Ep, #239 - Ghost in the Shell

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Ghost in the Shell.

[0:03] Was this the ghost with the most or the shell with the smell?

[0:07] Nice.

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

[0:39] Beep boop, I am Stuart Wellington, Ultimate Otaku.

[0:43] And from all the way on the west coast of the United States of America, it's me, Elliot Kalin, Los Angeles edition. Cue theme music.

[1:00] hold on you have to wait hold on could you see all the images of me and like a convertible and

[1:05] babes and bikinis and like yeah okay good okay that's what that was all supposed to be a couple

[1:10] of shots of like hazy palm trees yep you know it a surfer off in the distance is that elliot it's

[1:15] not and then there's like a dog catching a frisbee for some reason a california raisin uh hanging 10

[1:22] you're like why would he go in the water he's gonna turn into a grape

[1:28] yeah this is the first uh episode that we're recording uh in different different coasts real

[1:35] quick dan this is important if you throw a bunch of raisins in the water they transform back into

[1:40] grapes uh yeah it's called benjamin buttoning them okay oh yeah yeah let me let me go check

[1:47] the science on that dan you're a science guy can you check it uh all right i think that what you

[1:54] you get is a bunch of soggy raisins, actually.

[1:56] Enough fooling around, Dan. What do we do on this

[1:58] podcast?

[1:58] This is a podcast where we watch

[2:04] a bad movie, and then we talk about

[2:06] it. We otaku about it?

[2:08] Whoa!

[2:10] This week we talked about

[2:12] Ghost in the Shell.

[2:13] We're about to talk about it. We haven't talked about it yet.

[2:16] Thank you, Stuart. I was about to correct

[2:18] Dan's tense, and I'm glad you were on it.

[2:20] Thanks for listening. Dan, the

[2:22] only way that that's true, that we talked about it,

[2:24] is because I'm three hours behind you on the other part of the country.

[2:27] But even then, it doesn't quite make sense.

[2:30] That's some pretty deep science fiction you're talking about there, Elliot.

[2:32] Yeah.

[2:33] Oh, the things we have to warn you about.

[2:35] The science fiction of time zones.

[2:37] Just like my new science fiction novel series, Time Zone Cop.

[2:40] He's a cop who solves mysteries that involve time differences.

[2:45] Uh-huh.

[2:46] He's like, wait a minute.

[2:49] That plane was in the air at midnight, and somebody fed a mogwai.

[2:55] I cracked the case.

[2:58] What possible mystery could this be?

[3:02] The case of how a gremlin got on a plane?

[3:05] Yeah.

[3:06] He's like, there's no way they would have let him on that plane.

[3:10] He's a gremlin.

[3:10] Yeah.

[3:11] Also, he was carrying more than three ounces of water.

[3:14] And he's got a mogwai's passport on him.

[3:17] That's the reason they don't let you take water on planes, because you might drop it on a gremlin or a mogwai, suddenly they're multiplying.

[3:24] Or drop it on a raisin, and suddenly you've got a soggy raisin.

[3:27] Yeah.

[3:28] And how's that raisin going to sing a doo-wop song if it's all covered in water?

[3:32] It can't.

[3:33] I mean, I'm assuming they would let a mogwai on a plane, even if it was going to be after midnight, because they're like, who likes airline food?

[3:41] Am I right?

[3:42] Oh, okay.

[3:44] Am I right, guys?

[3:45] Wait, what is that?

[3:47] Oh, I see, because he wouldn't eat.

[3:48] I get you.

[3:48] Yeah.

[3:49] Okay.

[3:49] I get it.

[3:53] Well, I guess that's the end of the podcast, everybody.

[3:59] We're good.

[4:01] We're shutting down shop.

[4:03] The Flophouse has been condemned.

[4:06] Dan, so what do we do on this podcast?

[4:09] We already said that.

[4:11] No, you said we talked about a movie.

[4:13] We watch a bad movie, and then we talk about it.

[4:17] And on this episode, we're going to talk about Ghost in the Shell, a movie that we just downloaded

[4:24] into our eyeball brains sometime recently.

[4:28] Now, there's a big controversy, as everyone may know already, about Ghost in the Shell

[4:33] because it's based on a Japanese cartoon based on a comic book from Japan.

[4:37] But almost everybody in the movie is not Japanese, but they still have Japanese names.

[4:43] Yeah.

[4:44] Yeah.

[4:45] Kind of.

[4:46] Yeah.

[4:47] dan explain uh by all means let us as three white guys talk about this controversy

[4:52] that seems like uh it seems like we would just be endorsing our own privilege by taking our

[4:58] privilege of not having to talk about it that's true yeah dan uh why did they do this yeah why

[5:05] you're asking why'd they do it so it could have uh appeal at home and abroad they did it because

[5:13] it's a big expensive movie and they thought like scarlett johansson would get butts in seats but

[5:18] they were wrong dan says sadly uh well let's let's talk about what's in them i mean it's i mean it's

[5:28] not uncommon for uh any kind of adaption to uh when you're going to adapt uh something from a

[5:35] different culture to your own culture in a way to to change the ethnicity but that's the only thing

[5:42] they change about it, basically.

[5:43] Everything else seems to very clearly take place

[5:46] in, like, they didn't de-Japanify

[5:48] anything about it other than

[5:50] the ethnicities of the leads,

[5:51] which leads to a strange

[5:54] set of juxtapositions.

[5:56] But,

[5:58] Dan,

[6:00] I don't know what he's talking about,

[6:02] but he said that

[6:04] in such a pregnant pause way that I thought

[6:07] there was, like, some joke coming.

[6:09] I got some big news.

[6:11] What's that?

[6:11] My pause is pregnant.

[6:12] Oh, wow.

[6:14] Yeah.

[6:14] I guess congratulations.

[6:16] Thank you very much.

[6:17] Was this planned?

[6:18] No, it was a little bit of a surprise.

[6:20] But me and my pause, we've been thinking about starting a family for a long time.

[6:24] Yeah.

[6:28] Well, that's a joke.

[6:29] There it was, Dan.

[6:31] Anyway.

[6:32] Okay.

[6:33] Enough of me wasting time.

[6:34] You know, people were worried that when we started remote recording, we wouldn't miss a beat.

[6:37] Well, they were wrong.

[6:39] We missed a couple.

[6:40] We missed many beats.

[6:41] Let's talk about what's in the movie then, huh?

[6:44] So we start with our favorite opening thing, a text crawl that explains a little bit about what the future is like.

[6:50] Now, luckily, it does not start with a voiceover of Scarlett Johansson being like, you know, my mother told me, da-da-da-da-da.

[6:56] But that's only because she doesn't remember her mother.

[6:58] The text tells us that in the future, basically, people are becoming more and more cyborg.

[7:03] And the government is putting a human brain in a robot body.

[7:07] Get out of here.

[7:10] Oh, yeah. They take these surgeons that all have like digital amplifier waves over their faces.

[7:16] We see them take out a human brain and put it in a plastic body that for some reason has boobs.

[7:22] And then they put a layer of skin over it that looks kind of like a milk liquid.

[7:25] And then the milk liquid flakes away and there's a very pale, nude, nipple-less Scarlett Johansson underneath.

[7:32] And there's lots of like electronic choral music like we're watching the birth of a new stage in evolution.

[7:37] This is the most amazing thing that's ever happened.

[7:40] so dan i guess what i'm saying is why did they give this robot boobs but no nipples that's the

[7:46] real question i mean i feel like if i feel like the boobs like you're trying to just you know make

[7:52] the robot blend in in society but then if you don't you forget the nipples then there's a key

[7:58] component of this disguise that you i mean that only comes like how deep cover is she trying to

[8:03] go under i mean it would only come into play if she was solving a crime at a nude beach i guess

[8:08] like in uh yep like in a car wash what's uh why can i not shot in the dark a shot in the dark

[8:15] thank you i kept thinking a scent of something and i'm like that's not what it's not a cluso movie

[8:20] scent of pink panther scat of the pink panther oh no uh yes she's so anything that involved

[8:29] toplessness she's just gonna get caught out right away which as we see though her main

[8:34] crime fighting technique is to take off her clothes and go invisible so maybe they're just

[8:39] thinking she's going to be invisible so no one's going to notice she doesn't have nipples anyway

[8:42] yeah this is the most important question about the movie dan you pointed out earlier that we're

[8:48] three guys so we were wondering about this now scarlett johansson wakes up she's told that she

[8:52] died in a refugee boat that was sinking and her french doctor explained by terrorists and that

[8:59] her yeah refugees were killed by terrorists and the french doctor explains to her basically what

[9:03] we already know that she's a human brain in a robo body uh and then it gets explained again

[9:08] so the movie has to the concept of a human brain in a robot body which i feel like it's not that

[9:15] hard a concept to figure out it gets explained like three or four times pretty early in the

[9:21] movie did you guys have trouble was it not till the last explanation that you were like oh i get

[9:27] it they put a person's brain in a robot yeah i mean she doesn't look like a robot you said she

[9:34] had boobs right uh most of i mean robots have had breasts for millennia i guess robocop did too i

[9:42] mean basically just metropolis yeah that's what i meant millennia for thousands of years robots

[9:48] had boobs today on the history channel ancient robot boobs what archaeologists are discovering

[9:54] now the yeah i mean it it it feels like the type of person that's going to go and plunk down some

[10:04] hard-earned cash at the cineplex to go see a movie called ghost in the shell probably is going to

[10:11] grasp onto the idea that that character is a robot with a human's brain in it unless the whole time

[10:16] they're like when's this ghost going to climb into this shell like they think it's going to be about

[10:20] a ghost of a hermit crab that's just looking for the right shell.

[10:23] He just switches shell.

[10:24] Yeah.

[10:25] Yeah.

[10:25] And it turns out the shell he was looking for was inside him all along.

[10:30] Oh, that's really interesting.

[10:32] Wait, as a ghost?

[10:33] Yeah.

[10:33] And then he can go to Hermit Crab Heaven, which is the name of my Jimmy Buffett themed

[10:37] meat shack.

[10:38] Try the Herm Burger.

[10:42] It's pretty tasty.

[10:43] It's really weird, though, that you're eating a burger made out of hermit crabs at a place

[10:49] called Hermit Crab Heaven.

[10:50] Well, there's no better heaven than the human digestive tract.

[10:53] It seems like, like, size-wise, you need to harvest a lot of hermit crabs.

[11:00] Oh, yeah.

[11:00] One patty takes a number of hermit crabs.

[11:02] But you barely even notice how small the patties are because we put a heaping helping a surf sauce on there.

[11:07] And surf sauce is really where the tang comes in, that tasty tang you only get at hermit crab heaven.

[11:14] Yeah, because it's made of tang.

[11:16] Yeah.

[11:16] Oh, man, you beat me to it.

[11:17] Now, is that hermit crab burger?

[11:19] Is that like that one French king, the Sun King, who would make a casserole out of peacock brains?

[11:26] And you're like, how many peacocks did he have to kill?

[11:28] That's crazy.

[11:30] It is exactly like that.

[11:32] Peacocks were like rats back in the olden days.

[11:34] They were all over the place.

[11:35] Oh, yeah.

[11:36] And if you slap some ooze on them, they'll learn kung fu and teach some turtles.

[11:40] Those are the main things that peacocks and rats have in common, is their reaction to ooze and kung fu.

[11:48] So we find that we are in a city of the future.

[11:52] Back to the movie.

[11:53] It's basically Metropolis meets –

[11:55] Back to the future.

[11:55] No, I mean back to the – oh, boy.

[11:57] We're in one of your standard cities of the future.

[12:00] It's like Metropolis meets Blade Runner meets the Lego movie meets like a Hot Wheels track, and there's like hologram advertisements everywhere.

[12:07] The whole movie – and this sets the stage for what I would call too late visionariness where it's like – we had talked about this many, many episodes back with the Hansel and Gretel movie.

[12:18] where it was like if i hadn't seen this exact type of future cities design so many times i'd be like

[12:25] wow this is really cool like on the face of it it's pretty cool there's big hologram advertisements

[12:29] and multi-level highways and things like that but i've seen it so many times at this point

[12:35] so many times like hansel and gretel like if like if you hadn't seen uh evil dead 2 and you

[12:44] weren't aware that abraham lincoln vampire hunter existed then you'd be like this is a cool idea

[12:50] yeah i mean not that abraham lincoln vampire hunter is a good uh book or movie but it is

[12:58] you know the same sort of thing i know i've never read the book i guess i'm just talking

[13:02] somebody's judging without having actually seen true well well well looks like you're like one

[13:09] of those internet reviewers, or I guess internet commenters, who gets

[13:13] mad when people review superhero movies negatively, even though they haven't seen the movie yet.

[13:17] I'm exactly like that.

[13:19] That's what Dan Spence's Thursday before Friday night's doing

[13:24] when a hot new Marvel property comes out, or

[13:28] when a DC movie gets a bad review. You're like, you're just being paid by Marvel.

[13:33] You just hate comic books and all superheroes.

[13:37] That's why every time you see a movie critic

[13:41] who reviews DC movies poorly,

[13:44] that's why they're driving around in Lambos

[13:46] and they're just spending all this crazy money

[13:50] because Marvel just pays them, dude.

[13:51] It's just like how climate change scientists

[13:53] are just in it for the grant money.

[13:55] That's why you see them living it up.

[13:58] Whooping it up.

[13:59] At the Hotel California, living it up.

[14:02] Conveniently located to Hermit Crab Heaven,

[14:06] My Burger Shack.

[14:07] Good.

[14:08] Right on the beach.

[14:09] So anyway, Scarlett Johansson's character is called Major,

[14:14] and she is a major weapon in the fight against crime and terrorism.

[14:19] Oh.

[14:19] And we see her on a mission where she has to go into like a robo-geisha house

[14:24] full of incredibly frightening robo-geishas.

[14:27] And let me say one thing here.

[14:28] The Ghost in the Shell movie, the original one, the cartoon,

[14:31] I haven't seen it since it came out.

[14:33] I don't remember it super well.

[14:35] I don't remember loving it at the time.

[14:36] And so any design stuff that's taken from that movie,

[14:40] it's like, all right, that was a long time ago.

[14:42] But even then, that kind of stuff was fairly well-trodden ground

[14:46] after Blade Runner and things like that.

[14:47] So if I'm to say that the robo-geishas are incredibly frightening-looking

[14:52] and not at all sexy, maybe they're meant to be that way

[14:55] because of the original source material.

[14:57] They're supposed to be horrifying.

[14:58] But you have these rich guys hanging out in a bar

[15:01] that's staffed by these horrifically scary robots

[15:04] wearing huge wigs and geisha robes and you're like this is a weird place to relax i would not

[15:09] be able to stay calm in this place well isn't one of those guys one of those business guys

[15:14] played by michael wincott yeah yeah he's terrifying too yeah he's like i want to be among my own

[15:21] people terrifying i'll say the weird thing about those robo geishas first off i think they look

[15:26] really cool and a lot of their their face transforming is that's practical effects which

[15:31] is pretty cool that is but one of the weird things is the japanese actress whose face they modeled

[15:39] those masks from on the perform the stunt performers gets billing in the movie like her

[15:45] name is on the poster what is she a big star i guess she's a pretty big star yeah i don't have

[15:53] her name in front of me so i'm not gonna try and say it well here's the thing the robo geisha

[15:57] designs look really cool for scary robo geishas they don't look very cool for like oh these are

[16:03] people who are going to help me to relax after a long day of work so you're saying it's a poorly

[16:07] designed uh club i'm saying for the function of the film which is to be ominous and eerie

[16:12] perfect design for the function of the club within the world of the film terrible design i mean the

[16:17] people seem to be loving it they're having a great time it's the exact until until that one sticks

[16:23] all her Cthulhu tentacles out of her mouth

[16:25] and jacks into the back of his head.

[16:26] It's the exact opposite of the space

[16:29] diner in the Star Wars prequel, where

[16:31] for the purpose of that movie, that

[16:33] is not a good design. It's hard to believe that

[16:35] in the far-off land of Star Wars,

[16:36] they have space diners that look like

[16:38] 50s diners, but

[16:40] for the purposes of the characters in the film, who just

[16:43] want to go to a comfortable place, get a quick,

[16:44] cheap meal with friends everywhere

[16:47] and a real casual sense of

[16:48] I don't have to put on airs. This is just a restaurant

[16:51] for working Jedi like me.

[16:52] It's a perfect design.

[16:53] There's a reason those diners are classics.

[16:55] Call back to like a simpler time when those Jedis were kids and they weren't burdened with all these crazy things going on in the world.

[17:03] Back when Jedis like didn't have to worry about what was happening with minorities.

[17:08] Things were just easier back then.

[17:09] Politics were a little simpler.

[17:11] Yeah.

[17:11] Back when, you know, picket fences and, you know, father knows best on the TV and all that stuff.

[17:18] When Jedis knew that America was the best.

[17:22] Anyway, we're also introduced via telecommunication to Scar Jo's boss, Takeshi Kitano, who has kind of like Quicksilver hair.

[17:30] Oh, my God.

[17:31] He looks like they are.

[17:32] He looks like a cross between the owl or what's that flat top from Dick Tracy with a little bit of Gary Oldman's Dracula in there.

[17:42] He looks amazing.

[17:44] It's like they some it's something about I guess Takeshi Kitano has reached that point that great actors get to where they're like, if I'm going to do this role.

[17:52] i want crazy hair oh i didn't really notice it really really yeah his hair you thought that

[18:00] was a normal hairstyle i just thought it was like had like his hair like swooped back you know no

[18:05] dan he looks like wolverine come on yeah all right are you like marvel artists in the late 80s early

[18:11] 90s who thought they could just get away with giving everybody that haircut the haircut nobody

[18:17] could have ever in in life dan is like looking good beat maybe i'll think about that hair huh

[18:22] okay mr sonatine over there's got a pretty good do do you think takeshi katana was like there

[18:29] do you think when they're right when they approached him about the movie he was like

[18:33] he was like i'm you know johnny mnemonic was kind of a flop this one's bound to be a hit

[18:40] there was but he was like american movies always want to take my cachet and put it into

[18:48] not very good movies and uh i said i'd never do it again but okay one last score

[18:54] and then never again and he knows he's gonna get pulled in again uh so anyway assassins come in

[19:02] they attack the head of a what robotics company or he's an executive at a robotics company

[19:06] uh there's a bunch of robot and hologram effects and cthulhu tentacles are coming out of the robo

[19:11] geishas major turns invisible pulls a lot of matrix tricks starts shooting basic super assassin

[19:16] stuff uh and she's fighting like guys with metal bits all over their faces and like robo arms

[19:21] and she's part of section nine an elite security squad uh and it turns out the executives at hanka

[19:27] robotics the one robotics company that is so powerful it basically controls everybody uh they

[19:34] had their stuff hacked into

[19:35] and they were murdered

[19:36] by a mysterious figure.

[19:38] Yeah.

[19:40] Who is this mystery figure?

[19:42] You following all this, Dan?

[19:43] We don't know yet.

[19:45] Oh, okay.

[19:45] I thought they'd give him a name.

[19:47] They do eventually,

[19:48] but we're not up to him yet.

[19:50] And he wears a cool cloak, right?

[19:51] Yeah.

[19:52] Did you see that part?

[19:53] I will say eventually

[19:53] you find out his name is Koozie

[19:55] because he keeps drinks cold.

[19:57] Oh, got him.

[20:00] Somebody should have said that to him

[20:02] after they blasted his head off guess you'll be keeping drinks cold in hell and they're like

[20:10] that's actually a very hard job that would be very impressive yeah uh so major is kind of like

[20:16] she's a person but she's kind of like a robot uh i feel like they kind of like scarlett johansson

[20:23] is trying to balance being a trying to figure out am i human am i a robot what am i uh there's a

[20:29] surprising amount of time in the movie where people just tell her how beautifully she is as

[20:33] if she's an object and not a person uh and it's one of two times in the movie where i felt like

[20:38] i was like movie you're basically actually doing that treating her like an object and not a person

[20:43] you don't get to have characters doing that as if you're making a big point like come on hang a

[20:48] hang a lampshade on it or hang a what's the phrase hang a lantern on it hang a lantern on it hang a

[20:54] Hang the Red Lantern on it.

[20:56] Yep.

[20:57] We're introduced to her partner at this point.

[21:02] Her partner's name is Batu.

[21:03] Batu, yeah.

[21:04] Who's he played by?

[21:06] Big Hulken, dude.

[21:08] I don't know.

[21:09] It's not the bad guy Uncle Greyjoy from Game of Thrones, is it?

[21:12] I think it might be, yeah.

[21:14] Okay, it looks like him.

[21:15] And he's like, you know, he's kind of a Wolverine.

[21:18] He's like a brawler.

[21:19] He works for the good guys.

[21:20] But, you know, he likes to fight and he's close to animals.

[21:23] He keeps some dogs.

[21:24] He's always asking Major to feed his dogs for him.

[21:27] He looks normal.

[21:28] He's got a really normal human pair of eyeballs.

[21:31] Well, he starts with normal eyeballs like a human would have.

[21:37] Without the context of the movie, that would be such a funny way of explaining something to someone else.

[21:45] Like, what does he look like?

[21:46] You know, he's got normal human eyeballs.

[21:48] A couple of fingers.

[21:52] Who knows?

[21:53] um so they're uh they're trying to track this uh track down this uh hacker character this

[22:00] mysterious hacker figure so of course uh major has to do a deep dive into the robo geisha

[22:06] and uh major is having fragments of her memory pop in and out and it's very disconcerting to her

[22:11] uh visions of some other past or world but she doesn't know what it is and uh this is the movie's

[22:17] idea of like deep subtext is she's talking to her doctor and major says how do you tell the glitches

[22:21] from the rest of me and uh she doesn't she doesn't feel human the doctor says memories don't define

[22:26] us what we do defines us and it's like have memories ever defined anyone because you can't

[22:32] just go into someone's head and read their memories right like you can only judge someone

[22:37] by what they do i don't know that nobody's like yeah this guy seems like a great guy but look at

[22:42] his memories oh forget it bad dude is that like a like a uh a futuristic version of being like

[22:50] don't live in the past dude move forward i guess that's exactly what it is but it's futuristic so

[22:55] she says beep boop afterwards well she says it and then she removes her eyes from her face

[23:02] because their eyes slide off like a weird panel right yeah well that's the that's the other doctor

[23:08] the one who works in the autopsy morgue so are we talking about the doctor played by juliet binoche

[23:12] or no that's the one who says how do i pronounce that yeah that's right i'm gonna mispronounce a

[23:17] bunch of names juliet pinochet but she was a horrible dictator for a while uh so but yeah

[23:25] major has to do with the help of a of a morgue technician whose eyes slide off so she can plug

[23:30] other things into her robo eyes uh she has to take a deep dive into the robo geisha's memory

[23:35] because uh i thought memories don't define us but they're judging this robo geisha by her memories

[23:40] so look at your own self scar joe anyway uh her memory is all like creepy hallways and there's

[23:47] a robed guy you can't see his face but he looks like a real anakin skywalker uh looking at a robo

[23:52] body and he force hurls her into a pile of like dark robots that are crawling all over her and

[23:58] her friends are like she's being hacked and they have to pull her out and when they pull out he

[24:02] goes she goes i know where he is and it is harrowing right dan this is one of these things

[24:07] in movies that like bothers me because i know that movies need to have some sort of visual language

[24:13] to do this stuff

[24:14] like because

[24:14] otherwise they're just radio

[24:16] otherwise it's

[24:17] well

[24:17] you know

[24:17] we thought

[24:18] we were teaching radio

[24:19] but it turns out

[24:20] radio was teaching us

[24:21] yeah thanks

[24:22] and what he was teaching us

[24:24] was how not to continue

[24:25] an academy award winning career

[24:27] yeah

[24:28] uh

[24:29] snow dogs

[24:29] anyway

[24:30] uh

[24:31] you know

[24:32] we can't just have

[24:33] like a bunch of ones and zeros

[24:34] uh

[24:35] on the screen

[24:35] like we're like

[24:36] flying through the matrix

[24:37] or something

[24:38] so

[24:39] I mean we can always

[24:40] you can always cite

[24:41] other financially unsuccessful movie uh girl with a dragon tattoo the the english language version

[24:47] uh where most of it is just characters looking at a computer with ominous music playing in the

[24:53] background yeah or they could do it like that like that at csi ncs at the csi clip that i love so

[24:59] much where the two people are both using a keyboard at the same time to fight off a hacker

[25:02] yeah but instead they visualize it by like a bunch of like uh like goopy black hands like

[25:09] clawing at scarlett johansson and like pulling her down into into their mire you know and that's

[25:15] what being hacked is supposed to be like it reminds me of is it in disclosure where michael

[25:20] douglas has to go in and open a digital filing cabinet yeah he like walks down a hall that's

[25:26] what virtual reality is i mean huge hugh jackman does the same shit in what swordfish swordfish

[25:35] but he does it with such elan with such uh with such savoir faire okay can you think of another

[25:43] cinnamon yeah i can think of lots of cinnamons cinnamon buns cinnamon cookies uh it's only two

[25:50] stallion of the center simeron cinnamon edible stallion of the

[25:55] so dan was that so spirit stallion of the simeron was that a movie that actually existed or was it

[26:02] Just an ad campaign.

[26:04] Because I don't know anyone who saw it.

[26:06] I think it was just a Burger King toy.

[26:08] It was almost like they were like,

[26:10] can we make a successful kids movie without the actual movie?

[26:13] Let's try it out.

[26:14] Yeah.

[26:15] It's like they made a character out of cinnamon.

[26:21] Like Grimace is a character out of, what is he, a blob, a shake?

[26:25] What is he?

[26:25] What's Grimace, guys?

[26:28] A chicken nugget?

[26:28] I used to know what he was, but I forgot what it was.

[26:31] somebody listening to this drop of shake i think that that's i think they're retconning it i think

[26:36] they're just like uh yeah grimace is a big uh shake drop like because he i mean i know that

[26:42] he used to be a villain and that was why he was called grimace and they he the design was so

[26:47] appealing they're just like let's make it one of the good guys yeah oh kind of like uh walton

[26:52] goggins character in justified yeah very similar i mean they uh that were venom america's favorite

[27:00] villain turned hero right he's a hero now uh well he's a lethal protector dan well he hasn't been

[27:08] a lethal protector in like 20 years i think he's back to being a villain again but i'm not sure

[27:12] he certainly didn't go from hero to zero okay uh thank you but yeah grimace is something that

[27:21] here's my theory about it and i have a big theory grimace is ronald mcdonald's liver

[27:29] oh okay they had to remove it because it was diseased because of all the fatty foods that

[27:37] ronald mcdonald was eating and they were like ronald you can either work out or we're gonna

[27:40] have to remove your liver because it's becoming gorged and purple and it has a face now and a

[27:45] kind of an eeyore type voice and he was like horrified he was like ah get it out of me and

[27:50] ronald took a scalpel and was trying to cut it out of his own belly and they had to restrain him and

[27:54] sedatum uh and his doctor is that bird that's also a pilot and birdie birdie what's his name

[28:01] birdie yeah the imaginatively named birdie i love they they used up so much imagination juice on

[28:08] grimace they didn't have anything left so they're like the bird birds fly make her a pilot uh what's

[28:13] a good name for a bird birdie i'm so tired from grimace okay these guys uh these french fries

[28:18] what do we call them i don't know the fry guys it's like they spent four months developing the

[28:25] hamburglar and grimace and they were like guys our presentations in 15 minutes we were supposed

[28:29] to come up with four characters we only have two uh it's a bird named birdie uh some guys made out

[28:34] of fries we'll call them fry guys and that's why uh mayor mccheese has a police officer that looks

[28:41] just like him too i thought they were related oh yeah it's his dumb nephew that he got a job on the

[28:47] Yeah, I thought it was a sign of corruption.

[28:49] They're like, that Inspector McCheese killed another Fry Guy in the line of duty.

[28:55] We kick him off the force, but his uncle's the mayor.

[28:58] Yeah.

[28:59] Anyway, so that's my theory about Grimace.

[29:02] He's Ronald's liver.

[29:03] It's like a Michael Mann film version of McDonaldland.

[29:07] Or a Michael McDonald film?

[29:09] No, not like that.

[29:12] Oh, okay.

[29:14] What about a Michael Mann Donald?

[29:17] All right.

[29:17] I'm interested.

[29:20] Are we talking about Ghost in the Shell?

[29:21] All right, Ghost in the Shell.

[29:23] Anyway, they go to some kind of Yakuza club.

[29:25] Everyone's all tattooed up and cyborg-y because they find out that's where the bad guy is transmitting from, where he hacked Cynthia's from.

[29:32] And Major gets captured by a creepy pervert who starts hitting her with an electro-prod while Batuu is talking to the shirtless cyber bartender with a robo-arm.

[29:44] And, Stuart, I want to talk to –

[29:45] That's a health code violation.

[29:47] Yes, I wanted to talk to you.

[29:49] As the owner of a bar, would you accept a shirtless bartender with a robot arm?

[29:53] Yeah.

[29:55] That guy looks awesome.

[29:57] Do you see how unhappy he was to serve him a beer?

[30:00] He looked so incredibly displeased with his job.

[30:03] He did that movie thing, too, where he came in and just said beer.

[30:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[30:08] So he's like, I should ask this guy for ID, but he's got two human eyes, so he's probably okay.

[30:14] He's cool.

[30:15] And Major is being attacked.

[30:17] And he doesn't need to carry a speed opener because he can just pop off the top with his robot hand.

[30:23] Do you think they were trying to go for like a Danny Trejo in From Dusk Till Dawn type vibe with this bartender?

[30:29] So I was looking at a little bit of thing called IMDb trivia.

[30:33] Okay.

[30:34] Okay.

[30:35] And somebody postulated that it's a that that was a reference to the robotic armed bartender in William Gibson's Neuromancer novel, which this person suggests was a large influence on cyberpunk like no shit, dude.

[30:54] That was a lot of what I was doing was reading trivia for this and me just saying, oh, shit, dude, to my phone while I was reading it.

[31:05] why because your phone was was getting you mad yeah because my phone was giving me information

[31:11] that i'm like uh this is super obvious i'm a hardcore console cowboy

[31:15] you're a real cyberpunks you're a real snow crash yeah oh man now you just look like a noob

[31:25] wait do they say that i don't know did you or did you just read it you could be leet but you're a

[31:32] noob wow we are showing our age hey guys i guess i'll go on the prodigy message board later

[31:41] to talk about this new king's quest game

[31:44] okay so uh so major is under attack by these creepy guys who are really chewing the scenery

[31:52] they are so sweaty and pervy and gross and they're like

[31:55] like they're basically human salacious crumbs but yeah she doesn't take that for long she beats

[32:04] them all up meanwhile bateau has a shootout in the nightclub and the bad guys have like cyber

[32:10] uzis they're shooting him at point blank range and they still miss him it makes no sense i love

[32:16] the idea that they they're covered in like metal bits which i'm assuming are meant to be like

[32:20] upgrades to make them better than humans

[32:23] but they are way worse than humans

[32:25] they have these like robot eyes and mouths

[32:27] and it's almost like

[32:28] it's supposed to look like cyber upgrades

[32:31] but they function like when someone

[32:33] in World War 1 would get half his face

[32:35] blown off and they just make a ceramic

[32:37] face to go over it and it would be

[32:39] like alright now I

[32:41] have instead of just having bandages there I have

[32:43] a weird unmoving unworking

[32:45] face that goes over my real

[32:47] face and I have to take it off to eat anyway so

[32:49] thanks prosthetic technology of world war one dan you do you have a hot take on prosthetic

[32:55] technology of world war one uh it was probably pretty good for the time all right fair fair

[33:01] point you know how to feel bad yeah counterpoint you're right i shouldn't be a hater so they

[33:06] they uh chase this dude turns out wait don't they chase him and then he like dissolves into

[33:12] a bunch of code or something yeah he like teleports away uh and he still looks like a

[33:18] shambling mass of rags he teleports away they've walked into a trap a bomb goes off

[33:23] major has to be repaired and uh guess what happens to bateau's human-like normal eyes

[33:29] uh nothing right there was his best feature i'm sorry stewart uh they get but i got him

[33:37] these special contacts to wear um i sold my watch bomb to give him these contacts

[33:41] and he sold his eyes to buy you a watch oh no but uh he he needs to get robo eyes and

[33:50] he's like so for the rest of the movie he looks like he's wearing tiny binoculars

[33:54] implanted in his face and yeah you're like just put some sunglasses on over those dude

[34:00] i feel like in a world where they can make scarlett johansson they should be able to make

[34:04] better robo eyes than the ones that they have on this guy i mean she does suggest like hey you pick

[34:10] those weird ones and he's like yeah they're practical but you're right he should put

[34:14] sunglasses over them but it's like they i feel like he got just like the budget version they

[34:20] were like this is what your insurance will pay for it's essentially two tiny metal tubes stuck

[34:25] in your face and it functions like when you're looking down a paper towel tube and pretending

[34:29] it's a telescope that's what you're going to cover they make a lot of noise when they when

[34:34] they focus on things like and uh here's but if you paid for a little more you could get eyes

[34:41] that at least look like big goofy cartoon eyes like they still have pupils and everything it's

[34:46] like i'm not no let's let the insurance cover it i'll get the tubes but i have two big googly eyes

[34:52] just like craft style googly how much is it gonna cost doc

[34:55] i want to i want to howl at women on the street can i have my eyeballs

[35:02] bug out of my head anytime I see

[35:05] somebody. Yeah, sure, if you want to pay the

[35:07] deductible, of course you can.

[35:08] I wish that

[35:10] he had gone for big googly eyes like

[35:12] Godzilla in Shin Godzilla

[35:14] where his eyes are just always

[35:16] wide open and kind of cartoony.

[35:18] That would have made every scene hilarious

[35:21] and then it would have gotten creepy.

[35:22] He always has these

[35:24] Judge Doom googly eyes on his face.

[35:27] Oh man,

[35:29] that would have been so much better. Anyway,

[35:30] Major is like,

[35:32] Doc, I've got more glitches.

[35:34] The doctor says, yeah, you do, but you're the future of humanity.

[35:36] Soon we're all going to be cyber people and cyborgs.

[35:39] And it's as if to prove that true that Bateau shows up with his Luke Skywalker binocular eyes implanted in his face.

[35:46] Major then does what we would all do after a terrifying brush with death like that.

[35:52] She takes home a prostitute and touches her face for a while.

[35:56] And then the shrouded bad guy shows up at the robo-morgue, kills the technician who had much more realistic robo-eyes because they slide – regular eyes just slide off her face.

[36:06] I mean they were realistic until they slid off her face.

[36:09] Yeah.

[36:09] Yeah, that's true.

[36:10] Your eyes aren't supposed to do that?

[36:13] You've got to go to the doctor.

[36:14] Oh, boy.

[36:15] Yeah, Dan, I had to – I want to talk to you about how your eyes are always sliding off your face like two eggs.

[36:20] Like two eggs.

[36:21] Here's a question I have for you.

[36:23] Eggs don't usually slide off of plates, right?

[36:26] So why was that the first thing we both thought of?

[36:29] Cartoons.

[36:30] I guess, yeah, cartoons is the reason for a lot of things.

[36:34] It's the only reason that as a kid I knew what an anvil was.

[36:37] Yeah.

[36:38] I did not get to know the hand.

[36:40] Your dad wasn't a blacksmith?

[36:41] And my dad was not a blacksmith, although he was a fan of the Smiths.

[36:46] Oh, okay.

[36:48] Well, that's a good segue.

[36:51] My dad was a fan of In Descending Order, one, The Beatles, two, Bruce Springsteen, three, Billy Joel, four, Queen, and five, the song Final Countdown by Europe, but just that one song.

[37:03] That sounds like a dad to me.

[37:06] Yep, that was my dad.

[37:07] It's really funny because we have to listen to the radio a lot these days because we drive around in an automobile.

[37:12] And for some reason, California radio, it's going to be divided into four types of radio.

[37:19] Oh, boy, we're going to get some hot takes on the difference between California and New York.

[37:22] Okay, Spanish language, Mexican radio, which I love.

[37:25] I love the music on it, and it's great.

[37:27] Hip-hop radio, which is not really my thing.

[37:30] Stations that only play Hotel California over and over again.

[37:36] And stations that play a lot of Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen.

[37:40] And I feel like those stations are just for people like me who grew up on the East Coast and live in California now.

[37:45] Because every time a Billy Joel or Bruce Springsteen song comes on, I turn to Sammy and I'm like, this is the music daddy grew up with.

[37:51] And it's not even music I love that much, but it's just like such a – it's like this is the music I know as a kid.

[37:58] Sammy, I don't want you to lose sight of your East Coast roots.

[38:01] The same way every time we've had pizza out here, I'm like, Sammy, are you going to fold your slice?

[38:04] And he's like, no.

[38:05] And it's like a little piece of my soul crumbles away that my son is going to go up not folding his slice.

[38:11] And then he pulls out some tiny little utensils like the Skeksis and Dark Crystal and carefully eats them.

[38:18] Those little finger forks that he can use to just stab things.

[38:21] No, what he does is he takes out a little briefcase, opens it.

[38:24] It's just sliced avocado in there.

[38:26] Puts the avocado on the pizza.

[38:27] Oh, man.

[38:29] That's his college fund.

[38:31] That's when I say the mourner's cottage because I have no son.

[38:36] Okay, so at the RoboMorgue, a major finds out, oh, this is what the technician discovered that made the bad guy kill her.

[38:43] It's a list of people who worked on a secret project for the Hanker Robot Corporation, including my French doctor, Julia Binoche.

[38:50] so wait a minute the the the frankenstein robot man who goes to kill uh kill the doctor with the

[38:57] slide-off eyes that doctor is looking at a like a nintendo cartridge that is telling her all the

[39:04] information about who the guy is trying to kill and when the guy shows up she just yanks the

[39:10] nintendo cartridge out of the computer and he kills her and he lets her hold on to the

[39:15] the cartridge apparently is that is that intentional like is he trying to lead do you

[39:20] think he's trying to lead the major to him or was he just like i wasn't really paying that much

[39:26] attention i think it's like i it could go either way i think he is trying to lead major to him

[39:32] because he has his reasons for wanting to talk to major but it's also one of those things where

[39:36] it's like if you really wanted to talk to major that badly about this you know where to find her

[39:41] She's trying to find you.

[39:42] Why do you run away every time she tries to find you?

[39:45] And why did you lead her into a bomb?

[39:48] Yeah, why did you try to kill her?

[39:49] Every time he sees her, he says,

[39:51] like, if you work with Hanko Robotics,

[39:55] you'll be destroyed, and then disappears.

[39:56] It seems like in that moment, he could more easily say,

[39:59] hey, I'm doing this for a reason.

[40:00] Let me explain it to you.

[40:02] The same way that ghosts in movies,

[40:04] instead of making blood flow out of walls

[40:06] and making guys peel their own faces off and eat them,

[40:09] instead they can be like, hey, look,

[40:11] This house was built on my grave.

[40:13] I'd appreciate it if you either moved the body or this would be my real preference because, again, this is sacred ground for me.

[40:19] Move the house because I'm a ghost, and there's a lot of ghosts here.

[40:23] Let me start at the beginning.

[40:24] Ghosts are real and also Native American tribal mythology, also the true religion since that's me and I'm a ghost and I'm coming for you.

[40:31] So I guess there's a couple things I need you to deal with.

[40:34] My immediate problem is this house is on my grave.

[40:36] I want you to move that.

[40:37] Number two, I'm giving you proof that Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, all those religions, not the true faith.

[40:44] This was the true faith, as you can tell by the fact that I have spiritual power from beyond the grave.

[40:48] How many Christian ghosts have come back to you and complained about houses on their graves?

[40:52] Zero?

[40:53] Well, maybe let's take this as evidence, okay?

[40:55] But setting that aside, before you spread the word of this true gospel to the world so that we can all live in harmony, can you move your house, please, off my grave?

[41:04] Because it's right on my toe, and it really hurts.

[41:07] And that's why I'm so mad as a ghost.

[41:09] Ooh, I'm so mad.

[41:10] Otherwise, you know what?

[41:11] Why does it bother me if there's a house on my grave?

[41:13] It's nice.

[41:14] I get to interact.

[41:15] When you're watching TV, I get to watch the TV.

[41:18] I even get to go in the TV because I'm a poltergeist.

[41:20] That literally means like a house ghost.

[41:22] And so if anything, you're helping me achieve what I can because if I can believe it, I can achieve it.

[41:27] Now you believe in me.

[41:28] I appreciate that as both a ghost and as someone who, to be honest, my history has been mostly forgotten by mainstream America.

[41:34] And my sacrifices, many of them against my will, for your better life, have not been recognized.

[41:40] So, again, I really appreciate that you're listening to me now as a ghost.

[41:43] Maybe it took me doing a lot of crazy stuff about your house, but I think now we can open a dialogue, really get this going.

[41:48] But the main things, again, number two, number one, please move your house or at least move it off my toe.

[41:55] You guys are saying?

[41:56] Now, I hear what you're saying, but I already paid for this exorcist to come.

[42:02] Oh, boy.

[42:04] so is it zelda rubinstein yes okay we've worked with her before on a lot of other a lot of other

[42:13] places we can do that worry she's just gonna make it seem like the house is clean and then leave and

[42:17] then for some reason it's not clean it won't be really explained it's a scam that zelda and i

[42:22] have been running for for a while now you're very upfront about this information again i'm a ghost

[42:28] so i'm all about ominous honesty and transparency that little ghost joke for you there transparency

[42:33] see because he can see through me speaking of which amazon prime's transparent have you seen

[42:38] this show they call it a comedy but there's no jokes in it it's really just a half hour drama

[42:42] i know this because i watch you watching tv i went into that show and i said to everybody where are

[42:47] the laughs where are the yucks you know i may be a murdered native american ghost but even i need

[42:52] to laugh every now and then and judith light she was so great and who's the boss she was on that

[42:56] show and she's like hey let's talk about it let's open a dialogue about this after we deal with

[43:00] gender issues and i'm like that's cool intersectionality i can be an ally anyway guys it's been great

[43:05] talking i should really get back to my grave i'll be back in a little bit later to make some crazy

[43:08] things happen in your house see ya oh wow like the sign off uh so getting back to ghosts in a

[43:18] shell like a ghost that lives inside a house i think because isn't a house just a shell for

[43:23] ourselves and isn't a shell just a house for a little crab a hermit crab if you will try the

[43:28] hermit crab burger uh it's with surf sauce now they call it a hermit crab when hermits aren't

[43:35] necessarily known for living in things like living in they live in solitude okay or because

[43:42] they'll uh a hermit will climb into your house and then drag it away on his butt

[43:46] what if that was the case that'd be terrifying these super strong hermits

[43:52] because their little butts expand to the size of your house and then they walk away

[43:57] if you give them a bigger house their butts get bigger it's fucking science guys so you're saying

[44:04] herman's hermits would be like a ring of house thieves that herman was running like a like a

[44:09] sign of mod british fagan and herman's head if you will is like a house for your body it's like

[44:17] a house for four people who each have a pretty crazy personality one of them's just a slobby

[44:22] party dude anyway uh she learns this just in time for the bad guy to take over the minds of two

[44:30] super enhanced garbage men give them uzis and try to kill juliet binoche major gets there there's a

[44:36] shootout a chase invisible major does a kung fu fight and beats him up but bateau stops her from

[44:41] killing the shooter she's so mad they take the shooter to a glass room it's a classic the bad

[44:46] guy's been captured now we think but the shooter has he's had his memory erased and replaced with

[44:51] A false one about having a child.

[44:53] There's a brief talk of philosophy about memory versus reality.

[44:56] And Bateau's like, if you remember it, doesn't that make it true?

[44:59] What's the difference?

[45:01] And it's like, Bateau, don't be an asshole.

[45:03] That's not the same thing.

[45:05] Come on now.

[45:05] The bad guy appears in the body of the shooter, says some cryptic stuff.

[45:09] They trace the signal to some kind of bionic crime dorm where there's a lot of cyber criminals just kind of hanging out, maxing, relaxing, cool and all, shooting some b-ball outside of the school.

[45:19] But then a couple of guys, Major and Batou, showed up looking for no good.

[45:23] Yep, keep it going.

[45:24] They started making trouble with their neighborhood.

[45:26] They got in one little fight, and Major discovers a place where there's a bunch of human beings hooked up to wires to create Kuze's own neural network.

[45:37] They learn his name is Kuze, too.

[45:39] We go to Kuze's lair, which is one of those bad guy science fiction lairs where there's a lot of machines and wires, but the floor is always wet and the roof is always leaking.

[45:48] and it's like how does anything work in that room dan explain uh he got a really good deal on it

[45:54] you know like it's got an open it's got the openness plan you can imagine that's what that's

[46:00] how the broker uh put it like look this this could not be more open plan because it's just a cavern

[46:07] it's just a cavern hot and cold running leaks yeah so you have that so if you ever want to

[46:11] take a shower just stand anywhere in the room because water's leaking down all over your wiring

[46:16] and your machines it's like in the matrix how they were like we're existing in this reality

[46:22] where we can control things too anyway let's put on full-length leather trench coats and sunglasses

[46:27] and meet in the sewers let's ruin our coats and we'll bump into walls because we can't see anything

[46:34] because we got sunglasses on in the dark the the realtor was explaining it to koozane was like

[46:39] yeah it's sun drenched and koozane's like but wait there's just a hole in the ceiling

[46:45] that's a skylight oh okay i got you i got you and he's like talking to his friend and he's like

[46:52] so am i like am i a rube because i think this is a scam or is it really a scam like am i gonna

[46:58] like her if i think it's a scam and they're like does your memory think it's a scan because aren't

[47:03] memories uh kind of real depending on who you are and he's like but i want to be judged by my deeds

[47:10] It's not by memories.

[47:11] Wait, I can't keep this going.

[47:14] My brain doesn't work this way.

[47:15] And those are the only two ideas in the movie.

[47:17] I don't know if you guys saw.

[47:19] I did a little bit of impression of Kuze there,

[47:21] which Michael Pitt, I think, created, like, one part General Grievous

[47:26] and one part, I don't know, like, sad emo boy.

[47:32] Yeah, it's like a wannabe James Dean combined with General Grievous,

[47:35] but he has, like, a kind of Jared Leto face.

[47:39] But, so, Koozie Caps is the major.

[47:41] Yeah, I was going to say, it's a lot of, what's his name, from Jared Leto from My So-Called Life.

[47:46] Jordan Catalano?

[47:48] Yeah, where he just, like, looks at the sky a lot.

[47:52] Stuffs his hands in his pockets.

[47:55] That's what makes him hot, is that he's unhappy.

[47:59] He seems like he's got a lot of depth until you start talking to him, and then you're like, oh.

[48:03] Oh, you're illiterate.

[48:07] Well, you know, he's just always yearning to get back to the Catalan coast, where he's from.

[48:11] Because of his name, Catalano.

[48:14] Anyway, Kuze captures the Major.

[48:17] Turns out he's a man-bot too, but he's not as well-made as her.

[48:21] He's like the Tin Man in the old Wizard of Oz novels, halfway between becoming the woodchopper and the Tin Man, where he's got lots of metal pieces all over him.

[48:30] He does not look great.

[48:31] They have the old, we're not so different, you and I speech.

[48:35] He's like that other Gollum in that Hellboy story about the two Gollums.

[48:42] Oh, I was just thinking about that yesterday, too.

[48:44] Almost Human? No.

[48:45] Something like that.

[48:46] No, it's called Becoming Colossus? Something like that.

[48:49] Yeah, maybe.

[48:50] Almost Colossus is what it's called.

[48:52] I got there.

[48:55] But yeah, it's like the one Gollum and the developed Gollum and the not developed Gollum.

[48:59] Where their plan is to combine to make one giant Gollum.

[49:03] Yeah.

[49:03] And he ends up melting at the end, right?

[49:05] Yep.

[49:06] Yeah.

[49:07] Because of the flame of Prometheus.

[49:09] It's pretty simple stuff.

[49:10] Here's the problem with what we've been saying.

[49:12] They're not really golems.

[49:13] They're homunculi.

[49:14] Ooh.

[49:15] But I guess a homunculus is basically just a non-Jewish golem.

[49:20] It's like an assimilated golem.

[49:21] I have nothing to add to this conversation.

[49:23] And when the homunculi's parents come back, they're like, you never go to synagogue?

[49:27] Ooh.

[49:28] Bacon in your house?

[49:30] And he's like, I want to be a homunculi.

[49:33] Like everybody else, I'm not a golem anymore.

[49:36] Anyway, and there's a – we can write a 100-year-old play about it in Yiddish.

[49:40] But so Kuze says, we're not so different, you and I.

[49:44] She says, I don't kill innocent people.

[49:45] And he goes, who's really innocent?

[49:47] So they've got those two cliches right out of there off the bat.

[49:50] He reveals she wasn't the first cerebral salvage job.

[49:54] He was one too, and he paved the way for her creation.

[49:57] But he was a failure, and they threw him away, and he's killing everyone who created him.

[50:01] But he does see himself as man's replacement.

[50:03] He and Major are the future of technology.

[50:06] But he's kind of, again, like we said, he's kind of junkie.

[50:09] He has that Max Hedrum speech glitch where every now and then he'll just be like, he'll be like, no, we don't have to go over there.

[50:16] And it's like, I don't know that digital technology would really glitch like that.

[50:21] Like maybe, maybe he's buffering.

[50:23] Do you think that's what it is?

[50:24] Like he's always buffering.

[50:26] And they're both haunted by the same memory.

[50:30] She's been using medicine up until now to suppress her glitches, and he says, no, no, don't take it.

[50:33] That suppresses your memory, and he uses the word ghost and shell a bunch.

[50:37] You're a ghost in a shell.

[50:38] They can't take away your ghost even though they made your shell, and then Kuze runs off.

[50:43] Major goes to her French doctor, and the French doctor just breaks down instantly and admits there were 98 previous attempts before Major and says that they gave her fake memories.

[50:52] She wasn't really a refugee that was killed by terrorists, and now – and she gives her what, like a hotel key or something?

[51:00] something an apartment key to tell her the future you know this is where your real past is yeah uh

[51:06] and many like i mentioned earlier a lot of scenes of people telling scarlett johansson that she's

[51:11] beautiful oh you're beautiful you're beautiful as if she's just an object the movie treats her

[51:15] this way the other thing that the movie doesn't really get that it's commenting on itself i think

[51:20] is that both kusei and scarlett johansson when they learn their true identities they both have

[51:25] japanese names they're both were clearly japanese but were put into white bodies by the scientists

[51:31] yeah well that was the big whitewashing scandal it wasn't necessarily like the fact that they

[51:36] just the fact that they recast with a white actress it was like oh in the end you know like

[51:42] it turns out that this white person what used to be a japanese person within like the world of the

[51:47] movie and like the idea of like beauty standards like apparently japanese people are deemed less

[51:55] you know like they don't want to make them into like this perfect robot like that was one concern

[52:01] that people had but just it feels like the movie is doing it the characters in the movie are doing

[52:06] what the movie is doing and i don't know if the movie is smart enough that that's a comment on

[52:10] itself that it's like oh just like we had to cast white actors i mean to to for a bigger box office

[52:17] they took these Japanese, to play Japanese

[52:19] characters, they took these Japanese brains

[52:21] and put them in white bodies. I can't tell if the movie is

[52:23] slyly, like, digging at itself,

[52:25] or if it's just oblivious and is like,

[52:27] oh, what? Oh, I

[52:29] don't know, whatever.

[52:30] That's a perfect imitation

[52:33] of the movie. Oh, it's me,

[52:36] Hold on, whoa, all these plates,

[52:39] I can't carry them all at once.

[52:40] Smash, crash, boot, bash.

[52:42] You're fired from my restaurant, Ghost in the Shell.

[52:44] Give me another chance, Mr. Wilkins.

[52:47] oh this is my favorite one reelers from the 20s ghost in the shell in uh in the food fiasco

[52:56] yeah it's it's pretty like and now in the i can't remember in the in the original story

[53:06] was it a brain in a robot body or was it a robot brain with like

[53:10] like was there an idea was she like totally a robot because i mean the idea because i remember

[53:19] it having something like the idea of ghost in the shell is the idea of like a robot having like can

[53:23] a robot or an ai have a soul yes but she's not a robot she's got a fucking brain dude that's she's

[53:28] basically a human well that's the thing they keep saying like she's like what am i am i a person

[53:33] i'm i'm just a weapon and like well you do have a human brain like that's yeah let's see i'm taking

[53:39] look let's look at the i'm looking on wikipedia about the original all right so in the meantime

[53:45] so let's vamp a little bit so uh i got a new cat recently meatball wellington he's adorable

[53:51] how's uh muscles treating him well muscles is not uh well muscles was behaving very poorly

[54:00] before we got meatball he was uh he was just really like anxious and he was meowing a lot

[54:07] and he was jumping all over us all the time and we play with him but it didn't seem to help but

[54:12] since we've gotten meatball uh he's behaving a lot better he's not totally sure what to make

[54:18] a meatball and meatball doesn't clean himself as well as muscles would like so muscles has to get

[54:23] down for some aggressive grooming oh that's sweet uh it's kind of sweet i'm sure it's also like a

[54:29] bullying tactic where it's like i'm gonna show you how to clean your own butt yeah yeah like bullies

[54:36] do that's what i was thinking like is that what i would do to bully someone just hold you've never

[54:43] been bullied in uh in elementary school right where you got held down and people cleaned your

[54:48] butt properly okay guys i think i figured it out okay i think she's just a robot okay in the in

[54:57] the original yeah although i don't know let's see uh this is good audio yeah so uh dan did you ever

[55:09] read the ghost on the shelf comic book oh i see so here's the thing here's the thing in the so

[55:14] she uh i think she does if she is a brain in a body but she's not sure if she's actually a human

[55:20] brain or if she's just a full-on robot and that's and that's the thing the riddle that bedevils her

[55:26] existence i'm sorry it took me so long to reread that stuff uh i reread the entire comic book and

[55:32] then watch the movie again while you're doing that uh but here it's pretty clear it's a human

[55:36] brain they keep telling her you're a human you got a human brain it's yeah it's there's not this

[55:41] and uh the bad guy in the movie i think is also a fully cybernetic thing but i'm not sure in the

[55:48] original yeah anyway it's like an ai weapon that was developed by this like developed concurrently

[55:54] by the same people or something, I think.

[55:56] Anyway, let's get back to this movie.

[55:59] Major has gone swimming in the harbor

[56:01] with Glowy Jellyfish

[56:02] because she says it's the only place

[56:03] she can escape the data feed and feel real.

[56:05] But then, uh-oh, Hanko security captures her.

[56:08] Sometimes you just gotta unplug, Elliot.

[56:09] Yeah, and how do you unplug?

[56:11] Go off the grid.

[56:11] How do you unplug and go off the grid

[56:13] when you are the grid and you're made out of plugs?

[56:15] Oh, man.

[56:16] Very hard to do.

[56:18] It's like a Bill K. Dick title.

[56:20] And what would that title be?

[56:24] no how do you unplug and go off the grid when you are the grid and made out of plugs oh yeah

[56:28] it's a pretty long title that's true he did yeah like that one uh everything you always wanted to

[56:34] know about crazy alternate realities but we're afraid to ask yeah asterix

[56:38] asterix uh the adventurous journey of philip gay morrigan or something like that

[56:46] because he liked he liked putting just people's random character names into into titles too

[56:50] there's that one from the mixed up files of mr philip k dickerson about those two kids who get

[56:57] lost inside of their own perceptions of reality yeah and of course mr philip k dick and the rats

[57:03] of nim that's where a bunch of rats were fed space drugs yeah game super smart robots

[57:09] so major gets captured by hanko security this is one of those movies where there's a corporation

[57:16] that essentially functions as the state uh there is a government because takeshi katano keeps

[57:21] talking about how he works for the prime minister but the head of hanko whose name is cutter so you

[57:25] know he's a bad guy he just like has his own private army of masked guys that he sends on

[57:31] missions to fight people but no one puts two and two together uh they capture major hanko tells

[57:36] the doctor juliet binoche to terminate major but the doctor says no i won't do it instead the doctor

[57:41] frees major that's when she gives her she gives her some kind of thing and says here he's here

[57:45] here's your real past major escapes lots of hallway fighting she drags a guy on a motorcycle

[57:50] and then the cutter kills the doctor but tells to keshi katano that major did it and that major

[57:56] has become corrupted and a terrorist meanwhile major's not doing terrorist stuff she goes to

[58:01] an apartment building because what juliet binoche gave her was like either a key or a disc something

[58:06] with a with a room number on it one of those nintendo cartridges yes yeah she finds a cat

[58:11] who likes her and an older lady

[58:13] who says that the older lady

[58:15] with almost no

[58:17] nothing to trigger it, just

[58:19] suddenly starts talking about her life and how she had

[58:21] a daughter who ran away and died.

[58:23] Not only that, but she also just

[58:25] invites Scarlett Johansson in,

[58:27] this total stranger. She's a huge star, dude.

[58:29] I mean, I know that the

[58:31] older woman is lonely since her daughter

[58:33] went away, but...

[58:35] Yeah, so she's like preparing

[58:37] info dump. Yeah.

[58:40] It does feel like the movie should have a countdown clock that's like exposition dump in three, two, one.

[58:46] And then the old lady starts going, oh, my runaway daughter.

[58:48] She was always writing her anti-technology manifestos.

[58:51] And then she joined a squatter's enclave.

[58:53] And then she died.

[58:54] The police said she killed herself.

[58:56] But I don't know.

[58:57] That doesn't sound like her.

[58:58] I think it's more likely she turned into a robot.

[59:01] Speaking of which, Scarlett Johansson, you remind me a lot of my daughter.

[59:05] It's the way that you look at me.

[59:06] Which is like, so did your daughter always look at you with a vague sense of confusion?

[59:10] like why is this old lady talking to me because that's the look on scarlett johansson's face

[59:14] uh major reveals everything to her boss who believes her but cutter is eavesdropping on

[59:20] the conversation uh-oh masked hanko thugs go to assassinate keshi katano but come on big mistake

[59:26] dude mistake he's a badass who has even though they have uzis he has a six-shot revolver and

[59:32] the briefcase and a briefcase that he uses as a shield and his hair probably repels bullets too

[59:37] they just bounce off of that cloth uh he's awesome so he kills the thugs ankle's men are trying to

[59:43] kill off the the major's team all over the place but they can't do it because major's team is so

[59:48] good major goes back online to talk to koozay uh and he she leads he leads her into the lawless

[59:54] zone uh-oh and cutter sends in something called a spider tank which is exactly what it sounds like

[1:00:01] it's a tank with spider legs it is not uh it's not a spider it's not like a fish tank filled

[1:00:06] with spiders yeah and he says they'll think this is cool i'll trick them into thinking they're at

[1:00:12] an arboretum and shoot the spiders out it's a tank thing what do you call that it's a cannon

[1:00:18] it's it's basically just the grim gritty reboot of that tank that kenneth brana has in wild wild

[1:00:24] west which was like that big spider erector set that he would that he was piloting but scarlett

[1:00:29] johansson in the lawless zone she remembers in a flashback that she and koozay were both these

[1:00:34] runaways they were super close like brother and sister in this squat and the police came in and

[1:00:39] stole them to use them in experiments or not the police i guess it was the hanko people to use them

[1:00:45] in these experiments to make brain bots uh kuse's name was hideo and major was motoko and you're

[1:00:51] like uh yeah again this is uh it's weird that they were turned into non-japanese people i mean

[1:00:57] you mentioned it before but like the idea that they could be trying to make a comment on the

[1:01:02] idea of taking these japanese characters and putting them in like white robot bodies basically

[1:01:07] like they could be making some kind of comment on it but wasn't there a controversy where like

[1:01:12] the visual effects team were trying to oh yeah like make scarlett johansson look more asian yeah

[1:01:18] make the characters look more asian i mean she definitely the way her makeup and hair it does

[1:01:23] feel like they're trying to and it might just be that they're trying to copy the design of the

[1:01:27] character from the i mean the anime which would make sense i mean so much there's a lot of like

[1:01:31] shot for shot stuff in this yeah but it it does feel like they tried to make her look a little

[1:01:37] more asian like we'll uh we'll just fudge it a little bit we're not gonna go full katherine

[1:01:44] heppern and dragon seed not gonna go cloud atlas with the the horror of hugh jackman and yellow

[1:01:50] fit or uh not what's his name uh come on no the other one uh uh man laurie no wait the other guy

[1:01:58] Peter Lorre.

[1:01:59] Oh, man, my brain's slowly firing up.

[1:02:01] Lawrence O'Donnell.

[1:02:02] I'm glitching, guys.

[1:02:03] Rosie O'Donnell.

[1:02:05] No, Elrond.

[1:02:05] Elrond.

[1:02:06] Matrix Man.

[1:02:07] What's his name?

[1:02:08] Hugo Weaving.

[1:02:09] Hugo Weaving in yellow face.

[1:02:11] It's crazy.

[1:02:11] No, Stuart.

[1:02:12] No, Stuart.

[1:02:13] Hugo Weaving.

[1:02:14] Oh, man, I can't wait to meet him Sunday so I can make that joke to his face.

[1:02:21] Nice to meet you, Hugo Weaving.

[1:02:25] No, Hugo Weaving.

[1:02:26] That's a little funny one.

[1:02:27] Elliot Kalin, nice to meet you.

[1:02:28] I'd love to work with you.

[1:02:30] So anyway, I wanted to cast you in this movie.

[1:02:32] Not interested.

[1:02:33] Okay, thank you.

[1:02:34] Not interested, Mr. Kalin.

[1:02:37] After what I said, I don't want to work with me either.

[1:02:41] Kuze says, gives her the old, join me, together we'll, whatever, we'll usher in the next stage of Humana things.

[1:02:48] And then Cutter attacks with his spider tank.

[1:02:51] And just like in any of these movies, the head of the corporation is personally piloting this device from his house.

[1:02:57] When it seems like in a situation like that, you really want plausible deniability to say that like, oh, a rogue operator did it.

[1:03:04] It's kind of hard for that when you're literally controlling it yourself at your house.

[1:03:07] They should have gotten Hugh Jackman from Chappie to pilot it.

[1:03:11] He was super into piloting a giant robot.

[1:03:13] But he was the head of that company, too.

[1:03:15] I mean, just that division.

[1:03:17] That's true.

[1:03:17] Just Sigourney Weaver was the head of the company, right?

[1:03:20] That sounds familiar.

[1:03:22] Yeah.

[1:03:23] All I remember is Hugh Jackman's hockey player haircut.

[1:03:26] Yeah.

[1:03:27] And how he always had, like, a gun on his hip, even when he was just walking around the office.

[1:03:30] Yeah.

[1:03:31] And his ill cut-off shorts.

[1:03:34] I mean, those look like...

[1:03:35] Yeah, those cut-off shorts were ill.

[1:03:37] Yeah.

[1:03:37] That's the kind of shorts grown-up men wear, Dan.

[1:03:41] Oh, okay.

[1:03:42] Come on.

[1:03:43] High and tight.

[1:03:44] That's what you want.

[1:03:45] You want a three or four-inch inseam.

[1:03:47] You want it so long that it becomes an outseam at a certain point.

[1:03:54] Sure.

[1:03:55] Anyway, they get beat up real good by this spider tank.

[1:03:58] Kuzey abandons his body, but Major says she's not ready to go yet.

[1:04:02] They do blow up the spider tank, though.

[1:04:04] She punches it so hard so many times that she breaks it open.

[1:04:08] Her team saves her from snipers who have been sent in just in case the spider tank didn't do the job.

[1:04:13] It's like the head of the company is like, I'll take care of this myself.

[1:04:16] Send me the spider tank.

[1:04:18] But send in a couple guys, too, just in case the spider tank plan doesn't work out.

[1:04:23] Like we're going to send in a bunch of missile strikes, but also maybe like – can you send some mean dogs in afterwards just in case?

[1:04:32] But then Takeshi shows up, arrests Cutter, shoots him.

[1:04:38] And first he shoots him in self-defense, but Cutter's not dead.

[1:04:41] And then he calls Major and he says, do I have your consent to execute him?

[1:04:44] Because throughout the movie, they would ask Major for her consent to like go in and change her memories or do some data mining.

[1:04:49] And then at a certain point they revealed, we never needed your consent.

[1:04:52] That was all fiction.

[1:04:53] but now the guy she could tell no asked her for a consent she says i consent and he shoots him in

[1:04:58] cold blood i thought that was actually genuinely kind of effective the repetition of like you know

[1:05:03] do you have your consent and then like the obvious i mean it was like a clear reveal that like they

[1:05:08] didn't actually need her consent but i felt like that was a way that they got at the themes of the

[1:05:12] movie a little more like cleverly i mean up until the last part where she's like do you consent to

[1:05:19] me totally killing this dude yeah but but before that no i totally agree with you i thought that

[1:05:24] was cool yeah well that that's one of those things where it's like they've set up a legal fiction

[1:05:28] for her benefit to continue fooling her and then they reveal it when they don't need it anymore

[1:05:33] which is a smart thing to do but then it just becomes like i'm gonna say this badass thing

[1:05:37] before i blow this guy away and that's justice wait a minute hold on hold on uh because there

[1:05:44] is no law in Takeshi's town the only law is Takeshi's gun and that town is called Takeshi's

[1:05:50] castle and it's a game show uh uh so she goes and visits Motoku's grave uh and reunites with her mom

[1:06:02] kind of she tells her mom you don't have to come here anymore which is kind of I don't think she

[1:06:07] ever really explains to her I'm your daughter's brain inside a robot body she just to tell an

[1:06:11] old lady at her daughter's grave you don't need to come here anymore it's kind of kind of a rude

[1:06:15] thing to say uh and we cut to everything's back to normal big animated hologram advertisements

[1:06:21] everywhere and scarlett johansson back to what she does best brooding over the city in a long

[1:06:26] trench coat over her naked robot body she gives a monologue about how our memories don't define us

[1:06:31] our actions do that's the message and then they say your mission is go she throws off her coat

[1:06:36] jumps off the building for some invisible kung fu and salutes the audience as if to say hey

[1:06:41] i appreciate you sitting through this do you think the rooftops of future hong kong are just

[1:06:47] littered with uh trench coats that have been discarded why does she bother with the coat if

[1:06:51] she's just gonna take it off every time she goes into battle because it's part of the

[1:06:55] fucking illusion dude people are into the fantasy illusion that she's cold

[1:06:59] she wants to remain inconspicuous when she's brooding perched on top of a roof

[1:07:05] if she just had nothing they'd be like what's that weird nipple-less robot that looks like

[1:07:09] Scarlett Johansson

[1:07:10] doing up there

[1:07:10] with the trench coat

[1:07:11] they're just like

[1:07:12] oh there's just Scar Jo

[1:07:13] cold on a roof

[1:07:14] all right

[1:07:16] sure

[1:07:16] so

[1:07:18] we've gone way long

[1:07:19] we should get to

[1:07:21] final judgments

[1:07:22] whether this was

[1:07:22] a good bad movie

[1:07:23] a bad bad movie

[1:07:24] or a movie we kind of liked

[1:07:25] what do you think Stuart

[1:07:27] I don't know

[1:07:30] so this is a movie that

[1:07:34] I definitely

[1:07:35] I think I'm leaning

[1:07:36] in between

[1:07:37] bad bad

[1:07:38] and movie I kind of liked

[1:07:40] because there's things I like

[1:07:42] about it like that's an interesting

[1:07:44] divide that's an interesting divide because I don't think

[1:07:46] it's I don't think it's a good bad movie

[1:07:48] like it's

[1:07:50] not like oh watch this dumb piece of shit and

[1:07:52] laugh about it

[1:07:53] but it's and there's

[1:07:56] things about it that I like

[1:07:58] I mean part of it is that it's reminding me

[1:08:00] of a movie that I remembered enjoying

[1:08:02] watching back in the 90s

[1:08:04] but I like

[1:08:06] and I feel like

[1:08:08] despite the fact that there's there's obviously a lot of uh cgi and this is almost all digitally

[1:08:15] created there it still feels kind of physical like it still feels a little gritty and i like

[1:08:21] that they make a lot of effort to make every character have some kind of a touch or nuance

[1:08:26] like even if it's just like a little bit of metal in their face uh like i think all that stuff's

[1:08:31] pretty cool and it's just kind of bland uh it doesn't make a lot of sense um it's kind of boring

[1:08:39] but it looks great yeah i i i mean i kind of liked this movie i mean but that's on the sliding

[1:08:52] scale of blophouse movies i feel like probably the plot was kind of obvious and dull and like

[1:09:02] at the end you're kind of like oh is that all there is is that all there is to a movie yeah

[1:09:06] and i mean that's all there is are you supposed to root lay those pipes on us are you supposed

[1:09:12] to root for michael pitt's character because he's like just changing some fucking poor garbage truck

[1:09:18] driver's memories and getting him killed like yeah that sucks that was a scene i didn't quite

[1:09:23] understand where it was like he's like i have a daughter you gotta let me out of this prison cell

[1:09:26] and they're like he never had a daughter they inserted fake memories into him it's like why

[1:09:31] does to turn him into a super assassin for three minutes why was it necessary to give him a fake

[1:09:36] memory of a fake daughter like that seems like a weird move for koozie that's like why why even

[1:09:42] bothered to put that much imagination into it koozie yeah but i agree with uh stewart that like

[1:09:48] i mean there's a lot of cgi in it but i like the look of the film and i think i feel like it's

[1:09:54] stylish without being like flashy too many cuts kind of uh filmmaking uh michael bay over over

[1:10:03] stylized stuff and though it's like flashy and colorful i don't think it's overwhelming yeah

[1:10:10] uh i don't know what i like i'm saying all these things that make me sound like i didn't

[1:10:15] like it that much so it's weird that i said kind of liked it but uh i also don't know about

[1:10:21] scarlett johansson's performance like she's like so affectless and i know that she's supposed to

[1:10:26] be a robot but it's hard to be sort of charmed by her in any way because there's no personality

[1:10:35] there i mean she can be good at playing a character that's like weird and alien like

[1:10:41] she did in under the skin where she's like a total mystery wait she was an alien in that

[1:10:47] uh i don't know but for some reason i still kind of had a good time watching it i maybe it's just

[1:10:56] this california sunshine but i'm feeling much harsher on this than you guys are yeah that i i

[1:11:02] didn't think it was a good bad movie i didn't like i want to laugh at it i didn't really like it

[1:11:06] it's like it's not it's a perfectly serviceable movie i'm giving it a bad bad more just because

[1:11:12] like there are much better versions there's literally a better version of this movie in

[1:11:16] the cartoon version but i feel like there are better versions of a movie set in the future

[1:11:22] about what what makes you real and what makes you human and like what makes you a robot and what

[1:11:28] makes you a person what make gives you a soul and like to make a new version of that and to really

[1:11:35] make it something that i'm gonna be like yeah that was good the bar is so high and they just

[1:11:40] kind of it was so serviceable that just kind of didn't clear it for me the whole time i was

[1:11:44] watching it i was like yeah i've seen this movie before and it's not giving me for all the stuff

[1:11:49] they did with like practical effects and stuff it didn't have the spark i was looking for where i'm

[1:11:52] like oh well that's something i haven't seen before so call me jaded but i'm gonna say by

[1:11:59] default bad bad uh i have a question guys they kept uh they kept one of the visual things from

[1:12:06] the movie where the like secretary's hand breaks open and is a whole bunch of tiny little digits

[1:12:12] that they can like tap on a keyboard super fast with if you can jack your head into the internet

[1:12:18] why would you have to do that with your hands and how much faster can you type

[1:12:23] yeah i guess you could just i mean at that point you think text to speech would be so much better

[1:12:27] or just creating the or speech to text and like or just in thinking it into words in your head

[1:12:33] like yeah why are you still typing but that's just seems making those super finely calibrated

[1:12:39] little hand typer things seems much more complicated yeah there's a there's a there's

[1:12:46] a fun thing in a lot of movies i feel like they do it in steampunk movies and that's part of the

[1:12:50] joke but also in future movies where it's like it's not impressive looking to show how you would

[1:12:55] really solve this problem so i'm gonna do it in it like the same way that like we can use the

[1:13:01] internet and phones and things like that with amazing power on very small devices but they're

[1:13:05] like that doesn't look cool so i'm gonna make this one enormous and there'll be huge thick

[1:13:10] cables lying everywhere because it looks a lot better even though that's not really how we would

[1:13:15] do it yeah are you sad and confused about world politics worried about the upcoming inevitable

[1:13:25] nuclear war or maybe a rat is living in your house there's a rat living in my house how do

[1:13:29] you get rid of a rat from a house why not immerse yourself in a completely fictional imagined podcast

[1:13:33] for the beef and dairy industries it works for me the beef and dairy network podcast is the number

[1:13:38] one podcast for those involved or just interested in the production of beef animals and dairy herds

[1:13:43] don't worry it's funnier than it sounds find us at beefanddairynetwork.com or maximumfund.org

[1:13:49] or wherever you get your podcasts from oh god there's the rat oh god

[1:13:53] mugs shirts stickers patches tanks and more are yours for the purchasing at maxfundstore.com

[1:14:02] hey you already love the podcasts so why not take this to the next level

[1:14:06] and outfit your home and bod with our merch maxfundstore.com because if you have to wear a

[1:14:12] We have two sponsors for the program tonight, two lovely businesses helping the Flophouse stay afloat.

[1:14:22] The first, the Flophouse is supported in part by Casper, an online retailer of premium mattresses for a fraction of the price.

[1:14:31] Casper mattresses feature supportive memory foam for a sleep surface that's got just the right sink and just the right bounce.

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[1:14:51] Dan, can you explain?

[1:14:52] You use a Casper mattress.

[1:14:53] Can you explain the sink and the bounce to me?

[1:14:55] Well, the sink is where you go to get your water.

[1:15:00] Oh, boy.

[1:15:02] And the bounce is the third part of the title,

[1:15:08] The Big Bounce.

[1:15:08] It's a movie that starred Owen Wilson

[1:15:11] that everyone forgot about.

[1:15:12] Wow, I'm surprised you didn't say about the movie Bounce

[1:15:15] with Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow.

[1:15:16] Oh, yeah.

[1:15:17] I forgot about that movie so much

[1:15:19] that I didn't remember it.

[1:15:20] That's the way forgetting works.

[1:15:22] Did you know the interesting thing about The Big Bounce

[1:15:24] is that the second part of that title

[1:15:26] is the title of another movie called Big.

[1:15:28] That is the interesting thing about The Big Bounce.

[1:15:30] Yeah.

[1:15:31] Here's an interesting thing, Dan.

[1:15:32] Tell us how much you like using your Casper mattress.

[1:15:36] Oh, yeah.

[1:15:36] No, I...

[1:15:38] That was what you were...

[1:15:39] That was what I was trying to set up.

[1:15:41] i'll be clearer next time i'll say dan give us a product testimonial i love my casper mattress i

[1:15:49] have slept on many a more expensive mattress a traditional all right all right whoa okay

[1:15:55] mr movie star uh i slept on traditional spring mattresses uh i've slept on foam mattresses that

[1:16:04] have been too hot because they don't circulate the air correctly uh i mean there's not like

[1:16:09] air permeating the fabric no no yeah uh this mattress is a delight to sleep on and flop house

[1:16:16] listeners can get fifty dollars towards any mattress purchased by visiting www.casper.com

[1:16:23] slash flop house and using promo code flop house all one word at checkout terms and conditions

[1:16:30] apply and how many times can you use that like if you're trying to set up like a princess and

[1:16:35] the pea situation right with a bunch of mattresses yeah stacked on top of each other or a bunch of

[1:16:41] peas stacked on top of one mattress that i don't know i don't know if you can feel the mattress

[1:16:46] under this pile of peas and truly you're a hobo i just i just can't sleep on these peas there's

[1:16:53] something bothering me yeah i don't know the answer to that question stewart uh but also

[1:17:00] Support from the Flophouse comes from

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[1:17:37] You, Elliot, I know that you...

[1:17:40] Is it just a big box

[1:17:42] full of Deadpool t-shirts?

[1:17:44] Yeah, that's right.

[1:17:45] It's a t-shirt that says

[1:17:47] Farts Welcome,

[1:17:50] which is a weird thing to say

[1:17:52] on a t-shirt. Farts Welcome?

[1:17:53] Farts Welcome.

[1:17:55] Was that the original

[1:17:56] USA Network slogan?

[1:17:59] they changed it to characters welcome it was really farts welcome what's the uh what's the

[1:18:03] font on that one no let's not say these lies about the yeah dan let me talk for a moment okay

[1:18:10] for once in your life let me talk uh so i've been a bombfell user for years now it's a service that

[1:18:16] i've been using for a long time i knew i needed to put some pep in my get-ups and i didn't know

[1:18:21] how to do that and i've been very happy with the consistent kind of average of i get shipments and

[1:18:28] there's always one or two things that i want in them the things i don't want i just mail back and

[1:18:32] the things that i do want i keep and like a number of great pairs of pants a number of great shirts

[1:18:37] it's made it easier for me to try changing my style up because i get somebody else's input you

[1:18:43] get your individual style coordinator or whatever they're called who personally hand picks the

[1:18:48] clothes you get sent based on the type of thing you're asking for and how comfortable you are

[1:18:52] with trying new things and they say like try this out and i get it in the mail i put it on

[1:18:59] sometimes i'm like oh this is not something if i saw in the store i would ever think of buying

[1:19:03] but it looks really good now that i put it on and sometimes i get things you didn't know you

[1:19:08] were a tank top guy exactly yeah thank you but it's literally like a tank like a top of a tank

[1:19:13] oh cool yeah and uh sometimes i'm like this is too much for me and i send it back and it's totally

[1:19:18] fine. And the brands

[1:19:21] they have are good. The quality is all really good.

[1:19:22] Stuff that I've bought in stores has fallen

[1:19:24] apart much faster than the stuff they've sent

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[1:19:29] recommend it. I use it a lot.

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[1:19:35] last time in my special offer. I said

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[1:19:54] flophouse. Hey, when you put

[1:19:56] on those clothes, you're going to look like a bomb fell

[1:19:58] on you. A fashion bomb.

[1:20:00] Thanks for clarifying.

[1:20:03] Yeah, because otherwise it would be

[1:20:04] terrible. One of you, I gave a

[1:20:06] Jumbotron 2 to read. I forget which one.

[1:20:08] I think you gave it to me. Let me just

[1:20:10] jack into the internet

[1:20:12] right now. Into the flop net.

[1:20:14] Okay, powering up. Okay,

[1:20:16] this message is for Jonah. The message is from Edith, Tina, and friends. Jonah, happy birthday

[1:20:25] and congratulations on starting a PhD. From all of us, we hope you still have time for bad movies

[1:20:34] now that you've started school, especially with the impending Shocktober. Here's the gift you've

[1:20:42] always wanted a message immortalized in an episode of the flop house hopefully read by stewart

[1:20:50] from edith tina and friends meow uh that reminds me shocktober was mentioned in that lovely message

[1:20:59] uh i know that this being september this should be a small timber episode small vember the that's

[1:21:06] why we watched teeny tiny little movie ghost in the shell yeah ghost in the small we watched ghost

[1:21:13] in the shell because you know how small that ghost has to be to fit in that little shell

[1:21:16] i forgot i forgot that when we were recording it that i mean we're still in august right now

[1:21:23] i forgot that it would be a september episode but what's the weight of a human spirit elliot

[1:21:27] uh that would be 21 grams thank you i thought it was seven pounds uh i don't know spirit i don't

[1:21:36] know what that has to do with anything but uh the point is there's two more uh saturdays flop

[1:21:43] saturdays in september so we're gonna have our usual programming on those two saturdays dan you

[1:21:50] don't need to apologize to these people uh i just wanted if anyone was confused were you apologizing

[1:21:56] to us because our favorite time of year small member because let me tell you what let me tell

[1:22:00] you what months people look forward to in the flop us cage miss number one october number two

[1:22:05] cage miss in july number three all the other months and then at the bottom smallvember i

[1:22:10] don't think that's true well i look forward to small timber more than smallvember any other

[1:22:16] month of the year i think because we get the really crazy shit with the small movies

[1:22:22] what the hell was that what was that noise are you doing a little foley work

[1:22:29] what i was moving around some stuff over here okay uh before because i have my because i

[1:22:35] have my dvd for our first smallvember movie and i want to make sure that it was right here in front

[1:22:39] of me so i could gaze at it longingly oh did you guys uh have you guys ever like bought a dvd or a

[1:22:46] blu-ray and yeah lots of excited okay no let me finish and you're excited to decide to watch it

[1:22:53] but like you couldn't watch it right away so you just like looked at the box a lot

[1:22:58] that was me with with toys when i was a kid i used to i used to take like video game box if i

[1:23:06] couldn't play video like a video game when i first bought it i'm like i'm gonna go take this to the

[1:23:10] bathroom and read the manual and boy the first time i took a new game to the bathroom and i

[1:23:16] found out that they don't package them with manuals anymore because it's all like in-game

[1:23:21] information i was so bummed i just had to sit on the toilet and look at a fucking disc

[1:23:26] and look at a fucking dick i guess dan dan please uh dan dan yeah dan dan oh yeah can i

[1:23:41] dan can i please please dan dan dan yeah you got a message for us dan uh dan dan well first off

[1:23:52] uh dan if you want to get up on the jumbotron go to maximumfund.org jumbotron but i also want

[1:24:01] to thank a few people for things they've sent i want to thank alan for the copy of zolar the

[1:24:07] extreme sports movie christine for the three christian dvds him for the creepy collector

[1:24:15] card set dan for the copy of past the ammunition billy for the three books and steve for the

[1:24:22] monster posters so thanks and i'd like to thank everybody who came out to my little flop house

[1:24:28] meet up at gen con what i guess that was last week now uh thanks for coming and hanging out

[1:24:33] in the lobby of a hotel and playing a game where most of the answers were me or my friends jokes

[1:24:41] uh i kind of felt like a dumbass uh for making people do that but uh you guys were all really

[1:24:47] cool all right i'd like to thank all the people who have read our flop house funnies comic books

[1:24:53] and i want to let make sure they know that there's more on the way and i want to thank

[1:24:58] all the people who are going to be at our live shows coming up in the fall oh ah exciting oh

[1:25:05] in october uh we've got one in l in one in la on october 8th we've got one in toronto on october

[1:25:12] 21st and we've got one in san francisco uh when is that december something december december 9th

[1:25:21] uh december 9th we had said before that the toronto show was sold out i heard a rumor that

[1:25:28] people were still getting tickets so maybe check on that uh if you are possibly interested and it

[1:25:36] could be that we got misinformation i don't know everybody thought they were getting tickets to

[1:25:42] choppo flop house then they found out they were wrong and they're returning them yep yeah dan uh

[1:25:47] i think dan you want you said you want just a really intimate show of like just 10 people in

[1:25:52] there with us right right yeah that's it it's more of a cabaret and they everyone gets served

[1:25:59] drinks and curly fries is that what they do at cabaret shows that's right so dan what you're

[1:26:04] saying is everybody knows that the toronto show sold out but what your book supposes is

[1:26:12] maybe it didn't yeah that's right that's a royal tenenbaums joke uh okay was it a joke or was it

[1:26:20] a reference. What's the

[1:26:22] difference in today's internet world,

[1:26:24] Dan? Make a meme out of it. I don't know.

[1:26:26] Alright.

[1:26:27] So, now

[1:26:30] it's time for letters

[1:26:32] from listeners. Listeners like you.

[1:26:34] And the first letter

[1:26:36] is from

[1:26:37] Jana, who writes,

[1:26:40] Greetings from

[1:26:42] North Yorkshire, England.

[1:26:43] The other night I introduced my husband to

[1:26:46] Elliot Product Placement, Mystery

[1:26:48] Science Theater 3000.

[1:26:50] although she was watching the classic episodes it's a because she says she watched manos the

[1:26:56] hands of fate although it is a very well rated zero percent on rotten tomatoes i was introduced

[1:27:03] to my new favorite b-movie character torgo now everybody likes torgo let's be clear though this

[1:27:09] is a z movie this is not a b movie that's true manos is barely a movie it's as as part of about

[1:27:16] as low as movies get still look you gotta be you gotta give credit to anybody who says i don't know

[1:27:22] how to make a movie but i'm gonna make one anyway yeah i guess you do i guess that's one philosophy

[1:27:29] of life i guess you don't gotta now i think about it you don't gotta give credit to guys says i

[1:27:34] don't know how to make a movie and you're like maybe you should just like not do that and do

[1:27:38] something else more useful like start a soup kitchen yeah just imagine how bad the soup

[1:27:42] kitchen that the guy who made manos would make the soup would be inedible they just throw it at

[1:27:47] people and they wouldn't even give it to poor people they'd give it to us like cats and dogs

[1:27:51] yeah so anyway not and not and not poor cats and dogs not strays very wealthy ones who do not need

[1:27:59] that soup yeah they're used to eating fancy feast out of crystal goblets yeah uh anyway

[1:28:07] torgo has taken just like in indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal goblet full of fancy feast

[1:28:14] boy that was a disappointing one right they're really looking they've got they're going really

[1:28:19] way down the list for macguffins in these movies he's like he's like legend tells of a crystal

[1:28:25] goblet that the wealthiest cat in the world would eat its food out of we've got to put it in a museum

[1:28:30] yeah mutts on the case what isn't that shia labouf's character mutt yeah his name is mutt

[1:28:40] and he goes the name of a dog guys yeah

[1:28:42] all right he's like i hate cats love snakes so i hope that answers your question

[1:28:48] no there's more letter uh torgo has taken over for my previous favorite zardoz i never thought

[1:28:55] i could find another character i could adore more than a floating head that can treat sean connery

[1:28:59] postponed as an inferior being until torgo oh torgo so my question to you gentlemen oh torgo

[1:29:08] what is your favorite character from a b movie perhaps a character that most people wouldn't

[1:29:13] know about that won you over because the character made the film just a little less intolerable

[1:29:18] and a second question if you have the time after the girl on girl on girl on girl on girl fight

[1:29:24] scene in manos i wanted to know what is the best worst fight scene you can remember again that's

[1:29:29] from janna so there are two big questions thanks for writing in janna i've got an answer for that

[1:29:37] first question my favorite character from a b movie is someone i believe i've talked about on

[1:29:41] this podcast and i know i talked about them on my recent appearance on jordan jesse go but that

[1:29:46] would be the robot janitor from rotor rotor is a pretty not very good but pretty funny robocop

[1:29:53] ripoff and there's a robot janitor that works in the laboratory where they invent a robocop

[1:29:57] and he is so bumbling and absent-minded that my theory i'll just state it again that they had

[1:30:04] written a part for an absent-minded bumbling janitor and a robot auditioned and nailed the

[1:30:08] part and they just gave the part to the robot but he's he is like such a fun character i would love

[1:30:13] to see a movie or comic book series just about that robot janitor what do you think stew robert

[1:30:19] Elogia and No Deposit?

[1:30:20] I mean, he's great in that.

[1:30:22] It's tough for me.

[1:30:25] Like, both of these questions are kind of tough

[1:30:27] because I'm having trouble separating movies

[1:30:30] that are, like, B-movies from movies I actually like.

[1:30:33] And from the B-movie.

[1:30:35] Uh-huh, which is a movie I actually like.

[1:30:38] No, I'm kidding.

[1:30:40] I don't like that.

[1:30:40] Have you seen a B-movie?

[1:30:43] No, I haven't seen the B-movie.

[1:30:45] Have you?

[1:30:45] Guys, let's all watch a B-movie.

[1:30:47] Guys, let's stop judging things we haven't seen yet.

[1:30:50] Okay?

[1:30:51] Okay.

[1:30:52] So I shouldn't make any more B-movie jokes.

[1:30:56] Okay, guys.

[1:30:56] So, Dan, after we're done recording this,

[1:30:59] go through all of the episodes we've ever recorded

[1:31:02] and edit out every reference I make to not liking the B-movie.

[1:31:06] And then re-put them all up on iTunes or SoundCloud or whatever you do.

[1:31:12] I don't know how you do it, but I don't know how you do that magic that you do.

[1:31:17] um yeah i don't know uh i mean like the first i mean i don't necessarily i would call the

[1:31:26] phantasm movies b movies but i don't think they're bad they're just like you know they're

[1:31:31] gonna be movies and uh reggie bannister is a clear star in those movies as uh reg and he's i mean

[1:31:40] come on he's awesome you don't usually get a balding ponytail ice cream man with a vest

[1:31:48] but that's your hero yeah what i like about him is is that he's a character who

[1:31:54] the older he gets as the series goes on the cooler they try to make him out to be

[1:31:59] like i feel like in the first movie he's very clearly the kind of like goofy sidekick to the

[1:32:04] real cool older brother but as he becomes the hero of the series as it goes on they're like

[1:32:09] oh shit I guess we have to make him the cool guy

[1:32:11] and it kind of works

[1:32:13] but it's still pretty ridiculous

[1:32:14] oh man it's so great he's such a ladies

[1:32:17] man oh it's awesome

[1:32:19] and we don't have to answer the second

[1:32:21] question if we don't have any

[1:32:23] good answers because you know she was pretty

[1:32:25] sneaky sneaking in two questions like that

[1:32:27] pretty sneaky Jana oh wait

[1:32:29] I have a nominee

[1:32:31] I don't know if it's the best

[1:32:33] worst fight scene but the

[1:32:35] fight scene in Gymkata where that

[1:32:37] pommel horse appears out of nowhere in that

[1:32:39] medieval village that's pretty good it's a pretty good bad fight scene uh i just remembered

[1:32:44] something this is not a movie but i watched uh this is something that really happened to me but

[1:32:49] i got in a fight in third grade i lost that was the worst fight yeah uh the nbc had their terrible

[1:32:59] peter pan uh live production and i watched some of that and at the end uh christopher walken and

[1:33:07] alison williams have a sword fight and it is just as skilled as you would imagine both of those

[1:33:13] people being as fencers like i think i tweeted at the time that looked like a fight between two

[1:33:19] windshield wipers that i'm slow and uh that was a pretty bad fight scene and a way to promote your

[1:33:26] twitter feed that's at dank mccoy that's true on twitter yeah i've been uh speaking of whitewashing

[1:33:33] I've been watching Iron Fist and man,

[1:33:37] that is some bad martial arts on that show.

[1:33:40] No, thank you.

[1:33:41] But that doesn't square because he's supposed to be the greatest martial arts

[1:33:44] fighter in the world.

[1:33:44] I know.

[1:33:45] Maybe they maybe they slowed it down for Western audiences to see like they

[1:33:50] did to Jet Li and Lethal Weapon 4.

[1:33:52] Who knows?

[1:33:54] And Bruce Lee when he was when he was on the Green Hornet show.

[1:33:57] Yeah.

[1:33:58] They were like, slow it down, Bruce.

[1:34:00] Slow it down.

[1:34:01] because he also used to deliver his lines

[1:34:02] as fast as he could fight.

[1:34:03] Yeah, you got to get it out.

[1:34:06] Time's money.

[1:34:07] A young boy watched that on TV

[1:34:10] and was like, hey,

[1:34:11] and that boy grew up to be,

[1:34:12] and that boy's name was

[1:34:14] the Micro Machines Man.

[1:34:16] And now you know the rest of the story.

[1:34:19] This next letter goes like this.

[1:34:24] It's from Trevor, last name withheld.

[1:34:26] Trevor Noah, your boss?

[1:34:27] Wow.

[1:34:28] I'm new to the show,

[1:34:30] so i'm going through your back catalog sorry about some of those i just listened to the

[1:34:35] i just listened to the atlas shrugged episode and i have to say i love the addition of new

[1:34:40] co-host jubin parang he's so much more insightful and engaging than that party animal he used to be

[1:34:46] on the show i think his name was selbert walking horn it's crazy that you waited so long since

[1:34:52] the trespass episode to make him a permanent host but i guess elliot had to go through an audition

[1:34:55] to i can't wait to continue listening to this new presumably permanent edition of the show

[1:35:00] and since he mentioned in the atlas episode that he never got fan mail hopefully this will make

[1:35:05] his day my question is what actor would you love to see in a remake of a film you love

[1:35:10] i thought oscar isaac would do a great job in the nicholson role in five easy pieces

[1:35:15] and i loved the i love the idea of a remake of the conversation starring nicholas cage

[1:35:20] seriously and for some reason jubin isn't around when you answer this feel free to direct this

[1:35:25] towards whatever awesome dude happens to be in the

[1:35:27] studio. Love, Trevor. Last name with help.

[1:35:29] Aw, Stuart.

[1:35:33] No, it's cool,

[1:35:35] guys. You know, I take it in stride.

[1:35:37] Water off a stew's back.

[1:35:39] You know what they say.

[1:35:40] Wait, wait. Why would you pour water

[1:35:43] in your stew? It's already pretty

[1:35:45] watery. It's stew. You don't want to make it.

[1:35:47] It's got to be thick.

[1:35:48] I guess, but maybe you want soup to feed

[1:35:51] your fancy animals. I guess.

[1:35:53] You want like a thick roux.

[1:35:55] You know, you don't want it to be too watered down.

[1:35:56] Rue McClanahan, that is.

[1:35:58] There's no thicker.

[1:35:59] I was going to say Rue from The Underdick or Rue.

[1:36:00] I just love my thick Rue.

[1:36:02] McClanahan trumps Winnie the Pooh reference.

[1:36:07] Okay, so an actor you'd like to see in a film you love.

[1:36:12] Oh, man.

[1:36:13] It's hard to replace people in films you love, though.

[1:36:16] Well, you know, it's, yeah, I mean, like my favorite movie,

[1:36:18] Take a Pelham on 2-3, it could be updated.

[1:36:20] And you know who might have the chops to be like a charismatic bad guy

[1:36:23] like robert shaw but still dignified maybe like john travolta okay i'm following you he you know

[1:36:29] you know he can play he can play a believable badass cool guy like no other actor yeah and uh

[1:36:36] walter matthews part is a real hang dog kind of like schmoe who's just put in this situation but

[1:36:41] he's more clever than you think so when i think like kind of a like loser who never gets what's

[1:36:45] going to him it's kind of hang dog i think maybe like denzel washington maybe wow i think you hit

[1:36:50] nailed it in one dude yeah yeah that's what i would see yeah i think it would be an interesting

[1:36:57] experiment though if you if you had to you had to recast taking film one two three who actually

[1:37:02] would you recast it with do you think uh i'm trying to think of like like john totoro maybe

[1:37:11] in the walter math our role he's kind of like got a like a bit of the same vibe i could see that i

[1:37:18] could see that that sound was john turturro driving by outside honking his horn in approval

[1:37:24] well i'll tell you i'll tell you who would play the martin balsam sneezy guy role wallace sean

[1:37:30] oh perfect i would love to see wallace sean in a heist actually i'd love to see wallace sean in

[1:37:36] the robert shaw role i think that would be amazing he's just like a super tough as nails guy but uh

[1:37:43] he's very unassuming when you see him but he's like pointing guns at people he's given mean

[1:37:47] speeches i would love to see that and you know what you know who could play the walter matho part

[1:37:52] who's got a kind of like hang dog feel wallace sean so i think you have wallace sean in both

[1:37:56] parts and you call it the taking of wallace sean one two and that's it because there's just two of

[1:38:01] them in there oh but he's the he's the martin balsam sneezy guys that's three the taking of

[1:38:06] wallace sean one two three because there's three wallace sean's in it that sounds great but i could

[1:38:13] also see what if you did if you did a remake of like uh like the front page dan who would you put

[1:38:19] or rather his girl friday who would you put in that dan uh yeah i was thinking about that because

[1:38:26] i was like what are some favorite movies of mine and i i guess the accepted carrie grant

[1:38:34] replacement these days is george clooney i think uh i think he could probably do it

[1:38:41] in a fun way I mean

[1:38:43] he's no Cary Grant but

[1:38:45] he's like the closest thing we have

[1:38:47] and

[1:38:48] he's the Cary Grant we deserve even if it's not

[1:38:51] the Cary Grant we want

[1:38:52] yeah you need a real brassy

[1:38:55] dame for the

[1:38:56] for the woman

[1:38:59] and I don't know like women

[1:39:01] don't get a chance to like

[1:39:03] show off that side in movies that much

[1:39:05] so I don't know

[1:39:06] who would be like

[1:39:09] if

[1:39:11] you're going for

[1:39:13] I mean, I keep thinking

[1:39:15] Jennifer Jason Leigh just because of the Hudsucker Proxy

[1:39:17] but that's boring. I feel like

[1:39:19] The Hudsucker Proxy is boring?

[1:39:21] Damn it, you know

[1:39:23] what I mean. That's what reviewers at the time

[1:39:26] said. They were wrong, but

[1:39:27] What if you went more like

[1:39:29] Daffy with the role?

[1:39:30] Like a duck? Like Isla Fisher

[1:39:33] or something like that. Like a comedian

[1:39:35] woman.

[1:39:37] That might be

[1:39:39] fun. Yeah.

[1:39:41] And if I had to recast the lead of Lawrence of Arabia, one of my favorite movies, I think, oh no, I started it like a joke.

[1:39:50] But no, I feel like Michael Fassbender has already styled himself as a Peter O'Toole type in Prometheus.

[1:39:57] That'll work for me.

[1:39:59] Oh yeah, that's a good one.

[1:40:01] Actually, this is one I have been thinking about, and any Hollywood executives are listening, it's something I would definitely write.

[1:40:09] Because I was thinking about who would I cast in a remake of The Thin Man?

[1:40:13] Like, who would be Nick and Laurel Charles for me?

[1:40:16] And I think I would cast Anna Kendrick and Michael B. Jordan in those roles.

[1:40:22] In the Myrna Loy and William Powell roles.

[1:40:24] I think they could pull it off easy.

[1:40:27] Easy peasy.

[1:40:29] Stuart, what was that face you were making?

[1:40:32] I'm trying to remember those movies.

[1:40:34] Yeah, all right.

[1:40:35] Don't worry about it.

[1:40:37] It's never going to get done.

[1:40:38] Unless Hollywood call me up.

[1:40:39] You know my fee.

[1:40:40] $700,000.

[1:40:42] Oh, that's not bad.

[1:40:43] Also, I don't own the rights to that IP,

[1:40:46] so somebody else do it.

[1:40:48] Stuart.

[1:40:51] Yeah.

[1:40:52] The last letter is directed at you.

[1:40:54] Okay.

[1:40:55] I don't know who it's from.

[1:40:56] It's a mystery.

[1:40:57] Okay.

[1:40:58] It goes, what would happen...

[1:41:00] Did your cat eat the rest of the letter?

[1:41:02] What do you mean you don't know who it's from?

[1:41:03] Just arrived on your doorstep?

[1:41:05] Someone tied it to a brick and threw it through your window?

[1:41:07] How did it get to you?

[1:41:08] Someone tied it to a baby in a bassinet that they put outside my door.

[1:41:12] And I threw the baby away, but I kept the note.

[1:41:13] I think that's the plot of Willow.

[1:41:16] So it says, Stuart, what would happen if an ant had put on the one ring?

[1:41:22] Holy shit, dude.

[1:41:24] Have you seen, you guys are hip to the internet, right?

[1:41:30] Yeah.

[1:41:31] Okay.

[1:41:32] You know that expanding brain meme where, you know,

[1:41:38] it'll be like one thing and it shows a head with a bunch of lightning bolts in

[1:41:42] it.

[1:41:42] Then the next thing,

[1:41:43] like there's even more lightning bolts.

[1:41:45] You know what I'm talking about?

[1:41:46] Yeah.

[1:41:48] Yeah.

[1:41:48] We're talking about,

[1:41:49] we're talking about maximum brain lightning bolts here because the ant,

[1:41:52] oh my God,

[1:41:53] would he,

[1:41:54] I guess he would see first off,

[1:41:56] I guess ants have fingers.

[1:41:57] I guess the magic would work that way.

[1:42:00] I think the tree would probably turn invisible.

[1:42:05] Yeah.

[1:42:06] It seems like a pretty simple

[1:42:08] exclamation point.

[1:42:09] Hear me out, guys.

[1:42:10] When the Ent puts the ring on,

[1:42:13] it would turn invisible.

[1:42:14] Okay. Yeah. I can see that.

[1:42:17] Case closed.

[1:42:18] Thanks.

[1:42:20] You did it.

[1:42:22] People said you couldn't do it.

[1:42:25] But you did it.

[1:42:27] You cracked that one.

[1:42:28] I also think the Ent would be able to resist

[1:42:31] the lure of Sauron.

[1:42:32] So it'd be invisible.

[1:42:35] forever just and every now and then someone would just bump into an invisible tree

[1:42:41] yep pretty cool right what a story that could have been if a tree puts on a magic ring and

[1:42:48] then falls down and there's no one around to see it because it's invisible and they can't hear it

[1:42:52] either does it make a sound wait but you said it doesn't make a sound in your setup yeah you're

[1:42:59] Right, I answered my own question there.

[1:43:00] That's a real tummy teaser.

[1:43:02] Wait, hold on.

[1:43:04] It's a tummy teaser.

[1:43:05] So now what do we do on this show?

[1:43:07] Wait, I want to know what a tummy teaser is.

[1:43:10] Is it when you chew gum and your tummy's like, oh boy, he's chewing.

[1:43:15] Some food's going to show up and then it doesn't because you spit it out.

[1:43:18] To me, it's like a brain teaser, but it's like you go to one of those molecular gastronomy restaurants

[1:43:25] and they send out like an amuse

[1:43:27] bouche that it's like one thing that tastes

[1:43:29] like another thing. And they're like, oh,

[1:43:31] it's a real tummy teaser. Yeah, they're like,

[1:43:33] please enjoy this

[1:43:35] fried egg.

[1:43:37] And you're like, okay, I'll eat this egg. Wait

[1:43:39] a minute. This doesn't taste like eggs at all.

[1:43:41] And they're like, he, he, he, he, he.

[1:43:43] Yeah, they're the real

[1:43:45] imps of the gastronomic world.

[1:43:47] Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about imps?

[1:43:51] So what do we do on the show?

[1:43:55] uh oh the last thing we do is we recommend movies that we liked instead of uh going to

[1:44:02] see ghost in the shell which i think even the ones of us that sort of liked it would

[1:44:06] recommend you not do that yeah uh elliot what do you got uh well i originally was going to

[1:44:13] recommend uh under the skin as i feel like it tried to do a similar thing to this movie

[1:44:19] philosophically in a much more effective way but dan mentioned it already so i don't know if i'm

[1:44:25] gonna recommend it or not i am i am gonna say that uh if you want to see a movie where scarlett

[1:44:30] johansson is questioning what it means to be human and it's very creepy and spooky then under

[1:44:36] the skin is the one to go see uh lucy lucy is not so spooky uh and lucy is one of those movies that

[1:44:44] like it first started going and i was like this is gonna be crazy and after a certain point i was

[1:44:48] like it felt like eating too much candy where i was like oh i my tummy hurts i teased it too much

[1:44:56] yep the i'm gonna i'm gonna make up for elliot's partial recommendation well i do have i have

[1:45:03] something i have another partial recommendation if that counts as one recommendation okay two

[1:45:07] just last night i watched the movie captain fantastic with vigo mortensen where he is a dad

[1:45:14] who has decided to raise his children off the grid in the woods because he doesn't trust

[1:45:18] corporations or the system we all live in, that it's not a place for human equality and human

[1:45:25] potential, but because of a tragedy in their family, he has to take them back into what we

[1:45:31] would know as what we call the real world, and they all kind of deal with the fact that for all

[1:45:36] the things they know about surviving in the woods, there's a lot they don't know about living in

[1:45:41] modern life and the tensions that family and i didn't love it completely i felt like it was a

[1:45:47] movie that still fell into some of the tropes that like a family on a road trip to learn something

[1:45:52] about themselves movie would fall into like a little miss sunshine or something but i thought

[1:45:58] what i liked about it was that the acting in it is really good everyone's really good in it but

[1:46:03] that vigo mortensen's character is like this very self-righteous uh you know one of these guys who's

[1:46:09] I'm going to devote myself to making my kids as great as they can be, and we're going to live by our ideals, and there are things that are admirable about him in that way and things that are not, and that he is allowed as a character in the film to be both charismatic and also a real piece of crap at times, and his ideology is neither so much better than everything we do, but it's also not a totally dumb, silly thing.

[1:46:36] Like, it's a movie that allows its character to be a little right and a little wrong in a way that a lot of movies don't seem to allow.

[1:46:43] And I like that about it.

[1:46:45] All right.

[1:46:47] I have two recommendations, and they're both kind of qualified.

[1:46:53] I recently did some flying around the country of ours, this country.

[1:46:59] You're talking to the salt of the earth.

[1:47:02] I flew to Naptown, USA.

[1:47:06] uh and on the flight both ways i watched a movie uh on the way out i watched a split

[1:47:15] them night Shyamalan movie uh about James McAvoy having a whole bunch of personalities in his head

[1:47:22] and uh it's you know i think i wish i wish you said this way but you know that James McAvoy's

[1:47:29] got a whole lot of personality too much some would say in M. Night Shyamalan's split but

[1:47:34] know you're saying yeah elliot did a better punch-up of split than i just did um it yeah i

[1:47:40] think it's i think it's a fun little thriller uh i think it's a little slight that it uh there's a

[1:47:46] lot of build-up to get to the end um and it feels it feels like it doesn't quite need its whole

[1:47:54] hour and 50 minute run time but you know it was uh it was pretty fun and the fact that it's part

[1:48:01] of this new m night shy milana verse with unbreakable is very exciting uh that universe

[1:48:08] called philadelphia and uh denzel washington there is and there is a really great scene

[1:48:16] of james mcavoy dancing around which is awesome uh and i on the way back i watched a movie called

[1:48:23] dave made a maze which is on streaming on a lot of vod services right now and it's about an artist

[1:48:32] who can never seem to finish projects and while his girlfriend is away for the weekend he builds

[1:48:40] a maze out of cardboard in his living room that seems very small but once he's inside it he gets

[1:48:47] lost and his girlfriend

[1:48:48] has to assemble friends of his to

[1:48:51] go inside this

[1:48:52] go inside the maze and get him

[1:48:55] out of there

[1:48:55] you know it's much larger on the inside

[1:48:59] than on the outside and

[1:49:01] it it's a movie

[1:49:03] that feels like it was

[1:49:04] I think it was probably meant to be

[1:49:07] a shorter film and

[1:49:09] they there's definitely

[1:49:11] some padding

[1:49:12] padding in it but the

[1:49:14] like the design is so great and the uh like it's this whole like maze made out of cardboard and

[1:49:21] although all the uh the traps are made out of cardboard and it just looks great and it's uh

[1:49:27] it's pretty fun and james urbaniak is awesome in it he's really charming in us uh in a support role

[1:49:34] uh i have a movie that i was going to recommend a different movie but

[1:49:38] the themes of ghost in the shell inspire me to recommend a movie that i saw just uh two days ago

[1:49:47] i believe i can't remember when i do things uh it's called marjorie prime and it's about

[1:49:54] a world where there are these things called primes that are fake uh sort of images of

[1:50:03] people like

[1:50:05] dead people in your life that you use

[1:50:07] as therapy devices

[1:50:08] to talk to

[1:50:10] and it stars

[1:50:13] Lois Smith as an

[1:50:15] elderly woman who has

[1:50:17] a prime of her husband

[1:50:18] played by Jon Hamm and it

[1:50:21] helps her with her

[1:50:22] Alzheimer's and just

[1:50:25] like being happy in her

[1:50:27] life and she's living with

[1:50:29] her daughter

[1:50:31] played by Geena Davis and

[1:50:33] Her husband, played by Tim Robbins.

[1:50:37] It's a movie that has a lot to say about aging and death,

[1:50:46] but also about memory and how our memories are not necessarily accurate.

[1:50:56] They're memories of memories,

[1:50:57] and these primes are learning other people's memories.

[1:51:02] sort of what that means

[1:51:04] to like their humanity

[1:51:06] whether that sort of

[1:51:08] turns them more human

[1:51:09] and

[1:51:12] it talks about like legacy

[1:51:14] these crimes sort of live on after

[1:51:16] the people that they're

[1:51:18] representing have gone and

[1:51:20] what that means

[1:51:21] to their

[1:51:23] I don't know what that means

[1:51:26] philosophically

[1:51:27] it's a very good movie

[1:51:30] it's it's just a bunch of conversations in one house it was based on a play but it still feels

[1:51:37] engaging even though like they haven't like opened up the play as they say

[1:51:41] all the acting is terrific and uh it's worth saying it's playing in exactly one theater in

[1:51:49] new york so that means that pretty much anywhere else in the world you can't see it uh but i'm sure

[1:51:56] it'll be on demand or on

[1:51:59] DVD. It's not

[1:52:00] one of those movies where after the run time

[1:52:02] they put it in a

[1:52:04] box in a museum or Martin

[1:52:06] Shkreli buys it. Yeah, they just give it to

[1:52:08] Martin Shkreli and he webcams himself

[1:52:11] watching it, but you can't see it

[1:52:12] and he just goes, oh, this is good. Too bad you'll never

[1:52:14] see it. Yeah.

[1:52:15] So, great.

[1:52:18] Wait, a bunch more than that.

[1:52:20] Five great recommendations.

[1:52:21] Okay, so what do we do now that we've recommended

[1:52:24] movies now uh now that we've pushed the bounds of how long a flop house episode should ever go

[1:52:30] yeah uh and it's our first as i said remote episode so thanks things went well guys thanks

[1:52:37] yeah thanks for thanks for bearing with us yeah yeah to all the sound quality will improve i

[1:52:43] promise what are the other things we can say uh our timing will get better and our rhythm our

[1:52:49] rhythm will come back although it wasn't the rhythm it's gonna get you you know yeah the

[1:52:53] rhythm's gonna get you feel the beat of the rhythm of the night yeah uh flute player play that flute

[1:52:58] yeah i know you want to get your thing on turn the beat around um before we go caribbean queen

[1:53:05] we're sharing the same dream just really quick uh we're part of the network the maximum plum

[1:53:10] network uh go to maximum fun.org listen to a bunch of other great programs on our network

[1:53:16] and uh i guess that's it guys i guess it is i guess it is hey you know what i feel like i've

[1:53:25] got something to share and i need to share it with you guys what's that uh it's a song

[1:53:30] uh oh but this episode's so long i'll tell you what i'll do it next time okay okay well hey guys

[1:53:36] i want to apologize to the listeners for not having a song this time and i want to say the

[1:53:40] listeners you're welcome for not having a song this time i know it's very divisive but uh for

[1:53:47] the flop house dan who are we i've been dan mccoy i am stewart wellington beep boop or am i and this

[1:53:55] is elliot calen dude from california man hey bro oh no oh no it's happening join us next time for

[1:54:05] smallvember good night everyone bye

[1:54:07] that's what they want from the stewart wellington celebrity experience

[1:54:21] yeah uh yeah they got the whole thing we all uh i gave them all 10 minutes to scrub me down

[1:54:29] in the shower. Oh, okay.

[1:54:31] Wait, so wait.

[1:54:33] They all had ten minutes as a group

[1:54:35] or each person got ten minutes individually?

[1:54:37] Each person.

[1:54:39] Wow. The water was very cold

[1:54:41] by the time I finished my shower. That's over

[1:54:43] a three hour shower. That's a long shower.

[1:54:45] You must have been so, like,

[1:54:47] you get clean, but then you get dirty

[1:54:49] again from a shower like that.

[1:54:51] Yeah, exactly.

[1:54:52] So much wasted water. Yeah, because I'm

[1:54:55] eating chili and stuff in there, too.

[1:54:57] Well, yeah, because you need to give the people

[1:54:59] at the late end something to clean off yeah maximum fun.org comedy and culture artist owned

[1:55:06] listener supported

Ep, #239 - Ghost in the Shell

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