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

Dan McCoy

[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.

[0:39] What's up? It's me, Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

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

[0:45] Okay.

[0:46] I'm trying out some new material.

[0:48] Yeah, no, I like it.

Dan McCoy

[0:49] Tracks. It all tracks.

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

Stuart Wellington

[0:54] Oh, you got some business up top, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[0:55] 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.

Elliott Kalan

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

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

[1:07] There's a table between me and Stuart, so I can...

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

[1:12] Wearing just his skivvies and then a hoodie with the hood up on top.

Dan McCoy

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

Elliott Kalan

[1:18] So, to paint a picture, Stuart looks like the Unabomber in his underpants.

Dan McCoy

[1:23] So, at this point in the lifespan of the Flophouse, what happens is...

[1:28] Is I am in my apartment.

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

Stuart Wellington

[1:33] Yeah, contemplating the dark corners of the room.

Dan McCoy

[1:36] So, we...

[1:37] So, you're 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 in.

[1:46] The door is open to my apartment in defiance of safety in New York City.

[1:53] Yeah, and now you're giving away all the information.

[1:57] So, I want to say...

[1:57] This is New York City.

Elliott Kalan

[1:58] You're just asking for a chud to walk in.

Dan McCoy

[2:00] But what happens...

[2:01] Instead of a chud walking in, what happens is...

[2:03] A chub walked in.

[2:04] Stuart walks in every time.

Elliott Kalan

[2:05] Oh, dude.

[2:07] Because you were half erect.

Stuart Wellington

[2:08] Yeah, okay.

[2:09] Good save.

[2:11] Stuart knows...

[2:12] Let me check the tape.

[2:12] Okay, that was a cool chute.

Dan McCoy

[2:15] Stuart knows that my apartment's door is probably unlocked, waiting for him to show up.

[2:20] So, he just walks straight in.

[2:21] Actually, yeah.

[2:21] I always mean the door fell, but I should just walk in.

Elliott Kalan

[2:23] Just walk in.

Dan McCoy

[2:24] And then you...

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

[2:25] So, your catchphrase...

[2:26] Is the difference.

Stuart Wellington

[2:27] That's why my exercise is polite-ies.

[2:29] Oh, boy.

[2:30] Anyway, you were saying?

[2:31] Well, I like to open the door.

[2:32] I say my catchphrase.

[2:34] Everybody fucking cracks up.

Elliott Kalan

[2:37] Mark, he goes nuts.

[2:38] Stuart's the only person I know where when he enters the room,

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

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

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

Stuart Wellington

[2:45] It's like...

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

[2:48] You never know.

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

[2:50] Keep him guessing.

[2:51] That's one of my catchphrases.

Dan McCoy

[2:52] I hear the door open.

[2:54] He opens the door and goes, keep him 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...

Stuart Wellington

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

[3:10] Oh, I just happened upon it.

[3:11] I was watching it.

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

Dan McCoy

[3:12] I was watching it as a joke.

Elliott Kalan

[3:14] Yeah, yeah.

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

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

[3:19] No, we like the tongue-in-cheek ironic nature.

Dan McCoy

[3:22] Both things can be true.

[3:24] They cannot, Dan.

[3:26] I look down the hallway and the first thing I see is Stuart methodically taking off his pants.

Elliott Kalan

[3:33] What do you say methodically?

[3:34] Because I'm getting ridden to podcast.

[3:36] As opposed to Stuart, what, ripping his pants off?

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

Dan McCoy

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

Stuart Wellington

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

Dan McCoy

[3:50] I'm imagining Stuart on the ground, 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] Yeah, no, I have a child.

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

[4:00] Stop bragging.

Elliott Kalan

[4:02] Actually, that's the way he takes his shoes off.

[4:04] As he's still sitting in his stroller, he kicks his leg as hard as he can so that his shoe flies off of his foot.

[4:09] Like, as if it's hurling towards a ninja that's coming at him.

Dan McCoy

[4:14] Now, I think that all the listeners are probably wondering, because we've established that Stuart's not wearing pants.

Elliott Kalan

[4:20] What is he wearing?

[4:21] Describe it.

Dan McCoy

[4:22] He's got, hold on, he's got striped boxer briefs on.

[4:27] Okay, what color are they?

[4:29] I don't want to look too closely again.

[4:31] You're right.

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

[4:33] You're right.

[4:33] It's hard to tell color from distance.

Stuart Wellington

[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.

Dan McCoy

[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.

Elliott Kalan

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

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

[4:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan McCoy

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

Elliott Kalan

[5:02] To be honest, I think the listener at this point, all they need to know is it's Stuart.

[5:06] If I was sitting with my pants left, they'd be like, this is weird.

[5:09] Whereas pants on fire?

[5:11] With Stuart, I think they're just okay with it.

Dan McCoy

[5:14] Yeah, all right.

[5:14] The short reason is it was raining outside, and Stuart's pants got wet, so we thought the

[5:19] best solution was pants removal.

Elliott Kalan

[5:22] Just don't forget you left them here, Stu.

Stuart Wellington

[5:24] That's true.

[5:25] That's a good point.

[5:25] And don't leave without putting those things back on.

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

[5:34] That's your catchphrase?

[5:35] Doe.

Dan McCoy

[5:39] The other thing about Stuart today.

Elliott Kalan

[5:41] Okay, and then we can get to what this podcast is and what we do on it.

[5:45] Is it his birthday?

[5:46] Okay.

[5:46] It's a birthday podcast.

[5:48] Yeah, I mean, actually, this episode will be released like a week after Stuart's birthday.

[5:51] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[5:52] But we're recording it his birthday weekend.

[5:54] Yes.

[5:55] His birthday spans a whole weekend, because he's a special little boy.

Stuart Wellington

[5:59] I had a really good year, you know, so I deserve a whole weekend.

Dan McCoy

[6:04] So that plays into the rest of the show, but we'll just say that this is a podcast where

[6:11] we watch a bad movie, and then we talk about it.

Elliott Kalan

[6:12] And now usually we watch a recent big-budget Hollywood blockbuster.

[6:16] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[6:17] So if you saw the title of this episode, and you're like, wracking your brain, you're like,

[6:21] I don't remember this movie coming out in movie theaters recently.

[6:24] Max Magician?

Elliott Kalan

[6:25] Who was in that?

[6:26] Was that like Kieran Culkin and Anna Chlumsky?

[6:30] Big stars like that?

[6:31] Was it big stars like Danny Trejo and the late Taylor Negron?

Stuart Wellington

[6:40] Is Robert Morse the lead in that movie?

[6:43] Does he play Max Magician?

[6:45] Is it Robert Davi?

[6:46] Was he in this?

Elliott Kalan

[6:47] Is this Robert Picardo's most recent picture?

Dan McCoy

[6:51] Robert Picardo joint.

[6:52] That's how the credits proclaim it.

[6:56] No.

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

Elliott Kalan

[7:01] It's my birthday today.

[7:02] Can I watch?

[7:03] I sound all pantsless.

[7:04] Yeah.

[7:05] But also licking an enormous lollipop with a slingshot in his hand.

Stuart Wellington

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

Dan McCoy

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

Stuart Wellington

[7:15] Yep.

[7:15] And after giving them a couple options, I then just picked the one I wanted to watch, which

[7:20] was a DVD that we received in the mail and announced on this very podcast.

[7:26] Yeah.

[7:26] Max Magician.

Dan McCoy

[7:27] Many moons ago.

[7:29] And the Legend of the Rings.

[7:30] Now, normally this is the sort of thing we would save until Small Timber.

[7:34] Small Vember.

[7:35] But, Stuart.

[7:36] Wait a minute.

[7:37] So this wasn't like a big budget studio release?

[7:39] No, surprisingly not.

Elliott Kalan

[7:40] But all those big named stars we mentioned, like Robert Englund.

Dan McCoy

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

Stuart Wellington

[7:47] Like, hold on.

[7:49] To be fair, we looked up the credits.

[7:50] Jane is reading the back of this box like Max reads spells.

Elliott Kalan

[7:54] There's no one listed as an actor in this.

[7:58] As we saw, one of the actors in it was in Argo and Cecil B. Demented and other real movies.

Dan McCoy

[8:06] There is a three and a half star review on the front of this DVD from the Science Fiction

[8:12] 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 clue.

Elliott Kalan

[8:26] A fantasy 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] From 2002.

Stuart Wellington

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

Elliott Kalan

[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.

[8:52] That's a good one to punch.

[8:53] I mean, Hitler's body burned, so I can't punch that one.

[8:56] No.

[8:57] Who would I punch?

[8:58] What dead person would you punch, Dan?

Dan McCoy

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

[9:06] Weird.

[9:06] 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 he'd forgive you?

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

[9:14] I don't want to...

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

Elliott Kalan

[9:18] So, wait, okay.

[9:20] I mean...

[9:20] So I got to do it to someone who's going to...

[9:21] Even knowing that, like, Richard Nixon's corpse is, like, just lying there in a coffin somewhere.

[9:25] Oh, that was a good one.

Stuart Wellington

[9:26] I feel like cultural perceptions have shifted so much over the years, like, even in my lifetime,

[9:32] 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.

Elliott Kalan

[9:45] You probably said something that wouldn't fly now.

[9:47] Kaboom!

Dan McCoy

[9:49] Yeah.

[9:50] This is a fantasy movie.

[9:54] I can say that about it.

[9:55] And then the director had a fantasy that he could make a movie.

[9:58] Okay, Dan, sit back.

Elliott Kalan

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

[10:03] Wait, what?

[10:04] Recharge your joke batteries.

Stuart Wellington

[10:05] I feel like I was doing pretty well there.

[10:07] The Ski-Doo is getting out of control.

Dan McCoy

[10:09] I rented it to the Punisher, and that was the problem.

Elliott Kalan

[10:14] 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've said, what if there was a children's fantasy film that had slightly higher production value than...

[10:31] Slightly fewer lesbian orgies.

[10:34] That had fewer lesbian tarp orgies, and more of the same kind of cheap magic special effect over and over again.

[10:43] More animal reaction shots.

[10:44] Yeah, that's a fair point.

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

[10:48] Even more ADR work.

[10:50] We open...

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

[10:51] Every single voice is dubbed.

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

[10:56] Thank you.

[10:57] People are running through a wood.

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

Dan McCoy

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

Elliott Kalan

[11:09] Yes.

[11:10] And no matter...

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

[11:20] In which case everyone is smaller than a blade of grass.

Stuart Wellington

[11:23] And they're hiding in the fetlocks of the horse as it's running through the grass.

Dan McCoy

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

Elliott Kalan

[11:32] Yeah.

[11:32] And 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, 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 doing crazy things all at the same time better than The Greatest Show on Earth.

[11:51] Also, there were some animals, and it was really cool, but I still felt bad at the same time.

Dan McCoy

[11:54] I'm very excited about this, because I have a ticket to go to the circus next week.

[12:00] And when I say a ticket, yes, it is a single ticket to go to the circus alone.

[12:04] Is there anything sadder than the sentence I just said?

Stuart Wellington

[12:07] It sounds like a cut scene from the Highlander movie where Connor McLeod is going to kill a Highlander that trick rides on horses.

Elliott Kalan

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

[12:18] Dan, here's what would make it sadder, and what I want you to do, 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 that light up around.

[12:29] I'm on board so far.

[12:30] And I want you to just sit there in the dark, holding it and pressing the button that makes it go.

Stuart Wellington

[12:34] Now, this is...

[12:37] By yourself.

[12:38] This is completely unrelated, Dan.

[12:40] But do you know the phone number for the kiss cam for the circus?

[12:45] You know, the number that he calls it, you can set up a kiss cam shot.

Elliott Kalan

[12:48] Completely unrelated.

[12:50] How that works is you call ahead like a reservation for a restaurant.

Stuart Wellington

[12:54] Yeah, do you know the number off the top of your dome?

[12:56] I haven't.

Elliott Kalan

[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 is distract you from the lack of activity on the stage by making you look at video of someone in the stands.

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

Stuart Wellington

[13:15] When they're cleaning up all the stuff on the stage after the horses get done running around.

Elliott Kalan

[13:19] 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, he really wants the awkward moment of Dan by himself on a kiss cam.

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

[13:40] Like a light up sword or horse's head or something.

[13:43] Or like looking for someone to kiss.

[13:46] Yeah.

[13:47] And he has nothing to kiss, but his own hand curved into the rough shape of a mouth, which he would then kiss too long.

[13:55] And they would have to take the kiss cam away and point it to somebody else.

Dan McCoy

[13:58] Yeah, and I would scream, don't, don't, back on me.

[14:02] Back on me.

[14:03] Come on.

Elliott Kalan

[14:03] And he's just going, is this what you wanted?

Stuart Wellington

[14:06] Guys, this has been another great episode of Elliot Explained Stuart's Jokes.

[14:10] Hey, come back next week.

[14:12] Stuart's going to make another stupid ass joke.

Elliott Kalan

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

[14:18] Yeah.

[14:18] And I felt like.

[14:19] You felt cheated.

[14:20] 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.

Stuart Wellington

[14:27] Did she ever explain her relationship with that dude who's always climbing through her window?

[14:31] Yeah, they're friends.

[14:32] He's like Bob or something.

[14:34] Sam.

Elliott Kalan

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

[14:36] Oh, okay.

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

[14:38] That's the thing.

[14:39] And he possesses her brother, Ferguson.

[14:43] No, her friend Sam is just a friend.

[14:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[14:46] They're pals.

[14:48] They're platonic pals.

Stuart Wellington

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

[14:54] Probably.

[14:54] They're one and the same.

Elliott Kalan

[14:56] Yeah.

[14:56] He pissed off the wrong Loki god of mischief.

Dan McCoy

[14:58] Well, that's the thing.

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

[15:02] Change her name to Sabrina.

[15:03] Sabrina, sorry.

[15:04] The Teenage Witch.

Elliott Kalan

[15:06] If you guys could see.

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

Dan McCoy

[15:09] The disappointed look that Elliot has given me.

[15:12] I'm just saying.

Elliott Kalan

[15:12] If any grown man should know the name of that character, it is Dan McCoy.

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

[15:18] The whole point.

[15:19] Who I'm sure is very familiar with the work of Dan DiCarlo.

Dan McCoy

[15:21] I know.

[15:22] I know it was Sabrina.

[15:23] I knew it was Sabrina.

[15:24] 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.

Elliott Kalan

[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 of the Bing.

[15:39] Anyway, so somebody's running.

Stuart Wellington

[15:41] So, we get some tight shots on feet running through the forest.

[15:45] And we sense there's multiple figures being chased by some.

[15:50] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

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

[15:57] The villain kills them.

[15:58] Mm-hmm.

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

[16:02] Of course.

[16:03] The scroll is then discovered.

[16:06] Mm-hmm.

[16:07] By a local janitor.

[16:08] By a local man named Mr. Tim, we later find out.

[16:11] Yep.

[16:12] Okay.

[16:13] Cut to.

[16:14] Okay.

[16:15] A house.

[16:15] Sure, okay.

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

[16:17] In any old house.

[16:18] Any town USA.

[16:19] It's Magician Max himself.

[16:21] He's a nerdy kid wearing a cape practicing magic in his bedroom.

[16:25] But it's time to go to school.

[16:26] But his mom will not let him wear that cape at school.

Dan McCoy

[16:29] Because she is a mom who knows how other children would react to a cape.

[16:33] They, like a cape to a bull, they would charge it.

[16:37] Yes.

[16:38] A cape is another one of those things.

[16:39] Like the previously mentioned on a previous podcast, Fedora.

[16:44] That was last episode.

[16:45] That thing that a child thinks is cool.

[16:47] But everyone else knows, including other child children.

[16:50] No, but other child.

[16:51] Other child.

[16:52] Other Lee Childs.

[16:53] Lee Childs knows.

Elliott Kalan

[16:55] No.

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

Stuart Wellington

[16:57] No, but the thing is, the kid wearing the fedora, like he looks like a cool detective,

[17:01] Dan.

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

[17:05] Sure.

Elliott Kalan

[17:05] The fact that he's just wearing kid clothes with a fedora on top, he still looks like a

Stuart Wellington

[17:09] cool detective.

[17:10] It makes him look older.

[17:12] Yeah.

[17:13] 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.

Elliott Kalan

[17:20] So that is a teenager, I guess.

Stuart Wellington

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

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

[17:27] The oldest people.

[17:30] 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.

[17:39] Yeah, he's a regular Batman.

[17:40] The coolest bedroom ever.

Elliott Kalan

[17:41] Yeah, they're all trophies from his various adventures.

Stuart Wellington

[17:44] He has the bedroom that, like, when I would lie in bed asleep at night and fantasy, not

[17:50] asleep, 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.

[18:00] My ultimate kid bedroom fantasy would be.

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

[18:04] Yeah.

[18:04] It would be me with a cape.

Dan McCoy

[18:07] A giant plane card.

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

[18:11] Hey, man.

[18:11] Just ready to play.

Elliott Kalan

[18:12] This movie was made in 2002.

Dan McCoy

[18:15] Ready to play, whatever, like, number crunchers or whatever that fucking.

Stuart Wellington

[18:20] Yeah, hop on some fucking news groups.

[18:24] That's right.

[18:24] Slowly download one porn picture.

Dan McCoy

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

Elliott Kalan

[18:33] 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.

Dan McCoy

[18:41] Exactly.

[18:42] You got it.

[18:43] You got it, buddy.

Elliott Kalan

[18:44] Got it in two.

[18:45] He also has his own TV, which looks to be a black and white set.

[18:48] Probably what the family used to keep in the kitchen until they got a color set for the

[18:52] kitchen.

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

Stuart Wellington

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

Elliott Kalan

[19:01] Yeah.

[19:01] He seems to live in a town where most of the people were destroyed by some sort of tragedy,

[19:07] a plague, or a mass radiation.

[19:09] Now, have you ever seen The Leftovers?

Stuart Wellington

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

[19:14] Exactly like that.

[19:15] No.

[19:15] Because in The Leftovers, they say, like, what, like, 1% of the population or some shit

[19:19] got raptured.

[19:20] But it feels like everybody got raptured except for all these fucking losers.

Elliott Kalan

[19:24] And all they have left to eat is leftovers because all the chefs got raptured.

[19:27] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[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.

Elliott Kalan

[19:34] I mean, that sounds great.

Dan McCoy

[19:36] Forever?

Elliott Kalan

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

[19:37] I wouldn't want to eat it only that.

[19:39] Yeah.

[19:40] But that's a solid meal.

Dan McCoy

[19:41] No, it is a solid meal.

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

Elliott Kalan

[19:46] This is more about your life, I think.

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

[19:49] Yeah.

[19:50] Chinese food.

[19:51] Mm-hmm.

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

[19:54] Where are you buying all these?

[19:55] Chinese pizza?

[19:56] Okay, now you're talking about it.

Dan McCoy

[19:58] I like the idea.

[19:59] Wait.

[19:59] Hold on.

[20:00] Chinese pizza.

[20:00] What do we got on that?

[20:01] We got some...

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

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

Elliott Kalan

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

Dan McCoy

[20:06] No.

[20:06] Some sesame chicken?

Elliott Kalan

[20:08] Instead of tomato sauce, it would probably be, like, either, yeah, sesame sauce or some kind of

[20:11] brown sauce or perhaps a general sauce, kind of sticky sauce.

Dan McCoy

[20:15] So is the crust like a scallion pancake?

Stuart Wellington

[20:17] You know it.

[20:18] I love them scally pans.

[20:21] You're kind of a scally pan.

Elliott Kalan

[20:23] But what would take the place of the cheese?

[20:25] You know, that's what my mom says.

Dan McCoy

[20:25] Like noodles?

Elliott Kalan

[20:26] Like a long, flat noodle, like a chow fan or something?

Dan McCoy

[20:30] Yeah.

[20:30] There's not really a bunch of cheese in Chinese food, huh?

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

[20:33] That's what I'm saying.

[20:34] Like a tofu?

[20:35] Lactose intolerant.

[20:35] Some sort of tofu?

[20:36] Now you're talking.

[20:37] Tofu.

[20:37] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[20:38] What about those famous Chinese crab rangoons?

Elliott Kalan

[20:43] Okay.

Dan McCoy

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

[20:46] Yeah.

[20:47] The most Chinese...

[20:48] The most authentic Chinese food there is.

[20:49] The most authentic that it has Rangoon, which is not a part of China in it.

[20:55] So what happens is this kid goes to school.

[20:57] He gets briefly bullied.

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

Elliott Kalan

[20:59] He gets vaguely bullied.

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

[21:16] Yeah.

[21:17] What's the guy who's on that mystery from the game thing?

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

[21:21] And from...

[21:22] Yep.

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

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

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

[21:27] All right.

Stuart Wellington

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

[21:30] What show is this?

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

[21:34] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[21:35] Pardon me.

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

[21:37] It's called...

Elliott Kalan

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

[21:40] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[21:41] Wow.

[21:43] Okay.

[21:43] So...

[21:44] So...

[21:44] He is briefly bullied.

Elliott Kalan

[21:45] He shows them a magic trick, which ends with a bully getting egg yolk on his head.

[21:49] Mm-hmm.

[21:49] 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.

Stuart Wellington

[21:57] Now, they immediately bond because they're wearing matching denim button-down shirts.

[22:01] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

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

[22:03] Denim work shirts, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

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

[22:07] And the janitor's like, hey, dude.

[22:10] You know magic's real.

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

[22:13] And he gives them...

[22:14] And Max is like, I can't wait to read...

[22:14] Take a look.

[22:15] Take a look.

[22:15] It's in a book.

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

Elliott Kalan

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

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

[22:25] Probably the fanciest restaurant in town, which was like, you know, a Bennigan's.

[22:30] And just kind of poured tea and held a lighter up to the paper to make it look old.

Dan McCoy

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

[22:37] Papyrus.

[22:38] The most magical of all the fonts.

[22:39] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[22:40] Because it looks old.

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

[22:51] It's got all the rules for my guys!

Elliott Kalan

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

[22:55] Make fog.

[22:56] Get rid of fog.

[22:58] Cause sticks to levitate.

[23:00] Mice thing.

[23:00] Make mice from not mice.

[23:03] Because those are all the spells we see him perform throughout the movie.

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

[23:09] And when he speaks the words, he opens up a tree door.

[23:14] A magic portal.

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

Stuart Wellington

[23:17] 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.

[23:22] Previously on tree.

[23:25] Leaves.

[23:26] Which is blowing.

[23:27] Flowing wind.

[23:28] Wind.

[23:29] Think about how he could like offset the deforestation problem that the earth is facing.

Elliott Kalan

[23:34] But not if every tree he creates has a magic door to crazy land in it.

[23:38] I mean, you just cut the tree down and close off crazy land.

[23:41] 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.

Dan McCoy

[23:54] Smash it up and going.

[23:55] Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom.

Elliott Kalan

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

[23:59] Dan decided to put $10 on the table and then walk away from it.

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

[24:06] We lost money on that joke.

[24:10] So he ends up in a forest that looks pretty much like everywhere else in the movie except on the other side it's magic.

[24:15] We know that because the mouse that he was with, he was with a mouse, can now talk.

[24:19] And that mouse is named Krimble.

[24:22] Of course.

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

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

[24:26] He's the dragon from Mulan, which I think are both Eddie Murphy characters.

[24:30] Yep.

[24:31] He is 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 is overlaid over footage of a hawk.

Dan McCoy

[24:41] Over the same five seconds of a hawk on a limb looking around.

Elliott Kalan

[24:47] It is never mentioned that the hawk would, of course, be the natural predator of the mouse and beat him.

[24:52] No.

[24:52] Not at all.

[24:52] They're buddies because they're both on the side of good.

[24:54] They're both allies of the Bluebell Kingdom, which is a bunch of elves with pointy ears who are under the threat of Lord Dagda, who is a demon man with curved ram horns who sits in a cave, farting up a storm, and telling his two henchmen that they suck.

Stuart Wellington

[25:12] Yeah, he always has some lady combing his hair, and he always talks shit to his henchman worm.

Elliott Kalan

[25:17] He has one henchman worm who, to be fair, is not a winner.

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

[25:24] 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.

[25:30] He's an Nego Montoya type, but he works for the bad guy.

[25:33] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[25:33] And he is wearing, as you said, an Elseworlds Batman suit of armor.

Elliott Kalan

[25:37] If there was, I assume there is a medieval Batman Elseworlds, he's wearing that costume.

[25:42] But Max quickly gets, he finds a stucco papier-mâché castle, enters it at the beckoning of a-

Dan McCoy

[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.

[26:03] It's like, what of the Southern California architecture looks castle-y enough that we can set our LARP at?

Elliott Kalan

[26:10] It does look like this castle should be the establishing shot for every other scene on Modern Family.

[26:16] Mm-hmm.

[26:18] But he goes into it, invited in by a character who I have to assume was made up to look like the Miracle Worker character from Princess Bride.

[26:26] Oh, right, yeah.

[26:27] Or like Yogurt from Spaceballs.

[26:29] Yeah.

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

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

Dan McCoy

[26:34] Like a regular Elliot Kalin.

Elliott Kalan

[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!

[26:42] Where all the slime come from?

[26:46] A chime.

[26:46] Can you bring this with you 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 just in case I have to rhyme with it.

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

[26:59] To be fair, Rabid Wolverine.

Dan McCoy

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

[27:05] Wolverine?

[27:06] He's got you.

[27:07] Ben-verine?

[27:07] He's got it.

Elliott Kalan

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

[27:11] Watch out, Dan.

[27:12] Rabid Wolverine.

[27:13] Oh, God!

Dan McCoy

[27:15] Well, I guess I'm rabid now.

[27:18] I'm going to the circus alone.

[27:20] Drugs a bitch.

[27:21] Drugs his shoulders.

Elliott Kalan

[27:22] Turns out his pockets.

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

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

[27:26] Anyway, he gets invited in.

[27:29] He has a sumptuous banquet.

Stuart Wellington

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

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

Elliott Kalan

[27:33] No, he's not a vampire.

[27:35] What?

Stuart Wellington

[27:35] He's a little kid magician.

[27:36] But he had a cape!

[27:37] He's got braces.

Elliott Kalan

[27:38] Not everyone...

[27:39] Yeah, how's he gonna bite people's necks with his braces?

[27:41] Oh, my God.

Stuart Wellington

[27:42] There's gotta be some YA book about a fucking vampire kid.

[27:45] With braces, right?

Elliott Kalan

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

Stuart Wellington

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

[27:48] Everyone makes fun of him because he's Eastern European and he dresses in suits all the time.

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

[27:55] Okay, go on.

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

[27:57] I don't know.

[27:58] Kid vampire.

[27:58] It's called Benicula, but a kid instead of a bunny.

[28:01] Kid Icola.

[28:02] And they sued him because it was too close to Kid Icarus.

[28:05] Yeah.

[28:07] Do you think that Benicula and Eggplant Wizard would hang out or do you think Benicula would kill Eggplant Wizard?

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

[28:15] Are you not familiar with the premise of Benicula?

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

Elliott Kalan

[28:19] Well, let's call them two sides of an issue.

[28:24] Sure.

[28:26] Dialectics.

[28:26] Yeah, it's not just good guys and bad guys.

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

[28:30] So they have a banquet which rivals the banquet in Hook for uneatability of the things we see on screen.

[28:38] It's basically just mush and rice, I guess.

[28:42] And there's at least one or two just raw onions still with the onion skin on.

[28:46] And there's shots of extras passing bowls between them, almost dropping them.

[28:51] They can't even do that properly.

Dan McCoy

[28:54] You know how in any fantasy novel, the thing that every fantasy novel has in common is the loving description of food that they eat.

Elliott Kalan

[29:02] Yeah, Game of Thrones, all the stuff about capons and trenchers of gravy.

Dan McCoy

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

Elliott Kalan

[29:09] Yeah.

[29:10] And we have a lot of, here's something I loved about this movie.

[29:12] Aside from the fact that all the dialogue is ADR'd after the fact, that the music is hilariously overblown from what we're seeing.

[29:19] And that it frequently pads itself out with POV shots from the point of view of a small dog walking through a forest or perhaps, I don't know, a wombat.

[29:28] That the movie is full of extras in elf makeup and pointy ears, literally standing still saying and doing nothing.

[29:37] Just in the background, I guess as if they're sentinels or guards, but they're just regular people.

[29:43] And so it looks like someone cast a spell that turned them all into statues at some point, but maybe all that material got cut.

Stuart Wellington

[29:48] Yeah, it's some kind of a curse that is trapping them in a state of suspended animation or in a state where they are miming motions and miming what they're supposed to be saying, but they don't actually say anything.

[29:58] No sounds come out.

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

Elliott Kalan

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

[30:12] Yeah, Ariana Grande.

[30:13] Yeah, it was Princess Ariana Grande, the largest of the Ariana's.

[30:18] But the dinner is broken.

Dan McCoy

[30:19] Ariana Vente.

[30:20] That's a tweet that someone has done.

Elliott Kalan

[30:22] For sure.

[30:23] Yeah.

[30:23] For sure, Dan.

[30:24] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[30:25] For sure.

[30:26] Just Google that right now.

[30:27] Two years ago.

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

Elliott Kalan

[30:29] The number of hits will explode your computer, because it's probably the most said joke in the past year or two.

[30:36] You stupid man.

[30:39] All right.

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

[30:43] Seems extreme.

[30:43] So we have this awesome feast, and everybody's fucking loving it.

Stuart Wellington

[30:46] They're chilling.

[30:47] They're enjoying it.

Elliott Kalan

[30:48] They're all joking about, we have this magician with us.

[30:50] Ha ha ha.

[30:50] He can't really do any tricks, though.

[30:51] And then suddenly, uh-oh.

Stuart Wellington

[30:52] And he's just like, I've never been to a fucking big boy party before.

[30:55] I gotta fucking be cool.

Elliott Kalan

[30:57] Do I put the napkin in my neck or on my lap?

Stuart Wellington

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

Elliott Kalan

[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?

[31:12] It doesn't sound like heaven to me.

[31:14] Yeah.

[31:15] But he doesn't have to worry about all that.

[31:17] Because then a band of ruffians who returns are the soldiers of Lory Dagda.

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

[31:25] They're doing the same thing.

Stuart Wellington

[31:26] Yeah.

[31:26] There's like one dude wearing a Skyrim character helmet and one dude wearing a Thor helmet.

[31:32] And they all have big crooked mallets.

Dan McCoy

[31:32] The main way, as I can tell, yeah, to discern the bad guys from the good guys is the bad

[31:38] 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.

Stuart Wellington

[31:46] Yeah.

[31:47] Yeah, they do.

[31:48] What?

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

[31:50] Or staves.

[31:51] I mean, they look like-

[31:52] They just look like sticks.

[31:53] They just look like sticks, man.

Elliott Kalan

[31:55] They fight with sticks.

[31:55] Yeah.

[31:57] So Max is like, this is crazy.

[31:58] And immediately goes home.

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

[32:01] The-

Stuart Wellington

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

Elliott Kalan

[32:04] And he goes home.

Stuart Wellington

[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

[32:16] hall for your movie.

[32:18] And luckily-

Dan McCoy

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

[32:21] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[32:21] There's this one-

[32:22] There's a weird sleigh stack just hanging out, dude.

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

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

[32:32] I thought he was going to be set up as like this kind of C-3PO type character.

[32:36] But no, we only see him for two shots.

Stuart Wellington

[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, I guess, elves?

[32:45] What are they, dude?

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

[32:47] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

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

[32:49] Yeah.

[32:49] So here's the thing.

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

[32:55] 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-

Stuart Wellington

[33:00] Sorry, go on.

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

[33:03] That's what's so great about it.

[33:04] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[33:05] I thought you were going to say, much like Star Wars,

[33:06] the hero tries to reject the quest by going home.

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

Stuart Wellington

[33:12] Yeah, he goes home and his parents have been cooked alive by Stormtroopers.

Elliott Kalan

[33:16] Or in this case, they allow him to have a pet mouse.

[33:19] Yeah.

[33:19] Which means he must go back on his quest.

Stuart Wellington

[33:21] In one of the weirdest scenes for a parent to ever see, I would imagine.

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

Elliott Kalan

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

[33:27] I'll allow it.

[33:28] I'll allow it.

Dan McCoy

[33:28] You see some vermin crawling over your son.

[33:32] Like, not a pet mouse that you might get from a pet store.

[33:38] Like, from a catalog.

[33:39] Where?

[33:40] Now, Elliot.

[33:40] A mouse catalog.

Elliott Kalan

[33:41] A sky mouse catalog.

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

[33:46] A sky mouse.

Stuart Wellington

[33:47] Now, Elliot, let me paint a picture for you.

[33:49] A few years down the line, you and your wife burst into your son's bedroom, okay?

[33:55] It's gonna happen.

[33:56] You've heard your son.

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

[33:58] Yeah, you've heard your son giggling up a storm,

[34:01] and the room still reeks of a weird magic fog spell.

[34:04] Oh, that's right, because he cast a fog spell.

[34:06] And you go in there, and your son, fully clothed, is under the covers with a mouse.

[34:12] What do you do?

Elliott Kalan

[34:13] I take a step back.

[34:15] I look at my wife.

[34:16] I say, let's come back in in five minutes.

[34:19] Sure.

[34:19] And I close the door.

[34:20] That is the...

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

[34:24] Let's pretend it didn't happen, and I'll come back in five minutes.

Stuart Wellington

[34:27] That's not bad.

[34:28] You know, the correct answer for that, of course, is you open the door, you get on the floor.

Elliott Kalan

[34:33] Wait, and then walk a dinosaur?

[34:35] Yeah.

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

[34:39] so he has nothing to worry about.

Stuart Wellington

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

[34:44] And then you both dunk basketballs and beat everybody up?

Elliott Kalan

[34:47] Oh, yeah, and surf on a van.

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

[34:50] If instead of him becoming a basketball star, he and his dad just go to the high school and beat everybody up?

[34:57] And the dads lived in town for years, so these were all his teachers, too, and they're just mauling them.

[35:03] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[35:03] I mean, they don't have to, like, kill them or nothing,

[35:05] but, yeah, you just beat the shit up.

Elliott Kalan

[35:07] And it's like, oh, what are you going to tell the cops?

[35:09] Oh, werewolf did it?

[35:10] Yeah.

[35:11] Anyway, so there's this weird scene where he, well, one, okay, one, we have had a mouse in the house since my son was born.

[35:19] Not as a pet, as uninvited vermin, not as a vampire, wasn't like, oh, come on in.

[35:25] Oh, now you can come in whenever you want.

[35:26] It was a mouse.

[35:28] And I had two reactions.

[35:29] We had two different mice at two different times.

[35:31] One time, my reaction was, I'm going to kill this piece of shit.

Stuart Wellington

[35:34] Yeah, were you super mad that it rode around on the little mini scooter that you ride around?

Elliott Kalan

[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.

[35:44] Unless you're literally pooping where I eat, I don't care.

[35:47] Just go about your business, mouse.

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

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

[35:51] Here's the thing.

[35:51] The first time, I was like, my son is in this house.

[35:55] Get out of here.

[35:57] Get out of here.

[35:58] But the second time, there was a mouse that was just hanging out in our bedroom.

[36:02] And I turned on the light and caught a glimpse of it.

[36:03] And it was so tiny and cute.

[36:04] I was like, you know what?

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

[36:08] Yeah.

[36:08] And it worked.

[36:09] And I never saw him again.

[36:10] So if I walked in, I'd be like, but here's what happens with this movie.

[36:14] They walk in.

[36:14] He goes, it's my new pet mouse.

[36:16] And the mother goes, you can't keep that.

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

[36:19] The mother goes, no.

[36:20] And he goes, dad, can I have it?

[36:22] And the dad goes, yeah, if you keep it in a cage.

Stuart Wellington

[36:26] Almost as if, I'll call your bluff on this.

Elliott Kalan

[36:29] I dare you.

[36:30] You can have that pet mouse.

[36:31] Because within a week, that thing is dead of starvation.

Stuart Wellington

[36:34] When you realize that you have a Game Boy to get to.

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

[36:41] No, he is amazing.

[36:43] And he also dresses like he is a part-time private detective.

[36:47] They're sitting at breakfast.

Elliott Kalan

[36:48] And he's just wearing this incredibly loud Hawaiian shirt with parrots all over it.

[36:52] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

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

[36:58] He was in Veep.

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

[37:02] He got a lot of those as a reporter.

Stuart Wellington

[37:03] It looked like he was on his way to be Magnum P.I. stunt double.

Elliott Kalan

[37:07] He was in Cecilvy Demented.

[37:09] From the way he actually looks, he looked like he was going to be Magnum P.I.'s math tutor.

[37:13] Okay, so.

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

[37:16] Yeah, because he wants to be cool like his client, Magnum.

[37:20] We're going very slow on this.

[37:21] Yeah, we're going very slow on this.

[37:22] So, okay, let's.

[37:23] So, Max goes back to the magic world.

[37:25] He gets trained by a wizard who, for lack of a better word, I'm just going to call Black Merlin.

[37:32] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[37:33] Except he looks like.

[37:34] Yeah, he kind of Lurlin.

[37:34] He kind of looks like Longbrow from Zoo Warriors of Magic Mountain.

[37:39] But he's dressed up like an ancient Chinese.

Dan McCoy

[37:43] He looks like, what's his name from Kill Bill.

[37:45] Yeah.

[37:45] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[37:46] He looks like the mentor from that.

[37:47] The long mustache.

Elliott Kalan

[37:50] Is that Gordon-Ear?

[37:52] I don't remember.

[37:53] And a long black robe.

[37:55] And he says, and he is a famous wizard.

[37:58] And Max goes, why don't you save the world?

[37:59] And he goes, no, this is your quest.

[38:01] Teaches him some more magic.

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

Stuart Wellington

[38:06] Yeah, we get this great montage of Max doing magic tricks with a bow staff.

[38:10] And then we get multiple reaction shots from two different animals and the Merlin character.

Dan McCoy

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

[38:20] Each time doing different things.

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

Elliott Kalan

[38:24] So what I think is supposed to be a montage that takes a long time.

[38:27] Looks like it takes roughly like 47 minutes.

Dan McCoy

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

[38:36] The wipes.

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

Elliott Kalan

[38:38] Between every scene is a wipe effect.

[38:41] And they're the most obtrusive.

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

[38:50] The stuff you see in like family yearbook videos or things like that.

Stuart Wellington

[38:54] And Stuart's live flop house PowerPoints.

Elliott Kalan

[38:57] If you've ever seen Stuart's live flop house PowerPoints, he uses all the transition effects.

Dan McCoy

[39:01] 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.

Elliott Kalan

[39:08] I have not seen wipe segues this unsubtle since Home Improvement.

Dan McCoy

[39:14] 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.

[39:23] 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.

[39:27] Star wipe.

[39:28] I'm just asking whether that was the actual wipe.

Elliott Kalan

[39:29] 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 wipes.

[39:34] They do a ripple wipe.

[39:35] A ripple wipe.

[39:36] Oh, so many ripple wipes.

[39:38] They do a whipple wipe.

[39:39] They do a nipple wipe.

[39:40] A Robert whipple wipe.

Stuart Wellington

[39:42] Yeah.

[39:42] And so.

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

Elliott Kalan

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

[39:54] Dagda, yeah.

[39:55] Dagda.

[39:55] It's the name of the fairy king from the Hellboy comics.

[40:00] I guess so.

[40:01] I never liked any of the fairy stuff in that.

[40:03] I mean, that doesn't change that it's true.

[40:05] For the seven who are one, you know.

[40:07] Okay.

[40:08] Continue.

[40:08] What are they called again?

[40:10] The Ja.

[40:12] The Ogdru Jihad.

[40:13] Yeah, the Ogdru Jihad.

[40:14] Thanks.

[40:14] That's what I was in it for.

[40:16] Anyway, any of the stuff that involved Hellboy being the son of King Arthur, I wasn't so into.

[40:20] But anyway.

[40:22] Spoiler alert.

Dan McCoy

[40:23] Spoiler alert.

[40:24] That is a pretty big spoiler if I cared about Hellboy.

Elliott Kalan

[40:27] Well, I mean, the series ended a couple years ago.

[40:29] So, and that storyline happened also years ago.

[40:32] So, I guess deal with it.

[40:34] Look, at that point you should just be reading War on Frogs.

[40:35] I'm just surprised to learn that is all I'm saying.

[40:37] I was surprised to learn it too when it happened.

Stuart Wellington

[40:40] Elliot spit milk all over his comic books.

Elliott Kalan

[40:43] So, then I had to buy a new one.

[40:44] Bag it, board it, slab it, CGC grade it, then put it in my vault.

[40:49] And a new thing of milk.

[40:51] Oh, yeah.

[40:51] Let's not forget that.

Dan McCoy

[40:52] This was...

[40:53] You had to bag that milk too.

[40:54] I'll tell you what.

Elliott Kalan

[40:55] The guy in the Aaron Burr got milk ad.

[40:57] He thinks he had it bagged because he lost out on that money.

[41:00] What if he had milk in his mouth, double take, spit milk all over his Aaron Burr dual memorabilias?

[41:06] It would be even worse.

[41:07] I don't get the reference.

Stuart Wellington

[41:08] You don't remember the Got Milk commercial?

[41:10] Is that the one where he's drinking milk and he gets real big and then he shames the people that were mean to him?

[41:15] Nope.

[41:15] That's a different commercial.

Elliott Kalan

[41:18] So, anyway, he learns that in the olden days, the parents of this princess were taken captive by Lord Dagda.

[41:26] He wanted to marry the elf queen.

[41:28] She wouldn't marry him.

[41:29] He wanted some magic stones that his grandfather gave to the elf people, even though she says they weren't magic until our elf priestess put magic in them, which means that his grandfather just gave them some stones, which is not a great gift.

[41:40] Anyway, he kidnaps her.

[41:41] After punching her in the head.

[41:43] He just punches her and takes her to his cave, which is decorated with candles and one goat skull, where he's constantly getting his hair combed, as we mentioned, and he only has two henchmen to come visit him.

[41:54] It ended up being a battle for some magic stones and a ring that controls other rings.

Stuart Wellington

[41:57] I mean, he's kind of a tragic figure.

Elliott Kalan

[41:59] Yeah, in a way.

[42:01] Well, it's weird to see this very, like, over-the-top, scenery-chewing, fae, like, Tim Curry and legend-type demon villain, who then you see a scene where he approaches a woman and is like, why didn't you marry me?

[42:13] I loved you, too.

[42:15] Not what I expected from that character.

[42:17] Yeah.

[42:17] It really deepened him, and it made it that much more believable later in the movie when he's just hanging in the forest and his other sidekick tells him something bad and he goes, ugh, well, I won't let you ruin my day.

[42:28] You delivered that line reading, Elliot, about at two times speed of how he delivered every line in this movie.

[42:34] A lot of pauses.

[42:36] So, anyway, we learn that her parents were kidnapped by Lord Dagda, and he's been trying to stop the Bluebell people from not being under his control.

Dan McCoy

[42:43] And all of these things happen, by the way. All of the actual information that happens in this movie happens in a big info dump scene where it's just like...

[42:51] With three flashbacks.

[42:52] Yeah, we're gonna just literally explain everything that's going on, and the rest of the movie is padding, padding, padding, padding, and then a scene where information occurs.

Elliott Kalan

[43:02] There was less padding in Paddington Bear than in this movie, and he's full of padding.

[43:07] I guess you'd call it stuffing.

[43:08] Anyway, this is also... The flashbacks happen after Max has proven his true might as a wizard by coming across some elves who are in a fight with some bad guys.

[43:16] He happens upon a battle, yeah.

[43:18] Happens upon a battle, which the elves are handling themselves pretty well because they're all martial arts masters, and the bad guys are just big fat guys with hammers.

[43:25] They just land like out-of-work bouncers that have croquet mallets in them.

Dan McCoy

[43:28] Wait, is this the one where he does a magic spell that just basically sends staffs to people?

Elliott Kalan

[43:34] Yes, that levitates them so that people can catch them.

Dan McCoy

[43:36] There's a whole big stack of weapons in a corner, which are like...

Elliott Kalan

[43:40] Weapons is putting in, interestingly.

Dan McCoy

[43:42] There's a whole big stack of sticks in a corner.

Stuart Wellington

[43:45] Yeah, thank you.

[43:45] He opens the book, he's like, I don't know, Hawk, there's way too many of these sticks.

[43:51] And the Hawk's like, I believe in you, Max.

[43:52] He's like, I don't know, man.

[43:54] That goes on for 20 minutes.

Elliott Kalan

[43:56] The Hawk goes from, he's not ready yet, to believe in yourself and you can achieve anything within the space of about three scenes.

Stuart Wellington

[44:03] So, Max reads some shit out of his book, and then all of a sudden, baby, these things start floating up into people's hands.

Dan McCoy

[44:09] Sticks start floating over into people's hands, and oh boy, once they got those sticks, the tide turns.

[44:13] Oh, yeah.

[44:14] Because apparently the one thing that was keeping them from winning was that they couldn't run over to this corner where a bunch of sticks were stacked up and grab one of them.

Elliott Kalan

[44:21] Makes you wonder why they left the sticks over there in the first place.

[44:23] And they'll just take them with them everywhere they go.

Stuart Wellington

[44:25] That's the thing, Elliot, if you live your life carrying a stick, you're going to use that fucking stick.

[44:29] Yeah.

[44:30] You've got to put it aside sometimes.

Elliott Kalan

[44:31] If a bunch of guys run up to you with hammers, feel free to keep that stick with you.

Stuart Wellington

[44:36] I just don't believe in that kind of lifestyle, Elliot.

[44:38] I don't need a weapon to prove that I'm a man.

[44:40] From the man with no pants on.

Elliott Kalan

[44:44] So, Max is a hero.

[44:45] He gets a flashback info dump.

[44:47] Long story short.

[44:48] Yeah.

[44:49] There's a big battle between Lord Dagda's men and the Bluebells.

[44:52] Oh, it's enormous.

[44:53] Max is able to use his magic to erase a mighty army of four warriors in armor who show up at a battle where a bunch of children are defeating one of the bad guys.

[45:03] But the armored warriors turn the tide once again and the day is saved.

[45:08] And Lord Dagda, he goes after Max.

Stuart Wellington

[45:10] So we watch this child get attacked by a man in a goblin face.

Elliott Kalan

[45:15] By a man in ram horns and he had a goblin face.

[45:19] What's the name of his mouse companion?

[45:23] Chibble.

[45:24] Chimble.

[45:25] Chimble.

[45:26] Chimble.

[45:27] Chimble tries to save him by jumping at Dagda and biting his throat.

[45:31] And Dagda hurls Krimble against a tree, killing him.

Stuart Wellington

[45:34] He throws him so hard that they have to use the same sound effect as a fist hitting a face.

Elliott Kalan

[45:41] This movie is a full great sound effect.

[45:42] A Wilhelm scream appears early on for no reason.

[45:45] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[45:47] Everything's a slapping sound.

Elliott Kalan

[45:48] We realize that Dagda hates mice.

[45:51] So Max conjures up a bunch of mice that are all over Dagda.

[45:54] This somehow turns Dagda into a mouse.

[45:56] It's not really clear how that Dagda plus mice equals mouse, which if that was the way

[46:01] my life was going to be, I wouldn't want a mouse on me either.

[46:03] I don't want a mouse.

Dan McCoy

[46:04] But also, it just was like, you see him and all of a sudden there's a bunch of white mice

[46:09] swarming over empty clothes of him.

[46:12] So like mice have dissolved Dagda.

[46:14] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[46:15] At some point I'm like, did they eat him, I guess?

[46:18] Yeah.

[46:18] They're unsure of exactly what happened to him.

[46:20] But the day has been saved.

[46:22] Everything's great.

[46:23] Max goes back home.

Stuart Wellington

[46:25] Four armored warriors he conjured are edited out of the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[46:29] They instantly disappear in what can only be called a cut.

[46:32] And Max leaves and returns home where now he's got the confidence that he lacked before.

Stuart Wellington

[46:37] You know, he leaves and he's a little bummed because he's like, my best friend, Crimble,

[46:41] the mouse is dead.

[46:42] I'm going to lay this dude's corpse on this magic book.

[46:45] I'm going to say a prayer about...

[46:47] I wish that I could save him.

[46:48] Yeah.

[46:49] Guys, have I ever told you the story of Darth Plagius the Wise?

[46:52] Please tell us.

[46:54] So he was like a Sith Lord who was so super powerful that like he figured out that he

[47:00] might be able to...

[47:00] I think something about controlling life and death.

[47:03] Yeah, yeah, sure.

[47:04] Or maybe he couldn't do that and it drove him crazy.

Elliott Kalan

[47:07] Have you heard the story?

Stuart Wellington

[47:09] It was in episode three, Revenge of the Sith.

[47:12] I don't remember that movie that well.

[47:13] Was it Plagius or Plagueis?

[47:15] I don't...

[47:16] How do you pronounce it?

[47:17] I'm just trying to remember how they pronounced it in the film.

[47:19] Plagius?

[47:20] Plagius?

[47:21] I mean, I don't remember, but it's not like you were reading it.

[47:23] Ian McDermott's performance is very nuanced, but I don't always understand what he's saying.

Elliott Kalan

[47:27] I think what I liked best about that movie, and by liked I mean hated the most, which is the best of the prequels by far.

[47:34] Okay.

[47:34] Wow, Elliot's getting mad.

[47:36] He's standing up.

[47:37] Hey, look.

[47:38] Overturn's table.

[47:39] Is how the Emperor, rather than being an old man, or aging naturally over time, is hit with lightning so hard that he becomes an old man.

[47:49] That the movie needs to...

[47:50] That's what happens to all of us, Elliot.

[47:51] The movie needs to explain.

[47:53] The movie needs to explain everything to the point of, how did this guy, who was probably in his 60s, in only 20 years, turn into a man in his 80s?

[48:00] We got forced lightning.

[48:02] That's the only explanation.

[48:04] What a dumb movie in so many ways.

[48:06] But again, best of the prequels.

Dan McCoy

[48:09] You see Chris Fuddling riding like a hover bike.

[48:11] He really does look like a California raisin, that guy.

[48:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know?

Elliott Kalan

[48:17] Would that have made the movie better or worse if he and Yoda, instead of playing, broke into a Motown song?

[48:23] Broke into, heard it through the grapevine, and then boogied their way into a bag of raisins.

Stuart Wellington

[48:28] Oh my God, I just got it.

[48:30] Because raisins are made out of grapes.

[48:33] Oh my God.

Elliott Kalan

[48:34] It all makes sense to you now.

Stuart Wellington

[48:37] Oh my Lord.

[48:38] Oh, brother.

Elliott Kalan

[48:38] Remember you were like, Motown and raisins, they're both wonderful, but how do they, what's the connection?

Stuart Wellington

[48:43] I gotta call my mom and apologize.

Elliott Kalan

[48:47] Mom, remember when I said that your pitch for the California raisins campaign, even though they bought it, was stupid?

[48:53] Well, listen to this.

[48:54] I'm sorry.

[48:56] You know what apology you were looking for?

Stuart Wellington

[48:58] Well, listen to this.

[49:00] I'm sorry about what I said.

[49:01] She's like, I don't like it when you frame your apology like it's a Back to the Future reference.

Elliott Kalan

[49:06] But I can't express real emotion.

[49:09] You may not like it, but your kids are gonna love it.

[49:11] And I'm your kid.

[49:14] So he goes back home.

[49:16] He finds that Crimble is not dead, but instead can now be a boy again, because maybe he was a boy before.

Stuart Wellington

[49:23] Yeah, he is scant seconds away from being bullied.

Elliott Kalan

[49:26] Yeah, when Crimble.

Stuart Wellington

[49:28] When Crimble shows up, a young boy with elf ears.

Elliott Kalan

[49:30] And the bullies are like, ah, a black kid.

Dan McCoy

[49:33] We don't know how to handle that.

[49:36] That's the point in the movie where you're like, is this movie racist because they're making Crimble sound, the mouse sound like a black kid?

[49:43] Or is this supposed to be a black kid?

[49:45] And then it comes out and he's like, okay, it's a black kid, but it's still kind of racist.

Elliott Kalan

[49:48] A little bit.

[49:49] But Crimble holds a mice, which turns out to be Lord Dagda.

[49:52] Holds a mouse.

[49:54] I stand corrected.

[49:55] He doesn't hold a bouquet of mice.

[49:58] It's not a Rat King-like thing where their tails are entwined.

Stuart Wellington

[50:00] So he places a mouse on the bully's shoulder that immediately diffuses the bully's anger and the bully runs away.

Elliott Kalan

[50:07] Oh, right.

[50:07] And so the big Crimble death scene, he lays Crimble to rest on his magic book and then leaves.

[50:13] Leaving behind him the single most powerful magical tome or grimoire.

Stuart Wellington

[50:18] All four pages of it.

[50:21] All four dust-covered pages.

Elliott Kalan

[50:24] Barely pushing the length of an NES game instruction manual.

[50:29] He leaves behind.

[50:30] And I have to assume that the last three pages of that book were just the different baddies he would be facing.

[50:36] Yeah, well, the thing is...

Dan McCoy

[50:37] It was the French-language version of the thing that you've already read.

[50:41] Oh, I see.

Stuart Wellington

[50:41] Every time I buy a new video game, there's always a moment where I'm like, oh, I just got home from the video game store.

[50:50] I kind of got to take a shit.

[50:52] I'll go to the bathroom.

[50:52] Maybe I'll check out the game manual on this game.

[50:56] And I'll crack open the game.

[50:57] I'm painting a picture, Dan.

[50:58] No, I know.

[50:58] I'm a second.

[51:00] Crack open the manual.

[51:01] I sit down in that toilet.

[51:02] A lot of other things.

[51:02] I sit down in the toilet.

[51:03] Crack open the game.

[51:04] You know, unwrap all the packaging.

[51:06] They have all those, like, stickers and shit.

[51:08] Crack it open.

[51:09] And of course...

Dan McCoy

[51:09] Save those for later.

[51:10] There's no fucking manuals anymore.

Stuart Wellington

[51:11] All that shit's in-game.

[51:13] Oh.

[51:14] And I'm like...

[51:15] Why don't you read the back of the box?

[51:16] Why don't you read the back of the box, right?

[51:17] Yeah.

[51:17] Why don't we...

[51:18] Whatever happened to predictability, guys?

Elliott Kalan

[51:22] Milkman, the paper boy, video game manuals.

[51:25] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[51:25] Well, everywhere you look, there's a Max Magician.

[51:28] Things were better, you know?

[51:29] I mean, the movie just basically ends with...

[51:32] Crumble is, like, living in Max's...

Elliott Kalan

[51:34] Crumble and Worm, the henchman of Dagda who becomes a good guy.

[51:39] And Tom?

[51:40] And T-Top Tom, or whatever his name is, the rhyming weirdo.

[51:44] They're all living in Max's closet, and they can't wait to help him with his math homework later.

[51:49] And Lord Dagda, he's the mouse in the cage, because despite all his rage, he's still just a rat in a cage.

[51:55] Yep.

[51:55] Which means Lord Dagda has been cursed to spend his life watching an adolescent boy masturbate before going to bed.

Stuart Wellington

[52:03] And he can rely on a child to make sure he is fed every day, or he will die.

Elliott Kalan

[52:07] And has water and wood chips.

[52:08] And the movie ends with Dagda muttering to himself about wood chips.

[52:11] The end.

[52:12] Mm-hmm.

[52:12] Yeah.

[52:13] Circle wipe.

[52:14] Circle wipe to the credits.

Dan McCoy

[52:16] Yeah, well, no, it was an iris end on the end.

[52:20] But...

[52:20] So that's...

[52:21] Iris is essentially a circle wipe.

[52:24] Sure.

[52:26] That's Max Magician Legend of the Rings.

[52:29] I had to look at the DVD to remind myself of the title, because again, it's generic.

Elliott Kalan

[52:35] So, Dan, are we putting a bow on this?

Dan McCoy

[52:37] We are putting a bow on this.

Elliott Kalan

[52:38] I feel like we haven't fully gotten across the cheapness of the film.

Dan McCoy

[52:41] Yeah, it looks like a bunch of LARPers got together, and we're like, hey, man, what we do every weekend is awesome.

[52:48] We gotta get some other people to see what this stuff is.

Stuart Wellington

[52:51] We gotta get into this here podcast and say, you know what, this is a pretty...

[52:53] Sneak into the podcast?

[52:54] You're the third co-host.

[52:57] What are you talking about?

[52:58] This is...

[52:58] Sneak into the podcast.

[52:59] You know, this is a pretty low-budget affair.

[53:02] This is clear...

[53:02] This podcast?

Stuart Wellington

[53:03] Yeah, it is.

[53:03] Yeah, well, and the movie we talked about.

[53:06] And it's...

[53:06] You know, we're not that different.

[53:07] ...clearly like a labor of love.

[53:10] Somebody really kind of put their heart and soul up on the screen.

Elliott Kalan

[53:12] Somebody put their heart and soul in the makeup effects, because let's say one thing that we didn't say before.

[53:16] The makeup effects are pretty good.

[53:17] The makeup for the bad guys, like we were saying, this is Xena-level makeup.

[53:21] Yeah.

[53:21] Like, you wouldn't see it in a movie, but you would see it on a syndicated show.

Dan McCoy

[53:23] This is a lesser episode of Buffy-level makeup.

Elliott Kalan

[53:27] Yeah, it's good level of makeup.

[53:28] Yeah.

[53:28] If you saw someone wearing this makeup on Halloween, you'd be like, shit, you should be a professional makeup artist, dude.

[53:34] Yeah.

[53:34] If you saw it in a big budget motion picture, you'd be like, that's not so great.

Stuart Wellington

[53:37] If I saw it in an episode of Sci-Fi Channel's original reality program, Face-Off, I would be like, not bad.

[53:45] Yeah, B+.

[53:46] Yeah.

[53:46] Good work.

[53:47] Yeah, you could.

[53:47] Maybe you'll get work on this episode of Farscape.

[53:50] By the way, I was watching an episode of that fucking show and John Landis came on.

[53:53] And I flipped my shit and Charlene's like, who's that?

[53:56] And you're like, he's a famous murderer.

Elliott Kalan

[54:00] Manslaughter.

[54:01] You'd be like, that's Max Landis' dad.

[54:03] And she got super excited.

Stuart Wellington

[54:05] Yeah, yeah.

[54:06] She's really into American Ultra.

[54:08] She writes a lot of American Ultra slash fic.

Elliott Kalan

[54:11] You were like, you know Michael Landon?

[54:13] Well, they're not related.

[54:14] But their names sound a little similar if you don't say the last syllable.

Stuart Wellington

[54:19] But what I was trying to say is.

[54:21] Yeah, go on.

[54:21] This is like a super micro-budget movie.

[54:26] It's goofy.

[54:27] It has all the hallmark traits of a shitty.

[54:29] Of a hallmark movie.

[54:30] Of a hallmark movie.

[54:31] As you put it, a sure sign of one of these micro-budget movies is that every scene starts a couple seconds too early and ends a couple seconds too late.

Elliott Kalan

[54:45] Every shot.

[54:46] There's a scene in it where Max is leaving the house.

[54:51] And the dad is like, oh, your friend's the mouse.

[54:55] And he goes, Crumble says your fly is open.

[54:58] And he goes, huh?

[54:59] And Max leaves.

[55:00] And the dad zips it.

[55:01] And then it holds for a couple seconds.

[55:03] And the dad goes, what?

[55:06] Bye.

[55:06] Wait.

[55:07] Bye.

[55:08] And the mom laughs at him.

[55:09] And it's like, you should have just ended the scene on him zipping his fly up.

[55:13] You don't need to show us everything that happened after that.

[55:17] We need closure, really.

[55:19] The story of that fly.

[55:20] Where'd that fly come from?

[55:22] Where's the fly going?

[55:22] I'm trying to remember exactly what happened at sea.

[55:24] Why it was so awkward at the end of it.

[55:26] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[55:27] It was because you were so erotically turned on.

[55:30] I was like, oh.

[55:31] Erotically turned on.

[55:32] As opposed to the other ways you can be turned on.

Elliott Kalan

[55:34] Like what?

[55:35] Like someone.

[55:36] Intellectually.

[55:36] Like I was dead and Dr. Frankenstein put some electro bolts in me?

Stuart Wellington

[55:41] So guys, you keep interrupting me before I can reach my conclusion.

[55:45] But what I'm trying to say is.

Elliott Kalan

[55:46] This is your Jerry Springer sermon at the end of the episode.

[55:48] You know, guys.

[55:49] What did we learn?

[55:50] We don't want to rant here.

Stuart Wellington

[55:52] But this is the sort of thing where if you want to watch like a goofy, super low budget movie.

[55:58] We should be in final judgments right now.

Dan McCoy

[56:01] I'm giving a final judgment.

[56:02] All right.

[56:02] I'm saying this is a good example.

[56:03] Is this a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie you kind of like?

[56:06] Go, Stuart.

[56:07] This is a good bad movie all the way.

Stuart Wellington

[56:10] I'm with Stuart on this one.

[56:11] Good, bad.

[56:12] G to the B.

[56:13] You get to laugh at extras in the background, jump kicking stuff, or just not even doing anything, man.

Elliott Kalan

[56:20] There's lots of funny reuses of footage.

[56:23] There's bad editing.

[56:25] It's really fun.

Stuart Wellington

[56:26] There's a lot of shots of a hawk where they're doing voiceover for the hawk talking.

[56:31] And occasionally the hawk will move its beak.

[56:33] And you can swear there's a director or an animal wrangler off screen that's like trying to make motions to make the hawk move its mouth more.

Elliott Kalan

[56:40] I was thinking the opposite.

[56:41] I was like, did they try to line up the words with the hawk's mouth and then feel like it wasn't worth it and just not?

[56:47] Because there were a bunch of places where they probably could have, where the hawk is saying like, no.

[56:50] And the hawk will open its mouth, close its mouth, and then say, you'll hear no.

Stuart Wellington

[56:55] Yeah, yeah.

[56:55] Because O sounds are really easy to do with a beak.

[56:58] Idiot.

[56:59] All you have to do is show the beak opening and closing.

[57:02] Haven't you ever watched a Good Feathers episode?

Dan McCoy

[57:06] I agree that this is a good, bad movie.

[57:08] For a little while I was like marginal on it because...

Elliott Kalan

[57:14] You put margarine on it.

[57:16] Well, I realized that...

[57:17] And we're like, Dan, no, that's the disc.

[57:19] You're going to ruin it.

Dan McCoy

[57:20] I thought it was a bagel.

[57:21] I realized that my problem with this movie...

[57:24] It's not a pardon.

[57:25] No, your problem with this movie.

[57:26] My problem with this movie was...

[57:28] You've got to take it down a couple notches.

[57:30] I was actually trying to follow the exposition because I was like, we've got to talk about this later on.

[57:35] We've got to talk about this.

[57:36] We've got to understand what the rich mythos is of this movie.

[57:39] We owe it to our listeners to be able to explain exactly what happened.

Elliott Kalan

[57:42] But this is not classic check-your-brain-at-the-door action blockbusters.

Dan McCoy

[57:45] Well, that's the thing.

[57:46] If you're not doing a podcast on this movie, you don't need to give a shit about what's going on.

Elliott Kalan

[57:50] In fact, not understanding what's going on is a benefit to you then.

[57:54] Because you can joke to your pals about, wait, why is that happening?

[57:57] What? What's this about?

Dan McCoy

[57:58] Just sit back and let it wash over you, man.

Elliott Kalan

[58:00] It's an experience.

[58:01] Ride the roller coaster, you know?

Dan McCoy

[58:03] Just Max Magician, ride it.

[58:05] Just ride the horse.

Stuart Wellington

[58:07] Ride the pink horse, you know?

[58:08] You know?

[58:09] It's like bad boys.

[58:10] Ride that dragon.

[58:12] Just let it wash over you, the sights and sounds of bad boys.

Elliott Kalan

[58:16] Chase the dragon?

[58:17] Chase the dragon.

[58:17] Just hang on.

[58:18] Just find a snake, hang on to it, and let it drag you where it may.

[58:21] That's this movie.

[58:22] Yeah.

[58:23] Look, you're going to get brambles on your knees, and you're going to get rope burn.

[58:27] Let this movie just drag you through the woods to wherever it goes.

[58:32] Yeah.

[58:32] Which is a cage with a mouse in it in a boy's room.

[58:36] The end.

Stuart Wellington

[58:41] My name is Patrick.

[58:43] My name is Parker.

[58:44] Max FunCon has been a huge inspiration in my life.

Dan McCoy

[58:48] Now I have this network of friends that I've made that span literally across the entire globe, and they're some of my favorite people in the world.

Stuart Wellington

[58:56] I truly cannot believe the amount of wonderful and lasting friendships that have come out of this.

Elliott Kalan

[59:02] If you feel like you might not fit in, as long as you're a good person, you'll fit in, because everyone there is good and amazing and kind and wonderful, and you should absolutely go.

Stuart Wellington

[59:14] It will be the best decision of your life.

S4

[59:17] Make a ton of new friends like Parker and Patrick at MaxFunCon.

[59:21] Tickets for MaxFunCon and MaxFunCon East are on sale now at MaxFunCon.com.

Dan McCoy

[59:30] Hey, it's Dan breaking in here with an announcement that we didn't have ready at the time of taping, but it's exciting, and we all wanted you to know about it as soon as possible.

[59:40] The Flophouse is doing their own comics miniseries.

[59:44] It's unlike when we all did the Flash Gordon comic together.

[59:49] This is a Flophouse-branded product.

[59:52] It's all our original story.

[59:55] It's all our original.

[59:57] It has us in it.

[1:00:00] Introducing the story.

[1:00:02] It's all Flophouse all the time, and it's going to be available for purchase on the Flophouse website starting Wednesday.

[1:00:10] That's just a digital copy.

[1:00:12] A physical copy is not out of the question in the future if we do enough of these, but for now it's all digital.

[1:00:18] 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 money.

[1:00:28] 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 want because all the money is going to charity.

[1:00:42] That's right.

[1:00:43] 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 things if a lot of people buy it and donate and download and all that stuff.

[1:01:01] 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 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.

[1:01:31] Tom Fowler, who did the cover.

[1:01:32] Nathan Fairbairn.

[1:01:34] Chris Eliopoulos.

[1:01:36] Travis Lanham.

[1:01:38] And our editor, Nate Cosby, who came up with the whole idea in the first place.

[1:01:43] So thanks for that.

[1:01:45] And back to all three of us in the studio.

[1:01:50] But moving on, we've got a few sponsors for tonight's show.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:54] Oh, man.

[1:01:56] First up is Max Magician.

[1:01:59] Uh-oh.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:00] We've got to read the copy, though.

[1:02:02] Join this thrilling adventure that is beyond the realm of imagination.

[1:02:06] As Max learns to be...

Dan McCoy

[1:02:07] In the tradition of Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings.

[1:02:10] Sounds good.

[1:02:11] Sounds good.

[1:02:11] Is this thing.

[1:02:13] Put it in your mouth and watch it.

[1:02:16] All right.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:17] I guess that's our take.

[1:02:18] We'll call that a take one.

Dan McCoy

[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.

[1:02:35] 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 you a new way to rent.

[1:02:49] The Black Tux offers free home try-on so you can see the fit and feel the quality of your suit months before your event.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:57] So I don't just have to take whatever tux they send me.

[1:02:59] No.

[1:03:00] They're going to send it to me.

[1:03:00] I'm going to try it on and I can tell them, hey, this doesn't fit me.

[1:03:03] I don't want to rent it.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:04] Yeah.

[1:03:04] If they send you a clown suit, for instance, instead of a tux, you can be like, hey, Black Tux, this is a clown suit and not a tux.

[1:03:10] I don't even know you carried these.

[1:03:12] Yeah.

[1:03:12] Take it back.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:13] And you've probably been listening to this episode and you're like, I've kind of been wanting to try a cape with my tux.

[1:03:19] Mm-hmm.

[1:03:20] Well, I don't know for sure that they have them, but if they do, you can try on a cape, see if it looks good.

[1:03:25] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:25] If that's an option, you can have it.

[1:03:27] Well, we add features to the business, not knowing for sure if it's a...

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:34] Now, what I will say is, you can just go buy a cape wherever you are.

[1:03:38] Yeah, anyone can.

[1:03:39] The tux is the important part.

[1:03:40] Go to the nearest cape store.

Dan McCoy

[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.

[1:03:48] Put that for you.

[1:03:49] The box of the cape, the NBC show.

[1:03:53] A sheet is basically a cape.

[1:03:56] NBC is the cape.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:59] Why did we put this on the box?

[1:04:01] And why are we releasing the cape on DVD?

[1:04:03] Why did we pay to have this transferred to Blu-ray quality?

Dan McCoy

[1:04:08] All good questions.

[1:04:10] Speaking of quality.

[1:04:11] To get back to the black tux.

[1:04:12] Black tux.

[1:04:13] Quality tuxes to rent.

[1:04:14] The best part of the black tux, it's completely done online.

[1:04:18] To get free shipping both ways, plus $20 off of your purchase, visit theblacktux.com slash flop.

[1:04:27] That's theblacktux.com slash flop.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:32] You're never going to know when you need to put on the Ritz.

[1:04:34] No.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:35] Well, hopefully you will need to know because you have to order it a couple months ahead of time.

[1:04:39] Oh yeah, that's right.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:40] But.

[1:04:40] You always are going to know when you have to put on the Ritz.

[1:04:42] Let's say you've got a wedding coming up.

[1:04:44] Dance with sticks.

[1:04:45] You're on Bareilles.

[1:04:46] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:47] Yeah.

[1:04:48] Look dressed up like a million dollar trooper trying so hard to look like Gary Cooper.

[1:04:52] Super duper.

[1:04:52] Any of those things.

[1:04:53] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:53] Pooper scooper.

[1:04:54] Now, here's the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:56] You've got a wedding coming up.

[1:04:58] You've got an awards show coming up.

[1:05:00] Mm-hmm.

[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.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:05] Maybe you've got a wedding awards show coming up.

[1:05:07] Which is the best wedding?

[1:05:08] Oh.

[1:05:09] You don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:10] At the Weddies.

[1:05:11] Mm-hmm.

[1:05:11] The awards for weddings.

[1:05:13] I'm assuming it's on Bravo.

[1:05:15] Probably.

[1:05:15] It's got to be.

[1:05:16] Yeah.

[1:05:17] Watch what happens.

[1:05:18] Watch what happens.

[1:05:18] Live.

[1:05:20] Yep.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:21] That's the name of a thing, Dan.

[1:05:22] Good job.

[1:05:23] 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.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:29] So we've been doing this bit for a little bit.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:31] Go check out.

[1:05:32] That's true.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:33] It feels like it's been years.

[1:05:34] Do you think it's been back?

[1:05:35] Yeah, we have nice long beards.

[1:05:37] Do you think it's meetings at Bravo's?

[1:05:38] Bravo.

[1:05:39] They go, wait a minute.

[1:05:40] Wait a minute.

[1:05:40] Keep it down, everybody.

[1:05:41] Let's follow Vanderpump's rules of order.

[1:05:45] So theblacktux.com.

[1:05:48] Check it out.

[1:05:48] And use that promo code.

[1:05:50] What was it again, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[1:05:51] It was theblacktux.com slash flop is where you got to go.

[1:05:55] Cool.

[1:05:56] But our other sponsor for the evening is Casper.

[1:06:00] The Flophouse is supported in part by Casper, an online retailer of premium mattresses for a fraction of the price.

[1:06:09] Casper mattresses feature supportive memory foam for a sleep surface that's got just the right sink and just the right bounce.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:16] That's memory foam that's like, you can do it.

[1:06:18] Come on.

[1:06:19] Have faith in yourself.

[1:06:20] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:21] Dan, you are a diehard Casper customer.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:25] Yeah.

[1:06:26] Well, in that I have a Casper mattress.

[1:06:28] And you sleep on that shit every night.

[1:06:29] And you'll die on it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:30] I've only slept on a Casper mattress one time.

[1:06:33] But it was super comfortable.

[1:06:34] Yeah.

[1:06:35] It was super comfortable.

[1:06:36] Where were you?

[1:06:37] I was in Huntington, West Virginia.

[1:06:39] Yes.

[1:06:40] Visiting who?

[1:06:41] One of the McElroys.

[1:06:43] Two of the McElroys.

[1:06:44] Well, three of the McElroys, actually.

[1:06:46] But not the three that the listener is thinking of.

[1:06:49] I mean, I don't know.

[1:06:51] I'm not going to place any judgment on the listeners.

[1:06:53] But what I am going to say is I had a great time sleeping on that mattress.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:56] Dan, what about you?

[1:06:57] Do you have a great time on that mattress?

[1:06:59] Feel free to tell us the deets.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:01] Sometimes.

[1:07:02] I think you had a story queued up right when we walked through the door today.

[1:07:06] No.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:07] Not going there.

[1:07:08] Yeah, yes, Dan.

[1:07:08] Was there a yarn you wanted to spin?

[1:07:10] Nope.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:11] Don't want to spin any yarns.

[1:07:12] Yeah, I thought you said you were going to save it for the podcast.

[1:07:14] The yarn.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:15] You seem very eager to relay us with a certain tale.

[1:07:17] The yarn is all.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:19] Bed business.

[1:07:20] The yarn is all wound up in a ball.

[1:07:23] It is not de-yarned.

[1:07:25] There's a risk for.

[1:07:26] Why are you making strange eyebrow motions right now, Dan?

[1:07:30] Wink!

[1:07:31] There's a risk-free trial and return policy.

[1:07:33] Try sleeping on a Casper for 100 days with free delivery to the U.S. and Canada and painless

[1:07:39] returns.

[1:07:40] Mattresses made in America.

[1:07:42] And there's a special offer to listeners up the Flophouse.

[1:07:46] Flophouse listeners can get $50 toward any mattress purchase by visiting www.casper.com slash

[1:07:55] Flophouse and using the promo code FLOPHOUSE.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:59] Easy to remember.

[1:08:00] It's your favorite show.

[1:08:00] All one word, Flophouse.

[1:08:01] That's a huge deal.

[1:08:03] $50?

[1:08:04] Yeah.

[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.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:10] Terms and conditions apply.

[1:08:10] And Casper won a bunch of awards for their technology of making tiny little mattresses that expand

[1:08:16] to become giant mattresses.

[1:08:17] Sure.

[1:08:17] They won the Ghosties.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:19] The Matties.

[1:08:20] The Ghosties.

[1:08:21] The Matties.

[1:08:21] That's the Mattress Awards.

[1:08:23] And also the Caspies.

[1:08:24] But those are awards they produce.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:25] And the Espes, which just sounds sort of like Caspies.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:29] The Matties are hosted by Mads Mikkelsen and Mad Mardigan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:34] Yep.

[1:08:34] And the Caspies are hosted by Prince Caspian.

[1:08:37] Oh, weird.

[1:08:38] Of the Dawn Treader.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:41] Wow.

[1:08:43] Now, Dan.

[1:08:44] They're hosted by the Horse and His Boy.

[1:08:46] The comedy team of the Horse and His Boy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:50] Say boy.

[1:08:52] Anyway, Dan, we don't have any Jumbotron messages.

[1:08:55] No Jumbotron.

[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 Flophouse fan.

[1:09:07] She tells me about it all the time.

[1:09:09] 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 Flophouse.

[1:09:19] Please keep listening.

[1:09:20] Try to get my mom to listen sometime.

[1:09:21] She does not.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:22] And this isn't Cletus Cassidy, a.k.a.

[1:09:25] Carnage.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:25] Would I give a heartfelt message to a serial killer?

[1:09:28] No, I would not.

[1:09:29] And it's not Cassidy the Vampire from Preacher either.

[1:09:31] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:32] This is a person named Cassidy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:35] He's neither bonded to a symbiote nor a vampire.

[1:09:40] I mean, he's bonded to a symbiote known as heroin.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:45] You mean Cassidy the Vampire.

[1:09:46] Yeah.

[1:09:46] But now it's time for letters from listeners.

[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 listened to one episode, does that make you a listener?

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:02] If you're stuck in the back seat while somebody's playing this for you on the car.

[1:10:05] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:06] I'm sorry.

[1:10:06] If someone tied you up and put earbuds in your head, does that make you a listener?

[1:10:10] Are you being listener?

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:13] Look, I think I understand what you guys are saying.

[1:10:15] And I guess what you're saying is, the Flophouse boys are looking for listeners looking around

[1:10:20] 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] That's creepy the way you said that.

[1:10:29] 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.

[1:10:41] Not a lot of words rhyme with listen, but I'm trying and you'll glisten and you'll shine

[1:10:48] if you listen to the Flophouse.

[1:10:52] The Flophouse is good for the coats of pets and other domesticated animals.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:56] You know, there was chunks of that that sounded like Don't Stop Me Now by Queen.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:01] Yeah, sung by the world's greatest Eddie Vedder impersonator.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:08] That's Eddie Vedder, basically.

[1:11:09] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:10] This one's from Abbott, last name with hell.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:12] Hey, what would Eddie Shredder sound like?

Dan McCoy

[1:11:14] It's Shredder, but he has an Eddie Vedder cover band.

Elliott Kalan

[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.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:24] Yeah, they just play Hunger Strike over it.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:27] Crang does the Chris Cornell part.

[1:11:30] This letter is from Abbott, last name with hell.

[1:11:33] Who writes?

[1:11:34] And Costello.

[1:11:36] Dear speeches.

[1:11:37] Like, you don't leave that on a...

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:38] No.

[1:11:39] That was a penny on the table.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:41] Long time listener, first time writer.

[1:11:43] I'm slowly working my way through your back catalog and came across a movie minute where

[1:11:47] you talk about the then upcoming movie Avatar.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:50] Remember the movie minutes?

[1:11:51] Whatever happened to those, Dan?

[1:11:52] 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, I might be the only one who liked these.

[1:11:59] And they might have tweeted you too.

[1:12:00] But are you guys going to do another Oscars floptacular?

[1:12:03] And I was like, you are the only one who likes those.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:05] 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.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:13] Well, maybe at the next episode we record, we're recording this before the Oscars, but

[1:12:18] it's going to be released after.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:19] Maybe next episode we can just talk about the Oscars.

[1:12:20] Instead of doing letters, we can talk about the Oscars or something.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:22] I don't know.

[1:12:23] Let's not go crazy, but yeah, maybe.

[1:12:24] I don't know.

[1:12:25] Elliot's trying to get out of watching a movie.

[1:12:27] It depends.

[1:12:28] The listeners now will know whether the Oscars went out of their way to choose the best movie

[1:12:35] of the year, as they usually don't do, or whether we live in a dystopia where Trump is president

[1:12:40] and La La Land is considered the best fixture of the year.

[1:12:44] Listeners, you know if we live in that world.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:45] You know, while we didn't talk about, during the movie we didn't mention that one of the

[1:12:50] villains, one of the monsters is called the Red Cap, which is a popular, like a type.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:54] Person to help you with your bags at the airport.

Stuart Wellington

[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, and certainly in the

[1:13:07] White Wolf Changeling game.

[1:13:09] I've heard about that one in a while.

[1:13:10] But I'm surprised that all throughout this, you know, Trump's campaign, that nobody likened

[1:13:18] the Make America Great Again behatted legions as being likened to the violent red caps.

[1:13:25] I'm sorry, you're surprised that no one did that?

[1:13:27] Yeah.

[1:13:28] If I'm the first one drawing that connection, well, give me $5 million, because I'm awesome.

[1:13:33] Booyah!

[1:13:34] Who's giving you this money?

[1:13:35] I don't know.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:36] The fucking, I don't know.

[1:13:38] White Wolf?

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:39] Yeah.

[1:13:40] For promoting their product?

[1:13:41] $5 million.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:42] They do not have $5 million on hand.

[1:13:44] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:44] Maybe Chaosium can get it to you.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:47] Yeah, they have way more.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:49] This gentleman came across a movie minute, he says, where you talk about the then-upcoming

[1:13:55] movie Avatar.

[1:13:56] Elliot says, I'll be surprised this movie is not a flop.

[1:13:59] It could be a success, but maybe it will do well off James Cameron's name and then not

[1:14:04] do so well.

[1:14:06] Considering...

[1:14:07] I stand by my prediction of could be a flop or could do well.

[1:14:10] Considering that poor time 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?

[1:14:17] What movies have you thought would be terrible that turned out to be successful?

[1:14:20] And what movies did you think would be successes that you ended up covering on the podcast?

[1:14:25] Thanks for flopping.

[1:14:25] 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

[1:14:34] with Titanic, 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.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:43] Look, I'm totally...

[1:14:44] We have you on record years after the fact as saying you were right.

[1:14:48] I, uh...

[1:14:48] Look, I'm always willing to admit I was wrong.

[1:14:50] 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?

[1:14:56] I apologize.

[1:14:57] James Cameron to Avatar.

[1:14:59] I will settle the class action suit of Flav House listeners against me for being wrong.

[1:15:03] You all can have one third of a penny in settlement.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:07] You know, I'm kind of surprised that Batman versus Superman...

[1:15:13] 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

[1:15:23] universally disliked.

[1:15:24] Like it won a bunch of Razzie awards this year, which doesn't necessarily mean quality.

[1:15:29] The Razzies are kind of bullshit.

[1:15:31] Sorry, Razzies.

[1:15:32] Or maybe you're not.

[1:15:32] 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.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:40] Uh, I guess.

[1:15:41] But we're talking more about like flops or hits, I guess.

[1:15:44] Yeah, but...

[1:15:45] Well, no.

[1:15:45] But that's fair.

[1:15:46] It's movies that you thought would be terrible.

[1:15:48] It's a movie I didn't expect for us to cover on the show.

[1:15:51] Oh.

[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] It looks terrible.

[1:15:57] And then they turn out to be not that bad, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:00] Like the Fright Night remake was way better than I expected it to be.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:03] There are very few times where I think a movie is going to be great and then it turns out

[1:16:09] to be awful.

[1:16:10] If only because it's like, I don't...

[1:16:14] It's...

[1:16:14] There...

[1:16:15] 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 any of the time I had it.

[1:16:18] Every now and then...

[1:16:19] Well, I mean, La La Land.

[1:16:20] There you go.

[1:16:20] I was super excited about it.

[1:16:21] Wanted to...

[1:16:22] Really wanted to see it.

[1:16:23] And then I didn't enjoy it that much.

[1:16:24] But like, it's...

[1:16:26] I feel like right now, movies are so divided into like, smaller movies that tend to be of

[1:16:34] quality.

[1:16:35] And then large, big budget movies where even those, you can tell going in pretty much when

[1:16:40] it's going to be good or not.

[1:16:41] I don't know.

[1:16:42] Like, I find myself not that surprised by movies anymore.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:46] But I also see...

[1:16:47] You don't have that childlike wonder anymore.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:49] I don't.

[1:16:49] That's true.

[1:16:50] But it's also the fact that like, actually having a child, I like, don't go to the theaters

[1:16:55] that often.

[1:16:55] And I don't have that much time to watch movies at home.

[1:16:58] So it's rare that a movie that's bad slips through the screen that I've set up.

[1:17:03] Where it's like, this week, I have exactly two hours spread out over five dishwashing

[1:17:09] sessions to watch a movie.

[1:17:11] I'm going to watch a movie I've wanted to see for years.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:12] How do you watch movies when you're watching stuff doing the dishes?

[1:17:16] Well, I have...

[1:17:17] Do you have a TV in your kitchen?

[1:17:19] I have an iPad.

[1:17:21] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:21] And I can stream from my TiVo.

[1:17:22] And I can stream from my TiVo.

[1:17:23] Television wizard?

[1:17:24] I am a television wizard.

[1:17:24] Are we doing...

[1:17:25] You're some sort of TV wizard?

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:27] I have an iPad that gives me access to my TiVo through streaming, Netflix, and any other

[1:17:33] movie site.

[1:17:34] And I just set it up next to the sink and I watch.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:36] TV wizard was not a hit off of The Who's follow-up, Tommy 2.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:43] It's just, he's really good at, what, watching TV?

[1:17:47] Even though he's deaf and blind?

[1:17:49] This kid's deaf and blind, but he still knows the plot of all the Simpsons episodes?

Dan McCoy

[1:17:54] He's a TV wizard.

[1:17:56] He really loves Brady Bunch.

[1:17:59] TV wizard.

[1:18:00] He had an orange for lunch.

[1:18:04] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:04] You tell there lack some of the inspiration.

[1:18:07] How do you think he does it?

[1:18:09] He just watches TV.

[1:18:11] How did he get so good?

[1:18:14] He's a TV guy.

[1:18:15] Who the fuck cares?

Dan McCoy

[1:18:16] Yeah, I don't.

[1:18:17] Who the fuck cares?

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:19] It's your wicked Uncle Ernie and I watch a lot of bad TV as I change the channels.

[1:18:25] Change the channels.

[1:18:28] Or it should be flip about instead of fiddle about.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:30] But I think that's, I mean, I don't get to the theater very often either.

[1:18:35] I usually only, I rarely seek out something that I haven't.

[1:18:40] I mean, it's hard to see something that hasn't been promoted to me in some way or another.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:47] And also, it's hard, it's much harder these days to see a movie without knowing a lot about it ahead of time just by the way that culture is bombarded at us.

[1:18:55] Like either promoted or you see people just discussing it either online and social media or in person in front of your face.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:03] I mean, I've gotten pretty good if I know that a movie is like a horror movie or a genre picture that gets any kind of buzz at any of the festivals.

[1:19:12] I almost immediately, like, stop reading any details unless there's a release date.

[1:19:19] Because, I mean, it's not that I don't want to go in with spoilers, 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 and she spends most of the movie covering her eyes and then is mad at me.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:40] I was trying to go back and see whether there was actually, like, anything that we did on the show that I had thought might be good at some point.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:48] Because usually if you think it might be good, you watch it without us and then you're like, it was pretty crazy, but we can't see it for the show.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:53] Yeah, like all the Now You See Me movies, which you're apparently all about.

[1:19:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:01] Dan, Now You See Me 3, don't watch it so we can do it on Flop House even though it'll be a huge hit.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:05] It's Now You 3 Me.

[1:20:07] The Now You See Me movies are super, super, super stupid, but they're stupid in an entertaining way.

[1:20:13] So I guess that's the moral of this letter.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:17] Okay, let's go to the next letter.

[1:20:18] Okay, let's move to the next letter.

[1:20:19] We spent roughly an hour and a half on that letter.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:21] Okay.

[1:20:22] My commute to work is crazy long.

[1:20:24] This is from, by the way, Doug, last name was held.

[1:20:27] Doug Funny, right?

[1:20:28] Mike.

[1:20:29] How's Skeeter doing?

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:31] My commute.

[1:20:32] Oh, don't worry about it.

[1:20:32] Did you ever get married to Patty Mayonnaise?

[1:20:35] No spoilers.

[1:20:36] You know what?

[1:20:37] Maybe he married B.B. Bluff.

[1:20:39] She's got the money.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:41] Yeah.

[1:20:41] My commute to work is crazy long.

[1:20:44] And I listen to your podcast all the time.

[1:20:45] It's my favorite.

[1:20:47] And I think it's because your banter and absurd riffing remind me of my closest friends.

[1:20:51] None of whom, unfortunately, live close to me anymore.

[1:20:53] Oh, that's too bad.

[1:20:54] There is, in other words, something familiar about the Flophouse that I really appreciate,

[1:20:58] especially in these dark days.

[1:21:00] Cue Halley.

[1:21:01] Politics and elections.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:03] So, thank you.

[1:21:03] I like that he used close in two different ways within one sentence, emotionally and physically.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:09] Yeah.

[1:21:10] Continue.

[1:21:11] That's good writing.

[1:21:12] Anyway, two questions for you.

[1:21:14] One, I was texting with said friends the other night, and I joked that there should be a Milos Forman

[1:21:19] grill with an accompanying infomercial.

[1:21:22] I said that one part of the infomercial could be a guy holding the grill, inspecting its features

[1:21:26] carefully, and then dropping it on the floor on account of his bitter ecstasy.

[1:21:31] In another, a guy could pick one up, 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.

[1:21:39] Were they right?

[1:21:41] I think I can take it either way.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:42] Milos Forman's the guy that paints the Vigo painting in Ghostbusters 2.

[1:21:46] No.

[1:21:47] No.

[1:21:47] Incorrect.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:49] No.

[1:21:50] Okay.

[1:21:51] Stuart, I want to see you teach a history of film class.

[1:21:57] Now we get to Buster Keaton.

[1:21:59] Another name for Michael Keaton.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:02] He was Michael Keaton in Buster Poindexter's son.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:07] He was in Freejack and Gung Ho, right?

[1:22:13] Sure, yeah.

[1:22:14] Yeah.

[1:22:14] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:17] Number two.

[1:22:18] What are the most offensive movies you've seen, either because of former content?

[1:22:22] You flopped 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.

[1:22:32] Doug, last name is held.

[1:22:34] As for the Milos Forman grill, I don't know.

[1:22:39] Shrug.

[1:22:40] Wow.

[1:22:41] Wow.

[1:22:41] It's a perfectly fine joke.

[1:22:43] Rough.

[1:22:44] No, I mean, you know.

[1:22:45] Very rough.

[1:22:45] I would say it on the podcast, certainly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:48] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:49] And then Elliot would make fun of me for it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:50] Well, I'd say it and you'd make fun of me.

[1:22:53] You know what?

[1:22:54] So it passes the test of something we would say, knowing it's stupid, expecting the other

[1:23:00] guys to not like it, in the heat of a moment.

[1:23:02] Yeah.

[1:23:03] In the heat of a moment.

[1:23:07] There's the rest of that song.

[1:23:10] But what are the most offensive movies?

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:12] I've talked about how offensive I find the movie 40 Days and 40 Nights.

[1:23:17] Oh, yeah.

[1:23:18] That's a good one.

[1:23:19] Josh Hartnett sex comedy, where he decides to give up premarital sex for Lent.

[1:23:24] And then he proceeds to blow a feather across Shannon Sassamon's tummy to give her an orgasm,

[1:23:32] which I think, I mean, at that point, that's basically intercourse.

[1:23:34] And then at the end, he gets raped by his ex-girlfriend.

[1:23:37] It's really weird.

[1:23:40] There's, I mean, a lot of the Christian movies we watch feature like these ridiculous straw

[1:23:48] man arguments.

[1:23:49] And those are all, I don't know if I'd say they're like super offensive.

[1:23:53] They're just really dumb.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:54] They definitely insult the viewer's intelligence.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:57] Yeah, including the people that they're pitching the movie toward.

[1:24:01] That's the thing that bugs me the most, is it's like, we assume the people that like this stuff are idiots.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:06] Well, that's one of the things, I mean, this wasn't one of the movies I was going to talk about,

[1:24:10] but Saving Christmas or whatever it was, Kirk Cameron Saves Christmas.

[1:24:13] Like, even as a non-Christian, I was offended by a movie that was basically like, hey, 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, presents, eating a lot of food, dancing, drinking.

[1:24:31] That's what Christmas is all about.

[1:24:33] I mean.

[1:24:33] Why should we change?

[1:24:34] Just because some dusty old Jew back 2,000 years ago said so in some crazy old book.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:39] I mean, isn't the, isn't like the modern commercialization of Christmas, wasn't that created by the, like, the, like, Jewish department stores?

[1:24:48] I don't know if I'd say Jewish department stores.

[1:24:50] I mean, that's what my wife says.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:53] But, like, there was something about the, about the.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:57] Your wife, by the way, who is Jewish, not just anti-Semitic.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:01] Yeah, yeah, you're not, you're not married to Eva Braun.

[1:25:03] No.

[1:25:04] There was something about the vulgarization of any faith.

[1:25:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:25:08] That I was like, uh, this is gross.

[1:25:11] That they're like, hey, I really represent this faith, and I'm a believer.

[1:25:15] Here's why it's more important than my stuff.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:18] The best thing I could come up with for this was Passion of the Christ, where the movie seems to believe that the most important thing about Christ is he got the shit beat out of him one time, rather than, like, the message that he had.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:29] It is how he paid for the, it is how he erased the sin of original sin, which, even though he erased it, everyone still gets punished for, I guess, all the time.

Dan McCoy

[1:25:37] Dan, can you explain that to me?

[1:25:38] Uh.

[1:25:39] You've only cleansed the earth of original sin, and yet we're all still to blame for it?

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:42] Smoke bomb.

[1:25:43] Ah.

[1:25:44] I mean, we keep bringing up the religious movies, but I'm sure that there are a million movies where the gender politics or, like, the-

[1:25:55] Or the racial politics.

[1:25:56] Or the racial politics or sexual politics are so terrible that I don't even want to think about them.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:02] I mean, I assume we're just shoving aside, say, like, propaganda films that are offensive because they're actually against-

[1:26:10] Yes.

[1:26:10] They're for hurting people.

[1:26:12] Or things like Sallow or things like that, where it's like, we're just going to push it as far as we can go.

[1:26:17] Yeah, a Serbian film.

[1:26:18] Yeah, or a Serbian film.

[1:26:19] Like, the, uh, I, I think I mentioned before on the podcast, I watch a lot of old movies where I have to, like, cringe through scenes every now and then.

[1:26:27] Mm-hmm.

[1:26:27] But I was going to say, the two movies that just came to mind when I was thinking about this were number two runner-up, Soul Man.

[1:26:33] Yeah.

[1:26:33] Starring C. Thomas Howell.

Dan McCoy

[1:26:34] I was about to talk about Soul Man.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:36] Which is like, well, then I won't say too much about it.

[1:26:39] Oh, please.

[1:26:40] Well, it's just that the fact that this is like a movie-length blackface joke in the 80s.

[1:26:45] Like, I can almost, almost cringe my way through it in a movie from the 20s.

[1:26:51] But, like, that they did it in the 80s is crazy.

[1:26:55] And, like, James Earl Jones is in it.

[1:26:56] Like, the number one one, and this is one that I didn't expect to be, to find so offensive when I saw it, was Year of Living Dangerously with Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hunt.

[1:27:07] Wow.

[1:27:07] And the thing I found offensive about it was that you're watching this country in upheaval.

[1:27:12] It's like, people are getting killed left and right, but the movie is like, yeah, but Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver got out okay, right?

[1:27:19] Okay, good.

[1:27:20] The white people got out fine.

[1:27:22] We're just going to kill off all these people who live in this country to show how dangerous it was getting for these two white characters.

[1:27:28] Oh, but thank goodness they escaped.

[1:27:29] I was like—

Dan McCoy

[1:27:30] So it's the same problem people had with that Naomi Watts movie, The Inconceited—

[1:27:34] King Kong?

[1:27:34] No.

[1:27:35] There was, like, a movie about the funny games.

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:37] 21 Grams?

Dan McCoy

[1:27:38] There was a movie about the tsunami.

[1:27:39] The rain?

Elliott Kalan

[1:27:40] Oh, yeah.

[1:27:42] Like The Impossible or something like that.

[1:27:44] What if it was called Bad Vacation?

[1:27:48] And you added a laugh track to it.

[1:27:50] I mean, if you did a movie called Bad Vacation, and it's kind of like a tasteless comedy about vacationing in a place that is a tsunami,

[1:27:57] and the tourist characters, all they care about is trying to make this vacation work,

[1:28:01] even though people are drowning all around them.

[1:28:03] That is a movie I don't want to see, but somebody else do it.

[1:28:07] But kind of like that.

Dan McCoy

[1:28:08] More recently, there was that movie No Escape with Ray Liotta?

[1:28:13] Owen Wilson.

[1:28:13] Where it's a prison island?

[1:28:14] Owen Wilson was in it where they were—

[1:28:18] Owen Wilson was on Ray Liotta's prison island?

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:21] I mean, that seems crazy.

[1:28:23] Dan, you're thinking of Behind Enemy Lines.

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:25] No.

[1:28:26] That was the one where he was the soldier who gets trapped behind enemy lines, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:30] It's all in the title.

[1:28:31] I don't think Jackie Chan was in it.

[1:28:32] Wait, does he go Broken Arrow in that?

Dan McCoy

[1:28:34] No, no.

[1:28:34] That's Christian Slater.

[1:28:35] No, he's the peacemaker.

[1:28:37] Oh, okay.

[1:28:38] No Escape, it was called.

[1:28:39] Definitely.

[1:28:40] Okay, with Ray Liotta.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28:41] Is Jackie Chan in this movie, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[1:28:43] He wouldn't know.

[1:28:44] He was trying to get out of an Asian country that was being overcome with riots, and it was

[1:28:51] all about how menacing all the local—

[1:28:54] Is Lake Bell in that with him?

Stuart Wellington

[1:28:55] I think so.

[1:28:56] Lake Placid is in it.

[1:28:57] Oh, no kidding.

[1:28:59] You know, alligators are like dinosaurs.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:04] But yeah, there are a lot of those movies where it's like, we're going to drop some Americans

[1:29:09] into a situation that is dangerous for them.

[1:29:14] It's more dangerous for all these non-Americans because they're getting killed left and right.

[1:29:18] But they basically—it's like, as much as I love Wes Anderson, I did not like the Darjeeling

[1:29:22] Limited, partly because the movie did not earn having an Indian boy killed in order to help

[1:29:28] teach these three rich assholes a lesson about getting over their dad's shit.

[1:29:32] Like, it was just not right.

Stuart Wellington

[1:29:34] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[1:29:35] Are you saying a Wes Anderson movie featured people grappling with father issues?

[1:29:39] I have no problem with that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:29:41] Every man grapples with father issues.

[1:29:44] But also the fact that they literally, to lose their emotional baggage, had to leave

[1:29:49] behind a set of luggage at the end.

[1:29:52] It was like, come on, Wes.

[1:29:54] You're better than this.

[1:29:55] But then he made Moonrise Kingdom, which I love.

Dan McCoy

[1:29:59] Moving on.

[1:30:00] This is from Jeremy Lastname Withheld, who writes,

[1:30:05] To the heroes of my ear holes, the original Peaches.

Elliott Kalan

[1:30:09] That sounds like a movie about three tiny guys who just—

Dan McCoy

[1:30:13] Who stuff a submarine sandwich in somebody's ears.

[1:30:15] No!

[1:30:17] My daughter is three years old now.

[1:30:20] She is, as of yet, unable to grasp the wonder and excitement that your podcast brings to me

[1:30:25] nearly daily.

[1:30:26] But I hope your legacy will continue until she is able to.

[1:30:30] In the meantime, what words of future advice do you have for her

[1:30:34] as she is sure to enter a world of diminishing return movies

[1:30:37] and even more horrific reboots than we have currently

[1:30:40] 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.

Elliott Kalan

[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 as a city.

[1:30:55] 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?

Dan McCoy

[1:31:04] What advice for a young filmgoer, I think, is really with the—

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:08] What are you guys going to say?

Stuart Wellington

[1:31:10] I mean, I think the lamest thing, but I think probably the truest thing,

[1:31:13] is to try and support independent films and smaller budget films

[1:31:18] because even the bad ones are going to be generally the product of

[1:31:23] at least a somewhat singular vision.

[1:31:28] So at least you're going to see something bad that's a little more pure than a bad studio movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31:32] I would say be open to seeing anything that comes your way within reason,

[1:31:38] but don't close off your mind to something just because you think you're not supposed to like it

[1:31:43] or because you think it's the kind of thing you're not going to like.

[1:31:46] Certainly as a younger man, I closed myself off to a number of movies that I later found to be really enjoyable

[1:31:52] because I prejudged them, whether they be small movies or large movies.

[1:31:57] At the same time, you are about to enter—

[1:32:01] They are going to live in a very different, brave new world where films are distributed differently

[1:32:06] and where possibly China is the world's movie maker, which they want to be very badly.

[1:32:12] I was reading an article recently about the movie The Great Wall where they were saying

[1:32:16] this is essentially the beginning of Chinese studios really making a big play

[1:32:20] to be creating the kinds of movies that play internationally and win over the American audience.

[1:32:25] And it mentioned that America's studios have had pretty much unfettered domination of the international market for 100 years,

[1:32:32] which is true since World War I essentially.

[1:32:35] So, like, that's a long time, and by the time our children are of age, that run may have come to an end,

[1:32:41] possibly due to Hollywood's own dagger at its throat as it goes down this wheel, this hole of reboots and sequels and stuff.

[1:32:51] But I'll also say this.

[1:32:53] There have been a number of times in Hollywood history where it seems the studios are just churning out the same kind of movie,

[1:32:58] and then those times end and something new comes along in their way.

[1:33:01] You know, there was a time when half the movies being made were westerns.

[1:33:05] That's no longer the case.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:06] But what about that idea that, like, after 9-11, all the movie studios just kept focusing on nostalgia

[1:33:13] and looking backwards and never turning out anything new?

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:18] I don't think that's totally true.

[1:33:20] Yeah, I don't...

[1:33:21] I don't know that it's...

[1:33:22] It's more a sense of...

[1:33:24] I think in a world where movies have gotten more expensive

[1:33:27] and international markets have gotten more important,

[1:33:30] they glom to things that seem to have been proven in another medium

[1:33:34] or have already worked in movies.

[1:33:36] I don't know that it was a response to, like, a time of worry and crisis or anything like that.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:40] Here's my advice for a young film...

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:42] But you could be right.

[1:33:43] I hadn't heard of that before.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:44] Here's my advice for a young filmgoer.

[1:33:46] Do what I did.

[1:33:47] Go to your local library.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:50] Look at the way Dan's life has gone.

[1:33:51] Don't do what Dan did.

[1:33:53] Go here.

[1:33:53] He's an Emmy-winning writer for a hit television show.

[1:33:56] Don't...

[1:33:56] Scan the reasons for the R rating.

[1:33:58] I don't understand.

[1:34:00] If it says nudity, that's not good enough.

[1:34:02] If it says sexual situations, you know you're going to hit something good.

[1:34:05] Time to ride.

[1:34:06] That will include nudity.

[1:34:07] Adult content could go either way.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:10] 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 in case you hear the door open.

[1:34:17] Then you fucking scamper down them steps.

[1:34:19] And then you pretend you're sleeping underneath a bag of Cheetos.

Elliott Kalan

[1:34:22] You want to get really good at lip reading when someone is in ecstasy so that the volume's

[1:34:28] not so high that it draws attention and wakes people up.

[1:34:30] But you want to know what they're saying in the sex scenes.

[1:34:33] Oh, I'm sorry.

[1:34:34] Are you done yet?

[1:34:35] Are you done?

[1:34:36] Here's another hot tip from Dan McCoy.

[1:34:37] Okay.

[1:34:39] If you want to keep that movie on tape, just watch it on demand and just record the sex

[1:34:46] scenes so you don't waste tape with the plot scenes that you don't want.

Stuart Wellington

[1:34:49] Yeah, that's fucking crazy.

[1:34:50] You don't want to see George Hamilton and Billy Zane getting in an argument about Joan

[1:34:54] 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 Gay Blade himself is in that one.

[1:35:07] I know there's a Shannon...

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:09] That's Shannon Tweed, I think.

[1:35:10] There's a Shannon Tweed movie with Malcolm McDowell in it, but I don't remember the name of it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:17] I think it was Tank Girl.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:23] So, Dan, what was your advice?

[1:35:24] My advice was be like me.

[1:35:26] He's one of them kangaroos, right?

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:28] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:35:29] Booger or whatever.

[1:35:33] Be like me.

[1:35:34] Go to your local library's library sale.

[1:35:38] Pick up a copy of one of Roger Ebert's movie yearbooks that has the cover ripped off for

[1:35:44] 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 because Roger Ebert was a master of just making an entertaining

[1:35:55] movie review.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:56] Don't do that.

[1:35:57] Get the New York Times 1000 movies at best movies ever book.

[1:36:01] And then as I did and mark down the ones you haven't seen and then go through those.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:06] Well, I was going to say at the end of Roger Ebert's books, 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, actually, the great movies is a series he did where he just did a bunch of great movies.

[1:36:20] But then there was also his 10 best, both of which are good rabbit holes to go down.

Stuart Wellington

[1:36:27] Somebody, I think, I think the Alamo was showing, somebody was doing a screening of Valley Girl and they reposted Roger Ebert's article or his review of Valley Girl.

[1:36:38] And it's such a great review and reminds me about why I love that movie so much.

[1:36:43] So if you get a chance, find that review on the internet, dudes.

Dan McCoy

[1:36:45] Yeah, I mean, I'm joking a little bit, but find a good reviewer who, like, you find some sort of simpatico thing with him or her, but also is a good, like, crafter of thought and crafter of words.

[1:37:01] And you enjoy just reading them about film and follow them down their personal.

[1:37:07] Follow them on Twitter.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:09] Follow them, like, what.

[1:37:10] And eventually, as with Roger Ebert, you'll follow them into the afterlife.

[1:37:13] Follow them into the grave.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:15] No, but just follow that rabbit hole where it leads and it'll help you develop your own personal taste to, you know, listen to the other person.

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:27] Yeah, and hopefully, like, the next Picture Show podcast is still going so you can listen to that.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:32] And the last piece of advice I would give is come to terms with the fact that you will never see all the great movies in the world 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 going to say that.

[1:37:44] You'll most likely die having not seen everything.

[1:37:47] So don't feel the pressure to cram so many movies into your life that you don't live a real life.

Stuart Wellington

[1:37:52] Yeah, try and die surrounded by family as opposed to crushed by a stack of unwatched VHS tapes.

[1:37:57] Which once was definitely going to be the way I got out.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:02] Final letter of the evening from Ken Lastname withheld.

[1:38:05] Kardashian?

[1:38:06] Kim.

[1:38:07] Ken.

[1:38:08] Ken Kardashian.

[1:38:09] I thought you said Kim.

[1:38:10] Not Kim.

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:10] Little did you know the longtime opponent of Ryu is Ken Kardashian.

[1:38:15] I didn't know there was last name.

[1:38:16] Dropping dragon punches on him.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:20] Ken, last name.

[1:38:20] Sorry, Ken Dahl.

[1:38:21] Giving a big scar to Sagat.

[1:38:22] Last name Dahl.

[1:38:23] Ken Dahl.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:24] For Radio Zork, we have opened the door.

[1:38:27] I would like to get on the floor for the later purposes of Everybody Walk the Dinosaur.

[1:38:32] That is an unintentional callback to Stuart talking about it earlier.

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:39] I mean, I think there's a pretty good chance we'll refer to one of the only songs whose lyrics I kind of know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:46] I would say, what makes you think the door is open in Radio Zork?

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:52] Oh, we'll find out next week after Radio Zork.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:57] So now it is time to move on to the final segment of the evening, which is recommendations.

[1:39:05] Yeah, were you about to say letters?

[1:39:07] Wow.

[1:39:08] You okay, Dan?

[1:39:08] I was trying to remember what the final thing is that we do, even though I know that we recommend movies.

Stuart Wellington

[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.

[1:39:23] Get up out of your chair.

Elliott Kalan

[1:39:25] Get out of here.

[1:39:26] Wait, why?

[1:39:27] Yeah, Teresa was great.

[1:39:30] Dan, this episode's going long.

[1:39:32] Can you just come back to your chair and we'll recommend some movies?

[1:39:36] Classic sound effects.

Stuart Wellington

[1:39:37] So it's time to do some recommendations, and I'm going to surprise you all 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, but I want to give it anyway because I really enjoyed it.

[1:39:49] And that is Academy Award-nominated movie Moonlight, which I think if there's – I mean, my personal recommendation for the winner of the Best Picture Award is Moonlight.

[1:40:04] I think it's great.

[1:40:05] It is the story of a young man growing up in, I guess, the slums of – or the inner city of Miami.

[1:40:16] 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 to my second recommendation.

[1:40:27] But I do want to mention that there's these two great moments in the movie.

[1:40:30] There's many great moments, but there's these two great moments where two different characters start an argument with another character.

[1:40:38] And you, at least me as the viewer, like I was so behind them, and I'm like, I totally am with this person and totally with their emotions.

[1:40:46] And they begin their, like, argument against another person, and the person turns it on them so abruptly, and you can see them back off.

[1:40:54] And it felt so real.

[1:40:56] Like, I've had so many moments like that in my own life where I was so sure of my own argument until it actually happened against somebody else.

[1:41:05] And I immediately was like, oh, yeah, I didn't think about it from your perspective.

[1:41:09] And it just felt so natural, and it's a great movie.

[1:41:12] I totally recommend it.

[1:41:14] And the other movie I want to recommend is not nominated for Best Picture.

[1:41:18] It is a teen comedy called The Edge of Seventeen, which I'm going to look up some details.

[1:41:28] But it is a movie about a young woman who is coping with some personal tragedy.

[1:41:34] And she is, like, dealing with some upheaval in her, like, her relationships with her friends and with her family.

[1:41:44] And it is an interesting exploration of kind of relationships.

[1:41:49] And I think it presents teens as kind of the way teenagers are, like, kind of dumb and complicated creatures that are going through a crazy time in their life.

[1:42:00] And it's got some great performances from Keira Sedgwick.

[1:42:05] Woody Harrelson gives a great performance as a teacher.

[1:42:08] And Haley Stanfield, who was in True Grit, she gives a really great performance.

[1:42:16] As does the...

[1:42:18] Woody Harrelson.

[1:42:19] Woody Harrelson.

[1:42:19] Yeah, I already said that.

[1:42:21] Oh, I thought you were trying to remember who...

[1:42:23] No, I don't remember the name of the actor, but the actor who plays her brother, who is the lead in Everybody Wants Some, which is one of my favorites of the year.

[1:42:30] Ray Romano.

[1:42:31] Gives Ray Romano.

[1:42:32] I thought you said everybody loves Ray Romano.

[1:42:34] Everybody loves him.

[1:42:36] He gives a great performance.

[1:42:38] So, if you're looking for...

[1:42:39] Now, I will say that early on, there's a little bit of narration given by the main character.

[1:42:44] That goes away after the first scene or two.

[1:42:47] So, my initial reaction was, fuck this.

[1:42:50] I don't need a narrator to tell me what's going on.

[1:42:53] But, uh, it's great.

[1:42:54] Check it out.

Dan McCoy

[1:42:56] I'd like to recommend a movie called Lost Soul, colon, The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau.

[1:43:05] Not Lost Souls, colon.

[1:43:06] Which is a long, a long title.

[1:43:09] But it's about...

[1:43:10] It's a movie...

[1:43:11] The main title is Lost Soul.

[1:43:12] It's about the terrible John Frankenheimer Island of Dr. Moreau movie that came out starring Val Kilmer and...

[1:43:24] What's his face?

[1:43:26] Marlon Brando.

[1:43:27] Thouless, also.

[1:43:28] What's his face?

[1:43:28] Well, Marlon Brando is the...

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:30] What's his name?

[1:43:32] Oh, yeah.

[1:43:33] One of the most famous actors ever.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:35] David Thouless is not talked about in the movie, which is weird.

[1:43:38] I mean, David Thouless is awesome.

[1:43:39] Since he's the star of...

[1:43:40] He's the star of the film.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:41] Well, did they talk about how he and Val Kilmer switched parts?

[1:43:44] Well, actually, what happened was...

[1:43:46] Val Kilmer switched parts with another guy?

Dan McCoy

[1:43:48] Val Kilmer...

Stuart Wellington

[1:43:48] Did they talk about how later on he would become a werewolf in the Harry Potter movies?

Dan McCoy

[1:43:54] Val Kilmer...

[1:43:54] At the time that the part switching happened, Rob Morrow was supposed to be the person.

[1:44:01] I see.

[1:44:01] But then...

[1:44:03] He was stuck up in Alaska?

[1:44:04] Yeah.

[1:44:05] The switching happened, and then David Thouless came in to replace Rob Morrow, who told his agent to get him the fuck out of this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:44:13] No offense to Rob Morrow, but David Thouless is a much better actor.

Dan McCoy

[1:44:18] He's an upgrade, definitely.

[1:44:20] But if you've seen The Island of Dr. Morrow, it is a fascinating mess.

[1:44:25] It is the movie that has a miniature Marlon Brando that is the inspiration for Mini-Me and the Austin Powers movies.

[1:44:34] It is a terrible film.

Stuart Wellington

[1:44:37] Have we talked about this movie on the podcast before?

[1:44:39] I don't think so.

[1:44:40] It's a movie I've been meaning to see, and I keep fucking forgetting to.

[1:44:42] Have you ever seen it?

[1:44:43] I've never seen it, but I love Richard Stanley movies.

Dan McCoy

[1:44:46] Well, one objection I have to honestly Lost Soul is that I am not such a Richard Stanley fan.

[1:44:56] I mean, I guess I haven't seen Dust Devil.

[1:44:59] I tried to watch hardware, and I'm like, eh, this isn't doing a whole lot for me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:04] This doesn't please me.

[1:45:06] Bring me a miniature version of me.

[1:45:07] Take it away.

Dan McCoy

[1:45:10] Bring me a miniature version of me.

[1:45:13] And I think that Lost Soul, if anything else, it kind of deifies Richard Stanley a little much when the movie also kind of makes it clear that he probably wasn't ready to make a big budget movie like The Island of Dr. Morrow.

[1:45:31] Like, he was not up for the task, even though the movie wants you to believe that whatever he was going to come up with was going to be brilliant.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:40] Do you think they're going to make a Lost Soul 2, the Josh Trank Fantastic Four story?

Elliott Kalan

[1:45:46] Well, it reminds me of the Jodorowsky's Dune movie where it's a really entertaining documentary about a movie that would have been crazy, but everyone keeps talking in the movie about what an amazing movie it would have been when it's like, it does not.

[1:45:57] This sounds like it would be a mess.

[1:45:59] Yeah.

[1:45:59] Like, this does not sound like a good adaptation of Dune, that's for sure.

Stuart Wellington

[1:46:03] Like, Jodorowsky is the kind of guy who, if I need somebody to sell farts to people, I'm sure he could make them very appealing and interesting with his colorful language.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:12] Okay, interesting.

[1:46:14] I mean, one, people love farts, they're hilarious.

[1:46:17] Two, you're right.

[1:46:18] Yeah, but you're not going to buy it.

[1:46:19] You're going to check it out real quick and then you're going to walk away.

[1:46:22] You're right.

Stuart Wellington

[1:46:23] You're going to take a sample cup and leave.

[1:46:27] Jodorowsky will get you to take one of those home today.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:31] Point is.

Dan McCoy

[1:46:32] What do I have to do to get you home and drive home a fart?

[1:46:35] If you enjoy movies, if you enjoy documentaries about failed movies, this is a fun one.

[1:46:43] You know, it's like an hour and a half.

[1:46:44] You get to learn why Island of the Lost Souls is such a mess.

[1:46:49] And it has a lot to do with Val Kilmer being a crazy dick.

[1:46:54] And that was the original title of Crazy Heart.

[1:46:58] Marlon Brando being a lovable crazy person who was just like, you know, this is not important

[1:47:05] what we're doing.

[1:47:06] I don't care what we're doing.

[1:47:08] Like, we're getting paid.

[1:47:09] Let's just do whatever crazy shit we want to do.

[1:47:12] And so that's kind of wonderful, too.

[1:47:14] So if you like that stuff.

[1:47:15] Some kind of wonderful, the Val Kilmer story.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:18] No, the Marlon Brando story.

[1:47:19] Oh, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:47:20] Lost Souls is a fun movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47:23] I'm going to recommend.

[1:47:24] Surprise, surprise.

[1:47:25] It's an old foreign film.

[1:47:26] It's a French film from Eric Romare called My Night at Mauds.

[1:47:31] And it is pretty.

[1:47:33] I'm just going to say this.

[1:47:34] It's a little pretentious as a movie.

[1:47:36] But that's something I liked about it.

[1:47:38] It tells the story of a man who is.

[1:47:41] It's in France.

[1:47:42] It's the 60s.

[1:47:43] This man is a Catholic.

[1:47:45] And his faith is very important to him.

[1:47:46] But he's lonely.

[1:47:48] And he finds himself one night with an old friend of his.

[1:47:52] And a woman who's friends with that man.

[1:47:54] And the woman is very interested in spending the night with him.

[1:47:57] And he is torn about it.

[1:47:58] And most of the movie is that night the two of them talking.

[1:48:03] And trying to figure each other out.

[1:48:05] And then where their lives go from there.

[1:48:08] And what I like about it is it's a movie that is about the kind of very small drama moments in someone's life that stick with them for a long time.

[1:48:17] Even when it doesn't turn out to be that epic moment of their life.

[1:48:20] And it reminds me of when I was a kid.

[1:48:23] One of the things that seemed like a grown up thing to me was the Beatles song Norwegian Wood.

[1:48:27] Which is about a man going home with a woman.

[1:48:30] Things not quite working out the right way.

[1:48:33] And him sleeping in a bathtub.

[1:48:34] And when he wakes up the next morning she's gone.

[1:48:36] And he just kind of like hangs out.

[1:48:37] And then I assume leaves.

[1:48:38] And it's like as a kid that felt like a very grown up story to me.

[1:48:42] That like this isn't told.

[1:48:44] This is a thing that doesn't go quite right.

[1:48:47] It doesn't end with a fist fight or a sex scene or an explosion.

[1:48:51] And my night at mods is kind of like that.

[1:48:53] It feels like what a...

[1:48:58] Like looking at an important moment to somebody in their growth as a human being.

[1:49:03] But that moment doesn't define their lives or become like the turning point around which everything works.

[1:49:09] And there's a lot of philosophical talk in it which I'm a sucker for.

[1:49:12] And a lot of great black and white photography of just, you know, France at the time.

[1:49:18] But I thought it was really good.

[1:49:19] So my night at mods.

[1:49:22] My night at mods.

Dan McCoy

[1:49:25] My night at mods.

[1:49:27] At mods.

[1:49:29] Presented with commentary by a boreat.

[1:49:33] So guys, happy birthday to Stuart.

[1:49:36] Yay!

[1:49:37] Who for once we can blame for making us watch this movie rather than me.

[1:49:42] Unlike Dan.

[1:49:42] And you're like, oh, I'm trying to clear my DVR.

[1:49:47] That's pretty good there, right?

[1:49:48] That's a good impression.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49:49] Yeah, Dan is kind of like a Hank Hill type.

Dan McCoy

[1:49:55] But thank you for listening.

[1:49:56] And thank you for being here.

[1:49:57] And we'll be with you in a couple of weeks.

[1:50:00] But for now, for the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:04] Hey, I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:50:07] Good night, everybody.

[1:50:08] Elliot Kalin here saying, whatever your time you're listening to this, go to bed.

[1:50:12] Good night, everyone.

Stuart Wellington

[1:50:17] We were watching an episode of American Ninja Warrior today.

[1:50:23] And they were talking about 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 two Shaquille O'Neal's.

[1:50:36] Like, ah, the universal system of measurement.

[1:50:39] I don't know how to visualize 14 feet.

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:42] Oh, two Shaquille O'Neal's.

[1:50:43] Yeah, okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:50:44] Like, a common item, one you have in every home.

Stuart Wellington

[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'Neal's of bubble tape, please?

Elliott Kalan

[1:50:55] I need three Shaquille O'Neal's of stout rope.

Stuart Wellington

[1:51:03] You know, they say that's...

[1:51:04] That's our rope and bubble tape store.

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:05] You know, they say that's how Shaquille O'Neal got his name, is he was a riverboat pilot.

[1:51:09] And you would drop the rope down, and for each league, you would say Shaquille O'Neal.

[1:51:14] Yeah.

[1:51:15] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:51:16] Then he went on to write Puddin' Head Wilson.

[1:51:19] Mark Twain's famous work, most famous work, Puddin' Head Wilson.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:26] Maximumfun.org

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:27] Comedy and culture.

[1:51:29] Artist owned.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:30] Listener supported.

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

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