Ep. #296 - Slender Man

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

[0:04] Don't worry, the plot is a little...

[0:06] Thin?

[0:08] Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm!

[0:30] Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flop House.

[0:38] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:39] Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:41] And over here, it's Elliot Kalin, and I can see my co-hosts right in front of me in person.

[0:45] What's this all about?

[0:46] And what's the improved sound quality about?

[0:48] What's that all about?

[0:49] Yeah, it's almost like we're in an actual recording studio.

[0:51] Stuart, are we in an actual recording studio?

[0:54] Elliot, yes, we are.

[0:55] Dan, where are we?

[0:56] We're in MaxFun HQ.

[0:59] This is recorded right after the day after our L.A. show, which will be here years from

[1:06] now.

[1:07] Sorry to interrupt, but normally when you...

[1:08] There's suddenly more interruptions somehow, even though we're all in the same room.

[1:10] Seems like it.

[1:11] Sorry to interrupt, but when you're playing a game of Hot Potato Day and you gotta keep

[1:14] moving that hot potato, I pass it to you.

[1:17] Okay, well, I was...

[1:18] It's fine.

[1:19] Let's get to business.

[1:20] Dan, I'll just say it.

[1:21] MaxFun HQ, or MaxHeadCroom, as it's also known.

[1:25] I forget what I was gonna say.

[1:27] You know, we just thought, why not do it right, for once?

[1:29] Okay, so we were recording a show in Los Angeles.

[1:31] We did a live show last night, and so now we're recording it at MaxFun HQ, because we're

[1:36] all in the same city, here in the beautiful American Cement Building, right next to beautiful

[1:40] MacArthur Park, where yesterday we saw a pair of ducks eating a baby, or whatever Jesse

[1:45] says at the end of the whole time.

[1:49] Remember, every radio star has a signature start-off, or whatever.

[1:53] It's the opposite of what he says, I guess.

[1:55] Yeah.

[1:56] Okay, well, I guess that's good for the Venn Diagram of people who listen to us and Bullseye,

[2:01] but not the rest of the audience.

[2:03] You're right, Dan.

[2:04] We're usually pretty good about making jokes.

[2:05] Only the general populace and no one will not feel excluded from.

[2:09] Yeah, yeah.

[2:10] Only, you know, only the broadest of comedy.

[2:13] Guys, what month is it?

[2:15] I don't know, Dan.

[2:16] What month is it?

[2:17] It's so month.

[2:18] No, wait.

[2:19] Is that what you're going for?

[2:20] It's October.

[2:21] Oh, okay.

[2:22] Where are we?

[2:23] Watch horror movies.

[2:24] Yeah, for this podcast.

[2:25] Well, because what do we do on this podcast, Dan?

[2:26] I feel like you went to Chapter 3 and when you skip Chapter 2.

[2:27] Well, you gotta make sure the book's good, dude.

[2:28] I think somehow the professionalism of our environment is bringing our professionalism

[2:29] down.

[2:30] I think so.

[2:31] Yeah, we keep waiting for the real hosts to come in.

[2:32] Speaking of hosts, on this show, that's us.

[2:33] What do we do on this show as the hosts?

[2:34] Perfect.

[2:35] You threw it to me right there.

[2:36] I'm like, yeah, I'm going to do this.

[2:37] I'm going to do this.

[2:44] the show is about to get really kind of spooky.

[2:45] I'm not going to lie.

[2:46] I feel like you're doing it.

[2:47] You are.

[2:48] You are.

[2:49] You are.

[2:50] You are.

[2:51] You are.

[2:52] You are.

[2:53] You are.

[2:54] You are.

[2:55] You are.

[2:56] You are.

[2:57] You are.

[2:58] You are.

[2:59] You are.

[3:00] You are.

[3:01] You are.

[3:02] You are.

[3:03] You are.

[3:04] You are.

[3:05] You are.

[3:06] You are.

[3:07] You are.

[3:08] So, Dan, take four, I think.

[3:09] What do we do on this podcast?

[3:10] We watch a bad movie, and then we talk about it.

[3:11] Oh, yeah.

[3:12] And what month is it?

[3:13] So, you just started going back to school, and you got this mountain of homework, and

[3:17] you also have to manage that with your extracurriculars.

[3:21] There are all those leaves you have to rake, and they're dead, and so you have ghost leaves

[3:26] all around you.

[3:27] Yeah.

[3:28] The ghost leaves are hanging on the trees.

[3:29] Yeah.

[3:30] Of course.

[3:31] That makes sense.

[3:32] Also, you've got to wear a jacket, and what's scarier than that, having to wear a lightweight

[3:35] jacket?

[3:36] That was my favorite thing about trick-or-treating in the Midwest, was no matter what, I had

[3:42] to, like, prepare for cold weather.

[3:44] Yeah.

[3:45] So, you were a ghost wearing a jacket, is what you're saying.

[3:48] I think I stole that from somebody on Twitter.

[3:49] I'm sorry.

[3:50] Yeah, but the person on Twitter was doing, I hope unwittingly, a Jerry Seinfeld joke

[3:54] from about 15 years ago, so.

[3:56] Okay.

[3:57] So, yeah, like, I, you know, I stole from somebody.

[4:00] Look, we're all stealing from somebody.

[4:04] Man stole fire from the gods when Prometheus gave it to us.

[4:07] I'm stealing from my local bank.

[4:09] You're blaming...

[4:10] What?

[4:11] Hold on.

[4:12] Wait.

[4:13] So, wait.

[4:14] Was Prometheus involved with your bank, too?

[4:16] Yeah.

[4:17] He banks with Prometheus Bank.

[4:18] Oh, wow.

[4:19] Where he takes gold from Zeus and gives it to customers.

[4:23] Stuart's been staring at his notes for a while.

[4:25] I think he's raring to go.

[4:26] Oh, no.

[4:27] I'm just scrolling through Instagram right now.

[4:30] Another post from Dan, huh?

[4:32] Cool.

[4:33] While he's hosting the show.

[4:34] Amazing.

[4:35] What?

[4:36] Okay.

[4:37] So.

[4:38] So, tonight, if you...

[4:39] Tonight.

[4:40] I figured I'd set the mood because it's a spooky show.

[4:42] Yeah, it's less scary if people know that it's 1.45 p.m. where we are right now.

[4:48] So, tonight, we're going to be talking about a little movie called Slender Man.

[4:52] A very little movie.

[4:55] Very skinny.

[4:58] Okay, just kidding.

[5:00] It's a normal movie, but it, you know, does feel kind of slim.

[5:04] It's a normal movie.

[5:06] Such as you might find in your local Redbox.

[5:09] It's not like those scenes in, what's that show with Julia Roberts where it's about the

[5:14] returning veterans?

[5:15] Homecoming?

[5:16] Homecoming, where some of the scenes are shot in a narrow aspect ratio.

[5:21] It's not like that.

[5:22] Wait, what?

[5:23] Forget it.

[5:24] Never mind.

[5:25] Okay.

[5:26] Not worth it.

[5:27] So, just to let everybody know up front that I watched this movie on a MacBook Slim in

[5:36] honor of the movie.

[5:37] Oh, man.

[5:38] Was that or because you were on a plane watching it?

[5:41] I was on a plane.

[5:42] And you were on that plane with Fatboy Slim, former recording star.

[5:46] I thought he was fucking in heaven.

[5:48] Yeah, on a plane.

[5:49] Okay.

[5:50] Okay.

[5:51] So, the movie opens and we are introduced to a group of teen girls in small town USA.

[5:57] I am not sure if it's mentioned later, but is it, are we in like New Jersey?

[6:02] Did they say Clifton a couple times?

[6:04] Guys, I couldn't keep track of where the movie took place.

[6:08] I couldn't keep track of who the characters were or what their names were.

[6:10] The characters were pretty damn interchangeable.

[6:13] Well, their names are Hallie, Chloe, Wren, like the bird, and Katie, like the person.

[6:19] It's not Wren like the cartoon dog.

[6:21] Not like Wren the cartoon dog, unless the subtitles were incorrect on my version of

[6:26] the movie.

[6:27] No, I think, because I don't remember any scenes where they're like, we should call

[6:29] up Slenderman.

[6:30] And he's like, no, why would you do that?

[6:33] Wow.

[6:34] You've been working on that one in advance of the podcast?

[6:36] Not really.

[6:37] I told them apart by being like, okay, there's the one that's a little punkier than the

[6:42] others.

[6:43] Then there's the one who was played by one of the girls from Bunheads starring Sutton

[6:47] Foster.

[6:48] Oh, okay.

[6:49] I haven't seen Bunheads.

[6:50] And then there are the two others.

[6:51] Okay.

[6:52] I spent so much time there being like, we got to find Hallie.

[6:54] Where's Kelly?

[6:55] I was like, wait, I thought that was Kelly.

[6:56] Hold on a second.

[6:57] Which one is Wren?

[6:58] I just couldn't, it took me a long time to get their names straight.

[7:01] Yep.

[7:02] That's when the nightmare is completely engulfed you.

[7:04] So we see our friends walking through school.

[7:09] They're our friends?

[7:10] Yeah, they're our friends immediately.

[7:12] They're great.

[7:13] So they're walking through school and they're having that conversation that like all teen

[7:16] kids have in this kind of movie when you know they're doomed, where they're like, we're

[7:21] going to live forever.

[7:22] I think their game is, if you could be any age forever, what age would you be?

[7:27] And of course they're like, I would be 21 or I'd be 30.

[7:31] And then one of them says, I'd be the age we are right now.

[7:36] That allows you to assume what age they're talking about.

[7:40] And then Bruce Springsteen pops in and plays Glory Days.

[7:43] They bump into a group of teen boys that are kind of like the Omega to their Alpha.

[7:48] They're the exact pairings of each of them.

[7:51] And they, unless I'm wrong, basically do not reappear in the movie.

[7:55] Well, Tom shows back up.

[7:57] Tom is as rich a secondary character as exists in this film.

[8:02] Yeah.

[8:03] Yeah.

[8:04] I'm such a fan.

[8:05] I joined the Tom Tom Club.

[8:06] Okay.

[8:07] You're a genius of love.

[8:08] And how do you become a member of the Tom Tom Club?

[8:11] Well, you got to collect a whole bunch of box tops and Marlboro Miles and you send them

[8:15] in.

[8:16] It helps if you have a pretty bitter relationship with David Byrne.

[8:20] So these teen boys, we get a little bit of like, you know, friendly verbal sparring.

[8:25] It's basically a non-singing version of the Atop That scene in Teen Wish.

[8:30] Exactly.

[8:31] And Hallie, our heroine, is asking Tom about what they're going to be doing later.

[8:36] And he's like, it's a secret.

[8:38] And if I told you the secret, I could tell to you, but I'd have to kill you.

[8:42] And I'm like, that's a weird thing to say when you consider this is a movie about people

[8:46] seeing a secret thing and getting killed.

[8:48] I don't know that the characters know that at this point, though.

[8:50] I mean, it's similar.

[8:51] It's that kind of irony where like, or it's like when the narrative, the metaphor, the

[8:56] narrative kind of bleeds into the story itself.

[8:59] Like in the opening chapter of Ulysses, where Buck Mulligan is holding this like silver

[9:04] cigarette case and there's an emerald in the middle of it.

[9:07] And it's a symbol of like this English man holding Ireland in the palm of his hand.

[9:12] You know, you know what I'm talking about.

[9:13] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[9:14] Exactly.

[9:15] Sure.

[9:16] Dan, I've never read Ulysses.

[9:17] I don't know.

[9:18] I heard it's pretty good.

[9:19] It's Stuart sound.

[9:20] I heard there's a guy in it who has a cigarette case.

[9:22] And his name's Buck Mulligan.

[9:24] Yeah.

[9:25] So he's like a porn star.

[9:26] Probably.

[9:27] Probably.

[9:28] Or a famous golfer.

[9:29] I mean, I think he begins like wearing a bathrobe.

[9:31] Like he opens the whatever.

[9:33] OK.

[9:34] So, you know, I love stories about people who wear bathrobes.

[9:36] That's why I've never been a reader of Playboy, but I followed Hugh Hefner's exploits because

[9:40] I admire that he always wore a bathrobe all the time.

[9:42] So we get some scenes of home life.

[9:46] Hallie's parents are concerned about we get some concerns about teen pregnancy or teen

[9:51] partying.

[9:53] Like in many movies, their dining room table is extremely dimly lit and they only have

[9:58] one light.

[10:00] that's on above the table, the kitchen, that I assume is next to the dining room area,

[10:04] completely dark. As if they have everything they need on the table and they will not need to get

[10:09] up and get anything from the kitchen. Which, I don't know about you guys, is a very unrealistic

[10:12] depiction of dinner in my book. Yeah, yeah. Like, I feel like any moment,

[10:16] like a naked Axel Rose could wander in off of the set of what was that, Don't Cry?

[10:23] Okay, so we're also introduced to Hallie's younger sister Lizzie, who clearly wants to

[10:28] join in with the older girls, who only seem slightly older than she is.

[10:34] I actually thought they were the same age for a little bit.

[10:35] And Wren's the one who kind of, like, encourages us a little bit. I mean, like, it's not

[10:39] her sister, but she's like, yeah, you're, you know, she wants to be the cool, like, older friend.

[10:44] Yeah. And Wren and all of our friends,

[10:50] I spent the whole time trying to remember what other things that I've seen these young women in,

[10:55] and they've all been in a number of other things. I want to say, in this early going,

[11:00] I mean, there are a few things I liked about this movie, to spoil it, like,

[11:04] which are surrounded by, like, some of the most sort of generic horror movie filmmaking.

[11:09] I mean, this movie does feel like it is the horror movie demo that comes with your DVD player.

[11:15] Where it's like, does your TV work for horror? Horror? Horror? Does it work for horror also?

[11:19] Does it work for horror? Because let's try it out with this disc. Yeah, I guess it meets the

[11:24] minimum national requirements for horror. But in these early scenes, I kind of liked,

[11:29] despite the fact that the movie's very bad at differentiating these characters, like we said,

[11:33] I did feel like the movie had this kind of weird semi-verite mumblecore thing going on,

[11:41] where, like, it was shot in a slightly different way, like, following these kids than a generic

[11:46] quiet subdued. It's like if 8th grade was a horror movie. Yeah, like a quiet subdued

[11:51] as opposed to, like, guys, we've got to do this thing. Come on, Hallie. That would be crazy.

[11:57] Like, it's not super glossy and fake. Like, it seems like maybe some of the...

[12:01] It feels pretty fake. Well, but it seems like some of the dialogue might be, like,

[12:05] semi-improvised and, like, they have, like, a good rapport with it. I don't know. I'm looking

[12:09] for gems in the chaff, but I feel like... What? Who threw those gems in the chaff?

[12:16] But I'm just saying that... Dan, are you working on some sort of farming mind?

[12:20] If the script had been better... Well, he stole the gems from the duke's men.

[12:27] He's going to return them later. I'm just saying, if the script had been better, this style of

[12:31] doing a horror movie would have been interesting. It's something that I haven't really seen for

[12:34] this kind of teen horror movie. Yeah, like a teen mumblecore horror movie. Yeah, whereas...

[12:38] But there's just not... There's nothing really going on. So at times... So what should have

[12:42] been, like, a kind of endearing subtlety becomes, like, uh... So is this a movie?

[12:48] What happens next? I'm not sure. It's like the boyhood of horror movies, where you're like,

[12:53] uh, am I... So is this a scene, or, like... I don't understand. Yeah, I agree with you about

[12:58] boyhood, but we are not endearing ourselves to, like, the larger audience right now. Hey,

[13:03] I don't want to be popular. I just want to be me, but I also want to be popular. Guys,

[13:07] do I feel like boyhood to be liked? It's great. I love it, I guess. I don't think so. No, no,

[13:11] everybody's talking about it all the time, according to Dan. People are big fans of stunt

[13:15] and Ethan Hawke performances. Well, yeah, I mean... Well, I mean, I guess I am a fan of

[13:18] Ethan Hawke performances. Ethan Hawke and his stuntman, whoever they cast in that part, yeah.

[13:24] So... So what are they going to do when they hang out? So our teens are all hanging out. They're,

[13:26] of course, drinking. They're staying at Katie's house. Katie's dad has passed out drunk upstairs.

[13:33] They're goofing around, looking at stuff on the old internet. They decide to be like that group

[13:38] of boys, because they heard a rumor those boys are going out into the woods, and they're summoning

[13:43] a guy named Slenderman. And this is not Hiram Slenderman. No. Who I assume is a tailor. Yep.

[13:51] So they... Actually, his name would be like Chaim Slenderman, not Hiram. So they go to a website,

[13:58] and they... They just Google Slenderman, right? I do. Yeah, and I kind of like that the website

[14:02] looks kind of crappy, like an actual website. It's not like, I don't know, what, Swordfish,

[14:07] where you're like, let me get onto the internet, and then the lights are flashing across their

[14:12] chrome faces. So they... Yeah, they don't have, like, four, like, digital avatars that are floating

[14:22] through the cyberspace. A bunch of cubes they have to connect to do something. You've got to

[14:26] collect the 14 digital keys to unlock the Slenderman portal. So they... Yeah, so they're

[14:32] looking at this thing, and, you know, they see a couple people on this forum mentioning it,

[14:36] and then there's just a link that says, summon him. So they're like, fuck it, let's click this

[14:40] link. And it leads them to a video, which I'm assuming was uploaded by Slenderman.

[14:47] And they watch a video that gives them some instructions. They have to listen for bells.

[14:51] They have to close their eyes. Your usual urban legend crap. And the... And then when they open

[14:57] their eyes, their eyeballs are bombarded with a series of, you know, kind of cliched flashing

[15:03] images. Ringy type stuff, yeah. Now, should... I'm sorry, should we take a... Should we pause

[15:07] for a moment? Let's go on a tangent about Slenderman. Yeah, that's what I was going to

[15:09] say. Let's talk about this Slenderman fellow. Slenderman is a Slender-y... Not an original

[15:14] creation for this movie? Well, an original creation of the internet. A new urban legend,

[15:23] a new... Like a flying spaghetti monster type thing? Yeah, it's a digital urban legend.

[15:29] It feels like someone's going out of their way to create a Jersey Devil or... What's the...

[15:35] The one that movie just came out about? That's a Latin American evil spirit.

[15:40] Curse of La Llorona? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, they wanted to... They're like,

[15:44] much... The internet... Let's just face it. Or like a Mothman or... Does it fall under the

[15:49] subheading creepypasta? Yeah, it does. Yeah, let's say that. It does. It's... The internet

[15:54] thinks that it can do anything better than real life does. And so they're like, why should we

[15:58] make do with all these analog cryptids and analog urban legends that suck when we can have Slenderman

[16:05] all original, digital, 21st century urban legend who is a very thin guy in a business suit? Which

[16:11] is frankly what loses it for me. The idea that he's a monster from another dimension or whatever,

[16:16] but he wears a suit is stupid. That it's like, oh, he's... Look, he's got to look real cool so

[16:23] that like a hipster can dress up like him in a skinny suit. He has no face. And at times,

[16:27] he seems to have a tree body or a tarantula body. But anyway, he's just like a tall, thin guy in a...

[16:32] He's basically David Bowie. He's a tall, thin guy in a suit who steals children.

[16:36] If David Bowie didn't have a face, he'd be Slenderman. Just like David Bowie. Let's just

[16:40] say, though, that the movie doesn't seem to quite figure out what Slenderman is. And I think that

[16:46] that is partly kind of a symptom of the internet Slenderman, which is this crowdsourced story. So

[16:53] like everyone out there has kind of a... Who has written a Slenderman thing kind of does a different

[16:57] thing with Slenderman. They're trying to... They're trying to create immediately what usually

[17:03] takes decades or centuries. You have a character like the Jersey Devil doesn't exist. I'm from New

[17:09] Jersey. The only real Jersey Devil is, of course, Bruce Springsteen. Sorry, guys. He's driven many

[17:15] to their to their doom with his powerful music and his promises of riches beyond the Garden State.

[17:21] Yeah. The promise that you can be a sad guy in a bar and everybody else will still think you're

[17:26] pretty cool. Exactly. When in reality, they don't. So the Jersey Devil is this creature that

[17:31] has existed in legend for a very long time, probably not as long as the legend is said to be.

[17:36] But it has accreted over many years, both a solidity in terms of the landscape, the mental

[17:43] landscape of the state, but also like lots of weird details and lots of regional differences

[17:48] and things like that. But they kind of arose semi organically from people hearing the story and

[17:53] remembering it wrong or whatever, telling their children about it. With Slender Man,

[17:56] they're kind of like, let's do all that, but really fast. Yeah. So let's let's fake it. And

[18:00] so, yeah, it comes off as kind of a mushy character. And his thing like I mean, like

[18:05] there is a textbook about him in the movie. Yeah. About about bioelectricity and we'll get to that.

[18:11] I mean, in so much as we're going to get to a textbook about bioelectricity and so much as

[18:16] anyone agrees about Slender Man, the kind of basic parameters is he mostly targets children.

[18:22] He sort of he either spirits them away or drives them mad. And his motives are deliberately left

[18:30] vague. So in the movie, it's similar. They know that either takes you, drives you mad or kills

[18:36] you. Why? Bum, bum, bum. Because these are young Americans, young Americans. It's David Bowie,

[18:43] guys. I just like very quickly. I want to touch on. And I'll say he does this to young Americans

[18:48] because he's afraid of Americans. Oh, yeah. David Bowie. Yeah. I want to ground control to Slender

[18:55] Man. Oh, yeah. You're taking all the kids. But why do you wear a necktie if you're a monster?

[19:05] How do you tie that necktie with those fingers? I mean, I think you would be extra good at it

[19:12] because it's got these super long. You can't see in the mirror. He doesn't have. I can't see the

[19:17] the window. How is our engineer, Jordan, reacting to Elliot's singing?

[19:23] Oh, wow. She's filling out her last will and testament. Give everything to Elliot.

[19:27] No, I wanted to say to like, I just quickly want to touch on this as quickly as possible and move

[19:32] on. Content warning. Like so there was a stabbing related to Slender Man, where one young girl

[19:39] stabbed another young girl several times. They had been sort of obsessed with this character.

[19:44] And this movie came out four years after that. And a lot of people were kind of like upset that

[19:49] this movie came out because of this real life violent stabbing. And and I did a little reading

[19:56] on the production of this movie. And this movie was sort of cut down.

[20:00] To get a pg-13 rating, but reading between the lines it seemed like a lot of stuff was maybe cut out, too

[20:05] So it's not to like evoke to that case too much

[20:09] And so that is also part of why this movie feels so weirdly disjointed and things don't seem to follow other things

[20:15] So you're saying it would be tasteless of me to now do my Slenderman who sold the world's parody

[20:20] Yeah

[20:22] Wow yeah, that's a lot of work to get Elliot to stop singing yeah, okay?

[20:26] Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's that's obviously fucked up. Yeah, so they so yeah

[20:30] It's and it's tasteless of the filmmakers to to maybe if they intended to yeah

[20:35] I didn't want to dwell on it, but I feel like it's worth just mentioning

[20:38] But then again that kind of a dostoevsky wrote a novel that was inspired by a real murder is he exploitative

[20:44] Probably yeah, maybe

[20:46] the

[20:48] He's dead now

[20:52] Just because it happened a long time ago doesn't mean it's not bad. Yeah, it's good point

[20:56] Well that actually sheds a little bit of light on to the most likely tacked on

[21:01] Monologue at the end of the movie, but we'll get to that so they watch this video

[21:04] And then they're like oh that was weird or whatever let's watch a movie, and I'm like yeah, let's watch a movie

[21:10] But nope we don't

[21:13] Instead we instead we got a time jump one week later all the girls have been having nightmares

[21:20] They're all kind of like

[21:22] Their nightmare fantasies are kind of starting to bleed into their real life

[21:28] They go on a school trip to a historic cemetery in Clifton because it's Shocktober for school. I guess

[21:36] My ghoul friend was watching this and she was like I can't believe that she lets you call her your girlfriend encouraged it

[21:43] she's like what kind of

[21:46] like

[21:47] What kind of yeah school trip is just to a sentiment cemetery like like she's like asking me what school trips

[21:53] I took him like mostly the Science Museum. I mean if there if it's a historic cemetery and like the town

[21:59] Yeah, there's are buried there. Yeah, they take you to a cemetery. They're like Morson's buried

[22:03] This is the area that they shot return of the living dead at I'd be like awesome. Thanks teach

[22:12] Then me and my buddy chainsaw could go back to summer school

[22:16] Okay, so

[22:19] Katie one of the one of our friends

[22:22] Goes missing suddenly

[22:24] It's a kind of interesting

[22:26] Edit because all of a sudden like she's looking off into the woods and then all of a sudden we flash forward to later in

[22:32] The day with like the police looking for this missing girl

[22:35] It's very confusing. It's like there's a little touch of picnic and hanging rock there not enough to make it impressive

[22:41] But it's like for a moment. You're like wait what happened? Yeah, which is I mean on some level

[22:45] I appreciate yeah, it you know kept me on my toes so good on you movie. You're signed your toes

[22:51] so

[22:52] shortly afterwards her drunk father

[22:56] We scares Hallie by breaking into her home at night

[23:01] While she and her sister Lizzie are alone

[23:03] She he breaks into their home while very drunk and blames Hallie for involving his daughter in the occult

[23:11] It's a kind of a weird scene to see this like drunk grown-up assaulting these two young

[23:16] But I was also like how does he know that that have well because when they eventually go to her room

[23:21] It's full of occult. Oh, it's full of evidence. It's an evidence bedroom. Hey guys. I just realized

[23:26] We're sort of involving Hallie in Shocktober by having a character named

[23:33] Movie I just was like and so she finally saw a ghost good on you. Yeah Slenderman. It's what I make has a ghost

[23:39] I don't know. I know a lot of listeners are probably so Jason a lot of listeners are probably missing Hallie

[23:45] She was very busy for a while being in charge of white show and then I think it's fine to say she had a kid

[23:51] So she's very busy now, but I hope we hope she was pregnant and gave birth

[23:56] It's not like a kid was it's not a baby boom type situation. No, it's just dropped in her lap

[24:01] Yeah, but like I just you know, we hope to have her back, but it's it's harder than in the past

[24:07] so

[24:09] Thanks. Oh that digression. No, that's good

[24:11] It's good the people listeners note the Hallie in the movie is not the Hallie who has been on this show

[24:15] Yeah, nor is it Hallie Barry? No who has also been mentioned on this show a few times

[24:20] There was at Hallie's Comet, which is not a person, but instead a big ball of ice that flies through space

[24:28] Nor is it lay all

[24:30] Home of the late Anthony Bourdain you have a chart that explains this

[24:35] Let me pull it out here now, these are the halls of medicine, they're not actual halls

[24:43] Yes, that's exactly it's a misuse of the word Hall. Okay. Now, here's Arsenio Hall famous late-night host interviewed Jason once

[24:51] Didn't go that good

[24:55] Here's Arch Hall senior and junior the director and star of the movie Eegah

[25:00] Yeah, I guess under of course, here's Anthony Michael Hall who is of course the son of Anthony Hall I assume

[25:07] I don't know how names work

[25:08] under

[25:09] under goofs, I guess I should just remove the

[25:13] Hallie's Comet isn't a teenager

[25:17] Incorrectly regarded

[25:19] No, they're an unfilmed prologue explains that she began life as a comet

[25:24] It took human forms to learn what life is like to earth. Yeah, so

[25:29] After after this scary moment with their friends drunken father

[25:34] our remaining teens decide to become amateur detectives and they

[25:39] trick her father into

[25:41] Being distracted like he's asleep on the couch and they wake him up to distract him so they can break in

[25:47] It's like why'd they have to wake him up?

[25:49] They could have just broken so they break in and sneak into their friend's room and they're like, oh

[25:54] The where's our laptop the police must have taken it for evidence and instead there's a whole bunch of drawings of slender man strewn about

[26:01] And then they just find her laptop hidden

[26:03] So it appears like the police took nothing for it and also that the movie is wasting our time

[26:12] He had her computer from everybody else, but it's just a waste

[26:15] I'd argue that the entire length of the movie is wasting her time now Dan. You're skipping the final judgments

[26:21] It's not wasting our time because we've made sort of a business out of this

[26:26] Listeners if you're not watching this movie in order to record a podcast that you make a little bit of money

[26:31] Yeah, I would say maybe don't bother watching it. Yeah, that's for final judgments

[26:35] Maybe slender man will change our minds now. One thing I do like about slender man is

[26:40] the movie

[26:43] Yeah, I mean we're gonna go into the pros column now we'll say there's some obvious cons we'll get to those but under pros

[26:50] I like when somebody's kind of been bitten by the slender man bug they

[26:55] Immediately develop a little taste for some artwork. Oh, yeah, they began

[26:59] Scritching and scratching like mad they discover a previously unknown talent

[27:03] They should have called this movie slender Muse and it feels kind of weird because you would think with this like

[27:08] modern

[27:09] Tech techno savvy type bad guy. They would be they would be making all these pictures of of him and what CAD

[27:17] Yeah, yeah

[27:19] Yeah, no, but it's good old-fashioned pen on paper it now Dan. Let's okay. Let's well, how do you would you pitch the movie?

[27:24] It's Titanic, you know, but instead of Kate Winslet, it's slender man

[27:28] Uh-huh, and he inspires Leonardo DiCaprio to draw him like one of his French girls. Yeah, but slender man

[27:33] I don't think can take his suit off. It's kind of hard. Also, I think well, I mean I was gonna say it's hard to

[27:39] Draw slender man because he's got that sort of faceless quality. It's very easy to draw. Yeah

[27:44] The hardest thing to draw is the human face. Well the hands if you've tried to draw hands the feet

[27:49] I think feet are even better

[27:50] Yeah to make it look like you're actually standing on something and the penis is hard to draw without looking goofy

[27:55] Let's just say the hardest thing to draw is the human being, you know, I was doing

[27:58] Life drawing for a while. Okay, and I showed my progress to like

[28:03] Friends and they're like, yeah, wow, you really emphasize the female nipples and the male penis on these drawings

[28:11] Not intentionally

[28:13] Models with very pronounced nipples and penis. Yeah. I mean you want to show respect to your

[28:19] They're bearing it all I might as well, you know, yeah

[28:22] Also do the same and that's why you were kicked out of that life drawing class for drawing in the nude

[28:27] Till this day one of my favorite life drawing moments was when because we went to a small school

[28:32] I

[28:34] Know where this is headed, but you can go. No, it's fine Dan. I won't have a digression

[28:40] I'll just stick to the plot like you always tell me to do

[28:45] No, it was a story about how like every because we knew everybody in our class, right and

[28:53] My roommate

[28:55] like showed up from showed up to class one morning very hungover and a friend of ours or at least

[29:03] an acquaintance of ours who was the model

[29:05] Started posing for gestures and his first pose was this like crazy one with it like ended up spreading his butt

[29:12] and my buddy's just like

[29:18] I've never been in a real life drawing class

[29:20] So is it like in the TV where they walk out wearing the flimsiest of robes? Yeah

[29:24] Yeah, just like the thinnest of kimonos. Well, yeah

[29:29] It doesn't give you a lot of coverage, well, I mean you're gonna be nude in a second

[29:33] Yeah, but you want to make it a big reveal?

[29:34] I don't I don't think you understand what the model I would come out and kind of like a

[29:38] Mysterio style cape that covered my whole body and then I'd fling it back

[29:42] What if you had a couple smoke machines and yeah, I'm ready for this. Yeah

[29:46] Yeah, then I play that you'd fling it back and you'd be wearing a sweatsuit underneath and underneath you'd be wearing a full-body

[29:52] Like green man suit I keep taking this things off and each time I'd be like, okay now you'll get to see it

[29:57] And that'd be wearing clothes or anything. I'd go. Oh

[30:00] They started following up on her internet history.

[30:14] They find a website that Katie was visiting.

[30:18] They find a whole bunch of pretty well edited and shot little Slender Man videos, right?

[30:22] Yeah, yeah.

[30:23] They literally looked like a good piece of work of professional people trying to make

[30:27] amateur Slender Man videos.

[30:31] They're reading all the comments on there, and one of the girls says, it's like they're

[30:35] comparing experiences.

[30:36] It's like, yeah, no shit.

[30:39] That's exactly what they're doing.

[30:42] They end up interacting with an online pal of Katie's who goes by the handle Alley Cat.

[30:49] Alley Cat kind of tries to sketch out when they suggest their friend Katie has been taken.

[30:55] Alley Cat sketches out some of what they might have to do in order to get their friend

[31:00] back, which I believe they interpret as you have to give up or give him something they

[31:05] love.

[31:06] Yeah.

[31:07] Something that they cherish.

[31:08] They're going to have to give up in exchange for their friend.

[31:09] Wait, was it Kelly or Hallie?

[31:11] Who?

[31:12] That disappeared?

[31:13] Katie.

[31:14] Katie.

[31:15] Hallie is our lead.

[31:16] Okay.

[31:17] Hallie plus Hallie.

[31:19] Maybe their names shouldn't have been like Katie, Hallie, Mikey, Jenny, Jimmy, Tony,

[31:25] Jeffy, Jeffy, a little Jeffy, Baby Sinclair, Babe Big in the City, Babe Big in the City.

[31:36] Okay.

[31:37] So they end up going out of the woods and they are like, give up things they love, which

[31:46] involves like breaking pottery and ripping up photos.

[31:50] It's basically their plan is like they got to go into the woods, into the woods to get

[31:54] our friend into the woods to help the Slender Man into the woods and home before dark.

[31:59] Okay.

[32:00] I love it.

[32:01] So they all put on their blindfolds, the sounds of the forest go away and then sounds of Slender

[32:10] Man come up.

[32:11] And of course, that was his album, Sounds of Slender Man.

[32:15] Slender Man and Garfunkel.

[32:17] The rule is that like Slender Man was going to show up and they couldn't look at him or

[32:22] else they'll go crazy.

[32:23] Yeah.

[32:24] So like very quickly, Chloe's like, oh, what's going on?

[32:28] We shouldn't be doing this.

[32:29] And then takes her blindfold off, sees a Slender Man, runs away, freaks out.

[32:33] And she was waiting for maybe 15 seconds.

[32:35] Yeah.

[32:36] She gave up pretty quickly.

[32:38] He's millennials.

[32:39] Am I right?

[32:40] Which is like, this is the kind of scene that a horror filmmaker would be so excited to

[32:46] be like, great.

[32:47] This is the first real encounter with Slender Man.

[32:50] I can take my time and build up the tension here.

[32:53] I can build up the isolation and build up that fear of like not being able to do anything

[32:58] while this like otherworldly force might be closing in on our heroes.

[33:02] But instead, he's like, nope, we're done.

[33:04] Let's move on.

[33:05] I want to see his version.

[33:06] This, I'm assuming the director is him.

[33:08] Maybe it's not.

[33:09] This director's version of House of the Devil, where Tom Noonan leaves the babysitter behind

[33:13] and the babysitter is immediately like, who else is in the house?

[33:16] Come on.

[33:17] And then the bad guys come back and they're like, we're here, too.

[33:19] It is him.

[33:20] I looked him up.

[33:21] He also directed that movie The Losers.

[33:23] And Stomp the Yard.

[33:24] With a younger Chris Evans.

[33:26] And what's his face?

[33:28] The guy who looks like Javier Bardem, but isn't.

[33:30] Oh, Javier Bardem Jr.?

[33:31] The American Javier Bardem.

[33:33] He was in Watchmen.

[33:34] Faux VR Bardem.

[33:35] I don't know.

[33:36] Jeffrey Dean Morgan?

[33:37] Yeah, that's it.

[33:39] It's an okay little action movie.

[33:41] Not great, but fun.

[33:43] Wasn't Jeffrey Dean Morgan one of the Mick-somethings in Grey's Anatomy?

[33:48] Yes.

[33:49] Was he Mick Steamy?

[33:50] Yeah, he might be.

[33:51] Or Dreamy.

[33:52] Or Smokey.

[33:53] Now, Mick Dreamy is Patrick Dempsey.

[33:54] Yeah.

[33:55] Who is one of the characters in this movie, since his name ends in E.

[33:57] Now, who's Mick Creamy?

[33:58] There's Katie, Hallie, Dempsey.

[33:59] Mick Creamy?

[34:00] Yeah.

[34:01] That's Dr. Twinkie.

[34:03] They're like, Dr. Twinkie, you'll lose your license for this.

[34:07] And he's like, I'll outlast all of you.

[34:09] I'm full of preservatives.

[34:11] So, Wren and Hallie find their friend, Chloe, shaken in the woods, injured from smashing into a tree while stumbling about in the dark.

[34:24] And then life kind of moves on.

[34:28] We see a little bit of Chloe.

[34:30] Chloe has a – as I said, she's shaken by her experiences with Slender Man.

[34:35] And then he visits her in her home and, like, he calls her on the phone.

[34:41] And she's like, it's this kind of weird scene.

[34:43] It's a spooky video call, yeah.

[34:44] And then –

[34:45] He's choking her.

[34:46] And then she looks in the mirror.

[34:47] She's choking herself, screams, which she should not be able to do if she's choking herself well.

[34:51] Because the choking should stop air from entering her windpipe.

[34:54] She needs that air to scream.

[34:55] But she's not – she doesn't really kill herself.

[34:57] She's just giving herself a good old Slender Man spook.

[34:59] It's a good old scare-em-up.

[35:01] An old-fashioned Slender Man spook.

[35:03] So they – so Hallie and Wren are trying to survive or kind of figure out their situation.

[35:09] Wren starts doing some research at the library on bioelectric systems.

[35:15] What I love here is it is such an old-fashioned thing that she would go to the library to use their computers when it's clear all the kids have their own computers.

[35:21] And she looks up this book that's like – the book is called like Bioelectric – Bioelectricity and Supernatural Phenomena.

[35:28] Does her normal small-town library have a copy of it?

[35:32] You know they do.

[35:33] And their small-town library that's like super gothic and scary.

[35:37] Oh, yeah. It's a scary library.

[35:38] It's like Arkham's library.

[35:39] And I like when they're doing research.

[35:40] Like the internet research is kind of believably dumb.

[35:44] Like they're just doing like simple Google searches.

[35:47] It's the sort of thing that like if you were like, Stuart, you got to find out some stuff about Slender Man real quick to record a podcast.

[35:54] It would be like, OK, let me start Googling.

[35:56] And then there's all these like Photoshops, these like historical Slender Man photos that are like – this is some of the laziest Photoshop I've ever seen.

[36:06] I wish that they had gone all the way and had like paintings of like the Revolutionary War and there's a Slender Man in the back that's encircled.

[36:12] I also feel like this was a mistake that the movie makes where it's like, OK, Slender Man is an internet thing.

[36:17] So the movie also needs to like tie into the internet a lot, whereas like –

[36:21] They keep talking about it as like an invasive idea, like a meme, an evil meme.

[36:25] Yeah, I would have loved to have seen like a Peter Paul Rubens where he's like, I'm going to make a beefy Slender Man.

[36:32] There's a Mona Lisa Slender Man.

[36:34] It's like it's not smiling.

[36:35] It has no face.

[36:36] Now, here's – I just want to say one thing about this textbook she finds in the library.

[36:40] So it's called like Bioelectricity and Supernatural Phenomena or something like that, and it is very much a niche text.

[36:47] My wife, she's a librarian.

[36:49] She's talked to me many times.

[36:50] My mom is a librarian.

[36:51] They both talked to me about the need to cull a library's collection.

[36:54] If a book is one out of date, if it has incorrect scientific information, you got to cull that thing.

[36:59] That book seems to fall under that heading.

[37:01] Number two, if a book hasn't been taken out in years, you're probably going to lose it.

[37:05] You know what?

[37:06] It's just not being used at all.

[37:07] I have a hard time believing that that book has been in such good circulation that it continues to be –

[37:12] It's still a Slender Man in this neighborhood.

[37:14] It's not just still in the collection.

[37:15] It's on the stack.

[37:16] And it's dog-eared.

[37:17] It's in the stacks on the shelf, and it's dog-eared.

[37:19] This is a well-circulated, traveled book.

[37:22] She's like deep in the stacks and tries to get a phone call, and all of a sudden it fuzzes out because I'm assuming libraries have scramblers to prevent kids from using their cell phones.

[37:30] It's to stop old homeless men from watching pornography on their computers.

[37:33] I don't think she explains the stuff now that she finds in the book.

[37:37] I think that comes a little later.

[37:38] But the stuff in it is such weird, like Ghostbusters, like the gibbers that they throw around.

[37:44] It's like Supernatural's Techmomo Jungle.

[37:46] It's like, why are you trying to midichlorium this horror movie right now?

[37:50] Well, and I kind of also like that she relies entirely on a single textbook that she found, which is kind of funny because a textbook is like old media.

[37:58] This is something that was created through new media.

[38:01] But she completely believes in this one textbook she finds, and of course, spoiler alert, it provides no assistance for them over the course of the movie.

[38:10] It is a huge waste of everyone's time.

[38:13] Including ours.

[38:14] So, of course, she's deep in the stacks.

[38:16] She gets attacked by Slenderman.

[38:18] She kind of gets sucked into this weird semi-subdimension caught in a library.

[38:25] Multiple Slendermans are coming after her.

[38:28] He eventually tracks her down and pins her against the wall, and we get the Slenderman version of the Alien 3, Alien, and Ripley almost-kiss scene where he leans in and he's like, have you listened to my podcast?

[38:41] And then she loses her own face, right?

[38:44] Yeah, she loses her own face for a moment.

[38:46] And I want to say –

[38:47] Of course, it's just a trick-a-rooney.

[38:49] Trick-a-rooney, was that Andy Rooney's rap name?

[38:51] Yeah, trick-a-rooney.

[38:52] Trick-a-rooney.

[38:53] The faceless Slenderman.

[38:56] The faceless creature is kind of creepy from a distance, but when we see Slenderman's face up close, it just kind of looks like Styrofoam.

[39:03] It's what in Clueless they would call a Matisse.

[39:06] Yeah.

[39:07] It does look like – it looks like Smiley that way.

[39:09] Yeah.

[39:10] Where it was like, oh, this is kind of a scary idea, but when you see it actually on a person, it just looks like a big fat man's belly with a Smiley face on it.

[39:18] Whereas here, it just looks like a belly.

[39:20] I mean, there's a lot of points where, in general, any time they try to show the Slenderman, they're like, we need to make this character more definite.

[39:28] Like, we need to make this like a physical presence in the world.

[39:31] And I feel like what would make Slenderman scarier is for it to be vaguer and harder to see.

[39:36] Yes.

[39:37] But –

[39:38] Like it exists just outside of the realm of perception.

[39:40] Exactly.

[39:41] Or that – yeah, that it's almost like something that would be believable and not like a guy that's like a giant tarantula man.

[39:47] It just – it always looks like a guy in a suit who becomes a tarantula man, and it's the –

[39:51] Or was a tree and then becomes a man that becomes a man with a tarantula body.

[39:56] I mean that's one way to look at evolution.

[39:58] Sure.

[40:00] Demand to tarantula man. Sure. Hey, I I didn't come from no tree. Okay, Dan

[40:05] We've talked to you about your evangelizing, please

[40:06] The Shocktober has gotten very invasive on it

[40:09] But I had the same experience watching this movie that I had when I used to watch the show

[40:12] Are you afraid of the dark on Nickelodeon as a kid, which is like well, it's not scary

[40:16] But if it was happening to me, it would be scary

[40:18] Like it's objectively a scary situation to be in but to watch it is not scary. Yeah, so at this point

[40:25] Ren has decided to go deeper into the conspiracy

[40:29] Chloe has been driven mad her friends. Can't he like just don't want to talk to her at all

[40:33] It's basically just means like she looks like a zombie

[40:37] She's a vacant. She hasn't slept in a number of days looks like a young parent and and

[40:42] Hallie is just trying to ignore it. She's like it'll go away. So of course she schedules a date with Tom

[40:50] How late the date is I can't tell the scene where she's like, I don't have time for this Ren. I'm going on a date

[40:55] It already looks it's like full dark

[40:58] No, maybe because it's fall ish. It's like it's dark early, but it does seem like the date is at like 1 a.m

[41:04] Yeah, Tom's like, oh, yeah, my parents are out for the night. Yeah, the it. Yeah, it kind of feels like I mean

[41:10] There's something very ice stormy about it

[41:11] Yeah

[41:12] it also is very much well it feels very much like the

[41:15] The director was like this whole movie is gonna be like the ring where everything is dripping with menace and darkness. Yeah

[41:21] And yeah, it's 2 a.m. All the time. Okay, so

[41:25] It's 2 a.m. Do you know where your kids are? Yeah over at Tom's house Tom's house. Yeah

[41:29] so

[41:30] They're at Tom's house being cock-blocked by the Slenderman. Yeah, so so Hallie and Tom's date goes goes as well as you'd expect

[41:37] Tom shows off his dad's cool vinyl collection and they start making out and then this is what he plays this like

[41:43] Sexy guitar jazz, I guess and it's like what do you describe it as smooth?

[41:49] Extreme

[41:51] It's like yeah, he puts on the CD there's like no CD Dale, okay, is it is a vinyl album?

[41:57] Okay, he put it's so much warmer than a CD

[42:01] He puts on this album that you're just like is this just all guitar solo

[42:05] It is it starts with that and it's like but it feels like the background music of like a love scene in like a Beverly Hills

[42:11] 90210 or Melrose Place and I'm like, oh when I was a teen I shouldn't and I had a girl over

[42:16] I shouldn't have put on music. I liked I should have put on cliche sexy music

[42:21] So, yeah, they just like the saxophone from Baker Street over and over again

[42:24] So, of course, he started making out and then like that sounds like the vinyl is jumping around or skipping

[42:30] which is horrifying in and of itself and then yeah for real audio head like she she like looks up and

[42:36] Tom is having this like crazy freakout. That is the most cartoonish thing

[42:41] It's like they hired Tim and Eric to produce this freakout like yeah, which actually I liked it was like

[42:48] There are a couple moments in the movie where they feel like they're using

[42:51] the kind of like

[42:52] weirdo video effects that you can do now digitally in a way that I don't

[42:56] Often I see a lot of horror movies seem to be doing the same effects you could get with film

[42:59] Yeah, this they're doing like like art video stuff and I like that a little yeah

[43:04] But it also seems really good. I wanted to get into that

[43:07] To like at the climax when there's like a lot of like really crazy

[43:12] Effects like Slender Man effects like I like the look of some of the weird horror shit that happens in this

[43:19] Movie, uh-huh. The the problem is it all looks pretty

[43:24] Fakie. Yeah, like it's it's cool looking and really weird

[43:28] But it also because the rest of the movie is shot very realistically

[43:33] Whereas if like this movie was house sue or something, yeah, like it would be neat

[43:38] So after her freakout Hallie comes clean to Tom about her Slender Man situation

[43:44] And she and Tom's like wait, is this the video and he finds the video immediately on his phone?

[43:49] She's like you can't watch that. He's like, okay. She's like promise me. You won't watch it next day in class

[43:55] Tom shows up super freaked out. It feels like everybody but Hallie

[43:59] Goes through their stages of Slender Man exposure so much faster

[44:04] Yeah, so, you know, she's not gonna get much help there

[44:07] And then of course her little sister Lizzie goes into shock. She must have watched that video. She goes to

[44:15] some spooky hospital

[44:17] Where people with impossibly long hair getting their hair combed or like people with no faces are hanging out. It's st

[44:24] Halloween's

[44:25] Memorial Hospital. Yeah

[44:28] She realizes that rent and that her sister has fallen into a coma and she realizes that

[44:34] Wren is the one who exposed Lizzie to the Slender Man

[44:40] So she goes to track down her friend Wren. No, was it to get rent was did Wren do it to get?

[44:46] Hallie no to get who was the one who disappeared Kelly Katie. Did she do it to get Katie back or she just

[44:52] Not like was there some other way because it's kind of it's I mean you say what I mean

[44:57] I would say I I think from what I can tell she did it because of the whole idea that you have to sacrifice

[45:01] Something you love. Uh-huh. She's always had a close relationship with yeah, and maybe by giving up Lizzie

[45:06] They'll get their friend Katie back or say wonder man will stop

[45:10] Okay, so she goes to Wren's house where lent Wren of course has her little evidence

[45:16] Bedroom that's filled with more amazing Slender Man art

[45:20] And Wren is hanging outside like she's like standing Slender Man now that I think about it

[45:25] He's basically just the Operation Ivy logo, right? Yeah, but without the hat

[45:29] Yeah, yeah

[45:31] And and Slender Man probably likes Scott. You have to have to assume he wears that skinny suit all the time. Yeah, so they

[45:41] He steals people and he just takes him to his house to listen to madness and mustard plug and stuff all the time

[45:45] Yeah, so she like while she's there

[45:48] She's like going through Wren's computer

[45:51] I think at this point she finds evidence that the person they were talking to on the internet

[45:56] Alley cat was somebody who was driven mad by Slender Man

[46:00] So I guess we closed the loop on that plot thread and they find Wren

[46:04] She's standing on the edge of her her bedroom window. She's going to jump. She's trying to kill herself

[46:12] Hallie I mean as Aerosmith would say she's living on the edge. Yeah, I can't keep herself from falling

[46:16] Hallie pulls her in to save her and then they did

[46:21] Of course, so they pull her in and save her and then almost immediately Slender Man yanks her out the window

[46:27] She's gone. It's one of those moments. You're like if Slender Man could do that. Why didn't he do it a hundred times before now?

[46:34] Yeah, yeah, I mean it's

[46:42] The same man from Jonah Hex perhaps it's kind of like how in it it is both

[46:46] Insanely powerful and also can be scared away if you yell too loud at him

[46:51] Yeah, the so Hallie at this point decides to you know, she's like comes up with some kind of a plan

[46:58] She goes marching off into the woods. I think she's going to shoot her plan is confront Slender Man

[47:02] She finds him he's standing there and then he like sprouts big tarantula things

[47:08] She immediately loses her cool and she runs away and he chases her

[47:13] kind of like the giant robot arachnid in Wild Wild West and she runs away and then

[47:19] There's the inspiration for the same then she backs up against a tree. Of course, that tree is a Slender Man tree

[47:25] Because Slender Man is turned into a tree and then he turns her into a tree and then which is the episode

[47:30] It's the end of the children's book the slender tree

[47:36] Where the kid the tree keeps giving and giving giving until eventually it absorbs the child into its into its barn and the tree was

[47:41] happy

[47:45] With with her sacrifice

[47:49] Little sister

[47:51] Lovely as a Slender Man

[47:54] You know Slender Man grows in Brooklyn is one of my favorite coming-of-age stories

[47:59] Lizzie Lizzie wakes up her sister having sacrificed herself

[48:02] And then she seems to have been her her time in her coma seems to have explained all the secrets in the universe

[48:09] As she then lays out some nonsense about how we all believe it goes something like we all click on links share stories

[48:18] Photoshop images all serving his word some people seek him out and do messed-up stuff

[48:25] Like now knowing the actual like story behind some of this stuff. That's like a super fucked-up way to end the movie

[48:32] I got a but also like I have to say that this is

[48:36] If handled different differently, this is like I know this is sort of a cliched idea

[48:43] This is a frightening idea and maybe the first frightening idea in the movie and it comes at the very end of the movie because it

[48:49] Sort of suggests like this movie itself may just be furthering Slender Man's

[48:56] Much better in the movie in the mouth of madness

[48:58] Right where the the implication is that by watching the movie you have weakened the wall between our world and the world of these horrible

[49:04] things yeah

[49:06] then so yeah, but it's the idea that I

[49:09] Mean like I feel like that's part of the this thrill you're supposed to get from ring is like

[49:13] Oh, maybe there's something real about it that I shouldn't have watched this and it now it's gonna come after me

[49:18] Yeah, the tingler it's in the theater everyone run for your lives

[49:21] I mean your lives the tinglers around in a lot of ways. It feels like somebody was like, okay

[49:27] So why don't we just do a ring version with Slender Man? Yeah

[49:33] and it's and if handled yeah, if handle it's there's kind of a I think it's like an

[49:39] one-of-those-er

[49:40] Ideas of horror is that like by by observing it you have made it more real and there is a good way to do it

[49:46] and they're like

[49:47] Reaching for it with their with their wooden tarantula hands and yeah, but it's kind of like a like Alan Moore's Providence comic

[49:53] Which is yeah, like how the way Lovecraft's work spread out and do all that, but but it's like

[50:00] Does it do you think so do you think Dan that they had more substance in this movie?

[50:04] And they just kind of had to cut it because it was totally tasteless

[50:07] Because it was a hundred one totally tasteless jokes for adults

[50:16] I think they just burned the book. Oh, wow, that's what I mean. That's a rough editing job, but harsh, but fair

[50:22] like if they were

[50:25] Really like ups like trying to respect the real-life tragedy. They just wouldn't have done it. Yeah

[50:33] Like they put money into a movie that movies got to make money, yeah, but said they just like let's just make it disjointed

[50:39] I mean unless this was a nonprofit from the Slender Man Awareness Association. Yeah

[50:44] or sma I mean

[50:47] No, why that made me laugh. It's just simply you putting the letters together

[50:52] Yeah, I mean if you if if a studio is going to prevent the release of a movie like The Hunt and instead

[51:00] release

[51:01] Slender Man

[51:02] Like it's not the same studio. I don't think no

[51:05] I know but it's the same sort of like mentality of like not releasing a movie because it's vaguely connected to a tragedy and

[51:12] One of them seems only the slightest has the slightest connection whereas Slender Man seems to be great

[51:18] Closely connected to an actual tragedy now, would it be now would it be?

[51:23] Worse or better than if it was more connected like say The Haunting of Sharon Tate

[51:27] Which is an incredibly exploitative movie in which they're basically saying if Sharon Tate and her and her friends had tried a little harder

[51:34] Yeah, it'd still be alive today. Yeah, and not what ghosts are they good at the end

[51:39] I think it goes to their happy ghosts. Yeah, because good you can't spell ghost without H for happy. Uh-huh get happy or stop

[51:47] Terrifying strangers

[51:54] Well, let's do our final judgments, is this

[51:58] Totally terrifying. Wait, was that it? Wait, you're the keeper of the BS dance

[52:04] Totally scarifying totally scarifying totally snore

[52:08] Yeah

[52:10] I'm gonna say it's pretty snoreifying

[52:12] I think that the thing about it is like

[52:16] What's scary about Slender Man on the internet is kind of your personal connection to Slender Man

[52:22] Like you're going down that same rabbit. He's like Charles Barkley. He's friends with so many people. You never would have guessed

[52:28] Just ordinary folks whose lives are touched in a beautiful way by Slender Man

[52:32] I'm just saying that like I can see how it's scary at home

[52:34] Where you're like sitting alone in front of the computer going down this like rabbit hole of like here's a Slender Man story

[52:40] Other Slender Man story and maybe I am giving him more power

[52:43] Maybe he's like gonna come into my like you that personal experience of like

[52:47] Relating to this thing whereas in the movie we're watching other people get on the internet and learn about Slender Man

[52:53] And it just doesn't have the same

[52:56] Zazz I don't know

[52:58] Yeah, I mean it like if I was giving notes, I'd be like terminal lack of zazz. I feel like we could like

[53:06] Let's let's ignore the obvious relationship the metaphor here between Slender Man and vaping, right?

[53:17] Yes, I feel like I feel like I'm going out here, but I feel like we should take a stand against

[53:24] Instead of having so many firearms on our street and less being worried about Slender Man's on our street

[53:33] More people have been killed by vaping than by Slender Man

[53:36] so part of it is the

[53:38] Like it this movie feels so padded out

[53:41] There's like so many dream sequences, and there's so many dream sequences that are like nested on each other

[53:47] I did like the the one bit where where Hallie is in the bathroom, and then she looks down

[53:52] She's got a big old belly and then all of a sudden like a baby Slender Man comes out

[53:56] I'm like son of Slender Man already

[53:58] The sequels in the movie. Yeah the but no it like it's

[54:03] It's I mean it feels inevitable and I guess in a way like the that's the whole point

[54:08] But there's just so little there, and it's hard to get scared at a movie. That doesn't seem to

[54:14] Like it not only doesn't know its own rules. It doesn't seem to care

[54:18] It's a it's a hard movie that doesn't seem to be that interested in scaring you or having

[54:23] Really much of a response from you and like the thing there's there are two styles fighting against each other

[54:28] Especially as the movie that goes on and they're trying to scare it up by having more intense dream sequences

[54:32] There's this style that is very

[54:34] Removed and very there's almost like a haze between you and the film and that can work if you lean all the way into it

[54:40] Like I mentioned picnic at hang rock before that's that movie that movie is there's like a weird scrim between you and the film

[54:45] And it adds to this mystic feel like kind of ambiguity around the movie or you make it totally in your face

[54:51] You know scary intense, but it you can't quite mesh the two or at least they haven't done it here

[54:57] And so I'm gonna have to say snorifying too

[54:59] Although there are things that yeah, Dan if had been handled better if it had been made better

[55:03] It might have been a better movie. I'm gonna go with Dan McCoy's law, which is if it was a better movie

[55:08] It would have been better. Yep

[55:14] Hello, this is Amy man, and I'm Ted Leo and we have a podcast called the art of process

[55:19] We've been lucky enough over the past year to talk to some of our friends and acquaintances from across the creative spectrum to find out

[55:25] How they actually work so I have to write material that makes sense and makes people laugh

[55:29] I also have to think about what I'm saying to people if I kick your ass

[55:34] I'll make you famous the fight to get LGBTQ representation in the show

[55:39] We weirdly don't know as many musicians as you would expect

[55:42] I really just became a political speech writer by accident of realizing that I have accidentally

[55:47] Hold my pants down listen and subscribe at maximum fun org or wherever you get your podcast

[55:53] It's like if the guinea pig was complicit in helping the scientist

[56:01] Welcome back to fireside chat on

[56:03] Kmax with me in studio to take your calls is the dopest tool on the West Coast Oliver Wong and Morgan Rhodes

[56:11] Go ahead caller. Hey, I'm looking for a music podcast

[56:14] That's insightful and thoughtful but like also helps me discover artists and albums that I've never heard of

[56:20] Yeah, man, it sounds like you need to listen to heat rocks every week myself and I'm Morgan Rhodes and my co-hosts here

[56:25] Oliver Wong talked to influential guests about a canonical album that has changed their lives

[56:31] Yes, like Moby open Mike Eagle talk about albums by Prince Joni Mitchell and so much more

[56:39] Heat rocks deep dives into hot records every Thursday on maximum fun

[56:45] The

[56:48] Flophouse is brought to you in part by Casper Casper's new hybrid mattresses can block combine

[56:55] blind anything

[57:06] The hybrid mattresses combine the pressure relief of their award-winning foam with durable yet gentle

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[57:21] To create a hybrid that certainly can never get loose and destroy the park

[57:25] This new innovation offers the best of both worlds luxurious comfort and resilient support even with Springs

[57:33] These mattresses still come

[57:36] Magically in a box that simply arrives on your doorstep guys without you and your resilient support

[57:43] I don't think I could get through this and yet we come in a box that arrives on your doorstep

[57:49] The copy makes it sound like the magical thing is that the box arrives in your doorstep and you know

[57:53] People do get packages. I think the magical thing is I don't know. You're always complaining about

[57:58] Your Twitter feed you're constantly like it takes magic to get a package in this world. I think it's funny. Oh, yeah

[58:06] Dear Mercury the messenger God

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[58:35] Because it's named after Casper Hauser

[58:38] so no other

[58:41] Corporate sponsors, but we have a humble a jumbo tron. You know it that's the biggest tron

[58:47] Elliot I believe you have the longer of the two so perhaps you should go first sure

[58:51] This is a message for Karen and John soon to be named withheld and this message is from Gabe

[58:56] Fletch and Nick and the message goes like this dear Karen and John

[59:02] Congratulations on your marriage and there is no better way to celebrate but by paying the original peaches to yell it from the pod top

[59:08] Whether it's Elliot singing a song stew cracking up on a beer. We're Dan doing his best. Mr

[59:13] Burns excellent as Karen's but becomes a wife's, but we are so happy to see you two together forever mazel tov

[59:19] That's great news. Congratulations. Yeah

[59:22] And I also have a jumbo tron what this message is for Kyle

[59:30] the message is from

[59:32] Joanna

[59:33] Kyle I miss you

[59:36] We need to update the crayon list

[59:39] You're a good dino boy

[59:41] Love Joe

[59:43] It's sure the crayon list does need to be updated Dan. Don't pretend. You know what?

[59:50] This is a very intimate message between

[59:53] Do not try to horn in on their on their lives

[59:56] It's a real you me and debris type scenario going on right now

[1:00:00] I simply allow the spirit of the message to enter me and come out of my mouth.

[1:00:05] Every time Stuart finishes Jumbotron, he then goes, huh, where am I?

[1:00:09] What happened?

[1:00:10] Aeolus poured forth from my mouth.

[1:00:13] I simply allow the words on the page to enter my eyes and come out through my voice.

[1:00:20] So we don't have any more shows.

[1:00:22] We did our last show.

[1:00:23] Live shows.

[1:00:24] This is not the last episode of The Flop House.

[1:00:27] We don't have any more live shows for this year.

[1:00:31] You know what, guys?

[1:00:32] We're done.

[1:00:33] So close.

[1:00:34] Almost made it to 300.

[1:00:35] Well, we were.

[1:00:36] Yeah, that was our last live show.

[1:00:37] We have none more scheduled.

[1:00:38] As of yet, we will schedule more someday.

[1:00:41] Yeah.

[1:00:42] So I don't know if you guys have other things to play.

[1:00:44] There's a show for us somewhere, a show for us.

[1:00:52] And the show is in a city, most likely.

[1:00:57] 76 more shows over the next several years.

[1:01:01] Wow, that's really upping our number.

[1:01:04] That's a pretty big commitment.

[1:01:06] As always, Dan, I'd love to promote my children's book, Horse Meets Dog.

[1:01:09] I have another children's book coming out next year.

[1:01:10] I'll tell you more about it as we get closer to it.

[1:01:12] And get ready, podcast listeners, because at some point, Jon Hodgman and I will begin

[1:01:17] releasing the episodes.

[1:01:18] Oh, Max Freund will begin releasing.

[1:01:19] Jon and I are not doing the work of the actual releasing.

[1:01:22] It'll be Jordan who's doing the work of that.

[1:01:24] Jordan Cowling, that is, who's listening to us right now, so I better say nice things

[1:01:27] or else technical difficulties will kill all of us.

[1:01:30] Oh, she's tearing a framed photo of you in half.

[1:01:32] She's teeming off.

[1:01:33] She tore the frame.

[1:01:34] She's listening to us every episode, Elliot, not just the ones where we're at the HQ.

[1:01:39] But Hodgman and I are doing a podcast coming out soon called iPodius.

[1:01:43] We are watching the series iClaudius.

[1:01:45] This is a touchstone series of Jon Hodgman's life.

[1:01:48] I have never seen it before.

[1:01:49] I'm familiar with the books, but not the show.

[1:01:51] And we're hoping to interview some of the actors who are in it.

[1:01:54] Oh, that's really cool.

[1:01:55] And that's part of the bonus content, right?

[1:01:56] I think it's actually going to be a public release.

[1:01:59] Everyone can hear it, everyone.

[1:02:02] But for bonus fans, we should have another episode up of our flop tales that we're moving

[1:02:08] through.

[1:02:09] Episode three should be dropping soon.

[1:02:12] And that is where I make Dan, Elliot, and Jubin play a role-playing game with me and,

[1:02:17] you know.

[1:02:18] It's going to be a long hiatus.

[1:02:19] We'll be recording the final episode of this series soon.

[1:02:23] And I will desperately try to remember what happened in the last three episodes.

[1:02:26] I guess we'll have to listen.

[1:02:28] Stuart's always like, you guys aren't picking up on the clues.

[1:02:30] And I'm like, I don't remember what my character is, where we are, what's going on.

[1:02:33] The problem is Jubin as well had a child.

[1:02:35] So, you know.

[1:02:36] I mean, I don't think that's a problem, that's a blessing for us.

[1:02:40] Dan's like, it's a problem because Earth can barely sustain the number of humans it has

[1:02:43] on it right now.

[1:02:44] I mean, I kind of believe that.

[1:02:45] So, you know, he can do whatever he wants.

[1:02:47] All right.

[1:02:48] Miley Cyrus over here.

[1:02:49] And I'm also going to plug my bar, Hinterland's, and my wife's bars, Minnie's Bar and Charlene's

[1:02:55] Bar.

[1:02:56] Minnie's Bar just started doing karaoke on Saturday nights, where I'm assuming Dan McCoy

[1:03:02] will ramble in every once in a while and sing such party favorites as the Monster Mash and

[1:03:08] some song by R.E.M.

[1:03:09] I did sing Monster Mash at the first night to acceptance.

[1:03:15] I would say, actually, you had a much better reaction than I would expect.

[1:03:20] Well, it is the season.

[1:03:21] Anyway, let's move on to letters from listeners like you.

[1:03:26] This first letter is from Emily, last name withheld.

[1:03:29] And Emily writes, Hi, floppers, I'm hoping you can settle an argument.

[1:03:33] Yes.

[1:03:34] Okay, well.

[1:03:35] We did it.

[1:03:36] Asked and answered.

[1:03:38] When my partner and I first got together, we had a lot of DVDs.

[1:03:42] A couple of years into our relationship, we decided to pull the trigger and merge collections.

[1:03:48] Wow.

[1:03:49] Since then, our DVD collection has sat gathering dust in the corner of our living room on a

[1:03:54] number of rickety Ikea shelves.

[1:03:56] Wait, wait, I just want to stop and praise Dan for the way he pronounced rickety.

[1:04:01] Well, thanks.

[1:04:02] I mean, this happens so rarely that I'm going to take just a moment to enjoy it.

[1:04:06] Hey, look, infinite number of monkeys, infinite number of typewriters.

[1:04:09] Eventually, you're going to pronounce something right.

[1:04:11] Okay.

[1:04:12] Well, 99% of the time, we stream movies.

[1:04:16] In the rare case we want to watch a movie from our collection, we usually remember it's

[1:04:20] a plain old DVD and not a Blu-ray copy.

[1:04:23] So we download slash rent a Blu-ray copy.

[1:04:26] I spoke too soon.

[1:04:27] And stream it to the TV.

[1:04:28] Rickety was fine, but Blu-ray apparently didn't make it past the velvet rope.

[1:04:32] I mean, Blu-ray is actually a very strange thing to say.

[1:04:37] Shouldn't the movie be called a Blu-way?

[1:04:39] Because that's the way you're watching it.

[1:04:42] I mean, I don't even know why it's called Blu-ray, to be honest.

[1:04:44] That's the kind of laser beam that shoots at your fucking disc.

[1:04:47] A Blu-ray?

[1:04:48] Yeah, it's a Blu-ray.

[1:04:49] And Blu is spelled B-L-U?

[1:04:50] That's actually a good point.

[1:04:53] Maybe it's an acronym for Blazing Laser Under Your Disc.

[1:04:58] Wait, so where's your disc?

[1:05:02] It's all mushed together.

[1:05:04] I just want to say that if I mispronounce a word now, it does not take away the proper

[1:05:09] pronunciation of a different word.

[1:05:11] They cancel each other out, like matter and antimatter, pasta and antipasto, newly and

[1:05:18] Anthony Newley.

[1:05:19] Okay, well, Emily continues to write, or I continue to read Emily's words, rather.

[1:05:26] Oh, thanks for clearing that up.

[1:05:28] It's cooking along this letter.

[1:05:30] Well, you guys are the...

[1:05:32] Okay.

[1:05:33] I have suggested that we donate or sell off our DVD collections, holding on to a few good

[1:05:39] favorites.

[1:05:40] I think it would be nice to free up some space in the living room.

[1:05:44] But no doing.

[1:05:45] My partner is convinced that the fall of the internet is nigh, and at least we'll still

[1:05:49] have our precious DVDs to sell on the post-apocalyptic streets at a profit.

[1:05:55] My question to you is, which side are you on?

[1:05:58] The Marie Kondo purge or hoarding for the apocalypse?

[1:06:02] That's Emily's last name withheld.

[1:06:03] Guys, if I can jump in, because I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately.

[1:06:07] When I moved from New York to LA, I went through a big VHS videotape purge.

[1:06:10] I said, I haven't watched any of these tapes for at least five years.

[1:06:13] I don't even own a machine that plays them.

[1:06:15] I don't need them anymore.

[1:06:16] So I gave them all away.

[1:06:17] The movies I taped off television, I threw away.

[1:06:19] The factory-produced, manufactured videos, I gave away.

[1:06:23] And I don't regret that, but lately, I've been regretting how much I rely on streaming

[1:06:28] rather than buying DVDs, because I've had a number of experiences where I want to watch

[1:06:32] a movie, and I cannot get access to it readily.

[1:06:36] And sometimes I own it on DVD, and that's great, and it's wonderful, and even if it's

[1:06:40] not a Blu-ray, come on, don't be a snob.

[1:06:42] It's still the movie.

[1:06:43] I used to watch stuff on VHS tape where the best you could get was that it looked crappy.

[1:06:48] But now I'm realizing a lot of movies are not making it onto streaming, especially older

[1:06:52] movies, because there's not a huge amount of profit in that, so companies don't want

[1:06:56] to waste the space on it.

[1:06:57] And I think there will come a time when it dawns on people, oh, I don't own anything,

[1:07:02] and I have to pay every time I watch a thing, the same way that I don't own a lot of music,

[1:07:07] and I wish that I did, and at any moment, Apple could just take away all the albums

[1:07:11] that I have.

[1:07:12] So I am actually on the other side of it now, and I am pro-physical media in a way I wasn't

[1:07:16] before.

[1:07:17] But here's the thing.

[1:07:18] Are those DVDs in their boxes still?

[1:07:20] Throw those fucking boxes away.

[1:07:21] Put them in the DVD books.

[1:07:22] You don't need those boxes.

[1:07:23] Those are a waste of space.

[1:07:24] What, does it look nice on your shelf?

[1:07:26] No.

[1:07:27] Put some books in there, look classy, and then put the DVDs, discs, but you can keep

[1:07:31] the booklets if you want.

[1:07:32] Especially if those were those fucking cardboard DVD cases with the little, like, plastic snap

[1:07:38] on the side.

[1:07:39] It's fucking garbage.

[1:07:40] Yeah, it looks like garbage.

[1:07:41] Slide out the insert cover, recycle that, throw the rest away, and just take the disc

[1:07:45] and put it in a disc book, put it in a closet.

[1:07:48] You don't need to look at it, but you'll have it for when you want to watch it.

[1:07:51] Yeah, I mean, I feel bad that I got rid of my Laserdisc collection, because now I have

[1:07:56] nothing to chop up and snort cocaine off of.

[1:07:58] Wait, why do you have to chop it up?

[1:08:01] Yeah, you gotta, like, chop it up into lines.

[1:08:03] Yeah, it's cocaine.

[1:08:04] Oh, the cocaine's being chopped up.

[1:08:05] Not the Laserdisc.

[1:08:06] That's insane.

[1:08:07] That's my T2 Laserdisc.

[1:08:08] But even then, there are people who got rid of their Laserdiscs, and there are things

[1:08:11] on those Laserdiscs often that are not available anymore.

[1:08:14] Like there's either documentary features or things like that, or better versions of movies,

[1:08:19] or the old versions of the Star Wars movies.

[1:08:21] I really feel that with movies, and there's definitely stuff that I'm glad I have that

[1:08:26] I can watch whenever I want.

[1:08:27] Anytime I'm hankering for some Riccio, Story of Ricci, and if for some reason it's not

[1:08:34] profitable for a streaming service to carry it, I can just watch it.

[1:08:38] I just have to have a thing to play my DVD.

[1:08:41] With music, it's a little different, though.

[1:08:42] I find that I buy a lot of my stuff off of Bandcamp, and obviously I'd be nervous that

[1:08:48] Bandcamp would go away, but that lets you download the actual audio files, so it's a

[1:08:53] little different than just iTunes.

[1:08:56] But it's mainly modern stuff, because I'm kind of young and hip, and I support modern

[1:09:01] artists.

[1:09:02] I don't have a whole lot to add to what's been said.

[1:09:06] I agree with Elliot for the reasons that he cites, and also...

[1:09:10] Stewart about the Laserdisc thing.

[1:09:12] And also, even if a movie is available to stream on a service that's either free or

[1:09:19] you're already paying for, the way that licensing works, they usually just license those movies

[1:09:24] for a certain amount of time, and it's here today and gone tomorrow.

[1:09:29] I like having it around, although with streaming, I have curtailed my DVD collecting a little

[1:09:34] bit.

[1:09:35] I don't buy as much as I used to, but I'm starting to buy more, because I realized I

[1:09:38] wanted to watch The Thin Man the other night.

[1:09:40] I own it on DVD.

[1:09:41] Slenderman, you mean.

[1:09:42] Yes, The Thin Man, the original Slenderman, because it's one of my favorite movies.

[1:09:47] Thin Man, not Slenderman.

[1:09:49] It felt really good that I could just take...

[1:09:51] I would love to see the DVD box for Slenderman, where they edit that.

[1:09:56] One of my favorite movies, dot, dot, dot, Slenderman.

[1:10:00] It felt good to be able to okay

[1:10:01] I can just pull it out of the DVD booklet and stick it in the machine and I don't have to like find it

[1:10:06] I don't have to hope that the internet connection is gonna stay up or something like that. You know, I

[1:10:11] Like I'm coming on to liking physical media

[1:10:14] I never moved from physical books to digital books and I'm glad because I like I think physical books

[1:10:19] I'd be worried more about losing books and things like that

[1:10:23] Dan suddenly acting like there's an invisible B. That's why I

[1:10:26] I do a lot of digital books to be honest with you, but I keep like my favorite especially with like graphic novels

[1:10:32] I guess my favorites Oh

[1:10:34] Comics is different now. I'm all I'm almost all digital on that. Uh-huh

[1:10:37] unless you unless you get a

[1:10:39] You know the the the anniversary cube of the Akira collection, which of course you can't get on digital this

[1:10:45] I want to get it, but I already have all those books. Yeah, but this is like the

[1:10:49] Printing I have so many different printings

[1:10:52] How many different there's the great supplementary materials that are all about moving on unused art for the but didn't they publish it

[1:10:59] Japanese sound effects. I can't read Japanese. I don't know what that's saying

[1:11:03] Well, no, it says karang or kabash

[1:11:06] Leo last uncle Leo Leo last name withheld

[1:11:10] Writes this dear peaches my girlfriend and I need help

[1:11:14] So I'm throwing myself at the feet of your sage and august tribunal a lot of relationship

[1:11:21] Help we're handing out today. What is this savage?

[1:11:23] Love last month Stephanie and I had to make a somewhat long drive for apple-picking purposes

[1:11:30] Two hours one way and we knew that the only entertainment worthy of our mission was the flop house

[1:11:37] You got that right official podcast, you know, you love us, baby

[1:11:40] I have been talking up the glories of Frank D'Angelo and Neil Breen

[1:11:44] So we plan to listen to the no deposit and fateful findings episodes of both small Denver classics

[1:11:50] Now for a long time, I've politely insisted that the name of the month is small Denver

[1:11:55] Thank you, and she politely rejects my logic on its face

[1:11:58] Claiming that it is small timber

[1:12:00] Nope

[1:12:00] the round trip for apples was apparently the last straw because we could hardly contain our laughter while arguing about the matter in

[1:12:08] Target a few days later

[1:12:10] That is what has come to public displays of animosity over the made-up name of our favorite movie podcast

[1:12:16] Small production theme to September episodes, please peaches. How can we resolve this difference between us?

[1:12:22] Perhaps you'd favor us with a vote. There are three of you

[1:12:27] Sincerely at Leo last name withheld Wow

[1:12:29] Leo has really painted a picture of Apple picking podcasting and product purchasing at Target

[1:12:39] Yeah, you can see you can see the steam coming out of my ears

[1:12:42] Now

[1:12:46] If I recall correctly I

[1:12:49] You could also call collectly as you're about to say the other person takes the charges

[1:13:01] No, if I recall

[1:13:03] correctly, yep, I

[1:13:05] coined the name for that month

[1:13:08] But I misspoke the first time around saying small Denver

[1:13:13] thinking that that was the pun that made sense then realizing that the

[1:13:18] Month was September and not September. Yeah, so

[1:13:22] small

[1:13:25] Honestly the origin of it is lost to history

[1:13:27] Yeah, I think it's funnier to call it small Vember when it's in September and I like the sound of it more

[1:13:34] I'm a stickler for logic. So I say small timber

[1:13:38] Kind of like hey, whatever feels right do what your body wants. I'm kind of I'm kind of caught between two

[1:13:44] Warring houses here. Mm-hmm on one hand I could side with Dan

[1:13:50] Or I could side with the correct one, which is

[1:13:56] You're not gonna change my behavior

[1:13:59] So many have tried

[1:14:01] So I hope that helps. There's one last letter Amanda last name withheld

[1:14:05] Right peaches this evening. I drove by a Popeye's and it made me wonder

[1:14:16] Plosives were in a

[1:14:19] professional studio today professional

[1:14:22] This evening. I drove by a Popeye's and it made me wonder is Elliot still eating

[1:14:29] Chicken when watching movies for the flop house

[1:14:31] I would hate to hear that this control variable has been lost now that he can't grab it on the way to Dan's

[1:14:39] And speaking of the long-distance podcasting you all attempt to watch the movies at the same time

[1:14:44] Or if not, do you agree to watch them in a at a certain time period before the recording?

[1:14:49] So that's still fresh possibly we yours floppily Amanda last name withheld

[1:14:55] Which is hard to do with the time zone difference, I'm assuming Elliot is eating what kale and avocado toast

[1:15:00] Yeah, kale avocados sun-dried tomatoes or as your wife referred to them yesterday a tomato raisins

[1:15:06] The I the sad thing. I hate to break it to you

[1:15:09] I still eat Popeye's and there's one in my new neighborhood, which is great

[1:15:12] But I no longer can eat it while I'm watching the movie because I'm usually doing the dishes while I watch the movie

[1:15:17] Most movies are watched in three or four chunklets

[1:15:20] I mean me as I would do the dishes based on the way that you

[1:15:24] Clean your plate of Popeye's chicken

[1:15:26] I would say that's also kind of like doing the dishes because you could serve food on those things

[1:15:31] And to answer the second question about when we watch the movies

[1:15:35] Stewart often busts my balls about watching the movies several days before recording because you forget everything

[1:15:45] Let's be clear my

[1:15:48] My

[1:15:49] Memory is a sieve and if I'd watched it the day before I could remember exactly as much about the movie

[1:15:56] Yeah, but that's actually probably the best pro watch the movie four days in advance argument. You've ever made Dan

[1:16:02] Yeah, well, I we just you know

[1:16:04] We don't fit it into our busy schedules as long as we get it done before we record we try and do it

[1:16:10] Within say the five days before recording

[1:16:13] My favorite way to do it is because we've been recording normally at like noon on a Sunday noon

[1:16:20] Eastern Time

[1:16:21] in case you were wondering I

[1:16:24] I'll wake up early on Sunday mornings usually pretty hungover and my wife will go to the gym and I'll

[1:16:30] Sit on the couch and watch the movie

[1:16:32] And then run right over to Dan so that we can record so it's as fresh as possible in my brain now when we do

[1:16:38] A live show we still watch the movie together that day

[1:16:41] yeah before the show usually on some kind of small screen so that we can get the whole picture of

[1:16:47] X-Men Dark Phoenix or X-Men Godzilla

[1:16:50] King of the Monsters or X-Men Alita colon battle angel X-Men colon Alita colon battle in town

[1:16:57] So let's move on doing some texting thing. Uh, my girlfriend has forgotten Elliot's address

[1:17:02] She did not say it on the podcast. Please. No, I'm not going to

[1:17:07] Worth coming out gonna happen again

[1:17:11] Um, so let's do some recommendations of movies you should watch instead of Slender Man, okay

[1:17:19] Instead of the original Thin Man. No, that's a great movie. I'll tell everyone look if you haven't seen The Thin Man before

[1:17:25] That's not my recommendation for today

[1:17:26] Although it should be to my favorite movies

[1:17:28] You gotta keep watching until Nick and Nora get introduced the first 10 minutes or so of the movie is

[1:17:33] Setting up the suspects and the mystery and I like that part, but it's not quite

[1:17:37] It's not at the snappy wit that you're expecting

[1:17:39] But then William Powell and Myrna Lloyd come in and it's just non-stop

[1:17:42] bubble delight from that point on

[1:17:45] Speaking of you know, it's a delight bubble from Max fun written by Jordan Morris guys

[1:17:50] You're on your phones looking at things. So I'll recommend my movie. Sorry this so I'm gonna recommend the movie boy

[1:17:54] That's one of Taika Waititi's earlier films and it's about a boy growing up in New Zealand in the 1980s and he comes

[1:18:02] He's in a lower-class background. He's got a lot of problems in his family

[1:18:06] Oldest kid in the family's 11 or so

[1:18:08] so he's taking care of his younger siblings and I think maybe cousins and his narrow do well father comes back and

[1:18:16] At first it seems like this is chance to connect with a man

[1:18:19] he has been kind of making a legend of in his mind because he has

[1:18:23] so little to kind of look up to and

[1:18:26] Slowly it dawns on him after experience with his dad the reality of the situation and it's there

[1:18:31] It's a funny movie and a touching movie

[1:18:34] It wears its Wes Anderson influence on its sleeve a little heavily. Yeah in a way that

[1:18:39] Taika Waititi is kind of sloughing off with each movie. He makes I haven't seen the new one

[1:18:44] But but I really liked a lot. So I'll recommend boy

[1:18:47] I'm gonna recommend a movie called

[1:18:50] Three tears on blood-stained flesh. It's kind of the same movie. Yes, kind of the same movie rolls right off the tongue. It's a

[1:18:58] A

[1:18:59] tiny budget

[1:19:01] Giallo homage or I guess it's just a giallo

[1:19:04] Set and shot entirely in southern, Indiana using a cast of actors entirely from that area

[1:19:12] If you were to ask me

[1:19:14] Should that movie be two and a half hours long? I would normally say no, but I've also watched it twice in the last week

[1:19:21] It's I don't know. It's this movie that is clearly made

[1:19:26] For very little money it it looks cheap

[1:19:30] The you know, the script is like fun and gross

[1:19:35] But it all like for whatever reason it it's still it's it's a it's a great movie

[1:19:40] Like I couldn't explain it like every I would watch I'd be like when I first started watching

[1:19:45] I'm like, oh man, this doesn't look that great

[1:19:47] I'm I don't think I'm gonna enjoy this but every scene managed to include like little nuggets that made made me keep pressing on until

[1:19:54] The movie's over before I know it

[1:19:56] The all the acting has a little bit of the like we're putting

[1:20:00] for our parents vibe but kind of in a good way. The special effects are limited but they're fun.

[1:20:07] There's definitely a villain that looks kind of like the Nemesis from Resident Evil but he's

[1:20:12] wearing a tiny little top hat and that's really awesome. Yeah, it's just, man, I don't know. It's

[1:20:19] on Amazon Prime so you can watch it there. Yeah, it's great and weird. Check it out.

[1:20:25] I'm going to recommend a movie that, as of right now, I'm not quite sure how you can find it but

[1:20:32] I am recommending it on faith that it will be streaming somewhere soon and that you'll remember

[1:20:40] that I recommended it. You'll maybe come across it. Do you want the credit? Well, no. I mean,

[1:20:46] I will get into it in a second. This is not something that necessarily you would look at

[1:20:50] and be like, oh, this is going to be good but let me tell you, it's going to be good. I went

[1:20:55] to see this at Alamo Draft House. They had a special screening of it. I think it was like

[1:21:00] a fundraiser screening for something. Our buddy, Matt Carman, who does a lot of the tech stuff

[1:21:07] for our live shows said, you want to go see this? I'm like, yeah, I like hanging out with

[1:21:11] friends and seeing movies and so it's a documentary called Who Let the Dogs Out

[1:21:17] and it is about the song Who Let the Dogs Out. That sounds like exactly the movie Matt Carman

[1:21:23] would want to see all the time. It is a trim 61 minutes but it is delightful and it is about the

[1:21:31] surprisingly tangled history of who deserves the credit for writing the song Who Let the Dogs Out.

[1:21:41] And a lot of people said, oh, three identical strangers. The documentary is three identical

[1:21:46] strangers. There are so many surprises along the way, so many twists and turns. I was more

[1:21:51] amazed by the number of twists and turns that are in the story of who wrote Who Let the Dogs Out

[1:21:57] and whether someone heard earlier versions, whether they're borrowing, whether it was

[1:22:02] something psychically in the air over the course of the 60 minutes, it sort of becomes a documentary

[1:22:07] about the way all artists borrow and it's hard to know where something comes from and why a

[1:22:15] certain version of something becomes popular. It's like that moment when Hollywood was convinced

[1:22:21] that the name Chuck was hilarious and that they would find a way to fit it into everything.

[1:22:25] It's exactly like that and it sort of becomes a story too about the weird obsession that this

[1:22:31] guy who is unraveling this gets to with such a silly thing and also kind of in a larger sense,

[1:22:38] it becomes about how any stupid thing has an interesting story attached to it if you

[1:22:46] work hard enough to discover it or if you tell it in the right way. So Who Let the Dogs Out.

[1:22:52] That's just what it's called, Who Let the Dogs Out.

[1:22:54] It's called Who Let the Dogs Out.

[1:22:55] Some people might think it's a film adaptation of the song.

[1:22:58] Yeah.

[1:22:58] And it's a whodunit about letting the dogs out.

[1:23:01] Is the song a whodunit?

[1:23:03] I have to assume so. I don't know the lyrics, but I assume it's about a detective.

[1:23:08] I can only imagine it.

[1:23:09] Who's picking up clues.

[1:23:10] It's about a party where dogs get let out.

[1:23:12] And it probably asks more questions than it answers.

[1:23:15] Guys.

[1:23:16] I mean, looking at the lyrics right now, who let the dogs out?

[1:23:19] Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, who let the dogs out?

[1:23:27] Sounds like a whodunit to me.

[1:23:29] Okay.

[1:23:29] Well, let's just wrap it up.

[1:23:31] That's been another Shocktober 2019.

[1:23:35] Hope you had fun.

[1:23:37] We lay it to rest in its crypt and we lower the coffin down into the floor.

[1:23:42] Cover it with the dirt of its home country.

[1:23:45] Uh-huh.

[1:23:45] And possibly a grieving Italian grandma.

[1:23:48] Of course.

[1:23:49] Why?

[1:23:49] You were such a good boy.

[1:23:50] He was such a good month.

[1:23:52] A good theme month.

[1:23:53] But it is not consecrated ground and Shocktober is an unquiet soul.

[1:23:57] So it will rise again.

[1:23:58] When?

[1:23:59] No one knows.

[1:24:00] Oh, next year?

[1:24:00] Well, no one knows when next year.

[1:24:02] Yeah, impossible to tell.

[1:24:03] Maybe somebody will make another horror movie before then that we can review.

[1:24:08] Yeah, could be.

[1:24:08] Could be.

[1:24:09] I mean, we don't have any theme months between now and the end of the year, right?

[1:24:11] We might watch the movie that we originally wanted to watch, but I won't spoil that.

[1:24:15] And also, of course, there's Cagemas coming up.

[1:24:18] Yeah.

[1:24:18] Don't we have Sandalvember coming up?

[1:24:20] That is a made-up thing.

[1:24:21] Oh, right.

[1:24:21] Sandalvember.

[1:24:22] Or is it Sand-u-ary?

[1:24:24] No, Sandalve-

[1:24:25] I still want to do-

[1:24:26] Well, we'll talk about-

[1:24:27] It was either Mom-u-ary or Mom-brew-ary.

[1:24:30] I was just talking about how we need to wrap it up.

[1:24:33] So for the flop house, Dan McCoy is me.

[1:24:37] Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:24:39] And I'd also think you should check out other shows on the Maximum Fun Podcast Network.

[1:24:43] That's the network that we're on.

[1:24:45] And there's a lot of great, cool content on there.

[1:24:48] So check it out.

[1:24:48] And I'm Elliot Kalin saying, why don't you tell people about us?

[1:24:51] Leave us a positive review on iTunes.

[1:24:53] Tweet about us.

[1:24:53] Instagram about us.

[1:24:54] TikTok about us.

[1:24:55] Snapchat about us.

[1:24:56] Whatever your social media platform of your choice.

[1:24:58] They're all equally evil.

[1:25:00] Please talk about the flop house on them.

[1:25:02] I've been Elliot Kalin.

[1:25:04] Bye!

[1:25:11] That's boyish life.

[1:25:14] That's good quality propane.

[1:25:17] Today's top story.

[1:25:19] Boy, right.

[1:25:21] Propane remains the best heating gas.

[1:25:25] And grill fuel.

[1:25:27] In other news, local neighbor Con Supernusenfone, furious at his neighbor Hank Hill.

[1:25:38] We now turn to Boomhauer for the weather.

[1:25:44] Do they ever do weather on a podcast report?

[1:25:46] I don't think so.

[1:25:49] People need to know it.

[1:25:50] The national weather.

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Ep. #296 - Slender Man

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