The Flop House: Episode #152 - Easy Rider: The Ride Back

Dan McCoy

[0:00] For all those that wondered what happened decades after Easy Rider and decades before Easy Rider,

[0:07] there's Easy Rider, the ride back.

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

Stuart Wellington

[0:39] Hey there, Dan McCoy. I am Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:43] Hey there, Stuart Wellington robot. I'm Elliot Kalin.

Stuart Wellington

[0:46] Hey.

[0:48] Wait, I can't do a robot impression. Go, Dan.

[0:51] It goes like this. Beep, boop. Beep, boop. I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:55] Then you talk like this in a monotone.

Stuart Wellington

[0:57] Okay, so wait. Is this like an improv class?

[1:01] Yeah, look.

[1:01] Because improv classes teach you how to be a robot.

[1:04] You know, so can you be a baby robot?

Dan McCoy

[1:06] Beep, boop. I am Stuart Wellington.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09] I'm baby bot Stuart Wellington, I think is what I'm saying.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11] We're just trying to teach you to do the one impression anyone of any age knows how to do.

[1:15] Which is what?

[1:16] A robot.

[1:17] What the fuck?

[1:18] Oh, right.

[1:19] Beep, boop.

[1:20] Get with the program.

[1:20] Here's how you do a robot. I'm Stuart Wellington. Beep, boop.

[1:23] Here's how you do an alien. I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:25] Gleep, glower. It's easy.

Dan McCoy

[1:27] Yeah.

[1:28] For more like this, send in for Elliot's pamphlet.

[1:32] Easy impressions.

[1:32] It's called Easy Impressions.

[1:34] You're sending in for a pamphlet?

[1:34] Even you can do.

[1:36] First you have to draw a turtle.

[1:38] And then Elliot will teach you how to impress one.

[1:41] And if you don't draw the turtle well enough?

[1:43] Then you have to draw a pirate.

Elliott Kalan

[1:44] Oh, okay. That's not that bad.

Dan McCoy

[1:46] And if you don't draw the pirate well enough, I cannot help you.

[1:49] No.

[1:51] So this is a movie.

[1:54] Wow.

[1:54] I did it again, guys.

[1:55] Again, we've done this over 150 times.

[1:57] So this is a podcast.

[1:59] A podcast.

[2:00] You're hearing it in your ears.

[2:01] It's called The Flophouse.

[2:03] The Flophouse.

[2:03] Where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[2:05] And tonight.

Elliott Kalan

[2:06] Well, I want to say one thing.

[2:07] If my voice sounds a little off tonight and possibly more annoying, it's because I'm getting

[2:11] over a cold.

[2:12] Or maybe it sounds better.

[2:13] Or it sounds better.

[2:14] And everyone will keep infecting you.

[2:15] Sexier and Barry Whitish.

[2:17] But if you are hearing me wrong, it's not your headphones.

[2:21] It's my voice.

Stuart Wellington

[2:21] Yeah.

[2:22] If it's not a normal Elliot sound, just speed it up a little bit.

[2:25] So it's all Chipmunks.

[2:25] Yeah.

[2:25] Make it more high-pitched and chipmunky.

Elliott Kalan

[2:27] A little Porky Pig here.

[2:29] It's not the coffee.

[2:30] It's the bunk.

[2:32] It's a Christmas in July reference.

Dan McCoy

[2:33] We watched a movie called...

Elliott Kalan

[2:36] Did we watch a movie, Dan?

[2:37] I'm still not sure.

[2:39] I don't know what we watched.

[2:40] I'm waiting for it.

Dan McCoy

[2:40] Easy Rider.

[2:42] The Ride Back.

[2:43] What?

[2:44] It's called Easy Rider.

[2:45] I can't remember whether it's The Ride Back or the Rhyme.

Elliott Kalan

[2:45] It's Easy Rider, The Ride Back.

[2:48] This is an...

[2:49] Sequel.

[2:50] I would say an unauthorized sequel to Easy Rider, except the guy who made it bought the rights

[2:54] to Easy Rider.

[2:55] So it is technically an authorized sequel by the owner of the rights to Easy Rider.

Dan McCoy

[2:59] Spiritual sequel.

[3:00] I will say a large part of the credit for us doing this movie comes from Nathan Rabin

[3:06] of The Dissolved tweeting directly at us and suggesting that we do this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[3:10] And saying, hey, do this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[3:12] Which I double dog dare you.

[3:13] Which I'm super glad he did, because this was awesome.

[3:15] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[3:16] This was a...

[3:17] Wow.

[3:18] I just...

[3:19] Wow.

[3:19] I just gotta say, if you're a normal fan out there being like...

[3:21] Or a normie.

[3:22] You know, like, oh, they didn't do the movie I suggested.

[3:25] Well, tough.

[3:25] We're a bunch of star fuckers here.

[3:27] If you're a minor internet celebrity...

[3:29] Why is Dan looking at us?

[3:30] I don't know why you're so mad, Dan.

[3:32] Or a major normal celebrity.

[3:34] Why are you being so mean to our listeners?

Elliott Kalan

[3:35] I'm just saying.

[3:35] Look, if you write for The Dissolved and you recommend a movie for us, we'll watch it.

[3:39] We're gonna prick up our ears, man.

[3:41] We should have...

[3:42] Um, uh...

[3:43] I don't know what that means exactly, but I don't like the sound of it.

[3:46] It's a saying.

[3:47] It's a saying.

[3:47] Yeah.

[3:48] Anyway, Dick Ears McCoy is...

Dan McCoy

[3:50] My point is, if there are other semi-famous to famous people out there who want to tweet

[3:55] at us, maybe we'll have a star fuckers month.

[3:58] Yeah, sure, why not?

[3:58] This is a contest?

[3:59] Recommend a movie to us.

[4:00] Yeah, it's a contest.

Stuart Wellington

[4:01] It's a new contest we're doing.

[4:02] If you have...

[4:04] Wait, what?

Dan McCoy

[4:04] Peter Scolari wants to write in with a movie for us.

[4:07] We'll watch it.

[4:08] But you gotta verify yourself.

[4:10] You gotta take a picture of yourself, Peter Scolari.

[4:11] That day's newspaper.

[4:12] Holding that day's newspaper.

[4:13] Yeah.

[4:14] To prove that you're modern Peter Scolari.

[4:15] And a picture of you.

[4:16] Not a time family.

[4:17] See Peter Scolari.

Elliott Kalan

[4:19] We don't want Maniac Mansion, Peter Scolari.

[4:21] We want Girls, Peter Scolari.

[4:23] That's right.

Dan McCoy

[4:24] But the point is, Easy Rider...

[4:26] Is he on Maniac Mansion?

Elliott Kalan

[4:27] I don't know.

[4:28] That's a Nintendo game.

[4:29] No, he was in the direct-to-video Honey, We Shrunk Our Somethings.

[4:32] I mean, I...

[4:33] Oh, no, it was a Honey, We Shrunk the Kids TV show.

Dan McCoy

[4:36] That was the...

[4:37] Not from Bosom Buddies?

[4:38] To me, New Heart was the pinnacle of Scolari...

[4:40] Scolaridom.

[4:42] Tom Hanks would disagree.

[4:42] Scolari, maybe.

[4:45] Scolariana.

[4:45] Sweeping the nation.

Stuart Wellington

[4:46] It was him and his brother, Ghost, that attacked that...

[4:50] Attacked that...

[4:51] Yeah, the Scolari brothers.

[4:52] I gave him the chair.

Elliott Kalan

[4:53] Then they attacked me as a judge when Lewis...

[4:57] What's his name?

[4:58] Lewis Tully.

Elliott Kalan

[4:58] Lewis Tully was defending the G-Busters.

[5:01] The G-Busters.

Dan McCoy

[5:02] Yeah.

[5:03] Wow, it took me a long time to realize where Stuart was going with that Scolari ghost thing.

[5:07] Really?

Elliott Kalan

[5:07] You're saying that that's not the first thing you think whenever you hear Peter Scolari's

[5:11] name?

[5:11] Because it is for me.

[5:12] The Scolari brothers.

[5:13] I gave him the chair.

Stuart Wellington

[5:14] So you think he's the skinny Scolari brother though, right?

Elliott Kalan

[5:17] Of course, he's not the big fat one.

[5:19] Come on.

Stuart Wellington

[5:20] You sound a lot more if a cabbie was a judge than the actual judge.

Elliott Kalan

[5:23] Yeah, I guess so.

[5:24] I remember seeing those puppets when I took a tour of Industrial Light and Magic and it

[5:28] was very exciting to me.

[5:29] Yeah.

[5:30] I did all this stuff from movie history and what hit me the most was the Scolari brothers

[5:34] puppets and the painting of Vigo of Carpathia.

[5:36] The Scolari brothers.

[5:37] For some reason, I realized I loved Ghostbusters 2 so much.

Stuart Wellington

[5:40] And you were like, no, no, no, David, don't get near that painting.

Dan McCoy

[5:44] Well, that's, I mean, the Scolari brothers were definitely the best effect in Ghostbusters

[5:47] 2 as far as I'm concerned.

[5:49] I don't know about that.

[5:49] The most charming effect.

Elliott Kalan

[5:51] Yeah, I don't know.

[5:52] I have a soft spot for that mink coat that starts attacking its owner.

[5:55] All right.

Stuart Wellington

[5:55] I was going to say the bathtub ooze thing.

Elliott Kalan

[5:57] Yeah.

[5:57] Well, you like that it reaches for a topless Sigourney Weaver.

[6:00] Yeah, totally.

Stuart Wellington

[6:01] Anyway.

Dan McCoy

[6:02] Anyway.

[6:02] Easy Rider.

[6:03] We watched Easy Rider the Ride Back.

Elliott Kalan

[6:05] Which is, like you were saying, it's almost, it's so, it's been a long time.

Dan McCoy

[6:09] So it's hot on the heels of the original.

Elliott Kalan

[6:11] Yeah.

[6:11] Yeah, it's only 40 years after the original movie.

Dan McCoy

[6:14] And it may seem that we're killing a lot of time, but this movie defies description.

[6:18] This movie is about killing time.

Elliott Kalan

[6:20] This is, it is a long time, it's been a long time since we watched, maybe ever, such a low

[6:25] budget amateurish movie for the Flophouse.

[6:28] Even like, what was the movie we watched about how patriotism was destroying, how America

[6:34] was destroying patriotism in the church?

Dan McCoy

[6:36] Was it The Last Ounce of Courage?

[6:38] The Last Ounce of Courage.

Elliott Kalan

[6:39] Even that.

[6:39] Yeah.

[6:40] It looked more professional than this.

Dan McCoy

[6:41] We might have to go back to the Simon Fisher era and Memory starring Billy Zane to find

[6:46] such a low budget film.

Elliott Kalan

[6:49] But this was, let's try to explain it.

[6:50] Episode two.

[6:51] Yeah.

[6:52] So this is for everyone who saw.

[6:53] True believers.

[6:54] Everyone who saw Easy Rider, the movie about Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda riding on their

[6:59] motorcycles around, dealing drugs, and are eventually, at the end they are.

[7:03] Getting shot.

[7:04] At the end they're murdered by two guys in a truck.

[7:06] And anyone who saw the movie was like, but what happened next?

[7:09] Yeah.

[7:09] After they were murdered.

Dan McCoy

[7:11] Well, not what happened next, what happened several years later.

Elliott Kalan

[7:13] What happened next and what happened, what happened 40 years later and also 25 years

[7:18] earlier.

[7:18] Well, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[7:19] Anybody who watched the original Easy Rider and you saw the guy driving around with the

[7:24] Captain America outfit and you're like, man, America used to be great, wasn't it?

[7:28] Well, that's what this movie.

[7:29] Where did we go wrong?

Elliott Kalan

[7:30] And what's so weird about this movie is that this movie, it's like the first movie, this

[7:34] movie saw the first movie, which I guess is about the American dream shattered and we

[7:38] need a more hippie-ish view of freedom.

[7:40] This movie is like, allow us to correct that last movie.

[7:44] Actually, the great times in America were the olden days.

Dan McCoy

[7:47] Yeah, all that counterculture stuff, no thank you.

[7:50] What we need are more veterans.

Elliott Kalan

[7:51] What we need is more Vietnam vets.

[7:54] And World War II vets.

[7:56] And World War II vets.

[7:56] But I think Easy Rider was not against-

[7:58] And veterinarians.

[7:59] I don't think the people in Easy Rider were against World War II.

[8:02] I would assume they were taking an anti-Vietnam stance.

[8:05] No, no.

Dan McCoy

[8:06] They hated the Jews.

[8:07] Wow.

[8:08] Whoa.

[8:08] Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, a real anti-Jew cinnamon.

[8:13] Wow.

Elliott Kalan

[8:13] So you were originally called anti-Semitic rider.

[8:15] Yeah.

[8:15] I'm sure.

[8:18] So anyway, let's explain what's going on.

[8:19] It's a metaphor.

Elliott Kalan

[8:20] So the movie opens with a long VO and a lot of motorcycle footage of the guy who is also

[8:27] the co-writer of the film playing Peter Fonda's character's brother.

[8:31] Was it Wint?

[8:32] Morgan.

[8:33] Willie?

Stuart Wellington

[8:33] Morgan.

[8:34] Morgan.

[8:34] Yeah, he's like a Peter Fonda like-a-look.

Elliott Kalan

[8:36] He is like-a-look.

[8:37] He's a real like-a-look.

[8:39] And that he would like it if he looked more like Peter Fonda.

[8:42] That's why he dyed his hair black.

Dan McCoy

[8:44] This is-

[8:45] If you want Peter Fonda to come to your child's birthday, you look up at the yellow pages,

[8:49] the like-a-look section.

Elliott Kalan

[8:50] Let's say your grandma's turning 90 and her eyesight's not that good.

[8:54] She loves Peter Fonda from like Yuli's Gold or some shit.

[8:57] Sure.

[8:58] So if she wants him to come to her party, you hire this guy and she can't tell that

[9:03] he kind of barely looks like Peter Fonda if you're squinting at him and if he's wearing

[9:07] Peter Fonda's clothes.

Dan McCoy

[9:08] Yeah.

[9:09] Which he is.

Elliott Kalan

[9:10] Which he is.

[9:10] So he has a voiceover about how he's the brother of Peter Fonda's character.

[9:15] He doesn't like what happened to him.

Dan McCoy

[9:16] He got shot on a day with clear blue skies just like 9-11.

Elliott Kalan

[9:21] Yeah, he mentions that the shot that killed his brother came out of the nowhere in the

[9:24] blue sky just like 9-11.

[9:26] I mean, I can see that.

[9:27] I can see that parallel.

[9:28] And what happened to America?

[9:29] Yeah.

[9:29] And he is living in Mexico, I guess, as a drug dealer.

[9:33] And his sister says, hey, our father is dying.

[9:38] You need to come.

[9:39] Or it's his birthday.

[9:40] No, you know what?

[9:40] He's not dying.

[9:41] He's an old man.

[9:42] It's his birthday.

[9:42] You need to come see him.

[9:44] And he's like, I don't want to.

[9:45] I got problems with that old man.

[9:46] But meanwhile-

Stuart Wellington

[9:47] This scene takes place in a shed full of motorcycle equipment.

Elliott Kalan

[9:50] Yeah, motorcycle memorabilia that all has a red iron cross on it.

[9:55] Because their dad started a gang, a motorcycle.

[9:58] The vehicle gang that uses a red iron cross as its symbol.

[10:02] Anyway, they argue, okay, here's a rule about this movie.

[10:05] No dialogue scene is allowed to be more than two and a half minutes long.

[10:08] Or if that, two minutes long.

[10:10] Yet every motorcycle riding scene is roughly 75 to 85 minutes long.

Dan McCoy

[10:14] Yes.

[10:15] But the corollary of that is, even though the dialogue scenes are two minutes long, each

[10:19] two-minute long dialogue scene will mention 16 characters that you have not heard of before.

Elliott Kalan

[10:24] This is, we were talking about how every dialogue scene in this movie is like the Janet Leigh pickup scene in the Manchurian Candidate, where the dialogue makes no sense.

[10:33] And you're like, did I miss a scene?

[10:35] Like, they must be talking in code.

Dan McCoy

[10:37] What is this?

[10:38] Is there a subtext here that I'm not getting that explains everything?

Stuart Wellington

[10:42] Every scene is like a Matryoshka doll, like a Russian nesting doll filled with names that I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[10:47] Or a Rorschach test.

[10:48] It's like, let's let the audience figure out what's going on.

Dan McCoy

[10:50] If we have the key book that is the key to this book cipher.

Elliott Kalan

[10:55] Yeah, they should have sent us a coded message that told us what page to start on in our cipher code.

Dan McCoy

[11:02] Oh, boy.

[11:03] Then this would be like rules of the game.

Stuart Wellington

[11:05] Oh, yeah.

[11:06] It'll be the godfather.

[11:08] So they go to a, what, like a Mexican restaurant or something?

[11:10] They go to, it seems to be a Mexican restaurant.

[11:12] They get bottled with nachos.

Elliott Kalan

[11:14] They go to like a Mexican restaurant run by a drug baron.

[11:18] Yep.

[11:18] And the guy sells his drugs and comes back, and the sister and he get into a fight.

Stuart Wellington

[11:23] Over some kind of off-brand bottle of Patron, I guess.

Elliott Kalan

[11:26] Yeah, because he won't go see their dad, and he's mad that his, the dad always liked his brother, Virgil, more.

[11:35] Virgil being another character who we never see in the present, but appears in a lot of flashbacks.

[11:40] Yeah.

[11:40] The sister goes back and argues with the dad, and the main character, Morgan, tells his nude girlfriend in the, probably, I would say the best scene in the movie, because there's a nude girlfriend in it.

[11:53] Yeah.

[11:53] Tells her he has to go.

[11:54] She is totally nude balls.

[11:55] She is totally nude balls.

[11:57] She is totally naked-ocious.

Stuart Wellington

[11:59] Yeah, she totally raises this guy's value.

[12:02] Like before, we're like, who's this weird old dude?

[12:04] But now we're like, man, there's got to be something going on with this guy.

Dan McCoy

[12:06] Like, who's this 65-year-old dude?

[12:08] Well, he's got a 23-year-old.

[12:10] Whatever that shit is.

Elliott Kalan

[12:11] Who's this walking jerky stick in a sleeveless shirt and Peter Fonda's jacket?

Stuart Wellington

[12:15] Well, this nude lady seems to like him.

[12:17] So maybe there's something about her.

[12:18] Maybe it's because he has beautiful, long, black, flowing hair.

[12:22] Yeah.

[12:23] That is discongruous with the rest of his hair.

Elliott Kalan

[12:25] With his gnarled, tree-trunk face.

[12:28] Yeah.

[12:29] But here's the thing.

[12:32] Everyone in this movie is older.

Stuart Wellington

[12:34] Yeah, did you think he was leaving for like an ent mood or something?

[12:39] My people have to help the forces of light fight Sauron.

[12:41] And then they move slow enough.

Elliott Kalan

[12:43] Anyway, he decides he's going to motorcycle back after all.

[12:48] He's going to take a long trip.

[12:50] But before he goes, he's going to...

Dan McCoy

[12:51] In honor of his dead brother, kind of.

[12:53] Kind of.

[12:54] But also to see his dad mostly.

[12:54] His brother who died 45 years ago.

Elliott Kalan

[12:57] But everyone is still getting over it.

[13:01] Wait, who's his brother?

[13:02] Peter Fonda.

[13:03] Oh, shit.

[13:04] From the first movie.

[13:05] Yeah, exactly.

[13:06] From the beginning of the movie, right?

Stuart Wellington

[13:08] Get on the bus, Stu.

[13:09] Sorry.

Elliott Kalan

[13:09] Come on.

[13:10] Directed by Spike Lee.

[13:11] Exactly.

[13:12] To the Million Man March.

Stuart Wellington

[13:13] The bus that guy serves nachos are out on.

Elliott Kalan

[13:16] We haven't gotten to the guy who serves poor people out of a bus that doesn't work anymore

[13:19] and gets a big money transaction.

[13:21] Look at transfusion from Peter Fonda brother.

[13:24] But anyway.

[13:24] And then we don't see him again.

[13:25] From Peter Fonda Beba.

[13:27] He's like Ponda Beba from Star Wars.

[13:29] Peter Fonda.

[13:31] He's a babe.

[13:32] It's so weird that you made...

[13:33] It's like if they made a King Kong movie about King Kong's brother and dad.

[13:38] Like I know he died at the end of the first movie, but this is about the rest of his family.

[13:42] And I know they made...

[13:43] No, it's like Donkey Kong.

[13:43] I know they made Son of Kong, which is about King Kong's son.

[13:46] Sure.

[13:46] They could have made a movie about Peter Fonda's son.

[13:48] Instead, it's about his brother and his dad.

[13:50] As if he needed to fill in the backstory.

[13:52] Like most of this movie is prequel, which we'll get to.

[13:55] So before he's going to go on this trip, he decides to pick up his best friend.

Stuart Wellington

[13:58] But beforehand, there's that great bit where he makes the decision to go on the trip.

[14:02] And he stuffs that fucking tube full of money, just like in the first movie.

[14:06] Into his gas tank, yeah.

[14:07] Which has...

[14:08] Like they're only doing that because it's a callback to the first movie.

[14:11] It has no...

[14:12] Like it's no real point.

Elliott Kalan

[14:14] It's not like at any point someone tries to rob him.

[14:17] And it's only because the money's in the gas tank he gets away, you know.

[14:20] Yeah.

[14:20] I...

[14:21] I'm glad that I had you on hands.

[14:23] Poor guy.

[14:24] Or not at that yet.

[14:25] He's still picking up his best friend at the dirt bike track.

Dan McCoy

[14:28] I do say that.

[14:29] I'm glad that we had you on hands, Stuart.

[14:31] Because I would not have recognized that as a callback.

[14:33] I've seen the first movie, but I don't like Easy Rider.

[14:38] I don't like the original.

[14:39] Like I recognize that it is...

[14:40] You don't like counterculture.

[14:41] ...a million times better than this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[14:43] Call me square, but I'm not a fan of these Easy Riders.

[14:46] Well...

Dan McCoy

[14:47] Those five pieces aren't so easy to me.

[14:50] I like five easy pieces, but Easy Rider, I feel like...

[14:52] Hair, get it cut.

[14:53] That's what I say.

[14:54] I starred in Hair?

Stuart Wellington

[14:55] Yeah, I was going to say, Dan, as...

[14:57] One of my great moments in my college career was getting to see Dan McCoy star in the musical

[15:04] performance of Hair at Earlham College.

[15:07] Yeah.

[15:07] Not all the naked people.

[15:08] Dan was standing up on a platform, gazing up on them.

Dan McCoy

[15:11] So who did you play?

[15:12] Well, only out of the corner of my eyes was I gazing upon them.

[15:14] Who did you play in Hair?

[15:16] I played Claude.

[15:17] Oh, okay.

[15:17] So you did star in Hair.

[15:18] Yeah.

[15:19] Anyway.

[15:19] I wasn't...

[15:20] I wasn't...

[15:20] So that's a peek behind, I guess...

[15:22] The curtain of my college life?

Stuart Wellington

[15:25] No, but what I'm saying is you probably had to get deep into character.

[15:29] Yeah.

[15:29] Spooked a lot of pot.

[15:30] Dropped a lot of acid.

[15:31] Yeah.

[15:31] So how does that affect your opinion of hippie culture?

Dan McCoy

[15:35] The closest I came to get into character was the stage manager, Allison Kinnis.

[15:41] You may remember her.

[15:42] Yeah, glad we dropped the name.

[15:45] What is this?

[15:46] A scene from Easy Rider on the way back?

[15:48] Yeah.

[15:48] Right now dropped 17 more names.

[15:50] She and Karen Florentine and I were going to get some shrooms and eat them on a pizza,

[15:55] and then Allison dropped the ball.

[15:57] She never got the mushrooms.

[15:59] Is that drug skin dropping the ball?

[16:01] Can we cut this story out?

[16:02] I'm just saying.

[16:02] Can we get back to the movie?

[16:03] It was supposed to be research for the role.

[16:07] What?

[16:07] Because there's a lot of pizza in Hair?

[16:08] Were you doing it as Ninja Turtles?

[16:10] Sure.

[16:11] I was a long-haired Ninja Turtle who did not want to be drafted into the fight against Shredder.

[16:17] Claude Leonardo thinks that it's groovy to go sit in a movie and be a ninja.

[16:22] Anyway.

[16:23] I was burning my sighs.

[16:25] Anyway, so go on.

Elliott Kalan

[16:26] Wow.

[16:26] Dan, now if Raphael had said that, I'd know he meant the ninja weapon.

[16:30] But since you sigh sadly so often, I thought you were really protesting by burning your main mode of communication.

[16:36] If you could do that, it would be a powerful protest from you.

Dan McCoy

[16:39] Yeah.

[16:40] Well, yeah.

[16:40] No, it would be more of like taking control of my own life.

[16:43] Yeah.

[16:43] It would be a powerful, like, from this moment on, I'm sad no more.

Elliott Kalan

[16:48] I'm not.

[16:49] The sighs don't master me.

[16:51] I master them.

[16:52] Sigh guy no more.

[16:54] So anyway, he decides to pick up his best friend.

[16:57] What are we talking about?

[16:58] Easy Rider, the ride back.

[17:00] Now, here's the thing.

[17:01] We mentioned there are a lot of names.

[17:02] I don't think we've hit hard enough.

[17:04] The fact that every scene, each character mentions a ton of other characters.

[17:07] And this must be what, like, it must feel like when my wife picks up one of my X-Men comics.

[17:12] And they're just mentioning Aurora Monroe and Spiral and Mojo, and she has no idea who these people are.

Dan McCoy

[17:18] They sound pretty great, though.

Elliott Kalan

[17:19] Yeah.

[17:19] Oh, no.

[17:19] They're all great.

[17:20] Yeah.

[17:21] It's like Forge.

[17:22] A Forge is a noun.

[17:23] It's a thing, not a person.

[17:27] That's his problem.

Stuart Wellington

[17:28] Everyone treats him like he's a thing and not a person.

[17:31] But he's a person.

[17:31] He's a shaman and a mutant.

Elliott Kalan

[17:33] Yeah, yeah.

[17:34] So, but he goes to pick up his best friend, Jeff Fahey, playing the character of Wes Coast,

[17:40] who is a professional dirt biker turned fat bearded guy.

[17:46] He's Mr. Motocross.

[17:47] And he is kind of the Dude Lebowski of this movie.

[17:49] If the Dude Lebowski did nothing but ride a motorcycle and talk at such a low level that you can barely hear what he's saying.

Dan McCoy

[17:56] And also have flashbacks to having sex with the main character's sister.

[18:00] On the back of a motorcycle.

[18:01] That's another major nude scene delivery system of this film.

Elliott Kalan

[18:04] And this is a movie that is shot and scored like a Playboy video calendar.

[18:09] Yeah.

[18:10] So it's...

Dan McCoy

[18:11] It's all library music soundalikes of other songs.

Elliott Kalan

[18:15] And at this...

[18:16] Anyway, it's...

[18:17] So Jeff Fahey's character is introduced in a...

Stuart Wellington

[18:20] Some motocrossing.

[18:22] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[18:22] Where the camera cannot keep him in front of you.

[18:24] Oh, no.

Elliott Kalan

[18:24] He's just too fast.

[18:25] And he's the Sancho Panza of this film.

[18:28] He really is.

[18:28] To Morgan's Don Quixote.

[18:31] And they go to a bar where they watch some women dancing on a bar.

[18:35] Jeff Fahey gets into a fight and hits a bunch of people in the face with a Jack Daniels bottle.

[18:39] So hard that...

[18:40] Is that like a roadhouse?

Stuart Wellington

[18:41] What was going on there?

Elliott Kalan

[18:41] It was kind of a honky-tonk roadhouse.

Dan McCoy

[18:43] Well, it was one of those strip clubs where most of the women are fully clothed except for one lady.

Elliott Kalan

[18:47] Yeah.

[18:48] Well, they were all...

Stuart Wellington

[18:48] They were all fully clothed.

[18:49] They were all covered up.

[18:51] And they all had various degrees of boredom in their dancing.

Elliott Kalan

[18:55] Yeah.

[18:55] One woman was literally just bobbing while patting her hip.

Dan McCoy

[18:58] There was like the one topless lady and then there was a much...

Stuart Wellington

[19:00] I think the only top she took off was her cowboy hat.

Elliott Kalan

[19:03] I don't remember any topless ladies dancing.

[19:05] Let's check the video.

[19:06] This is your Castle Creek Ding Dong ripoff.

[19:10] Stuart and I both saw women in bikini tops.

[19:12] It's topless game.

[19:12] Sure.

[19:13] Bikini tops and short skirts.

[19:16] I didn't see any topless women.

[19:16] You don't have the radar that I do.

Stuart Wellington

[19:18] One girl had chaps on.

[19:19] Is that what you're thinking?

[19:20] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[19:20] Do you think chaps and boobs are the same thing?

[19:23] What do you think chapstick is?

Stuart Wellington

[19:24] And speaking of chaps, some chap gets rude with one of the girls and Jeff Fahey clubs him

[19:29] with a bottle.

Elliott Kalan

[19:30] Jeff Fahey defends her honor by killing him with a bottle.

[19:32] Then they've got a ski daddle.

[19:34] They go on...

Dan McCoy

[19:35] I did think it was pretty funny when he was like, it didn't break like in the movies.

Elliott Kalan

[19:39] Yeah, man.

[19:40] That's thick glass.

[19:41] Yeah.

[19:42] So then they ride...

[19:43] You gotta keep all that whiskey inside.

[19:45] And there's one of about 20 scenes where they just ride their motorcycle in a long shot.

Stuart Wellington

[19:49] What?

[19:50] Said it was a good joke.

[19:51] He's right.

Elliott Kalan

[19:51] That was a fine little chuckle.

[19:53] So then it's time to wipe them, ride their motorcycles forever.

[19:55] They eventually stop at, I guess, a restaurant.

[19:58] It looks more like...

[19:59] It's a bus.

[20:01] No, but before...

[20:01] I guess it's after that.

[20:03] I can't remember.

[20:04] It's hard to keep the order of this movie.

[20:05] There's a point where they stop at a restaurant.

[20:07] Nothing follows anything.

[20:08] No, but I'm loving watching you try to keep the order.

[20:10] They stop at...

[20:10] It's either a restaurant or it's the shanty town from Prince of Darkness.

[20:13] And a woman is their waitress and they ask her where they can get some reefer.

[20:18] She says, oh, here we call it pot.

[20:19] Oh, I love it.

[20:20] And Jeff Fahey is like, pot, huh?

[20:22] Yeah, as if that's the craziest newfangled thing he's ever heard.

[20:27] Keeping in mind, they've called it pot for, what, 50 years?

Dan McCoy

[20:29] And then there's five minutes of this young blonde lady driving around on a motorcycle with

[20:34] some shots of the other two of them following her.

[20:36] And it's like a country music television video from 1990.

Elliott Kalan

[20:40] And I assume the point is just to see her boobs bouncing while she's riding a motorcycle.

[20:44] I guess.

[20:44] I mean, it's not even that...

Stuart Wellington

[20:45] She takes them to a place...

[20:46] She's not even wearing a helmet.

Elliott Kalan

[20:48] No, or long pants.

[20:50] If she fell off that bike, her legs would get all scraped up.

[20:51] She would be torn to pieces.

[20:52] Yeah, she'd be like...

Dan McCoy

[20:53] She would be shredded like lettuce and not in the good way.

[20:55] No, she'd be like Steve Buscemi and the wood chipper at the end of Fargo.

[20:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[20:59] So they go to a place.

[21:00] She walks out of a building and hands them something.

[21:02] And then they drive off.

[21:03] And then she stares at them wistfully.

[21:05] Yeah.

[21:05] As if they've had a moment of some kind.

[21:07] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[21:07] The movie moves on and she stays there.

[21:10] Yeah.

[21:10] The adventure of them getting some pots.

Elliott Kalan

[21:13] This is like the...

[21:14] This is their version of...

[21:16] I guess it's like...

[21:17] Is it in Vanishing Point where the guy shows...

[21:19] The hero shows up at a place where there's a nude woman riding a motorcycle.

[21:22] She offers sex to him and he says no and then he leaves.

[21:25] And that's about it.

Dan McCoy

[21:26] I guess...

[21:27] I mean like this movie is like...

[21:29] You mentioned Don Quixote before.

[21:30] It's kind of like Don Quixote in that it's a picaresque tale.

[21:34] Go on.

[21:34] It is.

[21:35] Where it's split up into little incidents that don't necessarily...

[21:40] Like all add up together to a bigger narrative.

[21:42] Yeah.

[21:43] Until later on it turns into Tristram Shandy for a while where it flashes way back and

[21:47] leaves the main character.

Elliott Kalan

[21:48] So the quest to find some reefer is a success.

[21:52] Yep.

[21:52] And they continue on their way.

[21:54] There's another scene where they meet a friend of theirs.

[21:57] Used to be West Coast's big biking rival.

[22:00] Now he serves poor people meals out of an old unworking bus.

[22:04] And Peter Fonda lookalike gives him some money to fix the bus.

[22:09] So...

Stuart Wellington

[22:09] And thus the fable of the broken bus comes to its conclusion.

[22:13] So the money he hid in his gas tank, within the first, I'm hoping, third of the movie,

[22:19] he just gives it to the guy for his...

[22:22] Like the guy's like, how much is in there?

[22:23] He's like, enough.

[22:24] And then just gives him all the money.

[22:25] It doesn't make any sense at all.

Elliott Kalan

[22:27] So I guess they're living off the land, I guess, just stealing chickens and pies off ledges.

[22:31] They don't need that cash dollars.

Dan McCoy

[22:33] My favorite of these unconnected incidents is when they just stop on the beach for a while

[22:37] and a slow, shitty version of America, but beautiful plays over shots of...

[22:44] Of dead fish carcasses.

[22:44] Dead fish carcasses and ruined old buildings.

[22:47] And at the end, the main character goes...

[22:49] In voiceover.

[22:50] We blew it, man.

[22:51] We really gotta take better care of the earth.

Elliott Kalan

[22:54] And that's it.

[22:55] Yep.

[22:56] Yeah.

[22:56] Message received.

[22:57] Thanks, buddy.

[22:58] It is the least subtle environmental message since, I think, Godzilla versus the smog monster.

[23:04] Then there's also the scene where they bed down for the night.

[23:07] They're camping out.

[23:08] And Jeff Fahey makes the point that they could just fly where they're going.

[23:14] Or stay in a hotel.

[23:16] And Peter Fonda lookalike, or Jeff Fahey, I forget which one, talks about how, hey, if

[23:21] it could be 150 years ago when men had more freedom and these bikes were horses, you're

[23:25] saying you wouldn't give up all these modern conveniences to go back to that freedom?

[23:29] And he's like, yeah, I guess so.

[23:31] And I guess that's another one of the points of the movie about how America sucks now.

[23:34] I don't really understand what they're talking about.

Dan McCoy

[23:36] I think they're too high on Reaper.

Elliott Kalan

[23:37] Yeah.

[23:38] And then they start laughing at a Cheeto that fell on the ground.

Dan McCoy

[23:41] But this is like, but it's approximately here in this movie that the movie splits off into

[23:45] a whole different movie, right?

[23:46] Like, this is about where all of a sudden we go over to the main character's dad.

[23:50] Now it's about the daughter and the father.

[23:52] Yep.

[23:53] Now it's about the sister and the father.

Elliott Kalan

[23:54] His name is Wild Bill, and he is a cantankerous old gentleman with a constantly quivering lower

[23:59] lip.

[24:00] He always looks like he's either about to cry or he's chewing like...

Stuart Wellington

[24:03] Yeah, he's working on a little peanut.

[24:04] He's like trying to strip that acorn bear with just his rough little fucking kitty cat tongue.

Elliott Kalan

[24:11] He's got a tiny piece of gum that he wants to make last, so he's just these tiny little

[24:15] chewing motions.

[24:16] And I want to believe that's what he brought to the world.

[24:19] He's got that everlasting gobstock for me.

[24:23] It's like his mouth is always in one of those old-time workout machines that just shakes you.

[24:28] But anyway, he's mad at his daughter and the world.

[24:31] He hates his son Morgan, the main character.

[24:35] He loves his son Virgil, who we never see in the present.

[24:38] And the reason for this is he is a veteran of the North Africa campaign in World War II,

[24:44] which he flashes back to a lot.

[24:45] And apparently he was riding a motorcycle during a battle and his leg got blown up and his

[24:50] friend healed him.

[24:51] Yeah, by Rommel's Africa Corps.

[24:53] Yeah.

[24:54] And that's...

[24:55] And so the history...

[24:56] So that's another thing.

[24:57] This movie had to give it a family origin for why Peter Fonda rides a motorcycle in the

[25:01] first one.

[25:02] It's like, you know, every...

[25:04] Because that's the thing.

Stuart Wellington

[25:04] I didn't really buy it when I saw the first Easy Rider, that he's always riding a motorcycle.

[25:09] Yeah, no.

[25:10] What's the deal there?

[25:10] Like, where do you get that from?

[25:11] Oh, his family is...

[25:11] You're like, I get the Easy, but where did the rider come from?

Elliott Kalan

[25:15] So many unanswered questions about how he got into motorcycles.

[25:19] It's such a...

[25:20] It's a George Lucas Star Wars prequel level of explaining shit.

[25:24] Sure.

[25:25] Oh, you're wondering how Han got that vest.

[25:27] Well, here's what happened.

[25:29] He was walking through the forest and a bunch of brambles ripped the sleeves off his jacket.

Dan McCoy

[25:35] I mean, not to play...

[25:36] To flash back to the aforementioned Nathan Rabin, I read his review of this.

[25:41] And he talked about how, like, the movie came off as fan fiction.

[25:44] And that is totally true.

Elliott Kalan

[25:46] It totally feels like Easy Rider fan fiction.

Dan McCoy

[25:47] It's like, oh man, there's so many holes that I need to fill in.

Elliott Kalan

[25:49] Except fan fiction from someone who does not care for the message of the original Easy Rider.

[25:54] It is...

[25:55] It's...

[25:55] A guy who loves motorcycles, but doesn't like hippies.

[25:58] Doesn't like hippies.

[25:59] And so, there's...

[26:00] To make a very long, convoluted story short, the dad is mad.

[26:05] He's a mad dad.

[26:05] I don't know if I'll allow it.

[26:06] I think you should do the entire thing.

[26:08] I can honestly not imagine the order this stuff goes in.

[26:11] The dad is mad at his daughter.

[26:13] He has bad flashback dreams about World War II.

[26:16] Then his friend, who was the medic who healed him, comes by.

[26:19] And it's one of the old men from Nebraska.

Dan McCoy

[26:21] Yeah, a character actor's been in a ton of stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[26:23] Who is naming this as Stonewall Andrew Jackson, which is crazy.

[26:27] That it combines two different American Jacksons.

[26:31] And he...

[26:32] And Tito.

[26:33] And over dinner one night.

[26:34] It's weird.

Stuart Wellington

[26:35] And he got the nickname Stonewall completely unrelated.

Elliott Kalan

[26:37] Yeah, yeah.

[26:38] It's because he was at the Stonewall riots that night.

[26:41] He was the first guy to throw a punch at a cop.

[26:44] Yeah.

[26:45] He shows up wearing chaps the first time we see him.

[26:47] Yeah, that's why they're so close.

[26:49] Yeah, yeah.

[26:49] They were lovers.

[26:50] Mm-hmm.

[26:51] Back when that love dared not speak.

Stuart Wellington

[26:52] Yeah, there was like a five-minute scene of him driving up to the house.

Elliott Kalan

[26:57] Now, so, the daughter...

[26:58] This is a movie where everyone's decades-long family problems are solved with one conversation each.

[27:04] So the daughter yells at the dad, hey, stop pushing me away.

[27:07] Suddenly, everything's fine.

[27:08] Over dinner, he explains to her and his friend Stonewall his entire life history, which you'd think they'd know by this point.

[27:14] How he was in World War II.

[27:15] Then he came back.

[27:16] He had a farm.

[27:17] He had a baby.

[27:18] The kids grew up.

[27:18] He taught them racism was bad by talking about Jackie Robinson.

[27:21] And here, perseverance is good.

[27:23] Because that was when America was good when kids listened to their fathers.

[27:26] Not realizing that he's also illustrating that America was super racist at the time during the good old days.

[27:32] But then his sons grew up wrong.

[27:35] One of them went to Vietnam.

[27:37] Mm-hmm.

[27:37] And the other one...

[27:39] And it became a celebrated sniper.

[27:40] The other one...

Stuart Wellington

[27:41] Totally forgot that I called the postpartum depression suicide.

[27:44] Oh, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[27:45] The mother also killed herself due to postpartum depression after the daughter was born.

Stuart Wellington

[27:48] When the bad kid explained that his mom was sick with something after his sister was born,

[27:54] the whole time, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, in the fakest cigarette smoking scene I've ever seen.

Elliott Kalan

[28:00] It's also a scene where he is sketching and coloring in drawings of his American flag bike that he's going to ride in the first Easy Rider.

[28:06] Like he's fucking Spider-Man designing his costume.

Dan McCoy

[28:09] But the smoking.

[28:10] Imagine the scene from Ghostbusters where the cigarette is just dangling from Ray's lip the whole time.

[28:16] But imagine that that was played seriously as if Ray was still smoking that cigarette.

[28:21] And that's what that little kid's doing, that thing.

[28:23] Little kid.

[28:23] He's like a teenager.

[28:24] Whatever.

[28:25] He's not like an eight-year-old.

[28:25] I'm an old man now.

Elliott Kalan

[28:26] Yeah, yeah.

[28:27] They all look the same to you.

[28:29] So he's a kid racist.

[28:31] Okay.

[28:32] Casist.

[28:33] One brother becomes a dirty hippie and doesn't go to Vietnam.

[28:36] The other one does.

[28:38] But what we don't know is, it turns out, there's, oh, and also his, the older brother, Virgil,

[28:45] who did go to Vietnam, had a crush on the rich girl in town.

[28:48] But because they were a poor farm family, her parents didn't approve.

[28:52] Anyway.

[28:53] But it's revealed.

Dan McCoy

[28:54] There's more backstory in this fucking way.

Elliott Kalan

[28:56] I haven't even gotten to the dirty secret yet where this movie goes from bad to disgusting

[29:03] is when Morgan reveals to his friend West Coast that...

Stuart Wellington

[29:09] This is after we find, like, we see scenes of this awesome dude being, like, a sick sniper.

Elliott Kalan

[29:15] He's like a super sniper in Vietnam.

[29:16] Well, here's the thing.

Stuart Wellington

[29:17] Like, sniping little Vietnamese kids.

Elliott Kalan

[29:19] They drop him out of a helicopter in Vietnam.

[29:22] And this is where you know the budget of the movie is not super low because they rented

[29:25] a helicopter.

Dan McCoy

[29:26] And boy, do they show it because they hold on that shot of the helicopter for a good half

[29:32] a minute.

Elliott Kalan

[29:32] And there's a ton of helicopter shots of the bikes going across this...

[29:35] Probably the same helicopter.

[29:36] The California scrubland landscape.

[29:39] Yeah.

[29:39] He has the same helicopter they used in the other one.

[29:41] The Huey or something.

Stuart Wellington

[29:41] So they go to...

[29:43] He goes to Vietnam.

[29:43] The part of Vietnam that looks like Big Sur, California.

Elliott Kalan

[29:46] And then...

[29:47] Well, it's got palm trees.

[29:48] So it's Vietnam, right?

[29:50] They go...

[29:50] He gets dropped in on a helicopter.

[29:52] Then you see a unit of American soldiers who are moving through the jungle.

[29:57] And they get caught in a trap...

[29:59] Super tense.

[29:59] ...by this sniper.

[30:00] And then this...

[30:02] And then Virgil, who's all camoed up with plants on his head, he finds the sniper

[30:06] who's a...

[30:07] Like a real...

[30:08] Yeah, like a Tom Berenger.

[30:09] And then the Americans leave the helicopter.

[30:11] He ain't no fortunate.

[30:11] Yeah, he shoots him through his scope, dude.

[30:13] He shoots him through the scope, just like in Save a Prime Ryan or Sniper.

[30:16] In Sniper.

[30:17] And the Americans, I guess their mission was to go there and leave.

[30:22] They come...

[30:23] Yeah, they're just done.

[30:24] They've retrieved the bodies of the people the sniper killed.

[30:27] It shows their helicopters flying away.

[30:28] And that's when Virgil gets up out of the vegetation and goes to walk over to the corpse, which

[30:34] turns out to just be a kid.

[30:35] He wants to do honor to his fallen foe.

[30:37] But it's weird because you have to ask, okay, so did the other American troops even know

[30:41] Virgil was there?

[30:42] Did they think that, like, the hand of God struck the sniper dead?

[30:46] And is Virgil just going to walk home after that?

[30:48] Like...

[30:48] Yeah, a lot of crazy things happen in the war, dude.

[30:49] Thanks for saving us, guys.

[30:51] You want to ride home?

[30:51] No, it's okay.

[30:52] Cool.

[30:53] We're going to head out.

[30:54] Let's get in the air cab.

[30:55] You can just hang around the Vietnam jungle for as long as you want.

[30:58] But then it turns out he enlisted...

[31:00] His heart's been broken.

[31:01] He has no reason to go home.

[31:02] Well, that's the thing.

[31:02] He enlisted because of a dark secret.

[31:05] He...

[31:05] One night, his rich girlfriend snuck out of her home with him.

[31:08] They rode on a motorcycle down together because everybody loves motorcycles.

[31:12] And by the way, I cut out the scene where the dad, as a young man, takes an amputee World

[31:18] War II veteran on a ride in his motorcycle sidecar in exchange for a handmade flag.

[31:23] Let's just cut out that part entirely.

[31:26] Because America was a much better place back when we didn't have the medicine that allowed

[31:30] us to keep our legs.

Dan McCoy

[31:31] And these are like, who made that flag?

[31:35] I must have that flag.

[31:37] That flag was sewn so immaculately.

[31:39] And this is like...

[31:40] I've never seen a flag like that.

[31:41] This is Mad Men quality costuming.

Elliott Kalan

[31:42] You know, Mr. Hunsock was so nice, I gave his flag a double stitch anyway.

[31:45] What were you saying?

[31:46] We're talking Mad Men quality costuming, period costuming.

Stuart Wellington

[31:49] Oh, yeah, beautiful.

Elliott Kalan

[31:49] At no point does it look like a high school production of Grease.

[31:53] Never.

[31:54] Oh, God.

Stuart Wellington

[31:56] So...

[31:56] The point is...

[31:57] We were talking about the amputee.

[31:58] The most distasteful scene.

Elliott Kalan

[31:59] We were not talking about the amputee.

[32:00] So we're like...

[32:01] So it turns out...

Stuart Wellington

[32:02] We assume that the reason he went to Vietnam is because this girl broke his heart.

Elliott Kalan

[32:06] And because he's a proud, good American who is a patriot like his dad believes.

Dan McCoy

[32:10] At least he knows he's free.

[32:11] Yeah.

[32:12] He'll proudly stand up next to you.

Elliott Kalan

[32:14] And defend her still today?

[32:16] Yeah.

[32:16] Back then?

[32:17] Exactly.

[32:18] So it turns out Virgil...

[32:19] So Morgan tells West Coast that Virgil had a dark secret.

[32:23] So one night his rich girlfriend snuck out and they motorcycled down to an abandoned arboretum.

[32:28] Like, I don't know what it was exactly.

[32:30] Some kind of...

[32:30] It's like a...

[32:31] It's part of like a day camp.

[32:33] So it's like a three-sided house with a fireplace.

Stuart Wellington

[32:37] Yeah.

[32:37] Like you see the little campgrounds all over the place.

Elliott Kalan

[32:39] And they start making out and the girlfriend starts taking off her shirt and he goes, no, no, no.

[32:43] And she's like, it's okay.

[32:44] And they start making out.

[32:45] And then who should show up?

[32:47] But the bad side of motorcycles.

[32:50] A motorcycle gang.

[32:51] Wait.

[32:52] Hold on.

[32:53] It's a great difference.

[32:54] I like that motorcycles have turned evil.

[32:55] Unlike the patriotic motorcycle riders we've been used to in most of the movie, these are hoodlums who use motorcycles in a bad way.

Stuart Wellington

[33:02] And this is a motorcycle gang who looks like some community theater guys who are trying to be like street toughs.

[33:08] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[33:09] Again, it's like your dad decided to make a heavy metal music video.

[33:15] And these are the backup guys.

Dan McCoy

[33:16] It's a motorcycle gang from any which way you can.

[33:19] Yeah, kind of.

[33:20] For worse.

[33:20] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[33:20] And they're led by the fayest motorcycle bandit I've ever seen.

Stuart Wellington

[33:25] Yeah.

[33:25] The guy who wants to intimidate somebody by like jumping over something or like giggling weirdly.

[33:31] Yeah.

[33:31] He's like...

[33:31] He's kind of a young William Sadler type.

[33:33] I can see that.

[33:34] A little bit.

[33:34] He's only a couple...

[33:36] I think you're being charitable on the young part.

Elliott Kalan

[33:38] He's only...

[33:38] Yeah.

[33:38] He looks like he's about 57 years old.

[33:40] He's only a couple steps away from like Carmen Ghia from the producers in terms of coded homosexuality.

[33:46] But he decides to...

[33:49] Hey, hey, hey, this young couple is trespassing.

[33:52] And they punch Virgil and knock him out and make him watch as he rapes his girlfriend.

[33:58] And then as he's passing out goes, hey, and don't forget about that guy.

Dan McCoy

[34:01] I guess it's implied that he raped Virgil too.

Elliott Kalan

[34:03] Yeah, both of them.

[34:04] It is so distasteful.

[34:06] And look...

[34:06] It's distasteful and...

[34:08] It has none of the tact of irreversible.

Dan McCoy

[34:11] And rape scenes are always horrible.

[34:13] I don't want to make light of it.

[34:15] But like, I have to say, this actor is making the most hilarious evil faces during this.

[34:23] Pretty funny.

[34:24] He's like, he's looking over at the guy like, hey, hey, chick, hey, you see what I'm doing?

[34:28] Pretty horrible.

Stuart Wellington

[34:29] He looks either happy or like super mad in some of the shots.

Elliott Kalan

[34:33] Yeah, there's one point where he's looking at his face like, I hope he's appreciating this because I sure don't like it.

[34:37] I'm just doing this for your benefit.

[34:38] And so Virgil went to Vietnam.

[34:41] And when he comes back, he's a changed man.

[34:42] He's a kind of angel of vengeance, if you will, who wears a hood over his head.

Stuart Wellington

[34:46] Yeah, he's like one of those, the crows.

Elliott Kalan

[34:48] One of those crows or winter soldiers.

[34:50] And he walks into a biker bar where the gang is.

[34:53] And the gang orders them a Bloody Mary as a show of disrespect, I guess.

[34:59] And this is when there's the best line.

[35:01] Mark of death, dude.

[35:02] There's the best.

[35:03] Enjoy your last brunch.

[35:04] And the 60-year-old pirate bartender delivers it.

[35:07] And this is when the best line.

[35:08] My favorite character.

[35:10] He was by far the best character.

[35:12] He's got a do-rag.

[35:12] This scene-it-all honky-tonk pirate bartender with a do-rag on his head.

[35:16] Now, he delivers it.

[35:17] And this is the best line in the movie when the fae motorcycle bandit says, hey, I don't drink this shit.

[35:23] You go sell it to someone else and give me the money.

[35:26] That's not how it works.

[35:27] That's not how bars work.

[35:30] It's not like you now have ownership of the beer and you're going to outsource to the bartender.

[35:33] I'm going to sublet this drink.

[35:34] It's a resell it.

Stuart Wellington

[35:36] Like, I can't handle the acid in that tomato-based drink.

Dan McCoy

[35:40] You take it back.

[35:41] Maybe someone got sprayed by a skunk and get bored on him.

[35:44] Can I exchange this for store credit?

[35:48] I don't think so.

[35:54] Don't you have, like, a token I can use against this?

[35:57] Just give me two free plays on the jukebox.

Elliott Kalan

[36:00] Call it square.

[36:02] Okay, tell you what.

[36:03] You take back the drink and I'll pay a dollar.

[36:05] Give me, like, a hot dog.

[36:08] It's not how it works.

[36:09] This is not a party system.

[36:11] Have you seen the hot dogs?

[36:12] No exchanges, sir.

[36:13] It says it right over there.

[36:15] And another guy walks up.

[36:16] Yeah, I decided I don't want half this shot of whiskey.

[36:19] Can I get, like, a bucket of popcorn?

[36:22] We don't exchange, sir.

[36:23] No exchanges.

[36:24] I ate a quarter of this pickled egg.

[36:26] Will you take it back?

Stuart Wellington

[36:27] Can you get it?

[36:29] It isn't as it was advertised.

[36:31] I was expecting more pickled cheese.

[36:33] Can I get a partial refund?

[36:37] Okay, here's $22.

[36:40] Like, whoa, wait a minute.

[36:41] How much are you charging for pickled eggs?

[36:44] $35 an egg.

Dan McCoy

[36:46] They're totally organic.

[36:47] It's farm-to-table pickled eggs.

[36:49] It's very hard to pickle those chickens that lay the pickled eggs.

[36:53] It's a complex process.

Elliott Kalan

[36:54] It's hard to feed pickles to a chicken.

[36:56] You understand?

[36:59] This bartender has to do it.

[37:01] Okay, I'll tell you what, Barkeep.

[37:03] I'll make you a deal.

[37:05] Instead of giving me the full refund for the pickled egg,

[37:08] can you give me something in some kind of good?

[37:11] I notice there's a paper towel dispenser in the bathroom.

[37:13] Can I have a roll of paper towels?

[37:15] Sure.

[37:16] Whatever.

Stuart Wellington

[37:17] We're not getting our Cintas delivery for another two weeks.

[37:20] He tears off four paper towels

Elliott Kalan

[37:22] and gives it to him as a tip.

[37:24] Hey, here's some for you two.

[37:25] Have a drink on me.

Stuart Wellington

[37:27] Sir, I don't need those paper towels.

[37:28] I'm already wearing a do-rag on my head.

Dan McCoy

[37:31] Don't dry yourself all in one place.

Elliott Kalan

[37:34] Well, not my hands?

[37:35] I don't understand.

[37:36] Yeah, your mouth, too.

Stuart Wellington

[37:38] Well, if only he had those paper towels.

[37:40] Because he goes into the bathroom.

[37:41] He goes into the bathroom.

Elliott Kalan

[37:41] He goes into the bathroom.

[37:44] And not only does he not wash his hands,

[37:46] he doesn't even finish peeing because Virgil garrets him to death.

[37:50] But then he starts peeing blood.

[37:51] Does that happen when your throat gets cut?

[37:53] I thought at first that he'd cut his wiener off.

[37:56] Yeah.

[37:56] I thought this was a regular Castle Freak situation.

Dan McCoy

[37:58] Or maybe he stabbed him in the kidneys.

[37:59] I think he just garotted him and you were seeing arterial spray.

Stuart Wellington

[38:03] But it like ramped off of his wiener?

Elliott Kalan

[38:06] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[38:07] It happens sometimes.

Elliott Kalan

[38:09] It was a bank shot.

[38:10] It flowed down his body and went off like a waterfall.

[38:12] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[38:13] Yeah, it's like when you're in the shower and the water goes down

[38:17] and it looks like you're peeing because it's just cascading off of the penis

[38:20] because it jumps out.

[38:22] I don't want to hear anymore about this.

[38:23] You're peeing, too, though, right?

Elliott Kalan

[38:24] Well, sure.

[38:26] If you've got to pee.

[38:27] Of course you are.

[38:28] Come on.

[38:28] Who's going to stop you?

[38:29] Mr. Bubble?

[38:32] Mr. Clean, maybe.

[38:33] Not Mr. Bubble.

[38:34] Yeah, well, he'll say, wait, can I have some of that?

[38:36] That guy's in all sorts of things.

Stuart Wellington

[38:38] Anyway.

[38:38] So our patriotic hero son is a dark angel of vengeance.

Elliott Kalan

[38:41] He's a dark angel of vengeance who has killed,

[38:43] Vigilante killed the man who raped his girl.

[38:45] A Virgilante.

[38:46] He's the Virgilante.

[38:47] That's right.

[38:48] We can't, officers, we've got to find the identity of this Virgilante guy.

[38:52] But we check the guy's name, Virgil?

[38:53] I don't think so.

[38:55] We interrogated that Roman poet.

[38:57] He didn't seem to know anything.

Stuart Wellington

[38:58] Yeah, the Bloody Mary bandit.

[39:00] The Bloody Mary killer.

[39:03] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[39:04] Bloody Marty.

[39:05] We found all the suppliers of tomato juice in the county.

Elliott Kalan

[39:07] Now imagine somebody went into the bathroom, found the biker guy's body,

[39:11] and then brought it to the bartender and was like,

[39:12] so, can I get like half a bottle of Dewars for this?

[39:17] Is this worth anything?

[39:19] I mean, maybe take his clothes?

[39:22] You could probably sell them to like a medical supply.

Dan McCoy

[39:24] Sell them to...

Stuart Wellington

[39:25] Look, this is not...

[39:26] That's why you can't allow any kind of refunds.

[39:29] This is not the body snatchers, Eric.

Elliott Kalan

[39:30] Yeah, can't you send it to a medical school?

[39:32] No.

[39:34] Boil off the skin and they can, I don't know, look at his bones or something.

[39:37] Do it.

Stuart Wellington

[39:38] Sorry.

Dan McCoy

[39:39] What's that?

[39:39] That's what they do.

Stuart Wellington

[39:41] Make a stew out of them?

[39:43] Yeah.

[39:44] Send it to the bodies exhibit.

Elliott Kalan

[39:46] Full set of teeth?

[39:46] That's got to be worth something.

[39:49] I'll tell you what.

[39:50] Give me a six-pack of bud.

[39:52] I'll give you a six-pack of bud for you to leave me alone.

Dan McCoy

[39:54] And you'll take the body, right?

[39:55] No, I don't want it.

[39:56] No deal.

[39:59] Yeah.

[40:00] Well, we have to assume that's what happened because we don't see anything that happens afterwards.

[40:03] We don't see how he disposes of the body.

Elliott Kalan

[40:05] He doesn't.

[40:05] He just leaves it there.

[40:06] Now I just imagine...

[40:07] It's a janitor's problem.

[40:08] I want to see this guy, the Pawn Stars type show about this bartender.

[40:12] The guy brings in like, hey, I've got three hats.

[40:15] What can I get for this?

[40:16] Well, these hats are in pretty good condition.

[40:18] I'd say they're worth about like a half a bottle of Coors.

[40:24] Okay, sure.

[40:24] You got it.

[40:25] And then the graphics come up on screen.

Dan McCoy

[40:27] Wait, Coors Original or Coors Light?

[40:28] Coors Light.

Elliott Kalan

[40:29] Okay.

[40:29] And the graphics come up on screen.

[40:30] Hats, three.

[40:31] Price, cha-ching.

[40:32] Half of Coors Light.

[40:34] I'll give you a lime slice and a cherry.

[40:37] All right.

[40:39] Okay, I found this antique tin toy.

[40:41] This is pretty good shape.

[40:42] This is pretty good shape.

[40:43] I'll tell you what.

[40:44] Here's a bottle of Jack Daniels.

[40:46] Hey, great.

[40:46] Yeah.

[40:48] Anyway.

[40:49] So it turns out Virgil had a dark scene.

[40:51] That's the whole backstory of the fucking thing.

[40:52] But that's it.

Dan McCoy

[40:53] That's the last we hear of this character.

Elliott Kalan

[40:54] That's the last we hear of Virgil until the end when, okay.

[40:57] So finally, Morgan makes it to the, what is it?

[41:01] The Cave Creek Ranch.

[41:03] Yeah.

[41:04] That's where they're hanging at.

[41:05] The main brother.

[41:06] The Peter Fonda lookalike.

[41:07] Okay.

[41:07] To the Cave Creek Ranch, which is.

[41:09] Oh, and there's also.

[41:10] Let's.

[41:11] And there's also.

[41:12] There's the scene where the sister remembers.

[41:16] Shane.

[41:16] Sister Shane.

[41:17] Is that her name?

[41:18] Shane.

[41:18] When she remembers when her son enlisted to go to Iraq.

[41:21] Who looked eerily like Jeff Fahey, might I add.

[41:24] And her husband shows up and is like, you're not going over there to get killed.

[41:28] No, you're not going.

[41:29] And she's like, my dad served and my brother served proudly.

[41:32] If he wants to make that choice, it's his choice.

[41:34] And the dad is like, ah, just go to Iraq already.

[41:37] End of scene.

[41:39] Immediately.

[41:39] Immediately cut.

[41:40] Immediate cut.

[41:41] It's like they could not bother to spend any more time on it.

[41:45] Let's not let that moment sit.

[41:46] Let's get.

[41:47] When the guy throws up his hands and literally says, eh, just go to Iraq then.

Stuart Wellington

[41:50] Yeah.

[41:50] We got another five minutes worth of motorcycle footage.

[41:53] We need to immediately cut to.

Elliott Kalan

[41:54] So the son finally shows up.

[41:58] He and his dad, who have hated each other for decades, talk for about 75 seconds, a minute

[42:03] and a half.

[42:04] Everything's patched up.

[42:05] It was tough for us to pay attention.

[42:06] We were laughing too hard.

[42:07] We literally could not hear what they were saying because partly the dialogue is recorded

[42:11] very low.

[42:12] But mainly because we were laughing so hard at the constant lip vibrating of the old man.

[42:17] Like he really amped up the old man face in this scene.

Dan McCoy

[42:22] It's all offensive levels of old man face.

Elliott Kalan

[42:24] It's like you had to just imagine he wasn't even listening to his son because he was trying

[42:27] to get this popcorn kernel out of his teeth.

Stuart Wellington

[42:29] The director's like, okay, imagine you're Hagrid and Harry Potter just saved your job.

[42:36] The actor Newell Alexander, everybody.

[42:39] Okay.

[42:39] Your lip is.

[42:40] Same year.

[42:41] He was in a lot of stuff.

[42:42] And in the same year, he was in August, Osage County.

Elliott Kalan

[42:47] There are a bunch of actors in this who are not big name actors, but are in a lot of

[42:50] professional movies.

[42:51] Maybe you learned that trick from Meryl Streep.

[42:53] Maybe.

[42:54] Yeah.

[42:54] Like in Silkwood when Meryl Streep is just.

[42:57] That's their face in Sophie's choice, I think, when she makes the choice.

[43:00] But it's like, it's like the director was like, okay, in this scene, your lip is so cold.

[43:05] It can't stop shivering.

[43:06] So I'm cold.

[43:07] No, no, no.

[43:08] Just the lip.

[43:09] I don't want to see any body shivers.

[43:11] Just lip shivers.

[43:13] And then they rub ice on his lip, like, like putting peanut butter on a horse's teeth to

[43:17] make it look like it's talking.

[43:18] Yeah.

[43:19] Anyway, they've patched everything up.

[43:21] And next comes, we were just laughing through this, the most beautiful part of the movie,

[43:25] which is.

Dan McCoy

[43:25] And it's hard to explain.

[43:27] It's hard to like explain to the listener at home why it's so funny.

Elliott Kalan

[43:30] Stuart put it best when he said that they had become unstuck in time.

[43:34] The dad is going to.

[43:35] So the son is going to take the dad back on his motorcycle on the ride back home.

[43:40] And then suddenly it cuts to scenes that must have happened before this.

[43:44] He's lying in bed having a nightmare.

[43:46] Yeah.

[43:46] His daughter is shaving him while he laughs.

Stuart Wellington

[43:48] There's just a big shot of him flipping through an old photo album.

Elliott Kalan

[43:52] And it's literally like shards of time have come loose.

[43:55] It's like a montage for the, like.

[43:57] Superboy Prime punched the multiverse.

[44:00] Yeah.

[44:00] And now we're experiencing things in non-linear order.

Dan McCoy

[44:03] It's the series finale of a 10 season running show.

[44:08] And we're seeing scenes from previous episodes.

[44:09] It is the last episode of any season of The Wire.

[44:12] Yeah.

[44:12] And it's just.

Stuart Wellington

[44:13] It's the end of Akira where Tetsuo and Kaneda are like going through time.

[44:18] They're reliving their memories.

Dan McCoy

[44:19] But they're also like the most like maudlin scenes.

[44:21] Like you say.

[44:22] It's like.

Elliott Kalan

[44:22] Or maudlin or just.

[44:24] Or nothing scenes.

[44:25] It might have been a shot.

[44:26] Like there's a shot of him sitting in a chair.

Stuart Wellington

[44:28] There's this great shot of him getting shaved by his daughter.

[44:30] Yeah.

[44:30] And he's just yucking it up.

Elliott Kalan

[44:31] And he's just laughing.

[44:33] Which looks like.

Stuart Wellington

[44:34] That's what he's using his lips for.

[44:35] Laughing.

[44:36] Not quivering.

Elliott Kalan

[44:36] It's one of those things also where you're like.

[44:38] Is that a scene I missed?

[44:40] Like is that a deleted scene?

[44:41] Is that something that's just.

[44:43] It's an Easter egg.

[44:43] Yeah.

[44:45] It's just so strange to suddenly have this.

[44:48] Non chronological reminder of this guy's past couple days.

[44:53] But it's hard to impart the sheer level of delight.

[44:56] How hilarious is.

[44:57] Especially coming after his master class and lip quivering.

[45:01] And they're driving back.

[45:03] Riding back.

[45:04] And Morgan's VO comes back and goes.

[45:07] Well.

[45:08] Virgil will be showing up soon.

[45:10] And so West Coast.

[45:11] And West Coast says he's got a big surprise for the party.

[45:15] And for the birthday party.

[45:16] And I still hate surprises.

[45:18] Because earlier in the movie he said I hate surprises.

[45:20] That's it.

[45:21] The end.

[45:22] So like.

[45:22] We didn't even get to see the birthday party.

[45:24] We never got to meet Virgil.

[45:26] Why the character exists.

[45:28] You're at a total loss.

[45:29] Well do you think.

Stuart Wellington

[45:30] Do you think he got.

[45:31] After murdering that one motorcyclist.

[45:33] He is.

[45:34] Like he got that out of his system.

[45:35] And now he's like straight and narrow.

[45:37] No.

[45:37] I think he's an avenger of the night now.

Elliott Kalan

[45:40] Well by day.

[45:40] Yeah.

[45:40] He's a Virgil anti.

[45:41] By day he's a certified public accountant.

[45:44] By night he's the Virgil anti.

[45:45] Who has a camo hood.

[45:47] And just goes into bathrooms.

[45:48] And kills whoever's at the urinal at that moment.

[45:50] Assuming that they're a rapist biker.

Stuart Wellington

[45:53] Leaving Bloody Marys as a calling card.

[45:54] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[45:56] The hard part is mixing the Bloody Mary in the bathroom.

[45:58] Before anyone comes in and sees him with the body.

Stuart Wellington

[46:00] Sure exactly.

[46:01] He's got to carry his whole kit.

[46:03] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[46:03] All the tomato juice.

[46:06] Little measuring cups.

[46:07] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[46:08] He's got a whole bag of celery with him.

Elliott Kalan

[46:10] He's got a utility belt with just that stuff in it.

Stuart Wellington

[46:12] Think of all the garnish he could include.

[46:15] Sure.

[46:15] Why are you walking around with Worcestershire sauce?

Elliott Kalan

[46:18] Don't mind.

[46:18] Don't think about it.

[46:20] Don't worry.

Stuart Wellington

[46:21] Is that.

[46:21] Are you putting bacon in that bloody?

[46:23] Harvey Dent.

Dan McCoy

[46:24] Can we trust him?

[46:25] Is that an oyster on top of it?

[46:27] That's the way I make it.

Elliott Kalan

[46:29] I call it.

[46:30] I call it.

[46:32] I call it a Chesapeake Bloody Mary.

[46:35] It just seems so rich.

[46:37] I don't want to eat a whole.

[46:39] It's like a whole meal.

[46:40] I also do one with an egg in it.

[46:42] I call it the Good Morning Mary.

[46:45] All right.

[46:46] We have.

[46:47] Wait, what?

[46:48] No.

[46:48] Wait, what?

[46:49] Of course, there's my Big Easy Mary.

[46:50] All right.

[46:50] That has chunks of alligator sausage.

[46:53] And andouille in there.

[46:54] It's a play.

[46:55] It's a play on an andouille and po' boy meal, but in a Bloody Mary.

Dan McCoy

[46:58] It's got a whole beignet on the side.

Elliott Kalan

[47:00] Of course, I'm also working on a disassembled Bloody Mary.

[47:03] Sure.

[47:03] That's, of course, a glass of tomato juice, a glass of everything else, stick of celery.

Dan McCoy

[47:07] I thought you were going to say, it's just a half of tomato that I've hollowed out and I pour vodka into it.

[47:13] That sounds terrible.

Stuart Wellington

[47:14] Wait, is it the 5th of May?

[47:16] How about a Bloody Maria?

[47:18] So, yeah, there you go.

Elliott Kalan

[47:19] So, he is basically a vigilante and extreme radical mixologist.

Dan McCoy

[47:25] He sounds pretty radical.

[47:26] We've gone way over time.

[47:28] Quickly.

[47:29] Is this a good, bad movie a bad, bad movie or a movie you kind of like?

[47:31] I'll go first for once.

[47:33] I thought this was a good, bad movie.

[47:37] There, like, we rarely see a movie that's truly bad when we do the Flophouse because we usually stick to bigger films.

[47:45] Well.

Elliott Kalan

[47:45] I don't know that that's a joke.

[47:47] Well, truly incompetent.

[47:48] We rarely see one that's so incredibly amateurish and incompetent.

Dan McCoy

[47:50] Yeah, and the thing is, like, there's a certain magic to a truly incompetent movie because you don't know where it's going.

Elliott Kalan

[47:56] You don't know where it's going and you have no idea why any of the choices that were made are being made.

Dan McCoy

[48:00] A mediocre movie you can always predict.

[48:02] Like, a really, like, bad movie.

[48:05] You're like, what the fuck is going on?

Elliott Kalan

[48:06] Why are we watching Jeff Fahey riding a motorcycle through the same identical landscape for 10 minutes?

Stuart Wellington

[48:13] I used to watch a lot of really bad, like, straight to VHS horror movies.

[48:18] And you don't really, and that's what this movie feels like.

[48:21] And you don't really get those as much anymore.

[48:23] A lot of, like, the super cheap movies are all, like, the, like, you know, the found footage type stuff.

[48:30] Yeah.

[48:31] And you don't really get that anymore.

[48:32] And so it was great to kind of fall back in love with a shitty movie again.

Elliott Kalan

[48:37] If you want to see a bad sequel prequel to an old movie that resembles a softcore porno with no, with almost no sex scenes in it, then yes, watch, watch this one.

[48:49] Easy Rider, the ride back.

[48:51] But I also give it a good, bad movie.

[48:55] All right.

[48:55] It's unanimous.

[48:56] The coveted good, bad.

[48:57] It's been a long time since we've given something good.

[48:59] It's been a very long time.

[49:00] Usually you have to bully me into saying that food fight is good, bad.

Dan McCoy

[49:04] But before we get on to our letters, a quick word from our sponsor.

[49:09] This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, which is the all-in-one platform making it fast and easy to create your own professional website, portfolio, or online store.

[49:21] For a free trial and a 10% off offer, visit...

[49:26] A 10%?

[49:27] A 10% off offer.

[49:29] Oh, 10.

[49:30] Offer.

[49:31] Visit www.squarespace.com slash flophouse and enter the offer code flophouse at checkout.

[49:37] And look, guys, it's the modern world.

[49:42] It is?

[49:43] Everybody.

[49:44] I thought we were living in medieval times.

[49:46] It's arrived here in your time machine.

[49:48] Yeah.

[49:48] But everyone's got a website.

[49:50] Everyone's got a website.

Elliott Kalan

[49:51] Everybody.

[49:52] You got a business website.

[49:53] We have one.

[49:54] You got a personal website.

[49:54] If you are in business and you don't have a website, what's your problem?

[49:57] You are a fool.

[49:58] You are a fool.

[50:00] And the fool killer should come get you.

Dan McCoy

[50:02] Maybe you got a Flophouse fan site.

[50:04] I hope you do.

[50:05] Why don't you have one?

[50:06] Build one.

[50:07] Build one.

[50:07] You know where you can get the web stuff?

[50:09] With Squarespace.

[50:10] Squarespace.

[50:10] Because it's simple and easy.

[50:12] You got a beautiful...

[50:14] You got beautiful design templates to choose from.

[50:16] You got drag and drop content.

[50:19] I thought you said dragon.

[50:20] And I was really a dragon.

[50:21] I said it.

Dan McCoy

[50:21] I know that too.

[50:22] A little dragon comes and helps you with web design.

[50:24] Well, but you don't have a dragon.

[50:26] But you do have 24-7 support through live chat and email.

[50:30] And plans start at $8 a month.

[50:33] That's very reasonable.

[50:34] Including a free domain name if you sign up for a year.

[50:36] But the domain name is butts.com.

[50:39] No.

Stuart Wellington

[50:39] No.

[50:40] You got it.

[50:40] I think that's taken.

[50:41] But Flophouse butts.com is not taken.

Elliott Kalan

[50:44] Okay.

[50:44] Well, that's going to be the first fan site.

[50:46] Flophouse butts.com.

[50:47] And here's the thing.

Dan McCoy

[50:48] We know that you're reading websites on your phone.

[50:51] We're mostly spending our time looking at our phone when we're watching these movies.

[50:54] You are.

[50:55] I'm looking at my phone right now.

[50:56] So you got your responsive design that changes for mobile content.

[51:01] Because people are looking at things at different platforms these days.

[51:04] Yeah.

[51:05] So just remember, when you decide to sign up for Squarespace, use the offer code FLOPHOUSE

[51:10] to get 10% off your first purchase.

[51:12] And so show your support for us here at the Flophouse.

[51:16] So enjoy Squarespace at www.squarespace.com slash Flophouse.

[51:23] But now...

[51:24] Sounds like a real deal and steal.

[51:26] Let's move on to letters from listeners.

[51:31] Letters from listeners?

[51:33] Letters from who?

[51:35] Listeners.

[51:36] Listeners.

Elliott Kalan

[51:39] Who's been listening to us?

[51:41] Who's been listening to things we do?

[51:44] Who's listening to my phone calls?

[51:46] Who's listening to what I say in the shower?

[51:49] Someone put a chip in my brain and they're listening to the things that I say and I do.

[51:53] Let's get to the bottom of it.

[51:56] It's a conspiracy.

[51:57] Dan, did you do it?

[51:59] Are you working with the government to listen in on me?

[52:02] Send me letters from the listeners who are listening?

Dan McCoy

[52:08] I feel like that was like the whole plot of like a season's worth of television in one song.

[52:12] Yeah, it's a show called Letters the Show.

[52:15] So this first letter is titled The Flip House and it goes...

[52:20] You got the title wrong, buddy.

[52:22] Dear Floptrons, there's an elephant in the room of the Flophouse where the podcast is made that...

Elliott Kalan

[52:26] Ah!

[52:27] Ah, you're right.

[52:28] There is an elephant in the room.

Dan McCoy

[52:29] Get out of here.

[52:30] Oh man, it's like an episode of Who's Lung.

[52:31] Yeah.

[52:33] Aside from cooking three young women alive...

[52:36] What?

[52:37] I think it's a reference to Red Riding Hood.

[52:39] Oh, okay.

[52:39] What?

[52:40] Oh, that elephant that boils people.

[52:42] It's sitting there being an elephant in the room.

[52:44] No.

[52:44] Do I need to spell it out?

[52:45] The elephant is...

[52:46] It's the golden age of television.

[52:48] People are always talking nowadays about how TV is where all the good storytelling is happening

[52:53] and that movies are lame.

[52:54] Would love to hear your takes on that as well as some of your desert island favorite shows.

[52:58] Mine are The Sopranos and Battlestar Galactica.

[53:01] On the flip side, how about the flops?

[53:03] The big swings and misses like John from Cincinnati, The Newsroom, a.k.a. The Snooze Room.

[53:08] Boom.

[53:08] Good one.

[53:09] Nice Mad Magazine.

[53:10] And Dustin Hoffman's Weird Horse Racing Show.

[53:12] Wow, two David Milf films.

[53:15] And finally is TV shows, too.

[53:17] Oh, yeah.

[53:18] And finally, maybe you should reread the beginning of the letter where he made clear the difference

[53:21] between television and film.

[53:22] Thank you.

[53:23] And finally is Studio 60, the tango and cache of television.

[53:26] Yours in flop.

[53:27] Yes.

[53:27] Peter, last name withheld.

[53:29] Now, Peter, I would say...

[53:30] Peter Scolari.

[53:30] Peter Scolari, you finally wrote in.

Stuart Wellington

[53:32] You answered my letters.

[53:33] It's about your letters.

[53:34] I'm sorry about your brother.

[53:35] I know he's a ghost now.

[53:38] Wait, so those were both...

Dan McCoy

[53:39] So Peter Scolari was the brother of the Scolari brothers.

[53:43] So they're the Scolari triplets?

Elliott Kalan

[53:44] So one of them became a Hollywood actor and the other two became criminals who were sent

[53:48] to the chair.

[53:49] Yeah.

[53:50] All right.

[53:50] And then later haunted a courtroom.

[53:52] So here's...

[53:53] Let me tell you this, Peter.

[53:54] I have issue with the people who say that TV rules while movies drools.

[53:58] They...

[53:59] I think there's a lot of great storytelling going on in movies.

[54:02] You just have to either look for it or go to more than fucking Transformers movies.

[54:07] You know, it's...

[54:08] There's the idea that...

[54:10] Should I be writing this down to each?

[54:11] Yeah.

[54:11] No.

[54:12] But I would say that I think it's overblown...

[54:14] Like, there's a lot of great television drama right now, but I think it's overblown the

[54:18] idea that movies are totally in the tank.

[54:20] And it bugs me partly because there's some stories that are better served in a two to two and

[54:25] a half hour form than over a season.

[54:27] People keep saying...

[54:28] And this bugs me as a writer because I have stories that I'd like to tell someday that

[54:33] do not lend themselves to a multi-season television series.

[54:36] They would be a movie.

[54:37] And they would be made for a movie.

[54:39] So the idea that if you're a real writer or if you're really interested in good storytelling,

[54:44] television is now where it's at and movies are over.

[54:47] I find, in a way, almost offensive, you know?

Dan McCoy

[54:50] And it's also interesting that, like...

[54:51] But irritates.

[54:51] A lot of movies...

[54:52] Sorry.

[54:53] I'm doing it again.

[54:54] A lot of TV shows that get greenlit these days are shows that seem like they would definitely

[54:59] be better served...

[55:00] Are you talking about movies or shows?

[55:02] ...by being, like, at least a miniseries.

[55:04] Well, that's the thing, a lot of series now feel like they're stretched out.

[55:06] It's like they're so premise-based that it's like...

[55:09] There seems like a natural end point to this idea where they just have to keep, like, winding

[55:13] out new things.

Elliott Kalan

[55:14] That being said, there are a lot of great shows out there.

[55:18] And in terms of Desert Island shows, I'd say, for me, Mad Men.

[55:23] Because I just love spending time with those characters.

[55:26] Yeah.

[55:26] And really existing with them.

[55:27] And I've loved watching them change over the course of the number of years.

[55:31] But also...

Stuart Wellington

[55:31] And it's, like, at a point where you could just kind of pair those characters up

[55:34] and it's just exciting to see them together.

[55:37] You don't necessarily need plot to push it forward.

[55:39] Yeah.

[55:39] Exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[55:40] And, yeah, I like seeing them just interacting, you know.

[55:43] But if I was on a desert island, I'd probably want comedy shows to help distract me from

[55:48] how terrible my life is.

[55:48] So, like Scrubs or something, right?

[55:50] Like Scrubs-y Jones.

[55:52] So, you'd either have to go with, what, Simpsons?

[55:54] Yeah.

[55:54] Or my all-time favorite television show of all time, Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Dan McCoy

[55:59] Yeah.

[56:00] I mean, like, you already took, I mean, like, the first eight episodes, the first eight seasons

[56:04] of The Simpsons are tremendous.

Elliott Kalan

[56:08] I'll take all of them if I'm on a desert island.

[56:10] Look, I'll take the mediocre episodes when my only other entertainment is praying for a

[56:15] boat to come save me.

[56:17] I may be taking this too literally.

Dan McCoy

[56:19] Staring into a coconut.

[56:21] Well, you know what?

[56:21] I could also watch-

[56:22] Is this coconut ever going to do anything interesting?

[56:23] I could also watch-

[56:24] I'll keep staring and see.

[56:25] I could also watch Dobie Gillis over and over again, I think.

[56:27] Yeah, I mean, if that's your fucking criterion, if you're just like, oh, compared to being

[56:32] on a desert island, like, I think most television would-

Elliott Kalan

[56:36] Well, not Lost.

[56:37] All right.

[56:37] That's just going to remind you of your troubles.

Dan McCoy

[56:39] Yep.

[56:40] I'm a great big-

[56:42] I'm a utility-

[56:43] Bobby the Vampire Slayer fan.

[56:45] I'll say that.

[56:47] The movie or the show?

[56:49] Are we talking about movies again?

[56:50] We're talking about television shows.

[56:52] Fucking show.

Dan McCoy

[56:52] Bobby the Vampire Slayer.

[56:53] And what about you?

[56:54] Because I like-

[56:56] They're very likable characters, and to me, that mastered the serialized storytelling in

[57:03] that it was- I feel like the best show I've seen at continuing a story but making each

[57:09] season an individual story arc.

[57:12] Okay.

[57:13] Which I feel like more serialized stories should take that model rather than trying to spin

[57:18] out the same story over multiple seasons, which always fails.

Elliott Kalan

[57:22] Well, and especially I'm tired of mystery stories.

[57:24] Yeah.

[57:25] Where you're supposed to keep watching to find out what the characters are doing.

Dan McCoy

[57:29] You're like, I don't fucking care.

[57:30] After a certain point-

Elliott Kalan

[57:31] Which is one of the great things about Mad Men, because it started with the mystery of

[57:33] Dick Whitman, and at a certain point they solved that, and then the show just kept

[57:37] going and got more interesting.

[57:38] And almost forgot the fact that that was happening.

[57:40] Yeah.

[57:41] What about you, Stu?

Stuart Wellington

[57:44] I like a lot of stuff, but I usually try and recommend a couple of British shows like

[57:49] Spaced or The League of Gentlemen, because that kind of walks that horror and funny line

[57:55] that I like.

[57:57] And as far as shows that are flops, I don't know if I'd say it was a flop, but a Dan McCoy

[58:01] recommendation.

[58:02] A one-season show.

[58:04] I really like Terriers.

Dan McCoy

[58:06] Yeah.

[58:06] That's a really good show.

[58:08] And that show, if you are tired of shows that spin out longer than they should, the great

[58:15] thing about that show is it was canceled after one season, but it told one totally satisfying

[58:21] story within the confines of one season.

Stuart Wellington

[58:24] Yeah.

[58:25] Get on that Terrier's train.

Dan McCoy

[58:26] I will eventually.

[58:27] Yeah.

[58:27] Because I got a lot of time to watch TV.

[58:29] I mean, in terms of flops, though, I feel like the problem with a flop TV show is you

[58:34] don't want to spend that amount of time.

[58:36] It's a lot of time.

[58:37] You're going to commit yourself to hate watching something.

Elliott Kalan

[58:38] A flop movie is like two hours, and a flop TV show is like eight to 13.

[58:42] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[58:42] I think you've already mentioned the best movie.

[58:43] When will Hemlock Grove ever end?

Elliott Kalan

[58:46] Although, Studio 60 is the best.

[58:48] That's one I could watch to make fun of many times.

Dan McCoy

[58:54] And I always enjoyed, like on a personal note, at the show when...

[59:00] At where we work, you mean.

[59:02] Yeah.

[59:02] When Rory, our former EP, would make jokes about how they would have the characters, like

[59:09] people standing outside waiting for signatures for the head writer from that show.

[59:14] A peek behind the curtain.

Elliott Kalan

[59:15] What's great about Studio 60 is it takes place in a universe where a late night sketch comedy

[59:20] show is the biggest show on television.

[59:22] The writers are famous, and their enemies are Christian conservatives who hate them.

Dan McCoy

[59:27] Yeah.

[59:27] Who can't allow the sketch called Crazy Christians to get on the air, because that will totally

[59:32] unravel the fabric of our Judeo-Christian society.

Elliott Kalan

[59:35] Studio 60 is how old now?

[59:37] Like 10 years?

[59:38] It started the same year 30 rocked in, so it's like eight, nine years old.

[59:42] And we still talk about it at the show, and we still do the thing where we'll take somebody's

[59:47] script and just glance at the front page, glance at the second page, and go, this is good

[59:50] stuff.

[59:51] Like, this is funny.

[59:52] Because that's what they did on Studio 60 all the time.

[59:54] They never read the scripts.

[59:56] They just glanced at them and were like, this is funny stuff.

[59:58] Yeah.

[59:59] Really?

[59:59] Because you don't know how the sketch develops over the course of the four or five pages.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:05] So this next letter is titled, Can Somebody Tell That House Cat To Stop Partying?

[1:00:10] Dear-

[1:00:11] So this is the pilot from the plane.

[1:00:13] Dear Plophouse, I've been going through a rough personal time recently.

[1:00:17] Believe me when I say that you gentlemen are entirely to blame for this.

[1:00:20] Let me explain.

[1:00:21] And now I'm tracking you down to kill each other.

[1:00:23] I regularly host celebrating dinner parties-

[1:00:25] Bloody Mary-based murders.

[1:00:28] Dinner parties attended only by the creme de la creme.

[1:00:31] The last of these gatherings was fantastically ruined when your wretched feline mascot crashed

[1:00:35] it, by which he means he ramped his skateboard through a closed window, showering my guests

[1:00:40] with glass fragments.

[1:00:41] Before I could pick my monocle off the floor, this so-called house cat was gobbling greedy

[1:00:46] pawfuls of my caviar, dancing provocatively with the mayor's wife, and brazenly opining that

[1:00:51] the wealthy class pays less than its fair share in federal income taxes.

[1:00:55] Sounds like the house cat.

[1:00:57] Total occupier.

[1:00:58] He then sprayed my Chanel sofa and back-fliped to the infinity pool.

[1:01:02] This rampant rule-breaking raged on until the police dogs arrived.

[1:01:06] At that point, he deftly withdrew his sandpapery tongue from my daughter-in-law's mouth, howled

[1:01:11] lustily, and bailed over the fence.

[1:01:14] The house cat's complete disregard for basic decency has resulted in my ostracism and utter

[1:01:18] humiliation.

[1:01:19] I'll make this simple, Flophouse.

[1:01:21] Control your party, animal, or I'm going to revoke your charter.

[1:01:25] All joke-em-ups aside, you guys are great.

[1:01:29] Dan the Man, Stuart the Manly, and of course, fan favorite, the one with the nasally voice

[1:01:33] who works at The Daily Show, your friend and mine, Hallie Hagelin.

[1:01:36] Oh, come on.

[1:01:38] Roasted.

[1:01:39] Toasted.

[1:01:39] Of course, I can't close without giving a shout-out to the man whose endless stream of hilarious pedantic

[1:01:45] rambling really keeps the show glued together.

[1:01:47] Yes, keep writing in, David Kaelin.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:49] Oh, God, he got me twice.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:51] Say again, middle name withheld, last name withheld.

[1:01:54] Oof.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:54] So, does that mean we're still on double secret probation or triple secret probation?

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:00] I think we're on quadruple secret probation.

[1:02:01] Oh, no kidding.

[1:02:02] I don't know why they keep it a secret at this point.

[1:02:05] Might just tell everyone we're on probation.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:06] We should be on, like, wanted posters.

[1:02:08] It's called the newspapers.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:09] I kind of want more people to write in with tales of the house cat.

[1:02:12] Now the house cat has affected their life.

[1:02:14] Yeah.

[1:02:15] I'll allow it.

[1:02:16] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:18] As the keeper of the house cat.

[1:02:20] Mm-hmm.

[1:02:21] It is my burden.

[1:02:23] This next letter is titled, Late Night Sex Noirs.

[1:02:26] Sex Noirs?

[1:02:27] Sex Noirs.

[1:02:30] Dear Dan, Stu, and Elliot Charles Kalin.

[1:02:32] Oh, full name.

[1:02:33] Thank you for some reason.

[1:02:35] But mostly Dan.

[1:02:37] Discussions of bikini movies are fine and all.

[1:02:39] But there's more to early 90s Cinemax than car washes and Willie Talsall.

[1:02:43] Not as far as I'm concerned.

[1:02:44] Have we forgotten the majesty of Shannon Worry?

[1:02:46] Have we lost our collective minds?

[1:02:48] Why no references to Animal Instincts 2, Mirror Amidges 2, and other dark psychological tales of Big Brush to Danger?

[1:02:55] I'm asking for a friend.

[1:02:56] Purvisoid last name withheld.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:58] For a friend.

[1:02:59] Or let's not forget Private Obsession, the movie where Shannon Worry is kidnapped.

[1:03:03] Yeah.

[1:03:03] It's really gross.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:04] I like, uh, my favorite was...

[1:03:06] Lake Consequence?

[1:03:07] Lake Consequence.

[1:03:08] That's Zalman King, dude.

[1:03:09] Where the...

[1:03:09] Billy Zane.

[1:03:10] A young Billy Zane.

[1:03:11] I just...

Dan McCoy

[1:03:12] What was the consequence of that lake?

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:14] Uh, I think this woman had...

[1:03:15] Sex, I think.

[1:03:16] Had sex with some, like, carny or something?

[1:03:19] I mean, I don't know if that's a consequence.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:20] That sounds more like a reward.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:22] Now...

[1:03:22] Lake reward.

[1:03:23] It should be called.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:23] Shannon Worry has a special place in the food chain.

[1:03:27] Because she was the poor man's Shannon Tweed.

[1:03:30] Yeah.

[1:03:30] From Sexual Response.

[1:03:32] Yes.

[1:03:32] That's my favorite one of those.

[1:03:34] And it's...

[1:03:34] I just think it's funny that they're like...

[1:03:35] She has a call in show called Sexual Response.

[1:03:36] We need another big boobed woman who's named Shannon to do these movies.

[1:03:40] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:42] Yeah, because they're expecting people to pick up the fucking VHS and set.

[1:03:45] Start reading the names and stop after Shannon.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:48] Be like, oh, gotta be a good one.

[1:03:50] Shannon's in this?

[1:03:50] I'll take it.

[1:03:51] And Shannon Worry's other trademark was that she always dressed really classy.

[1:03:55] It's just she worded.

[1:03:55] Yeah.

[1:03:56] Like a robot.

[1:03:57] I feel like she did a lot of, like, wearing hats with black veils and, like, gloves and,

[1:04:03] like, skirt suits, you know.

[1:04:07] She always looked like she was getting dressed for sexy ladies' tea at a social club.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:11] Sorry.

[1:04:11] That terrible pun led me to want to make a pun about a Joan Severance package.

[1:04:16] You really couldn't come up with it.

[1:04:18] I think that's fine.

[1:04:19] We'll fill in the rest.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:20] Your time here serving as Black Scorpion has been great, Joan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:25] I think you'll find this is more than adequate to take care of you for the next couple months.

[1:04:30] I think, what are we going to say?

[1:04:31] Like, does he want us to cover every soft-core movie?

[1:04:35] It's impossible.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:36] What I wanted to say about it, I think that we've covered this to some degree in the past,

[1:04:40] where I know that you and I, Elliot, at least, I don't know about Stuart, are on the same page,

[1:04:44] where, like, I'm not so much a fan of the, like...

[1:04:47] The erotic thriller.

[1:04:48] The erotic thriller, because they always seem to be like, someone's out there killing strippers,

[1:04:52] and I'm like, well, I don't want strippers to be killed.

[1:04:55] That's not sexy.

[1:04:56] They should be rewarded.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:57] There are those movies where each stripper, you have a strip scene and a sex scene, and

[1:05:01] then they get killed.

[1:05:03] And it's like, yeah, well, why can't they just strip and have sex and then go about their day?

Dan McCoy

[1:05:06] Yeah, why can't they have fun having sex?

[1:05:07] I don't understand what the...

[1:05:08] We prefer the more lighthearted.

[1:05:09] I don't know why it's punitive.

[1:05:10] I mean, like, the thing is...

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:11] If I'm going to see girls' boobs, I want the girls to be having fun.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:14] Yeah, well, and, like, those bikini movies, like, say the bikini accidentally falls off,

[1:05:19] like, they seem to be pretty okay with it.

[1:05:21] Like, even in those, like, situations, it's just like, oh, I'm going to go with this.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:27] I'm having a delightful time all of a sudden.

[1:05:29] You're getting...

[1:05:30] Now you're getting a little too specific.

[1:05:31] All right.

[1:05:31] You prefer if the hand of God removed the time.

[1:05:33] Yeah, I'm getting the end of screwballs.

[1:05:35] I'm just saying.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:37] Like, where they prayed to some kind of...

[1:05:40] Well, I'm trying to get...

[1:05:41] It's the end of the stand.

[1:05:42] Except instead of the hand of crushing...

[1:05:42] They prayed to fucking Aeolus or something.

[1:05:44] They invited the wind to rip her fucking top of...

Dan McCoy

[1:05:47] What was the wind God did?

[1:05:48] What I'm trying to get across here is, like, some could argue that there's, like, a sexism

[1:05:52] there, too, where it's just like, oh, like, there's, like, this...

[1:05:55] Of course there's a sexism.

[1:05:57] Obviously.

[1:05:57] Just treating women as objects.

[1:05:58] Yeah, anybody could argue that.

[1:05:59] Obviously there's a sexism.

[1:06:01] But, like, the idea isn't just like, oh, it's horrible that this is happening.

[1:06:06] It's like...

[1:06:06] You're trying not to scare them.

[1:06:08] The women seem to be, in those movies, delighted participants in what's going on.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:13] Movies where women are used as sex objects but then not victimized or destroyed as penance

[1:06:21] for having done it.

[1:06:22] Exactly.

[1:06:23] It's kind of like, yeah, you'd rather see a movie where the women are, if anything,

[1:06:28] rewarded, or just, like, enjoying it.

[1:06:30] Yeah, you want them to be into what's happening.

[1:06:32] Rather than, like, okay, she took off her clothes.

[1:06:35] I liked it, but that means she's dirty.

[1:06:37] So, strangle her in the dark, please.

[1:06:38] Yeah.

[1:06:38] Like in...

Dan McCoy

[1:06:39] Like in Tony Perkins.

[1:06:40] Come out and stab her.

[1:06:42] Well, there's Night of the Demon.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:42] Tony Perkins, the...

[1:06:44] Like, Anthony Perkins?

[1:06:47] Well, I'm talking about Psycho.

[1:06:48] Because Psycho was not, like, there was no nudity in that.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:52] No, but the point was, like...

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:53] Were you watching Zalman King's Red Shoe Psychos?

[1:06:55] He was punishing a woman who was...

[1:06:58] Yes, yeah.

[1:06:59] Yeah.

[1:07:00] Anyway.

[1:07:00] I was thinking you could go more with a movie like Lap Dance or something like that.

[1:07:04] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:05] I was just going to say in how in Night of the Demons 2, the one...

[1:07:08] I just want to get this point across.

[1:07:11] Yes.

[1:07:12] It's very important.

[1:07:13] It's a very important point about Night of the Demons 2.

[1:07:14] In Night of the Demons 2, the one female character who gets naked

[1:07:18] and has sex is the heroine of the movie, and she survives the whole time.

[1:07:22] Mm-hmm.

[1:07:22] She doesn't get punished at all.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:24] She punishes the demons.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:25] Yeah.

[1:07:26] Although she has to go through the whole experience about fighting and killing demons,

[1:07:29] so that's terrible.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:30] Well...

[1:07:30] It's a real punch for feminism, Night of the Demons 2.

[1:07:34] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:35] But the last letter of the evening is titled, Help, and it goes like this.

[1:07:39] It says, Dear...

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:40] Help, I need somebody.

[1:07:41] Help, not just anybody.

[1:07:43] Last name withheld.

[1:07:44] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:44] Ringo, last name withheld.

[1:07:46] Dear Crop House, my corn isn't growing and I will surely starve come winter.

[1:07:50] What course of action might you recommend I take?

[1:07:53] Regards, Jeremad, last name withheld.

[1:07:56] So...

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:56] I think you might have written into the wrong podcast.

[1:07:59] I don't...

Dan McCoy

[1:07:59] Like Miracle-Gro maybe?

[1:08:01] I don't...

[1:08:02] I don't know.

[1:08:03] I mean, maybe if you can...

[1:08:03] You can try rotating your crops.

[1:08:04] If you can get a boy with...

[1:08:05] Sure, yep.

[1:08:06] If you can get a...

[1:08:06] Try step farming.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:07] If you can get a boy with leaves on his ankles, maybe that'll help in some way.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:11] Then we can make a pin out of leaves.

[1:08:12] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:14] Maybe get Pumpkinhead or the Children of the Corn involved.

[1:08:16] I don't know.

[1:08:17] No.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:17] Don't get the Children of the Corn involved.

[1:08:19] You'd think that that's going to be helpful, but it is not.

[1:08:22] What about the band Corn?

[1:08:23] Sure.

[1:08:25] What is it?

[1:08:25] The 90s?

[1:08:31] But now it's time for the final segment.

[1:08:34] Letters!

[1:08:35] No.

[1:08:35] We just did.

[1:08:36] We literally just finished that segment.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:39] Stuart sounded so happy.

[1:08:41] Let's just please him, okay?

[1:08:42] Let's do letters again.

[1:08:43] Let's do some more letters.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:46] Letters are coming in from all over the world.

[1:08:50] I changed my mind.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:51] You know what?

[1:08:52] That song wasn't so great.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:53] A little pitchy dog.

[1:08:55] Well, so this is the final segment where we recommend movies.

[1:09:01] That we actually enjoyed in a non-good-bad way.

[1:09:05] Unlike Easy Rider, The Ride Back.

[1:09:09] So, Stu, you've got your notebook open.

[1:09:11] You look like you're raring to go.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:12] I prepared because this is also important to me.

[1:09:14] Okay.

[1:09:15] And it's not Night of the Demons 2, although it kind of fits the subject that I want to cover.

[1:09:19] So, I figure since we watched a sequel to a movie that probably did not need a sequel,

[1:09:25] I'm going to recommend a movie that was a sequel to another movie that you didn't expect.

[1:09:30] And that's Blade 2.

[1:09:33] Yeah.

[1:09:34] Dressed by Guillermo del Toro.

[1:09:35] Sure.

[1:09:35] Okay.

[1:09:37] It was Guillermo del Toro's second vampire movie after Kronos.

[1:09:42] Kronos.

[1:09:43] Another movie I think I recommended.

[1:09:46] And it kind of, you know, it followed Blade, which was a kind of mediocre action movie with some, like, light horror elements.

[1:09:55] Yeah.

[1:09:56] Though it was, you know, financially successful.

[1:09:59] And I feel like Blade 2 kind of improved on every single element of the first one.

[1:10:05] It played up the horror element more.

[1:10:07] The action scenes were more varied.

[1:10:09] You swapped out a villain where the first one had Stephen Dorff as this kind of, like, smug, like, politicking vampire dude.

[1:10:18] You had, you swapped him out for Luke Goss from the British boy band Bros, who is more like a brooding and brutal bad guy.

[1:10:31] And got a better supporting cast with Ron Perlman.

[1:10:35] And you really got, like, it's an, it's, I wouldn't say an early Guillermo del Toro movie, but you still got, you have some really great little touches.

[1:10:45] The slow buildup to the reveal of the genuinely disturbing vampire zombie monster creatures.

[1:10:52] And I think it's a really effective, you know, action horror movie.

[1:10:56] And for me, it was, it kind of came out at a time when I first started collecting DVDs.

[1:11:02] And, yeah, I watched it all.

[1:11:05] You collected every copy of Blade 2.

[1:11:06] I collected every copy in the world.

[1:11:08] Yeah, there's shit tons.

[1:11:09] And I am sitting on them.

[1:11:11] You're waiting for them to appreciate and value.

[1:11:15] Or it's part of your plan.

[1:11:16] They're going to hatch into a, hey, you guys got a DVD player, writer.

[1:11:20] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:23] I would like to recommend a movie called The East, which stars and was written by Britt Marling, who also wrote movies with the same director whose name I can't recall.

[1:11:40] The Sound of My Voice and Another Earth, both of which I have not seen, but I've heard good things about.

[1:11:47] No, I think I appreciate the fact that she is generating kind of her own material for herself.

[1:11:54] And by all reports, it's all interesting stuff.

[1:11:57] But The East is, you know, a thriller about a woman who works in private security.

[1:12:04] She used to be in the FBI, but now she just works in corporate security, who infiltrates an eco-terrorism group called The East, whose members include Alan Page plays one of the members.

[1:12:20] That's probably the biggest name.

[1:12:21] You have a Mark Candy?

[1:12:22] Yeah.

[1:12:23] That's what she's best known for, yeah.

[1:12:27] Alan Page of X-Men 2.

[1:12:30] It's not.

[1:12:30] No, it was three.

[1:12:31] X-Men The Last Stand.

[1:12:32] Whatever.

[1:12:33] It's not a super great movie.

[1:12:35] It kind of falls apart at the end.

[1:12:36] It kind of gets very sort of optimistic and unrealistic at the very end in a way that is sort of surprising because the rest of the movie seems devoted to trying to at least simulate a kind of realism,

[1:12:51] even though the actual developments of the movie aren't necessarily that realistic.

[1:12:55] But as a stylish character-based thriller, I think it's a solid movie if you enjoy kind of low-key thrillers.

[1:13:05] Thrillers about low-key.

[1:13:06] Okay.

[1:13:06] Thor's brother.

[1:13:07] Yeah.

[1:13:07] So Thor and Thor 2 and The Avengers is what I'm recommending.

[1:13:11] So what movie are you recommending?

[1:13:12] The East.

[1:13:13] The East.

[1:13:14] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:15] Elliot?

[1:13:16] I'm going to recommend – I haven't gotten to see too many movies lately, unfortunately.

[1:13:20] But I'm going to recommend one that I saw recently that I almost feel kind of bad about recommending because it's kind of the stereotypical, like, intellectual movie, I guess.

[1:13:32] But I've been filling in holes of movies that I had heard a lot about when I was younger and never saw.

[1:13:37] And I recently watched My Dinner with Andre.

[1:13:40] I totally thought that that was what you were going to say.

[1:13:43] It's very typical.

[1:13:44] And, like, to recommend it feels, like, kind of stupid because it's almost like if you were going to see this movie, you'd have seen it.

[1:13:51] Except I hadn't, and I really enjoyed it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:54] Maybe there's a bunch of people out there afraid to watch this movie.

[1:13:57] Well, it's a lot more enjoyable than watching it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:59] And I find, like, it's gotten so stereotyped as, like, this is – oh, that's, like, a smart, boring person's movie.

[1:14:05] And I'm sure there's a lot of people who won't like it.

[1:14:07] But the things that Andre, Gregory, and Walsh-Sean are talking about are so insane.

[1:14:12] And they are two men who are at a terribly bleak moment in their lives sitting in this very fancy restaurant and, like, talking about these bizarre experiences that they've had

[1:14:23] and how almost semi-pointless life is in a way that was pretty funny a lot of the time also.

[1:14:29] Like, I really enjoyed it, and there was no point where – and it's just two guys talking over dinner for the whole movie.

[1:14:34] But it's – there was no point where I was like, oh, come on, boring.

[1:14:38] But – so I really enjoyed it.

[1:14:39] But I feel like I'm falling into a trap almost or a stereotype by recommending it.

[1:14:44] So to balance that out, I'm going to recommend, instead of Easy Rider, a sequel that I like better than the original and that, like Stuart did, and that's Evil Dead 2.

[1:14:53] So do an 80s double feature, My Dinner with Andre and then Evil Dead 2.

[1:14:58] What order should you watch, man?

[1:15:00] Oh, End with Evil Dead 2.

[1:15:01] Come on.

[1:15:02] Yeah.

[1:15:03] But I think you'll find that maybe they have a similar sensibility more than you think.

[1:15:08] I don't think you'll find that.

[1:15:09] No.

[1:15:10] But –

[1:15:10] They're both great.

[1:15:12] But I guess what I'm saying is just because you like Evil Dead 2 doesn't mean you might not like My Dinner with Andre, and you should give it a shot.

[1:15:18] So My Dinner with Andre 2.

[1:15:20] At the very least, it gives you a little snapshot of New York in the early 80s that is always interesting to see.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:27] Well, it's come the time where Stuart needs to rev up his motorcycle.

[1:15:33] I need to crawl into his sidecar, and Elliot needs to crawl into his other sidecar.

[1:15:37] There's two sidecars.

[1:15:38] It's not really a motorcycle so much as a car.

[1:15:39] It's like the Fantastic Car.

[1:15:40] Yeah.

[1:15:41] It balances out the motorcycle.

[1:15:43] It's like a motorcycle with big training wheels.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:45] Yeah.

[1:15:46] Mm-hmm.

[1:15:46] Yeah.

[1:15:47] In the form of people.

[1:15:48] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:49] Oh, training wheels are made out of people.

[1:15:51] They're people.

[1:15:53] Soylent wheels.

[1:15:54] Yeah.

[1:15:55] And we're going to drive off into the sunset.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:57] I got a question about Soylent Green.

[1:15:58] Okay.

[1:15:59] What ad wizard thought Soylent, something that sounds like soiled, would be a good thing to put in your food product?

[1:16:04] But it sounds like soy.

[1:16:06] But it's like – I guess, but it also sounds like –

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:08] When you hear people say, like, would you like some soy sauce, you're like, no, thank you.

[1:16:12] That sounds like soiled sauce.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:13] Soylent sounds like soiled underpants.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:16] Oh, that's true.

[1:16:16] It sounds like soiled lint.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:17] Yeah.

[1:16:18] That you got out of the lint.

[1:16:19] And now you're eating it.

[1:16:20] That sounds delicious, dude.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:21] When they were like, Soylent Green's made out of people, people were like, oh, thank God.

[1:16:24] I thought it was made out of soiled lint.

[1:16:26] That turns green from mold.

[1:16:28] Also, why make it green?

Dan McCoy

[1:16:30] Well, we'll puzzle this out off air, but –

[1:16:33] Ask Slimer.

[1:16:34] For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:16:36] Get out your Ouija boy.

[1:16:38] Wait, what?

[1:16:38] I've been Dan McCoy, you asshole.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:41] I've been Stuart Wellington, you asshole.

Elliott Kalan

[1:16:43] And I've been Elliot Kalen, beep boop.

[1:16:45] That's how you do a fucking robot impression, Stuart.

[1:16:47] Call that.

[1:16:48] Good night.

[1:16:49] I watched Big Trouble in Wall China again last night.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:56] Yeah, exactly.

[1:16:58] Black Blood of the Earth.

[1:16:59] It's such a good movie.

[1:17:00] I mean, Black Blood of the Earth.

[1:17:04] Basically, it boils down to a love story between a man and his truck.

[1:17:09] Aren't you going to kiss her?

Dan McCoy

[1:17:12] I've got to get going.

[1:17:12] You know what old Jack Burton says at a time like this?

[1:17:17] Who?

[1:17:18] Jack Burton.

[1:17:20] Me.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:22] I like hearing you guys talk about the movie so much more than I like watching the movie.

The Flop House: Episode #152 - Easy Rider: The Ride Back

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