[1:42:02] Our eclectic lineup of more than 50 albums includes The Kinks, Captain Beefheart, The Mountain Goats, Kate Bush,

[1:42:12] Janet Jackson, Ween, a 70s disco musical version of The War of the Worlds, and the Mega Man 2 soundtrack.

[1:42:21] Because why not?

[1:42:23] Subscribe to Discord and Rhyme wherever podcasts are found.

[1:42:28] Available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or anywhere else.

[1:42:31] Discord and Rhyme.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:33] I am definitely going to listen to their Mega Man 2 episode because that is my favorite video game soundtrack of all time.

[1:42:39] But I've also got a Jumbotron.

[1:42:42] And it goes like this.

[1:42:44] Somewhere in Middle America, a red-headed boy lives in a town called Riverdale.

[1:42:49] On the Riverdale High AV Club, sibling hosts Megan and Ezra chronicle his life, friends, family, pets, and exploits.

[1:42:57] In weekly episodes full of goofs and a few facts, they dive into the background of all things Archie.

[1:43:02] Join them as they explore such hidden corners of the Archiverse as Cosmo the Merry Martian, Katie Keene, CW's Riverdale, and more.

[1:43:10] Tune in to the Riverdale High AV Club on all your favorite podcatchers.

[1:43:13] That's right. Listen to their podcast, the Riverdale High AV Club, about all things Archie.

[1:43:19] Do you think they've...

Dan McCoy

[1:43:20] I was going to say, that sounds like my version of a Riverdale podcast.

[1:43:24] Like, I'm like, just talk to me about, like, the weird, obscure comics characters.

[1:43:27] I don't care about the sexy CW Riverdales.

[1:43:30] Like, give me the, you know...

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:32] Give me the sexy comic characters.

[1:43:34] Yes, the comic characters.

[1:43:35] I wonder if they've done an episode about that series where Jughead's dog was a superhero.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:40] Probably not yet.

[1:43:41] Yeah.

[1:43:42] You know, you gotta save something for season 10.

[1:43:45] Yeah.

[1:43:47] Hey.

[1:43:48] We'll get to it.

[1:43:49] I got good news, everyone.

[1:43:50] We can announce our contest winners.

[1:43:52] The winners of the prize packs for the raffle we did.

[1:43:56] The charity raffle during the charity livestream.

[1:43:59] Stuart is getting out his note.

[1:44:02] Because he's the one who's going to be sending these things out.

[1:44:04] Although, I can just email this information.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:06] No, no.

[1:44:06] Make sure he gets the information this way, Dan.

[1:44:08] Don't spoon feed it to him.

Dan McCoy

[1:44:09] Okay, I'll give him the full address of everyone who won.

[1:44:12] No, the contest winners are Robert Bain, which sounds like the, you know, mystery writer.

[1:44:20] Robert Bain.

[1:44:21] Congratulations.

[1:44:23] Tyler Moore.

[1:44:24] There's no Mary in front of it.

[1:44:25] Just Tyler Moore.

[1:44:27] And...

[1:44:27] Congratulations.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:27] I didn't realize they were also winning the chance to be razzed live on the show.

Dan McCoy

[1:44:32] And Stuart...

Elliott Kalan

[1:44:33] By Dan Rickles over here.

Dan McCoy

[1:44:35] Stuart, this will be a familiar name for you.

[1:44:38] Uh, Casey Crowe.

[1:44:40] Oh, shit.

[1:44:41] Your old buddy from college.

[1:44:42] My college roommate and oldest friend, Casey Crowe.

[1:44:45] Was chosen at random.

[1:44:46] We could possibly, you know...

[1:44:48] Sure.

[1:44:49] Sure, Dan.

[1:44:49] We could possibly, uh, do another drawing if you like, Stuart, so we can send out four.

[1:44:55] So, it's not just your friend.

Stuart Wellington

[1:44:56] Well, I'm, I'm glad that you have revealed evidence of my corruption live on the podcast.

Dan McCoy

[1:45:02] No, I was amazed.

[1:45:03] I was like, oh, out of the thousands of people, I recognize that name.

[1:45:07] But, um, yeah, maybe we'll, we'll draw another one as a bonus just to, just to make sure everyone knows we're on the up and up.

[1:45:14] But those are the congratulations.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:15] I guess Casey won fair and square, but we'll, uh, we'll, we'll throw one.

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:18] I like that instead of Dan just discarding that one and choosing another one without telling anybody, he instead put it out on the airwaves.

Dan McCoy

[1:45:25] I mean, it seems unfair to Casey in that situation, right?

[1:45:28] Like, he, uh...

[1:45:28] It's not like Casey's never gonna know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:30] Casey had the tip of his finger bitten off by a dog recently, Elliot.

[1:45:33] You don't think he deserves a prize?

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:35] I mean, not having known that, I'm gonna have to say yes.

[1:45:39] Okay.

[1:45:40] Hey, Casey, you're all right.

S4

[1:45:44] Wow.

[1:45:44] Congratulations, Casey.

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:46] Yeah.

[1:45:46] Congrats to all of our winners and thank you again to everybody who donated during our big live show.

[1:45:51] And, uh, we are still working on putting together the reading of The Boy Next Door that was the prize to everybody for, uh, massively exceeding the number of donations that we expected.

[1:46:01] Thank you very much, everybody, for using your heart to show your best.

[1:46:05] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:06] We do have, I'm not gonna, I can't reveal anything just yet.

[1:46:09] I think people will be happy.

[1:46:10] We do have a lot of the cast in place.

[1:46:13] And, um, it's, you know, many beloved figures from Flophouse Land will be involved.

[1:46:20] Um, so, but let's move on to Letters.

[1:46:23] Right?

[1:46:24] Guys, right?

[1:46:25] Why not?

[1:46:25] Yeah, we need them to make our words.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:27] And yet we've never celebrated them.

[1:46:29] Letters, thanks for everything you do.

[1:46:31] From A to Z and in between, thank you for being there to spell out our words, to be in our cereals and soups, and also just for making us laugh on rainy days.

[1:46:41] Letters.

[1:46:43] Here, this one's for you.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:45] Wait, hold on.

[1:46:45] So, are we laughing because the letters have spelled out jokes, or are we just sort of observing letters and, you know, finding joy in that?

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:54] Dan, whatever floats your boat when you need a lift, sometimes it's just looking at a lowercase Q and being like, hey, what are you up to, buddy?

[1:47:01] And sometimes, and sometimes it's reading some Robert Benchley and knowing that without letters, those ideas would have just died in his head, never communicated, except maybe verbally to one person right next to him.

[1:47:13] Letters, hey, you're the best.

Dan McCoy

[1:47:16] Or a whole round table of people.

[1:47:18] Um, let's do letters then.

[1:47:21] Uh, these are in the form of emails, however.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:23] Dan, hold on, Dan.

[1:47:24] What?

[1:47:24] Let's celebrate these letters and let's be, treat them to a good time.

[1:47:29] But I don't know if we need to do them unless, if there's chemistry between you and one of the letters, Dan, then go for it.

Dan McCoy

[1:47:34] Oh, damn it.

[1:47:35] Florian.

[1:47:36] Florian, last name withheld, is the first person writing.

[1:47:40] Florian writes, hi, Dan and Elliot and Stu.

[1:47:42] The three investigators were a huge part of my childhood in Germany.

[1:47:46] Now, this was brought up on the last episode with Hodgman and David Reese when we talked about detectives.

[1:47:53] I talked about how I liked the three investigators.

[1:47:55] Really ripped from the headlines.

[1:47:57] It is, it is.

[1:47:58] This is one of the more new emails you'll ever hear, but I thought it was interesting.

Elliott Kalan

[1:48:02] One of the more new, or as other people might say, newer letters.

[1:48:05] Yeah, okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:48:06] Well, I'm just, anyway, the point is I'm giving a little backstory.

[1:48:08] I read the three investigators as a kid.

[1:48:10] None of the others knew about this particular series of mysteries.

[1:48:16] And if you don't listen to the minis, I have seen, you know, like fewer people do.

[1:48:21] They're really good guys.

[1:48:22] They're a lot of fun.

[1:48:24] And they have less nonsense in them in the sense of boring stuff and more nonsense in them in the sense of nonsense.

Elliott Kalan

[1:48:30] Don't be a mini-misser.

[1:48:32] Hey, it's the worst thing you can be is a mini-misser.

[1:48:35] Don't miss those minis.

[1:48:36] Catch them today at the Flophouse.

Dan McCoy

[1:48:38] Okay.

[1:48:39] Well, he says they were a huge part of his childhood in Germany.

[1:48:41] The books were popular here, but the three boys from Palm Beach reached iconic status in the form of radio plays.

[1:48:48] All German kids from my generation had at least a couple of die-dre-fratzen-zeigen.

[1:48:57] Perfect pronunciation.

[1:48:59] That's really good.

[1:48:59] Yeah, that's great.

[1:49:00] Are you from Berlin?

[1:49:02] D-tapes.

[1:49:03] No, how is that?

[1:49:04] How would you say that, Stuart?

[1:49:05] You speak German, right?

Stuart Wellington

[1:49:07] I don't speak it well enough to repeat what I just kind of heard you say.

Dan McCoy

[1:49:12] What's the word for investigators?

[1:49:13] Does it sound anything like franz-zeigen?

Stuart Wellington

[1:49:15] Well, you know how to say three.

[1:49:18] Yep.

[1:49:19] D-dre.

[1:49:21] Franz-is-something-something.

[1:49:22] Rather than d-dre, as Dan said.

Dan McCoy

[1:49:25] Okay.

[1:49:25] Well, anyway.

[1:49:27] Had at least a couple of d-dre-fratzen-zeigen tapes or LPs to listen to on repeat.

[1:49:33] I am the same age as you.

[1:49:35] In 1997, a group of fans even started a playback theater show where they would have one of the tapes running and would lip-sync and move to it in front of an audience.

[1:49:44] This was a huge success and prompted the makers of the radio plays to go on extended tours of the German-speaking countries.

[1:49:52] They are still touring to this day.

[1:49:54] Too long didn't read.

[1:49:55] You didn't make up the three investigators.

[1:49:57] But they're probably considered weird or oft as evidenced by the fact that they were and are loved in Germany.

[1:50:02] Love the floor?

[1:50:03] Love the floor.

[1:50:04] Love the show, Florian.

[1:50:06] I'm sure Florian would love the floor, too, if you could see it.

[1:50:08] I've got a nice rug in here.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:10] It's that old Gearbook quote.

[1:50:13] Thanks to the floor for holding me up.

[1:50:17] Or thanks to the floor for always supporting me.

[1:50:19] That's another way of seeing it.

[1:50:20] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[1:50:22] Stuart, I'm sorry that I put you on the spot as my translator.

[1:50:25] No, it's okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:50:26] I was just trying to Google what investigator is in German, and it's not what you said.

[1:50:32] So I'm very confused.

[1:50:33] Sure, it might be a different...

Dan McCoy

[1:50:33] Well, it's probably an idiomatic translation.

[1:50:36] That's not...

Stuart Wellington

[1:50:37] Yeah, that's fair.

[1:50:37] Now, I'm surprised I've...

[1:50:39] There's probably a very specific German word for, like, three brothers who saw mysteries and are loosely related to Hitchcock.

[1:50:48] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:49] Bruder, frage, Hitchcocken.

[1:50:50] You know, that kind of thing.

[1:50:51] You know.

[1:50:51] Yeah.

[1:50:52] It's like, I'm surprised I never heard of the idea of people lip syncing on stage to radio shows or, like, drama LPs.

[1:50:59] And that's a great idea.

[1:51:00] That's a really good idea.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:02] Let's bring it over here.

[1:51:03] Let's lip sync to our own podcast on the road.

[1:51:06] Okay.

[1:51:06] Interesting.

Stuart Wellington

[1:51:08] That seems easier than us just coming up with this highly original bullshit, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:14] Ironically, that would require so much more preparation than what we currently do.

Stuart Wellington

[1:51:19] But you could switch roles, which would be very interesting.

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:23] Oh, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:24] I mean, they are doing transcripts.

[1:51:27] We could do readings where we all switch parts.

[1:51:31] It's our own version of True West.

[1:51:34] Okay.

[1:51:35] This one says this.

[1:51:36] Mr. McCoy, feel free to relax in this letter because you've already done your part.

[1:51:42] Elliot and Stuart, you've got some splaining to do.

[1:51:45] What are your erotica author aliases?

[1:51:49] The Great Dane has already unmasked himself in front of the World Press and subsequently been taken into police custody.

[1:51:56] You can all split this prison sentence three ways so it won't be so hard on any one of you.

[1:52:01] All you have to do is to state your full name and erotic alias into this microphone, then come out with your hands up.

[1:52:08] It's over.

[1:52:08] Big fan.

[1:52:09] Detective Jack.

[1:52:10] Last name withheld.

[1:52:12] Now, I mean, this seems like the opposite of the prisoner's dilemma.

[1:52:15] You know that I will just do the time if you keep your mouth shut.

[1:52:20] And so there's no, you know, you don't have to make any calculations.

[1:52:23] Like, the self-interested thing would be to just not say anything.

Stuart Wellington

[1:52:29] So the premise of this bit is that we are moonlighting as erotic authors.

[1:52:35] And we have to reveal what our nom de plume is.

[1:52:39] I'm just clarifying and returning to first principles, Stuart.

[1:52:43] Thank you.

[1:52:44] I just want to make sure I'm up to speed.

[1:52:46] You know, I like playing games.

Dan McCoy

[1:52:47] I mean, also we could just ignore it and pretend it never happened.

[1:52:50] We are the judge.

[1:52:52] You know?

[1:52:53] We make the call.

Stuart Wellington

[1:52:54] Do you have a nom de plume?

[1:52:55] Do you have an erotic author name?

Elliott Kalan

[1:52:57] Yeah, J.R.R.

[1:52:58] Throbin.

[1:52:58] Sure.

Stuart Wellington

[1:52:59] Okay.

[1:52:59] Oh, wow.

[1:53:01] You were quick with that one.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:03] Well, I spent the time Dan was reading the letter thinking of it.

[1:53:06] Hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[1:53:07] I feel like I want to pick a name that no one else in the world would pick.

[1:53:13] So I think maybe like Jackson Galaxy.

[1:53:17] Okay.

[1:53:19] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:21] And Erin, let's say you were involved in this highly questionable shenanigan.

S4

[1:53:26] Certainly, I have been thinking the entire time of what my erotica nom de plume would be.

[1:53:32] I think I would probably be Smulder Divine.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:39] Oh, that's very good.

[1:53:40] Oh, yeah.

[1:53:41] I like it.

[1:53:41] I mean, nom.

[1:53:42] That's significantly better than ours.

[1:53:43] Nom de plume is a pretty good erotica nom de plume.

Dan McCoy

[1:53:47] Hmm.

[1:53:51] Uh, guys, that's it for letters.

[1:53:54] Put it behind you.

[1:53:55] It's gone.

[1:53:55] It's dead now.

[1:53:56] You never had any letters.

[1:53:57] Pick them up and throw them in the...

[1:53:57] Yeah, don't look back.

Stuart Wellington

[1:53:58] Pick them up and throw them in Elliot's old trash can.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:00] Yeah, if you look back, it'll turn into assault.

[1:54:01] Just keep moving forward.

[1:54:04] Uh, now we got to talk about good movies that you should watch.

[1:54:07] Or, I mean, they don't have to be good.

[1:54:09] The thing I'm thinking about recommending is not.

[1:54:11] But it is fun.

[1:54:12] So, uh, let's go with that.

[1:54:14] Movies that people might enjoy.

[1:54:15] Let's say movies you would recommend.

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:16] Let's just call them movies we'd recommend.

[1:54:18] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:18] Yeah, don't make it complex, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:20] It's fine.

[1:54:20] I mean, you've already oversold yours quite a bit by calling it not good.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:25] Uh, well, I guess I'm already in it.

[1:54:27] I'm going to say, uh, I'm going to...

[1:54:30] See, the only thing worse than my German is my, uh, my Brazilian.

[1:54:36] So, or I guess Portuguese, right?

[1:54:38] Is that...

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:39] Well, Portuguese is the language, but Brazilian, I think, is the wax that you're talking about.

[1:54:42] Yes.

[1:54:42] Because they did not do a good job.

[1:54:44] Uh...

Dan McCoy

[1:54:45] Uh...

Elliott Kalan

[1:54:46] Uh...

[1:54:47] Uh...

[1:54:48] Uh...

[1:54:49] That made me sad.

[1:54:50] Uh...

[1:54:51] Well, don't go to Budget Brazilian next time, Dan.

[1:54:54] That was your mistake.

[1:54:56] Some things are worth paying full price for.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:59] Okay.

[1:54:59] So, I...

[1:55:00] My Portuguese is not good, but, uh...

[1:55:03] The, uh...

[1:55:03] Movie I'm recommending is Super Shusha Contra Obayo Astral.

[1:55:11] Perfect.

[1:55:12] Let's know that.

[1:55:12] Which, uh, is...

[1:55:14] You know, it translates basically to Shusha Against the Down Mood.

[1:55:19] Um...

[1:55:19] And this is...

[1:55:20] Okay.

[1:55:20] The Brazilian children's host, Shusha, who had, uh...

[1:55:24] Or, Shusha.

[1:55:25] I, I, I'm...

[1:55:26] Again, my accent is not good, but she was huge in Brazil.

[1:55:29] This movie that she made, uh, was the number three most profitable Brazilian film in Brazil.

[1:55:37] Or, sorry, the most profitable Brazilian film in Brazil.

[1:55:40] And the third most popular movie in Brazil that year overall.

[1:55:44] Like, above things like Robocop.

[1:55:46] So, it was a huge hit there.

[1:55:49] And, um...

[1:55:50] The best way to describe it is if...

[1:55:53] If Labyrinth, uh, was, uh...

[1:55:56] Done with, like, puppets you found in, say, like, a lost and found box.

[1:56:01] And instead of a baby being stolen, it was, uh, a dog puppet.

[1:56:07] And instead of it being kind of about, like, the coming of age of a, of a young girl, it's about this Brazilian lady in hot pants, like, singing songs about how we need to treat the earth better and not be sad.

[1:56:20] And, um, and the...

[1:56:23] And it's less coherent than that makes it sound, if that's possible.

[1:56:27] Uh, she's basically fighting the Satan.

[1:56:30] And it has this, as I alluded to before, the biggest crime in this world seems to be that you can't feel sad.

[1:56:36] Like, don't have a down mood.

[1:56:38] Which is, like, a completely misguided, uh, thing for people's emotional development, certainly, if this is for children.

[1:56:45] And very weird right now in the world as it is.

[1:56:48] Uh, but if you enjoy things that are, uh, just sort of colorful and weird and go off in directions you cannot comprehend and fathom and just let it wash over you.

[1:57:01] Like, it is a good, bizarre time.

[1:57:06] It's hard to find, uh, you probably might have to do it in a legal fashion, but it's, it's fun.

Elliott Kalan

[1:57:13] Which is an adventure in itself.

[1:57:16] Sounds like something to use your ExpressVPN for.

[1:57:18] Mm-hmm.

[1:57:20] Cover up your tracks.

Stuart Wellington

[1:57:23] Do either of you guys have a recommendation?

Elliott Kalan

[1:57:26] Uh, I do.

[1:57:27] Erin, would you like to go next?

S4

[1:57:28] Sure.

[1:57:29] Uh, so this, so Between Worlds felt to me like a horror comedy.

[1:57:35] That was how I experienced it.

[1:57:38] Um, and so another scary comedy that's more funny than scary, uh, is What We Do in the Shadows, which is a movie that, it's a movie that I really, really enjoyed.

[1:57:51] And now I started watching the series on FX that I'm also really enjoying.

[1:57:56] Um, so I would recommend that for people who want to laugh at something that should be scary and isn't.

[1:58:03] Um, also, Reese Darby is in What We Do in the Shadows, and he's also on The Big Fib streaming on Disney+, headwritten by me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:58:12] Oh, snuck a little plug in there.

S4

[1:58:15] Um, he, he's so great.

[1:58:17] He's so great.

[1:58:18] Also, if you want to, if you love Nicolas Cage's huge performance in this, um, then get in the Wayback Machine and watch or rewatch Vampire's Kiss.

[1:58:29] Uh, because that is a huge Nick Cage performance that just reinforces the fact that, um, this isn't new.

[1:58:38] He's always been this way.

[1:58:39] Like, he's always been so big.

[1:58:41] He's always made such huge choices and committed 100%.

[1:58:44] Um, so those are my two recommendations.

Stuart Wellington

[1:58:48] Always swinging for the fences, that guy.

[1:58:50] He really does.

Elliott Kalan

[1:58:52] Uh, I'm going to recommend a movie, unless you would like to go next, Stuart.

Stuart Wellington

[1:58:56] Oh, let me think.

[1:58:58] Uh, no, Ellie, you can go.

[1:58:59] Okay, thank you.

[1:58:59] But certainly you should drag it out, either way.

Elliott Kalan

[1:59:01] This movie ties into Between Worlds because it is also about a man who has very serious and at times traumatic memories tied up in a house

[1:59:08] that is not being well taken care of.

[1:59:11] And that's The Last Black Man in San Francisco, directed by Joe Talbot and, uh, written by him and, uh, Jimmy Fails.

[1:59:18] And, starring Jimmy Fails.

[1:59:19] And, uh, it's about a man in San Francisco who, uh, when he was a kid, his family lived in one of these, like, big, fancy, painted lady houses in San Francisco.

[1:59:29] And for years, he's been stopping by and taking care of it against the wishes of the current owners who think it's very strange.

[1:59:36] And when he gets the opportunity to kind of take semi-lawful possession of the house, he goes for it.

[1:59:43] But there's a lot more going on in the movie than that.

[1:59:46] And it's a lot about San Francisco as a changing city and black lives and white lives and friendship and all sorts of things.

[1:59:53] I found it to be a really beautiful movie and very lyrical and enjoyed it a lot.

[1:59:57] My wife, who's from the Bay Area and spent a lot of time in San Francisco, said it showed her a side of San Francisco she was not really familiar with.

[2:00:03] So she really enjoyed it, too.

[2:00:05] So The Last Black Man in San Francisco I'd recommend.

[2:00:07] Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

[2:00:09] So if you have Amazon Prime, just go watch it for free.

[2:00:12] You already paid for it.

Stuart Wellington

[2:00:13] Yeah, it's, it's, it's gorgeous.

[2:00:16] Yeah, it's a beautiful movie.

[2:00:18] And I'm going to recommend a Japanese zombie movie called One Cut of the Dead.

[2:00:23] I don't think I've recommended this before.

[2:00:25] But it is a movie about a movie.

[2:00:30] And it's about a bunch of filmmakers making a zombie movie.

[2:00:34] Or are they trapped in a zombie movie?

[2:00:36] It's a lot of fun.

[2:00:38] It plays with, like, it plays with ideas of low budget filmmaking and, like, found footage stuff.

[2:00:48] It's a lot of, it's, it's just great.

[2:00:50] It's fun.

[2:00:50] It's a hard movie not to like.

[2:00:52] I've been wanting to watch that one.

[2:00:53] One Cut of the Dead.

[2:00:53] I've heard a lot of really good things about it.

Dan McCoy

[2:00:55] And speaking of Stuart recommendations, it just occurs to me, we should mention this.

[2:00:59] You were on Movie Crush recently.

[2:01:02] Yeah.

[2:01:02] Chuck Bryant's podcast about people and their favorite movies talking about.

Stuart Wellington

[2:01:08] And I got to talk about the greatest movie of all time.

Dan McCoy

[2:01:10] Ricky O, the story of Ricky.

[2:01:12] The greatest movie ever made.

[2:01:13] And I was on it recently, too, talking about Aliens.

[2:01:16] And Elliot will be on it soon, I believe.

Elliott Kalan

[2:01:19] Yes, talking about my favorite, The Taken of Pelham 123.

Dan McCoy

[2:01:23] And I didn't know, it just occurred to me, like, we don't often plug these other appearances

[2:01:28] other than on social media.

Stuart Wellington

[2:01:29] And, you know, would it kill us to tell people once in a while?

[2:01:32] Huh?

[2:01:33] No, it doesn't kill anyone.

[2:01:35] But speaking of plugs, I'd like to throw out a plug.

[2:01:39] Now that New York is slowly and carefully reopening, at least carefully in our case, I just wanted

[2:01:46] to mention that my wife and I have a new bar in Sunset Park that has a very expansive backyard

[2:01:51] and also is currently doing to-go service.

[2:01:54] It's called Minnie's Bar.

[2:01:56] And it's lovely.

[2:01:57] And if you get a chance and you're in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, come by for a to-go cocktail.

[2:02:02] They just got a frozen drink machine, which I'm very excited about because I don't have

[2:02:08] to clean other people clean.

[2:02:10] It's not like we just let it get gross.

[2:02:11] That'd be crazy.

[2:02:12] So if you get a chance, check out Minnie's Bar in Sunset Park.

Dan McCoy

[2:02:15] Now, Erin, are you offering to-go cocktails?

S4

[2:02:20] If you can find me.

[2:02:22] Okay.

[2:02:22] And if you can afford me, then I will make you a to-go cocktail.

Dan McCoy

[2:02:28] Okay.

[2:02:28] Well, in lieu of that, are there other things you would like to plug?

S4

[2:02:33] Thank you so much for asking, Daniel.

[2:02:36] Yes.

[2:02:37] So as I mentioned before, I was head writer for The Big Fib on Disney+, which is a game

[2:02:44] show for kids.

[2:02:45] It is basically we have a 10-year-old contestant thereabouts who interviews two adults who both

[2:02:53] claim to be an expert in a given field.

[2:02:55] And then that child at the end of it has to guess who is the expert and who has been lying

[2:02:59] to them the entire time.

[2:03:01] So it's teaching critical thinking.

[2:03:02] It's fun.

[2:03:03] It's very silly.

[2:03:05] Reese Darby plays a robot.

[2:03:07] So for younger kids, I think it's really fun.

[2:03:11] For older kids, i.e. adults, I also was head writer for The Great Fantasy Debate on Facebook

[2:03:18] where teams of fantasy authors and comedians square off to debate issues within the fantasy

[2:03:26] world, like which fantasy world would be the best place to go on vacation or which fantasy

[2:03:32] character would be the worst roommate, things like that.

[2:03:36] That's really fun.

[2:03:36] And we had Jim Butcher on.

[2:03:38] We had Naomi Novik on, Tochi Onyebuchi, Marie Lu, Pierce Brown, and then a bunch of really

[2:03:47] talented comedians.

[2:03:48] That's really fun.

[2:03:49] And it's 10-minute episodes on Facebook.

[2:03:51] So it's like, you're already on Facebook for 10 minutes.

[2:03:54] Watch my show.

Elliott Kalan

[2:03:55] It's easier to watch it than not to watch it.

[2:03:57] It's harder to avoid it.

Dan McCoy

[2:03:59] And Elliot, you have children.

[2:04:01] And Stuart, you like fantasy.

[2:04:03] So it seems like there's something here for everyone.

[2:04:05] There's something for everyone.

S4

[2:04:06] Yeah.

[2:04:06] And for people who like podcasts, my scripted podcast, Ellie in the Wave, is available wherever

[2:04:12] you get your podcasts.

[2:04:14] That's a funny scripted dystopian.

[2:04:17] With Natalie Morales.

[2:04:18] With Natalie Morales.

[2:04:20] Not the Today Show host, but the very talented comedic actor, Natalie Morales, is our lead on it.

Elliott Kalan

[2:04:27] So where do we go to get the Today Show host, Natalie Morales?

[2:04:29] That's great.

[2:04:29] Uh...

S4

[2:04:30] I wish I had her number for you.

[2:04:36] I mean, probably the studio.

[2:04:38] I think you just go to the Today Show.

[2:04:39] Yeah.

[2:04:39] Yeah, you go to the Today Show.

Elliott Kalan

[2:04:40] I mean, I guess I could just stand outside the window.

[2:04:42] I think you stand outside with a sign.

S4

[2:04:43] Yeah.

[2:04:43] And just wait.

Elliott Kalan

[2:04:44] With a sign that says, Natalie, I have something very important to tell you.

[2:04:47] Come outside.

[2:04:48] That always works.

[2:04:49] That'll work.

[2:04:50] That'll work.

[2:04:50] Yeah.

[2:04:51] I mean, I usually...

Stuart Wellington

[2:04:52] I usually would just walk around until I get some kind of an indicator on one of the NPCs

[2:04:58] I'm passing that I can start a conversation.

[2:05:01] And then I scroll down my conversation options and see if one of them would...

[2:05:06] Might lead me to finding this Today Show host.

Dan McCoy

[2:05:09] Now we know what Stuart's Terminator readout looks like.

[2:05:13] Okay.

[2:05:14] Well, we've dithered enough.

[2:05:16] Let's thank Jordan Cowling for producing this show and editing.

[2:05:21] And thank Maximum Fun for being our network.

[2:05:25] You can see...

[2:05:26] Or listen to, rather.

[2:05:27] Other great shows at MaximumFun.org.

[2:05:31] And we always appreciate you listening.

[2:05:34] Thank you for being with us.

[2:05:36] You especially.

Elliott Kalan

[2:05:37] You, right now, hearing this, you're our favorite.

[2:05:40] And we're so glad that you're listening.

[2:05:42] And if there's more than one person in the room, both of you are our favorites.

[2:05:45] Okay.

[2:05:46] And if there's more than two, I'm sorry, only two of you are our favorites.

Dan McCoy

[2:05:49] If there's more than two, a broken pool cue will appear in front of you.

[2:05:54] And you have to fight for it.

[2:05:57] Okay.

[2:05:58] Well, that didn't go well for an ending.

[2:06:00] Hey, thanks, Erin, for being here.

Stuart Wellington

[2:06:03] Thanks for having me, you guys.

Dan McCoy

[2:06:05] Yeah, thank you.

[2:06:06] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[2:06:07] We'll kill death.

[2:06:09] For the Flophouse.

[2:06:10] I've been Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[2:06:13] Yeah, so I guess I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[2:06:17] Not sure exactly what Dan was getting at, but, you know, that's okay.

[2:06:21] I don't always know.

[2:06:23] Bye.

[2:06:27] I feel like talking about the movie was more fun.

Stuart Wellington

[2:06:38] I had more fun talking about it than I kind of did watching it.

[2:06:41] Because, as I said, I was watching it by myself.

[2:06:43] And I'm like, no, no, don't do this.

Elliott Kalan

[2:06:46] I think watching it with a group would be a little better.

[2:06:48] Yeah.

[2:06:49] With the right group.

[2:06:50] Like, not with your parents.

Ep. #316 - Between Worlds, w/ Erin Foley-Chan

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