Ep. #225 - Max Magician and the Legend of the Rings

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Max Magician and the Legend of the Rings.

[0:05] Wait, we do? Why?

[0:07] Uh, it's Stuart's birthday.

[0:09] Birthday! Birthday!

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

[0:40] What's up? It's me, Stuart Wellington.

[0:43] And I'm your littlest baby brother, Elliot Kaler.

[0:46] Okay.

[0:47] I'm trying out some new material.

[0:49] No, no, I like it.

[0:50] It tracks. It all tracks.

[0:52] Before we get on to the show...

[0:55] No, you got some business up top, Dan.

[0:57] Let's discuss the elephant in the room.

[0:59] And by elephant, I think we all know what I'm talking about.

[1:01] I don't really know.

[1:03] Dan, is this because I'm sitting in my underpants?

[1:05] This is because Stuart is sitting in his underpants currently.

[1:08] There's a table between me and Stuart, so I can...

[1:10] I forgot that he is pantsless at the moment,

[1:13] wearing just his skivvies and then a hoodie with the hood up.

[1:16] So at this point in the Flophouse...

[1:19] So to paint a picture, Stuart looks like the Unabomber in his underpants.

[1:24] So at this point in the lifespan of the Flophouse,

[1:27] what happens is I am in my apartment.

[1:31] I'm waiting for food to arrive.

[1:33] Contemplating the dark corners of the room.

[1:35] Yeah.

[1:36] So you're in a real yellow wallpaper type situation.

[1:39] We order in takeout for Stuart and myself.

[1:42] Elliot, of course, comes with his Popeyes.

[1:44] I have the door open.

[1:45] ABP, always be Popeye-ing.

[1:47] The door is open to my apartment in defiance of safety in New York City.

[1:54] Now you're giving away all the information.

[1:57] You're just asking for a chud to walk in.

[2:00] But instead of a chud walking in, what happens is...

[2:03] A chub walked in.

[2:04] Stuart walks in every time.

[2:06] No, dude!

[2:07] Because you were half erect.

[2:08] Yeah, okay. Good save.

[2:12] Let me check the tape.

[2:13] Okay, that was a cool check.

[2:15] Stuart knows that my apartment's door is probably unlocked,

[2:19] waiting for him to show up.

[2:21] Actually, yeah, I was doing the doorbell, but I should just walk in.

[2:24] Just walk in.

[2:25] Well, you're polite.

[2:26] Say your catchphrase.

[2:27] That's the difference.

[2:28] That's why my exercise is polities.

[2:30] Oh, boy.

[2:31] Anyway, you were saying?

[2:32] Well, I like to open the door, I say my catchphrase,

[2:34] everybody fuckin' cracks up.

[2:37] Archie goes nuts.

[2:39] Stuart's the only person I know where when he enters the room,

[2:41] an actual studio audience sound plays.

[2:43] I'm like, this is reality.

[2:44] No one's watching this.

[2:46] Sometimes it's a slide whistle.

[2:48] You never know.

[2:49] But where I'm headed with this is...

[2:51] Keep them guessing.

[2:52] That's one of my catchphrases.

[2:53] I hear the door open.

[2:54] He opens the door and goes, keep them guessing,

[2:56] and then walks in to applause and slide whistles.

[3:00] I'm in my living room watching the TVs.

[3:05] I duck my head down the hall to see...

[3:07] Often you're like, oh, Wild Things was just playing.

[3:10] I just happened upon it.

[3:12] I'm like, why not leave it?

[3:13] I was watching it as a joke.

[3:15] Yeah, me and Archie thought it was hilarious, right?

[3:18] We're not turned on by it.

[3:20] No, we like the tongue-in-cheek ironic nature.

[3:23] Both things can be true.

[3:25] They cannot, Dan.

[3:27] I look down the hallway,

[3:29] and the first thing I see is Stuart methodically taking off his pants.

[3:33] What do you mean methodically?

[3:34] Because I'm going to get it written into podcasts.

[3:37] As opposed to Stuart, what, ripping his pants off?

[3:40] Like a bear who has somehow his pants on?

[3:42] I would not put that past Stuart.

[3:45] Yeah, I scratch my legs up against a tree trunk so that the bark rips my pants off.

[3:50] I'm imagining Stuart on the ground,

[3:52] like taking your pants off the way a child takes their pants off

[3:55] where they're just kicking them off.

[3:56] You know what I'm saying?

[3:57] No, I have a child.

[3:58] I've seen him take his pants off, yeah.

[4:00] Stop bragging.

[4:03] Actually, that's the way he takes his shoes off.

[4:04] He's still sitting in his stroller.

[4:06] He kicks his leg as hard as he can so that his shoe flies off of his foot.

[4:11] Like as if it's hurling towards a ninja that's coming at him.

[4:15] Now, I think that all the listeners are probably wondering,

[4:18] because we've established that Stuart's not wearing pants.

[4:21] What is he wearing?

[4:22] Describe it.

[4:24] Hold on.

[4:25] He's got striped boxer briefs on.

[4:28] Okay.

[4:29] What color are they?

[4:30] I don't want to look too closely again.

[4:32] They're like a navy and a white.

[4:34] It's hard to tell color from distance.

[4:36] That's why people don't know what color the sky is because it's so far away.

[4:41] It's the gold or blue dress situation all over again.

[4:44] We don't need that.

[4:46] No, but we've established the what of Stuart's pants situation.

[4:50] We haven't established the why of Stuart's pants situation.

[4:53] Well, Sherlock, let's keep going.

[4:55] We don't yet have a motive for the crime.

[4:58] No, I think the listener is wondering why, and it's an anticlimactic reason.

[5:03] To be honest, I think the listener at this point just all they need to know is it's Stuart.

[5:07] If I was sitting with my pants left, they'd be like, this is weird.

[5:10] Where is pants on fire?

[5:12] With Stuart, I think they're just okay with it.

[5:14] Yeah.

[5:15] All right.

[5:16] The short reason is it was raining outside, and Stuart's pants got wet,

[5:19] so we thought the best solution was pants removal.

[5:23] Just don't forget you left them here, Stu.

[5:25] That's true.

[5:26] That's a good point.

[5:27] Don't leave without putting those things back on.

[5:29] I'll slap my forehead and say, doh, and people will all clap because that's my other catchphrase.

[5:35] That's your catchphrase?

[5:36] Doh.

[5:40] The other thing about Stuart today.

[5:42] Okay.

[5:43] And then we can get to what this podcast is and what we do on it.

[5:46] It's his birthday.

[5:47] Okay.

[5:48] It's a birthday podcast.

[5:49] Yeah.

[5:50] I mean, actually, this episode will be released like a week after Stuart's birthday.

[5:52] Yeah.

[5:53] But we're recording it his birthday weekend.

[5:54] Yes.

[5:56] So Stuart's birthday spans a whole weekend because he's a special little boy.

[6:00] I had a really good year, so I deserve a whole weekend.

[6:05] So that plays into the rest of the show, but we'll just say that this is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[6:13] And now usually we watch a recent big-budget Hollywood blockbuster.

[6:17] Yeah.

[6:18] So if you saw the title of this episode and you're like racking your brain, you're like, I don't remember this movie coming out in movie theaters recently.

[6:25] Max Magician.

[6:26] Who was in that?

[6:27] Was that like Kieran Culkin and Anna Chlumsky, big stars like that?

[6:32] Was it big stars like Danny Trejo and the late Taylor Negron?

[6:41] Is Robert Morse the lead in that movie?

[6:44] Does he play Max Magician?

[6:46] Is it Robert Davi?

[6:47] Was he in this?

[6:48] Is this Robert Picardo's most recent picture?

[6:53] That's how the credits proclaim it.

[6:56] No.

[6:57] Stuart came in and he goes, it's my birthday.

[7:00] It's my birthday today.

[7:03] Can I watch?

[7:04] Yeah, but also licking an enormous lollipop with a slingshot in his hand.

[7:08] I got it for my birthday, dude.

[7:10] Stuart wanted to watch something special for his special day.

[7:15] And after giving them a couple options, I then just picked the one I wanted to watch, which was a DVD that we received in the mail and announced on this very podcast many moons ago.

[7:28] And the Legend of the Rings.

[7:30] Now, normally this is the sort of thing we would save till small-timber.

[7:34] Small-timber.

[7:35] Wait a minute, so this wasn't like a big budget studio release?

[7:40] No, surprisingly not.

[7:41] One of those big-name stars we mentioned, like Robert Englund.

[7:45] What about the stars of this movie?

[7:49] Hold on.

[7:50] To be fair, we looked up the credits.

[7:51] Dana's reading the back of this box like Max Reid spells.

[7:55] There's no one listed as an actor.

[7:59] As we saw, one of the actors in it was in Argo and Cecil B. Demented and other real movies.

[8:07] We have a three-and-a-half-star review on the front of this DVD from the Science Fiction Chronicle, whatever that is.

[8:13] It's from Director's Mom magazine.

[8:15] A fantasy epic in the tradition of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

[8:19] Not a value judgment, just a simple statement of fact.

[8:23] But I mean that is crafted for a full quote.

[8:26] To say that it's in that tradition is stretching somewhat.

[8:30] So should we talk about – this is an incredibly low-budget film.

[8:33] Yeah.

[8:34] Normally here at the Flop House, we like to punch up, you know?

[8:38] Nope, but this time we were punching so far down, my fist got stuck in the dirt.

[8:43] As if I was trying to punch a buried corpse.

[8:46] Take that, Benedict Arnold.

[8:48] I feel – I mean, if you're going to punch a corpse, that's a good choice.

[8:53] That's a good one to punch.

[8:54] I mean, Hitler's body burns, so I can't punch that one.

[8:56] No.

[8:57] Who would I punch?

[8:59] What dead person would you punch, Dan?

[9:02] What if it was just like my great-grandpa?

[9:06] Weird.

[9:07] Okay, that's strange.

[9:08] Did you ever know him?

[9:09] No, I have no idea.

[9:10] So why would you do that?

[9:11] I just don't want to –

[9:12] Because you think he'd forgive you?

[9:13] I think he'd forgive me.

[9:14] I don't want to – I realized halfway through, I don't want to spread that kind of anger in the world.

[9:18] So wait, okay.

[9:20] I mean –

[9:21] So I've got to do it to someone who's going to –

[9:22] Even knowing that like Richard Nixon's corpse is like just lying there in a coffin somewhere.

[9:26] Oh, that was a good one.

[9:27] I feel like cultural perceptions have shifted so much over the years.

[9:30] Like even in my lifetime that like probably what people from like hundreds of years ago would say as like a joke would be like super offensive now.

[9:40] So I probably wouldn't feel that bad about just punching any old corpse.

[9:44] You probably said something that wouldn't fly now.

[9:47] Kaboom.

[9:48] Yeah.

[9:49] This is a fantasy movie.

[9:53] I can say that about it.

[9:55] The director had a fantasy that he could make a movie.

[9:59] Okay, Dan, sit back.

[10:00] Maybe take a couple of minutes and recharge your batteries.

[10:04] Wait, what?

[10:04] Recharge your joke batteries.

[10:06] I feel like I was doing pretty well there.

[10:07] The mosquito was getting out of control.

[10:10] I ran it into the Punisher and that was the problem.

[10:12] Yeah.

[10:15] So, let's say that this is a...

[10:18] So the movie opens with a chase sequence.

[10:20] Well, I just want to make one thing clear.

[10:21] This movie, if you watched, if you've seen your average Misty Monday film,

[10:25] and you said, what if there was a children's fantasy film

[10:29] that had a slightly higher production value than...

[10:32] Slightly fewer lesbian orgies.

[10:34] That had fewer lesbian tarp orgies

[10:37] and more of the same kind of cheap magic special effect over and over again.

[10:43] More animal reaction shots.

[10:45] Yeah, that's a fair point.

[10:47] Then this is the movie for you.

[10:48] We open...

[10:48] Even more ADR work.

[10:50] We open...

[10:50] It's like the whole thing is ADR.

[10:52] Every single voice is dubbed.

[10:54] And so we open in media res.

[10:56] People are running through a wood.

[10:58] There's a point of view shot that we see many times

[11:01] that seems to have been shot from the point of view of a basset hound

[11:03] or perhaps like a small rodent of some kind.

[11:07] The laces on somebody's tennis shoes.

[11:09] Yes, and no matter...

[11:10] Even when a character is riding a horse,

[11:12] the same POV shot is used to show them moving through the forest

[11:15] as if this is some sort of I shrunk the kids type scenario

[11:19] in which everyone is smaller than a blade of grass.

[11:22] And they're hiding in the fetlocks of the horse as it's running through the grass.

[11:29] Speaking of, I went to the circus today.

[11:32] Guys, I saw some amazing trick riding on horses.

[11:34] Did you?

[11:35] My mother took my family out to the Ringling Brothers Circus,

[11:39] their final season.

[11:40] They're shutting down after 140 some odd years.

[11:42] And let me tell you, nobody throws more people onto a stage

[11:47] doing crazy things all at the same time better

[11:49] than The Greatest Show on Earth.

[11:51] Also, there were some animals and it was really cool,

[11:53] but I still felt bad at the same time.

[11:55] I'm very excited about this,

[11:57] because I have a ticket to go to the circus next week.

[12:00] And when I say a ticket,

[12:02] yes, it is a single ticket to go to the circus alone.

[12:05] Is there anything sadder than the sentence I just said?

[12:08] It sounds like a cut scene from a Highlander movie

[12:11] where Connor McCloud is going to kill a Highlander that trick rides on horses.

[12:16] Can you see my depressing sentence and raise me?

[12:19] Dan, here's what would make it sadder,

[12:21] and what I want you to do,

[12:22] is I want you to get one of the light-up toys,

[12:25] like a light-up sword or one of those things that just whirls little filaments

[12:29] that light up around you.

[12:30] All right, I'm on board so far.

[12:31] And I want you to just sit there in the dark,

[12:33] holding it and pressing the button that makes it go

[12:37] by yourself.

[12:38] Now, this is completely unrelated, Dan,

[12:41] but do you know the phone number for the kiss cam for the circus?

[12:46] You know, the number you call so you can set up a kiss cam shot.

[12:49] Completely unrelated.

[12:51] The way it works is you call ahead like a reservation for a restaurant.

[12:54] Yeah, you know the number off the top of your domes.

[12:57] I have it.

[12:58] Here's what I like about the levels of reality of this joke.

[13:01] One, that circuses have a kiss cam, not just sporting events,

[13:05] because what they're trying to do at a circus

[13:07] is distract you from the lack of activity on the stage

[13:10] by making you look at video of someone in the stands.

[13:13] Number two, that you can arrange one of these.

[13:16] When they're cleaning up all the stuff on the stage

[13:18] after the horses get done running around.

[13:20] You can arrange one of these ahead of time.

[13:22] Number three, that Dan knows the number.

[13:26] He might have seen it while he was getting his tickets.

[13:30] And number four, that even though Stuart is not going to be there to see it,

[13:34] he really wants the awkward moment of Dan by himself on a kiss cam.

[13:38] Holding some kind of a light-up thing.

[13:41] Like a light-up sword or horse's head or something.

[13:44] Or like looking for someone to kiss.

[13:48] And he has nothing to kiss but his own hand

[13:51] curved into the rough shape of a mouth,

[13:53] which he would then kiss too long,

[13:55] and they would have to take the kiss cam away

[13:57] and point it to somebody else.

[13:59] Yeah, and I would scream,

[14:00] Don't! Don't! Back on me! Back on me! Come on!

[14:04] Just going, Is this what you wanted?

[14:07] Guys, this has been another great episode of Elliot Explains Stuart's Jokes.

[14:11] Hey, come back next week.

[14:13] Stuart's going to make another stupid-ass joke.

[14:15] When I was a kid, I saw a little show called Clarissa Explains It All.

[14:18] And I felt like...

[14:20] You felt cheated.

[14:21] She didn't really explain it all.

[14:23] Am I presumptuous enough to think that I can explain it all?

[14:26] No.

[14:27] But Stuart's jokes, yes.

[14:29] Did she ever explain her relationship with that dude who's always climbing through her window?

[14:32] Yeah, they're friends.

[14:33] He's like Bob or something?

[14:34] No, Bob is the evil spirit from Twin Peaks.

[14:37] He's also climbing through windows.

[14:39] It's a thing.

[14:40] And he possesses her brother, Ferguson.

[14:44] No, her friend Sam is just a friend.

[14:46] Yeah.

[14:47] They're pals.

[14:48] They're platonic pals.

[14:49] Now, is her brother Ferguson related to the cat Ferguson from the TV show The New Girl?

[14:54] Probably.

[14:55] They're one and the same.

[14:56] Yeah, he pissed off the wrong Loki god of mischief.

[14:59] She became Clarissa the Teenage Witch and she turned him into a cat.

[15:02] Change your name to Sabrina.

[15:04] Sabrina, sorry.

[15:05] The Teenage Witch.

[15:06] If you guys could see...

[15:08] Not all the magic in the world.

[15:10] The disappointed look that Elliot has given me.

[15:12] Any grown man should know the name of that character.

[15:14] It is Dan McCoy.

[15:16] It is old-timey comic strip reading Dan McCoy.

[15:19] The whole point.

[15:20] Who I'm sure is very familiar with the work of Dan DiCarlo.

[15:22] I know.

[15:23] I know it was Sabrina.

[15:24] I knew it was Sabrina.

[15:25] The joke was that Melissa Joan Hart played both characters and I just fucked it up.

[15:29] It was just a simple fuck up and I think we should all just put this sadness behind us.

[15:33] Well, that was this episode of Elliot Explains Dan's Jokes.

[15:36] Now, let's get back to the movie, huh?

[15:38] Magician Max and the Thing in the Bing.

[15:40] Anyway, so somebody's running...

[15:42] So we get some tight shots on feet running through the forest.

[15:46] And we sense there's multiple figures being chased by some...

[15:50] Yeah.

[15:51] That two guys are being chased by some sort of hooded villain of a sort.

[15:57] The villain kills them.

[15:59] And then they drop like a scroll or something?

[16:02] Of course.

[16:03] The scroll is then discovered...

[16:07] By a local janitor.

[16:09] By a local man named Mr. Tim, we later find out.

[16:12] Yeah.

[16:13] Okay.

[16:14] Cut to...

[16:15] Okay.

[16:16] A house.

[16:17] Sure.

[16:18] Okay.

[16:19] And it's the home of...

[16:20] Any old house.

[16:21] Any town you say, it's Magician Max himself.

[16:22] He's a nerdy kid wearing a cape practicing magic in his bedroom.

[16:26] But it's time to go to school.

[16:27] But his mom will not let him wear that cape at school.

[16:30] Because she is a mom who knows how other children would react to a cape.

[16:35] Like a cape to a bull, they would charge it.

[16:38] A cape is another one of those things, like the previously mentioned on a previous podcast, fedora.

[16:44] That was last episode.

[16:45] A thing that a child thinks is cool, but everyone else knows, including other child children.

[16:51] Other childs?

[16:52] Other childs.

[16:53] Other Lee Childs.

[16:54] Lee Childs knows.

[16:55] So if anyone's going to wear that cape, it's Lee Childs.

[16:58] No, but the thing is, the kid wearing the fedora, he looks like a cool detective, Dan.

[17:02] All the other kids will respect his authority of being a detective.

[17:05] Sure, the fact that he's just wearing kid clothes with a fedora on top, he still looks like a cool detective.

[17:10] It makes him look older.

[17:11] Yeah.

[17:12] You know, so he can hang out with teenagers.

[17:14] So our hero's not a teenager.

[17:17] He's just a boy in a cape.

[17:18] No, he's about 13, I'm guessing.

[17:20] So he's a teenager, I guess.

[17:21] Even though a kid wearing a cape, that makes him look older, too.

[17:24] Because older people wear capes like Dracula.

[17:26] The oldest people.

[17:29] So we get a shot of Max's bedroom, and you guessed it, everybody.

[17:34] He's got oversized playing cards all over the place.

[17:37] And a computer and a TV.

[17:38] Yeah, he's the coolest bedroom ever.

[17:40] Yeah, they're all trophies from his various adventures.

[17:43] He has the bedroom that, like, when I would lie in bed asleep at night and fantasize – not asleep.

[17:50] I'd be awake because I was terrified that zombies would come and eat me.

[17:54] But I would be, like, dreaming about what my ultimate, like –

[17:59] Your kid bedroom fantasy.

[18:01] My ultimate kid bedroom fantasy would be.

[18:03] And it would be just like this.

[18:05] It would be me with a cape, and I playing cards.

[18:08] You'd have what looks to be a Tandy computer in the background.

[18:11] Hey, man.

[18:12] Just ready to play.

[18:13] To be clear, this movie was made in 2002.

[18:16] Ready to play whatever, like, number crunchers or whatever.

[18:21] Hop on some fucking news groups.

[18:23] Yeah.

[18:24] That's right.

[18:25] Slowly download one porn picture.

[18:27] You could hop on alt.Simpsons.rec and talk about what Bart said last night.

[18:34] I mean, it's the Internet.

[18:35] Yeah, they talk about Simpsons or, like, The New Adventures of Lois and Clark.

[18:38] Yeah.

[18:39] I guess it was called Lois and Clark, The New Adventures of Superman.

[18:42] Exactly.

[18:43] You got it.

[18:44] You got it, buddy.

[18:45] Got it in two.

[18:46] He also has his own TV, which looks to be a black and white set, probably.

[18:49] But the family used to keep in the kitchen until they got a color set for the kitchen.

[18:53] That black and white set got kicked upstairs to the bedroom.

[18:56] So star wipe to the parking lot of a mostly abandoned school.

[19:01] Yeah.

[19:02] He seems to live in a town where most of the people were destroyed by some sort of tragedy, a plague.

[19:08] Have you ever seen The Leftovers?

[19:12] It's kind of like that.

[19:13] Exactly like that.

[19:15] Because in The Leftovers, they say, like, what, like, one percent of the population or some shit got raptured?

[19:21] But it feels like everybody got raptured except for all these fucking losers.

[19:25] And all they have left to eat is leftovers because all the chefs got raptured.

[19:28] That's the thing about the title of the show is it means it's double meaning.

[19:31] It's just a bunch of shepherd's pie.

[19:33] That's all it is.

[19:34] That sounds great.

[19:36] Forever?

[19:37] I mean, it's true.

[19:38] I wouldn't want to eat it only that.

[19:40] Yeah.

[19:41] But that's a solid meal.

[19:42] No, it is a solid meal.

[19:43] But to me, all leftovers are shepherd's pie.

[19:45] This is more about your life, I think.

[19:47] I mean, most people think it would be like pizza.

[19:49] Yeah.

[19:50] Chinese food.

[19:53] I mean, if you're Jeffrey Dahmer.

[19:54] Were you buying all these shepherd's pies?

[19:58] I like the idea.

[19:59] Wait, hold on.

[20:00] On Chinese pizza, what do we got on that?

[20:01] We got some...

[20:02] We got some noodles, probably.

[20:03] Noodles, maybe some...

[20:04] Rice, no cheese, that's for sure.

[20:06] No, some sesame chicken.

[20:08] Instead of tomato sauce, it'd probably be like

[20:09] either a sesame sauce or some kind of brown sauce,

[20:13] or perhaps a General Tso's kind of sticky sauce.

[20:16] So is the crust like a scallion pancake?

[20:17] You know it.

[20:18] I love them scallypans.

[20:20] You're kind of a scallypan.

[20:24] But what would take the place of the cheese?

[20:25] Like noodles?

[20:27] Like a long flat noodle, like a chow fun or something?

[20:30] Yeah, there's not really a bunch of cheese

[20:32] in Chinese food, huh?

[20:33] No, there's not.

[20:34] That's what I'm saying.

[20:34] They're lactose intolerant.

[20:35] Like a tofu?

[20:36] Some sort of tofu?

[20:37] Now you're talking.

[20:38] Tofu, okay.

[20:39] What about those famous Chinese crab rangoons?

[20:43] Okay.

[20:44] There's cheese in those, dude.

[20:46] Yeah, the most authentic Chinese food there is.

[20:49] I mean, that it has rangoon,

[20:50] which is not a part of China in it.

[20:53] Oh, so what happens is this kid goes to school.

[20:57] He gets briefly bullied.

[20:58] He gets bullied by other kids.

[20:59] He gets vaguely bullied.

[21:01] The kids that are bullying him are,

[21:03] if anything, his only affectionate friends.

[21:05] They kind of like tussle his hair,

[21:07] but the girls want him to show the magic trick.

[21:10] But uh-oh.

[21:11] Because in my experience, girls love magic.

[21:14] You know who's experienced girls love magic?

[21:17] Yeah.

[21:18] What's the guy who's on that mystery from the game thing?

[21:21] Oh, that's true.

[21:22] He shows him a magic trick.

[21:24] Next thing you know, his penis is inside them.

[21:26] That's the magic trick.

[21:28] All right.

[21:29] There's a couple of steps.

[21:30] What show is this?

[21:31] There's a couple of steps in between, but.

[21:34] Yeah.

[21:35] Pardon me.

[21:36] I'm just burping in the microphone.

[21:38] It's called Criss Angel Body Freak.

[21:42] Wow.

[21:43] Okay, so he is briefly bullied.

[21:45] He shows them a magic trick,

[21:47] which ends with a bully getting egg yolk on his head.

[21:50] The bully doesn't like that,

[21:51] chases him right into the hands of Mr. Tim,

[21:54] the man that we saw earlier finding that magic scroll.

[21:57] Now they immediately bond

[21:59] because they're wearing matching denim button down shirts.

[22:02] They look like they're both gonna go work at Home Depot.

[22:04] Yeah.

[22:05] And then he goes to the janitor's house, I guess.

[22:07] And the janitor's like, hey dude, you know, magic's real.

[22:12] Read about it in this fucking book.

[22:13] And Max is like, I can't wait to read.

[22:16] I can't wait to read this book that has like four pages.

[22:18] It is the slimmest magic tome.

[22:21] It looks like they took a menu

[22:24] from probably the fanciest restaurant in town,

[22:28] which was like, you know, a Bennigan's,

[22:30] and just kind of poured tea

[22:32] and held a lighter up to the paper to make it look old.

[22:34] And they wrote a bunch of magic spells in.

[22:37] Papyrus, the most magical of all the fonts.

[22:40] Because it looks old.

[22:41] It's the kind of book that like,

[22:43] I would find at the gaming store and take up to my mom

[22:46] and she's like, $30 for this?

[22:48] There's only like four pages.

[22:49] And I'm like, but mom, it's got all the rules for my guys.

[22:53] It's got all the most powerful spells.

[22:55] Make fog, get rid of fog, cause sticks to levitate.

[22:59] Mice thing.

[23:00] Make mice from not mice.

[23:04] Because those are all the spells we see him perform

[23:06] throughout the movie.

[23:07] But it turns out to be a magic spell book.

[23:09] And when he speaks the words,

[23:12] he opens up a tree door, a magic portal

[23:15] that appears to be a door airbrushed onto a tree.

[23:18] And like the tree appears too.

[23:19] The tree wasn't there previously.

[23:21] Oh, that's right.

[23:21] Previously.

[23:22] Which is basically on tree.

[23:25] Leaves.

[23:26] Which is blowing wind.

[23:29] Think about how he could like offset

[23:31] the deforestation problem that the earth is facing.

[23:34] But not if every tree he creates

[23:36] has a magic door to crazy land in it.

[23:38] I mean, you just cut the tree down

[23:39] and close off crazy land.

[23:41] That's a good point.

[23:42] But then deforest it again.

[23:43] Oh yeah.

[23:44] So he enters the door in the magic tree.

[23:47] Deforested Kelly.

[23:48] Anyway, go on.

[23:50] Ends up.

[23:51] Couldn't leave that one just sitting on the table.

[23:52] You gotta smash it up.

[23:54] Smash it up and go nom, nom, nom, nom.

[23:56] We were literally leaving no money on the table.

[23:59] Dan decided to put $10 on the table

[24:01] and then walk away from it.

[24:04] That's effectively what just happened.

[24:07] We lost money on that joke.

[24:10] So he ends up in a forest that looks

[24:12] pretty much like everywhere else in the movie.

[24:13] Except on the other side, it's magic.

[24:15] We know that because the mouse that he was with,

[24:18] he was with a mouse, can now talk.

[24:19] And that mouse is named Crimble, of course.

[24:23] And Crimble is kind of like your sassy sidekick.

[24:25] He's the donkey from Shrek.

[24:26] He's the dragon from Mulan,

[24:28] which I think are both Eddie Murphy characters.

[24:30] Yep, yeah.

[24:31] He's your wisecracking sidekick who's also a mouse.

[24:34] He immediately introduces Max to a talking hawk.

[24:38] When I say talking, I mean a voice

[24:40] is overlaid over footage of a hawk.

[24:42] Over the same five seconds of a hawk on a limb looking around.

[24:47] It is never mentioned that the hawk would, of course,

[24:49] be the natural predator of the mouse and eat him.

[24:52] Instead, they're buddies because they're both

[24:53] on the side of good.

[24:54] They're both allies of the Bluebell Kingdom,

[24:57] which is a bunch of elves with pointy ears

[25:00] who are under the threat of Lord Dagda,

[25:03] who is a demon man with curved ram horns

[25:06] who sits in a cave, farting up a storm,

[25:09] and telling his two henchmen that they suck.

[25:12] Yeah, he always has some lady combing his hair,

[25:15] and he always talks shit to his henchman, Worm.

[25:17] He has one henchman, Worm, who, to be fair,

[25:20] is not a winner.

[25:21] He's kind of a droopy type with a cowl on

[25:25] who always looks like he's pretty sad.

[25:26] And his other sidekick, whose name I did not remember,

[25:29] let's call him Rodrigo, he's an Amigo Montoya type,

[25:32] but he works for the bad guy.

[25:33] Yeah, and he is wearing, as you said,

[25:35] an Elseworlds Batman suit of armor.

[25:38] I assume there is a medieval Batman Elseworlds.

[25:41] He's wearing that costume.

[25:43] But Max quickly gets, he finds a stucco papier-mâché castle,

[25:48] enters it at the beckoning of a-

[25:50] I mean, it's not just like stucco papier-mâché.

[25:52] It is like, clearly like Southern California style castle.

[25:57] Like, that is what it is.

[25:59] It's like, yeah, it's covered in avocado.

[26:02] Yeah, it's like, what of the Southern California

[26:07] architecture looks castle-y enough

[26:09] that we can set our LARP at?

[26:10] It does look like this castle should be

[26:13] the establishing shot for every other scene

[26:15] on Modern Family.

[26:18] But he goes into it invited in by a character

[26:21] who I have to assume is made up to look like

[26:22] the Miracle Worker character from Princess Bride.

[26:26] Oh, right, yeah.

[26:27] Or like Yogurt from Spaceballs.

[26:29] And this character hilariously speaks in rhyme all the time.

[26:33] Like a regular Etrigan the Demon.

[26:34] Like a regular Elliot Kaelin.

[26:36] I don't speak in rhyme all the time.

[26:38] It's not a crime.

[26:40] You've been slimed.

[26:41] Oh no, where'd all the slime come from?

[26:46] A chime.

[26:47] Did you bring this with you

[26:48] just for the purposes of that rhyme?

[26:49] Just in case it came up, yes.

[26:51] I carry every object with me in this little pocket dimension

[26:54] just in case I have to rhyme with it.

[26:56] Dan, what's a rhyme for wolverine?

[26:59] To be fair, rabbit wolverine.

[27:02] Because I want to offload this thing.

[27:04] Wolverine?

[27:06] He's gotcha.

[27:07] Ben-verine?

[27:08] He's got it.

[27:09] Hey, it's all that jazz star Ben-verine.

[27:11] Watch out, Dan, rabbit wolverine.

[27:13] Oh God, oh God, oh.

[27:16] Well, I guess I'm rabbit now.

[27:19] I'm going to the circus alone.

[27:20] Life's a bitch.

[27:21] Rugs and shoulders.

[27:22] Turns out it's pockets.

[27:23] Yeah, is he a regular Ziggy?

[27:25] Guess I'm rabbit now.

[27:27] Anyway, he gets invited in.

[27:29] He has a sumptuous banquet.

[27:30] Which is their first fucking mistake, dude.

[27:32] You never invite a vampire in.

[27:34] He's not a vampire.

[27:35] What?

[27:36] He's a little kid magician.

[27:37] But he had a cape.

[27:37] He's got braces.

[27:38] Not everyone, yeah.

[27:39] How's he going to bite people's necks with his braces?

[27:41] Oh my God, there's got to be some YA book

[27:44] about a fucking vampire kid with braces, right?

[27:46] There's got to be, yeah.

[27:47] His fangs aren't growing in right.

[27:48] Everyone makes fun of him

[27:49] because he's Eastern European

[27:50] and he dresses in suits all the time.

[27:54] Sounds like a book I read once.

[27:56] Okay, go on.

[27:56] What was the name of that book?

[27:57] I don't know.

[27:58] Kid Vampire.

[27:59] It was called Benicula but a Kid

[28:00] instead of a bunny.

[28:01] Kid-icula.

[28:02] And they sued him

[28:03] for being too close to Kid Icarus.

[28:05] Yeah.

[28:07] Do you think that Benicula, an eggplant wizard,

[28:10] would hang out or do you think Benicula

[28:12] would kill Eggplant Wizard?

[28:13] Benicula would eat Eggplant Wizard, for sure.

[28:15] So it's gonna be-

[28:16] Are you not familiar with the premise of Benicula?

[28:17] It'd be protagonist and antagonist then.

[28:20] Let's call them two sides of an issue.

[28:26] Dialectic.

[28:27] Yeah, it's not just good guys and bad guys.

[28:29] They have their points of view.

[28:31] So they have a banquet which rivals the banquet in Hook

[28:35] for un-eatability of the things we see on screen.

[28:39] It's basically just mush and rice, I guess.

[28:42] And there's at least one or two just raw onions.

[28:45] Still with the onion skin on.

[28:47] There's shots of extras passing bowls between them,

[28:50] almost dropping them.

[28:52] They can't even do that properly.

[28:54] You know how in any fantasy novel,

[28:56] the thing that every fantasy novel has in common

[29:00] is the loving description of food that they eat.

[29:02] Yeah, all the Game of Thrones,

[29:03] all the stuff about capons and trenchers of gravy.

[29:06] This is the opposite of that.

[29:08] Yeah, and we have a lot of,

[29:11] here's something I loved about this movie.

[29:13] Aside from the fact that all the dialogue

[29:14] is ADR'd after the fact,

[29:16] that the music is hilariously overblown

[29:18] from what we're seeing,

[29:19] and that it frequently pads itself out with POV shots

[29:23] from the point of view of a small dog

[29:25] walking through a forest or perhaps,

[29:26] I don't know, a wombat.

[29:28] That the movie is full of extras in elf makeup

[29:32] and pointy ears,

[29:34] literally standing still, saying and doing nothing.

[29:38] Just in the background,

[29:39] I guess as if they're sentinels or guards,

[29:41] but they're just regular people.

[29:43] And so it looks like someone cast a spell

[29:45] that turned them all into statues at some point,

[29:47] but maybe all that material got cut.

[29:48] Yeah, it's some kind of a curse

[29:50] that is trapping them in a state of suspended animation

[29:53] or in a state where they are miming motions

[29:56] and miming what they're supposed to be saying,

[29:57] but they don't actually say anything.

[29:59] No sounds come out.

[30:00] Which is odd for something where all the dialogue is ADR.

[30:05] Max is, and the dinner is being hosted by a princess, whose name I don't remember,

[30:10] Armanella or something, Ariana?

[30:12] Yeah, Ariana Grande.

[30:14] Yeah, it was Princess Ariana Grande, the largest of the Arianas.

[30:18] But the dinner is broken.

[30:20] Ariana Vente, that's a tweet that someone has done.

[30:22] For sure, for sure, Dan, for sure.

[30:26] Just Google that right now.

[30:28] See how many of those come up.

[30:30] The number of hits will explode your computer.

[30:32] Because it's probably the most said joke in the past year or two.

[30:36] You stupid man.

[30:39] Alright.

[30:41] Anyway, so, back to the movie.

[30:44] So we have this awesome feast and everybody's fucking loving it.

[30:47] They're chilling, they're enjoying it.

[30:49] They're all joking about, we have this magician with us, ha ha ha, he can't really do any tricks though.

[30:52] And then suddenly, uh oh.

[30:54] And he's just like, I've never been to a fucking big boy party before.

[30:56] I gotta fucking be cool.

[30:58] Do I put the napkin in my neck or on my lap?

[31:00] What do I do with this weird talking mouse character?

[31:03] This talking mouse that's crawling over my food?

[31:05] When do I do seven minutes in heaven with the elf princess?

[31:08] What if we get in there and I throw up all over her?

[31:11] Is that what's supposed to happen?

[31:13] It doesn't sound like heaven to me.

[31:15] Yeah.

[31:16] But he doesn't have to worry about all that.

[31:18] Because then a band of ruffians returns, or the soldiers of Lord Dagda.

[31:22] Although they look pretty much just like a bunch of...

[31:25] The same thing.

[31:26] Yeah.

[31:27] There's like one dude wearing a Skyrim character helmet and one dude wearing a Thor helmet.

[31:31] And they all have big purple mallets.

[31:33] The main way, as I can tell, yeah, to discern the bad guys from the good guys,

[31:37] is the bad guys are a little more overweight and they've got mallets.

[31:41] And the good guys have blue on their faces and elf ears.

[31:44] Yeah, they fight with staves.

[31:46] Yeah, they do.

[31:48] What?

[31:49] No, I guess they're staves.

[31:51] They fight with staves.

[31:52] I mean, they look like...

[31:53] They just look like sticks.

[31:54] They look like sticks, man.

[31:55] They fight with sticks.

[31:56] Yeah.

[31:57] So Max is like, this is crazy, and immediately goes home.

[32:00] And that's the thing.

[32:01] Oh, the princess gives him a necklace and says, you're our only hope, and he goes home.

[32:05] When you are making a low-budget film and you have not directed any other films before,

[32:10] I think what you should probably do is feature a complicated fight scene inside a feasting hall for your movie.

[32:18] With a bunch of different species of fantasy characters.

[32:21] Yeah, there's a weird slea stack just hanging out, dude.

[32:24] And he is horrified and appalled by these gentlemen running in and breaking up this place.

[32:30] Yeah, all these warm-blooded creatures.

[32:32] I thought he was going to be set up as this kind of C-3PO type character, but no, we only see him for two shots.

[32:37] I thought he was going to be some kind of diplomat from an entire race of lizard people

[32:41] that sees the humans fighting amongst each other.

[32:44] I guess elves?

[32:45] What are they, dude?

[32:46] They're humans and elves.

[32:47] I bet that Lord Dagg does a demon man of some kind.

[32:49] Yeah.

[32:50] So here's the thing.

[32:51] Much like Star Wars, we're just given these glimpses of other cultures and possible stories,

[32:56] and then we're allowed to fill in the backstory with our imagination.

[32:58] It's what makes the movie work.

[32:59] I thought you were going to say – sorry, go on.

[33:01] It gives you a blank map with all these corners to fill out, man.

[33:04] That's what's so great about it.

[33:05] I thought you were going to say, much like Star Wars, the hero tries to reject the quest by going home,

[33:10] and then he has to come back, though.

[33:13] Yeah, he goes home and his parents have been cooked alive by Stormtroopers.

[33:16] Or, in this case, they allow him to have a pet mouse, which means he must go back on his quest.

[33:22] In one of the weirdest scenes for a parent to ever see, I would imagine.

[33:25] Elliot, you're a parent.

[33:26] Yep, that's true.

[33:27] I'll allow it.

[33:28] In a few years, when you see some vermin crawling over your son,

[33:31] like not a pet mouse that you might get from a pet store.

[33:38] From a catalog.

[33:39] Now we have a mouse catalog.

[33:42] A sky mouse catalog.

[33:44] That's a bat, I guess.

[33:46] Sky mouse.

[33:48] Now, Elliot, let me paint a picture for you.

[33:50] A common street mouse.

[33:51] A few years down the line, you and your wife burst into your son's bedroom, okay?

[33:56] It's going to happen.

[33:57] He's masturbating with a mouse.

[33:58] Yeah, you've heard your son giggling up a storm, and the room still reeks of a weird magic fog spell.

[34:05] Oh, that's right, because he cast a fog spell.

[34:07] And you go in there, and your son, fully clothed, is under the covers with a mouse.

[34:12] What do you do?

[34:14] I take a step back.

[34:16] I look at my wife.

[34:17] I say, let's come back in in five minutes.

[34:19] Sure.

[34:20] And I close the door.

[34:21] And then I say, son, finish whatever you're doing.

[34:25] Let's pretend it didn't happen, and I'll come back in five minutes.

[34:28] That's not bad.

[34:29] You know, the correct answer for that, of course, is you open the door, you get on the floor.

[34:33] And I'm a werewolf too.

[34:34] Wait, and then walk a dinosaur?

[34:36] I thought the correct answer would be, like, I open the door, and it turns out I'm a werewolf too,

[34:40] so he has nothing to worry about.

[34:41] And I finally have a heart-to-heart with him about how we're a family of werewolves.

[34:45] And then you both dunk basketballs and beat everybody up.

[34:48] Oh, yeah, and surf on a van.

[34:49] What if that was the way that movie went?

[34:51] If instead of him becoming a basketball star, he and his dad just go to the high school and beat everybody up?

[34:58] And the dads lived in town for years, so these were all his teachers too, and they're just mauling them.

[35:03] Yeah.

[35:04] I mean, they don't have to, like, kill them or nothing, but, yeah, you just beat the shit out of them.

[35:08] And it's like, oh, what are you going to tell the cops?

[35:10] A werewolf did it?

[35:11] Yeah.

[35:12] Anyway, so there's this weird scene where he – well, one, okay.

[35:17] One, we have had a mouse in the house since my son was born, not as a pet, as uninvited vermin, not as a vampire.

[35:24] It wasn't like, oh, come on in.

[35:26] Oh, now you can come in whenever you want.

[35:27] It was a mouse.

[35:28] And I had two reactions.

[35:30] We had two different mice at two different times.

[35:32] One time my reaction was, I'm going to kill this piece of shit.

[35:35] Are you super mad that it rode around on the little mini scooter that you ride around?

[35:39] I'm supposed to be the motorcycle mouse.

[35:41] Now, I've had many mice in different New York apartments.

[35:43] Usually I'm live and let live.

[35:45] Unless you're literally pooping where I eat, I don't care.

[35:48] Just go about your business, mouse.

[35:49] Mice are honestly kind of cute.

[35:51] I'm going to say this.

[35:52] Well, here's the thing.

[35:53] The first time I was like, my son is in this house.

[35:56] Get out of here.

[35:57] Get out of here.

[35:59] But the second time there was a mouse that was just hanging out in our bedroom, and I turned on the light and caught a glimpse of it,

[36:04] and it was so tiny and cute.

[36:05] I was like, you know what?

[36:06] I'm just going to block up where I think he's coming from.

[36:09] And it worked, and I never saw him again.

[36:11] So if I walked in, I'd be like – but here's what happens with this movie.

[36:14] They walk in.

[36:15] He goes, it's my new pet mouse.

[36:17] And the mother goes, you can't keep that.

[36:19] He goes, can I have it as a pet?

[36:20] The mother goes, no.

[36:21] And he goes, dad, can I have it?

[36:22] And the dad goes, yeah, if you keep it in a cage, almost as if – I'll call your bluff on this.

[36:29] I dare you.

[36:31] You can't have that pet mouse because within a week, that thing is dead of starvation when you realize that you have a Game Boy to get to.

[36:37] The father character has some of the best ADR lines.

[36:42] It's crazy.

[36:43] No, he is amazing.

[36:44] And he also dresses like he is a part-time private detective.

[36:48] They're sitting at breakfast, and he's just wearing this incredibly loud Hawaiian shirt with, like, parrots all over it.

[36:54] But he's the only one who we found that had, like, actual other credits.

[36:59] He was in Veep.

[37:01] Yeah, I mean he looked like he was –

[37:02] Like a reporter.

[37:04] It looked like he was on his way to be Magnum P.I.'s stunt double.

[37:08] He was in Cecily Demented.

[37:10] From the way he actually looks, he looked like he was going to be Magnum P.I.'s math tutor.

[37:14] Okay, so –

[37:15] He wears the same kind of shirt.

[37:17] Yeah, because he wants to be cool like his client, Magnum.

[37:20] Let's – we're going very –

[37:22] Yeah, we're going very slow on this.

[37:23] Okay, let's – so Max goes back to the magic world.

[37:26] He's trained by a wizard who, for lack of a better word, I'm just going to call Black Merlin.

[37:33] Yeah, he kind of looks like –

[37:35] He kind of looks like Long – what, Longbrow from Zoo Warriors of Magic Mountain?

[37:40] But he's – yeah, he's dressed up like an ancient, like, Chinese –

[37:44] He looks like – what's his name? – from Kill Bill.

[37:46] Yeah.

[37:47] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[37:48] He looks like the mentor from that.

[37:49] The long mustache.

[37:51] Is that Gordon New?

[37:53] I don't remember.

[37:54] He's got that long black robe, and he says – and he is a famous wizard, and Max goes, why don't you save the world?

[38:00] He goes, no, this is your quest.

[38:02] Teaches him some more magic.

[38:03] He does not like it when Max is clowning around with his bo staff.

[38:07] Yeah, we get this great montage of Max doing magic tricks with a bo staff, and then we get multiple reaction shots from two different animals and the Merlin character.

[38:15] There's also a montage where they keep cutting to the Merlin character and Max standing in exactly the same place, each time doing different things.

[38:22] But the montage cuts to them over and over.

[38:24] So what I think is supposed to be a montage that takes a long time looks like it takes roughly, like, 47 minutes.

[38:31] It's the same way that this movie keeps doing, like, a wipe from one part of the forest to the other part of the forest.

[38:36] The wipes.

[38:37] We haven't talked about the wipes.

[38:38] Between every scene is a wipe effect, and it is – they are the most obtrusive.

[38:43] The only way it could be more obtrusive is if they did, like, PowerPoint things where the screen, like, fractures and then spins around and then comes back together again.

[38:51] The stuff you see in, like, family yearbook videos and things like that.

[38:55] And Stewart's live flop house PowerPoints.

[38:57] Have you ever seen Stewart's live flop house PowerPoints?

[38:59] He uses all the transition effects.

[39:01] Yeah, where he's doing a transition effect as a joke.

[39:04] As a joke.

[39:05] This movie does not seem to realize.

[39:07] Gotta show off, baby.

[39:08] Yeah.

[39:09] I have not seen wipe segues this unsubtle since Home Improvement.

[39:15] Was that the actual joke in, like, The Simpsons when Lisa's, like – there's a different – there are other wipes other than a star wipe, and Homer's like, why use hamburger when you have a steak?

[39:26] What was the – yeah, I mean, that's what he said.

[39:28] Star wipe.

[39:29] I'm just asking whether that was actually what –

[39:30] Yes, but they don't use a star wipe in this one.

[39:32] They use a V-wipe, a reverse V-wipe.

[39:34] Clock wipe.

[39:35] They do a ripple wipe.

[39:36] A ripple wipe.

[39:37] Oh, so many ripple wipes.

[39:38] Flashback.

[39:39] They do a Whipple wipe.

[39:40] They do a nipple wipe.

[39:41] A Robert Whipple wipe.

[39:42] Yeah, and so –

[39:43] There are three flashbacks in the same scene, all that feature different ripple wipes.

[39:48] Because Max eventually learns the backstory of this world that Lord Dagda –

[39:54] Dagda, yeah.

[39:55] Dagda –

[39:56] It's the name of the fairy king from the Hellboy comics.

[40:00] I guess so i never liked any of the fairy stuff in that i mean it doesn't change that it was a seven who are one you know okay continue what are they called again the job.

[40:11] The object of the object of hot thanks that's what i was in it for anyway any of the stuff that involves hellboy being the son of king arthur i wasn't so it didn't anyway spoiler alert spoiler alert that is a pretty big spoiler i care about hellboy well i mean the series ended a couple years ago so

[40:29] and this that storyline happened also years ago so i guess deal with it look at that point you should just be surprised to learn that is all i'm saying i was surprised to learn it too when it happened elliot spit milk all over his comic books so that i had to buy a new one bag it board it slab it cgc grade it then put it in my vault and a new thing oh yeah let's not forget that this was the bag that milk to tell you what the guy in that the guy in the aaron bird got milk ad he thinks he had a bag as he lost out on that

[40:59] money what if he had milk in his mouth double take spit milk all over his aaron bird dual memorabilia is

[41:06] even worse i don't get the reference you remember that got no commercial is that the one where he's

[41:11] drinking milk and he gets real big and then he shames the people that were mean to him nope that's a different commercial

[41:18] uh so anyway he learns that in the in the olden days the parents of this princess were taken captive

[41:25] by lord dagda he wanted to marry the elf queen she wouldn't marry him he wanted some magic stones

[41:30] that his grandfather gave to the elf people even though she says they weren't magic until our elf

[41:35] priestess put magic in them which means that his grandfather just gave them some stones which is

[41:39] not a great gift anyway he kidnaps her i think after punching her in the head he just punches

[41:44] her and takes her to his cave which is decorated with candles and one goat skull and where he's

[41:49] constantly getting his hair combed as we mentioned and he only has two henchmen to come visit him

[41:53] uh there was it ended up being a battle for some magic stones and a ring that

[41:58] tragic figure it's weird to see this very like over the top scenery chewing fey like tim curry

[42:06] and legend type demon villain who then you see a scene where he approaches a woman is like why

[42:11] didn't you marry me i would i loved you too not what i expected from that character yeah it really

[42:17] deepened him and it made it that much more believable later in the movie when he's just

[42:21] hanging in the forest and his other sidekick tells him something bad and he goes oh well i

[42:26] won't let you ruin my day uh you delivered that line reading elliot about at two times speed of

[42:33] how he delivered every line of this movie pauses uh so anyway we learned that her parents were

[42:38] kidnapped by lord dagda and he's been trying to stop the bluebell people from not being under his

[42:43] control and all these things happen by the way all the actual information that happens in this movie

[42:48] happens in a big info dump scene where it's just like three flashbacks yeah we're gonna just

[42:53] literally explain everything that's going on and the rest of the movie is padding padding padding

[42:58] padding and then a scene where information occurs there was less padding in paddington bear than in

[43:04] this movie and he's full of padding i guess you'd call it stuffing anyway this is also the flashbacks

[43:11] happen after he max has proven his true might as a wizard by coming across some elves who are in a

[43:16] fight with the battle yeah happens upon about which the elves are handling themselves pretty

[43:20] well because they're all martial arts masters and the bad guys are just big fat guys with hammers

[43:25] uh they just land like out of work bouncers that have croquet mallets wait is this the one where he

[43:30] does a magic spell that just basically sends uh staffs to people yes that levitates them so that

[43:35] people can catch them and there's a whole big like stack of weapons in a corner which are like weapons

[43:41] interestingly there's a whole big stack of uh stack of sticks yeah thank you he's like he opens

[43:47] the book he's like i don't know hawk there's way too many of these sticks and the hawk's like i

[43:51] believe in you max he's like i don't know man but the hawk that goes on for 20 minutes the hawk goes

[43:56] from he's not ready yet to believe in yourself and you can achieve anything within the space of

[44:02] about three scenes so max reads some shit out of his book and then all of a sudden baby these things

[44:07] start floating over into people's hands and oh boy once they got those sticks the tide turns oh

[44:13] yeah because apparently the one thing that was keeping them from winning was that they couldn't

[44:17] run over to this corner where a bunch of sticks were stacked up and grab one of them makes you

[44:21] wonder why they left the sticks over there yeah and they'll just take them with them everywhere

[44:24] they go that's the thing elliot if you live your life carrying a stick you're going to use that

[44:28] fucking stick yeah you got to put it aside sometimes if a bunch of guys run up to you with

[44:33] hammers i think feel free to keep that stick with you i just don't believe in that kind of lifestyle

[44:37] elliot i don't need a weapon to prove that i'm a man from the man with no pants on

[44:44] so max is a hero he gets a flashback info dump long story short yeah there's a big battle between

[44:50] lord dagdus men and the bluebells uh max is able to use his magic to erase a mighty army of four

[44:57] warriors in armor who show up at a battle where a bunch of children are defeating one of the bad

[45:02] guys that the armored warriors turn the tide once again and the day is saved and lord dagda

[45:09] he goes after he goes after max and so we watch this child get attacked by a man in the goblin

[45:14] face by a man in in ram horns and he had a goblin face uh what's the name of his mouse companion

[45:23] shibble shimble shimble crimble crimble crimble tries to save him by jumping and biting his

[45:30] throat and dagda hurls crimble against a tree killing him he throws him so hard that they have

[45:36] to use the same sound effect as a fist hitting a face uh this movie is full of great sound effects

[45:42] wilhelm scream appears early on for no reason every yeah everything's a slapping sound we

[45:48] realize that that dagda hates mice so max conjures up a bunch of mice that are all over dagda this

[45:54] somehow turns dagda into a mouse it's not really clear how the dagda plus mice equals mouse which

[46:00] if that was the way my life was going to be i wouldn't want a mouse on me either but also like

[46:04] it just was like you see him and all of a sudden there's a bunch of white mice swarming over empty

[46:12] clothes of him so like mice have dissolved dagda yeah at some point i'm like do they eat him i guess

[46:18] yeah unsure of exactly what happened to him uh but the day has been saved everything's great

[46:23] max goes back the four armored warriors he conjured are uh edited out of the movie they

[46:29] instantly disappear what can only be called a cut and and max leaves and returns home where now

[46:35] he's got the confidence that he lacked before you know he leaves and he's a little bummed because

[46:39] he's like my best friend crimble the mouse is dead i'm gonna lay this dude's corpse on this

[46:44] magic book i'm gonna say a prayer about i wish that i could save him yeah guys have i ever told

[46:50] you the story of darth plagius the wise please tell us so he was like a sith lord who was so

[46:56] super powerful that like he figured out that uh he might be able to i think something about

[47:01] controlling life at death yeah yeah sure uh or maybe he couldn't do that and it drove him crazy

[47:07] and if you read this story uh it was it was in episode three revenge of the seven i don't

[47:12] remember that movie that well plagius or plagius i don't how do you pronounce it i'm just trying to

[47:18] remember how they pronounced it in the way g is plagius i don't know i mean i don't remember but

[47:22] it's not like you were reading in mcdermott's performance is very nuanced but i don't always

[47:26] understand what he's saying i think what i liked best about that movie and by liked i mean hated

[47:30] the most okay which is the best of the prequels by far okay wow elliot's getting mad he's standing

[47:36] up hey look overturned stable uh is how the emperor rather than being an old man aging

[47:44] naturally over time is hit with lightning so hard that he becomes an old man that the movie

[47:51] all of us need to explain needs to explain everything to the point of how did this guy

[47:55] who was probably in his 60s in only 20 years turned into a man in his 80s we got forced

[48:01] lightning that's the only explanation what a dumb movie in so many ways but again best of the

[48:07] prequels yeah yeah you see really doesn't look like a hover bike it really does look like a

[48:12] california raisin that guy yeah yeah you know well that made the movie better or worse if he

[48:19] instead of writing it broke into a motown song broken i heard it through the grapevine and then

[48:25] boogied their way into a bag of oh my god i just got it because raisins are made out of grapes

[48:33] oh my god all it all makes sense to you now oh my lord oh brother you were like i gotta call

[48:40] my own and raisins they're both wonderful but how do they what's the connection i gotta call

[48:43] my mom and apologize mom remember when i said that your pitch for the california raisins campaign

[48:51] even though they bought it was stupid well listen to this i'm sorry you know the apology you were

[48:58] looking for well listen to this i'm sorry about what i said she's like i don't like it when you

[49:02] bring your apology like it's a back to the future reference but but i can't express real emotion

[49:09] you may not like it but your kids are gonna love it and i'm your kid

[49:14] uh so he goes back home he finds that crimble is not dead but instead can now be a boy again

[49:20] because maybe he was a boy before yeah he is he is me seconds away from being bullied

[49:26] yeah when crimbo shows up a young boy with elf ears and the other and the bullies are like ah

[49:32] a black kid we don't know how to handle that like that's the point in the movie where you're like

[49:38] is this movie racist because they're making crimble sound the the mouse sound like a black

[49:43] kid or is this supposed to be a black kid and then it comes out he's like okay it's a black kid but

[49:47] it's still kind of racist a little bit but crimble holds the mice which turns out to be lord dagda

[49:52] holds them how's the mouse i stand corrected it was just it was not he doesn't hold a bouquet of

[49:57] mice it's not a rat king like thing where they

[50:00] tails are entwined so he's he places a mouse on the bully's shoulder that immediately diffuses

[50:05] the bully's anger and the bully runs away all right and then so the crimbles but the big

[50:09] crimble death scene uh he lays crimble to rest on his magic book and then leaves

[50:13] take leaving behind him the single most powerful magical tome or grimoire all four pages of it

[50:21] it's all four dust covered pages barely pushing the length of an nes game instruction manual

[50:27] he leaves behind and i have to assume that the last three pages of that book were just the

[50:34] different baddies he would be facing yeah well the thing is there's the french language version

[50:39] of the thing that you've already read every time i buy every time i buy a new video game

[50:45] there's always a moment where i'm like oh i just got home from the video game store

[50:50] i kind of gotta take a shit i'll go to the bathroom maybe i'll check out the uh the game

[50:54] manual on this on this game when i'll crack open the game i'm painting a picture in a second

[50:59] so uh i sit down among other things sit down in the toilet crack open the game you know

[51:05] unwrap all the packaging they have all those like stickers and shit crack it open and of

[51:09] course those for later there's no fucking manuals anymore all that shit's in game

[51:14] so when i'm like the back of the box right yeah why we whatever happened to predictability guys

[51:21] milkman the paper boy video game manuals yeah well everywhere you look there's a magician

[51:28] things were better you know uh i mean the movie just basically ends with

[51:32] crimble is like living in max's crimble and worm the henchman of dagda who becomes a good guy

[51:39] and tom and t-top tom or whatever his name is the rhyming weirdo they're all living in max's closet

[51:46] and they can't wait to help him with his math homework later and lord dagda he's the mouse in

[51:51] the cage because despite all his rage he's still just a rat in a cage which means lord dagda

[51:57] has been cursed to spend his life watching an adolescent boy masturbate before going to bed

[52:03] and rely on a child to make sure he is fed every day or he will die and has water and

[52:08] wood chips the movie ends with dagda muttering to himself about wood chips the end yeah circle

[52:13] wipe circle wipe to the credits yeah well no it was an iris in on uh the end uh but so that's

[52:22] iris is essentially a circle wipe sure uh that's max magician legend of the rings i had to look at

[52:30] the dvd to remind myself of the title because again it's generic i feel like dan are we putting

[52:36] a bow on this we are putting a bow we haven't fully gotten across the cheapness of the film

[52:41] yeah it looks like a bunch of larpers got together and we're like hey man what we do every weekend is

[52:47] awesome we got to get some other people we got to get some other people to sneak into this here

[52:51] podcast and say you know what this is a pretty the third co-host what are you talking about this is

[52:58] the end of the podcast this is a pretty low budget affair this is contest yeah it is yeah well and

[53:04] the man the movie we talked about and you know we're not that different clearly like a labor of

[53:09] love somebody really kind of put their heart and soul on the screen so in the makeup effects

[53:14] because let's say one thing that we didn't say before the makeup effects are pretty good makeup

[53:18] for the bad guys like we were saying this is xena level makeup like you wouldn't see it in a movie

[53:22] you would see it on a lesser episode of buffy level makeup yeah it's good level makeup yeah

[53:28] it's if you saw someone wearing this makeup on halloween you'd be like shit you should be a

[53:32] professional makeup artist dude yeah if you saw it in a big budget motion picture you'd be like

[53:36] that's not so great if i saw an episode of sci-fi channels original reality program face off i would

[53:43] be like not bad yeah b plus yeah good work yeah you could maybe you'll get work on this episode

[53:48] of farscape uh by the way i was watching an episode of that fucking show and john landis came

[53:53] on and i flipped my shit and charlene's like who's that and you're like he's a famous murderer

[53:59] uh manslaughter you'd be like that's max landis's dad and she got super excited yeah yeah

[54:06] she's really into american ultra she writes a lot of american ultra slash fic she's you were like

[54:12] you know michael landon well they're not related but their names sound a little similar if you

[54:16] don't say the last syllable um but what i was trying to say is yeah go on this is this is like

[54:23] a super micro budget movie it's goofy it has all the hallmark traits of a shitty hallmark movie of

[54:30] a hallmark movie like as you put it a sheer sign of like a sure sign of a bat of one of these like

[54:37] micro budget movies is that every scene starts a couple minutes like a couple seconds too early it

[54:43] ends a couple seconds too late uh every shot there's a scene in it where uh they max is leaving

[54:50] the house and they're making and the dad is like oh your friend's the mouse and he goes uh

[54:56] crumble says your fly is is open and he goes huh and max leaves and the dad zips it and then it it

[55:02] holds for a couple seconds that goes uh what uh uh uh bye wait bye and the mom laughs at him and

[55:09] it's like you just should have just ended the scene on him zipping his fly up like you don't

[55:14] need to show us everything that happened after that like we need closure only the story of that

[55:19] fly where'd that fly come from where's the flag i try to remember exactly what happened at sea why

[55:24] it was so awkward at the end of it yeah so it was because you were so erotically turned on i was

[55:30] like oh erotically turned on that's what's the other ways you can be turned on like what like

[55:35] someone intellectually i was dead and dr frankenstein put some electro bolts in me

[55:41] so guys you keep interrupting me before i can reach my

[55:46] jerry springer sermon at the end of the episode you know what did we learn

[55:50] uh i don't want to rant here but but this is the sort of thing where if you want to watch

[55:55] like a goofy super low budget movie we should be in this is a pretty good one right now i'm

[56:01] giving a final judgment all right this is a good bad movie a bad bad movie or movie you kind of

[56:05] like go with stewart this is a good bad movie all the way i'm with stewart on this one good

[56:12] bad g to the b you get to laugh at extras in the background jump kicking stuff or just not

[56:18] even doing anything man there's lots of funny reuses of footage there's bad editing it's really

[56:25] fun there's a lot of shots of a hawk uh where they're doing voiceover for the hawk talking

[56:30] and occasionally the hawk will move its beak and you can swear there's a director or an animal

[56:35] wrangler off screen that's like trying to make motions to make the hawk move its mouth i was

[56:40] thinking the opposite i was like did they try to line up the words with the hawk's mouth and

[56:45] then feel like it wasn't worth it and just not because there are a bunch of places where they

[56:48] probably could where the hawk is saying like no and they and the hawk will open its mouth close

[56:53] its mouth and then say you'll hear no yeah yeah because oh sounds are really easy to do with a beak

[57:00] show the beak opening and closing haven't you ever watched a good feathers episode

[57:06] i agree that this is a good bad movie for a for a little while i was like

[57:12] i was like marginal on it because you're like mar you put margarine on it well i realized and

[57:17] we're like dan no that's the disc you're gonna ruin it i thought it was a bagel i realized that

[57:22] my problem with this movie yeah it's not a pardon no your problem this movie my problem this movie

[57:27] was was gonna take it down a couple notches i was i was actually trying to follow the exposition

[57:33] because i was like we got to talk about this later on we got to talk about this we got to

[57:37] understand what the the rich mythos is we owe it to our listeners to be able to explain exactly

[57:42] what happened and then i was like check your brain at the door action block well that's the thing

[57:46] like if you're not doing a podcast on this movie you don't need to give a shit about what what's

[57:50] going on in fact not understanding what's going on is a benefit to you then because you can joke

[57:54] to your pals about wait what why is that happening what what's this just sit back and let her wash

[57:59] over you man just it's an experience ride the roller coaster you know just like max magician

[58:04] ride it ride the horse ride the pink horse you know you know yeah yeah it's like bad boys

[58:10] ride that ride that dragon just let it wash over you the the sights and sounds of him bad boys

[58:16] chase the dragon chase the dragon just hang on just find a snake hang on to it let it drag you

[58:21] where it may that's this movie yeah look you're gonna get brambles on your on your knees and

[58:26] you're gonna get rope burn let this movie just drag you through the woods to wherever it goes

[58:32] which is a cage with a mouse in it in a boy's room the end

[58:41] my name is patrick my name is parker max fun con has been a huge inspiration in my life

[58:48] now i have this network of friends that i've made that span literally across

[58:53] the entire globe and they're some of my favorite people in the world i truly cannot believe

[58:58] the amount of wonderful and lasting friendships that have come out of this if you feel like you

[59:04] might not fit in as long as you're a good person you'll fit in because everyone there

[59:09] is good and amazing and kind and wonderful and you should absolutely go it will be the best

[59:15] decision of your life make a ton of new friends like parker and patrick at max fun con tickets

[59:21] for max fun con and max fun con east are on sale now at maxfuncon.com

[59:30] hey it's dan breaking in here with an announcement that we didn't have ready at the time of taping

[59:36] but it's exciting and we all wanted you to know about it as soon as possible

[59:40] the flop house is doing their own comics miniseries it's uh unlike then when we when we

[59:46] all did the flash gordon comic together this is a flop house branded product uh it's all our

[59:53] original story it's all our original uh it has us in it

[1:00:00] Introducing the story, it's all Flophouse all the time and it's going to be available

[1:00:05] for purchase on the Flophouse website starting Wednesday.

[1:00:10] That's just a digital copy, a physical copy is not out of the question in the future if

[1:00:15] we do enough of these, but for now it's all digital.

[1:00:19] But go to Flophousepodcast.com on Wednesday for your chance to buy a copy.

[1:00:24] But the important thing to know about this is we're not lining our pockets with this

[1:00:28] money.

[1:00:29] All the proceeds from the sale of this comic go to the ACLU.

[1:00:34] So we're asking a minimum $1 charge for the comic, but you can totally give more if you

[1:00:39] want because all the money is going to charity.

[1:00:43] That's right, to charity.

[1:00:44] The Flophouse gives back.

[1:00:47] I actually wrote the first story that is available, but this is the first in a projected series.

[1:00:53] Stuart and Elliot have their own scripts ready to go, but we only get to do more of these

[1:00:57] things if a lot of people buy it and donate and download and all that stuff.

[1:01:02] So if you want more, spread the word.

[1:01:05] Mine's a fun story, I think.

[1:01:07] It's a take on the old EC Comics Tales from the Crypt style of doing things, but funny.

[1:01:15] It's the sort of thing you can enjoy even if you're not a comics reader, or you can

[1:01:19] buy to give to the comics fan in your life.

[1:01:23] And I would like to, before I go, thank all the people who made this possible.

[1:01:28] Roger Landridge, who did the art for the comic, Tom Fowler, who did the cover, Nathan Fairbourn,

[1:01:34] Chris Eliopoulos, Travis Lanham, and our editor, Nate Cosby, who came up with the whole idea

[1:01:41] in the first place.

[1:01:43] So thanks for that, and back to all three of us in the studio.

[1:01:51] But moving on, we've got a few sponsors for tonight's show.

[1:01:56] First up is Max Magician.

[1:02:00] We got to read the copy, though.

[1:02:02] Join this thrilling adventure that is beyond the realm of imagination as Max learns...

[1:02:08] And the tradition of Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings.

[1:02:10] Sounds good, sounds good.

[1:02:12] Is this thing.

[1:02:13] Put it in your mouth and watch it.

[1:02:17] I guess that's our take, we'll call that a take one.

[1:02:23] The first advertisement is for...

[1:02:27] Okay, that's take two.

[1:02:31] The Flophouse is sponsored in part by The Black Tux.

[1:02:36] Looking great for a wedding or special event has never been easier with TheBlackTux.com.

[1:02:42] With high quality rental suits and tuxedos delivered to your door, The Black Tux gives

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[1:02:55] your suit months before your event.

[1:02:57] So I don't just have to take whatever tux they send me.

[1:02:59] They're going to send it to me, I'm going to try it on, and I can tell them, hey, this

[1:03:02] doesn't fit me, I don't want to rent it.

[1:03:04] Yeah, if they send you a clown suit, for instance, instead of a tux, you can be like, hey Black

[1:03:08] Tux, this is a clown suit and not a tux.

[1:03:10] I didn't even know you carried these.

[1:03:12] Yeah, take it back.

[1:03:14] And you've probably been listening to this episode and you're like, I've kind of been

[1:03:17] wanting to try a cape with my tux.

[1:03:19] Well, I don't know for sure that they have them, but if they do, you can try on a cape,

[1:03:24] see if it looks good.

[1:03:25] Yeah, if that's an option, you can have it.

[1:03:29] Add features to the business, not knowing for sure if it's a...

[1:03:34] Now, what I will say is, you can just go buy a cape wherever.

[1:03:38] Yeah, anyone can.

[1:03:39] The tux is the important part.

[1:03:40] Yeah, just go to the nearest cape store.

[1:03:41] A sheet is basically a cape, as any child can tell you.

[1:03:45] Let's put that on the box for Sheets, the box of the cape, the NBC show.

[1:03:54] Sheet is basically a cape, NBC is the cape.

[1:03:59] Why did we put this on the box?

[1:04:01] And why are we releasing the cape on DVD?

[1:04:04] Why did we pay to have this transferred to Blu-ray quality?

[1:04:09] All good questions.

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[1:04:27] That's theblacktux.com slash flop.

[1:04:32] You're never going to know when you need to put on the writs.

[1:04:34] No.

[1:04:35] Well, hopefully you will need to know, because you have to order it a couple months ahead

[1:04:38] of time.

[1:04:39] Oh yeah, that's right.

[1:04:40] But...

[1:04:41] You always are going to know when you have to put on the writs.

[1:04:43] You've got a wedding coming up, an awards show.

[1:04:45] Dance with Sticks or Umbrellas.

[1:04:48] Yeah, look dressed up like a million dollar trooper, trying so hard to look like Gary

[1:04:51] Cooper, super duper.

[1:04:52] Any of those things.

[1:04:53] Yeah, pooper scooper.

[1:04:54] Now, here's the thing.

[1:04:55] You've got a wedding coming up, you've got an awards show coming up.

[1:05:00] Maybe you've got, I don't know, you're just going to Casablanca and you want to look good

[1:05:04] at Rick's.

[1:05:05] Maybe you've got a wedding awards show coming up.

[1:05:07] Which is the best wedding?

[1:05:08] You don't know.

[1:05:10] At the Weddies.

[1:05:12] The awards for weddings.

[1:05:13] I'm assuming it's on Bravo.

[1:05:14] Probably.

[1:05:15] It's got to be.

[1:05:16] Yeah.

[1:05:17] Watch what happens.

[1:05:18] Watch Andy Cohen.

[1:05:19] Live.

[1:05:20] Yep.

[1:05:21] Yep.

[1:05:22] That's the name of the thing, Dan.

[1:05:23] Good job.

[1:05:24] I'm demanding that you watch it live.

[1:05:25] You must watch it live.

[1:05:26] Sure.

[1:05:27] You can't just watch what happens.

[1:05:28] You have to do it live.

[1:05:30] So we've been doing this bit for a little bit.

[1:05:31] Go check it out.

[1:05:32] That's true.

[1:05:33] Do you think...

[1:05:34] It feels like it's been years.

[1:05:35] Do you think...

[1:05:36] Yeah, we have nice long beards.

[1:05:37] We get meetings at Bravo.

[1:05:38] They go, wait a minute.

[1:05:39] Keep it down, everybody.

[1:05:40] Let's follow Vanderpump's rules of order.

[1:05:41] So theblacktux.com.

[1:05:42] Check it out.

[1:05:43] And use that promo code.

[1:05:44] What was it again, Dan?

[1:05:45] It was theblacktux.com slash flop is where you've got to go.

[1:05:46] Cool.

[1:05:47] But our other sponsor for the evening is Casper.

[1:05:48] The Flop House is supported in part by Casper, an online retailer of premium mattresses for

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[1:07:40] Mattress is made in America.

[1:07:43] And there's a special offer to listeners of the Flop House.

[1:07:46] Flop House listeners can get $50 toward any mattress purchase by visiting www.casper.com

[1:07:55] slash Flop House and using the promo code FLOPHOUSE.

[1:08:00] All one word, FLOPHOUSE.

[1:08:01] And that's a huge deal.

[1:08:03] $50?

[1:08:04] Yeah, that's crazy.

[1:08:05] Yeah.

[1:08:06] That's a grant.

[1:08:07] A little grant.

[1:08:08] Terms and conditions apply.

[1:08:09] And Casper won a bunch of awards for their technology of making tiny little mattresses

[1:08:15] that expand to become giant mattresses.

[1:08:18] The Ghosties.

[1:08:19] The Matties.

[1:08:20] The Ghosties.

[1:08:21] The Matties.

[1:08:22] That's the Mattress Awards.

[1:08:23] And also the Caspies.

[1:08:24] But those are awards they put out.

[1:08:26] And the Espies, which just sounds sort of like Caspies.

[1:08:30] The Matties are hosted by Mads Mikkelsen and Matt Martin.

[1:08:34] And the Caspies are hosted by Prince Caspian of the Dawn Treader.

[1:08:39] Wow.

[1:08:40] All right.

[1:08:41] Now, Dan.

[1:08:42] They're hosted by the horse and his boy, the comedy team of the horse and his boy.

[1:08:50] Say boy.

[1:08:52] Anyway, Dan, we don't have any Jumbo Tron messages.

[1:08:55] No Jumbo Tron.

[1:08:57] But I wanted to give a special shout out to Cassidy, an avid listener, former co-worker

[1:09:05] of my mom, huge Flop House fan.

[1:09:07] She tells me about it all the time.

[1:09:10] And Cassidy is making a big move, starting a new job, a cross-country move.

[1:09:13] And I just want to say, Cassidy, good luck with it.

[1:09:16] I hope it's a great move and I hope everything works out great.

[1:09:18] Thanks for listening to Flop House.

[1:09:19] Please keep listening.

[1:09:20] Try to get my mom to listen sometime.

[1:09:21] She does not.

[1:09:22] And this isn't Cletus Cassidy, aka Carnage.

[1:09:25] Would I give a heartfelt message to a serial killer?

[1:09:28] No, I would not.

[1:09:30] And it's not Cassidy the Vampire from Preacher either.

[1:09:32] Okay.

[1:09:33] This is a person named Cassidy.

[1:09:36] He's neither bonded to a symbiote nor a vampire.

[1:09:40] I mean, he's bonded to a symbiote known as Heroin.

[1:09:44] You mean Cassidy the Vampire.

[1:09:47] Yeah.

[1:09:49] But now it's time for letters from listeners like you.

[1:09:53] Like you.

[1:09:54] Are you a listener?

[1:09:55] Probably.

[1:09:56] I mean, you're listening right now.

[1:09:58] Would you consider yourself a listener?

[1:10:00] If you just listen to one episode, does that make you a listener?

[1:10:02] If you're stuck in the backseat while somebody's playing this for you in the car, I'm sorry.

[1:10:07] If someone tied you up and put earbuds in your head, does that make you a listener?

[1:10:11] Are you being listener-forced?

[1:10:14] Look, I think I understand what you guys are saying, and I guess what you're saying is,

[1:10:17] the Flophouse Boys are looking for listeners looking around the world.

[1:10:22] That's not what we're saying.

[1:10:23] The Flophouse Boys are looking for boys and girls who like to listen to Flophouse stuff.

[1:10:28] Sounds creepy the way you said that.

[1:10:30] Flophouse Boys looking for listeners.

[1:10:33] Flophouse joy felt by the listeners.

[1:10:37] Write us a letter and tell us if you listen.

[1:10:40] Write us a letter, not a lot of words rhyme with listen.

[1:10:44] But I'm trying, and you'll glisten, and you'll shine if you listen to the Flophouse.

[1:10:52] The Flophouse is good for the coats of pets and other domesticated animals.

[1:10:56] You know, there was chunks of that that sounded like Don't Stop Me Now by Queen.

[1:11:00] Yeah, sung by the world's greatest Eddie Vedder impersonator.

[1:11:05] That's Eddie Vedder, basically.

[1:11:09] Yeah.

[1:11:10] This one's from Abbott, last name with L.

[1:11:13] Hey, what would Eddie Shredder sound like?

[1:11:15] It's Shredder, but he has an Eddie Vedder cover band.

[1:11:18] He has a Pearl Jam cover band, him and Crang.

[1:11:21] Rocksteady and Bebop, of course, play in the band as well.

[1:11:24] Yeah, they just play Hunger Strike over it.

[1:11:28] Crang does the Chris Cornell part.

[1:11:30] This letter is from Abbott, last name with L.

[1:11:34] Who writes?

[1:11:35] And Costello.

[1:11:36] Dear speeches.

[1:11:37] Like, you don't leave that on the…

[1:11:39] No, that was a penny on the table.

[1:11:42] Long-time listener, first-time writer, I'm slowly working my way through your back catalog

[1:11:46] and came across a movie minute where you talk about the then-upcoming movie Avatar.

[1:11:50] Remember the movie minutes?

[1:11:51] Whatever happened to those, Dan?

[1:11:53] No one liked them, so I stopped doing them.

[1:11:55] That's a good point.

[1:11:56] Somebody tweeted at me the other day, and they said,

[1:11:58] I might be the only one who liked these, and they might treat you too,

[1:12:01] but are you guys going to do another Oscars floptacular?

[1:12:04] And I was like, you are the only one who likes those.

[1:12:06] No, people did like the Oscars floptacular, but I don't know.

[1:12:11] Not enough to make it worth doing the whole thing.

[1:12:14] Well, maybe at the next episode we record.

[1:12:16] We're recording this before the Oscars, but it's going to be released after.

[1:12:19] Maybe next episode we can just talk about the Oscars.

[1:12:21] We can talk about the Oscars or something.

[1:12:23] I'm not going to go crazy, but, yeah, maybe. I don't know.

[1:12:26] I like trying to get out of watching movies.

[1:12:28] It depends.

[1:12:29] The listeners now will know whether the Oscars went out of their way

[1:12:34] to choose the best movie of the year, as they usually don't do,

[1:12:37] or whether we live in a dystopia where Trump is president

[1:12:40] and La La Land is considered the best picture of the year.

[1:12:44] Listeners, you know if we live in that world.

[1:12:46] We didn't talk about – during the movie we didn't mention that one of the villains,

[1:12:51] one of the monsters is called the Red Cap, which is a popular –

[1:12:55] Person to help you with your bags at the airport.

[1:12:57] A type of fey creature, like a notoriously violent goblin type character.

[1:13:02] Oh, I didn't realize that.

[1:13:03] But that's like something that's shown up in folklore quite a bit

[1:13:06] and certainly in the White Wolf Changeling game.

[1:13:09] I haven't heard about that one in a while.

[1:13:11] But I'm surprised that all throughout Trump's campaign

[1:13:17] that nobody likened the Make America Great Again behatted legions

[1:13:23] as being likened to the violent Red Caps.

[1:13:25] I'm sorry. You're surprised that no one did that?

[1:13:28] Yeah. If I'm the first one drawing that connection,

[1:13:31] well, give me $5 million because I'm awesome.

[1:13:34] Booyah!

[1:13:35] Who's giving you this money?

[1:13:36] I don't know.

[1:13:37] The fucking – I don't know.

[1:13:39] The White Wolf?

[1:13:40] Yeah.

[1:13:41] For promoting their products?

[1:13:42] $5 million.

[1:13:43] They do not have $5 million on hand.

[1:13:45] Maybe Chaosium can give it to you.

[1:13:47] They have way more.

[1:13:50] This gentleman came across a movie minute, he says,

[1:13:54] where you talk about the then-upcoming movie Avatar.

[1:13:57] Elliot says, I'll be surprised this movie is not a flop.

[1:14:00] It could be a success, but maybe it will do well off James Cameron's name

[1:14:04] and then not do so well.

[1:14:07] I stand by my prediction of could be a flop or could do well.

[1:14:10] Considering that four times this movie had the honor of being the highest-grossing film,

[1:14:14] my question is what other movies have you been this wrong about?

[1:14:18] What movies have you thought would be terrible that turned out to be successful

[1:14:21] and what movies did you think would be successes that you ended up covering on the podcast?

[1:14:25] Thanks for flopping.

[1:14:26] Abbott last name withheld.

[1:14:27] I just want to point out that at the time I was like James Cameron has done this before with Titanic

[1:14:35] where people thought it was going to be a flop and it wasn't.

[1:14:38] I predicted that Avatar would be a success.

[1:14:42] Okay, we got you on record now.

[1:14:44] We have you on record years after the fact as saying you were right.

[1:14:48] Look, I'm always willing to admit I was wrong.

[1:14:51] After this past November, I've never been more wrong in my life,

[1:14:54] and so I'm embracing my wrongness.

[1:14:56] So you know what?

[1:14:57] I apologize, James Cameron to Avatar.

[1:14:59] I will settle the class action suit of Flophouse listeners against me for being wrong.

[1:15:03] You all can have one-third of a penny in settlement.

[1:15:07] I'm kind of surprised that Batman v. Superman – I'm not surprised that I didn't like it,

[1:15:15] but I'm surprised that Zack Snyder and Warner Brothers turned out a movie that is kind of universally disliked.

[1:15:24] Like it won a bunch of Razzie awards this year, which doesn't necessarily mean quality.

[1:15:30] The Razzies are kind of bullshit.

[1:15:31] Sorry, Razzies, or maybe you're not.

[1:15:33] I don't really care.

[1:15:34] But what I'm saying is I'm surprised that it was as bad as it was.

[1:15:40] I guess, but we're talking more about like flops or hits I guess.

[1:15:44] Yeah, but no.

[1:15:46] It's movies that you thought would be terrible.

[1:15:49] It's a movie I didn't expect for us to cover on the show.

[1:15:52] I mean there are movies where I've seen the commercial or the trailer, and I've been like,

[1:15:56] I don't want to see that.

[1:15:57] That looks terrible.

[1:15:58] And then they turn out to be not that bad.

[1:16:00] Like the Friday Night remake was way better than I expected it to be.

[1:16:04] There are very few times where I think a movie is going to be great, and then it turns out to be awful,

[1:16:10] if only because it's like I don't – no, actually that's not true.

[1:16:16] Every now and then there's a movie.

[1:16:17] I can't think of it off the top of my head.

[1:16:18] Every now and then – well, I mean La La Land.

[1:16:20] There you go.

[1:16:21] I was super excited about it, really wanted to see it, and then I didn't enjoy it that much.

[1:16:25] But like it's – I feel like right now movies are so divided into like smaller movies that tend to be of quality

[1:16:35] and then large, big-budget movies where even those you can tell going in pretty much when it's going to be good or not.

[1:16:42] I don't know.

[1:16:43] Like I find myself not that surprised by movies anymore.

[1:16:46] But I also see –

[1:16:47] You don't have that childlike wonder anymore.

[1:16:49] I don't.

[1:16:50] That's true.

[1:16:51] It's also the fact that like actually having a child, I like don't go to the theaters that often,

[1:16:56] and I don't have that much time to watch movies at home.

[1:16:59] So it's rare that a movie that's bad slips through the screen that I've set up where it's like this week I have exactly two hours

[1:17:07] spread out over five dishwashing sessions to watch a movie.

[1:17:11] I'm going to watch a movie I've wanted to see for years.

[1:17:13] How do you watch movies when you're watching stuff doing the dishes?

[1:17:17] Do you have a TV in your kitchen?

[1:17:20] I have an iPad and I can stream from my TiVo.

[1:17:23] Are you some sort of television wizard?

[1:17:25] I am a television wizard.

[1:17:26] Are we believing that you're some sort of TV wizard?

[1:17:28] I have an iPad that gives me access to my TiVo through streaming, Netflix, and any other movie site,

[1:17:34] and I just set it up next to the sink and I watch.

[1:17:37] TV wizard was not a hit off of The Who's follow-up Tommy 2.

[1:17:44] It's just he's really good at watching TV even though he's deaf and blind.

[1:17:50] This kid's deaf and blind, but he still knows the plot of all the Simpsons episodes.

[1:17:55] He's a TV wizard, he really loves Brady Bunch.

[1:17:59] TV wizard, he had an orange for lunch.

[1:18:05] He still lacks some of the inspiration.

[1:18:07] How do you think he does it?

[1:18:10] He just watches TV. How did he get so good?

[1:18:14] He's a TV guy.

[1:18:15] I don't care.

[1:18:17] Who the fuck cares?

[1:18:20] It's your wicked Uncle Ernie and I watch a lot of bad TV as I change the channels, change the channels.

[1:18:28] Or should it be flip about instead of fiddle about?

[1:18:31] I don't get to the theater very often either.

[1:18:37] I rarely seek out something that I haven't –

[1:18:41] it's hard to see something that hasn't been promoted to me in some way or another.

[1:18:47] It's much harder these days to see a movie without knowing a lot about it ahead of time

[1:18:52] just by the way that culture's bombarded at us,

[1:18:55] like either promoted or you see people just discussing it either online in social media

[1:19:01] or in person in front of your face.

[1:19:03] I've gotten pretty good if I know that a movie is like a horror movie or a genre picture

[1:19:09] that gets any kind of buzz at any of the festivals.

[1:19:12] I almost immediately stop reading any details unless there's a release date

[1:19:19] because it's not that I don't want to go in with spoilers,

[1:19:22] but I'm like I don't need to spend time promoting this further.

[1:19:25] I know I want to see Green Room by Jeremy Saulnier again,

[1:19:30] although that sometimes leads to a mistake where I take my wife to see it

[1:19:34] and she spends most of the movie covering her eyes and then is mad at me.

[1:19:40] I was trying to go back and see whether there was actually anything that we did on the show

[1:19:45] that I had thought might be good at some point.

[1:19:48] No, because usually if you think it might be good, you watch it without us,

[1:19:50] and then you're like it was pretty crazy, but we can't see it for the show.

[1:19:53] Yeah, like all the Now You See Me movies, which you're apparently all about.

[1:19:58] Yeah.

[1:20:00] uh...

[1:20:01] now you see me three don't watch it so we can do a lot of us in order to be a

[1:20:05] huge hits and now you three me now you see movies are super super super stupid

[1:20:10] but they're stupid in an entertaining way

[1:20:12] so uh...

[1:20:15] i guess that's the moral of this show letter okay let's go to the ok let's

[1:20:19] move to the next level roughly an hour-and-a-half on that letter

[1:20:22] my commute to work is crazy long this is from uh... by the way doug last name

[1:20:26] is held a funny right

[1:20:28] my

[1:20:29] as you're doing

[1:20:31] uh... i think you need to know that we're going to get married to patty

[1:20:33] mayonnaise

[1:20:35] like no spoilers you know what

[1:20:37] maybe maybe love

[1:20:40] she's got the money

[1:20:41] my commute to work is crazy long

[1:20:44] and i was in your podcast all the time it's my favorite

[1:20:47] i think it's because you're better and absurd riffing remind me my closest

[1:20:50] friends

[1:20:51] none of whom unfortunately live close to me anymore policy that there is in other

[1:20:55] words and familiar about the flop house that i really appreciate especially in

[1:20:58] these dark days

[1:21:00] q haley

[1:21:01] politics and elections

[1:21:03] so thank you i'd like that he is close

[1:21:05] in two different ways within one sentence emotionally and physically

[1:21:10] and you're right

[1:21:12] anyway two questions for you

[1:21:15] i was texting with said friends the other night i joke that there should be

[1:21:17] a meal of form and grill

[1:21:20] with an accompanying infomercial

[1:21:22] i said that one part of the infomercial could be a guy holding the grill

[1:21:25] inspecting its features carefully

[1:21:27] and then dropping it on the floor on account of his bitter ecstasy

[1:21:31] and another a guy could pick one up

[1:21:33] throw it through a window and then disappear into the early morning

[1:21:36] i was legitimately proud of this idea but they didn't care for it when they

[1:21:40] write

[1:21:41] i think i can take it either way meals form is the guy that uh... paints the

[1:21:44] vigo painting it's been going on

[1:21:47] no incorrect

[1:21:50] okay

[1:21:51] store policy teaching history of film class

[1:21:55] uh...

[1:21:58] now we get the bus to keep another name for michael keaton

[1:22:03] it was it was my opinion buster poindexter

[1:22:07] he was in free jack and uh...

[1:22:11] gung ho right

[1:22:13] yeah okay

[1:22:15] uh...

[1:22:17] number two

[1:22:18] one of the most offensive movies you've seen either because of former content

[1:22:22] you flop some offensive crap over the years

[1:22:24] parentheses last ounce of courage comes to mind

[1:22:27] but what movies make you fume from righteous indignation

[1:22:31] thanks for the laughs doug last name with hope

[1:22:34] as for the mealish form and grill

[1:22:37] i don't know

[1:22:37] haha

[1:22:39] shrugged

[1:22:41] uh... it's a perfectly fine joke

[1:22:44] now and i mean you know very rough

[1:22:45] i would say on the podcast certainly

[1:22:48] yeah yeah and then i would make money for it well i'd say and then you go and

[1:22:52] you make fun of me i you know what

[1:22:53] it password passes the test of

[1:22:55] something we would say snowy stupid

[1:22:59] expecting the other guys to not like it in the heat of a moment

[1:23:03] in the key

[1:23:04] uh... the moment

[1:23:07] there is the rest of that song

[1:23:10] uh... so it was a movie movies

[1:23:12] i've i've talked about how offensive i find the movie uh... forty days and

[1:23:17] forty nights and i have any josh hartnett sex comedy where he decides to

[1:23:22] give up premarital sex for lent

[1:23:24] and then he proceeds to uh... blow a feather across

[1:23:28] sessions as a man's tummy to give her an orgasm

[1:23:32] which i think it i mean at that point that's basically intercourse

[1:23:34] and then at the end he gets raped by his ex-girlfriend it's really weird

[1:23:38] uh...

[1:23:40] there's i mean the a lot of the a lot of the christian movies we watch uh... are

[1:23:46] feature like these ridiculous straw man arguments

[1:23:50] and those are all

[1:23:51] i don't know if i'd say they're like super offensive they're just really dumb

[1:23:54] definitely insults

[1:23:55] viewers intelligence yeah including the people that they're affected that they're

[1:24:00] pitching the movie tour that's the thing that bugs me the most is it's like

[1:24:04] we assume the people that like this stuff or it was i'd that's what i mean

[1:24:08] and this wasn't one of the movie doesn't talk about that

[1:24:10] saving christmas or whatever was kirk cameron saves christmas yeah like at

[1:24:14] even as a non-christian

[1:24:16] i was offended by movie it was basically like

[1:24:19] a you know what's most important about christmas

[1:24:22] all the stuff that really doesn't have anything to do with the birth of christ

[1:24:26] trees

[1:24:27] presents

[1:24:28] eating a lot of food

[1:24:29] dancing drinking that's what christmas is all about

[1:24:33] i mean should we change

[1:24:34] just because some dusty old jew back two thousand years ago said so

[1:24:38] in some crazy old book i mean

[1:24:40] isn't the isn't the like the modern commercialization of christmas wasn't

[1:24:44] that created by the like

[1:24:46] the like jewish department stores

[1:24:48] uh... i don't think jewish i mean that's that's what my wife says

[1:24:54] but like even there is something about

[1:24:56] the about the your wife

[1:24:58] by the way who is jewish not just anti-semitic

[1:25:01] yeah you're not you're not married to eva braun

[1:25:04] the it's there's something about the vulgarization of

[1:25:08] yeah yeah

[1:25:09] that i was like

[1:25:10] uh... this is gross that that they're like

[1:25:13] i really represent this faith and i'm a believer

[1:25:16] here's why it's more important to know the best thing i can come up with this

[1:25:19] was passion the christ where

[1:25:22] the movie seems to believe that the most important thing about christ as he got

[1:25:25] the shit beat out of one time

[1:25:27] rather than like the message that he had paid for the it is how you raised the

[1:25:32] center original sandwich

[1:25:33] even though he raised it everyone still gets punished for i guess all the time

[1:25:37] dan can you explain it to me

[1:25:38] uh... the original sin and yet we're all still to blame for it smoke bomb

[1:25:44] i mean we keep we keep bringing up the the religious movies but i'm i'm sure

[1:25:49] that there are

[1:25:51] a million

[1:25:52] movies where the gender politics or like the racial politics racial politics or

[1:25:57] sexual politics

[1:25:58] are so terrible that i don't even want to think about it and i mean i i i

[1:26:03] assume we're just shoving aside say like

[1:26:06] propaganda films that are

[1:26:07] offensive because they're actually against yesterday for their for hurting

[1:26:11] people

[1:26:12] where things like

[1:26:14] sallow or things like that it's like we're just going to push as far as we can

[1:26:17] go to a serbian film let your serbian film like

[1:26:20] the uh...

[1:26:21] i i think i mentioned on the podcast i watch a lot of old movies where i have to

[1:26:24] like cringe to scenes every now and then but i was going to set the two

[1:26:28] movies that just came to mind when i was thinking about this were

[1:26:31] number two runner-up soul man

[1:26:33] yes i see thomas howell

[1:26:34] i was about to talk about soul man

[1:26:37] well then i won't say too much about it

[1:26:39] please let's just let the fact that this is like

[1:26:42] a movie length blackface joke

[1:26:43] in the eighties

[1:26:46] i can

[1:26:46] almost

[1:26:47] almost cringe my way through it in a movie

[1:26:50] from the twenties

[1:26:52] that they did it in the eighties is crazy

[1:26:55] and like james earl jones is in it like

[1:26:57] that the number one one and this is this is one that i didn't expect to be

[1:27:00] stuffed to find something so when i saw it

[1:27:03] was a year of living dangerously with mel gibson and sugary weaver and i'm going

[1:27:06] to hunt

[1:27:07] and the thing i found offensive that it was that

[1:27:09] you're watching this country in upheaval

[1:27:12] it's like people getting killed left and right

[1:27:15] but the movie is like

[1:27:17] yet but no gifts and sugary weaver got out okay right okay good the white

[1:27:20] people got out fine

[1:27:22] we're just gonna kill off all these people who live in this country

[1:27:25] to show how dangerous it was getting for these two white writers

[1:27:28] of the thank goodness they escaped i was like the same problem with that and i

[1:27:31] mean what's movie the

[1:27:33] the inconsistent com no there was like a lot of money gains twenty one and

[1:27:38] movie about the tsunami

[1:27:40] oh yeah uh...

[1:27:41] sts uh... yet might be a possible or something like that it was called bad

[1:27:45] vacation

[1:27:48] and you have a lot of uh... if i mean if you don't have a vacation it's kind of

[1:27:53] like a tasteless comedy about a vacation in a place that's the tsunami

[1:27:57] and the tourist characters all they care about is trying to make this vacation

[1:28:00] work even though people are drowning all around them that is a movie i don't want

[1:28:04] to see yeah but

[1:28:06] somebody else do it

[1:28:07] but uh... no more recently than i would have been no escape with uh...

[1:28:12] uh... i don't know and also it's a prison i don't know when wilson

[1:28:16] was that where they were uh...

[1:28:18] from wilson was on radio this prison island

[1:28:22] or even let's see if there is a return of the behind enemy lines no

[1:28:26] if there's no one where he was a soldier gets trapped behind and i think it's all

[1:28:30] in the title

[1:28:31] i don't think jackie chan was it does he go broken arrow in that and i don't know

[1:28:34] it's christian though he's a peacemaker okay

[1:28:38] uh... escape it was called definitely

[1:28:40] okay with radio that

[1:28:41] uh... in this movie

[1:28:44] he was trying to get out of the uh... in a like an asian country that was being

[1:28:48] overcome with riots

[1:28:50] and it was all about like how menacing all the latest little bell in that with

[1:28:55] him

[1:28:56] i'd like to ask it isn't it

[1:28:57] no kidding

[1:28:59] you know alligators are like

[1:29:02] dinosaurs

[1:29:04] uh... but yet there there are a lot of those movies rates like

[1:29:08] we're gonna drop some americans into a situation that is

[1:29:13] dangerous for them it's more dangerous for all these non-americans as they're

[1:29:16] getting killed left and right

[1:29:18] but they basically it's like uh... as much as i love was anderson i did not

[1:29:21] like the jersey limited

[1:29:22] partly because

[1:29:24] the movie did not burn having an indian boy killed

[1:29:27] in order to help teach these three rich assholes a lesson about getting over

[1:29:31] their dad's shit

[1:29:32] like it was just what we were we were we

[1:29:35] are you seeing a was anderson movie featured people grappling with father

[1:29:38] issues

[1:29:39] and i have no problem with that every man grapples with father issues

[1:29:44] but uh... also the fact that they literally to get to

[1:29:46] to lose their bag emotional baggage had to leave behind a set of luggage at the end

[1:29:52] it was like come on wes you're better than this

[1:29:55] and then he made moonrise kingdom which i love

[1:30:00] Moving on, this is from Jeremy Lastname Withheld,

[1:30:04] who writes, to the heroes of my ear holes,

[1:30:07] the original peaches.

[1:30:08] That sounds like a movie about three tiny guys

[1:30:12] who just stuffed a submarine sandwich in somebody's ears.

[1:30:17] My daughter is three years old now.

[1:30:20] She is, as of yet, unable to grasp the wonder

[1:30:23] and excitement that your podcast brings to me nearly daily.

[1:30:26] But I hope your legacy will continue

[1:30:28] until she is able to.

[1:30:30] In the meantime, what words of future advice

[1:30:33] do you have for her as she is sure to enter a world

[1:30:36] of diminishing return movies and even more horrific reboots

[1:30:39] than we have currently as she grows into adulthood?

[1:30:42] Yours truly, Jeremy Lastname Withheld.

[1:30:45] So the question is sort of advice for a young filmgoer.

[1:30:49] Well, never date a woman who has a tattoo of a weapon.

[1:30:52] Never play cards with a guy who has the same last name

[1:30:55] as a city, otherwise everything's cream cheese.

[1:30:57] That's from Teen Wolf, but I screwed it up a little bit.

[1:30:59] Okay.

[1:31:02] So what advice for movies?

[1:31:04] What advice for a young filmgoer I think is really with the...

[1:31:09] What are you guys gonna say?

[1:31:10] I mean, I think the lamest thing,

[1:31:12] but I think probably the truest thing,

[1:31:13] is to try and support independent films

[1:31:17] and smaller budget films,

[1:31:19] because even the bad ones are gonna be generally

[1:31:22] the product of at least a somewhat singular vision

[1:31:28] so at least you're gonna see something bad

[1:31:30] that's a little more pure than a bad studio movie.

[1:31:32] I would say be open to seeing anything

[1:31:35] that comes your way within reason,

[1:31:38] but don't close off your mind to something

[1:31:41] just because you think you're not supposed to like it

[1:31:43] or because you think it's the kind of thing

[1:31:45] you're not gonna like.

[1:31:46] Certainly as a younger man,

[1:31:48] I closed myself off to a number of movies

[1:31:50] that I later found to be really enjoyable

[1:31:53] because I prejudged them,

[1:31:55] whether they be small movies or large movies.

[1:31:57] At the same time, you are about to enter,

[1:32:00] by the time your daughter is grown up and my son too,

[1:32:02] they are gonna live in a very different brave new world

[1:32:04] where films are distributed differently

[1:32:06] and where possibly China is the world's movie maker,

[1:32:11] which they want to be very badly.

[1:32:13] I was reading an article recently

[1:32:14] about the movie, The Great Wall,

[1:32:16] where they're saying this is essentially

[1:32:17] the beginning of Chinese studios really making a big play

[1:32:21] to be creating the kinds of movies

[1:32:22] that play internationally

[1:32:24] and win over the American audience.

[1:32:25] And it mentioned that America's studios

[1:32:27] have had pretty much unfettered domination

[1:32:30] of the international market for a hundred years,

[1:32:33] which is true since World War I essentially.

[1:32:35] So like that's a long time

[1:32:37] and by the time our children are of age,

[1:32:39] that run may have come to an end,

[1:32:41] possibly due to Hollywood's own dagger at its throat

[1:32:45] as it goes down this wheel,

[1:32:48] this hole of reboots and sequels and stuff.

[1:32:51] But I'll also say this,

[1:32:53] there've been a number of times in Hollywood history

[1:32:55] where it seems the studios are just churning out

[1:32:57] the same kind of movie and then those times end

[1:33:00] and something new comes along in their way.

[1:33:02] There was a time when half the movies being made

[1:33:05] were Westerns, that's no longer the case.

[1:33:07] But what about that idea that like after 9-11,

[1:33:09] all the movie studios just kept focusing on nostalgia

[1:33:13] and looking backwards and never turning out anything new?

[1:33:18] I don't think that's totally true.

[1:33:20] Yeah, I don't.

[1:33:22] It's more a sense of, I think in a world

[1:33:25] where movies have gotten more expensive

[1:33:28] and international markets have gotten more important,

[1:33:30] they glom to things that seem to have been proven

[1:33:33] in another medium or have already worked in movies.

[1:33:36] I don't know that it was a response

[1:33:37] to like a time of worry and crisis or anything like that.

[1:33:40] Here's my advice for a young film.

[1:33:42] But you could be right, I hadn't heard of that before.

[1:33:44] Here's my advice for a young filmgoer,

[1:33:46] do what I did, go to your local library.

[1:33:50] Don't say Dan's life is gone.

[1:33:51] Don't do what Dan did.

[1:33:53] He's an Emmy-winning writer for a hit television show.

[1:33:56] Don't follow his lead.

[1:33:57] Scam the reasons for the R rating.

[1:33:58] I don't understand.

[1:33:59] If it says nudity, that's not good enough.

[1:34:02] If it says sexual situations,

[1:34:04] you know you're gonna hit something good.

[1:34:06] That will include nudity.

[1:34:07] Adult content could go either way.

[1:34:09] You don't know.

[1:34:11] First off, make sure your parents are asleep, okay?

[1:34:14] Sit on the stairs near their bedroom

[1:34:16] in case you hear the door open.

[1:34:17] Then you fuckin' scamper down them steps

[1:34:19] and then you pretend you're sleepin'

[1:34:21] underneath a bag of Cheetos.

[1:34:22] You wanna get really good at lip reading

[1:34:25] when someone is in ecstasy

[1:34:27] so that the volume's not so high

[1:34:28] that it draws attention and wakes people up.

[1:34:30] But you wanna know what they're saying in the sex scenes.

[1:34:33] Oh, I'm sorry, are you done yet?

[1:34:35] Are you done?

[1:34:36] Here's another hot tip from Dan McCoy.

[1:34:38] Okay.

[1:34:39] If you wanna keep that movie on tape,

[1:34:43] just watch it on demand and just record the sex scenes.

[1:34:46] So you don't waste tape with the plot scenes

[1:34:49] that you don't want.

[1:34:49] Yeah, it's fuckin' crazy.

[1:34:50] You don't wanna see George Hamilton and Billy Zane

[1:34:53] gettin' in an argument about Joan Severance.

[1:34:56] Wait, is George Hamilton in that movie?

[1:34:58] He's in one of those.

[1:35:00] George Hamilton?

[1:35:01] I think George Hamilton is in Sexual Response.

[1:35:05] Zorro the Gayblade himself?

[1:35:07] I know there's a Shannon,

[1:35:09] there's a Shannon.

[1:35:10] That's Shannon Tweed, I think.

[1:35:10] There's a Shannon Tweed movie with Malcolm McDowell in it,

[1:35:13] but I don't remember the name of it.

[1:35:15] I think it was Tank Girl.

[1:35:22] So Shannon, what was your advice?

[1:35:23] My advice was, be like me.

[1:35:25] You should name one of them kangaroos, right?

[1:35:28] Booger or whatever.

[1:35:32] Be like me, go to your local library's library sale,

[1:35:37] pick up a copy of one of Roger Ebert's movie yearbooks

[1:35:40] that has the cover ripped off for 25 cents,

[1:35:44] for 25 cents.

[1:35:45] This is very specific.

[1:35:47] Read it from cover to cover,

[1:35:49] just read all of the reviews,

[1:35:52] because Roger Ebert was a master

[1:35:54] of just making an entertaining movie review.

[1:35:56] Don't do that.

[1:35:57] Get the New York Times 1,000 Movies Best Movies Ever book,

[1:36:01] and then, as I did,

[1:36:03] and mark down the ones you haven't seen,

[1:36:05] and then go through those.

[1:36:06] Well, I was gonna say,

[1:36:07] at the end of Roger Ebert's books,

[1:36:08] he always has The Great Movies,

[1:36:10] where he writes about his 10 favorite movies,

[1:36:13] and those are, I mean,

[1:36:15] actually, The Great Movies is a series he did

[1:36:17] where he just did a bunch of great movies,

[1:36:20] but then there was also his 10 best,

[1:36:24] both of which are good rabbit holes to go down.

[1:36:27] Somebody, I think the Alamo was showing,

[1:36:30] somebody was doing a screening of Valley Girl,

[1:36:33] and they reposted Roger Ebert's article,

[1:36:35] or his review of Valley Girl,

[1:36:38] and it's such a great review,

[1:36:40] and reminds me about why I love that movie so much.

[1:36:44] So, if you get a chance,

[1:36:44] find that review on the internet, dudes.

[1:36:45] Yeah, I mean, I'm joking a little bit,

[1:36:47] but find a good reviewer who you find

[1:36:52] some sort of simpatico thing with him or her,

[1:36:55] but also is a good crafter of thought,

[1:36:59] and crafter of words,

[1:37:01] and you enjoy just reading them about film,

[1:37:04] and follow them down their personal.

[1:37:07] Follow them on Twitter.

[1:37:09] Follow them, like what?

[1:37:11] And eventually, as with Roger Ebert,

[1:37:12] you'll follow them into the afterlife.

[1:37:13] Follow them into the grave.

[1:37:15] No, but just follow that rabbit hole where it leads,

[1:37:20] and it'll help you develop your own personal taste

[1:37:24] to listen to this other person.

[1:37:27] Yeah, and hopefully,

[1:37:28] the next Picture Show podcast is still going,

[1:37:30] so you can listen to that.

[1:37:32] And the last piece of advice I would give

[1:37:34] is come to terms with the fact

[1:37:35] that you will never see all the great movies in the world,

[1:37:38] and you will never see all the good movies in the world,

[1:37:40] and you will most likely die.

[1:37:42] Alone.

[1:37:43] I wasn't gonna say that.

[1:37:44] You'll most likely die having not seen everything,

[1:37:47] so don't feel the pressure

[1:37:48] to cram so many movies into your life

[1:37:50] that you don't live a real life.

[1:37:52] Yeah, try and die surrounded by family

[1:37:54] as opposed to crushed by a stack of unwatched VHS tapes.

[1:37:58] Which once was definitely gonna be the way I got out.

[1:38:02] Final letter of the evening from Ken, last name withheld.

[1:38:05] Kardashian?

[1:38:06] Ken.

[1:38:07] Ken.

[1:38:08] Ken Kardashian.

[1:38:09] I thought you said Kim.

[1:38:11] Little did you know,

[1:38:12] the long-time opponent of Ryu is Ken Kardashian.

[1:38:16] I didn't know that was his last name.

[1:38:16] Dropping dragon punches on him.

[1:38:20] Ken, last name withheld.

[1:38:21] Sorry, Ken Dahl.

[1:38:21] Giving a big scar to Sagat.

[1:38:22] Last name Dahl, Ken Dahl.

[1:38:24] For Radio Zork, we have opened the door.

[1:38:27] I would like to get on the floor

[1:38:29] for the later purposes of Everybody Walked the Dinosaur.

[1:38:33] That is an unintentional callback

[1:38:36] to Stuart talking about it earlier.

[1:38:39] I mean, I think there's a pretty good chance

[1:38:42] I'm gonna refer to one of the only songs

[1:38:44] whose lyrics I kind of know.

[1:38:47] I would say, what makes you think

[1:38:49] the door is open in Radio Zork?

[1:38:51] Oh, we'll find out next week on Radio Zork.

[1:38:58] So now it is time to move on

[1:39:00] to the final segment of the evening,

[1:39:03] which is recommendations.

[1:39:05] Yeah, were you about to say letters?

[1:39:07] Wow.

[1:39:08] Okay, Dan.

[1:39:09] Trying to remember what the final thing is that we do,

[1:39:11] even though I know that we recommend movies.

[1:39:13] We review sausages.

[1:39:16] I like chicken garlic sausages.

[1:39:18] Oh, those are delicious.

[1:39:19] I'm a fan of chorizo.

[1:39:21] Get out of here.

[1:39:23] Nope, get up out of your chair.

[1:39:25] All right, get out of here.

[1:39:26] Wait, why?

[1:39:27] Chorizo is great.

[1:39:30] Dan, this episode's going long.

[1:39:32] Can you just come back to your chair

[1:39:35] and we'll recommend some movies?

[1:39:36] Classic sound effects.

[1:39:37] It's time to do some recommendations

[1:39:38] and I'm going to surprise you all

[1:39:40] by doing a pair of recommendations.

[1:39:42] Oh, okay.

[1:39:44] One of them is, I don't think needs my additional support,

[1:39:47] but I want to give it anyway,

[1:39:49] because I really enjoyed it.

[1:39:50] And that is Academy Award nominated movie, Moonlight,

[1:39:56] which I think if there's, I mean,

[1:40:00] Personal recommendation for the winner of the Best Picture Award is Moonlight.

[1:40:05] I think it's great.

[1:40:07] It is the story of a young man growing up in like I guess the slums of or the inner

[1:40:14] city of Miami and it takes place over different moments of his life and it's really great

[1:40:21] and I don't want to talk too much about the actual stuff about it because I need to get

[1:40:26] to my second recommendation but I do want to mention that there's these two great moments

[1:40:30] in the movie.

[1:40:31] There's many great moments but there's these two great moments where two different characters

[1:40:35] start an argument with another character and you at least me as the viewer like I was so

[1:40:41] behind them and I'm like I totally am with this person and totally with their emotions

[1:40:47] and they begin their like argument against another person and the person turns it on

[1:40:51] them so abruptly and you can see them back off and it felt so real like I've had so many

[1:40:57] moments like that in my own life where I was so sure of my own argument until it actually

[1:41:02] happened against somebody else and I immediately was like oh yeah I didn't think about it from

[1:41:08] your perspective and it just felt so natural and it's a great movie.

[1:41:12] I totally recommend it and the other movie I want to recommend is not nominated for Best

[1:41:17] Picture.

[1:41:18] It is a teen comedy called The Edge of Seventeen which I'm going to look up some details but

[1:41:28] it is a movie about a young woman who is coping with some personal tragedy and she is like

[1:41:37] dealing with some upheaval in her relationships with her friends and with her family and it

[1:41:45] is an interesting exploration of kind of relationships and I think it presents teens

[1:41:51] as kind of the way teenagers are like kind of dumb and complicated creatures that are

[1:41:58] going through a crazy time in their life and it's got some great performances from Keira

[1:42:03] Sedgwick, Woody Harrelson gives a great performance as a teacher and Haley Stanfield who was in

[1:42:13] True Grit, she gives a really great performance as does Woody Harrelson, I don't remember

[1:42:24] the name of the actor but the actor who plays her brother who is the lead in Everybody Wants

[1:42:29] Some which is one of my favorites of the year, Ray Romano, he gives a great performance.

[1:42:38] So if you're looking for, now I will say that early on there's a little bit of narration

[1:42:43] given by the main character that goes away after the first scene or two so my initial

[1:42:48] reaction was fuck this, I don't need a narrator to tell me what's going on but it's great,

[1:42:54] check it out.

[1:42:55] I'd like to recommend a movie called Lost Soul, the doomed journey of Richard Stanley's

[1:43:04] Island of Dr. Moreau which is a long title but it's about, the main title is Lost Soul,

[1:43:13] it's about the terrible John Frankenheimer Island of Dr. Moreau movie that came out starring

[1:43:22] Val Kilmer and what's his face, Marlon Brando, what's his name, oh yeah, one of the most

[1:43:33] famous actors ever, David Thewlis is not talked about in the movie which is weird since he's

[1:43:39] the star of the movie, do they talk about how he and Val Kilmer switched parts, well

[1:43:44] actually what happened was, Val Kilmer switched parts with another guy, do they talk about

[1:43:49] how later on he would become a werewolf in the Harry Potter movies?

[1:43:54] At the time that the part switching happened, Rob Morrow was supposed to be the person but

[1:44:02] then he was stuck up in Alaska, the switching happened and then David Thewlis came in to

[1:44:09] replace Rob Morrow who told his agent to get him the fuck out of this movie, no offense

[1:44:14] to Rob Morrow but David Thewlis is a much better actor, he's an upgrade, definitely,

[1:44:21] but if you've seen the Island of Dr. Moreau, it is a fascinating mess, it is the movie

[1:44:26] that has a miniature Marlon Brando that is the inspiration for Many Me and the Austin

[1:44:32] Powers movies, it is a terrible film, have we talked about this movie on the podcast

[1:44:39] before?

[1:44:40] I don't think so, it's a movie I've been meaning to see and I keep fucking forgetting

[1:44:42] to you.

[1:44:43] You've never seen it?

[1:44:44] I've never seen it but I love Richard Stanley movies.

[1:44:48] One objection I have to Honestly Lost Soul is that I am not such a Richard Stanley fan,

[1:44:58] I guess I haven't seen Dust Devil, I tried to watch Hardware and I'm like, this isn't

[1:45:03] doing a whole lot for me.

[1:45:04] This doesn't please me, bring me a miniature version of me.

[1:45:08] Take it away, bring me a miniature version of me.

[1:45:16] I think The Lost Soul, if anything else, it kind of deifies Richard Stanley a little much

[1:45:22] when the movie also kind of makes it clear that he probably wasn't ready to make a big

[1:45:28] budget movie like The Island of Dr. Moreau, he was not up for the task even though the

[1:45:35] movie wants you to believe that whatever he was going to come up with was going to

[1:45:38] be brilliant.

[1:45:39] Do you think they're going to make a Lost Soul 2, the Josh Trank Fantastic Four story?

[1:45:46] It reminds me of the Jodorowsky's Dune movie where it's a really entertaining documentary

[1:45:51] about a movie that would have been crazy but everyone keeps talking in the movie about

[1:45:54] what an amazing movie it would have been when it's like, this sounds like it would be a

[1:45:58] mess, this does not sound like a good adaptation of Dune, that's for sure.

[1:46:03] Jodorowsky is the kind of guy who, if I need somebody to sell farts to people, I'm sure

[1:46:08] he could make them very appealing and interesting with his colorful language.

[1:46:12] Okay, interesting.

[1:46:13] I mean, one, people love farts, they're hilarious, but you're not going to buy it, you're going

[1:46:19] to check it out real quick and then you're going to walk away, you're going to take a

[1:46:23] sample cup and leave, Jodorowsky will get you to take one of those home today.

[1:46:31] What do I have to do to get you home and to drive home a fart?

[1:46:36] If you enjoy documentaries about failed movies, this is a fun one, it's like an hour and a

[1:46:44] half, you get to learn why Island of the Lost Souls is such a mess and it has a lot to do

[1:46:50] with Val Kilmer being a crazy dick and Marlon Brando being a lovable crazy dick.

[1:47:01] I'm going to recommend Surprise, Surprise, it's an old foreign film, it's a French film

[1:47:28] from Eric Romare called My Night at Maud's and it is a little pretentious as a movie,

[1:47:36] but that's something I like about it.

[1:47:38] It tells the story of a man who is in France, it's the 60s, this man is a Catholic and his

[1:47:45] faith is very important to him but he's lonely and he finds himself one night with an old

[1:47:50] friend of his and a woman who's friends with that man and the woman is very interested

[1:47:56] in spending the night with him and he is torn about it and most of the movie is that

[1:48:01] night the two of them talking and trying to figure each other out and then where their

[1:48:06] lives go from there and what I like about it is it's a movie that is about the kind

[1:48:12] of very small drama moments in someone's life that stick with them for a long time even

[1:48:18] when it doesn't turn out to be that epic moment of their life and it reminds me of when I

[1:48:22] was a kid, one of the things that seemed like a grown-up thing to me was the Beatles

[1:48:26] song Norwegian Wood which is about a man going home with a woman, things not quite working

[1:48:32] out the right way and him sleeping in a bathtub and when he wakes up the next morning she's

[1:48:35] gone and he just kind of like hangs out and then I assume leaves and it's like as a kid

[1:48:39] that felt like a very grown-up story to me that like this isn't told – this is a thing

[1:48:45] that doesn't go quite right, it doesn't end with a fist fight or a sex scene or an

[1:48:50] explosion and My Night at Mauds is kind of like that. It feels like what a – like looking

[1:48:58] at an important moment to somebody in their growth as a human being but that moment doesn't

[1:49:04] define their lives or become like the turning point around which everything works and there's

[1:49:09] a lot of philosophical talk in it which I'm a sucker for and a lot of great black-and-white

[1:49:14] photography of just France at the time but I thought it was really good so My Night at Mauds.

[1:49:20] My Night at Mauds. My Night at Mauds. Presented with commentary by Borat.

[1:49:31] So guys, happy birthday to Stuart who for once we can blame for making us watch this

[1:49:40] movie rather than me. Unlike Dan where you're like, oh, I'm trying to clear my DVR.

[1:49:44] It's pretty good though, right? That's a good impression.

[1:49:49] Yeah, Dan is kind of like a Hank Hill type.

[1:49:51] But thank you for listening and thank you for being here and we'll be with you in

[1:50:00] of weeks, but for now, for the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:50:04] Hey, I've been Stuart Willington.

[1:50:07] Good night, everybody. Elliot Kalin here saying, whatever time you're listening to this, go to bed.

[1:50:13] Good night, everyone.

[1:50:14] We were watching an episode of American Ninja Warrior today, and they were talking about

[1:50:25] this stunt where you have to, like, jump from one platform to another platform.

[1:50:29] And the announcer's like, that's 14 feet, people.

[1:50:32] That's right, that's two Shaquille O'Neals.

[1:50:36] Like, ah, the universal system of measurement.

[1:50:40] I don't know how to visualize 14 feet.

[1:50:42] Oh, two Shaquille O'Neals, yeah, okay.

[1:50:45] Like, a common item, one you have in every home.

[1:50:48] So, shopkeep, I would like to purchase some of your bubble tape.

[1:50:52] Can I get one and a half Shaquille O'Neals of bubble tape, please?

[1:50:56] I need three Shaquille O'Neals of stout rope.

[1:51:04] That's our rope and bubble tape store.

[1:51:06] You know, they say that's how Shaquille O'Neal got his name, is he was a riverboat pilot.

[1:51:10] And you would drop the rope down, and for each league, you would say, Shaquille O'Neal.

[1:51:15] Yeah, yeah.

[1:51:17] And he went on to write Puddinghead Wilson.

[1:51:19] Mark Twain's most famous work, Puddinghead Wilson.

[1:51:26] Maximumfund.org.

[1:51:28] Comedy and culture.

[1:51:29] Artist owned.

[1:51:30] Listener supported.

Ep. #225 - Max Magician and the Legend of the Rings

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