The Flop House: Episode #140 - After Earth

Dan McCoy

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss After Earth, about a planet destroyed by the power of nepotism.

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

Elliott Kalan

[0:35] That was Dan McCoy, and I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:38] And that was Stuart Wellington and Dan McCoy, and I'm Elliot Kalin.

Dan McCoy

[0:40] And that was Stuart Wellington and Elliot Kalin and Dan McCoy, and I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:44] Well, good night, everybody.

Elliott Kalan

[0:47] This was The Flophouse Podcast.

Dan McCoy

[0:50] The Flophouse. I was a little late on that one.

Elliott Kalan

[0:51] So Dan, what do we do on The Flophouse?

[0:53] It's a podcast.

[0:55] I was asking what do we do on it.

[0:56] You're like, listen to it.

[0:57] Thanks for establishing what we already know, dumb shit.

[0:59] I'm sorry, that was totally uncalled for.

[1:01] Dan, what do we do on The Flophouse?

Dan McCoy

[1:03] Dumb shit.

[1:04] We watch a bad movie.

[1:06] That happens prior to the taping.

[1:07] Yes.

[1:08] And during the taping, the part that you're listening to now, we discuss that bad movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12] So they're listening to something we taped at a distant past, but they're listening to it now.

[1:16] Much like the light from a star.

[1:18] After Earth.

[1:19] What? After Earth?

[1:20] That sounds like the title of the movie we watched.

[1:22] Oh boy, that's because it is.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25] Oh boy, indeed.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26] We watched the movie called After Earth.

[1:29] We watched a movie called After Birth.

[1:32] Story of a placenta.

[1:34] In a way.

[1:35] We wanted to make it in the big city.

[1:36] As a dancer.

[1:39] It was disgusting.

[1:41] It's called Babe 2, Placenta in the Big City.

Dan McCoy

[1:44] It just lays there.

[1:45] It lays there on the stage.

Stuart Wellington

[1:46] Hey, quit your crying, kid.

[1:48] You want to grow up?

[1:49] Is that the bulldog that befriends him?

[1:53] The cigar-smoking bulldog that befriends the fetus.

[1:56] It's not a fetus.

[1:57] It's not a fetus.

Dan McCoy

[1:58] It's a placenta.

[1:58] No, that's terrible.

[1:59] They're very different.

[2:00] Sure.

[2:00] This is just the refuse.

Elliott Kalan

[2:02] I don't know how you got on the list of top ten OBGYNs in the country with that kind of mistaken knowledge.

[2:10] So Dan, After Earth was the movie we watched, right?

Dan McCoy

[2:12] Yeah.

[2:13] This is an M. Night Shyamalan joint.

Elliott Kalan

[2:15] Oh, man.

[2:16] Number three.

Dan McCoy

[2:17] We were discussing.

[2:17] We've watched.

[2:18] This is the third movie we watched that was directed by him.

[2:20] And we've also watched one produced by him.

[2:22] Elevator.

[2:24] Elevator.

[2:24] So it's like.

[2:25] Elevator.

Elliott Kalan

[2:26] Delaware.

[2:27] Evil lift.

[2:28] So it's like we watched three and a half M. Night Shyamalan movies.

[2:34] That's a terrible sitcom.

[2:36] Three and a half M. Night Shyamalan.

[2:37] Yeah.

[2:38] Yeah.

[2:38] Stars M. Night Shyamalan.

[2:40] Another M. Night Shyamalan.

[2:41] He wasn't in this one.

[2:42] Two of M. Night Shyamalan and then half of an M. Night Shyamalan.

Stuart Wellington

[2:45] So M. Night Shyamalan's in most of his movies, right?

Elliott Kalan

[2:49] I don't know about that.

[2:50] He's in most of them.

[2:51] He's not in The Happening.

[2:52] He isn't?

Dan McCoy

[2:53] He's not in The Sixth Sense.

[2:55] Wait.

[2:56] What?

[2:56] He's got to be in The Sixth Sense.

[2:57] I think he is in The Sixth Sense, but I can't remember.

[2:59] He's a real Alfred Hitchcock.

[3:00] Is he in Unbreakable?

[3:02] Yeah.

[3:03] Wait, hold on.

[3:04] Let me.

[3:04] I'm going to look it up.

Stuart Wellington

[3:05] He's the doctor that explains to her that her kid's fucking bones are made of glass or some shit.

[3:09] There's no way to figure this out.

[3:10] Or explains to Unbreakable that he's Unbreakable?

[3:12] No, I think it's the other way around.

[3:14] He's like the actor in the beginning.

Dan McCoy

[3:15] Hold on.

[3:16] Actor, filmography.

[3:18] He was in The Happening.

[3:19] Okay.

[3:19] He was in Lady in the Water.

[3:20] He was in The Village.

[3:21] He was in Science.

[3:22] He was in Unbreakable.

[3:22] He was in The Sixth Sense.

Stuart Wellington

[3:23] Who was he in The Sixth Sense?

[3:25] He was the Ursa, an alien that tracks people by fear smells.

[3:29] No, that's in After Earth.

Dan McCoy

[3:30] It was Dr. Hill.

[3:32] Jonah Hill.

[3:32] Everyone's favorite character from that movie, Dr. Hill.

[3:35] We can all remember his catchphrase, hey, there's a bunch of spook-em-ups around here.

[3:40] His catchphrase, who ordered the ghosts?

[3:42] Yep.

Elliott Kalan

[3:44] So, After Earth, but it wasn't advertised as a directed by M. Shyamalan movie.

[3:48] It was advertised as...

[3:49] No, because they've caught on that that's box office poison.

[3:51] It was advertised as a Will Smith, Jaden Smith, box office smash.

[3:57] A tentpole film much like The Pursuit of Happiness, except with more spaceships and mumbly language

[4:02] in a future accent that's hard to understand at times.

Dan McCoy

[4:05] But with a proper spelling of happiness.

Stuart Wellington

[4:08] And you probably saw trailers for this, along with trailers to Oblivion.

[4:11] They are not the same movie.

[4:13] No.

[4:13] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[4:14] Even though they look very similar.

[4:15] I get the feeling that I would enjoy Oblivion more.

Elliott Kalan

[4:17] They're also not the same as Elysium, even though those trailers look kind of similar.

[4:21] Yeah, it's got a robot suit, I think.

[4:22] And the costumes are not the same as Game of Thrones, even though they look very similar.

[4:27] Yeah, there's a lot of doublets.

[4:28] A lot of slashed leather doublets.

[4:30] Leather doublets.

[4:31] Timeless.

[4:33] So, were you going to open a new clothing line?

[4:34] Yes.

[4:34] Mostly leather doublets?

Stuart Wellington

[4:35] Stuart Slash Leather Doublets.

[4:38] You've heard of Slash Fiction.

[4:40] Now you want something that isn't a story.

[4:43] It's a piece of clothing.

[4:45] Stuart Slash Leather Doublets.

[4:46] That's a pretty long plug.

Elliott Kalan

[4:47] Kind of a clunky tagline.

[4:49] How about like, you've heard of Slash Fiction, these are the real thing.

Dan McCoy

[4:53] No, it doesn't make sense, though.

[4:55] Well, that they're real.

Elliott Kalan

[4:56] How about this?

[4:57] Doublets, doublets, doublets.

[4:59] Why settle for just one when you could doublet?

[5:02] Yeah.

[5:03] Exactly.

[5:04] So anyway, Stuart Wellington Slash Leather Doublets, soon to be in a gaming or cosplay store near you.

[5:10] In case you want to dress up like a caveman in the year 1500 BC, which is not when cavemen were around.

[5:17] Sure.

[5:18] Or a spaceman in the year 4000 AD.

Stuart Wellington

[5:20] You want to look like a Star Trek guy on the set of next year's Game of Thrones spinoff?

Elliott Kalan

[5:24] Yep.

[5:25] What's next year's Game of Thrones?

[5:27] It's called Star Trek The Thrones.

[5:28] Yep.

[5:29] It's a prequel.

[5:31] So let's talk about it.

[5:31] This movie is set in the future after Earth.

[5:34] Yeah.

[5:34] We open with an explosion on a spaceship.

[5:38] Will Smith and Jaden Smith are in trouble.

[5:40] Jaden Smith is lying hurt in a forest somewhere.

[5:44] And I was like, you know what?

[5:45] This jumped into the action really fast.

[5:47] Like, that's not bad.

[5:48] Then the voiceover started.

[5:50] Like a slap in the face.

[5:52] Like being hit with a wet fish.

Stuart Wellington

[5:54] It's not just any voiceover.

[5:56] It's Jaden Smith doing a voiceover in this like mumbly patois future language they use.

Elliott Kalan

[6:00] And now it's very, I want us to try to establish some ground rules because Jaden Smith is a teenager.

[6:05] Sure.

[6:05] He's a kid.

[6:06] He's a minor.

[6:07] Let's not hit him too hard.

[6:08] But let's just say off the top of the bat, he is totally without charisma or chops.

[6:13] I refuse to play by your rules.

[6:15] I just feel like we should be fair to someone who is not a legal adult.

Stuart Wellington

[6:19] Well, like when I make fun of him for his inability to pronounce words in this movie, it's not his fault.

[6:26] It's the director's choice or whoever's choice to make it the way it is.

[6:30] To use some kind of future accent.

Dan McCoy

[6:31] It was hard to tell.

[6:32] Like everyone had like this weird future patois that we couldn't understand.

[6:35] Let's just say one thing.

[6:36] It was mumbly.

[6:37] It was not patois.

[6:38] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[6:38] No.

[6:39] A patois to me involves like a pigeon language of some kind.

[6:43] They were not using made up words.

[6:45] They were just pronouncing things slightly wrong.

Dan McCoy

[6:46] They were just pronouncing things as if they were from like a weird part of Baltimore or Philadelphia.

[6:49] Yeah, where people walk around with stuff in their mouth.

Elliott Kalan

[6:51] Yeah, where everyone is gravel in their mouths and they drop a lot of letters from their pronunciations.

Dan McCoy

[6:56] Yeah, but I honestly could not tell a lot of the time whether it was the director's fault or whether Jaden Smith as an inexperienced actor just wasn't articulating as well as he should be.

[7:05] I think it was a little bit of both.

Stuart Wellington

[7:06] It's an interesting accent that as soon as the characters become really emotional, they just forget about the accent entirely.

Elliott Kalan

[7:13] It's something I call Keanu Reeves syndrome.

[7:15] Yeah.

[7:15] He could be from the south in a movie.

[7:18] He could be English.

[7:19] As soon as something big happens, he just sounds like a California surfer dude.

[7:23] Okay.

[7:24] So, After Earth.

[7:25] Should we talk about the plot briefly?

[7:26] There's not a lot of story in the movie, but there's enough.

[7:28] So, in voiceover, it's explained to us that environmental cataclysm, as Wikipedia describes it, has made the Earth uninhabitable and humans have gone off and colonized space, especially a new world called Nova Prime.

[7:41] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[7:41] All stuff we don't really need to know.

[7:43] We could have assumed.

[7:44] Let's carry on.

Elliott Kalan

[7:44] Wait, there's even more we need to know.

[7:46] We don't need to know.

[7:46] A thousand years after that, the United Ranger Corps, which is basically just a bunch of soldiers, you know, it's like the army, led by, I guess, Will Smith's character, General Cipher Rage.

[7:58] That's right.

[7:59] That's an awesome name.

[8:00] His first name is Cipher, and his last name is Rage.

Dan McCoy

[8:02] Now, Rage is spelled slightly differently.

[8:04] It has an I in it.

Elliott Kalan

[8:05] Yeah.

[8:05] But otherwise, his name still sounds ridiculous.

[8:08] It sounds like a 14-year-old's idea for what his stage name is going to be when his metal band's bone sex takes off.

Dan McCoy

[8:17] M. Night Shyamalan was sifting through George Lucas's trash can and found his name.

Elliott Kalan

[8:23] And found the name Sifo Diaz and was like, this isn't dumb enough.

[8:26] Let's make it Cipher Rage.

[8:29] Cipher Rage does sound like a Terminator knockoff that you would have seen in your video store in 1996.

Stuart Wellington

[8:35] He's the hard-boiled space detective who hunts down Elan's Lee's Bago or whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[8:39] And everyone has like little pieces of metal glued to their face.

[8:43] Yeah.

[8:44] Cipher Rage.

[8:46] And everyone lives on the internet somehow.

[8:48] But anyway, there's aliens who attack humans, and to do this, they breed a monster called an Ursa,

[8:56] which is a blind, you know, basically kind of cat monster thing.

Dan McCoy

[9:01] Yeah, it's like a, I don't know, it looks like a...

[9:04] It's not a bear, right?

Elliott Kalan

[9:06] It's not a bear.

[9:06] It looks, if anything, it looks like the kind of animals that were in Wayne Barlow's book, Expedition.

[9:11] If anyone's seen that?

Dan McCoy

[9:12] Yeah, it's got a bit of a, I don't know, like the bugs from Starship Troopers look to it a bit.

Elliott Kalan

[9:17] Yeah, but there's a little bit of like the monsters from Cowboys and Aliens.

[9:20] It's like a big, bald, naked mole rat that's huge, and it's got big teeth and no eyes,

[9:25] and like spikes that it impales people with.

[9:27] Sharp, crabby hands.

[9:28] And it loves to impale people on tree branches.

[9:30] Like that's its serial killer MO, is that it impales people on tree branches.

Stuart Wellington

[9:34] It looks kind of like an attempt to be a scarier version of one of the monsters from, I think it's Spirited Away.

[9:43] Okay.

[9:44] The thing with all the arms and like a big, fat body.

Elliott Kalan

[9:47] I guess so.

[9:48] It looks, yeah, yeah, I can see that.

[9:49] It's like a pretty low-rent imitation of like a Guillermo del Toro monster in some ways.

[9:53] Yeah, but the point is.

[9:54] Or like a bad, it's like a bad Guy Davis design for BPRD, where Guy Davis would be like,

[10:00] eh, this isn't so good, and throw it away.

Dan McCoy

[10:02] It doesn't matter so much what it looks like, but what matters is what it does, which is it senses fear.

Elliott Kalan

[10:06] It senses fear by smelling fear pheromones that are emitted by people when they see this hella monster coming towards them.

[10:14] And so Cypher has learned how to, and taught the rangers to suppress their fear pheromones,

[10:20] because as he says, danger is real, but fear is a choice.

[10:23] And so the monster can't smell them, and it is invisible to the monster.

[10:26] This is called ghosting.

[10:30] It seems there's a ghost in the machine, and the ghost name is Cypher Rage.

Stuart Wellington

[10:34] Now, wait a minute.

[10:35] So if it, so how does it like go around the woods and stuff?

[10:40] Does it smell the fear of the trees?

Elliott Kalan

[10:42] Yeah, it just bumps into shit all the time.

Stuart Wellington

[10:44] Yeah.

[10:45] And it does like things to make people freaked out by like taking people at kills and sticks their dead bodies on trees.

Elliott Kalan

[10:51] Yeah, I don't, it, look.

[10:53] That's called the Ursa signature.

[10:54] It has a tree sense.

[10:55] It has a tree sense.

[10:56] Yeah, there is a part where they're seeing if this Ursa is around,

[10:59] and there's a computer that detects whether the Ursa signature is located,

[11:04] and it basically just means, are there any dead things stuck on trees?

[11:06] If so, then yes, it's an Ursa.

[11:09] But Jaden Smith plays Cypher's son named Katai, Katai Rage, who is in Ranger Cadet School and is the fastest runner of the group, as we learn in his opening scene.

[11:19] But unfortunately, he's good in exercises, but in the field he falls apart.

[11:24] He still feels fear, and he is not promoted to Ranger Cadet.

Stuart Wellington

[11:27] Which seems to be like the key skill you need to be a Ranger, right?

[11:31] Because it's the only way to ghost.

Dan McCoy

[11:31] You've got to ghost around, man.

[11:33] Yeah, come on.

Stuart Wellington

[11:34] That's what the movie Ghost was about.

Dan McCoy

[11:36] Not being able to be seen by an Ursa.

[11:37] It's about how Patrick Swayze, yeah, could go around and tell that evil guy in the subway played by, what's his face?

[11:46] Schiavelli?

[11:46] Yeah, Schiavelli ruined his career as a ghoster by teaching him how to kick cans around.

[11:53] Yep.

Elliott Kalan

[11:54] And the only thing that could stop Ursa's was pottery-based romance.

Stuart Wellington

[11:58] Speaking of kicking cans, our hero throws a lot of tantrums in this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[12:02] He certainly does.

[12:03] It feels like every other scene has Jaden Smith smashing something or getting mad and crying or shouting to the skies.

[12:12] I should be a Ranger!

[12:13] Anyway, his dad is coming home for the first time in years.

[12:16] His dad, Cypher Rage.

[12:17] Cypher Rage, who's like a hero to everybody.

[12:19] And he has to break the news to him that he didn't make it to Ranger school.

[12:22] Cypher Rage goes, they have an argument like dads and sons do.

Stuart Wellington

[12:26] Over dinner.

[12:27] So they made it kind of realistic.

Elliott Kalan

[12:29] Yeah, but they're eating with their three-pronged space chopsticks.

[12:33] Because it's the future.

[12:35] And now here's the interesting thing.

[12:36] So much more work seems to have been put into the design of this movie than anything else.

[12:40] And they live in this future that's very white and organic.

[12:43] It's all made out of linen.

[12:44] And made out of flowing linen sheets and bamboo.

[12:48] It's this weirdly hippie-ish future.

Stuart Wellington

[12:50] It's not organic enough for it to be like a Cronenberg future.

Elliott Kalan

[12:54] No, it's not like they're living in the guts of a giant building animal.

[12:58] They don't like grow guns made out of pulsing organs or anything.

[13:02] But if they did...

[13:03] But it's all very soft.

[13:05] It feels like this is what...

[13:06] If women ruled the world, maybe this is what the future would look like.

[13:09] No hard edges.

Dan McCoy

[13:10] Bed, Bath & Beyond invented a future.

Elliott Kalan

[13:13] That's mainly it too.

[13:14] It's a future where they chose...

[13:16] They had a scented soap and they said, how do we design an entire civilization around this?

Dan McCoy

[13:21] But also, as I said during the movie, I feel like in a lot of futures, I guess in the future people don't have stuff anymore.

[13:27] Because everything is so empty.

[13:29] Everyone's into minimal living.

[13:31] Yeah.

[13:31] You know?

Elliott Kalan

[13:31] It's the small living movement.

[13:33] Yeah.

[13:34] They're all Buddhists.

[13:34] That thing about owning a hundred objects and keeping it that way?

[13:37] That's the law in the future of After Earth.

[13:40] What a dystopian horror that is.

[13:41] It's a dystopian future where people are not allowed to own too much stuff.

[13:44] Can one of them be a double-ended blade staff?

[13:47] It has to be.

[13:48] Because that's the only way you're going to fight an Ursa.

[13:49] Because guns apparently don't exist anymore.

[13:52] Sure.

[13:52] Which would be...

[13:53] We never see one, ever.

Stuart Wellington

[13:54] You would totally want a gun, because then you could be way far away.

[13:57] You couldn't smell your fear and you could fucking blast it.

[14:00] Yeah, come on.

Elliott Kalan

[14:00] Just shoot it up.

[14:01] Anyway.

[14:02] Like a missile launcher.

[14:04] It's the only way to be sure.

[14:06] So anyway, Cypher and Kitai have a fight, and Cypher tells his wife,

[14:10] I'm going to retire after this next mission where I'm going to some planet somewhere to deliver a big thing.

[14:15] And she says, your son needs a father, so he agrees to take his son Kitai with him on this mission.

Stuart Wellington

[14:21] Doesn't he have plenty of time after he retires to spend time with his stupid son?

Elliott Kalan

[14:24] You'd think so, but apparently they need to do it right now.

[14:26] Yeah.

[14:27] So they go on this mission, and Kitai is a total crybaby wuss.

[14:32] Everything makes him upset, whether it's sitting in a chair or walking up to a big asteroid egg where there's an Ursa inside of it.

Dan McCoy

[14:39] Yeah, he walks into this area that has a big sign that says, hazardous area only, like, what is it?

[14:46] Rangers only, no Jaden Smith's allowed.

[14:48] Basically.

Stuart Wellington

[14:49] And he's like, rules don't apply to me.

Dan McCoy

[14:51] I'm the son of the star.

[14:52] Well, that's the thing.

[14:52] I am the star.

[14:53] That's the point I made during the movie, which was just like, yeah, sure, Jaden Smith, whatever, he's a kid, don't want to make too much fun of him.

[15:00] But you do have to make his character not seem like an entitled kid if we know that Jaden Smith is the guy.

[15:07] He's the son of the movie star.

[15:08] The son of Will Smith, huge movie star who's making this movie basically to propel Jaden Smith into stardom.

[15:14] Don't make him then this kind of kid who's like, whatever, signs don't apply to me.

Stuart Wellington

[15:19] I'm going in here.

[15:20] You know?

[15:21] So you're saying he already has strikes against him.

[15:23] Yeah.

[15:23] To get, like, if they just pick some random kid like a real Jake Lloyd off the street.

[15:27] Yeah, you know, a future star like Jake Lloyd.

Elliott Kalan

[15:30] Well, it's the same way that, like, This is 40, which I didn't see, I gotta admit, because I had no interest in it.

[15:35] I feel like a lot of the criticism about it involves, like, this is just Judd Apatow and his family.

[15:39] We're just watching his family hanging out.

[15:41] Like, there was this extra level of entertainment the movie had to reach to justify, why are we watching a movie where Judd Apatow's just casting his kids in it?

[15:49] And this is the same way with After Earth.

[15:51] Like, Jaden Smith has to reach it up to a high enough level where we're like, oh, he does deserve to have a movie built around him beyond the fact that his dad is Will Smith.

[15:59] And he fails to do it.

Dan McCoy

[16:00] He's the only guy who can pull this mission off.

[16:02] Yeah.

[16:03] I think, uh.

[16:03] Wait, who?

[16:04] Wait.

[16:04] Jaden Smith.

[16:05] What mission?

[16:05] The mission of being charismatic.

Stuart Wellington

[16:08] Yeah, but apparently he couldn't.

[16:09] No.

[16:10] So anyway.

[16:11] Elliot, digging into Jaden Smith already.

[16:13] Chill out, bro.

[16:14] Sheep those claws, kitty.

Elliott Kalan

[16:16] What's wrong with this?

[16:17] He smells fear and he attacks.

[16:18] I can be both.

[16:19] I'm going to give him some constructive criticism.

[16:21] Jaden.

[16:22] Get more charismatic.

[16:23] Maybe.

[16:24] Stop being such an ass.

Stuart Wellington

[16:25] Focus your ability points in future experience games on charisma stat.

Elliott Kalan

[16:30] And not on dexterity, which you're very good at.

[16:33] Clearly.

[16:33] He outruns CGI gorillas and stuff like this.

[16:36] Let's give your classic shit sandwiches.

[16:37] Stuart's described it.

[16:38] You're very good.

[16:39] Okay, you're in great shape, Jaden, and I believed that you were running around and being fast.

[16:43] You're not that charismatic.

[16:45] Thank you for that comment, but explain.

[16:47] And you're not.

[16:48] You're not.

[16:50] Well, I think you need to express to us the likability that the other people who cast you

[16:55] in this see within you.

[16:56] I'm hearing the words you're saying, but you're not making me understand.

[17:00] You're kind of a mealy-mouthed, petulant sort of person.

[17:03] I'm thinking maybe like smile once during the movie or show us a moment of humor or playfulness.

[17:09] The same thing that has made your dad a billion-dollar movie star.

Stuart Wellington

[17:12] So I can make a couple of jokes, say things like, that wasn't cool, and you don't got it, dude, etc.

Elliott Kalan

[17:20] Exactly.

[17:20] Yeah, great stuff.

[17:21] Great stuff, Jaden.

[17:22] And now the other end of it, you're a fine-looking boy, and you'll grow up into a handsome man.

[17:27] Thanks.

Stuart Wellington

[17:27] So plenty of butt shots of me in this movie, right?

Elliott Kalan

[17:29] That was the other thing is, it seemed like M. Night Shyamalan was being paid by the butt shot.

[17:33] There's a lot of shots from below.

[17:35] Which, by the way, directors, that works in certain movies.

Dan McCoy

[17:40] If you're making a bikini car wash, that's a great way to be paid.

[17:43] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[17:44] Or you're making, if you're Tinto Brass, then yes, pay him by the butt shot.

Dan McCoy

[17:47] If you're making a movie Cheeky, which is about butts.

[17:51] Then yes, you'll make a lot off it.

Elliott Kalan

[17:53] But if you're making an action-adventure sci-fi film.

Stuart Wellington

[17:59] Wait, wait, wait, you can make an adventure sci-fi film that's also about butts.

Elliott Kalan

[18:03] Yeah, but it would be like a porn parody, like Flesh Gordon or something like that.

[18:08] You can't make a serious science fiction movie that is about butts.

[18:12] Okay.

[18:12] Unless it's called like...

[18:13] Barbara.

[18:14] Like Butt Invasion or something, and there's aliens.

[18:16] Sure.

[18:16] Except that's basically just Dreamcatcher.

Dan McCoy

[18:20] Think about how much better that movie would have done.

[18:23] That's a pretty serious sci-fi movie.

[18:23] It was called Butt Invasion.

[18:25] Or Butt Invaders.

[18:26] I mean, I certainly would have, like, my expectations.

[18:29] Butt Invasion would be where they should be.

[18:31] Rather than me being like, oh, I'm seeing this high-class adaptation of Stephen King.

[18:37] Oh, wait, hold on, it's about butt weasels.

[18:39] I didn't know that.

Elliott Kalan

[18:39] It's amazing that one man's adaptations can, I guess this is the way it is for many authors,

[18:43] but can encompass everything from The Shining to Dreamcatcher.

Stuart Wellington

[18:48] And be pretty accurate to the source material, to be honest with it.

Elliott Kalan

[18:53] So anyway, they're on this spaceship.

[18:55] They go into an asteroid field.

[18:56] Oh, shit, we haven't gone to the crash yet.

[18:58] No, they're on, I'll go fast.

[18:59] They're in a spaceship.

[19:00] They go through an asteroid field.

[19:02] And Will Smith is like, let's avoid this asteroid field.

[19:04] And the guys are the...

[19:05] I couldn't understand what anybody was saying.

[19:06] The co-pilots are, this is the mumbliest, lowest mixed part of the movie.

[19:10] He's saying, let's go through this, let's not, let's avoid this asteroid field.

[19:13] And the co-pilots are like, we're cool.

[19:16] Asteroids hit the space shuttle.

[19:18] They mumble techno jargon to each other for like a thousand minutes.

[19:22] It's really, it takes forever.

[19:24] Short story short, long story short, the spaceship crashes.

[19:27] Short story long.

[19:28] Short story long.

[19:30] So the gift of the Magi is a tale.

[19:33] I'll tell you over three hours.

Dan McCoy

[19:35] Let me explain first the reference of the Magi.

[19:37] The Magi were the three wise men who...

[19:40] Who visited the Christ child.

[19:42] Now the Christ child is...

[19:43] Now there's a messiah character in many different...

Elliott Kalan

[19:47] Now a child is a young version of a human.

[19:49] A youngling, you might know them as.

[19:51] Humans are the main bipedal ape simian descended inhabitants of Earth.

[19:57] Let me back up.

[19:57] The Big Bang.

[20:00] Nothing's bigger.

[20:01] Nothing's bangier than the Big Bang coming soon to a universe near you.

Stuart Wellington

[20:04] And speaking of Big Bangs, the ship crashes.

[20:07] The ship crashes.

Elliott Kalan

[20:08] Everyone on it seems to have been killed except for Jaden and Will.

[20:12] Will has...

[20:13] That's convenient.

[20:13] Will has had a bad arterial break to his leg.

[20:16] Yeah.

[20:17] And he's spurting blood.

[20:18] They gotta get out of there fast.

[20:19] Jaden has to get a...

[20:21] He has...

[20:21] Their beacon is broken.

[20:23] Their emergency beacon.

[20:24] He's gotta get to the tail end of the ship all the way, like a mile away through jungle to...

[20:29] 100 kilometers.

[20:31] Is it 100 kilometers?

[20:32] Okay.

[20:32] 100 kilometers away.

[20:33] He's gotta access that beacon.

[20:35] But they're on Earth in the future.

[20:38] Somehow the atmosphere's changed somehow.

[20:40] That makes it harder for people to breathe.

[20:42] And he only has so many...

[20:43] It's either the atmosphere's changed or just humans have evolved differently.

[20:46] Yeah.

[20:47] It's been a while, right?

[20:48] Hey, look.

[20:48] It's been a thousand years.

[20:49] People are not gonna evolve away from breathing oxygen in a thousand years.

Stuart Wellington

[20:52] Yeah, but if your body gets used to breathing in a slightly different type of, like, amount of oxygen...

Dan McCoy

[20:57] Yeah.

[20:57] ...of oxygen.

[20:58] Point is, Jaden Smith has these cookies that, like, basically...

[21:01] They look like...

[21:02] He has these...

[21:03] The pill boxes that, like, birth control come in.

Elliott Kalan

[21:05] He has these little discs that look like round hamantash in...

[21:08] But they look like old people cookies that have raspberry, like, gel on the top.

Dan McCoy

[21:12] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[21:13] And he has to take one...

[21:14] He has four.

[21:15] Prune jam.

Dan McCoy

[21:15] He drinks some, like, fucking magic liquid out of them that makes them be able to breathe.

Elliott Kalan

[21:20] He drinks breathing elixir out of them.

[21:22] And he only has four.

[21:23] He only has four...

[21:24] That's four days of grandma cookies.

[21:25] That means it's gonna take him that much to get to where the beacon is.

[21:28] But, uh-oh, actually, some of them were broken.

[21:31] He doesn't have four.

[21:32] But he doesn't tell his dad that because he wants to go on this mission and prove himself.

[21:35] Yeah.

[21:36] So his dad watches him through a magic backpack and communicates with him to give him advice.

[21:41] He takes his dad's collapsible double-pointed spear, you know, saber.

[21:46] Yeah.

[21:46] So he's like a regular Ray Park Darth Maul with his double-edged thingamabob weapon.

[21:51] And right off the bat, he goes in and angers some baboons for no reason.

[21:56] His dad is yelling at him, stand down.

[21:58] And instead he throws a rock at a baboon.

[22:01] He gets chased by them.

Dan McCoy

[22:02] Yeah.

[22:03] Well, let's back up and say that...

[22:04] What's to back up to?

[22:05] Well, no, we'll just point out that Jaden Smith's journey...

[22:08] Jaden Smith is the son of Will Smith.

[22:10] Jaden Smith's...

[22:10] Megastar.

[22:11] Jaden Smith's journey in this movie is that he needs to learn to not feel fear.

Elliott Kalan

[22:16] He needs to learn to grow up and not feel his fear.

[22:18] And we eventually learn that over time, we learn through flashbacks that there's some backstory to them.

[22:24] That Will Smith had an older daughter, Jaden Smith's older sister, Katai's older sister.

[22:30] Cypher Rage had this daughter.

[22:31] And she was killed because dad, Cypher, was away on a mission when an Ursa attacked their house.

[22:38] And she put Jaden...

[22:40] A regular home invasion.

[22:42] She put Jaden into some kind of globe for growing plants.

[22:46] And so that his pheromones wouldn't get out and Ursa wouldn't smell it.

[22:49] She put him under a dome.

[22:50] She put him...

[22:51] It was like under the dome.

[22:52] If the dome was big enough to hold one child.

[22:54] And it protected you from Ursa's.

[22:57] So she was killed.

[22:58] Which, presumably, under the dome.

[22:59] So Cypher Rage is killed.

[23:01] So Cypher blames himself for his daughter being dead and blames Jaden a little bit.

[23:07] Although, what was Jaden supposed to do?

[23:08] He's a little kid.

[23:09] Yeah.

[23:10] He's a five or six-year-old supposed to fight off an Ursa?

[23:13] I don't think so.

Stuart Wellington

[23:13] Yeah, he's going to ghost all over the place.

[23:15] I don't think so.

Elliott Kalan

[23:15] But more important, Jaden blames himself for his sister's death.

[23:18] And he needs to get over that.

[23:20] And realize that he needs to...

[23:22] That it was okay for him to feel fear then.

[23:24] But now he shouldn't or some stuff.

[23:26] So anyway, that's his arc, his life goal, mission.

Dan McCoy

[23:30] But that translates him to him acting erratic and crazy and like a coward for most of the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[23:35] And it's one of those things where like teenagers act really erratic and they get mad out of nowhere and stuff.

[23:40] If that was what they're playing up, I'd be like, this is pretty realistic.

[23:42] Like if I had been 15 and I was on a planet and I had to get somewhere, I'd probably act out and get mad and frustrated.

[23:48] But instead he just comes off as like petulant and doing stupid shit.

[23:52] Like a baboon's right there.

[23:53] Why'd you throw a rock at him?

[23:54] A hundred baboons come out and chase him.

[23:56] He runs into a river.

[23:57] He gets a leech on him that makes him all puffy.

[23:59] He's got to inject some magic medicine into him that takes away leech puffiness.

[24:03] And it turns out that because of something that we did to the earth, every night it gets freezing cold.

[24:10] Which doesn't square with the fact that he's in this lush kind of Pacific Northwest rainforest.

Stuart Wellington

[24:15] Yeah, like temperate forest land.

Elliott Kalan

[24:18] With full of baboons and eagles and stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[24:20] Old growth trees.

Elliott Kalan

[24:22] So how does it work?

[24:24] We don't know.

[24:25] Nobody did a lot of ecologies.

Dan McCoy

[24:26] I mean we get one scene of like the plants curling up a little bit.

[24:28] For the night.

Elliott Kalan

[24:29] But I don't think that...

[24:29] That scene would have been a hundred times better if the plants had been like Looney Tunes plants.

[24:34] And they'd been like...

[24:35] Exactly.

[24:36] And curling up there like putting nightcaps on.

[24:38] Good night tree.

[24:40] Good night fern.

[24:41] Like someone pulls a chain that turns the sun off.

Dan McCoy

[24:44] Yeah.

[24:44] Like one plant pulls itself down and it wraps up like a shade on a window.

Elliott Kalan

[24:49] Yeah, yeah.

[24:49] And there's like a mushroom that folds into a tree like a Murphy bed.

[24:53] That would be hilarious.

[24:56] And then they all sing some song from the Warner Brothers song library.

[24:59] Yeah.

[25:00] That they're trying to promote.

[25:01] You know.

[25:02] Yeah.

[25:02] I only have ice for you or something like that.

[25:05] I only have ice for you.

[25:07] There you go.

[25:08] That's the song that Mr. Freeze would sing.

Stuart Wellington

[25:10] That should have been in the movie we just watched.

Elliott Kalan

[25:12] Shouldn't it have been?

[25:13] That was Mr. Freeze's first dance song at his wedding was I only have ice for you.

[25:20] He's a romantic guy.

[25:21] He's trying to unfreeze his wife.

[25:23] No, I know.

[25:23] I don't know why he just doesn't stick her in the microwave.

[25:25] And he liked ice buns even before because of his name.

[25:29] His name, Carl Freeze.

Dan McCoy

[25:34] So yeah, that happened.

Elliott Kalan

[25:36] Did anyone ever make a joke about a movie called They Call Me Mr. Freeze?

[25:40] Well, now you did.

[25:41] Now they did.

[25:42] So it's been done.

[25:42] Anyway, but one night when he gets to a hot zone, which is one of the bullshit warm areas

[25:48] the movie made up so that Jaden Smith doesn't freeze to death.

[25:50] And he just runs to him at night.

Dan McCoy

[25:52] Video game checkpoints.

Elliott Kalan

[25:54] Yeah.

[25:54] His father tells him the story when he learned how to ghost, which was he was fighting an

[25:58] Ursa and they fell into a river.

[26:00] And he was about to drown.

[26:02] And he realized he shouldn't be scared.

[26:04] And he didn't.

[26:05] And he won.

Stuart Wellington

[26:06] You told that story much more excitingly than Will Smith did in the movie we just watched.

Elliott Kalan

[26:10] Most of that story is communicated.

[26:11] Do we get a flashback?

[26:12] No.

[26:13] Do we visualize any of this?

[26:14] No.

[26:14] We see Will Smith literally just kind of lackadaisically just sitting there in a monotone talking

[26:18] to the camera.

[26:20] Yeah.

[26:21] Just really slowly telling the story.

Dan McCoy

[26:23] And this is a moment to say that like Will Smith, one of the most charismatic movie stars

[26:27] ever.

[26:28] Yeah.

[26:28] I would say ever.

[26:29] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[26:29] I would say you drop Will Smith into the 30s or the 40s and he would have been just as

[26:33] successful.

[26:34] Like incredibly charismatic, incredibly likable, talented.

[26:37] He's a double threat.

[26:38] He can dance, sing, act with S3.

Dan McCoy

[26:41] But he seems to have decided like, oh, I don't want to do that anymore.

[26:45] What I want to do is to not be any of those things.

Elliott Kalan

[26:47] He's stretching by being serious here.

[26:50] Yeah.

[26:50] And he's playing kind of this Martinet drill sergeant, you know, emotionless fellow who

[26:55] he's shut himself off from fear.

[26:57] But does that mean he's also shut himself off from love?

[27:00] But also I feel like there are actors out there.

Dan McCoy

[27:03] I mean, there's no love interest in this movie, right?

Elliott Kalan

[27:05] There's his wife.

[27:06] He has a wife.

[27:06] Yeah, but she's on a different plan.

[27:08] And Jaden Smith has a love interest, a big vulture that saves him.

[27:11] Sure, it's vulture buddy.

[27:12] Or it's a contour, I guess.

[27:14] But there are actors out there.

[27:15] It's vulture buddy Volturo.

[27:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[27:17] There are actors who can be like tough and emotionless and still have a lot of charisma.

[27:21] And I feel like...

[27:21] Name one.

[27:22] Will Smith just doesn't seem to know how to do that.

[27:25] Okay, Tommy Lee Jones.

[27:25] Yeah, exactly.

[27:26] Name two.

[27:28] Josh Brolin.

[27:29] Okay, that's three.

[27:32] Name four.

[27:33] Shit, I don't know.

[27:34] I guess you're right, Ellie.

[27:35] I can't name four.

[27:36] Okay, Clint Eastwood too.

[27:37] Yeah, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[27:38] You're right.

[27:38] A lot of people can do it.

[27:40] And Will Smith is playing against his strengths here and not in a way that helps him.

Stuart Wellington

[27:44] And do you think that was a conscious choice on his part so that he could give his son more

[27:48] of the spotlight?

Dan McCoy

[27:49] I think it was probably.

[27:51] But Jaden is not picking up the slack.

Elliott Kalan

[27:53] I think that's definitely why he took a passive role in the movie, where Will Smith spends

[27:56] most of the movie sitting down and talking to his son through a camera.

Stuart Wellington

[28:00] While he's about to pass out from blood loss.

[28:03] Why oh why could they have not given his computer like a sassy voice to add a little bit of levity

[28:09] to this movie?

Elliott Kalan

[28:10] Or any voice.

[28:10] Yes.

[28:11] There's, so Will Smith also takes a drug that makes him drowsy because he's dying of blood

[28:16] loss.

[28:16] But it means that you have a movie in which the biggest star in the movie, Will Smith,

[28:20] seems it's a boring movie and he can barely stay awake.

[28:23] Like the star of the movie is barely fighting enough to stay awake through his film.

[28:27] You know.

[28:29] Anyway, so eventually he learns the truth that Katai doesn't have enough breath cookies

[28:34] to get to where he's going.

[28:36] He needs four.

[28:36] He needs three and a half and he only has two left.

[28:38] So he says abort the mission, abort.

[28:40] But he's, and Katai is on the top of a cliff and they have an argument about, was I supposed

[28:45] to save my sister?

[28:45] I was just a kid and that kind of thing.

[28:47] You were never there for us.

[28:48] And the argument.

[28:49] Wasting valuable breath cookies.

[28:50] Comes out of nowhere and he's wasting breath cookie time.

[28:53] And so he says, I'm going to finish the mission.

[28:55] The only way to do it, to jump down from this cliff instead of hiking down, he can save

[28:59] himself one and a half breath cookies by the sky jump.

Dan McCoy

[29:02] Yeah, he's going to base jump with like a fucking, he's got like a Rocky the Flying Squirrel

[29:07] suit on.

Elliott Kalan

[29:07] Because his multi-suit, which he's wearing, which is this magic leather suit that does

[29:13] whatever he needs and it changes color a bunch of times for seemingly no reason, has...

[29:17] Camouflage.

[29:17] It has Flying Squirrel Flaps.

Stuart Wellington

[29:19] To camouflage him from the blind monster that smells fear.

Elliott Kalan

[29:23] He should have a suit that releases a pheromone.

[29:26] A distracting pheromone.

[29:27] That makes perfect sense.

[29:28] Like for a sexy lady Ursa.

[29:30] So the Ursa falls in love with him and wants to bring him flowers and chocolates.

[29:34] Puts on a hat and a bow tie.

[29:37] Yeah.

[29:38] Chicks himself out in the mirror.

Stuart Wellington

[29:41] And puts his claw around his shoulder.

[29:44] Oh, fresh.

[29:45] He keeps trying to sneak away and he keeps dragging him back.

Elliott Kalan

[29:48] Again, another way this movie would have been better if it turned into a Looney Tune.

[29:53] If this movie, instead of starring Will Smith and Jaden Smith, had starred Bugs Bunny and like Burt Bunny, his son, it would have been way better.

[30:01] Burt Bunny?

[30:02] Come on.

[30:02] What's a better name for his son?

[30:03] I don't know.

[30:04] His dad, his name is Bugs.

[30:05] You don't want to fight that.

[30:06] That's true.

[30:07] Bugs Jr.?

[30:08] B.J. Bunny.

[30:09] There you go.

[30:09] B.J. Bunny.

[30:10] All right.

[30:10] I think that character probably exists.

[30:12] Well, that's B.J. Funny Bunny exists.

[30:13] Sure.

[30:14] Anyway, so he sky jumps down, but he's attacked, which just means floating through the air.

[30:19] He's attacked by a giant condor, which Stuart made the point that this is ridiculous, that the kid who's using his skysuit for the first time is more maneuverable than the bird that evolved to fly on this planet.

[30:31] But he gets caught.

[30:33] He gets caught, and he wakes up in a nest full of little cute baby birds that's being attacked by saber-toothed tigers.

[30:39] And he uses his double-edged spear to fight off the tigers too late.

[30:42] All the birds have been killed, and the condor, grief-stricken.

[30:45] He's not a cat person.

[30:47] He's a baby condor person.

[30:48] I wish his line would have been like, I'm really not a cat person.

[30:53] I'm allergic to cats.

[30:54] Allergic to death.

[30:55] And then throws the cat overboard or something.

Dan McCoy

[30:58] Yeah, but the condor sheds condor tears over its fallen kids.

[31:02] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[31:02] It's pretty sad.

[31:03] It's really sad.

[31:04] He goes to a cave.

[31:06] He sleeps next to a magma river.

[31:08] He sees the Lascaux cave paintings or some kind of mammoth cave paintings because those have been preserved excellently.

[31:14] And a flying snake.

[31:15] And a flying snake.

[31:16] A regular Quincecottle.

Dan McCoy

[31:17] He doesn't have any feathers.

[31:19] We see no other remnants of Earth.

[31:22] And as Stuart points out, there's no reason why this movie had to take place on Earth.

[31:25] Why does it have to be on Earth?

[31:26] The title's after Earth.

[31:27] Any fucking planet.

[31:29] Like, it's like, oh, it's just a planet that's a hot dog planet.

Stuart Wellington

[31:32] So they could do lazy animal design and just be like, let's take a snake, but make it flap around.

Elliott Kalan

[31:37] We'll make a bird, but it's big.

[31:39] Here's a baboon, but it looks a little different.

[31:40] Bigger baboon.

Stuart Wellington

[31:41] It's got a bunch of buddies.

[31:44] Normally, baboons only travel packs of ten.

[31:47] These ones travel packs of twenty.

Elliott Kalan

[31:49] That's how you know it's Earth in the future.

[31:51] They should have called this Planet Fear and not have it set on Earth.

[31:54] Perfect.

[31:55] Better title, better planet.

[31:57] Should have called it Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez.

Stuart Wellington

[31:59] It's not like they used any actual animals in the movie.

[32:01] It's all CGI.

[32:02] It's all CGI.

[32:03] Even the baby condor monsters are CGI.

Elliott Kalan

[32:06] Jaden Smith might be CGI.

[32:08] They used a real Ursa, though.

[32:09] Oh, okay.

[32:10] Interesting.

[32:10] Yeah.

[32:11] So anyway, he gets out of there.

[32:14] He's running out of capsules.

[32:15] He's plotting his course.

[32:16] Once he gets to a river, he builds a raft.

[32:18] He's like a regular Huckleberry Finn.

[32:20] He's going down the river.

[32:21] He falls asleep, and he has a dream of his sister.

[32:24] And his sister tells him...

[32:26] Practical special effects, though, right?

[32:28] And this is all practical special effects, by which we mean the actress playing his sister

[32:32] is just sitting there.

[32:32] Yeah.

[32:33] And she tells him, basically, to stop being mad and stop being afraid.

[32:38] That kind of shit.

[32:38] Yeah, stop being such a puss.

[32:39] That kind of shit.

[32:39] That's what he says.

[32:40] It's a real, like, Obi-Wan just telling Luke to do this stuff moment.

[32:43] Yeah.

[32:44] Except stupid.

[32:46] And you know it's a dream, because it's not really a ghost.

[32:48] Except she's going, wake up, wake up, Katai.

[32:50] Wake up.

[32:50] And he won't wake up.

[32:51] And then she turns in.

[32:52] She gives him a monster face for a moment.

[32:54] Where she's got, like, a slash and blood on her face, and he wakes up, and it's like...

Stuart Wellington

[32:59] It's like a PG-rated Large Marge.

[33:01] I mean, Large Marge was rated PG.

[33:03] Really?

[33:04] I thought she was terrifying.

Elliott Kalan

[33:05] I thought that was rated X for sure.

[33:08] Yeah, for sex.

[33:09] I watched that scene on YouTube recently, again, from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.

[33:13] And when I was a kid, I couldn't watch it.

[33:15] Yeah.

[33:15] I covered my eyes every time, just knowing it was...

[33:18] And I watched the movie all the time.

[33:19] I loved it.

[33:19] But just knowing it was coming, I was like, got to cover my eyes now.

[33:22] I don't want to see Large Marge.

[33:23] And I watched it again.

[33:23] It is the goofiest.

[33:25] It's so goofy.

[33:25] Like, it's two claymation cartoon eyes and a big mouth, and you hear, like, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.

[33:30] Like, it's the silliest thing.

[33:32] And as a kid...

[33:33] Well, it's so surprising.

[33:34] It's surprising.

[33:35] It's out of nowhere.

[33:35] But once you know it's coming.

[33:37] But as a kid, it was right up there with that one ghost in Ghostbusters who's driving

[33:40] a cab and looks like a grosser version of the Crypt Keeper.

Dan McCoy

[33:43] Yeah, he's like a decaying corpse.

[33:45] Those were the two things I was a kid.

[33:46] He's the Crypt Keeper's brother.

Elliott Kalan

[33:48] His less attractive, less charismatic brother.

[33:50] Yeah.

[33:51] He couldn't cut it in the pictures.

[33:52] Harold's...

[33:53] Harold's...

[33:53] Gary Crypt Keeper.

[33:54] Gary Crypt Keeper.

[33:55] Yeah, I drive a cab.

[33:56] Yeah, that's my brother who does the TV show and the comics and the movies.

[34:00] He's the real big shot in the family.

[34:02] I think he goes, he'll laugh.

[34:03] Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho.

[34:04] Whatever.

Dan McCoy

[34:05] Just because he comes up with puns.

[34:06] I didn't come up with puns.

[34:07] Yeah.

[34:08] Oh, it looks like you lost your head.

[34:10] Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Elliott Kalan

[34:11] We're driving into a dead end.

[34:12] Yeah, forget about it.

[34:13] Okay.

[34:14] Are you going to tip me or what?

[34:15] Thanks for nothing, pal.

[34:17] Taxi.

[34:18] Taxi here.

[34:18] Who wants a taxi?

[34:20] Oh, forget about it.

[34:21] She's also riding a pedicab.

[34:22] Where are you going?

[34:23] Brooklyn, I'm not going there.

[34:24] I'm not taking you to Brooklyn.

[34:25] Forget about it.

[34:26] I'm dead.

[34:26] I'm not stupid.

[34:29] I wouldn't be caught dead over there.

[34:31] Get it?

[34:31] Pun.

[34:31] Ha-ha-ha.

[34:32] Goodbye.

Dan McCoy

[34:33] Voiced by Sylvester Stallone.

Elliott Kalan

[34:35] Yeah.

[34:36] Young Sylvester Stallone.

Dan McCoy

[34:38] Young Sylvester Stallone.

[34:40] Yeah.

[34:40] Yep.

[34:40] Not John Cassir.

[34:42] In this case, Sylvester Stallone.

[34:44] Voicing the brother of the Crypt Keeper.

[34:47] The brother of the Crypt Keeper.

[34:47] Who doesn't have a TV show.

[34:48] I don't know why it's someone voicing him.

[34:50] Slumber.

Elliott Kalan

[34:50] Well, they started with the brother and then they worked their way towards the host.

[34:53] I got you.

[34:54] A lot of writers will do that when they're creating characters.

[34:56] They'll say, before I get started on my main character, what will help me shape him?

[34:59] Well, what's his brother like?

[35:01] I think that's how J.R. Tolkien wrote his main books.

[35:04] What's Bilbo's brother like?

[35:06] Bilbo.

[35:07] What's Sal Baggins like?

[35:08] I went with Bilbo and not Dildo.

[35:11] The obvious joke.

[35:12] Yeah.

[35:13] That is obvious.

[35:14] So obvious.

Stuart Wellington

[35:15] Too obvious.

[35:15] Even as a kid, the first time I read The Hobbit, I made that joke to myself and laughed.

Elliott Kalan

[35:19] When I read Board of the Rings, the Lord of the Rings parody from the National Lampoon,

[35:23] and they called him Dildo, I said, really?

[35:25] You could do better than that.

[35:26] Come on.

[35:28] Okay.

[35:28] So, Kitai's ghost sister wakes him up.

[35:31] It's getting cold out.

[35:32] Oh, no.

[35:33] He can't escape it.

[35:34] It's freezing.

[35:34] He passes out from breath coldness or something.

[35:37] Yeah.

[35:38] Luckily.

[35:38] Covered in a sheen of frost.

[35:40] Which was my favorite line Stuart had.

[35:43] He saw me and he goes, oh, he's an old man now.

[35:45] Because he has white frost in his hair.

[35:48] He had frosted tips.

[35:51] The condort that turns out saves him, drags him to his nest, and then dies, covering him

[35:55] in his body to keep him warm.

[35:56] Because that's the way birds work.

[35:58] If you do a bird a favor, the birds please to death, they stay dead, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[36:02] If you do a bird a favor, he'll never forget, and he'll help you in your eye on me.

Elliott Kalan

[36:07] You can't thaw out a dead bird and it just flies away.

[36:09] No, but birds have a real code of ethics.

[36:12] Yeah.

[36:12] If you do a bird a favor, they'll do you in return.

[36:15] But, and always remember this, never ask a bird for a favor or accept a gift or offering,

[36:20] for then you will owe them, and they will come back for repayment when you least expect it.

Stuart Wellington

[36:24] Sure.

[36:25] What you thought was your own baby is just a baby condor.

Elliott Kalan

[36:28] They stole my baby and replaced it with a condor.

Stuart Wellington

[36:30] Now you touch that baby condor with some cold iron.

Elliott Kalan

[36:34] And he'll tell you his true name.

[36:36] That gives you power over him.

[36:37] Really, when a bird asks you for a favor, it's usually like, hey, can you hand me that vole?

[36:42] Yeah, sure.

[36:42] Here you go, bird.

[36:43] Our pact is over.

[36:45] Your debt has been repaid.

[36:47] Can you put peanut butter in this pine cone and then put seed on it?

[36:50] Yeah, sure.

Dan McCoy

[36:51] You got any suet anywhere?

Elliott Kalan

[36:53] Yeah, here you go.

[36:54] Thank you.

[36:55] Your eternal blood legacy is now fulfilled.

[36:59] Anyway, so.

Stuart Wellington

[37:00] So, in any other movie, I feel like the hero, after being saved by this giant condor who gives

[37:05] its life for his, the hero would do something to remember that bird.

[37:10] Would, like, bury the bird, perhaps?

[37:11] He does nothing.

[37:11] He just walks away.

[37:12] He shakes it a little bit.

[37:13] He's like, oh, okay, whatever.

[37:15] He's like, is it like he should have taken a feather or something?

[37:18] Or he said, thank you.

[37:19] Or, when they're flying away, he should look into the stars and the stars should form the

[37:23] face of the condor.

Elliott Kalan

[37:24] And then he's a single tear.

[37:26] But it's like he just shake, nudges it to be like, hey, buddy, time for school.

[37:30] Wake up.

[37:30] Oh, you're dead?

[37:31] I guess I'll keep going then.

[37:33] And it doesn't even say thanks.

[37:34] Yeah.

[37:35] Again, not playing into it.

[37:36] Take a bite out of it.

[37:38] I will honor you, my winged friend, and your sacrifice.

[37:41] You will live on within me.

[37:42] It's hard.

[37:42] The legend of the condor friend.

[37:44] And ever shall man and condor be allies.

[37:48] You have...

[37:49] And that was how the mandor became one.

[37:51] You have bought a pledge of friendship with your blood.

[37:54] So he goes out.

[37:56] He finds the tail end of the spaceship.

[37:57] He finds the beacon.

[37:58] But it's not working.

[37:59] There's some ionic sphere layer of dust bullshit.

[38:02] There's some bullshit.

[38:03] And the blood...

[38:03] So he has to get to the top of a volcano for the beacon to...

[38:06] He finds a giant broken egg.

[38:06] He's just like running by magma.

Dan McCoy

[38:08] He's like running by...

[38:09] I don't know why his sneakers aren't melting, but he's fine.

Elliott Kalan

[38:11] And the egg the Ursa was in is broken.

[38:13] And we've already seen the other rangers who are on the spaceship, who I guess survived

[38:17] and walked away and just left Will and Jaden Smith to die, have been killed by the Ursa

[38:21] and impaled on trees.

[38:23] The Ursa's signature move.

[38:25] Sure.

[38:25] Now the Ursa...

[38:26] That's his finishing move.

[38:27] Now the Ursa follows Jaden up this volcano.

[38:29] He only has one.

[38:29] Which is not good because there's no trees there.

[38:31] What's the Ursa going to do?

[38:32] Carry the dead body back down?

[38:33] Stick it on a tree?

[38:34] I guess so.

Stuart Wellington

[38:35] Maybe he'll bring his own tree.

[38:37] He's pretty big.

Elliott Kalan

[38:38] Yeah, I guess so.

[38:39] He can carry a tree.

[38:40] So the Ursa's chasing him.

[38:41] He's trying to get to the top.

[38:43] They fight a lot.

Stuart Wellington

[38:43] So he has to get to the top of a volcano to set off the beacon, right?

[38:46] Yes.

[38:46] But he's screwed because after he sets off the beacon, his condor buddy's already dead.

[38:50] So he can't leave when the volcano erupts.

Elliott Kalan

[38:53] That doesn't seem to be a problem.

[38:54] The movie kind of ignores that.

[38:55] The bigger issue is that an Ursa is trying to kill him.

[38:57] And he's still afraid so that Ursa can smell him.

[39:00] And it's like, ah, oh no, an Ursa.

Dan McCoy

[39:02] It's like Naked Gun, the smell of fear.

Elliott Kalan

[39:04] Wasn't that Naked Gun 2 1⁄2?

Dan McCoy

[39:05] Yeah, I don't know.

[39:06] What was 33 1⁄3?

[39:08] I think that was it.

Stuart Wellington

[39:11] Didn't have a subtitle?

[39:11] Listeners, write in and tell us what the subtitle is.

[39:13] It was like Naked Gun, 33 1⁄3.

[39:15] The one with Anna Nicole Smith in it.

Dan McCoy

[39:16] Save us the three seconds of IMDBing it.

[39:18] The last funny one of these.

Elliott Kalan

[39:20] At the last minute as they're fighting on a volcano,

[39:22] Ash falling all around them,

[39:24] and I assume a tasteful reference to Schindler's List,

[39:27] suddenly Jaden remembers his father's words of advice

[39:30] and instantly is able to control his fear,

[39:33] and his pheromones, I guess, suck back into his pores.

[39:36] Yeah, they dissipate immediately.

[39:37] He's just ghosting the shit out of things after that.

[39:38] He just goes in like crazy,

[39:39] and Ursa's like,

[39:40] I can't see you.

[39:40] Where are you?

[39:41] He doesn't talk,

[39:42] but you can see,

[39:43] I'll tell he's trying to find Jaden,

[39:44] and Jaden's just slashing the crap out of him

[39:46] with his double-bladed super sword.

Dan McCoy

[39:47] Can I just take a moment to say,

[39:49] like,

[39:49] this is,

[39:50] this is,

[39:51] what I hate the most about this,

[39:54] what I maybe hate the most about this movie

[39:55] is like,

[39:56] it's so clearly like,

[39:57] okay,

[39:57] we're gonna make a movie

[39:58] where the theme is,

[40:00] um,

[40:00] overcoming fear.

Stuart Wellington

[40:02] Because when you're a kid,

[40:03] you're afraid to everything,

[40:04] and when you grow up,

[40:06] you learn to not be afraid of anything.

[40:07] Of anything, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[40:08] You learn that fear is the mind killer,

[40:09] fear is the little death within us all.

[40:10] But we're gonna do this in like,

[40:11] it's a total oblivion.

[40:12] We're gonna do this in the evil.

[40:12] You will let the fear pass through you.

[40:14] You will go into it,

[40:15] and look behind you,

[40:16] and see that nothing is left,

[40:17] only you.

Stuart Wellington

[40:17] Otherwise,

[40:18] you get stabbed with a gum jabbar,

[40:19] and you're totally toast.

[40:20] And it's like,

Elliott Kalan

[40:21] the poison goes in,

[40:22] and you're dead.

[40:23] You're double-dog dead.

Dan McCoy

[40:24] But we're gonna do this,

[40:26] unless you're the mod dib.

[40:27] Jesus Christ.

[40:28] We're gonna do this,

[40:32] obvious way,

[40:32] by creating this creature

[40:34] that smells fear.

[40:36] But it's so,

[40:37] like,

[40:37] it only makes sense

[40:38] as a metaphor in a movie.

[40:39] Like,

[40:39] it's so illogical in real life.

[40:41] Like,

[40:41] the aliens created this monster

[40:42] that can smell fear,

[40:43] but also doesn't have eyes,

[40:45] I guess.

[40:45] It's a total design flaw.

[40:46] Like,

[40:47] as a backup,

[40:48] it can just like,

[40:48] see where Jane Smith is.

Stuart Wellington

[40:50] It's continuing the tradition

[40:51] of M. Night Shyamalan aliens

[40:53] having a very clear design weakness.

[40:55] Yeah,

[40:56] like being allergic to water.

[40:57] Yes,

[40:57] and then dropping them

[40:58] on a planet

[40:59] that's covered in water.

[41:00] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[41:01] Even the very atmosphere,

[41:02] shouldn't melt them to dust.

[41:03] To be fair,

[41:04] that was an act of God.

[41:06] Yeah.

[41:06] And God is,

[41:07] if nothing,

[41:07] illogical.

[41:09] I'm just saying,

[41:09] make your metaphorical creatures

[41:11] a little less,

Dan McCoy

[41:12] a little more subtle.

Elliott Kalan

[41:13] The real problem

[41:14] with the movie,

[41:15] I mean,

[41:15] aside from it being,

[41:16] well,

[41:16] let's just say,

[41:16] he conquers his fear,

[41:17] he sets off the beacon,

[41:18] then he gets saved at the end.

[41:19] everyone's happy.

[41:20] And Jaden Smith gets

[41:21] one of three or four joke lines

[41:22] where he goes,

[41:23] I want to get,

[41:24] I want to do mom's job

[41:25] at the end.

[41:26] Which we don't know what it is.

[41:27] And they go home.

[41:28] Any way you want it,

[41:29] that's the way you need it.

[41:30] Right?

[41:31] That's right.

[41:32] So they win in the end.

[41:33] And he saves the day.

[41:35] But the real flaw in this movie,

[41:37] aside from it being super boring,

[41:39] and the lead actor

[41:40] not having much charisma,

[41:41] certainly at this stage

[41:43] in his performing career,

[41:44] to carry an entire movie,

[41:45] and it being very unimaginative

[41:47] and things like that,

[41:47] is that,

[41:49] they mention in the beginning,

[41:50] a bunch of aliens

[41:51] made monsters to fight us.

[41:53] And those aliens,

[41:54] we never see them,

[41:55] they never show up,

[41:55] we never find out

[41:56] what happened in the war with them,

[41:57] is that still going on?

[41:58] Like,

[41:58] what's happening?

[41:59] It's like,

[42:00] it's like if you were doing a story

[42:02] about the atomic bomb,

[42:03] and it was like,

[42:05] by the way,

[42:06] we were fighting Nazis

[42:07] in World War II,

[42:08] so we made an atomic bomb.

[42:09] Flash forward,

[42:10] 60 years later,

[42:11] and you'd be like,

[42:11] wait,

[42:12] but what about,

[42:13] what happened to the war

[42:14] you were just telling me about?

[42:14] Is that still happening?

Dan McCoy

[42:15] And before people write in

[42:17] to tell us,

[42:17] we saw on Wikipedia

[42:18] that this was supposed to be

[42:19] the first of a trilogy,

[42:21] we understand that maybe

[42:22] that would be developed later,

[42:23] but each movie

[42:24] has to stand on its own.

[42:25] You can't take it for granted

Elliott Kalan

[42:26] that this one mention

[42:27] of something is going to be okay,

[42:29] and it's not like

[42:30] a Star Wars mention

[42:31] where in the first movie

[42:32] they'll mention stuff,

[42:33] well,

[42:33] like in the first movie,

Stuart Wellington

[42:34] I'm just,

[42:35] I'm laughing at Dan's defense

[42:36] already.

Elliott Kalan

[42:37] I'm sick of you people.

[42:39] This is not a time code situation.

[42:41] Was that what that movie

[42:42] was called?

[42:42] In Time?

[42:43] In Time.

[42:44] Time code was the,

[42:45] It was that four quadrant movie,

[42:47] right?

[42:47] It's not like,

[42:48] Yeah,

[42:48] it appeals to all four quadrants.

[42:52] People who like looking

[42:53] at four screens at once.

[42:54] Young people,

[42:55] old people,

[42:56] uh,

[42:57] people who like

Dan McCoy

[42:58] horny people.

[42:58] Bullshit art movies

Elliott Kalan

[42:59] that don't work.

[43:01] Um,

[43:01] hungry people.

[43:02] You get to decide

[43:02] what story to follow.

[43:03] No, you do that.

[43:04] Make the movie for me.

[43:07] The, uh,

[43:07] I actually saw it.

Dan McCoy

[43:08] I did,

[43:08] Mike Figgis.

[43:09] I liked it okay.

[43:10] Yeah,

Elliott Kalan

[43:10] Figgis Pudding,

[43:11] they call him.

[43:12] But, uh,

[43:13] here in Star Wars,

[43:14] they say,

[43:14] oh,

[43:14] my dad fought in the Clone Wars,

[43:16] and you don't need

[43:16] to know more about it.

[43:17] It's just like backstory.

[43:19] Here,

[43:19] I think they might have been

[43:20] going for some of that here

[43:21] in a way that,

[43:22] like,

[43:22] you're hinting at a wider universe

[43:24] that exists around the story.

[43:25] But it's such a major thing

[43:27] that humans are at a,

[43:28] in a war with aliens

[43:29] to never have it,

[43:31] have much to do

[43:32] with the rest of the movie

[43:33] is,

[43:34] unless like,

[43:35] they're bringing this Ursa egg

[43:36] somewhere,

[43:36] and I don't,

[43:37] obviously,

[43:37] I,

[43:38] clearly I missed

[43:38] what the mission was.

[43:39] Are they delivering it somewhere

[43:40] so they can discover

[43:41] a way to kill Ursas?

[43:43] Like,

[43:43] the first Spike Spears

[43:44] seem to do it pretty well.

Stuart Wellington

[43:46] First 20 minutes of the movie,

[43:47] I don't,

[43:47] I couldn't understand

[43:48] anything anybody said.

Dan McCoy

[43:50] Yeah,

[43:50] the weird,

[43:51] like,

Stuart Wellington

[43:51] accent was a,

Dan McCoy

[43:52] and the mumbling.

[43:53] If you're going to have

Stuart Wellington

[43:53] a crazy mumbling accent,

[43:55] don't have a bunch of

[43:56] loud beeps going off

[43:57] from your weird,

[43:58] organic computer console.

[44:00] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[44:01] But there's,

[44:02] I have to admit

[44:02] that there are a few scenes

[44:03] that are well-directed

[44:04] in this from a,

[44:05] like,

[44:05] camera viewpoint,

[44:06] point of view.

Dan McCoy

[44:07] Let's move on

[44:07] to final judgments

[44:08] about whether this was

[44:09] a good,

[44:09] bad movie,

[44:10] a bad,

[44:10] bad movie,

[44:10] a movie you kind of liked.

[44:11] Elliot,

[44:11] you're already there.

[44:12] Okay,

Elliott Kalan

[44:13] it's a bad,

[44:13] bad movie.

[44:14] there's a couple moments

[44:16] where there are camera moves

[44:17] that I like a lot,

[44:18] where,

[44:18] but literally like

[44:19] two or three of those

[44:20] where there's like

[44:21] just some neat uses

[44:22] of the camera.

[44:23] But otherwise,

[44:24] it's just a lot of

[44:25] watching Jaden Smith

[44:26] usually from a

[44:27] butt-focused point of view,

[44:28] like crawling through jungle,

[44:30] getting mad at things

[44:31] and fighting animals

[44:33] that don't look real

[44:34] and not overcoming fear

[44:36] and his dad,

[44:37] meanwhile,

[44:37] sitting in a spaceship

[44:38] 100 kilometers away

[44:40] just kind of talking

[44:41] in a monotone

[44:42] to nobody.

[44:43] It really doesn't,

[44:44] it doesn't,

[44:44] I can see

[44:45] how this could be

[44:46] a really good movie,

[44:47] but there's no sense

[44:48] of life to it.

Dan McCoy

[44:50] Yeah,

[44:50] I'm going to say

[44:50] bad,

[44:51] bad movie.

[44:51] I'll just say

[44:52] boring and mumbly.

Elliott Kalan

[44:54] The old B&M combo.

Stuart Wellington

[44:56] Stuart,

[44:57] what do you have to say?

[44:58] Yeah,

[44:58] I mean,

[44:58] it's a bad,

[44:59] bad movie

[45:00] for the B&M

[45:01] reasons alone.

[45:03] I mean,

[45:04] it kind of feels like

[45:05] structure-wise,

[45:06] it's kind of like

[45:07] the gray,

[45:08] but it doesn't have

[45:09] the impact

[45:10] of Liam Neeson

[45:11] fighting wolves.

[45:12] If you told me

[45:13] that,

Elliott Kalan

[45:14] there was a movie

[45:15] about a plane crash

[45:16] where a bunch of guys

[45:17] are being picked off

[45:18] by wolves,

[45:18] and there's a movie

[45:19] about a spaceship crash

[45:20] where a kid has to

[45:22] prove himself courageous

[45:23] by fighting a monster alien.

[45:26] Like,

[45:26] I'd want to see

[45:27] the second one more,

[45:28] but the first one

[45:29] is marginally better.

[45:30] I didn't love the gray.

[45:31] I found it kind of boring,

[45:32] too.

[45:33] But,

[45:33] uh,

[45:33] Yeah,

[45:34] I mean,

Stuart Wellington

[45:34] I think it's a design flaw

[45:35] in this type of movie.

Elliott Kalan

[45:37] But they pull it off a lot.

[45:37] But there are good movies

[45:38] where people are

[45:40] at risk from the elements

[45:42] and there's like

[45:42] an animal or something

[45:43] chasing them,

[45:44] you know.

[45:45] You can do that movie.

[45:46] Animal,

Dan McCoy

[45:46] a bounty hunter,

[45:47] who knows.

[45:47] Anyway,

Elliott Kalan

[45:48] it's the oldest,

[45:48] maybe it's Tashira Mifune

[45:49] and Hell in the Pacific.

[45:51] They're like,

[45:51] there's,

[45:51] it's a very simple story

[45:53] and so it sucks

[45:53] when you see it

[45:54] screwed up this badly,

[45:56] you know.

Dan McCoy

[45:58] Um,

[45:59] so let's move on.

[46:00] How were those

[46:00] final judgments,

[46:01] Dan?

[46:01] Perfect.

[46:02] Satisfactory.

[46:03] How do you judge,

Elliott Kalan

[46:03] this is the new segment,

[46:04] final judgments,

[46:05] judgments.

Dan McCoy

[46:06] Uh,

[46:06] you get a 98.

Elliott Kalan

[46:07] 98,

[46:08] okay.

[46:08] No,

[46:08] no,

[46:08] it's,

[46:08] were those good judgments,

[46:09] were they bad judgments?

[46:10] Were they judgments

[46:11] you kind of disagree with,

[46:12] Dan?

[46:13] Good judgments.

[46:14] Uh,

[46:14] room for improvement.

[46:16] Um,

[46:17] A plus all around.

Dan McCoy

[46:18] All right.

[46:18] So.

[46:19] Extra credit for being awesome.

[46:20] Quickly,

[46:21] I want to say,

[46:21] this,

[46:22] uh,

[46:22] podcast,

[46:23] I believe is going to come out

[46:23] on the 30th,

[46:25] so there's not a lot of time,

[46:26] but I just want to reiterate.

[46:27] Happy Thanksgiving.

[46:28] I want to reiterate that the,

[46:30] uh,

[46:31] Happy Hanukkah.

[46:32] House cat music video contest.

[46:34] You got two more days.

[46:35] Your last day is December the 1st.

Elliott Kalan

[46:37] One day.

[46:38] What time are you accepting them by

[46:39] on December the 1st?

[46:40] I don't know.

[46:40] Like evening?

Dan McCoy

[46:41] I'm not really gonna be much of a,

[46:44] like,

[46:45] whatever.

[46:45] Just get them in.

Elliott Kalan

[46:46] But you're a stickler.

[46:46] They gotta be in by December 1st.

[46:47] I'm not gonna be a stickler.

[46:48] By December 1st.

[46:50] December 1st.

[46:51] By midnight December 2nd.

[46:53] Those videos better be in,

[46:54] or you are shit out of luck.

[46:56] Rawr rawr.

Dan McCoy

[46:57] Thanks, house cat.

[46:58] Um,

[46:59] so let's quick.

[46:59] House cop.

[47:00] Let's quickly go through

[47:01] a few letters.

Elliott Kalan

[47:03] Just a few letters,

[47:05] not a lot of time

[47:06] for a lot of letters.

[47:08] Do it fast,

[47:09] but make it last.

[47:11] Letters for us,

[47:12] letters from you.

[47:13] Letters from all

[47:14] for a little bit of time,

[47:16] not a lot.

[47:17] Let's do it quickly,

[47:18] just a quickie.

[47:19] Some letters,

[47:20] real quick,

[47:21] Dan.

Dan McCoy

[47:22] Uh,

[47:23] this letter's from

[47:24] Trevor,

[47:24] last name withheld.

[47:26] It's titled,

[47:26] Five Easy Pieces,

[47:27] Cinematic Geographical Epiphany.

[47:30] Dear Floppers,

[47:31] I've started listening

[47:31] to your podcast

[47:32] after the gently honorable

[47:34] internet judge,

[47:35] John Hodgman,

[47:36] recommended it so highly.

[47:38] When he said,

[47:38] don't listen to it?

[47:40] Oh,

[47:40] he was very positive.

[47:41] Oh,

[47:41] that was nice of him.

[47:42] He's a good guy.

[47:43] I wanted to share

[47:44] a moment of cinematic

[47:45] geographical epiphany

[47:46] with you and inquire

[47:47] if you've ever had

[47:48] a similar experience.

[47:49] I first saw

[47:50] what I have thought of

[47:52] as a masterpiece

[47:52] of 70s drama,

[47:53] Five Easy Pieces,

[47:55] around 1988

[47:56] as a scratched up

[47:57] VHS rental

[47:58] and completely loved it.

[48:00] I'm old.

[48:01] As I've grown older

[48:02] and frailer,

[48:03] subsequent viewings

[48:04] have only enriched it

[48:05] for me.

Elliott Kalan

[48:05] The movie has become

[48:06] too intense

[48:08] and I worry my bones

[48:09] will break

[48:09] if I watch it.

Dan McCoy

[48:11] Watching the movie

[48:11] a few months ago,

[48:12] I realized,

[48:12] like seeing something

[48:13] for the first time,

[48:14] that the movie

[48:15] begins in Bakersfield,

[48:17] California.

[48:18] The scene where

[48:18] Jack Nicholson

[48:19] plays the piano

[48:20] on the back

[48:20] of the moving truck

[48:21] was filmed

[48:21] on or near the I-5,

[48:23] the least pleasant

[48:24] stretch of interstate

[48:25] anywhere in the U.S.

[48:26] and the closest thing

[48:27] to a road warrior

[48:28] theme park

[48:29] one will ever experience.

Elliott Kalan

[48:30] Unless you go

[48:31] to that Doomsday Con

[48:32] or whatever that is

[48:32] that people do.

[48:33] It's hard,

Dan McCoy

[48:34] it's,

[48:34] what,

[48:35] Burning Man?

[48:36] It's hard to,

[48:37] that's Wicker Man Con.

[48:39] It's hard to explain

[48:40] this to you.

[48:40] You're unfamiliar

[48:41] with these terrible

[48:41] places as I,

[48:42] many Californians

[48:43] are.

[48:45] I don't follow that.

[48:46] It's like realizing

[48:47] Casablanca takes place

[48:48] in,

[48:49] I don't know,

[48:49] the East Coast

[48:50] equivalent of

[48:51] Bakersfield.

[48:52] Do you have

[48:53] a post-apocalyptic

[48:54] hellscape

[48:55] of sunblasted

[48:55] strip malls

[48:56] and trailer parks

[48:56] populated by

[48:57] hyper-conservative

[48:58] meth addicts

[48:58] who live on

[48:59] disability

[48:59] and condemn

[49:00] the government?

[49:01] I'm sorry,

[49:02] beloved Bakersfield

[49:02] friends,

[49:03] but you know

[49:03] it's true.

[49:04] It blew my mind

[49:06] and yet only made

[49:06] me appreciate the movie

[49:07] even more

[49:08] as it's grounded

[49:09] in a pedestrian

[49:10] reality I've seen

[49:11] and touched

[49:11] and smelled

[49:12] so many times.

[49:13] Genius.

[49:14] Have all,

[49:15] some or none of you

[49:15] had a similar

[49:16] experience and

[49:17] would you move

[49:18] to Bakersfield?

[49:19] Trevor,

[49:19] last name without,

[49:20] well,

[49:20] I mean,

[49:20] obviously not.

[49:21] fucking tourist

Elliott Kalan

[49:22] board of Bakersfield?

[49:23] Well,

[49:23] come to Bakersfield,

[49:24] it sucks.

[49:26] Move here and

[49:26] make it better.

[49:28] Well,

[49:29] thanks for those

[49:30] kind words.

[49:30] Thanks for writing

[49:31] in,

[49:31] Trevor,

[49:31] about your

[49:32] Bakersfield

[49:32] experience.

[49:33] I've never

[49:33] been there.

[49:34] I will say

[49:35] that I've had

[49:36] experiences

[49:36] certainly where

[49:37] I've watched

[49:38] a movie and

[49:38] it's felt like

[49:40] or reminded me

[49:40] of places I've

[49:41] been.

[49:41] Like Midnight

[49:42] in Paris,

[49:43] the recent Woody

[49:43] Allen movie,

[49:43] a lot of it

[49:44] was shot at

[49:44] places I had

[49:45] been not too

[49:46] long before

[49:46] when I took

[49:47] my first trip

[49:47] to Paris.

[49:48] So it felt

[49:49] like Woody

[49:49] Allen had been

[49:49] stalking me

[49:50] and my wife

[49:51] on our vacation

[49:52] which was a little

[49:52] weird.

[49:53] But one that

[49:55] hits me a lot

[49:55] when I see it

[49:56] is the movie

[49:56] The Landlord

[49:57] which I really

[49:58] love and is set

[49:59] in the neighborhood

[49:59] I live in,

[50:00] Park Slope,

[50:01] and was shot

[50:02] there on location

[50:02] in the late 60s.

[50:04] And like I've

[50:05] walked by the

[50:06] house that it

[50:07] was shot at

[50:07] many times,

[50:08] but what really

[50:09] hit me was

[50:09] when I saw

[50:10] in the background

[50:11] of a shot

[50:12] a sign

[50:13] for Coca-Cola

[50:14] that up until

[50:15] very recently,

[50:15] about a year or

[50:16] two ago,

[50:16] was still on the

[50:17] front of a

[50:18] pizzeria

[50:19] in Park Slope.

[50:20] And so seeing it

[50:21] it really drove home

[50:22] to me like

[50:22] I know exactly

[50:23] what block

[50:24] they're on

[50:25] right now.

[50:25] Like I know

[50:26] exactly that corner.

[50:27] And it really

[50:28] hit hard,

[50:29] you know?

Dan McCoy

[50:31] Like this is

[50:32] kind of a similar

[50:33] Bakersfield

[50:33] hellscape.

[50:35] I remember

[50:36] my wife

[50:37] and I actually

[50:38] went to a

[50:39] Speaking of

Elliott Kalan

[50:39] hellscapes,

[50:40] my wife

Dan McCoy

[50:40] My wife and I

[50:41] went to a

Elliott Kalan

[50:42] I hope she

[50:42] doesn't listen

[50:42] to this one,

[50:43] Dan.

Dan McCoy

[50:43] We went to a

[50:45] horrific,

[50:46] horrific,

[50:47] unpleasant strip

[50:48] club near the

[50:49] what is it?

[50:49] The Costco?

Stuart Wellington

[50:51] Do you know

[50:51] what I'm talking

[50:51] about,

[50:52] Stuart?

[50:52] Yeah,

[50:52] yeah,

[50:52] yeah.

[50:52] The one over

[50:54] in Sunset Park.

[50:55] Oh,

[50:56] this is in

[50:56] New York.

Dan McCoy

[50:57] It's like,

[50:57] yeah,

[50:59] just the seediest

[51:00] place you could

[51:01] imagine.

[51:02] And this was

[51:04] your anniversary

[51:04] gift?

[51:05] Yes,

[51:05] that was what

[51:06] it was.

[51:07] It was just

[51:09] a regular

[51:09] Sunday night.

[51:11] But then years

[51:11] later on the

[51:12] television show

[51:13] Louis,

[51:14] if you've seen

[51:14] the episode

[51:15] where Robin

[51:16] Williams and

[51:16] Louis C.K.

[51:18] are the only

[51:18] two people

[51:19] at this agent's

[51:20] funeral,

[51:21] they go to a

[51:22] strip club where

[51:23] he was apparently

[51:24] beloved,

[51:25] that was the

[51:26] strip club,

[51:27] this very seedy

[51:27] place.

[51:28] And it's like,

[51:29] yep,

[51:29] you found the

[51:29] perfect place

[51:30] for this horrible

[51:31] guy to have

[51:32] been a beloved

[51:33] regular.

Elliott Kalan

[51:34] I had a Louis

[51:34] experience like

[51:35] that because

[51:35] there's an

[51:36] episode where

[51:37] he meets

[51:37] Parker Posey

[51:38] and they go

[51:39] on a date.

[51:39] And he meets

[51:40] her at a

[51:40] bookstore where

[51:41] the exterior,

[51:42] part of it,

[51:42] they shot it to

[51:43] make it look like

[51:44] it was in

[51:44] Manhattan.

[51:45] But the

[51:45] interior and

[51:46] the immediate

[51:46] exterior are

[51:47] very clearly

[51:48] community books,

[51:49] also in

[51:49] Park Slope on

[51:51] 7th Avenue,

[51:52] which I've been

[51:52] in many,

[51:53] many times.

[51:53] I was like,

[51:53] I know that

[51:54] bookstore.

[51:55] I've never seen

[51:55] Parker Posey

[51:56] working there.

[51:57] Wait a minute,

[51:58] hold on a second.

[51:59] Bullshit.

[51:59] This TV show's

[52:00] lying to me.

[52:01] Stuart,

[52:01] what about you?

Stuart Wellington

[52:03] I have never

[52:04] been in community

[52:05] books.

[52:05] I don't read a

[52:06] lot of books.

[52:08] More of a

[52:08] calendar guy.

Dan McCoy

[52:10] Like hot

[52:11] babes on

[52:11] Ferraris.

[52:12] Yeah,

[52:13] hot babes on

[52:13] Ferraris.

[52:13] Cute puppies.

[52:15] With a gun or

[52:16] on a car hood.

Stuart Wellington

[52:18] Life size.

[52:19] Yeah,

[52:20] when they're so

[52:20] small they can

[52:21] fit on the

[52:21] calendar page.

Elliott Kalan

[52:22] There's a,

[52:22] one of our

[52:23] co-workers

[52:24] has an

[52:25] animals

[52:26] calendar

[52:27] and there's

[52:28] one where

[52:29] it's a

[52:29] horse eating

[52:30] hay,

[52:31] but the

[52:31] hay is

[52:31] like falling

[52:32] out of

[52:32] its mouth.

[52:33] So it

[52:33] looks like

[52:33] it's just

[52:34] this big

[52:35] glossy picture

[52:36] of a horse

[52:36] vomiting

[52:36] all over

[52:37] the place.

[52:39] I think

[52:40] it's hilarious.

Dan McCoy

[52:41] So this

[52:42] letter is

[52:44] titled

[52:44] Bork,

[52:45] Bork,

[52:45] Bork.

[52:46] Robert Bork.

[52:47] A delicious

Stuart Wellington

[52:48] mixture of

[52:49] beef and

[52:49] pork.

[52:49] You can

[52:49] buy it at

[52:50] Fleischer's Deli

[52:51] in Park Slope,

[52:51] Brooklyn.

[52:52] Lots of

[52:52] many Park Slope

[52:53] plugs.

Dan McCoy

[52:55] The letter

[52:56] goes,

[52:56] We beg the

Stuart Wellington

[52:56] question by

[52:57] Bob Vigerman,

[52:58] plenty of

[52:58] Park Slope

[52:58] pictures.

Dan McCoy

[53:01] One issue

[53:03] of local.

[53:03] This is not

[53:04] the jabber

[53:05] back and forth.

[53:05] This is the

[53:06] part where we

[53:06] talk about

[53:06] letters.

[53:07] The letter

[53:08] goes,

[53:09] Dear

[53:10] Floop

[53:10] House,

[53:11] you guys

[53:12] are a

[53:12] super

[53:13] duper.

[53:14] Barrel's

[53:14] ear a

[53:15] head full

[53:15] of laughter

[53:16] I put you

Elliott Kalan

[53:18] in my

[53:19] ear holes.

[53:19] Can you

[53:20] just read it

[53:20] like a

[53:20] normal person

[53:21] please?

[53:22] Look at what

[53:22] it fucking

[53:23] says.

[53:23] I see that

[53:23] it is

[53:24] spelled

[53:24] that way.

Dan McCoy

[53:25] It has

[53:26] a big

[53:26] brain full

[53:27] off

[53:27] muffy

[53:28] analogy

[53:28] but a

[53:30] teeny

[53:30] moosa

[53:31] floosa.

[53:32] I don't

[53:32] know what

[53:32] that means.

[53:33] Stuart

[53:33] probably

[53:34] boinks

[53:34] all the

[53:35] chicks

[53:35] at

[53:35] the

[53:36] bikini

[53:36] car

[53:36] wash.

[53:37] The

[53:38] pert

[53:38] goy.

[53:39] Bork,

[53:39] bork,

[53:40] bork.

[53:41] Don is

[53:41] pleasant.

[53:42] That's

[53:42] it.

[53:43] Om

[53:44] de hurdy,

[53:44] hurdy,

[53:45] hur.

[53:46] In feet

[53:46] to me

[53:46] over

[53:47] some

[53:48] time

[53:48] and to

[53:49] watch a

[53:49] movie.

[53:50] So is this

[53:50] like a

[53:50] Swedish chef

[53:51] or is this

[53:51] an Italian

[53:52] character?

[53:52] I will

[53:52] prepare you

[53:53] guys a

[53:54] meal.

[53:55] Maybe a

[53:55] floop house

[53:56] a house

[53:56] cat

[53:57] jamboree.

[53:59] sc.

[54:00] So that's

[54:03] from sc.

Elliott Kalan

[54:04] So that's

[54:05] your Swedish

[54:06] chef,

[54:07] huh?

Dan McCoy

[54:07] No,

[54:07] that's

[54:07] this

[54:08] guy's

[54:08] Swedish

[54:08] chef.

Elliott Kalan

[54:09] That he

[54:09] wrote out

[54:09] phonetically.

[54:10] Well,

[54:10] thanks for

[54:11] writing in

[54:11] and for

[54:12] the

[54:12] compliments.

Dan McCoy

[54:15] Yeah,

[54:16] I'm sorry

[54:16] if I

[54:17] lost the

[54:19] thread there

[54:19] in the

[54:20] middle.

Elliott Kalan

[54:20] If it

[54:20] seemed like

[54:20] Dan was

[54:21] having a

[54:21] stroke while

[54:22] reading that

[54:22] letter.

[54:23] But I

[54:23] always did

[54:23] wonder what

[54:24] if the

[54:24] Swedish

[54:24] chef was

[54:24] doing a

[54:25] Borat

[54:25] impression.

[54:26] I guess

[54:26] that's what

[54:26] it would

[54:26] be.

[54:27] I think

Stuart Wellington

[54:28] it's

[54:28] interesting

[54:28] that of

[54:29] the

[54:29] Muppets we

[54:29] hear from

[54:30] the Swedish

[54:30] chef and

[54:31] not Statler

[54:32] and Waldorf.

[54:32] They seem

[54:33] to be kindred

[54:33] spirits.

[54:34] You think

Elliott Kalan

[54:34] they would

[54:34] heckle our

[54:35] heckling or

[54:36] appreciate

[54:36] fellow hecklers.

[54:38] Yeah,

[54:38] you never

[54:38] know.

[54:40] We never

[54:40] hear from

[54:41] New Zealand.

Dan McCoy

[54:44] So this

[54:44] last letter I

[54:45] think that we

[54:46] have time for

[54:46] this evening

[54:47] is from

[54:47] Mark

[54:48] last name

[54:48] withheld.

[54:50] It's

[54:51] titled

[54:51] Boy?

[54:54] Oh,

[54:54] so it's a

[54:54] phantasm

[54:55] thing.

Stuart Wellington

[54:55] It's either

[54:56] phantasm or

[54:57] some girl's

[54:58] boobs fell

[54:58] out of her

[54:58] dress.

Dan McCoy

[55:00] He goes,

[55:01] gentle flops.

[55:03] You guys

[55:03] have made

[55:03] passing reference

[55:04] to the

[55:04] classic 1978

[55:05] horror flick

[55:06] phantasm a

[55:07] bunch.

[55:08] I think most

[55:08] recently in the

[55:09] Paperboy episode.

[55:10] Possibly later.

[55:11] Possibly later.

[55:12] You never know.

[55:13] You play a good

Elliott Kalan

[55:14] game,

[55:14] Paperboy.

Dan McCoy

[55:15] Please spend

[55:16] 10 to 15

[55:17] minutes elaborating

[55:18] on this.

Elliott Kalan

[55:20] Wait,

[55:20] is this a

[55:21] test prompt?

Dan McCoy

[55:23] Did anyone

[55:24] like parts

[55:25] three or

[55:25] four?

[55:26] Yep.

[55:26] What about

[55:26] that time

[55:27] a mutant

[55:27] version of

[55:30] Angus Scrimm

[55:31] came out of a

[55:31] hole in the

[55:32] size and

[55:32] shape of a

[55:32] double pizza

[55:33] box in that

[55:33] girl's back?

[55:34] Fucked up,

[55:35] right?

[55:35] In short,

[55:36] more phantasm,

[55:38] boys.

Elliott Kalan

[55:39] You write a

[55:39] good letter,

[55:40] boy,

[55:41] but now you

[55:41] die.

[55:43] What's the

[55:43] author's name?

[55:44] Mark,

[55:44] last name

[55:45] withheld.

[55:45] Mark,

[55:45] thanks for

[55:46] writing in.

[55:47] Stuart,

[55:47] you're the

[55:47] biggest phantasm

[55:48] fan,

[55:49] I feel.

Stuart Wellington

[55:49] I am what

[55:50] they call a

[55:51] fan in the

[55:53] biz.

[55:53] that's spelled

[55:54] with a

[55:54] ph.

[55:55] Of course,

[55:55] yeah.

[55:56] I was really

[55:57] happy to get to

[55:57] meet Don

[55:58] Cascarelli,

[55:58] director of

[55:59] Phantasm,

[55:59] and get an

[56:00] autograph on

[56:00] my Phantasm

[56:01] poster.

[56:02] Yeah,

Elliott Kalan

[56:02] at the late

[56:02] lamented 92

[56:03] Y Tribeca.

[56:04] I said Don

Stuart Wellington

[56:04] Cascarelli,

[56:05] right?

[56:05] Or did I say

Dan McCoy

[56:05] Dan Cascarelli?

[56:06] It sounded like

[56:07] Dan.

[56:07] I think you were

[56:07] saying Don.

Elliott Kalan

[56:08] Don Cascarelli.

[56:09] Stuart and I

[56:10] had a,

[56:10] Dan,

[56:10] were you with us

[56:11] when we went

[56:11] to that?

[56:11] Yeah,

[56:11] I was there,

[56:12] man.

[56:12] We saw the

[56:13] double feature

[56:13] of John

[56:14] Dies at the

[56:14] end and

[56:14] the original

Stuart Wellington

[56:15] Phantasm.

[56:15] And I got

[56:16] to stand

[56:17] nervously in

[56:18] line behind

[56:19] a couple of

[56:20] horror geeks

[56:20] getting Japanese

[56:21] VHS tapes

[56:22] autographed.

[56:23] It was

Elliott Kalan

[56:24] adorable to

[56:25] see how

[56:25] nervous

[56:26] Stuart was

[56:27] in getting

[56:28] the chance

[56:29] to talk to

[56:29] Don Cascarelli.

[56:30] Yeah.

[56:31] But yeah,

[56:32] they're great

[56:32] movies.

[56:33] What do you

[56:33] have to say

[56:34] about the

Stuart Wellington

[56:34] sequels?

[56:35] Yeah,

[56:35] I like all

[56:36] of them.

[56:36] It's interesting

[56:38] because the

[56:39] second one was

[56:40] filmed so long

[56:41] after the first

Dan McCoy

[56:41] but it picks

[56:42] right up after

[56:43] the first one.

Stuart Wellington

[56:43] And with a

[56:44] different guy.

[56:45] With a different

[56:45] actor, yeah.

[56:46] And apparently,

[56:47] what is it?

[56:48] I think there was

[56:49] a rumor that

[56:50] originally Brad Pitt

[56:51] was up for that

[56:52] role to play

[56:52] Mike, but he

[56:53] got passed on

[56:54] and how

[56:57] different would

[56:59] the world be

[56:59] if megastar

[57:01] Brad Pitt had

[57:02] Phantasm 2

[57:03] in his

[57:03] More people

[57:04] would be aware

[57:04] of it, I guess.

Elliott Kalan

[57:05] Brad Pitt was

[57:06] also in, what,

[57:07] Johnny Suede

[57:08] and nobody

[57:08] watches that

[57:08] anymore?

[57:09] In Cool

[57:10] World.

Stuart Wellington

[57:10] I think

[57:11] Flophouse

[57:11] friend Alex

[57:12] Smith watches

[57:13] Johnny Suede

[57:13] quite a bit.

Elliott Kalan

[57:14] Well, nobody

[57:14] watches Cool

[57:15] World, even

[57:16] though Brad Pitt's

[57:16] in it.

Stuart Wellington

[57:17] Except I think

[57:17] I recommended

[57:18] that on the

[57:19] podcast a while

[57:20] ago.

[57:20] Cool World?

[57:20] Really?

Elliott Kalan

[57:22] It's a terrible

[57:23] movie.

[57:24] I'm just trying

[57:25] to get you to

[57:25] say the title

[57:26] many more times.

[57:27] Cool World.

[57:27] Hollywood, if

[57:28] Holly could.

[57:29] Cool World.

[57:30] The end.

[57:30] One thing I'm

[57:31] going to mention

[57:31] I like about

[57:32] Phantasm is that

[57:33] the sequels

[57:34] carry the story

[57:35] forward in terms

[57:36] of the spreading

[57:36] evil of the

[57:38] main villain.

[57:39] A lot of horror

[57:40] movies and

[57:40] franchises they

[57:41] reset at the

[57:42] beginning of the

[57:43] next movie and

[57:44] it's like everybody

[57:44] just forgot there

[57:45] was a fucking

[57:46] maniac running

[57:47] around killing

[57:47] kids in the

[57:48] last movie.

[57:49] But in Phantasm

[57:49] this evil force is

[57:51] just emanating

[57:52] throughout the

[57:53] country at a

[57:54] greater and

[57:54] greater rate.

[57:55] still like an

[57:55] apocalyptic rate.

Dan McCoy

[57:57] They're pushing

[57:58] that premise too

[57:59] and it gets

[57:59] into this weird

[58:00] science fiction

[58:01] area where

[58:02] you're like

[58:02] okay well the

[58:03] fourth one is

[58:04] basically like a

[58:05] Star Wars movie

[58:05] sort of.

Elliott Kalan

[58:06] I mean the

[58:07] first one already

[58:07] involves other

[58:08] planets with

[58:09] Jawas running

[58:09] around on them.

Stuart Wellington

[58:11] And tuning

[58:12] forks Dan.

[58:13] So many

[58:14] tuning forks.

[58:15] And different

[58:15] levels of

[58:16] spheres.

[58:17] Yep.

[58:18] So we've

[58:18] lost all the

[58:19] non-Fantasm fans

[58:20] listening.

[58:20] So thanks Mark

[58:22] for ruining our

[58:22] listenership.

Dan McCoy

[58:24] Should we move

[58:24] on Dan?

[58:25] Let's move on to

[58:26] the final

[58:26] judgments.

[58:28] Okay Stuart was

[58:28] this a good

[58:29] episode?

[58:30] Let's circle back

[58:31] around.

[58:31] We're going to

[58:31] have to do that

[58:31] whole thing again

[58:32] word for word.

[58:33] After Earth.

[58:35] So this is the

[58:36] last segment.

[58:37] It's where we

[58:37] make a recommendation

[58:38] of a movie that

[58:39] we liked for

[58:40] people to watch

[58:41] instead of

[58:42] After Earth.

[58:43] Stuart what do

[58:43] you have to

[58:44] recommend?

Stuart Wellington

[58:44] I'm going to

[58:44] recommend a

[58:45] classic Stuart

[58:46] Wellington

[58:46] Flophouse movie.

Dan McCoy

[58:48] So get ready for

Stuart Wellington

[58:48] something gross.

[58:50] Well I'm going

[58:54] to recommend the

[58:55] movie Bad Milo

[58:56] currently streaming

[58:57] on video on

[58:58] demand from

[58:58] Time Warner

[58:59] Cable.

[59:01] Bad Milo

[59:02] starring Ken

[59:03] Marino.

[59:04] It's about a

[59:05] guy who has an

[59:06] ass demon that

[59:07] is triggered by

[59:07] stress that goes

[59:09] out and murders

[59:09] the causers of

[59:12] his stress.

[59:13] There's a lot of

[59:14] poop slash fart

[59:14] jokes.

[59:15] There's jokes about

[59:16] a demon crawling

[59:16] back up into his

[59:17] butt and you get

[59:18] to see those.

[59:19] There's a lot of

[59:19] scenes of that.

[59:21] There's also a

[59:22] scene where this

[59:22] monster bites a

[59:26] dude's dick off.

[59:27] So I think that

[59:29] fulfills all the

[59:30] criteria of a

[59:30] Stuart movie.

[59:32] Yeah.

[59:33] Some good

[59:34] character actors.

[59:35] Sure.

[59:36] Thanks.

Dan McCoy

[59:37] Okay.

[59:37] Dan?

[59:38] I'm going to

[59:38] recommend a movie

[59:39] that I saw

[59:40] in the theater

[59:42] a couple weeks

[59:44] back.

[59:44] By the name of

[59:45] Blue is the

[59:46] Warmest Color.

[59:47] Oh boy we all

[59:47] know how Dan

[59:48] enjoyed this one.

[59:49] Look I decided to

[59:50] lean into the

[59:51] Purposoid label.

Elliott Kalan

[59:56] I'm recommending a

[59:57] movie I really

[59:57] enjoy.

[59:57] I think you will

[59:58] too.

[59:58] It's called

[59:58] Baby Dolls

[59:59] Behind Bars.

[1:00:00] I mean everyone

[1:00:01] It's soft core.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:02] You can find it on

[1:00:04] 7X On Demand.

[1:00:05] But it's a hard

[1:00:05] soft core.

[1:00:06] Anyway Dan continue.

[1:00:07] Blue is the Warmest

[1:00:08] Color.

[1:00:08] I mean yeah well the

[1:00:09] thing is like it's

[1:00:10] very it's people have

[1:00:11] talked a lot about the

[1:00:12] sexual content.

[1:00:13] There is a lot of

[1:00:15] sexual content in the

[1:00:16] sense that there's a

[1:00:17] seven minute long

[1:00:18] sex scene that is

[1:00:19] fully just like seven

[1:00:21] minutes of sex and

[1:00:22] it's it's it's done

[1:00:23] fairly explicitly but

[1:00:25] like this is a three

[1:00:26] hour movie.

[1:00:27] So really it's like a

[1:00:28] one second sex scene.

[1:00:29] No no I'm just

[1:00:30] saying like I'm

[1:00:31] saying that people

[1:00:32] have focused on this

[1:00:33] but it's it's out of

[1:00:34] proportion with like

[1:00:35] the full content of

[1:00:36] what the movie is

[1:00:37] which is about this

[1:00:39] woman's first love

[1:00:40] and the the

[1:00:44] building of a

[1:00:44] first love and sort

[1:00:45] of the realization of

[1:00:46] who she is and then

[1:00:47] unfortunately the

[1:00:48] falling apart of that

[1:00:49] which I enjoyed the

[1:00:51] second half of the

[1:00:52] movie a little less

[1:00:53] just because it's a

[1:00:53] little more emotionally

[1:00:54] difficult.

[1:00:54] It's it's it's sad to

[1:00:55] see that ballpark

[1:00:57] and there is less sex

[1:00:58] so there's that too

[1:00:59] but I thought it was

[1:01:01] great.

[1:01:02] So you would recommend

[1:01:03] watching the first half

[1:01:04] and then watching it

[1:01:04] again.

[1:01:05] Well sitting down to it

[1:01:06] you know I was like

[1:01:07] I like a lot of

[1:01:10] art.

[1:01:11] Where is this gonna go?

[1:01:12] No I like a lot of

[1:01:13] art films.

[1:01:14] I like a lot of

[1:01:14] foreign films.

[1:01:15] Do I want to watch a

[1:01:16] three hour French

[1:01:18] movie and then once it

[1:01:19] started like I was

[1:01:20] like I was engaged

[1:01:22] and transported the

[1:01:23] whole time.

[1:01:23] So it's a very good

[1:01:24] movie.

[1:01:25] I don't love.

[1:01:26] It's a fast three

[1:01:27] hours.

[1:01:27] It's like the

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:27] godfather of lesbian

[1:01:28] love films.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:29] I don't love the

[1:01:30] very end for reasons

[1:01:32] that maybe I can get

[1:01:33] into on the Facebook

[1:01:34] page.

[1:01:34] Don't spoil it.

[1:01:35] So there's no

[1:01:35] spoilers but that

[1:01:37] would be my only

[1:01:37] criticism.

[1:01:38] Was it all a dream?

[1:01:40] Yeah.

[1:01:41] It was an autistic

[1:01:42] boy's dream.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:43] It was all a dream

[1:01:44] turns and sees a

[1:01:44] woman in her bed

[1:01:45] or was it?

[1:01:46] Or were they all

[1:01:47] characters inside of

[1:01:48] John Cusack's mind?

[1:01:49] Yeah.

[1:01:51] Or did the two

[1:01:52] characters face off

[1:01:54] and shoot missile

[1:01:55] launchers at each

[1:01:55] other and explode

[1:01:56] the world?

Dan McCoy

[1:01:57] They were inside of

[1:01:58] Pruitt Taylor Vance.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:00] Anyway go on Elliot.

[1:02:01] What?

[1:02:02] He's correcting me

[1:02:03] not understanding that

[1:02:04] John Cusack isn't

[1:02:05] the star of identity.

[1:02:06] He is the star.

[1:02:07] He's not the

[1:02:08] brain that the

[1:02:10] characters are running

[1:02:11] around in.

[1:02:11] But shouldn't the

[1:02:12] characters be running

[1:02:13] around in the head of

[1:02:13] the star of the movie?

[1:02:14] No.

[1:02:15] That's the twist.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:17] You'd expect that.

[1:02:18] But no.

[1:02:19] I'm going to recommend

[1:02:20] a noir movie from

[1:02:22] 1953 called 99 River

[1:02:25] Street.

[1:02:26] And I'm not going to

[1:02:27] I don't know why

[1:02:28] that was...

[1:02:28] That's a real

[1:02:29] fucking spectrum of

[1:02:30] movies tonight guys.

[1:02:30] Yeah.

[1:02:31] I'm not going to say

[1:02:32] that it's like the

[1:02:33] most amazing movie

[1:02:34] because I want to

[1:02:35] I really liked it a lot

[1:02:36] and I thought it was

[1:02:36] really good.

[1:02:37] But there's I think

[1:02:38] a problem when you

[1:02:39] say like I've found

[1:02:39] this little known gem

[1:02:41] and then people see it

[1:02:42] and they don't.

[1:02:43] They're like that

[1:02:43] wasn't so amazing.

[1:02:44] Look it's not going to

[1:02:46] blow your mind but

[1:02:47] it's maybe one of the

[1:02:49] grimmest noirs that

[1:02:50] I've seen in a long

[1:02:51] time and I'm kind of

[1:02:52] surprised I haven't

[1:02:53] heard about it for that

[1:02:54] reason.

[1:02:54] It's directed by

[1:02:55] Phil Carlson who

[1:02:58] also directed Kansas

[1:02:59] City Confidential

[1:03:02] some of his off time

[1:03:02] from Genesis.

[1:03:03] Phil Carlson who

[1:03:04] directed Kansas City

[1:03:05] Confidential which is

[1:03:06] another one of those

[1:03:07] more movies and stars

[1:03:08] John Payne as a

[1:03:09] former boxer who

[1:03:10] lost the big fight

[1:03:11] and is now a cab

[1:03:13] driver stuck with a

[1:03:14] shrewish wife who

[1:03:14] thought she was

[1:03:15] marrying the future

[1:03:16] heavyweight champion

[1:03:17] of the world but now

[1:03:18] is only married to a

[1:03:18] cab driver.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:19] John Payne would be

[1:03:20] a good partner for

[1:03:22] Cypher Raid.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:23] It is except this is

[1:03:24] a real person's name.

[1:03:25] He is friends with

[1:03:27] an actress and he

[1:03:29] finds out that his

[1:03:30] wife is cheating on

[1:03:31] him with a kind of

[1:03:32] small time diamond

[1:03:33] crook who is not

[1:03:35] averse to killing

[1:03:36] women who know a

[1:03:38] little too much about

[1:03:38] his diamond thieving

[1:03:39] and long story short

[1:03:41] the taxi driver gets

[1:03:42] a murder pinned on

[1:03:43] him and has to find

[1:03:44] the guy who did it

[1:03:45] before the police find

[1:03:46] him.

[1:03:46] So it's a pretty

[1:03:47] classic kind of

[1:03:48] wrong man noir story

[1:03:49] but it is so dark

[1:03:50] and so grim and

[1:03:52] there's one scene

[1:03:53] where a character

[1:03:54] confesses a murder

[1:03:55] to another one

[1:03:56] that's so overwrought

[1:03:57] that it becomes like

[1:03:58] frighteningly grotesque

[1:04:00] in a way and the

[1:04:02] characters are so

[1:04:03] kind of mean and

[1:04:05] slimy in a way that

[1:04:07] even noir movies in

[1:04:08] the 50s usually held

[1:04:09] back from.

[1:04:10] So it just feels like

[1:04:12] grim in a way that

[1:04:13] they usually don't in a

[1:04:14] way I liked a lot.

[1:04:15] It's shot really neat

[1:04:16] all at night and the

[1:04:18] ending is so

[1:04:19] ridiculously upbeat

[1:04:20] and such a crazy

[1:04:21] change in tone that it

[1:04:22] almost feels sarcastic

[1:04:23] like they had to put

[1:04:25] a happy ending on this

[1:04:26] movie because it's a

[1:04:27] studio movie but they

[1:04:27] went so far over the

[1:04:29] top that it's almost

[1:04:30] like the movie is

[1:04:30] daring you to reject

[1:04:32] that ending because

[1:04:33] the philosophy of the

[1:04:34] film to that point has

[1:04:35] been so like brutally

[1:04:36] dark.

[1:04:37] What was the movie?

Dan McCoy

[1:04:38] You showed a movie

[1:04:39] like that at your

[1:04:40] closely watched films

[1:04:41] at the end of the

[1:04:42] old dark house?

[1:04:42] What was that?

[1:04:43] Ministry of Fear.

[1:04:44] Ministry of Fear.

[1:04:44] Ministry of Fear is a

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:45] really good movie where

[1:04:46] Ray Moland is on the

[1:04:49] run and he's not sure

[1:04:50] why.

[1:04:51] Nazis are chasing him

[1:04:52] in England in the

[1:04:53] 40s and he's not sure

[1:04:54] why and it's like this

[1:04:56] nightmare.

[1:04:56] This man is being

[1:04:57] chased and doesn't

[1:04:58] understand what's going

[1:04:59] on and people are

[1:04:59] turning up dead when he

[1:05:00] goes to them for help

[1:05:01] and it ends with this

[1:05:03] ridiculous joke about

[1:05:04] cake and it's just

[1:05:06] like wait what?

[1:05:07] And all they have to

[1:05:08] do is...

[1:05:08] And there's a zippy

Dan McCoy

[1:05:08] like musical sting and

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:10] then the end.

[1:05:11] It's the same with

[1:05:12] Ray Moland in The

[1:05:12] Uninvited where he

[1:05:14] has just exercised the

[1:05:15] murderous ghost of his

[1:05:17] girlfriend from the

[1:05:18] house and it's really

[1:05:19] like tense and then

[1:05:21] she goes that was

[1:05:22] close and he turns

[1:05:23] her and goes you

[1:05:24] think that was close

[1:05:25] for you?

[1:05:26] That was almost my

[1:05:27] mother-in-law.

[1:05:27] The end.

[1:05:29] Like for some reason

[1:05:30] these movies had to

[1:05:31] end either on upbeat

[1:05:32] endings or jokes but

[1:05:33] 99 River Street it's a

[1:05:35] real tense little

[1:05:36] noir movie.

[1:05:38] Do I want to say a

[1:05:38] little known gem?

[1:05:39] Yeah sure I do and I

[1:05:40] hope you enjoy it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:41] So if somebody were to

[1:05:42] watch all three of

[1:05:43] these movies in one

[1:05:44] sitting what order

[1:05:45] would explode.

[1:05:46] I think maybe do

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:47] warm blue is the

[1:05:48] warmest color last.

[1:05:50] Actually you know

[1:05:50] what I'd say do 99

[1:05:51] River Street then

[1:05:52] blue is the warmest

[1:05:53] color and then end it

[1:05:55] with some bad Milo.

[1:05:57] Cab it off with a

[1:05:58] butt demon to kind of

[1:05:59] wash out the taste of

[1:06:00] ruined romance and

[1:06:01] murder.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:02] Yeah.

[1:06:03] Well guys I know you

[1:06:05] guys have a metal

[1:06:05] show to go to.

[1:06:06] Yeah.

[1:06:07] And we're going to

[1:06:08] go see some squealing

[1:06:09] guitar.

[1:06:09] Masters of Thrash

[1:06:10] 2013.

[1:06:13] So I don't think

[1:06:14] there's anything else

[1:06:15] to say for the

[1:06:16] Flop House.

[1:06:16] But there's so much

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:16] to say Dan.

[1:06:17] Dan I love you.

[1:06:19] Dan I've been holding

[1:06:20] you back all this

[1:06:20] time.

[1:06:21] I got to tie it off

[1:06:21] quick.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:22] For the Flop House

[1:06:22] I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:06:23] Dan no we remember

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:23] each other.

[1:06:23] I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:06:24] Dan is the warmest

[1:06:25] color.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:26] I was just going to

[1:06:27] keep waiting and let

[1:06:28] you keep pastoring it

[1:06:29] for a while.

[1:06:29] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:06:30] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:06:32] Good night everyone.

[1:06:32] That was a Flop House.

[1:06:33] Good night Dan.

[1:06:34] Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:35] Dan no.

[1:06:35] My favorite movie

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:41] featuring Buster

[1:06:43] Poindexter.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:44] More than Carving

[1:06:45] Before War.

[1:06:45] Matt Scrooged.

[1:06:46] Okay you guys are

[1:06:47] both right.

[1:06:48] I like this more.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:49] Or where's the one

[1:06:50] where he gets killed

[1:06:50] by a cat in the mouth?

[1:06:53] Tales from the Dark

[1:06:54] Side of the Movie.

[1:06:54] Cat in the Mouth.

[1:06:55] It's where he's

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:56] Captain Cat in the Mouth.

[1:06:57] He gets a cat in the

[1:06:58] mouth.

[1:06:59] That the superhero

[1:07:00] kills crooks by

[1:07:00] shoving cats in their

[1:07:01] mouths.

[1:07:02] A submarine sandwich

[1:07:02] situation.

[1:07:03] Exactly.

[1:07:04] A submarine cat

[1:07:05] witch.

[1:07:05] Okay.

[1:07:06] Submarine cat

[1:07:06] witch Everdeen.

[1:07:09] What a powerful

Dan McCoy

[1:07:10] tribute to Subway

[1:07:13] Sandwiches.

[1:07:14] Okay.

The Flop House: Episode #140 - After Earth

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