Ep. #273 - The Humanity Bureau

Dan McCoy

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss The Humanity Bureau, starring Nicolas Cucca Cage!

Stuart Wellington

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

[0:36] Oh man, it's been a long time, Dan. It's me, Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:40] And over here, Elliot Kalin, confirming that, yes, for us, it has been a long time.

[0:45] Even though, for you listeners, it's only been the regular two weeks since an episode.

Dan McCoy

[0:50] Alright, well, I guess that's a peek behind the curtain. People needed to know how long it was since we were all talking.

Elliott Kalan

[0:54] In actuality, that's not the case, because last week we recorded a MaxFun Donors Only bonus episode,

[0:59] so it's actually been less time than usual between recordings for us.

[1:02] Exactly.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04] Now you're probably wondering why I haven't said MaxFun Bonors Only bonus episode,

[1:09] and that's because, uh, I guess I just did.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12] Okay.

[1:13] Okay.

[1:14] A rascal.

[1:15] Asked and answered, I suppose.

[1:19] So what do we do on this here at Flophouse?

[1:21] That's what I was going to ask. Dan, what do we do on this here at Flophouse?

Dan McCoy

[1:23] Well, we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it, and boy howdy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28] What time of year is it?

[1:29] What time of year is it, Tiny Elliot?

Elliott Kalan

[1:31] Is this, I, well, hold on a second.

[1:34] Now, I'm assuming Tiny Elliot is a reference to the Nicolas Cage character Tiny Elvis from SNL.

[1:40] Not just the fact that I'm a shorter than average human being.

[1:43] Or Tiny Tim also.

[1:46] Tiny Tim, the Nicolas Cage character from A Cagemas Carol.

[1:49] Hey, wait a minute.

[1:50] It's Cagemas.

[1:51] That's right.

[1:51] It's that special time at the end of the year when we celebrate the recent works of our patron saint,

[1:57] Saint Nicholas, Nicolas Cage, that is, the greatest actor in the world who makes the worst choices in the world.

[2:04] Often, yeah.

[2:05] Often.

[2:06] Wait, wait, wait, wait.

[2:07] He often makes the worst choices.

Stuart Wellington

[2:09] And we're not just talking about his choice of property or, I don't know, hairstyle.

Elliott Kalan

[2:15] We're not talking about his choice to overstretch his finances by buying castles and a smuggled Mongolian Tyrannosaurus skull.

[2:22] We're talking about his choice in roles.

[2:24] Because here's the thing, guys.

[2:25] Let me lay it with you.

[2:26] Let me just be honest here.

[2:28] I do really think Nicolas Cage is one of the best actors ever.

[2:31] But he's not always in the best roles.

[2:34] But maybe today will be a little different.

[2:37] Dan, what movie did we watch today as if it wasn't already announced at the top of the show?

Dan McCoy

[2:41] We watched The Humanity Bureau.

[2:43] Now, you probably have never heard of this movie.

[2:46] I mean, that's the Slim Pickens this year when it comes to Nicolas Cage.

Elliott Kalan

[2:50] Slim Pickens is in it?

[2:51] How great would it be if Nicolas Cage did a movie that was a biopic of Slim Pickens?

[2:55] I would love that.

[2:57] That would be amazing.

Stuart Wellington

[2:59] So, yeah.

[3:00] So, the last year or so, Nicolas Cage has made a couple of indie hits.

[3:05] Yeah.

[3:06] Mandy and Mom and Dad are both really great.

[3:09] And so, we had to hop over to the old internet movie database and see what movies he's turned out that aren't those two movies.

[3:18] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[3:19] The ones he pooped out in private.

Elliott Kalan

[3:22] Pooped out in private.

[3:25] That's the name of the Criterion Eclipse collection of these Nicolas Cage movies is Nicolas Cage pooped out in private.

[3:34] So, often – so, Nicolas Cage, we – it used to be that there were glorious riches of bad Nicolas Cage movies.

[3:40] Now, there's still plenty of them, but they're not as high profile.

[3:43] Yeah.

[3:43] And this is perhaps the lowest profile Nicolas Cage movie we've ever done.

[3:47] And that's including, I think, left behind.

Stuart Wellington

[3:48] I remember when I was a boy, when I was a boy, guys, you could just stroll through the fields and there would be Nicolas Cage movies all over the ground.

[3:59] And you could just pick them up and eat them right there.

[4:02] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[4:02] Yeah.

[4:03] But then climate change and Nicolas Cage movie swarms have been dropping in population very drastically.

[4:09] And it's an important part of the bad movie ecosystem.

[4:12] So, guys, let's do everything we can to reuse Nicolas Cage movies, recycle Nicolas Cage movies, and the other one.

[4:20] The other re-word for conservation that I don't remember.

[4:24] Reduce?

[4:25] Reduce – no, we don't want to reduce Nicolas Cage movies.

[4:27] No, that's the opposite.

[4:28] Reduce non-Nicolas Cage movies.

[4:30] Thank you.

[4:31] But, yeah, I feel like we grew up during a golden age when Nicolas Cage was making good movies in theaters and also his bad movies were released in theaters.

[4:40] And now his bad movies are mostly low-budget things that he needs to work.

[4:46] To put it – to coin a phrase that's never been said before, these are the movies he kind of pooped out in private.

[4:52] Yeah.

[4:53] That's a new phrase I just invented.

[4:55] Yeah.

[4:56] So, Dan, how did you hear about this movie, The Humanity Bureau?

[4:58] Because I had never heard of it until we started – or, Stuart, were you the one who brought it up?

Stuart Wellington

[5:01] You brought it up, right?

[5:02] I mean, I told you the same thing.

[5:04] I looked at IMDb, and I'm like, what movies?

[5:06] Which one has the dumbest name?

[5:09] Okay, let's pick that one.

Elliott Kalan

[5:10] Now, is this a sequel to The Adjustment Bureau, or perhaps a prequel or squeakquel to The Adjustment Bureau?

[5:16] Another movie about The Bureau?

[5:16] I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[5:17] I've never seen The Adjustment Bureau, so I can't tell you.

[5:19] I think it's a movie about people wearing hats, from what I can tell.

Elliott Kalan

[5:22] Yeah, it's about the band Men Without Hats before they lost their hats.

[5:29] Is that why they're called that?

[5:31] Yeah, I think so.

Dan McCoy

[5:32] Because they were always known for their hats before that.

[5:35] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[5:36] It's the basis for John Classen's hit children's book, I Want My Hat Back.

Stuart Wellington

[5:40] That's one for all the parents in the audience.

[5:42] But they wanted to differentiate that band from the band The Men, and they had to specify because The Men apparently always wear hats.

[5:50] Oh, whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[5:50] Anyway, so.

[5:51] That is a rich man.

[5:54] So, The Humanity Bureau falls under the heading of dystopia movies, and it also falls under the heading of worst driving CGI I've ever seen in a feature film.

Dan McCoy

[6:07] The bad driving CGI set up an expectation that this movie was not prepared to follow through on, because I was laughing out loud at the first scene.

[6:16] I'm like, this is going to be great.

[6:17] And then the rest of the movie was just a slide into disappointment.

[6:20] Yeah.

[6:21] But the bad, yeah, it's like he's driving through a video game.

Elliott Kalan

[6:27] See, I want to just give a quick mention of warning to Flophouse listener and special effects expert Todd Vaziri.

[6:35] Todd, we're going to be talking about bad CGI on this one.

[6:38] So get ready to defend CGI effects on Twitter.

[6:41] That's what he does sometimes.

Stuart Wellington

[6:43] I figured that any moment after that first scene, the camera would just pull back, and you would see that it's on the set of Saturday Night Live.

Elliott Kalan

[6:52] Yeah, I mean, there are times when I was like, oh, he's just sitting in a fake car in front of a TV at an amusement park or something like that.

Dan McCoy

[7:00] Yeah, I texted a friend, and I was like, there are rear screen projection effects in Alfred Hitchcock movies that look better than this.

Elliott Kalan

[7:09] And he also does the classic thing of moving the steering wheel way too much.

[7:14] He'll be driving down a straight road, and he's constantly swerving the wheel as if, I guess, he's trying to avoid Koopa shells in the road that banana peels that Wario threw in his path.

Stuart Wellington

[7:24] Yeah, I mean, Wario's a fucking awesome asshole.

Elliott Kalan

[7:27] Now, what's your feeling about Waluigi?

Stuart Wellington

[7:30] I mean, obviously, I feel positive about Waluigi, but, you know.

[7:35] Is that obvious?

[7:36] I mean, it's obvious.

[7:39] He's Waluigi.

[7:40] Yeah.

[7:41] But, I mean, I feel like Wario was my, like, first and greatest love.

[7:46] So, you know, I'm going to go with Wario on this one.

[7:49] Small business owner Wario.

Dan McCoy

[7:52] Okay, guys.

[7:53] So, should we talk about what this movie is about?

[7:55] Yeah, I suppose so.

Elliott Kalan

[7:57] It's not just about watching Nicolas Cage pretend to drive poorly in front of a very bad special effect.

[8:03] It's also about.

[8:04] Can I just say.

Dan McCoy

[8:04] Yep.

[8:05] Before we start, this is possibly the most rote story that I have ever seen on the Flophouse.

[8:11] Yeah, someone wrote it, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[8:13] Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.

[8:13] I think that's the hundredth time I've done that joke on the Flophouse.

[8:16] Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.

[8:17] Confetti, confetti, confetti, confetti.

[8:20] Parade, parade, Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras, body blow, body blow, knockout.

[8:23] Wow.

Dan McCoy

[8:24] I'm impressed that you set up all that confetti ahead of time to fall on you.

Elliott Kalan

[8:27] Yeah, now I've got to clean it up.

[8:29] Well, the 80th time I did that joke, I was like, I've got to get ready for number 100 because it's going to happen.

[8:35] There's a time when Dan's going to say it again and I'm going to say it again and it's going to be the hundredth time and then I'm going to get a free Toys R Us shopping spree just like on Nickelodeon.

[8:44] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[8:45] I don't know who's sponsoring you, but that's great.

[8:48] He said Nickelodeon, dude.

[8:50] Nickelodeon's doing it, right?

[8:51] Yeah, yeah.

[8:52] They still make stuff, right?

[8:53] That's a channel.

Elliott Kalan

[8:54] I mean, not the television channel.

[8:54] It is a channel.

[8:55] Not the television channel, Nickelodeon, but an actual old-timey movie theater that charges a nickel to watch that train get into the station.

[9:02] Sure.

Stuart Wellington

[9:03] Well, Elliot's recommendations keeps driving them into our theater.

Elliott Kalan

[9:09] But Dan, what were you going to say?

[9:11] It's a rote movie?

Dan McCoy

[9:13] Yeah, it's just the most basic dystopia.

[9:15] Is that because somebody wrote it?

Elliott Kalan

[9:17] Ba-ba-ba-ba-boom!

[9:19] 101 Dalmatians!

Dan McCoy

[9:24] Okay.

[9:25] There wasn't much more to what I was going to say.

Elliott Kalan

[9:27] No, no, it's a very by-the-numbers, soulless, very bland and dull dystopia.

[9:34] And a lot of – look, a lot of filmmakers, they don't have a lot of money in the budget for special effects, not even realistic car driving effects.

[9:41] They don't have a big cast.

[9:42] And they make up for it with, I guess, the most valuable and yet cheapest effect of all, which is –

[9:47] What's that?

[9:48] Imagination.

[9:50] Oh, okay.

[9:51] Which is the ability to come up –

Stuart Wellington

[9:52] Have you been talking to Vin Diesel again?

Elliott Kalan

[9:53] Yeah, the ability to come up with concepts or ideas or even dialogue or scenes or characters that we've never seen before and really blow us away.

[10:02] The creators of the Humanity Bureau decided not to go that route.

[10:06] And instead, they would go the opposite route of just kind of doing what other people have done before.

[10:11] And we'll talk about that.

[10:11] So the Humanity Bureau.

[10:13] We open on text.

[10:15] Oh, boy.

[10:16] Everyone's favorite thing to open on.

[10:17] Is there – how many good movies are there that open on text?

[10:20] Is it just the Star Wars movies?

[10:23] Damn.

[10:25] Wait, no.

[10:26] Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I guess, also opens on text?

Dan McCoy

[10:30] Conan the Barbarian.

Elliott Kalan

[10:31] Okay.

[10:32] Conan the Barbarian.

[10:33] Okay.

[10:34] Has there been a good movie in the past like 10 years that opened on text?

[10:37] Again, barring Star Wars movies.

Dan McCoy

[10:41] Probably not.

Elliott Kalan

[10:42] Well, Flophouse listeners, write on in.

[10:45] If you've got an idea, send it to text at theflophouse.com.

[10:49] It's not a real email address.

[10:51] So maybe just write into the regular email address.

Stuart Wellington

[10:54] Yeah, I mean – and that's barring like – we're not talking about like credits.

[10:58] We're talking about descriptive text.

Elliott Kalan

[11:00] Yeah, explanatory text.

[11:01] I mean most movies start with credits and many of them are very good.

[11:04] Okay.

[11:04] But the text tells us that in the near future, the climate collapsed and that caused society to collapse and America has walled off its cities and created the Humanity Bureau whose job is to relocate people who are considered burdens on society.

[11:21] We're living in one of those post-collapse dystopias that somehow both, I guess like very socialist and very like libertarian conservative.

[11:31] It's a movie that feels like it's political but it actually does not have any political ideas in its head.

[11:37] Cut to Nevada.

[11:39] Nicholas Cage, our hero, Agent Noah Cross of the Humanity Bureau.

[11:43] And let's talk about that name Noah Cross for a moment.

[11:44] That's a real name.

[11:46] Now that's –

[11:47] It's fucking awesome.

[11:47] It's what it is, right?

[11:48] Yeah.

[11:49] But that's the name of the villain in Chinatown is Noah Cross.

[11:52] Really?

Stuart Wellington

[11:53] Is he a vampire?

[11:55] Yeah.

[11:55] So wait.

Elliott Kalan

[11:56] You're saying it's the same character?

Stuart Wellington

[11:58] Yeah, probably.

[11:59] Okay.

[11:59] So –

[12:00] By vampire, I mean like that's the name of a daywalker who hunts down other vampires.

[12:04] I mean it's pretty clear.

[12:05] And he has some kind of Krull-like thrown blade weapon.

Elliott Kalan

[12:08] Yeah, of course.

[12:09] Sure.

[12:11] Perhaps.

[12:11] So is that what the Kruller is named after because it's shaped kind of like Krull's blade weapon?

[12:16] I can only assume so, yeah.

[12:17] Yeah.

[12:18] Okay.

[12:18] That's fair.

Stuart Wellington

[12:18] What about a bear Kruller?

[12:19] In original commercials for Krullers, they had guys throwing Krullers into people's mouths.

Elliott Kalan

[12:28] Was it a tie-in with Krull?

[12:30] Was that the thing?

[12:31] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[12:31] They got Liam Neeson for the commercials.

[12:33] Wow.

[12:34] Really?

[12:34] Because he plays the thief character in that movie.

Elliott Kalan

[12:37] That reminds me of when Dark Man came out and they introduced darkness and rooms without lights turned on.

[12:43] And he was like having trouble sleeping with the lights on.

[12:46] Well, there's something new in town.

[12:48] And they turned the lights off and it was the first time I ever saw a room with no lights on.

[12:52] And it's funny that people don't realize that darkness came as a tie-in with Dark Man.

[12:56] It didn't exist.

Stuart Wellington

[12:56] Yeah, I remember that commercial.

[12:58] I played during Saturday morning cartoons and a couple of kids see Durant standing in the doorway and they're like, oh no, it's Durant.

[13:03] And then they turn off the light and they're like, he's gone.

Elliott Kalan

[13:07] Thanks, darkness.

[13:08] We all remember those commercials.

[13:09] Anyway, I wanted to be one of those kids so bad.

[13:11] Anyway, so we're in Nevada.

[13:13] Nicolas Cage, Agent Noah Cross.

[13:15] He's driving terrible green screen behind his car.

[13:18] Get used to it because it's going to be the best character in the whole movie is the bad green screen.

[13:21] And he's got a hologram iPad, my other favorite character, which seems to be, if anything, less efficient than a normal iPad.

[13:28] It seems like he has to do a lot more extra work to get it to work and tell him things.

[13:32] But it's also one of those movies where it's like, we've got to show this to the future.

[13:36] He's got an iPad that he can talk to and it talks back to him.

[13:39] But that technology already exists in the modern world.

[13:43] So we'll have a little hologram floating above it all the time.

[13:46] And that'll, I assume, really drain the battery power.

Stuart Wellington

[13:49] I feel like companies would only create hologram cell phones if they really want to cut down on people sending dick pics and people surfing porno sites on their phone.

[14:04] Because it projects it above the phone.

[14:05] Yeah, because everyone would see that person lazily scrolling through porno.

[14:10] They don't have to be doing it lazily.

[14:12] Maybe they're doing it with a purpose.

[14:14] I mean, I think I'm instilling a little bit of my own personal life into this joke.

Dan McCoy

[14:18] And also, these holograms look like holograms.

[14:21] I mean, they look like Princess Leia being projected out of R2-D2.

[14:25] So the porn that you would see on it would not be that.

[14:29] The resolution would be pretty low is what I'm saying.

[14:32] It's not the optimum way to.

Elliott Kalan

[14:33] When people look at porn on the internet, the thing they're first worried about is, is this 4K?

Stuart Wellington

[14:38] Yeah.

[14:39] Is this Blu-ray quality?

[14:40] Is this HD?

[14:41] I won't look at it if it's not.

[14:43] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[14:43] Is this bootleg stream of a porn video in the best possible visual quality?

[14:49] Is this 3D TV?

Dan McCoy

[14:52] I can't get off to standard definition anymore.

[14:54] I'm sorry.

[14:55] You need to see pores.

[14:57] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[14:57] Yeah, exactly.

[14:58] Now, speaking of seeing pores, there's a lot of poor people in this movie that have to be relocated by the Humanity Bureau.

[15:06] So let's get back to it.

[15:07] So Nicolas Cage is also driving.

[15:09] It's an old kind of like what?

[15:11] Like muscle car type car, but clearly.

[15:12] It's an El Camino.

[15:13] It's an El Camino, but he's had it retrofitted somehow.

[15:16] They mentioned at some point that they haven't made new cars in 30 years or something like that.

[15:20] They're constantly like upping the ante of what things are not around in the future because they're like, they haven't built new cars in a long time.

[15:26] And later it's like, here's a can of coffee.

[15:28] Very rare.

[15:29] Hard to get.

[15:29] And then later on, someone's like, we're going up to a lake.

[15:31] And someone's like, they don't have lakes anymore.

Stuart Wellington

[15:34] Well, there's a moment where, yeah, they talk about how rare coffee is.

[15:37] And then later on, you see a guy drinking a takeout cup of coffee.

Elliott Kalan

[15:43] There's a part later on where Nicolas Cage has to trade his expensive watch for a can of beans.

[15:48] And it's like, OK, hold on a second.

[15:50] Just how bad is everything that's going on?

[15:53] Because we also see later that he has a Monet in his apartment.

[15:56] Like this is Last Man on Earth and like Will Forte.

[15:58] He's just been walking around the world stealing treasures.

[16:01] But OK, he goes to a motel where they're selling unlicensed pure water, which is not OK to do.

[16:08] And he sees this old.

Stuart Wellington

[16:10] Yeah.

[16:11] And that unlicensed pure water is clearly an Evian bottle with the label removed.

[16:17] With the label taken off.

[16:19] On one hand, like I like that detail that they have to scrounge for that sort of thing.

[16:25] But most likely it was just a lazy prop choice.

Elliott Kalan

[16:27] Yeah, as lazy as a Pornhub browser.

[16:31] Yep.

[16:33] Something that made me think of before when you said lazily scanning through, it was like a Goofus and Gallant for adults where it's like Goofus lazily browses through Pornhub.

[16:42] Gallant has a specific fetish that he's searching for.

[16:48] So the heat.

[16:49] So Nicolas Cage has a meeting with an old man who is appealing the decision for him to be relocated to New Eden.

[16:55] New Eden is where they send all the people who cannot support themselves financially.

[16:59] Now, they're told it's a place where everyone gets everything they want and it's all candy and elves and comic books and all that stuff.

[17:05] But, you know, he says he knows the truth.

[17:08] And it's like, yeah, of course, it's a place where they kill people.

[17:10] Like what else is it going to be?

[17:11] Like from the first moment, I mean, I wasn't sure if the audience was ever supposed to believe that New Eden is a good place.

[17:18] Nicolas Cage seems to think so.

[17:19] Every other character in the movie seems to be totally aware that it is a place where they kill people who go there.

Stuart Wellington

[17:24] Yeah, I mean, I assumed right off the bat that it was going to be a place where they kill people and turn them into food.

[17:29] And New Eden was going to be a pun for New Eden.

Elliott Kalan

[17:33] Stuart, that is so much more imagination and wit than anyone put into this movie.

[17:39] Because as we see later, we'll get to it, the people who get killed in New Eden just get turned into ashes, which are then packed into boxes to be used when you want to threaten somebody who works for you.

[17:48] So the old man is like, I don't want to go there, but it's a crime not to be a productive citizen.

[17:53] It's never really explained what productivity is since everyone in the movie is either a nonproductive burden who's running from the government or a government agent.

[18:01] There's nobody in between.

[18:03] And so this turns into a gunfight.

[18:05] The old man pulls a gun on Nicolas Cage.

[18:07] Nicolas Cage, our hero.

[18:08] We're introduced to him shooting and killing an old man.

Stuart Wellington

[18:10] Yeah, he's like, I'm just going to go get some receipts from underneath my mattress in here.

Elliott Kalan

[18:15] Nicolas Cage has to audit their finances.

[18:17] And he's looking through papers that look like they're from the Gold Rush era.

[18:21] It's like they put, guys, you did not have to use a match and coffee to stain and burn these documents to make them look like pirate maps.

[18:28] They can just look like old receipts.

Stuart Wellington

[18:29] And I love that the establishing shot for this guy's rundown apartment is, which they use a couple times, is always a close-up shot of a plate with old food on it covered in mealworms.

Elliott Kalan

[18:41] Yeah, because they all live in a Cenobite Hellraiser world, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[18:45] Now, I think we were speaking over you when you're making this point, Elliot, but it struck me that, yes, our introduction to our hero is him shooting a destitute old man.

Elliott Kalan

[18:57] Yeah.

[18:57] And I mean, he's a guy who's working for bad people.

[19:00] We know that.

[19:01] But it is a very unsympathetic way to be introduced to Nicolas Cage.

[19:04] At the very least, make the person that he's going after a threat in some way so that we see a sense of Nicolas Cage's skills.

Stuart Wellington

[19:12] I mean, he totally blasts the hotel guy with a shotgun before Nicolas Cage shoots him.

[19:16] That guy's on a rampage.

Elliott Kalan

[19:18] The way this scene works out is he goes, let me get these other papers.

[19:20] He closes the door.

[19:21] He gets a shotgun and he blasts it through the door, I guess using his Matt Murdock daredevil radar sense to know where Nicolas Cage is.

[19:28] He opens the door.

[19:30] Nicolas Cage is gone.

[19:31] And it turns out Nicolas Cage has the amazing skill of moving out of the way of doors when there might be a shotgun blast behind it.

[19:37] And then the hotel owner walks in.

[19:39] The old man kills him.

[19:40] And then Nicolas Cage shoots and kills the old man.

[19:42] And we learn the old man was once the governor of Colorado and had dinner at the White House with President Donald Trump in a pretty –

[19:49] Oh, wow.

[19:49] How the mighty have fallen.

[19:50] Oh, boy.

[19:51] Very much so.

[19:52] Donald Trump, we must assume, is wearing some kind of sackcloth and eating ashes in the desert.

[19:58] You know, as penance of some kind.

[20:00] We can only imagine because the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

[20:03] He's a pretty big guy.

[20:05] I'm not trying to size shame him.

[20:06] He's taller than me.

[20:07] He's just kind of like there's an elephantine quality about Donald Trump.

[20:10] But anyway, we don't need to get into that because this is way in the future when that's all over.

Stuart Wellington

[20:14] So I can only assume that Nicolas Cage was behind the couch because he was looking for more receipts and then was surprised when shotguns started flaming.

Elliott Kalan

[20:23] I think so.

[20:24] And as – look.

[20:27] Well, I don't know.

[20:28] I was going to try to quote a Carol Kane – that Carol Kane song about it.

[20:31] You can't talk to a man with a shotgun in his hand.

[20:33] But then I briefly forgot the lyrics, so forget about that.

[20:35] Okay, guys.

[20:36] Nicolas Cage, as a result of his just top work shooting this old man, is getting a promotion.

[20:41] And he talks to this bald guy in his apartment who – I can't tell if it's his boss or his partner or just another coworker.

[20:49] Their relationship seems to be kind of fluid.

[20:51] But Nicolas Cage, he sympathizes too much with the unproductive.

[20:55] He doesn't want to move them.

[20:56] And as he says to this bald man whose name I think is Adam, but I wasn't really sure, he says –

Stuart Wellington

[21:00] I thought it was like Ben Westinghouse.

[21:02] Oh, that could be it.

[21:04] Named after he's the – his family owns the patent on the refrigerators.

Elliott Kalan

[21:08] Oh, that's why he was able to survive and become a federal agent.

[21:11] So bald man is right off the top.

[21:13] You can tell he's going to be the bad guy.

[21:15] And that's why I'm going to spin him off into the movie Bald Man and then I can have the sequel Bald Man versus Dark Man where they finally fight.

[21:22] These two characters we wanted to see in conflict for so long.

[21:25] Dark Man who has the power of fake faces and Bald Man who has the power of blinding you when light shines off of his dome.

[21:31] And that is the enemy of darkness.

[21:33] And we often think of darkness as bad, but in this case it's good because Dark Man, he hides in the shadows for justice.

[21:39] And Bald Man, he shines the light of injustice in your eyes to blind you.

Stuart Wellington

[21:43] So anyway –

[21:44] I mean the darkness comic book is bad, but the darkness band is pretty good.

[21:48] So I mean it's balanced out.

[21:50] All right.

Dan McCoy

[21:50] And Blinded by the Light is a different song that people don't realize is a Bruce Springsteen song, but it is.

[21:56] There's almost no plot in this film, but we've spent 20 minutes talking about the first five minutes.

Elliott Kalan

[22:01] Okay, so Nicolas Cage mentions that he's seen children drink their own piss.

[22:04] I guess he was watching Waterworld Babies starring little Kev Costner.

[22:10] And Nicolas Cage remembers the good old days when he was a kid and his mom used to take him to a lake and teach him fly fishing.

[22:15] And he is using a fly fishing rod in his apartment and hooks it onto the Monet on his wall, which who cares?

[22:22] Society has collapsed.

[22:23] Who cares about how valuable Monet is anymore?

[22:25] Okay, Nicolas, he goes to his next humanity that needs bureauizing.

[22:30] That's a mom named Rachel and her son Lucas.

[22:32] And Rachel has dressed Lucas up in new shoes that don't fit to make it look like he is.

[22:37] They're successful.

[22:38] Nicolas Cage goes through their papers.

Stuart Wellington

[22:39] Which is fucking crazy because later on this kid is climbing all over a roof wearing a brand new pair of Timberlands, man.

[22:46] Like what?

[22:48] Yeah, tell me about it.

[22:48] Why you put him in those shitty dress shoes, man?

[22:50] Those Tims look awesome.

Elliott Kalan

[22:52] Nicolas Cage, he tells them they're going to have to relocate.

[22:55] And Rachel slaps him.

[22:56] But then Lucas is climbing up on that roof, putting a bird back in a nest that he keeps on a chimney.

[23:02] I couldn't quite understand what was going on.

[23:04] I guess there's a bird that lives in a nest on a chimney on the house.

[23:07] There's apparently enough food for this bird to get by.

[23:09] So why don't they just let the bird tell them how to not be a burden on society?

[23:12] Because you can't fill bird in without bird.

[23:14] Right, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[23:16] Well, not those exact letters, but yes.

Elliott Kalan

[23:19] Close enough though, right?

Dan McCoy

[23:21] Yeah, all right.

[23:22] I guess so.

[23:22] Now I'm a little confused about the timeline here because I feel like…

[23:26] Well, Dan, this is the future.

Elliott Kalan

[23:28] All right.

[23:28] And that's why…

[23:29] And that's why…

Stuart Wellington

[23:30] Wait, we're in the future?

[23:31] No, no.

[23:31] Oh, no.

[23:32] We're in the…

[23:32] Every moment, we're in the future from the moment before.

[23:34] Well, that's true.

Elliott Kalan

[23:35] There was a scientist, I believe, who once said…

[23:38] I think it was…

[23:39] His postulate that time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future.

[23:43] Okay.

[23:43] And also, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot.

[23:45] So that applies to this situation.

[23:47] But Dan, what did you not understand about the timeline?

[23:49] Now, I may…

[23:50] It goes like this.

[23:51] I wasn't saying…

[23:51] It goes like this.

[23:52] Creation of the universe, single-celled organisms, plants, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, people.

Dan McCoy

[23:58] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[23:58] Then question mark, question mark, question mark.

[24:00] Like an Evite where you don't know how late the party's going to go.

Dan McCoy

[24:02] Mm-hmm.

[24:03] And then Morlocks and Eli.

Elliott Kalan

[24:06] Yeah, Eli.

[24:07] Just a guy named Eli and his Morlocks.

[24:09] L-O-I.

[24:11] I don't know how the fuck…

[24:11] I would have said Eloy, but you know what?

[24:13] Maybe I'm wrong.

Dan McCoy

[24:15] So, I may have misunderstood things because I was, frankly, not paying full attention to

[24:21] the movie.

[24:22] But I feel like later on, don't we learn that by this time he has learned the shocking

[24:26] truth of New Eden?

[24:27] Like he learns it in between…

Elliott Kalan

[24:29] No, not yet.

[24:30] Not yet.

[24:31] Okay.

[24:31] That is about to happen.

[24:34] Anyway, Nicolas Cage saves this boy by giving him CPR, which I guess heals the broken

[24:38] leg that he got from falling off a roof.

[24:40] And Nicolas Cage, this is the weirdest part of the movie for me.

[24:43] He's hanging out in their one-room house while the mom gives Lucas, who is 11 years old,

[24:48] a bath in a big metal tub.

[24:50] And it's like, one, it's kind of weird for her to still be giving him a bath.

[24:53] He is almost an adolescent.

[24:55] And two, it's even weirder that Nicolas Cage is watching this mom give this kid a bath.

[25:00] Like the whole situation is weird.

[25:03] And you know what?

[25:04] Family togetherness.

[25:05] You know, the family that bathes together stays together.

[25:09] But I think it's still weird.

[25:10] Like when my son's 11, you better believe I'm not going to be washing him in a big tub.

[25:14] And you better damn well believe Nicolas Cage is not welcome to watch my 11-year-old son

[25:18] wash himself.

Stuart Wellington

[25:20] Oh, come on.

[25:21] He's Nicolas Cage.

[25:22] Yeah, I'm going to stick with, I'm going to side with Dan on this one.

Elliott Kalan

[25:24] Okay.

[25:25] Outvoted.

[25:26] Nick, when my son's 11, come on by and watch him take a bath.

[25:29] The jury has spoken.

Stuart Wellington

[25:31] This is around the time where Nicolas Cage turns to the woman and he's like,

[25:35] why do you want to stay here?

[25:37] And I think it's pretty clear.

[25:38] They have this big-ass house with a ton of stuff in it.

[25:41] Like they have a whole fucking display of commemorative spoons.

[25:45] Like if they're so poor, how do they have all this stuff?

[25:50] Are there stores still?

[25:51] Why don't you sell those spoons?

[25:52] Who's the set dresser for this movie who's like, well, we could make it look post-apocalyptic

[25:57] or we could just use my friend's house.

Elliott Kalan

[25:59] Now, let's just say right now we are not falling into the Fox News trap of saying,

[26:03] how can you be poor if you have stuff?

[26:05] Because poor people have TVs and refrigerators.

[26:08] They can't be that poor.

[26:08] Don't give them welfare.

[26:10] But it is true that they are supposed to be so destitute that the government wants to relocate them to a death camp.

[26:15] And yet they've got so many – I mean I don't know where she got those new shoes.

[26:19] They should have had a line about like I had to trade my eggs for those shoes or something like that.

[26:24] They really don't seem to be in that bad of shape.

[26:27] But maybe the standards in the future are just so high because the rich don't want to share.

Stuart Wellington

[26:32] Yeah, and the idea of like it doesn't feel like there's a Walmart down the street that they're just going to to buy their stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[26:39] No, no.

[26:39] They live in a blasted wasteland.

[26:41] They live on a dune.

Stuart Wellington

[26:43] They have like four different cookie jars on their counter.

[26:46] That's true.

[26:46] There's a scene later –

[26:47] This feels like a world that doesn't have cookies.

Elliott Kalan

[26:50] There's a scene later where the bad guy needs something that he saw get put in a cookie jar.

[26:54] But he's tied up and he's telling somebody it's in the cookie jar.

[26:57] No, the other cookie jar.

[26:59] And it's like, yeah, good point.

[27:00] Why does this family have so many decorative cookie jars?

[27:03] Okay, so Nicolas Cage, he feels sympathy for this boy that he's watching get a bath.

[27:08] And he calls in and he remembers fishing with his mom.

[27:11] And he calls in and says, let's delay their deportation.

[27:14] I'm going to look into the case.

[27:15] Baldy does not like that.

[27:17] He's already suspicious of Nicolas Cage.

[27:19] Now he's double suspicious.

[27:21] Nicolas Cage goes back to the big city.

[27:23] And he follows the clue that he got from the old man, which leads him to meet like this kind of rebel guy in an elevator.

[27:29] And the rebel gives him a data chip that tells him the truth about New Eden.

[27:34] Now we don't get to see it, but it's pretty clear that he's learning that they just kill the people that go to New Eden.

Stuart Wellington

[27:38] So what about this old man with a shotgun at the beginning?

[27:44] Like nothing about him would make me think he's part of a resistance.

Elliott Kalan

[27:47] He's so close to being a hobo with a shotgun, but not quite there.

Stuart Wellington

[27:53] Yeah, there's nothing that would make me believe that this guy is part of a complicated resistance movement.

[27:58] He just seems like a poor old man down on his luck.

[28:01] But maybe that's all an act.

Elliott Kalan

[28:02] It could be a cover story.

[28:03] Although this seems to fall into the V for Vendetta trap of everyone in the movie is either a fascist or a rebel.

[28:10] And there's no regular people in between.

[28:12] The way how in V for Vendetta everyone openly disparages the fascist totalitarian government seemingly without punishment.

[28:20] And yet no one ever puts two and two together and is like, oh, there's like four people who run the whole government.

[28:26] And they have three policemen who work for them.

[28:28] Maybe we should just go and fire them and just take over.

[28:31] But it's kind of like that.

[28:32] Everyone in the movie is either a bad guy or a rebel with nothing in between.

[28:36] Some of them are even rebel rebels, which is like –

[28:39] We'll get to that later.

[28:40] Yeah, exactly.

[28:41] And none of them, of course, are robble robble, which is what the hamburger says.

[28:45] Oh, God.

Dan McCoy

[28:45] Yeah, he died long ago.

Elliott Kalan

[28:47] Yeah, that's true.

[28:48] What if there was a scene where they like found the hamburglar's bones clutching what was left of a hamburger?

[28:54] I love –

[28:55] That would be very strange.

[28:57] That's the answer to your what if.

[29:00] I guess that's true.

[29:01] You would go, what?

[29:02] I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories where they stumble upon vestiges of civilization that they don't recognize but that we recognize.

Stuart Wellington

[29:10] Like Tom Petty in the Postman movie?

Elliott Kalan

[29:13] Yeah, basically.

[29:14] Or like the end of – I mean he recognizes it, the Statue of Liberty.

[29:17] But the end of the Planet of the Apes or like – there's all these movies where – or books more – where people are wandering through a post-apocalyptic world and they'll come across like the ruins of a New York landmark.

[29:28] And the characters don't know what it is but you know what it is.

[29:30] I love that stuff.

[29:30] So maybe they just find someone in a hamburger costume.

[29:33] They come across the radioactive – what's left of a McDonald's play place and they go, huh.

Stuart Wellington

[29:39] These must have been –

[29:40] They come upon the feet of an Azar's big boy statue and the plaque reads.

[29:47] The plaque reads, yeah.

[29:48] Gaze upon my big boy in despair.

Elliott Kalan

[29:49] They find the statues of the McDonald's and they see Mayor McCheese and they go, ah, this was their leader.

[29:55] Probably a war chief.

[29:56] And then they see Grimace and they go, and this was their god.

[29:58] Interesting.

[30:01] Okay, so Nicholas Cain –

Stuart Wellington

[30:03] I mean Mayor McCheese is a fucking puppet, right?

[30:05] We can all agree.

[30:06] Oh, yeah.

[30:07] He's a puppet for Ronald McDonald's.

[30:08] Ronald's in charge.

[30:09] Oh, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[30:10] Considering Ronald's the richest man in his town and it's named after him, I think the fact that it's called McDonaldland and not the People's Republic of Burgersvania or something like that.

[30:19] Yeah.

[30:20] Yeah.

[30:20] Ronald McDonald's is very much the hands behind the puppet and the man behind the throne.

[30:25] Now, here's the thing.

[30:27] Who's the rebel in this scenario?

[30:28] Is it the bird with the flight cap?

[30:30] That's birdie.

[30:31] Or really, you know what?

[30:32] Is it Hamburglar?

[30:34] Is he the rebel?

[30:34] Yeah, it's pretty clear.

[30:35] And that's what he's saying.

[30:36] Rebel, rebel.

[30:37] Not robble, robble.

[30:38] You know what, guys?

[30:38] Forget what I said.

[30:39] He is a rebel.

[30:40] He's the best of them all.

[30:41] Hamburglar, someday you'll be a hero, but not today.

[30:45] And there's going to be that moment where Hamburglar gives his life to remove the bomb from Gotham City and they put a statue of him in town hall and then his butler finds him alive in Italy.

[30:56] And at no point does he go to Gotham and be like, oh, you can take that statue down.

[30:59] He's fine.

Dan McCoy

[31:02] Wait, do you think that's his responsibility?

[31:04] He should do that?

[31:05] If you see something, say something, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[31:07] He saw living Bruce Wayne.

[31:08] Say something.

[31:09] Take down that boondoggle of a bat statue.

Dan McCoy

[31:12] Just because he didn't die, he doesn't deserve recognition for saving Gotham?

Elliott Kalan

[31:17] You know, because this opens up a world where Christian Bale decides to dress up as Batman, go over to Gotham, and just step in front of the statue and start selling his autograph and taking pictures in front of it.

[31:27] And that's not cool.

[31:28] Okay.

[31:29] Okay, so Nicolas Cage, he goes to Lucas' recital.

[31:33] The official cover story is I delayed their deportation so he could go to his recital at school that he's been training for.

[31:39] And Lucas' part is to literally recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

[31:42] Everyone applauds him as if that's difficult.

[31:44] As if millions of children don't do that every day.

[31:48] It is very stupid.

[31:49] This movie is very heavy-handed with its, like, America stuff.

Dan McCoy

[31:52] The people are like, this was supposed to be the United States of America.

[31:56] Look what happened.

Elliott Kalan

[31:57] That kind of stuff.

[31:58] Nicolas Cage gives Rachel a can of coffee.

[32:00] Very rare.

[32:00] The next morning, Nicolas Cage having stayed the night, but as a gentleman, he sleeps in his car.

[32:06] He does not take you out.

Stuart Wellington

[32:07] I feel like this is a movie where cars are the only place people sleep.

Elliott Kalan

[32:12] Or car-shaped beds.

[32:15] Yeah.

[32:16] Or beds shaped like, or cars shaped, wait.

[32:20] Yeah, car-shaped bed.

[32:21] For a minute, I thought I said a car shaped like a bed, which would be crazy.

Stuart Wellington

[32:25] It would be crazy because they haven't made new cars in years.

[32:28] Exactly.

[32:29] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[32:29] So it's just a bed on wheels, I guess.

[32:32] Yeah.

[32:33] Which I guess is how the grandparents in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory would get around.

[32:38] Just a bed on wheels.

Stuart Wellington

[32:40] Yep.

[32:40] When they participate in wacky races.

Elliott Kalan

[32:45] What a crossover.

[32:46] Finally, the worlds of Hanna-Barbera and Roald Dahl have combined.

[32:51] Okay.

[32:52] So the next morning, Baldi shows up.

[32:54] There's a big fight.

[32:55] Lucas shoots him in the eye with a BB gun or a rifle or something and knocks his eye right out of his head.

[33:00] Leads to a very lackluster fist fight.

[33:02] And Rachel holds up Nicolas Cage's gun and shows she is totally incapable of handling it as she just shoots the walls up, loses control of it.

[33:09] And they escape just as the other Humanity Bureau agents arrive.

[33:12] Now, next we get to my favorite little detail in the movie, which is that they have handcuffed Baldi and he has to tell his sidekick Porter, give him the key, which is hidden in the aforementioned cookie jars.

[33:24] And they have – I don't know if – so they must have done this as a little bit of frontier medicine.

[33:28] They have duct taped a piece of bread over his empty eye socket.

[33:32] I guess because they don't have bandages in the future, but they do have bread.

[33:35] And it's such a –

Stuart Wellington

[33:36] Which is weird because the whole point is they don't have bread, right?

Elliott Kalan

[33:39] I guess that was – maybe it's really moldy.

[33:42] But it is such a funny visual.

[33:44] And it's the one movie where – the one moment where it turns into like a Fury Road delicatessen Terry Gilliam type movie.

[33:50] It's just like, yep, that's what they use for bandages in the future, just little pieces of bread duct taped to your face.

[33:56] Partially eaten bread.

[33:58] Partially – nothing's better to put on an open wound such as a missing eye than a little piece of partially eaten bread.

[34:05] Yeah, I love it.

[34:07] It is such a weird scene.

[34:08] It's like he has bread taped to his face and he's telling his assistant, no, the other cookie jar.

[34:13] And you're like, this is supposed to be funny, I assume, right?

[34:16] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[34:17] And then I think we cut to Westinghouse walking down an austere hallway back at the Humanity Bureau.

[34:23] And he's passing a janitor's cart and picks up a paint scraper that's just sitting there and uses it as a mirror to check out his new eye patch, which is crazy.

[34:34] Like, wouldn't he just go to his office to do that?

Elliott Kalan

[34:37] Or the bathroom.

[34:38] Do they not have bathrooms in the future with mirrors?

[34:41] Now, he is meeting with his superiors in a wet parking lot because I don't think they had access to conference rooms at that particular building when they were shooting it.

[34:50] And they tell him that he has to stop Cross because they have to preserve the illusion of New Eden.

[34:56] And he shows them that the bad guy superior shows them these boxes of ashes.

Stuart Wellington

[35:01] And he pulls something out.

[35:02] This is an empty parking lot but for one pallet of boxes.

Elliott Kalan

[35:06] Yes.

[35:07] And it's this box of ashes.

[35:09] And he pulls out and he goes, what do you think this is, a piece of bone, a tooth?

[35:12] And his assistant goes, maybe she's not his assistant.

[35:15] I just assumed because he is the one who's throwing the threats around.

[35:18] But maybe they are co-equals on this bad guy committee.

[35:20] She says, I think it's a child's tooth.

[35:22] And he goes, yeah, a child's tooth.

[35:24] Anyway, you better stop him or you'll go to New Eden.

[35:26] And it was like, this movie is, that's a pretty crazy moment to be like, take a look at this kid's tooth.

[35:33] We killed this kid and burned him.

[35:34] The same thing will happen to you.

[35:35] And just playing off the fact that Nicolas Cage earlier was like, I've seen children drink their own piss.

[35:39] It's like, this movie really is hitting the child's card pretty hard.

Stuart Wellington

[35:44] This is when the evil president also threatens Baldy by saying,

[35:49] Agent Noah Cross was your friend, a good friend, as good as friends get.

[35:53] And I don't think that's the case.

Elliott Kalan

[35:55] No, they don't seem to like each other.

[35:57] That's also not the way any person has ever talked in the history of the world.

Dan McCoy

[36:01] I also don't know why he has to have these props for show and tell.

Elliott Kalan

[36:06] Since everybody already knows what New Eden is.

[36:08] I mean, because it makes it a cool scene, dude.

[36:11] And you know why?

[36:12] Because the tactile sensation of an object really can get it point across in a way that mere words don't always.

[36:19] Join me, won't you, in a little voyage into the world that I call proper communication.

[36:24] Hi, I'm Elliot Kalin.

[36:25] Would you like to be an effective communicator for both business, pleasure, or combined?

[36:30] I didn't sign up for this.

[36:32] We all would.

[36:33] And so the first rule of communication is object work.

[36:36] Did I buy a master class online that I don't know about?

[36:39] Hit the back button.

[36:40] Hit the back button on the remote.

[36:42] Preferably, preferred objects include dead children's teeth, cans of coffee, or too many cookie jars.

[36:48] Now, any of these can be used to get your point across.

[36:51] Lesson two.

[36:52] Tell a tale.

[36:53] Facts don't stick in the human mind, but stories do.

[36:56] We're a people that love stories.

[36:58] Stories like the Humanity Bureau, in which, in the next scene, Nicolas Cage smashes his phone so they can't track him.

[37:05] This is when our hero, Nicolas Cage, demands gasoline from a handicapped man at gunpoint.

Dan McCoy

[37:11] The handicapped man really turns his opinion around on Nicolas Cage, too.

[37:15] He threatens this guy at gunpoint, like you say.

[37:18] And then, as Nicolas Cage is leaving, he's like, are you a good family man?

[37:23] And Nicolas Cage is like, I try to be.

[37:26] And this creates a bond between them so strong that the gasoline man then crashes his truck into the pursuing bad guys.

Stuart Wellington

[37:36] You guys are being mean to Brian, the owner of Brian's gas or whatever.

[37:42] His name is written on the thing.

[37:44] No, I prefer gasoline man.

[37:45] Brian carries around a crutch, but never leans on it at all.

[37:50] He doesn't seem to.

[37:51] More as a prop, like Elliot was saying.

Elliott Kalan

[37:52] He doesn't seem to need the crutch.

[37:54] The crutch seems to be there more as a conversation starter.

Stuart Wellington

[37:57] But you would think, like, if he needed a crutch, maybe he could use it to lean over when he spits out his tobacco juice.

[38:02] Because most of the time, he's just spitting it on himself.

Dan McCoy

[38:05] Yeah, that's the full character of this guy.

[38:07] No, no.

[38:07] He likes to chew and get tobacco.

Elliott Kalan

[38:09] There's the characters.

[38:11] Here's the four things about him.

[38:12] He owns a gas station.

[38:13] He pretends he needs a crutch.

[38:15] He likes to chew tobacco.

[38:16] And every line he says is so hilariously portentious.

[38:19] He goes – he shows Nicolas Cage all this extra gasoline.

[38:22] He goes, I was saving these for a rainy day.

[38:25] Something tells me a storm is coming.

[38:27] Like, everything he says, it seems like it was designed for the trailer.

[38:32] Like, this actor was like, I'm going to be in the trailer for this movie.

[38:34] I'm going to rewrite all my dialogue.

[38:36] So it's just, like, super ominous.

[38:38] And then he crashes his tow truck into a bad guy car.

[38:41] I assume giving his life.

Stuart Wellington

[38:43] Yeah, the sad, lonely end of Brian the gas man.

[38:46] Now, he smashes his car into – you would hope that he would smash it into the lead car of the pursuers.

[38:52] But, in fact, he hits the second car, leading Westinghouse to look over his shoulder and say, what the hell?

[39:00] And that's it.

[39:01] Like, that is the entirety of Brian's eulogy.

[39:05] That's what it says on his sonotap.

[39:06] Like, you'd think they would stop their car and be like, what is going on?

[39:09] But, in fact, what the hell?

[39:10] Let's just continue.

[39:11] Yeah.

[39:12] Put it on his tombstone.

Elliott Kalan

[39:13] Brian left the world as he entered it, making people go, what the hell?

[39:17] What is this?

[39:18] Who is this guy?

[39:20] Nicolas Cage bonds with Lucas over a lucky rabbit's foot that he gives to Lucas as a gift.

[39:24] And he says he plans to take them to the lake he used to go to as a kid, Jackfish Lake, which he has a postcard for.

[39:29] And Rachel doubted exists.

[39:30] And this is kind of one of those things where it's like – I feel like we've seen this in other post-apocalyptic movies where someone has, like, a piece of memorabilia from a place that used to exist in the before times in the old world.

[39:42] And I'm trying to get to it.

[39:42] I'm having trouble thinking of a specific example off the top of my head.

Stuart Wellington

[39:45] Yeah.

[39:46] It looks like any location map in the Fallout series of games, basically.

[39:50] Yeah, there you go.

[39:50] And that kind of, like, fake postcard-y shit.

[39:53] And I think he's bonding with him while sitting on the prow of, what, like, a rowboat that's on – like, sitting in, like, an old dead lake.

[40:03] Like, it's just desert.

[40:04] And yet there's a bunch of fish just lying around that look like they haven't been there that long.

Elliott Kalan

[40:09] Maybe the lake dried up, like, a day ago.

[40:12] Yeah.

[40:12] It's a movie that seems to not have put a lot of thought into how long in the future it's supposed to be.

[40:18] Like, it's – everyone's like, oh, nobody remembers a world where there were lakes.

[40:22] But they were like, oh, we better show this was a dried up lake so we'll put fish around.

[40:26] Not even, like, fish bones.

[40:27] Not even the band Fishbone, which would have been amazing to have them suddenly appear and put on a performance in the movie.

[40:32] Yeah, they're great.

[40:33] Yeah, who wouldn't love that?

[40:34] Okay.

[40:35] Baldi, he threatens the rebel who told Nicolas Cage about New Eden.

[40:39] And he says, I'm going to kill your family.

[40:41] And then it's like, psych, I already killed him.

[40:44] And we never hear about those characters ever again.

[40:47] Nicolas Cage gets stopped by a family of survivalists led by a German dad who has the – another one of these hilarious lines.

[40:53] He goes, what is your business here, stranger?

[40:55] And it's like, all right, is it medieval times all of a sudden?

Stuart Wellington

[41:00] Well, first I thought they're, like, getting into Canada.

[41:02] And I'm like, this is an interesting take on a Canadian accent.

Dan McCoy

[41:06] Well, also, like, he feels the need to identify himself as German, too.

[41:10] Like, he actually says it explicitly.

[41:12] And it's just like, yeah, dude, we can hear you.

[41:14] I don't understand what –

Elliott Kalan

[41:15] It's almost like they were like, people are going to wonder why he has this accent.

[41:18] So we better just call it out ahead of time.

[41:19] But it was unnecessary.

[41:21] He tells them – he gives them a Root North and a Geiger counter.

[41:24] While Lucas bonds with the guy's kids who are kind of, what, Reavers?

[41:29] Or they're kind of like a raiding family.

Stuart Wellington

[41:31] It's one of the – it's like –

[41:32] Yeah, it's like Rufio and the gang.

Elliott Kalan

[41:34] Yeah, or like – what's that – was that Captain Fantastic, the Viggo Mortensen movie?

[41:39] It's like – yeah, they're feral children who live out in the wild lands.

[41:43] So Baldy learns that Rachel is living under an assumed name.

[41:48] She stole the identity of her neighbor who's dead.

[41:50] And he also shows off his exercise pool to his sidekick, Porter.

[41:54] Now, this is what meant to show that Baldy is so rich because he's a fascist government agent that he can afford to live in a place that has a swimming pool.

[42:04] But there was like – I don't know if I should bring it up.

[42:07] There's an icky moment in there for me where he's like, Porter, you should – and Porter is black.

[42:12] And he goes, Porter, you should get in.

[42:13] And he goes, no, I would drown.

[42:14] And I'm like, that's – I mean, are they not aware of the – like there's a racist stereotype that black people can't swim?

[42:21] And so that's like – that's not a cool movie.

[42:23] Like, I mean, you probably don't know you're playing into that, but it's still a weird moment and I didn't like it.

[42:28] And I thought this was a colorblind fascist totalitarian dystopia.

[42:32] And now I'm kind of weird – gross.

Dan McCoy

[42:35] It was like –

[42:36] Yeah, you were on board before.

[42:37] You were like, sure, New Eden, whatever.

[42:38] Get rid of the burdens.

[42:39] But now –

Elliott Kalan

[42:40] Look, I'm a maker, not a taker.

[42:41] Get these leeches off of me.

[42:42] Let's go Galt, everybody.

[42:44] But it's also like – it shows, I guess, how unrealistic the movie is that when they pull out a child's dead tooth, I was like, eh.

[42:52] But when they accidentally touch upon a racial stereotype, I was like, movie, that's too far.

[42:58] Maybe it's just what I expect from movies and don't expect from movies.

[43:01] It says more about me.

[43:02] Well, I guess what I'm saying is this movie is a Rorschach test in that it's not trapped in here with us.

[43:07] We're trapped in here with it.

[43:09] Okay.

[43:09] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[43:09] Yeah.

[43:10] The true Rorschach test is whether or not you think Rorschach is the hero or possibly a villain of that story.

Elliott Kalan

[43:16] I guess so, yeah.

[43:17] Certainly an argument I had with a friend of mine when I was 15.

[43:20] So Nicholas –

Stuart Wellington

[43:21] That friend, Zack Snyder.

[43:24] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[43:25] Exactly.

[43:27] So Nicholas Cage and the other guys, by which I mean Rachel and Lucas, they're in the car.

[43:31] Uh-oh.

[43:32] A drone is flying overhead.

[43:33] They have to, bump, bump, bump, sit in their car and wait for it to fly away.

[43:38] That's the next challenge on their quest.

[43:41] And they all really get on each other's nerves.

[43:44] And I'm like, oh, they are – this is one of those moments where they are kind of becoming a real family because they're all on each other's nerves on this long car trip.

[43:50] And Lucas is like, hey, my friend told me New Eden is a death camp.

[43:54] And Rachel is like, don't say that.

[43:55] And Nicolas Cage is like, no, he's right.

[43:57] It is.

[43:57] And it's like, how big a secret is this if Lucas heard it from his friend at school?

[44:02] Like, come on.

Stuart Wellington

[44:04] Yeah, that's like finding out that after you beat Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson's punch out, there's a secret guy named Bray Trashman who throws trash at you.

[44:11] Like, I heard that in school.

[44:13] Like, there's no way that's a real secret.

Elliott Kalan

[44:15] Or if it turned out that they really did invent hoverboards that worked and parents did take them off the market because they were so dangerous.

[44:21] And you were like, how did kids get this secret information?

[44:23] I don't understand.

[44:25] Uh-huh.

Stuart Wellington

[44:26] Yeah, those parents, I guess, are the same parents who lied about Freddy Krueger ever existing.

[44:31] Yeah.

[44:32] You know, kids have ears everywhere.

[44:36] Yeah, like on their heads, certainly.

Elliott Kalan

[44:38] Yeah, mostly on their heads, Dan.

[44:40] I can name a couple different parts of the body.

[44:42] I've seen kids.

Dan McCoy

[44:45] They're just covered in ears.

[44:46] They're lousy with them.

[44:47] Oh, that's gross.

Elliott Kalan

[44:48] And then Dan pulls down his pants to show us the ears on his butt.

Dan McCoy

[44:52] Elliot, come on.

[44:54] I'm not a kid.

Elliott Kalan

[44:55] Oh, yeah.

[44:55] I'm sorry.

[44:55] If he was a kid, they dropped off.

[44:57] When you went through puberty, your vestigial ears fell off.

Dan McCoy

[45:00] My baby ears fell out.

Elliott Kalan

[45:02] You put them under your pillow and the ear fairy comes along and gives you, I don't know what, what does the ear fairy give you?

Dan McCoy

[45:10] Well, just a ball of wax.

[45:12] It's really gross.

[45:13] Oh, that's disgusting.

[45:13] I don't know why I put the ears under my pillow if I knew that was going to happen.

Stuart Wellington

[45:16] We're putting together a pretty good spec script for the next Channel Zero season.

Elliott Kalan

[45:22] So there's a moment here where Rachel is like, so are you going to tell Lucas that you're his father and he's your son?

[45:28] And it's one of those things where you're like, I knew this was going to happen because I know how movies work.

[45:32] But there was nothing in the story that would have led me to believe this.

[45:35] It just kind of comes out of nowhere unless you've seen a movie, in which case you know that's the case.

[45:40] And Nicolas Cage is like, I don't know, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[45:42] But it means that Nicolas Cage knew that Rachel was not really Rachel, despite, she doesn't even have the Rachel haircut.

[45:48] So like, he knows that, if anything, she looks more like a Monica.

[45:52] Yeah.

[45:53] A harmonica, if you will.

Stuart Wellington

[45:55] Oh, wow.

[45:56] No.

[45:56] Isn't that what her dad, Elliot Gould, calls her?

[46:00] Harmonica, was it?

[46:02] Yeah, I think so.

[46:02] Okay, I'll allow it.

[46:03] Hey, Friends fans, check out the Friends wiki.

[46:06] Text me later whether or not I'm right.

[46:10] Promise not to be a creep like a Ross over here.

[46:12] Wait, are you calling me a Ross?

[46:14] I'm just saying Ross is the villain of Friends.

[46:16] Yeah, Ross is the bad guy.

[46:17] If there's a baddie, it's Ross.

Elliott Kalan

[46:19] Ross is very clearly the worst, most horrible character in Friends.

[46:23] Because he's a jerk, but he thinks he's the hero.

Stuart Wellington

[46:26] And look, you either-

[46:28] And Gunter is there to warn us away from trusting in Ross.

Elliott Kalan

[46:32] What people don't realize is that Monkey is Ross's parole officer, who's there to keep him in line.

[46:38] Weird.

[46:39] Yeah, oh, did you not know that the Friends live in the Zootopia world?

[46:42] Okay.

[46:43] Oh, wow.

[46:44] Yeah, yeah.

[46:45] They're the last humans in Zootopia.

[46:47] And people are like, how do they afford that apartment on a waitress's salary?

[46:50] Because they're in a human zoo, dudes.

[46:52] She's not really a waitress.

[46:53] Yeah, that makes sense.

[46:54] They just put her in an environment that she feels comfortable in, where she would do human life-like activities.

[46:59] So she doesn't go crazy and chew off her own feet, you know, like an animal in a cage.

[47:03] So Ross is very much just the bad guy, you know?

[47:06] All right.

[47:07] It's like that old saying, either die a hero or live long enough to become Ross.

[47:11] Mm-hmm.

[47:11] Uh-huh.

[47:12] So Baldi, at this point, Lucas stops to use the bathroom, continuing our—and Baldi attacks

[47:17] him in the bathroom, continuing our theme in the movie of Lucas having adults with him

[47:22] when he's either bathing or using the bathroom, when he shouldn't need to, really.

[47:25] He's old enough that he can do it on his own.

[47:26] He doesn't need a bad guy there.

[47:28] Turns into a firefight with federal agents.

[47:30] Lucas gets away from Baldi by stealing his fake eye, which I couldn't quite figure out

[47:34] how that happened.

[47:35] He just took it from his pocket, which doesn't make any sense.

[47:38] It was like—

[47:38] Yeah.

[47:39] It was like he stole it from his pocket, and Baldi was like, my eye of power!

[47:42] I'm too weak to hold you now!

Stuart Wellington

[47:44] Yeah.

[47:44] And Wessinghouse, when he loses his eye, he's like, hey, you little—and then the kid drops

[47:49] it down a fucking vent, and he's like, I'll get it.

[47:52] And Wessinghouse's like, I guess I'll just stand here and wait for you to come back.

[47:56] And then, like, I'm sure it cuts to him a little bit later.

[47:58] He's like, I don't think he's coming back.

Elliott Kalan

[48:02] And Lucas runs outside, where Nicolas Cage almost backs his car into him, in what was

[48:07] a pretty good stunt, in that it really did look like they almost hit that kid with a

[48:11] car.

Dan McCoy

[48:13] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[48:14] So, Rachel—

Dan McCoy

[48:16] I guess take our moments of joy when we can in this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[48:19] Look, yeah.

[48:19] Like when Nicolas Cage defends his decision not to go with Lucas to the bathroom, because,

[48:24] as he says, it was number two.

[48:31] Yeah, that's pretty funny.

[48:32] I didn't even think about that.

Dan McCoy

[48:33] Which means they had a conversation about it, too.

[48:36] Lucas was like—

[48:38] Should I come with you?

[48:39] He's like, no, it's number two.

[48:40] All right.

[48:41] So does that mean I shouldn't come with you?

Elliott Kalan

[48:43] And Lucas is like, no, Agent Cross, if it's number one, sure, number one, more is the fun.

[48:50] Everyone hangs out with me.

Stuart Wellington

[48:51] He's like, I've heard about you, Agent Cross.

[48:53] You like watching kids drink their own piss.

[48:55] So if it was number one, you're coming in.

Elliott Kalan

[48:57] Number two, I don't need you.

[48:59] That's the—just remember that rhyme, and you'll always remember.

[49:02] Yeah.

[49:02] Okay, okay.

[49:03] What about number three?

[49:04] The mythical number three?

[49:06] Well, well, well, Noah Cross.

[49:07] I don't think you're ready for the secrets of number three.

[49:12] So Rachel tells Nicholas, hey, I was friends with the real Rachel, with Lucas's mom, and we had a fight because she wanted to sell Lucas.

[49:19] And then when he was a baby, and I said, no, he's too beautiful.

[49:22] Don't sell him.

[49:23] And then I accidentally killed her.

[49:24] And that—or it's implied that she killed her accidentally in the fight.

[49:27] And Nicholas Cage is like, all right, okay.

[49:30] And they then drive through a radioactive zone.

[49:34] Uh-oh.

[49:35] The guy at your counter says, actually, there's not that much radiation.

[49:38] It was a trick.

[49:39] They didn't want people going to this place for some reason that I don't get.

Dan McCoy

[49:43] Yeah, that's never made clear, like, why everyone thinks that this place is a radioactive zone, and then, like, and then it's not.

[49:51] And, like, who's spreading this, and, like, why there aren't more people in the non-radioactive zone.

[49:55] And it's like, we just—we mentioned it before.

[49:58] We just watched for the bonus episode, Star Trek V, with the Greatest Generation guys.

[50:04] And it's exactly like when they're going through the great barrier to find God at the end of the movie, and they're like, no one's ever gone through this barrier.

[50:11] And then they're just like, I guess we'll go through this barrier.

[50:13] And they do it just perfectly fine.

Elliott Kalan

[50:16] Yeah.

[50:16] Nicolas Cage has more trouble with his car driving than they have with the Enterprise going through the great barrier.

[50:21] Yeah.

[50:21] And it's really weird because it's like, I guess it's supposed to be like, the government didn't want people to know about this place where there are still trees and snow because they'd know there's resources.

[50:31] But it's like the whole reason the Humanity Bureau exists is because there weren't enough resources.

[50:35] So if there were, why are we doing this?

[50:38] Like, what—like, why are we doing this?

[50:40] You know.

Stuart Wellington

[50:40] Yeah, and it's not like—

[50:42] You just got bored.

[50:42] It's not like the New Eden lie.

[50:46] Like, maybe running death camps, like, provides something for them.

[50:53] Like, it would make sense if they were eating them because at least they're creating a resource.

[50:57] But otherwise, it's like, yeah, okay, run away.

[51:00] Then we don't have to take the time to turn you into ashes.

Elliott Kalan

[51:04] Well, the other thing is like, oh, if you live out in the wasteland, okay.

[51:08] Like, you're not getting any of our resources anyway.

[51:10] It's—I guess what I'm saying is they didn't put a—yeah, we were saying they didn't put a lot of thought into the creation of this dystopia.

[51:16] They reach a heavily wooded forest.

[51:18] Uh-oh.

[51:19] Baldi and the federal agents, Westinghouse and the agents, they show up and catch on to them.

[51:22] And Westinghouse is like, give me the memory card with the proof about New Eden.

[51:26] And then he kills Rachel, kind of gratuitously.

[51:28] And he steals Lucas.

[51:29] And Nicolas Cage says, let the boy go.

[51:31] I'll give you the memory card if you let the boy go.

[51:33] And he does.

[51:34] He lets the boy go.

[51:35] And Nicolas Cage is like, run!

[51:36] Run into the trees, Lucas!

[51:37] Which is hilarious because it's like, you know this kid's going to die, like, instantly, right?

[51:42] Like, how is he going to—you don't think he's going to become Mowgli all of a sudden?

[51:45] Like, he doesn't know how to—

Stuart Wellington

[51:46] Yeah, I mean, maybe he read Hatchet as a kid and knows all about that shit.

Dan McCoy

[51:50] Yeah, but he doesn't have a hatchet, Stuart.

[51:52] How is he going to survive without a hatchet?

[51:53] Maybe he'll find one.

[51:55] Okay.

[51:55] He knows a lot of Mowgli Hatchet songs.

[51:57] Would that help?

Stuart Wellington

[51:59] Mowgli Hatchet, their album covers always sold me an unfair bill of goods there.

[52:04] Their album covers looked awesome and their music was meh.

Elliott Kalan

[52:07] Now, here's the part where Westinghouse shows that he's not that dumb, is he's like, let me just check this memory card right here in front of Nicolas Cage.

[52:13] Hey, it's blank!

[52:15] You tricked me!

[52:16] And he just shoots Nicolas Cage in the head.

[52:18] Lucas runs back, and the feds are like, why did you come back?

[52:21] And a sniper takes out all the feds.

[52:23] Uh-oh.

[52:24] There were rebels in the forest that Lucas found.

[52:27] I guess he stumbled on them when they were, what, tapping trees for their maple syrup?

Dan McCoy

[52:30] Yeah, there's two questions here.

[52:32] Like, number one, why does Westinghouse, upon finding out that there's nothing on the thing, just shoot Nicolas Cage rather than be like, all right, where's the real information?

[52:41] And number two, like, those snipers came in a little late.

[52:44] You know?

[52:45] They could have shot them maybe before they killed Nicolas Cage and Rachel.

[52:49] Yeah.

[52:50] Possibly.

[52:51] I mean, they might have been like-

[52:52] Rachel's a murderer.

[52:53] I thought we already covered that.

[52:55] Okay, so-

[52:55] True, true.

[52:56] She killed Lucas' mom.

[52:57] Harsh justice from Stewart.

Elliott Kalan

[53:00] Now, the next scene is Lucas with the sniper and his female compatriot.

[53:05] It's not- I guess you're supposed to assume they're married.

[53:07] In their ski lodge?

[53:09] They live in a very nicely appointed lobby of a hotel in Aspen.

[53:14] And it's like, if this is what life is like outside the cities, then yeah, like, okay, great.

[53:19] Let's do it.

[53:20] Let's not live in the cities.

[53:21] Like, what?

[53:22] And they take Lucas in and they go, do you have any idea where the real memory card would

[53:25] be?

[53:26] Hey, guess what, guys?

[53:28] It's in the only object that the movie spent any time talking about.

[53:31] The rabbit's foot.

[53:33] Oh!

[53:34] Because sometimes in this world, you got to make your own luck.

[53:36] Always bet on Black.

[53:37] Or in this case, Lucas.

[53:41] And they play the memory card, which has a message about New Eden from Noah Cross where

[53:46] he just says, like, it's a death camp.

[53:48] Watch out.

[53:49] Don't believe him.

[53:50] Blah, blah, blah.

[53:51] This message.

[53:52] And it's one of those things where it's like, so Noah Cross, instead of using the original

[53:55] memory card that was given to him.

[53:57] Or maybe he recorded over it with his own message because he thought he was a better

[54:00] communicator.

[54:01] He took my course.

[54:03] Why didn't he just, why did he then not tell everybody along the way, oh yeah, New Eden's

[54:07] a death camp.

[54:08] Like, what was he waiting for?

Dan McCoy

[54:09] What moment was he waiting for this?

[54:11] I mean, not to get ahead of things, but like, the next thing is they cut to, like, hilarious

[54:17] stock footage of riots to indicate that this message has gone through the world and, like, everyone's, there's an uprising.

[54:24] But there's no indication that these rebels have any ability to broadcast this message to the world.

[54:30] Like, I don't know how that part of it happened.

Elliott Kalan

[54:32] I mean, I'm just going to assume, because they didn't tell me that's not how it happened.

[54:35] I'm going to assume it's the same way it happens in Johnny Mnemonic.

[54:37] And, like, Henry Rollins and the other guys are just broadcasting it on some kind of pirate

[54:43] TV radio station, the symbol that you need to break out of the system, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[54:48] It's like in Pump Up the Volume.

[54:50] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Dan McCoy

[54:52] Yeah, sure.

[54:52] Or they live.

[54:53] They break into the local TV station.

[54:56] Yeah, yeah, perfect.

Dan McCoy

[54:56] Yeah, yeah, now you're getting it.

Elliott Kalan

[54:57] Or that rock and roll pirate radio movie that came out a couple years ago, where it's

[55:00] like an offshore oil drilling rig that they turn into a radio station, something like that.

[55:05] Maybe that's what it is.

[55:06] Anyway, the point is.

Stuart Wellington

[55:07] Or like in Airheads, where they take over that radio station and play music.

[55:12] Oh, yeah.

[55:12] Everyone remembers Airheads.

[55:14] I mean, of course you remember it.

[55:15] Comedy Central played it all the time.

[55:17] They played it a lot.

Elliott Kalan

[55:19] Look, that was the movie that forged the bond between Adam Sandler and Steve Buscemi, that

[55:23] we are still reaping the benefits and rewards of today.

Dan McCoy

[55:27] Guys, for some reason, I saw Airheads in the theater.

[55:29] I just want to confess that.

Elliott Kalan

[55:31] I mean, I get it.

[55:32] It was a good cast.

[55:33] You like Brendan Fraser.

[55:34] Dan, I saw the Jerky Boys movie in the theater, okay?

[55:38] The only defense you need is that you were young at the time.

[55:41] Look.

[55:41] Yeah.

[55:43] What's funny about the Jerky Boys movie is that I don't remember anything except the very

[55:47] end of it.

[55:48] So it's very possible that me and my friend got the showtimes wrong, got there late, saw

[55:53] the last 10 minutes of the movie, and then left.

[55:55] And we're like, that's enough.

[55:56] That's all we need.

[55:58] Either that or I blocked out the rest from my memory.

[56:01] So, okay.

[56:01] Yeah.

[56:02] As Dan says, revolution breaks out because people are like, Nicolas Cage's word is all

[56:05] that I needed.

[56:06] And it's really funny because it's like, again, everybody seemed to know that this was the

[56:10] case.

[56:11] They just needed someone to, I guess, pop the bubble out loud.

Stuart Wellington

[56:15] There's never a moment in the movie where we see any characters talking about New Eden

[56:21] in a way that isn't totally silly.

[56:25] Like every time, the only person who talks about New Eden positively, it's Nicolas Cage

[56:30] as he's about to send somebody there.

[56:32] Like at no point is there somebody who's like, yeah, you know, maybe New Eden makes sense

[56:37] for us.

[56:38] Yeah.

[56:38] You'd think people would be like.

[56:39] This is the movie downsizing.

Elliott Kalan

[56:44] You think people would be applying for New Eden?

[56:46] Like that's.

[56:46] Yeah.

[56:47] It would be like the same way that, spoiler alert for Sorry to Bother You, that in Sorry

[56:51] to Bother You, people want to go into these kind of slave prisons that have been set up

[56:56] to buy that one corporation so that they can have a home and meals.

[57:00] Like it's, they do.

[57:00] You know what, guys, we should have watched Sorry to Bother You.

[57:03] This is just a really good movie.

[57:04] And the Humanity Bureau is not a good movie.

[57:07] Okay.

[57:08] So revolution breaks out.

[57:09] Free folk are streaming back into the cities so that they can get on some of that fed killing

[57:13] action.

[57:14] And dead Nicolas Cage in his last moments on earth, which apparently stretched the months that

[57:20] it takes for this revolution to take place.

[57:22] He remembers swimming at the lake.

[57:24] Or maybe the whole thing is what Nicolas Cage is imagining in his last moments on earth.

[57:28] We don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[57:29] We don't care.

[57:30] It's the fields of grain in Gladiator.

[57:33] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[57:34] Or fields of gold in Sting.

[57:37] Nope.

Dan McCoy

[57:40] Nope.

[57:41] All right.

[57:42] Well, after 11 years, Stuart definitively shuts things down.

Elliott Kalan

[57:49] Stuart, can we compromise and say it's more of a Salisbury Hill scenario?

Dan McCoy

[57:53] Yeah.

[57:54] Okay.

[57:55] Hmm.

[57:55] A Salisbury steak scenario.

Elliott Kalan

[57:58] So that's the end of the movie.

[58:00] Nicolas Cage got them.

[58:01] The Nicolas Cage should have been more focused on getting the message out instead of like

[58:05] helping this kid.

[58:06] And the old order returneth, I guess.

[58:09] Or perhaps a new order that's better than the old arrives.

[58:13] Who cares?

[58:14] It's the Humanity Bureau.

[58:16] For the Flophouse, I've been Elliot Kalin.

Dan McCoy

[58:18] Back to you, Dan.

[58:18] I'm Stuart Wellingtown.

[58:20] No, that's not how we do it.

[58:22] We do Final Judgments.

[58:24] Was this a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or movie kind of liked?

[58:26] Yeah.

[58:28] This ranks high up on the list of boring movies we've done.

Elliott Kalan

[58:33] And by high, you mean low, right?

Dan McCoy

[58:35] Well, I mean, on the list of most boring, it ranks high.

Elliott Kalan

[58:41] Because now you know that on the DVD of the Humanity Bureau, it's just going to say, ranks

[58:44] high.

[58:46] Or ranks high on the list.

[58:48] Dan McCoy, The Flophouse.

Dan McCoy

[58:50] Yeah.

[58:51] As I said at the beginning, there's nothing distinctive about this story at all.

[58:57] We've seen it all before.

[58:59] It's all very predictable.

[59:01] There's no reason Nicolas Cage would have made this movie other than defund his castles.

[59:06] Like, I can't see any other name actor reading the script and being like, yeah, yeah, this

[59:12] seems good.

[59:13] I mean, Eric Roberts would probably be into it.

[59:15] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[59:15] I mean, ironically, Nicolas Cage is making the Humanity Bureau, so I guess, I assume so he

[59:19] can pay back the IRS the money he owes them.

[59:22] So maybe he's like, oh, I'm finally going to stick it to him.

[59:24] This is really going to say something about how the government takes advantage of people.

[59:28] And it's like, Nick, I mean, you didn't do proper accounting.

[59:32] I mean, that's part of the problem, as much as I respect you as an artist.

Stuart Wellington

[59:35] You know, I kind of enjoyed the first act of this movie.

[59:39] It's really silly, and that guy has bread taped to his face, and everybody goes out of

[59:44] their way to say how pretty the female lead in the movie is, which is really strange.

Elliott Kalan

[59:50] It is weird that the only quality she has that anyone remarks upon ever is that she's pretty,

[59:56] and it's presented as if the movie thinks that it has to keep reminding us, which is weird.

[1:00:01] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:02] It's like the way in XXXIII, everybody has to keep telling us how cool Xander Cage is.

[1:00:08] Yeah.

[1:00:08] Because if we don't hear it once every 10 minutes, we will completely forget.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:13] Well, they didn't make this explicit, but in this dystopia, there are no pretty women anymore.

[1:00:19] Oh.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:20] Okay.

[1:00:21] So this is, yeah.

[1:00:23] You're saying people just, the movie Pretty Woman has been banned, because it reminds people

[1:00:27] of a world gone by.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:29] Yeah.

[1:00:29] That sounds like a big mistake.

[1:00:31] Huge.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:35] Stuart, you saying that makes me so glad I went with a Pretty Woman movie reference and

[1:00:38] not a reference to the song Pretty Woman from Sweeney Todd.

[1:00:40] Yeah.

[1:00:41] So, yeah, this is a bad, bad movie.

[1:00:44] Don't watch it.

[1:00:45] It's a bad, bad movie.

[1:00:46] It's worth watching, like Stuart said, at the very beginning just to see how bad the car

[1:00:50] driving effects are.

[1:00:51] Uh-huh.

[1:00:51] But, yeah, but don't watch the, don't watch it.

[1:00:53] It's very boring.

[1:00:54] It's not, if you're going to watch, if you want to have fun watching a Nicolas Cage cash

[1:00:58] grab, there's much better options for you.

S4

[1:01:01] If you're looking for a new comedy podcast, why not try the Beef and Dairy Network?

[1:01:11] It won Best Comedy at the British Podcast Awards in 2017 and 2018.

[1:01:17] Also, I love...

[1:01:18] There were no horses in this country until the mid to late 60s.

[1:01:21] Specialist bovine arse vet.

[1:01:23] Both of his eyes are squid's eyes.

[1:01:25] Yogurt buffet.

[1:01:26] She was married to a bacon farmer who saved her life.

Jesse Thorn

[1:01:30] Farm-raised snow leopard.

S4

[1:01:34] She.

[1:01:34] Download it today.

[1:01:35] That's the Beef and Dairy Network podcast from MaximumFun.org.

[1:01:39] Also, maybe start at episode one, or weirdly, episode 36, which for some reason requires no

[1:01:45] knowledge of the rest of the show.

Jesse Thorn

[1:01:47] Hey, gang.

[1:01:48] This is Jesse, and I am joined by Bikram, the Managing Director of Maximum Fun.

[1:01:53] Hi, everyone.

[1:01:53] So, we have some really amazing news to close out 2018.

[1:01:59] After this spring's pledge drive, we gave members the chance to buy enamel pins with the

[1:02:04] full profits of those sales going to the National Immigration Law Center.

[1:02:09] This is a tough time to be an immigrant in the United States.

[1:02:12] As individuals, as a company, and as a community, we wanted to help provide resources for immigrants

[1:02:17] in the face of these attacks.

[1:02:19] We're proud to live in a nation of immigrants, and many of us here at Max Fun are immigrants

[1:02:23] or the children of immigrants ourselves.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:25] Together, we raised over $100,000.

Jesse Thorn

[1:02:29] NILC will put that money to good use, providing legal representation to immigrants and their families

[1:02:34] who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:37] We are so proud of our community for making such an immense difference in so many lives.

Jesse Thorn

[1:02:42] And whether you bought pins or not, you can help the NILC advocate for immigrants right now.

[1:02:49] All you have to do is go to MaximumFun.org slash NILC.

[1:02:55] That's MaximumFun.org slash NILC.

[1:02:59] Our thanks go to all of you who made this possible.

[1:03:03] Great work, everybody.

[1:03:04] And happy holidays from all of us at Max Fun.

[1:03:10] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:13] That's the classic pause and yeah, as Dan switches gears audibly into the next section of the show.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:21] Yeah.

[1:03:22] Sorry.

[1:03:24] I just got texted something funny, which I saw as I was going into my phone to do ads and letters.

[1:03:31] Ads and letters are so special.

[1:03:33] I got my phone.

[1:03:33] Funny text.

[1:03:34] Funny text.

[1:03:35] Was it some kind of funny gif?

[1:03:38] Yeah.

[1:03:38] Someone doctored a photo of me and sent it to me.

[1:03:40] So just imagine that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:43] I hope that friend is listening to the podcast and feels good about themselves.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:47] So, okay.

[1:03:50] Ads.

[1:03:50] Sure.

[1:03:51] Yeah.

[1:03:51] Everyone loves them.

[1:03:52] Let's do some.

[1:03:52] Let's keep the lights on.

[1:03:53] Yeah.

[1:03:53] They certainly do.

[1:03:55] This flop house is supported by ButcherBox.

[1:03:59] ButcherBox delivers healthy, 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef, free-range organic chicken, and heritage-bred pork.

[1:04:08] ButcherBox is committed to raising animals humanely and free of antibiotics and hormones.

[1:04:14] Each box comes with at least 9 to 11 pounds of meat, enough for 24 individually-sized meals.

[1:04:21] 24 meals, guys, from one box.

[1:04:25] That's a great box-to-meal ratio.

[1:04:27] Can you imagine it?

[1:04:29] It's like the loaves and the fishes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:30] I can imagine it for reasons I'll explain after Dan finishes.

[1:04:34] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:35] You can choose from five different box types.

[1:04:38] All beef, beef and chicken, beef and pork, mixed box, or a custom box, which let you choose your own cuts.

[1:04:47] Meat is frozen at the peak of freshness in individual vacuum-packed, biodegradable packaging.

[1:04:53] Hey, think of ButcherBox as your neighborhood butcher.

[1:04:57] Delivered right to your door.

[1:04:58] In a box.

[1:04:59] On dry ice with free shipping anywhere in the lower 48 states.

[1:05:03] It's a real midnight meat train.

[1:05:05] For free bacon and $20 off your first box, go to butcherbox.com slash flop and enter code flop.

[1:05:14] That's butcherbox.com slash flop, code flop, for free bacon and $20 off your first box.

[1:05:22] Have you all been eating a lot of meat lately, right?

[1:05:26] I certainly ate the bacon.

[1:05:27] I haven't gotten to the beef yet.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:29] Guys, let me tell you something.

[1:05:31] Let me testimonize.

[1:05:32] Let me testify to this.

[1:05:34] So you know I love meat, perhaps too much, like Quinn Cannon in that one preacher storyline.

[1:05:39] But I love meat.

[1:05:40] And so I was very excited to get a butcher box in the mail.

[1:05:44] It was a ton of meat.

[1:05:45] I was so surprised.

[1:05:46] It was a lot.

[1:05:47] And it was really good.

[1:05:48] Now my family has eaten through most of it.

[1:05:50] I got to fry up some bacon for my son.

[1:05:52] And we really bonded over this father-son bacon moment.

[1:05:54] We were cheersing each other with our bacon strips.

[1:05:57] And we had – there was really high-quality ground beef in there that we made hamburgers out of.

[1:06:02] There was really high-quality chicken in there that we ate.

[1:06:05] You don't need to know how we eat our chicken.

[1:06:06] We do it a couple different ways.

[1:06:08] And it's – and there was a couple other things too that we haven't even gotten to yet.

[1:06:12] Because there was so much meat in it.

[1:06:14] And it all tasted really good.

[1:06:15] And look, I love meat.

[1:06:16] I got high standards for meat.

[1:06:18] And butcher box exceeded those standards in a box at my door with dry ice.

[1:06:24] Which is always fun because then you can pretend you're in a mad scientist laboratory.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:29] So here's an ad for the vegetarians in the audience.

[1:06:33] And it's about contacts.

[1:06:38] Support for the Flophouse comes in part from Simple Contacts,

[1:06:42] a convenient way to renew your contact lens prescription

[1:06:44] and reorder contacts from anywhere in minutes.

[1:06:48] Need to renew your prescription?

[1:06:50] Take a five-minute vision test from your phone or computer.

[1:06:54] It's reviewed by a licensed doctor.

[1:06:55] You receive a renewed prescription and reorder your contacts.

[1:06:58] Have an unexpired prescription?

[1:07:01] Just upload a photo or your doctor's information and order your lenses.

[1:07:05] Now, Simple Contacts wants you to know

[1:07:08] this isn't a replacement for your periodic full health.

[1:07:11] Eye exam.

[1:07:12] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:13] Now, you guys are eyeglass wearers and contacts havers.

[1:07:17] You better believe it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:18] My eyes are garbage.

[1:07:19] I can't see crap without lenses of some kind.

[1:07:22] So this is exciting to me because I've been thinking about –

[1:07:25] I used to wear contacts.

[1:07:27] And it just became a real hassle.

[1:07:29] It was hard for me to keep up reordering them.

[1:07:32] And finally, I was like, frigate it.

[1:07:33] I'll just wear one pair of glasses all the time

[1:07:35] and look like a total nerdzo dorkville

[1:07:37] instead of the totally cool guy with super perfect vision

[1:07:41] that I appeared to be when I had contact lenses on.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:44] Oh, you were so radical back then.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:45] I was so radical.

[1:07:46] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:46] And now that you're in L.A.

[1:07:48] L.A. is such like an appearance-based culture, right?

[1:07:50] You just want to blend in with all the young stars.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:53] The minute I walk into a meeting, they see I'm wearing glasses

[1:07:55] and they say, no, thank you.

[1:07:56] Please turn away.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:57] Like a writer wearing glasses.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:00] Well, I never.

[1:08:01] And their monocle falls out of their eye,

[1:08:03] which I think is a little hypocritical that they wear monocles,

[1:08:05] but they're against glasses.

[1:08:06] Now, when I met my now wife when we were first dating,

[1:08:10] I was wearing contact lenses.

[1:08:12] If I was wearing glasses at the time –

Dan McCoy

[1:08:13] You were basically lying to her.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:15] I was giving her the lie that my genetic code included good eyesight

[1:08:19] so that she would marry me so that when we had children,

[1:08:22] they would have good eyesight in their genes.

[1:08:24] Luckily –

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:24] Yeah, it was a lot like a Molly Hatchet album cover.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:27] Yeah, exactly.

[1:08:28] Without contact lenses, she might have known that I was carrying flawed vision genes.

[1:08:32] She might have said, no, thank you,

[1:08:34] and the date would have been over right from the beginning.

[1:08:37] So contact lenses, they're important.

[1:08:39] And anything that makes it that much easier to keep getting them

[1:08:43] and not run out is great.

[1:08:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:48] Hey, get $20 off your contacts order at simplecontacts.com slash flop

[1:08:53] or just enter code flop at checkout.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:58] So that's a little deal for you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:59] Okay.

[1:08:59] Thank you.

[1:09:00] Yeah, that's great.

[1:09:01] For anyone who uses it.

[1:09:02] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:03] Steals and deals.

[1:09:05] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:06] I mean, don't steal.

[1:09:06] Please don't actually steal the things.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:08] I believe each of you has a Jumbotron to read.

[1:09:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:09:12] Does anyone want to go first?

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:14] Let me pull up this bad boy.

[1:09:16] You want me to go first while you're pulling yours up?

[1:09:18] All right.

[1:09:18] Hell no, I am already.

[1:09:19] Okay.

[1:09:20] This message is for Graham.

[1:09:23] The message is from Matthew Hain.

[1:09:26] Dear Graham, it's me, Sludge.

[1:09:29] Surprise, biatch.

[1:09:31] I know that it's been an incredibly tough year, first with your diagnosis and then your heartache.

[1:09:37] So I want to say what an honor it is to be pals with you.

[1:09:40] You were a true friend when mom died and things got rough.

[1:09:44] Thanks for all the beers, yelling, van purses, and flophouse sessions.

[1:09:49] Much love, Matt.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:51] That was very sweet.

[1:09:52] That was very sweet, aside from the biatch in there.

[1:09:55] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:55] I feel I'm sorry for whatever bad times the recipient has gone through.

[1:10:01] I hope that your friend's Jumbotron salves the wounds a little.

[1:10:07] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:08] Hopefully I didn't read it too sassy.

[1:10:10] You can just write in and let me know.

[1:10:13] I'll use the desassifying.

[1:10:14] Oh, third.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:15] Yeah, that comes with this program, right?

[1:10:17] A desassizing.

[1:10:18] Sizer.

[1:10:18] Yeah.

[1:10:20] Oh, wow.

[1:10:21] I had trouble pronouncing it because it's a word that doesn't exist.

[1:10:23] Hey, I've got a Jumbotron too.

[1:10:25] It's made up out of real words, so hopefully I'll read a little better.

[1:10:28] This message is for Aaron, and it's from Jacob.

[1:10:31] This message is, congrats on your PhD, Aaron.

[1:10:34] Congratulations.

[1:10:35] It's been wonderful working with you, and I am so excited to see where you will go in the future.

[1:10:38] Your intelligence and helpfulness is a real inspiration, as is your ability to skip leg day,

[1:10:43] and yet somehow out-squat the entire lab.

[1:10:46] So this guy's got brains and brawn.

[1:10:48] That's amazing.

[1:10:48] I am so grateful for your thoughtful mentorship, as well as for turning me on to the flop.

[1:10:53] So another very sweet message.

[1:10:55] That's from Jacob for Aaron.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:57] Yeah.

[1:10:58] And if you want to get on the Jumbotron, go to MaximumFun.org slash Jumbotron.

[1:11:03] People can hear about your squats.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:08] I've been looking for a way to inform more people about my squats.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:14] Let's take some letters.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:16] Wait.

[1:11:17] Before we do that, Dan.

[1:11:18] Before we do that.

[1:11:23] Look.

[1:11:24] We've still got a show coming up at the end of January, and I just want to talk about it for a moment.

[1:11:28] We're going to be doing a show live at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in beautiful Wisconsin.

[1:11:33] That's right.

[1:11:34] My grandma's alma mater and my sister's alma mater.

[1:11:36] I got badgers in my family, and I'm very proud to be entertaining some badgers at the UWM.

[1:11:42] That's going to be Saturday, January 26th, 2019.

[1:11:45] The future.

[1:11:46] But it's going to be here before we think.

[1:11:47] Robots and hovercrafts 2019.

[1:11:50] That's at 8 p.m.

[1:11:51] Saturday, January 26th at the Wisconsin Union Theater.

[1:11:54] Shannon Hall.

[1:11:54] University of Wisconsin-Madison.

[1:11:56] Tickets are available online.

[1:11:58] It's a very complicated URL.

[1:11:59] So just do a Google search for Flophouse University of Wisconsin.

[1:12:03] It'll come up.

[1:12:03] And student tickets.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:05] And that's, yeah, that's the last Flophouse show ever.

[1:12:09] I mean, it's the last one currently scheduled.

[1:12:12] It's the last one scheduled.

[1:12:12] We will do more.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:13] I haven't talked to you guys off air about this, but our agent did get back to us with some options.

[1:12:18] Glad we're throwing that in this episode.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:20] Future shows.

[1:12:21] Student tickets, only $10 to the Flophouse show, January 26th, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

[1:12:25] Should we say what movie we're doing?

Dan McCoy

[1:12:28] Yeah, do it right now, Dan.

[1:12:29] Like, are we sure?

[1:12:31] I mean, we're sure it's going to be available, right?

[1:12:33] I think so.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:34] If it is available for us to watch, we will be doing Venom.

[1:12:40] Oh, yeah, that's right.

[1:12:41] My favorite Marvel character, circa age 13, finally in his own movie and starring Tom Hardy.

[1:12:48] How could it go wrong?

[1:12:49] This is going to be a-

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:51] Critical on financial success Venom.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:53] I mean, it was a huge financial success.

[1:12:55] It was a big success.

[1:12:56] And some critics liked it.

[1:12:57] Will we feel the same way?

[1:12:58] Let's find out on the Flophouse live, Saturday, January 26th.

[1:13:03] It's Venom time.

[1:13:04] University of Wisconsin-Madison.

[1:13:06] Get your tickets now.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:08] So let's do letters.

[1:13:10] I said it before.

[1:13:11] I'll say it again.

[1:13:11] Now it's for real.

[1:13:13] Okay.

[1:13:13] This time.

[1:13:14] Now and forever.

[1:13:15] Cats at the Winter Garden.

[1:13:17] This first letter is from Sebastian.

[1:13:20] A crab.

[1:13:20] Last name with help.

[1:13:21] Okay.

[1:13:22] Sure.

[1:13:24] Now, Dan, normally-

[1:13:25] Dude in the voice.

[1:13:27] Dude in the voice.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:28] Normally, I would sing a Calypso-type song about the letters under the C, the letter C, at this point.

[1:13:36] But we've had enough of my jabbering.

[1:13:38] Let's get on to that letter.

[1:13:39] Just imagine that song at home, everybody.

[1:13:42] Okay.

[1:13:44] Because I think it would go a little something like this.

[1:13:46] The letter C.

[1:13:49] It's a letter in the alphabet.

[1:13:51] Along with all the other letters.

[1:13:54] And so forth.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:56] Okay.

[1:13:57] So this letter from Sebastian goes like this.

[1:13:59] Isn't it weird that both Unbreakable and National Lampoon's Animal House both ends with postscripts?

[1:14:05] I don't know.

[1:14:06] They're just such different movies that it's weird that both Harold Ramis and M. Night Shyamalan both decided to include these in their scripts.

[1:14:13] Is there a movie you three have flops that you wish included a postscript at the end to inform you about what happened to a character after the credits have rolled?

[1:14:20] Yours in flop.

[1:14:21] Sebastian.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:22] Well, I think the text at the end of Unbreakable was mainly there to maintain the absolute last moment twist reveal.

[1:14:33] So they didn't actually have to have the movie go.

[1:14:36] Like they want people to be like, what?

[1:14:38] And then immediately leave the theater.

[1:14:39] Yeah.

[1:14:41] Which is what.

[1:14:42] You got to clear it out for the next showing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:44] That reminds me of when I first saw the trailer for Unbreakable and the moment you saw Samuel L. Jackson's haircut for the first time, everyone in the theater erupted in laughter.

[1:14:54] So I kind of wondered at the end of the Humanity Bureau, I want to know what's going to happen to Lucas a little bit.

[1:15:01] Give me a postscript.

[1:15:02] Has he become the president of this new world like a child king?

[1:15:05] I don't understand.

[1:15:06] But I wanted to know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:08] What about something like Stand By Me where you have a bunch of kids getting in troubles?

[1:15:14] Uh-huh.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:15] I mean, you do find out there is a postscript in Stand By Me.

[1:15:18] Wait, what happens?

[1:15:21] You're like, they all live long lives.

[1:15:23] None of them go to Vietnam, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:15:27] This question requires me to remember movies that we've done, which is a real problem.

[1:15:32] Oh, are we talking about movies we've done?

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:34] No, it could be.

[1:15:34] Oh, yeah.

[1:15:35] Any movie that we have flopped.

[1:15:36] I'm going to say Humanity Bureau.

[1:15:38] I'm going to take the easiest one that I remember because we did it already.

[1:15:40] And I'll say this.

[1:15:41] I can tell you a movie that we didn't flop that I wish did not have a postscript at the end.

[1:15:45] It's called The Imitation Game.

[1:15:47] Oh, yeah.

[1:15:48] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:15:49] I did not need to be reminded that we call those thinking machines computers.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:53] Yeah, this thinking machine would grow up and one day be called a computer.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:57] It was almost like, I wish it said, it came up on screen, it says, the text says, today

[1:16:01] we call them computers.

[1:16:02] And then another text comes up and says, you idiots.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:07] Academy Award nominated film, The Imitation Game.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:11] Yep, for writing.

[1:16:13] But what about if there's a postscript at the end of Food Fight to tell us what happened

[1:16:16] to all those characters?

[1:16:17] What's going to happen to Larry Miller's elderly, out and proud Batman?

Dan McCoy

[1:16:22] Yeah.

[1:16:23] Yeah, Dan.

[1:16:24] Well, I assume that because of the Supreme Court ruling allowing gay marriage, he gets

[1:16:36] married to his longtime paramour, Mr. Clean.

[1:16:38] Oh, okay.

[1:16:39] I can see that.

[1:16:40] That would be very sweet.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:41] Mm-hmm.

[1:16:42] And that would mean Mr. Clean, the people who own Mr. Clean would pay more money for Food

[1:16:46] Fight 2.

[1:16:48] Oh, yeah, finally.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:49] More than the two bucks I assume they paid for the first time around.

[1:16:52] Was he in Food Fight?

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:53] I don't remember at all.

[1:16:54] Oh, yeah.

[1:16:54] He's, Mr. Clean's walking around in there, which food, Mr. Clean is not a food product,

[1:16:58] so it's a little weird that he's in there, but.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:00] In fact, I would encourage you not to eat it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:02] Yeah.

[1:17:03] Let's put that in the Tide Pod category of looks delicious, but don't put it in your mouth.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:08] Yeah, I gotta apologize to our listeners because I don't remember most of the movies we watch.

[1:17:14] Big surprise.

[1:17:15] And can't really answer this question.

[1:17:18] That's okay.

[1:17:18] We came up with some bullshit.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:21] And I'm going to nitpick a little bit and say that Dan earlier when he said Supreme Court

[1:17:25] decision allowing gay marriage, I want to change that to.

[1:17:28] Upholding?

[1:17:29] Recognizing the right of gay marriage.

[1:17:32] Yeah.

[1:17:32] Well, okay.

[1:17:33] It's not like the Supreme Court was like, I'll allow it.

[1:17:36] The Supreme Court came around and was like, oh yeah, this is a human right and we shouldn't

[1:17:39] deny it from you any longer.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:40] Yes, you're right.

[1:17:41] I, clearly I'm a bigot who purposely misphrased.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:44] No, Dan, you didn't.

[1:17:46] No, no, no.

[1:17:47] I'm just trying to save your bacon.

[1:17:48] Bacon you can get from ButcherBox if you use our code.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:52] Yeah.

[1:17:55] This next letter is from Amos' last name withheld.

[1:17:59] And Andy.

[1:18:00] Oh, racist.

[1:18:01] Oh, boy.

[1:18:01] Wow, we are really stepping in it a lot today.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:04] Wasn't Nicolas Cage in that movie?

Dan McCoy

[1:18:07] He was in Amos and Andrew.

[1:18:08] Oh, my mistake.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:10] They're like, Amos and Andy live in Florida.

[1:18:13] We're Amos and Andrew.

[1:18:14] Yeah.

[1:18:16] He writes.

[1:18:18] I've never seen Amos and Andrew.

[1:18:19] Is it based on Amos and Andy that radio intelligence?

Dan McCoy

[1:18:22] No, they were just going off of the name recognition, I guess, of that racist radio show.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:29] It seems really weird.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:32] Yeah, it's a bad choice all around.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:36] It's like, oh, we wanted to do this.

[1:18:39] We're doing this movie.

[1:18:40] It's called Birth of Oration.

[1:18:44] It's a comedy about rationing.

[1:18:46] Wait, so it's about the clan?

[1:18:47] No, why would you think that?

[1:18:49] Yeah.

[1:18:50] Amos and Andrew sounds like a weird name for that.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:52] So what's it about?

[1:18:53] Yeah.

[1:18:53] Is it an action movie?

[1:18:56] It's like a buddy comedy of some kind.

[1:19:00] I don't know.

[1:19:00] Is it like the Fox and the Hound?

[1:19:02] Way back when.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:03] Is it like Milo and Otis?

Dan McCoy

[1:19:06] It's like Homeward Bound, The Incredible Journey.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:08] Oh, okay.

[1:19:10] So it is like Milo and Otis.

[1:19:12] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:13] Amos writes, I was listening to an old episode.

[1:19:17] Your review of the last Taylor Lautner video.

[1:19:19] Sorry, vehicle.

[1:19:21] Abduction.

[1:19:22] Not like a VHS tape.

[1:19:24] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:26] Not just the video he put out on Twitter for his fans being like, this is Taylor.

[1:19:29] Much love to everybody.

[1:19:31] Yeah.

[1:19:31] Let's keep it laut.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:33] In that episode, Elliot said the movie would have been better if it had taken a sudden turn

[1:19:37] and Taylor Lautner had brought the statues in the Pittsburgh Pirate Stadium to life to fight the villains.

[1:19:44] Yep.

[1:19:44] I stand by that.

[1:19:46] It reminded me of a movie I saw earlier this year, Sorry to Bother You, which, spoiler alert,

[1:19:51] takes kind of a crazy turn in its last half.

[1:19:54] Have you guys ever enjoyed a movie that completely changed tone and went wacky toward the end?

[1:19:59] Best regards and keep on flopping in the free world.

[1:20:01] Amos' last name withheld.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:02] I mean, I think my favorite movie that kind of turns into a comedy in the last half is,

[1:20:07] of course, Takeshi Mi A.K.'s Audition.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:13] Yeah.

[1:20:14] Yeah, side-splittingly wacky at the end.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:17] That's another movie I'd like to see post-credits for.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:20] Oh, yeah.

[1:20:20] I can't hear someone say, dee-ga-dee-ga-dee-ga-dee-ga-dee-ga-dee without bursting into laughter.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:27] Yeah, I feel like most sort of gear shift movies,

[1:20:31] like shift gears into something serious at the end rather than wacky.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:37] But you could say, I mean, like, so I could, you could say that it's not the end necessarily,

[1:20:41] but you could say Gremlins 2 does exactly this, that it starts off as a kind of pretty straight,

[1:20:46] aside from the part with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are arguing with each other at the beginning,

[1:20:49] it starts off as a pretty straightforward Gremlins type movie and then gets crazy.

[1:20:54] And I mean, I've talked about Gremlins 2, I think, on this podcast before.

[1:20:57] I love it.

[1:20:57] It was a very formative experience for me seeing it.

[1:21:00] So like, that's an example, kind of, but it goes wacky like a third of the way into the movie,

[1:21:04] I think.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:05] And obviously From Dusk Till Dawn, like, starts off as a fairly serious crime film and then turns into a wacky vampire comedy.

[1:21:14] It gets very silly.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:17] Yeah, but like...

[1:21:18] I had a person at the bar arguing with me that From Dusk Till Dawn had zombies in it.

[1:21:24] And I was like, no, no, no, I assure you, it's vampires.

[1:21:28] I don't know much, many things in this world.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:32] Yeah.

[1:21:34] But like most of the examples I can think of are things like Something Wild,

[1:21:38] where it starts off as kind of a lighthearted romp and then like it gets like sort of serious at the end.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:45] Yeah, like to draw you in, right?

[1:21:46] Yeah.

[1:21:47] Yeah, and they drop the other shoe.

[1:21:49] I mean, there's a movie that I did not like, but I did, I would have liked it more if it was more like The White King.

[1:21:54] That we watched for The Flophouse.

[1:21:55] That movie, The Cobbler with Adam Sandler, where it is not a good movie.

[1:22:00] And then at the very end, suddenly it's about a father and son cobbler team that is in a secret spy war with, what, dry cleaners?

[1:22:08] And they end up having a secret hideout underground with a supercar in it.

[1:22:12] And it was like, wait, where was this movie the whole time?

[1:22:15] Like, why couldn't it be this movie?

[1:22:16] Why did I watch a movie where Adam Sandler gets in disguise as his dad to have sex with his senile mother when I could have been watching this movie about spies?

Dan McCoy

[1:22:24] Yeah.

[1:22:25] Yeah.

[1:22:27] Why, indeed.

[1:22:28] Last letter from Leo, last name withheld.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:34] Leo Dorsey from the Bowery Boys, a.k.a. the Dead End Kids.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:38] The hoi hoi original peaches.

[1:22:39] I'll get the sad stuff out of the way first.

[1:22:41] In the last year, both my father and future father-in-law passed away unexpectedly.

[1:22:45] The day that my father went into the hospital, my close friend's dad died of cancer.

[1:22:49] Also, I broke my toe.

[1:22:51] An avid podcast listener, I decidedly turned away from any media that wasn't abundantly joyful, which led me to The Flophouse.

[1:22:57] For a solid six months, you guys were the only cast I could hold close to my heart.

[1:23:01] It was nice to find myself weeping from laughter rather than grief.

[1:23:04] This is always very nice to hear.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:06] Yeah, that is very nice.

[1:23:07] I mean, it's not nice to hear that people have lost loved ones.

[1:23:10] No.

[1:23:11] Definitely.

[1:23:12] Let's clarify.

[1:23:13] Let's just clean up Dan's language a little bit.

[1:23:14] It is nice to hear that we have helped someone through a hard time.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:18] It's weird that Dan's not even speaking off the cuff.

[1:23:21] This is a prepared statement.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:23] It is always nice to hear that the human population has been lessened, as Malthus warned us it must inevitably do.

[1:23:29] Dan, please.

[1:23:30] No, but it is very heartwarming to know that our idiots are idiots.

[1:23:32] Look, I just read what's in the teleprompter.

[1:23:36] It's nice to know that we have helped someone in some strange way.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:41] But Leo goes on to write,

[1:23:43] On an unrelated note, I've peddled the phrase boner police around my social circles for several years, trying to find a home that's fitting its glory.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:51] This is the kind of shift we were just talking about.

[1:23:54] It started very serious and has become quite wacky.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:58] Who are the boner police?

[1:23:59] Are they law enforcement perpetually edging themselves from the thrill?

[1:24:03] Do they haunt illegal boners in a dystopic, gun-cotta-riddled future?

[1:24:07] I never solved the riddle, but on a recent episode,

[1:24:11] Stu Ball has dropped this phrase so perfectly.

[1:24:14] I should have known that some pursuits are best left to the masters.

[1:24:18] Stu, can you identify us about boner police?

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:21] I think this letter about boner police brings up an important point about the Humanity Bureau,

[1:24:26] and that's if they wanted, like if they were going to be so rote, and by that I mean a movie written by people,

[1:24:33] that they should have just cribbed from equilibrium a little bit more a movie that does exactly what Humanity Bureau is trying to do,

[1:24:40] but better because it has gun-cotta in it.

[1:24:42] Thank you.

[1:24:43] This has been my prepared statement.

[1:24:45] Okay.

[1:24:46] I mean, I had less about boner police than I expected.

[1:24:48] Now you plead the fifth.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:49] As Stuart's lawyer, I'm going to advise him to take the Fifth Amendment when it comes to boner police

[1:24:54] on the grounds that what he says about boner police might incriminate him

[1:24:56] in activities that the boner police would like to look into.

[1:25:00] Okay.

[1:25:01] Sure.

[1:25:01] Okay.

[1:25:02] Now, are the boner police, are they always getting into, now are they getting into jurisdiction dust-ups

[1:25:07] with the Female Body Inspector Bureau, or is it just like?

[1:25:10] Oh, all the time.

[1:25:11] I would imagine, yeah.

[1:25:12] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:13] Now what about the-

[1:25:13] But, I mean, I feel like less said's the better.

[1:25:15] I think my dumb mouth's already getting me into trouble today, so let's move along.

[1:25:20] What's the next part of this podcast, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[1:25:22] Okay.

[1:25:22] Well, Stuart's bequest, or request, I guess.

[1:25:26] No, no.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:26] Stuart has left us, and now he's bequested us with this ending.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:32] Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah, in my last gasp, I ask you to do something different on the podcast.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:40] Well, it was his last wish, so we should honor it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:45] Especially, this is especially tasteless misspeaking after the last letter, too.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:50] Yeah.

[1:25:51] Now's the time on the podcast where we recommend movies you definitely should watch instead of the Humanity Bureau.

[1:25:56] Mm-hmm.

[1:25:58] I just watched yesterday.

[1:26:00] I went out and in the theaters.

[1:26:02] Okay.

[1:26:03] On the big screen.

[1:26:04] What theater was it?

[1:26:05] It was the Alamo Draft House in Brooklyn.

[1:26:07] Oh, okay.

[1:26:07] What did you watch?

[1:26:09] I saw Spider-Man, Into the Spider-Verse.

Stuart Wellington

[1:26:12] Yeah, Dan's the number one Spider-Man fan here at the Flophouse.

[1:26:16] Oh, making me so mad.

[1:26:17] I want to see that movie, and I can't.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:21] I haven't had the time to see it.

[1:26:23] It's really fun, guys.

[1:26:26] And it's got our boy in it.

[1:26:27] Which boy is that?

[1:26:28] Nicolas Cage.

[1:26:29] Oh, yeah.

[1:26:30] Yeah.

[1:26:30] If you want to see a good Nicolas Cage movie this Cajeman season, go out and see Into the Spider-Verse.

[1:26:34] I don't know what else to say about it.

[1:26:36] I mean, it's packed with story and fun and jokes and in-jokes and heartfelt feeling.

[1:26:50] It's just a movie that you're surprised at how much stuff they can get into a movie watching this film.

[1:26:59] And it all works really well.

[1:27:01] And at the end of the movie, it turns into like a crazy psychedelic light show with the beautiful animation.

[1:27:07] Spoiler alert.

[1:27:08] And that's fun, too.

[1:27:08] Spoiler alert, Dan.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:09] Yeah, that's great.

[1:27:10] And Dan, everybody listening at home, Dan's currently wearing a pair of those hard-to-get Miles Morales Nike sneakers.

[1:27:18] Oh, yeah.

[1:27:19] Yep.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:20] Well, Dan's a real shoe collector.

[1:27:23] He loves it.

[1:27:24] I am a shoe collector.

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:25] Yeah, yeah.

[1:27:25] You say that as a joke, but I have so many shoes.

[1:27:28] Yeah, he's got a huge collection of Jordans all wrapped up in cellophane.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:31] I mean, they're not – yeah, they're not – I'm not a sneaker collector, but I –

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:34] Yeah, and you love the comic strip shoe about the conservative duck.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:38] That's right, about the cranky –

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:40] Oh, no, I'm thinking of Mallard Fillmore.

[1:27:41] The cranky reporter bird.

[1:27:43] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:45] Yeah, that's one of the most inexplicable comics on the comics page, and that's saying a lot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:49] Is it more or less inexplicable than Funky Winker Bean?

Dan McCoy

[1:27:53] I mean, the thing about Funky Winker Bean –

Stuart Wellington

[1:27:57] Is that it's the absolute funniest comic Dan's ever read.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:59] They should call it Funny Winker Bean, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:28:01] It's that –

[1:28:01] Mm-hmm.

[1:28:02] For a Winker Bean –

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:04] What?

[1:28:04] He's not that funky.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:05] Whoa, can someone call the boner police to deal with this Winker Bean problem?

[1:28:13] No, but for Winker Bean, you're saying he's not particularly funky.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:16] Yeah.

[1:28:17] Okay.

[1:28:17] Yeah.

[1:28:18] That's the –

[1:28:20] I'm imagining a world –

[1:28:21] I'm imagining a world now where Funky Winker Bean is so popular that they do a porn parody of it.

[1:28:29] Oh, no.

[1:28:29] Called Funky Winker Bean?

[1:28:31] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:32] I mean, it might exist.

[1:28:33] Who knows?

[1:28:33] It's particularly for band teachers who want to watch some pornography.

[1:28:36] Yeah.

[1:28:37] Now, here's the thing about Funky Winker Bean.

[1:28:40] When I was a kid, I would read the Sunday comics, but I didn't always read the daily comics.

[1:28:44] And so I'd be like, Garfield, hilarious.

[1:28:46] Peanuts, I love it.

[1:28:47] Funny and heartbreaking.

[1:28:49] Like, Far Side, hilarious.

[1:28:51] And then I get to Funky Winker Bean, I'd be like, okay, here's one panel of a character dying.

[1:28:56] I don't – how am I supposed to take this right now?

[1:28:59] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:01] Well, you know, we've grown to love those characters so much over the years.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:04] Oh, all those famous characters, like the guy with the glasses.

[1:29:07] Of course, Funky Winker Bean, who seemed to never actually be in the strip.

[1:29:11] The band teacher.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:13] Yeah, I think the guy with the glasses was the band teacher.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:16] So we've matched the name two characters.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:19] Guys, is that the comic strip with Bill the Cat where he's always saying,

[1:29:23] Ack?

[1:29:23] No.

[1:29:25] That's Bloom County.

[1:29:26] That's Bloom County.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:26] Or Outland, I guess it's also known.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:29] Do you think that Bill the Cat and Kathy get mad at each other because they both have

[1:29:34] the same catchphrase?

Dan McCoy

[1:29:36] Yeah.

[1:29:37] They got into a big intellectual property battle over that.

[1:29:39] There was – yeah, it was Cat v. Kathy.

[1:29:44] And it went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:46] And who did they rule in favor of?

Dan McCoy

[1:29:49] They declined to hear it.

[1:29:51] Oh, so it didn't go all the way to the Supreme Court.

[1:29:53] Well, they went up to the federal level.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:56] Yeah, and then Kroc threw them both in jail.

[1:30:01] Kroc.

[1:30:02] Yeah, he's like a –

[1:30:03] No, I remember Kroc.

[1:30:05] He's like a prison warden, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:07] I mean, the thing is, Bill the Cat had a lot of nuisance lawsuits that he was filing

[1:30:11] because there was also Cat v. Cap, his lawsuit against Andy Cap.

[1:30:15] Oh, yeah.

[1:30:15] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:17] About cheese fries.

[1:30:19] Yeah.

[1:30:19] Anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:19] Who invented and owned the cheese fries trademark?

Dan McCoy

[1:30:23] Someone else go.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:26] Okay.

[1:30:27] I'm going to recommend a movie that I have to throw a big old caveat in front.

[1:30:30] Okay.

[1:30:31] Caviar.

[1:30:32] Delicious.

[1:30:32] Yep.

[1:30:33] It's directed by a buddy of mine.

[1:30:35] Okay.

[1:30:36] It is the movie Leprechaun Returns, the latest Leprechaun movie that acts as a sequel to the

[1:30:43] original Leprechaun movie, kind of in that reboot, sequel type thing.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:49] So it's like the most recent Halloween.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:50] Kind of like the most recent Halloween.

Dan McCoy

[1:30:52] Ignore all the sequels.

[1:30:53] Or like Superman Returns, where it was like, this is a sequel to Superman 2.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:57] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[1:30:58] It's exactly like that.

[1:31:00] And, oh, man.

[1:31:02] Dan, real quick.

[1:31:03] Can you type in your address into my phone so my wife can find me?

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:10] This episode's really getting a lot of outside world interruption.

[1:31:13] Do you want me to talk to you while you do that?

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:15] No.

[1:31:15] Don't say it out loud because then people will know where we're currently at.

[1:31:19] Yeah.

[1:31:19] So I'm going to recommend Leprechaun Returns.

[1:31:22] It's a fun little Leprechaun movie.

[1:31:24] It seems to understand that, you know, Leprechaun is basically if you.

[1:31:29] Wait, Stuart, I have a question.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:30] Yep.

[1:31:30] If you don't know my address, how did you get here?

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:33] Well, I didn't type your address in because I'm trying to do this fucking thing on the podcast.

Dan McCoy

[1:31:38] So, I see.

[1:31:39] I can't do both at the same time.

[1:31:40] You're just delegating work.

[1:31:42] You're not.

[1:31:43] It's not that you didn't know my address.

[1:31:44] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:45] So.

[1:31:46] It would be mysterious, right?

[1:31:47] Stuart went into a trance and he asked his spirit animal, Spuds McKenzie, where to find you.

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:52] I mean, I prefer Patronus, but that's okay.

[1:31:57] So, Leprechaun Returns.

[1:32:00] It's basically, you know, Leprechaun is basically if you just take Freddy Krueger and only keep the, like, funny, goofy parts, right?

[1:32:07] So, it manages to be pretty fun.

[1:32:10] Not all the jokes land, but there's a lot of them.

[1:32:13] The special effects are great.

[1:32:14] It's directed by Stephen Kostansky, who directed Manborg and The Void, two movies I like quite a bit.

[1:32:22] And it, you know, it looks better than you'd expect.

[1:32:25] It's just, yeah, it's fun.

[1:32:27] Leprechaun Returns.

[1:32:28] And, like, the fucking Leprechaun rides around on a drone for a while and a dude gets his head chopped off.

[1:32:32] It's wild.

[1:32:34] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:32:34] Sounds fantastic.

[1:32:36] Delivers those Leprechaun thrills.

[1:32:38] I like The Void a lot, too.

[1:32:39] Maybe I'll check it out with my limited movie watching time.

[1:32:42] Hey, guys, but I watched a movie, too.

[1:32:43] Let me tell you about it.

[1:32:44] I watched a movie I liked called Summer 1993.

[1:32:47] Now, I know what you're thinking.

[1:32:48] This is a movie about the release of Jurassic Park.

[1:32:51] I wish.

[1:32:51] No, it's not.

[1:32:52] That's not what it's about.

[1:32:54] It's a Spanish movie from last year, written and directed by Carla Simone, and it's about a young girl whose mother passes away, and so she has to go live with her aunt and uncle and their daughter, who is a little bit younger than her.

[1:33:09] And it's a movie that's about someone, like, basically a kid trying to figure out what her life is like and what world she is in now, now that the things that she knows and is used to have gone away.

[1:33:21] And the performance by the lead girl is really, really great.

[1:33:24] And the story is told less in kind of, like, straightforward one-after-another scenes and more in kind of, like, moments that this kid is going through.

[1:33:34] And it feels like they capture really well kind of, like, a child's perspective on the world, on the events going on.

[1:33:40] It really reminded me of what it was like to be, like, a 10-year-old kid trying to make sense of, like, what adults are doing at any given point, like, why certain things are okay and certain things are not okay.

[1:33:51] And I just thought it was really good.

[1:33:53] So that's summer 1993.

[1:33:55] But watch out.

[1:33:56] It's not about Jurassic Park.

[1:33:58] It's not about Jurassic Park, and it's not in English.

[1:33:59] So get ready to read some subtitles.

[1:34:02] But I thought it was really good.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:03] Yeah, I mean, if you're one of those folks who wants to watch a movie and not read a book, maybe you shouldn't go see it.

[1:34:10] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:11] Okay.

[1:34:12] That kind of petered out at the end.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:14] I mean, it's less reading than a book, certainly.

Dan McCoy

[1:34:17] I don't know what kind of books you read, dude.

[1:34:21] It's more reading than Horse Meets Dog.

[1:34:24] Hey, Horse Meets Dog.

[1:34:25] Wow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:25] It is.

[1:34:26] That's true.

[1:34:26] But that's a children's picture book that's in stores now.

[1:34:29] It's a bestseller at the Reader's Bookstore in Sonoma, California.

[1:34:33] And it is, you know, it's just a fun book about a horse and a dog.

[1:34:36] I wrote it.

[1:34:36] The great Tim Miller drew it.

[1:34:38] It's on shelves now.

[1:34:39] Why not get one for the child in your life or the person who's young at heart in your life?

[1:34:43] Or just buy it.

[1:34:44] I don't care who you give it to.

[1:34:45] Just like send it to a prisoner.

[1:34:47] I don't know.

[1:34:47] Throw it in the ocean.

[1:34:48] Like as long as you pay for it, it's yours.

[1:34:50] You own it.

[1:34:51] Do what you want with it.

[1:34:52] I hope you read it.

[1:34:53] But like I don't know.

[1:34:54] I don't know what you're going to do with it.

[1:34:55] Just pay for it and buy it and own it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:58] Strangely libertarian ending of that message.

[1:35:00] Elliot, why not for the second printing, why don't you rip off that Jon Stewart quote on the front and add Dan's quote,

[1:35:07] less reading than a movie with subtitles.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:12] You're right.

[1:35:12] I think that'll get more people interested than the one by Jon Stewart that calls the book delightful.

[1:35:16] So I'll think about it.

[1:35:18] Horse Meets Dog on shelves now.

[1:35:20] Summer 1993.

[1:35:21] I watched it on the Canopy app, but it's available other places too.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:25] Before we go, we should always remind you that there are a lot of great shows over at MaximumFun.org, our podcast network.

[1:35:34] And if you want to spread the word about the Flophouse, write us a review on iTunes or tweet about us with a hashtag, an appropriate hashtag.

[1:35:41] Probably the Flophouse Podcast or Flophouse Podcast.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:44] Let's use hashtag Flophouse Podcast.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:47] Tell people about it.

[1:35:50] You can be at the gym and somebody's like asking why you're cracking up and you're like, because I'm listening to this super funny podcast, buddy.

[1:35:55] And he's like, okay, let's keep working out.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:58] And if you see one of us walking around, feel free to come up and tell us you like the podcast.

[1:36:02] You know, that's not the same thing, but it feels nice.

[1:36:05] I was at a place just this past weekend with my father-in-law and my son while the ladies were off having a baby shower.

[1:36:14] And a guy walks up and goes, is your name Elliot?

[1:36:16] I recognize your voice in the Flophouse.

[1:36:18] I listened to it.

[1:36:18] And it made me feel 100 feet tall, which for a guy like me who is roughly two feet tall is a great sensation.

[1:36:24] Yeah.

[1:36:25] But even better than that, write us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcast or tell people about us.

[1:36:30] Yeah.

[1:36:31] In a good way.

[1:36:32] Don't tell people about us in the way of like, don't listen to these guys.

[1:36:34] They're terrible.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:35] Yeah.

[1:36:36] Maybe keep that to yourself.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:37] Yeah.

[1:36:37] Or if you're like, if you listen to this podcast, you go insane in seven days.

[1:36:42] Don't tell people that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:36:44] Yeah.

[1:36:44] I mean, it's not true, but also don't tell them that.

[1:36:46] I feel like that would drum up interest though.

Elliott Kalan

[1:36:48] That's true, I guess.

[1:36:49] Yeah.

[1:36:49] In a kind of a bird box way where people are like, oh, now I've got to listen to it.

[1:36:55] Yeah.

[1:36:57] So another Cagemas is coming, gone.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:59] Oh, man.

[1:37:00] But don't be sad.

[1:37:01] Until next year.

[1:37:01] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:02] It's so hard, that moment when you take down your Cagemas decorations, you're cleaning up all the wrapping paper from your Cagemas presents.

[1:37:09] You have to shoo Nicolas Cage back up the chimney out of your house because he started living on your couch.

[1:37:14] And, you know, you just say goodbye until the next time.

[1:37:17] But we've got a whole great year coming up ahead of us, guys.

[1:37:20] 2019.

[1:37:21] It's going to be good stuff.

[1:37:22] There's going to be lots of crap movies for us to watch.

[1:37:24] Aren't you excited?

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:26] I can't wait, Elliot.

[1:37:27] I mean, we haven't even watched Gotti yet.

[1:37:29] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:29] Oh, I'm so excited about that.

[1:37:31] You guys, how have we not watched Gotti yet?

[1:37:33] Why couldn't Nicolas Cage have been Gotti so that we could watch Gotti this month?

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:37] He's in Gotti, too.

[1:37:38] Yeah, I think that's probably...

[1:37:39] It's like the Substitute series.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:41] I think that's probably the next one.

[1:37:43] We've put it off long enough.

[1:37:44] Just so, so a little teaser for the next episode.

[1:37:48] But for now, we should sign off this episode.

[1:37:51] I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:37:52] Yeah, you have.

[1:37:54] And I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:37:56] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:57] And I'm Elliot Kalin saying, Merry Cagemas, one and all.

[1:38:03] Bye.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:15] I had to put Stuart's hair out at one point.

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:18] At the groom's request, I insisted that Dan McCoy cancel whatever plans he was doing and come to this bachelor party.

[1:38:27] And I think you showed up after, I don't know, like the 10th round of shots, it feels like.

[1:38:33] So I was probably really fun to hang out with.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:35] I was talking to Stu and he put his head down on the bar and he put it over a candle.

[1:38:43] That's horrible.

[1:38:44] I pulled his head up because it had started smoking and I started clapping his hair.

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:49] Wait, I think you said that wrong, Dan.

[1:38:51] It started smoking.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:52] Yeah, and then Stuart said, somebody stop me from immolating myself.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:59] Maximumfun.org.

[1:39:01] Comedy and culture.

[1:39:02] Artist owned.

[1:39:03] Listener supported.

Ep. #273 - The Humanity Bureau

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