Ep. #228 - Collateral Beauty

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

[0:03] So if this was an X-rated movie, it would have been called Collateral Booty, right?

[0:08] And if kids made it, it would be called Collateral Duty.

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

[0:40] I'm Stuart the Hustlin' Hoosier Wellington.

[0:44] Okay.

[0:47] And kind of thrown off by the not-perfect timing of Stuart's beer opening there,

[0:52] but still admiring that new nickname you gave yourself,

[0:55] I'm Elliot Comments on Everything Kalen.

[0:57] A nice sip of a beer, Dan, while I was talking.

[1:00] And Stuart, great pins on your jacket.

[1:02] We're here in Dan's apartment.

[1:04] Cleaner than usual.

[1:05] A lot less cat debris on the floor than I'm used to.

[1:07] And what are those in the corner?

[1:08] A pair of shoes.

[1:09] Can't wait to hear what kind of adventures Dan's been having walking around in those in the big city.

[1:14] New York.

[1:15] Gotham.

[1:16] The Big Apple.

[1:17] Batman's home.

[1:18] Superman's dome.

[1:19] Spider-Man's place.

[1:21] The country's face.

[1:23] The financial center of the world.

[1:25] Theater capital of America.

[1:27] I can get the nap that I really wanted during the movie and right now.

[1:31] So, guys, what do you think of that nickname I put out there?

[1:33] I think I'm going to take it for a walk.

[1:35] No, I like it.

[1:36] I like it.

[1:37] What I like about it is, one, it tells us a little bit about your backstory and that you were a male hustler.

[1:40] And, two, it tells us the name of your favorite movie, Hoosiers.

[1:43] And then also, you know, something, a little known fact about Stuart is that he's like a corn-fed Midwestern boy.

[1:52] Give me that yummy corn.

[1:53] Yum, yum, yum.

[1:54] Feed me more of it.

[1:57] On the cob, in a big bowl with butter, maybe on pizza if you're in Europe.

[2:02] Who cares?

[2:03] Here's the thing, though.

[2:04] Can you say that someone is corn-fed anymore when corn is by far the largest crop in the United States?

[2:10] It's subsidized at such a rate that it actually would be more expensive not to grow it.

[2:16] Yeah, I mean, I can say whatever I want.

[2:17] Judge Dredd's not going to kick down the door and send me off to the fucking solitary cells, the isolation cubes.

[2:25] Which one is it?

[2:26] Arkham Asylum.

[2:28] Just freeze you up and put you in a...

[2:31] That's Demolition Man.

[2:32] All right, sorry.

[2:34] What if Demolition Man...

[2:36] Okay, I'm with you.

[2:37] ...get Judge Dredd from the Steve O'Sullivan movie Judge Dredd,

[2:39] and they had to fight Dredd from the movie Dredd?

[2:41] Okay, I mean, is that the pitch for a movie or a comic book?

[2:47] It's called Too Many Dudes.

[2:49] Or like a Tumblr story?

[2:51] A Tumblr story.

[2:53] Dredd versus Dredd, a Tumblr story.

[2:56] I feel like Too Many Dudes, like that's pretty ambiguous of a title.

[2:59] I think you're underselling your property.

[3:01] Okay, I want to call it Too Many Dreads, but I thought people might think it was about a Jamaican hair.

[3:06] Yeah, Jamaican hair.

[3:07] Yeah, they're like, where's Dred Scott?

[3:08] Where's huge movie star Dred Scott of the Supreme Court decision of the same name?

[3:16] Because, you know, he spun that into a movie career.

[3:20] Yeah, yeah, he was in Club Dred, the movie.

[3:24] And Judge Dred Scott.

[3:26] Dan, what do we do on this podcast aside from offend people?

[3:28] This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[3:32] And tonight we watched a movie called Collateral Beauty, which is a thing that was explained

[3:37] several times in the movie and I still don't know what it's supposed to be.

[3:40] Here's my thinking on it.

[3:43] Collateral Beauty is the beauty around other stuff.

[3:49] Wow, all those years of improv really showing off, Elliot.

[3:53] It's the beauty that's cast into sharp relief.

[3:57] You finally see it when something bad happens.

[3:59] You become more present and more aware of the beauty in the world because you're raw.

[4:03] I feel like that's what they want you to think it is, but it is so poorly explained in the movie.

[4:10] Well, let's talk about what the movie's about, Dan.

[4:12] Who are the stars of this movie?

[4:14] Because there's big-name stars.

[4:15] There's big stars like William Smith.

[4:18] Yep, Will.i.am Smith.

[4:20] There's Edouard Norton.

[4:23] Yeah, weird way to pronounce his name, right?

[4:26] Yeah, that's great.

[4:27] Yeah, keep going.

[4:28] There's Kate Winsley.

[4:29] Okay, this bit continues to roll.

[4:31] Let's give us some more names.

[4:32] Michael Pena, who I will say correctly, lest I seem racist.

[4:37] I mean, just by saying that, yeah.

[4:40] Yeah, and Naomi Harris, another Academy Award nominee.

[4:46] Helen Mirren is in it.

[4:47] Helen Mirren.

[4:48] Kira Knightley.

[4:49] Kira Knightley.

[4:50] Your old KK.

[4:51] I guess what people call her.

[4:54] Hey, KK.

[4:56] Great work bending like Beckham, KK.

[4:59] Hey, KK.

[5:00] You going to make any more Caribbean movies, KK?

[5:03] This guy keeps interrupting me.

[5:05] Hey, KK.

[5:06] What you atoning for?

[5:08] Atonement.

[5:09] KK.

[5:10] What else was KK doing?

[5:12] Why do you keep walking away, KK?

[5:13] Hey, KK.

[5:14] Oh, I'm so sorry.

[5:15] I thought you were Keira Knightley.

[5:16] You're doing a great job as the face of Chanel.

[5:20] Baffo work, KK.

[5:21] And King Kong is like, me?

[5:23] No, not you.

[5:24] Oh.

[5:26] For a moment, Kong thought that he was the face of Chanel.

[5:30] He was like, finally.

[5:31] Oh.

[5:32] Kong, beautiful.

[5:35] My beautiful punim.

[5:36] He's Jewish.

[5:37] A lot of people don't know that about King Kong.

[5:38] Oh, I mean, that explains a lot of the story.

[5:40] Yeah, he is just like Larry King and Alan King.

[5:42] Mm-hmm.

[5:43] So this is a movie about a very sad way

[5:48] willie will willie will smith big willie style smith dan i want you to do the summary this time

[5:54] because i love the way you're going and i want more of it look wherever this crazy taxi takes

[6:00] me i want to get out and i'll pay a hundred dollars extra in tim he's so sad that his kid

[6:06] died that he plays with dominoes all day tell me more where does he work he works at an advertising

[6:11] agency how long into the movie did it take us to figure out that's where he worked 30 40 minutes

[6:16] maybe at least now who does he share this ad agency ownership with uh edward norton uh-huh

[6:21] and of tv's the honeymooners kate winslet and michael pena of tv's titanic and michael pena

[6:26] of the movie's chips yeah and so and now they're worried about him right because he's so greedy boy

[6:33] yeah he's uh he's not able to do basic things in his life i mean he comes into work every day

[6:39] but as he does it he has to play the set up the aforementioned fancy dominoes things to knock down

[6:46] and he can't seem to work up the energy

[6:49] to even pay for his rent,

[6:50] which Kate Winslet discovers when she comes to visit him.

[6:54] Now, we know that he was not always this way

[6:58] because we see in the first scene,

[6:59] he's like a charismatic boss,

[7:01] giving like a funny, motivating speech.

[7:03] And Dan, what does he emphasize and highlight

[7:05] as the three things that drive all human action?

[7:08] He says, he goes,

[7:09] He says, first you get the money.

[7:11] He goes, then you get the power.

[7:13] And then, of course,

[7:14] You get the women.

[7:15] The women.

[7:16] Now, maybe...

[7:18] They're like, you plagiarized that, dude, but you're such a great boss, we'll roll with it.

[7:22] And he's like, and that's right, highest sales, get a DVD copy of The Women, the remake, starring who is in that?

[7:30] Oh, I fucking don't know.

[7:32] I'd say KK was in it.

[7:34] Yeah, KK, hey, were you in this?

[7:36] KK, hey, sign this.

[7:39] Sign this DVD.

[7:40] Anyway, he gives a speech in which he identifies the three.

[7:44] He says, what's your why?

[7:45] And he identifies the three motivators of human action.

[7:48] And they are, Stuart.

[7:49] Time.

[7:50] Mm-hmm.

[7:51] Love.

[7:53] Mm-hmm.

[7:53] And death.

[7:55] Oh, kind of a twist ending there.

[7:57] Mm-hmm.

[7:57] Spooky.

[7:58] And so now he is mad at time, love, and death.

[8:02] And his friends slash business partners, Michael Pena, Edward Norton, and Kate Winslet,

[8:07] they, what do they do, Dan?

[8:08] The three Mouseketeers, let's call them.

[8:10] Sure.

[8:11] No reason to.

[8:12] They decide.

[8:15] So they discover...

[8:16] They've already hired a private eye to follow him.

[8:18] Yeah.

[8:19] And they want to...

[8:20] Like this is some kind of Paul Auster novel.

[8:22] Who...

[8:22] And this is all set in New York.

[8:23] The character actor who plays the private eye is like...

[8:28] She's always a nanny in things, right?

[8:30] She seems like...

[8:32] She's using her with Mrs. Doubtfire.

[8:33] Oh, okay, yeah.

[8:35] Maybe...

[8:36] Was she Mrs. Doubtfire in that movie?

[8:38] You know why they...

[8:39] She played Mrs. Doubtfire's mom.

[8:44] Call me Elvira.

[8:47] Elvira Doubtfire.

[8:49] You know why they call it how she got that name?

[8:51] No.

[8:51] Because her house was on fire.

[8:53] She refused to believe it and died and came back as a sort of nanny spirit.

[8:58] Oh, so it's like an old English, like you get named after your profession.

[9:02] Exactly.

[9:03] You're the person who doubts fires are happening.

[9:05] How that person was supported in the village economy, who knows?

[9:11] She was one of those holy fools who was taken care of by charitable works, as it's also known, the GOP health plan.

[9:19] Oh!

[9:19] Oh, wow.

[9:21] Topical.

[9:21] Dan, so they hire this private eye, and what does she discover?

[9:25] Well, the reason they hire this private eye—

[9:27] She's watching him, watching him, watching him, watching him.

[9:31] There's a chance for them to sell the company and all make mucho dolores.

[9:35] Lots of Dolores.

[9:38] You also get the feeling like the company is failing without, you know, a firm hand at the tiller.

[9:45] Apparently it takes the three of them to equal one pinky finger of Will Smith.

[9:48] He's the Don Draper of this movie in that he is, one, an advertising genius, two, ruining his business partner's business, and three, very depressed and unwilling to-

[9:58] And driven by his whims, basically.

[10:00] Yeah, his whims and his loss in equal measure.

[10:03] And Will Smith owns the controlling interest in the company, so they need to prove that he is mentally unstable to wrest control of the company from him.

[10:13] And sell it so that it can stay in business.

[10:15] Yeah.

[10:16] And which is not such a terrible motivation for them, but they come up with the most evil plan to put into effect afterwards.

[10:25] Now, this plan comes about.

[10:27] Edward Norton, he takes a shine to an actress who is lined up to audition for a commercial.

[10:33] By the aforementioned, KK!

[10:35] KK!

[10:37] She doesn't want to come over.

[10:39] No.

[10:39] She's too busy.

[10:41] She's pretending that she can't hear you.

[10:42] She's reading.

[10:43] She's starting KK's delivery service.

[10:45] Oh, no.

[10:46] No.

[10:47] I refuse.

[10:49] I forgot your anti-studio Ghibli joke rule on the show.

[10:55] oh brother i'm sorry that i'm a little uh slow tonight guys no it's okay i'm very tired the

[11:02] thing is dan you and i we got a little bit twisted last night at the max fun drive meetup it's true

[11:09] uh and i at one point in the night when dan's waiting for his uber i said hey dan i'll see

[11:15] you tomorrow because we're recording and dan looks at me and he goes what his eyes bugged out like

[11:21] large mark that accurate depiction of what happened now dan does this mean you're revoking

[11:26] your anti-studio ghibli joke rule because you're so slow and i can still finally do my

[11:31] my neighbor toblerone one act it's a whole one act i've expanded it all right oh wow if you

[11:39] would let me release these jokes one at a time over 100 episodes it'd be different but i have

[11:42] a 40 minute one act play all right i'm now i'm trying to think of other studio ghibli things but

[11:48] I actually don't like Studio Ghibli that much,

[11:50] so I can't think of other titles.

[11:51] Wow.

[11:52] I know.

[11:52] So send all your hate mail to us, everybody in the world.

[11:56] I guess you hate beauty and elegance.

[11:58] Is it about World War II, Dan?

[11:59] He doesn't like it.

[12:00] Let it go.

[12:00] That was a long time ago.

[12:01] Dan doesn't like the concept of flight.

[12:03] I can't justify my dislike.

[12:09] I just know what I feel.

[12:11] And there goes my other one act, Princess Mononokia.

[12:14] It's the whole thing if it was about cell phones.

[12:18] uh so they come so he bumps into this actress kira knightley and she impresses him with

[12:24] one her attractiveness and two an idea she has for an ad and making their ad slogan better but

[12:30] then which advert male advertising executives love to hear they love it when younger women

[12:35] tell them how to improve their work uh they're very open to ideas from women and very open to

[12:41] ideas from other people uh but she then flees and he follows her to a little theater where she is

[12:48] rehearsing a play that frankly

[12:50] seems kind of pretentious

[12:51] with two other actors, Helen Mirren

[12:54] and another actor whose name I don't remember. It seems like

[12:56] this is supposed to be an original piece

[12:58] this play that they're producing but

[13:00] it's all written in

[13:01] sort of Shakespearean dialect

[13:03] so I'm kind of confused by

[13:05] why this modern play

[13:07] sounds the way it is. I mean it's possible

[13:09] it's an existing play and we just didn't recognize it

[13:12] Or maybe it's written that way

[13:13] as like a goof dude

[13:15] Yeah, a goof dude

[13:16] it's stewart's new character that he plays after the hustle and hoosier

[13:22] yeah goof dude he's like a cool version of goofy put him on fucking t-shirts and give me a million

[13:29] dollars the looney tunes had their time in the sun wearing totally cool uh you know like wrap

[13:35] clothes on shirts type of goofy slot put some wraparound shades on goofy i don't know give

[13:40] him a cigarette to smoke because he doesn't give a shit so goof dude so they he finds these three

[13:48] actors and they come up with a plan so he walks in and he sees them rehearsing for like a second

[13:53] and he's like oh my god that was amazing and i have seen a lot of theater and he does say that

[13:58] now oh with here's some things that we didn't mention one what the private i did discover about

[14:02] william smith is that he has been writing letters to love time and death and just mailing them which

[14:08] is one a waste of a stamp that's a dollar 50 in postage he just wasted because he doesn't even

[14:13] write an address he just writes love time or death stamps it puts it in a mailbox doesn't

[14:18] put his return address on it so some mailman has been wandering the eternal abstract cosmos

[14:23] with a platonic realm trying to find these concepts and he's like i guess i'll ask

[14:28] the endless if they can show me where to trap i mean i'll find death there and destiny could

[14:34] be controlling time and i don't know about love delirium maybe they bring in bags of mail to the

[14:39] courtroom and they go thousands of letters all for death and this chattering skeleton who has

[14:45] been telling people he's death at a department store you're free to go grimy um yeah so he's

[14:53] been writing letters to it's called tragedy on 34th street uh he's been writing letters to these

[15:00] entities and we learned that each of these people also has a thing going on with them ed norton he's

[15:04] having trouble connecting with his daughter his daughter is still mad at him for cheating on her

[15:10] mom and causing a divorce and she's like keeps bringing it up she's like can i smell your dick

[15:16] that's an actual song you never heard that song yeah but risque i think that was before your time

[15:24] that it was a Daily Show Office favorite

[15:26] and we would listen to it a lot.

[15:27] Okay.

[15:28] Why are you coming home

[15:30] five in the morning?

[15:32] Something's going on.

[15:34] Can I smell your dick?

[15:36] And it's because, you know.

[15:37] I mean, you added a syllable to yo,

[15:39] but that's okay.

[15:40] You're pretty close.

[15:41] Look, I'm trying to.

[15:42] You're trying to make sure

[15:44] that Dan understands

[15:45] by enunciating more

[15:47] than the original song.

[15:48] Look, I know there's a cultural barrier

[15:50] here between Dan

[15:52] and all of culture.

[15:54] uh but yeah that was when we used to listen to a lot so she yeah she's let me explain the song to

[15:59] you she's suspicious that her husband is cheating on her and the only way she's been hearing stories

[16:05] yeah the only way to figure this out is the aforementioned dick smelling now does sex smell

[16:12] i've never had any so uh well according to the song sex and candy it smells and even the scent

[16:17] of candy can't cover it up i don't know now what does candy smell like and i don't mean john candy

[16:22] I can pretty much guess what he smells like now,

[16:24] which is a decomposing horse.

[16:26] Oh, yum.

[16:30] But what does regular candy sound like?

[16:32] Sound like?

[16:33] Yeah, what does it smell like?

[16:34] It sounds like this.

[16:34] What does it smell like?

[16:36] Well, what kind of candy are we talking here?

[16:40] Are we talking a hard candy?

[16:41] A soft candy?

[16:43] I don't know what a soft candy is.

[16:45] I guess like a fruit roll-up?

[16:46] Like a marshmallow?

[16:47] Is that candy?

[16:49] Elliot, I don't think, is actually expecting an answer.

[16:52] He's just trying to hold up a mirror towards society.

[16:54] These are all Zen Coens.

[16:56] Oh, I get it.

[16:57] One, I don't expect an answer.

[16:58] It's a way to clear my head.

[17:01] Zen Cohen is the son of Jewish hippies.

[17:04] So that reminds me, I've been trying to think if this is racist for me to do a Twitter joke about this.

[17:10] There's an ad in the subways.

[17:11] All right, by all means.

[17:12] Might as well work it out here.

[17:13] This workshop is here in front of thousands of people.

[17:16] In the New York subways right now, there are ads for the 2nd Avenue subway line, which just opened up.

[17:21] Why the subway feels the need to advertise another part of the subway is confusing to me.

[17:26] Yeah, it's like drinking a can of Coke, and at the bottom of that can of Coke, there's a, like, why not drink Coke sticker.

[17:31] And you're like, why don't I drink Coke?

[17:33] Well, it's like there was this somebody who had a – I think it was Mark Maron years ago who had an – or maybe it was somebody else who had a joke about why the post office advertises.

[17:42] Like, there's no other competitors.

[17:43] you're gonna like you're gonna if you may if you just tape panties to a to an envelope they're not

[17:48] gonna get there you have to go to the post office to buy stamps this was of course before stamps.com

[17:51] this was years ago but anyway uh but it always it's weird to me but there's an ad that shows

[17:57] it's all these different people whose businesses and things are now easier to get to because the

[18:01] second avenue subway line and uh for those outside of new york this is subway line that's been

[18:06] like a bunch of fucking grandmas like who is it kind of yeah and there's like sloan kettering

[18:12] and uh one one of the ads is a zen master from a zen temple zen boost temple and the quote is

[18:18] something like the opening of the subway is really ends a lot of anxieties we had about the opening

[18:23] the subway and it's like dude if you're really anxious about when the subway's gonna open maybe

[18:29] you're not the zen master i should be going to you need physician heal thyself buddy whoa you

[18:34] took him down a couple notches so wait is that the racist thing yeah i don't know if that's

[18:39] culturally insensitive or not i don't think so do you steward you're a zen master yeah man uh

[18:45] what are we talking about anyway let's go back to the movie shall we collateral beauty so uh he's so

[18:52] he's been writing letters to love death and time and each of his partners have an issue that's

[18:56] related to the same ed norton is having trouble rewinding back the love of his daughter yep kate

[19:01] winslet is worried she's too old to have a baby she's running out of time and michael pena has

[19:04] cancer that he hasn't told anyone else about he's dying about 20 minutes into the movie he lets out

[19:08] a cough and we're like that dude's died it's like anytime a woman gets sick in a movie or tv show

[19:15] and you're like i guess she's pregnant what's she gonna do with that baby well i mean they all had

[19:19] like the most obvious uh scenes setting up what their wants and desires were like they might as

[19:27] have had signs on them during the scenes

[19:29] being like, this is my goal.

[19:31] This is my screenwriter's goal.

[19:32] The first one where Ed Norton

[19:35] is talking to his daughter outside

[19:36] downstairs.

[19:39] He's in a lobby inside.

[19:41] Yeah, sorry. I believe probably

[19:42] the screenplay is at Interior, High-Rise

[19:45] Lobby Day.

[19:46] And she doesn't want to come with him

[19:49] over Christmas and they have a big conversation

[19:51] about that. Very clear what he wants.

[19:53] Then we have a scene out of nowhere where

[19:55] Kate Winslet is looking at artificial insemination on her computer.

[19:59] In an office in the middle of the floor that has glass walls.

[20:02] Everyone in the office knows that she wants it.

[20:04] That she needs a baby in her tummy.

[20:07] Yeah, she needs a baby in her tummy.

[20:08] It's like guys that'll go to the library and look at porn and you're like, really?

[20:13] I'd say they're not exactly the same situation.

[20:15] One of them is a little bit more acceptable.

[20:17] Pictures of babies are porn to some people.

[20:19] Yeah, horrible people.

[20:22] Like monsters.

[20:23] Yeah, you're right.

[20:24] that was that was insensitive and then there's the aforementioned obvious cough which as stewart

[20:29] said uh is just secondary to like someone throwing up in a movie indicating that they're pregnant

[20:35] as like the most obvious signifier in a film it reminds me of the one of the most horrifying

[20:41] things i've ever seen in a movie in uh what about 10 minutes into synecdoche new york when philip

[20:46] seymour hoffman is peeing into a sink or something and he pees out blood and you're like this is the

[20:52] Worst thing I've ever seen.

[20:53] I hope you don't ever pee out blood.

[20:55] What a horror movie.

[20:56] As somebody who's had blood come out in their pee.

[20:58] Were you passing stones?

[21:00] I was passing stones, yeah.

[21:02] Oh, okay.

[21:02] It was the second time I passed a stone.

[21:03] You weren't like attacked by a werewolf.

[21:05] He's passing a DVD of family stone.

[21:07] No, no.

[21:07] A werewolf got into my penis and was just ripping it up.

[21:10] Like an inner space?

[21:11] Yeah.

[21:11] I don't know why the government shrunk a werewolf, put him in a capsule, and then injected him

[21:15] into my body.

[21:16] It didn't help me, that's for sure.

[21:17] Sometimes you do it just to see what happens.

[21:19] It was like one of them experiments the CIA pulls where they're just pouring radiation into a town's water supply to see what happens.

[21:25] I mean, there's two types of science, Elliot.

[21:26] There's science with a goal, and there's science just to explore the universe.

[21:30] I thought you were going to say there's normal science and there's weird science.

[21:32] There's normal science.

[21:33] This is very much of the weird variety.

[21:35] That's true.

[21:36] Yeah, it was performed by guys with bras on their heads.

[21:39] Okay, now, did they ever get to—

[21:41] I feel like if we were going to do a remake of Weird—that'd be crazy—of Inner Space, you could—

[21:47] I'm less excited.

[21:49] You would certainly be the lead in the Martin Short role.

[21:52] I'm, of course, you know, what's his name?

[21:55] Dennis Quaid.

[21:56] Dennis Quaid.

[21:56] I'd be great.

[21:57] You could be Robert Picardo, Dan.

[22:00] Now, and you raise a good point.

[22:03] If we did do a remake of Weird Science,

[22:04] you better believe we're not doing the sequence

[22:06] where they go to that blues bar.

[22:08] Yeah.

[22:09] That's not happening.

[22:10] Yeah, he talks in jive language.

[22:13] Yeah, but here's the thing.

[22:15] Do you think Wyatt and, what was the other guy's name?

[22:17] uh andrew was that it no andrew wyeth andrew wyeth famous painter uh do you ever think that

[22:26] those two guys got to write up their experiment for the journal of weird science because they

[22:29] got a peer review that stuff someone has to replicate those results or else it can't be

[22:34] considered actual yeah that's fair actual factual now okay let's get back to the movie so everyone

[22:39] has their deal they decide they're gonna hire these three actors to portray love death and time

[22:46] and kind of ambush Will Smith so that they can,

[22:50] at first it seems like they're doing it for therapeutic reasons,

[22:53] but then it's so that they can just make him look crazy.

[22:55] The ultimate plan is to provoke him to such an extent that he yells at them,

[23:00] and then they'll have video of it secretly taped,

[23:03] and they'll digitally remove the actors.

[23:04] So it looks like Will Smith's just losing it in the streets at nobody.

[23:07] Now let's just lose in it.

[23:09] Reiterate this.

[23:10] As in the film, lose in it.

[23:13] Because this is the dumbest thing in the world,

[23:15] Let's just reiterate it, so make it clear, make sure the audience gets it.

[23:19] They're hiring three actors, again, to pretend that they're death, time, and love.

[23:25] To gaslight.

[23:26] To gaslight Will Smith.

[23:27] Yeah.

[23:27] And they go to a huge amount of unnecessary effort to explain what gaslighting is.

[23:33] Oh, no, they don't even explain what gaslighting is.

[23:35] Helen Mirren uses the term gaslight, and the other characters don't know what it is.

[23:40] And I feel like that term has become such a common term, even in political discussions, that, like, they would just, you know, those guys all read liberal blogs all day.

[23:49] They live in New York.

[23:49] They're rich, you know.

[23:50] I reach for the arts and leisure section first.

[23:54] Of the blogs?

[23:55] I look for the funnies.

[23:57] I want to see, yeah, I want to see what Slylock Fox is up to.

[24:02] And I go straight to the obituaries.

[24:03] What's on the, what's for dinner tonight?

[24:07] Wait, am I a ghoul?

[24:09] Yep.

[24:10] So they do this, and the actors go and confront Will Smith and say very pseudo-profound things.

[24:17] But they also help each of the other people deal with their personal problems in stupid, pseudo-profound ways.

[24:22] Yeah, they're all matched up perfectly.

[24:24] Meanwhile, each one of the people is coaching or is the liaison, I guess, for the actor that is portraying the thing that is their problem.

[24:30] And I almost wish there was a scene where they divided it up deliberately that way because it's so on the nose.

[24:36] That Kate Winslet was like, okay, well, I feel like I'm running out of time, so I'll take time.

[24:40] And Michael Peña, you're dying even though you haven't told us about it.

[24:42] So you take death and clearly you have issues with your daughter at Norton's.

[24:45] And they all call each other by their real names, too.

[24:47] That's really weird.

[24:48] We've got to convince everyone that Will Smith is crazy.

[24:50] I mean, acting is about strong choices.

[24:52] So I think that that's a really bold choice to do that.

[24:55] To ignore the character names?

[24:56] Exactly.

[24:57] Meanwhile, Will Smith seems to be finding a much healthier outlet for his grief,

[25:02] which is a support group for parents who have lost children.

[25:05] He's been grieving over the loss of his daughter.

[25:08] these other people are and there's a great scene where i mean a great but a kind of weird scene

[25:13] where this woman gives a long monologue about the death of her son and when she realized that her

[25:19] young son knew he was not going to survive and then when she finishes and she's crying will

[25:24] smith walks in and the woman running the support group immediately turns to will smith and starts

[25:28] asking him to introduce himself and talk to him and he doesn't want to talk and he sits down and

[25:32] then she turns the one who's been crying is like well thank you for sharing that with us and it's

[25:35] Like, how insensitive was that?

[25:37] Yeah.

[25:38] And what a sign of the double standard of society.

[25:40] This woman is clearly in pain.

[25:41] It's this, like, super intense scene of, like, the camera, like, hugging this woman's face as she's crying and telling a terrible story.

[25:48] And then it's immediately undercut by, like, oh, forget about you.

[25:53] You're a nobody.

[25:53] Will Smith is a somebody.

[25:55] The star of Hitch just walked in.

[25:56] Hello.

[25:57] The millennium has begun.

[26:00] Sorry for your loss, lady.

[26:01] The exit's over there.

[26:03] Let's talk about Men in Black 3.

[26:05] Yeah, one of the Galaxy Defenders came in.

[26:06] Come on.

[26:07] He won't let you remember about your dead son.

[26:12] No, sit down and tell us all about how your life got flipped, turned upside down.

[26:16] If you could take a minute, just sit right there.

[26:18] Tell us all about the death of your young daughter.

[26:20] He starts to build a relationship with this, the woman who runs the support group.

[26:27] Played by Academy Award nominee Naomi Harris.

[26:30] Who is much better in the movie she was nominated for an Academy Award for,

[26:34] but she's given him a lot more to do there.

[26:36] Yeah, she's a lot more crack to be addicted to.

[26:40] That's technically correct.

[26:43] We don't know how much crack she could be addicted to in this movie.

[26:46] That's true, she could be a very functional crack addict,

[26:48] like in Half Nelson.

[26:49] I mean, he's not that functional.

[26:52] He can do his day job.

[26:53] And I mean, he's pretty good looking.

[26:55] Oh, for sure, yeah.

[26:56] So it's her that gives Will Smith the idea of collateral beauty.

[27:04] and it is one of many speeches in the movie that sounds like it means a lot,

[27:09] and I'm sure it meant a lot to whoever was writing them.

[27:12] But to you, the audience, it's like these are just gossamer threads of smoke,

[27:16] and every time I try to grasp onto them and understand what they're meaning,

[27:19] it just slips through my fingers.

[27:21] I can't figure it out.

[27:22] It's like a rope made out of sand.

[27:24] And when you say the audience, you mean like the movie critics

[27:28] who were forced to see the movie and nobody else

[27:31] because nobody went to see this movie.

[27:33] According to Wikipedia, this movie outdid its budget.

[27:35] Really?

[27:36] Quite a bit.

[27:36] Had a budget in the 30s of millions and made 80s of millions worldwide.

[27:41] Yeah.

[27:42] People love that Ed Norton.

[27:44] Yeah, he's probably the biggest star in the movie.

[27:46] He's the big draw, is Ed Norton.

[27:49] People are like, oh, I mean, he never really reached the full potential that he showed

[27:53] in Primal Fear, but I guess I'll keep watching his movies.

[27:55] So the movie continues for a while, and then stuff happens.

[28:01] I mean, not much more.

[28:02] Not that much happens, except everyone has their epiphanies about their lives.

[28:05] They confront him with the doctored videos, and he signs away stuff.

[28:11] And then at the same time, he drops a little bit of info about each of his three partners' various problems.

[28:18] And he shows them, maybe he's so not mentally incompetent that he's identified their problems and tells them what they need to do.

[28:25] But again, he does it in a way that isn't really that concretely helpful for them.

[28:29] They pay the actors.

[28:30] And in case you're wondering, this is the point in the movie where I was dozing off and jerking my head back up to say, as if to say, shit, I have a podcast that I do.

[28:41] I should really be paying attention to this thing.

[28:43] I was checking my phone.

[28:45] And so, but we're getting to the two big twists of the movie.

[28:51] KK, you want to tell them what the twists are?

[28:55] KK.

[28:56] She's not paying attention.

[28:57] Apparently KK also stands for catcall.

[29:00] um if it was super cool yeah uh but it's not cat calling is not cool unless you are literally

[29:06] calling for a lost cat and you go buttons buttons come here boy buttons i'm glad that you're saying

[29:13] in both languages you know maybe the baby buttons only knows a little bit of english but everyone

[29:19] speaks cat because everybody wants to be a cat the aristocats anyway so they i'm just trying to

[29:28] shake dan out of his torpor sorry uh so here are the two twists twist everyone's happy again kind

[29:34] of they've come to peace with things michael pena tells his wife he's dying she knew already

[29:38] everybody did he was fucking ralph and all the time yeah yeah but first twist uh will smith goes

[29:46] to the home of the head of the support group turns out because she lost daughter too she walks into

[29:51] the he ruins her christmas eve by coming to her apartment and we're like wow she's got a really

[29:56] nice place. She's got a great house. And it's the sort

[29:58] of thing like, I've been thinking about

[30:00] people's apartments and homes

[30:02] on TV and movies a lot

[30:04] lately. I was watching Big Little

[30:06] Lies, the HBO show, which has

[30:08] a bunch of very nice Monterey homes

[30:10] and then you finally see the one poor

[30:12] character's house and I was like, wow, that's

[30:14] a nice place.

[30:15] That's a stern

[30:18] rebuke to the quality of housing

[30:20] in Brooklyn, I guess.

[30:22] In real life. Yeah. But he goes

[30:24] to her house and she tells him about

[30:26] she lost her daughter to a rare brain cancer and then she starts playing like i forget does he play

[30:33] the video or does she play his video the video is on i think oh in her house of him and a little

[30:39] girl and he tells she says tell me about your daughter his daughter had the same name and died

[30:43] of the same thing you you're thinking this is the most amazing coincidence this is bad screenwriting

[30:49] that their lives are so similar but it turns out it was his wife all along they become estranged

[30:55] after the death of their daughter and he started go he had been haunting this support group because

[31:00] he didn't know how to communicate with her anymore the only way they could do it was to pretend that

[31:05] they were strangers much as many married couples do they'll go to just got that they'll go to a

[31:11] motel or they go to a hotel bar yeah and pretend to be different people and they're like excuse me

[31:16] kids are dead do you like pina coladas and having a dead child

[31:21] it's it really spices up the marriage if you pretend you're in an extreme stage of grief

[31:27] and you're strangers uh that they have just pretended to be strangers and they come back

[31:34] together and they're crying and i have to assume then that the sex they had that night was amazing

[31:37] because they're both because it's yeah they're edging for years it's both the sex of strangers

[31:44] who have found that they have a lot in common and they're kind of they did they never fell

[31:47] before and the sex of a couple that knows each other's bodies extremely well and knows exactly

[31:52] what pleasure buttons to push so i guess that's kind of the best sex you can have right i don't

[31:57] like hearing about i don't like your understanding of sex it bothers me i don't like to think of you

[32:03] as a sexual being it's like seeing a doctor i have a child i know i had sex at least once yeah

[32:08] but you don't i don't look at your child and think oh they fuck to get that i do every day and it's

[32:14] hot gross i mean it's not looking at him doesn't is not hot i'm not turned on yeah you're not like

[32:21] oh your curly hairs remind me of the curly tail of the sperms that shot out of my weenus

[32:25] i hope the tails are not that curly like sperms should have pretty straight tails no but they

[32:31] use the tail like go real fast they go yeah like like a propeller yeah dan like what dan did

[32:38] they're like little piggies yeah uh anyway the second twist twist numero dos and this maybe this

[32:48] is the reason that edward norton keeps striking out when he's trying to hit on kk is uh wills we

[32:55] see wills they've the actors have helped everyone their problems the play has been they were

[32:58] rehearsing has been called off will smith and his now reunited wife are walking through central park

[33:03] smiling they're reunited and it feels so good above them on a on a on a bridge one of the many

[33:09] beautiful bridges that olmsted and vox put into central park the first park they ever designed

[33:15] and yet it's one of the greatest in the world it's amazing i guess it all goes down to their

[33:19] original theories of park design which were not kind of the english box garden very very man-made

[33:26] and artificially manicured but instead the idea of a more natural this is the art of suspense

[33:31] That Olmstead believes that you always wanted

[33:34] To be able to turn a corner and see a new vantage

[33:35] Creating a desire to hear the end of this sentence

[33:38] And so they're on a bridge watching down on them

[33:40] Camera cuts over to Will Smith and his wife

[33:43] Cuts back

[33:44] Cat's eyes

[33:45] No, it turns out

[33:51] And they've disappeared

[33:53] And you're like, wait, what?

[33:54] Was that?

[33:55] Hold on

[33:56] So was that really love, time, and death?

[34:01] that took time out of their busy schedules of running the universe

[34:05] to help the ad agency help their grieving friend

[34:10] to get back together with his wife.

[34:11] And you're left to wonder, don't they have better things to do?

[34:16] I always see a movie like this, and I'm just like.

[34:19] You always see a movie like this?

[34:21] I always see a movie.

[34:22] You should watch some other better movies.

[34:23] I always see a movie like this, and I'm like.

[34:25] Always?

[34:25] Like, go watch that.

[34:27] Like a silly movie.

[34:28] Yeah.

[34:29] Why don't these magical figures ever intervene in my life?

[34:33] Like, apparently that's what they do.

[34:34] They just, like.

[34:35] It's a movie.

[34:36] Oh, okay.

[34:38] The same reason that you've never met Freddy in your dreams.

[34:42] And, like, you don't turn on your fucking radio and you're, like, a person from Frequency or Destiny or some shit.

[34:49] The same reason that you should stop being scared that you're going to be invited to the opening of a dino park and the dinos are going to get loose.

[34:56] Oh, yeah.

[34:58] No, but it seems like if...

[35:01] By the way, you would totally get killed

[35:02] if you got invited to Jurassic Park.

[35:04] No offense, dude, but you're not like a little kid

[35:06] or, you know, like the hero.

[35:08] You're certainly not knowledgeable about dinosaurs

[35:10] to the extent that, say, Dr. Alan Grant is.

[35:12] I don't have the cool factor of a...

[35:16] Of a Goldblum type?

[35:17] Yeah.

[35:18] I'd be more of like a Newman type.

[35:20] Like, why is this dinosaur spitting acid in my eyes?

[35:24] I like to believe I'm the guy who says,

[35:25] hold on to your butts before a dinosaur kills me.

[35:28] spoiler alert for jurassic park samuel jackson doesn't make it through the movie he gets turned

[35:34] into one of the fakest fake ripped off arms you've ever seen in a movie yeah uh so dan these

[35:39] yeah you wonder these forces never intervene in your life well maybe you're not rich enough

[35:44] yeah because in a lot of movies where destiny or or an angel intervenes it's to show a rich

[35:50] person that they should like be with their family more and poor people don't tend to get that much

[35:54] help from angels in the movies or from from abstract concepts i mean we're talking about

[35:59] people who have no the only element of reality interceding in these people's lives is i guess

[36:07] the is the mortality of their children and person which is a pretty big thing terrifying but like

[36:15] there's other than that they're just like you know wealthy manhattan yeah i just figure that

[36:20] But if like WMPs, if magical like cosmic entities are going to personally interfere, like they're going to intervene in people's lives, then maybe we would, I don't know, hear about this more often.

[36:33] If they've got the time to go around doing this.

[36:35] Dan, this brings me back to something I've talked about on the podcast that I call the Teen Wolf Hypothesis, which is that or the Teen Wolf Paradox, which is that that's better.

[36:48] It was your essay you sent into Weird Science Magazine.

[36:50] Yeah, the Journal of Weird Science, not published.

[36:52] That in a world in which a werewolf is playing basketball for a high school basketball team,

[36:58] this news would make it into papers beyond the local school paper.

[37:03] Yeah.

[37:03] That an openly werewolf basketball player, let's disregard the fact that this team got turned around

[37:11] from being one of the worst to one of the best because of one star player.

[37:14] That would attract scouts at the very least.

[37:15] Yeah, that would attract national attention.

[37:17] Like, LeBron was well-known in high school, you know.

[37:20] He was already being scouted.

[37:22] Wow, have you been spending time with David lately?

[37:24] What's going on?

[37:24] But tie on top of that the fact that he is a werewolf.

[37:29] Not just proving, one, that werewolves are real,

[37:33] which is something that we've all agreed to.

[37:36] We've all wondered for years.

[37:37] For years.

[37:38] I mean, we've all agreed to the social fiction that there are no werewolves

[37:41] just to keep society moving.

[37:42] So this opens up two doors.

[37:45] One, two doors down, you might say.

[37:47] One, if werewolves are real, what about vampires?

[37:50] What about mummies?

[37:51] What about gilmen?

[37:52] What about ghosts?

[37:53] What about Frankenstein monsters?

[37:54] What about dybbuks?

[37:55] What about banshees, ghoulies, critters, munchies, gremlins?

[37:59] And I can't believe gremlins were the last of that list after munchies.

[38:03] Number two, what, how do we not, what is it?

[38:08] Okay, something with the amazing morphology that it can grow hair overnight and then I

[38:13] shed that hair and teeth will lengthen and then go back biologically we don't have an explanation

[38:19] for that dna doesn't really cover it so this werewolf would be the biggest story sorry sorry

[38:25] trump being an agent of russia you're going on second page because werewolves are real yeah that's

[38:30] fair so anyway uh you make a good point damn we would have heard about this at some point so is

[38:36] it like when when we were watching crashing tiger hidden dragon together and you're like

[38:41] Why am I never flying around like that and falling in love?

[38:46] You never answered that question for me, Stuart.

[38:51] I know.

[38:52] I was totally enraptured by the magic of the movie.

[38:54] How come I never get trapped in a Groundhog Day?

[38:57] Yeah.

[38:58] I would love to relive the same day over and over again until I get it right.

[39:02] I have tickets, by the way, for the Broadway production of Groundhog Day.

[39:07] I got them free.

[39:08] Whoa.

[39:09] Got them free?

[39:10] Yeah.

[39:11] I've got press tickets.

[39:12] Whoa.

[39:13] So next time I'll report back on that.

[39:16] Please do.

[39:16] It'll be Flophouse in theaters.

[39:18] You're writing up the review for Variety or something?

[39:21] Yeah.

[39:21] So here's the thing about this movie.

[39:24] It was trying for very meaningful.

[39:27] It fails to that.

[39:29] It's instead very treacly.

[39:30] I have a question, but Stuart, you said it looks like you want to say something.

[39:34] Yeah, I mean, I think the elephant in the room tonight, guys,

[39:40] is a certain little cat burglar

[39:43] by the name of Seven Pounds.

[39:45] So he's a cat burglar?

[39:49] Right?

[39:49] I thought that was his...

[39:50] I guess he's a thief in general.

[39:52] I mean, when Batman drops him off at Arkham Asylum

[39:55] and he fills out the paperwork...

[39:57] He certainly isn't.

[39:58] Well, the only options they give you on the form

[40:00] are cat burglar, murderous clown, and...

[40:06] That covers Zaz.

[40:07] And murderers.

[40:10] Zaz is not really a clown.

[40:11] I mean, but he's covered in, like, scars, right?

[40:14] That's pretty funny.

[40:15] Which is pretty funny.

[40:15] Okay, I'll give you that.

[40:16] It's either cat burglar, murderous clown, or...

[40:20] Alligator man.

[40:22] Yeah, or alligator man.

[40:24] He's just the one dude, killer cop.

[40:26] I mean, Clayface can be an alligator man.

[40:28] Yeah, he could change into an alligator, true.

[40:29] And Penguin has a sharp nose.

[40:31] He's kind of an alligator.

[40:31] Yeah, I mean, let's just say animal man.

[40:33] Who?

[40:34] Just say animal man, not animal man.

[40:37] Oh, okay, then animal man, Buddy Baker, who's a hero.

[40:39] Why is he in Arkham?

[40:40] But animal men.

[40:41] Yeah, animal people.

[40:42] Manimals.

[40:43] Manimals.

[40:43] So you could either be a cat burglar, a psychotic murderous clown, or a manimal.

[40:47] And they're like, we've got to make more bubbles on this form to fill out.

[40:51] Well, we'll add other.

[40:52] That's how you can fit poison ivy on there.

[40:55] That's where Condiment King goes or whatever.

[40:58] Condiment King?

[41:00] Yeah.

[41:00] I mean, there's Clock King.

[41:02] No, there's also a Condiment guy.

[41:04] There's no way.

[41:05] Yeah.

[41:05] And he's the king?

[41:07] Look, I want listeners to prove me wrong on this.

[41:09] I don't remember a condiment-themed Batman villain.

[41:11] His relish is on there.

[41:14] Yeah, he relishes crime.

[41:15] He's got to catch up to the other villains.

[41:19] He's using mustard gas.

[41:22] I think it was one of those Joker villains that was like a one-shot thing.

[41:28] I've read about him, though.

[41:29] Okay, I'm not familiar with him.

[41:31] I mean, Batman has a villain who's literally a ventriloquist dummy with a tiny gun.

[41:36] So maybe he has a condiment-themed villain.

[41:38] character that bruce tim made terrifying yeah that's true um okay so but what i'm trying to

[41:45] say is that the previous will smith movie seven pounds had a similar like overly saccharine overly

[41:53] like sentimental tone yeah uh this was gonna be the most important movie you ever saw what's going

[41:59] on with our boy will smith why is he why is will smith doing this guys yeah i mean we've seen mr

[42:08] smith go to washington yeah and a number of movies uh after earth seven pounds something else yeah

[42:17] name another uh uh the incredible mr lipid uh here's i think he's just like smother his natural

[42:27] charm recently and it feels like the sort of movie that would be made by somebody who is

[42:32] kind of out of touch with

[42:35] Winter's Tale.

[42:36] Oh, he was actually really good in that.

[42:38] Yeah, he was the devil in Winter's Tale.

[42:39] He was the best thing in it.

[42:40] But it feels like the kind of movie

[42:42] made by somebody who has lost touch

[42:45] with what people are actually like.

[42:47] Yeah, there's a sense in it of

[42:50] famous people trying to connect to emotions

[42:54] that they, like everyday things

[42:59] that are not necessarily a part

[43:01] of how they exist anymore.

[43:02] Will Smith exists in a very strange plane right now

[43:05] where he just thinks,

[43:08] he seems to think and comprehend the universe

[43:10] in a different way than most people.

[43:12] Now, I was reading trivia,

[43:14] not to bring the podcast about a movie about...

[43:18] Not to brag.

[43:20] But I can read.

[43:20] I was reading trivia on the Internet Movie Database

[43:24] and it was talking about how Will Smith was dealing,

[43:27] while he was making this movie,

[43:29] He's also dealing with the loss of his father, which I guess on some level I understand the idea of using – as an artist, he's using this as a way to like work through his personal shit.

[43:43] And I guess that makes sense.

[43:45] I just wish the movie was better.

[43:47] Yeah.

[43:48] Yeah.

[43:49] I don't – well, we can go into final judgments and I'll say what I –

[43:53] I had one thing I wanted to say.

[43:54] Well, I can say it as part of my final judgment actually.

[43:56] So go ahead.

[43:57] Final judgment.

[43:58] this is a good bad movie a bad bad movie or movie you actually liked uh i'm gonna say it's a bad bad

[44:05] movie it's it's placed in a real world context but the uh contrivances of it are so crazy that

[44:14] it only would have worked if you had created a heightened reality i don't feel like what i was

[44:20] gonna say is like i don't feel like it's the actor's fault for what's going on i think by and

[44:24] large they're all doing the best they can with what they're given it's just a crazy fucking

[44:29] script that is maudlin and filled with stupid tricks it's not odd enough to work as like

[44:37] i know and this movie's not for kids that's the thing no true it's not odd enough for it to be

[44:42] like i feel like had this been a french movie the like exoticism of uh like french cinema

[44:49] If What's-His-Name-Who-Did Amelie did this, or if it was, I could see, if this was in French, Spanish, or Italian, I could see it working better, or Japanese.

[44:59] The otherness of it would elevate it to a different, it would feel divorced enough from everyday reality for it to seem like a bigger, like a grand story.

[45:14] lines of dialogue in this that if they i was reading them in a subtitle i think would affect

[45:19] me more than hearing them spoken in english because i'd be like people don't talk that way

[45:23] come on that doesn't make any sense that if i was reading them in a subtitle i'd be like

[45:27] i don't know maybe i don't know here's i would say this is a bad bad movie uh you know trying

[45:34] its darndest uh here's my question has there ever been a good movie with beauty in the title

[45:39] i mean american beauty was didn't it win the best picture what come on what does that mean okay

[45:46] you're right american beauty it's not the worst movie in the world that's true i feel like that's

[45:50] a movie people have have tarred more than they need to it it is certain people audiences have

[45:56] soured on it yes it's one of many movies that won best picture and then audiences disperned it

[46:01] immediately was stealing beauty any good or was it just that there were naked people in it

[46:06] To be honest, I haven't tried to watch it since I was 16

[46:10] and was not interested in anything other than the Beast.

[46:12] I mean, number one at the box office right now is Beauty and the Beast.

[46:15] Okay, there you go, Beauty and the Beast.

[46:17] I haven't seen the current version, but surely the Disney version.

[46:19] And the Cocteau.

[46:20] The Cocteau version is wonderful.

[46:22] The current movie, which famously a moviegoer at the Alamo Drafthouse

[46:26] in New York City asked another moviegoer,

[46:30] what's his dick like?

[46:32] Famously.

[46:35] there was an article in the new yorker talking about it and i guess uh that that like a screenshot

[46:41] of that that new yorker article was going around where like a woman was like what's his dick like

[46:47] were they asking bell like how would anyone know i mean i i don't know i think at that point it's

[46:54] you got on that what was that like it's it's i mean i think at that point it's like a brainstorming

[46:59] sesh and she goes home and she just like puts a dildo on a rug to try to figure out what the

[47:03] sensation was like barb well i mean i would hope not yeah i would hope not to i think we can all

[47:10] hope that okay so you answer my question beauty and the beast all right there's a hard i was

[47:13] having trouble thinking of a movie with beauty in the title that was not a movie i cared i did

[47:18] not want to watch yeah oh beautician and the beast doesn't actually have beauty

[47:24] so

[47:28] no sponsors this week

[47:31] we are unpopular

[47:33] no that's because Max Fun Drive

[47:36] just ended and we wanted to thank

[47:38] everyone who donated to Max Fun

[47:40] Drive this year

[47:41] yeah well the

[47:43] our show like all the shows on the Maximum

[47:46] Fun Network are almost

[47:47] exclusively listener supported

[47:50] like predominantly listener supported

[47:51] we have sponsors they are a pittance

[47:54] compared to what we get from our listeners,

[47:56] which is what keeps us going.

[47:57] Keeps my boy in Cheerios and underpants.

[48:01] And Captain Underpants books.

[48:04] He is not reading those, thank you.

[48:06] And keeps us financially, emotionally supported.

[48:11] Keeps our genitals supported through Mack Weldon underwear.

[48:17] In many ways, I mean, that's a sponsor thing.

[48:20] And my hands because I hold up to Weiner and Testes.

[48:24] All right.

[48:25] Well, I was going to say something sincere, but now I feel like I can't.

[48:27] In many ways, just as even though the money often feels necessary to us and is a wonderful supplement to our day-to-day incomes and makes it a little easier for us to live and do the podcast, it is in a larger sense, for me at least, seeing that money coming in from the pledge drive is such an emotional support because it shows us how much you, the listeners, care.

[48:50] about what we're doing and want to support

[48:52] it and want to hear more about it

[48:54] and don't take it for granted

[48:56] and it really means a lot to us and so

[48:58] don't think we take you for granted

[49:00] in making those pledges. It really means a lot

[49:02] to us and we're thankful for it.

[49:03] And it was a very fun time.

[49:06] Obviously I had a lot of fun

[49:08] last night based on my

[49:10] Why are you winking at me right now, dude?

[49:11] demeanor this morning. Did you guys sleep together

[49:14] last night? Well, I think it was on the table.

[49:16] Together is a strong word.

[49:20] I don't know what I mean by that.

[49:22] So you both slept in several places?

[49:23] Yeah, that's right.

[49:24] That's a less strong word.

[49:25] So that's every night.

[49:27] Dan stormed off, and then me and Mark Gagliardi from We Got This

[49:33] just kept drinking and bullshitting about Dan leaving early.

[49:37] Classic bit.

[49:41] So, Dan, did you have something nice to say,

[49:43] or do we just want to razz on you for leaving early?

[49:45] Yeah.

[49:45] I wasn't even there, and I'm still going to razz on Dan for leaving early.

[49:48] Elliot stayed up until 4 in the morning

[49:51] And he wasn't even at the party

[49:53] He just wanted to stay up to show he could do it

[49:55] Because he's a big boy

[49:56] Who's going to tell me no?

[49:58] Nobody, that's who

[49:59] I can eat cereal whenever I want

[50:01] I'm going to have pizza for breakfast

[50:03] Get out of here

[50:04] And I'm going to have candy for dinner

[50:06] I didn't say that

[50:08] Dan, explain yourself

[50:11] No, I agree with everything that was said before

[50:14] It's a great support

[50:15] We get a lot of support

[50:17] in the way of

[50:19] messages from listeners

[50:21] which are also

[50:22] well appreciated, telling us

[50:25] how much they

[50:26] love the show, how much it means to them,

[50:29] how it's helped them through a hard time.

[50:31] But money, too.

[50:31] Don't forget the money.

[50:33] Money makes the world go round.

[50:35] Thank you for that.

[50:37] And the money goes also toward

[50:39] the MaxFun Network.

[50:40] And being part of the MaxFun Network for us has been

[50:43] a wonderful experience. It's been a great

[50:45] community for us to be a part of and

[50:47] It feels like we reached another level of podcasting, I don't know, confidence and quality.

[50:54] Sure.

[50:55] Considering the other shows.

[50:56] This episode not so much this one, but considering the shows that we're brethren to now.

[51:01] So thank you very much for pledging.

[51:05] If you didn't pledge this year, then next year is coming around.

[51:08] And by the time you're listening to this, there's a chance that my fate will be sealed.

[51:14] That I will be boxed up and sent off to the Grand Canyon to ride a burrow out into the middle of nowhere to what I have heard is one of the most beautiful places in the United States to record a special podcast.

[51:31] And one last note on this.

[51:35] When this gets released, the Max Fun Drive will be officially over, but it'll be over by a day.

[51:41] I'm pretty sure that if you decided to get in a last donation or two,

[51:47] you probably will be counted as part of the MaxFun tribe, I would imagine.

[51:52] So try it.

[51:53] Yeah, try it as an experiment.

[51:55] See what happens.

[51:57] So we've finished thanking the listeners and asked them to continue donating.

[52:01] I have a correction I'd like to make.

[52:04] And I'd like to, can we go to the beginning of the episode

[52:08] and apologize that we made jokes about a movie

[52:11] that the main point is a guy getting over the loss of a child.

[52:15] I feel like we should throw that out up front.

[52:17] It didn't really happen.

[52:18] It's a movie.

[52:19] I guess that's right.

[52:20] I mean, speaking as a father,

[52:22] which I can do because I have a child,

[52:23] it is, and it's just so wonderful.

[52:27] It's just such a wonderful thing.

[52:30] You seem really fulfilled for having sex that one time.

[52:34] That's all I needed.

[52:36] It is the thing I fear the most, and it is something that – it's one of those things where it's such a horrifying thought that you find your mind drawn to it in a way – in the way that something really terrible that you don't want to think about attracts your thinking, and then you worry that by thinking about it, you're making it more likely to happen.

[52:55] And even having that be a fear I live with every day, watching this movie, I was still like, come on, movie.

[53:02] And like, I'm not going to name specific movies, but a couple of the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture this year that I thought were pretty good were movies that dealt with the loss of a child on various stages.

[53:14] And it only sets this movie in stark relief about how bad it is.

[53:20] Yeah.

[53:20] I mean, if you're going to watch a movie about loss of a child, this is not the one to do.

[53:25] There's a couple of movies from this year.

[53:27] Or just go watch The Sweet Hereafter.

[53:28] How about that?

[53:29] Mm-hmm.

[53:31] That's a movie that kind of gets at similar things in a way, in a much deeper way.

[53:35] But, okay, I should have saved that for recommendations.

[53:38] I want to make a correction for something I said a couple episodes ago.

[53:41] I referred to an unpublished Marvel story of mine called Old Man Spider-Ham.

[53:46] And I erroneously misremembered the name of the artist who drew the book.

[53:51] It was not Scotty Young, as I said.

[53:53] It was Eric Canney, who was drawing in a very Scotty Young style.

[53:57] okay because when you said scotty young my my eyeballs popped out of my head and i had to stuff

[54:02] them back into my head but no if scotty young had drawn it they probably would have they probably

[54:08] would have published it because he's what's the name of the artist again eric canny who's also a

[54:13] really good artist he's really great and he has a couple books out now great uh and maybe someday

[54:19] marvel will see fit to print up that story now that spider ham is more relevant than ever yeah

[54:25] hot on the heels of Deadpool 2

[54:28] going to production.

[54:29] I would love it if they worked it out

[54:31] somehow for Spider-Ham to appear in Deadpool 2.

[54:34] That would be amazing.

[54:36] Who would do the voice of Spider-Ham?

[54:38] Because, of course, he's a CGI character.

[54:40] Yeah, oh no.

[54:41] You can't just hire an actual pig man to do it.

[54:43] No. They're uncommon.

[54:45] Yeah, they're difficult to find.

[54:47] And to find one that also has the acting chops, unlikely.

[54:49] Yes.

[54:50] So who's going to do the voice of Spider-Ham, Dan?

[54:54] The late Gary Marshall.

[54:56] Okay, well, they're going to do it Peter Cushing style.

[55:00] Okay.

[55:01] I mean, it's already a CGI character.

[55:03] You don't need to do a recreation of Gary Marshall for a character that is a pig man,

[55:08] which Gary Marshall was not one of.

[55:11] It leads me to believe you were not listening to what we were saying.

[55:14] That's a good question because it should not be too cartoony a voice.

[55:19] It's not a Rocket Raccoon type character because he's Peter Porker.

[55:23] He's a mild-mannered pig who becomes Spider-Ham.

[55:25] But it should be a little cartoony.

[55:27] Uh-huh.

[55:27] So I'm going to say, I don't know.

[55:32] Now, when you guys were watching Collateral Beauty tonight

[55:35] and they kept calling Will Smith's character Howard,

[55:37] were you ever thinking, is he Howard the Duck?

[55:40] I was not thinking that.

[55:43] And Dan's checking the Flophouse Recommends wiki,

[55:47] so he'll answer later.

[55:48] So who would do the voice of Spider-Ham?

[55:51] I'm going to say Grown-Up Jonathan Lipnicki.

[55:56] Wow.

[55:57] I mean, you know, I think he's ready to get back in the spotlight.

[56:01] He's super buff these days, and I don't know what he sounds like, so it's a wild card.

[56:05] Oh, wow.

[56:06] I like it.

[56:07] Casting unheard.

[56:08] Let's move on to letters from listeners.

[56:12] Okay.

[56:13] Let's move on to letters.

[56:16] L-E-T.

[56:18] Let's.

[56:18] L-E-T.

[56:19] Letters.

[56:20] There are two words that both have L-E-T in them.

[56:24] And what does that stand for?

[56:25] L, strength of a lion.

[56:29] E, memory of an elephant.

[56:32] T, strength of a termite.

[56:35] Proportionately stronger than a lion.

[56:38] Combine those two strengths and it's pretty strong.

[56:41] An elephant's memory, I've heard, is very strong.

[56:46] Let's do the other letters.

[56:48] T, greatness of a tiger, Tony specifically.

[56:52] E, richness of an emir.

[56:58] It rules the whole country, you see.

[57:01] And R stands, of course, for Roy Rogers.

[57:05] Roy Rogers, fried chicken chain.

[57:08] Roast beef sandwich is hard to find unless you're on a highway in New Jersey.

[57:14] letters the s stands for you stewart can i lick your stamp

[57:23] um so this one is from graham last name withheld who ran norton graham cracker can you think of

[57:34] any films where the version you watched made a substantial difference to how much you enjoyed it

[57:38] speaking from my own experience and opinions i could not understand the universal popularity

[57:42] of Blade Runner from the earlier cuts,

[57:44] which I felt

[57:46] lacked coherency, but I

[57:48] enjoyed the final cut far more,

[57:50] despite being almost the same film.

[57:52] Having grown up on the longer

[57:54] T-1000 edition of

[57:56] Terminator 2 made watching

[57:58] the theatrical version somewhat jarring,

[58:00] as scenes I thought were integral to

[58:02] the plot were absent altogether.

[58:04] The critically maligned Daredevil

[58:06] films actually somewhat watchable in its R-rated

[58:08] form, and most obscurely,

[58:11] The original Japanese version of The Adventures of Milo and Otis only shares about 60% of its footage with the later English version.

[58:18] They show a lot more of the stunt dogs being killed.

[58:20] If you watch it, you'll see why 40% was changed for Western audiences.

[58:25] It's all tea ceremony.

[58:27] It's mostly them bowing to each other in ever more elaborate ways to show respect.

[58:38] You must not receive a gift three times in a row, Otis,

[58:43] before eventually accepting it.

[58:45] So what movies would you recommend one version of?

[58:48] Milo has to make a pilgrimage to a specific shrine.

[58:51] What movies would you recommend one version of, but not the other?

[58:55] And for Stuart, what was it like re-watching Castle Freak

[58:58] and not seeing a scene you remembered so vividly?

[59:00] Love your show. Keep on flopping.

[59:02] Does the imaginary version count as a version of that movie?

[59:04] First off, I don't know.

[59:07] I mean, the version I saw must have been a little different

[59:09] than the version I saw originally.

[59:10] But I want to go back to Blade Runner.

[59:12] I'm going to tell you right now.

[59:13] I would like to talk about that too.

[59:14] Right now I'm going to tell you why the original version was popular

[59:17] and also your later version is popular

[59:20] because people don't give a shit about the narrative coherence of a movie

[59:23] that I don't actually think is very coherent at all.

[59:25] I don't think it's a particularly great movie.

[59:28] The reason why people like it

[59:30] and the reason why I will still say it's all right

[59:33] is because it's a beautiful movie.

[59:37] great it's a beautiful movie that has a great score like here's what i'm gonna say and this

[59:41] is gonna be controversial blade runner is you're gonna ruffle a few feathers i'm gonna ruffle a lot

[59:45] of feathers get your chickens out of the room unless you want their feathers ruffled the fuck

[59:48] up okay check in okay they're out of here the chickens out okay blade runner is the the hunger

[59:54] of science fiction movies it is a scene no it's a stylistic feast where the plot does not really

[1:00:03] make any sense and that is why i like the original theatrical cut with the voiceover on it more than

[1:00:09] the director's cut because at least you have harrison ford telling you what the hell is going

[1:00:13] on in the movie even even though it's led in and it's just describing things without that i grew up

[1:00:19] with the only the director's cut of the movie and there's a long time before i saw the theatrical

[1:00:23] cut and i read all the stuff about how terrible theatrical cut was how bad the voiceover was

[1:00:27] when i finally saw it i was like oh i know what's happening from scene to scene in this movie now

[1:00:32] now i know why the studio put this voiceover on it but it looks beautiful yeah uh a movie i'll say

[1:00:38] the versions are very different growing up with godzilla king of the monsters and then finally

[1:00:43] as an adult when it was released in theaters briefly again the original gojira which is a

[1:00:50] very different movie one is a kind of one is a monster movie and the other is about

[1:00:55] the horror of a city under

[1:00:57] massive attack by a force it can't

[1:01:00] stop and

[1:01:01] losing Raymond Burr

[1:01:03] just kind of looking out of windows and kind of like

[1:01:05] sleepily talking about what he was seeing

[1:01:07] really improved the movie. It's a very

[1:01:09] different movie.

[1:01:10] I remember... Just not to say that I didn't

[1:01:13] grow up loving Godzilla King of the Monsters.

[1:01:15] No one would ever accuse you of that.

[1:01:18] Okay, good. Thank you. The first time

[1:01:20] I saw Aliens, and I think this

[1:01:22] is the version that I taped off of television

[1:01:23] and had for many years.

[1:01:25] It was the director's cut.

[1:01:28] The VHS that said sports on it.

[1:01:29] Why are you hiding aliens?

[1:01:32] It was the director's cut that included a lot of scenes.

[1:01:39] The stuff about her daughter?

[1:01:40] Yeah, well, the scenes that it had that...

[1:01:43] All right, first it had a scene that's unnecessary,

[1:01:45] which was the...

[1:01:47] That dance party at the end?

[1:01:48] You see the colonists on, what is it, LU-486 or something like that?

[1:01:53] No, LU-486.

[1:01:54] You see the columnists.

[1:01:58] You see Hedda Hopper and Luella Parsons.

[1:02:01] Trying to get an interview with this xenomorph.

[1:02:03] Rumors going around that this xenomorph might be gay.

[1:02:06] Let's blow the lid off this thing.

[1:02:08] The studios are trying to cover it up.

[1:02:10] No, the colonists were, you see them.

[1:02:14] Mr. and Mrs. America and all the spaceships at sea.

[1:02:17] Getting attacked, and we don't need to see that.

[1:02:20] It's better not to know what happened to the colonists

[1:02:23] Even though you know what happened to the colonists

[1:02:24] The movie's called Aliens

[1:02:25] But it's better not to see that

[1:02:28] You're like oh do they just give up on their dreams

[1:02:30] Of founding a new colony

[1:02:32] I guess it was climate change

[1:02:34] It's better for the movie not to start that way though

[1:02:36] You want to wait on the mystery

[1:02:39] To edge you a little bit

[1:02:40] But there are two scenes that I think

[1:02:43] Make the movie a lot better

[1:02:44] And one is the one where she sees

[1:02:47] Ripley sees that her daughter has died

[1:02:49] during the time that she was in hypersleep,

[1:02:51] which adds a little emotional backstory

[1:02:55] to why she's so attached to Newt.

[1:02:57] And two, there's...

[1:02:58] Because Newt's a precocious, cool old kid.

[1:03:00] Yeah.

[1:03:00] Who says they mostly come out at night.

[1:03:02] She's like an audience surrogate.

[1:03:03] Go on.

[1:03:05] Affirmative.

[1:03:06] And there's the...

[1:03:09] You're a bug hunt man, game over, yeah?

[1:03:10] I'm in the pipe five by five.

[1:03:12] There's...

[1:03:13] There's a scene where they set up automated guns

[1:03:18] to uh the the aliens are coming down the corridors at them and they set up these automated guns that

[1:03:26] are slowly going down you see the countdown of their ammunition slowly going out and uh and you

[1:03:33] don't know what's going to happen and i won't spoil it for people who haven't seen aliens but

[1:03:36] it's a very tense scene and it's one that i miss very much when i see the theatrical version

[1:03:41] yeah i mean aliens is a great movie yeah it is so let's see uh the extended versions of lord of

[1:03:50] the rings uh obviously i prefer the extended versions i think the extended version of return

[1:03:55] of the king and maybe i feel like that's the only one where it's a toss-up between the theatrical

[1:04:00] or the extended version but the the extended version of fellowship the ring and two towers

[1:04:04] i think are essential that's the preferred version uh i would say the the tv comedy central edit of

[1:04:12] coming to america is hilarious if only for all the swapping of uh fuck you to forget you uh that's

[1:04:19] hilarious that's i was gonna say about the version of ferris bueller's day off that we had on tape

[1:04:24] as a kid was off tv and there was a lot of there's a few moments of that it's like if you i'm not

[1:04:29] saying Cameron is uptight but if you took a piece of coal and shoved it in his fist in two weeks

[1:04:35] you'd have a diamond of course it took me it was a long time before I learned that the line was up

[1:04:39] his ass and I was and I was always like why don't come when he says in his fist his voice sounds

[1:04:43] totally different like he's in a different room even I remember in I remember in college I a buddy

[1:04:49] of mine had a VHS tape of uh the Peter Jackson movie Bad Taste and he's like oh you gotta watch

[1:04:54] this it's from the guy who made dead alive and i had seen dead alive previously but i had seen the

[1:05:00] r-rated version oh yeah and first off it's like fucking like 64 minutes long it's super short

[1:05:07] and they just edited all the awesome gore out and i'm like this movie is dog shit so that didn't uh

[1:05:14] and then i ended up having to track down and finding the the unrated version which is amazing

[1:05:19] and it's super great so and it's one of my favorite movies of all time yeah definitely

[1:05:24] only see the unrated version of dead alive that's a good one uh should i move on sure

[1:05:31] uh this is from let me look joseph last name withheld gordon levitt oh wow

[1:05:39] house du flop your biggest gay ass fan again hey recently i noticed yes sorry

[1:05:48] Recently, I noticed Elliot using yet again a descriptive term that subjectively, personally, in my head, is particularly grating.

[1:05:54] He described a character's development in the film as their journey.

[1:05:59] He's also used this odd therapeutic epithet to describe plot as well.

[1:06:04] Now, I find Elliot as cute and cuddly and as wonderful as I find Dan sturdy and as well extant or as hot as Stuella DeVille.

[1:06:12] But this word is loathsomely overused in general, but particularly as applied to movies.

[1:06:18] I only prefer it to be applied to reality shows.

[1:06:21] This made me realize that there are many such filler words regularly used by critics and reviewers.

[1:06:28] I would call journey to be a totally apt word.

[1:06:32] We'll continue.

[1:06:34] Some good, some not so good, which I find corny in the sense of being lame.

[1:06:39] some of these include visceral balletic tactile and the dread academic eyes academicized sorry

[1:06:49] filmic are there balletic is definitely when it's referred to when referring to violence

[1:06:54] because i'm always like have these guys seen a ballet but they all i saw equilibrium dude

[1:07:02] that's a ballet right because all they're really saying is that this violence was well choreographed

[1:07:08] But it's not really balletic.

[1:07:09] I saw that scene in Boondock Saints

[1:07:12] where Willem Dafoe is flipping out.

[1:07:15] Oh, that movie sucks.

[1:07:17] End it, and then I've got an answer for it.

[1:07:20] Are there any of these grayish shorthand words

[1:07:22] that you dislike?

[1:07:24] The male gaze?

[1:07:25] Fetishization?

[1:07:26] I suspect Stuella has a high disdain

[1:07:29] for Hustler's old Peter meter.

[1:07:31] Joseph's last name would help.

[1:07:32] I was kind of thrown in there.

[1:07:35] Overused a bit.

[1:07:37] it's really only used by the one guy but uh i do like uh anytime a movie has any element of

[1:07:44] synthesizer in the score and or uh neon in the movie it's gonna get lurid in the uh review

[1:07:52] somewhere if there's anything through venetian blinds then yeah yeah yeah here are the here

[1:07:57] are the words that in reviews the term american classic bothers me because just called a classic

[1:08:04] You're then saying that this movie says something

[1:08:07] Uniquely true about America

[1:08:08] Which is rarely the case

[1:08:10] I remember in the ads for Fight Club

[1:08:13] They were always quoting Peter Travers

[1:08:15] As calling it an American classic

[1:08:16] And that really bothered me

[1:08:17] In ads for movies

[1:08:20] Visionary, we've talked about this of course

[1:08:22] And even when it comes to visionary I guess because they can see

[1:08:24] And this is something I was complaining about

[1:08:26] On Twitter not too long ago

[1:08:28] Woefully miscast

[1:08:30] I've never seen a movie

[1:08:33] where someone has i've seen movies where people are miscast never so miscast that i felt whoa

[1:08:38] which is literally like edgar allen poe level melancholy and sadness yeah they've never you

[1:08:45] haven't been watching a movie and you're like oh no a pox upon my house for this casting george

[1:08:51] clooney shouldn't be playing batman oh god there is no god i'll guess i'll just live in a decaying

[1:08:58] manner yeah worry that my sister was buried alive uh i don't know that i have any of these um

[1:09:07] honestly like they're ones that are specific to like certain reviewers like i'm a anything

[1:09:13] matt singer says i'm like fuck that go back to go back to eating branded uh fast food menus

[1:09:20] he's eating the menus i mean if if it gets close enough to his king kong burger it'll get eaten

[1:09:28] that's uh so dan what are some words you don't like well i was saying that trust honesty yeah

[1:09:35] forthrightness affection love time death uh everything in between if this movie had been

[1:09:45] made in the 90s yeah and it was an indie film it would have been called love time death and

[1:09:49] everything in between or like love time death and some other great flavors or some shitty like

[1:09:54] winky title like that everything in the 90s had to have shitty winky titles yeah love time death

[1:10:02] and a duffel bed yeah exactly love time death and other and other fun things to do and i'd be in

[1:10:08] blockbuster video and i'd be like this looks good mom can i rent this i'll try it uh i didn't have

[1:10:18] anything good to say about this so we should just move on cool let's just move on um let's get

[1:10:22] moving on. I think we're only

[1:10:24] going to do three letters this night, so this will

[1:10:26] be our last one. Okay,

[1:10:28] the third act.

[1:10:29] The denouement.

[1:10:31] That's French for last letter.

[1:10:33] This one is from Riley, middle

[1:10:36] name withheld Quinn,

[1:10:37] who writes, hey Flop Kings,

[1:10:40] when I was 80% asleep, I muttered

[1:10:42] something to my girlfriend and asked her

[1:10:44] to take it down so I could send it in to you guys

[1:10:46] as a letter. How lazy.

[1:10:48] Write it yourself.

[1:10:50] He's dating her from the movie Her.

[1:10:52] here follows her note

[1:10:54] either help me make sense of it or let me

[1:10:56] resign myself to worshipping

[1:10:58] Nyarlathotep

[1:10:59] the crawling chaos

[1:11:02] is it creeping chaos or crawling chaos

[1:11:04] crawling chaos

[1:11:05] although I don't know a way to

[1:11:08] worship him he's really more of a servant of the elder gods

[1:11:10] she sent a

[1:11:12] or he sent he

[1:11:14] he said girlfriend right

[1:11:15] whoa Dan

[1:11:17] could be a lesbian I said

[1:11:19] don't make that assumption just say they

[1:11:21] all right that's acceptable now riley is just uh ace of spies what did riley say okay

[1:11:28] yes what did riley say riley sent a nice screenshot of it which shouldn't make it

[1:11:36] harder to read i don't know why you're showing it to ellie and like look at this stuff exhibit a

[1:11:41] the printed out i got proof i'll enter this into evidence says exhibit a um

[1:11:47] riley writes just just tell us oh my god

[1:11:52] sounded out phonetically if you have to

[1:11:57] blophouse letter if you had said riley tells us one more time i think it would have left

[1:12:03] kk i'll come with you kk yeah i'll come with you blophouse letter dash houses of parliament dash

[1:12:12] commons and lords dash and a slobs v snobs film with a cool teen made pm

[1:12:18] sewell convention speakers dais skateboard tricks challenge the flop guys to come up with a name

[1:12:26] that's the word dais yeah like rock me i'm a dais no and so continue riley says challenge the flop

[1:12:35] guys to come up with a name that was it oh so okay so it's a slobs versus snobs comedy where

[1:12:39] I guess the House of Commons and the House of Lords are in a fight.

[1:12:42] And with a cool team-made PM, apparently.

[1:12:45] Makes sense, okay.

[1:12:46] And there's a skateboard trick.

[1:12:48] Speakers Deus skateboard tricks.

[1:12:51] Okay.

[1:12:51] Sewell Convention.

[1:12:53] Is that Rufus Sewell?

[1:12:54] I'm not sure.

[1:12:55] He's got to be the bad guy.

[1:12:56] I mean, you sure maybe it's a misspelling of Sewell Convention,

[1:12:59] and there's like a Ghostbusters angle to it?

[1:13:01] Or are you saying that...

[1:13:02] That would be a hell of a misspelling.

[1:13:03] They sound alike, but they're not spelled alike at all.

[1:13:07] I've had enough times when I've typed a word into my phone

[1:13:10] and it's thought it was some other cockamamie word I didn't want.

[1:13:12] Like cockamamie.

[1:13:13] Yeah, type in cockamamie and it thinks I want cockamamie Eisenhower.

[1:13:18] This is not my Mamie Eisenhower erotic fan fiction.

[1:13:22] Wow, that's a lot of pressure to come up with a good name on the spot,

[1:13:26] but that's pressure that we can handle because we're professionals.

[1:13:28] I think I'd call it London thrashing.

[1:13:30] Oh, cool.

[1:13:32] Because we've got the skateboard angle in there.

[1:13:34] I would say...

[1:13:37] Houses and lords and everything else.

[1:13:40] And Dan, where would you go?

[1:13:43] Keep in mind, I'm now taking bringing down the houses off the table.

[1:13:47] Extra anarchy in the UK.

[1:13:49] Okay, interesting.

[1:13:51] More than the regular size.

[1:13:53] When you need a little bit more anarchy, that's the one you get from behind the counter.

[1:13:56] Extra strength anarchy in the UK.

[1:13:59] Okay, so we did like a B plus job on this assignment.

[1:14:03] That's generous.

[1:14:05] I'm giving us an A for trying.

[1:14:07] oh wow uh but yeah if you have any notes that you've written yourself or had dictated at late

[1:14:15] at night and don't understand anymore please send them to us send it to us we'll come up with a

[1:14:19] title for them i guess um but uh now we move on to our final segment of the evening or whenever

[1:14:26] you're listening to this podcast and that is recommendations movies that we like instead of

[1:14:33] Collateral Beauty, which I keep wanting to call

[1:14:35] Collateral Damage because that's a phrase

[1:14:38] and Collateral Beauty is not.

[1:14:39] Okay, Dan coming out

[1:14:42] strongly against the phrase

[1:14:43] Collateral Beauty.

[1:14:44] Alright.

[1:14:46] I hope people listen to this episode

[1:14:48] long into the future and realize

[1:14:51] that far into the future

[1:14:53] where Collateral Beauty is like a thing

[1:14:54] that everybody says

[1:14:55] and will seem totally

[1:14:58] divorced from

[1:15:01] Yeah, exactly, like

[1:15:02] that gi joe retaliation episode where i was like there's no way the american people would uh elect

[1:15:08] a man with a silly hair like jonathan price and then people keep tweeting me about it and every

[1:15:14] time i'm like oh i feel bad about saying that thing and i feel worse about our the current state

[1:15:19] of our country i mean yeah it's like that is to to say uh before it happened that america would

[1:15:26] never elect like a bad person president i think is or super villain i think it's totally okay to

[1:15:31] have been to be like, you know what?

[1:15:33] I was wrong.

[1:15:34] I'm not going to feel bad about assuming that.

[1:15:36] You guys are idiots because you didn't think the American people

[1:15:38] would hire, elect Cobra Commander to be the commander-in-chief.

[1:15:43] I don't know.

[1:15:45] Commander experience.

[1:15:46] That's true.

[1:15:47] That's very hard to get to.

[1:15:49] But that's the thing.

[1:15:50] That's why they wouldn't elect him is because they're suspicious

[1:15:54] of somebody with previous experience in being a commander.

[1:15:56] They want an outsider.

[1:15:58] He's establishment.

[1:15:58] Let's just say Cobra Commander is establishment,

[1:16:01] And they want an outsider like Globulus.

[1:16:03] Like Globulus.

[1:16:05] Couldn't even say it with a straight face.

[1:16:08] Resident Globulus, which is kind of what we have.

[1:16:11] But anyway.

[1:16:13] That's where I got that name.

[1:16:15] So I was sitting here.

[1:16:20] You know, we've done this.

[1:16:22] What do we do now, Dan?

[1:16:23] Like I said already, recommendations.

[1:16:25] We've done this for nearly 10 years, this podcast.

[1:16:28] When's our anniversary?

[1:16:29] When's our 10th anniversary?

[1:16:30] Keep in mind, I wasn't here for the originals.

[1:16:32] Well, me and Dan, our anniversary's in August.

[1:16:35] When did we do I Know Who Killed Me?

[1:16:37] That was your first evening.

[1:16:38] That would have been, I don't know, that was episode eight.

[1:16:42] You can check iTunes.

[1:16:44] I think it tells you when it came out.

[1:16:46] So we'll have to figure out if we want to do a 10th anniversary.

[1:16:48] We'll just do both, 10th anniversary of the show

[1:16:50] and then a mini 10th anniversary for when the original peaches came together.

[1:16:53] Ironically, not as the original members of the show.

[1:16:56] Maybe people could write in.

[1:16:58] You're explaining the joke for me.

[1:17:00] You can write in, explain, and with suggestions about how to celebrate 10 years of the Flophouse,

[1:17:04] which seems crazy now that I've just said that.

[1:17:06] Yeah.

[1:17:06] Oh, God.

[1:17:07] But I say that just to say that we've been doing recommendations that entire time.

[1:17:14] They were a fixture of the show from the very beginning,

[1:17:16] and I still forgot that I was supposed to come up with a movie until halfway through the podcast tonight.

[1:17:23] I thought you were going to say that you had run out.

[1:17:25] Oh, that's why you were so quiet, Dan?

[1:17:26] I thought it was because you were half asleep.

[1:17:28] I thought you were going to say that you're like,

[1:17:30] we've gone through a lot of movies, so it's hard to think of another one,

[1:17:33] and I was going to make fun of you.

[1:17:34] Like, yeah, there's only been 240 movies in the history of filmmaking.

[1:17:37] But no, that makes sense.

[1:17:39] It's actually, I should make fun of you for forgetting the thing we do

[1:17:43] every episode for 10 years,

[1:17:44] but it just makes me worry about you a little bit.

[1:17:47] You didn't cough at all tonight, did you?

[1:17:49] I have been coughing a little bit.

[1:17:52] Pregnant.

[1:17:53] One thing I will say is doing this, doing the recommendation section of the podcast at this point, it genuinely puts pressure on me to watch movies that aren't just the movie we watch for the flop.

[1:18:05] Oh, yeah, for sure.

[1:18:07] Well, that's what I was.

[1:18:08] I haven't seen a new movie since we were last together, certainly.

[1:18:14] So like part of it was just like, what if I just recommended a book?

[1:18:19] And then I'm like, no, that's cheating.

[1:18:20] We will make fun of you forever.

[1:18:23] Is it a book about movies, at least?

[1:18:24] No, it's not a book about movies, but it led me to a movie.

[1:18:27] Not permissible.

[1:18:28] It led me to a movie.

[1:18:29] Okay.

[1:18:30] Because I read The Yiddish Policeman's Union recently, and I enjoyed it.

[1:18:33] Are you going to recommend Orson Welles' Heart of Darkness, which is mentioned in the book?

[1:18:36] That movie does not exist.

[1:18:37] No.

[1:18:39] And it's the one thing I want to ask Michael Chabon.

[1:18:40] Anyone listening, if you have the chance to ask Michael Chabon a question, I want you

[1:18:44] to ask him for me.

[1:18:45] In the alternate universe where the Jews of Europe were resettled in Alaska, how did it

[1:18:50] also change whether orson welles made a movie of heart of darkness or not i mean he follows

[1:18:54] hodgman on instagram so there's a decent chance hodgman could ask him john hodgman yeah if you're

[1:19:00] listening he's not he's not well somebody tell hodgman this because he's not speaking to me right

[1:19:05] now that's not true maybe i'll ask him but uh it's i've always been like it's just an interesting

[1:19:10] kind of the other difference of this alternate universe because he was going to make a movie

[1:19:14] of hard darkness yeah but it was gonna be too expensive so okay so you're reading it

[1:19:20] no i enjoyed it very much but that led me to think of police academy four i should recommend

[1:19:26] a michael chabon movie which is wonder boys wonder boys wonderful boys that i enjoy very much

[1:19:34] um it was not uh it was not particularly lauded at its time of release i mean it wasn't i mean

[1:19:43] the critics liked it okay but critics liked it okay but no one went and saw it uh and that's

[1:19:49] because it's a movie about a college professor and a creative writing student who are having

[1:19:53] issues that they help each other out with that didn't was a huge hit that didn't rock the box

[1:19:58] office for 19 whenever it's sort of a melancholy comedy but it's it's very funny uh in spite of

[1:20:06] having this kind of also known as every comedy on cable or amazon all right well apparently elliot's

[1:20:11] not a fan of wonder boys oh no it's fine just this this new wave of melancholic comedies um sorry i

[1:20:17] shouldn't interrupt so much no i don't have a whole lot to say other than it's a movie about

[1:20:21] a michael douglas plays a college professor who's been trying to write a book for years and years

[1:20:28] and years and uh his protege um in the movie fuck what's who tommy mcguire uh peter parker

[1:20:41] yeah i was like biscuit he uh is um he's a very talented uh writer and michael douglas realizes

[1:20:53] this and um jesus it's a complex plot honestly now that i'm thinking about it it's almost like

[1:20:59] a screwball plot slowed down is what uh roger ebert said about it i think that's very accurate

[1:21:05] so i'm not going to try and get into all of the ins and outs of it it's just a beautifully shot

[1:21:11] film it there's just gorgeous uh stuff in it and i forget which i think it's in pittsburgh

[1:21:18] that it's set and they managed to make this like run down factory town look magical uh and again

[1:21:25] it's got a great cast it's got francis mcdormand in it too and she's great along with uh michael

[1:21:32] douglas probably putting in his best performance i think so i recommend wonder boys if you like

[1:21:38] the works of michael chabon you should watch this film which captures it pretty well even though

[1:21:43] in the book uh the professor is decidedly jewish and not michael douglas i mean michael douglas is

[1:21:51] half jewish is he he's kirk douglas's son kirk douglas is jewish all right well he doesn't he

[1:21:57] certainly doesn't come off as jewish in anything he does anyway what about wall street he might be

[1:22:04] jewish i don't know who his mother is oh my god i just remembered the movie we watched tonight is

[1:22:09] like a sad version of the game that's hilarious dan i'm gonna look up and see if michael douglas

[1:22:19] so while dan's uh well damn well elliot's doing that i'm gonna recommend a handful of movies i

[1:22:24] guess so a whole handful so no yeah only his father is jewish uh dan had mentioned an episode

[1:22:32] or two ago that he had seen get out and i finally saw it and i think it's great you should totally

[1:22:37] go see it uh it manages to be a successful uh horror movie like a schlocky horror movie

[1:22:44] but at the same time i think the uh the political message it's uh it's putting out there is well

[1:22:51] thought out and deepens the the horror movie-ness of it uh and it's a movie where as things are

[1:22:58] revealed uh it actually becomes a more interesting movie as opposed to being demystified and less

[1:23:04] interesting which is often the case with that kind of movie get out it's just a great strong

[1:23:08] first feature for a director so boo on dan for not recommending it so you're saying get out and

[1:23:15] see get out get out and see get out before dan can respond i'm going to keep going uh i'm also

[1:23:20] going to recommend uh last time when we were doing the show uh john hodgman was playing me off the

[1:23:27] stage. And I didn't get to bring up the fact that the movie I was recommending, Manborg, which is

[1:23:31] great, has at the end a trailer for a fake movie called Biocop, which is amazing. And that's

[1:23:41] available on YouTube. So if you have any time at all, go onto YouTube and watch a five minute

[1:23:46] trailer for a movie that doesn't exist called Biocop. You'll feel better about yourself. Go do

[1:23:52] that. I don't want to talk too much about it because I don't want to ruin it. So go see that.

[1:23:55] and then i'm going to recommend the movie i'm actually going to recommend uh although actually

[1:24:00] no you know what i'm just going to say get out is my recommendation it's awesome wow you should

[1:24:04] you should go see that it's got a lot of great performances uh yeah save that other one for

[1:24:10] another time yeah i'll just eat it let me just open up my little pouch and put it back in there

[1:24:14] your movie pouch when you open it

[1:24:17] Stuart Wellington's movie pouch.

[1:24:19] Get back in there, gross movie.

[1:24:21] What did you say, Dan?

[1:24:23] I know, that sounds like his Turner Classic movie show.

[1:24:26] Stuart Wellington's movie pouch.

[1:24:27] Wouldn't that be great if I was able to trump Elliot's bid

[1:24:30] to be a Turner Classic movie host with Stuart's movie pouch?

[1:24:35] Movie sack.

[1:24:36] I got a sack full of movies.

[1:24:39] My request is very simple.

[1:24:41] Just put me on, like, do a little thing on Shudder

[1:24:45] where I introduce fucking movies.

[1:24:47] I'd gladly do that.

[1:24:48] Oh, that'd be great.

[1:24:48] Here's, okay, anyone who's listening to this,

[1:24:51] if you work at Turner Classic Movies,

[1:24:52] you know somebody who works at Turner Classic Movies.

[1:24:54] One of my career goals is to be a Turner Classic Movies movie host.

[1:25:00] Hook me up with it.

[1:25:02] It's something that I'm pretty sure I can do.

[1:25:04] Thank you.

[1:25:04] That's very nice of you to say.

[1:25:05] And I would do it in a very respectable way.

[1:25:09] I'm not looking to slag any movies on there.

[1:25:11] I'd really like to do it.

[1:25:12] I'm more than willing to share an apartment with Faye Mankiewicz,

[1:25:16] if that's how it works.

[1:25:17] Because I assume he shared an apartment with Robert Osborne, and that's where they shoot all the intros, in that apartment.

[1:25:20] I feel like if, like, I think I'm pretty likely to get offered that gig, Elliot.

[1:25:26] And, you know, I'm just up front, I'm going to say, you'd be better at it than me.

[1:25:30] Like, I'm really charming, and I'm really funny and everything, but I think you'd be better at it than me.

[1:25:34] So just offer it to Elliot instead.

[1:25:35] I mean, Stuart's more handsome than me, so they're probably going to give it to Stuart.

[1:25:39] Yeah, that's true.

[1:25:40] I'm tall, too.

[1:25:42] And he's tall.

[1:25:42] Isn't that kind of like a bad boy image?

[1:25:44] uh-huh and you know i can dance when i have to usually doesn't enter into it but maybe no but

[1:25:51] if i had to if you had like if someone had to put a gun to your head yeah yeah like the only way to

[1:25:56] save a bus full of people that's falling off a cliff if you danced okay i'm gonna give you a

[1:26:02] hypothetical we're on a planet and ronan the accuser pops out and he's got one of them infinity

[1:26:07] stones and you're like dude i i dance and win the day okay i'm kind of confused about how you're

[1:26:14] Dancing wins the dance contest.

[1:26:16] You haven't seen Guardians of the Galaxy?

[1:26:17] That's what basically happens.

[1:26:19] I mean, what I remember from Guardians of the Galaxy

[1:26:21] is the unnecessary amount of swear words.

[1:26:23] It was not necessarily called Ronan the Accuser, a bitch.

[1:26:27] You were really mad because Danielle had her hands over your ears

[1:26:31] so you didn't have to hear those swears.

[1:26:33] I was like, oh, I want to hear the bad words.

[1:26:35] I am disappointed that Ronan the Accuser,

[1:26:38] who has become a kind of complex character in the comics,

[1:26:40] was made just a the regular marvel movie two-dimensional bad i thought he was i thought

[1:26:45] he was much more interesting than that but that's mostly i think lee pace did what he could i love

[1:26:49] the idea that that movie the most of it seems like a happy-go-lucky goofy space movie and then

[1:26:55] all the scenes uh on ronan the accuser's ship is like super like grim and gross like it seems like

[1:27:03] it's part of a completely different movie and i love that about it it's fair well we'll see what

[1:27:08] happens with the second one since i'm hoping well we'll talk about later the storyline they're doing

[1:27:11] the second one as i hope one from the comics that i like anywho i'm gonna recommend a movie that i

[1:27:18] feel like was kind of trying to do the thing that this movie was trying to do and achieved it much

[1:27:22] more and it's a movie from 1986 called promise with james garner and james woods which was

[1:27:28] technically a hallmark hall of fame tv movie wow but it's available on this is a real first for

[1:27:34] but it's available i mean i saw it on turner classic movies it's available i think on dvd

[1:27:38] uh and it is about james garner is a man who is in middle age but doesn't want he doesn't live

[1:27:44] like he's a middle age he lives like a much younger man and his brother played by james woods

[1:27:49] is a paranoid schizophrenic and their mother passes away and he had promised his mother years

[1:27:54] ago i'll take care of my brother if anything should happen to you and he's finding it now

[1:27:58] very hard to live up to that promise in a way he didn't realize it would be because he never

[1:28:03] really thought about it before and for the most part it's a pretty understated movie there's of

[1:28:09] course a scene where james woods flips out completely uh which is a little over the top

[1:28:13] but uh does he stick anything in his fucking tummy no he's not he doesn't because he doesn't

[1:28:19] enter the new flesh but uh the but uh it's a movie about uh two brothers who really have nothing in

[1:28:27] common and have trouble living with each other in a way that they can never really overcome and

[1:28:33] the best that they can do is kind of come to an understanding about each other in a way that they

[1:28:38] love each other but they can't fix each other and i found that there was an for especially for a

[1:28:43] hallmark tv movie oh this was at the time when they were putting out really really quality tv

[1:28:47] movies that for that it really got to that point in an honest way in a way that something like

[1:28:55] Collateral Beauty did not do

[1:28:56] And the score in it is done by David Shire

[1:28:58] Who did the score for my favorite movie, Taking a Pelham 123

[1:29:01] And it is light years different from the score

[1:29:03] For that movie

[1:29:04] For the score of Taking a Pelham 123

[1:29:07] Or Collateral Beauty

[1:29:08] Because Collateral Beauty sounds like it was scored

[1:29:11] By like Atticus Ross' nephew

[1:29:13] There's a surprise about a beeps and boops

[1:29:15] In the soundtrack of it

[1:29:16] Not in Collateral Beauty I mean

[1:29:18] So Promise I would recommend as

[1:29:20] Just a solidly made family drama

[1:29:23] Type movie that I liked

[1:29:25] A bunch of recommendations.

[1:29:27] That's an accurate summation of what just happened.

[1:29:30] Now what's the next thing that we're going to do?

[1:29:33] The next thing we do is we...

[1:29:35] Do we do prizes or a quiz?

[1:29:38] I'm curious about Stuart doing one of those famous dances of his.

[1:29:40] I hit stop on the recorder and we all go home to our snug little beds.

[1:29:45] And we go shuffle off to dreamland.

[1:29:48] What if I need to shuffle off to Buffalo?

[1:29:50] You're free to do that.

[1:29:51] What if I just want to dream about a buffalo?

[1:29:53] The Free Country for now.

[1:29:55] Oh, too topical.

[1:29:58] Yeah.

[1:29:59] Okay, Air America.

[1:29:59] I'm getting too saucy.

[1:30:01] We should probably sign off.

[1:30:02] For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:30:04] I've been Stuart, the Quaken Quaker Wellington.

[1:30:08] Not actually a Quaker.

[1:30:11] I was going to ask about that.

[1:30:12] And friends, who are we really when we get down to it?

[1:30:19] There's really only three constants in life.

[1:30:20] Love, death.

[1:30:22] Just a bunch of meat and bones.

[1:30:24] And time.

[1:30:24] We're just sacks of flesh with maybe a little bit of spark and who knows who put it there.

[1:30:28] Can you put a name on it?

[1:30:30] Can you really put a name on the thing that makes us us?

[1:30:33] Put a name on it.

[1:30:34] I guess if I had to put a name on it, for me, I'd say Elliot Kalin.

[1:30:39] Good night, everybody.

[1:30:41] Good night.

[1:30:52] oh let's start this show yeah yeah yeah show that we do all right let's call it a podcast

[1:30:59] do the intro first and then we'll do the second part second okay love it so the second part is

[1:31:06] the show yeah so you decided what part are we doing now second part uh in three two one

[1:31:13] on this episode

[1:31:15] i don't know why you looked at me like i was about to unleash a jpe on you

[1:31:20] three two one they'll look to you like i did something bad i'm a naughty little boy

[1:31:27] with my counting down oh can you believe me numbers usually go the other way

[1:31:32] all right maximum fun.org comedy and culture artist owned listener supported

Ep. #228 - Collateral Beauty

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