Ep.#451 - Better Man, with Hallie Haglund

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss Better Man.

[0:03] I guess we can find a better man.

[0:08] It's pretty good.

[0:31] Hey, everyone.

[0:32] Welcome to the Flophouse.

[0:33] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:34] Hey, Dan McCoy.

[0:35] And listeners, I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:38] Hey, Stuart Wellington and Dan McCoy.

[0:40] My name, which is on my driver's license, is Elliot Kalin.

[0:44] And joining us today is…

[0:46] Hallie Haglin!

[0:48] Woo!

[0:49] Star of the Shareholders.

[0:50] Oh, she's got her… she's part of the…

[0:52] I didn't realize Hallie has, like, a ragtime sting that she now uses.

[0:56] Yeah, that's good.

[0:57] So you hired Scott Joplin to write that for you for your appearances on podcasts?

[1:01] Yeah.

[1:02] Everyone's stepping up.

[1:03] I appreciate that Hallie had a theme.

[1:05] I appreciate that Stuart specified that he was talking to the listeners.

[1:08] Uh-huh, yeah.

[1:09] Instead of just Dan, yeah.

[1:10] When you addressed them.

[1:11] Yeah.

[1:12] It's good stuff.

[1:13] Yeah, this is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[1:16] Now, hold on.

[1:17] Hold on.

[1:18] You might be saying the straw man that Stuart claims I'm always talking to.

[1:21] Hold on.

[1:22] I'm listening.

[1:23] Ba-ba-da-da.

[1:24] Yeah.

[1:26] Dan, tell us about this straw man you're always worried about who always takes issue

[1:30] with everything you say.

[1:31] It's like he's in the audience of the podcast and he's saying, Dan, you suck.

[1:36] I want to kill you.

[1:37] I'm going to kill you.

[1:38] I'm a scarecrow.

[1:39] I'm going to come in your home at night.

[1:41] It was kind of like an evil Dan is what you're saying.

[1:44] Yeah, but it looks just like a younger version of Dan and then Dan has to jump off the podcast

[1:48] stage and do, like, a battle.

[1:50] Oh, right.

[1:51] Yeah.

[1:52] Do a battle with all the other versions of Dan that are wearing the clothes we've seen

[1:54] Dan wearing throughout the movie.

[1:55] Yeah.

[1:56] Like the one of me that's just viscera from the rock DJ.

[2:00] That was an Easter egg for the true fans.

[2:03] Yeah.

[2:04] Which video was that from?

[2:05] We're referring, of course, to the movie we watched, Better Man, which has a lot of Easter

[2:08] eggs for little Robbie Williams moments.

[2:10] So for someone like me who is not super versed on the career of Robbie Williams, there were

[2:14] times I was like, I guess that's a thing he wore once.

[2:16] Like, I guess that's a thing he said once.

[2:18] Elliot's an outlier for all Americans, though.

[2:20] Americans love Robbie Williams.

[2:21] They love Robbie Williams.

[2:22] Yeah.

[2:23] Before we get into that, though, let's wrap up the thing that I needlessly introduced,

[2:26] which is to say that this got a lot of pretty good reviews.

[2:29] You know, this is not our usual.

[2:32] Usually we, you know, tend towards the critical flop rather than commercial flop.

[2:38] This was a commercial flop, though, while being a largely a critical success.

[2:43] And so that's why we made like seven hundred dollars in the US.

[2:47] A little more than that, but not much more.

[2:50] Yeah.

[2:51] And that includes popcorn sales.

[2:53] That's like I listen to one popcorn.

[2:56] Oh, thanks, Trump.

[2:58] I was listening to I was listening to a podcast recently about the making of Donnie Darko,

[3:02] a movie that I saw in the theaters, and they talked about how what a tiny amount of money

[3:06] made in the theaters.

[3:07] It made me feel really special that I was part of this elite, I guess, smaller than

[3:10] I realized, exclusive crew of people that saw it in the theaters.

[3:13] So anyone out there who saw Better Man in the theaters, you are part of like a real

[3:18] kind of exclusive club of people who can say, yeah, I went to the theater and I paid

[3:23] money to sit in a public place, a private business that functions as a public place

[3:27] to watch a chimp be Robbie Williams and live out the life of Robbie Williams.

[3:32] Because not a lot of people can say that, it turns out.

[3:34] And it's interesting.

[3:35] Like, so this movie, Robbie, we should make it clear to Americans.

[3:40] This is not a movie about Robin Williams.

[3:42] Yeah.

[3:43] Much more famous celebrity in America.

[3:44] And I think the rest of the world was a similar name.

[3:46] This is about Robbie Williams, who is short for Robert Williams, I think, who is a singer,

[3:51] a singer and dancer, a showman, as opposed to Robin Williams, who is more of a force

[3:55] of nature.

[3:56] Also a showman.

[3:58] One of the greatest.

[4:01] That's an Easter egg for this director.

[4:04] No, I mean, he's huge in the UK, Robbie Williams.

[4:09] In Europe.

[4:11] But the funny thing is, this was not even that successful.

[4:15] I thought I was going to see.

[4:16] I looked at it and I was like, oh, this is probably a huge smash hit in the UK.

[4:19] And it just didn't translate.

[4:20] Oh, no, they didn't like it over there either.

[4:21] Or they didn't go to see it.

[4:22] You know?

[4:23] Yeah.

[4:24] Yeah.

[4:25] It took a big swing.

[4:26] You know what?

[4:27] He did it his way.

[4:28] He did do it his way.

[4:29] He did, yeah.

[4:30] Classic.

[4:31] A song that was popularized by singer Robbie Williams and no one else.

[4:34] Have you guys heard that song?

[4:35] That's Robbie Williams.

[4:36] He's not even.

[4:37] It's not even.

[4:38] It's not as if it's not even the first time it's been sung by a figure in a musical biopic.

[4:42] You know, it's.

[4:43] Sid Vicious.

[4:44] Sid and Nancy.

[4:45] Who also sings my way.

[4:46] My preferred version.

[4:47] The.

[4:48] My wife's.

[4:49] Because it's the only one that cuts through the fucking tree.

[4:52] Like that.

[4:53] That's all.

[4:54] Let's be honest.

[4:55] One of the worst Sinatra songs.

[4:57] Like.

[4:58] I have to ask Charlotte.

[4:59] My wife's a huge Sinatra fan.

[5:00] She even saw him in Las Vegas at the Desert Inn, which is a story that I will not share.

[5:05] She.

[5:06] It's her story.

[5:07] But she.

[5:08] She was very young.

[5:09] And yeah, exactly.

[5:10] She did it her way.

[5:11] And I think it can't help being like when he gets going, it can't help it being like

[5:15] a little rousing.

[5:16] But the message of that song is just so dumb to me.

[5:19] It's like we all do it our own fucking way.

[5:21] And it also sounds like shitty, like, look, no, I didn't take advice from anybody.

[5:25] I'm.

[5:26] I'm.

[5:27] I'm right.

[5:28] It's a song.

[5:29] It's a song that work.

[5:30] It's a song that on base level is a is a jerk.

[5:32] Justify himself.

[5:33] But it works when it is an older jerk like Sinatra, who has been through things and made

[5:37] mistakes.

[5:38] The point of that song is I made a lot of mistakes, but look, this is the only way I

[5:41] knew how to do it.

[5:42] I had to do it my way.

[5:43] And it screwed me up.

[5:44] That works when it is an older man singing it who can look back on things.

[5:48] But I feel like Robbie Williams, for all the mistakes he's clearly made, as seen in the

[5:51] movie, it still seems weird for someone who is not in their 60s to be singing my way.

[5:56] And also he's in America, early 50s, early 50s now.

[6:00] But by the time in the movie he must be in, his parents are still alive and not looking

[6:03] that old.

[6:04] So he must be in like, well, not both of his parents.

[6:06] What?

[6:08] Oh, well, by the end, one of them is talking about it.

[6:11] No, one of those grandma who died.

[6:13] Oh, really?

[6:14] Yeah.

[6:15] Yeah.

[6:16] No.

[6:17] Oh, man.

[6:18] Did you watch this movie?

[6:19] I don't think he did.

[6:20] Well, Dan thinks that Gran is what English people call mom, which is not.

[6:23] They didn't call her Gran.

[6:24] That's true.

[6:25] They didn't really call her Gran, no.

[6:26] But I mean, you, Hallie, but I will.

[6:31] Hallie's the only one who did her homework.

[6:33] It is an interesting move that the dad, as he gets older, he becomes more and more caked

[6:37] with old age makeup.

[6:38] And the mom just, they don't really do much.

[6:40] Actually, that's just Steve Pemberton's real face.

[6:42] Oh, they de-aged him for the earlier ones.

[6:44] No, that makes a lot more sense looking back on the movie.

[6:48] But the thing is.

[6:49] This is a real in-time situation where, for people who don't remember that old episode,

[6:52] we didn't realize that one character was supposed to be another character's mother.

[6:56] The dad is made up, even when he's young, looks so old that it made more sense to me

[7:01] that those two were together.

[7:03] Oh, man.

[7:04] I, yeah, like the father in this movie, we'll actually start the movie in a second.

[7:10] But we're going to watch it.

[7:11] Yeah, we're going to watch it together.

[7:12] I'll hit play on the VHS tape.

[7:13] The father is played by Steve Pemberton, longtime member of the League of Gentlemen, longtime

[7:18] English comedy guy.

[7:20] And I'm so used to seeing him wearing like crazy wigs and like look at like with tons

[7:25] of weird makeup on.

[7:26] So I feel like this all tracks.

[7:28] And yeah, I love him in everything he's in.

[7:30] And he plays such like a piece of shit.

[7:32] And he's so good at doing it in every performance.

[7:35] He's playing the classic.

[7:36] I feel like we have this in America, too, but I feel like it's very classic in England,

[7:39] which is the bad dad who is kind of like a musical type performer, super low level, super

[7:45] never going to be famous.

[7:46] Yeah.

[7:47] A real Rolling Stone.

[7:48] Yeah.

[7:49] And he just and he's just I feel like there's been I've seen so many British movies, especially

[7:53] about this kind of guy.

[7:55] But there's maybe the hit man of England.

[7:56] There's probably like seven of them.

[7:57] But they make so many movies that it seems like this is the number two job in England

[8:01] after like, I don't know, working in a factory and getting your hands cut off or something

[8:05] like that.

[8:06] The what?

[8:07] Chimney sweep.

[8:08] Yeah.

[8:09] If you're either a chimney sweep, you are a low level entertainer who abandons your

[8:11] family for a long time or you are the king.

[8:15] Those are basically the jobs.

[8:16] You know, the guy with the big hat.

[8:18] But like, I feel like.

[8:19] Oh, right, right.

[8:20] The guard.

[8:21] Yeah.

[8:22] I feel like Dick Van Dyke and Mary Poppins crosses off like four of those boxes.

[8:27] You know, he's got like at least one family somewhere that he's not paying attention to.

[8:32] Oh, yeah.

[8:33] As I said on line two, if you're if you're a reformer in the UK, you either end up on

[8:36] a comedy panel show or you get to be a detective.

[8:39] Those are two paths.

[8:40] Yeah, that's what you get to stick around long enough.

[8:42] Yeah.

[8:43] OK, so let's get into Better Man now.

[8:46] Right.

[8:47] Let's let's jump in here.

[8:48] Right up top.

[8:49] Let's jump in the way Robbie Williams was because he does a lot of jumping in this movie.

[8:52] A lot of jump.

[8:53] Because he's a monkey.

[8:54] So that's he's not a monkey.

[8:55] He's a chimpanzee.

[8:56] As we mentioned a bunch of times.

[8:58] This movie makes the interesting choice to replace its human performer with a what Dan

[9:04] informed me was a digital chimp character, a chimpanzee.

[9:09] The they didn't really didn't really train a chimpanzee to walk on its hind legs exclusively

[9:13] and sing Robbie Williams songs and do a Robbie Williams impression.

[9:16] Yeah, I think they can do it.

[9:17] They can grow to man's size.

[9:20] Yeah.

[9:22] So it's it's an interesting choice and one that didn't actually pay off.

[9:27] Yeah.

[9:28] I think it's it's one of those things where it's a double edged sword because it is the

[9:31] one thing that made us interested in talking about this.

[9:34] I can see how it would bring in.

[9:35] It made me interested.

[9:36] Yeah.

[9:37] That's the thing that might bring in the curious.

[9:39] But for the Robbie Williams fan, I think it's probably off putting to not recognize the

[9:44] person that the movie is about.

[9:46] And as we can as we've seen from Bohemian Rhapsody, people love it.

[9:49] People love a performer who is made up to be an exaggerated, almost physical caricature

[9:54] of the person they're performing.

[9:55] But they do not like a different species.

[9:57] And there's only one scene where you see the chimp in bed.

[10:00] with women. And just for that moment, it is weirdly off-putting. But I had the same feeling

[10:07] watching this that I've had with other things where I'm like, I had to keep reminding myself,

[10:10] oh yeah, in real life, this scene is happening with a person and not a chimp doing it.

[10:14] And so the movie is much more interesting if it's about a performing chimp than about

[10:18] a performing person. Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I find it slightly

[10:23] off-putting to see a chimpanzee snorting like mountains of cocaine. Yes. Well,

[10:28] that's going to rip someone's face off is my worry. The only place you should see that is

[10:33] a roadside carnival in Florida. And you should only see it because you're walking past that

[10:37] room to the bathroom and accidentally catch a glimpse of it. Yeah. OK, well, the movie begins

[10:43] in a little town called Stoke-on-Trent, what a small town in the north of England. We are

[10:48] introduced to Robert, who is a young chimpanzee boy who claims that he can play goalie in a

[10:57] pickup soccer game. He does terribly. Well, this this shows his inability to understand

[11:02] his own limitation. Let's no, no. He's assigned he's assigned to being goalie. This is the thing

[11:11] that I thought was weird. Like they're all like, you're shit, Robbie. Be goalie. One of the most

[11:16] important things here. Thank you. As a former goalie, I appreciate if you're playing like

[11:20] soccer as certainly as kids play it. Just put him in the middle. Like one of the people who

[11:25] runs around, like they're not staying tight to their like roles, like just let him. What's the

[11:30] name of that position, Dan? You're a big footballer. There's like a wing and another wing

[11:34] and a forward. Usually there's at least one wing. If you only have one, you're not going to get

[11:38] far. You know what I'm talking about. Like I found this right. Perhaps it could be a striker.

[11:41] You're not going to fly. Yeah. It's like it's in like that famous Stevie Nicks song,

[11:47] just like a one wing does. Sings a song. Sounds like she's singing. Where's my wing?

[11:56] Is that though? Is that a joke? No, no, no. It's a white one. I was like, I thought it was a white

[12:04] wing. Yeah. So she's so she's not afraid of changes because she's built her life around

[12:09] goo all the time. I thought that was the lyric. Yeah. OK. So she works at Nickelodeon.

[12:15] Children get balder. Is that the line? So young Robert, he doesn't do particularly well in soccer.

[12:23] People kind of kind of razz him a little bit. This doesn't we don't really see much more of

[12:27] this relationship with the other kids in the neighborhood. But it shows that he has a desire

[12:31] to be someone. And he has a he lives at home with his mother. And his bluster. It shows his bluster.

[12:37] Yeah, his bluster and his cheek. This is what's going to get him through life. And eventually

[12:40] he's a cheeky bastard. He never knows when to monkey. He's not a monkey. He's not a chimpanzee,

[12:47] Dan. A chimpanzee and a monkey are two different things. Are we sure he is, though?

[12:52] Yeah, not like a capuchin. No, he's not like Dr. Watson. I mean, we never know. He doesn't

[12:57] well, he doesn't have a tail. You're right. He doesn't have a tail. This is the difference

[12:59] between a monkey and other apes or I guess apes and monkeys are different. Monkeys have tails.

[13:04] Chimpanzees do not have tails. Gorillas don't have tails. Orangutans. And we do see his butt

[13:08] when in during the surprisingly ass bearing girl boy band world of Britain in the 1990s,

[13:17] where I was like throughout that sequence, I was like, this is a lot more skin than I'm used to

[13:21] American boy bands showing. But we do see that he does not have a tail. So, Dan, I'd like you

[13:25] to I'm going to keep correcting you. This is the kind of straw man you should worry about.

[13:28] A zoological straw man who does not like it when people confuse monkeys and chimpanzees.

[13:32] Stewart, continue. Don't let Dan stop you. Just let me stop you.

[13:36] Whoa. So his home life, he lives at home with his grandmother, who's very nurturing or his nan.

[13:43] Or mother, as Dan says. Thank you. Yep. His mom, who is a hardworking lady who is trying to pay

[13:51] the bills. And then he has a roommate who I guess is just renting rooms from a non entity in this

[13:58] movie. It's Nan. She's such a nan entity. She was a mom entity in the movie. Mom entity. Oh,

[14:05] yeah. That like I yeah, no, I feel foolish. But at the same time, they really do not put any

[14:11] importance on the mom compared to the nan or the dad. Yeah. She does cry at the end. He says some

[14:16] nice things. Yeah, she's there. That's that's what moms do. She shows up. We're there and nobody

[14:21] gives us the credit, but we're always there. Yeah, Hallie, how would you feel if you're if one of

[14:25] your sons, I won't mention their names for their privacy on this podcast, if one of them eventually

[14:29] made a movie where they were a champ, Robbie Williams, Robbie Williams achieved stardom as

[14:35] a champ and you were barely in the movie, how would you feel about that? I'd be pissed. Okay.

[14:40] Yeah. I also I also think this episode comes out right before Mother's Day. This is the episode

[14:47] that comes out I think the day before Mother's Day. Yeah. Okay. So everybody, everybody tomorrow,

[14:51] take care of your moms. Put them in your movie. Make sure to make sure to show their important

[14:55] parts of your champ performing career. Give them a gift. Happy Mother's Day. Workout set.

[15:00] So let me. Mom, I know that you listen. I find that confusing and distressing, but I love you.

[15:06] Okay. Are you sure that's your mom and not your grandma you're talking to? Because I know you

[15:09] have trouble telling them apart. Oh, now. Now. Oh, it's like on the end of the usual suspect.

[15:14] Just check the time time stamp on where we're at in the movie. Two seconds.

[15:18] Oh, wow. Okay. Cool. Okay. Buckle up, guys. I mean, it's a does everybody pee before this trip?

[15:26] It's the most basic plot. We don't need to get like, you know, it's

[15:30] establish some fucking foundations here. So and his dad is this like, as we said, he he's a small

[15:36] level performer. He's he's very selfish. He's not around very much. He runs away at the first

[15:42] opportunity. He's not he's a bad dad, singer dad. Yeah. And he he's obsessed with the legends,

[15:48] as he calls them. This is your your Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. And of course, Frank Sinatra.

[15:53] Yeah. So and he at the first opportunity, he runs away. He does not show up for Robbie when Robbie

[16:00] is part of a school production of Pirates of Penzance, which I have to say that is that is

[16:06] an intense production for kids to have to pull off. Gilbert and Sullivan is hard even for professional

[16:11] adult performers that rapid fire, very complicated and modern major general in that. Yeah. I mean,

[16:17] I guess I mean, Robbie's playing a pirate. I guess he's not. But but that's a case to pull

[16:20] off. Gilbert and Sullivan is harsh. This must be one of the toughest, non-toughest schools in all

[16:26] of England. It's like the famed school. But in England. Yeah, it's like. But that's the thing.

[16:32] School. I mean, England puts way more effort into teaching kids the arts than the U.S.

[16:37] So maybe that's the difference. And that's why they get Robbie Williams and we don't. Yeah. Yeah.

[16:42] That's why we have no boy bands in this country. Not a single losing. We're losing ground to Korea

[16:47] so fast every single day in the boy band market. Yeah. And and I think this is a good time as any

[16:53] to say sorry for not winning any Tony nominations. Current performance of Pirates of Penzance now on

[17:00] Broadway. Right. David Heissner's. Yeah. Didn't even know that was happening. Potential snub

[17:06] is what I what New York one told me. OK. I mean, we know by now. Well, I mean, you know,

[17:12] well, he's nominated. It was not nominated. I thought it was going to get nominated. Well,

[17:16] he's a potential snub. And I'm like, well, we know. But I haven't seen any of the productions,

[17:22] so I can't tell. Maybe they may. I feel like potential snub just means whether it was deliberate

[17:27] or not or whether it was like, oh, they just didn't deserve it. You know. Yeah. Like when

[17:31] Better Man was snubbed by audiences. So his father runs away, leaving Robbie to young Robert

[17:39] to sing a Robbie Williams song to kind of commemorate this loss. And he still clutches

[17:46] onto various trinkets and artifacts that his father left behind because he still loves his

[17:50] dad despite him being a bad dad singer. In some ways, in some ways, the more distant your dad is,

[17:55] the easier it is to love them because there's that yearning, you know, becomes a very strong thing.

[17:59] Whereas if your dad's kind of always around and wants to help you, it's easier for a kid to say,

[18:04] eh, no, thanks. I'll just sit in my room and not interact with you.

[18:07] All seems very personal. No, it's all hypothetical. Not at all true. But,

[18:11] you know, sometimes the dad reaches out and is like, hey, let's play catch. And they're like,

[18:14] I'm good. And you're like, oh, this is the kind of thing I always wanted my dad to do with me.

[18:18] All right. And then they go, hey, mom, want to play catch? And you're like, what?

[18:24] Yep. And then you put on Cats in the Cradle and they turn it off. They're like,

[18:28] I don't want to hear that shit. My kids are like, dad, I was really hoping for more of a

[18:36] Cats in the Cradle relationship with you. OK, so teenage Robbie now has ambitions to be a singer

[18:43] and performer and kind of like a cabaret star. Like that's his his foundation. He wants to be

[18:48] like the Rat Pack. Yeah. And so he is the Brat Pack. He does not want to be like that.

[18:55] He expressly says that at the time. It's like most of them didn't go,

[18:59] you know, look at their potential. Some of them hit some quite highs.

[19:02] Yeah. The Grindr, what a show. High highs, low lows.

[19:05] Yeah. Yeah, that was what, the Curaçao film?

[19:12] Yeah, the Curaçao film about the Brat Pack, yeah.

[19:15] So, young Robert, here's an ad on the radio for a upcoming boy band audition that is being put

[19:24] together by the actor who played Dewey Crowe from Justified, which he plays it as creepy as

[19:29] possible. I will say that this movie, for me, really loses something as soon as that sleazy

[19:34] producer leaves the movie. Yeah, I agree. Especially because they really seem to make

[19:39] a meal out of his facial hair and regular hair. They make a big point of talking about,

[19:46] of like hinting at what a jerk he is. And then it never, I mean, he's not nice to them,

[19:51] but I feel like in the annals of boy band managerdom, they're so much worse.

[19:55] Well, I mean, they make a joke of it, but like literally the first thing is like, you know,

[20:00] reasons he was a real sweetheart and like I wonder if that's sort of genuine like there's

[20:04] a limit to how far he wanted to go but then they undercut that because they say it goes

[20:08] end of right c word and it's like so it's like if you're going to do that do something

[20:13] different in england yeah in england it's a it's a it's a nice thing it's a term endearment

[20:18] yeah that's what the movie terms of endearment is about that's right yeah the uh this is

[20:23] the this is the word speaking of me and my children where my my older son he not he's

[20:27] out of that phase now but for a while like a year to go he was very uh enamored of showing

[20:31] off what bad words he knew and he'd be like i know the f word i know the s word he goes

[20:36] i know the worst word which of course is is a different kind of word but uh and i've like

[20:41] you don't know the second worst word and he'd be like just tell me what letter it starts with

[20:44] and i'm like it's a word you're not even gonna hear don't worry but he's like i just want the

[20:47] letter just give me the letter mr policeman i gave you all the yeah if you if you if you

[20:52] even speak it it'll destroy your mouth yeah yeah it's a lovecraftian word yeah it's a nuncia um

[20:59] so he uh so it's i think it's important to say that this is a first off this is a musician

[21:05] biopic my least favorite genre movie but it's a musician biopic so you'd rather see a real

[21:10] life snuff film yeah yeah i considered that a genre although it's funny stewart you're the

[21:16] one who really uh sold this movie i was yeah sometimes i mean literally the marketing exec

[21:21] who was on the movie so good job weird enough i got promoted that's why he's a podcaster now

[21:29] failing upward that's the stewart wellington story you took one for the team you got pinched

[21:33] you didn't talk we're gonna kick you upstairs yeah yeah the uh but so it i think it suffers

[21:39] from the fact that many of the people that are featured in this movie are still alive so they

[21:43] are a little bit careful to not be too honest about things um and we occasionally get voiceovers

[21:49] from real life robbie williams himself not a chimp um which like he'll you know he'll give

[21:55] you little insights into the moments of the story not as good as say 24-hour party people

[22:01] which makes is much better um i mean well that's a great movie like that's a genuinely great great

[22:05] movie i think this movie suffers a little bit from and we can talk about this more later i guess but

[22:09] like from coming relatively soon after a bunch of other music biopics like i'm trying to remember

[22:15] what other ones there were besides in the last few years like rocket man and bohemian rhapsody

[22:18] but like it is telling a very similar story but and uh complete unknown yeah complete unknown

[22:25] although i guess yeah it's a although this came up before complete unknown right or no i mean within

[22:30] like a few months right but like and they're the same kind of performer pretty much so it's like

[22:34] if you're gonna see one you're not gonna see the other yeah i don't think i texted dan this already

[22:39] but i do think this is a like the better version of maestro oh i never saw my take but i i didn't

[22:47] i didn't really dig into it on uh text because i wanted you to explain more it's got here you know

[22:54] like how many chimps are in maestro well i feel like i feel like the chimp the chimp is akin to

[22:59] the prosthetic nose yeah and then they have these fantastical scenes at least in my memory don't

[23:07] they have like dance scenes in maestro i didn't see maestro i don't know i thought it was about

[23:11] did you see my i did see maestro uh i don't remember like fantastical but i remember it being

[23:17] like extremely stylized yeah i think this yeah but but the dance scenes in this i i never am

[23:24] that into like dance in movies but i thought the dance was so the dancing was so the dance scenes

[23:29] in this movie are very good yeah i mean there's one scene in particular the rock dj we're not even

[23:34] there we're not there yet but but i just want to i mean well we've got brought it up i'm just

[23:38] saying like that's like a five star scene in a otherwise you know not five star like two and a

[23:42] half star movie three star movie dancing that he when he did the dancing with nicole on the yacht

[23:48] yeah that's great excellent yeah so let's let's get let's let's put the pedal to the metal and get

[23:53] there fast so he aces his audition he doesn't sing particularly well but he has a just a kind of i

[23:59] think the kid's called riz yeah uh a little bit of cheek a little charm he specifically uh he

[24:05] specifically uh talks about his success being tied in with a specific wink he does yes he looks

[24:11] like he's he's failed the audition and he turns around and goes should i tell the other guys just

[24:15] to give up because you've already found me and then winks and the guy and he's like if i hadn't

[24:18] winked i never would have been here today you know whatever and then when he leaves the guy's like

[24:23] cheeky bastard yeah that's exactly what we need for our boy bond we need someone who's a real

[24:30] but i respect i mean every boy band needs a bad boy like in the boy band of the flop house

[24:35] i'm the bad boy dan's the cute one i'll take it i don't know i guess that leaves me

[24:43] elliot's the smart one i guess i'm the artistic genius that leaves and creates

[24:47] even bigger things okay well you're not the quiet one that's for sure i am bound for reality

[24:53] television okay so uh and halle is the guest one i'm the girl

[25:04] she comes in and does like a hot like uh solo or chorus that we really need to bump that that's

[25:09] right yeah yeah that's right contributes the hook yeah yeah so uh he is invited to join he joins

[25:16] take that a hot new boy band that starts out by playing shows in the gay club scene in england

[25:22] before graduating to more uh i guess cishet normative uh venues i mean to to specifically

[25:30] a teenage girl uh directed venues but the that's something that so this was the one insight of them

[25:37] the insights about like when you get everything you want it leaves you empty inside you know

[25:40] people are important that insight did not i've heard that before but something that i had never

[25:45] like thought about every other comics oh okay yeah yeah the movie family man with uh

[25:52] episode of family guy yeah the uh quagmire says it and they say giggity

[25:57] the institute he sure does

[26:03] no wonder that show has ran for 29 years or whatever

[26:06] on the top people who says giggity

[26:09] name it name it name it name it name name someone who's

[26:13] yeah undeniable there's somebody who's better at giggity than him uh but but the the insight that

[26:20] you can that you can create a a teen girl oriented boy band by first testing them out in the gay club

[26:26] scene was one where i was like you know what that made a connection for me that i had not made

[26:30] internally before and i and i liked that that was the kind of thing where i'm like okay that's a

[26:34] that's a different uh point than i'm that i'm saying that makes sense to me but i haven't heard

[26:38] it before and but but first before they did that i was like he's like first we started on the gay

[26:42] club scene i'm like is there enough money in the underground gay club scene to for a boy band to

[26:48] be like to build a whole career off of that and then it was like oh that was just your testing

[26:52] lab for the for the teen girl scene that makes sense but yeah um and so they are very successful

[26:58] but robby individually isn't particularly successful a lot of the money goes to their

[27:03] manager or to their like front man gary gary because gary writes the songs so he gets the

[27:10] royalties on the songs whereas they do not they just get their i guess session and performance

[27:14] fees you know robby develops a pretty severe cocaine and drinking problem by even though he

[27:19] has 21 even though he has no money he's somehow swimming in cocaine but you know i don't i don't

[27:23] think that i think that tracks because the manager just keeps giving them those things for free oh

[27:28] is that it all right yeah that makes sense yeah because you got to get them amped up to go

[27:31] prepare i also assume you know like i mean look i i've never been in a boy band but i could podcast

[27:37] is pretty similar yeah i figure i know haley's shocked i think she just did a bazooka joke

[27:42] look take one day

[28:06] you're the one who'd run out on stage joke it's a total three for all and then the other two guys

[28:10] would come out and join you yeah it was weird though because i was 30 and the other two guys

[28:14] were 18 30 there's a three in there so it works yeah exactly no no you have to be an age that's

[28:20] divisible by three which is really tricky because you can only perform every three years

[28:26] oh yeah that year when you were 31 and they were 19 and you could not perform legally that was

[28:30] harsh that was terrible business model repair into a castle in england and you worked on your

[28:36] no i was in two years the point was originally i assume that also this is a uh a job where people

[28:44] give you a lot of drugs yeah probably yeah yeah as stewart's saying now that the uh the i this

[28:49] what struck me here when he's like you don't get it your way that's a reference yeah

[28:57] you know what i was gonna imagine like a burger king for drugs i i want to have it my way

[29:02] don't please no uh no sauce on top of my

[29:07] yeah yeah or uh outback commercial like no rules just right and yeah no rules please

[29:12] yeah and you deserve a break today and that break i guess is drugs when you're in a boy band that's

[29:16] a lot of drugs i mean that's when i take my drugs is when i'm on a break not when i'm at work loving

[29:22] it

[29:35] do you guys know that like bk have it your way is my son's favorite song

[29:43] like if that commercial comes on he like stops whatever he's doing it like

[29:47] i get just like double takes to the tv it's amazing how does your son feel about because

[29:53] this is my sons love that song but the thing they love even more are insurance company slogans

[29:57] so they'll just walk around going liberty liberty liberty

[30:00] Liberty.

[30:02] Can we get like a single for that?

[30:04] Yeah, I don't know.

[30:06] It means when I sing the Ring Pop song to them

[30:08] from all those old commercials, it's like a Gilbert Sullivan

[30:10] Pirates of Penzance thing because the lyrics are so much more

[30:12] complicated than just Liberty, Liberty,

[30:14] Liberty, but yeah.

[30:16] You won't get it yet. You'll get it when you're a little bit

[30:18] older.

[30:20] Yeah, just

[30:22] don't play the Cars for Kids song for them

[30:24] or it'll drive them insane.

[30:26] That's what they're going to want my ringtone to be.

[30:28] They'll just be rocking back and forth.

[30:30] They'll want Cars.

[30:32] The song says we can have them.

[30:34] People are just giving them to kids.

[30:36] Do they do the Cars for Kids

[30:38] song in LA?

[30:40] Oh, it's nationwide.

[30:42] It's on your side.

[30:44] Oh, no.

[30:46] Our brains.

[30:48] So, Robbie is unsatisfied

[30:50] being in the group, so it leads him to greater

[30:52] acts of rebellion.

[30:54] He gets kicked out of the group.

[30:56] He wishes that he could

[30:58] take a bigger part in it.

[31:00] He claims that he has all these lyrics, which

[31:02] having heard a lot of Robbie Williams songs after

[31:04] the end of this movie, I don't think that's true.

[31:06] Wow.

[31:08] I can be a hater. That's fine.

[31:10] You can be a hater.

[31:12] I'm allowed legally.

[31:14] What if you were Bill Hader?

[31:16] You'd have Barry on your resume.

[31:18] You would love to work.

[31:20] I would probably have a pretty good

[31:22] Robbie Williams impression in my back pocket.

[31:24] Oh, for sure. That would be wonderful.

[31:26] Can we get him? Is he available

[31:28] for this episode? Let's see. No.

[31:30] So,

[31:32] he gets kicked out of the group

[31:34] that leads him to drinking more.

[31:36] He takes a watermelon with him like he's the jerk.

[31:38] He's like, all I need is this watermelon.

[31:40] That was an interesting choice, and I

[31:42] was not sure what he was going to do with that watermelon, and the answer

[31:44] was nothing. Yeah, he saved it

[31:46] for like 30 years until he brought it back.

[31:48] He says, I'm sorry message that

[31:50] he carved into it, but there's a scene where

[31:52] he really screws up partly when

[31:54] they're about to go on stage for a concert. They're on like an elevated

[31:56] platform, and he's passed out

[31:58] on the platform when the show starts,

[32:00] and I was like, so when did he

[32:02] get in his costume? Did he just

[32:04] pass out a minute ago? Yeah.

[32:06] Guys, I'm sorry. Let's actually, and I know

[32:08] Stuart, you'll hate this, but let's skip

[32:10] backwards because we've gone

[32:12] past the point that you were like,

[32:14] we're not there yet. Oh, yeah.

[32:16] There is a

[32:18] fantastic dance sequence right

[32:20] in the middle of the movie to Rock DJ,

[32:22] Robbie Williams, probably

[32:24] biggest hit in the U.S.

[32:26] Yeah, Rock DJ I'm not familiar

[32:28] with, but Millennium.

[32:30] You didn't know Rock DJ?

[32:32] I did not know that one.

[32:34] I knew Millennium.

[32:36] But like this is a really

[32:38] smiles direct to our face.

[32:40] I don't know the lyrics, but

[32:42] a genuinely great sequence

[32:44] in the middle, and I thought it was interesting the way that

[32:46] Millennium was the theme song to the

[32:48] TV show. Yes, it was.

[32:50] Lance Hendrickson did a cover of it for that.

[32:52] Yeah, cool.

[32:54] He's got some grammar.

[32:56] Just

[32:58] exploring his lined face

[33:00] as Millennium plays.

[33:02] What it is, is you think

[33:04] you're looking over kind of like a desert wasteland

[33:06] and then it pulls back at the very end and you see

[33:08] that it was Lance Hendrickson's face the whole time.

[33:10] Great actor.

[33:12] I have no idea who you guys are talking about.

[33:14] You may remember him best

[33:16] in the day Lincoln was shot, the TV movie we played Abraham Lincoln.

[33:18] He was probably

[33:20] Bishop in Alien.

[33:22] He's in Pumpkinhead.

[33:24] He doesn't play Pumpkinhead, but he's the guy who

[33:26] summons Pumpkinhead. It's just like credit

[33:28] after credit that we have no reason to expect

[33:30] Hallie to be familiar with.

[33:32] I thought Aliens, maybe.

[33:34] He plays Ace in Quick and the Dead.

[33:36] You may remember best at the start of the show, Millennium.

[33:38] He comes back in

[33:40] Aliens vs. Predator.

[33:42] Anyway,

[33:44] the rock DJ scene,

[33:46] a lot of modern musicals

[33:48] cut things all to hell.

[33:50] This is clearly

[33:52] digitally stitched together

[33:54] from a bunch of different stuff.

[33:56] I'm sure a lot of it was on green screen anyway,

[33:58] but it is done as if it's one continuous dance.

[34:00] Presented as a continuous shot

[34:02] where you can see the full bodies a lot of the time

[34:04] and it goes all the way through

[34:06] the streets of London.

[34:08] It goes into stores.

[34:10] It goes on top of a bus.

[34:12] It's a really, genuinely great sequence.

[34:14] And they're great dancers.

[34:16] How many deckers

[34:18] is that bus, Dan?

[34:20] It's a double.

[34:22] That's right. They pulled out all the stuff.

[34:26] This is a really well done scene

[34:28] and it's really exciting. It really gets you into

[34:30] the energy that they want you to get into. It's really good.

[34:32] Unfortunately, this hits about

[34:34] a third of the way through and I feel like the movie

[34:36] has difficulty recapturing

[34:38] this. No, it never hits that high

[34:40] again, which is a problem.

[34:42] I'm like, oh, well this is a way

[34:44] forward for a movie musical where it's like

[34:46] this is modern flash,

[34:48] but you're still getting to see

[34:50] a big, genuine

[34:52] dance musical number that's not

[34:54] cut to hell. It looks more like

[34:56] a music video, honestly,

[34:58] but in a good

[35:00] way. But it seriously

[35:02] did make me wonder if

[35:04] he had not been a chimp.

[35:06] Go on.

[35:08] It reminded me of so many things

[35:10] that get so much critical

[35:12] acclaim. I said Maestro,

[35:14] but it was also like, oh, this is also

[35:16] a way better version of La La Land.

[35:18] All movies that were nominated

[35:20] for Oscars and then this made

[35:22] $700. So you're saying it's

[35:24] anti-chimp racism. I think so.

[35:26] I think the backlash,

[35:28] they just... I will say,

[35:30] I thought of La La Land 2 while I was watching

[35:32] this because there's that first scene in La La Land where they're

[35:34] dancing in the streets. Yeah, La La Land 2.

[35:36] La La again.

[35:38] La La La La La

[35:40] La La Land 2, La La La

[35:42] La. And it's

[35:44] called La La Lands. It's like, oh, no,

[35:46] now there's more of them. Dollar sign, yeah.

[35:48] I will say I thought of that

[35:50] first scene where they're kind of dancing on the freeway

[35:52] or whatever and I was like, I like this scene more.

[35:54] The only part of La La Land that's really exciting to me

[35:56] is the part when he's supposed to be selling

[35:58] out and he plays that great keyboard solo

[36:00] and I'm like, yeah, this keyboard solo rocks.

[36:02] Why are we supposed to see this as the nay deer of his

[36:04] artistic career? And this captured

[36:06] that energy really nicely. So I think

[36:08] probably the difference is, here's

[36:10] how I hear my theories for why this didn't get the same kind

[36:12] of acclaim. One, it's a chimp doing it.

[36:14] Two,

[36:16] Robbie Williams,

[36:18] and three,

[36:20] it being like a

[36:22] get another biopic, which I think

[36:24] give people reasons to turn away from it

[36:26] or to treat it as lesser.

[36:28] I don't know. It did not get bad reviews.

[36:30] This came out after the

[36:32] Queen one? Yes.

[36:34] I think part of it, yeah, is

[36:36] because we don't have a single person

[36:38] to kind of hang this on.

[36:40] We don't have Taron Egerton doing

[36:42] Elton John. We don't have Rami Malek

[36:44] doing Freddie Mercury.

[36:46] We have Andy Serkis

[36:48] doing... That's what I assumed.

[36:50] It's not Andy Serkis. It's somebody else.

[36:52] But we do have that chimp

[36:54] but I think it does make it, it makes the movie

[36:56] feel like a novelty act

[36:58] rather than a real story.

[37:00] I would say, you know, cutting ahead

[37:02] slightly as a spoiler to my final judgment,

[37:04] it's a very well made movie in a lot of ways

[37:06] and yet I could never quite get over

[37:08] my intense lack of interest

[37:10] in the life story of Robbie Williams

[37:12] and the movie did not find the angle,

[37:14] it got the angle to get me in through the door

[37:16] which is there's a chimp dancing

[37:18] but it did not get me into the,

[37:20] it didn't get into my heart to the point where I'm like,

[37:22] oh, I care about this guy and I care about what he's doing

[37:24] and I think that's the real weakness of it

[37:26] whereas maybe with Bohemian Rhapsody

[37:28] it's partly because people have such,

[37:30] a lot more audiences went in with affection

[37:32] for Freddie Mercury, like his story is genuinely

[37:34] also tragic in a way because he died young

[37:36] whereas Robbie Williams is just like,

[37:38] and then I did great and I'm doing good now.

[37:40] Too bad that Bohemian Rhapsody told a completely

[37:42] bullshit version. I mean it's totally made up

[37:44] also, it's not true, which is too bad

[37:46] because Queen is genuinely one of the strangest bands

[37:48] in the history of the world and it would have been amazing

[37:50] to see their real, because the stories you hear

[37:52] about them are just bonkers,

[37:54] just like very weird.

[37:56] It's another downfall of the fact

[37:58] that we're talking about many people who are still alive.

[38:00] Yeah, maybe.

[38:02] It feels like,

[38:04] maybe you guys didn't feel this way, but I never

[38:06] quite got over feeling like this was kind of a vanity

[38:08] production in the way that Rocketman

[38:10] feels a little bit to me.

[38:12] Yes, it's exactly a vanity production.

[38:14] Yeah, if you're producing your own biopic

[38:16] basically, then either

[38:18] you've got to really pull out the stops to show

[38:20] that you're telling the story or digging deep

[38:22] and I guess he's kind of digging deep here.

[38:24] He's saying, I'm depressed, I see myself

[38:26] as ugly and weak and

[38:28] bad, but

[38:30] there's always the thing of like, I think

[38:32] I'm so interesting, you should see my

[38:34] whole life here and that's

[38:36] a hard hurdle to get over.

[38:38] Speaking of his whole life, should we go through the movie or do we

[38:40] just want to skip to Final Judgment?

[38:42] No, no, let's go to the movie.

[38:44] Sorry Stu, I forgot

[38:46] that we rigidly adhere to structure

[38:48] on this podcast.

[38:50] No, I mean it just sounded like you were wrapping up.

[38:52] Yeah, anyway.

[38:54] We've got a little Gary on our hands over here.

[38:56] Have a what on our hands? Gary.

[38:58] Sorry about that.

[39:00] So Robbie is

[39:02] floundering a little bit, he wants to do

[39:04] his own solo album and he bumps into

[39:06] Nicole,

[39:08] what's her last name, Nicole Appleton

[39:10] from the band All Saints.

[39:12] Owner of a ton of apples.

[39:14] All Saints was a popular

[39:16] UK girl group.

[39:18] When I was living

[39:20] in Germany and Austria, their song

[39:22] Black Coffee was on MTV a lot

[39:24] and I always kind of associate my time over there

[39:26] with that song.

[39:28] Was that in the movie?

[39:30] No.

[39:32] But I'm like, oh I'm familiar

[39:34] with this girl group.

[39:36] But their

[39:38] number one hit, the one

[39:40] that went number one in the movie,

[39:42] everybody knows that song, right?

[39:44] Which one's that?

[39:46] It's like, you know,

[39:48] when you're gonna get me out of this

[39:50] black hole.

[39:52] I think you mean,

[39:54] black hole son,

[39:56] won't you come

[39:58] and wash away.

[40:00] Right. No, that's not what I mean.

[40:04] Never mind then. OK, so they they start a romance.

[40:08] They the two of them have a like a musical number, a duet

[40:12] with a little dance on a yacht. It's pretty good.

[40:15] It's good. It's good.

[40:15] It's one of the better parts of the movie.

[40:17] Their romance builds while they're having this, having this

[40:20] and also the lows of their relationship.

[40:22] She is a really good dancer also. Yeah.

[40:24] Yeah. And through the the montage of flashy forward,

[40:30] you get it's sort of obliquely shown in the I mean,

[40:34] they say it outright later on, but it's obliquely shown

[40:36] in this montage in a way that like I'm like, oh, I'm glad

[40:39] I read the Wikipedia page for what's going on here,

[40:42] that the her label pressured her to have an abortion of their child,

[40:48] which then leads to kind of the the divide in their relationship.

[40:52] Because that was definitely very obliquely done in a way that I thought

[40:56] maybe she had a miscarriage because you see them putting a crib together

[40:59] and then it's just kind of things are not good after that.

[41:02] And there are. Yeah.

[41:03] No, but you see the manager like yelling at her and she's like, no, no.

[41:07] And then you see the manager taking her to a baby and then like

[41:16] he brings out his doll and then he just goes.

[41:22] So they their relationship starts to deteriorate.

[41:25] He keeps doing too many drugs.

[41:28] He's very cheeky on television.

[41:30] He has some successful albums.

[41:32] He seems to be sleeping around quite a bit, which that means

[41:36] we get at least one shot of a chimpanzee in bed with some naked ladies.

[41:40] Dan, that must have been like seeing your search results

[41:42] just come to life in a movie.

[41:44] Yeah, exactly. I did.

[41:45] I was I mean, you know, this movie was not something where I expected.

[41:50] I will say that Dan was like, wait a minute.

[41:53] Am I still watching the movie or did I accidentally switch browser?

[41:56] This is a very like, how did my fantasy get on the screen?

[42:00] I guess there's a lot of I guess there's a lot of swearing.

[42:03] But like, why the length of it?

[42:04] Because it is such a basic story.

[42:06] It like read to me as like PG in a way that I'm like, oh, there's like

[42:11] three nude ladies in bed with a chimpanzee that I did not expect.

[42:15] Yeah, that's fair. Yeah.

[42:17] I mean, that's yeah, that is fair. That is fair. Yeah.

[42:19] Do you think that's one of those things where they hadn't quite

[42:22] they hadn't quite thought of when they started the process

[42:25] of making a movie about a chimp, Robbie Williams?

[42:27] And then they're like, oh, it's very possible that they didn't realize

[42:29] it would cut down on the amount of kind of like scandalous love scenes.

[42:32] They'd be able to do.

[42:33] There's it reminds me of a so my younger son has really gotten

[42:36] into the original Planet of the Apes movies recently.

[42:39] And we we skipped beneath the Planet of the Apes

[42:41] because I was worried the mutants would scare him.

[42:43] And I was talking to my wife about the making of it.

[42:46] I was saying how like, yeah, the original version of it,

[42:48] they were going to have an ape human hybrid to show that maybe there's

[42:51] a way for the apes and the humans to get along.

[42:53] And they even went as far as to do a makeup test with a kid, an ape

[42:56] human makeup.

[42:57] And then they realized the implication is that a human had sex with an ape

[43:00] and they and that it was too late in the process for them

[43:02] to not have spent the money on the makeup.

[43:04] But they cut it out of the movie.

[43:05] And it feels like this is a similar thought process here

[43:08] where they're like, we'll show him as a chimp.

[43:09] It'll be amazing.

[43:10] And we'll show all his bad boy exploits.

[43:12] Oh, you mean like when he slept with women?

[43:13] So you want to show him as a chimp having sex with women?

[43:15] And they were like, oh, OK.

[43:18] Wow, I wish we weren't on day 49 of the 50 day shooting schedule.

[43:22] You know, you guys, this this moment did not.

[43:25] I mean, it stuck out to me because there are naked ladies.

[43:27] But like the the interspecies.

[43:31] Yeah, that did not affect me as much as him as just Robert

[43:35] Robbie Williams at that point.

[43:37] Like, I didn't really think about it.

[43:38] Maybe it's because I'm a visual learner.

[43:39] I kept having to remind myself, oh, yeah, he's a person.

[43:41] He's not a chimp.

[43:42] Yeah, I have amnesia, so I keep forgetting what's happening

[43:47] because I brought up because you brought Planet of the Apes, though.

[43:51] So I, you know, I finally recently got a new phone to get ahead

[43:54] of our idiot president's disastrous tariffs and such.

[43:58] Can't wait to find out how this has to do with Planet of the Apes.

[44:01] I mean, it's got to get there.

[44:03] Your impatience will be slowed down when you.

[44:08] No. So I was like, you know, I hate

[44:11] AI for all sorts of applications, but I, you know,

[44:16] like across the board, I'm like, I'm not like, well, this has no use whatsoever.

[44:19] You know, like I was like, oh, well, it has like the phone has this function.

[44:23] Point it at a thing, it'll tell you what the thing is, you know,

[44:26] like a screenplay for me.

[44:27] I'll I'll try that.

[44:29] That's my favorite function.

[44:31] The one that's put everyone out of work.

[44:33] No, but I'm like, let me put it up to a better man and see what happens.

[44:37] And sure enough, it says you're watching Planet of the Apes.

[44:40] I'm like, oh, yeah, I even for the things I kind of accept.

[44:44] Technically correct.

[44:45] Dan, Dan, I'm going to I'm going to do you even one better.

[44:48] I have a new children's book out.

[44:49] I'll plug it later called Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House.

[44:51] And I had to look up the date of an author event.

[44:53] I'm doing so I could talk about this podcast.

[44:55] And when I googled Sadie Mouse once upon a time, which is in the store,

[44:58] the A.I. said this may refer to the book Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House

[45:01] or Sadie such and such of the Manson family as portrayed

[45:04] and once upon a time in Hollywood.

[45:05] I'm like, I guess they did wreck that house.

[45:07] Yeah, I guess they did.

[45:09] Correct. Have you seen that thing where like people just like put in

[45:12] totally made up phrases into like chat GPT and ask them to explain it?

[45:15] And chat GPT confidently like claims like, oh, that's what this means.

[45:19] It's like, fuck you.

[45:21] So I guess we know chat GPT is a man.

[45:25] Oh, air horns.

[45:27] Oh, oh, wait.

[45:29] I don't know how I can so roasted here.

[45:31] I don't know how to pick up my phone.

[45:33] They're going to have to fix that by stealing Scarlett Johansson's voice

[45:35] and just sticking it on there. Yeah.

[45:37] Oh, OK.

[45:39] So Robbie manages to he what he nets a big he nets a like a huge fish.

[45:46] Yeah. He nets a huge festival appearance at Nebworth.

[45:50] Are you guys were you guys familiar with Nebworth?

[45:52] I was not. So when they start when they kept saying Nebworth,

[45:55] we got to do Nebworth.

[45:56] I was like, I got to look what what this is.

[45:58] Don't know what they're talking about.

[45:59] You know, it sounds like like a nerdy villain or like a butler character.

[46:03] Yeah, it's true.

[46:06] Stop bothering us, Nebworth.

[46:08] You're too small to play the piccolo.

[46:10] I'll show you.

[46:12] So leading up to this point, every time Robbie's small to play,

[46:16] he is so small.

[46:18] Every time Robbie is performing on stage,

[46:21] he looks out in the audience and he sees past versions of himself

[46:26] saying horrible, violent threats to him, basically like you're going to fail.

[46:32] I'm going to kill you.

[46:33] All these things.

[46:34] I'm going to kill you was weird.

[46:35] Like I get like the self-doubt, like, you know, like you're ugly,

[46:39] you're stupid, but I'm going to kill you.

[46:42] Does that seem like something you say to yourself?

[46:45] Yeah, not particularly.

[46:46] Yeah. I mean, although he was in many ways trying to kill himself

[46:50] with drugs and then later on with, I think, a razor blade.

[46:55] But a frozen pond.

[46:56] So the whole time I'm like, every time he's performing,

[46:58] I'm like something bad is going to happen.

[47:00] But I'm not that worried because I've seen Smile 2, the worst

[47:03] possible concert performance thing in a movie.

[47:07] So but he this is this seems to be.

[47:09] I mean, Trap was a pretty bad outcome for a concert performance, too.

[47:12] You end up at a serial killer's house.

[47:14] I mean, you can't see it.

[47:17] The actual concert goes off without a hitch in Trap.

[47:21] Oh, I see. Yeah, exactly.

[47:22] And it's amazing.

[47:24] You can buy her album somewhere.

[47:26] I bet. Right.

[47:26] M. Night Shyamalan's daughter.

[47:28] So Lady Raven, Lady Raven.

[47:30] Yeah, cool. I remember.

[47:31] I mean, she doesn't perform in real life as Lady Raven.

[47:33] That's her character. She doesn't.

[47:35] I think she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[47:38] So what I'm saying is that this is like

[47:43] his his like relationship with himself

[47:46] and his addiction and his relationship with his father.

[47:49] That's his big challenge that he has to overcome. Yes.

[47:52] And he his stress leading up to this big festival

[47:56] forces him to push everyone away.

[47:58] It's turning into more of a stressful.

[48:00] Yeah. Thank you.

[48:01] He he he destroys his relationship with Nicole, his grandmother.

[48:07] Grandmother, not mother. Yes. Thank you.

[48:09] And he wrecks his relationship with his best friend,

[48:12] who is a guy that he's known for years.

[48:14] Like I was like, are we supposed to do that?

[48:17] Yeah, we were. I mean, they showed up earlier.

[48:19] They were they were drinking together when he said, I'm going to go be in a boy band.

[48:21] Yeah, they were like sitting on a on a billboard or something.

[48:24] But like he was not a big part of the movie.

[48:27] Like they made it out like he's like a conscience.

[48:29] This is like a huge thing.

[48:30] And I'm like, this guy was barely here for the whole rest of the day.

[48:33] And did you really want to see a lot of scenes with him

[48:35] hanging out with his old buddy?

[48:36] Or do you want to see this chimp dancing on a double decker bus?

[48:39] Right. Do you think do you think that old buddy really exists or he was invented

[48:42] for the the movie? Do you think what do you think?

[48:45] This character, this character actually existed in real life

[48:47] or if this was just like a straw man.

[48:49] I bet he's a composite of the people.

[48:51] You know, I think he's real.

[48:53] I think he's real.

[48:53] And I think Robbie was like, I got to put him in the movie that.

[48:57] Yeah. Like this guy is a legend.

[48:59] That's how people people are going to get mad

[49:01] if I don't put this guy in the movie.

[49:03] It'd be like making a Beatles movie and not putting in.

[49:07] Who's a Beatle?

[49:07] Yoko. Yeah. Yeah, there you go.

[49:10] So he he strains all his relationships.

[49:12] He even his father, who had come back into his life

[49:16] when he became successful, he even pushes his father away,

[49:21] which at this point we're like, yeah, your father's a piece of shit.

[49:24] Like we all know this.

[49:26] Yeah. Yeah.

[49:27] So he does the festival and not a man.

[49:30] It goes off without a hitch, except for the fact that he jumps off the stage

[49:34] and he battles digital versions of former selves,

[49:38] slaughtering them in quite a battle.

[49:41] Yeah. But we presume that the audience probably doesn't see that.

[49:44] My guess is that if you look at that, if you look at the archival footage

[49:47] of his actual performance at Knebelworth, that he doesn't jump off the stage

[49:51] and just start fighting people, you know, that but it ends with him.

[49:55] Stabbing through the or not gets not ends.

[49:57] One of the big moments is him stabbing through the chest.

[49:59] His pirates.

[50:00] Penzance younger kids, which really was sad.

[50:04] Yeah, it was a he gave a little whimper.

[50:07] Yeah, it was like that.

[50:09] That version of himself didn't really do anything bad to him.

[50:13] No, not particularly.

[50:14] But I will say this is one of those moments where I'm like,

[50:16] I don't really I don't really buy this as it as a scene.

[50:20] But I love seeing this kind of chimp fight free for all.

[50:22] It's also, yeah, it doesn't look like real chimps.

[50:24] But like, I love seeing all these different ships

[50:26] and different costumes fighting each other.

[50:27] Like that's why they made the movies.

[50:28] It was like 300.

[50:30] Is that the name?

[50:31] Is that the number?

[50:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[50:34] The 300 chimps.

[50:35] Yeah, three.

[50:36] And yeah, they stood against Persia in the hot gates.

[50:39] Yeah. The thing is, the movie 300 be different.

[50:42] If all the if all the Spartans were chimps, that would feel different.

[50:45] Too much. I guess that's true.

[50:46] Yeah, they would all be ripped.

[50:49] Super ripped chimps.

[50:50] Now I you know, I'm not the biggest fan always of like,

[50:54] you know, like a mishmash of CGI characters battling each other.

[50:59] But I will say I much prefer that than seeing actual chimps

[51:02] having to hit each other with fish.

[51:03] Oh, for sure.

[51:04] That would make me upset.

[51:05] I think we can all agree that this is a stand here.

[51:08] It's a better movie for not Lancelot

[51:09] Link style using a real chimp in a costume and like putting peanut butter

[51:13] on his lips so that his mouth moves and not having real chimps fighting each other.

[51:16] I think we all agree with that.

[51:17] Yeah. Now, for people who aren't as old as us

[51:20] and didn't see it in this indication, Lancelot Link was a secret chimp.

[51:27] Now, that implies that you think he's a chimp in secret like Robbie Williams.

[51:31] No, no, no.

[51:32] He's actually a secret agent who's a chimp in a world of chimps

[51:34] where everyone is a chimp.

[51:35] Yeah. See, I like my chimps playing baseball with Matt LeBlanc, and that's it.

[51:40] In which case, I don't I don't think that was a real chimp in that movie.

[51:43] I think that's a person in a costume.

[51:44] So what all the better? Yeah.

[51:46] Sorry. Sorry.

[51:47] Your innocence has been shattered.

[51:49] Maybe you need to watch Dunstan checks in,

[51:51] which I guess is also maybe not really a real one.

[51:55] Is Dunstan a real one?

[51:56] That Dunstan, he's a real one.

[52:00] Let me tell you this about Dunstan.

[52:01] That guy, that was an orangutan, I think, or I don't remember.

[52:05] It's an orangutan or a gorilla.

[52:06] He is a real one.

[52:08] A hundred percent.

[52:08] He gets a hundred percent all the time.

[52:10] He will check in.

[52:10] You do. You doing bad?

[52:11] He'll check in.

[52:14] He's not afraid of it.

[52:14] That's what it's about, right?

[52:16] So after his performance,

[52:19] if it was I was just I hope it's a real ape so that I can go back in time

[52:22] and write a review of that ape's performance and say Dunstan checked out

[52:26] halfway through the movie.

[52:30] Oh, man, Dunstan's going to be so fucking bummed.

[52:32] He's going to be so mad, so mad.

[52:34] Yeah. You made Dunstan cry.

[52:38] So this is what it sounds like when apes cry.

[52:42] Do do do do do do.

[52:43] Anyway, do you go with when Dunstan cries?

[52:46] Yeah, that's not the right number of syllables.

[52:48] But as I say, getting found is dumb.

[52:50] Yeah, damn.

[52:51] Prince was one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

[52:52] I do not want to ruin his scansion, but kind of let go.

[52:55] And then we're done. We don't cry.

[52:58] I don't know. You're right.

[52:59] Much better. Done.

[53:00] It's very much better.

[53:01] Yeah, it's only as long as I can call that.

[53:04] But yeah, I take this on the road.

[53:05] We'll have this.

[53:08] I mean, it's still better than my raspberry break parody.

[53:11] So

[53:13] so after battling again,

[53:15] no disrespect to Prince, one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

[53:16] OK, stupid idiot.

[53:18] After all this, Robbie contemplates self-harm,

[53:22] but he stops himself and he checks himself into rehab.

[53:25] He cleans himself up and then he

[53:29] the his first big step, the only step is that he reconnects.

[53:34] And with all the people that he's pushed away in his life

[53:37] and he makes him, he makes like showy amends with everybody. Right.

[53:42] He gives he gives Gary Barlow back a watermelon with a penis

[53:46] crudely carved in it.

[53:48] He tells the idea that he's been mad at him all these years

[53:50] because he never paid him back for that watermelon.

[53:53] This is all it took. Yeah.

[53:54] You know, the water watermelon symbolizes

[53:58] something, I guess, drug use.

[54:00] But you got to imagine those are expensive in England, too.

[54:02] Like you're not growing watermelons in England.

[54:04] Those are all imported, you know?

[54:06] Yeah, that's right.

[54:07] Where do you grow watermelons?

[54:09] Yeah, you can grow them here.

[54:10] You grow them in the United States.

[54:12] That's my husband.

[54:13] And he grew them in our yard.

[54:14] Yeah, we've grown watermelons in ours, too.

[54:16] Yeah, they grow a lot in Mexico.

[54:17] They grow a lot in in Japan is where they grow the square ones.

[54:21] You know how to make a square watermelon?

[54:22] They just put it in a box.

[54:23] It's so exotic to me to live a place where you could grow your own watermelon.

[54:27] So Dan, Dan, so you're going to try to grow your own watermelons

[54:30] now in your window box in your I think you could do it.

[54:32] Yeah. Yeah.

[54:33] I don't think the temperature is here.

[54:35] We can figure it out.

[54:36] You could do it. Yeah, I bet you could figure it out.

[54:38] Maybe just get some grow lights.

[54:39] And, you know, do it inside. Yeah.

[54:42] You should grow it like under your bed.

[54:44] Yeah. But grow lights on your bed.

[54:46] So it also looks like your bed is like a race car.

[54:49] Yeah. Yeah.

[54:51] I think it's pretty cool.

[54:52] The bed just like slowly like goes up higher as the watermelons grow.

[54:55] Yeah, it's a real little Nemo type scenario.

[54:57] Yeah, I love it.

[54:58] Down by the bay.

[54:59] That's where they grow also.

[55:01] Down by the bay. Yeah, that's true.

[55:03] They do. But don't talk to your mom about it.

[55:06] She's going to ask you if you've seen some crazy things.

[55:09] So the movie concludes.

[55:10] Robbie does a big performance at the Royal Albert Hall,

[55:15] and he does a kind of like a cabaret style show

[55:20] where I'm assuming he does some of his own songs.

[55:22] He also does a tribute to his mother.

[55:24] He brings his father up on stage and they sing My Way by Sinatra.

[55:28] Again, is that's a Sinatra original or is that a standard before that?

[55:32] No, he I think you know what?

[55:34] I know he didn't write it.

[55:35] Like, I don't think Sinatra didn't write his songs.

[55:38] But I think it was it was his.

[55:40] I think he may have introduced it like it was his signature song.

[55:43] Sure. That is like he did it his way.

[55:46] He did it his way, which means usually extending all the syllables

[55:49] as long as possible. Yeah.

[55:51] And that's kind of the end of the movie.

[55:52] He like I think he says something cheeky at the end.

[55:56] Yeah. And that's that's it.

[55:58] He literally ends saying, like, that's my story.

[56:00] I'm an entertainer. I'm the best in the world.

[56:02] Fuck you. And then the movie ends.

[56:03] It's like, I just watched your whole movie.

[56:05] Why are you mad at me? I don't understand.

[56:07] And I'm like, if you have to say that, I don't think it's true.

[56:11] If you have to tell me you're the best in the world.

[56:14] At least he's a cabaret entertainer.

[56:16] He's he's he's he's copping to like being corny.

[56:19] I think a little bit like, you know, like, oh, this is what I really like.

[56:22] Is that enough?

[56:23] It is. It is interesting.

[56:24] Like they they're the it is interesting that like I wonder if there's a

[56:28] this is not a more interesting version of the movie, I guess,

[56:30] but like about a guy who is a pop star, but really wants to to to chance,

[56:35] chance that we'll adore you.

[56:38] The there's the whole movie is him.

[56:40] He's a pop star, but he really wants to do kind of old fashioned those.

[56:44] He wants to do Seth MacFarlane style, big band and and and cabaret songs.

[56:49] And I wonder if if that would have been like

[56:54] in some ways a more interesting thing than fame is tough.

[56:57] You get everything you want and it and it hurts.

[56:58] It's like I'm performing.

[57:00] I'm a performer who is doing work that is not what I want to do,

[57:03] although he writes the song.

[57:04] So I don't I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

[57:05] You know, he writes the songs that make Robbie.

[57:08] Well, there's also there's also a there's a theme that he feels

[57:12] like he is doing he is doing everything

[57:16] but he doesn't really want to.

[57:17] Like he throughout the whole movie, even when he's doing

[57:20] like when he's performing his own stuff, he feels like he is doing it for someone else.

[57:24] Yeah. In this case, for most of it, it's like he's trying to live out

[57:27] his father's fantasy to get some approval from his father.

[57:30] Yeah. But it's also like very weird that the whole running theme is like

[57:35] I did it my way because also the the whole theme of the movie is like

[57:38] I was just doing it for everyone else.

[57:40] And I, I, I just cared about what the other people thought of me.

[57:45] So he really wasn't doing it his way.

[57:48] Well, we're.

[57:50] I feel like we're in.

[57:51] We're still judging.

[57:51] We're still in the final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie,

[57:56] bad, bad movie or movie.

[57:58] We kind of liked I kind of like this one.

[58:01] It is it is a kind of like I enjoyed the first half

[58:06] when things were fun, better than the inevitable

[58:10] like sink into the mire of like drugs and alienating people.

[58:14] It's the weird I guess actually this is the way this or a lot of these movies

[58:16] that when things get better for the character, the movie gets kind of sadder

[58:21] and grimmer and more boring, you know, that like it's fun to see someone

[58:24] dissolving and and being hedonistic, but it's not so fun to see someone

[58:28] recognizing the trouble and and reconnecting with other people.

[58:32] You know, a Nora.

[58:34] I will say there is one funny moment in the getting that we should have mentioned

[58:38] in the reconnecting with people montage where he goes to his grandmother's grave

[58:42] through the TV and a VCR and watches the old shows

[58:46] they love to watch together with her tombstone and chips and some chips.

[58:50] And I thought it was so funny because it was crisp.

[58:52] Yeah, I thought it was so funny because I was like,

[58:54] so does he think his grandmother is enjoying this?

[58:56] Like this is making up for a lost time.

[58:58] And also anyone else walking through that cemetery would just see a famous man

[59:01] laughing his head off at it in the middle of a cemetery watching a TV show

[59:04] which seems super disrespectful.

[59:06] What is going on in this scene?

[59:07] But anyway, I just thought it was a funny thing to put it.

[59:09] I would say. Oh, yeah. Go, Dan.

[59:10] Oh, yeah. I think there's going to be a split decision on the chimpanzee

[59:17] decision for me.

[59:19] I think that it takes what is just a basic biopic.

[59:23] And it's like, OK, you know, I wouldn't necessarily be sympathetic to this guy

[59:27] who's like just destroying his own life without having any like

[59:32] particularly large problems that he's raging against normally,

[59:39] if not for the fact that it sort of literalizes

[59:42] how alienated he feels in a way that like is hard to ignore.

[59:46] And I felt more sympathy for this chimpanzee man

[59:50] than maybe I would have for Robbie Williams.

[59:52] Yeah. So but but, you know, it does kind of lose a lot of steam.

[59:57] I didn't love it, but I kind of I kind of like.

[1:00:00] Stuart? Yeah, I would say so I'm, as I've said before, I greatly dislike musician biopics.

[1:00:07] I don't care. I just don't give a shit. I don't need to hear a rags to riches story where he

[1:00:15] gets famous very young and is famous. And the thing he has to overcome is

[1:00:20] be like doing too many drugs and whatnot. I just I couldn't I couldn't care less.

[1:00:27] The there's a couple of things moments in the movie like obviously the that big dance number

[1:00:32] I thought was a lot of fun. I really like the scene when his dad tries to reunite with him

[1:00:38] when they are when he's famous again. And he brings some woman into the into Robbie's hotel

[1:00:44] room and she's like, Can I use your bathroom? It's a number two. I was like, great scene. Perfect.

[1:00:50] But yeah, this is I think the the choice to make him a chimp I found kind of fascinating. And

[1:00:56] like every once in a while, I would just be reminded of it. And I'm like,

[1:01:00] why the fuck are they doing this? But I thought it was, you know, I thought that was a fun choice

[1:01:06] that made it I feel like it would be almost insufferable without without the chimp character.

[1:01:12] So I'm going to say I think this is a bad, bad movie. That's not for me.

[1:01:15] I'm going to call this also a movie. I didn't like it, but dammit, I respected it. I'm gonna

[1:01:20] call this a movie I kind of respect in that it is well made. I think at heart, it never gets I was

[1:01:27] never interested in Robbie Williams, and I never felt emotionally connected with him or anything

[1:01:32] like that. So I think it fails at its number one job, which is to get me to care at all

[1:01:36] about the main character. But I think it succeeds in being like, really watchable.

[1:01:40] And a lot of the scenes work well. And the dance numbers are really, really fun.

[1:01:44] The fact that I don't know the music and don't like that music particularly was not as big a

[1:01:49] hurdle as I thought it'd be because those scenes are well done. But it does feel like that chimp

[1:01:55] thing. Like I said, it's a double edged sword. It is both the only interesting thing about the movie.

[1:01:59] And it also shows you how not interesting to me, at least the rest of the movie is because the whole

[1:02:04] time you're like, there's a chimp doing this stuff. This should be more they should be doing

[1:02:08] what's other stuff you can do. What are your other ideas? And it feels like the movie had one

[1:02:11] idea, basically, you know, at one point, he runs into the Gallagher's from from Oasis.

[1:02:18] And I was like, you're one and Gallagher to my watermelons. And the movie does portray them as,

[1:02:25] you know, assholes, which famously they are assholes, right? I thought like,

[1:02:32] I feel like it would have been great if they were the only other animal characters.

[1:02:37] Like a couple of storks or something, or I mean, I would have been good for them.

[1:02:41] I would have liked it more if it was if they just went full mouse and everyone was an animal,

[1:02:45] you know, except for him, except for or if they I was Wade. I kind of wanted him to start when

[1:02:51] he's a kid. I kind of wanted him to see him as a person and then have him either cut.

[1:02:57] And he's he's a chimp where he changes into a chimp, something to really make it clear that

[1:03:01] the filmmakers know that this is not a story about a talking, singing chimp that is a human family.

[1:03:06] It's not Stuart Little, but a chimp instead of a mouse, a human family, one animal member.

[1:03:10] But it felt like once you've taken a swing that big to then make the rest of the movie taking no

[1:03:15] big swings, you know, there's good sequences in it, but to play the rest of it pretty safe,

[1:03:19] it feels really disappointing. And I just his Robbie Williams story was just not quite

[1:03:24] interesting enough to me to in some ways to justify taking such a big swing that,

[1:03:30] you know, this you shouldn't judge a movie by its budget.

[1:03:32] You should judge it by its by what it does. But, you know, that that added millions and

[1:03:36] millions of dollars to the budget that every scene had to be performed by a CGI chimp.

[1:03:40] And I think that was mostly money well spent in this case, except do more with it. You know,

[1:03:45] that's that's what I would say. Anyway, from a story perspective,

[1:03:48] Hallie, what did you say? What do you think? I liked it. I loved it.

[1:03:53] You lived it. But I want some more of it. But no, but I thought that I you know,

[1:04:00] everyone keeps saying, like, well, I'm not that into Robbie Williams. I don't like his

[1:04:04] music. So the story inherently wasn't that interesting to me. But I actually thought

[1:04:09] that the reason why it was interesting is because he's sort of like this side character of fame.

[1:04:16] Like when you see him, like with the Oasis people, you're like, oh, yeah,

[1:04:21] this guy is also famous, but I have no respect for him as like a musician. And it's kind of

[1:04:27] interesting to like watch a whole movie about someone who like, you don't take seriously,

[1:04:31] but they are themselves. So they obviously take themselves seriously. I don't know. I thought I

[1:04:37] thought it was sort of like fascinating to to like, be really invested in a silly famous person.

[1:04:46] Yeah, you know, and I want to say like, I, you know, I don't have any sort of breadth of Robbie

[1:04:50] Williams musical knowledge, because he wasn't famous in the US. But the songs I do know,

[1:04:54] I actually, I actually like the good pop songs. Fine. But nobody is like, he's the best. I don't

[1:05:00] think I don't think anyone is like, he's doing the best work in this form. They're fine.

[1:05:04] Yeah, no, but I think they're fine. But they're I don't know, I feel like there's like, there are

[1:05:11] there's like, high lowbrow. And then there's Robbie Williams, like Robbie Williams, I wouldn't

[1:05:18] say I wouldn't say I like have a ton of like, respect for his music. But if I'm at the disco,

[1:05:26] I'm happy when you go to the disco. Well, that's actually how I know all these Robbie Williams

[1:05:33] songs. Because when I was when I was like, went abroad to Argentina. That's where I would hear

[1:05:39] them was like going to like dance clubs. Yeah. But I so I loved it. And I thought I thought it was

[1:05:46] like, I did think it was more ambitious than just the monkey choice. Because it did have, you know,

[1:05:53] like, all of these crazy, like the big fight scene, the big dance scenes, like, I thought it

[1:05:58] was like a really ambitious movie that kept me very entertained. I did hate I did feel the way

[1:06:05] you guys felt about like, it losing steam. The more he descends into addiction, because it just

[1:06:13] felt like there was no way to heighten like you just kept getting the scenes of him losing his

[1:06:17] mind. And it was like, okay, like, you can't lose your mind any more than you already lost your mind.

[1:06:21] He gets addicted so early in his life. And maybe that's just the way that it was. But it does feel

[1:06:25] like okay, and now he's still addicted. Yeah, you know? Yeah, you're right. There's no you want to

[1:06:30] see a build there. That's a really good point. I mean, and then you want to build to the point

[1:06:33] where he has an all out chimp battle. And then the movie ends. Like, I don't know why the movie

[1:06:38] keeps going after that, you know, kind of the most striking part of him, like, losing it is early

[1:06:45] on when he takes a watermelon. And there's like, another cool sequence where he's like, driving at

[1:06:50] full speed in the rain. And we're like, around fantasy, like driving into the water and almost

[1:06:57] drowning. You know, that was a great, that's a really great sequence. Yeah. And that that this

[1:07:02] director also did greatest showman, a movie that has its fans. We I mean, I'm somewhat mystified,

[1:07:11] but similarly, the greatest showman has some great, great produced sequences in it some great,

[1:07:16] like visions, it's got great sequences to watch, and especially the musical numbers.

[1:07:21] But at that, that's another one where the story you're like, what, like, there's nothing,

[1:07:25] there's very little to dig into. Although there is like climbing a rope or something.

[1:07:30] Well, it's also it's that one is so completely inaccurate. And I feel like I wish they'd taken

[1:07:34] a little bit of that and put it into this movie to like, it like if they were like,

[1:07:37] oh, that's the that's the point when I got arrested for trying to kidnap the queen or

[1:07:41] something like that. I wish they'd done bigger with it. Because part of it is like Robbie Williams

[1:07:45] is sold on his like, charm and like cheek and like, I would like to see more of that

[1:07:51] injected into the storytelling is like braggadocio. It made me want to be more cheeky. I was like,

[1:07:57] maybe that's all I need. Maybe that is what you need. You should try it out. So Hallie,

[1:08:00] be a little cheeky, do something cheeky. Wouldn't you like that?

[1:08:07] You can't see the facelessness, there's a very cheeky face.

[1:08:11] One thing this movie did hit home for me, which is something that I wish I like to see is those

[1:08:17] glimpses of British culture that we don't always get in the United States, because we tend to get

[1:08:20] the more sophisticated British culture, not always, but over here, and how so much of British culture

[1:08:25] is lowest, crassest, dumbest stuff. And like he said, boom, and they're all laughing like it's

[1:08:32] just to be reminded that that England has this strain of just the dumbest stuff. I really like

[1:08:37] a lot. Yeah. And I also will say, I actually don't usually I don't usually like dancing

[1:08:43] or singing in movies. I don't usually like fight scenes. And I really, I really liked all of that

[1:08:49] in these movies. Okay, so or in this movie, so I don't I think it was done really well.

[1:08:54] You don't like dancing, singing or fight scenes. This was like,

[1:08:57] no, I like things that can be a movie. I was crying.

[1:09:01] No, I feel like usually it's like, oh, like, that's how I feel about

[1:09:07] you're embarrassing yourself.

[1:09:11] Someone needs to go in there and tell these people, people are watching.

[1:09:15] Yeah. Um, hey, Jackie Chan, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, quit it. Just don't just to care.

[1:09:25] Um, you know, The Flop House is sponsored mostly by the wonderful listeners, members of Max Fun.

[1:09:34] Thank you for being a member if you are. But we also have a couple of sponsors.

[1:09:39] And one of them this week is Aura Frames. Are you ready to win Mother's Day? Are you ready to

[1:09:43] prove to your mom that you know the difference between her and your grandmother? Well, why not?

[1:09:50] Why not show that you're the best gift giver in your family by giving

[1:09:55] your mother an Aura digital picture frame? And maybe it could be one that's pretty.

[1:10:00] preloaded with decades of family photos.

[1:10:01] Like that's the beauty of these frames,

[1:10:03] is you can preload them and from a distance

[1:10:08] using the power of the internet, add new photos.

[1:10:11] So your family is up to date

[1:10:14] and all the great things in your life.

[1:10:16] And it's, you know, you can do it from afar.

[1:10:20] I have one of these frames.

[1:10:22] It's a wonderful thing

[1:10:23] because we have all of our wedding photos on there,

[1:10:26] stuff that otherwise maybe would go in a, you know,

[1:10:30] an album that you take down once every few years

[1:10:33] and take a look at,

[1:10:34] but instead we get to be reminded of all our great friends.

[1:10:38] I have photos of these two Flothouse co-hosts,

[1:10:42] Jokers pop up regularly.

[1:10:47] I was invited to the wedding.

[1:10:48] I couldn't go because I was too pregnant,

[1:10:50] but I was invited just so the listeners know.

[1:10:52] Yes, I know that Hallie would have been there.

[1:10:54] Dan said, nobody's going to upstage me at my wedding,

[1:10:57] especially not a pregnant lady.

[1:10:58] Keep that belly away, I said.

[1:11:02] It was named the best-

[1:11:02] This wedding has a four drink minimum.

[1:11:05] So Hallie, you're not coming.

[1:11:10] That would be wild.

[1:11:11] We have to take advantage of the open bar.

[1:11:12] Four drink minimum.

[1:11:15] It was named the best digital photo frame by Wirecutter.

[1:11:17] It's easy to see why.

[1:11:19] It's got unlimited storage

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[1:11:24] Hey, why not some funny memes?

[1:11:25] Throw those in there if you can find.

[1:11:28] You can put videos on that?

[1:11:30] Yeah.

[1:11:31] I didn't know that.

[1:11:32] That's the magic.

[1:11:33] That's the magic of this modern world.

[1:11:35] So if you want to take advantage of this,

[1:11:37] Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day.

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[1:11:55] That's A-U-R-A, frames.com,

[1:11:57] promo code FLOP.

[1:11:58] Support the show by mentioning us at checkout.

[1:12:01] Terms and conditions apply.

[1:12:03] Stuart.

[1:12:04] Hey, y'all.

[1:12:05] This podcast is also brought to you by Squarespace.

[1:12:10] Squarespace is a all-in-one platform

[1:12:12] for creating a website.

[1:12:14] Hey, you, do you want a website?

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[1:12:31] There is some intuitive options like drag and drop editing,

[1:12:35] styling options, visual design effects.

[1:12:38] You don't have to be a website coder or anything like that.

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[1:12:44] I don't know if those are real jobs.

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[1:12:48] they also offer plenty of options

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[1:13:02] So head over to squarespace.com slash flop for a free trial.

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[1:13:12] off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[1:13:16] We also have a couple of jumbotrons.

[1:13:19] That's right.

[1:13:20] Jumbotron.

[1:13:21] Not just regular trons, but trons that are jumbo.

[1:13:23] And the first one is from Laura, last name withheld.

[1:13:26] She says, for years, my husband Brendan and I

[1:13:28] have been listening to the Flophouse.

[1:13:30] Our new video game, Skin Deep, is a comedy stealth game

[1:13:33] inspired by immersive sims like Thief, Prey, and Dishonored

[1:13:36] and by classic action movies like Die Hard.

[1:13:38] Play as Nina Pasadena, a human insurance commando

[1:13:41] who saves talking cats from space pirates.

[1:13:44] You can flush a pirate's head down a toilet,

[1:13:46] use deodorant as a weapon, and drive a mech.

[1:13:48] It's on Steam right now to buy or wishlist.

[1:13:51] Check out our slapstick stealth game,

[1:13:53] Skin Deep, on the Steam store.

[1:13:55] So that's one jumbotron.

[1:13:57] That sounds pretty fun to me.

[1:13:58] Next jumbotron.

[1:13:59] This is a message for Dylan, last name withheld.

[1:14:02] And this message is from Melissa, Morgan, Harper,

[1:14:05] and Charlie, last names also withheld.

[1:14:07] And that message is, happy 40th birthday to you and Kellen.

[1:14:10] You are a wonderful brother and uncle.

[1:14:12] Thank you for introducing us to some of our favorite things,

[1:14:14] Flophouse included.

[1:14:16] Here's to many more years of Nuggets Championships

[1:14:18] and video games with the kids.

[1:14:19] This place may be a prison, but we will always love you.

[1:14:22] Even Harper, despite her note.

[1:14:25] Do you think they're really in prison?

[1:14:27] I have to assume so. Probably.

[1:14:28] Yeah.

[1:14:29] And Nuggets Championships are when you try to eat

[1:14:31] as many chicken nuggets as possible in one sitting, right?

[1:14:33] I mean, I can't think of any other way to take that phrase.

[1:14:36] Or when you're listening to Nuggets,

[1:14:39] that psychedelic songs collection.

[1:14:42] Oh, yeah. Not familiar,

[1:14:43] but okay, sure.

[1:14:45] You know what?

[1:14:46] I'll pretend I get that reference.

[1:14:47] And what's the championship aspect of it?

[1:14:49] Just how long you can, like, let's do it on a loop.

[1:14:51] Oh, I see, okay.

[1:14:52] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:14:54] Hey, maybe you want to mention your book.

[1:14:56] I saw exactly what I was going to do.

[1:14:57] I don't have a book. Thank you, Dan.

[1:14:59] You've got a book you can use to someday, someday.

[1:15:01] Confessions of a Bartender.

[1:15:02] Hey, don't tell yourself short.

[1:15:04] You've got a bunch of books.

[1:15:05] You can do it.

[1:15:08] That's a real, that's a real Chick-O-Mart way to do it.

[1:15:10] Oh, I don't have a book.

[1:15:11] Hey, you got a lot, you got a bunch of books.

[1:15:12] I've seen them on your shelves.

[1:15:13] Yeah, I have a new children's picture book

[1:15:16] that is out right now.

[1:15:17] It's called Sadie Mouse Wrecks the House by me

[1:15:20] and with art by Tim Miller.

[1:15:22] It is about a good girl mouse

[1:15:24] who is tired of doing the chores

[1:15:25] and decides she's going to do them bad.

[1:15:27] So she never has to do them again.

[1:15:28] And she wrecks her house.

[1:15:30] You can pick it up in bookstores now.

[1:15:32] It's a really fun book for kids.

[1:15:33] It's a picture book, as I said, for children.

[1:15:35] And I am going to be making a public appearance,

[1:15:38] appearance, appearance, appearance.

[1:15:39] Wow, wear your bulletproof vest.

[1:15:42] Are you saying that to the audience?

[1:15:44] Because you know, my children's things,

[1:15:46] I like to, they're just, they're just pellets.

[1:15:48] They're just pellets.

[1:15:48] It's not, you know.

[1:15:49] So I, Saturday, May 17th,

[1:15:52] one week after this episode is released, I believe,

[1:15:55] at 11 a.m., I will be at Once Upon a Time Bookstore

[1:15:57] in Montrose, California.

[1:15:59] Once Upon a Time is one of the oldest children's bookstores

[1:16:03] in the state, possibly in the country, I'm not sure.

[1:16:06] It's a great little store.

[1:16:07] I love it there.

[1:16:08] And I'm going to be doing a story time,

[1:16:09] reading Sadie Mouse to anyone who shows up

[1:16:12] at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 17th.

[1:16:14] So please come by to Once Upon a Time in Montrose, California.

[1:16:18] If no one shows up, will you still read it?

[1:16:20] I will still read it.

[1:16:21] I've done book readings where no one showed up

[1:16:22] and I just read it for the people who work at the store.

[1:16:26] So that will happen.

[1:16:27] But please don't, don't force the people

[1:16:28] who work at the store to listen to me.

[1:16:30] Come by Saturday, May 17th at 11 a.m.

[1:16:34] at Once Upon a Time Bookstore

[1:16:35] to hear Sadie Mouse wrecks the house.

[1:16:37] Hey, we're the Eurovangelists

[1:16:43] and it's the most wonderful time of the year

[1:16:45] because the Eurovision Song Contest is next week.

[1:16:48] 37 countries will face off in Basel, Switzerland

[1:16:51] to determine who has the best song in Europe.

[1:16:53] On our show, we've argued about all the songs

[1:16:55] and we are heading to Europe

[1:16:56] to bring you our reactions straight from Switzerland.

[1:16:58] And on our next episode, we're going to predict

[1:17:00] who's going to survive the semifinals,

[1:17:02] compete in the grand final

[1:17:03] and ultimately win Eurovision 2025.

[1:17:06] Albania, baby.

[1:17:07] It's Malta, Latvia.

[1:17:09] But we won't be alone.

[1:17:10] Glenn Weldon of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour

[1:17:12] will be with us, sharing his own predictions

[1:17:14] and telling us why we're wrong.

[1:17:15] So make sure you're ready for Eurovision

[1:17:17] by listening to Eurovangelists on Maximum Fun,

[1:17:19] available everywhere you get podcasts.

[1:17:23] You never know what you'll learn more about

[1:17:25] on the celebrity trivia show, Go Fact Yourself.

[1:17:28] For over 150 episodes, we've welcomed guests

[1:17:31] like DJ Jazzy Jeff, Audie Cornish and Andy Richter

[1:17:34] to tell us why they love what they love

[1:17:36] and then get quizzed on it.

[1:17:37] And past quizzes have included

[1:17:39] some pretty unexpected topics like

[1:17:41] Reverse painting.

[1:17:42] The perfect flip turn while swimming.

[1:17:44] Prince's house party playlist

[1:17:46] from that one episode of New Girl.

[1:17:48] And so much more.

[1:17:49] Plus, our guests meet surprise experts in their topics.

[1:17:52] Like the time we met an actual celebrity cow.

[1:17:55] So listen to Go Fact Yourself twice a month,

[1:17:57] every month on Maximum Fun.

[1:17:59] Do it for the cow.

[1:18:01] No.

[1:18:02] Let's read some letters from listeners.

[1:18:09] Why not?

[1:18:09] Hey, fuck it.

[1:18:10] For a treat.

[1:18:11] Yeah, sure.

[1:18:12] Only live once, right?

[1:18:13] This is from-

[1:18:14] Depending on your religion.

[1:18:15] This is from Elise, last name withheld,

[1:18:18] who writes, long ago in 1998,

[1:18:22] I went to see Armageddon in the theater

[1:18:24] with my best friend.

[1:18:25] Cool.

[1:18:26] As a 14 year old girl, I was enthralled.

[1:18:29] I laughed, I cried,

[1:18:30] and I walked away with a huge crush on Steve Buscemi.

[1:18:34] Yeah.

[1:18:35] Probably not what Michael Bay intended.

[1:18:37] When the movie came out on video,

[1:18:38] I begged my parents to rent it for family movie night,

[1:18:41] assuring them that it was a great movie

[1:18:42] and they would love it.

[1:18:43] You're gonna love this, hunk.

[1:18:46] As middle-aged adults with fully grown frontal lobes,

[1:18:49] they did not love the movie.

[1:18:50] This has stuck in my mind as my first experience

[1:18:53] with hyping something up as great,

[1:18:55] and then learning that it was actually pretty stupid.

[1:18:58] I actually haven't re-watched Armageddon since then

[1:19:01] because of the residual embarrassment

[1:19:03] attached to that memory.

[1:19:04] I have two questions for you to choose.

[1:19:06] What a tragedy.

[1:19:08] Yeah.

[1:19:09] I'm sorry.

[1:19:10] If it's a movie you like, you should watch it.

[1:19:11] Looking uncool in front of your parents?

[1:19:13] Yeah.

[1:19:14] They're just your parents.

[1:19:15] They're the least cool people there are.

[1:19:16] Exactly.

[1:19:17] Yeah.

[1:19:18] I have two questions-

[1:19:19] I mean, not mine, but...

[1:19:20] I'm sorry, Mom.

[1:19:23] I have two questions for you to choose between.

[1:19:26] One, what was the first time you shared a movie

[1:19:29] you really liked with someone and they thought it was dumb?

[1:19:31] Did it change the way you felt about the movie?

[1:19:33] Two, are there any movie characters you crushed on

[1:19:37] when they were clearly not intended to be

[1:19:39] on the movie's roster of crushable characters?

[1:19:43] Thanks.

[1:19:44] Elyse, last name withheld.

[1:19:46] Dan, you can answer both.

[1:19:47] Don't worry.

[1:19:48] I'm able to?

[1:19:49] I'm allowed?

[1:19:49] You're allowed to, yeah.

[1:19:50] I'm gonna give you a laugh.

[1:19:52] I'll answer the first.

[1:19:53] Yeah, you do.

[1:19:53] I'm gonna answer first.

[1:19:54] I'm just gonna answer the first one first

[1:19:55] while I think of an answer for the second.

[1:19:57] Sure.

[1:19:58] I remember-

[1:20:00] Introducing my friend Nigel who is from ye olde England

[1:20:05] Robbie Williams home of Robbie Williams. Wow. Yeah, if I told him we watch better man, he'd be like, oh, yeah, that's me favorite guy

[1:20:15] Dead-on impression he I

[1:20:19] Introduced him to I loaned him my DVD copy of wet hot American summer and I'm like this movie is so funny

[1:20:25] I love it

[1:20:26] And he watched he's like this is the worst movie I've ever seen and I I'm like is this is it just that he has

[1:20:32] Bad taste which is possible or that he like it just didn't translate to the type of comedy

[1:20:38] He likes which is like Benny Hill running around and that yeah classic English comic the sophisticated English comedy that I love. Yeah

[1:20:44] Yeah

[1:20:45] but I was like a little shocked also because this that was one of those relationships where I kind of viewed him like a cool

[1:20:50] older brother and I you know, it hurt my feelings that

[1:20:53] That's certainly when I was in when I was in high school

[1:20:56] There was a girl that I crush on and she came over and we went to her house and we watched Brazil

[1:21:01] Which I had seen multiple times and I was like this movie's amazing and afterwards. She was like, yeah, that was a weird movie

[1:21:08] And it was made no impression and I was like, okay, I guess I felt and then I felt dumb afterwards. Yeah

[1:21:15] Yeah, I'm having trouble thinking like, you know, I'm secure in like how I feel about my own things that I like

[1:21:22] You know, have you always felt secure in the things that you like? Yeah. Yeah

[1:21:26] I'm not Dan's always struck me as someone with a very healthy amount of self-esteem

[1:21:30] I'm not sure about myself

[1:21:33] Necessarily, but like why should I give a shit what your tastes are if they're not mine?

[1:21:39] sounds healthy, but I mean there are occasions where like

[1:21:43] I'm a little sad that someone doesn't like a thing that I like or whatever and

[1:21:48] The the thing that's springing to mind even though it's not exactly right it's like I feel like

[1:21:53] Audrey just got the wrong impression about a thing

[1:21:55] I showed her the outtakes for Emmett Otter's jug bag Christmas because I was like, oh you'll like this. This is funny

[1:22:02] And they're hilarious. I mean like, you know, I've seen those outtakes. They are fun outtakes

[1:22:06] There's nothing funnier than outtakes of puppets, you know, yeah staying in character reacting to stuff

[1:22:14] And you know, she loved the outtakes and then and then you know one Christmas we're like, let's watch him in honor and

[1:22:20] Her main reaction was she found it so sad and I'm like, yeah

[1:22:30] Everyone's happy at the end. It's like yeah, but it's sad for so much of it

[1:22:33] She just wasn't prepared to watch something bittersweet. I think after

[1:22:37] You know these fun outtakes

[1:22:40] I

[1:22:42] Don't know. What about you Hallie? Well, I'm trying to think of something

[1:22:46] I feel like the opposite

[1:22:47] usually happens with me where someone shows me something that they really like and I don't like it and I have to pretend like I

[1:22:53] Like it. I feel like I'm very secure

[1:22:56] Enough in my own taste that I'm willing to reject the thing that I don't like so I'm always like yeah, and usually it's

[1:23:04] Whatever it is is very very long and it's my husband who likes it and so it's a lot

[1:23:11] Give us one. Give us one. Uh

[1:23:13] So I one of our first dates we went on we saw that movie the great beauty

[1:23:18] Which now that I'm thinking about I might have even like recommended on it on this podcast because that's the house Stockholm syndrome

[1:23:25] I am ended your relationship. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I remember this. Yeah. Yeah, and

[1:23:30] If I'm being totally honest with myself, I didn't really like the movie it was really long and

[1:23:35] Kind of boring. The only thing that was cool was that there was one scene with like a really big giraffe, which I found it

[1:23:42] That's a movie I also did not like very much but it was one of those movies people like oh a

[1:23:47] Ravishing love letter to Italy, you know stuff. Yeah. All right. No, it's kind of boring. Yeah

[1:23:52] Yeah, do we have answers for the second question? I do

[1:23:56] Yeah, I got one dish how dish I do dish John Malkovich in both Conair and Mary Riley

[1:24:03] I love this. Oh and Mary Riley

[1:24:06] Okay, somebody likes a bad boy

[1:24:10] I would say Ursula from Little Mermaid

[1:24:15] Interesting, oh for sure. Yeah. Yeah

[1:24:17] I

[1:24:19] Like I feel like anything I come up with is like the the most like surface level like oh not like other

[1:24:26] Guys or other girls, you know

[1:24:32] Cuz like I was really I'm sure that there's a more interesting one but you know in a

[1:24:38] In a movie where like all the other women are like made up to be like the most conventionally attractive

[1:24:45] I remember and mean girls being like, who's this Lizzie Caplan, but she's like a gorgeous. Well, yeah, you know

[1:24:49] So it's not like that weird. That's the hard thing even even in movies

[1:24:53] Like even John Malkovich has a has a magnetic like charisma about him

[1:24:56] Yeah, why is a movie star but the the first things that came to mind for me were in

[1:25:02] I mean mentioning Kitty Pryde opened up a whole world of other characters

[1:25:05] It's like I've always had a crush on the character spiral who is an X-Men character who is that's a cool one

[1:25:10] She dances. She's got a samurai helmet. She has six arms and like, you know

[1:25:14] She she does that she changes people's bodies in weird ways. Like she's amazing. I love her

[1:25:18] but uh the

[1:25:20] That I the first thing came to mind was I always used to think like well in Teen Wolf. I'm really into booth

[1:25:25] I'm not into the other girl, but the movie is into booth

[1:25:28] Like obviously she's the one yeah

[1:25:29] Let's end up with but I realized who I really have a crush on are those two girls that hang out with styles who have

[1:25:34] No dialogue in the movie and they always are rolling their eyes at him

[1:25:37] They always look like they hate everyone else that they're around. Yeah, these are exactly the girls

[1:25:42] The level of confidence you

[1:25:44] Aspire to exactly like that. They are they're like we're not even a part of this world. We're just here. We're going through it and

[1:25:52] But they're yeah, that's so that's who I have a crush on is those girls from Teen Wolf

[1:25:55] What about that little dancing girlfriend Mac and me?

[1:25:59] Well, that's Nikki Cox. That's yeah. Oh, I didn't have a crush on her

[1:26:03] I just always felt bad because I was like she's trying so hard like she wants to be a professional you can tell and

[1:26:08] It's just she's in this shitty movie, but then I found it was Nikki Cox. I'm like, oh she had a whole career

[1:26:11] Great. Okay, I didn't feel anymore

[1:26:12] You know

[1:26:13] I don't know if there's a fair answer since this might be the sexiest a woman has ever been in a movie

[1:26:18] But obviously Joan Cusack and Adams family values. Oh, I mean, yes, of course. Yes

[1:26:24] That's the one where I mean, it's one of those things where it's like she's she's presented as a femme fatale the whole time

[1:26:29] So they know she's sexy, but I don't I don't they realize how much she is, you know

[1:26:32] Give me a kiss. Give me a what? Give me a 15. Would you say give me a 20? I love it

[1:26:37] Okay, well our second and final question from Benny last name with help

[1:26:47] Rights when listening to your venom the last dance episode

[1:26:51] I was I was dumbstruck that none of you mentioned the underlying metaphor of an adult man who reflects on a life of retreating into

[1:26:58] escapist

[1:26:59] Superhero fiction instead of pursuing family or career goals that his best friend feels partially and self selfishly

[1:27:06] Responsible for his lack of ambition. My question is this a lot of credit given to venom. Well, here we go

[1:27:12] My question is this have you ever been so confident in an interpretation of a film as universal?

[1:27:18] Only to later find said interpretation was merely a window into her own messy psychology and dysfunctional relationships

[1:27:24] So this is a complex question

[1:27:28] Believing your interpretation, of course is the obvious one and then being like, oh, maybe that's just

[1:27:33] Me and I I don't really have a good one. I thought this is a great question

[1:27:37] I don't really have a good one for this the only thing that came

[1:27:40] Up, and it is not a reflection of anything in my life. But I remember I

[1:27:45] saw the recent

[1:27:47] music man revival and it was the first time when I'm like, oh

[1:27:52] like Winthrop's obviously like

[1:27:54] Hurt her kid right like that. She got pregnant by this. I cracked the code Dan

[1:28:01] It's like and to me like then it seems so obvious

[1:28:05] But then I would like like went online for like confirmation

[1:28:09] They're like, oh I was just an idiot all these years and they're like

[1:28:11] So many people like saying like no like look at the ages of the characters

[1:28:16] No, like Meredith Wilson didn't necessarily like speak to that. Like it seemed like he

[1:28:22] Didn't have that view but it seems so obvious to me like that

[1:28:25] Like of course like the whole things about her being the sadder but wiser

[1:28:29] Girl like she has this child that is actually her child

[1:28:33] But but that's not a reflection of of me per se

[1:28:37] That's just like you kind of like kind of like text year that you'd be the child in that situation

[1:28:41] Right the child who doesn't realize that that his parents have had this life before he was around or you know, what that means

[1:28:47] Yeah

[1:28:48] I

[1:28:49] So the first thing that came to mind for me was something that I've actually talked about before on a different podcast on the being

[1:28:55] Seen podcast I talked about my relationship with the movie Taxi Driver where when I was I first saw that movie when I was like

[1:29:01] 14 years old and very depressed and very lonely and I continued to be depressed and lonely for

[1:29:06] basically the next six to seven years and the

[1:29:12] feeling such

[1:29:13] sympathy and empathy with an identification in a way that I now think is bad with Travis Bickle and

[1:29:19] His loneliness and his inability to really understand whether how the rules of human life

[1:29:24] you know how to be a human and how to interact other people and it was only when I got older and had grown up a

[1:29:29] Little bit that I saw it. I'm like, oh

[1:29:30] I think you're supposed to feel bad for him a little bit

[1:29:33] But you're not supposed to identify with him like you're supposed to watch the movie being like this guy's a weirdo

[1:29:37] This is this is strange as opposed to looking at him being like I hear you man

[1:29:41] It's hard to know how to talk to people

[1:29:42] So that was a that was a a real shift in the way

[1:29:45] I looked at that movie and it helped a little bit

[1:29:48] I think was last year reading Quentin Tarantino's book where he talks about

[1:29:51] watching Taxi Driver when it came out when he was young in an all-black theater and how the audience just laughed through the whole movie being

[1:29:58] Like can you believe this guy? Can you?

[1:30:00] leave the stuff he's doing, this guy's an idiot.

[1:30:02] You know, that they fully saw the other side

[1:30:04] of that character, which is from the outside,

[1:30:06] looking at him, what are you doing, man?

[1:30:08] Whereas I was looking at it from the inside of like,

[1:30:09] yeah, I get it, I get it.

[1:30:10] And no one tells you the rules

[1:30:12] when you're born into this world, you know?

[1:30:14] What about you, Hallie?

[1:30:16] I don't, I don't really, I can't think of,

[1:30:18] I don't have a good answer for this.

[1:30:20] You're allowed.

[1:30:21] I'm always ready.

[1:30:22] I'm always ready.

[1:30:23] I don't, I don't particularly.

[1:30:24] I always get it.

[1:30:25] Hallie makes snap judgments and they're always correct.

[1:30:26] Yeah. Yeah.

[1:30:27] I don't particularly have any good answers either.

[1:30:29] I mean, I'm gonna piggyback on Elliot's,

[1:30:31] which is just the idea of like,

[1:30:33] so many movies I watched as a teenager,

[1:30:35] I sympathized with the wrong character,

[1:30:38] or I use things to justify,

[1:30:41] based on like my own feelings,

[1:30:43] like my own feelings of alienation,

[1:30:45] or how I'm the most important person in the universe.

[1:30:48] You know, that kind of sociopathic teenager thinking.

[1:30:51] But as an adult, I like to think

[1:30:53] I've become a little better.

[1:30:56] But I'm sure I'll think of a better answer

[1:31:00] and then be dumbed.

[1:31:01] No, I mean, there are certainly things like

[1:31:03] high fidelity, right?

[1:31:04] I realize that this is not like,

[1:31:05] supposed to be like a great guy,

[1:31:07] but it was only like later in life,

[1:31:09] I'm like, oh, like,

[1:31:10] I realized like what a sharp critique it is

[1:31:12] of a certain type of nerd and their blinkered,

[1:31:15] like, you know, the difficulties with empathy.

[1:31:20] Yeah, that's a good one, yeah.

[1:31:22] There are a lot of movies that involve guys

[1:31:25] of a certain type, where if you were a guy of that type,

[1:31:28] you buy into it.

[1:31:30] I mean, I feel like I never liked this guy,

[1:31:32] but I feel like I knew people

[1:31:33] who were really into Rushmore,

[1:31:35] and without recognizing, like, what a little shit

[1:31:40] he is for much of the movie,

[1:31:41] and like, didn't understand

[1:31:42] why anyone else was recognizing that, you know?

[1:31:44] Yeah.

[1:31:44] Well, he's kind of a big shit.

[1:31:46] Yeah.

[1:31:47] Wait, which one is, sorry, I missed it.

[1:31:48] Bill Murray, and you're talking about Bill Murray.

[1:31:51] Well, I mean, the other thing of like,

[1:31:53] it's the, there's that moment in your life.

[1:31:54] The two sides of shit.

[1:31:55] There's the moment, yeah.

[1:31:56] That learn to be better from each other.

[1:31:57] Big or little, yeah.

[1:31:58] That famous kid's book, Big Shit, Little Shit, yeah.

[1:32:02] There's that moment when you grow up,

[1:32:03] when you cross the Bill Murray understanding barrier,

[1:32:06] when you go from being like,

[1:32:07] this is the coolest man in the world,

[1:32:08] to being like, okay, this guy, like,

[1:32:10] what is this guy's deal?

[1:32:11] Like, why does he think he can get away with anything?

[1:32:12] It's not fair, you know?

[1:32:13] Well, there is a thing about like, media literacy,

[1:32:16] where as a kid, if you grow up with an actor or performer,

[1:32:20] and you have like, deep emotional connection to them,

[1:32:23] that like, you have trouble identifying them,

[1:32:26] like, identifying them as a bad person in a movie.

[1:32:30] Yeah, yeah.

[1:32:30] You're like, oh, but I love Michael Keaton.

[1:32:32] Why would he be a serial killer

[1:32:33] trying to kill Andy Garcia?

[1:32:34] Yeah, a lot of kids had that strange realization.

[1:32:39] It happened to me.

[1:32:41] Why is Batman doing that?

[1:32:42] I don't know.

[1:32:43] I don't know if this is exactly, if this exactly fits,

[1:32:46] but I think it was very hard for me to wrap my head around

[1:32:49] in the Winona Ryder little women,

[1:32:53] in the 90s little women.

[1:32:54] Like, it never made sense to me

[1:32:57] when I saw that movie seven times in the theater,

[1:33:00] why Joe wasn't supposed to wind up with Lori,

[1:33:04] and why Amy was supposed to wind up with Lori.

[1:33:06] It's like, it seemed like that was big miss.

[1:33:11] Like, it was like, we invested this entire movie

[1:33:16] in rooting for this particular couple to work out,

[1:33:20] and then they don't work out.

[1:33:21] Why did that make sense?

[1:33:22] But I'm not sure I have an answer.

[1:33:25] I'm not sure that I now understand

[1:33:27] why it did work that way.

[1:33:30] Why they didn't wind up together.

[1:33:33] I mean, I don't know that version of the movie that well.

[1:33:35] In the book, I think it's a matter more of like,

[1:33:36] they actually aren't the right match for each other.

[1:33:40] She needs someone who's gonna play a different role,

[1:33:42] and that's why she ends up with the professor who,

[1:33:44] I think they made a big mistake in the Greta Gerwig one

[1:33:47] by making that professor so handsome that like,

[1:33:49] because I think you're supposed to read that book

[1:33:51] and be like, Joe, why aren't you with Lori?

[1:33:53] He's handsome and rich.

[1:33:54] Why are you with this kind of like,

[1:33:55] older, not attractive professor guy?

[1:33:58] But it's like, but that's the relationship

[1:34:00] that she needs in her life rather than, you know.

[1:34:02] Well, but I think they made it,

[1:34:03] it made more sense in the Greta Gerwig one

[1:34:06] because Timothee Chalamet was like such a kid.

[1:34:09] Yeah.

[1:34:10] Yeah.

[1:34:11] And so you understood why she wouldn't wanna,

[1:34:14] why he would represent the past

[1:34:16] rather than like the future to her.

[1:34:19] But in the Winona Ryder one,

[1:34:22] fricking what's his name is so hot.

[1:34:25] John Malkovich.

[1:34:26] No, no.

[1:34:27] Your favorite.

[1:34:28] No, no, you know, what the-

[1:34:30] Who is that, Ski-Doll Rich, Steven Dorf?

[1:34:32] No, no.

[1:34:33] It was the 90s, yeah.

[1:34:34] You know, the little-

[1:34:36] Macaulay Culkin.

[1:34:37] Oh my God, I can't believe I'm not remembering.

[1:34:38] Kieran Culkin?

[1:34:39] No, he's the one from The Machinist.

[1:34:41] The one from what?

[1:34:42] The Machinist.

[1:34:43] Adrian Brody?

[1:34:44] Christian Bale?

[1:34:44] Christian Bale.

[1:34:45] Oh, Christian Bale.

[1:34:46] Yeah.

[1:34:47] It's a recent season of Righteous Gemstones

[1:34:50] where Steven Dorf says the word nards

[1:34:55] and it's the funniest thing I've ever seen.

[1:34:57] He's from that Wolfman?

[1:34:59] Unfortunately, no.

[1:35:00] But it's-

[1:35:01] No.

[1:35:02] Oh man, it was like, ugh.

[1:35:04] I love Righteous Gemstones.

[1:35:06] And I thought this season,

[1:35:08] at the beginning of the season,

[1:35:09] I was like, every season I like this less.

[1:35:11] But then by the end, I was like, this is great.

[1:35:13] It's best ensemble cast on television right now.

[1:35:16] Yeah.

[1:35:17] There's a little show called Tracker.

[1:35:19] Oh, my mistake.

[1:35:20] I forgot about Colter Shaw and his tracking.

[1:35:22] It's about a guy who tracks.

[1:35:24] He does track.

[1:35:25] That tracks, yeah.

[1:35:26] Yeah, it sounded like Colter Shaw was knocking on your door

[1:35:28] so that he could get in on the action.

[1:35:30] No, no.

[1:35:31] My family is currently building a kind of gardening cage

[1:35:35] around our blueberry bushes

[1:35:36] that the birds and squirrels can get to them.

[1:35:38] And they're doing it right outside the window

[1:35:40] where we're recording.

[1:35:41] So they're hitting the window every now and then.

[1:35:43] And the best part is seeing my wife's face

[1:35:44] as she knows that we're hearing the sounds.

[1:35:46] And just is like, ugh, sorry.

[1:35:52] Well, let's, in that case, move on to the next segment,

[1:35:56] which is recommend movies.

[1:35:57] There's still more?

[1:35:58] What an amazing value for the dollar we give with this show.

[1:36:00] I know, it's really, I mean,

[1:36:01] considering also that you don't have to give the dollar.

[1:36:05] Damn, don't tell people you don't have to.

[1:36:07] Look, we love that you give the dollar.

[1:36:09] Yeah.

[1:36:10] So this is a, it's a trick.

[1:36:12] GTD, give the dollar.

[1:36:14] That's what we're always saying.

[1:36:15] That's why all the Flophouse merchandise

[1:36:16] has GTD in place of dollar, yeah.

[1:36:18] Yep, don't check that.

[1:36:21] Unless you're asking AI, in which case we'll say,

[1:36:23] yep, it does.

[1:36:24] It sure does.

[1:36:25] AI is in some ways the worst improv partner.

[1:36:28] They're just like, I will yes and

[1:36:29] whatever question you ask me,

[1:36:30] but not in a way that builds the scene,

[1:36:32] just in a way that confuses you.

[1:36:33] In a way that adds to the general misinformation

[1:36:39] in the world and ends up gaslighting me

[1:36:41] and catfishing me out of all of my money.

[1:36:45] Yeah, that's the worst part, yeah.

[1:36:46] That's why you got a GTD,

[1:36:48] because Stu keeps getting catfished by AI, yeah.

[1:36:52] Let's recommend movies.

[1:36:53] Oh.

[1:36:54] That's what I'm trying to get to.

[1:36:55] Okay, sure.

[1:36:55] Movies that you might enjoy.

[1:36:56] Jay is going to recommend AI.

[1:36:58] Well, I don't think,

[1:37:00] I think that Stuart made a little video

[1:37:04] with me recommending this movie,

[1:37:05] but I don't think on main,

[1:37:07] I don't think we recommended this.

[1:37:08] No, we didn't.

[1:37:09] Stu and I went and saw another Ridiculous Sublime.

[1:37:12] We always plug these Ridiculous Sublime movies.

[1:37:14] Your favorite series.

[1:37:15] If you live in Brooklyn,

[1:37:17] go to the, run, don't walk to the Nighthawk Cinema

[1:37:19] for their Ridiculous Sublime series.

[1:37:21] Always the best.

[1:37:22] Great stuff.

[1:37:23] And we watched Ninja III,

[1:37:25] The Domination from 1984.

[1:37:27] I haven't seen that in a long time.

[1:37:29] Very silly, very fun.

[1:37:31] Like honestly starts out with an action sequence

[1:37:33] that I'm like, holy crap.

[1:37:35] Like for a movie that is like a low budget movie,

[1:37:38] this is one of the most amazing action sequences.

[1:37:41] Yes.

[1:37:41] Like the bang for your buck in this

[1:37:42] is so much bigger than any like blockbuster you're gonna see.

[1:37:45] But the movie-

[1:37:46] Bigger bang for your buck than a blockbuster

[1:37:48] says Van Bocoy.

[1:37:50] That opening scene,

[1:37:51] I've said it before,

[1:37:52] but it's like,

[1:37:53] it is like a five-star Grand Theft Auto Rampage

[1:37:56] caught on cinema.

[1:37:57] It's so wild.

[1:37:59] It is essentially a ninja kills a guy

[1:38:03] and some other people on a golf course,

[1:38:06] and then is chased down by a bunch of cops.

[1:38:09] Eventually he's shot a ridiculous number of times.

[1:38:13] And then the spirit of that ninja

[1:38:16] inhabits a woman who works on the telephone wires.

[1:38:20] She's from-

[1:38:21] Lucinda Dickey.

[1:38:22] Yeah.

[1:38:23] It's the director of Breaking Two Electric Boogaloo.

[1:38:25] And Lucinda Dickey was in that film.

[1:38:27] Starr, yeah.

[1:38:28] And so she becomes the ninja.

[1:38:30] She's possessed by the ninja

[1:38:32] as he wants to kill all the cops that killed him.

[1:38:37] They should have called it Ninja Three Possession.

[1:38:38] I don't know why it's Ninja Three Domination.

[1:38:40] Even though she decides to start dating

[1:38:43] the hairiest of the cops.

[1:38:44] Yeah.

[1:38:45] A man who is so hairy that you're like,

[1:38:48] am I in a different dimension

[1:38:49] where you can be that hairy in a movie

[1:38:51] and still be the love interest?

[1:38:53] All the audience cheered when she's like,

[1:38:55] I don't date cops.

[1:38:56] And then like, boo,

[1:38:56] as she started to date that cop.

[1:38:59] But it's a perfect movie of its type

[1:39:03] in that it's really silly,

[1:39:05] but also kind of amazing.

[1:39:06] Like it's genuinely like entertaining

[1:39:09] and great in a lot of ways,

[1:39:10] while also being the goofiest shit you ever saw.

[1:39:13] So that's what I recommend.

[1:39:14] Ninja Three The Domination.

[1:39:15] Stuart, what do you recommend?

[1:39:16] I'm gonna recommend a movie

[1:39:17] that is hot in the theaters right now.

[1:39:19] So hot it will burn your flesh with flames.

[1:39:24] I'm gonna recommend Ryan Coogler's Sinners.

[1:39:27] It is one of the,

[1:39:29] like I would argue probably

[1:39:31] one of the biggest box office successes of the year.

[1:39:34] It is an original kind of horror movie

[1:39:37] that is set in a prohibition era South.

[1:39:41] It stars two Michael B. Jordans.

[1:39:44] You get double your Michael B. Jordan for the dollar

[1:39:47] where they play,

[1:39:48] where he plays two twin brothers

[1:39:50] who are setting up a juke joint near their hometown.

[1:39:54] And then there's some vampire violence.

[1:39:56] It is so fun.

[1:39:58] Rated R for vampire violence.

[1:40:00] It is. It's so fun. It is a movie that I kind of went in expecting it to be a fair, you know, like a really intense horror movie.

[1:40:09] And I feel like the horror movie elements, while done well, are kind of not the thing the movie is most interested in.

[1:40:15] It's a total blast. It's all the performances are great. The music is great.

[1:40:20] And it is the kind of like in theater experience that I've been looking for. I think it's great.

[1:40:26] If you haven't seen it, you should go check it out.

[1:40:28] They brought it back to IMAX and it crashed Fandango.

[1:40:31] Yeah, I can see it. It's great.

[1:40:34] I'm going to recommend a movie that is kind of not – it's not really related to Sinners.

[1:40:41] But it is directed by the writer of Creed II, which Ryan Coogler didn't direct.

[1:40:46] But it is – but Ryan Coogler did direct Creed, so it's kind of similar.

[1:40:49] And this is someone who their work has been on the fly house before because they were a writer of Space Jam, A New Legacy.

[1:40:54] But they made a movie called –

[1:40:56] Interesting bona fides for this recommendation.

[1:40:59] This is directed – this is a movie directed by Jewel Taylor who wrote those called They Cloned Tyrone that came out like a year before last.

[1:41:06] And it's a science fiction – it's like a science fiction movie that is – science fiction kind of mystery action movie that is – has like black exploitation kind of style touches to it.

[1:41:18] And it has to do with a drug dealer in this kind of – in this bad neighborhood, predominantly black neighborhood that is economically depressed.

[1:41:29] And he gets killed and then wakes up the next day totally fine, and it leads to a plot that – I won't tell you too much about what happens.

[1:41:37] But it involves a secret government plots and people being used for experiments and things like that.

[1:41:44] And I thought it was really fun. It's a really funny movie, and it was real – it had some real good action scenes in it.

[1:41:49] Jamie Foxx appears in it as a slick Charles, a pimp who becomes one of the hero group, and he's great in it.

[1:41:55] I watched this not too long after watching – finally seeing Collateral for the first time, which I had never gotten around to seeing.

[1:42:01] I was like this is the kind of Jamie Foxx I want to see though.

[1:42:03] I don't want to see serious Jamie Foxx who's just trying to build his limo business.

[1:42:07] I want to see Jamie Foxx as a kind of larger-than-life character, and it's really great.

[1:42:12] Keanu Parris is in it as this character, Yo-Yo, who's the – kind of takes the lead in the mystery and in figuring out what's going on.

[1:42:21] And it was – it's not – it kind of lives in a similar world in terms of being a science fiction satire on black themes.

[1:42:31] It's a similar world to Sorry for Bothering You.

[1:42:34] Sorry to Bother You.

[1:42:35] Sorry to Bother You, but it's not as – it's not quite as incisive as that one.

[1:42:39] It's much more fun than that one, but I really enjoyed it.

[1:42:42] So that's – they cloned Tyrone, which I think it's on Netflix right now.

[1:42:45] I think it's a Netflix-exclusive movie.

[1:42:48] Allie, what about you?

[1:42:49] What's your recommendation?

[1:42:50] Well, I'm going to recommend a movie that could very well be the answer to the previously asked question about being really embarrassed when you reveal something that you like because it turns out it actually sucks.

[1:43:06] Because I haven't seen this movie since I was probably like 14, but for some reason it's just been on my mind recently.

[1:43:12] The movie Dangerous Beauty, did you guys see that in the 90s starring Rufus Sewell?

[1:43:21] I've been thinking about it a lot because I recently watched The Diplomat and I was like this guy never stops being smoking.

[1:43:29] He is so hot and he was so hot in Dangerous Beauty.

[1:43:33] The story of a courtesan in a historical time during the –

[1:43:42] This is one of Hallie Haglin's classics.

[1:43:45] No research movie reviews.

[1:43:47] No, but it was during both the Black Plague and the Inquisition because both of those were featured within the movie and it was great.

[1:43:57] I rented it over and over and over again.

[1:44:00] I thought maybe when I grow up, I'll be a courtesan, but I didn't really know what that was.

[1:44:05] I never saw this movie, but I remember seeing the poster for it.

[1:44:07] Yeah, well, it was good.

[1:44:09] Okay.

[1:44:10] Wait, Stu, you gave a knowing nod.

[1:44:13] Do you remember this movie?

[1:44:15] A little, yeah.

[1:44:16] I mean I remember seeing it years ago, but I couldn't give you too many details on it.

[1:44:21] Do you remember if you liked it?

[1:44:23] I remember liking it, yeah.

[1:44:25] Okay.

[1:44:26] I remember it being like a little horny, right?

[1:44:28] Yeah, yeah.

[1:44:29] And I liked Rufus Sewell.

[1:44:31] I'd get stuck in a dark city with him.

[1:44:33] I got to tell you, it works in person too, that Rufus Sewell attraction.

[1:44:37] I saw him on stage in the play Rock and Roll and he was very handsome.

[1:44:40] Oh my god.

[1:44:41] Very handsome.

[1:44:42] I saw him on stage in Richard III and –

[1:44:45] Who did he play?

[1:44:46] The titular Richard III.

[1:44:49] The titular III.

[1:44:50] He played all three of them?

[1:44:52] Even better than two Michael B. Jordans.

[1:44:55] Richard III is like multiplicity, but it's set in England's past, yeah.

[1:44:59] Yeah.

[1:45:00] Two Michael B. Jordans.

[1:45:01] What would be better?

[1:45:02] Two Michael B. Jordans or three Rufus Sewells?

[1:45:04] Who knows?

[1:45:05] I'll take the – yeah.

[1:45:06] Hard to choose.

[1:45:07] I just looked up Dangerous Beauty on Letterboxd.

[1:45:09] The most popular review, the top review –

[1:45:12] Paul Schrader.

[1:45:13] Did she peg the king of France?

[1:45:16] So that's a thing that might happen in this movie if you want to –

[1:45:21] I don't remember that part.

[1:45:23] I guess I've got to go see it again.

[1:45:24] I guess I'm recommending it to myself.

[1:45:26] Maybe that's a director's cut.

[1:45:27] Yeah.

[1:45:28] Yeah.

[1:45:29] I mean I do find that like sometimes recommending a movie I haven't seen in a long time, I'm like,

[1:45:33] you know what?

[1:45:34] I'm going to watch that fucking thing again.

[1:45:35] Yeah.

[1:45:36] Yeah.

[1:45:37] Is it available on streaming since you just looked it up?

[1:45:40] Could you help us out with that?

[1:45:41] Yeah, Dan.

[1:45:42] Pull up Just Watch real quick.

[1:45:44] Yeah, okay.

[1:45:45] Well, it's connected to Just Watch, so it shouldn't take as long as it does.

[1:45:49] Where to watch?

[1:45:50] You can –

[1:45:51] It just says Hallie's House.

[1:45:53] It just says rent or buy, so I don't think it's streaming.

[1:45:56] You can still rent it.

[1:45:57] Yeah, it's still available.

[1:45:58] I mean there was a time in the past when you always rented or bought things.

[1:46:01] But there were places to go to do that in the past and there aren't anymore.

[1:46:04] That's true.

[1:46:05] You know what?

[1:46:06] I bet there's a place.

[1:46:07] I bet you could go to Vidiot's and rent it.

[1:46:08] I will.

[1:46:09] I will.

[1:46:10] And a new like DVD store just opened up, a DVD like purchase and rental store just opened up in Williamsburg.

[1:46:17] I don't know why Letterboxd linking to Just Watch doesn't work as well as just going to Just Watch itself.

[1:46:23] But if you go directly, yes, it's on Hulu.

[1:46:26] You can see it on Hulu.

[1:46:27] Oh, wow.

[1:46:28] I have Hulu.

[1:46:29] There you go.

[1:46:30] You can have a Hulu hoop.

[1:46:31] I don't know what that means in this context.

[1:46:35] Not sure.

[1:46:36] Not sure.

[1:46:37] Hey, thank you.

[1:46:38] I just feel bad that Stuart had an Ace Lathe of Heaven reference earlier, and I thought it was so funny.

[1:46:44] And the best I can do is Hulu hoop in my bad song parodies.

[1:46:50] It's always a shot in the arm, Hallie, when you're here and a delight to see you again.

[1:46:55] I hope not a gun shot.

[1:46:59] I miss seeing you regularly.

[1:47:02] Hey, you know what, you guys?

[1:47:04] This is real.

[1:47:05] I had a moment a couple of weeks ago where I was like, I don't laugh anymore.

[1:47:11] I just don't laugh.

[1:47:12] Nothing makes me laugh anymore, and I thought, I'm so glad I'm doing the Flophouse because when I do the Flophouse, I laugh.

[1:47:18] So thank you guys for that.

[1:47:19] I think we should probably have you on more often just for your own mental health.

[1:47:23] Yeah.

[1:47:24] Yeah.

[1:47:25] And you have a delightful laugh, so that's also good for us as well.

[1:47:30] Oh, yeah.

[1:47:31] Thank you.

[1:47:32] Ha, ha, ha.

[1:47:33] That's the one.

[1:47:36] Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee.

[1:47:39] Oh, yeah.

[1:47:40] A lot of people don't know.

[1:47:41] Hallie makes most of her money off of doing Halloween sound effects.

[1:47:44] Yeah, yeah.

[1:47:45] Zoom's like, that Halloween sound effect is copyright.

[1:47:48] We gave you that.

[1:47:49] Yeah, that's true.

[1:47:50] Yeah, that's why we had to stop using that chain rattle sound.

[1:47:52] We get sued.

[1:47:53] Yeah.

[1:47:54] Anything you wanted to say before we do our sign-off, Hallie?

[1:47:58] Thanks for having me.

[1:48:00] That's all.

[1:48:01] Ha, ha, ha.

[1:48:02] Hallie, why don't you plug your sub stack?

[1:48:04] Oh, yeah.

[1:48:05] Yeah.

[1:48:06] Sign up, you guys.

[1:48:08] Read my sub stack.

[1:48:09] Check it out.

[1:48:10] It's called, That Hurts My Feelings.

[1:48:13] One sub stack.

[1:48:14] I'm glad it's still going, because honestly, I read the last one.

[1:48:17] I'm like, does this mean she's stopping?

[1:48:19] No.

[1:48:20] There's a sense of finality about it.

[1:48:23] I know, I know.

[1:48:24] Like, goodbye forever or something?

[1:48:26] Yeah.

[1:48:27] Yeah.

[1:48:28] But I'll recommend, Hallie, if you are continuing, That Hurts My Feelings, it's the thing I read

[1:48:31] right away when it shows up in my email inbox.

[1:48:34] I always think it's great.

[1:48:35] It's both funny and also kind of meaningful and touching and revealing in ways that I

[1:48:40] think...

[1:48:41] Very revealing.

[1:48:42] A lot of new pictures.

[1:48:43] A lot of new pictures, yeah.

[1:48:44] A lot of new...

[1:48:45] Dangerous beauty.

[1:48:46] It was originally called, That Hurts My Feelings, right?

[1:48:48] It was just much more of a porn newsletter.

[1:48:52] But it's a...

[1:48:53] No, it's like...

[1:48:54] Hallie's doing such amazing writing on it, and someone's gotta...

[1:48:58] I wish there was more newspapers with syndicated columns, because it shows me that Hallie would

[1:49:03] do an amazing job with that.

[1:49:04] Oh, thank you.

[1:49:05] Thanks.

[1:49:06] Yeah, so if any newspapers are listening...

[1:49:08] If you're listening, USA Today, and I know you are...

[1:49:11] Mr. USA Today.

[1:49:15] Is there a Mrs. USA Today?

[1:49:19] Mr. Ulysses Samson Arthur Today.

[1:49:22] Thank you to Hallie.

[1:49:25] Thank you to our producer, Alex Smith, both for producing the show and being on our Unfrosted

[1:49:31] episode recently.

[1:49:33] And if you don't subscribe to Flop Secrets, our newsletter, the most recent one was devoted

[1:49:38] to Alex's side project, so look that up.

[1:49:41] It's an easy way to see what Alex is up to.

[1:49:45] Thank you to Maximum Fun.

[1:49:46] Go to MaximumFun.org to find other great shows on the MaxFun Network.

[1:49:51] And for The Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:49:54] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:49:55] I've been Elliot Kalen.

[1:49:56] And I've been Hallie Haglund.

[1:50:00] to us I got don't worry guys I got a real hot one oh boy not just warm but

[1:50:17] hot okay let's okay what's this okay I remember the movies called so that's the

[1:50:22] important thing here we go on this episode we discuss better man and if

[1:50:28] your number one celebrity crush is Robbie Williams prepare to be confused

[1:50:33] that's pretty good that is a hot one maximum fun a worker owned network of

[1:50:40] artists owned shows supported directly by you

Ep.#451 - Better Man, with Hallie Haglund

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