Ep.# 208 - Norm of the North

Stuart Wellington

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Norm of the North, starring Norman Reedus and Norm MacDonald.

[0:08] As Norman Bates.

Elliott Kalan

[0:11] And Norm from Cheers.

[0:13] Okay.

[0:14] And the Norman Conquest.

[0:15] All right.

[0:17] And Norman named Norm.

[0:30] Hey, everyone.

Dan McCoy

[0:47] Welcome to the Flophouse.

[0:48] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:49] Hey, what's up, dudes?

[0:50] It's me, Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:52] Howdy, chaps.

[0:53] It's me, Elliot Kalin, who didn't bother to go all the way into doing an English accent.

[0:57] I said chaps to create more of a character for myself.

[0:59] Yeah, you dipped your toe in there.

Dan McCoy

[1:01] Yeah, like a Kevin Costner-y thing there.

[1:03] Uh-huh.

[1:03] You're just, you're indicating.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06] You're sort of...

[1:06] It's like, you know what?

[1:08] I'm just going to give you a little hint, and you can do the rest.

[1:10] Let your imagination do the rest.

Dan McCoy

[1:11] It's like making a really dry martini, but just waving the vermouth bottle over the glass.

[1:16] Yeah, like a magic spell or something.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18] That's right.

[1:19] Yeah.

[1:20] The magic spell of creating a martini.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23] It's, in Harry Potter, you would say, like, Prestigio Martinez, or something like that.

Dan McCoy

[1:29] Yeah.

[1:29] Oh, boy.

[1:30] Harry Potter, in his later years, did have a big drinking problem.

[1:33] Yeah.

[1:33] After the things he saw...

Stuart Wellington

[1:35] Yeah, is that the play that...

[1:36] That's the play that he's...

[1:37] Just kidding.

[1:37] Rowling's cracking out right now.

Elliott Kalan

[1:39] Yeah, about the older Harry Potter, where he moves in with his other divorced friend,

[1:42] who's a muggle.

[1:44] It's called The Odd Couple.

[1:45] Mm-hmm.

[1:47] And he goes, it's not spaghetti, it's linguine.

[1:50] And then Harry throws it against the wall and says, I'm sorry, I'll cast a spell of cleanup.

[1:54] And he does.

Stuart Wellington

[1:55] Is that references to The Odd Couple that I don't get, or references to Harry Potter I don't get, Elliot?

[2:00] A little bit of both.

[2:01] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[2:02] A little from column A, The Odd Couple.

[2:04] A little from column B, The Harry Potterverse.

[2:07] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[2:08] So, Dan, what do we do on this podcast?

[2:10] This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie, and then we talk about it.

[2:14] And on tonight's show...

[2:16] Oh, boy.

Elliott Kalan

[2:17] You're already running out of gas.

[2:18] Oh, brother.

[2:20] What did we watch this time, as if we didn't already announce it earlier, before the theme?

Dan McCoy

[2:24] Yeah, we watched an animated show.

[2:27] Yeah, a real joint.

Elliott Kalan

[2:28] Animated show.

[2:29] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[2:31] A talkie.

[2:33] It was called Nor the North.

[2:35] And boy, was it ever.

[2:36] Mm-hmm.

[2:37] Called that.

Stuart Wellington

[2:38] It was certainly animated, and...

[2:41] So, Dan was looking at the screen, and it said,

[2:43] Norm of the North, animated children's movie, 90 minutes.

[2:46] Now, Dan, this is a movie you really wanted to watch.

Elliott Kalan

[2:50] Yeah.

[2:51] Why?

[2:53] I mean, it was garbage.

[2:54] If that helps.

Dan McCoy

[2:56] I feel like we have a good time whenever we watch a bad family film.

[3:01] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[3:02] Not soul-crushing at all.

[3:03] Get a zing out of it.

Elliott Kalan

[3:04] Well, by how good time usually means go to the edge of madness and just peek in.

[3:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[3:10] Stare over the precipice.

[3:12] Yeah.

[3:12] Down to the darkness.

[3:13] You know the end of In the Mouth of the Madness?

[3:14] Norm of the North waits.

[3:15] Where Sam Neill is just sitting in a movie theater watching his own life and laughing maniacally?

[3:20] Mm-hmm.

[3:20] It's like that, except my own life does not involve a polar bear who pretends to be a man in a polar bear suit to sell condos in the Arctic.

Stuart Wellington

[3:28] Yeah.

[3:28] I look forward to a drunken half-sleep tonight where, in the shadows of my room, I see the leering visage of Norm of the North and Gooby looking at me.

[3:38] And they're kissing.

[3:39] And I'm like, okay, guys, my wife's asleep.

[3:43] You can do whatever you want.

[3:47] Yeah, right?

[3:47] That's cool.

[3:48] I mean, it's whatever you want, man.

[3:50] Who am I to judge?

[3:50] Yeah, I'm not going to judge people.

Elliott Kalan

[3:51] Am I pretty mainstream white bread in my sexual tastes?

[3:55] Yes.

[3:55] But that doesn't mean you have to be Stuart.

[3:57] Yeah.

[3:58] If you want to be in a threesome with a bear and a Gooby, that's okay.

Stuart Wellington

[4:00] I don't want a threesome.

[4:01] Like, I just want to watch those guys enjoy themselves.

[4:03] Gooby's also a bear, right?

[4:05] He's something.

Dan McCoy

[4:07] He's something.

[4:08] He's something else.

[4:09] He's not quite a mop, and he's not quite a puppet.

Stuart Wellington

[4:13] So to answer your question, I don't know.

[4:15] Okay, so we watched Norm of the North, a movie that Dan McCoy raves as 90 minutes long.

Elliott Kalan

[4:21] It's 88 minutes, too.

[4:22] Oh, wow.

[4:23] Unlike the film 88 Minutes, which was much longer than that.

[4:26] Yeah.

[4:27] Let's talk about Norm of the North.

[4:28] Norm of the North has a pretty simple plot, considering we had trouble following it so much.

Dan McCoy

[4:34] Well, in the beginning, it kept changing the thrust of the movie every five minutes or so.

[4:40] Drastically.

[4:41] And then...

Stuart Wellington

[4:42] So the movie opens with a...

[4:44] Smash cut.

[4:46] A title card.

[4:46] That's my line, dude.

[4:48] With a title card for Splash Entertainment.

[4:51] The entertainment very clearly written in the font of Entertainment Weekly.

[4:55] As if they're trying to confuse us into thinking this was a magazine we were watching.

[4:59] Yeah, exactly.

[5:01] Like, I don't know.

[5:04] TMZ, that's a news magazine, right?

[5:06] I mean, it's not a physical magazine.

Dan McCoy

[5:08] I think they're actually just selling big gulps.

[5:10] Oh, okay.

Stuart Wellington

[5:11] You think it's an advertising?

[5:12] What TMZ?

[5:13] Yeah.

[5:14] Yeah, yeah.

[5:14] They're selling a lifestyle based around big gulps and office buildings.

[5:19] And snickering.

[5:20] Yep.

Elliott Kalan

[5:21] Hey, there's a hunger inside you for laughing at somebody else's pain.

[5:24] Snickering.

[5:26] I'll give this to the movie, Norm of the North, that we're talking about.

[5:29] One, the title, the company logo...

[5:31] Is accurate.

[5:32] The title's accurate.

[5:33] It's about Norm and he lives in the North.

[5:35] The production logo looked like a professional production logo.

[5:38] Sure.

[5:38] Partly in that it looked like a magazine.

[5:39] It was way better than the Food Fight production logo, which, as we mentioned, looked like somehow the DVD menu credits suddenly appeared on screen.

[5:48] And also, the animation in this, while not particularly great, was of a much higher caliber than the other animated movies we've watched.

[5:56] Much better than Food Fight.

[5:57] Much better than Guardian of the Highlands.

[6:00] Better than...

[6:01] Dorothy's Return.

[6:02] Dorothy's Return.

[6:03] Or Delgo.

Stuart Wellington

[6:04] Yeah, better than Delgo.

[6:05] Or Delgo.

[6:05] Not as good as Strange Magic.

[6:08] That's probably true.

[6:09] Well, George Lucas was involved in Strange Magic, right?

[6:11] I didn't see that when I was in the West.

[6:12] George Lucas was not involved in Norm of the North.

Dan McCoy

[6:14] The main problem with Strange Magic was just the weird character design that made it all look like, I don't know, like a Hallmark card that you stared at while you had LSD or something.

[6:26] What, because Maxine was talking to you?

Elliott Kalan

[6:27] Being all like a sassy old lady?

[6:29] Yeah.

[6:30] I hate getting older.

[6:31] Get drunk and kill yourself.

Stuart Wellington

[6:33] I'm like, oh, Maxine, you're going to live forever.

Elliott Kalan

[6:36] That's my curse.

Stuart Wellington

[6:38] Please take me, sweet embrace of death.

[6:40] Yep, this bag of groceries is my phylactery that my soul resides in.

Elliott Kalan

[6:45] I'm so busy smoking with my sunglasses on, like an old lady version of Uncle Duke from Doonesbury.

[6:51] So take that, Maxine.

[6:52] That was from the Comedy Central roast of a greeting card mascot.

[6:59] But anyway, Norm of the North.

[7:01] So it starts out, we're in the North.

[7:02] We're in the Arctic Circle.

[7:04] Sure.

[7:04] And Norm is a polar bear voiced by Rob Schneider at his most generic.

[7:08] Now.

[7:09] The comedy genius we've come to expect from the animal and the hot girl, or the hot chick, not in evidence here.

Stuart Wellington

[7:17] Dan, are you nervous that your cat is making too much noise in the background?

Dan McCoy

[7:20] Yeah, I'm nervous that the cat is being very audible on the track, but that's okay.

Elliott Kalan

[7:24] That's okay.

[7:25] Presence for People 2, my other series is from Audible.

[7:28] Audible Originals, Presence for People 2.

[7:29] Check it out.

[7:30] Nice segue.

[7:32] So, Norm of the North is...

[7:34] So, Norm of the North, he lives in...

[7:35] So, if you hear what sounds like Dan's prisoner is trying to escape from his dungeon, it's just his cat trying to escape from his dungeon.

[7:42] Now, Norm is a polar bear who has the amazing ability to talk to humans.

[7:45] And we learn this in a flashback story.

[7:47] He tells a seal that he's trying to catch.

[7:49] To eat.

[7:50] And as Dan said, we were watching it.

Dan McCoy

[7:52] It's nice to see an animated movie that acknowledges that animals eat other animals.

[7:56] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[7:56] I mean, it doesn't acknowledge it to the point of showing us that Norm starves when he doesn't catch the seal.

Dan McCoy

[8:00] Yeah, well, actually, he does catch the seal, but he's too soft-hearted to eat it.

[8:04] Literally, he has Stallone's disease.

[8:06] It raises the question, what does he eat?

[8:08] I guess we see him eating fish later on in the movie.

[8:10] And we see him eating a lot of crow because he's wrong about some things.

[8:13] Oh, shit.

Elliott Kalan

[8:14] So he explains to the seal that when he was young, he discovered he could talk to humans, and also he liked to dance a lot, which they don't like.

[8:22] Unlike the penguins in Happy Feet, who live on the South Pole and love dancing and get mad when Happy Feet can't dance, the polar bears live in the North, and they hate dancing.

[8:33] It's like one of those Star Trek episodes where they go to a planet where some people have white face on the left and black face on the right, and some people have black face on the left and white face on the right, and they hate each other.

[8:42] And it's an allegory for racism.

Stuart Wellington

[8:44] Oh, that's what that's about.

[8:46] I thought it was a reference to the star-bellied sneetches and the sneetches that don't have stars on their bellies.

Elliott Kalan

[8:50] Which is also kind of about racism.

[8:52] That's what that's about?

Stuart Wellington

[8:53] What did you think it was about?

[8:54] I don't know.

[8:55] I thought it was about looking fresh and fly and how trends change.

Elliott Kalan

[9:00] I mean, it's kind of about that, too.

[9:04] But anyway, he can talk to animals, which is, not to humans.

[9:07] No, he talks to humans, which are animals.

[9:09] Humans, all right, let's just admit it.

[9:11] Look, we're nothing more than a couple of mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel, you know?

[9:15] Who would snag it up?

[9:16] Anyway, so, Norm of the North.

[9:19] His grandfather, who is the king of the North, can also talk to humans.

[9:22] And he says, this is a great power you have.

[9:24] His grandfather disappears.

[9:26] No one knows where he goes to.

[9:28] Norm of the North is friends with an old man seagull, played by Bill Nighy.

[9:32] Who's also the science guy.

[9:34] Who's also a therapist, but nobody believes him when he claims things.

[9:38] He's not a science guy.

[9:39] He's a seagull-y.

[9:41] With glasses.

Stuart Wellington

[9:43] As you pointed out, where did that seagull get those glasses?

Elliott Kalan

[9:45] And as Stuart pointed out, how does he keep them on?

Stuart Wellington

[9:47] He has no ears.

[9:48] He just has a fringe of hair like...

[9:52] Jonathan Katz.

[9:52] Yeah, like Jonathan Katz.

[9:54] That's the wrong one.

[9:55] I was going to say.

[9:56] Yeah.

[9:56] A monk-a-hole.

[9:57] He has a taunt shirt.

[9:58] He ritually shaves the top of his head.

[10:00] His pate.

Elliott Kalan

[10:01] Oh, it's the exact opposite of what he would do if he was a samurai.

[10:04] Mm-hmm.

[10:04] I guess then he'd just shave the front, right?

Stuart Wellington

[10:06] I mean, you shave the top and then you fold your ponytail over on top, which I don't really

[10:11] understand.

[10:11] Like Donald Trump.

[10:12] Oh.

[10:12] Anyway, so, moving on.

Elliott Kalan

[10:14] That's the extent of the topical political humor for the evening.

[10:16] Mm-hmm.

[10:17] Norm also has a brother who sets up, like, displays of animal behavior because he says

[10:22] if people are interested in visiting the north, they'll protect it and they'll want to keep

[10:27] the animals alive that they see, which is kind of the impetus behind a lot of, I guess,

[10:31] conservation tourism.

[10:33] So his brother's ahead of his time.

[10:34] Anyway, but there's also the forbidden area that was the grandfather's property and grandfather

[10:39] disappeared.

[10:41] One day the seagull takes Norm over there and they find that some humans are shooting

[10:46] a commercial for condos in the north and the condo house that's there looks like Frank

[10:52] Gary designed it, so I already don't approve.

[10:54] Yeah.

[10:54] And there's a nice woman played by Heather Graham who works for the company who's building

[10:59] it, which is the Green Housing Company.

[11:01] Led by a guy named Green, played by Ken Jeong.

[11:07] Stuart is letting the cat out of the room.

[11:11] And we'll see if later, now usually during the recordings, Archie tries to climb onto my

[11:16] jeans and I push him off and his claws scrape out of my jeans.

[11:20] Now I'm wearing shorts today, so when he climbs up my legs with his claws, let's see if I can

[11:24] pretend that I'm just recording and he's not doing it.

[11:26] It's a little game we'll play called Elliot's Bloody Knees.

Stuart Wellington

[11:29] I'm taking an aggressive stance of being proactively interested in Archie, Dan's cat.

[11:35] We have gotten way off topic.

[11:37] No, I'm-

[11:37] The topic is Archie the cat who is now biting me.

Elliott Kalan

[11:40] This new movie, Archie of Stu's lap.

[11:43] Now, Stuart is a member of a group many people don't know of which is called Catnesty International

[11:47] where he frees cats from Dan's room.

[11:49] That cat was a political prisoner.

[11:51] It's a different-

Dan McCoy

[11:52] Now he's biting me now.

[11:53] It's a different organization than Catnesty International, which is-

Elliott Kalan

[11:58] Which is, I don't even want to know.

[12:00] Unless that's a new rapper from Detroit, I don't want to know.

[12:05] So, Norm finds out that these humans want to build condos in the north, and they're looking

[12:10] for a way to sell these condos.

[12:12] Now, Heather Graham's character has been separated from her daughter, who is super bright, Elisa

[12:16] Simpson type, and she wants to get her daughter into the same very exclusive prep school that

[12:21] she's got to be in the middle of the night.

[12:23] She's got to be in the middle of the night, and she's got to be in the middle of the night.

[12:25] Wonderful.

Stuart Wellington

[12:25] Evil, fake, phony, hippie.

[12:27] Yeah, he looks like a 70s, like, slimy, greasy fellow.

[12:32] Like, I don't know, like he's bald and has a ponytail and wears a blousey turtleneck with a big gold medallion around his neck.

Elliott Kalan

[12:40] He reminds me of Carmen Ghia, the housekeeper slash boyfriend to the director in the producers.

[12:47] Who, like, Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder have that scene where they're in a very small

[12:51] elevator with him, and they just can't quite seem to stand far enough away to not be touching each other?

[12:55] Yes.

[12:56] So anyway, that's what he resembles.

[12:58] And then mix a little Jafar in there, too.

Stuart Wellington

[13:00] Yeah, there's definitely a lot of Jafar, but with much more manic movements and the, like, dead face of an animator

[13:08] who doesn't feel like trying to match it up with Ken Jeong's very animated performance.

Elliott Kalan

[13:13] Instead, all of his limbs are constantly moving like serpents, like his body is a hydra head,

[13:18] and he's, as the movie goes on, he's less and less beholden to the laws of physics

[13:22] until he's just slipping around and floating everywhere in a kind of, well, let's just say you called him manic.

[13:28] For him, every day is Manic Monday.

[13:31] Yeah.

[13:32] Even Sunday is a Manic Monday for him.

Dan McCoy

[13:35] I'm just chiming in to say that I'm still here, even though I haven't talked in a long time,

[13:39] because the cat is bothering the fuck out of me.

[13:42] Mm-hmm.

[13:43] So I apologize to everyone.

[13:45] Oh, come on, dude.

[13:45] For doing a subpar job at my job.

Elliott Kalan

[13:48] Hey, look.

[13:49] One, I appreciate you acknowledging that.

[13:51] And two, which is the main thing.

[13:54] Two, I think what you're telling them is you're not going.

[13:57] And you, and you, and you, you're gonna love him.

[14:02] Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, dream girls, bomb, starring Dan.

Stuart Wellington

[14:08] See, I don't even know that reference.

[14:10] Yeah.

[14:10] I'm telling you I'm not going.

[14:12] Oh, okay.

[14:13] It's the big song from Dream Girls.

[14:14] It's a show-stopping number from what I understand.

[14:16] In the movie Jennifer Hudson sang it.

[14:17] Yeah, yeah.

[14:18] That's the, the one that Eddie Murphy was in, right?

[14:21] Yes.

[14:21] Okay.

[14:22] Dream Girls.

[14:22] Norbit.

Elliott Kalan

[14:23] You're thinking of Meet Dave.

[14:25] Uh-huh.

[14:26] Oh, no.

[14:26] Was he in that?

[14:27] Yeah, he was.

[14:28] Was Meet Dave the one with Kevin Kline?

[14:30] No, that's just Dave.

[14:31] Now, you're not thinking of the movie.

[14:32] The movie's called Just Dave?

Dan McCoy

[14:33] No, Meet Dave.

[14:35] Okay.

[14:35] Just Dave is my brother.

[14:36] Okay.

[14:37] Now, you're not thinking of the low-budget film Meet Dave, which is about a man made entirely

[14:41] of meat.

[14:41] Uh-huh.

[14:42] Disgusting.

[14:42] And his name's not even Dave.

Stuart Wellington

[14:44] That's how low-budget it is.

[14:45] They couldn't afford the rights to Dave.

[14:46] Yeah.

[14:46] Yeah, because Kevin Kline has that locked down.

[14:48] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[14:49] He and Phoebe Cates have it in their will, and it goes to their children.

Dan McCoy

[14:51] It was an Asylum production.

[14:54] They thought that Meet Dave was going to be a much bigger blockbuster than it was.

Elliott Kalan

[14:58] They thought all the kids were going to be asking their parents for DVDs of Meet Dave.

[15:02] And they're like, oh, but this, I guess it's what they're looking for.

[15:05] Anyway, I got you.

[15:06] Grandma doesn't understand.

[15:08] I got you those squeamage ninja myrtles.

[15:11] Oh, this isn't what I wanted, Grandma.

[15:14] You're the worst grandma ever.

[15:16] I can't keep track of your kid trends.

[15:18] Anyway, I got you this Ben Zen.

[15:20] I wanted Ben 10.

[15:21] You're the worst.

Stuart Wellington

[15:24] What's some of the kid stuff?

[15:25] And Grandma's like, I lived through the Great Depression.

[15:28] I've seen such wonderful things.

[15:31] Like the Great Depression.

Elliott Kalan

[15:34] Anyway, when I was being a nurse in France during World War II, oh, whatever.

[15:39] I didn't want the Revengers on DVD.

[15:41] I wanted the Avengers.

[15:43] Mm-hmm.

[15:44] The Revengers' age of Moltron, who's a robot bird, whose feathers are falling out.

[15:49] This is besides the point.

[15:51] So Heather Graham gets footage of Norm of the North trying to save her from an earthquake,

[15:55] but it looks like he's trying to attack her.

[15:57] For some reason, her boss decides, you know what will make people really want to move to

[16:01] the North?

[16:02] A scary polar bear.

[16:04] Yeah.

[16:05] Let's show people how scary polar bears are.

[16:07] It's going to make them want to move there.

[16:09] And so they decide they're looking for the perfect actor who can play the perfect polar bear.

[16:13] And Bill Nighy says, Norm, this is your chance.

[16:16] You can talk to humans.

[16:17] You know what?

[16:18] You're like every animal in the movie Zookeeper.

[16:21] You go there.

[16:22] You land this part.

[16:23] And then you tell people how important it is to not build homes in the Arctic by first

[16:28] becoming a shill for these Arctic homes.

[16:30] Which means, hey, was this movie a sequel made in the 1980s because they're going to New York?

[16:35] Da-da-ba-ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba!

[16:37] Or...

[16:38] I want to make it in the city that doesn't sleep.

[16:42] Hey!

[16:42] Ho!

[16:43] To find I'm king of the North.

[16:46] Norm of the bears.

[16:47] Yeah.

[16:48] Top of the bears.

[16:50] King of the norm.

[16:52] And he goes there with his three lemming friends who, as it's established, are indestructible

[16:57] physically and also pee all over everything to the point that we see animated pee streams.

Stuart Wellington

[17:01] They're basically minions and they speak...

[17:04] They sound exactly like the kooky gremlin from Gremlins 2.

Elliott Kalan

[17:09] I want to...

[17:09] Yeah, they're like minions with a little touch of Conker's bed for a day for the Nintendo 64.

Dan McCoy

[17:14] I just wanted to go backwards for a moment and say that...

[17:17] Much like Edward Bellamy.

[17:18] Oh, no.

[17:19] That was looking forward.

[17:20] That's Bill Bellamy.

[17:21] Oh.

[17:22] Even though this was an animated film, it looked like it was shot in Vancouver because they

[17:27] couldn't be bothered to make the New York skyline, one of the most iconic skylines in the world,

[17:32] look anything like New York.

[17:33] A skyline?

[17:34] Was there a Chrysler building?

[17:35] No.

[17:35] Was there an Empire State building?

[17:37] No.

[17:37] Nothing.

Elliott Kalan

[17:37] Was there the World Trade Center?

[17:39] No, but understandable.

[17:40] Yeah.

[17:40] This is a post-9-11 world.

Stuart Wellington

[17:42] At this point, it's so refreshing that we are given a backdrop that isn't just white textures.

[17:49] Like, for a little while, I thought we were just going to watch an entire movie with poorly textured snow.

[17:55] Stuart had gone snow blind.

[17:58] There's a blizzard of Oz over here.

[18:00] A blizzard of Oz.

[18:02] Yeah, so they show up in New York.

[18:04] We get a taste of New York culture.

[18:07] We have our friend Drescher stand in.

[18:09] Yeah.

[18:09] We have endless seas of taxi cabs.

Elliott Kalan

[18:13] Taxi cabs and people going, I'm walking here.

[18:15] Hey, oh.

[18:16] Hey, forget about it.

[18:17] A million pizzas.

[18:18] So Norm, he gets involved.

[18:21] I can't even remember exactly how things happen.

[18:26] He's on the run from two people who work for Green with tranquilizer darts.

[18:30] He manages to instead get them into a fight with a Shakespearean actor in a ragged bear suit.

Dan McCoy

[18:35] Who's going to audition for the same role that Norm needs to get.

Elliott Kalan

[18:40] And once he's taken the bear suit off, it's clear he is Adam Driver from...

Stuart Wellington

[18:45] Yeah, he looks very similar to like a Sacha Baron Cohen, Adam Driver character.

Elliott Kalan

[18:49] Yeah, mashup.

[18:49] Yeah.

[18:50] And he goes to the audition.

[18:52] Of course, he nails it because he's a fucking bear.

[18:54] Which is great.

Stuart Wellington

[18:55] Which is just, it's not too far from your critique of the movie Funny People,

[19:00] where getting a role in a commercial in New York with such a crowded market of other talent,

[19:08] other actors, and he gets it so easily.

[19:11] Like, it's such a huge accomplishment and it's just glossed over.

[19:13] It just minimizes the real stakes of the movie.

[19:17] Of actual bears out there who are busting their ass every day.

Elliott Kalan

[19:21] They're paying their dues.

[19:22] There are bears waiting tables.

[19:23] There are bears, let's just say it's stripping.

[19:25] Because that's the best they can get.

[19:26] Yeah.

[19:27] And they're trying to make it.

[19:28] And suddenly Norm of the goddamn North, who's the son of royalty, his dad is the king of the North,

[19:33] his grandfather is the king of the North.

[19:35] He just swans in with his white bear privilege and just plucks that job.

[19:40] You know why?

[19:41] Because he has the right connections and because he has the confidence that comes with always being top of the heap.

[19:46] King of the king of the hill, A number North.

[19:50] Norm of the norm.

[19:53] And he's going to be some two bears.

[19:56] Norm York, New North.

[20:02] That's all on my new album, My My Way.

[20:06] Elliot Mangles, Sinatra.

[20:08] I've got you inside my hair.

[20:13] I've got you deep in the hair of mine.

[20:18] So deep in my hair that you really should get out of my hair.

[20:25] I've got you trapped in my room.

[20:29] That's pie.

[20:31] Oh, that's pie.

[20:35] What song is that?

[20:36] That's life.

[20:36] Oh, okay.

[20:38] Luck be some gravy tonight.

[20:40] Just chunky gravy tonight.

[20:43] Luck, if you've ever been a condiment to begin with.

[20:46] Luck be some gravy tonight.

[20:49] Gravy's not the same as ketchup.

[20:51] It isn't mustard or mayonnaise.

[20:55] Gravy's a thing that you put on turkey and meatloaf and other things like that.

[21:00] But don't put gravy on a burger.

[21:04] Don't put gravy on mac and cheese.

[21:06] Although maybe that could be pretty good.

[21:08] I mean, it's kind of poutine.

[21:10] Except with french fries instead of mac.

[21:11] And the gravy burger sounds pretty good.

[21:13] Forget what I said.

[21:14] Just put the gravy on whatever.

[21:16] Luck be some gravy.

[21:21] Luck be some gravy on pie.

[21:22] I like that he's thinking of them back up in the sound.

[21:24] I kind of have to because you guys are not holding up your end of the bar.

[21:28] I'm trying to come up with a My Way parody.

[21:31] Are you guys my stepbrothers at my dad's second wedding?

[21:34] Because you're not holding up your end of the hoopah.

[21:36] Anyway, it's an inside joke for my brother, I guess.

[21:42] Anyway, Norm's there.

[21:44] He gets the part.

[21:45] Ken Jeong, the boss, goes from hating him to loving him to hating him back and forth constantly.

[21:50] It gets revealed that his grandpa was kidnapped by the evil boss and has been kept in a basement.

Dan McCoy

[21:54] For reasons, I guess.

[21:56] He's there for reasons that we...

Elliott Kalan

[21:57] I guess because he was going to stand in the way of the housing project.

[22:01] Yeah.

[22:02] The Polar Council, on the other hand...

Stuart Wellington

[22:04] Maybe he captured the former King of the North in order to destabilize the region,

[22:08] hoping that there would be infighting between Norm, his brother, and Norm's dad.

Dan McCoy

[22:15] It just feels like one of these things where the screenwriter was like,

[22:17] oh, it's not enough that Norm has to save his entire way of life.

[22:22] His grandfather also has to have been kidnapped by the exact same guy.

[22:25] To make it personal.

Elliott Kalan

[22:27] Yeah.

[22:27] To make it just like how Sandman had to be the guy who killed Uncle Ben.

[22:30] While Spider-Man 3 would have not been a good movie.

Stuart Wellington

[22:33] Yeah.

[22:34] Luckily, Spider-Man 3 is amazing.

Elliott Kalan

[22:37] Luckily, it's the greatest movie ever made.

[22:39] Not even just the greatest superhero movie ever made.

[22:41] Oh, wow.

[22:41] The greatest movie ever made.

[22:43] Sorry, the red shoes.

[22:44] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[22:45] Yeah, Lawrence of Arabia, you're not the only Sandman in town.

Elliott Kalan

[22:51] There's a new Sandman on the block, Lawrence.

[22:55] And his name is Cain Marco.

[22:56] No, wait a second.

[22:59] Cain Marco is the juggernaut.

[23:00] Flint Marco is the Sandman.

[23:02] Are they brothers?

[23:03] They are not.

[23:04] Cain Marco is Professor X's half-brother, though.

[23:06] Okay.

[23:06] Or stepbrother?

[23:08] Stepbrother.

[23:08] Like in the movie Stepbrothers, which is about Professor X and the juggernaut.

Dan McCoy

[23:11] There's a surprising percentage of people named Marco, considering that Marco is a very uncommon name in normal life.

[23:18] I mean, I know you work with someone named Marco.

[23:20] Yeah, but not as a last name.

Elliott Kalan

[23:22] That's a good...

[23:23] You make an amazing point.

[23:24] You're right.

[23:24] Yeah.

[23:25] You make an amazing point.

[23:27] Let me drop my argument, because you're right.

[23:32] Oh, boy.

[23:32] What are we talking about?

[23:34] So, anyway, he has to save his grandpa.

[23:36] The lemmings help him break into stuff.

[23:38] Sure.

[23:38] Ken Jeong, he needs the approval of the Polar Council, which is a mean old lady who looks kind of like Cookie Roberts, who tells him, you need to get 85% of public approval before I can give you the permits to build these Frank Gehry houses in the Arctic.

Dan McCoy

[23:52] As in real life, if you want to build anything in the Arctic, you have to get the approval of the Polar Council, which is an organization we're all familiar with.

[24:00] And they make their decisions, as we all always have.

Stuart Wellington

[24:02] And you can't gloss over it, because you can't underestimate kids' knowledge of polar politics.

Elliott Kalan

[24:09] Kids would know, hey, the North Pole is technically international territory monitored by the Polar Council.

Stuart Wellington

[24:15] Yeah, they couldn't connect to the source material.

Elliott Kalan

[24:17] They would also understand that in the bylaws of the Polar Council, permits are based entirely on public approval for the mascot of a company.

[24:24] And so, using his meter device on his phone that measures happy faces, Ken Jeong, the boss, has to get 85% approval of Norm's antics, or else this deal is a no-go in the North.

Stuart Wellington

[24:37] Well, Ken Jeong, even his character, Mr. Green, confronts Norm in a rooftop sushi parlor with a tranquilizer gun.

[24:47] And Norm avoids being shot with a tranquilizer and defeats Ken Jeong.

[24:53] And you're like, okay, I guess he's going to kill him now.

[24:55] He doesn't kill him.

[24:56] He honorably allows his opponent to survive.

[25:00] That gets captured on phones, telephones.

[25:03] Yeah, it goes viral, much like the end of Chronicle.

[25:05] Yep.

[25:05] And he becomes this instant celebrity, overnight success.

[25:09] Yeah.

[25:10] And that's what Ken Jeong is trying to build off of.

Dan McCoy

[25:13] He wants to ride the coattails or the bear tails of Norm to the top of it.

Elliott Kalan

[25:18] Yeah, I think it's bear tails.

[25:19] Now, nobody puts two and two together that the guy who's ultimately profiting from Norm's popularity is the guy who was trying to kill Norm and ended up with a tranq dart in the butt for his efforts.

Dan McCoy

[25:29] I want to back up and just talk a little bit about this guy.

[25:32] Yeah, back it up.

Elliott Kalan

[25:33] Back that stuff up, Dan.

[25:34] Yeah, come on.

Dan McCoy

[25:35] Back the bear up.

[25:36] No, I want to talk a little bit about Mr. Green's plan.

[25:39] Okay, we did, but, you know, all right.

[25:41] Well, just the fact that there are actual—

[25:42] There are some gold houses in the Arctic, dude.

[25:44] It makes perfect sense.

[25:45] I'll buy one.

[25:46] It's beautiful up there.

[25:47] I'm touched.

[25:47] There are actual threats to the Arctic, you know, from man-made threats, from global warming.

[25:53] The threat is not that people want to buy condos up there.

Stuart Wellington

[25:57] Yeah, the threat is that there will be too much residential housing and not enough commercial space.

[26:01] Exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[26:02] It's like Jane Jacobs said, mixed use is what brings life to an urban neighborhood.

Dan McCoy

[26:07] I had the screenwriter of this watched a back-to-back showcase of, like, bikini car wash, poltergeist—

[26:16] And Orca the Killer Whale.

[26:18] Electric Bugaloo.

[26:19] And thought, okay, the only bad guys in the world are land developers.

[26:23] We've got to make it land developers.

Elliott Kalan

[26:24] It is—there's a very 80s thing that it's like condos are the villain.

[26:28] Yeah.

[26:29] That the plan is—the bad thing is condos.

[26:31] They're also just houses, too.

[26:33] I think they're called condos at times, but they're just houses.

[26:36] Yeah.

[26:36] Anyway—

[26:37] These are not shared buildings.

Dan McCoy

[26:39] The fact that they're trying to develop the Arctic in a—yeah, they're just trying to put housing up there is weird.

Elliott Kalan

[26:45] I mean, the plan is literally to put, like, ten houses up there without grocery stores or anything.

[26:50] Yeah.

[26:50] Anything—you're going to have to mail order everything.

[26:52] It's going to have to be sent by either big freighters that never come out.

Stuart Wellington

[26:55] I mean, you don't need to go for groceries.

[26:55] You'll just, I don't know, kill, like, a seal?

[26:58] You'll just club up some seals.

Dan McCoy

[27:00] Club up some seals?

[27:01] Make a club sandwich out of it.

[27:02] Oh.

Stuart Wellington

[27:03] Is that what you would say when you're killing the seal?

[27:06] Yeah.

[27:06] You know, you're laughing.

[27:07] You're going to shine them on a little bit?

Elliott Kalan

[27:08] Yeah, you get it.

[27:09] You get the seals.

[27:10] Let's make a club sandwich.

[27:12] You're going to say it like a peanut.

Stuart Wellington

[27:14] Yeah, the seal's like, that's awesome, Terminator.

[27:17] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[27:18] The seal's like, I'm dying, but I appreciate that you went to the trouble.

[27:22] Of the pun.

Elliott Kalan

[27:23] Of eating a pun.

[27:25] So Norm does the—and the daughter of Heather Graham catches onto this plane instantly.

[27:30] You're going to get as popular as possible, and then when people really love you, when they're

[27:34] worshiping you and they'll do anything you say, you're going to turn on Mr. Green and talk

[27:37] about how you shouldn't build houses in the north.

[27:39] And the plane is working beautifully.

[27:41] Everyone loves him because he's a dancing bear.

[27:43] All of New York people are just stopping what they're doing and dancing.

[27:45] The city shuts down.

[27:46] It's a state of emergency.

[27:48] The National Guard gets called in, but they're dancing.

[27:50] The Army gets called in.

[27:51] They're dancing.

[27:52] Terrorist attack.

[27:54] They're dancing.

[27:55] Nobody cares.

[27:56] It's all dancing.

Stuart Wellington

[27:57] It's like almost some kind of subliminal mind control that when you see this bear awkwardly

[28:01] gesticulating and flopping around—

Dan McCoy

[28:04] Shaking his butt and his belly.

[28:05] What did he call his dance?

[28:06] He had a name for his dance.

[28:06] The Arctic Shake.

Stuart Wellington

[28:07] The Arctic Shake.

[28:08] I thought it was the Arctic Shuffle.

[28:10] Oh, boy.

[28:11] Oh, no.

[28:13] Listeners, watch Norm the North and write in to us and tell us which one is.

[28:16] No, we've got to watch it all over again.

[28:18] No.

[28:18] For the first time.

[28:19] Shoot me in the face.

[28:21] Now, Elliot, you made a good point.

Dan McCoy

[28:23] With candy.

[28:24] Yay.

Elliott Kalan

[28:26] Oh, I did.

Dan McCoy

[28:26] Thank you.

[28:27] You made a good point.

[28:28] Mr. Green's plan was basically failing already.

[28:33] He didn't have enough approval to put these houses up.

Elliott Kalan

[28:35] All Norm needed to do—Norm is the Indiana Jones in this movie.

[28:39] Yeah.

[28:39] And that all he needed to do was nothing.

[28:41] And the bad guys kind of would fall apart at the end.

Stuart Wellington

[28:43] He just had to eat the villain and everything would have been fine.

Elliott Kalan

[28:47] And much like as in Raiders, Indy does not need to be there.

[28:51] Because when the Nazis open—

[28:52] When Indy fails consistently—

Stuart Wellington

[28:52] If Indy showed up and physically devoured Bellic's body.

Elliott Kalan

[28:57] But Norm never eats anybody.

[28:59] He has that power, sure, but he doesn't.

Dan McCoy

[29:02] Yeah, that's his mutant power.

[29:03] Yeah, he's like Kirby.

Elliott Kalan

[29:05] It's the mutant power that all bears have of being able to eat people.

[29:11] If he never went to the North, it's not like one of these guys in a bear suit was going to be good enough to sell this blend.

[29:18] When you see the other actors in the room—

[29:19] Yeah, it didn't work in Grizzly Man.

[29:23] Look, you think one of these guys is just going to stick their hands in some bear poop, say this was inside her, and then sell a bunch of houses?

[29:30] I don't think so.

[29:32] When the other actors have joined to audition, Heather Graham walks out and she goes, I want to see bears.

[29:38] Show me bears.

[29:38] And there's one guy who's just looking at the camera going, bear, bear, bear.

[29:41] It's very creepy.

[29:43] And it's super creepy and way too sexual.

[29:45] That would never get people's approval.

[29:48] The bear—Norm would just not go there, and the plan would not happen.

[29:52] But he's got to save his grandpa.

[29:55] Let's say that.

[29:55] He has to do it because his grandpa's kidnapped.

[29:57] All right.

[29:57] Yeah.

[29:58] Let's cut to the chase.

[29:59] He spurred into action by his grandpa.

[30:01] Let's cut to the chase.

[30:02] He becomes the hit of the world.

[30:04] He's the biggest star.

[30:04] Look at me.

[30:05] I'm the king of New York.

[30:06] He's a bear wearing clothes.

[30:08] That's crazy.

Stuart Wellington

[30:09] He's at a gym.

[30:09] So what I'm trying to figure out is, do most people assume he's a bear or a man in a bear suit?

Elliott Kalan

[30:15] I think they assume he's a man in a bear suit because, as in horror movies, in the movies, costume technology is much better than in real life.

Stuart Wellington

[30:23] Okay.

[30:23] And there's so many horror movies—

[30:24] When you're watching Space Invaders and everyone's like, great Halloween costumes, and you're like, that's fucking insane.

[30:29] There's no way.

[30:31] Those are aliens.

Elliott Kalan

[30:31] There's no way an off-the-shelf or even homemade Halloween costume would have motor controls in the face that detailed.

[30:39] I hadn't thought of Space Invaders in a long time.

[30:43] That's one of those movies where I think I watched—

[30:45] Where an alien wears a letterman jacket.

[30:47] Yeah.

[30:48] One of those movies where alien wears a letter.

[30:51] One of those movies I watched, I think, three times as a kid, and I remember in so much more detail than I remember any movies I saw in the past three weeks.

[30:57] Yeah.

[30:57] But, uh, anywho.

[31:00] So, he's at an off-brand generic version of Rockefeller Center's ice skating rink, and he's about to make his big announcement.

[31:07] He does a dance, and he goes, hey, I'm from the Arctic, and I've got to tell you something to protect my homeland.

[31:11] And it's—Ken Jeong cuts the feed and throws in something he's patched together for Norm's other statement, saying, I support green houses in the Arctic.

[31:21] Go move there, chumps.

[31:23] Buy these houses and give money to my boss.

[31:26] I'm a bear, not just a guy in a suit.

[31:30] Kidding.

[31:31] Anyway, burger, mushroom.

[31:33] He had extra words he had to use.

Stuart Wellington

[31:35] At that point, Norm should be thinking as Lucky Stars, the North Star, that he didn't get—

[31:41] The midst of the North Star, if you will.

[31:44] That he didn't receive, like, an assassin's bullet and have to become a martyr to the cause of green houses.

[31:50] Yeah.

[31:51] But instead, he goes on the run.

[31:53] He frees his grandfather.

[31:54] Because that's the thing.

[31:55] Once you hit a certain level of popularity, like he's reached—

[31:58] Oh, yeah.

[31:58] You become a threat.

[31:59] Yeah, the only option is death, martyrdom.

[32:01] Look, because that—here's the thing.

[32:02] To get that 100%, you need to be—you need to live on as an idea rather than an actual person.

Elliott Kalan

[32:08] Because an idea can never disappoint.

[32:10] Yeah.

[32:10] But a flesh-and-blood human, or in this case, bear, always will eventually because we have flaws.

[32:14] And that's what makes us human, or in this case, a bear.

[32:17] Yep.

[32:17] And so if he's going to inspire, you're right.

[32:20] He must become that abstract ideal instead of being just, again, a flawed human, or in this case, bear.

[32:26] Yeah.

[32:26] So he goes on the run.

[32:28] He saves his grandpa.

[32:29] They go—they have a chase scene on the Brooklyn Bridge where they're running against traffic for some reason.

Dan McCoy

[32:34] The one thing that actually looks like something in New York.

[32:36] They do the Brooklyn Bridge okay.

Elliott Kalan

[32:38] They almost drown.

[32:39] Then they get on the boat that's going to take the model houses to the North Pole.

[32:43] They almost drown again after—in a storm, they let loose all the houses and sink them in the water.

[32:47] They get back to the North Pole.

[32:49] Everything's okay.

[32:51] Mr. Green's plans have failed.

[32:52] And Norm also gave the evidence that he was going to bribe the Polar Council to his investors who have released it to the police.

[33:00] And so he's in trouble.

[33:02] The movie punishes him by suspending him by his ponytail over the sewers, which would hurt a lot.

Stuart Wellington

[33:08] And then he would have the lower part of his body devoured by chuds.

Elliott Kalan

[33:12] And Norm is named King of the North.

[33:15] He's King in the North now, you know, to protect us from the wildlings.

[33:18] A King in the North.

[33:19] And he becomes the polar bear king.

[33:22] He doesn't even have to pull a golden compass and swipe some other bear's jawbones off in a fight with a Panzerbjorn.

[33:30] Instead, he's the king, the lady bear, who has no personality and whose head is massively shaped different than his.

Stuart Wellington

[33:35] It's crazy, dude.

Elliott Kalan

[33:36] He has three kids with her, and he gives a reference to Heather Graham so she can get a new job.

Stuart Wellington

[33:42] So it's all wrapped up neat and tidy.

[33:44] In a tight little polar bow.

[33:47] So, and his father abdicates the throne so he can be King of the North.

[33:50] I don't know if his father was ever really king.

[33:53] Oh, so he's like a seneschal?

Elliott Kalan

[33:54] I think he was like acting regent for the absent grandpa.

Stuart Wellington

[33:57] Yeah, like a steward?

[33:57] Yeah.

[33:58] A steward Wellington.

[33:59] Yep, that's me.

[34:01] Old Denethor Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[34:03] So here's the thing about this movie.

[34:04] Final Judgments.

[34:06] Anyway, so.

[34:06] Wow.

[34:07] Wow.

Stuart Wellington

[34:07] You're taking over all of my parts.

Elliott Kalan

[34:09] Oh, sorry, Dan.

[34:10] Well, I didn't know you were going to run after Archie or something.

Stuart Wellington

[34:12] Do you want to talk about that scene where Norm says, hey, let's go investigate that shelf that smells like grandpa.

Elliott Kalan

[34:18] Or there was a part, Stuart, Dan and I were talking, so I missed it.

[34:21] Or was it you, Dan, that was talking about it?

Stuart Wellington

[34:23] It was the scene where he's about to come out and give his big speech.

[34:27] He's like, I'm at maximum approval rating.

[34:30] And they're going to have him do some dance on an ice rink.

[34:32] I'm having maximum fun.

[34:33] Yeah, maximum fun.

[34:34] Our network.

[34:35] This movie was partially sponsored by Jesse Thorne.

[34:39] And Norm comes out from behind a dressing screen that they've set up on the ice for some reason.

[34:46] I guess he could change his clothes only half in public.

[34:49] So this is the first time that we see Norm in clothes and he's wearing, it looks like a disco outfit.

[34:55] Yeah, it's like a Saturday Night Live fever.

Dan McCoy

[34:57] Saturday Night Live fever.

Elliott Kalan

[34:58] Saturday Night Fever.

[34:59] Saturday Night Live fever is when they go.

Dan McCoy

[35:02] When that Saturday Night Live fever tore through that Saturday Night Live cast.

[35:06] Oh, boy.

Elliott Kalan

[35:06] Oh, so many deaths.

[35:07] Yeah.

[35:08] Well, if they weren't having sex with each other, they wouldn't keep catching it.

Dan McCoy

[35:12] Yeah, they were sharing the same cocaine straws.

[35:14] It was back in the 70s.

[35:15] Yeah, yeah.

[35:16] That's the way stuff spreads, right?

[35:19] Through cocaine straws?

Elliott Kalan

[35:20] Yeah, it was all every, when you're using cocaine, every straw is a crazy straw.

[35:24] So it's like a discarded George Carlin joke.

[35:29] He thought of it briefly and was like, nah, that's no good and threw it away.

Stuart Wellington

[35:34] So he comes up from behind the screen.

[35:38] Like, wait, he balls up the joke and throws it in the trash and then he goes back to combing

[35:42] his ponytail?

[35:43] Yeah, that's right.

[35:46] Yeah, because he's got to let it loose.

[35:47] He slaps his head.

[35:48] He's like, Carlin, come on.

[35:50] Yep.

[35:50] What are you doing?

[35:52] Get in the program.

[35:53] Yep.

[35:54] Wow, that's a dead-on impression.

[35:55] I like it.

[35:56] So Norm comes out from behind the screen after he's, they request, Heather Graham's character

[36:03] requests.

[36:03] And they're saying, come out, Norm.

[36:03] Come out, Norm.

[36:04] And he steps out from behind the screen and we get a nice oogle at this outfit he's wearing

[36:09] and he says, I think I just did.

[36:12] Which is, I'm guessing, a comment on him thinking that he looks like somebody who's come out of

[36:17] the closet.

Elliott Kalan

[36:18] Well, it seems like a gay joke.

[36:19] There's a number, there's too many jokes.

[36:21] This is something we've talked about on the podcast before.

[36:23] I don't like kids' movies with jokes that are just for the adults and about things that

[36:27] kids should not have to be worrying about, like when a bear is going to come out and how

[36:33] society is going to handle that.

[36:35] Yeah.

[36:35] Or like, there's a scene where the director of the commercial about the Green Homes sees

[36:40] a helicopter and he goes, oh, creative notes from the executives.

[36:43] I won't have it.

[36:44] I'm a genius.

[36:45] And it's like, don't put any jokes in your kids' movie about the Hollywood notes process.

Dan McCoy

[36:50] I also don't need to see a scene in a movie where three lemmings are peeing in a fish tank.

[36:55] And you see the pee.

[36:56] And you see the stream of the pee.

Elliott Kalan

[36:58] See the pee sounds like do the do.

[37:00] Or it's like, there's a new Damon Lindelof show about mysterious urine.

[37:05] That may be ghosts or aliens.

[37:07] And at the end of all the commercials that don't quite tell you what the show's about,

[37:10] at the end it goes, see the pee.

Stuart Wellington

[37:12] And that's the slogan on the billboards.

Elliott Kalan

[37:14] It's like, see the pee.

[37:15] Wait, it's like a little girl whispering in your ear?

[37:18] But pee is backwards or something.

[37:20] Save the pee.

[37:21] Kill your bladder.

[37:23] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[37:24] Yeah, I mean, there are a fair amount of fart jokes.

[37:30] There's actually fewer fart jokes than I expected.

Elliott Kalan

[37:32] That's true.

[37:32] I mean, and I like, here's the thing.

[37:34] I like a good fart joke.

[37:35] I hate a bad fart joke.

[37:37] Uh-huh.

Stuart Wellington

[37:38] So, is it based on volume of the fart?

Elliott Kalan

[37:42] It's just based on timing, context, quality of the fart sound.

Stuart Wellington

[37:46] The face that Kevin James is making.

[37:48] There's almost no faces he can make that aren't funny.

[37:50] He was unfortunately born with a disfiguring syndrome called Funny Face.

Elliott Kalan

[37:54] They made a movie about it with Audrey Hepburn.

[37:56] It was called fucking Dick Tracy.

[37:58] It was the ancestor of the movie Mask was Funny Face starring Audrey Hepburn about a woman whose

[38:04] face is disfigured by being hilariously funny.

Dan McCoy

[38:06] Mask was hilarious.

[38:09] Sometimes I just lie in bed laughing thinking about it.

Elliott Kalan

[38:12] When that disfigured kid goes, somebody stop me.

[38:16] Smoke in.

[38:20] So, this movie.

Dan McCoy

[38:21] Yeah, final judgments.

[38:23] Do-do-do-do.

[38:23] Not a very good movie.

Elliott Kalan

[38:25] No.

[38:26] I will say this.

[38:27] Animation quality, better than expected.

[38:29] Story quality, not good.

[38:33] You know, for the first-

[38:35] Disagree with me, Dan.

[38:36] For the first-

[38:37] I think I can make a pretty good case.

Dan McCoy

[38:39] For the first, like, half or two-thirds of this movie, even, like, I thought maybe it

[38:43] was a-

[38:44] A good, bad?

[38:45] A good, bad movie.

[38:46] I mean, there was a lot of stuff that I really liked about it.

[38:49] Like, just the baffling-

[38:51] The plot is baffling.

[38:53] The fact that he has to stop condos from being developed by-

[38:58] A hippie.

[38:58] By a hippie who has a polar council meter that tells what people are thinking about his

[39:05] plan, and he has to become the face of the organization to build it up, to tear it down.

[39:12] Like, this is a children's movie that we're talking about.

[39:16] It does seem overly complicated.

[39:17] It's overly complicated, and it's all based on, like, corporate espionage.

Elliott Kalan

[39:22] There's also two scenes where Norm is on the brink of death by drowning.

[39:27] Yeah.

[39:28] And at the end, it's made very clear that he fucked that other polar bear, because they

[39:32] have three kids.

Stuart Wellington

[39:33] Like, come on, movie.

[39:34] Don't-

[39:34] You don't have to show us that to prove that Norm fucks.

Elliott Kalan

[39:38] Just look at him, and you know he does.

[39:40] Like, it's gross, dude.

[39:41] It's totally obvious from the moment you see him that he just- that he fucks, man.

[39:45] Come on.

[39:46] This bear is a freak.

Stuart Wellington

[39:49] You can't stop him.

[39:51] Yeah, he's- you don't get that confident without fucking every once in a while.

[39:54] Come on.

Elliott Kalan

[39:55] That jackhammer pelvis he's carrying around?

[39:57] Yeah.

[39:58] Anyway, so you're saying, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[39:59] Yeah.

[40:00] It's the stuff I liked.

[40:01] I also liked how-

[40:02] I liked how the movie kept saying the title.

[40:06] Like, the woman kept introducing the bear as, yeah, it's Norm of the North.

[40:10] Norm of the North, everybody.

[40:12] And I'm like-

[40:12] Someone sees an apartment and she goes, Norm of the North!

Elliott Kalan

[40:14] You're the king!

[40:15] Or something like that.

Stuart Wellington

[40:16] Yeah, and you're like, I didn't know you understood the monarchy situation in the Arctic, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[40:23] But it gets boring by the end.

[40:25] By the end, I was, like many films, checking the whole phone for tweets and quotes.

Stuart Wellington

[40:31] Just looking for that next Rush, you know?

[40:34] Yeah.

[40:35] That next Premium Rush.

[40:36] That would be great.

[40:37] I'd much rather be watching Premium Rush, the movie.

[40:39] Oh, Michael Shannon is brilliant.

[40:40] They brought back Michael Shannon.

[40:41] Yeah.

[40:42] Michael Shannon came back at Premium Rush 2 as some kind of The Crow character.

[40:49] Spoiler alert.

[40:49] What if there was a movie called, you know, like The Legion of Shannons, and it's Michael

Elliott Kalan

[40:55] Shannon from all of his movies.

[40:56] Premium Rush, Man of Steel, Bug, I Son, My Son, What Have You Done, Revolutionary Road,

[41:03] Iceman.

[41:04] What other movies did Michael Shannon make?

Dan McCoy

[41:05] I was walking past a stoop sale recently, and one of the DVDs on sale was Bug.

[41:12] And I'm like, I like Bug.

[41:16] I thought Bug was a good movie.

[41:17] It would never cross my mind to get a DVD.

[41:19] I was like, I gotta get this for home viewing.

[41:22] I'm gonna rewatch this year after year.

Elliott Kalan

[41:24] Look, I stay in a lot of Airbnbs, because it's easier to stay in them than hotels when

[41:28] you have a small child.

[41:29] One of my favorite things is looking at people's DVD collections and being like, why do you

[41:34] own this?

[41:35] Why are you, are you really gonna watch Nanny McPhee that many times?

[41:39] Why do you own a copy of Look Who's Talking Now?

Stuart Wellington

[41:43] It's like visiting an old person's house and seeing their weirdly small VHS collection that

[41:48] has a few very specific titles.

[41:50] I mean, I understand why you have Cocoon here, but I don't know.

[41:56] Chawanna Man, really?

[41:58] I guess you must love Basketball, because you're an old person.

[42:02] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[42:03] Batteries not included?

[42:04] Okay.

[42:05] Yeah, I mean, old people.

[42:06] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[42:07] Cocoon batteries not included.

[42:08] These are movies where old people become relevant.

Elliott Kalan

[42:10] I only like to watch movies about old people.

[42:13] The world's fastest Indian, best exotic marigold hotel.

[42:17] Second best exotic marigold hotel.

Stuart Wellington

[42:20] Go on, there's probably more.

[42:23] When the wind blows?

[42:26] Yep.

Dan McCoy

[42:27] I feel bad for all those other exotic marigold hotels, always knowing that they're not gonna

[42:34] be the best exotic marigold hotel.

Elliott Kalan

[42:36] Yeah, I think we might have done that joke before.

[42:38] Oh.

[42:38] Maybe not.

[42:39] Anyway, final judgment, bad, bad.

Dan McCoy

[42:41] I think that's a joke I kept trying to get into the Daily Show, actually.

[42:44] I think that's where you heard it.

Elliott Kalan

[42:45] Maybe that's it.

[42:46] Maybe I read it in one of your passes.

Stuart Wellington

[42:47] Yeah, you plaintively in the corner suggesting that joke over and over.

Elliott Kalan

[42:51] John, what about the best exotic marigold?

[42:53] No.

[42:54] But it's the second best.

[42:56] But, well, maybe Trevor.

Dan McCoy

[43:00] Guys, if you hear an exotic marigold hotel joke on the Daily Show, you'll know exactly where

[43:06] it came from now.

Elliott Kalan

[43:06] I'll be impressed when you get a best exotic neutral milk hotel joke on the show.

Stuart Wellington

[43:10] So Elliot says, bad, bad.

[43:12] Dan says, good, great.

[43:13] And I say, bad, bad.

[43:14] So the bad, bads have it.

[43:15] I wish it was good, bad.

[43:16] But it's not bad enough to be good, bad in a weird way.

[43:19] It doesn't, like, as much as we have a character design of female characters that have giant

[43:25] asses.

[43:26] All of them.

[43:26] It doesn't compare to the madness of proportion that is Guardian of the Highlands, Sir Billy.

[43:32] Yeah.

[43:32] Where every woman is this, like, crazy balancing act of giant breasts and strange faces.

Elliott Kalan

[43:38] Yeah, you might as well have called it Guardian of Future Back Pain.

[43:41] Sure.

Dan McCoy

[43:42] It was a Russ Meyer animated film.

Elliott Kalan

[43:45] Oh, imagine.

[43:46] That would be a crazy movie.

[43:48] Yeah.

[43:49] Oh, boy.

Stuart Wellington

[43:51] Okay, so we gave some final, wait, you're talking about Alf?

Dan McCoy

[43:54] No, I was going to say Ralph.

Stuart Wellington

[43:55] Russ Meyer's Alf was weird.

Dan McCoy

[43:57] Ralph Bakshi should take one of Russ Meyer's old scripts and animate it.

Stuart Wellington

[44:02] You got to stay relevant with the teens today who love Russ Meyer.

S4

[44:10] Hey, guys, this is Adam Conover.

[44:12] You may know me from my true TV show, Adam Ruins Everything.

[44:15] Well, guess what?

[44:15] Now we're doing a podcast version right here on Maximum Fun.

[44:18] What we do is we take all the interesting, fascinating experts that we talk to for just a couple minutes on the show,

[44:23] and we sit with them for an entire podcast, really going deep and getting into the fascinating details of their work.

[44:29] Find Adam Ruins Everything wherever you get your podcasts or at MaximumFun.org.

Dan McCoy

[44:35] Now is the time where I have to pay the piper.

[44:39] Oh, boy.

[44:41] Doing the pipers.

[44:42] A hungry man.

[44:43] He's come across.

[44:43] Some Flop House housework.

[44:45] Yeah.

[44:46] And if you're...

Elliott Kalan

[44:47] Taking care of Biz-Nass.

[44:53] Taking care of Boss-Nass.

[44:55] From Star Wars.

[44:56] Taking care of Boss-Nass.

[44:58] The worst character they have.

[45:00] Work out.

[45:01] Whoa.

[45:03] Name a worst character.

Stuart Wellington

[45:04] Oh, man.

[45:05] That's going to be tough.

Elliott Kalan

[45:06] Even Jar Jar's better than Boss-Nass.

Stuart Wellington

[45:08] What about Dex, the guy who runs the slave slaver?

Dan McCoy

[45:15] Which one?

[45:16] The one who owns Anakin.

Stuart Wellington

[45:17] The floaty body.

[45:18] Oh, Watto?

[45:19] Watto.

[45:20] I wanted to call him Watto.

[45:20] The Toydarian?

[45:21] Yeah.

[45:21] Watto's great.

[45:22] The thing is, Jedi mind jerks don't work on him because of his race.

Elliott Kalan

[45:26] Look, just...

[45:28] He is a racist caricature, sure.

[45:31] But every racist caricature has a little bit of truth to it, right?

[45:34] You know what I'm saying?

[45:35] Jewish people.

[45:36] Just kidding.

[45:37] Anyway, he's a bad character too, but Boss-Nass is the worst.

[45:40] Of the worst.

[45:42] And I like the character who's a space mummy.

[45:45] Dengar.

Stuart Wellington

[45:46] Who's just an old man with dirty toilet paper wrapped around his head.

[45:49] Yeah, who's like, Han Solo stole from my tomb.

Elliott Kalan

[45:56] In one of those Star Wars comic strips, I guess.

[45:59] Yeah.

[46:01] That Al Williamson did.

Dan McCoy

[46:02] But tonight, the Flophouse is brought to you in part by Blue Apron.

[46:08] It's a great service.

[46:10] It delivers you fresh ingredients to your home so you can make your own meals.

[46:15] For less than $10 per meal, Blue Apron delivers seasonal recipes.

[46:19] Along with pre-portioned ingredients to make delicious home-cooked meals.

Stuart Wellington

[46:24] We've all had good experiences with Blue Apron.

[46:25] Yeah, we all like cooking at home, right, Dan?

[46:28] I certainly do.

[46:30] Elliot, you're cooking for what?

[46:32] I'm cooking for two.

Elliott Kalan

[46:33] Me and my unborn child who lives in my belly.

[46:35] Oh, wow.

[46:36] His name is Gorgor.

[46:38] He's a demon.

[46:39] No, nice.

[46:39] No, yeah.

[46:40] I find myself doing more cooking than I ever have before.

[46:43] Mm-hmm.

[46:44] And it would be, and it is such a help when I don't have to measure stuff.

[46:48] And that's the great thing about Blue Apron is they send it all to you measured already.

Stuart Wellington

[46:51] Because normally when you go to the grocery store, you just buy huge boxes of everything.

[46:55] You're like, sugar, I'll take two bags, please.

Elliott Kalan

[46:58] Well, I go to, I don't even go to Costco or Price Club.

[47:01] I go to Gim-a-Lot.

[47:03] Okay.

[47:03] Which is where you say, give him a lot of that stuff.

[47:05] Okay, sure.

[47:06] And you have to buy at least 300 pounds of every item.

[47:09] Oh, wow.

[47:09] That's way too much.

[47:10] Unless you're cooking for a polar bear, like say Norm of the North.

[47:13] Yeah.

[47:14] Who would eat probably, I don't know what, a thousand pounds of salmon a day.

[47:17] Blue Apron, they give you everything measured out for humans so that you don't have to do

[47:21] that kind of work.

[47:22] And also, like you were saying, the ingredients are fresh.

[47:24] The recipes are right there.

[47:25] You don't have to figure out what you're going to cook.

[47:27] They make that decision for you.

[47:28] And they kind of teach you how to cook, right?

[47:29] Because really the best vacation is a vacation from choice.

[47:33] Sure.

[47:33] And having someone else make decisions for you.

[47:36] But it's a great, especially, I mentioned this last time we talked about Blue Apron.

[47:40] If you know somebody who's going to be in a situation where they're not going to be able

[47:42] to cook for themselves, maybe they're having a baby, maybe they're convalescing, maybe they're

[47:48] taking care of somebody else.

[47:50] Blue Apron is a great way to get them a gift that helps make their life a little easier.

[47:53] And I'm allergic to a lot of things, including homework.

Stuart Wellington

[47:57] Does Blue Apron accommodate that, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[48:00] I hope so.

Stuart Wellington

[48:03] Stuart, this is like being a trial lawyer.

Elliott Kalan

[48:05] You never ask a question you don't know the answer to.

Dan McCoy

[48:09] We've been over this.

[48:10] Your ad-libbing is harming our...

Elliott Kalan

[48:13] Ad-libbing?

Dan McCoy

[48:14] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[48:15] Anyway, Blue Apron's a really good service.

Dan McCoy

[48:17] Here's a...

Elliott Kalan

[48:18] The food tastes good.

[48:19] They send it to you.

[48:19] They teach you how to cook it by telling you.

Dan McCoy

[48:21] We got a call to action on that piece?

[48:22] No, I just want to...

[48:23] First, I just...

[48:24] Here's some of the meals available in June.

[48:26] June, you got crispy...

[48:28] Or, sorry, creamy shrimp.

[48:29] Read it more like a...

[48:30] That's very different.

[48:30] Crispy and creamy are very different textures, Dan.

Stuart Wellington

[48:33] Read it more like a waiter.

[48:33] Let's not sweet this up.

Elliott Kalan

[48:35] Read it like a French waiter, Dan.

[48:37] Read it like you're telling us with specials.

Dan McCoy

[48:39] There is a creamy shrimp fettuccine with sauteed green beans and spinach.

[48:44] Now, let me ask you.

[48:45] That sounds good.

[48:45] I heard you had a crispy shrimp dish.

[48:47] Is that the case?

[48:48] No.

[48:49] Oh, that was...

[48:50] The former waiter here was an idiot.

[48:54] We had stupid tongue.

[48:55] We had to fire him.

[48:57] Oh, terrible.

[48:57] Oh, that's too bad.

[48:58] I'm a spa, I guess.

[48:59] We have sweet chili chicken with Tinkerbell peppers, green beans, and jasmine rice.

Elliott Kalan

[49:05] So that's real fairy blood in it, the Tinkerbell.

[49:08] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[49:08] And spiced steak and tomato avocado salad with creamy cone cabbage and a red onion slaw.

[49:15] Now, I don't know what creamy cone cabbage is, but it sounds delicious.

[49:18] I can't wait to find out.

Stuart Wellington

[49:20] Oh, wow.

[49:20] Yeah, yeah.

[49:21] So, Dan, tell that waiter that we want to order the third one.

[49:25] Okay.

[49:25] No, no.

[49:26] One of everything.

[49:26] Come on.

[49:27] Oh, yeah.

[49:27] I guess we'll have one of everything.

[49:27] Max funds paying.

Dan McCoy

[49:28] Yeah.

[49:29] Three orange whips.

[49:31] But check out this week's menu.

[49:32] And two duck eggs.

[49:33] And three hard-billed eggs.

[49:36] Make that four hard-billed eggs.

Elliott Kalan

[49:38] Is my Aunt Minnie in here?

[49:40] I'm trying to look at the ceiling.

[49:42] It's the only place.

[49:42] Oh, no.

[49:43] He sells the cleaners to start with the ceiling.

Dan McCoy

[49:45] So check out this week's menu and get your first three meals free with free shipping by

[49:50] going to blueapron.com slash flophouse.

[49:53] Blueapron.com slash flophouse.

[49:55] You won't regret it.

[49:56] Yeah.

[49:57] You'll love how good it feels and tastes to create incredible home-cooked meals with Blue

[50:00] Apron, so do not wait.

Elliott Kalan

[50:02] Hey, guys.

[50:03] We got somebody else who is helping us pay the bills this time.

[50:07] And it's another company that we've all had a very positive personal experience with that

[50:11] I'm happy to talk about.

[50:13] And that's Mack Weldon.

[50:15] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[50:16] This is kind of a message for all those dudes out there.

Elliott Kalan

[50:19] Ladies, leave your man at home listening to this podcast because this is a man's clothing

[50:26] supply store.

Stuart Wellington

[50:27] Because I got to say, when I throw on them Mack Weldon shorts, that's going to be special

[50:31] time.

[50:32] When me and the lady, or if it was, well, in my case, it's a lady.

[50:35] Let's say Gooby and Norman the North are in the corner.

[50:39] When it's going to be a special night, I like throwing on my Mack Weldons first.

Elliott Kalan

[50:42] One, they're comfortable.

[50:44] Two, they look great.

[50:45] Let's just get this straight.

[50:47] Mack Weldon is better than whatever you're wearing right now.

[50:49] Except for me, because I'm wearing Mack Weldon stuff right now.

[50:52] Dan, you probably feel and look like crap because you're not wearing Mack Weldon right now.

Dan McCoy

[50:57] My groin feels like Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies right now.

Elliott Kalan

[51:02] So it feels a sense of power?

[51:04] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[51:05] It feels like there's no dividing line between pain and pleasure.

Elliott Kalan

[51:09] So if you don't want centibite penis, listen to what I'm going to tell you.

[51:13] So Mack Weldon believes in smart design, premium fabrics, and simple shopping.

[51:19] It's one of the centibites.

[51:20] It's super easy to shop there.

[51:23] The clothes, it's mainly, there's a lot of underpants.

[51:26] There's the best undershirt I've ever owned from them.

[51:30] And it's all really good.

[51:32] It's a website.

[51:33] You go and you shop from it.

[51:34] It's super easy.

[51:35] They send it to you really quickly.

[51:36] It comes wrapped in plastic so you know nobody else has ever worn it, which would be gross.

[51:40] Yeah, yeah, unless it's Laura Palmer.

[51:42] Then you don't want Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic.

[51:44] She's dead.

[51:46] Mack Weldon will be the most comfortable underwear, socks, shirts, undershirts, hoodies, and sweatpants

[51:50] you will ever wear.

[51:51] I totally believe this.

[51:52] They have a line of silver underwear and shirts.

[51:55] That sounds amazing.

[51:56] That are naturally antimicrobial.

[51:57] I have a pair of the silver underwear.

[51:59] Very comfortable.

[52:00] Doesn't smell.

[52:01] And it feels like I have the silver surfer's crotch.

[52:05] And who wouldn't want that?

Stuart Wellington

[52:06] And that's what you would wear when you and your significant other have a date night.

Elliott Kalan

[52:09] Well, if we're playing, and this is a fantasy role play.

[52:12] I'm not saying we necessarily do.

[52:13] If I'm the silver surfer and I'm stopping in at the thing's blind girlfriend Alicia Master's apartment

[52:18] and maybe things go one way or the other and they do it, this is the great way to act that

[52:24] out.

Stuart Wellington

[52:24] Okay.

[52:24] So she pretends to be a blind girlfriend who is cheating on the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[52:29] Yes.

[52:29] And she's a sculptor.

[52:30] Here's the way it goes.

[52:31] Okay.

[52:31] I'm Noren Rad, the silver surfer.

[52:33] I'm still trying to understand how humans work.

[52:35] How they can be such a mix of beauty and evil and, you know, terribleness.

[52:39] Exactly.

[52:39] How prejudice could so beautifully counterbalance with grace.

[52:43] And she is sculpting me.

Stuart Wellington

[52:44] But there's something magical about humans.

[52:46] That's why you prevented Galactus from devouring the planet.

Elliott Kalan

[52:48] Exactly.

[52:49] And now I'm trapped here, unfortunately, by a space barrier that Galactus, my former master,

[52:53] put in place.

[52:53] And I want nothing more than to go back to my home world and be with Shalabal, my beloved.

[52:59] But that's not in the cards right now.

[53:02] So Alicia Master's going to sculpt me.

[53:03] But she's blind, so she kind of has to feel me first.

[53:06] And one thing leads to another.

[53:08] And let's just say...

[53:09] I feel like I'm reading is like online dating bio.

[53:13] Let's just say I'll be stiff as a board.

[53:16] A surfboard that is.

[53:18] It's hilarious.

Dan McCoy

[53:19] I'll be really excited later on when I listen to this episode to hear what the hell you were

[53:22] talking about because I zoned out halfway through.

Elliott Kalan

[53:24] Well, just go to the Wikipedia entry for silver surfer fantasy sex role play.

[53:29] There's a CGI illustration of it and everything.

[53:32] They want you to be comfortable, so if you don't like your first pair, keep it.

[53:35] They'll still refund you.

[53:36] No questions asked.

[53:38] No questions.

[53:39] It's your underpants.

[53:40] They will not ask you questions about it.

[53:42] But they'll refund it if you're not comfortable.

Stuart Wellington

[53:44] And in fact, even if you want to send those underwears back, do not do that.

[53:48] Don't worry about it.

[53:49] Just hold on to them.

[53:50] Just hold on to them.

[53:50] Burn them in effigy.

[53:51] Who knows?

Elliott Kalan

[53:51] Whatever you want to do with it, try them again because you're probably wrong.

[53:54] They're probably very comfortable.

[53:55] Maybe you just need to take like three showers, dude.

[53:57] Then put them back on.

[53:58] Yeah.

[53:58] Maybe the problem is you've got too much grime built up.

[54:01] And so they're good for anything you do.

[54:03] Working out, going to work, going on dates, everyday life.

[54:06] Literally, this is like...

Dan McCoy

[54:07] Or if you're like Stuart, and I know that this is true from sharing a hotel room with him

[54:12] when I went out to Max Fun.

[54:13] Okay.

[54:14] Just lounging around without your pants on.

Stuart Wellington

[54:15] Yeah, yeah.

[54:16] You've got to feel comfortable sometimes.

Dan McCoy

[54:17] Just hanging out with another guy in the room without your pants.

Stuart Wellington

[54:20] When I enter what I would call a safe space, my pants are off in, I don't know, like under

[54:26] a minute usually.

[54:28] When I was in Los Angeles recently pitching a television show that nobody was interested

Elliott Kalan

[54:32] in.

[54:33] And it was called No Pants.

[54:34] It was called Pants Off Dance Off.

[54:36] Unfortunately, that show already exists.

[54:37] I think it was canceled.

[54:38] Yeah, yeah.

[54:39] So I pitched another show.

[54:40] It's called Dating Naked.

[54:41] I think that exists already.

[54:42] So I was like, let's keep with the naked theme.

[54:43] How about naked and afraid?

[54:45] They said that exists already.

[54:46] And I said, not the way I'm going to do it.

[54:48] But I was doing pitch meetings and I only packed Mack Weldon under things because I wanted

[54:54] to be comfortable and I didn't want to feel sweaty.

[54:56] And it helped give me the confidence to do really good pitches.

[54:59] So that's a real true testimonial.

[55:01] So here's what you're going to do.

[55:02] You're going to go to MackWeldon.com and you're going to get 20% off using the promo

[55:06] code FLOP.

[55:08] F-L-O-P.

[55:10] MackWeldon.com.

[55:11] Look, if you want underwear that feels good and looks good, and I don't know why you wouldn't,

[55:15] go to MackWeldon.com.

Stuart Wellington

[55:18] Promo code FLOP for 20% off.

[55:20] Boom.

[55:21] Okay.

[55:21] Now at this point, we do a little bit of J-J-J-Jumbotron.

[55:26] And we got a message.

[55:29] Hey, dudes.

[55:32] Hey.

[55:32] A little informal.

[55:33] Let me level with you.

[55:34] Let me just turn the chair around.

[55:36] Yeah, Stuart's going to rap with the young people.

[55:38] Okay.

[55:39] Do you guys love Game of Thrones, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica?

[55:43] At least two-thirds of those things.

[55:45] Yeah, why not?

[55:46] Please don't interrupt the Jumbotron.

[55:47] Do you guys want to know about the real world politics behind these otherworldly realms?

[55:54] Well, Otherworldly Politics is the new book for you.

[55:57] What would Mr. Spock do about Vladimir Putin?

[56:00] Who would make a better president?

[56:03] Daenerys Targaryen or Tyrion Lannister?

[56:06] I think that answer's pretty clear, guys.

[56:08] It's Tyrion Lannister.

[56:11] If you look at their...

[56:12] You guys agree with me?

[56:14] Yeah.

[56:14] If you look at their policies and track record, clearly.

[56:17] I mean, we have a staunch progressive in the form of Daenerys Targaryen.

[56:22] But Tyrion Lannister...

[56:22] But can she deliver?

[56:23] That's the thing.

[56:24] She can't deliver.

Elliott Kalan

[56:25] Here's a situation I'm just going to roll with you.

[56:27] Yeah.

[56:27] The economy collapses.

[56:29] We're in a recession.

[56:30] We need the president to do something.

[56:31] Oh, no.

[56:32] She just got on a dravion and flew the fuck to who knows where.

[56:35] Yep.

[56:36] Who knows where?

[56:37] She's getting her Dothraki minions together for what?

[56:41] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[56:42] They're like, we need more funding for Planned Parenthood.

[56:44] Does this dragon blowing fire on stuff help?

[56:47] No, it doesn't.

[56:47] Does not help at all.

Stuart Wellington

[56:48] And clearly Tyrion Lannister's policy of the whore's penny, or the dwarf's penny, where

[56:53] he was taxing people using prostitutes in King's Landing, though not preferred by the people

[56:59] making use of those services.

[57:01] It cut down on the deficit.

[57:02] Yeah, yeah.

[57:03] It cut down on the deficit.

[57:04] So anyway...

[57:04] Okay, let's continue.

Elliott Kalan

[57:05] But you're advertising a book that you're now giving the answers away.

Stuart Wellington

[57:10] You can find all this information out in Otherworldly Politics.

[57:14] So, why don't you go buy Otherworldly Politics, The International Relations of Star Trek, Game

[57:19] of Thrones, and Battlestar Galactica on Amazon and all other good booksellers.

[57:25] All right.

[57:25] Check it out.

Dan McCoy

[57:27] But moving on to letters from listeners.

[57:30] Show's not over yet.

Stuart Wellington

[57:34] Mamma mia.

[57:36] So, Norm of the North.

[57:38] He was a man or a bear?

[57:41] What's the difference, really?

[57:43] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[57:44] So, we asked last week for people to write in with goofy scenes from otherwise good films.

Elliott Kalan

[57:52] Yeah, scenes like...

[57:54] Let's say you're watching a big marmer in the movie and Goofy shows up.

[57:57] Yeah.

[57:58] Well, you're watching the Goofy movie and suddenly Goofy's grandmother starts talking about the

[58:01] Holocaust.

[58:02] And her experiences really brought the room down.

Dan McCoy

[58:05] So, I'm going to read a few of these answers.

[58:10] One person wrote in to say, I want to put forth one from the 2013 movie The Counselor.

[58:15] I don't know if I can say it's a good movie per se, but it is at least a very dramatic movie

[58:20] that has one absurdly odd sequence wherein Cameron Diaz leaps on top of a car and grinds

[58:25] her naked crotch against the windshield whilst Javier Bardem watches from inside.

Elliott Kalan

[58:31] And he describes, he's talking about it, he describes it as seeing like an octopus up

[58:34] against the glass of a fish tank, right?

Dan McCoy

[58:37] I watched that movie.

[58:39] I may have blocked that line out.

[58:40] Oh.

[58:41] But, yeah, that was a goofy scene.

[58:44] I liked it, though.

[58:46] I don't like the face.

Stuart Wellington

[58:47] Yeah, he's got all the elements of a Dan scene.

Dan McCoy

[58:50] Dancing.

[58:52] Ted Danson.

[58:53] I submit the pinnacle moment.

Elliott Kalan

[58:54] Dancing, dancing, Ted Danson.

[58:57] He's a Ted Danson machine.

[58:58] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[58:59] This one says, I submit the pinnacle moment of Spike Lee's oeuvre, the scene in Summer of

[59:04] Sam, where David Berkowitz, played by Michael Badalucho, who I'm sure Elliot has seen in a play.

[59:11] I think so, yeah.

[59:12] Is tormented by the barking of his neighbor's dog when all of a sudden, the dog appears in

[59:16] the room with him and speaks through the magic of CGI and the voice of John Turturro, the

[59:20] mortar line, I want you to go out and kill, kill, kill.

[59:24] This is the only scene of David Berkowitz actually in the film.

[59:27] I'm not sure what Mr. Lee was going for.

[59:28] Well, I don't know if that's a good thing.

[59:29] That happened.

Elliott Kalan

[59:31] Well, it's part of the legend Son of Sam built for himself.

[59:35] Yeah.

[59:35] Like, he was not that kind of crazy, but he told people that it was that kind of awesome.

Stuart Wellington

[59:38] Yeah, and magic didn't happen in the real world.

Elliott Kalan

[59:40] No, but he did claim that a dog told him to kill.

[59:43] Yeah.

[59:43] But he was not, he didn't really believe that himself.

[59:46] So, like, I get why Spike Lee would put that in, because it's a colorful moment of semi-real

[59:50] history.

[59:51] Yeah.

[59:51] He was the kind of crazy where he got a sexual release from killing people.

Dan McCoy

[59:54] Now, having John Turturro's voice might be goofy.

[59:57] But it's a Spike Lee movie.

[59:58] John Turturro's got to show up at some point.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:00] Yeah.

[1:00:00] It's in his contract.

[1:00:02] Mm-hmm.

[1:00:02] Now, what would be a less goofy or more goofy voice?

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:06] Well, goofy would be a more goofy voice, obviously.

[1:00:08] Yeah, sure.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:09] Ooh, go out and kill.

[1:00:10] Mm-hmm.

[1:00:12] Gorsh.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:13] But they had a...

[1:00:13] That's not too far from Davy and Goliath, right?

[1:00:16] I guess that, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:16] Oh, Dave, I mean, that Goliath was what, a talking dog?

[1:00:19] Yeah.

[1:00:19] Go kill Davy.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:21] If they had that actor who they always spoof on The Simpsons, the one who's like,

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:25] hello.

[1:00:27] Mm-hmm.

[1:00:27] That would be a goofy voice.

[1:00:28] Frank Nelson?

[1:00:29] Yeah, maybe.

[1:00:30] Is that who that is?

[1:00:30] From, like, the Jack Benny show?

[1:00:32] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:33] He was Jack Benny.

[1:00:34] Yes?

[1:00:34] Yeah.

[1:00:36] I think that was his name.

[1:00:37] So, less goofy would be, what, Christopher Walken?

Dan McCoy

[1:00:40] Yeah, he sounds like a dog who would tell people to kill.

[1:00:42] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:45] That's probably too on the note.

[1:00:46] And also, that's a big name.

[1:00:48] You can put that on the poster and people go see it.

[1:00:50] Yeah, feature the voice of Chris Walken.

[1:00:52] They're like, I can't wait to see Chris Walken.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:55] The last answer we got from this, until recently, I had been living and working in Tokyo for

[1:00:59] several years, trying to keep up with Western TV and movies the best I could.

[1:01:03] When David Bowie passed away, a small art theater launched a retrospective of his films,

[1:01:08] including Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:10] Oh, yeah, I just saw that not too long ago.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:11] I'd always meant to see it.

[1:01:12] Well, maybe it was last year, I guess.

[1:01:14] And I figured I should take advantage of the occasion to see it on the big screen.

[1:01:17] The film is essentially one big, long tale of fraught, homoerotic tension, and gay panic,

[1:01:22] with a lot of the conflict centered around a young Japanese captain, played by composer

[1:01:26] Ryuichi Sakamoto, trying to deal with how badly he has the hots for David Bowie.

[1:01:31] Haven't we all been there?

[1:01:32] Yeah.

[1:01:33] What made this weird is that I actually went to school with Sakamoto's son, and watching

[1:01:37] the father of someone you know, even only in passing, act out repressed sexual urges in

[1:01:41] very heavy eyeliner.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:42] I was about to say repressed sexual urges.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:47] Come on, buy this paper for me, pal.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:50] I'm dealing with issues.

[1:01:51] There's a part of me that I feel like I can't put that out in public.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:54] The only issues I'm dealing with aren't just newspapers.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:57] Extra, extra.

[1:01:58] I'm afraid to admit myself to myself.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:03] I'm not going to finish that sentence.

[1:02:04] Nothing to joke about.

[1:02:05] Because it's nonsense now.

[1:02:06] At the climax of this film, which grows increasingly strange as it progresses, David Bowie plants

[1:02:11] Oh, I don't know about that.

[1:02:12] Plants a big angry kiss on the captain's face, who then falls to his knees in horror in a

[1:02:16] manner not dissimilar to Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes.

[1:02:19] Spoiler alert.

[1:02:20] It was overacting at its best, and the theater was silent, except for the sound of me and

[1:02:24] the young man next to me wheeze laughing like horrible Philistines.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:28] Except for the sounds of me and the man next to me violently masturbating each other.

[1:02:34] I, I, um, within the context of that film, I think that scene is not crazy.

[1:02:41] Yeah.

[1:02:41] It's kind of what the movie's building up to.

[1:02:43] But hey, I get it.

[1:02:45] That's not a movie that's on everybody's wavelength.

[1:02:47] Yeah.

[1:02:48] Great soundtrack.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:49] But I just wanted to...

[1:02:50] I mean, is that, is that a completely out of place scene, or it's just a scene that's

[1:02:54] like overly dramatic?

[1:02:56] It's a mel, it's a very, it's a very over the top scene, but it's not like...

[1:02:59] Like the sort of thing that might show up in like a David Lynch movie, basically.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:02] Uh, not that weird, because it's not like the content is strange or unexpected.

[1:03:07] It's more that like, his reaction is so intense.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:10] Okay.

[1:03:10] It's not like an overly arch performance in a otherwise straight-laced movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:15] Not, no, not exactly.

[1:03:17] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:18] Uh, but anyway, I just wanted to read some of the, um, the reactions.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:22] No, I like that.

[1:03:23] It's like in, uh, comic books when they'll have like a contest in the letters pages and

[1:03:27] people write in.

[1:03:28] Mm-hmm.

[1:03:28] We should do more of that.

[1:03:29] Dan, let's ask the listeners to send in something specific this time, too.

[1:03:32] Oh, God.

[1:03:33] If you guys have any sex fantasies involving Marvel Comics characters, send them in.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:39] Oh, no.

[1:03:40] The owl is gonna show up.

[1:03:43] Tombstone and the owl are hanging out.

[1:03:45] So, I have this thing where D-Man, Tombstone, and the owl are all together.

[1:03:51] And Mysterio is watching.

[1:03:53] This letter.

[1:03:54] The facebot Pete shows up.

[1:03:56] And the white stuff in his pots.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:57] Excuse me, the trapster.

[1:03:59] He hasn't been pastepot Pete for a long time.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:02] This letter.

[1:04:02] That's not pasting his pot this time.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:04] Is from Brett.

[1:04:05] Do you know what I mean?

[1:04:07] Brett, last name withheld, who writes, thank you, not only for hosting the most insightful

[1:04:12] and hilarious bad movie podcast on the internet, but also resolving a mystery that has plagued

[1:04:16] my dreams and nightmares for several years.

[1:04:18] In about 2012, I was walking by the Clinton Park Cafe across the street from the campus of

[1:04:23] the Pratt Institute in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

[1:04:25] Mm-hmm.

[1:04:25] Ooh, cool.

[1:04:26] This story checks out.

[1:04:27] I discovered on this occasion a cardboard box of VHS tapes.

[1:04:30] Ever the curious collector of other people's garbage, I examined the box's contents only

[1:04:35] to discover that I had hit the jackpot.

[1:04:37] Here you will find a full inventory of the box's contents in no particular order.

[1:04:41] Andy Warhol presents Joe D'Alessandro and Holly Woodlawn in Trash.

[1:04:46] Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

[1:04:48] Pink Flamingos.

[1:04:49] Catgirl.

[1:04:50] Bloodthirsty Tale of a Pretty Girl with Claws.

[1:04:53] David Friedman's Roadshow Rarities Volume 1.

[1:04:55] Teaser-rama.

[1:04:56] Don't Torture a Duckling.

[1:04:58] German language version.

[1:05:00] Frank Hinlater's Sexy Shocker, Triple X Hardcore Horrors Volume 7, Sacrilege Slash Sexual Satanic Awareness.

[1:05:07] Ham and Tommy Lee Hardcore and Uncensored.

[1:05:10] Videodrome.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:11] Whoa, hold on a second.

[1:05:13] Videodrome is a respectable film.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:15] Prisoners of Paradise.

[1:05:17] Teenage Catgirls in Heat.

[1:05:18] The Adventures of Rat Fink Abubu.

[1:05:20] Signed.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:21] Seriously?

[1:05:22] By Cash Flag?

[1:05:23] Ray Dennis Steckler?

Dan McCoy

[1:05:24] I guess so.

[1:05:25] The Devil and Miss Jones.

[1:05:27] The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies.

[1:05:30] Another Ray Dennis Steckler classic.

[1:05:32] And Wild at Heart.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:34] Obviously.

[1:05:35] Wow!

[1:05:36] This is the only company in which Videodrome, Wild at Heart, and Pink Flamingos are like the

[1:05:40] mainstream picks.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:43] Obviously I took the box home.

[1:05:44] However, I couldn't help but wonder who had left behind such a finely curated collection

[1:05:48] of 80s old cinema and top shelf pornography.

[1:05:54] A disgruntled anthology films archive volunteer, the couple who had been masturbating the seats

[1:05:58] in front of me in the full runtime of a midnight show of Alien at IFC the year before.

[1:06:02] Wait, what?

[1:06:04] With so few clues, I was left to assume that I had simply stumbled upon the post-gentrification

[1:06:09] Brooklyn equivalent of a soggy stack of hustlers stashed in the woods.

[1:06:13] However, now that I've discovered the Flophouse, the identity of the tape's original owner becomes

[1:06:17] all too clear.

[1:06:18] It could be none other than our own Purvisoid number one Dan McCoy.

[1:06:21] Or possibly Stewart.

[1:06:23] Of course, this begs the question.

[1:06:25] Why would Dan have taken a 22-minute subway ride to simply discard his prized VHS collection?

[1:06:30] Actually, at that time I would have been living in Clinton Hill not far from there.

[1:06:33] That's true.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:33] Actually, the story really matches up.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:36] The story is clear.

[1:06:38] As we all know, Dan's true perversion is his deviousness.

[1:06:41] The tawdry and shameful manner in which he pathetically attempts to conceal his seething

[1:06:45] sexual menace.

[1:06:46] Of course Dan would be too ashamed to leave such a box on his own stoop.

[1:06:49] And yet he would feel such a deep affection for his stag swag that he would be unable to

[1:06:54] simply throw it all away.

[1:06:55] It's not really swag.

[1:06:56] Unless he leaves the box conspicuous in a place no one would ever connect it to him personally.

[1:07:00] Well, Dan, I'm sorry to unmask you so thoroughly on your own podcast, but I knew you'd be happy

[1:07:04] to know that your precious babies have found a good home buried under AV cables in my childhood

[1:07:09] bedroom, concealed so that my mom doesn't assume that her son has a fetish for lovingly preserved

[1:07:14] VHS smut.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:15] P.S.

[1:07:16] Which appears to be the truth, though.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:17] Yeah.

[1:07:18] Also, thank you to Elliot for the box of American Cinematographer Magazines from 1993

[1:07:22] left outside his Park Slope apartment in 2012.

[1:07:24] Very possible.

[1:07:26] Very possible.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:27] I didn't, but that is the era when I had a subscription.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:31] Yeah, if he picked up a box stuffed to the gills with old White Dwarf magazines, that would

[1:07:36] have been for me.

[1:07:38] Also semen encrusted.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:40] Ew.

[1:07:41] I did walk by, once I was walking to work, this is in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

[1:07:44] Sure.

[1:07:44] And there was just an open box of porno tapes sitting next to a public garbage can.

[1:07:50] And I was like, that's weird.

[1:07:53] And I didn't go too close to it.

[1:07:55] But if I was a teenager, I would have been like, oh.

[1:07:57] Yeah, you thought it might have been like a honeypot?

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:59] Like you got too close and somebody grabs you?

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:01] And then somebody pulls a steak out and the box falls on me and Elmer Fudd's eating me

[1:08:05] for dinner.

[1:08:07] Stick an apple in your mouth.

[1:08:10] That is quite a story.

[1:08:11] There was a time when I used to go through boxes of VHS tapes on the street.

[1:08:14] Yeah, when you were a hobo.

[1:08:15] When I was a hobo and I ate them.

[1:08:17] But there was a time when like, if I found a box of home VHS tapes, like not factory released

[1:08:23] movies, but like videotapes with stuff written on the labels, I would pick those up in an instant

[1:08:28] because you never know what might be on them.

[1:08:30] I don't know if you're a hobo movies.

[1:08:31] Well, like Home, but like if there was something, I remember I found a box once on the labels,

[1:08:35] it was just old episodes of Letterman.

[1:08:37] And I was like, this is perfect, great.

[1:08:38] But most of the tapes were in like really bad condition.

[1:08:41] Yeah.

[1:08:41] But it was like, you never know what you're going to find.

[1:08:43] And that was in the pre-YouTube days, you know.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:45] I remember when I lived in Minneapolis, my roommate Jonas Walker bought a recliner.

[1:08:53] And we found in the cushions an envelope full of the most Midwestern shots of middle-aged

[1:09:01] nude that you could imagine.

[1:09:04] Just an old couple having fun with each other.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:09] So I assume you guys burned that chair?

Dan McCoy

[1:09:13] Yeah.

[1:09:14] Yeah.

[1:09:15] The chair.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:15] Kept the nudes though.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:18] The chair was filled with bed bugs with syphilis.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:21] Oh, they were all going insane.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:23] That's terrible.

[1:09:23] Yeah, that's too bad.

[1:09:25] So last letter of the evening.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:27] Oh, so soon.

[1:09:29] Is from.

[1:09:30] That was a sarcasm?

Dan McCoy

[1:09:32] I guess so.

[1:09:32] From Jensina, who says, I never thought I'd find a podcast with a subject matter like yours.

[1:09:38] Is that an insult?

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:40] But after years of searching.

[1:09:41] I hoped I wouldn't.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:42] I finally found a program that tackles the type of cinema I love.

[1:09:46] Sure, there's many a movie-themed podcast to choose from.

[1:09:49] But I've yet to find another podcast all about Dorf with the same quality you provide.

[1:09:54] And unlike other listeners, I don't mind the occasional rambling about other lesser non-Dorf movies.

[1:09:59] Because you guys are so hilarious and engaging.

[1:10:02] Oh, thank you.

[1:10:02] Much like our hero, Dorf.

[1:10:04] Yeah.

[1:10:05] So my question is, which is your favorite in the Dorf octology?

[1:10:08] Mine is Dorf Goes Auto Racing.

[1:10:10] Keep up the wonderful work on the Dorf cast.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:13] Love Jensina.

[1:10:14] I think mine would be, I mean, there's always the fishing classic.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:19] Dorf is golf.

[1:10:20] But I think it's on golf.

[1:10:20] Dorf on golf.

[1:10:21] I'm a big fan of that.

[1:10:22] Because it's crazy.

[1:10:23] There's no way there's, like the clubs?

[1:10:26] How does he swing those things?

[1:10:28] No, I mean the clubhouse.

[1:10:29] How does he get to hang out there?

[1:10:30] Because he's so weird looking.

[1:10:32] Well, there's Dorf Goes to Clubs, which is when Dorf visits.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:35] And he's Jewish.

[1:10:35] They don't let him in.

[1:10:38] Dorf visits the various sex clubs of Berlin and gets into hilarious mishaps.

[1:10:43] Sure, because he's the perfect hype to have accidental bump-ins.

[1:10:48] But there's also, what, like A Very Dwarf Christmas?

Dan McCoy

[1:10:52] There's As You Dorf It, the Shakespearean dwarf play.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:55] Yeah, there's Dorf 2, Electric Dorfaloo.

[1:10:59] Dorf Takes Manhattan.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:00] Dorf Scared Stupid.

[1:11:03] There's the Red Shoe Dorfries.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:05] Yeah.

[1:11:06] Like, David Duchovny, leave that Dorf alone.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:09] Dorfid Dudorfany.

[1:11:11] Oh, yeah.

[1:11:12] There's actually, speaking of David Duchovny, there's a David Duchovny Dorf story.

[1:11:15] In that, I remember reading an article, an interview where some, I don't know how this came up,

[1:11:19] but someone asked him, what's like the worst thing you ever bought?

[1:11:23] And he says, oh, I bought my wife, at the time he was still married to Tay Leone,

[1:11:27] one of those Dorf videos for a birthday present, because I thought it would be funny,

[1:11:31] and we watched it, and it was terrible, and we didn't laugh.

[1:11:33] And it's like, in what world does David Duchovny, the star of The X-Files,

[1:11:37] think that a proper gift for his wife, who's also a famous actress,

[1:11:43] would be like a Dorf tape?

Dan McCoy

[1:11:46] But I don't know.

[1:11:47] It took me far too long to realize the pun of Dorf and dwarf.

[1:11:54] Well, and also endorphin, because he does a lot of active activity.

[1:11:58] But now that I realize that pun, it becomes all the more offensive.

[1:12:03] It really is just like, I'm making fun of short people.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:06] It's such a weird thing, because I have so much respect otherwise for Tim Conway.

[1:12:12] Yeah.

[1:12:12] This can be so funny.

[1:12:14] But that thing is not funny.

[1:12:15] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:16] I guess everyone has that thing.

[1:12:17] I mean, it's okay for him to tackle a serious role.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:21] You know, that's right.

[1:12:22] Why am I limiting him to comedy?

[1:12:23] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:24] This was the day the clown cried for him.

[1:12:26] Mm-hmm.

[1:12:27] So, talking about Dorf.

[1:12:29] What do we do now, Dan?

[1:12:31] Now is the moment on the podcast where we recommend movies.

[1:12:34] Anyway, I got a movie called Dorf Goes Fishing.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:36] Sure.

[1:12:37] It's called Norm of the Dorf.

[1:12:38] There's a hilarious scene where Dorf is fishing with his wife.

[1:12:42] Okay.

[1:12:42] And she knocks him over the side of the boat with the cooler.

[1:12:46] And he falls in the water.

[1:12:47] And it's like, Dorf, come on.

[1:12:49] Yeah.

[1:12:50] Okay, kick your legs and get...

[1:12:51] Oh.

[1:12:52] Ooh.

[1:12:53] They're just knees.

[1:12:54] Yeah.

[1:12:55] So, are we recommending movies that we actually liked?

[1:12:58] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:58] Okay.

[1:12:59] Unlike Norm of the North.

[1:13:00] So, what are you going to fire us up with, Dan?

[1:13:02] Why am I first?

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:04] I don't know.

[1:13:05] Because you're the boss, the leader of the group.

[1:13:07] Yeah.

[1:13:07] Well, the thing is...

[1:13:07] As Raphael is erroneously credited with in that Ninja Turtles rap.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:11] Yeah.

[1:13:11] I shouldn't have burned two recommendations last time.

[1:13:16] Shouldn't have.

[1:13:17] Because I got nothing this time.

[1:13:19] Should not have done that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:20] Dan looks under a piece of paper hoping that there's a movie there.

[1:13:23] Maybe there's a movie underneath this.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:25] Hold on.

[1:13:26] I'm going to go...

[1:13:26] I'm literally going to go look at the diary that I keep of movies that I watch.

[1:13:30] I used to do that and I haven't been able to.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:32] The diary, current page.

[1:13:34] The guys are coming over and they're my best friends.

[1:13:36] I hope they don't make fun of my mispronouncing of words.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:39] I hope they don't make fun of the fact that I have a diary of movies.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:44] I'm going to go first then.

[1:13:45] I am going to recommend a movie called Shallow Grave.

[1:13:50] It's, I think, the debut film from director Danny Boyle.

[1:13:54] It stars a young Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston, who you may know as one of them,

[1:13:59] Doctor Who.

[1:14:00] And it's about three roommates who get a fourth roommate who's a little weird and then mysteriously dies.

[1:14:11] And as they, after discovering the body, they find that this roommate has a bunch of money.

[1:14:18] And they come up with a plan to keep the money.

[1:14:23] But leave the cannoli.

[1:14:24] And everything kind of escalates as their kind of true characters kind of come to light.

[1:14:31] And it's a great, tense little thriller from a talented director.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:37] I'm going to recommend another tense little thriller from a talented director.

[1:14:41] What's that?

[1:14:42] It's one that I think might have been recommended on the podcast before.

[1:14:45] Maybe by me.

[1:14:45] Maybe by Dan.

[1:14:46] I don't know.

[1:14:47] But I recently watched, for the first time in a long time, because I hadn't seen it in a while,

[1:14:52] Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat.

[1:14:53] Starring Tallulah Bankhead and Hume Cronin and a bunch of, William Bendix, a bunch of other people.

[1:14:59] Canada Lee is in it.

[1:15:00] But anyway, it's a movie that, if anyone doesn't know, it's about a bunch of people during World War II.

[1:15:06] Their ship is torpedoed by a German U-boat.

[1:15:08] And they're trapped in a lifeboat to survive.

[1:15:11] And don't know quite what to do or who they can trust.

[1:15:14] And I'd seen this movie a few times, but hadn't in years.

[1:15:17] And I kind of remembered it as like lighter, kind of a larky Hitchcock.

[1:15:21] And watching it again, I had forgotten what a bleak film it is.

[1:15:24] Like, there's a lot of death in it.

[1:15:26] There's very much a sense of the Nazi threat and how the rest of the world has been taken by surprise by it,

[1:15:34] even just among these characters.

[1:15:36] And it was just like a really tense movie in a way that I didn't remember it being.

[1:15:41] So I was like, Lifeboat, you're a much better movie than I remember.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:44] But what made you watch it again if you thought it was kind of a light lark?

[1:15:48] Were you just like hoping to kick back with a couple of brews and some friends?

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:51] I was like, this is going to be hilarious.

[1:15:54] Let's have a laugh boat with Lifeboat.

[1:15:56] No, this is not an interesting story.

[1:15:58] My wife wanted to watch a Hitchcock that she'd never seen before.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:00] So spice it up a little bit.

[1:16:02] Well, we were playing Silver Surfer and Alicia Masters.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:04] And she's like, I'm Alicia Masters, so I can't see, so describe the movie to me.

[1:16:08] But she wanted to see a Hitchcock that she hadn't seen before.

[1:16:13] And I somehow have two DVD copies of Lifeboat from different releases.

[1:16:16] And you had to use one up.

[1:16:18] Yeah.

[1:16:20] And so we watched Lifeboat.

[1:16:21] It was either that or we were also possibly going to watch.

[1:16:28] Well, I can't remember what the other one was that we were possibly going to watch.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:31] Okay.

[1:16:31] So Dan, edit that out.

[1:16:33] You're right.

[1:16:33] That was a boring story.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:34] It was a very boring story.

[1:16:36] Dan, continue.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:37] It took me a while to go back to find a movie that I liked well enough to recommend.

[1:16:45] And this one isn't like a huge recommendation, but it's a fun movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:49] Dan, you usually recommend movies you watch on planes and kind of don't like.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:53] So I think we'll be okay.

[1:16:54] Yeah, well, the last movie I watched on a plane was The Overnight, which has already been recommended on this podcast by, I forget who, but I looked it up.

[1:17:01] It wasn't me having seen it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:02] You recommend it as the number one movie to watch if you want to see penis while sitting next to another person.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:07] Yeah, if you are on a plane and you want to see a scene where Adam Scott dances around with his micropenis and...

[1:17:15] What?

[1:17:15] Does he have a micropenis?

[1:17:16] I'm sure it's a fucking prosthetic.

[1:17:20] He's got a serious hog.

[1:17:21] That's the point of the movie is that he's got a small penis and what's-his-face, Jason Schwartzman, in the movie has a really big penis.

[1:17:28] Like a garden hose.

[1:17:30] And they're like dancing next to each other.

[1:17:32] Yeah, it's like Gonzo.

[1:17:33] For a long time.

[1:17:34] And I'm sitting on the plane watching this movie and being like...

[1:17:37] Next to Margaret Dumont.

[1:17:38] That's right.

[1:17:39] Oh my, ooh.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:40] And her monocle shattered.

[1:17:44] I can't look away.

[1:17:46] It's like the kid from the Tindrum screaming.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:50] But I'm going to recommend a little movie, and it is a very little movie, called Sleeping with Other People.

[1:17:56] It stars Jason...

[1:17:57] What, do you watch it on your phone or something?

[1:17:58] Jason Sudeikis, Alison Brie.

[1:18:00] It's a flip book.

[1:18:02] Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie are the leads.

[1:18:04] It's also got Adam Scott, Natasha Lyonne, Amanda Peet, Jason Manzoukas.

[1:18:07] So how big is his penis in it?

[1:18:09] We never see it.

[1:18:11] I assume it's huge.

[1:18:12] Just a wild hog.

Stuart Wellington

[1:18:14] Yeah, it's like a Shia Lude.

[1:18:17] But it's...

[1:18:18] It's a maker.

Dan McCoy

[1:18:20] Just spitting out spice.

[1:18:22] It's...

[1:18:23] You know, Sleeping with Other People is basically like romantic comedy plot 4.3, where it's two

[1:18:33] people who have trouble with commitment who slept together once a long time ago and meet up

[1:18:39] again and try and just be friends and eventually become more than that.

[1:18:44] Because it is apparent to everyone that they should be together.

[1:18:47] And...

[1:18:48] A parent?

[1:18:49] Like their parents get involved?

[1:18:50] Mm-hmm.

[1:18:51] That was really worth the...

[1:18:53] Nope.

[1:18:53] Not worth interrupting.

[1:18:54] Continue.

[1:18:55] But as with everything, it's in the execution, whether it's worth watching or not.

[1:19:02] And especially with romantic comedies, I think it's how charming you find the leads and whether

[1:19:07] there are some good jokes along the way.

[1:19:09] And I liked both of those things in this movie.

[1:19:12] And it's the perfect sort of movie that maybe...

[1:19:14] I don't know.

[1:19:15] Maybe you're a little hungover.

[1:19:16] Maybe you're a little tired on a Sunday morning.

[1:19:18] You just want to lie on the couch and watch something.

[1:19:20] Sleeping with Other People is the kind of thing you might want to watch.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:23] Is it like there's No Strings Attached or Friends with Benefits?

Dan McCoy

[1:19:27] It's like...

[1:19:28] Or Drinking Buddies.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:29] One of those that was good.

[1:19:31] Yeah.

[1:19:31] Friends...

[1:19:31] The one with Justin Timberlake.

[1:19:33] JT.

[1:19:33] Yeah, that was the good one.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:35] Uh-huh.

[1:19:35] Or Drinking Buddies, yeah.

[1:19:37] I would put it in the same sort of level as those movies.

[1:19:40] Mm-hmm.

[1:19:42] Yeah, that's it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:43] Ooh-wee.

[1:19:44] We got three recommendations out of us.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:46] Three for three, everybody.

[1:19:47] And three very different types of movies.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:49] Okay, we can finally return to our eternal slumber.

[1:19:53] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:53] Our work on Earth having been finished, we will now ascend to heaven and the crypt.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:58] Until the unseen house cat comes a-digging again and disturbs our tomb.

[1:20:04] Mm-hmm.

[1:20:04] Yep.

[1:20:04] Who spills the blood of three nerds to awaken us.

[1:20:07] Yeah.

[1:20:08] Uh, but until that horrid time, uh, I've been Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:14] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:20:16] And I'll still be Elliot Kalin even when you listen to this.

[1:20:20] Creepy.

[1:20:20] Great.

[1:20:21] Check out other MaxFun shows.

[1:20:22] Thanks.

[1:20:22] Please.

[1:20:23] MaxFun has great shows.

[1:20:24] Check them out.

[1:20:26] Bye.

[1:20:32] Dan, can you put that in archive.com?

[1:20:33] Just three friends making jokes.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:37] Making out.

[1:20:38] Talking, I guess, I mean.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:40] Um, I've seen that video, but we weren't the friends.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:42] They did live together.

[1:20:43] Mm-hmm.

[1:20:45] One's named Joey.

[1:20:46] It was specified in the title.

[1:20:47] That name is Monica.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:49] And the third name, I don't know, Gunther?

[1:20:52] Uh, you've seen that site, We Live Together, about the old people in a home?

[1:20:56] It's not sex.

[1:20:57] They just, they live in a building together.

[1:21:00] It's a site?

[1:21:01] Well, it's a place, it's a closed circuit camera.

[1:21:03] Like a web ring?

[1:21:04] Your elderly relative is doing okay.

[1:21:06] Okay.

[1:21:07] It's like a web ring.

[1:21:08] Mm-hmm.

[1:21:09] Remember those?

[1:21:10] Yeah.

[1:21:11] Oh, boy, do I.

[1:21:11] Web rings?

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:12] Yeah, you scroll to the bottom of the page, and it's like, click on, if you want to see

[1:21:17] other...

[1:21:17] You want to see more Cindy Crawford pictures?

[1:21:18] Click on this.

[1:21:19] Yeah, yeah.

[1:21:20] It was like, you really like reading about Lord of the Rings stuff on the one ring dot net.

[1:21:25] Why don't you go to another site that is Lord of the Rings themed?

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:28] And how about onion rings?

[1:21:29] You guys remember those?

[1:21:30] Mm-hmm.

[1:21:31] Instead of french fries?

[1:21:34] Maximumfun.org.

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Ep.# 208 - Norm of the North

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