Ep. #201 - Vice

Dan McCoy

[0:00] On tonight's episode, we watched a movie called Vice.

[0:05] It is twice.

Elliott Kalan

[0:08] As nice.

[0:09] As lice.

[0:11] It's actually not that much better than lice.

[0:30] As lice.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00] As lice.

[1:01] Okay.

[1:01] Let me get my voice ready.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04] Dear cruel world.

[1:09] How are you so cool?

[1:10] If Hollywood, if Hollywood.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12] That's what the ad said.

[1:13] But what my paper says is, the statue's arm rotates easily and a section of wall slides to the left.

[1:22] Do you, A, enter the secret hallway.

[1:28] B, wait and do nothing.

[1:31] Or C, use item butler's mask.

[1:37] Okay.

[1:37] There you have it.

[1:38] Wow.

Dan McCoy

[1:39] After many weeks of no movement on Radio Zork, apparently we have leapt ahead through a time

[1:44] war.

[1:44] Was that Radio Zork?

Stuart Wellington

[1:46] Yeah, that was Radio Zork.

Elliott Kalan

[1:47] Yeah, so he's in the house at a hallway.

[1:49] Yeah.

[1:49] Or she.

Stuart Wellington

[1:50] I mean, you haven't been following, obviously, on our other podcast that we've been doing that

[1:54] Dan keeps editing out of this podcast.

[1:56] Oh, the Adventure Zork?

[1:57] Yeah.

[2:01] We don't know the rules that well, but we love doing it.

Elliott Kalan

[2:04] Yeah.

[2:05] Now I'm worried that that was some sort of elaborate terrorist code.

[2:10] Did it turn out Stuart was in a sleeper cell or something?

Dan McCoy

[2:13] He does look pretty sleepy.

[2:15] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[2:16] And his body's made of cells.

[2:19] Mm-hmm.

[2:19] Yep.

[2:19] Take them away, boys.

[2:21] Mm-hmm.

[2:21] Uh-huh.

Stuart Wellington

[2:22] Do you think sleeper cells use a lot of sleeping bags?

[2:28] Uh.

Elliott Kalan

[2:30] You know how they say there's no dumb questions to it?

Stuart Wellington

[2:34] You're familiar with that?

Elliott Kalan

[2:36] You know how people say there's only one stupid question where you asked it.

Stuart Wellington

[2:41] You found it.

[2:42] Nobody's ever said that to me.

[2:44] You won the prize.

[2:45] I won the prize.

[2:45] Okay, so what do I get?

[2:47] Uh.

[2:47] A subscription to Radio Zork.

[2:49] Yeah, that's right.

[2:51] Okay, guys.

[2:52] So, as Dan mentioned, that was a section from tonight's game of Radio Zork.

[2:58] Write in with your answers to the Flophouse at, I don't know, email.com?

Elliott Kalan

[3:04] Write in to radiozork at flophouse.edu slash gov.

Dan McCoy

[3:10] Okay.

[3:11] Times 11.

[3:12] Sponsored, as always, by Sweet Amazing Penises.

[3:15] They're the sweetest and the most amazing penises on the market today.

[3:19] Oh, boy.

[3:20] Let me get my hands on one of those sweet, amazing penises.

Stuart Wellington

[3:23] Penises the way grandma used to make.

[3:26] So, yeah.

[3:27] I'm sorry for interrupting the show, guys, but it is episode 201.

[3:31] Just like, I don't know, I can't come up with a joke.

[3:34] 201 is Space Odyssey.

[3:35] Area code I grew up with.

[3:37] That's right.

Dan McCoy

[3:37] Just like 201 is Space Odyssey.

[3:40] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[3:41] It's an astronaut movie set in the year 201.

[3:44] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[3:44] Because technically, we're all in space all the time, guys.

Stuart Wellington

[3:49] Wow.

[3:50] Wow.

[3:50] That's the level of depth that one would expect from a movie like Vice.

[3:55] The movie we watched tonight.

[3:56] Yeah, we watched.

Elliott Kalan

[3:57] Hey, folks, this is a podcast.

[3:58] Dan, what do we do on this podcast?

[3:59] We watch.

[3:59] Other than cryptic instructions.

[4:01] Yeah.

[4:02] Boy.

Dan McCoy

[4:02] If someone had not, if this is the first episode of this show for some people, Radio Zork will

[4:11] have baffled them entirely.

[4:14] And they will have turned off, they will have dragged this podcast to the delete can.

[4:19] Yeah, on their ear things.

[4:22] On their ear things.

[4:23] They will drag it over to, there's the trash can and there's the trash with extreme prejudice

[4:27] can.

[4:28] They've put it in that one.

Elliott Kalan

[4:30] There's the trash can icon and then there's the hell icon that you drag programs you're

[4:34] mad at, too.

Stuart Wellington

[4:34] Yeah, and it sends an email to us, the creators of that program.

[4:38] That says, tsk, tsk.

[4:40] You guys are terrible.

[4:40] I will not be continuing my listening of your program.

[4:43] You should stop doing your podcast.

[4:44] I'm like, I guess that makes sense.

[4:46] So, Dan, what do we do on this podcast?

Dan McCoy

[4:48] We watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[4:50] And tonight we watched a movie that I'm pretty sure that.

[4:54] It was a movie, I think.

[4:55] Maybe.

[4:55] 1%.

[4:56] Maybe.

[4:57] Perhaps 1% of our listenership has even heard of.

[5:00] I know.

[5:00] I hadn't before we started watching it.

Elliott Kalan

[5:02] It was called Vice.

[5:03] Vice.

[5:04] Vice.

[5:05] Not Miami Vice, although it looked like it was Miami.

[5:07] Not the Vice Magazine?

[5:10] No.

[5:10] Not Vice Land, the TV channel that stole the name of our podcast.

[5:13] Yeah.

[5:15] Hot to take.

[5:17] We're coming for you, Vice Land, apparently.

[5:19] Like, I'm worried they're going to find out.

[5:20] They clearly don't know we exist.

[5:22] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[5:22] What are they going to do?

[5:23] Just make another show with our name?

Dan McCoy

[5:26] Yeah.

[5:26] They're going to.

[5:27] Flophouse is going to get canceled.

[5:29] And then they're going to just put up a show that's called Three Guys Watching a Bad Movie

[5:32] and then Talking About It.

[5:33] But it's not actually going to be about that.

[5:35] It's going to be about, like, Syria or something.

Stuart Wellington

[5:37] Or they'll do a show of three guys, three idiots watching a movie and talking about it.

[5:41] And they'll call it, like, the Shitty Loser House.

Elliott Kalan

[5:43] And they'll do impressions of us that are really not flattering at all.

[5:47] I'm Elliot.

[5:48] I'm the nerdy one.

Stuart Wellington

[5:49] Oh, it's me, Stuart.

[5:50] Oh.

[5:51] No, you're supposed to do Dan and then he does me.

Elliott Kalan

[5:53] Dan is just hanging from the ceiling on his noose because he killed himself.

[5:56] Aw.

[5:57] Because our impressions were so good.

[6:00] Anyway, Vice stars big names like Bruce Willis and Thomas Jane.

[6:05] Tom S. Jane.

[6:06] And, yeah, Tom.

[6:08] Tommy Jane.

Stuart Wellington

[6:08] Tommy Jane.

[6:09] He's a Flophouse veteran at this point.

[6:11] Yeah, he's been in at least one other one.

[6:13] He was in Drive Hard?

[6:15] Yeah.

[6:15] He was in I, Frankenstein, right?

[6:18] No.

[6:18] No, that's the other guy.

[6:20] That's Aaron Eckhart.

[6:21] Aaron Eckhart.

[6:21] Get out of here, right?

[6:22] Aaron Eckhart's monster.

Dan McCoy

[6:23] Yeah.

[6:24] They should do a movie where they are brothers.

[6:28] They're boring brothers.

Elliott Kalan

[6:29] Yeah, let's call it the boring brothers movie.

Stuart Wellington

[6:32] Actually, it's a pretty good name.

[6:33] I mean, they could easily be in a twin brothers separated at birth and they both are cops.

[6:39] One's a straight edge cop.

[6:41] That'd be Aaron Eckhart.

[6:41] Aaron Eckhart, of course.

[6:42] And then we'd have our loosey-goosey, plays-by-his-own-rules cop.

[6:46] That would be Thomas Jane.

[6:47] Played by Danny DeVito.

[6:48] Thomas Jane.

[6:48] By Danny DeVito.

[6:50] And Thomas Jane would be his, I guess, boyfriend because we're trying to be pretty progressive.

Elliott Kalan

[6:57] Because it's about time that people of different sexual orientations were represented in classic

[7:02] film genres.

[7:03] Yep.

Dan McCoy

[7:05] Twin brothers, both cops.

[7:06] Yeah, classic film genres.

[7:08] Like, boring twins.

Elliott Kalan

[7:11] So, and also really starring in the movie is Amber Childers.

[7:17] That's Amber with a Y.

[7:18] Amber spelled with a Y.

[7:20] Not like the Chronicles of Amber.

[7:22] What are they just called?

[7:23] The Amber Chronicles?

[7:24] What?

[7:24] You know that Robert Silverberg series?

[7:25] Oh, yeah.

[7:26] Yeah.

[7:26] The, uh, I mentioned a fantasy series.

[7:29] I assumed Stuart would be all over that.

Dan McCoy

[7:31] It's also not spelled like the Chronicles of Narnia because those are two different words.

Elliott Kalan

[7:35] Who did I say wrote that?

[7:37] Probably Roger Zelazny.

[7:38] I think it was Zelazny, yeah.

[7:40] I think we're both wrong.

[7:41] In my head I get Silverberg and Zelazny mixed up.

[7:43] I think it's Zelazny.

[7:45] Anyway.

[7:45] Who doesn't?

[7:46] Am I right?

[7:48] Come on.

Stuart Wellington

[7:48] Mom, write in with the correct answer.

Elliott Kalan

[7:54] So, it really starts Amber Childers.

[7:56] And here's, I'll tell you what this movie is.

[7:58] Childers of the corn.

[7:59] It is, this movie is Westworld for a new generation.

[8:04] Hey, in the olden days, people might have been excited by fantasies of being a cowboy and going to the Old West and being in a gunfight.

[8:11] But nowadays, we know what the real fantasies are.

[8:14] Going somewhere where you can rape and murder women with impunity.

[8:17] Welcome to Vice.

[8:18] A place with no rules.

Stuart Wellington

[8:21] Unless you're a robot.

[8:23] Yeah.

[8:23] There's no wrong, just right.

[8:25] Yep.

[8:26] It's kind of like an Outback.

[8:28] I hope.

[8:30] The food is delicious.

Elliott Kalan

[8:32] The food is delicious.

Dan McCoy

[8:34] They have this onion.

[8:35] You can do fry that you can then rape and murder.

Elliott Kalan

[8:38] So, Bruce Willis is the guy who runs, he's the Ed Harrison Truman show.

[8:44] Named Jillian Michaels.

[8:46] Named Jillian Michaels.

[8:47] But everyone pronounced it.

[8:48] Important difference.

[8:49] Everyone pronounced it as if it was Jillian Michaels.

Dan McCoy

[8:51] The first five times someone said their name, we were all like, Jillian Michaels?

Elliott Kalan

[8:54] We're like, Jillian is a weird first name for a man, but okay, but that's a real woman's name already.

[9:00] Where's this body-busting workout that I've heard so much about?

[9:03] Why is he not throwing tables full of perfectly good food over to make a point?

Dan McCoy

[9:09] Screenwriter of Vice was really mad.

[9:11] He tried to do the Jillian Michaels workout and it didn't work for him.

[9:15] He's like, I'm going to get back at her.

Stuart Wellington

[9:17] I'm going to make ruggedly handsome Bruce Willis carry her namesake into the future.

Elliott Kalan

[9:24] This is going to be the biggest takedown of a fitness person since my last movie, The Crimes of Bailey Blanks.

[9:31] Ty Bo.

[9:33] So, this movie takes place in the future, right?

[9:36] It does.

[9:37] It takes place an uncertain amount of time in the future.

Stuart Wellington

[9:39] In an uncertain location that's probably Tampa.

[9:42] It looks like Tampa.

Elliott Kalan

[9:43] It looks like Florida, specifically Tampa.

[9:46] And we know that it's far enough in the future that, one, there is cyborg technology that allows you to create killable, rapable women robots.

[9:54] Yeah.

[9:54] And that there's a theme park of that.

Dan McCoy

[9:56] There's probably some dude robots too, right?

Elliott Kalan

[9:58] I mean, there are, but they aren't really.

[10:02] We don't give a lot of screen time.

[10:03] They're just extras.

[10:03] They're just in the background.

Dan McCoy

[10:04] Yeah, it's like 90% men come into Vice.

[10:07] You got to believe.

Stuart Wellington

[10:09] Right?

[10:09] Yeah, but once again, progressive.

[10:11] Like, do what you want to do, man.

[10:13] If you want to rape and kill a dude, you can do that there too.

[10:15] Yeah, thanks.

Elliott Kalan

[10:16] I mean, there's probably a lot of guys who want.

[10:17] Thanks for the permission.

[10:19] There's probably a lot.

[10:20] I mean, that's not legally binding permission.

Dan McCoy

[10:22] Wait, it's not the purge tonight?

Elliott Kalan

[10:23] No, it's never the purge.

[10:25] Aw.

Dan McCoy

[10:28] Hell, yeah.

[10:28] I keep asking you when the purge is coming.

[10:30] That's what I keep saying.

Elliott Kalan

[10:31] You sound so sad.

[10:33] You keep, like Schroeder, you're wondering how many shopping days there are till the purge.

[10:38] But like Stewart said during the purge episode, this is another one of those movies where they posit a fantasy thing that doesn't exist and then show you why it's bad.

[10:48] Yeah, they present like a negative utopia, and then the whole time you're like, why do we do these hunger games?

[10:54] Oh, I wish they make a good point.

[10:56] We shouldn't have a theme park where people rape and kill robots.

[10:59] Yeah.

[11:01] Who, Obama?

Dan McCoy

[11:02] So like, so.

[11:04] And like, there's always, I mean, this one actually makes a little more sense than other ones.

[11:10] This one what?

[11:11] Movie?

[11:12] What do you, what is, what do you represent by the word one here?

[11:16] This, this.

[11:18] Vision of the future.

[11:18] Social structure where it's like, the idea is like, okay, maybe if they've got a place where they can get out all of their bad, like their bad instincts.

[11:28] Let's just call it their ya-ya's.

[11:29] Yeah, they can get their ya-ya's out.

[11:32] Maybe they won't take it outside of the, of that, you know, zone.

[11:36] Yeah, you create a, it's something that is.

[11:38] Whereas when, Stuart and I were talking about the Hunger Games yesterday, and we're talking about how like, there's no direct line you can draw from like, the fact that these kids have to kill each other to social unrest doesn't happen.

Elliott Kalan

[11:51] Well, it's a way of the government showing how powerless the people of the different districts.

[11:55] Yeah, I know, but.

[11:56] At will, their children can just be taken from them.

Dan McCoy

[11:58] It, it just doesn't have like the same like direct, like, I don't know, like, I'm just like, really?

Stuart Wellington

[12:04] Is that how that thing's gonna shake down?

[12:07] So, Vice is better than Hunger Games, says Dan McCoy.

[12:09] Better than Hunger Games.

Elliott Kalan

[12:11] Don't go see Hunger Games, go see Vice, says Dan McCoy.

[12:14] It's the best movie ever made.

[12:17] Sergei Eisenstein, eat your heart out.

[12:19] Put that on the VHS box, dude.

Stuart Wellington

[12:21] The VHS box.

[12:23] Put that on the Sega CD box.

Elliott Kalan

[12:25] Could you watch movies on Sega CD?

Stuart Wellington

[12:28] I mean, it plays CD's.

[12:29] Did we watch Night Trap?

[12:30] Night Trap is sort of a movie.

[12:32] Did we watch Sewer Shark tonight?

Dan McCoy

[12:35] It's got those, you know, it's all cut scenes, so it's basically a movie.

[12:40] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[12:40] Yep.

Dan McCoy

[12:41] It's about as much of a movie as Mr. Payback is.

Elliott Kalan

[12:44] Mr. Payback was not a movie either.

[12:46] It was an experiment in storytelling.

[12:48] They're both two short-of-adventure movies.

[12:51] Mr. Payback was the dark, gritty Inspector Gadget that our generation needed.

[12:55] So, are you allergic to your own cat, Dan?

[12:58] I have been sick for a long time.

Stuart Wellington

[12:59] He's been like dying for the last four episodes, Elliot.

[13:02] Haven't you been paying attention?

[13:03] Not really.

Dan McCoy

[13:04] This sickness just will not leave my body.

[13:05] That's not so good.

[13:06] I need an exorcist sickness.

[13:09] You mean like a doctor?

[13:10] Yeah.

[13:10] I need one of those exorcists for viruses.

[13:13] Or we should get Eric Bana in here.

Stuart Wellington

[13:15] Like he has carried her from Deliverous from Evil.

[13:17] Or Chopper.

[13:18] Chopper, yep.

Elliott Kalan

[13:19] Anyway, so, but you make a good point, Dan.

[13:23] Often in society, we show that certain behaviors are not acceptable by creating safe zones in which they are acceptable and then separate distancing.

[13:32] The same way that say like-

[13:33] It's called Las Vegas.

[13:34] Yeah, exactly.

[13:35] Well, like Las Vegas or-

[13:37] Senior frogs.

[13:39] Yeah.

[13:40] On New Year-

[13:41] Halloween.

[13:41] Well, on Halloween and New Year's Eve, people indulge in behaviors that they do not-

[13:44] Silver Shamrock, et cetera.

[13:46] The rest of the year.

[13:46] Or like Mardi Gras.

[13:48] Yeah.

[13:48] By allowing that kind of behavior at Mardi Gras, what we're saying is, this is okay today because it's a special occasion.

[13:54] It is not okay on other days.

[13:55] So you could say the Vice Park is saying like, by saying it's okay within the limits of this convention center slash airport waiting lobby, which seemed to be where the movie took place, we are saying it's not okay outside.

[14:07] But we're at some point in the future where whatever this Tampa-like city is that's around Vice, their main industry seems to be barrel fires and shadowy fog over abandoned buildings.

Dan McCoy

[14:20] Bars beneath elevated trains.

[14:22] Yeah.

[14:22] And like-

Stuart Wellington

[14:23] Like Gary Glenn Ross.

[14:25] Shadowy silhouettes moving in like a steamy dark alleyway, which by the way, I think Dan's apartment's probably conducive to that because your radiator is making a ton of noise right now.

[14:36] Sorry, if you're picking up any background noise.

Elliott Kalan

[14:39] Unless that's the cyanide gas that the Japanese occupiers from the Man of the High Castle are sending in to kill us to get information out of our brother.

Stuart Wellington

[14:46] Man of the High Castle, the book or the TV show?

[14:49] The TV show.

[14:50] Oh.

[14:50] The book is much better.

[14:52] Oh, okay.

[14:52] Yeah.

[14:54] So anyway.

[14:54] So speaking of books, this is a lot like a William Gibson book, right guys?

[14:58] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[14:58] It's not even like a Dean Kuntz book.

[15:00] You're jacking your brain into the cyber-

[15:03] Into the Weber space.

[15:05] Yep.

[15:05] Which is where Stephen Weber is.

[15:06] Have we got-

[15:07] Whoa!

Elliott Kalan

[15:08] That's what the Weber name is.

[15:09] Have you ever seen The Long Weber Man?

Dan McCoy

[15:14] You get the chance to feel what it's really like to shoot an episode of Wings.

Elliott Kalan

[15:18] This is the fantasy.

[15:19] I mean, that's the first Oculus program I'm putting in is Wings 2.0.

Dan McCoy

[15:23] Yep.

[15:24] You get to go up to Thomas Hayden Church and what's-his-face.

[15:28] Who-

[15:29] Yep.

[15:29] What's-his-face.

[15:30] God damn it.

[15:31] Tim Daly?

[15:31] Tim Daly.

[15:33] Tony Shalhoub.

[15:34] Tony Shalhoub.

[15:35] And be like, you guys are going to be big stars in the future.

[15:37] Well, not you as much, Thomas Hayden Church.

Elliott Kalan

[15:39] You're going to be in movies.

Dan McCoy

[15:40] He was-

[15:41] Wasn't he like nominated for an Oscar for like-

[15:43] For Sideways?

[15:44] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[15:45] A lot of people have been nominated for Oscars.

[15:47] Yeah.

[15:50] Who was that character?

Elliott Kalan

[15:51] That was the old prospect.

[15:54] That was the old man.

[15:55] I felt like it was-

[15:55] Also an Oscar historian.

Dan McCoy

[15:57] More of a, like, a New Englander.

[16:00] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[16:01] No one's been nominated for an Oscar around here for about 40 years.

[16:04] Yeah.

[16:04] That was Turner Classic Movies, Clanton Osborne.

[16:08] Next film.

Stuart Wellington

[16:10] Thomas Hayden Church was nominated for playing that Sandman.

Elliott Kalan

[16:14] No.

[16:16] Certainly wasn't.

[16:19] Look, I'm not one of the same things about Thomas Hayden Church.

[16:21] Of all the actors who later married actresses from softcore porn films.

[16:26] He's my favorite.

[16:27] Who did he marry?

[16:28] An actress named Mia Zatali.

[16:31] I think is her name.

Stuart Wellington

[16:32] I don't know who that is.

[16:33] And Gene Simmons never technically married Shannon Tweed, right?

[16:36] They're just like-

[16:36] I don't know if they were ever married.

[16:37] They're in this like weird, weird thing.

Elliott Kalan

[16:39] I mean, it's not a weird thing.

[16:41] It's common law.

Stuart Wellington

[16:42] Yeah, but I don't know.

[16:44] It feels like-

Elliott Kalan

[16:45] Look, they saw what happened to Helen Hunt and Hank Azaria.

[16:47] You get married and your relationship gets-

[16:48] I shouldn't judge Gene Simmons.

[16:52] I mean, Gene Simmons knows that if he marries her, he's suddenly going to be in a web of deceit and desire.

[16:57] That's true.

[16:58] Because of her successful practice as a sex therapist who watches people have sex through a two-way mirror.

Stuart Wellington

[17:03] Is that the one where she's married to George Hamilton?

Elliott Kalan

[17:05] They're all the one where she's a sex therapist married to George Hamilton.

[17:09] It's called Indecent Illusions of the Night Eyes.

Stuart Wellington

[17:12] Instincts 4.

[17:13] Of course she's going to sleep around.

[17:15] He spends all his time in that tanning bed.

Dan McCoy

[17:19] George, come to bed.

[17:20] I am in bed.

[17:21] That's not what I meant, George.

[17:24] You knew.

[17:24] Be more specific next time.

[17:26] Pulls the lid down.

Elliott Kalan

[17:29] So this movie, Vice, it's set in not-

[17:33] It's like Westworld.

[17:33] It's the future.

[17:34] There's a theme park where you can act out your fantasies,

[17:36] but only your gross fantasies of attacking women and having sex with them.

[17:40] Usually it seems in the scenes we see against their wishes, which is gross.

Stuart Wellington

[17:44] Yeah.

[17:45] It seems to be a haven for dudes in business suits with kind of greasy shoulder-length hair.

[17:50] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[17:51] Thomas Jane is a police officer who doesn't like this place.

Stuart Wellington

[17:53] Also has greasy shoulder-length hair.

Elliott Kalan

[17:55] He has very greasy, very long hair, and he mumbles the shit out of his lines.

Stuart Wellington

[17:59] But if you want to see Thomas Jane try and mumble his lines through a match that he has stuck in his craw the whole time-

Dan McCoy

[18:08] Yeah.

[18:09] Old craw.

[18:10] His performance here is not as fun as it was in Drive Hard, but it is a cousin to that performance

[18:16] in that it's very twitchy and muttery and mumbly, and he has long, stringy hair.

Elliott Kalan

[18:22] Now, don't get me wrong.

[18:23] I like a good mumble performance.

[18:25] Mumblecore.

[18:25] Yeah.

[18:26] It's a mumblecore film.

[18:27] This could be the first mumblecore sci-fi action film.

[18:30] I mean, except computer chess.

[18:33] Yeah, you're probably right.

[18:34] But I mean, I like-

[18:35] That's a real action film.

[18:36] There's chess action.

[18:38] One of the characters is propositioned by some swingers.

[18:41] I mean, that's action.

[18:42] All right.

[18:43] I mean, is it action if you're only propositioned?

[18:46] I mean, he skips out on the actual action.

[18:48] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[18:49] But I mean, I like a Tom Hardy mumble performance.

[18:52] Yeah, yeah.

[18:52] I mean, Tom Hardy usually has a reason for his mumbling.

[18:55] And I feel like they-

[18:56] They like him better.

Elliott Kalan

[18:59] So, I'm gonna try to do this plot as quickly as possible, because it's really dumb.

[19:02] There's barely any of it.

[19:03] Thomas Jane is a cop.

[19:04] He doesn't like Vice.

[19:05] He goes in to catch an escaped rapist of a real person, and gets him and arrests him,

[19:11] but that gets him into trouble with his boss.

[19:12] And the guy's like, you can't arrest me.

Stuart Wellington

[19:13] I can do whatever I want here, pig.

Elliott Kalan

[19:16] Yeah.

[19:16] And he goes, when you rape and kill someone in my world, I come after you.

[19:21] And it's like, well, your world is just the world's.

[19:23] Yeah.

[19:24] It turns out-

[19:25] World Prime.

[19:26] These people are-

Stuart Wellington

[19:27] Did we mention that the movie opens with the silliest bank robbery ever?

[19:30] The opening scene of this movie, I was like, this is gonna be a fun movie.

[19:34] And then nothing lived up to it.

[19:35] The camera does not stop spinning around.

[19:37] These two-

[19:38] That dude jumps up on a bank counter and just kicks somebody in the face.

Elliott Kalan

[19:42] Kicks a woman in the face for no reason.

[19:44] And the whole thing is, I mean, this movie is shot with way too much camera movement to

[19:48] begin with.

[19:48] The camera's always swimming around.

[19:50] And the only thing that made me enjoy it was just thinking about when people are trying

[19:54] to act.

[19:55] Somebody with a Steadicam strapped to their chest is kind of like hovering around them

[19:58] and like dancing around.

[20:00] And it must be like when you're on the subway trying to read a book and you hear, showtime,

[20:04] showtime.

[20:04] And two kids start swinging around and kicking you almost in the face.

[20:08] Yeah.

[20:08] Like that.

[20:09] But it's a guy with a camera just kind of touching you.

Stuart Wellington

[20:11] And then Elliot nervously pulls a crumpled dollar out of his pocket so they don't bully him.

Elliott Kalan

[20:15] Never.

[20:16] I have never given money to those guys.

[20:18] I will not move from where I'm standing and I don't give them money.

[20:21] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[20:22] Because you're not a patron of the art.

Elliott Kalan

[20:24] They're trying to use their talents to get out of poverty.

[20:28] Forget it.

[20:29] Not interested.

Stuart Wellington

[20:30] They're not selling candy for no basketball team.

[20:33] It's to stay out of trouble.

[20:35] Just put money in their pocket.

[20:36] That sounds like a threat.

Elliott Kalan

[20:39] This is all very New York specific at this point.

[20:42] But look, I mean.

[20:43] Dan will edit all the New York stuff out.

[20:45] Yeah, yeah.

[20:45] Edit that stuff out that I said about Thomas Hayden Church's marriage joke.

[20:49] But leave it when I ask you to edit it out.

[20:51] Some people wonder what I'm talking about.

[20:52] All right.

[20:53] Now, anyway.

[20:54] He gets in trouble with his boss.

[20:56] At Vice, there's a bunch.

[20:58] It turns out they're all cyborgs that are human organs and human flesh and blood to make them more realistic for the killing.

[21:05] But they have computer brains.

[21:06] And every night when the robots get killed, their memories are erased.

[21:11] Thanks to a robo bracelet.

[21:12] Yes.

[21:13] And that helps them track them wherever they're going.

[21:14] But Amber Childers, who is programmed to be a bartender who is leaving her job as a bartender that night.

Stuart Wellington

[21:21] Yeah, who looks like Pris from Blade Runner got a job as a bartender.

Dan McCoy

[21:24] Amber Childers, by the way, sounds like a third level Marvel character.

[21:30] Like the best friend of one of the superheroes.

Elliott Kalan

[21:32] She's one of these characters who would be the best friend of a superhero who then becomes a detective.

[21:37] Yeah.

[21:37] And now, 30 years after her introduction, or 40 years, she has her own comic and she is Spider-Man or Iron Man or some shit.

[21:45] Because every character in the Marvel Universe has to eventually become an Avenger, a mutant, or an Iron Man.

Stuart Wellington

[21:53] Why are you guys staring at me?

[21:55] I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[21:55] You look like you were babbled by something.

[21:56] I was just going to say that Amber Childers, if you add an extra L, would be the name of like a washed up has-been scream queen in the screenplay I'm writing.

Elliott Kalan

[22:04] Okay.

[22:05] So that's the news.

[22:06] She was writing a screenplay.

[22:07] Amber Childress.

[22:09] Yeah.

[22:09] Chill-dress.

[22:11] No, then she's halfway to being an Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze pun.

[22:15] My favorite actress is Amber Childress.

[22:18] Mm-hmm.

[22:19] She's not-

[22:20] I can go back in time and just add that to the movie.

[22:22] Add that in.

[22:23] And everyone will be like, that actress doesn't have a career yet.

[22:26] I don't understand.

[22:27] She's just like a teenager now.

[22:28] Yep.

[22:28] And they're all frozen in place while they puzzle out that pun he made.

[22:32] Unfortunately, Amber Childress' robot waitress has a panic attack when for some reason she remembers the murder she was the victim of the night before.

[22:41] She gets brought back to have her memory double erased.

[22:44] She breaks loose and she gets out-

Dan McCoy

[22:46] But in the course of the double erase memory, they're like, we have to flood you with all the memories that you had before and erase them one by one.

Stuart Wellington

[22:54] The one computer tech who's kind of a sadist-

[22:57] He's very much a sadist.

[22:58] Instead of having an additional security guy who they're like, all the other security guys are down the hall watching dudes dance with naked robot ladies.

[23:07] So he's all by himself.

[23:09] So she wakes up and kicks him twice into-

[23:12] Into a spark wall.

[23:13] Into a spark wall and he dies.

[23:15] Yeah.

[23:15] A lot of the walls in this convention center turned into a movie set are covered with just occasional fluorescent bulbs.

[23:22] Like it's like the walls of a dance party or like the max in Saved by the Bell.

Elliott Kalan

[23:29] The whole thing is lit like the hallway between the main area of a club and the bathrooms.

[23:35] Like the whole movie is lit with just exposed neon bulbs and like flashing lights.

Dan McCoy

[23:40] Or like a tunnel that you have to go through on the moving- the people mover in an airport.

Stuart Wellington

[23:45] Yeah.

[23:45] It's like if you've ever been at like in the stair ramps at a airport or a convention center and you're like, this would be a badass place for Blade to kill some vampires.

[23:56] Welcome to a place.

[23:57] But this director had the same thought.

Dan McCoy

[23:59] Well, that was like, wasn't it like Alphaville, the Godard film where it's like, I'm just going to use a bunch of like modern looking buildings to indicate the future.

[24:07] Yeah.

[24:07] And this is like the really cheap bad version of that.

[24:10] Like, was it like, I'm going to-

Stuart Wellington

[24:12] That was in Godard's Blade Trinity.

Elliott Kalan

[24:18] In Godard's Alphabets.

[24:23] So, she escapes, but not after someone fires a ton of grenades at her out of a grenade gun.

[24:29] Oh, yeah.

[24:29] This is one hot dog with a grenade launcher.

[24:31] The security guards are constantly firing their guns at everything.

[24:36] She escapes.

[24:36] She gets out into the real world.

[24:39] Probably because a wall got blown open by a grenade.

[24:42] It stops being Westworld and it starts being parts the cloness horror slash the island with Scarlett Johansson.

[24:48] And she's out and about.

[24:50] She's attacked by a guy.

[24:51] She's threatened.

[24:51] She's out and about.

[24:52] She's painting the town red.

[24:53] She goes on a big shopping spree.

[24:55] The police want to investigate why there was a bunch of shooting going on at Vice, but they can't because they don't have jurisdiction and the security camera was erased.

[25:04] Whatever.

[25:05] It doesn't matter.

[25:06] Thomas Jane's on the case.

[25:08] Meanwhile, she is-

Stuart Wellington

[25:09] And you realize that his police chief is super corrupt.

[25:12] You can tell because he's got weirdly long hair that's slicked back all gross.

[25:18] Yeah, he has James K. Polk hair.

[25:19] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[25:20] He looks like the unfrozen caveman lawyer who became the police commissioner or the DA or something.

[25:25] And here's something I want to mention.

[25:27] If anyone watches Vice in any of the police station scenes and also most of the other scenes, watch the extras because the extras are hilarious.

[25:37] Everyone in the back of every scene or sometimes in the foreground is having a very gestural conversation.

[25:42] It's like they told all the extras, always be talking and be talking as big as possible.

[25:47] These are supposed to look like real conversations.

[25:50] Well, you could walk down that hallway or you could jump slash run.

[25:55] Check your watch.

[25:56] Always check your watch.

[25:57] Always be gesturing the things.

[25:58] The extras are great.

Dan McCoy

[25:59] Talk as if you're an Italian stereotype explaining your pizza sauce.

Stuart Wellington

[26:05] No, don't talk with the bottom of your head.

[26:07] Talk with the top of your head.

Elliott Kalan

[26:08] Talk with your whole body.

[26:10] Body talk.

[26:10] So she's escaped.

[26:16] The vice has sent its security guards after her and there's a series of shoot-em-ups.

Stuart Wellington

[26:21] There's a great scene where she is accosted by a creep in the real world with a knife.

[26:27] That creep, and then they're surrounded by dudes with machine guns.

[26:30] That creep looks at his knife and he's like, I got this one.

[26:33] And he charges them only to be shot down immediately.

[26:36] Many times.

[26:38] He's like, they don't know these dumpster-filled streets like I know them.

[26:42] These tin cans filled with flame.

Elliott Kalan

[26:45] If paper beats rock, I bet knife beats guns.

[26:48] When he looked at them, they have two guys with guns.

[26:51] That cancels each other out.

[26:52] My knife will win.

[26:53] They'll probably just shoot each other.

[26:55] There's a great scene right after that where the people who are tracking her for vice,

[26:59] one of them is a, he's a robot too, it's revealed.

[27:02] But he's like, Bruce Willis is right-hand man.

[27:04] And he decides to quote, I know why the caged bird sings to her.

[27:08] And, uh.

Stuart Wellington

[27:09] That's to trigger some kind of memory in her head, right?

[27:12] I think it's just pretentious.

[27:13] Is it like in the 100 Bullets comic where you just say Croatoa and they flip out and become

Dan McCoy

[27:17] super assassins?

[27:18] It got really weird when you just started doing Casey at the bat.

[27:23] I didn't understand.

Elliott Kalan

[27:24] And then all these Calvin Trillin poems.

[27:27] And it's like, they're not funny necessarily.

[27:29] They're just kind of like clever, you know?

[27:31] And so she's on the run.

[27:33] She makes her way to a church that she saw in a dream where a man who.

Stuart Wellington

[27:38] Yeah, she sketched it for us earlier in a scene that was very clearly like.

[27:42] She sketched it terribly.

[27:43] Yeah.

[27:44] Like a normal movie would have made it look like she was sketching.

[27:48] And then they had an artist actually draw the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[27:50] Just hired Guy Davis to draw that thing in an insert.

Stuart Wellington

[27:55] I mean, there is a million out of work cartoonists or underpaid cartoonists who would be happy

[27:59] to sketch a shitty church for someone.

[28:02] I mean, they're all underpaid.

[28:02] I mean, I.

Dan McCoy

[28:03] Get an overpaid cartoonist.

[28:04] Get Jim Davis to do it.

[28:05] I guess it was realistic in that, like, you know, most people can't draw.

[28:09] And it was like, okay, well, this is a lady.

[28:11] She can't draw.

[28:12] And certainly why would they program this robot to be a modern day Rembrandt?

[28:16] She'll draw this.

[28:18] She'll draw this church as if it's just a box that's falling apart.

Elliott Kalan

[28:23] I mean, now, to be fair, the church on the outside does look like a box.

[28:25] And for some reason, it has a sphinx outside of it, which I don't know what church has a sphinx

[28:30] outside except an ancient Egyptian temple.

Stuart Wellington

[28:32] I mean, it's the future.

[28:33] It can look like anything, dude.

[28:34] You're right.

[28:35] Open your mind.

[28:35] That's why you thought there was a stargate inside the church.

Elliott Kalan

[28:38] I assume there was a stargate because I saw a Gwawood sculpture out front.

[28:42] Now, here's the thing.

[28:43] Maybe there's a prologue they cut, in which case, great, I hate prologues to movies, where

[28:47] it's explained that this was a society where Christianity fell out of favor and Ra and Osiris

[28:52] and the gods and Isis are now worshipped.

[28:56] And that's what led to the downfall of America, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[28:58] Yep.

[28:59] And you could go to Vice and live out your fantasy of throwing dead bodies to feed alligators

[29:06] for Sobek.

[29:07] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[29:07] Or finally getting your heart weighed against a feather by Anubis.

[29:11] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[29:11] I think we've covered all the Egyptian mythology references we previously made on this podcast.

Elliott Kalan

[29:17] Yeah.

[29:18] What about this one?

[29:19] Okay.

[29:19] My real fantasy is I've always wanted to be a dung beetle that pushes the sun across the

[29:23] sky.

[29:24] Welcome to Egypt world.

[29:26] So she goes in and she finds that this is now the hideout slash sanctuary of the scientist

[29:31] who invented the robots and who, it turns out, patterned her on his dead wife who died of

[29:37] cancer.

[29:37] That's creepy.

[29:38] He seems pretty upset that she's been repurposed as a sex and murder droid.

[29:42] But to be fair, why did you invent this?

[29:45] And then I guess sell the patents to sex and murder world?

[29:48] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[29:48] This was a part of the movie I wasn't paying that much attention.

[29:51] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[29:51] This is literally where we all started just.

Elliott Kalan

[29:54] If you had a graph labeled flopper's attention, it's around this point that the line would

[30:00] go from just dipping to a precipitous drop.

Dan McCoy

[30:03] Yeah.

[30:04] It would go below zero to negative 24.

Elliott Kalan

[30:07] We are actively talking about things other than the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[30:09] Yeah.

[30:10] Where I'm like, Hulk Hogan did what?

Elliott Kalan

[30:13] How much is the court awarding him?

[30:15] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[30:16] Yeah.

[30:16] Where did I?

[30:17] My eyeballs pop out of my head and I spend the next 20 minutes pushing them back in.

[30:22] I feel like that it's not.

[30:23] It's like 20 minutes.

[30:24] Dude, I got to be delicate.

[30:26] They're my eyeballs.

[30:27] I only have two of them.

Dan McCoy

[30:29] It's not the gawker results.

[30:32] It's not the ruling that you're excited about.

[30:35] It's the sex tape.

Stuart Wellington

[30:36] Hulk Hogan did what?

[30:38] Yeah.

[30:38] Where can I see it?

[30:39] Hulk Hogan had sex with a girl?

[30:41] I saw the gawker article about that and then I followed links to the deeper story.

[30:48] Links from Sonic the Hedgehog?

[30:50] No, the links game system.

Elliott Kalan

[30:52] Okay.

[30:52] Oh, yeah.

[30:53] There was no links in Sonic the Hedgehog.

[30:54] I'm thinking of Tails.

[30:55] I like that it's specific.

[30:56] And Knuckles.

[30:56] You're going to get so many angry letters from Sonic fans.

[30:59] I corrected myself.

[31:01] The Sonic restaurant chain does not have any sausage links, Elliot.

[31:06] Sue Stan's corrected.

[31:08] So just let's cut to the chase.

[31:10] In fact, they're chasing everybody throughout the movie.

[31:12] Yeah, oh boy.

[31:12] There's a lot of chasing.

[31:14] The bad guys catch up with, well, the girl robot who's escaped, Amber Childers, or woman

[31:21] robot.

[31:21] She is given a new identity by a friend of the scientist.

[31:24] You don't want to defend the robots out there.

[31:26] He says, I could also upgrade you.

[31:27] She says, nah, never mind.

[31:30] She tries to escape.

Stuart Wellington

[31:30] Which was an odd moment.

[31:31] That was the moment where we're like, what's going on, movie?

[31:34] Of course she needs an upgrade.

Elliott Kalan

[31:35] Yeah.

[31:36] And she is about to escape.

[31:38] Her husband, her, the husband of her original is going to help her.

[31:42] He gets killed in a shootout with the bad guys.

[31:44] Thomas Jane kills all the bad guys.

[31:45] He says, hey, you could run away.

[31:47] I'd let you.

[31:48] But why don't you help me take down Vice?

[31:50] They go back to the guy's friend.

[31:51] And she says, I need an upgrade.

[31:53] This upgrade consists mainly, I think, of giving her a leather jacket and wetting her hair.

[31:58] Yeah, her hair slicks back.

[31:59] Yeah, and that's about it.

[32:01] She's got a little more eye makeup, maybe.

[32:02] Her plan seems to be to check in at Vice.

[32:05] Then she's going to steal a gun from a guard, just walk into the lab.

Stuart Wellington

[32:09] It's like any time I play a video game where you have to be stealthy.

[32:12] Where the first guy, I'll kill one guy stealthy and then just run around and get murdered.

Elliott Kalan

[32:18] It's basically that.

[32:19] And she goes to Bruce Willis' office, but the guns are programmed not to kill her.

[32:23] Because why not let's steal a little bit from RoboCop 2 for this movie?

[32:27] Meanwhile, it turns out, I guess, maybe she was just a diversion.

[32:30] Because Thomas Jane has a...

[32:32] Blasts a shitload of dudes.

[32:34] Gets a machine gun.

[32:35] Gets a machine gun and forces a tech guy to upload a virus that gives all the robots all their memories.

[32:42] And they go into herky-jerky, epileptic seizures.

[32:44] For some reason, this makes all the regular patrons run around going nuts and fires get started.

[32:51] I guess some robots start a tech guy.

Stuart Wellington

[32:52] Well, a couple of those robots, if you get within grabbing range, they do all kinds of shit.

Elliott Kalan

[32:56] But they're kind of like zombies.

[32:58] It's like, if you get close enough to one that they kill you, that's partly on you.

Stuart Wellington

[33:01] Yeah, because getting all their memories immediately also makes them walk really strange.

Elliott Kalan

[33:06] Yeah.

[33:06] And go like, but, but, but, but, but, but.

[33:09] And now, in one case, a guy is being strangled by the legs of a robot who is in a sex swing.

[33:15] You're like, that's your own fault, buddy.

[33:17] Dude, don't walk up to that sex swing when you see a herky-jerky killer robot in it.

Stuart Wellington

[33:21] Yeah, you're not, like, he looks around, everybody else is run out screaming.

[33:24] Yeah.

[33:24] And he's like, hmm, but now it's my time to shine.

Elliott Kalan

[33:27] He's like, I had performance anxiety, but now no one's here to watch, so I guess I'll give it a try.

[33:32] It turns, everything is, the police can't go in because they don't have jurisdiction or whatever.

[33:37] And things just fall apart.

[33:39] And Tom.

[33:40] Chinua Chabick.

[33:41] Yeah.

[33:41] The center cat hold.

[33:43] Falcon cat here.

[33:43] The falcon earth.

[33:44] Slouching toward Vice.

[33:46] And the, Amber Childress finds her roommate again, and they hug, and Thomas Jane leaves.

[33:55] And he has a very snake, pliskeny moment where he's like, welcome to the new world.

[34:00] Welcome to the real world.

[34:01] Welcome to the real world, and then flicks the match out of his mouth.

[34:04] He shot Bruce Willis.

[34:05] Let's not forget that.

[34:06] And they shot Bruce Willis, but that's okay because.

Stuart Wellington

[34:08] So that's a great shot, that's a great scene where it all of a sudden goes into slow-mo.

Elliott Kalan

[34:14] And we see Amber's upgrade, which involved her being able to slam into Bruce Willis and take a gun from the ground.

[34:20] Throws the gun to Thomas Jane.

[34:22] And tosses it lightly to Thomas Jane.

Stuart Wellington

[34:24] Still slow motion, so that gives him enough time to shoot Bruce Willis a couple times.

[34:29] TJ grabs it out of the air.

Elliott Kalan

[34:31] TJ Maxx, yeah, we did that.

[34:33] Kablamo.

[34:34] And here's the thing about that scene.

[34:35] It called for some kind of cool kung fu move.

[34:39] And it's like they saved that scene to shoot to last, and they ran out of money in the budget to hire a wire fu expert from Hong Kong.

[34:47] So they're just like, whatever.

[34:49] Just kind of knock him over and toss the gun over.

[34:51] But everyone acted like that was a super cool move she just pulled that she needed an upgrade for.

[34:56] And the end.

[34:58] Oh, and Bruce Willis, we see his face, which means he's going to open his eyes because he's probably a robot.

[35:03] And we're looking at him, we're like, he's sleeping, he's so beatific in death.

[35:09] The end.

[35:10] Vice.

Dan McCoy

[35:11] So, Dan, what did you learn from the movie?

[35:13] No, I just wanted to say, like...

[35:15] Do you understand what reality is anymore, Dan?

[35:17] We talked about it a little bit, but I don't want to just, like...

[35:21] But yeah, Wings was a great show.

[35:22] I don't want to zip past the plan at the end of the movie where, like, all through the movie, Thomas Jane has been, like, this law and order guy who's like, I hate Vice.

[35:32] Dun, dun, dun.

[35:33] I hate the way that, like...

[35:35] Thank you.

[35:35] The evil from Vice, you know, like, slops over the edge and comes out.

Elliott Kalan

[35:39] You think people are getting their ya-ya's out, but really, they get acclimated to this activity.

[35:44] Yeah.

[35:44] And then when they go outside, they do it to real people.

Dan McCoy

[35:46] Yeah, so he's, you know, really upset about things.

[35:48] He's supposed to be the one doing things really...

[35:51] Like, even though he's a rogue cop, he is the one speaking up for doing things by the book.

[35:57] He's the avatar of justice.

[35:59] Yeah.

[35:59] And then at the end, the plan is apparently just, like, all right, we're gonna go into Vice and we're gonna shoot everybody.

[36:07] Including people that I assume are not robots.

Elliott Kalan

[36:10] We can't...

[36:10] We have to assume everyone who gets shot is a robot.

[36:12] All right.

Stuart Wellington

[36:13] Yeah, like, is every security guard a robot?

[36:15] Because if not, they have, like, families, dude.

[36:18] Mm-hmm.

[36:18] Yeah.

[36:18] That's just a job.

[36:19] It's not like they work for that company and they're like, well, I also love the product.

[36:23] I'm making a statement by doing this.

[36:25] Yeah.

[36:25] That I believe in this.

Dan McCoy

[36:26] They don't know that he's a cop.

[36:28] You know, they just see a guy going around shooting people.

[36:30] I mean, that's...

Stuart Wellington

[36:31] Thomas Jane looks nothing like a...

Elliott Kalan

[36:32] He looks like a crazy fucking drifter.

[36:35] He looks more like one of the bank robbers from the beginning of the movie.

[36:37] And he doesn't...

[36:37] It's not like he's holding his badge out.

[36:39] He just runs in and starts shooting.

Dan McCoy

[36:41] So, uh, that's justice in the Vice world.

[36:44] Like, really, who's the real monster is what I'm saying.

Stuart Wellington

[36:46] Yeah.

[36:47] Probably those dudes who are raping and killing robots, Dan.

[36:50] That's pretty cut and dry.

Elliott Kalan

[36:52] That's the other thing is...

[36:52] I forgot about them.

[36:54] These are also, like...

[36:55] They never really established what part of them was a robot.

[36:58] Because they have flesh and blood bodies.

[37:00] But it's like...

[37:02] They...

[37:02] I guess...

[37:02] Do they have computer brains?

[37:03] How do they make them?

[37:04] It's their butt.

Dan McCoy

[37:05] Their butt is robot.

Elliott Kalan

[37:07] So, they have a metal butt.

[37:08] It's a robot.

[37:09] Dan's...

[37:10] The rest of it is normal.

[37:11] Dan's high concept sci-fi porn film robot.

Stuart Wellington

[37:13] Yeah, so they...

[37:14] Looking for an investor.

[37:15] Because they can drink things.

[37:17] They drink...

[37:17] They can take shots and stuff.

[37:19] Yeah, yeah.

[37:19] I mean, they have...

[37:19] Do they have, like, an exhaust port in the robot?

Dan McCoy

[37:23] In a way, we've got...

[37:24] We've all got an exhaust port in the robot.

Elliott Kalan

[37:26] They take a shot and then, unbeknownst to them, a flap opens up in their butts and the liquor

[37:30] just flows out.

Dan McCoy

[37:32] Yeah, like airplanes or something.

[37:34] Everything else about the robot is super sophisticated.

[37:37] And then there's just, like, a little trap door in the butt.

[37:39] It does...

Elliott Kalan

[37:40] It goes...

[37:40] When it opens.

Dan McCoy

[37:42] And then...

[37:43] And it closes.

[37:44] It's like old-time long johns.

[37:46] But in their bodies.

Stuart Wellington

[37:49] Drizzles out.

[37:50] It's like...

[37:51] It's like the back of a Mr. Potato Head, the little flap where you stick all those parts.

[37:55] Oh, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[37:56] Yeah.

[37:57] The first robot.

[37:58] That's where they store their extra features.

[38:00] Yeah.

[38:01] Their different wigs.

[38:03] Hey, guys.

[38:03] Who's the real monster?

[38:04] Us or Mr. Potato Head?

Stuart Wellington

[38:06] When I was growing up, I always kind of wished I had a flap that I could put all my stuff in.

[38:11] Just in your body?

[38:12] In my body, yeah.

[38:13] I mean, that carried over to...

[38:15] You want to be like a marsupial?

[38:17] Yeah.

[38:17] Like a pouch?

[38:18] You want to be more like a James Woods video drone?

[38:20] First off, I don't think that Mr. Potato Head's a marsupial.

Dan McCoy

[38:23] I don't think he's a mammal at all.

[38:24] I don't think he's a mammal at all.

Stuart Wellington

[38:24] In New Zealand.

[38:26] Or Australia.

[38:27] Or Australia, yeah.

[38:29] And then when I was growing up later on...

Elliott Kalan

[38:31] I mean, possums are marsupials and they're all over the North American continent.

Stuart Wellington

[38:33] And then when I got into, like, nerdy shit, there was, like...

Elliott Kalan

[38:37] You know, instead of cool guy shit.

[38:40] What would you call wanting a flap where you could store things in your body?

[38:43] Like, yeah, cool.

[38:43] Pretty normal.

[38:45] That's a normal core.

[38:46] I was like a kid.

Stuart Wellington

[38:46] Every kid's an idiot.

[38:50] But no...

[38:51] When you became a nerd.

[38:52] Yeah, when I became a nerd, one of my favorite things in the Shadowrun role-playing game,

[38:57] which is a sci-fi cyberpunk future...

[39:01] Yeah, very Snow Crash.

[39:01] ...is that if you wanted to be a cool street samurai, you could get little holsters in your legs like RoboCop.

[39:09] And I thought that was even cooler.

[39:11] That you could store, like, I don't know, like, chits, cred sticks, or guns in various container sections of your body.

Elliott Kalan

[39:19] But since you were, like, a teenager, you'd just be storing, what, like, your pens and pencils for school and a Go-Gurt?

Stuart Wellington

[39:25] Yeah, I mean, I didn't...

[39:27] I wasn't carrying around an Ares Predator 2 handgun.

[39:31] But, yeah, I would carry Go-Gurt, various things.

[39:34] Dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.

[39:35] I mean, probably, like, printed off pornography from the internet that I didn't want my parents to find.

Elliott Kalan

[39:41] Just keep it in your leg.

[39:43] Yeah, they're not gonna look at my leg, dude.

[39:44] While you're sleeping, what if they press the code buttons and open your leg up?

Stuart Wellington

[39:47] There's no code buttons.

[39:48] It's all mental commands.

Dan McCoy

[39:50] You know the solution I got for you?

[39:51] Okay, Dan.

[39:52] Get yourself a pair of Keds.

[39:54] Little zipper pockets.

[39:56] Wait, are those shoes?

[39:57] Pair Keds.

[39:57] Yeah.

[39:58] You don't remember that?

[39:59] Keds had zipper pockets?

[40:00] That was what was so, like, I thought this was so cool when I was a kid.

[40:04] Okay.

[40:04] Those shoes...

[40:05] We're establishing the bar for cool when Dan was a kid.

[40:08] I mean...

[40:08] Did these shoes light up at all?

[40:09] No.

[40:10] Were they British knights?

[40:11] No.

[40:11] L.A. Gears.

[40:12] No.

[40:13] Okay.

[40:13] There were shoes that had pockets in them.

[40:15] Keds is the brand, I think you said.

[40:17] Oh, yeah.

[40:17] Keds, yeah.

[40:19] So, if you wanted to...

[40:21] If you had anything of the size of something that could be transported easily in a shoe...

[40:25] So, like, a penny.

[40:27] Yeah, it was like, literally, you put a penny in there.

Stuart Wellington

[40:29] Or, like, a condom, right?

Dan McCoy

[40:31] Yeah, the guy wearing Keds is the one who's gonna get lucky.

Stuart Wellington

[40:35] Or, like, a couple ketchup packets.

Dan McCoy

[40:38] It's like a Howard the Duck condom.

[40:39] One of those tiny condoms.

Stuart Wellington

[40:40] Gross.

[40:41] A non-wrapped Howard the Duck condom?

[40:43] Yeah.

[40:44] Okay, Elliot, so we've shared some embarrassing stories from our youth.

[40:47] Yeah, sure.

[40:48] What did you want a pocket in?

Elliott Kalan

[40:51] I mean, I don't...

[40:52] Where did you want your pockets?

[40:54] I mean, I probably would have wanted to hide pornography in it, too.

[40:56] I can't think of anything else that...

[40:58] Okay.

[40:59] I mean, but I had plenty of places around my room that I could hide that stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[41:03] What, like Trapper Keeper?

Elliott Kalan

[41:06] I mean, I assume there's the classic under the bed.

[41:08] Well, like, behind...

[41:09] I had a ton of books in my room, so, like, behind books, in between books.

Stuart Wellington

[41:13] Did you tape it to the underside of the lid of the...

[41:18] The toilet, yeah.

[41:18] The toilet thing, yeah.

[41:19] Yeah, yeah, the toilet tank.

[41:20] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[41:24] So that, in the middle of the night, I could surreptitiously take off the ceramic lid of the toilet with the, like...

[41:31] And then pull the duct tape, the loudest tape you could find.

[41:35] Yeah.

[41:35] Which, in turn, rips and destroys the pornography.

[41:41] Such a mistake.

[41:41] You're really busy spending hours trying to download a picture from some kind of news group.

Dan McCoy

[41:48] Yeah.

[41:48] So this is a real flashback to a time in people's lives where they had to have physical pornography and hide it around.

[41:55] Uh-huh.

[41:56] Or just use the power of the human imagination.

[42:00] That's gone.

[42:01] Yeah.

[42:01] That's totally gone now.

[42:01] It doesn't exist anymore.

[42:02] No.

[42:03] I can't do it.

[42:04] I can't think of any sex things.

[42:05] Just do it right now.

[42:06] I dare you.

[42:07] I'm trying to.

[42:07] I'm trying to think of a sex thing.

[42:08] Dan's face is looking really weird.

[42:09] I can't.

[42:10] All you can think of is...

Elliott Kalan

[42:11] He's scrunching his features up.

[42:12] All that's coming up is what, Simpsons jokes?

Dan McCoy

[42:15] He's got, like, a picture of, like, a lime for some reason.

Elliott Kalan

[42:18] A lime?

[42:19] Yeah.

[42:19] Just a little lime.

[42:20] A lime?

[42:22] Is that something you find sexy?

[42:23] No.

Dan McCoy

[42:24] Not at all.

[42:24] That's the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[42:25] So, Dan, you don't want to go to a theme park where you can kill and rape a lime?

Dan McCoy

[42:30] Well, let me put it that way.

[42:33] Vice.

[42:33] I don't.

[42:34] So, good bad movie.

[42:35] Put it that way, I don't.

Stuart Wellington

[42:37] So, can we...

[42:38] So, time to talk about this movie some more, guys.

[42:39] Can we wrap it on the final judgments?

Dan McCoy

[42:41] Final judgments.

[42:41] No, we can say final judgments, whether this was a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or

[42:45] a movie you kind of liked.

[42:47] I'll start by saying, like, there's a brief point at the beginning and then at the end

[42:52] where I was like, this is verging on good, bad, but the complete lack of interest that

[42:57] I had in the entire middle...

Elliott Kalan

[42:59] I would say the middle hour and 25 minutes, really.

Dan McCoy

[43:02] And the fact that it's based on such a distasteful premise makes it a bad, bad movie.

Elliott Kalan

[43:06] Yeah, I agree.

[43:07] I...

[43:07] There were times when it felt like we were watching, like, an abandoned pilot for a crappy

[43:14] show.

[43:15] Mm-hmm.

[43:15] And...

[43:16] You cut out a couple of Thomas Jane swear words.

[43:19] You cut out the one topless scene, and it's the pilot for a show where a guy and a robot

[43:24] are partner cops, and he's got to teach her about how to live like a human.

[43:28] Yeah, that's a show called Almost Human.

[43:30] I guess, yeah, it was Almost Human, so...

Stuart Wellington

[43:33] But...

[43:33] So bad, bad.

[43:33] Yeah, it was totally bad, bad.

[43:35] Yeah.

[43:36] This was another one of those where Dan sprung it on us, and he was like, hey, guys, I think

[43:41] Vice is going to be the bee's knees.

[43:43] And we're like, I don't know about that, Dan.

[43:44] He said, Archie, put on your pajamas, because this movie will be that.

[43:48] Yep.

[43:48] The cat's pajamas.

[43:50] Yep.

[43:51] You guys might want to take your socks off now, because they're about to get knocked

[43:54] right off.

[43:55] Don't pay for the whole seat, because you're only going to use the edge.

[43:57] Better put some Elmer's glue on that wig of yours, so don't flip right off.

[44:03] Hey, guys, use this corset to hold your sides in, because they're going to be splitting.

Elliott Kalan

[44:07] Wait, so it's funny?

Dan McCoy

[44:08] Put this pillow on your knee, because you're going to be slapping it.

[44:12] Wow, that bit went on longer than I had any hope for.

[44:16] I was amazed at that.

[44:19] You just kept pulling them out.

Elliott Kalan

[44:21] Hold on to this bishop, because you're going to be waxing him.

[44:24] What?

[44:25] Jesus.

[44:26] What?

[44:27] Are you going to masturbate because of this?

Dan McCoy

[44:30] You thought the movie was going to be really great.

Stuart Wellington

[44:33] Let me hold on to your nightsticks, boys, so you don't start polishing them.

[44:39] So now.

Elliott Kalan

[44:41] Don't choke that chicken, because PETA has been really on me lately.

[44:45] Before we.

[44:46] So, bad, bad movie, right, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[44:48] I've got to admit, I kind of would rather watch Nothing But Trouble than Vice.

Elliott Kalan

[44:52] Vice is just so boring and forgettable, whereas Nothing But Trouble is really burned into my

[44:58] mind as a horrific stew.

Dan McCoy

[45:00] It's a true act of madness.

Stuart Wellington

[45:02] Yeah, we're referring to Nothing But Trouble, the movie we watched last time we recorded.

[45:07] See, the nice thing about Nothing But Trouble is, for the most part, I could walk out of certain

[45:11] scenes to make drinks and come back, and I would miss them entirely.

[45:15] And it lessened the impact.

Elliott Kalan

[45:17] I mean, any movie you could do that with.

[45:19] Here's what I like about Nothing But Trouble.

[45:21] This whole movie was just one big scene.

[45:22] It wasn't being inserted directly into my brain, so I could walk out of the room.

[45:26] Unlike most movies.

[45:28] Yeah.

[45:29] They'd follow you around.

Stuart Wellington

[45:30] My review advice is, I don't know, maybe close your eyes the whole time.

S4

[45:39] Hey, you like t-shirts, right?

[45:42] How about a mug?

[45:44] Are your walls looking a little bare?

[45:47] Visit maxfunstore.com and cover all of these bases and more.

[45:52] We just added some amazing new shirts and posters.

[45:55] So visit today and outfit your home and torso with the freshest MaxFun merch.

[46:01] MaxFunstore.com

Dan McCoy

[46:02] Yeah, so before we move along to our next segment, we have a couple of Jumbotron messages.

Stuart Wellington

[46:11] Get your trons and make them jumbo.

[46:12] Yeah, so this is, if you guys haven't turned off this podcast to get on with your life,

[46:17] this is Flophouse Housework.

[46:22] It may sound like a chore.

Elliott Kalan

[46:23] No, these are announcements that people want us to announce.

[46:26] Oh, yeah, okay.

[46:27] That Jumbotron.

[46:28] So the first Jumbotron is...

[46:31] And if you want to have a Jumbotron message, I don't know, sign up for it.

[46:34] Yeah, go to maxfunfun.org.

[46:36] Okay.

[46:36] .org forward slash Jumbotron.

Stuart Wellington

[46:38] So our first message is a free e-book from Marcus Lambert, an author you've never heard of.

[46:46] I'm assuming it's Lambert, not Lambert.

[46:48] I mean, we can only assume.

[46:52] Christians, you have a new savior.

[46:54] I do?

[46:55] Don't worry.

[46:56] You sounded worried.

[46:58] This one's Jewish, too.

[46:59] A pitch black horror comedy about loneliness, failure, and male hero fantasies.

[47:06] The e-book version of Ralph Pincus, Occultist Extraordinaire by Marcus Lambert is currently available for free on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and iTunes.

[47:19] Warning!

[47:20] This book contains sexually explicit content and graphic language.

[47:25] Unlike Vice.

[47:26] My favorite thing.

[47:27] Yeah, Dan's got all the stuff you like in it.

[47:30] That's why I pitched my voice at the perfect level to sell something to Dan.

[47:35] It's the only level I can hear, actually.

Elliott Kalan

[47:36] Salesman, this is a tip you should know if Dan walks in.

[47:39] There's a certain frequency, which if your voice hits it, he has to buy from you.

[47:44] It's a strange thing that neurologists have been looking into, but until they find a cure, sell the shit out of stuff to Dan.

Stuart Wellington

[47:50] That's why when Dan's walking down the street and he almost walks into a car dealership, we have to Mr. Magoo him out of the way.

Elliott Kalan

[47:55] By putting a girder in front of him that he walks onto and it swings him into a construction site?

Dan McCoy

[48:02] Have to buy it.

[48:04] Slide down a tube into safety.

Elliott Kalan

[48:06] I mean, that's what birth is, basically, right?

Dan McCoy

[48:08] Yeah.

[48:08] Except for the safety.

[48:10] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[48:11] Good point.

[48:11] So head over to those various platforms and download your free e-book.

[48:15] Ralph Pincus, Occultist Extraordinaire.

Elliott Kalan

[48:18] There's another Jumbotron message, which is less of a commercial one and more of a personal one.

[48:25] And I'm very honored to read it.

[48:27] This is for Victoria from Day.

[48:29] Two and a half years ago, I was listening to the Flophouse on a bus to New York to meet you for the first time.

[48:34] The show relaxed my nerves, brightened my eyes, loosened my tongue, helped me be the goof you judged worth a long-distance relationship.

[48:41] Our first month living together, I felt so contented.

[48:44] Thanks for moving and taking on this commitment with me.

Stuart Wellington

[48:47] I think that's very sweet.

[48:48] What episode do you think they were listening to?

[48:53] Two and a half years ago, probably Gooby.

Elliott Kalan

[48:57] What movie?

[48:58] What puts me in romance?

[48:59] Gooby.

[49:01] I think we just peered into Elliot's psyche here.

Dan McCoy

[49:03] Timothy Green.

[49:05] If they can make a pencil out of boys.

[49:07] Then I can make this relationship work.

[49:10] If they can make a pencil out of boys.

Elliott Kalan

[49:13] Stop the pencil machines.

[49:14] They're pouring boys into them.

[49:17] I did think they were weirdly soft.

[49:21] They were made out of human skin.

[49:23] But that's very sweet.

[49:25] That's a lovely message.

[49:26] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[49:27] Speaking as someone who...

[49:30] It's nice to hear a story about two people who are together by choice as opposed to trapped together like the three of us.

Elliott Kalan

[49:37] Yeah, by a witch's curse.

[49:39] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[49:40] Terrible.

[49:40] I shouldn't have made fun of that witch.

Elliott Kalan

[49:42] You tell me that now.

Stuart Wellington

[49:46] Can you get any more warty?

[49:51] Chandler Bing.

[49:52] Friends, everybody.

Elliott Kalan

[49:54] Was that the Halloween episode?

[50:01] That's a special...

[50:04] Friends, Halloween.

[50:06] Wishmaster 5, friends.

Dan McCoy

[50:09] And Ross accidentally summoned those sex monsters that stripped all the flesh off of his body.

[50:15] Yep.

[50:16] It's horrifying.

[50:18] Could be...

Stuart Wellington

[50:21] Didn't help when Joey walked up to the witch and went, how you doing?

[50:28] I would think that would be a compliment, but I guess not in this enlightened age.

[50:32] Yeah.

[50:33] Yeah.

[50:34] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[50:35] Yeah.

[50:36] And then Rachel did whatever she did that was funny.

[50:39] And Monica and Phoebe sang a song about it.

[50:42] Mm-hmm.

[50:42] And what other characters were on that show?

[50:44] Gunther.

[50:45] Yeah.

[50:46] That's not a real character.

[50:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[50:47] There's Gunther, yeah.

[50:48] What about Bebop and Rocksteady?

Stuart Wellington

[50:50] Were they on Friends?

[50:51] I mean, they were friends, so I guess they'd have to be.

[50:54] Legally.

[50:55] What about Chef Boyardee?

[50:57] Was he a character on Friends?

[50:58] I mean, it makes sense.

[50:59] Monica was a chef.

[51:02] It all checks out.

[51:03] She was?

[51:03] I think so.

[51:05] What about Darkwing Duck?

[51:07] Was he a character on Friends?

[51:09] Joey's a vigilante, so it's gotta be the case.

Dan McCoy

[51:14] Joey's a vigilante.

[51:17] Okay.

[51:18] Let's move on to letters from listeners.

[51:22] Let's do it.

[51:22] The thing that we do where you write us a letter.

Elliott Kalan

[51:26] That only we do.

[51:28] Nobody else does this.

[51:31] Flophouse copyrighted and trademark.

[51:34] We put the idea of reading letters into an envelope, mailed it to ourselves.

[51:41] That thing is fucking date stamped.

[51:43] Don't even try to steal it from us.

[51:44] We'll sue you.

Dan McCoy

[51:46] It's also like the most basic way of explaining a thing.

[51:50] This is a thing that we do.

[51:51] No.

[51:52] I could have just done it, and then the audience would assume that that was a thing that I did.

Stuart Wellington

[51:55] Just by virtue of it being a complex.

[51:56] No, they could have thought it was a one-off.

[51:59] Yeah.

[51:59] All right.

Dan McCoy

[52:01] Anyway.

[52:01] Okay.

[52:02] So, first letter.

[52:03] It's from...

[52:05] Let's see.

[52:07] Who's it from?

[52:07] Ross' last name.

[52:08] Are you asking the paper?

Stuart Wellington

[52:10] Paper.

[52:11] Who is this letter from?

[52:12] So, it's from Ross from Friends.

[52:14] Yeah.

[52:14] I have a monkey.

[52:15] Free being having your flesh dripped from your bones by the Wishmaster.

Dan McCoy

[52:20] Greetings from an unusually sunny Glasgow, Scotland.

[52:23] As a Scot, I feel honor-bound to get in touch with you after...

[52:26] Just to say one thing.

Elliott Kalan

[52:27] When I was there, it was pretty sunny, actually.

[52:30] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[52:32] Checkmate, Scotland.

[52:32] I'm sure that your one visit to it is a typical...

Stuart Wellington

[52:37] No, no, no, Elliot.

[52:38] I think your interruption counts.

Elliott Kalan

[52:40] Just bragging that I've been to Glasgow.

[52:42] Yeah.

[52:43] Keep reading, Dan.

[52:44] Were you there for, like, a Fringe Fest?

[52:46] That's Edinburgh.

[52:46] Well, that's Edinburgh.

[52:47] I went to the Glasgow Fringe Fest, which doesn't exist.

[52:50] So, boy, that travel agent really got me.

[52:52] That is pretty fringe, yeah.

[52:53] That was the first curse that the witch put on me.

Dan McCoy

[52:56] Yeah.

[52:57] As a Scot, I felt honor-bound to get in touch with you after you gave pod time to our national

[53:03] shame, also known as Guardian of the Highlands.

[53:06] Mm-hmm.

[53:06] You mentioned in the episode that you hadn't been able to find a Wikipedia page for the film.

[53:09] That's because when it was released in the UK, to the critical equivalent of a sad trombone

[53:14] sound, it was called Sir Billy, and that's the name it appears on Wikipedia.

[53:19] Oh.

[53:20] I can only assume that the name change was the last-ditch attempt to hoodwink some money from

[53:24] foreign audiences clamoring for the long-awaited Legend of the Guardians The Owls of Gahool sequel.

Elliott Kalan

[53:29] Mm-hmm.

[53:30] Was that...

[53:31] Is that in a way to...

Dan McCoy

[53:31] Or a Highlander sequel.

[53:33] Sadly, they'll have to wait a little longer for the armor-clad owl action they and I crave.

[53:38] It contains some informative...

[53:40] This sentence doesn't make any sense, so I'll re-edit it.

[53:45] It contains some informative information...

[53:47] Okay, some real-time critique of your letter-writing abilities.

[53:51] It has some information about the political controversy around the film.

[53:56] There were some complaints from the Hartmans when the pro-Scottish, independent Scottish

[53:59] National Party government chose to promote the Disney-Pixar film Brave, made in the USA,

[54:05] rather than give the UK...

[54:07] Rather than promote the UK-made Sir Billy.

[54:10] The film Brave went on to receive an audience score of 76% on the website Rotten Tomatoes.

[54:15] Sir Billy received 0%.

Stuart Wellington

[54:17] That's certified fresh.

Elliott Kalan

[54:19] Yeah.

[54:20] Now, to be fair, Sir Billy only received 0% from audiences because zero audiences went

[54:24] to see it.

[54:24] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[54:25] And the ones that did killed themselves.

Elliott Kalan

[54:29] They asked that their memories be erased from human civilization.

Stuart Wellington

[54:33] Can you turn me into one of those vice robots?

Dan McCoy

[54:36] He writes...

[54:37] Just use me and abuse me because I saw Sir Billy and I can't live anymore.

[54:41] Regardless of your views on Scottish independence, I think we can all agree that the Scottish

[54:44] government made the right call on this one.

[54:48] Pardon me.

[54:48] That kind of hiccup burp turned that into an inadvertently Allen impression.

[54:52] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[54:53] The Scottish government made the right call on this one.

Dan McCoy

[54:58] The film was put together by a husband and wife team who made a 20-minute short, which

[55:02] then they stretched into 75 minutes.

[55:04] Oh, we watched it.

[55:05] Clearly, they added no additional plot elements whatsoever to flesh out the longer run time.

[55:10] Nope.

[55:10] Yeah.

[55:10] Somehow, they managed to raise 15 million pounds to fund the project, leading me to wonder

[55:15] if this was some elaborate money laundering scheme, perhaps following the model of the producers.

[55:21] There was some talk in Scotland during its development that the Hartmans, the directors of the movie,

[55:25] had somehow fooled an ailing Sean Connery into lending his voice to the project.

[55:30] A normally very with-it person.

[55:33] I have no way of knowing if this is true, but either way, it's a sad end to Connery's

[55:36] career, even sadder than his previous career capper, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

[55:40] That's pretty sad.

[55:41] Anyway, thanks for drawing attention to one of the worst movies ever to come out of Scotland.

[55:45] Quite an achievement for a small country which has long punched well above its weight in

[55:49] the category of shitty movies.

[55:50] Before I go, I'll leave you-

[55:51] There's a lot of good movies from Scotland, though.

[55:53] Like what?

[55:54] Let's hear them.

[55:55] Highlander.

[55:56] List them all.

[55:57] Highlander 2, The Quickening.

Elliott Kalan

[55:58] Highlander 2, The Quickening.

Dan McCoy

[56:01] Highlander 3, The Thickening.

Stuart Wellington

[56:04] Yeah, Mario Van Peebles gets really fat.

[56:07] A la the Santa Claus.

Elliott Kalan

[56:10] It's a Highlander-Santa Claus crossover.

Dan McCoy

[56:13] Fried Twinkie, the movie.

[56:16] That's another Scottish film.

[56:18] All right, let's keep moving, shall we?

[56:19] Wow.

[56:20] Really?

[56:21] Wow.

[56:22] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[56:23] I think-

[56:24] We're even recording an hour earlier than Gnarl.

[56:27] I think Ross is being a little bit harsh on Guardian of the Highlands because despite how terrible

[56:33] it is, it was much more interesting to watch than Vice.

[56:36] Yeah, that's for sure.

[56:37] Certainly more confusing.

[56:39] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[56:39] Anyway-

[56:41] Gregory's Girl was a Scottish movie.

[56:42] I like that one a lot.

[56:43] Ross wraps up saying, before I go, I'll leave you with this bone-chilling quote from Tessa

[56:48] Hartman.

[56:49] We have a treatment for Sir Billy 2 and also other sub-brands of other characters because

[56:53] feedback has been so positive.

[56:56] P.S.

[56:57] Thanks must go to Elliot who managed to pronounce Glasgow properly and not as Glass Cow, which

[57:02] many Americans do, to the endless frustration of Glaswegians.

[57:06] As a result, you're welcome here anytime and if you do find yourself in Glasgow, let me know.

[57:11] I can offer advice on where in the city you'll be least likely to be stabbed during your stay.

[57:14] That is very helpful.

[57:15] Oh, that's great.

Elliott Kalan

[57:16] Dan, I apologize that I did that.

[57:18] I get a little defensive, I guess, around Scotland because for whatever reason, I really

[57:22] like it.

[57:23] Really like it there.

Dan McCoy

[57:24] Hey, man, I'm theoretically of Scottish heritage.

[57:28] I understand.

[57:29] Theoretically.

Elliott Kalan

[57:30] I mean, like, I don't have it.

[57:31] In theory.

[57:32] I mean, we're all from Africa if you go back far enough.

[57:34] It's not all certified.

[57:37] But, like, Scotland is, like, right up there, I think, as my second favorite country after

[57:43] the United States of America.

[57:45] You don't care.

[57:45] Who knows it?

[57:46] I don't care who knows it.

[57:47] I really like it there.

Dan McCoy

[57:48] I mean, it's beautiful to look at.

Elliott Kalan

[57:50] It's beautiful.

[57:51] Anytime I've been there, which is not a huge number of times, but I've spent a couple

[57:54] of trips there.

[57:55] People have been really nice.

[57:57] You like mixing their native beverage with Coca-Cola?

[57:59] I do, very much.

[58:01] I mean, and say what you will about their food.

[58:03] I love it.

[58:04] It's all fried shit.

[58:06] Like, it's just, I went, it's the only place I've ever had double fried hamburgers.

[58:10] So, thank you, Scotland.

[58:11] How do they double fry it?

Dan McCoy

[58:12] You just fry it and then you fry it again.

[58:14] You fry it a second time.

[58:14] Yeah.

[58:15] I mean, I'm...

[58:16] It's like chicken fried steak.

[58:17] I mean, so it's just thicker frying on the outside?

[58:20] Probably.

[58:20] Yeah.

[58:21] It's really good.

[58:22] No, I mean, it sounds good.

Elliott Kalan

[58:23] I love Haggis, unironically.

[58:26] Paul Haggis?

[58:27] Terrible.

[58:28] Terrible stuff.

[58:28] He's all right.

[58:29] No.

[58:30] Because his name's Haggis.

[58:31] I'm going to give him a pass.

[58:32] So, I apologize.

[58:33] You know what?

[58:34] You could have kept going with that bit.

[58:35] I just like Scotland.

Dan McCoy

[58:38] So, there's a couple countries I've been to that I really formed a bond to and I feel

[58:41] like Scotland is one of them.

[58:43] Elliot loves Scotland even though...

Stuart Wellington

[58:44] Elliot Kalin, your native son.

[58:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[58:47] And Elliot's favorite movie is Sir Billy.

[58:49] I love it.

[58:51] So, this is from Justin, last name withheld.

[58:57] Long.

[58:57] Who writes...

[58:58] Diamond.

[59:00] Oh, that was Justin.

Stuart Wellington

[59:05] Dustin Diamond is the twin brother of Justin.

[59:08] I thought that was...

[59:09] That's how it works.

[59:09] I really knew that.

Dan McCoy

[59:12] I'm just going to jump right in knowing how much Elliot loves retelling history with more

[59:16] awesome trademark.

[59:18] No, I don't.

[59:19] 1905, Germany.

[59:21] Seemingly mild-mannered patent clerk Albert Einstein discovered something that would turn

[59:25] the world on its head.

[59:27] The Necronomicon.

Elliott Kalan

[59:28] No.

Dan McCoy

[59:30] Reading its...

[59:30] That doesn't even make sense.

Elliott Kalan

[59:31] He's a physicist.

Dan McCoy

[59:33] Reading its insane stanzas, Einstein is driven not to madness but brilliance.

[59:37] developing his own alien geometries, the theory of special relativity.

[59:43] Now, in 1930s Germany, the Nazis seek to steal his secrets to release the great old ones

[59:47] from the second city of Rylea.

Elliott Kalan

[59:50] In reality, they basically pushed him out of the country.

Dan McCoy

[59:53] Albert Einstein, Oppenheimer, and the Manhattan Bunch raced to develop...

Elliott Kalan

[59:57] The Manhattan Bunch?

[59:58] The Manhattan Bunch.

[59:59] Were these the kid detectives that hung out at the Manhattan Project?

[1:00:02] That's right.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:03] They raced to develop the H-bomb to defeat the returning Cthulhu and his gibbering coterie

[1:00:07] of an abominable Migo.

[1:00:10] But when all hope is lost with the failure of the bomb and subsequent summonings of...

[1:00:15] Is this a pitch?

[1:00:16] Like what?

[1:00:17] Nalarthotep and Dagon.

[1:00:19] Nyalathotep.

[1:00:20] Nyalathotep.

[1:00:20] They're calling chaos, dude.

[1:00:22] It's fucking...

[1:00:22] These are all gibberish, H.P. Lovecraft words.

[1:00:26] Come on.

[1:00:27] Hard to say.

[1:00:28] Even for a normal person.

[1:00:29] And August Urlet.

[1:00:30] And then imagine me.

[1:00:30] Yeah, let's not forget August Urlet's huge influence.

[1:00:34] Our heroes find renewed vigor with the accidental nuclear release of another slumbering ancient.

[1:00:39] Godzilla.

[1:00:40] Okay, saw it coming.

[1:00:41] Now, shouting strategies from his Dr. Wily style...

[1:00:44] This letter won me over again.

[1:00:46] Floating saucer.

[1:00:47] Einstein and Godzilla engage in a battle royale with maddening eldritch horrors above a war-torn

[1:00:53] Japanese Pacific.

[1:00:54] An adventurer so non-Euclidean there will be no seat edge to sit upon.

[1:00:59] Albert Einstein.

[1:01:00] Destroy All Monsters.

[1:01:01] Rated R.

[1:01:02] I know it's a little heady, but I think it would safely make its money back if it had

[1:01:05] the right screenwriter.

[1:01:07] Yours, Justin, last thing you wrote.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:08] I mean, thanks to movies like Deadpool, you can pitch an R-rated big budget movie now,

[1:01:12] man.

[1:01:12] Yeah, finally.

[1:01:13] You can make your budget back.

[1:01:14] You just have to have Godzilla talk to the camera.

[1:01:16] Yeah.

[1:01:17] Make penis jokes.

[1:01:19] Play 90s hip-hop.

[1:01:20] Of course, Ryan Reynolds as Cthulhu.

[1:01:22] That would be great.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:25] He's played every other comic book character, am I right?

[1:01:27] Yeah, tell me about it.

[1:01:28] As long as Einstein is not firing a machine gun, I'm okay with it.

[1:01:33] Here's the thing that gets to me about the awesoming up of history.

[1:01:36] Yeah.

[1:01:36] If it's like, I mean, it doesn't make sense for Einstein to read the Necronomicon.

[1:01:40] He's not an occultist or a literary archivist.

[1:01:43] He's a physicist.

[1:01:43] Yeah, it's not like he-

[1:01:44] And a chemist, I guess.

[1:01:45] Well, what if he picked up-

[1:01:46] No, not even a chemist.

[1:01:46] He's like a mathematician.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:47] What if he picked up like a pamphlet that he thought was something else, but it turns

[1:01:50] out somebody just put it like some students put a slipcover over their like, I don't know,

[1:01:54] physics textbook.

[1:01:55] Or what if-

[1:01:56] On the Necronomicon?

[1:01:57] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:57] And he somehow could read ancient Arabic?

[1:01:59] What if he was just reading it on-

[1:02:00] Because it was written by the mad Arab, Abdul Al-Hazred, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:02:02] Yeah, yeah.

[1:02:03] What if he was just reading it on his vacation?

[1:02:06] Okay, now you're without with you.

[1:02:07] He picked it up as a beach read.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:08] Yeah, he picked it up as a beach read.

[1:02:09] It was one of those like hotel exchanges.

[1:02:12] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:12] I finished this, Grisham.

[1:02:14] I will.

[1:02:15] What books do you have?

[1:02:17] Just this.

[1:02:17] I'll try it.

[1:02:18] Necronomicon.

[1:02:19] Sounds sexy.

[1:02:21] I'll give it a try.

[1:02:23] It rhymes with Comic-Con.

[1:02:27] A thing that does not exist yet.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:29] Is this written by Brian Lumley?

[1:02:32] No, that's Necroscope.

[1:02:35] Well, anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:37] If he's dealing with science things as opposed to like, Albert Einstein has to kick ass or

[1:02:43] something like that.

[1:02:44] Yeah, yeah.

[1:02:44] Where he figures out the physics of how to do the best axe kick or some shit.

[1:02:49] Yeah, like he's a Kung Fu master all of a sudden.

[1:02:50] I don't like that stuff.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:52] Yeah.

[1:02:52] No, I agree.

[1:02:53] I agree.

[1:02:54] But I like to see Godzilla fighting some old ones.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:57] I mean, Godzilla I don't think would be much of a match for the old ones.

[1:03:01] But that's just me.

[1:03:02] I don't know.

[1:03:03] I mean, but I'd still want to see it.

[1:03:04] I'd still want to see it.

[1:03:05] He just wouldn't last long, I think.

[1:03:07] This is coming from one of the world's greatest Godzilla fans.

[1:03:10] I'm a big G fan.

[1:03:11] I'm just saying.

[1:03:12] I have to be realistic.

[1:03:13] The same way that I'm a huge Spider-Man fan.

[1:03:15] But I wouldn't be like, can't wait to see Spider-Man take down Cthulhu.

[1:03:19] He'd go insane upon seeing him.

[1:03:21] Mm-hmm.

[1:03:23] I don't know.

[1:03:24] You don't think his quips would save him?

[1:03:25] Maybe for like a couple minutes.

[1:03:26] Okay.

[1:03:28] So this last.

[1:03:29] It was worth it to hear Dan mispronounce Nyarlathotep.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:32] Mm-hmm.

[1:03:32] I was sad that he didn't list more old ones for Dan to mispronounce.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:36] And then his army of Shagots.

[1:03:38] Shagots, Dan.

[1:03:39] Shagots.

[1:03:42] I could say Shagots.

[1:03:44] Who's the one who dances at the center of the universe to the sound of blind pipers?

[1:03:47] Is that Ezoth?

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:49] Yeah, I think so.

[1:03:49] I was just really hoping that the goat with a thousand youngs name would be mentioned in

[1:03:53] that letter.

[1:03:54] So Dan would have to be forced to read it on the laws of letter pages.

[1:03:57] I don't even remember her name.

[1:04:00] Shelly.

[1:04:01] I'm not going to bring it up.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:02] You're not going to bring it up.

[1:04:04] I want Dane to mention it.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:06] This last is from Emily, last name with Hel.

[1:04:10] Dickinson.

[1:04:10] Who writes,

[1:04:12] I never got into podcasts until my good friend Steven, a fellow who knows the precise algorithms

[1:04:16] of my sense of humor and love of bad movies, recommended I give the CBGB episode a listen for a

[1:04:22] road trip I embarked upon early this summer.

[1:04:25] He was right and I was hooked.

[1:04:27] And all the back catalog binging has made this summer an unbridled squealing with mirth

[1:04:32] and laughter.

[1:04:33] I'll tell you, that was one crazy summer.

[1:04:36] Thanks.

[1:04:38] Was it better off?

[1:04:40] Dad?

[1:04:42] I guess not.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:42] How I got into college.

[1:04:44] Eek the cat.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:45] Savage Steve Holland.

[1:04:48] Elliot's letter songs and general Elliot-ness are like a super concentrated syringe full

[1:04:52] of joy.

[1:04:53] Oh, thank you.

[1:04:53] Ditto Hallie.

[1:04:55] Stuart is an awesome dude in the saga of Ding Dong Gate.

[1:04:57] It was an epic tale I hoped to tell my grandchildren one day.

[1:05:00] And Dan, I actually wish you were the default human being.

[1:05:04] Because if only humanity had Dan McCoyness as his default setting, the world would be a

[1:05:08] much smarter, funnier, and pervisory-er place to live.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:11] Oh, way to turn that insult into a compliment.

[1:05:14] Any whoosies.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:15] I was listening to an old episode and the Stuart recommendation of Space Jail reminded me of a

[1:05:20] time.

[1:05:20] You're welcome.

[1:05:22] It reminded me of a time many years ago when Stephen and I eagerly awaited said movie because

[1:05:26] the trailer appeared to have someone say the line,

[1:05:28] He's the best there is, but he's a loose cannon.

[1:05:31] We fell in love with the idea of a character in the movie blatantly stating such a cliche,

[1:05:35] but much to our disappointment, it turns out the line came from Mr. Trailer narrator and

[1:05:38] not an actual character.

[1:05:40] Fear of speeches.

[1:05:41] Has there ever been something, and not just general awesomeness, that the movie failed to

[1:05:45] deliver, in a trailer that got you all hyped up for a film, but wasn't in the final cut?

[1:05:51] Floptatiously, Emily.

[1:05:54] This is a tough one, because I don't know if I have the recall.

[1:05:56] I mean, there's lots of times that scenes have been in trailers and then not in the movie,

[1:06:01] but...

[1:06:01] Because the cut isn't finished.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:02] Well, there's a...

[1:06:04] In the...

[1:06:04] I remember in the...

[1:06:05] I think it was the first trailer for The Two Towers, there was a scene of Eowyn stalking

[1:06:12] around in the caves underneath Helm's Deep with a sword, and it was indicating that maybe

[1:06:18] that orcs were tunneling underneath, or that we were kind, and she was stalking around,

[1:06:22] like being like...

[1:06:24] Going all like...

[1:06:26] Like Splinter Cell on them.

[1:06:28] But that was never in the movie, and I don't even think it was in the...

[1:06:31] Yeah, I don't think it was in the extended cut either.

[1:06:33] Hmm.

[1:06:34] Wow.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:36] I can't imagine things not being in the extended cut.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:39] I know, if it was a Hobbit movie, it would have been...

[1:06:41] I mean, there's scenes from other movies in the extended cut.

[1:06:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:06:44] Just to film it.

[1:06:44] Yeah, they watch like 20 minutes of Lawrence of Arabia.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:47] There's weird...

[1:06:48] Like, there's a segment from Bugsy Malone of all things.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:50] Stare into my palantir and watch this dope movie I like.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:55] We have a quest to embark upon, but first, have you seen the one where he tells Honey that

[1:07:00] he shrunk the kids?

[1:07:01] And then he just puts the tape in, and it's the static shot of a TV playing Honey I Shrunk

[1:07:06] the Kids for the entirety of the movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:10] I don't know if I actually have an answer for this.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:12] Yeah, I don't know that I do either.

[1:07:13] I mean, there's certainly movies that the trailer made look better or more exciting.

[1:07:16] Like, there's any number of monster movies...

[1:07:19] I mean, there's Godzilla, which came out recently, where the trailer made it look like

[1:07:22] this is going to be an amazing movie with a ton of Godzilla in it, and it was not.

[1:07:26] But, you know, but that's just general trailer stuff, I feel like.

[1:07:31] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:32] I, yeah, yeah, that's...

[1:07:34] I specifically remember thinking, like, that the Pineapple Express trailer was one of the

[1:07:39] best cut trailers I'd seen, and then I saw the movie, and I'm like, this is all right.

[1:07:44] Oh, I liked it a lot.

[1:07:45] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:46] But the purpose of a trailer is to give you the best...

[1:07:48] Yeah, it is.

[1:07:49] There's no trailer that's going to be like, it's an okay movie that you're going to kind

[1:07:52] of like.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:54] Mm-hmm.

[1:07:54] Yeah.

[1:07:54] Maybe go to it.

[1:07:55] I don't care.

[1:07:56] I don't know what your life is like.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:57] Like, whatever.

[1:07:58] Maybe you've got better things to do.

[1:07:59] That's cool.

[1:08:01] Moonstruck.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:02] Which is actually a very good movie, so I don't know why they sold it that way.

[1:08:07] Hey, Archie.

[1:08:07] Hey.

[1:08:08] So, everyone hears my cat complaining.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:10] Yeah, going, hey, get him out of here.

[1:08:13] I'm tired of wearing these pants.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:16] Yeah.

[1:08:16] Put it up...

[1:08:17] Yeah, that's good.

[1:08:18] Put them up closer to the microphones, too.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:21] So, Dan, that was the letter segment.

[1:08:22] I guess we didn't have an answer for that.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:24] Yeah, I apologize.

[1:08:25] But we did that hilarious bit about the Hobbit movies.

[1:08:28] Yeah, we did.

[1:08:29] So, checkmate.

[1:08:30] Touchdown.

[1:08:31] Classy bit.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:31] They're already turning it into a series of paintings.

[1:08:36] That's right.

[1:08:37] A triptych.

[1:08:38] Yeah.

[1:08:39] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:40] Put it in the Flophouse time capsule and set it to...

[1:08:44] The future.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:46] Yeah.

[1:08:47] The future.

[1:08:48] Set it to ten minutes from now.

[1:08:50] We're just testing to make sure the time capsule works.

[1:08:52] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:54] Dig up that five...

[1:08:55] I like that idea.

[1:08:55] Like, we're just like...

[1:08:56] We just put something in a box and then we wait ten minutes and we open the box to see if

[1:09:00] it's still in there.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:01] Yep, it works.

[1:09:02] No Schrodinger hijinks on this one.

[1:09:06] There's a dead cat in here, too.

[1:09:08] Yeah, I put that in there.

[1:09:09] It's okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:10] Aw.

[1:09:12] So, this is our last segment on the show where we recommend a movie that we actually liked

[1:09:18] that you should watch instead of watching Vice, which I recommend for no one.

[1:09:25] No?

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:26] No.

[1:09:27] Letters.

[1:09:28] It's letters time.

[1:09:30] Flophouse Housework.

[1:09:31] Rawr.

[1:09:32] Welcome to the Flophouse.

[1:09:33] I'm Dan McCoy.

[1:09:34] I'm Elliot Kaylan.

[1:09:36] Everything is wrong.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:39] So, we're going to talk about movies that we actually liked and I'm going to talk about

[1:09:43] a movie I totally liked.

[1:09:45] Last night...

[1:09:46] Thus fulfilling the obligations of the bit.

[1:09:50] Fulfilling the prophecy.

[1:09:52] My mom always told me, Stuart, tell me about a movie that he liked.

[1:09:57] When I was a child growing up in the temple, the magic scrolls told me that Stuart would

[1:10:01] watch a movie he actually liked and then talk about it on a podcast.

[1:10:05] And that's what I'm about to do.

[1:10:06] Last night I watched...

[1:10:08] I went to a early screening, a special early screening that we got wise to thanks to a

[1:10:14] listener over at the Flophouse Facebook group of the movie Green Room.

[1:10:19] The latest feature from the director, Jeremy Saulnier, the director of Blue Ruin and Monster

[1:10:27] Party.

[1:10:27] Not Monster Party.

[1:10:28] Murder Party.

[1:10:29] Monster Party.

[1:10:30] Mad Monster Party?

[1:10:31] Yeah.

[1:10:32] Day of the Tentacle.

[1:10:34] And Green Room is a super tight little thriller.

[1:10:40] It's very brutal.

[1:10:42] It's about a punk rock band who are far away from home.

[1:10:47] They're from the D.C. area and they're touring the Pacific Northwest.

[1:10:51] And they are having difficulty finding gigs.

[1:10:55] And they get set up with a last minute gig at a venue that is a little more skinhead-y

[1:11:02] than they expected.

[1:11:03] And they get stuck in a situation that rapidly spirals out of control.

[1:11:09] And it's really great.

[1:11:11] The violence is very meaty, I guess.

[1:11:18] Yeah.

[1:11:18] It's meaty violence.

[1:11:19] It's shocking and horrible.

[1:11:22] And it seems it has some kinship to something like the Assault on Precinct 13.

[1:11:30] But it's, I guess, even more difficult to watch.

[1:11:35] And it has some great performances in it from both, I think it's Mason Blair, the star of

[1:11:42] Blue Ruin, as well as Anton Yelchin.

[1:11:46] Imogen Poots.

[1:11:47] Imogen Poots.

[1:11:48] My favorite Poots.

[1:11:49] Yeah.

[1:11:50] Multi-star.

[1:11:51] And a great heel turn by Sir Patrick Stewart.

[1:11:56] I totally recommend it.

[1:11:58] It's not an easy watch.

[1:11:59] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:59] If you're not into gory violence like Stewart's wife.

[1:12:04] Yep.

[1:12:04] You may not have enjoyed the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:05] Large chunks of the movie making unhappy noises and covering her eyes.

[1:12:10] Though afterwards, she did admit, though she didn't like it, it was a good movie.

[1:12:15] And it's pretty legit.

[1:12:18] Too legit to quit.

[1:12:20] Not only do they have some great music in the soundtrack, but also in the thank yous.

[1:12:25] They thank King Fowley, the front man for the band Deceased, which is a super, like, kind

[1:12:33] of unknown death metal band from the DC area.

[1:12:36] So that was pretty cool.

[1:12:37] The Deceased area.

[1:12:39] Yep.

[1:12:40] So, Green Room, Run, Don't Walk.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:44] I'm going to also recommend a thriller.

[1:12:48] I got around to watching 10 Cloverfield Lane, which is a fun movie.

[1:12:56] I think it's maybe been, like, slightly overpraised just because, I don't know.

[1:13:02] John Goodman.

[1:13:04] He has good in his name.

[1:13:06] I feel like if any movie sort of delivers.

[1:13:10] Unlike the director, John Badham.

[1:13:12] These days, like, most mass market entertainment is so bad that if any movie, like, delivers.

[1:13:18] It's so bad.

[1:13:21] How bad is it?

[1:13:22] It's so bad that if any movie delivers.

[1:13:23] How many sharks were in that, Nado?

[1:13:27] It is overpraised.

[1:13:28] But I still liked it quite a bit.

[1:13:30] And I probably would have been recommending Green Room 2 if it was a sequel.

[1:13:37] Green Room 2 is out already?

[1:13:38] Oh, man.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:39] They're just churning them out.

[1:13:40] Thanks, Holly Weird.

[1:13:41] Oh, my God.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:42] We made it money.

[1:13:44] Just pump it out, pump it out.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:45] You would obviously recommend Green Room.

[1:13:47] I scooped you, but then I sent you the link for the tickets.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:51] Stuart was the scooper and you were the pooper.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:55] That's from your lips to my ears and my heart.

[1:13:59] Anyway.

[1:14:01] Pardon me.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:04] But I did quite like 10 Cloverfield Lane, despite my.

[1:14:09] You liked that Mary Elizabeth Winstein.

[1:14:11] Minor.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:13] What do you call it?

[1:14:14] I'm just.

[1:14:15] I'm just.

[1:14:15] You didn't love it.

[1:14:16] You think it's not as good as people say, but it's still good.

[1:14:18] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:18] It's a somewhat qualified recommendation.

[1:14:20] Yeah.

[1:14:21] But.

[1:14:21] Watch it on a plane.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:22] It.

[1:14:22] It starts.

[1:14:23] Why not?

[1:14:24] It's a movie that starts like psycho and it ends.

[1:14:27] Spoiler.

[1:14:28] Like Caddyshack.

[1:14:28] Spoiler.

[1:14:29] Spoiler.

[1:14:31] Spoiler.

[1:14:32] Kind of like aliens.

[1:14:34] And if that sounds like fun to you, then.

[1:14:37] Then you're, you know, my kind of guy.

[1:14:40] And let's go get a beer sometime.

[1:14:42] But.

[1:14:44] No, it's a lot of fun.

[1:14:45] Like the thing that I kind of found interesting about it is like.

[1:14:48] Yeah.

[1:14:49] Jesus Christ.

[1:14:50] These things wouldn't be so long if you didn't.

[1:14:52] If you let me fucking talk.

[1:14:54] Okay.

[1:14:54] You're saying the thing you kind of liked about it.

[1:14:55] The thing I kind of liked about it is it's this.

[1:14:58] It's really this chamber piece.

[1:14:59] Like it literally has three actors in it.

[1:15:03] And it's a small classically constructed thriller.

[1:15:08] And that's a sort of movie that wouldn't get made nowadays.

[1:15:13] Except it did.

[1:15:14] If it wasn't.

[1:15:15] Oh.

[1:15:15] Attached to the Cloverfield name.

[1:15:18] Like it's an interesting way to make a sequel.

[1:15:19] Like it's not a direct sequel to this big blockbuster.

[1:15:22] It's a squeakle.

[1:15:23] It's a sequel that's set.

[1:15:24] It's a road trip if you will.

[1:15:26] It's a sequel that's set in the same universe.

[1:15:29] Which allows them to make kind of a smaller movie.

[1:15:33] And for that to be.

[1:15:34] For the studios to take a chance on a smaller movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:37] It kind of is the daredevil to Cloverfield's The Avengers.

[1:15:41] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:42] And so it's kind of nice that.

[1:15:44] People call it bad robot.

[1:15:46] I think it's a good robot.

[1:15:49] JJ Abrams.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:50] For studio review.

[1:15:52] I'm Stuart Wellington.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:53] But making a sequel this way kind of opens the window to a different type of film.

[1:15:57] That unfortunately hasn't been made that much lately.

[1:16:02] Because studios are so focused on just huge blockbusters all the time.

[1:16:06] And so I really liked it.

[1:16:08] And it had a really great third act.

[1:16:09] Like the first two acts were like good.

[1:16:12] But few movies I feel like these days.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:16] Often the third act is the worst.

[1:16:17] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:17] Often the third act is the worst.

[1:16:18] Especially with horror movies.

[1:16:20] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:20] Because in the early acts the mystery is what drives you.

[1:16:25] And you get so excited.

[1:16:26] And the build up is so good.

[1:16:27] That when they finally reveal everything you're like.

[1:16:29] Honk shoe.

[1:16:30] I'm sleeping because this movie sucks.

[1:16:31] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:32] I think this movie sets things up so beautifully that the payoff is very exciting.

[1:16:37] So yeah.

[1:16:38] Tim Cloverfield Lane.

[1:16:40] That's what I'm recommending.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:41] Speaking of big blockbusters.

[1:16:43] I want to recommend a little movie that's kind of a blockbuster.

[1:16:46] It's about two well-known heroes reversing each other.

[1:16:50] And maybe Justice Dawn's.

[1:16:51] Okay.

[1:16:52] It's called The Forbidden Room.

[1:16:54] Okay.

[1:16:54] Now it's.

[1:16:55] Oh.

[1:16:56] This is a movie that.

[1:16:56] He zigged and we both zagged.

[1:16:58] Mm-hmm.

[1:16:58] Ziggy.

[1:16:59] Now this is a movie that.

[1:17:01] We got zigged.

[1:17:01] If I had seen it when it was released in U.S. theaters.

[1:17:05] It would have been my second favorite movie of last year after Fury Road.

[1:17:10] Or maybe Tide for First.

[1:17:12] But I saw it.

[1:17:13] It's on Netflix now.

[1:17:14] So I finally got to see it because I missed it in its very brief run.

[1:17:16] The Forbidden Room is the most recent movie from Guy Madden.

[1:17:19] One of my favorite directors.

[1:17:21] He did the saddest music in the world.

[1:17:23] He did Careful.

[1:17:24] He does those.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:24] Those shoes with the ads that look like Bratz dolls.

[1:17:28] No.

[1:17:28] That's Steve Madden.

[1:17:29] They're brothers.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:30] Nope.

[1:17:30] Not related.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:31] He does those football games.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:33] That's John Madden.

[1:17:34] Okay.

[1:17:35] That's his dad.

[1:17:36] That's his dad.

[1:17:37] Yeah.

[1:17:37] His dad was in sports.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:39] His dad worked for a Winnipeg hockey team.

[1:17:40] He did that TV show with Don Draper where he was dissatisfied with his life even though

[1:17:45] he's changed his life.

[1:17:46] It's Matthew Weiner.

[1:17:47] I was Mad Men.

[1:17:48] Oh, I see.

[1:17:49] I see.

[1:17:50] I don't know about people's names.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:52] That's a good way to do it.

[1:17:52] Yeah.

[1:17:53] Yeah.

[1:17:53] Okay.

[1:17:54] He was.

[1:17:55] Yeah, anyway.

[1:17:56] But so Guy Madden.

[1:17:57] I've been eagerly awaiting this one.

[1:17:58] I'm a big fan of Guy Madden and it lived up to all my expectations.

[1:18:01] He's doing some things in it that are even more.

[1:18:06] He's a director who is always doing kind of radical things.

[1:18:11] Radical.

[1:18:12] Radical.

[1:18:13] With film format in terms of the look of the thing.

[1:18:16] He loves shooting things like silent movies.

[1:18:18] His editing is hyper fast.

[1:18:20] And he distorts the images.

[1:18:22] And this he takes that even further.

[1:18:25] But he manages to get some much more, some even more beautiful imagery than he's used

[1:18:29] to because the way he's using color and the way he's combining images.

[1:18:32] But also some strange and haunting and bizarre and unpleasant imagery.

[1:18:37] But I would go into the plot except it's this kind of nested series of plots that keep

[1:18:42] changing back and forth.

[1:18:44] It opens as a kind of instructional film about how to take a bath.

[1:18:50] And from that point it goes on to a story on a submarine.

[1:18:53] There's a story in a jungle.

[1:18:54] There's a story involving an evil insurance agent with who has these women dressed as skeletons

[1:19:01] that poison people.

[1:19:02] Like there's a lot of crazy stuff in it.

[1:19:05] Is it like Holy Motors?

[1:19:07] Uh, I would say no in that I feel like Holy Motors was, you're just following that one

[1:19:12] actor through a bunch of different scenes.

[1:19:14] And the scenes weren't necessarily full stories.

[1:19:17] In this case it feels like he's telling you a series of really bizarre stories but they

[1:19:22] have kind of beginning middle ends as opposed to just being like a crazy thing this character

[1:19:27] is doing.

[1:19:28] I mean some people maybe could.

[1:19:29] It's more like Holy Motors than it is like Titanic, you know.

[1:19:32] Okay.

[1:19:33] But it's.

[1:19:34] Or like a commercial.

[1:19:35] Yeah, exactly.

[1:19:36] Or, you know, an episode of Big Bang Theory.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:38] But I liked this more.

[1:19:41] You heard of your first, folks.

Elliott Kalan

[1:19:43] But I liked this more than Holy Motors.

[1:19:46] But Dan, as if you're not already going to go see it, there's an original song in it

[1:19:52] from the band Sparks, which I have about a man who's obsessed with butts and is trying

[1:19:57] to desperately cure himself of this obsession.

[1:20:00] And I've had this song stuck in my head for a few days now.

[1:20:03] It's, uh, but it's just like a very, it's a strange but very fun movie.

[1:20:08] And it unleashes so much more movie on you than you expect to get from a normal movie.

[1:20:14] So, The Forbidden Room.

[1:20:15] I like getting extra movie.

[1:20:16] Yep, it's streaming on Netflix right now.

[1:20:18] Don't expect closure on too many of the stories.

[1:20:23] Okay.

[1:20:23] But expect to be constantly thrown off balance by what this movie is doing, which I really

[1:20:28] enjoyed.

[1:20:29] The Forbidden Room.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:31] Three recommendations from the Flop Dudes.

[1:20:34] Yep.

[1:20:34] Thanks for summing up what just happened.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:37] Now we're going to talk some more.

[1:20:39] Yeah, I mean just a little bit more.

[1:20:41] Okay.

[1:20:41] Because this is the time where we sign off.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:44] Let's have a little bit less conversation and a little more finishing the podcast and leaving.

Stuart Wellington

[1:20:49] What I would say is, uh, this is the first episode after the MaxFunDrive.

[1:20:53] Thank you everybody who donated.

[1:20:55] It means a lot to us.

[1:20:56] Good point, Stuart.

[1:20:57] Thank you very much for the donations.

[1:20:58] Thank you very much to everybody.

[1:20:59] It's a fun time of year for us to, like, go out and actively promote the show because

[1:21:05] it's a big part of our lives.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:06] And to force John Hodgman to come into my apartment and watch...

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:10] I don't know, he was begging to come back.

[1:21:11] I don't know how to make Jay McEroy be slathered up in a big fat baby costume and do a dumb voice.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:17] The whole time, yeah, he kept eyeballing Elliot's seat.

[1:21:21] He's like, hmm, maybe I can take the motor mouth seat.

[1:21:23] Wow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:24] And just from the bottom of our hearts, we know there's a lot of people who are fans

[1:21:29] of this show who are not wealthy millionaires.

[1:21:31] And to donate any money to the MaxFun Pledge Drive is a real choice that you're making with

[1:21:37] your dollars.

[1:21:38] It's not a frivolous choice.

[1:21:39] And it's you choosing to support us rather than spend it somewhere else that you could.

[1:21:43] And we really appreciate that.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:44] And I also want to say thanks to everybody who donated as part of the Rocket Crocodile Action

[1:21:51] Squad to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

[1:21:55] That was a really cool thing that was set up by a group of our listeners over at our Facebook

[1:21:59] group.

[1:21:59] Yeah.

[1:21:59] And they raised a ton of money, which is awesome.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:02] Yeah.

[1:22:02] Basically, 25 grand.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:04] And don't forget that if...

[1:22:05] And what's our cut?

[1:22:06] And if...

Dan McCoy

[1:22:07] It's for charity.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:09] Yeah.

[1:22:10] You get to feel a swelling in your heart like a Care Bear.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:14] You get to feel like this wasn't all for nothing.

[1:22:16] That you've done some good in the world.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:19] I need the monies.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:21] And if...

[1:22:22] Charity begins in my wallet.

[1:22:23] If you missed out on the drive...

[1:22:25] Charity begins in me buying myself stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:27] If you missed out on the drive but you want to contribute, you can still go over to the

[1:22:30] MaxFun store and pick up the Rocket Crocodile poster drawn by Flophouse favorite Tom Fowler.

[1:22:39] And all profits of that poster go to the same charity.

[1:22:44] Yeah.

[1:22:44] Suicide prevention.

[1:22:45] Mm-hmm.

[1:22:46] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[1:22:47] We're out there sort of helping to do good in the community.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:51] Not really.

[1:22:53] We are tangentially.

[1:22:53] We're actively hurting.

[1:22:55] We are inadvertently.

[1:22:56] We are tangentially.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:57] We are inadvertently an accessory to a good cause.

[1:23:00] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:01] Whichever streaming service rented you, rents out Vice is going to be like, wow, there's

[1:23:06] an uptick in people watching this turd.

[1:23:08] Time to green light turd number two.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:10] Vice two.

[1:23:11] Vice in it.

[1:23:13] The re-Vicening.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:14] Yep.

[1:23:15] Twice is Vice is the name of the sequel.

[1:23:17] Nice.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:18] It's Vice with a two instead of a V.

[1:23:20] People are like, how do I pronounce this movie's name?

[1:23:23] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:24] But thank you to everyone again.

[1:23:26] And now it's time to sign off.

[1:23:29] No.

[1:23:29] You know what?

[1:23:31] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:31] Thank you.

[1:23:32] To everyone.

[1:23:33] Thank you.

[1:23:34] You don't care who knows it.

[1:23:36] I made it sound like I was arguing with you, but really I agree.

Dan McCoy

[1:23:40] For the Flopcast, which is called the Flophouse.

[1:23:44] For the Flopcast, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:23:48] Over there is Elliot Kalin.

[1:23:50] I'm looking right at Stuart Wellington and my eyes are thanking me.

[1:23:53] Good night, everyone.

[1:23:55] Bye.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:25] You never know.

[1:24:27] You never know.

Dan McCoy

[1:24:28] Nope.

[1:24:28] Yeah, I'm not going to show you that we're not.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:29] I'm feeling pretty good about the chemistry between me and Stu.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:32] I'm not going to need it.

[1:24:33] I mean, maybe after the show.

[1:24:35] I guess we can do it on.

[1:24:37] Okay, we're doing it on the show.

[1:24:38] Or during.

[1:24:38] Yeah, come on.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:39] What, are we going to talk about the movie?

[1:24:40] Forget about it.

[1:24:41] For...

Stuart Wellington

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:44] Mm-hmm.

[1:24:44] For...

[1:24:47] That's my Mickey Blue Eyes impression.

[1:24:49] Hmm.

Jordan Morris

[1:24:51] Maximumfun.org.

[1:24:53] Comedy and culture.

[1:24:54] Artist owned.

[1:24:55] Listener supported.

[1:24:56] I'm Jesse Thorne.

[1:24:57] I'm Jordan Morris.

[1:24:58] The federal government has millions of dollars in programs and opportunities that you need to seize today.

[1:25:04] You're a taxpayer, right?

[1:25:06] Well, then you've got it coming.

[1:25:07] Thanks to Uncle Sam, you can get...

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[1:25:32] Greyhound tickets.

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Ep. #201 - Vice

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