The Flop House: Episode #148 - Gangster Squad

Dan McCoy

[0:00] Gangster Squad, in color!

[0:28] Hey everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse, I'm Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[0:32] I am Stuart Wellington.

[0:34] And fiddling with my Stuart Wellington robot, I'm the mad Dr. Elliot Kalin.

Dan McCoy

[0:39] Elliot, I've been meaning to tell you to stop fiddling with your Stuart robot.

[0:43] Bleep lorp, that feels good, boss.

[0:45] I bought it to fiddle in.

[0:46] You're gonna go blind.

Stuart Wellington

[0:49] Maybe he will, but not me.

[0:51] Alright.

[0:53] My lenses are clouding up.

Elliott Kalan

[0:55] Yeah, exactly. See, it's his problem.

[0:57] Alright.

Stuart Wellington

[0:58] Subban, I made you for pleasure, but not your own.

[1:03] I am a God-fearing Christian robot.

[1:05] Wait, what?

Dan McCoy

[1:07] That means he'll let you put it in the butt.

[1:09] Okay, oh yeah.

[1:11] Well, disgusting past.

[1:13] His robot.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14] Dan, what are these people, sadly, listening to against their wheel?

Stuart Wellington

[1:17] Are they immediately pausing and then deleting?

Elliott Kalan

[1:20] What are they dragging to the recycling bin on their desktop?

[1:23] This is a little podcast called The Flophouse.

[1:25] I'm glad they're recycling it, by the way.

[1:27] What?

Dan McCoy

[1:27] I'm glad they're recycling it, not just throwing it away.

[1:30] Yeah, it's gonna turn into a can or something like that.

[1:31] All these computer files, if we didn't recycle them.

Elliott Kalan

[1:33] They just pile up?

[1:34] Yeah.

[1:34] There's that big patch of computer files out in the ocean.

Dan McCoy

[1:39] That's a myth.

[1:40] Oh, this is a bad movie podcast, guys.

[1:44] What's it called?

[1:44] The Flophouse.

[1:45] That's nice.

[1:45] I said that.

[1:46] You know what I'm gonna say?

Elliott Kalan

[1:46] This is a podcast called The Flophouse.

[1:48] It's about bad movies.

[1:49] Every episode, we watch a bad movie, and then we talk about it.

[1:53] Dan seems to be in some kind of semi-comatose hyperstate, and Stuart just kind of drunk

[1:58] a little bit.

[1:59] So I'll take the reins.

[2:00] Me, Elliot Kalin.

[2:02] So today, Dan, what movie did we watch?

[2:04] A movie called Hat Detectives.

[2:07] No, no.

[2:08] Should have been called Hat Detectives.

[2:09] It's called Gangster Squad.

[2:12] A squad of gangsters?

[2:14] Mm-hmm.

[2:14] I mean, there's really like...

[2:15] No, wrong.

[2:16] It's a squad that fought gangsters.

Stuart Wellington

[2:17] Dan, are you even listening to what we're saying?

[2:20] No, he's saying that our characters are gangsters.

[2:23] They're gangsta.

Dan McCoy

[2:24] Yeah.

[2:25] Well, I mean, it was a movie about...

[2:27] Explain the movie.

[2:30] The thin line between...

[2:31] Love and hate.

[2:33] Detectives and gangsters?

[2:34] Not really, no, but...

[2:35] About using gangster tactics?

[2:37] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[2:38] When you stare at a monster, be careful, because that monster could be used in a fight.

Elliott Kalan

[2:42] Yeah, when you stare at a gangster, the gangster's still in a fight.

[2:44] Hears back.

[2:45] Mm-hmm.

[2:46] Yeah.

[2:47] Anyway, so let's talk about what happens in the movie.

[2:48] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[2:49] Okay, so we watch this movie.

[2:50] Now, Elliot, this is the part of the podcast where Elliot talks about what the movie was

Elliott Kalan

[2:54] actually about.

[2:54] Thanks, man.

[2:55] Thanks for introducing it.

[2:56] Because you guys don't remember it.

[2:57] You've got to be really confused.

[2:58] Now, everyone may remember this was a big release from a while ago.

[3:01] Star-studded.

[3:02] You got a lot of stars.

[3:03] Yeah.

[3:03] Sean Penn.

[3:04] The sky was dark.

[3:04] Josh Brolin.

[3:05] Ryan Gosling.

[3:07] Emma Stone.

[3:08] Robert Patrick.

[3:09] John Pulido.

[3:11] Michael Pena.

[3:12] Michael Pena.

[3:13] Anthony Mackie.

[3:14] Yeah.

[3:14] Huge stars.

[3:17] So, but it was a big, this is a big star, Giovanni Ribisi.

[3:20] Nick Nolte.

[3:21] And I, Nick Nolte.

[3:22] And I was, I was, before this movie came out, I was kind of hoping it would turn out to be

[3:26] really good.

[3:26] Directed by the guy who made Zombieland, which I like.

[3:29] I like a good old-fashioned gangster action movie.

[3:31] I like a lot of the cast members.

Dan McCoy

[3:32] You like the good old-fashioned Squad movie, too.

Elliott Kalan

[3:34] I love Squad movies.

[3:35] Monster Squad.

[3:37] Squad Monsters.

[3:38] All those movies.

[3:39] The Squad and the Whale.

[3:41] Yeah.

[3:41] Squad.

[3:42] Squad.

[3:42] I didn't like that so much.

[3:44] It was depressing.

[3:44] It was kind of like a short story that they made into a movie.

[3:47] Yeah.

[3:47] Squad Squad, which is about a squad that goes after squads.

[3:50] Like Incident on Owl Creek Bridge.

[3:52] Yeah.

[3:52] That's not, it has nothing to do with squads.

[3:54] It's a short story.

[3:55] They made a new movie.

[3:56] They didn't make it into a whole movie.

[3:57] They made it into a short film.

[3:59] Okay.

[3:59] Continue.

[3:59] That aired as an episode of The Twilight Zone.

[4:02] So, the year is 1949.

[4:05] It's Los Angeles.

[4:06] Hollywood land.

[4:07] LA.

[4:08] The city of angles.

[4:10] Every building's got at least four angles.

[4:14] Circles?

[4:14] No, thank you.

[4:15] No, thanks.

[4:16] No rounds here.

[4:16] We like corners here in Los Angeles.

[4:19] Or as we call it, corner-fornia.

[4:26] I feel like that should be in something that's supposed to teach kids about geometry.

[4:30] Like, let's go to Los Angeles, corner-fornia.

[4:34] Mayor Pythagoras.

Dan McCoy

[4:36] All right.

[4:37] Well, let's save it for the Donald and Math Magic Land sequel you're pinning.

[4:40] Yeah.

[4:41] It gets really dirty.

Elliott Kalan

[4:43] Weird.

[4:44] They're trying to find the algorithm for ecstasy.

[4:47] Anyway, so, crime is on the rise as gangster Mickey Cohen, Sean Penn with like three pounds

[4:54] of latex slapped on his face for no reason, is trying to drive out the East Coast mob

[4:59] in the form of John Pulido's character.

[5:02] And things...

[5:03] John Pulido, forever being driven out by other mob bosses.

[5:07] He's never the big mob boss.

[5:09] Although, for me, my favorite role of his is always the dry-cleaning investment salesman

[5:14] from the man who wasn't there.

[5:16] Right.

[5:17] I love that.

[5:17] He goes...

[5:18] When he raises his eyebrow at a building authority, he goes, was that a pass you just made?

[5:23] Could be.

[5:24] He looks like a guy...

Stuart Wellington

[5:25] You are way out of line, mister.

[5:26] I'm sorry.

[5:27] Way out of line.

[5:28] He looks like the type of guy I would ask Hoagie advice from.

[5:31] Like, where to get a really good Hoagie.

Elliott Kalan

[5:33] Sure.

[5:34] I thought you were saying you'd ask Hoagie Carmichael for advice about what to get John

[5:38] Pulido for his birthday.

[5:39] I do that too, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[5:40] Probably an ascot is what Hoagie Carmichael would say.

Elliott Kalan

[5:43] Yeah, or a piano or a CD of Hoagie Carmichael songs.

[5:48] Everyone loves him.

[5:49] Yeah.

[5:50] Yeah.

[5:52] He's got really sad.

[5:53] I did.

[5:54] Well, he's dead, so it made me sad.

[5:56] Anyway, so in order...

[5:58] Welcome home, Hoagie Carmichael.

[6:03] Sorry.

[6:04] I just needed to say that.

[6:04] It'd be a very different movie.

[6:06] It doesn't mean anything.

[6:08] Not connected.

[6:09] So, luckily, there's some tough guys in town, such as Detective Sergeant John O'Mara, Josh

[6:16] Brolin.

[6:17] He's a detective in the LAPD.

[6:18] Yep.

[6:18] And we are introduced to him as he saves a young girl from being forced into prostitution

[6:23] by a bunch of kind of rat-faced, like, frat-ish bad guys.

[6:27] And he busts his way into this...

[6:31] Into this frat party.

[6:32] Into this...

[6:32] He busts his way into one of Mickey Cohen's fuzz castles in order to save this girl.

[6:38] He doesn't...

[6:38] He's been shut up in a Murphy bed.

[6:39] And now...

[6:40] Who is attacked and then shut into a Murphy bed.

[6:43] And Josh Brolin instantly...

[6:45] He tells us three things.

[6:47] One, he's a tough guy who's not afraid to take on Mickey Cohen, even though the rest of the

[6:51] cops are.

[6:51] Two, he wears a hat.

[6:53] Yep.

[6:53] Much like every other character in this movie, including at one point a dog.

[6:56] And three, he's got a penchant for hurting people's hands.

[7:01] Yeah.

[7:01] In that he's fighting two guys in an elevator and he, like, sticks one guy's gun hand out

[7:06] the elevator side.

[7:07] Yep.

[7:08] So that when they go to the next floor, his hand is, I assume, just swiped right off.

Dan McCoy

[7:11] And possibly the high point of the film.

Stuart Wellington

[7:13] Oh, not possibly.

[7:14] I like the idea that standing with his hand out, it just chops his hand off like it's

[7:18] like a blade.

[7:19] Just shears right off.

[7:21] Instead of, like, just knocking his hand or...

Elliott Kalan

[7:23] The only way the scene could have been better is if he raised up his stump and two spurts

[7:26] of blood came out.

[7:28] Oh!

[7:29] Anyway.

[7:30] So that impresses his boss, Nick Nolte, who's the chief of police, who says, look, I know

[7:35] you have this, like, guerrilla warfare training from World War II.

[7:38] I want you to take on a new, inform a new squad, not on the books, totally underground,

[7:44] unofficial, that will...

[7:46] I'm not going to pay you anything.

[7:47] That will just strike back at Mickey Cohen's money-making institutions and kill his guys

[7:52] and stuff like that.

[7:53] And...

[7:54] That sounds pretty legal, right?

[7:55] It's totally not.

[7:57] But they are the good guys.

[7:58] And so Josh Brolin goes home to his pregnant wife, who says, I don't want you to do this.

Stuart Wellington

[8:02] They make us believe that Mickey Cohen's a super bad guy, though, at this point.

[8:05] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[8:05] He is the gangster of all gangsters.

[8:08] He even kills other gangsters.

Stuart Wellington

[8:09] Yeah, we saw him kill a gangster and beat up a punching bag, right?

Elliott Kalan

[8:13] Yeah.

[8:14] Yeah, he's a gangster who only goes after other gangsters.

[8:17] But the movie opens with him killing a guy by chaining his...

[8:21] By drawing and quartering him with two cars.

Stuart Wellington

[8:23] And with a classic flophouse element with a voiceover.

Dan McCoy

[8:27] It opens with a voiceover.

[8:28] That's true.

[8:29] He pulls him apart between two cars and then coyotes be still.

Elliott Kalan

[8:33] And then some wild animals just come and eat him.

[8:35] And it's like, thanks, boss.

[8:37] I wish they had been talking sidekicks like the eels in Little Mermaid.

[8:42] Sure.

[8:42] Or like Scars hyena sidekicks in The Lion King.

[8:46] That would be great.

Stuart Wellington

[8:46] Or if there's a newspaper headline later on, like, coyote population starving.

[8:51] No.

[8:51] Coyote population on the rise.

Elliott Kalan

[8:53] Fat coyotes seen in town.

[8:56] It's worried they have a taste for human flesh.

[8:59] Look, we gotta get to the bottom of this fat coyote mystery.

Stuart Wellington

[9:03] They're spreading their money around.

[9:04] Think about how...

[9:05] Not catching any of the roadrunners.

[9:07] Think about how much this...

Elliott Kalan

[9:08] They don't even care about roadrunners anymore.

[9:10] The roadrunner population is way too big.

[9:13] It's hard to catch.

[9:14] Here's...

[9:15] Okay.

[9:15] Here's the movie I wanted it to be.

[9:16] Gangsters feeding the coyotes on gangsters.

[9:20] Here's what I want...

[9:20] Like, they lose their ability to hunt.

[9:21] Gangster meat is delicious.

[9:22] Here's the movie I wish we had watched.

[9:24] It's called...

[9:25] It's called...

[9:26] It's called Animal Squad.

[9:28] And it's about a pest control guy who notices there's a lot of fat coyotes around and the

[9:33] And the roadrunner population is not being kept in check.

[9:36] So the coyotes must be eating something else.

[9:39] Finds out they're eating gangsters.

[9:40] Decides to take on Mickey Cohen.

[9:42] Because he's thrown off the natural order of coyotes going after roadrunners.

Stuart Wellington

[9:45] Sure.

[9:45] And the sequel, he's like, these mongooses are getting fat and lazy.

[9:49] And there's cobras everywhere.

Elliott Kalan

[9:50] Exactly.

[9:51] Turns out a gangster is feeding things to mongoose.

[9:54] Anyway.

[9:54] It's called Animal Squad.

[9:56] $700,000.

[9:57] The story can be yours.

[9:59] So he puts...

[10:00] So overnight, his wife, who's a tough cookie herself,

[10:03] decides, no, he's got to do it.

[10:05] And she helps him put together his squad.

[10:07] She says, don't go after the young, high-achieving detectives.

[10:11] Because those are the guys Mickey Cohen's going to put on his payroll.

[10:14] Because they're bound to rise to the ranks.

[10:15] Go after the outcasts and the underdogs.

[10:18] Yeah.

[10:18] Yeah, we've had...

[10:19] Some lovable losers.

Dan McCoy

[10:20] This movie has some slobs to take on the snobby gangsters.

Elliott Kalan

[10:24] Yeah, in the summer camp prank-off that is Gangster Squad.

[10:28] Prankster Squad.

[10:29] Prankster Squad would have been much better.

[10:31] Like, they sneak into Mickey Cohen's house and replace all his clothes with smaller clothes.

[10:35] So he thinks he's growing.

[10:37] And then they replace those with bigger clothes.

[10:38] So he thinks he's shrinking.

[10:40] They take apart a car, put it together inside of his office.

[10:43] Well, how am I supposed to get this out of here?

Dan McCoy

[10:48] They leave an old dead carp in his locker.

Elliott Kalan

[10:50] Yeah, that's going to smell up the joint.

[10:52] They shrimp him.

[10:53] Oh, that's the worst.

Stuart Wellington

[10:54] So up until this point, though, there's been a pretty exciting opening for a movie.

Elliott Kalan

[10:59] It's been a pretty fast-moving movie with a lot of action.

[11:01] And ironically...

[11:02] Time to hit the brakes.

[11:03] It starts to bog down when he puts the Gangster Squad together.

[11:06] So he hires...

[11:07] Oh, this is the best part of the movie.

[11:09] So one of them is a black policeman played by Anthony Mackie.

[11:12] And Anthony Mackie is introduced to us by...

[11:15] We're in, I guess, the Los Angeles equivalent of a Harlem jazz joint.

[11:19] It's all...

[11:20] It's a black hangout.

[11:21] And there's a drug dealer who's about to do something.

[11:24] And then suddenly a knife flies out of nowhere and pins his hand to the wall.

[11:28] By which I mean a knife went right through his hand.

[11:31] And Anthony Mackie steps out.

[11:32] He's a master of the throwing blade, I guess.

[11:35] And he's like, not going to have any of that in my part of town.

[11:39] Josh Brolin steps out of nowhere.

[11:41] I want to offer you a place on the Gangster Squad.

[11:43] I like your moves.

[11:44] So was Josh Brolin just following him, waiting for him to prove himself?

[11:48] Or was he hanging around that joint, waiting for someone to hurt a hand?

[11:51] I'm like, I want you on the Handster Squad.

Dan McCoy

[11:54] He just appears whenever justice is served.

[11:58] He's like the Phantom Stranger or something?

Stuart Wellington

[12:01] Yeah, for the past hour he'd been telling that drug dealer to keep making that motion with his hand.

[12:05] So I just keep doing it.

[12:07] Eventually I'll cover any medical damage.

Elliott Kalan

[12:10] Look, you'll be on my insurance.

[12:12] I just need to find someone who will hurt your hand.

[12:14] I don't know if that works that way.

[12:14] I need someone who's going to throw a knife at your hand, hit it with a blow dart, chop it off with an axe,

[12:19] hit it with one of those bowling pin clubs people used to work out with back now,

[12:24] because it's the past.

[12:25] Any of that stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[12:26] Or maybe like a yo-yo that's a buzzsaw.

Elliott Kalan

[12:30] Yep.

[12:31] Anyway, he tells him, let's strike at the source of the drugs.

[12:34] Mickey Cohen, they get a wiretapper nerdy guy, played by Giovanni Ribisi.

[12:40] So wait, he couldn't play like the tough guy knife thrower?

[12:43] He had to be the nerd?

[12:44] No, he's the nerdy guy.

[12:45] That's too bad.

[12:45] With a mustache and the character Dan liked the most.

[12:47] And a family.

[12:49] And a family.

[12:50] He's the only other member of the squad of the family.

[12:53] He's doing it for his boy's future.

[12:54] Well, they watch a rocket fly into the sky.

[12:57] They also get an old West gunslinger, played by T-1000 himself, Robert Patrick.

[13:05] And he has a young Mexican sidekick who nobody likes on the regular force because they're racist.

[13:11] But Gangster Squad will take him in once he follows them and basically forces himself on them.

[13:16] Now, Josh Brolin wants Ryan Gosling to join.

[13:19] Ryan Gosling plays the part of Jerry Wooters.

[13:21] Yeah, he needs a face name.

[13:22] A name that seems to have come out of a Nexus comic book from the planet Ilum.

[13:28] But Jerry Wooters is a ladies' man who strikes up a relationship with Emma Stone, who is Mickey Cohen's girlfriend.

[13:37] And a shoeshine boy.

[13:38] Well, no, he doesn't have a relationship with a shoeshine boy.

[13:40] He's just friendly with a shoeshine boy.

[13:40] I mean, they're friends.

Stuart Wellington

[13:41] Like, a relationship doesn't necessarily mean sexual.

Elliott Kalan

[13:44] Yeah, and there's a shoeshine boy he runs past every time he goes to see Emma Stone at Slappy Maxi's, a real-life nightclub.

[13:50] Slapsy Maxi's.

[13:51] Slapsy Maxi's, sorry.

[13:52] Slapsy Maxi's.

[13:52] A real-life nightclub.

[13:54] And he has a friend named Jack who keeps telling him, don't get involved with this girl.

[13:59] Mickey Cohen's going to kill you.

[14:00] But anyway, they have the Gangster Squad decides to go on.

Stuart Wellington

[14:04] Slapsy Maxi's sounds like the type of bar that, like, Leela Chaney's band would play in an X-Men comic.

Elliott Kalan

[14:10] Yeah, before, like, what were those characters from Excalibur that Chris Claremont became obsessed with?

[14:16] Like, Gate Crashers or something like that?

[14:18] TechNet?

[14:19] Yeah.

[14:20] There's some stupid group of characters that show up a lot.

[14:22] Anyway, whatever.

[14:24] X-Men comics, what are you going to do?

[14:25] So, the Gangster Squad, which at this point I decided to name the Hat-Headed Hand Herders.

[14:33] Because they all wear hats and they all hurt hands.

[14:35] They all wear head hats.

[14:36] They're head hats, not like butt hats or foot hats.

[14:40] Which would be bats or fats.

[14:41] Although there is a dog hat in the movie.

[14:43] Yeah, that's a dat.

[14:44] Which stands for a dog head hat.

Stuart Wellington

[14:48] Because you don't put it on a dog's butt.

[14:49] That would be crazy.

[14:50] And hilarious.

Elliott Kalan

[14:51] That would be, I guess, only a John Waters movie would do something so tasteless.

Stuart Wellington

[14:56] I mean, that's comedies about subverting expectations.

[14:58] Yeah, it's like one.

[14:59] That's two subvertings.

Elliott Kalan

[15:00] You don't expect a dog to wear a hat unless it's like...

[15:01] Well, of course not.

[15:02] Where's he going to buy that hat?

[15:03] Exactly.

[15:04] And you totally don't expect him to wear it on his butt.

[15:06] That's where his poop comes from.

Stuart Wellington

[15:08] Yeah, the salesman will explicitly explain that's a head hat.

Elliott Kalan

[15:11] The salesman who's fitting the dog for a hat.

Dan McCoy

[15:14] I think a hat salesman knows, though, that a hat is, as you said, a contraction for a head hat.

[15:19] I hope it's the first thing they teach them.

[15:20] Like to say a head hat is just redundant at that point.

Elliott Kalan

[15:22] No, no, but he would tell the customer that.

[15:24] Oh, okay.

[15:24] The customer would be like...

Stuart Wellington

[15:25] Yeah, maybe they're from another land.

Elliott Kalan

[15:27] Yeah, where they don't wear...

[15:27] Like Holland?

[15:28] Well, because in Holland, hat means Holland accessory towards the sun, because it's the top of your head.

[15:39] Wait.

[15:42] It's the part of your body that points towards the sun, but it's an accessory that goes on that in Holland.

[15:47] Okay.

[15:49] The Dutch word for hat is hat.

[15:52] It just stands for something different.

Stuart Wellington

[15:53] Okay.

[15:53] It doesn't mean anything to do with your head.

[15:55] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[15:55] No, no.

[15:56] And hats in Holland, of course, is Holland accessory towards the sun, suckers.

Stuart Wellington

[16:00] It's weird that they use another country, another language's term for their nation in Holland.

Elliott Kalan

[16:06] Yeah.

[16:07] Look, it's weird, but that's what they do there in Holland.

[16:10] It makes sense.

[16:11] Yeah.

[16:11] That's...

[16:12] And I mean...

[16:13] They're weird.

Stuart Wellington

[16:14] What with their windmills.

[16:16] Oh, no.

[16:17] Dan is alienating our fan base.

[16:19] Look, you're talking about...

[16:20] Tulips.

[16:20] You're talking about a country that...

Elliott Kalan

[16:21] A country that...

[16:22] Shoes.

[16:23] You're talking about a country that named itself after the rock duo Holland Oats.

[16:26] So, they're a weird country.

[16:29] Yeah.

[16:29] The Dutch supergroup Holland Oats.

[16:32] Or, alternately, the Dutch brand of oats, Holland Oats.

[16:37] So, Gangster Squad.

[16:38] The Gangster Squad decides to hold up one of Mickey Cohen's casinos in Burbank, but there

[16:43] are some cops at the casino thing, and the Gangster Squad looks like criminals, because they've

[16:49] got bandanas on, they're trying to rob the place.

[16:51] There's a shootout.

[16:52] They're shooting indiscriminately in the crowds.

[16:53] Yep.

[16:54] There's a shootout, and...

[16:55] You guys got an axe?

[16:56] I don't know what's going on there.

[16:57] Brolin and Mackie are taken in.

[17:01] They're thrown in jail.

[17:02] But luckily for them, but not so lucky for a certain Shoeshine Boy, it's at that point

[17:07] that Mickey Cohen's men kill John Pulido, and in the crossfire, kill the Shoeshine Boy.

[17:12] Jerry Wooters, our old friend Ryan Gosling, sees the whole thing and decides now he'll join

[17:17] the Gangster Squad.

[17:18] No!

Dan McCoy

[17:19] Who will make my shoes shiny?

[17:21] My shoes are so dirty!

Elliott Kalan

[17:23] They're not shining!

[17:25] And he says to somebody, I assume, in his head, well, he's shining shoes in heaven now.

[17:30] Even though you're in heaven, you shouldn't have to shine shoes anymore.

[17:33] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[17:33] Well, there's a case system up there.

[17:36] Cased system?

[17:36] Case?

[17:37] I don't know, man.

[17:38] It's a cast system.

[17:40] Cast.

Elliott Kalan

[17:41] Because everyone wears casts because their arms are broken.

[17:43] From all the shoes, they've been shining.

[17:44] All right.

[17:45] Anyway, he decides, fine.

[17:47] You can't shine a cast.

Stuart Wellington

[17:48] That's crazy.

[17:49] You sign the cast.

Elliott Kalan

[17:50] He'll...

[17:51] That's your public service card.

[17:55] Screw Wellington saying, kids, sign it, don't shine it.

[17:58] A message about casts.

[17:59] Brought to you by the American Cast Council.

Stuart Wellington

[18:04] Oh, the ACC.

[18:05] Don't shine it.

[18:07] They spend all day coming up with catchphrases?

[18:09] What does the American Cast Council do?

Elliott Kalan

[18:10] They just raise public awareness of how to treat someone who has a cast?

Stuart Wellington

[18:13] Come up with new ways to itch underneath them?

Elliott Kalan

[18:15] Yeah, that's part of it.

Stuart Wellington

[18:17] How can we make this itchier and dirtier?

[18:19] How do we keep this less smelly?

[18:23] Stick herbs in your cast.

Elliott Kalan

[18:26] If you fill your cast with thyme and rosemary, it won't smell so bad.

[18:30] Also, maybe don't break your leg next time.

Stuart Wellington

[18:33] Insert a layer of moss to wick away the sweat.

Dan McCoy

[18:37] And then, once you get your cast off, you can make a delicious stew out of it.

Elliott Kalan

[18:42] Put maggots in to eat away the dead flesh.

[18:44] There is no dead flesh.

[18:45] I just broke my leg.

[18:46] Oh, get those maggots out of there.

[18:48] Just open the cast and your leg is a skeleton.

[18:52] Maybe they're piranhas.

[18:53] I don't know.

[18:53] Anyway, so Ryan Gosling decides, okay, I'm a gangster squaddy now.

[18:58] Puts on his hat, decides to hurt some hands.

[19:00] He goes to the jail and pretends to be Mickey Cohen's guy coming to pick up his targets.

[19:05] But, uh-oh, the real guys show up.

Stuart Wellington

[19:09] And basically, just like the director, the guys at the jail let him do whatever he wants.

Elliott Kalan

[19:14] Yes, yeah.

[19:15] Ryan Gosling seems to be in a different movie from everyone else.

[19:19] Everyone else is playing kind of like quick-talking 40s characters, and he is his regular kind of slow burn.

Stuart Wellington

[19:24] He's move a little slower in Ryan Gosling's movie.

Elliott Kalan

[19:27] Yeah, Ryan Gosling.

[19:28] We like to take our time with line readings.

[19:32] It's like Schneider, or that's his name?

[19:36] Who's the guy who directed it?

[19:38] Fleischer.

[19:39] I knew it was a Jewish name.

[19:40] Fleischer was directing everybody else, and then Nicholas Winding-Refen was directing.

[19:46] Like, Ryan Gosling's like, I'm bringing in my guy.

[19:48] And Reifen's like, okay, just stare into the space for a little bit.

[19:51] Okay, now talk real slow.

[19:54] Anyway, he saves them, and they put a bug in Mickey Cohen's house, and with that information, they find...

[20:00] Like a Firefly?

[20:03] Like a listening device.

[20:04] Okay.

[20:05] No, it's not.

[20:06] They put a DVD box of Firefly in his house, and he's so busy watching it and demanding they renew it for another season.

[20:14] Sure.

[20:15] Somebody do a Kickstarter.

[20:16] That he shuts down his gambling organization.

[20:18] But they find that he has this big plan.

[20:21] He's put together this telegraph wire system.

[20:24] He's going to control all the gambling and booking and bookie stuff on the West Coast.

[20:30] And as Stuart said while we were watching it, they make it sound like he's a supervillain with like a super weapon,

[20:35] that they need to stop it by a certain time, or else he'll be unstoppable.

Stuart Wellington

[20:38] Yeah, it'll be an unstoppable bookie operation.

[20:41] Basically, Josh Brolin says that.

[20:43] He does, yeah.

[20:44] Like, after a certain point, like, this bookmaking operation is going to be impossible to stop.

Elliott Kalan

[20:47] It's amazing how many times in the movie...

[20:48] You can't shoot it enough times to kill it.

[20:50] How many times in the movie we predicted the lines they were going to say.

[20:53] There's one part where they're just in a police station, and a guy walked in and I went, hey, boys.

[20:57] And then he said that.

[20:58] Yeah.

[20:58] And later on, they're toasting their success as the Gangster Squad.

[21:02] And I was like, yeah, to Gangster Squad.

[21:04] And then Ryan Gosling says, to Gangster Squad.

[21:06] Because that's what...

[21:07] They go on a rampage against Mickey Cohen's stuff.

[21:10] Yeah.

[21:11] And the newspapers refer to them as the Gangster Squad.

[21:13] They think they're vigilantes of some kind.

Dan McCoy

[21:16] And I want to point out, Nick Nolte tells them, don't just shoot Mickey Cohen.

[21:22] Like, if you do that, other gangsters are just going to come in to fill the void.

[21:26] I want you to destroy his organization.

[21:27] So that nobody can have it again.

[21:28] Which is, I guess, an explanation that makes sense.

[21:33] But more so, it's just an explanation to keep the movie running longer.

Elliott Kalan

[21:36] Yeah, because if they killed Mickey Cohen, the movie would be over.

[21:38] Yeah.

[21:40] And they're not an assassination squad, Dan.

[21:41] They're a gangster squad.

Dan McCoy

[21:42] Oh, they sure shoot the fuck out of a bunch of people, though.

Elliott Kalan

[21:44] They kill a lot of people.

[21:45] There's a couple different action sequences.

[21:47] They're not bad.

[21:48] There's a good car chase, where the bad guys are throwing a bunch of potato mashers at them.

Stuart Wellington

[21:53] You're being pretty charitable with the term good.

Elliott Kalan

[21:55] It's not that good, but I have to...

Stuart Wellington

[21:58] As you said, all the action sequences make a lot of use of digital video.

Elliott Kalan

[22:02] Yeah, so they're very blurry.

[22:04] It's the same, if you guys saw the movie Public Enemies, which was another modern gangster movie,

[22:09] which I think might have all been shot on digital video.

[22:11] And it was super blurry.

[22:13] And like Captain America, the action sequences were very clearly DV and were really blurry.

[22:18] Like, I don't know why they think digital video is not blurrier than film.

[22:23] And I could be getting this, maybe it's all shot on DV.

[22:27] Maybe somebody smearing stuff on their glasses.

[22:29] That could be it.

[22:30] That could be it.

[22:31] We spent a good amount of the movie talking about how good Raiders of the Lost Ark is.

Dan McCoy

[22:35] Yeah.

[22:36] Oh boy, if you want to see good action, good punch-em-ups.

Elliott Kalan

[22:41] Yeah, anyway, so there's a lot of back and forth with the gangsters.

[22:44] The Gangster Squad, this secret underground organization that nobody can know about,

[22:49] spends a lot of time hanging out in their spare time together.

[22:51] They have a barbecue at Brolin's house that the chief of police stops by.

[22:56] They're drinking together in bars, talking loudly about how they're the Gangster Squad.

[22:59] Look at those Gangster Squad t-shirts that they wear around.

[23:02] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[23:02] Where Nick Foley...

[23:03] Nick Foley.

[23:05] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[23:06] Yeah, they hire Mick Foley mankind, and he's just like,

[23:09] yeah, I'm Gangster Squad, Mick Foley.

Stuart Wellington

[23:11] Nick Nolte shows up and does his best Mr. Toad impression.

Elliott Kalan

[23:15] Yeah, because he's...

[23:16] Nick Nolte seems to have somehow cloned himself and then eaten that Nick Nolte,

[23:20] so he's got twice the Nick Nolte in him.

[23:22] Sure, yeah.

[23:23] He's a big guy.

Stuart Wellington

[23:24] He's preparing for that, what, the old mentor role for the upcoming Battletoads live-action movie.

Elliott Kalan

[23:30] Please don't tease me with the idea of a live-action Battletoads movie.

[23:33] If it's not happening, I don't want to hear it.

[23:35] There's been such an advance in Frogman technology since Hell Comes to Frogtown.

[23:42] But Mickey Cohen learns about what's...

[23:44] That these guys are cops.

[23:46] He learns that there's a bug on him, and by feeding them...

[23:50] What?

[23:51] He goes, ah, ah!

[23:53] Get away, get away!

[23:55] Is it biting me?

[23:56] It's a piece of lint, sir.

[23:58] First off.

Dan McCoy

[23:59] It's I, Mickey Cohen's one weakness, a bug.

Elliott Kalan

[24:02] A bug.

Stuart Wellington

[24:03] This one particular bug.

[24:05] He would say it a lot more like Big Boy Caprice than what you guys are doing.

Elliott Kalan

[24:09] Sean Penn seems to think that he's playing Al Pacino in Dick Tracy, which is nuts.

Stuart Wellington

[24:13] Which is nuts, but also not that far from what this movie is.

Elliott Kalan

[24:16] This movie, it's one of these movies that is a little too over the top to be taken seriously,

[24:20] but it's not over the top enough to be really fun.

[24:23] So if they were going to go the Sean Penn route and just have everyone be over the top bonkers

[24:27] with makeup on their face, that would be fun.

[24:29] Or if they dialed it back and made it more like L.A. Confidential, that would be fun.

[24:33] But instead, it's in this weird limbo where you can't take it seriously because Sean Penn

[24:36] has a child's idea of makeup on his head.

[24:40] And you can't take it, but it's not goofy enough because the movie acts like we're supposed

[24:44] to give a shit about these characters.

Stuart Wellington

[24:46] Yeah, it's caught in the limbo between L.A. Confidential and Dick Tracy.

[24:50] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[24:51] It's like an unbaptized baby.

[24:52] It's just caught in limbo after it dies.

[24:54] It's like Dick Confidential, right?

[24:56] Well, I was going to say L.A. Tracy.

[24:59] L.A. Tracy sounds great, too.

[25:01] Sounds like Dan has his magazine title.

[25:03] Dick Confidential.

[25:05] True, shh, stories about penises.

[25:09] The detective pulled his pants down.

Dan McCoy

[25:15] Here's the badge I need.

[25:16] The magazine's like, can we keep this between you and me?

[25:19] And then shows you a picture of a dick.

Elliott Kalan

[25:23] There's a bunch of scenes in the movie where they show people holding copies of True Detective

[25:28] Magazine.

[25:28] It just made me wish I was watching that.

[25:30] So I guess what I'm saying is, movie, if you're going to be bad, don't put in a reference

[25:34] to a TV show that comes out a year after the movie does.

[25:37] Anyway, so they get bad.

[25:40] Mickey Cohen feeds them false information that there's going to be a big drug operation

[25:44] in Chinatown.

[25:45] The Gangster Squad goes there, but it's totally a trap.

[25:48] Gangster Squad, assemble.

[25:49] La la la la la.

[25:53] Gangster Squad, assemble.

[25:54] Brolin.

[25:55] Mexican guy.

[25:57] Old gunslinger.

[25:58] Wooters.

[25:59] But they go, and it's a trap.

[26:02] And Mickey Cohen's bodyguard, the real-life Johnny Stampanato, and Mickey Cohen's a real-life

[26:06] person, too.

[26:07] This is also one of those movies that's kind of loosely enough based on facts that they

[26:10] use people's real names, but then all the heroes are made-up characters.

[26:14] You know.

[26:15] You mean Stabby Guy didn't exist?

[26:17] Which one was Stabby Guy?

[26:19] You know, Mackie.

[26:20] Yeah, the guy who...

[26:20] Mackie?

[26:22] No.

Stuart Wellington

[26:22] Yeah, if that movie had been made 20 years ago, it'd be Lou Diamond Phillips.

Elliott Kalan

[26:25] Yes.

[26:26] Yeah, exactly.

[26:28] And Ryan Gosling part would have been played by child Ryan Gosling as kid detective.

[26:34] So it's a trap.

[26:36] They blow up a truck.

[26:37] Nobody gets hurt.

[26:38] But at the same time, they go over to...

[26:40] They find out where Giovanni Ribisi is listening in on Mickey Cohen's talking, and he gets strangled.

[26:46] And there's a part where Mickey Cohen is talking directly into the microphone going, talking

[26:50] about how a cop eavesdropped on him.

[26:52] And then suddenly the guy shows up and strangles Giovanni Ribisi.

[26:56] They had to have planned that shit, dude.

[26:57] Did he say like, I'm gonna give a monologue.

[27:00] Wait till I say the part about eavesdropping cops.

[27:02] He's gonna be great.

[27:03] He's gonna be on the edge of his seat.

[27:05] I wanna have that moment where he goes like, wait, is that me?

[27:07] And then you kill him.

[27:08] And the one thing I liked about that scene was there's an open furnace behind the bad guy,

[27:13] and while he's choking Giovanni Ribisi, he's stepping backwards, his coat catches on fire,

[27:18] and instead of him being like, what?

[27:20] Ah!

[27:20] And that's saving Ribisi, he finishes strangling him, and then calmly takes off his coat and

[27:25] stomps it out and then leaves.

[27:26] And it's like, this is a tough dude.

[27:29] He is not fazed by being on fire.

[27:31] This is the character the movie should be about.

[27:34] Not Afraid of Fire Gangster Guy.

[27:37] That's the title, by the way.

[27:39] Oh, I don't know if that's gonna sell it.

Dan McCoy

[27:40] Not Afraid of Fire Gangster Guy, rated R.

[27:42] I'm imagining a comedy version of that scene.

[27:47] Fireproof.

[27:48] Where Sean Payne...

[27:49] You know, it slips on a banana peel?

[27:50] Well, no, Sean Payne gives the cue, like, policeman listening in on me, but tough guy is being

[27:56] distracted by, like, there's a skunk right next to him, and he's like, you can't move.

[28:01] He's gonna spray me.

[28:03] I'm gonna smell all bad.

[28:04] And Sean Payne keeps going, the cop who is listening in on me.

Elliott Kalan

[28:09] And Giovanni B. Rebez is like, is he talking about me?

[28:11] The cop who bugged me and was listening on me at the time.

[28:16] I'm getting this all down.

[28:17] Who's going to be strangled in a moment.

[28:18] What are the odds that another cop was eavesdropping on him at some point?

[28:21] Too bad for that guy who was strangled.

Stuart Wellington

[28:23] Yeah.

[28:24] It's too bad you weren't involved in the making of the movie Mafia.

Elliott Kalan

[28:28] Jane Austen's Mafia?

[28:29] Yeah.

[28:29] Starring Jay Moore and Christina Applegate?

[28:31] That movie has one joke in it I really like a lot, which is that Christina Applegate leaves

[28:36] for a long time, and then she comes back, and Jay Moore goes, you never even visited our

[28:40] son.

[28:41] And Christina Applegate goes, we have a son?

[28:44] Somehow didn't know she gave birth to a child.

[28:46] Also, there's a part where I think it's Jay Moore's mistress is throwing vases at him

[28:50] because she's so mad, and she picks up a dog and throws it, and it shatters against the

[28:54] wall.

[28:56] There's two good jokes in that.

[28:57] Now, the scene where Lloyd Bridges is being shot, and the bullets shake his body so that

[29:02] he does the Macarena is not a good joke.

[29:05] And if you're wondering why I remember Jane Austen's Mafia, a movie I saw once in the theaters

[29:09] when it came out almost 20 years ago, this well, I have no idea.

[29:13] That's how my brain works.

[29:15] It works stupidly.

[29:16] I'm glad you saw the theater.

[29:18] Of course I did.

[29:18] Did you lose a bet?

[29:19] No, I loved spoof parody Abrams-Zucker-Chomp movies.

Stuart Wellington

[29:23] Sure, and you had to take a girl on a date to a movie.

[29:26] I mean, what are you going to do, just take her to Fazoli's and give her fucking unlimited

[29:28] breadsticks?

[29:28] Yeah, come on, what, are we just going to go to Make Out Hill for the sub races?

Elliott Kalan

[29:31] I don't think so.

[29:32] No, you've got to give her some laughs first so you can warm her up.

[29:35] I thought I would scare her with laughter, and then she'd cuddle close to me.

[29:40] She was afraid of laughter.

[29:42] Weird girl.

[29:43] Anyway, so, but what was I talking about?

[29:47] I don't know.

[29:48] Anyway, I'm lucky that those like Meet the Spartans date movie type movies came out when

[29:54] I was old enough to recognize shitty movies.

[29:56] Because if those had come out when I was 14, I'd be like, this is a comedy, I have to see

[30:00] it, you know?

[30:01] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[30:02] Unlike, I don't know, Ski Patrol, which I thought was the funniest movie in the entire world,

[30:06] and I was wondering why I only saw it on video and not in the movie theater.

[30:10] I mean, it had already come out, right?

[30:12] Yeah, I mean, probably, but I can't imagine Fort Wayne, Indiana, the theater showed fucking

[30:17] Ski Patrol.

Elliott Kalan

[30:17] I mean, they probably showed that before they showed like, I don't know, Kiss of the Spider

[30:22] Woman.

Stuart Wellington

[30:23] No, I totally remember my parents going to see Kiss of the Spider Woman one time.

[30:27] Oh, really?

[30:27] Yeah.

[30:28] And then coming back going, needed more kissing.

[30:30] Yeah, I was staying at a, I had a babysitter that night, and I was like, I wonder what

[30:35] this movie's about.

[30:36] It's kind of half woman, half spider.

[30:37] That's what I'm talking about.

[30:38] Who kills you with kisses.

[30:39] It sounded great until...

Elliott Kalan

[30:41] It's like, I have a, I have a memory of my parents, me getting a babysitter so my parents

[30:45] could go see Crimes and Misdemeanors, and I only knew the character Misdemeanor from

[30:49] the show Cops, the cartoon, so I was like, this sounds like a movie I should see.

[30:53] Come on, it's got this character Misdemeanor from a show I watch.

[30:57] But no, it was a Woody Allen tale about morality.

[31:00] I also saw movies when I was a child.

Dan McCoy

[31:05] I remember a time my parents...

Elliott Kalan

[31:06] This is about you getting a babysitter while your parents saw a movie.

Stuart Wellington

[31:09] My parents, my parents went to a movie one time, and after the movie, my mother brought

[31:13] up the idea that they, that my parents had to decide which movie they were going to see,

[31:17] whether they were going to see the movie with like, The Beautiful Woman for my dad, or

[31:22] the movie with the hot guy for my mom.

[31:24] And I'm pretty sure the movie with the girl was Die Hard for my dad, which was kind of weird,

[31:30] I guess that's like a, you know, his wife.

[31:33] And I think the movie for my mom was a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[31:38] That was the hunky guy?

[31:39] Yeah, I guess Arnold was the hunky guy for my mom.

[31:42] So was it like Hercules in New York?

[31:43] It's, as I've gotten older, that's kind of rocked, that's kind of shaken my faith in both

[31:47] my mom and my dad.

Elliott Kalan

[31:50] This reminded me of the time my dad organized a bunch of his friends to go see Godfather 3,

[31:54] because he was so excited about it, and just came home destroyed.

[31:57] So disappointed.

[31:59] Anyway, Gangster Squad, right?

[32:00] So the friend, so Emma Stone decides she's going to leave Mickey Cohen.

[32:05] Now she realizes he's a violent gangster.

[32:06] He's having a fit.

[32:07] He's breaking shit.

[32:08] Ryan Gosling's friend takes her in, but Mickey Cohen tracks them down.

[32:12] Ryan Gosling's friend bravely defends her, and he is murdered.

[32:15] And Emma Stone sees the whole thing.

[32:17] She tells Ryan Gosling, you know what, I will testify as a witness that Mickey Cohen killed

[32:22] this guy.

[32:23] They get a warrant.

[32:24] The Gangster Squad, after being fired, is back on the job.

[32:27] They go to the Park Plaza Hotel, where Mickey Cohen is holed up with his men, and everyone's

[32:31] like, it's a fortress.

[32:32] You're never going to get in.

[32:33] But Mickey Cohen has like eight guys.

[32:35] They're killed almost instantly by the Gangster Squad.

[32:39] There's some more shooting.

[32:40] It's really anticlimactic.

[32:41] And then Mickey Cohen tries to escape in his car, crashes into a fountain.

Stuart Wellington

[32:45] Basically, it's a fortress.

[32:47] But all the bad guys get out of the fortress so you can shoot them.

Elliott Kalan

[32:50] The bad guys do a lot of standing out in the open and firing over the good guys' heads

[32:55] while the good guys kill them.

Stuart Wellington

[32:57] If you're going to be carrying a Tommy gun, you want to just fucking spray that shit all

[33:00] over the place.

Elliott Kalan

[33:01] But spray it like at the level of the thing you're trying to hit.

Stuart Wellington

[33:05] You can't just fire wildly.

[33:06] You don't want to make them duck their heads by spraying right over it.

Elliott Kalan

[33:08] I'm spraying so many bullets, the odds are mathematically that one of them will hit the guy that I'm

[33:12] looking for.

[33:13] I'm trying to do a really sweet ricochet kill.

[33:15] I want to get the bank shot points.

[33:18] So anyway, there's a bunch of shooting and Mickey Cohen tries to escape.

[33:21] He doesn't.

[33:22] Josh Brolin throws his gun away and they have a fist fight.

[33:25] And at some point, he gets the upper hand, but we weren't really paying attention.

[33:28] We were talking about Raiders of Lost Ark.

[33:29] Yeah.

[33:30] Mickey Cohen gets beat up and humiliated in front of this spontaneously assembling crowd

[33:35] of cops and gangsters.

[33:37] Well, I guess we're probably drawn to the area after the reports of an enormous gunfight

[33:40] that killed several people.

[33:42] Robert Patrick, the old gunfighter, gets shot and dies, unfortunately.

[33:47] Wait, he died?

[33:48] They didn't show him being put in the ground or anything.

[33:49] They don't show him dying, but you assume that he's dead.

[33:51] Really?

[33:52] I mean, you never see him again.

[33:54] Show me the body.

Stuart Wellington

[33:55] Yeah, I want to see fucking grave dirt being thrown over a fucking pine box.

Elliott Kalan

[33:59] Bring me his mustache.

[34:00] And then lightning hits the gravestone and his fist comes out, clutching a gun.

[34:03] That sounds awesome.

[34:04] Okay.

[34:05] Which is the way that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the movie, should have ended.

[34:08] But anyway, besides the point.

[34:11] Mickey Cohen goes to jail and everybody is happy, except the people who died.

[34:17] Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are still together.

[34:20] Josh Brolin.

Stuart Wellington

[34:20] And they've adopted Mickey Cohen's dog.

[34:23] Yeah, and put a hat on it.

[34:25] And they're immortal now.

Dan McCoy

[34:26] They live forever.

[34:27] And they appear in crazy, stupid love.

[34:30] Yeah, as the same characters.

Stuart Wellington

[34:32] Same characters.

[34:33] That's cute.

[34:33] I guess they forgot about each other, like fucking C-3PO.

[34:37] Yeah, well, it's just like that movie.

[34:38] Yeah, it's like that movie.

Stuart Wellington

[34:39] Or whatever.

Dan McCoy

[34:40] They forget about it.

[34:41] And immortals forget about each other.

[34:42] Oh, yeah, that was really stupid.

Elliott Kalan

[34:45] And Josh Brolin quits the force to spend more time with his wife and his baby.

[34:48] And tosses his badge into the ocean.

[34:50] Tosses his baby.

[34:51] Because why would you want to keep your...

Stuart Wellington

[34:53] That's a big baby, dude.

[34:54] That will clog the ocean.

[34:55] There's a...

[34:55] Clog the ocean.

Elliott Kalan

[34:57] Is there a drain?

[34:59] We've got to get this baby out.

[35:01] The currents won't move.

Dan McCoy

[35:02] Is that why there's so much water in the ocean?

[35:04] Is the drain got clogged?

[35:05] The drain got clogged by a baby.

Elliott Kalan

[35:07] By some fat baby.

[35:09] Why is there so much water in this ocean?

[35:11] When the gangsters learn of the Gangster Squad's identities,

[35:14] they shoot up Josh Brolin's house,

[35:17] and his pregnant wife, in the night, gives birth to the baby.

[35:20] And he finds her in the bathtub, bloody from delivering the baby.

[35:23] And this baby is huge.

[35:25] Yeah, that's why she's so bloody, dude.

[35:26] It is a huge...

[35:28] It's like she gave birth to a little man.

[35:31] And the baby's a girl, because she's wearing a dress later.

Dan McCoy

[35:34] Brolin's like a big ox of a guy.

[35:36] I mean, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[35:37] Oh, you're saying that...

[35:38] It works that way.

[35:38] You're saying he came to her in the form of an ox like Zeus and Europa.

[35:41] Yeah.

[35:43] Oh, boy.

[35:44] Anyway, so Gangster Squad ends...

[35:45] Do you think Europa is like,

Stuart Wellington

[35:46] why couldn't he come in a form of a golden shower or as a swan?

[35:50] Yeah, one of the easier...

[35:51] Why do you have to be a fucking...

Elliott Kalan

[35:52] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[35:54] Ugh.

[35:55] A nice, relaxing shower that leaves you impregnated by the gods.

Stuart Wellington

[35:58] And it's gold.

[35:59] It's worth a ton of money.

[36:00] All right.

[36:01] It's super classy, like champagne and balloons.

[36:03] Yeah, there's just molten gold raining down on you from the sky.

Elliott Kalan

[36:06] It hurts a lot.

[36:08] Congealing into dinosaur poop, like in...

[36:10] Like in...

[36:11] Was it Stolen?

Stuart Wellington

[36:12] Yeah.

[36:12] Yes, yes.

[36:14] Gold turns into dinosaur poop in that movie we watched one time.

[36:16] Yep.

Elliott Kalan

[36:17] So that's Gangster Squad.

[36:18] It ends on a happy note.

[36:20] And L.A. is free from...

[36:22] For the characters.

[36:22] L.A. is free from crime forever.

Dan McCoy

[36:25] Yeah.

[36:26] And good thing that the L.A. police department was never corrupt again.

[36:30] Never ever.

[36:33] Jeez.

[36:33] I feel like this movie...

[36:36] Gangster Squad.

[36:37] ...had a lot of plot without much happening.

[36:41] So...

[36:41] I mean, the movie looked okay.

Elliott Kalan

[36:44] Except for the action scenes.

[36:44] The production design in the movie was really good.

[36:46] Like it was a good...

[36:47] The costumes were good.

[36:49] The sets were good.

[36:50] The cars were good.

[36:51] Everyone looked good except for Sean Penn.

[36:54] Because he looked like...

[36:55] He did his own makeup at a silly putty.

[36:57] In front of a mirror like an old British thespian.

[36:59] But the...

[37:01] But there was just like...

[37:02] For a movie that should have had a really intricate plot.

[37:06] Like we should...

[37:07] There should have been twists and turns.

[37:08] We should have gotten to know the...

[37:09] Like how Mickey Cohen's empire operated.

[37:11] Or...

[37:12] It should have been like a dumb...

[37:14] Like just shoot him up.

[37:15] But at least the scenes are connected to one another in a way.

[37:18] It was neither of those.

[37:19] You know.

[37:20] It wanted to be two different types of movies.

[37:21] It wanted to be a stupid action movie.

[37:23] And some kind of historical drama.

[37:25] And it fails pretty much on both counts.

Dan McCoy

[37:27] Yeah.

[37:27] Let's just...

[37:28] I mean like...

[37:29] We should do final judgments.

[37:31] Whether this is a good bad movie.

[37:32] A bad bad movie.

[37:33] Or a movie you kind of like.

[37:34] I'm going to say like...

[37:36] I've...

[37:37] I've talked less than normal this podcast.

[37:39] Part of that's just because I'm...

[37:40] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[37:40] You okay?

Elliott Kalan

[37:41] You seem like you took a lot of coding.

Dan McCoy

[37:42] I'm very tired.

[37:44] I'm exhausted today.

[37:45] But also there's just not...

[37:48] I don't have a lot of strong feelings about this movie.

[37:50] Like...

Elliott Kalan

[37:50] This is a real bland movie in a lot of ways.

Dan McCoy

[37:54] I liked a lot of the action sequences.

[37:56] If the action...

[37:56] If the whole movie was amped up like some of those action sequences were.

Stuart Wellington

[37:58] The whole movie involved a car driving around throwing grenades out the back of it.

[38:03] Mm-hmm.

[38:03] And people's hands being cut off by elevators.

Elliott Kalan

[38:05] Yeah.

[38:06] Well those are the good parts.

Dan McCoy

[38:07] Then...

[38:08] Yeah.

[38:08] But otherwise I think this was a bad bad movie.

[38:10] It's true.

Elliott Kalan

[38:11] Now Dan...

[38:12] Oh wait.

[38:12] Wait.

[38:12] Let's do final judgments.

[38:13] Then I said I want to ask you about it.

Stuart Wellington

[38:14] I'm going to say...

[38:14] I'm going to say it's a bad bad movie.

[38:16] But it was...

[38:17] There's moments where it's close enough to a good bad movie that you might enjoy it

[38:21] if that's what you're looking for.

Elliott Kalan

[38:22] I would say it's a good bad movie.

[38:24] It's not good bad in that like let's watch it and have a lot of fun making fun of it.

[38:27] Have a bunch of yucks.

[38:28] Yeah.

[38:28] If it was on TV on like a Sunday afternoon and you had nothing to do and you watched it

[38:32] you'd be like alright that was Gangster Squad.

Dan McCoy

[38:35] I'm two hours closer to death now.

[38:37] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[38:37] There are better things to watch.

[38:39] Like go watch Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[38:41] But the...

[38:42] But if it's...

[38:42] Or listen to a couple of great podcasts.

[38:44] Who knows?

[38:44] Yeah.

[38:45] But like if you're on a plane you don't want to...

[38:47] You saw the other movies.

[38:48] You don't have a book with you.

[38:50] You know what?

[38:50] Watch Gangster Squad.

[38:51] Why not?

Stuart Wellington

[38:51] They're showing an old movie on a plane for some reason nowadays.

[38:55] What are we going to ask?

[38:56] They do show movies from within the past couple of years.

Dan McCoy

[38:59] Now you can watch classics depending on what airlines.

[39:02] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[39:02] Classics like Gangster Squad.

[39:04] So Dan you don't like it in movies when people get hurt in the knee because of your knee injury.

[39:09] Do you think it's insensitive that you're like yeah more hand injuries please.

[39:13] Well there's probably some poor dude who broke tore his hand ACL and now he's really hurt and he doesn't like it when people get their hands hurt in movies.

[39:19] Are you a hand-a-crit?

Dan McCoy

[39:21] No, no.

[39:22] I mean like you know scholars of Flophouse mythology know that I have hooks for hands.

[39:28] And so I just want more people to join me in my brotherhood of hooking around.

[39:35] Hooking around.

[39:35] It's the happy hooker they call me.

[39:37] No.

[39:38] I don't.

[39:38] It's the franken hooker.

Stuart Wellington

[39:40] You know after you're dead and you get reanimated.

[39:42] Yeah, yeah.

[39:43] By a bolt of lightning you're in a grave.

[39:46] You stick a gun out.

[39:47] Yeah.

[39:47] Yeah, you're a real Hollywood chainsaw hooker.

[39:51] I'm a real.

[39:52] You want to encourage people.

[39:54] You're a real hook.

Elliott Kalan

[39:55] You want to.

[39:55] A movie starring Dustin Hoffman about hookers.

Stuart Wellington

[40:01] You make it sound like it's a command in the title.

[40:04] Hook.

Elliott Kalan

[40:06] You work on the streets, Dustin Hoffman, but I'm an Academy Award winning actor in my 70s.

[40:10] Now you work for me.

[40:11] I'm turning you out.

[40:15] So you want to.

[40:16] Wear the tootsie outfit.

[40:17] Your name's Sharice Starlight.

[40:19] Put on the tootsie dress.

Stuart Wellington

[40:21] Get out to Hollywood Boulevard.

[40:23] So you want to encourage our listeners to lose their hands in some kind of horrible accident.

[40:27] Yeah.

[40:29] Yep.

[40:30] You can quote me on that.

[40:31] Sure.

[40:31] Like, so if they see a fan and they're fighting that urge to stick their hand in that fan.

[40:35] Just stick it in because Dan wants you to have a hook for a hand.

[40:37] Feel the rhythm of the night.

Dan McCoy

[40:39] So let's just move on to letters while we still have time.

[40:45] This one, this first one's titled USO Tour.

Elliott Kalan

[40:48] First letter.

[40:49] It's the first letter.

[40:51] Not the worst letter.

[40:53] It's the best letter.

[40:53] I mean, we still have time.

[40:54] I think it's okay.

[40:55] We don't know yet.

[40:55] We haven't read the letters.

[40:57] Could go either way.

[40:59] So what do you say?

[41:00] Let's start that first letter today.

[41:03] No further ado.

[41:05] This letter's for you.

[41:06] First letter of the night.

[41:08] Watch out.

[41:08] Doesn't bite.

[41:11] So let's get it started.

[41:14] Oh, open hearted.

[41:16] First letter for Stuart and Dan and me.

[41:18] Is he just warming up or warming down?

[41:19] This is the first letter.

[41:21] Don't you see?

[41:22] It's the first letter of the night for us.

[41:25] So let's get going with the first letter tonight.

[41:29] All right.

[41:30] So.

[41:30] And here it comes.

[41:31] That first letter here.

[41:33] Dan's going to read it right into your ear.

[41:35] He's your boss now.

[41:36] The first letter started.

[41:38] And you can't stop me from singing about it.

[41:41] Singing out loud.

[41:42] It's the first letter for tonight.

Dan McCoy

[41:44] I was sung in a meeting at work.

[41:47] And one of the fellow writers looks over to me.

[41:49] Who listens to the podcast.

[41:50] Looks over at me and says,

[41:51] Can you do something about this?

[41:52] Isn't that your thing?

[41:53] They haven't listened to the podcast.

[41:55] It's not even on the podcast.

[41:56] Can you stop me?

[41:56] I can't do it on the podcast.

[41:57] Number two.

[41:58] This is not my jurisdiction.

[41:59] My songs are like a runaway train.

[42:01] Unstoppable.

[42:02] Yeah.

[42:03] So.

[42:04] Soul asylum.

[42:05] Again.

[42:06] Again.

[42:07] You wouldn't remember this because there was a lengthy letter in between.

[42:10] Here's a reminder of the subject for the first letter.

[42:13] The subject was.

[42:14] USO tour.

[42:15] The subject was roses.

Stuart Wellington

[42:17] A USO tour.

Dan McCoy

[42:19] That's probably about you or me.

[42:21] Dear Plop House Podcast.

[42:22] While I was looking.

[42:23] While I was looking at the Facebook photos of the Daily Show USO tour.

[42:28] My daughter wandered by.

[42:30] Upon seeing the photo of Elliot in a protective suit being attacked by a dog.

[42:33] She asked.

[42:34] Why is that dog attacking her?

[42:36] Oh, come on.

[42:37] I corrected her saying.

[42:38] That's a guy.

[42:39] To which she replied.

[42:40] Oh, well.

[42:41] My mistake.

[42:42] Oh, okay.

[42:42] My question to you is.

[42:44] Was getting attacked by dogs the most macho masculine thing you've ever done?

[42:47] And if not, what would you say was the most macho thing you've ever done?

[42:50] Keep up the good work and sorry for the nine-year-old girl emasculation.

[42:54] Maybe.

[42:54] That's impregnating your wife.

Elliott Kalan

[42:55] A lot of my youth being mistaken by strangers for a girl, which made no sense.

[43:00] Because I didn't look like a girl.

[43:01] It's your high cheekbones.

[43:02] Well, I mean, I have a certain feminine sensuality that I think came out when I was a child.

Dan McCoy

[43:08] I can sense that you have a girl twin.

Elliott Kalan

[43:11] Yeah, and it rubbed off on me.

[43:12] Yeah.

[43:13] So I might have a double X chromosome floating around in me somehow I picked up in the womb.

Stuart Wellington

[43:17] Well, in middle school, one of my mother's work colleagues came up to her and suggested that I might have some kind of learning disability.

[43:25] Just from the way that I was acting.

[43:27] So I feel your pain, Elliot.

[43:29] Thank you.

[43:29] For being mistaken for things.

[43:31] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[43:31] It sucks.

[43:32] Dan, of course, everyone always knew what he was.

[43:34] Just a dude.

[43:34] Just some guy.

[43:35] Just piling around.

[43:36] With terrorists.

[43:37] Now, are they asking me what the most masculine thing I've done is?

[43:40] Yeah.

[43:41] I think it was not being attacked by a dog, but at a different point in that trip, firing a truck-mounted .50 caliber weapon, I think, was probably the most masculine thing.

[43:50] You stopped an army of bad guys, right?

[43:52] No, I just fired into a big pile of sand.

[43:55] And I did, unfortunately, because they don't do this anymore.

[43:58] I didn't get to fire it from the top of the truck.

[44:01] I didn't get to kill any Nazis.

[44:03] Because they stopped doing that in like 1945.

[44:05] What's the deal?

[44:07] They don't fire them from the top of the truck anymore, because that leaves you too exposed.

[44:12] They have a joystick within the truck that fires it.

[44:14] But that was probably it.

Stuart Wellington

[44:15] Oh, so you got to hide inside a truck and play with a joystick?

[44:18] Yeah, but every time you fire it, the truck shakes.

Elliott Kalan

[44:21] Okay, then it was when I shot one of the other types of guns I shot over there.

[44:25] That was the trip where they said, okay, these guns, I think it was either the M4 or the SCAR, which are two different types of weapons they have there.

[44:32] They both sound cool.

[44:32] They said, there's three settings, there's single shot, then there's semi-automatic, which is a three-shot burst, then there's automatic, which is an illegal setting in the States.

[44:40] You can only have that in Warzone.

[44:42] So you can set it to whatever you want.

[44:43] And all of us were like, automatic.

[44:45] Of course, that's what we want it to be set to.

[44:46] The one we can't do at home.

[44:48] And let me tell you, it's really hard to hold onto a gun that is in automatic mode, and I was so worried I would lose control and kill everybody.

[44:57] And they would start bouncing around killing all the bad guys.

[45:00] But there were no bad guys.

[45:01] It was all good people.

[45:04] I met some of the people you were on tour with.

[45:07] I was worried it would be like a fire hose in a cartoon, and I would just lose control of it and fly into the air.

Stuart Wellington

[45:11] And you'd put out the fire through accidental gun bursts.

Dan McCoy

[45:17] Yeah, you'd shoot the fire.

Stuart Wellington

[45:18] No, we'd like shoot a fucking avalanche or something, and then snow would put out the fire.

[45:23] Who knows?

[45:23] It was a real Dyatlov pass that we were in.

Dan McCoy

[45:26] Okay, so this next letter goes thusly.

[45:30] Hey, guys.

[45:31] I'm a big fan and first-time letter writer.

[45:33] I love you guys.

[45:34] You're all equally my favorite.

[45:35] Whisper to Elliot.

[45:36] You're really my favorite.

[45:38] Thank you.

[45:39] I recently moved.

[45:40] You should be made the boss of a flop house.

[45:42] Oh, I'm already Dan's boss in one area.

Elliott Kalan

[45:43] I don't need to be in two.

[45:45] Dan, keep reading the letter.

[45:46] You're fired.

Dan McCoy

[45:47] I recently moved and collected many boxes from my parents' attic.

[45:50] Inside, I found two...

[45:51] Many boxes?

[45:53] Many.

[45:53] Like the boxes that like individual cereal bowls?

[45:55] Many boxes.

[45:56] Oh, like the He-Man character.

[45:58] From my parents' attic.

[46:00] Inside, I found two, yes, two copies of the original, more scary stories to tell in the dark.

[46:04] I know you all were traumatized by this book as kids, as was I, and I think the better for it.

[46:09] It will certainly help with my new job as priest in charge of a small parish in Long Island.

Stuart Wellington

[46:13] My new job as scarer-in-chief.

[46:15] Sure.

[46:16] Well...

[46:16] As a local crazy man.

[46:19] Driven insane by finding those books in an attic.

[46:23] Oh, no, but a priest in Long Island?

Dan McCoy

[46:25] A priest in Long Island.

[46:27] Well, maybe it won't, but I can stay up late at night under the sheets of the flashlight and scare myself.

[46:31] Anyway, my point, I'm willing to part with one copy of this masterpiece if any of you gents would like it, or perhaps another ill-defined contest would be in order.

[46:39] Whatever you like.

[46:40] Or, if you would like it, please send me an address.

[46:42] I promise not to stalk you.

[46:44] Keep on plopping.

[46:45] The Reverend Lauren, last name withheld.

[46:46] And I read this to say, please do not send this book to me.

[46:50] Because it's going to frighten you?

[46:51] Bury it in the yard.

Stuart Wellington

[46:53] Put it in the yard, and maybe an evil baby will grow out of that book.

[46:57] Yeah, a real evil Timothy Green.

[46:59] A scarecrow will come out.

Elliott Kalan

[47:01] Sure, a horrible pumpkin head.

[47:03] If we can make children out of horror books, then maybe we can make a pencil out of children.

[47:10] That's the scary life of Timothy Green.

[47:15] I think what you need to do...

[47:16] It's clear what you need to do with that book, which is give it to a child so they can be traumatized by it.

[47:20] Yeah.

[47:20] And grow up into a cool adult.

[47:22] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[47:23] Maybe become an illustrator themselves.

[47:26] Yeah.

[47:27] All right.

[47:28] You know, buying magazines, cutting the eyes out of all the faces.

[47:32] Sure.

[47:32] Pasting them up in, I don't know, you might call it a dungeon.

[47:35] You might call it, who knows, a basement?

[47:37] Maybe a dungeon full of evidence, let's say.

[47:39] Sure, who knows?

Dan McCoy

[47:41] This next letter is titled, Allie Larder is obsessed.

[47:45] Dear Floppers, after hearing you discuss obsessed, I was curious...

[47:49] That was a long time ago.

[47:49] Yeah.

[47:50] I was curious what Allie Larder's underwear in the car scene actually looked like.

[47:54] We discussed she had some mismatched lingerie.

[47:57] I honestly don't even remember.

Elliott Kalan

[47:58] Maybe, I think she was wearing like water wings and like a tutu and maybe like an old-fashioned

[48:03] strongman's leopard skin leotard.

Dan McCoy

[48:05] Just everyone out there, Google Allie Larder lingerie and do it at work.

[48:09] Okay.

[48:10] But she headed to Google.

[48:12] When I clicked on one of the pictures, I was surprised to find out it was from an article

[48:15] on a style website that gave an in-depth backstory to the ahem outfit.

[48:21] Oh.

[48:21] Here are some of the highlights.

[48:23] This is from the article.

[48:24] In one of the movie's hotter scenes...

[48:26] What a bitchy title.

[48:27] Larder's Lisa Sheridan surprises the object of her desire, played by Idris Elba, with the

[48:31] old nothing but silk and lace under the coat trick.

[48:34] Note.

[48:35] I love how they describe this as an old trick, a la the popcorn trick mentioned in an earlier

[48:39] podcast.

Stuart Wellington

[48:40] It's probably what they were thinking when they said that.

Dan McCoy

[48:43] Lieberman says Larder came up with the idea for...

[48:45] Joe Lieberman?

[48:46] The former senator?

[48:47] Yes.

[48:49] They came up with the idea.

[48:50] Yeah.

[48:52] Lieberman says...

[48:53] Lieberman says Larder came up with the idea for the vintage-inspired ensemble herself.

[48:58] The lingerie was 100% Allie's idea, Lieberman said.

[49:02] She wanted to avoid anything stripper-inspired because she felt strongly that her character

[49:06] would pick something high-fashioned and sophisticated.

[49:09] I really love that Allie Larder was worried about whether her psycho stalker character might

[49:14] be seen as too slutty.

[49:16] Lieberman used two pieces from two different sets and dyed them to match.

[49:20] I also love that the floppers' fine eyes for lingerie were 100% accurate in noticing

[49:25] that the underwear and bra were not a match set, despite a costume designer's best attempts

[49:29] to fool them.

Elliott Kalan

[49:30] I don't want to get into the details of why, but we have experience looking at ladies in

[49:35] lingerie.

Dan McCoy

[49:35] The final look?

[49:37] Classy, sexy, and surprisingly demure.

[49:40] A nice change, no doubt, for an actress who first made headlines wearing nothing but a

[49:44] whipped cream bikini in 1999's Varsity Blues.

[49:47] She made headlines?

Elliott Kalan

[49:48] Was that on the cover of the Times or something?

[49:50] Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh.

[49:52] And we've got to put out an extradition.

[49:53] Actress wears...

[49:55] Extradition.

[49:56] Extry, extry.

[49:56] Read all about it.

[49:57] Actress wears whipped cream on boobs.

[49:59] Here, give me that paper, kid.

[50:00] Larder lathers boobs.

[50:01] Holy Jesus.

[50:02] Just like he says, shoeshine boy.

[50:04] Take a look at this.

[50:05] Oh, no.

[50:06] I'm shot to death.

[50:07] Awooga, awooga.

[50:08] Buddy, you gonna get in the cab or not?

[50:10] Hold your horses.

[50:11] Where's the fire, buddy?

[50:13] Check out this paper.

[50:14] Then FDR gets on the radio.

[50:16] My fellow Americans, we've all seen the headlines.

[50:19] Allie Larder has whipped cream on her boobs.

[50:22] I have declared a state of emergency.

[50:25] All men are to turn in their erections right now.

Dan McCoy

[50:27] We're assembling a crack team to lick the whipped cream off.

[50:33] She says, they did it, you guys.

[50:35] The psychotic stalker looked classy, sexy, and demure.

[50:39] And Idris Elba did not react like he smelled something bad at all.

[50:43] All the best.

[50:44] Anne-Marie, last name withheld.

[50:46] So that was a pretty exciting piece of trivia.

Elliott Kalan

[50:49] Thanks for reminding us of a thing we saw.

[50:51] Yeah, it was an old blast from the flop past on this podcast.

[50:56] And now for the last letter, I assume?

Stuart Wellington

[50:59] If we weren't fooled by that lingerie, a ladies' man like Idris Elba,

[51:03] that guy's not going to be fooled.

[51:04] No, come on.

Elliott Kalan

[51:05] He'd be like, no, thank you.

[51:06] I'll just play my tiny accordion.

Dan McCoy

[51:08] That's why he went back to Beyonce, you know?

[51:11] It makes no sense why you would ever consider leaving Beyonce for Allie Larder.

Elliott Kalan

[51:18] If you're going to have him plausibly tempted away from his wife,

[51:25] don't cast one of the most beautiful women in the world.

[51:28] Like, come on.

[51:28] Maybe he's too intimidated by her.

[51:30] He's afraid to approach his wife because he's afraid of rejection.

[51:35] My husbands never even talk to me because they're too intimidated by my beauty and my success.

Dan McCoy

[51:41] Keeping with the theme, our final letter is titled,

[51:45] Good Bad Boobs, Bad Bad Boobs, or Boobs You Kind of Like.

[51:48] Okay, this episode took a turn.

[51:49] It's real minefield.

[51:50] It's from Trisha, last name withheld.

[51:53] Oh, so it's cool because it's a girl, right?

[51:54] Hey, OP.

[51:55] Could be a man named Trisha.

[51:56] What's flopping?

[51:57] I think it's a girl, though.

[51:58] I was hoping the subject line would get the attention of the number one pervazoid,

[52:01] who, rest assured, Dan is my favorite flopper simply because he has the same last name as my boyfriend,

[52:06] Chris, last name withheld.

[52:09] Anyway, I just had two questions for y'all.

[52:10] How can I put the clues together?

Stuart Wellington

[52:12] So first off, she said that Dan's her favorite flopper,

[52:16] and she has a boyfriend, so her butt is on limits.

Dan McCoy

[52:20] I read one that complimented Elliot, come on.

[52:24] I was wondering if any of you had seen Nailgun Massacre.

[52:28] It's a bad, bad movie that both of my parents are actually in,

[52:31] and growing up, I thought I was the only person that had ever seen it,

[52:34] and other classics they produced, such as Reanimator Academy and Irving Peaks.

[52:39] Until years ago, when I was in college and saw Nailgun Massacre on video store shelves,

[52:42] and then the Alamo Drafthouse featured it as one of their Terror Tuesday films.

[52:47] So just sing if you knew it.

[52:48] If you don't, seriously, don't bother.

[52:51] I was aware that there was a movie with that title.

[52:53] I don't believe I've seen it.

[52:55] Stuart?

[52:55] I haven't seen it.

[52:56] I'm not familiar with it.

[52:58] But congratulations on having Nailgun Massacre parents.

[53:01] And stumping us.

[53:03] Yeah.

[53:03] But number two, boobs.

[53:05] As a representative...

Elliott Kalan

[53:06] Yeah, that's usually how many there are.

Dan McCoy

[53:08] As a representative of the Petite Ladies with Little Boobs Rotary Club.

[53:12] Seems like a weird club.

[53:13] I was wondering if you guys really are grossed out by skinny chicks with less to offer in the bosoms department.

[53:19] You praise Hots, the great bikini off-road adventure, and the like,

[53:22] while eschewing such ladies as Allie Larder for their slight frames and less than blossoming bosoms.

[53:28] So come on, do smaller boobs really get...

Elliott Kalan

[53:29] Is this an Allie Larder-themed mailbag?

Dan McCoy

[53:31] Yeah, it's called producing a show well.

[53:35] I don't know anything about that.

[53:36] Do smaller boobs really get zero wormy boners?

[53:39] Love the Flophouse?

[53:40] Regardless of your stance on bazoombas,

[53:42] keep it up, dudes.

[53:43] Trisha, last name withheld.

[53:44] Now...

Elliott Kalan

[53:44] Look, we all...

[53:45] Elliot and Stewart.

[53:47] All men have their types.

[53:48] But that doesn't mean we're blind to other forms of female beauty.

[53:52] Right, Stewart?

[53:54] Wait, what?

[53:55] Just say yes.

Dan McCoy

[53:55] I think Stewart might be blind to non-giant boob female beauty.

[54:00] I have always been a proponent...

[54:01] A giant boob is a bit of an exaggeration.

[54:03] Okay.

[54:04] I have always been a proponent that what is attractive is a proportional body, whatever the size is.

[54:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[54:11] Even if that proportional body is a female gremlin body, Dan is up for it.

Elliott Kalan

[54:15] Dan is totally into it if the ears are gremlin proportioned to the rest of the body.

Dan McCoy

[54:20] No, no, I'm quite fond of the smaller breasts as well as the larger breasts.

Elliott Kalan

[54:25] This is making me so uncomfortable.

[54:27] I mean, we were asked directly.

[54:29] We were, but you chose the letter.

[54:32] Trust me, we get a lot of boring letters.

[54:34] Look, let's just say, when it comes to the fluffers, we're all gentlemen and it's the full package,

[54:39] both physical, mental, and spiritual, that attracts us to a woman.

[54:42] Except in Dan's case, it's often a wife's butt, and in Stewart's case, it's boobs.

Stuart Wellington

[54:47] And beer.

[54:48] If she brings beer and a pizza and holds them next to the boobs.

Dan McCoy

[54:52] We all have very successful long-term relationships.

[54:56] Let's point this out.

[54:57] We're not monsters.

[54:59] No, we're not monsters.

[55:00] Except for Stewart, who's a werewolf.

Stuart Wellington

[55:02] Yep.

[55:03] I was bitten by a magical gypsy who gave me lycanthropy.

[55:07] I understand.

Elliott Kalan

[55:09] Do you like how I said lycanthropy weird?

[55:11] Yeah, I did.

[55:12] But we were so distracted by it that it was a gypsy that bit you, that made you a werewolf.

Stuart Wellington

[55:15] So the gypsy put a curse on his magical bite he gave me.

[55:18] Wait, it was a dude gypsy.

[55:19] He smeared...

[55:20] Yeah, so we were wrestling around.

[55:24] I thought we were just playing.

[55:25] And he took a big bite out of my leg.

[55:27] Just a friend of yours?

[55:28] And then he smeared wolf's bane in the bite, and that made me a werewolf.

[55:31] Yeah, okay.

[55:32] Not really how it works.

[55:34] I mean, I knew him for a couple of hours.

[55:37] We were having drinks.

[55:37] I met him at this bar.

[55:38] And then we started wrestling.

[55:39] I met him at this bar of wolfies.

Elliott Kalan

[55:42] Yep.

[55:45] So rest assured, and do not be afraid.

[55:49] All of us would find you attractive.

Dan McCoy

[55:51] Yeah, well, we just don't want to...

[55:53] You know, let's not contribute to any body dysmorphia out there.

[55:56] Yeah.

[55:56] Everyone's beautiful.

Stuart Wellington

[55:58] Okay, so something positive came out of this experience.

[56:00] Yeah, that was nice.

Elliott Kalan

[56:01] Yeah.

[56:01] Dan, that used to be the most inspiring pervizoid there is.

[56:05] So, but to move on...

[56:07] Suffice to say, however you look, Dan will find a way to objectify you as a sexual object.

[56:13] Boy, howdy will I.

[56:15] Anyway, so letters are over.

Stuart Wellington

[56:17] So, next...

[56:18] Somebody shut up the mailbag, throw that shit in the ocean.

Elliott Kalan

[56:22] Next to my badge.

[56:23] And that big baby.

Dan McCoy

[56:27] So, lastly, on this podcast, we make recommendations of movies that we've seen, usually recently,

[56:34] that we liked better than, say, Gangster Squad.

[56:39] Movies we think you should actually watch.

[56:42] Elliot, what do you have to plug?

Elliott Kalan

[56:44] I haven't seen anything lately that I...

[56:46] On behalf of someone else.

[56:46] I haven't seen...

[56:47] Who made the movie.

[56:48] I haven't seen anything lately that I really loved, but I decided, hey, Gangster Squad,

[56:53] you know what that's about?

[56:54] Gangsters.

[56:55] So, I'll recommend two gangster movies that I like a lot.

[56:58] I'll recommend a kind of classic 30s gangster movie and a later, you know, more modern gangster

[57:05] movie.

[57:05] So, I'm going to recommend, one, The Roaring Twenties, starring James Cagney and Humphrey

[57:09] Bogart, which is kind of a classic, late 30s, throwback to early 30s gangster movies, telling

[57:15] the story of one main gangster and a couple others through the Roaring Twenties and their

[57:19] rise and fall.

Dan McCoy

[57:20] Is that a Raul Walsh movie?

Elliott Kalan

[57:21] It is a Raul Walsh movie, yes.

Dan McCoy

[57:22] I think they're playing that, actually, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of the

[57:26] Martin Scorsese-Raul Walsh.

[57:28] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[57:28] Because they're brothers.

Dan McCoy

[57:31] Because Scorsese was so influenced by Raul Walsh.

Elliott Kalan

[57:34] So, if you're in the Brooklyn area and this hasn't already aired afterwards.

[57:38] No, I think they'll miss it.

[57:40] Then, you know what?

[57:40] Just get a DVD because it's available.

[57:43] But The Roaring Twenties, it's a great, classic, snappy gangster movie with a tragic

[57:48] ending as they all did back then.

[57:50] And then, you know what?

[57:51] Go read Robert Warshaw's essay, The Gangster is a Tragic Hero.

[57:53] Why not?

[57:54] And the other movie I recommend is Kung Fu Hustle.

[57:58] Yeah, that Axe Gang was the top gangsters.

[58:01] Is the movie The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

[58:04] Directed by Peter Yates, 1973.

[58:06] One of Robert Mitchum's best movies, especially of his later movies.

[58:10] Peter Boyle's in it, too.

[58:12] And it's a picture of a time when gangsters were a lot less glamorous and a lot more gritty.

[58:18] And it's just another great movie about gangster betrayal and the tragedy that happens when

[58:24] your life gets mixed up with gangsterism.

Stuart Wellington

[58:26] Did you screen that, the 92Y?

Elliott Kalan

[58:29] No, I wanted to.

[58:30] But I think they did another time or we couldn't get a print of it.

[58:35] Because I really wanted to.

[58:36] It's a really good movie.

[58:38] I may have shown it once at my house.

[58:41] Stuart, do you want to go or shall I?

Stuart Wellington

[58:42] Sure.

[58:43] I'm going to continue this theme of gangster movies and recommend Manhunter from 1986.

Elliott Kalan

[58:48] I don't know if I call it a gangster movie.

[58:51] It's a serial killer movie.

Stuart Wellington

[58:52] Hannibal Lectar.

Elliott Kalan

[58:55] Lectar.

[58:55] Now what makes Hannibal Lectar a gangster?

Stuart Wellington

[59:00] Well, he's played by a popular Cockney actor, Brian.

Elliott Kalan

[59:05] But he's not involved in organized crime in any way.

[59:11] So I've been...

Stuart Wellington

[59:12] Enrico's statutes would take him down.

Elliott Kalan

[59:13] No, you don't need him because he's killing people and eating them.

[59:17] Spoiler alert.

Stuart Wellington

[59:18] It said that he's already in jail when the movie starts.

[59:21] Sure.

[59:21] And it rhymes with cannibal.

[59:23] I get it.

[59:25] So I've been doing some prep lately for a piece I'm doing for the upcoming I Love Bad Movies issue.

[59:32] And so I've been re-watching some of the Thomas Harris-based Hannibal Lecter movies.

[59:40] Like your favorite one, Red Dragon.

[59:42] And Manhunter, which is based on the novel Red Dragon.

Dan McCoy

[59:45] But not to make fun of Manhunter in this I Love Bad movie.

Stuart Wellington

[59:48] No, you like...

[59:48] No, no, no.

[59:49] I like...

[59:49] You're going to make fun of Hannibal Rising?

[59:51] No, I'm making fun of Hannibal, the Ridley Scott movie.

Elliott Kalan

[59:54] Oh, you mean the continuing adventures of Hannibal Lecter?

[59:56] Yeah.

[59:57] Brain eaters.

[59:58] I love the story.

Stuart Wellington

[59:59] The adventures of Cannibal Man.

[1:00:01] Hannibal the new bed.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:03] It is.

[1:00:03] I'm kind of surprised they didn't just keep going with movies where he became a superhero.

[1:00:08] And it was eventually just like Popeye, but he eats people instead of spinach.

[1:00:12] And coming up with food puns.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:13] So Manhunter, this was an early Michael Mann movie.

[1:00:19] It stars William Peterson.

[1:00:21] CIS?

[1:00:22] CSI?

[1:00:23] CSI.

[1:00:23] Yeah, no, the Culinary Institute.

[1:00:25] Of science.

[1:00:27] And everybody's favorite love interest, Tom Noonan.

[1:00:31] Yeah.

[1:00:32] Playing a...

[1:00:33] Spoiler alert.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:34] People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive, 2002 Forever, Tom Noonan.

[1:00:39] Playing Buffalo Bill, right?

[1:00:42] No, he's playing the...

[1:00:44] I mean the dragon.

[1:00:45] The dragon dude.

[1:00:46] Tooth Fairy.

[1:00:47] Francis Donahue.

[1:00:47] I got the non-Hannibal Lecter serial killers and Thomas Harris movies mixed up.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:51] And although it doesn't follow the original novel as closely as the later Brett Ratner directed

[1:00:59] Red Dragon.

[1:01:01] It's a better movie.

[1:01:01] Yeah, it's a much better movie.

[1:01:04] And what is it?

[1:01:05] Does it use Inigal of Da Vida, I believe?

[1:01:08] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:09] By Iron Butterfly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:10] They shot a scene with Tom Noonan where he had the big dragon tattoo on his back and

[1:01:15] then they redid it with him wearing a shirt because they thought it looked too ridiculous.

[1:01:18] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:19] Which is something that Brett Ratner would never do.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:21] No.

[1:01:22] Instead, Brett Ratner has the villain, and maybe this is in the book, but I don't remember

[1:01:26] it because I don't remember the book that well.

[1:01:27] Go and find the original William Yates drawing of...

[1:01:30] William Yates.

[1:01:32] William Blake.

[1:01:33] William Blake.

[1:01:34] Ugh.

[1:01:34] I'm getting all over the place.

[1:01:35] William Blake drawing of the red dragon and eat it.

[1:01:38] That happens in the book.

[1:01:40] It's such a weird move to have a real painting be eaten by your character in a story.

[1:01:46] He kills people.

[1:01:48] Art eater.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:49] Manhunter art eater.

[1:01:52] Manhunter colon art eater.

[1:01:54] So Manhunter, if you like Hannibal Lecter but want to see him played by Brian Cox.

[1:02:00] My favorite part...

[1:02:00] Or if you like Will Brian and I want to see him not played by Hugh Nancy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:04] If you want to see Stryker from X-Men 2 in a jail cell.

[1:02:09] If you want to see the therapist from Running With Scissors eating people, it's implied.

[1:02:17] What other Brian Cox roles are there that I can reference?

[1:02:21] I think my favorite part of that movie is the shot of Brian Cox sitting in his cell, impatiently waiting for a phone call.

[1:02:29] And it's like such a...

[1:02:30] By the time that Andy Hopkins was playing Hannibal Lecter, he was too invincible.

[1:02:36] But Brian Cox plays him as this petulant jerk.

[1:02:39] Really childish.

[1:02:41] And I like that.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:43] So I would like to recommend a movie that I watched.

[1:02:46] Video on demand.

[1:02:47] Less emotion, Dan.

[1:02:49] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:50] Too much.

[1:02:50] You're really overwhelming everybody.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:52] I would like to recommend the movie Grand Piano starring Elijah Wood, the voice of John Cusack.

[1:03:01] Frodo!

[1:03:02] And weirdly, Alex Winter as a henchman.

[1:03:07] I don't know what's so weird about that.

[1:03:08] He's a working actor.

[1:03:09] Sure.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:10] Even Alex Winter's got to see him.

[1:03:12] Yeah, come on.

[1:03:12] You haven't seen him in a while.

[1:03:13] Freaked 2 isn't coming out.

[1:03:14] He's got to get other work.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:15] But it's a movie that when I saw the trailer, I'm like, what the fuck is this?

[1:03:20] How can they make this a movie?

[1:03:22] It's basically a phone booth except for instead of Keith or...

[1:03:25] Keith or...

Dan McCoy

[1:03:25] Keith or no.

[1:03:26] Keith or Sutherland.

[1:03:27] Keith or Sutherland, yeah.

[1:03:28] Instead of Keith or Sutherland keeping Colin Farrell in a phone booth, it's John Cusack has Elijah

[1:03:36] Wood in his sights.

[1:03:37] And Elijah Wood has to play this whole piano recital, the symphony recital, including playing

[1:03:44] this incredibly complex, unplayable piece without messing up any of the notes or else he will

[1:03:50] be shot and his wife will be shot in the opera box.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:55] Now, does he have extra fingers like that pianist in Gattaca?

[1:03:58] He does not.

[1:03:59] That's going to make it more difficult.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:01] But it is an absurd premise, but it is luckily matched by really melodramatic, amped up directing.

[1:04:09] Like, there's a camera swooping around.

[1:04:11] There's like kind of a split screen effect at one point.

[1:04:14] It's very early Brian De Palma.

[1:04:17] Late femme fatale?

[1:04:19] That's late Brian De Palma.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:21] You mean more like sisters?

Dan McCoy

[1:04:23] Yeah, I mean, like, this is definitely in that Hitchcockian mode.

[1:04:26] There's something actually very classic about the way this...

[1:04:27] Early Brian De Palma, you mean like hi mom?

[1:04:29] Yeah.

[1:04:30] Greetings?

[1:04:32] No, but there's something...

[1:04:33] Phantom of the Paradise.

[1:04:35] But there's something very...

[1:04:36] Snake eyes.

[1:04:37] Classic Hitchcock about the feel of the movie.

[1:04:40] Because it's a stripped down thriller about an ordinary guy other than him being a...

[1:04:45] A grand pianist.

[1:04:46] A grand pianist.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:48] And it has nothing to do with a phone booth.

[1:04:51] I don't know what...

[1:04:51] I mean, that was just a comparison Dan was making.

[1:04:53] The final...

[1:04:54] So he's not on the phone with the guy?

[1:04:56] The final solution...

[1:04:57] Yeah, how does he hear...

[1:04:57] Is it like a thing in his ear or something?

[1:04:58] His earpiece, yeah.

[1:04:59] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:00] The final solution for why...

[1:05:01] Like a blue Cusack.

[1:05:02] The final solution.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:03] Dan, that's offensive.

[1:05:05] I can't believe you'd support that.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:07] The final revelation of why John Cusack...

[1:05:09] That's better.

[1:05:09] ...is doing this is pretty dumb, but...

[1:05:13] I...

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:13] There's no not dumb reason for him to do it.

[1:05:15] I find that impossible to believe.

[1:05:16] The only...

[1:05:16] The only not dumb reason would be maybe like his mother was killed by a piano?

[1:05:20] Yeah.

[1:05:20] And now he's trying to torture a piano?

[1:05:22] I don't know.

[1:05:23] I just had a...

[1:05:23] No, even that's stupid.

[1:05:24] It's a very...

[1:05:25] It's a very fun movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:25] Maybe he's just the best piano coach ever.

[1:05:28] Yeah.

[1:05:28] That could be it.

[1:05:29] He's the Bella Carosi of...

[1:05:30] Well, there is...

Dan McCoy

[1:05:31] They can faint at that as being like an explanation.

[1:05:32] Like, he just wants to hear a beautiful piece played totally well.

[1:05:37] But, um...

[1:05:38] It's just...

[1:05:39] It's just stupid fun, but it's a well-put-together throw.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:42] Stupid fun, says Dan McCoy.

[1:05:43] Check your brain at the door, says Dan McCoy.

[1:05:46] But keep the receipt, because they won't give you your brain back without it.

[1:05:50] Mm-hmm.

[1:05:51] And somebody else is going to take your brain.

[1:05:53] It's going to be in the lost and found box for like a month.

[1:05:55] It'll be normal.

[1:05:56] I thought it was my brain.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:57] What are you talking about?

[1:05:58] I thought it was your brain.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:59] It doesn't even fit in your head.

[1:06:00] Yeah, exactly.

[1:06:01] Meanwhile, you're dead, because your brain got taken out of your head.

[1:06:04] Why did you check your brain?

[1:06:07] I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:08] It's a Transformers.

[1:06:09] I don't know anything anymore, because my brain's gone.

[1:06:11] It's a Transformers?

[1:06:12] Yeah, that's the type of movie you check your brain at the door for.

[1:06:15] Yeah, no, that's true.

[1:06:16] It's not a Transformers.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:17] It's a much better movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:18] No, it's called Transformers for Grand Piano.

[1:06:22] The piano turns into a robot that saves him.

[1:06:25] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:26] Spoiler.

[1:06:26] It blocks the bullet and then bites his hands off, just like in the movie.

[1:06:30] Gangster Squad.

[1:06:31] Gangster Squad.

[1:06:31] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:32] Hat-headed hand-hurters.

[1:06:34] The movie.

[1:06:36] All right.

[1:06:37] Rated H for hats.

[1:06:39] And hands.

[1:06:41] And hurt.

[1:06:41] Rated double H.

[1:06:43] Triple H.

[1:06:44] Hats, hands, and hurt.

[1:06:45] All right.

[1:06:46] Let's...

[1:06:46] John Hurt.

[1:06:46] Endorsed by wrestler Triple H.

[1:06:48] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:50] And by Preparation H.

[1:06:51] Let's close the door on this episode.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:53] The only way to prepare a hat.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:56] Preparation H.

[1:06:57] Mere Preparation H on it.

[1:06:59] Then put it on your head, which is also an H.

[1:07:02] Then put it on your butt.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:04] Much like that dog that we talked about earlier.

[1:07:07] Hey.

[1:07:08] Best Flophouse callback ever.

[1:07:10] Theoretical Dog we've suggested.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:15] Or a hound if you want to use an H.

[1:07:17] Another H.

[1:07:18] So many H's.

[1:07:20] Too many stupid callbacks.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:22] Let's stop.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:23] Now it belongs to the H's.

[1:07:25] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:27] For the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:07:30] I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:07:32] And I've been Helliot Kalin.

[1:07:34] Good night, everyone.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:36] H.

[1:07:40] H.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:50] I had fun talking to Scott Tobias over Twitter today about Blood Rain.

[1:07:56] Because he was talking.

[1:07:57] He wrote a piece about Blood Rain.

[1:08:00] By the way, I think it's funny that the only Dissolve article I've talked to any of the writers.

[1:08:05] It was about Blood Rain.

[1:08:08] I just called him.

[1:08:09] I mentioned that he didn't.

[1:08:11] He did not mention Billy Zane in his description.

[1:08:14] And I feel like it's an oversight.

The Flop House: Episode #148 - Gangster Squad

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