Ep. #271 - Death Wish

[0:00] On this episode we discuss Death Wish, not a suitable replacement for Viagra.

[0:31] Hey everyone, welcome to the Flop House, I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:36] Watch out now, it's me, Stuart Wellington.

[0:38] And here's Elliot Kalin, blown back by the sheer propulsive force of Dan's Hello.

[0:42] Not what I expected since he was yawning moments before.

[0:46] Well, I'm a real pro, I can turn it on for the... I was going to say cameras, but there aren't any cameras here.

[0:52] I'm just saying, tell the listeners, here comes the boom. Dan's ready to roll.

[0:56] Yeah, the force of Dan's Hello blew the leaf Elliot was using to shield the rain off of his little head.

[1:04] We're outdoors, I guess?

[1:05] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:06] Yeah, and I'm a mouse, yeah.

[1:07] Okay.

[1:08] Ralph S. Mouse?

[1:10] I mean, that's kind of what I implied, but I guess you can spell it out for the listeners.

[1:13] Okay.

[1:14] Ralph Stuart Mouse.

[1:16] S stands for Stuart Little.

[1:18] Ralph Stuart Little Mouse.

[1:20] It's a thing that no one has ever associated with me all of my life.

[1:24] Oh, come on.

[1:25] I don't care.

[1:26] I don't care.

[1:27] It's fine.

[1:28] No, no, let's get to the bottom of this.

[1:29] So Stuart, have you often been made fun of because people might think you're a mouse?

[1:32] Yes.

[1:33] Okay.

[1:34] I can see that.

[1:35] We got to the bottom of it already.

[1:36] We made a real breakthrough.

[1:37] Wow, we made a breakthrough, right?

[1:38] It's not your fault, Stuart.

[1:39] It's not your fault.

[1:40] It's not your fault, and it's done.

[1:41] I can't control the actions of other people, but maybe if I just got a gun and just started killing them...

[1:51] Now, that may seem like a non sequitur from Stuart, but it's not.

[1:54] Because, Dan, what do we do on this podcast?

[1:56] Well, on this podcast, we watch a bad movie and we talk about it, and today we're huddled in a Holiday Inn to talk about...

[2:03] Huddled in a Holiday Inn.

[2:06] If we were an actor, it would be Tom Huddleston.

[2:10] We're here to talk about Death Wish.

[2:13] And we might sound a little tired.

[2:14] We just did a show in Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, last night.

[2:18] I don't sound tired.

[2:19] I sound normal.

[2:20] Stuart sounds normal, like a mighty lion.

[2:22] Because he always sounds tired.

[2:24] Oh, roasted by Dr. Sleepypants himself.

[2:27] Oh, man.

[2:29] How much better would it have been if we watched a horror movie called Dr. Sleepypants?

[2:32] Yeah, yeah.

[2:33] All we know about the killer is he wears pajamas and a surgical mask.

[2:37] Dr. Sleepypants is struck again.

[2:39] Uh-huh, and when he kills somebody, he goes,

[2:41] Night, night.

[2:43] You so tired.

[2:45] Oh, wow.

[2:46] You have this warm mouth.

[2:53] People die confused by where that accent's coming from.

[2:56] The trailer has a little kid singing like,

[2:59] Hush-a-bye and goodnight.

[3:04] Real creepy slow.

[3:05] Yeah.

[3:06] Yeah, so while we wrote that movie, I guess...

[3:09] Rock-a-bye, baby.

[3:10] If we were Kevin Smith, we would immediately leave and make that movie.

[3:13] Yeah, that's true.

[3:14] So today we reviewed...

[3:17] Well, we have not yet reviewed it.

[3:19] We viewed.

[3:20] We are about to review.

[3:21] Okay.

[3:22] Death Wish, directed by Eli Roth.

[3:24] It's a remake of the Charles Bronson movie.

[3:27] From the 70s, which there was a whole Death Wish series.

[3:30] It starts the original.

[3:31] He's an architect whose family is killed on the mean streets of New York,

[3:34] and he decides to take the law into his own hands to stop the killers and take out anyone else.

[3:39] By the end of the series, he was, like, using bazookas to blow up drug lords.

[3:43] It got really crazy.

[3:45] All I really remember of that series is there's one where Christopher Guest shows up as, like, a medical examiner or something.

[3:51] Yeah, waiting for Death Wish.

[3:52] Yep.

[3:53] Well, this one, Bruce Willis plays the titular Death Wish.

[3:56] Uh-huh.

[3:57] Well, that's the real question is, who has the Death Wish in these movies?

[4:01] Because in the original Charles Bronson, I think it's kind of implied that he is hoping to get killed doing this.

[4:07] Because his life is empty now that his family is gone.

[4:10] Like, he must have a Death Wish he's going to have.

[4:12] These criminals also must have a Death Wish if they're going to keep committing crimes when Charles Bronson is on the streets.

[4:16] But here I'm not sure who has the Death Wish.

[4:19] Guys?

[4:21] Yeah, I mean, everyone seems pretty committed to living in this movie.

[4:24] Maybe it was Elizabeth Shue.

[4:25] Maybe she had a Death Wish, and she got her wish, and it's a happy movie.

[4:28] She fished her wish.

[4:30] With her ish wish dish, yeah.

[4:32] Okay, so let's talk about this movie.

[4:34] So the movie opens in Chicago.

[4:35] Chicago is in chaos according to the radio reports we're hearing as we watch a, frankly, beautiful opening shot of this Chicago skyline that then pans into a police car driving along, what, Lakeshore Drive or something?

[4:47] Uh-huh.

[4:48] But according to the radio reports, Chicago is in chaos.

[4:51] Everyone in Chicago is being shot to death all the time on every street corner.

[4:54] What are we going to do about it?

[4:56] The murder rate is sky high.

[4:58] We're, like, days away from a fucking robocop showing up.

[5:01] The only thing that's higher than the murder rate is one of their huge pizzas.

[5:06] It's essentially a cake filled with tomato sauce.

[5:08] Yeah, yeah.

[5:09] It's the kind of pizza that you would sleep on and be like, I think there's a pea in here somewhere.

[5:13] I mean, I sometimes get a Casper deep dish where you open it from the box, looks really little, and you open it up.

[5:18] And you're like, that's reasonable.

[5:19] Expands into this enormous pizza.

[5:20] And you're like, that's not reasonable at all.

[5:22] But I'll still eat it because I'm sad.

[5:24] Ironically, the thing is, deep dish pizza isn't really – it doesn't seem like pizza, but it's much more like pie than a standard pizza pie is.

[5:30] It's got a kind of crust outside and a filling.

[5:33] So that's our discussion topic today.

[5:35] What deserves to be called pie, pizza or deep dish pizza?

[5:39] Let's open up the phone lines.

[5:40] Let's – here's Jackie from Chicago.

[5:43] Hello.

[5:44] Jackie, what do you have to say?

[5:45] Who's your dog in this fight?

[5:46] Bubble buoy, bubble buoy.

[5:47] We fell for it again.

[5:49] Always.

[5:51] I'll try and screen those better, Elliot.

[5:53] Thanks. I appreciate it.

[5:54] Our next call, it's Joey from the Bronx.

[5:56] Joey, you're on the air.

[5:59] Yeah, hello.

[6:00] Okay, Joey.

[6:01] Is this Pizza Talk?

[6:02] It is. It is.

[6:04] This is Pete's Pizza Talk.

[6:05] I'm Pete, and we're here to talk pizza.

[6:07] So deep dish or regular New York slice, which deserves to be called pie?

[6:11] I think that pie should only have four and 20 blackbirds in it, and nothing else is a pie.

[6:17] All right.

[6:18] That's a hot take from a fairy tale or nursery rhyme.

[6:20] And we've also got on the phones talking about pie.

[6:23] It's Darren Aronofsky.

[6:26] Darren Aronofsky, your take on the pie situation?

[6:29] I think it catapulted me to greater success.

[6:33] All right.

[6:34] Well, that's Pizza Talk.

[6:36] Coming back to it now, we now return to The Flop House, our normal programming, which has been interrupted.

[6:41] So anyway, Chicago is in danger, and a cop is shot.

[6:45] Bruce Willis is a surgeon.

[6:46] He cannot save that cop's life, but then he has to go save the life of the animal that shot him.

[6:51] Now, the cop's partner is mad.

[6:53] He goes, so you can't save him, but you'll save the animal who shot him.

[6:56] And for a minute I was like, guys, what if a tiger shot him?

[6:58] Like what if it was a literal animal?

[7:00] Yeah, like in Plague Dogs where the dog steps on the gun accidentally.

[7:04] Bruce Willis is like, well, you shouldn't have taken your partner to a veterinary hospital.

[7:07] I'm much better at curing animals.

[7:09] So let me go heal the giraffe that shot your partner.

[7:12] But that's not what it is.

[7:15] Bruce Willis, we find out he has a lovely family.

[7:17] He lives in a nice rich man's house in Evanston, Illinois, home of my brother's college, Northwestern.

[7:22] He's married to Elizabeth Shue, who is a welcome face, star of Adventures in Babysitting, my favorite movie.

[7:29] And Leaving Las Vegas, Dan's favorite movie.

[7:31] He calls it hilarious.

[7:33] And the St. Elliot's favorite movie.

[7:35] I love it.

[7:36] The part where they stop that one scene just so we can talk about how great his watch is, wonderful.

[7:41] Is that in the scene?

[7:42] Yeah, there's some part in it where he's like meeting us another spy in the sewers, and they take a moment to talk about how great their watches are.

[7:47] It's a weird movie.

[7:49] So he has a daughter who is going to college.

[7:52] She also plays soccer, and he has a wife, Elizabeth Shue, who is going for her Ph.D. in subject unknown.

[7:58] It's never said because that's as much character as she gets.

[8:02] And we have a scene.

[8:03] Probably in Piranha Fighting, if the last movie I saw Elizabeth Shue in is any indication.

[8:08] Piranha 3D.

[8:09] And there's a scene where they're all having dinner with Bruce Willis's brother, Vincent D'Onofrio.

[8:15] And I wonder, do they talk about adventures in babysitting a lot?

[8:19] Because they're both in it.

[8:21] Vincent D'Onofrio.

[8:22] Vincent D'Onofrio.

[8:23] Yeah, he played Thor.

[8:24] Thor guy.

[8:25] Right.

[8:26] So probably, yeah.

[8:27] I mean, they have their reunions every month of the babysitting cast.

[8:30] Or they sing the babysitter's blues or whatever.

[8:34] Yeah, exactly.

[8:36] So Bruce Willis – let's just get one thing straight.

[8:39] He's had a long, storied career in both film and television, very talented.

[8:44] He has reached this level – this era in his acting, he's had so many resurgences.

[8:50] And now he seems to resemble to me nothing more than like an elderly egg that occasionally looks at things and does not find it in his interest to emote about life.

[9:01] So for the first half of this movie, you're like, is this movie about someone who's in such a deep depression that they can't relate to their family?

[9:07] Because he seems to not be in the same movie that they're in.

[9:10] Yeah, he is the expression of Saitama from the One-Punch Man comics who just looks like an egg.

[9:17] Dan, do you have an egg reference?

[9:20] Well, he is the Eggman.

[9:22] He is the Eggman.

[9:24] I am the walrus.

[9:26] Goo-goo-ga-joo?

[9:28] Sure.

[9:29] He also kind of looks like if all the facial features of the Bailet conformed to make a human-style face instead of being all over the egg from the Berserk comics.

[9:36] Yeah, yeah, sure.

[9:37] I mean I think he just looks like someone painted a face on an egg, but then the Eggman got realized.

[9:42] I think more complicated.

[9:43] I think there's a reason that in China he's billed as thousand-year egg in Death Wish.

[9:51] So delicious.

[9:54] We know that Bruce – maybe it's just that Bruce Willis is so beaten down by our modern demasculinized society because as –

[10:00] So we see when his daughter is playing soccer, another dad is being very loudly abusive, swearing, very aggro at the players.

[10:06] Totally alpha is what Dan said.

[10:08] Yeah, and he tells him, he tells him, don't, hey, stop swearing, and the guy threatens him to a fight,

[10:13] and Bruce Willis, like the beta cuck he has become, does not fight him.

[10:17] When I guess the movie is implying that the main thing for him to do would be to rip his head off with his bare hands and use it as a soccer ball.

[10:24] I did expect the movie to return to this character at some point, once Bruce Willis became, like, tough guy Bruce Willis, like, there'd be like a...

[10:31] A reckoning?

[10:32] Yeah, just like a bookend scene where...

[10:34] They're both trying to hunt the same video at the video store, and he's like, you take it, you take this copy of Death Wish 2.

[10:44] Instead, he's, he just doesn't do it.

[10:47] He used to fight as a young man, he reveals.

[10:48] He was a scrapper.

[10:49] He was a scrapper, but he's since mellowed out.

[10:51] He has a perfect family.

[10:52] His brother, Vincent D'Onofrio, is a bit of a ne'er-do-well, always asking for money, always a little bit on the shady side of the law.

[10:58] But hey, what are brothers for?

[11:00] But he's bringing that Vincent D energy, so you're like, I love it.

[11:03] He's got to be the baddie.

[11:05] Yeah, that big Vincent D.

[11:07] Hey, she loves, she wants the D, D'Onofrio.

[11:11] Yeah, more on that later, because the moment he enters, we thought it was one of those scenarios where we're like, well, obviously, he's the bad guy.

[11:16] But is he the bad guy?

[11:17] Question mark.

[11:18] You'll have to listen to the more about Death Wish to find out.

[11:20] One night, while Bruce Willis is out at his round, he was supposed to go out for a birthday dinner at La Fonda with his family to have their famous tres leches cake, which they talk about so many times in the movie.

[11:32] And then later we see him eating it by himself.

[11:36] You got to have this cake.

[11:37] He's like, it doesn't have just uno leches or dos leches.

[11:42] There are tres leches in this cake.

[11:44] Now, Dan, yeah, you're confirming, you're showing your bona fides of being a tres leches expert.

[11:49] After last night's late night dinner of a tres leches pancakes.

[11:55] For some reason, we've fallen into probably a bad habit of having another full meal after a live show.

[12:03] And I had a huge stack of pancakes with caramel sauce on them.

[12:09] Not a good choice.

[12:09] Three leches were represented.

[12:11] Now, you know that at some point there's some there's some madman chef who's like, I'll do it.

[12:16] I will add the cuatro leches.

[12:19] No, no, no.

[12:20] It's impossible.

[12:21] You can't do it.

[12:21] No one can take it.

[12:22] The gozer's like, don't do that.

[12:24] I'll get banished.

[12:26] That's what it took?

[12:27] Yeah.

[12:27] Mr. Mixing, fiddling.

[12:31] So, OK, but while he gets called into work because the guy was supposed to be on call is sick.

[12:35] So he's there surging people up.

[12:38] Meanwhile, a gang of thugs who seem to have gotten his the address of his house from his

[12:44] car because of a valet that parks their car once and found the address in the car.

[12:49] They go and they rob the house and things go wrong.

[12:51] They end up shooting his wife and daughter.

[12:53] Oh, no.

[12:54] The wife dies.

[12:55] The daughter is in a coma.

[12:57] And I thought the movie was going to literally do that.

[12:59] The thing about I can't operate on them.

[13:02] They're my family, but he tries anyway and fails.

[13:04] But instead, he just doesn't do it.

[13:06] He gets there too late.

[13:07] He gets there too late.

[13:09] He's after he has his wife has her funeral, and then after the funeral, he's just driving

[13:14] around with his wife's dad, who I guess lives out in the country somewhere.

[13:17] And he starts shooting at poachers.

[13:20] He starts shooting at some poachers with a rifle because he's landed gentry.

[13:25] It was like poachers and they're still and they're going after a deer.

[13:29] Yeah, it's like, wait, do you own the deer?

[13:31] Like, that's not weird.

[13:33] Like, I'm not a fan of hunting because I just don't like the idea of deer.

[13:38] I don't like the idea of doing a blood sport in general.

[13:40] Except unless it's blood sport with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

[13:43] But deer are kind of a nuisance animal that he's like, he's like, no, no, they're shooting

[13:48] up my deer.

[13:49] Well, I mean, if it's not in season, I mean, that's kind of regulated for a reason.

[13:53] But yeah, the idea, like, does he does he run like an animal preserve?

[13:58] Like, what the deer farm?

[14:00] Yeah, I mean, theoretically, as a deer farm, but it doesn't seem like they're killing the

[14:03] deer on like a farming area killing of a sacred deer.

[14:07] I don't know.

[14:07] I haven't seen that movie yet.

[14:08] Is he Norman Mailer?

[14:09] And is that a good thing or a bad thing, Dan?

[14:12] I have no idea.

[14:13] What makes the deer sacred?

[14:17] It's been blessed by a priest.

[14:18] I mean, that's how things get sacred, I guess.

[14:21] So he but he starts shooting at them and he goes and Bruce Willis is talking about, yeah,

[14:25] the police, they think they can find these guys eventually.

[14:27] And the dad is like, people rely too much on the police.

[14:30] The police only come after the crimes happened.

[14:33] It's like and I'm adding more of an accent to him than he actually has.

[14:36] It's like trapping the fox while it's leaving the hen house.

[14:39] It's like, well, yes, human beings, you have to wait till they commit a crime to arrest

[14:44] them like that's like unless you want a minority report this like that's how that's how reality

[14:49] works.

[14:50] Yeah.

[14:50] Maybe if we just had a gun pointed at everyone all the time, no one would make mistakes,

[14:55] Elliot.

[14:55] I think that is literally the platform of the Republican Party.

[14:59] But we shouldn't get into politics.

[15:00] Come on.

[15:01] This is Death Wish.

[15:01] How can we not get into politics?

[15:03] This is the most we're just dropping goop.

[15:05] Stacked movie.

[15:07] There's a lot in this movie that's like, yeah, it's very it's a very politically like trying

[15:13] to have it both ways sort of movie.

[15:14] It feels a little bit like we'll get to this, I guess, but like Wild Things, where with

[15:18] Wild Things, it was like, if you like it, it's because it's like a crazy thriller.

[15:22] If you don't like it, it's supposed to be goofy and stupid.

[15:25] Come on.

[15:26] And this is a little bit like if you agree with Bruce Willis, then you're gonna love

[15:29] this movie.

[15:30] If you don't agree with Bruce Willis, we threw in a couple of jokes about guns to like make

[15:35] make it like we think we're really criticizing him.

[15:38] But this guy is just he's literally he is the mission objective of the movie when he

[15:43] does this, and he never appears in the movie again, which is like people rely on the police

[15:47] too much to solve their problems.

[15:49] OK, thanks, old man with a gun.

[15:51] And you said you said the minute you know, you know that he then turns to Bruce Willis

[15:54] and goes, you heard of this Pizzagate?

[15:58] Because the real Pizzagate controversy is deep dish.

[16:00] That's a pizza.

[16:01] Come on, guys.

[16:02] Do we have a no, we don't have any more calling.

[16:04] No, no.

[16:04] The lines have stopped lighting up.

[16:06] Wait, no, we do have one more caller.

[16:08] This man is he calls himself El Cesar, and he said he has something to say about pizza,

[16:13] pizza, El Cesar.

[16:14] You're on the line.

[16:16] It's a pizza.

[16:18] All right.

[16:18] Thank you.

[16:19] I guess that's the answer.

[16:20] Now we have a P.

[16:21] Johns on the line about pizza.

[16:24] Also, I'd like to spout some racial slurs.

[16:27] OK, cut off his mic.

[16:29] Let's listen to that caller.

[16:31] And now it seems X-Force assassin Domino has something to say about pizza.

[16:35] Wow.

[16:36] Perhaps her name.

[16:38] Hello.

[16:38] I'm not quite sure what my powers are.

[16:41] They're based around luck and probability.

[16:43] Well, that seems weird.

[16:44] Domino's the game of luck.

[16:45] He gave a chance.

[16:46] She's one of those characters where her powers that she that reality just lets her do stuff.

[16:50] Not like long shot, but she has all the normal amount of fingers.

[16:55] And that was your annual long shot Domino differences review.

[16:59] Next time we'll get into bone density.

[17:01] Oh, yeah.

[17:01] Long shots got those hollow bird bones.

[17:03] Yeah.

[17:04] OK, that's how you can do all those mad flips.

[17:06] Uh huh.

[17:06] And that's how they're like, oh, it's really windy.

[17:08] Somebody throw a long shot up in the air.

[17:10] Oh, no.

[17:11] So Bruce Wills is seeing a therapist.

[17:12] He's very depressed, as anyone would be when your daughter's in a coma and your wife has

[17:15] been killed.

[17:16] He tries to drown his sorrows in that tres leches cake, but it's just not the same to

[17:20] eat it by himself.

[17:20] It tastes like ashes.

[17:21] He feels he failed his family and he says he's obsessed with the killers.

[17:25] He doesn't even know who they are.

[17:27] He's obsessed.

[17:27] And every time he's driving by someone who looks like a bad dude, he's like, is that

[17:31] it?

[17:32] Meanwhile, he talks to Dean Norris, who is playing a policeman.

[17:35] And Stuart, you had an interesting point about casting Bruce Willis and Dean Norris in the

[17:38] same movie, right?

[17:39] I mean, they look very similar at this point in their careers.

[17:41] Dean Norris looks like the the version who's like always on some kind of wacky diet.

[17:47] I mean, Bruce Willis looks like a chicken egg and Dean Norris looks like an ostrich

[17:50] egg.

[17:50] I guess what you're saying.

[17:52] Yeah, both delicious.

[17:53] They both look like two polished stones that a rich person might have on a pillar in their

[17:57] lobby of their building.

[18:00] We are introduced to Dean Norris as he tries to eat an RX bar as his sustenance, and he

[18:05] makes a face like, oh, this doesn't taste good.

[18:07] I wish I was eating man food.

[18:09] Instead, I'm feminized and I'm eating this bar.

[18:12] Yeah.

[18:14] Although at this point, I feel like those bars associated in my mind are like working

[18:18] out and getting strong.

[18:19] There's something more masculine to me about eating that kind of food.

[18:23] Yeah, it's got so much protein in it.

[18:24] Yeah, exactly.

[18:25] It's like, oh, you're you're maximizing your strength and your muscle power.

[18:28] Maybe he just doesn't like it because it's got eggs in it.

[18:30] And it's like he's eating his own.

[18:32] That's probably a big part of it.

[18:36] You know, there's a there's a I wanted to see it like if this was the Charlie Kaufman

[18:40] version, you'd have a scene where Bruce Willis has served an egg in a cup and his face appears

[18:45] on the egg.

[18:49] So Dean Norris is like, well, we don't have any leaves, but we're going to work on it.

[18:53] And they have a big wall of unsolved cases because, as we know, just mentioned earlier,

[18:57] Chicago is a hellhole.

[18:58] It's full of chaos and gunfire all the time.

[19:01] Bruce Willis comes across some thugs committing a crime in an alley and he goes, hey, stop

[19:06] that.

[19:06] And they kick him a bunch of times.

[19:07] Yeah, they beat him up.

[19:08] They just beat him up.

[19:09] And that gives him two ideas.

[19:11] One is that if he just walks around, he's going to find crimes.

[19:15] And two, he's not very good at being kicked and punched.

[19:19] He needs to come up with a he needs to bring a gun to a kick punch battle.

[19:22] Yeah, he needs a gun.

[19:23] And also he has his costume that he needs to put on.

[19:26] Oh, yeah.

[19:27] He needs a sweatshirt.

[19:28] He needs to don his cool outfit.

[19:29] So which is honestly not that different than his outfit in the movie Unbreakable.

[19:34] It's the exact same outfit.

[19:37] Although in this movie, he is very breakable.

[19:39] No, that's true.

[19:40] Yeah.

[19:41] I mean, he's been broken by being weaponized by the YouTube gun industry.

[19:46] Yeah, well, because he watches a video about guns and then he goes to the store Jolly

[19:50] Rogers that the video is like the video feels very much like a parody ad, right?

[19:55] It's so goofy.

[19:56] And there's a lot of like cartoon graphics that come up on screen.

[20:00] the host of the commercial actually seems to be a salesperson at the store?

[20:05] Yeah.

[20:06] Yeah, I mean, I would disagree with what you're saying a little bit about

[20:09] the movie having it both ways, because it does stack the deck so ridiculously in favor of this

[20:15] conservative pro-gun ideal of vigilante justice. But one of the places where it is acting silly

[20:22] is this gun commercial, where it's just like, you know what, if you're a liberal,

[20:27] you can kind of read this as like a parody.

[20:30] A lampoon, yeah. And it's like a pretty girl shooting a gun and being like,

[20:33] this is what I love. I don't shoot to kill, I shoot to survive.

[20:38] And he goes into the store.

[20:39] Banjo music.

[20:39] Yeah, man.

[20:40] All criminals are lawbreakers.

[20:43] He goes, criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot. I shall take the form of,

[20:47] and then a hooded sweatshirt smashes through the window.

[20:49] I thought you were going to say a gun smashes through the window.

[20:52] And shoots him. Ah, God! Chicago!

[20:57] See, he goes to buy a gun, but it's just so much trouble. But it's not that much trouble.

[21:01] She's like, fill out these forms, then we'll give you a gun and you'll take a class.

[21:05] She goes, everyone pass. Nobody fails.

[21:08] She's like, wink, wink, wink. It's easy to get a gun. Wink, wink, wink, wink, wink.

[21:11] Later on, we find out that he's doing this recon mission so that he can

[21:15] cover his tracks after he decides to not be a vigilante anymore.

[21:18] Yeah, well, he's, well.

[21:20] I think he wants a gun there, but he's like, oh, it's too traceable.

[21:23] And yeah, he doesn't want his name on any paperwork.

[21:25] Luckily, a patient gets brought to him with a gunshot wound.

[21:27] He's like, I'll come up with a name.

[21:30] Bruno. Nobody will associate that with me.

[21:33] Unless he's splitting people's throats with a razor sharp harmonica.

[21:36] Yeah, cool.

[21:37] I mean, how amazing would it be if they were like,

[21:39] he fills up the harmonica and he blows in it and little trank darts fly out and poison on him?

[21:43] Some, like, criminals are walking down the street and then they just hear some

[21:45] harmonica music and they look at each other and start running.

[21:48] Shit, Bruno's coming.

[21:49] When he comes back to the store later on, the lady's like, oh, it's the return of Bruno.

[21:56] What a, what a funny period in his career that was.

[21:59] Look, everyone has their Chris Gaines.

[22:01] And for Bruce Willis, it was Bruno.

[22:04] Yeah, yeah.

[22:05] Sometimes, you know, we all have those moments where we stare into the mirror and

[22:10] deep in the darkness of our eyes, we see Chris Gaines staring back at us.

[22:14] When Millie Joel's song, The Stranger, was originally called The Chris Gaines.

[22:18] We all have a Chris Gaines.

[22:20] Yeah, Camus' novel, L'Etranger, was originally called Le Chris Gaines.

[22:25] Yeah.

[22:27] So, luckily, a patient comes in with a gunshot wound, has a gun stuck in the

[22:30] waistband of his pants, and it just falls on the floor.

[22:32] And Bruce Willis was like, check, please.

[22:37] Like that night or the next day or something.

[22:39] He's like, oh, this is handy.

[22:40] I was looking for a gun.

[22:41] So much of the movie is like God is nudging Bruce Willis to kill people.

[22:45] And this is the first part.

[22:47] Bruce Willis practices with that gun.

[22:48] And we get a split screen montage of him saving gunshot victims as a surgeon.

[22:53] And in the same split screen, practicing with the gun and like

[22:56] cleaning it, set to the most tasteful music they could find back in Blackway.

[23:00] I know you're going to say, you've got to put one foot in front of the other.

[23:06] The only way it could have been more ridiculous is if it was, I'm too sexy for this guy.

[23:10] Or like, walk like a man.

[23:15] Dan, you want to join in?

[23:16] What songs?

[23:16] He did the match.

[23:19] That would just be arbitrary.

[23:21] Almost be turning a mirror on the movie itself.

[23:23] I like big butts that I cannot lie.

[23:26] That wouldn't make any sense.

[23:27] But it's at that point, I feel like the movie is tipping its hands that it's like, oh, yeah.

[23:32] Fuck, yeah, we're going to see Bruce Willis fuck some dudes up.

[23:35] OK, he goes out.

[23:37] He stops a carjacking and shoots two people and kills them and hurts his hand.

[23:42] And everyone's like, and someone tapes him while doing it on their phone, tapes it.

[23:45] They don't use tape.

[23:46] They just record him.

[23:46] And they've got a realtor connection to their phone.

[23:50] They're using 16 millimeter cameras.

[23:53] Just looks better, guys.

[23:54] And they upload it to the Internet.

[23:57] People start calling him the Grim Reaper and making memes.

[24:00] And suddenly, everyone on the radio.

[24:02] How dank are these memes?

[24:03] They're not that dank.

[24:04] They're totally not dank.

[24:05] They're pretty crappy.

[24:06] They look like someone's idea of memes.

[24:08] They're pretty bad.

[24:10] And the memes also aren't like, they've got memes like crazy.

[24:13] And the memes aren't like, check out this awesome guy.

[24:15] The memes are, it's him shooting someone in the head.

[24:17] I mean, that's not very good.

[24:18] When your friend gives you GOT spoilers.

[24:20] It's like, the memes are not about him, is what I'm saying.

[24:23] They're just using him to like, make jokes about other things.

[24:26] Yeah.

[24:27] But we know the movie has a Greek chorus in the form of Chicago radio personalities,

[24:33] Sway and ManCow, who provide the opposing viewpoints via their broadcasts of everything

[24:38] the Grim Reaper does.

[24:39] Now, ManCow, I'll just say, is a piece of scum.

[24:43] Like, he's scum.

[24:44] He's a piece of trash.

[24:45] He's a cow-man hybrid.

[24:46] Abomination against nature.

[24:47] Because I had gone so many years forgetting that ManCow existed,

[24:51] but now I'm brought back to harsh reality.

[24:53] I used, I forgot, like, I used, when I was at the Daily Show, I had to watch,

[24:57] for a long time, he was on Fox all the time, and on MSNBC a lot.

[25:00] And I used to watch those then, and it was like, oh, who is this jerk?

[25:04] And I thought maybe that he had been put out to pasture, you might say.

[25:08] But no, he's still around.

[25:09] And he's, uh, it's, I-

[25:11] I mean, he got his start as what, like a Midwestern DJ or some shit?

[25:15] Yeah, yeah, and then they all start that way as DJs.

[25:17] And then they put more and more politics and opinion into the show.

[25:20] Yeah.

[25:20] Until it becomes, the whole show is just them spouting off on stuff.

[25:23] Mm-hmm.

[25:23] Instead of talking about the movies like they're supposed to.

[25:26] But then, but I like, well, I guess they get stuck with the name that they started with.

[25:30] So, like, ManCow, I'm sure, was like a silly name.

[25:33] Yeah.

[25:33] But now he's got to be like, well, here's what ManCow thinks about-

[25:35] This is the ManCow brand.

[25:36] Like, it's like, well, here's what DJ Butterspanks thinks about campaign finance reform.

[25:42] But, uh, they, nobody can-

[25:44] There's a big debate, but the debate seems mostly weighted on the side of Grim Reaper

[25:48] is a urban hero who is making our streets safe, especially after he next goes out and

[25:53] in broad daylight kills a drug dealer named the Ice Cream Man.

[25:56] Uh-huh.

[25:56] And, like, Clint Howard's like, I'm available.

[26:03] I can play urban?

[26:04] I don't know, Clint.

[26:05] I don't know if you can.

[26:07] Uh, so everyone's like, this guy's great.

[26:10] Dean Norris and his partner, I don't remember the actress who's playing his partner,

[26:14] they're investigating this case.

[26:15] Yeah, she looks super familiar, but I don't remember it.

[26:17] I can't remember.

[26:18] I didn't look her up.

[26:19] And the only clue they really have to go on is that this is a white man in a hooded sweatshirt

[26:23] and he looks like he hurt his hand the first time.

[26:25] M&M.

[26:28] So, the Unabomber?

[26:30] Yeah, I kind of expected every witness to be like, yeah, he kind of looked like you,

[26:34] Dean Norris.

[26:36] We put this hood on.

[26:37] Yeah, yeah, like you.

[26:39] Like, suck in your cheeks.

[26:40] Yeah, yeah, that's it.

[26:42] Meanwhile, Bruce Willis, he's feeling a real pep in his step.

[26:44] He is loving murdering people.

[26:46] I mean, his therapist is like, whatever you're doing, keep doing it.

[26:50] He's like, thank you, I will.

[26:53] And, uh, but, uh-oh, things are about to come to a head.

[26:57] His days of murdering generic criminals are going to be over because that valet he recognizes

[27:04] comes in as a gunshot victim and around his wrist, the fancy watch that his wife was going

[27:08] to give him for his birthday.

[27:09] Luckily, he gets to murder him.

[27:10] Oh, wait, he's already dead.

[27:12] Vengeance has been taken from him.

[27:14] I mean, it's kind of implied, I thought, that he doesn't work that hard to save him.

[27:17] Oh, okay.

[27:18] It's like he has the defibrillator paddles and he's like, clear, and just holds them

[27:21] above the guy's chest.

[27:22] Oh, nothing we could have done.

[27:23] Oh, it's not working.

[27:25] Clear, zip, zip, zippity-zap, zippity-zap, zippity-zap, zippity-zap, zippity-zap, zippity-zap,

[27:29] Oh, it's not working.

[27:30] Doctor, did you say zaparino with your mouth?

[27:34] Somebody get the Spider-Man villain Electro in here to get him a jolt.

[27:38] Get this man some jolt cola.

[27:40] Let me try mouth-to-mouth.

[27:42] Ah, he's just breathing on his face.

[27:44] It's not gonna, oh boy, nothing we could do.

[27:46] Put the sheet over him.

[27:47] He hasn't flatlined yet.

[27:48] Put the sheet over his face.

[27:49] If only, he'd been taking more improv classes instead of gun classes.

[27:54] So, anyway, he says, oh, I'm going to track this guy down.

[27:56] He steals this guy's phone, which was in hospital evidence, I'm not sure,

[28:01] and uses his dead body's fingerprint to open up the fingerprint ID.

[28:05] Here's a question I have.

[28:07] I don't know how those fingerprint IDs work,

[28:09] so will it work on a dead body or does it need to have heat in the finger?

[28:12] Uh, that's a good question.

[28:14] Is it like a little camera that takes a picture of the ridges of your thumbprint?

[28:17] I assumed it was just a thumbprint thing, but

[28:20] as someone who's tried to open my phone while it's raining outside

[28:24] and there's water on my thumb,

[28:25] I don't think that the bloody thumb probably was very good to open that.

[28:30] That's totally true.

[28:31] If I have any water on my thumb, my phone's like, uh-uh,

[28:34] there's someone else.

[28:35] Lock the phone.

[28:36] Break it.

[28:36] Explode it.

[28:38] We don't want Aquaman stealing Stewart's pictures.

[28:41] All my cool memes that I've saved.

[28:44] Like when mom shows you a GTO spoiler.

[28:47] Critter's gifts that he has on his phone.

[28:50] I'm amazed.

[28:50] I don't know how much memory he's taken out of your phone.

[28:53] GIFs and memes.

[28:56] A normal amount.

[28:57] Well, it's normal.

[28:58] I'm like constantly running out of space.

[29:00] Whenever I take a photo, it says no memory.

[29:02] I'm like, oh, I gotta delete some stuff.

[29:03] Stewart has a bottomless well.

[29:05] It's like a magical rucksack full of memes and GIFs.

[29:08] Well, that's the thing.

[29:10] When I went to get my phone, I'm like,

[29:12] which is the one that holds maximum amount of pictures of my cat and memes and GIFs?

[29:16] And they're like, oh, you'll need the executive model, sir.

[29:19] Uh, but anyway, because that's what executives have.

[29:23] Yeah.

[29:24] They're not playing with that hangy ball toy on their desk.

[29:26] They're just looking up memes and GIFs, pictures of their cats.

[29:29] I mean, that's just to show that executive that for every action,

[29:32] there's an equal and opposite reaction.

[29:33] I mean, that makes sense.

[29:35] That's a good message for them to learn.

[29:36] Our today's executives can learn something.

[29:38] Learn from that.

[29:39] Maybe they need to know.

[29:40] Today's Tom Sawyer, too.

[29:42] Mean, mean guy.

[29:43] Yeah, you had a mean, mean stride, right?

[29:45] Yeah, yeah.

[29:46] Here's the thing about today's Tom Sawyer.

[29:48] He sounds like an asshole.

[29:50] I know his mind is not for rent, but it's like he seems like he just doesn't like other people.

[29:54] Why don't we get rid of the old Tom Sawyer?

[29:56] The old Tom Sawyer was great.

[29:59] The new Tom Sawyer.

[30:00] is much more efficient at tricking people into painting fences you saying

[30:04] the aim ran loving rush lyrics are not good

[30:08] I'm just saying that I don't want to hang out with this time that with the

[30:12] new Tom Sawyer the old Tom Sawyer yeah he sounds great

[30:15] hmm friends with Huck Finn yeah I mean you know when you kidnap him he's he's

[30:20] trouble but but why would you kidnap him he's a cool guy

[30:24] I mean I think if we judge everyone on their reaction to being kidnapped

[30:29] metric yeah I think that's that's not you're not at your best

[30:32] that moment so

[30:36] Bruce Willis uses the phone to track down the fence

[30:39] who has his stolen stuff is that a bar which appears to be closed all the time

[30:44] he's like hey you can't come back here it's like well it appears to be a bar

[30:47] the bar has a one TV which is showing a loop apparently of a woman in a very

[30:51] short dress

[30:52] with about hanging out bowling and it's I thought was a bowling show of

[30:56] sexy ladies but you just see the same one over and over again every shot

[30:59] yeah I feel like the old guy sitting in the bar watching it is like

[31:03] I don't know like watching Kingpin for Mr. Skin trying to see if there's any

[31:07] new scenes

[31:08] is this technically new to me

[31:11] he goes back rewind computer rewind 15 seconds

[31:14] ass shot get the time code

[31:18] computer rewind I miss the time code again watching Kingpin

[31:22] Vanessa Angel's brief film career

[31:27] I was on that weird science show that's what made her know

[31:31] I don't know what happened to her after I mean the weird science before Kingpin

[31:34] okay

[31:34] was that the start of the revitalization of Bill Murray's career

[31:37] Kingpin I think you know it I think if you're gonna trace it back

[31:41] that was the showing that he wanted to be back in the spotlight maybe

[31:45] because it wasn't a huge hit as a movie but it was maybe Bruce it was like Bill

[31:49] Murray saying to the world

[31:50] I'm ready to play again. They had that Blues Traveler song at the end of the movie

[31:54] You're right I'm wrong. It was the biggest hit of all time. It was the number one movie in the history of the world. You're right. Blues Traveler.

[32:00] Blues Traveler at a band where my dad met the

[32:04] the lead singer on an airplane once. John Popper. John Popper and he continued to call him John Papa

[32:09] forever and we'd be like it's not his name. He called him Tom Papa.

[32:12] He called him Papa John.

[32:15] Oh not that old soul. Someone call me I wanted to say some racist stuff.

[32:21] Pizza talk is over. No hold on a second. We're getting another call from Jabba the Hutt.

[32:27] He wanted to tell us about his pizza.

[32:41] We don't have a you know whatchamacallit.

[32:47] Thank you.

[32:49] Well you don't really need it because half of Huddy's is just English words.

[32:53] Something Jedi emails.

[32:57] No Jabba Wonga her server.

[33:01] So Jabba's really into conspiracy theories too?

[33:05] So anyway this is where the movie starts getting silly.

[33:10] Because Bruce Willis he's fighting this fence and the fence calls this other guy.

[33:14] And that guy comes in and starts a gunfight.

[33:18] He's never really in danger because the universe is looking out for him.

[33:22] Because this bad guy Bruce has his gun on Bruce Willis.

[33:26] He accidentally bumped into a wall which knocked over a trophy which hit a bowling ball.

[33:30] And the bowling ball falls in the bad guy's head and kills him.

[33:34] So it's like wait this movie just became Final Destination all of a sudden? Or Home Alone in some way?

[33:38] Yeah I like the idea that Bruce Willis has summoned some kind of like death god.

[33:42] Like Luke from Death Note to help him out.

[33:46] Kathan help me with this.

[33:50] So maybe that's –

[33:54] Talgon take me away.

[33:58] I mean that's a soap right? Or a detergent for sure.

[34:02] But now he knows that the universe smiles on him because his therapist says it's okay and a bowling ball's okay.

[34:06] Yeah and I think his mother dipped him in the river sticks but held on to his ankle.

[34:10] I give my life for thee witness me.

[34:14] And sacrificed himself to kill that other guy.

[34:18] I shall defeat the Herod one.

[34:22] To save my brother of bald.

[34:26] Oh how horrible they have filled your finger holes with horrid eye putty.

[34:30] And teeth to make you one of the manlings.

[34:34] But I shall save you my half bowling brother.

[34:38] You know that monologue the bowling ball gives at the end of Act 4 is amazing.

[34:42] That's what I auditioned for.

[34:46] I auditioned to be a scorpion wrangler.

[34:50] It's not a performing part.

[34:54] How do you help a scorpion say all pins shall fall before my might.

[34:58] For I am Lane Crusher.

[35:02] And have no need for the gutter pillows that children use.

[35:06] Yeah it was crazy when I saw there when they gave me back my resume after saying I was hired.

[35:10] It was just covered in their tears.

[35:14] Yeah because they loved it so much.

[35:18] I hear the hammer of strike maker.

[35:22] I didn't realize you were going to do the whole piece but that's okay.

[35:26] Anyway he goes on to the next guy.

[35:30] This is the guy who caused all the trouble during the break in and led to the shooting.

[35:34] Bruce Willis because he's the hero of the movie torches him by cutting open his femoral artery.

[35:38] No it's some nerve in his leg.

[35:42] Exposes the sciatic nerve in his leg.

[35:46] And then pours motor acid into it.

[35:50] Some sort of caustic agent.

[35:54] I'm so happy to be party to this.

[35:58] And then as he's walking away the guy's like you're not going to.

[36:02] Oh boy I can't even remember these names.

[36:06] He goes it's this guy Knox I don't even know him.

[36:10] And he goes how do I find him? You don't find Knox he finds you.

[36:14] Okay great.

[36:18] And then he goes you're not going to kill me? No the jack is.

[36:22] And then he pulls the jack out from under this car and the car smushes the guy's head and his brains pop out.

[36:26] It's one of those moments where you're like oh yeah I am watching an Eli Roth movie.

[36:30] I literally saw his brains pop out of his head. Cracked like an egg.

[36:34] Bruce Willis is like now who's the egg head?

[36:38] It's like all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put you back together.

[36:42] Why would the horses be of any help anyway?

[36:46] They don't have hands they probably just try to eat the yolk from inside of humps.

[36:50] Yeah it's very much an attempt at commando level levity.

[36:54] But it's not as good. It's also like the jack didn't kill him you killed him.

[36:58] Like you killed him by dropping a car on his head.

[37:02] That's what the judge decided.

[37:06] Ladies and gentlemen of the jury I submit it was the car that committed the murder.

[37:10] My fingerprints were nowhere near him but the tire prints were on his head.

[37:14] I'm just a simple country lawyer.

[37:18] You are actually a surgeon who lives in the city. Simple country egg.

[37:22] Now I'm just an incredible edible egg. I'm not some big city lawyer.

[37:26] I may be packed with protein but I don't have

[37:30] any fancy law books in this shell.

[37:34] Seems to me if a car falls on a man's head

[37:38] you can't blame a little old egg.

[37:42] Which came first the chicken or the me? I rest my case.

[37:46] You rest your case?

[37:50] This is just a sentencing hearing.

[37:54] You already found guilty.

[37:58] You can't break a few me's without making an omelette. Please don't break me though.

[38:02] I would appreciate not being in an omelette.

[38:06] I wouldn't mind being in Amelie though. Amelie starring Bruce Willis as Amelie.

[38:10] I want to try something different.

[38:14] She would still begin life as an egg.

[38:18] Less impishness that's for sure.

[38:22] Smash his head open with a car.

[38:26] This is when the police start to suspect D'Onofrio because he's the only other character in the movie.

[38:30] He has a history of dropping cars on people.

[38:34] Let's see your hands. Do you have a wound on your hand?

[38:38] D'Onofrio is way stouter than the Grim Reaper.

[38:42] Maybe he could have fit in that hooded sweatshirt in college.

[38:46] It turns out he's not.

[38:50] D'Onofrio goes to Willis' home and finds Willis' vigilante hole in his basement.

[38:54] I kind of like that reveal that when he goes down there and he realizes that his brother has been radicalized by YouTube videos.

[38:58] His once nice house now has a basement that is

[39:02] some kind of gross ass video game dungeon.

[39:10] It's like a man cave for a serial killer.

[39:14] No evidence and red string all over the place.

[39:18] Pictures of the guys he's going to kill with their eyes cut out.

[39:22] There's a lot more dirty laundry hanging around.

[39:26] It's almost like he put his own subconscious mind into the basement of his house.

[39:30] It's like this place is disgusting.

[39:34] It's just a mess. There's just bullet casings all over the place.

[39:38] It's like if the Punisher wasn't as good at his job.

[39:42] Organizing the bullets, making the techno van,

[39:46] and cleaning Punisher's vans because Punisher is a big skate kid.

[39:50] What's his style? Half cabs?

[39:54] He's a long boarder. He needs grip.

[40:00] Willis, Bruce Willis, he's been told Knox is at this club, or Knox calls him or something,

[40:06] says meet me, he texts him, says meet me at this club.

[40:09] This is when we were so sure.

[40:10] He's like, or else I'm going to tell the police, and he's like, I mean, you're a known criminal.

[40:14] I'm not so sure, like, how, like, you could be like, Knox finds you, but I'm not so sure

[40:19] how Knox found this guy, because, like, what connection, like, he killed the guy that he

[40:24] was there talking to, it's not like, tell Knox I'm looking for him, or anything like

[40:29] that.

[40:30] He squashed that guy's brains out.

[40:31] He has no real reason to think that he's out for him, or who this Grim Reaper is, but also,

[40:36] it's a pretty late in the game attempt to make Knox into kind of like a scary super

[40:40] criminal, when up until now he's just been kind of like some idiot goon who screwed up

[40:43] a house robbery, but now he's supposed to be like, oh, now he needs a threat worthy

[40:48] of the Grim Reaper, an angel of death himself.

[40:52] So Bruce Willis goes to this club, it's exactly the sort of place that Blade would show up

[40:56] and kill all the vampires.

[40:57] It is a crazy club.

[40:58] There's like, just two women in a glass case holding big futuristic laser guns, and instead

[41:05] of having individual sinks outside the bathrooms, there's a huge fountain, like a communal hand

[41:10] washing fountain, which must be disgusting at the end of the night.

[41:14] And Bruce Willis goes, it's just like a human soup, just gross.

[41:19] Bruce Willis goes into the bathroom, which is packed with peeps, packed with people,

[41:25] men and women, so it's like an Ally McBeal unisex bathroom.

[41:28] Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a, it's 2018.

[41:32] Good point. Yeah, I guess you're right.

[41:34] And so, but it's all a trap.

[41:35] And Knox shows up and starts shooting at him.

[41:37] And Bruce Willis is like, oh, no.

[41:39] And he collapses into a bathroom stall where he was, it was like the cage that he was lured

[41:44] into. Yeah, because there was a phone there that he was following.

[41:47] And the only way to get out is he points his gun up to the ceiling and shoots out the fuse

[41:51] box to put the lights out.

[41:52] Yeah, a fuse box that's conveniently located on the ceiling of the men's bathroom, which

[41:56] is insane. Now, Stuart, you're a, you're a borrower.

[41:59] You own a public house. Yeah.

[42:00] Now explain how difficult this would make your life.

[42:02] Well, I think it's first off, I think it's really important to put your fuse box in a

[42:06] public area. Easily accessible to the patrons.

[42:10] Yeah, I mean, not necessarily easily because it is above a toilet, but an enterprising

[42:15] patron with a will to cause some destruction could easily have access to it.

[42:20] OK, so first rule, put your fuse box in a public place.

[42:22] Secondly, fuse box placement.

[42:24] Probably in a bathroom, someplace that just gets it generates a lot of like, I don't know,

[42:28] like water in the air, you know, the type of room that you would want to use a special

[42:32] kind of primer on the walls because the water like it just gets the humidity is so high.

[42:37] So you would want to put something that requires absolute dryness to be right.

[42:41] Yeah, put some electrical things there.

[42:43] Now, also, let's say you needed to switch the fuses on and off.

[42:47] Would it make it more or less difficult to have to climb onto a toilet seat to do so?

[42:50] Well, that's the thing, is that you would put it above a toilet seat because chances are

[42:54] there's already going to be somebody in there pooping.

[42:56] So you can just climb on him instead of having to use a ladder.

[42:58] I just get on his shoulders.

[43:00] I mean, it's going to save you ladder dollars.

[43:01] Plus the pressure you're applying on his shoulders will help the poop get pushed out.

[43:04] I mean, it's a service I provide.

[43:09] That's if you need a recall of well intentioned, if you're ever constipated, he'll just sit on

[43:12] your shoulders and bounce up and down a little bit.

[43:14] Yeah. Gravity, some extra help.

[43:17] Yeah. And I whisper things in your ears.

[43:21] Just let go. It's like every time, every time I go to the bathroom, I was like, love, like you

[43:26] never been hurt. Poop like nobody's watching.

[43:28] That's my moral, my motto and my moral.

[43:30] So anyway, the shooter doesn't the shootout doesn't go well.

[43:34] Bruce Willis actually gets shot, though.

[43:35] He escapes. That's impossible.

[43:36] And the cops are like, check out all the hospitals.

[43:38] We think the Grim Reaper got shot.

[43:40] But Willis doesn't go to hospital.

[43:41] He's a doctor. He knows how to handle this.

[43:42] So he goes home and uses glue and a stapler to close his wound up.

[43:46] And it doesn't look fun.

[43:48] But we get to watch the whole thing.

[43:49] Yeah, it's super cool.

[43:50] The cops at this point suspect Bruce Willis for the very rational reason that, again, he is the only

[43:55] other character left in the movie.

[43:57] Who else is going to be Sway?

[43:58] Mancow? I don't think so, though.

[44:01] Mancow is supporting the Grim Reaper.

[44:02] He, I don't know, doesn't seem to have the stuff.

[44:05] No, I don't think so.

[44:07] His daughter comes out of her coma, which is great, since I was worried that she would die.

[44:12] But then I realized later, oh, just so that she can be vulnerable in the in the climactic scene.

[44:16] Oh, yeah, of course.

[44:17] While they're leaving, they get into an elevator that Knox happens to be in.

[44:20] He's leaving the hospital, too, because he was shot.

[44:22] And Knox and the daughter have this very bizarre, creepy conversation as Bruce Willis just

[44:27] kind of stands there smiling the whole time.

[44:29] And it's one thing where it's like, I don't know if Bruce Willis is the character supposed to be

[44:32] secretly seething inside as he knows that the man that he wants to kill is right here and he

[44:37] can't do anything about it.

[44:38] Or if Bruce Willis is just thinking about like something funny he saw on TV, like, oh, I

[44:42] remember that Cheddar Goblins ad.

[44:43] That was hilarious.

[44:44] Or Bruce Willis is just like, hmm, this is a nice boy.

[44:47] Maybe my daughter will finally meet a nice boy and settle down.

[44:49] Yeah, it's weird because I feel like we're not supposed to think that he necessarily knows

[44:53] that this is Knox until after afterward, when like not as they were leaving, he goes, you

[44:58] know, he calls him Dr.

[44:59] Kersey, which calls him by his name, like the movie.

[45:03] Yeah. So the movie Call Me By Your Name is about it's about that moment when you realize

[45:07] that's the bad guy.

[45:08] Yeah. But but before that, it's just like especially like the new killer, Bruce Willis.

[45:13] I feel like would not allow a creepy dude to talk to his wheelchair.

[45:18] Like, hey, oh, you're getting out, huh?

[45:19] We'll have one of you. Oh, I hope you feel like you're going home.

[45:23] Yeah, I am. Great.

[45:24] OK. Like that's what he sounds like.

[45:27] Where is home, huh?

[45:28] Well, out of curiosity, give me your address, which is your bedroom window.

[45:31] OK, honey pie.

[45:32] Well, I know this licks her face.

[45:34] Gotta go. Have a good one.

[45:36] Bruce Willis is like, he seems nice.

[45:38] Why can't you meet a nice boy like that?

[45:40] He's like thinking about changing the appetizer menu at Planet Hollywood

[45:47] for the return of the return of Bruno in his mind.

[45:51] He's like North wasn't that bad a movie.

[45:53] How come Roger Ebert?

[45:54] Hey, that said, oh, so much worse.

[45:55] Willis is Disney's The Kid.

[45:59] Why not? The kid to boyhood did well.

[46:05] Hudson Eagle is Hudson Hawks brother.

[46:08] Did I die at the end of that movie?

[46:09] Maybe I didn't. And it could just be Hudson Hawk, too.

[46:13] Oh, man, what is the color of night blue?

[46:17] Who knows the famous movie where you see Bruce Willis's penis?

[46:21] Yeah, it's a movie.

[46:24] There was a sixth element

[46:26] and the seventh sense.

[46:29] Sixth element is salt.

[46:32] I mean, it's essential to flavor, not an element.

[46:34] It's two elements put together.

[46:35] NACL is potassium chloride, I think.

[46:38] But still,

[46:41] then we could just go on like this moon darkening.

[46:45] There's some potential there.

[46:46] And his daughter's like, Dad, did you see that creepy guy?

[46:48] He called you by your name. What?

[46:49] No, I don't know. I just think it's all right.

[46:51] Just thinking about squeakles.

[46:54] Anyway, long story short, the bad guys invade Bruce Willis's house.

[46:58] There is no suspense as Bruce Willis is on top of the game the whole time

[47:02] and essentially just slaughters.

[47:03] Yeah, he has led them into the sweetest honeypot of all.

[47:06] And I was waiting at this point for it to be revealed finally

[47:10] that Vincent D'Onofrio was the real bad guy behind it all.

[47:13] But no, the movie played me. I was wrong.

[47:16] It was not smart enough to do that.

[47:17] Instead, it was just a bunch of random criminals.

[47:20] Yeah. Yeah.

[47:22] And all that. And which led me to wonder, why is it that I'm in this movie?

[47:26] Yeah. This character has really no point other than to, like, make you think,

[47:30] I guess, that he's the bad guy, which is fair.

[47:32] Well, he's like, you know, he's the moral guy who, like,

[47:37] once he figures out what Bruce Willis is doing, he's like,

[47:39] you got to stop killing people.

[47:42] Look, buddy. Listen, bro.

[47:43] There's one thing I know.

[47:45] You got to. I mean, as much as having the power of life and death in your hands

[47:49] makes you feel like a god, you got to stop killing people.

[47:51] It's been amazing and toxic, and I understand.

[47:54] The way you smoked out those three dudes like a couple of blunts.

[47:57] It was awesome.

[47:58] I mean, it wasn't very tense because it wasn't shot well or anything.

[48:02] It's edited poorly.

[48:02] But, you know, knowing that there's a mother somewhere who's crying

[48:06] because her baby's gone and you made that happen.

[48:08] I know it's amazing.

[48:09] It's a thrilling feeling, better than sex, even.

[48:11] But come on, buddy, you got to stop.

[48:13] You get the whole family in trouble.

[48:14] Come on. I know that.

[48:18] What are you doing?

[48:20] Why? Come on.

[48:21] It's me, Vincent D'Onofrio.

[48:27] Vincent D'Onofrio, up all night, you were saying.

[48:29] The man's an animal.

[48:31] Oh, wow.

[48:32] I think I've said this.

[48:33] There's never been scenery devised that he cannot chew through.

[48:36] He's omnivorous when it comes to scenery.

[48:39] I think I've mentioned this before on the podcast.

[48:40] I bet you guys were watching it, seeing a play with Vincent D'Onofrio in it.

[48:44] And there were times where it was like a wild rhinoceros was loose on the stage

[48:47] and I was ready to just going to run into the audience

[48:49] and start killing people with his bare hands.

[48:51] It's an amazing performance.

[48:53] It's him and Ethan Hawke on stage.

[48:54] One of several times I've seen Ethan Hawke in plays.

[48:56] I like Ethan Hawke on stage more than the movies.

[48:58] They were playing, what, the producers or something?

[49:00] Yeah, yeah, it was La Caja Hole.

[49:08] So the movie ends with Dean Norris and the cops

[49:11] are now investigating the multiple homicide at Bruce Willis's house.

[49:14] But yeah, he's just a man.

[49:16] So it looks like these criminals came in and you stalked them like a true death

[49:19] dealer.

[49:20] Yeah, so you're craving the hundred, these guys.

[49:25] And he's like, so what happened here?

[49:26] He's like, they came into my, I took, they came into my home

[49:29] and I protected my daughter.

[49:30] And you bought a heavy automatic weapon the day before?

[49:33] The day my daughter came home, just in case it happened again.

[49:36] And that injury in your hand that's almost healed and the gunshot wound

[49:41] in your arm that's stitched up?

[49:43] He says, those you got today?

[49:44] He goes, yep.

[49:45] And I was waiting for Bruce Willis to go like, yeah, I'm a kind of Logan,

[49:48] if you will. I heal real fast.

[49:50] I'm a saber tooth.

[49:51] And Dean Norris is like, OK, well.

[49:54] All right.

[49:55] I think you're just a regular husband who wanted to protect his family

[49:59] and I appreciate.

[50:00] And it's like that moment where it's like I know what you did and I approve of it and then Dean Norris to seal the deal

[50:05] Takes a piece of pizza off the counter and eats it. That's not in his diet

[50:09] No, it's a man. Where did that fucking pizza come from?

[50:12] Let's stop for a moment think about this because it is one of the most

[50:16] Unrealistic things about the movie that there is spontaneously generating pizza

[50:19] Well, it was like the cops arrived at the crime scene and like get us some pizza

[50:23] Oh, we're gonna there's gonna be a late one. Oh boy get the pizza guy

[50:26] It would make sense if they were next to the what the coroner who showed up who brought a pizza along with his tools because that's

[50:33] What coroners do they always open up their little tool bag and there's a sandwich it

[50:39] Imagine that like they ordered the pizza before all the guys got shot and the pizza delivery guy got there in between when the guys

[50:45] Got shot and the cops were there. So he's like

[50:48] There's all these bodies lying around

[50:51] I mean, that's that would actually be a joke that might actually be funny

[50:55] Movie with no humor. I mean where it he goes to open the door and pulls a gun. It's the pizza guy

[51:00] He goes, oh, it's just pizza or then shoots the pizza guy. I think he's another or something. Yeah

[51:06] There's all these guy people here and it's really crazy and I'm a pizza guy. Mm-hmm, but no, it's just it's just pizza

[51:11] But Dean Norris, he's never going back to those rx bars now that he's seen the masculine ideal of justice and strength

[51:18] Reaper Bruce Willis, he's gonna eat pizza for an exam cuz I guess Dean Norris is continuing his transformation into an intro. Yep

[51:24] so Bruce Willis takes his daughter to college in the big city, New York and while he is

[51:31] And and we hear over the radio sway is like out of nowhere. There's just this burst of radio

[51:36] It's like grim reaper wherever you are. We don't know but like rest in peace stay away and it's like so either

[51:43] I mean, they don't have that much stuff to fill the air on Sirius XM, right? I guess that must be it

[51:48] I didn't realize that sway had a national radio show

[51:50] Yeah, or that it's being picked up by the filling and Bruce Willis's teeth

[51:54] Yep, and we see there's a bellhop who has enormous pile of bags

[51:58] He's bringing into a hotel and a guy just walks by and takes one of them and Bruce Willis goes

[52:01] Hey, and then mimes shooting him with a gun. Mm-hmm cut to credits directed by Eli Roth

[52:07] I wasn't sure what to take from that last scene

[52:10] Was it supposed to be like petty crime is the same as capital crime?

[52:13] And it's almost like they're going for like an end of taxi driver moment where you're like this guy could go off at any moment

[52:19] Again, like he's a dancer walking around but he's the hero of the movie and I think we're supposed to like him

[52:23] So yeah, I think back in black starts to play again. Does it something like that? Yeah. Yeah

[52:28] Oh, it is back in black. It was either that or like back in the saddle again by Aerosmith

[52:32] What if it was big balls? That's crazy. That'd be nuts

[52:36] So yeah

[52:39] Back in the high life again

[52:44] Yeah, and and the movie had the one the bad luck of being a

[52:50] Horrible celebration of murder, but also the bad luck of coming out at a time when it has been rarely more apparent

[52:57] the danger of random people deciding to

[52:59] Reorder the universe according to their inner morality through bullets. So we'll try not to let that influence our judgments

[53:06] Let's be like hermetic monks looking at only the thing

[53:15] Let's try it a final judgments where we decide whether this is a good bad movie a bad bad movie or movie

[53:20] kind of like I'm gonna go first and just say that like

[53:24] Eli Roth is a stupid man. Whoa, but well in terms of like invented the Roth IRA

[53:31] Oh, well, I mean, I don't know what the effect that has on economy in general

[53:35] But I certainly take advantage really called a Roth Eli in terms of morality. He's a stupid man like oh sure

[53:41] Yeah, the thinking in his films the morality is idiotic. Yeah

[53:46] But he's a slick director. Like I actually think yeah, he has talent as a director. So this movie

[53:54] While watching it entertained me like it went down smoother than a lot of bad movies that we watched that I'm just totally bored by

[54:01] But I found the morality of it so reprehensible that it sickened me

[54:07] so I

[54:09] give it I have a props for being a slick piece of

[54:13] Filmmaking but I found it to be a bad movie because of the content

[54:18] Yeah, I mean, I actually kind of wish there was a little more cleverness to something like there

[54:23] It never felt like there was that much tension something

[54:25] I guess some of the action scenes had it was nice that the action scenes actually utilized some of the geography of the locations

[54:31] which is good and uncommon most of the time but uh

[54:35] It like there was never any tension. You never ever thought that like Bruce Willis wasn't gonna murder these clowns

[54:42] And yeah, they were actually clowns. I mean that would basically that would basically just be like a Batman

[54:52] And yeah, it's it's the

[54:55] There's a lot of movies out there about guys. Who's

[54:58] all their responsibilities get washed away in an orgy of violence and

[55:02] This is not even one of the better ones. No, I don't recommend it

[55:07] I actually found I would call bad battles

[55:09] I actually found it like it's like tech from a technical level is competently made it reminded me of like Red Dragon

[55:15] It's like okay. This is like a movie made by a machine fairly sterile. Yeah sterile

[55:20] There's no sense of like until that guy's head got squashed like an egg

[55:24] Yeah, you could it feels like that's the one moment where Eli Roth was like, I love it

[55:27] But otherwise it felt like him doing something for a paycheck almost and the end

[55:31] yeah, the morality of it is is horrified like the idea of like the idea of watching a surgeon get radicalized by YouTube videos is

[55:39] Fucking horrible. Yeah and sad

[55:41] It's this weird baby boomer white male baby boomer wet dream that so much that I expected like

[55:48] Them to announce that there's unlimited paper towels for them to use forever

[55:54] White male baby boomer thing. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I mean the one of your parents house and see how many paper towels

[56:01] Probably a lot. Yeah, it's crazy and I bet their bathroom has a tiny landscape. Yeah

[56:08] That's something that I noticed in a lot of older bit older baby boomers bathrooms. There's a tiny landscape painting in the bathroom

[56:14] yeah, it's it was almost like if the only thing was missing was Bruce Willis then like

[56:19] Hooking up with a much younger like sexy assassin or something like that to make it the full-on

[56:24] Middle-aged baby boomer. Yeah, like fantasy that dream. Yeah cornucopia. There's and then there's also the moment where uh,

[56:31] They're like if he started dating his his coma daughter's best friend

[56:35] There's a scene that kind of almost started to imply that

[56:39] There's it's there's a moment where Dean Orris is like be or maybe it's his partner's like be on the lookout

[56:43] It's a white male and a hooded sweatshirt 40s to 50s and Stewart was like 40s 50 seems a little generous

[56:50] Yeah, that was uh, that's part of Bruce Willis's rewrite

[56:56] So, I don't think we like this movie

[57:05] Hi, I'm Dave hi, I'm Graham and we're two house DJs who have been trapped inside our drum machine

[57:11] We love it here and we'd love if you stopped by and visited us every week on stop podcasting yourself here on maximum fun org

[57:20] We're just a couple of doofuses from Canada and listen to our show or perish

[57:26] Stop podcasting yourself on maximum fun org

[57:42] Hi, I'm Dave hi, I'm Graham and we're two house DJs who have been trapped inside our drum machine

[57:48] We love it here and we'd love if you stopped by and visited us every week on stop podcasting yourself here on maximum fun org

[57:57] We're just a couple of doofuses from Canada and listen to our show or perish

[58:03] Stop podcasting yourself on maximum fun org

[58:11] Oh

[58:17] Hello I didn't see you come in it's time for a solo flop house ad read

[58:22] This uh, this podcast the flop house. It's called you maybe maybe you've heard of it

[58:27] I don't know it's supported in part by a way away

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[58:51] But you can see it on the Sony movie classics channel every fucking day for some reason

[58:58] It's got a little battery

[59:01] That you can use to charge your phone, I mean, I don't know why I'm getting into these

[59:06] Features because the copy explains the features later on. I just want to say I really appreciate having this this piece of luggage

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[59:16] Thanksgiving

[59:18] I don't know why you care about that. Are you stalking me? Are you stalking me?

[59:23] Are you gonna show up at my brother's on Thanksgiving and try and do something to me for God's sake people?

[59:30] for God's sakes

[59:32] Stay away. I mean, I love you, but stay away

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[1:02:45] We got a couple of jumbotrons coming all over the wire.

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[1:03:07] Are you podcast monogamous with the Flophouse?

[1:03:10] Helpful Snowman has books.

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[1:03:20] Find all this and more at helpfulsnowman.com.

[1:03:23] Visit helpfulsnowman.com or subscribe to the podcast in your favorite pod thingy.

[1:03:31] I am even more confused by what this is than when I started reading.

[1:03:37] But in a way, isn't that the most effective advertising?

[1:03:40] Don't you want to go and go over to helpfulsnowman.com and see what the hell I was just talking

[1:03:47] about?

[1:03:48] Anyway, we got another personal message.

[1:03:52] This one's for Ollie.

[1:03:55] It's from Emily, and it says, to the best acquaintance I've ever had, thank you for

[1:04:00] giving me the best week of my life.

[1:04:02] You are everything I could ever want.

[1:04:04] I can't wait to see you in April for more full breakfasts, shearing, bed snacks, and

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[1:04:11] After all, Reno is the Paris of the West.

[1:04:15] I love you.

[1:04:16] Isn't that sweet?

[1:04:19] I say that in a way that makes it sound like I'm ironically angry, but I am not.

[1:04:26] If you want to get a Jumbotron, go to maximumfun.org forward slash Jumbotron, and you can look

[1:04:34] into it.

[1:04:36] For now, I will continue reading, reading, I'm not reading anything.

[1:04:42] I'll continue drinking my coffee in my pajama pants, which is what I'm doing while recording

[1:04:47] this ad read.

[1:04:50] And you can get back to the show.

[1:04:53] All right.

[1:04:54] Well, moving on to letters from listeners, listeners like you.

[1:05:01] You?

[1:05:02] Uh huh.

[1:05:03] Yeah, let's do it.

[1:05:04] Uh, I so.

[1:05:05] It's like you're waiting for something that, that I don't know what it is.

[1:05:08] No, I'm not waiting for anything.

[1:05:10] I, I, I, uh.

[1:05:11] What is Dan waiting for?

[1:05:15] Why does Dan pause in that peculiar way?

[1:05:18] What could Dan think is about to happen today?

[1:05:24] Because today's a day that's freighted with weight.

[1:05:28] And Dan, he's having trouble waiting.

[1:05:32] Dan's appetite, it needs sating.

[1:05:35] Dan's food needs plating.

[1:05:39] What's Dan waiting for?

[1:05:41] I think that's what we're all asking every day, in every way, as we go about our lives

[1:05:47] thinking, hey, what's Dan waiting for?

[1:05:51] Waiting for?

[1:05:52] What's Dan waiting for?

[1:05:55] Waiting for?

[1:05:56] There's so many things Dan could wait for.

[1:05:59] So many things Dan could hate for.

[1:06:02] So many things Dan is late for, but what's he wait for?

[1:06:06] There's only one man who can answer, that's Dan.

[1:06:10] Dan is the man who can answer.

[1:06:13] The answer belongs with Dancer.

[1:06:16] He's a tiny dancer, that's Dancer.

[1:06:21] That was from my 1975 Broadway show, uh, Dan's Day.

[1:06:25] Oh, okay.

[1:06:26] You know, Stephen Hassanheim told me I was terrible.

[1:06:30] Normally I do some sort of vetting of these letters beforehand, but because we're...

[1:06:34] Do you?

[1:06:35] Because we're in a...

[1:06:36] I think this is the exception.

[1:06:37] Because we're in a Holiday Inn, or Howliday Inn, I would say, funicula.

[1:06:41] Because we're in a Holiday Inn in the middle of nowhere, uh, I haven't had a chance.

[1:06:49] You're right, Dan, the internet doesn't work the same way here.

[1:06:52] When you're in a Holiday Inn in the middle of nowhere, you're so busy that you don't

[1:06:55] have time to do things.

[1:06:56] Guys, Daylight Savings Time just kicked in, and Dan is going apeshit.

[1:06:59] Oh, man, yeah.

[1:07:00] I'm just picking...

[1:07:01] Letters.

[1:07:02] Picking a rando.

[1:07:03] By semi-random.

[1:07:04] Uh, this one is from Eric Lastnamewithheld.

[1:07:05] Mm-hmm.

[1:07:06] Eric Estrada.

[1:07:07] Who writes,

[1:07:08] Hey.

[1:07:09] Chips.

[1:07:10] Hey, original peaches.

[1:07:11] Hey.

[1:07:12] In recent reviews of most movies, especially in relation to the release of the new Venom

[1:07:16] movie,

[1:07:17] Mm-hmm.

[1:07:18] CGI is criticized more and more.

[1:07:20] As a younger listener who didn't grow up during the time of practical effects, I can still

[1:07:24] agree that the reliance can be too much, but I don't always understand the complaints.

[1:07:29] Recently I've heard people complaining about the trailer for the upcoming Aquaman movie

[1:07:32] and the CGI involved.

[1:07:34] My question for you is, when does CGI rub you the wrong way?

[1:07:37] Also, could you make a good Aquaman movie without CGI?

[1:07:40] I don't think the underwater scenes would go nearly as well.

[1:07:43] Keep up on floppin', Eric Lastnamewithheld.

[1:07:48] Uh, I mean, I, I think, I think it's, it's easy to misunderstand, uh, the complaint,

[1:07:54] uh, that I have about CGI, but I mean, I feel like it's, it's kind of like salt.

[1:07:59] Like it's, it's a good thing, like CGI and all special effects in general are good to

[1:08:04] have in a certain amount, but if you overdo it, it's terrible.

[1:08:08] And if you do it without really thinking about it, I feel like a lot, like the problem with

[1:08:11] the Aquaman movie and the trailer at least, and all the DC movies is they feel like they

[1:08:17] are entirely shot on a green screen and all the digital effects are thrown in afterwards

[1:08:22] and it's all done as an afterthought and it doesn't feel like there's no impact to anything.

[1:08:27] It doesn't feel creative and it doesn't feel purposeful at a certain point.

[1:08:30] Something that I think, to twist Stewart's, uh, metaphor slightly, because it's a very

[1:08:34] good metaphor.

[1:08:35] I'm going to use bacon instead of salt.

[1:08:36] Okay.

[1:08:37] Where there's this, there's this thought among certain people where it's like, hey, guess

[1:08:39] what I put in there?

[1:08:40] It's some bacon.

[1:08:41] You're going to love it.

[1:08:42] And it's like, I don't need it and everything.

[1:08:43] And it's making it, it becomes a crutch that people lean on instead of thinking about what

[1:08:47] they're making.

[1:08:48] And with CGI, there's a certain feeling of like, oh, we don't have to try too hard to

[1:08:52] figure this out because we'll have the CGI guys work 80 hour weeks, just making it look

[1:08:57] like whatever.

[1:08:58] And it ends up being.

[1:08:59] And we'll barely acknowledge them in the credits basically.

[1:09:02] Yeah, that too.

[1:09:03] I mean, from a labor point of view, it's horrifying, but like a, but CGI, it's like, it can, it's

[1:09:07] a tool and it's a really good tool when it's used well and it's a really crappy tool when

[1:09:12] you use it for everything, you know, and, and I think certain directors also have a

[1:09:16] better grasp of how to use that sort of thing effectively, like Guillermo del Toro, for

[1:09:22] instance.

[1:09:23] Yeah.

[1:09:24] And there's something about like, it's just, it's just when anything, anytime something

[1:09:27] is overused and not used particularly well, because it's a good way to not have to think

[1:09:32] about stuff too hard.

[1:09:33] And you can paper over things, you know, there's so much stuff in TV and movies that gets done

[1:09:37] digitally that could pretty easily be done practically.

[1:09:40] You're referring to Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom, where they use a underwater saw on

[1:09:45] a tooth and you're like, those two things exist.

[1:09:47] Yeah.

[1:09:48] That could be a real thing.

[1:09:49] But like, I've noticed that people driving in cars looks much worse now than it used

[1:09:55] to.

[1:09:56] Like it looks faker because it's just very easy to do and people don't even really think

[1:09:59] about it anymore.

[1:10:00] more whereas it's like CGI is like real enough I feel like that people stopped trying to make it

[1:10:06] look really real and they're just like good enough this is fine and people are watching

[1:10:11] the show on their phones who cares yeah and you have a comment and you know for whatever and

[1:10:16] sometimes and maybe I'm being too critical of it sometimes when I get mad about it but like

[1:10:19] with the Venom trailer it was like this looks like a cartoon to me and the cartoony Venom suit

[1:10:25] and not just Tom Hardy's awesome over-the-top performance is his crazy accent and everything

[1:10:29] but it's like uh it feels like is this supposed to exist in a world where I'm supposed to give a

[1:10:35] shit about anything in it because if it is like help it look real to me you know and that might

[1:10:40] mean using a practical effect here there rather than just doing it all green it's this weird way

[1:10:45] of doing things where it's like in some ways I think much more expensive at times but it's just

[1:10:51] it's easier to do stuff on set that way and I'm saying the person who calls the shot is the

[1:10:55] director who's working on set and he's not sitting there doing the effects work so I mean that might

[1:11:00] be part of it who knows Dan what do you think you got thoughts on this uh about him out we're

[1:11:04] talking it's a CGI I think I personally feel like you should only use it CGI if it's a thing that

[1:11:10] could not be done like easily in another something that could never exist yeah like a good example of

[1:11:18] it to me is like the incredible hulk in the avengers movies it's like I can't there's you

[1:11:23] cannot get that effect with a human in green paint and if you used like a physical body puppet for

[1:11:30] the whole thing it would I think it wouldn't quite work like it wouldn't look like mark ruffalo the

[1:11:34] way it needs to it would look kind of probably dark crystal muppety which now that I think

[1:11:37] about it sounds amazing yeah but that's something where they do it pretty well but even then there

[1:11:42] are times where it's like all right like this scene you could have made like a fake hulk hand

[1:11:46] for this shot and it would have looked a little better than just using a computer hand I mean the

[1:11:50] value of practical effects is that anything that exists in reality feels like it exists in reality

[1:11:58] like whereas something that's CGI even if you can't always clock it you know there's something

[1:12:05] off about it and I feel like the best like it's a reason why people love action movies where you've

[1:12:12] got talented stunt performers like doing like real fight choreography because there's weight

[1:12:18] and heft to everything and you can tell that that's not like that scene in the most recent

[1:12:23] terminator where arnold schwarzenegger flies off that car hood and bounces on the ground yeah

[1:12:26] it's like wait a minute that's not what people's bodies do that's what cartoon bodies do at the way

[1:12:31] the thing I always compare it to in my head is the chewbacca costume from the original star wars

[1:12:35] movies where it's like it's so clearly a costume that's a man's suit but it looks so good yeah

[1:12:40] character feels so alive to me and the fur looks so real to me whereas anytime I've seen anything

[1:12:46] with CGI hair or fur no matter how no matter how they're able to differentiate all the different

[1:12:51] hairs like it never yeah it's as real to me as that costume yeah this next letter is from

[1:12:57] colin last name withheld hello mockery trevorrow who writes you often talk about how a woman

[1:13:03] vomiting in a movie is lazy shorthand for pregnancy well steward often talks about yeah

[1:13:07] I do that all the time can't stop yapping you brought up like five times today uh-huh I wanted

[1:13:12] to point out that in the sequel to mamma mia the writer hung a lantern when amanda amanda safe

[1:13:17] reads character throws up into the toilet looks directly into the camera and says we know what

[1:13:21] that means do you have any other examples of tropes that you think are usually signs of lazy

[1:13:27] screenwriting but work in a given film because the writer draws attention to them in an absurd

[1:13:31] or an unexpected way and also he carved a jack-o'-lantern of nick cage and he wants to

[1:13:37] show it to us so here's a oh that looks very scary great and scary yeah uh

[1:13:46] i don't know somebody's calling our room

[1:13:53] so we were talking about the question was are there any tropes that you don't like in movies

[1:13:57] but then it gets called attention to in a clever way and you like it and i was gonna say to be

[1:14:02] honest sometimes when uh the when the filmmaker calls attention to something like this is a cliche

[1:14:08] get it right everybody it makes me madder because i'm like you know it's a cliche don't do it like

[1:14:12] find another way to do it dude like it's not in the rule book that you have to do it that way

[1:14:17] but that sounds like a funny moment in mamma mia yeah yeah i can't i'm having trouble thinking

[1:14:22] anything so i'll agree with heliot all right well since we just got a call saying that uh

[1:14:29] we gotta get out of this room soon uh we should just do two letters and uh okay that's it for

[1:14:35] letters sorry everybody okay we'll just burn the mailbag do a quick recommendation of movies that

[1:14:42] we saw recently that we liked um i'll give a qualified recommendation to a movie i saw called

[1:14:48] the old man and the gun it's the movie with uh robert redford that briefly robert redford said

[1:14:56] was going to be his last movie and then he kind of walked back on that and said maybe i'll do

[1:15:01] other movies i don't know but it stars him as a elderly bank robber who robs banks with uh let me

[1:15:10] guess a gun a gun yes and he has a team of other elderly uh uh i think it's danny glover and tom

[1:15:20] weights i can't remember like back in style or back in business whatever that yeah and uh

[1:15:25] looney tunes back in action he has a romance with um uh sissy space x and she's the the romance is

[1:15:35] the best part of the movie the um they you know like he kind of hints to her what his job is but

[1:15:44] doesn't ever like come out and say it and they have this like little kind of dance around where

[1:15:49] like i don't know he provides a little sense of like spark in her life and and she provides

[1:15:55] stability um and that's honestly the best part of the movie is this kind of like older romance

[1:16:02] the movie itself the just the idea of like oh these are old people who rob banks like

[1:16:07] not that interesting in and of itself even though it's based on a real life uh guy like the movie

[1:16:14] is 90 minutes long and the plot still feels a little thin in 90 minutes but the acting is so

[1:16:20] good and the period kind of feel of the movie it's in the early 80s and it's kind of shot as

[1:16:27] if it's like a 70s film uh gives it this and they all talk like it's the 30s yeah yeah i'm on this

[1:16:34] bank just like brick right yeah so that's uh my qualified recommendation it's a little thin

[1:16:42] but it's very pleasant the old man and the gun uh i'll also give a uh also give a qualified

[1:16:49] recommendation uh i saw the recent uh stars born starring lady gaga and uh bradley coops

[1:16:59] uh now who would win a fight between lady gaga and gal gadot oh i mean probably gal gadot because

[1:17:04] she is like a true warrior and lady gaga's mother monster she is mother monster i don't know

[1:17:10] we'll have to we'll have to see how it goes okay uh the it's a movie that uh you know it's the

[1:17:16] fourth iteration of this story um and i think it's a movie that has some pretty solid performances

[1:17:22] all around including a great one from my man sam elliott uh but the you know it's uh and the myth

[1:17:31] of mustang it's a weird movie because the i liked the first like 30 or 40 minutes of the movie so

[1:17:37] much uh that it made me want to like the second half of the movie more and frankly i like that

[1:17:44] first half enough that i think it's certainly an experience worth worth having uh but i feel like

[1:17:50] the second half kind of loses its way and it focuses a little too much on uh bradley cooper's

[1:17:55] character and seems to like seems to treat lady gaga's character a little poorly um and i think

[1:18:01] that sucks uh like not not just like her character goes through hardships but her character gets

[1:18:09] like kind of the short end and is kind of critically uh the movie is critical toward

[1:18:15] her career as opposed to bradley cooper's career which is crazy um uh characters not the actors

[1:18:21] um so yeah i mean i i think it's worth watching but i will say that i feel like the ending's a bit

[1:18:26] of a letdown and i'm going to give an unqualified recommendation oh to a movie i liked a lot uh it's

[1:18:34] a movie called shirkers that is a documentary that's on netflix right now uh and it was made

[1:18:38] by this woman sandy tan who back in the 90s she and some of her friends when they were very young

[1:18:44] they're all like 18 19 fell they were part of this the uh diy and zine movement at the time and

[1:18:51] they were all living in singapore and this is how they could reach out to the rest of the world was

[1:18:55] through zines and other people's homie magazines they decided they were going to be independent

[1:18:59] filmmakers and fell under the sway of this older man who said that he had all his experience in the

[1:19:05] film industry and they shot an entire movie that she had written and she stars in and then he took

[1:19:11] all the film and disappeared with it for years and the movie is partly about them trying to figure

[1:19:17] out trying to find him and find this film and figure out who he was exactly and why he would

[1:19:22] do this but it's even more about like the relationship between the director and her

[1:19:28] friends and how that evolved over time through the making this film in the years after and how

[1:19:32] like the movie slowly emerges to be more and more i think about her coming into her own as a person

[1:19:38] and maturing from this kind of like you know uh not exactly nihilist but like kind of mad at the

[1:19:44] world young person to becoming someone who is more a part of the world and i really liked a lot so

[1:19:50] it's called shirkers and i highly recommend it i think it's really great great well normally we

[1:19:56] talk a little bit more do a little more bullshitting

[1:20:00] say that thanks for listening. This show is on Maximum Fun Podcast. Please check out other

[1:20:05] shows on the network. They're great.

[1:20:06] Maximumfun.org.

[1:20:07] Yes.

[1:20:08] And the website.

[1:20:09] If you enjoyed this show or other episodes, then please feel free to tweet about us with

[1:20:13] the hashtag TheFlopHouse or go to iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts and leave

[1:20:17] us a review or just tell someone that you like it and maybe spread the word that way.

[1:20:21] Go to the old water cooler.

[1:20:22] Go to the water cooler and just put up a poster that says listen to TheFlopHouse on Maximum

[1:20:26] Fun and other Maximum Fun shows.

[1:20:27] And or learn guitar, take a take a tag.

[1:20:31] If you're looking for a book for a child, I'm just gonna take a moment to mention Horse

[1:20:34] Meets Dog, my children's book, which is out in stores now. And but otherwise, TheFlopHouse

[1:20:39] is the main thing.

[1:20:40] Leave us reviews and stuff. I don't know. Maybe just if you want to send us a big bag

[1:20:43] of money, you could do that too.

[1:20:45] Yeah.

[1:20:46] But before we get literally evicted from our hotel room, we should sign off. And so I will

[1:20:52] say for TheFlopHouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:20:54] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:20:56] Chaining myself to a holiday in bed.

[1:20:58] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:20:59] Bye.

[1:21:07] I'm here.

[1:21:08] You're wearing a sweater.

[1:21:10] Take the sweater off.

[1:21:11] Why are you wearing sweatshorts?

[1:21:13] The Midwestern in November.

[1:21:16] You're inside a room and you're hot.

[1:21:19] So take the sweater off.

[1:21:20] We're going to get a knock on the door.

[1:21:21] It's like, guys, you got to leave the room.

[1:21:23] And we're like, but Dan's still hot.

[1:21:25] We haven't started yet.

[1:21:26] I love the idea that Dan's like, I'm so hot, but I can't take the sweater off because it's

[1:21:30] the Midwest in the cold.

[1:21:32] My body is telling me the sweater is too much, but my brain is telling me I need a

[1:21:36] sweater. Who should I listen to?

[1:21:38] More, more, more.

[1:21:40] All right.

[1:21:40] What a weird, what a weird argument to make against your own body, Dan.

[1:21:49] My body's lying to me because it wants me to take off my sweater.

[1:21:52] Make myself vulnerable.

[1:21:53] Maximumfund.org, comedy and culture, artist owned, listener supported.

Ep. #271 - Death Wish

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