The Flop House: Episode #130 - The Scarlet Letter

Dan McCoy

[0:00] It's the long-awaited Roger Ebert tribute episode.

[0:29] Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse.

[0:31] I'm Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[0:35] I'm Stuart.

[0:36] Line, cue.

[0:38] No, I'm Stuart.

[0:39] No, Stuart Wellington.

[0:40] I'm Stuart Wellington.

Dan McCoy

[0:41] Your full fucking name.

[0:42] I've done this a million fucking times.

Elliott Kalan

[0:44] I'm Elliot Kalin, the one professional member of the team.

[0:47] I said my name delightfully.

[0:49] And then you fell apart into profanity.

Stuart Wellington

[0:53] Okay, I'm Stuart Wellington of the Flophouse Podcast.

Elliott Kalan

[0:57] The Flophouse Podcast, huh?

[0:58] What do we do here?

Dan McCoy

[0:59] What do we do on the Flophouse, Dan?

[1:01] We watch a bad movie, and then we talk about it.

[1:04] Which is what we're going to do.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05] Tonight, for you, the listener.

Dan McCoy

[1:07] Or during the day.

[1:08] I don't know if you're listening.

[1:10] He's playing it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12] Your balls.

Dan McCoy

[1:14] So a while back on the podcast, we...

[1:17] What podcast?

[1:17] The Flophouse?

[1:18] This podcast.

Dan McCoy

[1:18] This very podcast.

[1:20] We announced that we would, in honor of Mr. Roger Ebert, be...

[1:25] Roger Ebert.

[1:26] Yeah.

[1:27] A film critic of notes who touched all of our lives and passed away.

Elliott Kalan

[1:31] I would say the preeminent film critic of the past 30 years.

Dan McCoy

[1:36] That's probably true.

[1:37] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37] And as much as he was not academically accepted for a long time, I think that's changed considerably.

Dan McCoy

[1:43] Mm-hmm.

[1:43] He had a late career sort of renaissance where...

Elliott Kalan

[1:48] He was like Betty White that way.

[1:49] Well, everyone just realized that they loved him.

[1:51] He was hot in Cleveland.

[1:52] He was like Betty White that way.

[1:54] Yeah.

[1:54] And he was hot in Chicago.

Stuart Wellington

[1:56] Does...

[1:56] Do you think...

[1:57] Do you think it helped that the...

[1:59] Like the people...

[2:00] When he started, a lot of the young people who were reading his stuff just got older and

[2:04] then the people who were older and didn't like his stuff just died.

[2:06] I think that's a big part of it.

[2:07] I think that's absolutely part of it.

Elliott Kalan

[2:09] So anyway, because of Roger Ebert, what did we do?

Dan McCoy

[2:11] We took some movies from his...

Elliott Kalan

[2:15] We stole some movies from a local video store.

Dan McCoy

[2:18] Or should I say the ruins of a closed video store.

[2:21] It was a crazy heist.

[2:22] We got Taylor Kitsch and he broke in from the top of the...

[2:27] Yeah.

[2:28] You may know him as John Carter, Warlord of Mars.

[2:30] We told him we were stealing burritos.

[2:31] Oh, Tim Big Rig Riggins.

[2:33] Yeah.

[2:34] No, we found some movies that were on the list of movies that were in his book.

[2:39] I hated, hated, hated this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[2:43] Why couldn't we have watched Blue Velvet?

[2:45] That's in that book.

Dan McCoy

[2:46] Yeah.

[2:47] Which is weird.

[2:50] Yeah, we took a number of those movies.

[2:53] We threw them up on the Flophouse website as a poll.

[2:56] And we asked our listeners, which of these movies that Roger Ebert hated should we watch in tribute to the great man?

Elliott Kalan

[3:04] Which deserves a thorough flopping.

Dan McCoy

[3:05] And this was actually suggested...

[3:07] Is that what we call it?

[3:07] Yeah.

[3:08] This was suggested by a fan.

Elliott Kalan

[3:09] I cleaned it up a little bit.

[3:11] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[3:11] Who, if I was a better producer, I would remember who suggested it.

[3:15] But I don't.

[3:16] So thank you, fan.

Elliott Kalan

[3:17] And yeah, you're not a good producer.

[3:18] Let's all admit it.

[3:19] Nameless fan.

[3:20] So let's just call them Fan Anonymous.

[3:23] The A stands for Arthur.

Stuart Wellington

[3:26] Sure.

[3:27] Arthur Anonymous.

[3:28] Like, what, a DC villain?

[3:30] Or a wrestler?

[3:32] A wrestling villain.

Elliott Kalan

[3:33] A wrestling villain called Dr. Anonymous.

[3:36] And his name is Arthur Anonymous.

Stuart Wellington

[3:37] Like Irwin R. Shyster, a.k.a. IRS.

Elliott Kalan

[3:40] Or E. Nigma, the Riddler.

[3:42] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[3:43] Edward Nigma.

[3:43] I don't know that one.

[3:44] Or famous villain E.E. Cummings.

[3:47] Yeah.

[3:48] Anti-Semitic villain.

Elliott Kalan

[3:51] Why anti-Semitic?

[3:52] Wasn't he E.E. Cummings known for?

[3:53] You think of T.S. Eliot.

[3:54] I am thinking of T.S. Eliot.

Dan McCoy

[3:55] You got your initialed poets mixed up, Daniel.

[3:59] And me, A. English major.

[4:02] But let's...

Elliott Kalan

[4:03] M.E.A. English major.

[4:04] You mean Mortimer Edward, a Reginald major?

[4:09] English major?

Dan McCoy

[4:10] So, but let's talk about the...

[4:13] I'm just going to break down...

[4:14] What were the nominees?

[4:15] I'm going to break down the nominees.

[4:18] I'm going to tell you who people voted on.

[4:22] Who was hot and who was not.

[4:24] So coming in at the rear of our poll was Ben with 4% of the votes.

[4:29] Is that just some guy?

[4:31] That was...

[4:32] That was Ben?

[4:32] No, that was the sequel to Willard.

[4:33] Oh, I see.

[4:35] The Killer Rat movie.

[4:36] Yeah.

[4:38] And you may remember that for the Michael Jackson song.

[4:41] Thriller.

[4:42] Then the two of us are something.

[4:45] I don't know the lyrics to this song.

Elliott Kalan

[4:48] It's weird that the lyrics are about how he doesn't remember the lyrics to this song.

Dan McCoy

[4:51] Very strange.

[4:52] It's very meta.

Elliott Kalan

[4:53] It's like the part in...

[4:55] A friend of ours has complained that in the Elton John song...

[5:00] What's it called?

[5:00] The song is for you.

[5:02] Yeah, this is your song.

[5:03] If I was a sculptor, but then again, no.

[5:05] It's like, well, why don't you erase that line of the song then?

[5:08] You're not happy with it.

Dan McCoy

[5:11] Anyway, go ahead.

[5:12] The next...

[5:13] Coming in next was Food of the Gods with 7%.

[5:16] Uh-huh.

[5:16] Is there a song?

[5:17] You mean 7%?

[5:18] Uh-huh.

[5:19] 7 pounds.

Stuart Wellington

[5:20] Yeah, thanks.

[5:20] Is there a song for that one too?

[5:22] Food of the Gods is the movie we didn't watch.

Dan McCoy

[5:26] Ate you when they're hungry.

[5:27] It's a movie about giant rabbits.

[5:30] Rats.

[5:31] No.

[5:32] Food of the Gods is...

[5:32] I guess there's giant rabbits in it too.

[5:34] Oh, wait.

[5:34] You're thinking of Night of the Leapus.

[5:35] I'm thinking of Night of the Leapus.

[5:36] You were thinking of all the wrong things.

[5:37] I'm thinking of all the wrong things.

[5:38] All the wrong moves?

Elliott Kalan

[5:40] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[5:41] The movie where you don't see Tom Cruise's penis.

[5:45] All the wrong moves.

Elliott Kalan

[5:45] As opposed to his every other movie he's ever made where you do?

Dan McCoy

[5:49] Like Color of Night?

[5:50] That's Bruce Willis.

[5:51] Oh, man.

[5:53] So, coming in with 9%.

[5:56] Actually, no.

Elliott Kalan

[5:56] That was Tom Cruise's penis playing Bruce Willis's penis in Color of Night.

[5:59] Sure.

Dan McCoy

[6:00] 9%.

[6:00] Little Indian Big City.

[6:02] Which I've never seen.

[6:04] The Tim Allen remake of a French children's film.

Elliott Kalan

[6:06] I thought the Tim Allen movie was Jungle to Jungle.

Dan McCoy

[6:09] Jesus Christ.

[6:11] Why can't I get anything right tonight?

[6:13] No, just keep going.

[6:14] Let's see how many air-to-airers we can rack up.

[6:17] Oh, the correctors having a great night tonight.

[6:19] There's some furious typing somewhere.

[6:22] No, but no.

[6:23] There's not typing because Elliot is thankfully.

Elliott Kalan

[6:24] Well, I like to think all the Flophouse listeners immediately start typing an email

[6:28] and then I correct it and they delete, delete, delete, delete, delete.

Dan McCoy

[6:30] Yeah.

[6:31] I like to think they're using old-fashioned typewriters so that they crumple up the paper every time.

Elliott Kalan

[6:34] Yeah, like in the Stephen J. Cannell opening.

[6:38] Toss it into a weird pile.

[6:40] Not opening.

[6:40] It's the close of the Stephen J.

Dan McCoy

[6:41] I'll say it in a pile, but not before it turns into the letter C.

[6:45] But the next one with 10% instinct.

Elliott Kalan

[6:51] Not of the basic variety.

Dan McCoy

[6:53] No, of the Kubi Goodwin Jr. Anthony Hopkins variety.

Elliott Kalan

[6:57] I remember, I never saw that one, but I remember seeing the trailer and being like,

[7:00] oh, so it's Silence of the Lambs, but in a jungle?

Dan McCoy

[7:03] But dumb.

[7:05] Then with 13%, Return to the Blue Lagoon with Mia Jovovich replacing...

[7:11] I might have been up to that.

[7:13] What's your face?

[7:14] Brooke Shields.

Elliott Kalan

[7:14] Mia Tarzan.

[7:15] You a Jovovich?

[7:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[7:16] Thank you.

Elliott Kalan

[7:18] How long have you been working on that one?

[7:20] About a half a second.

Dan McCoy

[7:21] The heartwarming tale of underage island sex.

[7:26] Something's getting warm.

[7:27] I don't know what's in my heart, though.

[7:29] Coming in very close to the top with 24% was an Alan Smithy film, Burn, Hollywood, Burn.

[7:35] Oh, starring Eric Idle.

[7:36] Yeah, they could not decide on one or the other.

[7:39] It had to be an Alan Smithy film, colon, Burn, Hollywood, Burn.

Elliott Kalan

[7:42] The movie about a director mad at his movie, in which the real-life director became so angry

[7:46] about what happened to the movie that he also took his name off it, and it was listed as Alan Smithy.

Dan McCoy

[7:51] Yeah, a beautiful irony.

[7:52] But, because our listeners hate us, with 33%, they chose The Scarlet Letter, starring Demi Moore.

[8:05] Not with Lillian Gish, but with Demi Less is More.

[8:09] Yeah, Demi Moore, who, halfway through the movie, I realized, hey.

[8:12] And Gary left me cold, man.

[8:15] Oh, no.

[8:17] But Gary Oldman is capable of putting in a...

[8:19] And Robert Presky.

[8:22] No.

[8:23] Gary Oldman is capable of putting in a good performance, whereas Demi Moore, I looked through her filmography,

[8:28] and she has never been good in anything.

Elliott Kalan

[8:31] What about, like, people like her in, like, The Butcher's Wife?

Dan McCoy

[8:35] Um, I guess.

[8:38] Or what about...

[8:38] I mean, like, that movie is not very good.

Elliott Kalan

[8:40] The movie about the closure that got dissed?

[8:42] What was that called?

Dan McCoy

[8:44] Dis-closure.

[8:46] No, that wasn't it.

[8:46] As in this closure.

Elliott Kalan

[8:47] I think Charlie's Angels Full Throttle.

[8:48] That's what I was thinking of.

[8:49] Yep.

Dan McCoy

[8:49] I think, actually, of the movies I've seen her in, I may have liked her most in Charlie's Angels Full Throttle.

[8:57] But it's between that or One Crazy Summer.

Elliott Kalan

[8:59] Well, I can't...

[9:00] Well, she's going to come out with that mockumentary about...

[9:03] Because remember, for a couple years, she was pretending to be married to Ashton Kutcher.

[9:07] To be, like, a rapper.

[9:07] And I assume it was, like, yeah, it was, like, some kind of stunt like Joaquin Phoenix pulled

[9:11] that he's doing a rapper.

[9:12] Because that was crazy.

[9:13] No one believed that, right?

[9:14] It's Joaquin.

[9:15] It's Joaquin Phoenix.

[9:17] Fast acting Joaquin.

Dan McCoy

[9:20] So, we have burned up ten minutes or so of this podcast.

[9:24] Okay, okay.

[9:24] Before we start talking about the Scarlet Theater.

[9:27] Well, let's talk...

Stuart Wellington

[9:28] It's based on a book that you might have read in school.

[9:30] You may have read it in school.

Dan McCoy

[9:32] It's called Moby Dick.

[9:34] Good one, dude.

[9:35] The Tale of a White Whale.

Elliott Kalan

[9:37] And Two Cities.

[9:40] Has anyone ever done a Dick conspiracy called Sex and Two Cities?

[9:44] Where it's Carrie is in Paris and France during the...

[9:48] Parents and France.

[9:50] Paris and London around the time of the Revolution.

Dan McCoy

[9:52] Yeah.

[9:52] Somebody write it up.

[9:53] I'm not going to do it.

[9:54] And she's, like, writing her column.

[9:55] It's like, it's more like the pick dick papers.

[10:01] That would be her saucy pun.

Elliott Kalan

[10:03] Yep.

[10:03] Like the pick with papers.

[10:05] While men were being beheaded in the streets, Miranda was giving a behead job to her own

Dan McCoy

[10:11] French marquee.

Elliott Kalan

[10:15] Charlotte was enjoying some revolutions of her own.

Dan McCoy

[10:19] Samantha had great expectations for this date.

Elliott Kalan

[10:22] No, we're doing French Revolution puns.

[10:25] I'm doing Dickens puns.

[10:26] What are you talking about?

[10:28] Stuart, you're going to have to be the tiebreaker on this.

Stuart Wellington

[10:29] Oh, man.

[10:30] Something about less miserables.

Elliott Kalan

[10:32] No.

[10:33] No.

[10:34] It's not even the French Revolution.

[10:36] Meanwhile, across town...

[10:38] Is Bernice the character on that show?

[10:40] Meanwhile, across town...

[10:41] Bernice continued to knit.

[10:43] Bernice was having her best deal stormed.

[10:46] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[10:47] Sex in two cities.

[10:49] I think that...

[10:49] I think it was fair to make a Dickens joke.

Elliott Kalan

[10:51] I think it was fair.

[10:52] You're right.

[10:53] I was being told.

[10:53] I'll allow it.

[10:54] The Scarlet Letter.

[10:54] So it's based on a book by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Dan McCoy

[10:57] You may know him from his blockbuster, The House of the Seven Gables.

Elliott Kalan

[11:03] And let's not forget The Black Veil.

[11:05] That was him, too.

[11:06] Yeah.

[11:08] Now, we're not going to talk about what happens in the book first.

[11:11] But it's a story of hypocrisy and social oppression in 17th century Puritan America.

[11:18] Which, for the movie, has been turned into kind of like a vaguely softcore-y kind of like romance with occasional action elements and some thriller elements.

[11:29] We'll explain.

[11:31] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[11:31] It's like a PBS Zalman King.

Elliott Kalan

[11:33] Yeah.

[11:34] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[11:34] Kind of.

[11:35] Yeah.

[11:35] It's Zalman King's masterpiece theater, basically.

[11:38] That's The Scarlet Letter.

[11:40] So we open.

[11:41] It's the 17th century in the Americas.

[11:44] Which America, specifically?

[11:47] This one.

[11:47] Okay.

[11:48] Thank you.

[11:50] Some Indians are causing trouble.

[11:52] Seems the Puritans and this one Indian chief got along.

[11:55] But now that Indian chief is dead and his son does not care for Americans.

[11:58] Except for – well, they're not Americans yet.

[12:00] Doesn't care for the colonists.

[12:02] Except for one, Mr. Gary Oldman.

Dan McCoy

[12:05] Yeah.

[12:05] I mean, he's pretty cool looking.

[12:07] Cut to –

[12:08] He knew that he'd be good in The Professional.

[12:09] He's like, I like this guy.

Elliott Kalan

[12:10] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[12:11] Yeah.

[12:12] Super method.

[12:12] I loved you in The Contender, even though you took your name off the credits.

[12:16] Right?

[12:17] Didn't he do that?

[12:18] I think so.

[12:18] I don't know.

[12:19] So, then Demi Moore playing young, bewitching Hester Prynne, a lady, arrives in the colony.

[12:27] It seems that she is arriving ahead of her husband, who's a doctor, and she is supposed

[12:33] to go find a house and set it up.

[12:35] And the town is –

[12:36] She's a little strong-willed.

[12:37] She's very strong-willed.

[12:38] A little tarted up.

[12:39] Liberated.

[12:39] She wears lace around her shoulders.

Dan McCoy

[12:41] She's a modern woman.

Elliott Kalan

[12:43] Well, not really.

[12:45] She's still a 17th century woman.

[12:46] She's a modern-ish woman.

[12:47] She's strikingly modern for the 17th century.

[12:49] And that town is aghast that she thinks that she can, I guess, have her own opinions and

[12:54] live in a house by herself.

[12:55] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[12:55] And have a bathtub.

Elliott Kalan

[12:57] Which is –

[12:58] Imagine she has a bathtub and that is scandalous.

[13:00] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[13:00] That is very French of her.

Stuart Wellington

[13:02] And she shows off her lovely curly hair, which only men are allowed to have.

Elliott Kalan

[13:07] Yeah.

[13:07] The hair in this movie on the men is fantastic.

Stuart Wellington

[13:10] Most of it is in their faces.

Dan McCoy

[13:12] It all looks like all the men are wearing literal Lord Fauntleroy wigs.

Elliott Kalan

[13:18] It's like right before the movie, they had all the male actors go into a Ricky's and they

[13:22] just went, go nuts.

[13:25] Go pick a wig, fellas.

[13:26] Really?

[13:27] I think this one looks too fakie.

[13:28] No, no.

[13:28] It's great.

[13:29] No, no.

[13:29] It looks great.

[13:30] It's supposed to look fakie.

[13:31] That way it looks real.

[13:32] I don't understand what you're saying.

[13:34] Real hair.

Dan McCoy

[13:34] I can't be the award-nominated director.

[13:36] Real hair looks fake on camera.

[13:38] Yeah.

[13:38] It's the only way it'll get picked up by the 3D cameras, right?

Elliott Kalan

[13:41] But you have this long, shoulder-length, wavy hair on everybody from Gary Oldman to old-faced

[13:47] Robert Duvall to the guy who looks kind of like M.C. Ganey.

Dan McCoy

[13:52] There's one in every movie.

[13:54] To the aforementioned Presky.

Elliott Kalan

[13:55] Anyway, everyone's aghast at her strong-willedness.

[14:01] And this is the Puritan era.

[14:04] Everyone lives by very strong rules.

[14:06] It's very orderly.

[14:07] And nobody is allowed to be different.

[14:09] Except that, as we see throughout the movie, almost everybody seems to be different.

[14:13] Characters are constantly speaking out about hypocrisy, how bad it is, while the rules are

[14:18] not very good, and that kind of stuff.

[14:19] But anyway.

Dan McCoy

[14:19] You've got Joan Plowright playing basically like a Wiccan who lives on the edge of town.

[14:23] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[14:24] She is playing your kind of Kathy Bates in Titanic, earthy, speaks-her-mind stout woman.

[14:29] Yeah.

[14:30] She's got a lot of sass.

[14:31] Got a lot of sass.

[14:32] Got a lot of sass-fress.

[14:34] A lot of moxie.

Stuart Wellington

[14:35] A lot of them.

[14:35] When she was a younger lady, she would have been smoking hot.

[14:39] But now she's kind of old, and you're like, eh, I'd still do her, but come on.

Dan McCoy

[14:43] Wow.

[14:44] Okay.

[14:44] You had to boil it down to the sex thing.

[14:46] Yeah.

[14:46] I know.

Stuart Wellington

[14:47] Give me a note.

[14:47] No, I mean, like, there'd be a lot of love there.

[14:49] It wouldn't just be sex.

[14:50] Sure.

[14:50] Okay.

[14:51] The love is what makes the sex hot.

[14:53] It's like a sharing of respect.

[14:55] Me pouring into one cup and her pouring into my cup.

Elliott Kalan

[14:58] I don't want to know what your cup is in this metaphor.

[15:03] Okay.

[15:03] But one day, Demi Moore sees a bird.

[15:06] She's working in the garden, and she sees a red bird.

[15:08] And the red bird leads her on a merry chase through the forest to where she spies with her

[15:14] naked eye, and even naked-er Gary Oldman, swimming in a stream with no clothes on, totally

[15:20] nude balls.

[15:20] Yeah.

[15:21] In the scene that I...

Stuart Wellington

[15:23] Do you want to see Gary Oldman's stuff obscured by water?

[15:26] Then watch this movie.

[15:27] Suddenly not obscured by water?

[15:29] But I sort of...

Elliott Kalan

[15:29] I have to...

[15:30] I have to see Gary Oldman's normal-sized, not-at-all-impressive penis.

Dan McCoy

[15:35] I have to imagine this has to be on the shelf.

[15:38] It was the hairstyle down there, dude.

[15:40] It was covering it up.

[15:41] This is on the shelf next to Labyrinth, and, like, women of a certain age, like, this is

[15:46] what awakened my sexuality.

[15:47] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[15:47] I watched this for a book report, and suddenly I was a woman.

[15:50] Yeah.

[15:51] Yeah.

[15:52] Well, anyway, she sees Gary...

[15:53] You're talking about Labyrinth, right?

[15:55] Yeah.

[15:56] I watched it for a book report on Labyrinth.

Dan McCoy

[16:00] A report on Joseph Conrad's Labyrinth.

Stuart Wellington

[16:05] Masquerade ball is so much better in the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[16:08] So, anyway, she is all aflutter by what she sees, because, of course, if you were going

[16:13] to ask women...

[16:15] Well, name an Adonis, they would say Gary Oldman.

[16:17] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[16:18] Maybe it's...

[16:19] Whose face looks kind of like a skull covered in skin.

Elliott Kalan

[16:21] Maybe it's his paleness.

[16:23] Maybe it's the fleshiness around the middle, but she is struck dumb.

[16:25] Future Commissioner Gordon.

[16:28] That's what I like.

[16:30] She sees him in him, the making of a great witch finder general in Red Riding Hood.

[16:38] Oh, I forgot about that guy.

[16:40] Yeah, he put people in a big elephant and lit them on fire.

[16:44] Anyway, so she sees him naked, and she falls in love.

[16:48] The next day, she is riding...

[16:50] She has to get to church on time.

[16:51] Oh, no.

[16:52] She's riding through the mud in the forest.

[16:54] I think it's the same day.

[16:55] Oh, really?

[16:55] And her cart gets stuck in a mud hole.

[16:57] Yeah, I think you're right.

[16:58] She can't get it out.

[16:59] She's trying to push the wheel.

[17:00] Something else gets stuck in a mud hole later.

[17:03] Let's just say, there's a lot of scenes of characters riding carts around in this movie.

[17:07] If you were wondering what the main mode of transportation was in the 17th century, look no further.

Stuart Wellington

[17:11] And she's riding that thing balls to the walls, dude.

[17:14] Like, she's going crazy.

[17:14] She's got to get to church.

Dan McCoy

[17:15] That cart is road hard and put away away.

Elliott Kalan

[17:17] To quote a song by a band, I don't remember who it is.

[17:21] She wants them to get her to the church on time.

[17:25] Anyway.

[17:26] I mean, it's from My Fair Lady.

[17:27] No, but there's also that 80s song.

[17:28] It's not even a direct one.

[17:29] Yeah, Modern Love.

[17:31] David Bowie.

[17:32] Okay.

[17:33] Oh, it's David Bowie?

Stuart Wellington

[17:34] Yeah.

[17:34] Eh, I'm not a fan.

Dan McCoy

[17:35] Anyway, so...

[17:36] Well, that is shameful.

[17:37] But let's put that aside for after the...

[17:39] I love her in her prestige.

[17:40] All right.

Stuart Wellington

[17:40] However, Elliot loves this movie we're talking about.

Elliott Kalan

[17:43] Oh, that's great.

[17:43] A handsome stranger comes along to help her.

[17:46] And by handsome, I mean not.

[17:48] And by stranger, I mean Gary Olden.

[17:49] The guy she was just looking at.

[17:51] The guy who's junk, she was just...

[17:53] I mean, he was still wet from the bath.

[17:54] It had to have been the same day.

[17:55] I like how you say bath.

[17:57] He said he was bathing.

[17:58] He was bathing in a stream.

Dan McCoy

[18:00] It wasn't a bath.

[18:00] Same shit, right?

[18:01] He didn't have a rubber ducky and a loofah.

Stuart Wellington

[18:02] In the olden days, dude, you'd bathe in the streams and stuff.

[18:05] She has a bathtub.

Dan McCoy

[18:06] He's bathing Ginny Agater style in Walkabout.

[18:09] You know?

[18:09] That's what she had.

[18:10] Yeah, right.

Elliott Kalan

[18:10] Yeah.

[18:11] Anyway, so he helps her get the coach out.

[18:14] Oh, no, he doesn't.

[18:14] He gives her a horse and he takes her...

[18:16] He gives her his horse.

[18:17] Some kind of horse exchange.

[18:18] She takes his horse.

[18:19] I'm not sure why they exchanged horses.

[18:21] They get to church on time and she sits down.

[18:24] Time for Reverend Dinsdale.

[18:26] Hot body.

[18:27] Yeah.

[18:28] No, no.

[18:28] Time for Reverend Dinsdale to give a sermon.

[18:30] He steps out.

[18:31] Gary Oldman's the reverend.

[18:33] Yeah.

[18:33] And he gives a very long sermon.

[18:35] And we know it's long because there are at least four dissolves during it.

Dan McCoy

[18:38] There's no...

[18:39] Not even.

[18:40] There's at least, like, 15 dissolves in this thing.

[18:44] There's no way that's true.

[18:45] No, I swear to God.

Stuart Wellington

[18:47] There's so many dissolves in this.

[18:49] And there's, like, a giant Gary Oldman head floating over a smaller Gary Oldman head.

[18:52] At the very small, there's ten.

Elliott Kalan

[18:54] Like, 70s variety show music acts where they'd have a close-up and then they'd dissolve in, like, a side view of the person.

[19:01] It's super cheesy.

[19:03] Anyway, she didn't realize that she had a crush on the reverend, that she saw him as God made him.

[19:08] And suddenly, they fall in love.

[19:11] To make a long story short, and it's a very long story told very slowly.

[19:15] They fall in love, but what are they to do?

[19:17] She's married.

[19:18] She's waiting for her husband.

[19:19] She gives him some books.

[19:20] She gives him some books.

[19:21] He reads those things.

[19:22] They're flirtatious.

Dan McCoy

[19:23] Yeah, he accidentally puts ink on his face and she laughs at him.

Elliott Kalan

[19:25] In the most Hugh Grant moment you never expected to see in a Nathaniel Hawthorne adaptation.

[19:31] But then...

Stuart Wellington

[19:31] There's this great scene of him trying to decide whether or not he should read the books and her slowly bathing herself while her serving maid looks on through a people.

[19:40] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[19:40] And she's masturbating.

[19:41] Let's...

[19:42] Demi Moore is...

[19:43] Demi Moore is masturbating in the bath while a comely servant girl...

Elliott Kalan

[19:47] This is a slave girl that Demi Moore purchased earlier in the movie.

[19:50] The slave girl is kind of like winking at the audience and then looking through a keyhole.

[19:54] She snuffs a candle.

[19:55] She puts out a candle and there's a little red bird in the room, always.

[20:00] And she watches Demi Moore masturbate.

[20:02] And then...

Dan McCoy

[20:03] Well, but the little red bird figures more into the later scene where the slave girl masturbates on her own.

[20:09] And there's a little red bird that she keeps gazing at sexily as if like the bird's turning her on, I guess.

Elliott Kalan

[20:14] The red bird obviously represents like passion.

[20:17] The red bird's turning.

[20:17] Yeah.

[20:19] It's the red bird diaries.

[20:21] Every episode is the bird witnessing a different period and having sex.

Dan McCoy

[20:23] But we talked about this during the movie.

[20:25] Like the servant girl feels like she was ported in from a 1970s Emanuel film.

[20:31] Yeah.

[20:31] Because her whole thing is just to kind of like look at the camera and be like, can you believe how erotic this is?

[20:37] What's happening?

Elliott Kalan

[20:38] She's just...

[20:38] Well, it's like they would go to another country in the Emanuel movies and there would be like kind of a more animalistic native.

[20:46] You know, like a non-white person who would just their mere...

[20:49] Smile at the camera.

[20:50] Smile at the camera.

[20:51] And their presence would make everyone hot and want to have sex with each other.

Stuart Wellington

[20:54] And then go have sex with Simon Le Bon in the jungle.

[20:57] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[20:58] Exactly.

[20:59] So anyway, Demi Moore and Gary Oldman fall in love.

[21:03] There's an Indian massacre of people on the boat that Demi Moore's husband was on.

[21:07] And one of his things, it's just like a piece of cloth with his name on it, is discovered.

[21:12] They assume he's dead.

[21:14] And so Gary Oldman goes, oh, we can be together.

[21:17] Passion overtakes them.

[21:18] And as the serving girl masturbates in a tub next to a bird, Gary Oldman and Demi Moore have sex on a pile of dried wheat.

[21:25] Or maybe it's beans.

[21:27] Maybe let's say it's beans.

[21:28] All we know is for the rest of the movie, we assumed that Demi Moore was picking dried grain out of her butt.

[21:35] It is the least sexy sex scene I think I might have ever seen in a movie.

[21:39] And that's, do I want to say it's counting irreversible?

[21:42] Maybe.

[21:43] And there's a scene, like...

[21:44] Okay, that's going too far.

Dan McCoy

[21:45] But it is...

[21:47] Gary Oldman, like, gnaws at her neck in a way that, like, you know, like, you know, a little neck action.

[21:52] That's a good thing.

[21:53] But, like, it's like he's, like, making his way slowly around.

[21:55] And then he's, like, he's, like, chewing on her chin almost.

Elliott Kalan

[21:58] Here's my only understanding, my only rationalization for it is, it's the 17th century.

[22:03] Neither of these people have had sex before.

[22:05] Is this how it works?

[22:06] They totally don't know how it works.

[22:08] Wait, hold on.

[22:09] It looks like two...

[22:10] They're just doing what their bodies want, right?

[22:11] It's two teenagers who don't know how to make out who are just kind of, like, awkwardly positioning their mouths.

[22:17] They're afraid to touch each other.

[22:18] And then they just kind of plunge in on top of the beans.

[22:21] So that happens.

[22:22] But it turns out, and then Demi Moore is, gets pregnant.

[22:28] Starts barfing all over the place.

[22:29] Starts barfing all over.

[22:30] They realize she's pregnant.

[22:31] They throw her in jail for being pregnant, and for being a blasphemer, I guess.

[22:37] And Gary Oldman says, I'll reveal that I'm the father.

[22:40] And she says, no, don't do it.

[22:42] And she gives birth to a baby in jail.

Dan McCoy

[22:46] As opposed to...

Elliott Kalan

[22:48] Like a dog.

[22:49] A story?

[22:49] Yeah, it gives birth to a nation.

[22:52] She gives birth to a normal-style baby.

[22:56] It's not like V or anything like that.

[22:59] So she gives birth to a baby.

[23:01] She gets out of jail eventually, I guess as a way...

[23:03] I don't remember why they let her out of jail.

[23:05] The colony looks bad.

[23:05] Yeah, she's released on bail.

[23:07] Yeah, it's kind of like that.

[23:08] Like a governor comes by and is like, look, your colony looks bad because you've got a lady in jail who's pregnant and had a baby.

[23:15] Like, let's cut the shit, okay?

[23:17] And that's the other thing.

[23:18] It's like, so everyone thinks the guys who are running this town are stupid and too Puritan.

[23:24] And yet they still get to run the town.

[23:26] But then, uh-oh, it turns out her husband survived.

[23:30] He's actually been inducted into the Indian tribe and has crazy spells where he goes nuts and puts a deer carcass on his head and dances around.

Stuart Wellington

[23:39] And then the local Indians kick him out because he's just too crazy.

Elliott Kalan

[23:41] Yeah, an Indian lady says, he has a ghost in him.

[23:44] Send him away.

Dan McCoy

[23:45] And I gotta say...

Elliott Kalan

[23:46] When you're too crazy for the Indians at that time...

Dan McCoy

[23:49] In a movie full of bad performances, it takes a true artist like Robert Duvall to go way too far.

Elliott Kalan

[23:55] It's almost like his performance is an experiment in how bad he can be.

[23:59] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[24:00] Yeah, he's probably the worst of them.

[24:02] They're all really bad.

[24:03] But it takes a man of talent to be that terrible.

Stuart Wellington

[24:06] Most of the dialogue is like whispered or mumbled or spoken in like a super stilted accent.

[24:13] Very bad English accent.

[24:13] And Robert Duvall tops it all with his like super crazy performance.

Elliott Kalan

[24:18] But it's crazy, but then he'll be really still and dull in other scenes.

Stuart Wellington

[24:22] Not the scene where he's shaving his belly with a weird stone razor.

[24:26] No, that's true.

[24:28] That's a good point.

Elliott Kalan

[24:29] As Dan put it, he's in pretty good shape for an old guy, right?

[24:32] Yeah.

[24:33] So he comes back.

[24:35] He confronts Hester Prynne, Demi Moore's character.

[24:37] And, oh, you have a baby, huh?

[24:40] Tell me who the father is.

[24:41] And she's like, no, no, get out of my life.

[24:43] And he decides he's going to come back as a new persona who is going to start fomenting trouble in the town.

[24:51] And he comes back.

[24:51] He's going to put on a terrible wig.

[24:52] He's going to put on a terrible shoulder length wig.

[24:56] That was a wig?

Dan McCoy

[24:56] I thought he grew his hair out.

[24:59] He looked great.

[25:00] He used some Native American trick.

[25:02] He put some, like, fucking pumice on there.

Elliott Kalan

[25:04] You rub a deer carcass on your head and all of a sudden you got beautiful hair.

[25:08] It's a fertility spell, dude.

[25:10] With his weird old face and his hair, he looks like Tommy Wiseau from The Room.

[25:15] So I just like to think that Tommy Wiseau was wandering around the 17th century because he's a vampire.

[25:19] Everyone knows it.

[25:20] Anyway.

[25:22] He's like, Hester, you're pret.

[25:23] You're tearing me apart, Hester.

[25:25] He starts, Hester gets in trouble again.

[25:28] They put a Scarlet A on her for adultery because, again, she refuses to name.

[25:34] Oh, for adultery.

[25:34] She refuses to name the father of her child and she refuses to let Gary Oldman reveal that he's the father for, I guess, to prove a point.

[25:42] Or she doesn't want to ruin his life.

[25:44] I'm not sure.

[25:44] Gary Oldman is really unhappy.

[25:46] He cuts his hands on a big pillar for some reason in his anger.

[25:50] And Robert Duvall decides that he's going to make everyone believe there are witches in town.

[25:55] Yep.

[25:55] So it's almost like the producers were like, hey, is this a movie of The Crucible or The Scarlet Letter?

[26:02] Yeah.

[26:03] I don't remember.

[26:03] Let's just put The Crucible.

[26:04] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[26:05] I read them both at the same time in high school.

[26:07] So whatever.

[26:09] Mix it up.

Stuart Wellington

[26:10] It's amazing.

[26:10] Mash it.

[26:11] Mash them up.

[26:11] It's one of the great.

[26:12] I don't want to see people with weird hats and there not be a witch, werewolf, or like, I guess, a vampire mummy or something.

Elliott Kalan

[26:19] I wish a vampire mummy.

[26:22] It's this funny thing where, like, everyone gets The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible mixed up, even though they were written a hundred years apart, basically.

[26:31] But just because they're the only two things anyone ever reads that's set in 17th century Puritan American colonies, basically.

[26:39] Yeah.

[26:40] One has...

[26:41] It doesn't...

[26:42] Wait.

[26:42] So does Demi Morgens...

[26:44] And they're both about, like, hypocrisy and overzealous oppression of government.

Stuart Wellington

[26:48] And when Hester Prynne gets her Scarlet Letter, then they throw a bunch of stones at her for fertility or something?

[26:53] No, no.

[26:53] That's the lottery.

[26:54] That's Shirley Jackson.

Elliott Kalan

[26:55] Totally different story.

[26:56] But that's the same thing, right?

[26:57] No.

[26:57] It's set in modern day.

[26:58] That's what's so horrifying about it.

[27:00] Mm-hmm.

[27:00] Right.

[27:01] Well, I guess it's implied it's modern day.

[27:03] I don't know that they really explain explicitly what time period it's in.

Dan McCoy

[27:07] Anywho, so...

[27:08] What's the one where there's children of the corn?

Elliott Kalan

[27:10] I believe you're thinking of Pumpkinhead.

[27:13] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[27:13] Thanks.

[27:14] No, that's what Lance Henriksen...

Elliott Kalan

[27:16] Oh, oh, yeah, you're right.

[27:17] Star of Millennium.

[27:18] Mm-hmm.

[27:19] Yeah.

[27:20] Star of Millennium is sure.

[27:22] Mm-hmm.

[27:22] And, uh, anywho, let's keep going.

[27:27] We're almost...

[27:27] He was also bishop on Aliens.

[27:28] Yeah, thanks.

[27:28] We're almost a quarter of the way through the movie.

[27:31] Mm-hmm.

[27:31] So he's fomenting trouble.

[27:33] He gets everyone to think that Hester Prynne is a witch.

[27:35] He gets everyone to think Joan Plowright's a witch.

[27:37] And meanwhile, the Indians are getting angry about stuff.

[27:40] Mm-hmm.

[27:40] Robert Duvall's...

[27:41] The natives are restless, if you will.

[27:43] Yep.

[27:43] I will.

[27:44] Robert Duvall scalps a man to cause trouble.

Stuart Wellington

[27:47] No, he scalps the guy that he...

[27:49] I thought he scalped who he thought was Gary Oldman's dude.

Elliott Kalan

[27:52] Oh, there's a guy who looks kind of like M.C. Ganey.

Stuart Wellington

[27:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[27:54] Or Powers Booth.

[27:56] Or Gerard Depardieu.

[27:57] Or Gerard Depardieu.

Elliott Kalan

[27:58] Or a young Chef Boyardee.

[28:00] He's wearing a doublet.

[28:01] That's all I remember.

[28:02] Early in the movie, he tries to kiss Hester Prynne and she slaps him.

[28:05] And he goes away for like an hour and a half.

[28:06] He leaves the movie for a long time.

[28:08] I assume he's on a trip somewhere.

[28:10] Maybe he was sleeping.

[28:12] And he attempts to rape her and she shoves a candle, lit candle in his eye.

[28:17] And he runs away.

[28:18] Continuing the candle motif.

[28:19] Yep.

[28:19] And I think maybe you're right.

[28:20] Robert Duvall thinks he's the father.

[28:22] And so...

[28:23] I think he mumbled something about that.

[28:24] I mean, it's tough to say.

[28:25] It's so hard.

[28:25] Everyone's so mumbly in this.

[28:27] It's mumble...

[28:27] It's the biggest budget mumblecore movie I think ever made.

[28:30] It's the only mumblecore costume film.

[28:33] So Hester Prynne is...

[28:35] They think she's a witch.

[28:36] But meanwhile, the scalping has been blamed on the local Indian tribes.

[28:39] They start killing off Indians.

[28:41] The Indians aren't going to take that.

[28:43] So Hester Prynne's about to be hung for witchcraft because it's true.

[28:46] Most of the witches at the time were hung, not burned at the stake.

[28:49] Burning at the stake was a European thing.

[28:51] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[28:52] Hanging was an American thing.

Dan McCoy

[28:53] So good work, Roland Jaffe.

Elliott Kalan

[28:54] You got that right.

[28:55] And when I say witches, I mean to say not witches.

[28:59] People who were accused of being witches.

[29:00] Because no matter what your friend the Wiccan will tell you, there were no witches at Salem.

[29:04] I'm sorry to tell you.

[29:04] Speaking of which...

Dan McCoy

[29:05] Take a good stand here.

[29:07] Speaking of which, I visited Salem not too long ago.

[29:10] And I was kind of just disgusted by how many witch-based things there were that were just Halloween-style witches around.

[29:19] And you realize that you're profiting off of the fact that your ancestors just killed a bunch of innocent people, right?

[29:26] That's what this is.

Stuart Wellington

[29:27] You went by a subway and you're like, no, I don't want a sand witch.

Dan McCoy

[29:31] They've got a big bewitched statue there.

[29:36] A bewitched statue?

[29:37] Yeah.

[29:38] I mean, it was donated by TV Land, but they took it.

[29:40] They still took it.

Elliott Kalan

[29:41] It's amazing to me that they took it.

[29:43] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[29:44] They have free statue.

[29:45] What, are we going to turn it down?

[29:46] Sure.

[29:47] Come on.

[29:47] It's not RoboCut, but it's okay.

[29:48] I mean, sure.

[29:49] Montgomery, yeah, we'll take it.

[29:50] You know, it belittles a bunch of confused young girls who got killed for no reason.

[29:54] But whatever.

[29:54] You know, it's a good statue.

[29:55] It's cute.

Elliott Kalan

[29:56] It's TV Land, whatever.

[29:57] Great show.

[29:57] Aren't we all living in a TV Land?

[29:59] Anyway, so she's about to be hung at the stake.

[30:02] And Gary Oldman says, wait, stop.

[30:05] I'm the father.

[30:06] If you're going to hang anybody, hang me.

[30:08] And takes the noose off her neck and puts it on his.

[30:10] And the executioner's like, all right, whatever.

[30:13] Allow it.

[30:14] Rules is rules.

[30:14] I mean, I get paid the same either way.

[30:16] It's almost like he's like, look, I got contracted for one hanging.

[30:20] I don't care who it is.

[30:22] I'm just the tool in the executioner's hand.

[30:25] Hang her, hang you, whatever.

[30:26] Look, either way.

[30:27] Whatever way, a neck's going to get snapped.

[30:28] Long as I'm home by two with some money in my pocket, I don't really care for shit.

[30:32] So the executioner is.

[30:33] Sad, really.

[30:34] And he gives him a look like, cocks his eyebrow like, all right.

[30:37] Okay, just don't make me look bad.

[30:39] And he starts pushing back and forth the bench that Gary Oldman's standing on, like to tease him a little bit.

[30:45] He's a real hang tease.

[30:46] Yeah, you gotta play it out.

[30:47] A real noose tease.

[30:48] For the crowd.

[30:48] But then suddenly, thwack and arrow hits him in the neck.

[30:51] The Indians are attacking the settlement.

[30:53] And let me tell you.

[30:54] Blood everywhere.

[30:55] All of a sudden, apocalypto breaks out.

[30:57] Yeah, the Indians are getting shot.

[30:59] They're slashing people's throats.

[31:01] They're like running over people with flaming carts.

[31:04] It's crazy.

Stuart Wellington

[31:04] There's a great scene where one of the Puritan men is fighting with an Indian over like a flag.

[31:09] And then another Indian runs up and chops his arm off.

Elliott Kalan

[31:13] And blood's everywhere.

[31:14] And blood spurts.

[31:15] It's like the end of Sanjuro.

[31:16] There's just a spurt of blood.

[31:18] It's crazy.

[31:19] This is not anything the movie ever set you up for.

[31:21] Just this bloody Indian fight.

[31:23] But that's all in the book.

[31:25] No.

[31:26] And Hester Prynne and Gary Oldman, Reverend Dimmesdale, run around for a while and save

[31:31] Hester Prynne's daughter, who I forgot to mention earlier.

Stuart Wellington

[31:34] It's like making bullets bend around her with her magic powers.

Elliott Kalan

[31:37] Because she's Neo.

[31:38] I forgot to mention that one of the pieces of evidence against Hester Prynne was that

[31:41] her baby has a birthmark on its belly, which is a sign of the devil, according to Robert

[31:45] Vahl, who, does he disappear from the movie?

[31:48] He hangs himself.

[31:48] Oh, he hangs himself?

[31:49] I missed that part.

[31:50] Yeah.

[31:50] I might have done the bathroom.

Stuart Wellington

[31:51] After all of his plots are in motion, but before they reach their fruition, he hangs himself.

[31:58] I don't know why.

Elliott Kalan

[31:59] That is the ultimate Bond villain, assuming his plan is about to go through.

[32:04] That's one step beyond just leaving Bond in the trap and going somewhere else.

[32:07] It's, well, Mr. Bond, I have you at my mercy.

[32:10] I suppose my plan is finished.

[32:12] Kill self.

[32:13] Do you think maybe he was like, just making sure that the noose would work when the time

Stuart Wellington

[32:16] came?

[32:17] He's like, oops.

Elliott Kalan

[32:18] Well, he wasn't, you know, you don't make that much money as a witch trouble fomenter,

Dan McCoy

[32:22] so he was working as a noose tester also.

[32:24] Let me make sure that nooses actually kill people.

Elliott Kalan

[32:27] But I mean.

[32:27] It's a great job, but I can only do it once.

[32:32] Looney Tunes.

[32:32] Anyway, so there's a big Indian fight, and somehow the Indians coming in and burning the

[32:37] town down, I guess, like, erases the charges against Hester Prynne.

[32:42] Because the next thing we see.

[32:43] They got bigger problems.

[32:44] She's kneeling at a grave of someone who was killed in the battle, and she's.

[32:47] It was her husband.

[32:50] Yeah.

[32:50] Do we know that for sure?

[32:51] Yeah, it's at our Prynne.

[32:52] Oh, you're right.

[32:54] Look, by that point, I think I was.

[32:55] I was paying attention.

[32:56] You were paying attention so much closer than me at that point.

[32:58] I think my brain was actively rejecting the film as it entered my eyes.

[33:02] Flophouse first.

[33:04] It's a first house.

[33:05] Flophouse.

[33:05] So Dimmesdale.

[33:07] Dimmesdale says, don't leave.

[33:09] And she says, I have to leave.

[33:10] And he goes, all right, then leave with me.

[33:11] And they just do.

[33:13] And.

[33:13] He climbs up into the coach.

[33:14] Demi Moore takes.

[33:15] They make out while they're riding around.

[33:16] Demi Moore takes the Scarlet A off her.

[33:19] Her little daughter takes it.

[33:20] And then as they're riding away, the daughter drops the A out of the cart and the wheel rolls

[33:24] over it.

[33:25] Take that, social mores.

[33:27] You just got run over by a muddy wagon cartwheel.

[33:31] The end.

[33:32] So we shouldn't dwell on.

[33:33] And there's a voice.

[33:34] I should mention the whole thing.

[33:35] There's been voiceover narration throughout from Hester's grown-up daughter in the future.

[33:40] And she mentioned that they went to the Carolinas.

[33:42] Not Days of Heaven style.

[33:43] The Days of Heaven narration is poetic and loosely related to what we're seeing.

[33:47] This is like Legion style.

[33:50] All right.

[33:50] And at the end.

[33:52] My mother always told me vampires were real.

[33:55] And.

[33:56] But they're demons.

[33:57] According to the voiceover, they had a successful time in the Carolinas and lived happily ever

[34:02] after.

[34:03] There's also literally what where Demi Moore says.

[34:05] We weren't paying attention because.

[34:06] There's literally a part where Demi Moore says, we came here to make a new country.

[34:11] Like, let's make a good enough one for her or something like that.

[34:15] It's so lame.

Stuart Wellington

[34:16] But I wasn't really paying that much attention because I was making up stories for all the

[34:20] people that they rode past, like Fakebeard and White Hat.

Elliott Kalan

[34:24] Classic Flophouse getting more interested in the extras.

[34:26] As they're riding away, there's these two guys walking together.

[34:29] One has this wide floppy hat and the other has such a big beard.

[34:34] He looks like Andre the Giant playing the Sasquatch in that one million, six million dollar

[34:38] man episode.

[34:39] And he looks like, what's the name of that?

[34:41] What's the name of that big Muppet?

[34:43] The big monster with the ragged clothes?

Dan McCoy

[34:45] Sweetums?

[34:46] Yeah.

[34:46] He looks like Sweetums.

Elliott Kalan

[34:47] And it's suddenly like, who are these two?

Stuart Wellington

[34:49] Who are these two traveling con artists?

[34:51] Like, kind of hoping that the sequel will follow them, right?

[34:54] Because there's a sequel to this, right?

[34:55] Yeah, Scarlet Letter 2, Scarlet again.

Elliott Kalan

[34:58] Still red.

[34:59] Scarlet Letter 2, yeah.

[35:01] Better red than dead.

[35:03] What?

Dan McCoy

[35:05] Tagline.

Elliott Kalan

[35:06] Scarlet Letter 2, letter B.

Dan McCoy

[35:10] I don't think we should dwell on this too much because it was well reported on at the

[35:16] time, but this is nothing like the book, The Scarlet Letter.

Elliott Kalan

[35:18] Nothing like the book, just to be, the book is much more about, she's got the Scarlet Letter,

[35:23] she committed adultery, she refuses to say who, and the person who did it won't admit

[35:27] it.

[35:27] Who was it?

[35:28] And it turns out that it was, should I just, it was Reverend Dinsdale, who is a hypocrite.

[35:33] In the book, he is one of the leaders of the people who are oppressing and attacking Hester

[35:38] Prynne.

[35:38] He's a bad guy.

[35:39] And when he gives his speech at the end, it's about the soul-crushing guilt he feels

[35:44] because he has betrayed God, basically, and betrayed the truth.

[35:48] And it's not this like, it's not a stirring speech about how we gotta let lovers be lovers

[35:52] and equality for all.

Dan McCoy

[35:54] It's not a romance between two star-crossed lovers.

[35:58] It's this woman had sex with this guy and this guy was an asshole and a hypocrite and

[36:04] tortured her.

[36:06] And then, um, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[36:08] But also the book didn't have a big Indian attack at the end.

[36:10] I don't think it had a bathtub masturbation scene.

[36:13] I don't know that any...

Dan McCoy

[36:13] That's why the book never went anywhere, right?

Elliott Kalan

[36:15] Yeah, you're right.

[36:16] It was a big...

[36:16] It was a big flop.

[36:17] It was an obscurity to this day.

[36:21] In fact, this Flophouse is not about the movie, which is a huge hit.

[36:23] It was about the book.

[36:24] It was a total flop.

[36:25] Yeah.

[36:25] But like, this is such a slow...

[36:28] It's a movie that misunderstands seriousness to be the same as slowness.

[36:33] Like, if you take...

Stuart Wellington

[36:34] Yeah, slap some wigs on some dude.

Elliott Kalan

[36:36] Slap some wigs on, talk in really quietly in bad English accents, and take 40 seconds

[36:42] between lines of dialogue to look at each other, and you've got like, I guess, a best picture

[36:46] winner.

[36:46] That was their thing.

[36:47] Sure, sneak in some horse riding.

[36:49] That's the thing.

[36:49] And do some...

[36:50] As Ebert says in his review, he says it's shot in a kind of like Playboy Fantasies video

[36:55] style.

[36:56] And it totally is.

Dan McCoy

[36:58] I just don't know what they were...

[36:59] Like, I really don't know what anyone involved with this was thinking, because anyone who

[37:04] had any interest in making an adaptation of The Scarlet Letter, like, why would they then

[37:09] turn it into this movie?

[37:11] Like, why would they then be like, you know what?

[37:14] Let's make it a romance.

[37:15] Let's make it super sexy.

[37:17] Let's cap it all off of the Indian attack.

Stuart Wellington

[37:20] Let's make it super sexy.

[37:22] Adds more Robert Duvall in a wig.

Dan McCoy

[37:24] And the thing is, like, the only interesting things about it are the terrible things that

[37:28] were added, though.

[37:28] Yeah.

[37:29] Like, the violent Indian attack, and the masturbation in the tub.

Elliott Kalan

[37:34] And the bizarrely erotic slave girl voyeur.

[37:38] So here's my theory.

[37:40] My theory is, Demi Moore was at a point in her career where she wanted to do a prestige

[37:43] movie.

[37:44] She's a big star now.

[37:46] She wants to be nominated for an Oscar or something like that.

[37:48] She wants to do something that shows that she's an actress.

[37:50] She's not just a pair of boobs.

[37:52] She is an actress.

[37:53] And so they say, okay, well, what's a...

[37:56] You know what we've done a lot of movies of?

[37:58] That's a big classic.

[38:00] Everyone's heard of it.

[38:01] Nobody's read it.

[38:02] So it's...

[38:02] And this is something Demi Moore said, I think, was that, like...

[38:05] It was either Demi Moore or the director...

[38:07] No, she said that, like, no one's actually read it.

[38:08] No one's actually read it, so they're not going to know we made changes.

[38:10] And besides, she also said something about, like, if we had an unhappy ending, it

[38:15] wouldn't be true to the character of Hester Prynne.

[38:17] Which is crazy.

[38:19] But that's it.

[38:20] That Demi Moore knows the character better than Nathaniel Hawthorne, the inventor of

[38:24] the character.

[38:24] But anyway, I think that...

[38:26] And then I think they literally went through it and said, okay, people aren't...

[38:29] We don't want to make this type of movie.

[38:31] We want to make a stirring romance.

[38:32] This is going to be Demi Moore's Gone with the Wind.

[38:34] It's going to be a historical costume romance, sweeping passion, epic scope, like a real

[38:40] portrait of a picture time in America and a strong-willed woman.

[38:44] Because it's...

[38:45] We can't have her be too crushed by society because she needs to be a strong woman, too.

[38:49] And that just kind of throughout the process...

[38:51] I would guess the screenplay went through a ton of different drafts where they were, like,

[38:56] inventing backstory, coming up with scenes and, like, putting in...

[38:59] Extra Indian attacks.

[39:00] Well, kind of saying, like, we're going to need to get asses in seats.

[39:03] We need an action scene for the trailer.

[39:04] Let's end it with a big Indian attack.

[39:06] Also, then we got a pro-Indian message because the settlers brought it on themselves by not

[39:10] respecting the Indians.

[39:12] And it's like...

[39:12] Which is true in real life.

[39:14] They did, you know, the settlers did not respect the Indians and brought on themselves

[39:16] and got killed.

[39:17] But anyway, IRL, yeah.

[39:19] IRL.

[39:20] The colonists did not treat the Indians well.

[39:23] Spoiler alert.

[39:24] But then they...

[39:25] So basically, it's one of these things...

[39:27] This used to happen a lot also in old movies much more often, where you would take the

[39:31] title of a story, the barest elements from it, and just make up a whole new story.

[39:37] And that was your new story.

[39:38] It's kind of like all the great Edgar Allan Poe movies.

[39:41] Like From Hell.

[39:43] Yeah, exactly.

[39:43] From Hell.

[39:44] Almost none of them have anything to do with the story they're based on, you know.

[39:48] The Black Cat is a great movie that has nothing to do with the story of the Black Cat,

[39:52] you know.

[39:53] But here it's...

[39:54] Here it's...

[39:55] They just said, like, let's just make a kind of a crappy movie, but that we'll hope

[40:00] will be good, and what's called Scarlet Letter, and do Scarlet Letter-y things in it,

[40:03] you know.

[40:05] So...

[40:05] Anyway, so that's a behind-the-scenes look at what I imagine was behind the scenes.

Dan McCoy

[40:09] So I think that we were there already, but just quickly, this is a good, bad movie,

[40:14] a bad, bad movie, a movie you kind of liked.

[40:16] Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[40:17] I would say...

[40:18] No, no, no, no.

[40:19] Roger Ebert was right, or Roger Ebert was super wrong.

[40:21] I'm gonna have to go...

[40:22] I'm gonna give thumbs up to Roger Ebert's review of this, because he was right, it is

[40:26] very boring and bad, it doesn't make any sense, and it is...

[40:30] It's one of the...

[40:31] Although, it's...

[40:32] There are parts of it...

[40:33] If you could make a supercut of just the scenes with birds in them, and the scenes with candles

[40:37] in them, you would have a very funny supercut.

[40:40] But otherwise...

[40:41] But there's so much dross in the middle, it's so slow and meandering.

[40:44] It's like chaff to get to that wheat.

[40:46] Yeah, and the Indian attack...

[40:48] Literally wheat in the sense of the sex scene.

[40:50] It's like, by the time you get to this really super bloody Indian scene, it's like, too little,

[40:53] too late movie.

Stuart Wellington

[40:54] And there's so little chemistry between the two leads.

[40:57] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[40:58] Strangely enough, Gary Oldman is not the romantic lead that they might have thought.

Dan McCoy

[41:02] I agree.

[41:02] There's some really great silly scenes that are supposed to be sexy.

Elliott Kalan

[41:06] The scene where Gary Oldman accidentally gets ink on his head, and it is delightfully clumsy,

[41:11] and Demi Moore laughs, and it's just like a Julia Roberts-Hugh Grant scene, is pretty

[41:17] funny for how stupid it is.

[41:18] That they have this dumb, like, romantic comedy scene in the middle of the fucking Scarlet Letter.

Dan McCoy

[41:23] Yeah, but all in all, I think we can agree.

Stuart Wellington

[41:25] Yeah, we all agree.

[41:26] Roger Ebert was right.

Dan McCoy

[41:27] It was boring.

[41:28] This time.

Elliott Kalan

[41:29] Wait, what's that light over there?

[41:30] Roger Ebert's soul!

[41:32] It's finished its business here on Earth, and it's ascending to heaven!

[41:35] Terrible.

[41:36] Wait, no, it's getting caught in a Ghostbusters trap!

[41:38] No!

[41:38] Dr. Benchman!

[41:40] He was a good ghost!

[41:41] Oh, God.

[41:42] Oh, now Slimer is kissing him.

[41:44] Oh, I don't know how I can see inside the trap, but...

[41:47] This is horrible.

[41:50] Ghostbusters 3, Roger Ebert's revenge.

[41:52] Yeah.

[41:53] So, um...

[41:54] Starring Shia LaBeouf.

[41:54] I gave him the chair!

[41:56] Now we're gonna...

[41:57] The Scolari brothers!

[41:59] I gave him the chair!

Dan McCoy

[42:00] We're gonna move on to our letters segment, the Flop House movie Mailbag.

Elliott Kalan

[42:05] The letter this time is A, a scarlet letter.

Dan McCoy

[42:09] The first letter is...

Elliott Kalan

[42:10] It's really hard to read this letter.

[42:11] It's red type on a red background.

[42:13] Maybe you shouldn't have printed these all out in red for the scarlet letter themed episode.

Dan McCoy

[42:16] Yeah, I apologize.

[42:18] This first letter, though, is titled, The Show is Beautiful.

[42:22] Gentlemen.

[42:24] Gentlemen.

[42:25] I love the podcast.

[42:27] Love it.

[42:27] My wife demands that I stop talking about it.

[42:30] Well, you divorce her.

[42:33] Well, she could put her demands in a pipe and smoke them, baby.

[42:36] I say, no, listen.

[42:38] That rascally rawr rawr was the Flophouse house cat.

[42:41] And Elliot always yells house cat afterwards like a delighted child that she just saw Santa Claus.

Elliott Kalan

[42:48] Because I'm Jewish, the house cat is the closest I'm gonna get to Santa Claus.

Dan McCoy

[42:51] And she sighs and mutters, have fun with your weird podcast, honey, and leaves the room.

[42:56] It is a weird podcast.

[42:57] There's no accounting for taste.

Elliott Kalan

[42:58] As long as we're not, as long as it's not the, like, the scenario where the wife finally listened to the Flophouse and it was Dan describing, or was it Stuart?

[43:05] One of you guys.

[43:06] It was me.

[43:06] Describing a vagina sliding down a banister.

[43:09] Yeah.

[43:10] As long as your wife's experience was not that.

[43:13] Or Dan commenting on your wife's butt.

[43:18] Anyway, Dan, continue.

Dan McCoy

[43:19] I've been going through a rough personal time and coming home and listening to an episode or two has gotten me through some difficult times.

[43:24] I'm not blowing smoke up your ass.

[43:26] I'm legitimately grateful for the laughs you've given me.

Elliott Kalan

[43:30] Yeah, Dan loves smoke enemas.

[43:31] Is this part of his character we've established?

Dan McCoy

[43:33] Your next movie pitch should be a revenge fantasy wherein Nicolas Cage breaks into Dan's house during a recording and takes you all hostage.

[43:40] He then subjects you to various personalized tortures, e.g. forcing Dan.

[43:44] E.g. Marshall?

Stuart Wellington

[43:46] E.g.

[43:46] E.g. Cummings, right?

Dan McCoy

[43:49] Yeah.

[43:49] G.E. Smith?

[43:50] E.g. forcing Dan to converse awkwardly with a married gay couple and forcing a bald gag to Elliot to listen to a prolonged recording of celebrity names being mispronounced.

[43:58] Oh, but I do that.

[44:00] Stewart's personalized torture can be the subject of a listener contest.

[44:04] Make this movie and then subsequently review it for an episode of your podcast.

[44:08] Meta is in these days.

[44:10] Love your work.

[44:11] Absolutely love it.

[44:11] Brandon, last name withheld.

[44:12] Now, look.

[44:14] I just want to take a note.

Elliott Kalan

[44:15] Well, one thing.

[44:15] Thanks, Brandon, for listening.

[44:17] We're glad we could provide you some amusement.

[44:18] Let's get that out of the way before we jump on him.

[44:20] Before Dan shreds you a new one.

Dan McCoy

[44:22] No, I'd like to take a note.

[44:24] Roasted.

[44:25] On the day that we're recording this, on the day that the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down by the Supreme Court.

[44:32] That's right.

[44:32] I'd like to clarify that despite many attempts to smear me with the label of homophobe, I could not be more delighted that anti-homosexual legislation has been killed.

[44:49] Okay.

Elliott Kalan

[44:49] All right.

[44:50] Suddenly we're at the Rachel Maddow house.

Dan McCoy

[44:53] But now that I've said that.

Elliott Kalan

[44:55] Is this the Fluff House with Chris Hayes?

[44:57] What's going on?

Dan McCoy

[44:57] Now that I've said that, we can decide what Stuart's torture would be.

Elliott Kalan

[45:00] Oh, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[45:01] I think Stuart's torture would be.

[45:04] I think that his torture would be that someone tried to give him some sort of microbrew instead of for his life.

[45:11] Yeah, that would be pretty terrible.

Stuart Wellington

[45:13] Or being stuck in a room with Nicolas Cage and not being able to pet his hair.

Elliott Kalan

[45:17] That would be torturous.

[45:18] Yeah, your hands are in oven mitts.

[45:20] So you can't touch his hair.

Stuart Wellington

[45:21] And tied behind my back.

[45:22] Yeah.

[45:23] Because my fingers could bust through those mitts and get at that greasy hair.

[45:27] Like a ghostbuster for hair.

Elliott Kalan

[45:30] So like your fingers are to oven mitts as Wolverine's claws are to his hands?

[45:33] Yeah.

[45:33] It just burst through?

[45:34] Yeah, it'd be like, snicked.

[45:36] Snicket?

[45:37] So Lemony.

[45:38] I had an eye to the bucket board.

[45:39] Is that okay?

[45:40] So Wolverine is talking about children's author Lemony Snicket when his claws come out.

Stuart Wellington

[45:43] Yeah, yeah, no.

[45:44] I use an eye though, not a knee.

[45:45] Oh, okay.

[45:46] It's not copyright infringement.

[45:47] And so my fingers bust through those mitts.

[45:49] So they turn into weird wristbands.

[45:51] Uh-huh.

[45:52] Sweatbands.

[45:52] So that the Nicolas Cage hair sweat doesn't get all over my upper forearms, I guess.

[45:57] Okay.

[45:58] Then I just start petting.

[45:59] Yeah.

[46:00] Okay, so we decided.

[46:02] Wait, I don't think we did.

Elliott Kalan

[46:04] What else is going on?

[46:04] Continue.

[46:05] Next letter, please.

[46:06] Next letter.

Dan McCoy

[46:07] Next scarlet letter.

[46:08] Next letter is titled, Is Stuart's Ding Dong Alright?

[46:11] Nope.

[46:11] That's a...

[46:12] Dear...

Elliott Kalan

[46:12] It's more than alright.

[46:14] It's great.

Dan McCoy

[46:15] Dear floppers.

[46:16] This morning I was listening to a local morning show and a story came across titled, Man High

[46:21] on Mushrooms Rips Off Part of Penis.

[46:26] The morning show crew was making wise of the situation, but I found no humor in this event.

[46:31] Yeah, that's horrible.

[46:32] High on mushrooms, nothing new.

[46:34] Stuart could no longer hold back his need to finally succumb to his fantasy and become the

[46:39] castle freak.

[46:39] Sure.

[46:40] Please let me know that...

Elliott Kalan

[46:41] Actually, he was looking for the castle freak and he said, in order to find the castle

[46:44] freak, I must become the castle freak.

[46:46] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[46:47] Please...

[46:47] So I rip off my ding dong and I go to jail.

[46:49] Yeah.

[46:51] Modern day jails are like castles, right?

Elliott Kalan

[46:53] The closest you're going to get, yeah, I think.

Stuart Wellington

[46:55] That's where you're going to find a freak.

Elliott Kalan

[46:56] And you become a phone freak.

[46:58] Finish the letter.

Dan McCoy

[46:59] Yeah, please let me know that Stuart is okay and his ding dong is holding strong.

[47:03] Concerned, Eric's last name withheld.

[47:05] Now, this same news story was also brought to our attention by one Tico Alhambra, apparently

[47:11] a co-host of the It's on Craigslist podcast and also by a number of people on our Facebook

[47:19] group.

[47:20] Including Dan Sarah Wolf.

[47:21] Yeah.

[47:22] I would like to clarify again, this is not a ding dong podcast.

[47:26] We have no particular interest in ding dong news.

Stuart Wellington

[47:29] I think what he's suggesting is that I take my pants off, right?

[47:35] No, no one's suggesting that.

[47:36] So I'm just going to...

[47:37] No, don't do it.

[47:38] I mean, only if you're going to do it.

[47:39] Well, let's examine.

Elliott Kalan

[47:40] Yeah, we should just examine what you got under there.

[47:42] Oh, it's like a Kindle down there.

Stuart Wellington

[47:43] All right.

Elliott Kalan

[47:44] Oh, no.

[47:45] Oh, it's all gone.

[47:46] It's all gone.

Stuart Wellington

[47:48] Zip up.

[47:49] I can't bear it.

Elliott Kalan

[47:50] Here, Stuart.

[47:51] I'm going to have to...

[47:51] I'll give you one of my two penises.

Dan McCoy

[47:53] Okay.

[47:54] Share and share alike.

[47:55] That's what Elliot always says.

[47:57] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[47:59] You're going to add that...

[48:00] It's the classic...

[48:02] It's the classic mathematical proposition.

[48:04] Share equals share.

[48:05] It's the law of conservation of share.

Stuart Wellington

[48:07] You're going to add sound effects to that bit later, right?

[48:10] I mean, I think that you did it.

[48:11] You did sound effects.

Elliott Kalan

[48:11] I mean, you unbuckled your belt and everything.

Dan McCoy

[48:13] Okay, we'll listen to it.

Elliott Kalan

[48:17] He'll add in horrified gasps.

Dan McCoy

[48:18] We'll have a listening party after the recording.

[48:21] This letter is titled, I Found Gooby.

[48:25] Is he missing?

[48:27] It's from...

[48:28] Is that a gas station?

Elliott Kalan

[48:30] And the five dollars?

[48:31] It sounds like something that a little kid would say upon seeing dog poop on the ground.

Dan McCoy

[48:37] This letter's from Chris, last name withheld.

[48:39] He writes, I'm a family-sized fan of the show and have been through most...

[48:43] Family-sized fan?

[48:45] I don't know whether that means that he's...

[48:46] Family-sized fam?

[48:48] Yeah.

[48:48] He's a family-sized fan of the show and have been through most of the episodes, some of them multiple times.

[48:55] Thank you.

[48:56] Like any borderline creepy, slightly too into it devotee, I'm careful always to keep my eyes peeled for signs of flop.

[49:04] And that's how I found Gooby.

[49:06] As the attached image more or less clearly shows, he has ended up behind a local greasy spoon, Oakland's legendary Lois the Pie Queen.

[49:14] And there he languished for some months, as I had frequent occasion to confirm, given that I lived about half a block away and often ran, walked, or biked by the place.

[49:22] I recently moved away, but not before observing that he appears to have moved on.

[49:26] To where?

[49:27] I cannot say.

[49:28] Heaven.

[49:29] But if I find him, never fear, I will update you.

[49:32] Cherchez la flop.

[49:34] Gooby, stay alive!

[49:36] I will find you!

[49:37] And he adds a postscript.

[49:39] As I was writing this, I started to think, how many people would, knowing what I found Gooby means, actually choose to open the email with that subject line?

[49:46] Then I started to think, how sure am I that the Flophouse team will open an email with that subject line?

[49:51] Then I told myself rather sternly to get it together already.

Elliott Kalan

[49:54] Look, we opened an email to subject line crying with boobs, didn't we?

Dan McCoy

[49:58] Here's the photo showing evidence of, is that Robbie Coltrane?

Elliott Kalan

[50:04] Yeah, it looks like Gooby, all right.

Dan McCoy

[50:06] Behind a broken down patio table.

Elliott Kalan

[50:10] Gooby's seen better days.

[50:12] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[50:13] Gooby appears to be fenced in.

[50:15] He's not riding high like he was off the success of the Gooby motion picture.

[50:19] No, he's not, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[50:20] Yeah, that was the thing.

[50:22] Like, after Gooby came out, he was certain it was going to be a big hit.

[50:25] He started getting coked up, you know, like, just blowing all of his fuzz on prostitutes.

[50:31] All of his fuzz?

[50:32] What?

[50:33] Is that how he gets paid?

[50:35] He pays them.

[50:36] The weird thing is that the prostitutes would accept the fuzz.

[50:39] Yeah, I don't get it.

Elliott Kalan

[50:40] Does he grow golden fuzz?

[50:41] I don't understand.

Dan McCoy

[50:42] Yeah, well, that's the magic of Gooby.

[50:45] If a child believes in Gooby, then Gooby can...

[50:47] No, you're thinking of Bogus.

[50:49] Okay.

[50:50] Sure.

[50:51] Draw Dead Fred?

[50:52] Yeah.

[50:53] Yeah.

[50:54] Yeah, wait.

[50:55] Yeah, Rick Mayall.

Elliott Kalan

[50:55] Yeah, the movie that killed Rick Mayall's career in America.

Dan McCoy

[50:59] But thank you for letting us know that...

Elliott Kalan

[51:01] Is that my favorite Phoebe Cates movie?

[51:03] No, not at all.

[51:05] It's not Paradise?

[51:07] Well, that's my third favorite Phoebe Cates movie.

[51:10] After Gremlins 1 and 2.

[51:12] But not in that order.

[51:13] Gremlins 2, then Gremlins.

[51:15] Then Paradise, just the scene with the shower.

[51:17] Yep.

[51:18] So, this last letter of the evening...

[51:20] Then Princess Caribou.

[51:22] Which I've actually never seen.

[51:25] I've actually seen Princess Caribou.

[51:27] I just remember when it came out, it was like, oh, Phoebe Cates is back.

[51:29] And then Phoebe Cates disappeared again.

[51:32] Happier just being Mrs. Kevin Kline.

[51:34] Yeah, who wouldn't?

Dan McCoy

[51:35] I mean, come on.

[51:35] Good point.

[51:36] That's a good point.

[51:37] Kevin Kline, dream date.

Elliott Kalan

[51:39] Him and his brother Calvin are always hanging out, having fun.

[51:42] And his son Chris.

Dan McCoy

[51:44] Yep.

[51:46] Terrible in Street Fighter.

[51:48] And, of course, Grandpa Robert.

[51:50] Great in Street Fighter.

[51:51] Yeah, amazing in a certain way in Street Fighter.

[51:54] So, this last letter is titled...

Elliott Kalan

[51:56] And, of course, their nephew, Ein Kline, knocks music.

Dan McCoy

[52:01] This last letter is titled,

[52:03] Super Flophouse Brothers.

[52:05] And it goes like this,

[52:06] Dear Floppers,

[52:08] I just finished listening to the Alex Cross episode in which Elliot was able both to reference

[52:12] Rampage, an arcade game that is at least 25 years old.

[52:16] Yeah, but I was there when it was new.

[52:17] And still sound remarkably like a confused grandparent with his lack of awareness of Kratos, the protagonist

[52:24] from the God of War series, which has sold over 20 million copies and won several Game of the Year awards.

Elliott Kalan

[52:29] Yeah, because I really follow the Game of the Year awards.

[52:31] I'm not accusing Elliot.

Dan McCoy

[52:32] You're too busy winning Emmys.

Elliott Kalan

[52:34] Yeah.

[52:34] Who gives that out?

[52:35] Loser in his mom's basement magazine?

Dan McCoy

[52:39] I'm not accusing Elliot of being a video game poser because he almost certainly has...

[52:44] So weirder.

Elliott Kalan

[52:45] What I think is, it's crazy.

[52:47] The idea that I would lose track of video games somewhere between Rampage and God of War is not that crazy.

Dan McCoy

[52:53] He gets to it.

[52:56] Okay.

[52:57] I'm not accusing him of being a video game poser because he almost certainly has, like I have,

[53:01] significantly dropped out of the video game pastime as he's grown older.

[53:05] His dropout date was probably some date in between when Rampage was big and when God of War was big.

Elliott Kalan

[53:10] You know what?

[53:11] You nailed it on the head.

[53:12] It was.

Stuart Wellington

[53:13] Good Scooby-Doo work over there.

Dan McCoy

[53:15] What was the last video game each of you remember really enjoying?

[53:20] This email has been written before the summer of 2013.

[53:23] When a re-rendered DuckTales game is scheduled to be released.

[53:26] Yes, I can't say DuckTales re-rendered.

[53:28] It certainly will rekindle all of your previously extinguished video game desires.

[53:32] If you would like to offer your favorite video game of all time, that would be great too.

[53:36] If you haven't played the 2013 version of DuckTales, you may not vote for that.

[53:41] But a vote for the 1990 NES version would certainly be allowed.

[53:46] I know.

[53:47] I'm just saving time.

[53:48] Say it weirder.

Elliott Kalan

[53:49] You really saved a lot of time by saying NES instead of NES.

Dan McCoy

[53:52] Just because you had to explain the fucking thing.

Elliott Kalan

[53:54] If you said NES, you wouldn't have wasted this time in the explaining.

[53:56] Eric's last name would help.

[53:57] Anyway, the NES, Nintendo Entertainment System, or Famicom System, is what Dan's talking about.

Dan McCoy

[54:03] Originally sold with that robot.

[54:08] Gyrobot, dude.

[54:09] Gyrobot?

[54:10] Yeah.

[54:10] So you played Gyromite.

[54:11] I thought his name was Rob.

Stuart Wellington

[54:13] No, it was Gyrobot.

[54:14] Then who's Rob?

Elliott Kalan

[54:16] Your fucking friend, Rob?

[54:17] Oh yeah, that's right.

[54:18] Rob, my friend.

[54:19] Who's a robot?

[54:20] It might have been called Rob.

[54:22] You might be right.

[54:23] I think the game might have been called Gyrobot.

[54:25] No, the game was Gyro.

[54:26] Gyromite was the game.

[54:27] Oh, Gyromite.

[54:28] Oh yeah, because it was a...

[54:29] Okay, listeners.

[54:30] Because it was a what's happening tie-in.

[54:33] Listeners, please write in and tell...

[54:35] Gyro-mite!

[54:36] Please don't write in.

Dan McCoy

[54:37] I didn't tell me I'm right or that I'm wrong.

[54:38] About this at all.

[54:39] I don't care which one.

[54:40] Don't write in.

Elliott Kalan

[54:41] Okay, Dan, what was the last video game you played that you really liked a lot?

[54:44] Um, well, uh, you know, I've got...

[54:48] I've played, I think...

[54:50] Was it like Leisure Suit Larry?

Dan McCoy

[54:51] I've played, I think, more recent games than Elliot.

Stuart Wellington

[54:54] He doesn't like Leisure Suit Larry because Leisure Suit Larry isn't extreme enough for him.

Dan McCoy

[54:58] I have a PlayStation 3.

[55:00] He likes Bondage Suit Larry.

[55:01] I don't play video games that much at all.

[55:04] I have...

[55:05] Well, you played that Batman game, right?

[55:06] I have Uncharted 2 and Arkham City or whatever, and like, I have not finished either of them just because I...

Stuart Wellington

[55:13] You like the music games too, right?

[55:15] Like the...

[55:15] Well, that's what I was going to say.

[55:16] Like Parappa?

[55:17] The last game...

[55:18] Which is basically the foundation of the God of War game.

[55:21] Yeah, the last game I really...

[55:23] The Parappa combo game.

Dan McCoy

[55:24] Really?

[55:24] All right.

[55:25] The last game I really enjoyed was probably Rock Band.

[55:29] Like that's...

[55:30] Like I'm more of a party game guy at this point.

[55:32] He said Rock Man, which is the Japanese name for Mega Man.

[55:36] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[55:38] I did recently look up the soundtrack on YouTube to Mega Man 2, which I think still has maybe the best soundtrack of any video game.

Dan McCoy

[55:47] No, but that's the game of semi-recent years that I've enjoyed the most.

[55:55] A more traditional game that I enjoyed, I would probably have to go back to something like Mario Kart or something.

[56:01] Yeah.

[56:01] But my favorite game of all time, I don't know, like, I'm an old man, probably either The Legend of Zelda or maybe Mega Man 2.

[56:10] Speaking of Rock Man.

[56:11] Mega Man 2 is a really great game.

[56:12] What do you have to say?

Elliott Kalan

[56:13] I liked the Super Mario Brothers side-scrolling game for Wii I enjoyed, but I never finished it.

[56:19] And I got it as part of a wedding present almost three years ago, and I have yet to finish it.

[56:25] Yeah, you're drawing it out.

[56:26] I was like, maybe it's time to get back into video games.

[56:28] It's like slowly masturbating.

[56:30] It's tantric Nintendo.

[56:31] Sure.

[56:32] But before that, I don't know, maybe like Super Smash Brothers or something like that?

[56:37] Like a game where you can have fun with a couple other people.

[56:40] And your favorite of all time?

[56:42] My favorite of all time?

[56:43] I don't know, that's a good question.

[56:44] That's a very good question.

[56:47] Maybe like, I don't know, maybe even the original Super Mario Brothers.

[56:53] One of the Super Mario games.

[56:54] I like those games a lot.

Dan McCoy

[56:55] Stuart, you are more current, I think.

Stuart Wellington

[56:58] Yeah, I play all kinds of games.

Elliott Kalan

[56:59] You're always playing your Mass Effects and your Bioshocks and what have you.

Stuart Wellington

[57:02] Your Borderlands.

[57:04] And I like the fighting games.

[57:05] Immortals Combat.

[57:06] Yeah, I like the fighting games.

[57:08] Your Mass Shocks.

[57:09] Your Marvels versus Capcoms.

[57:11] All these things.

[57:13] I do.

Elliott Kalan

[57:14] Baby Geniuses, the games.

Stuart Wellington

[57:15] I think my favorite games of all time is probably a tie between, well, I really liked, I was a

[57:23] big fan of Metal Gear Solid.

[57:25] That was great.

[57:25] Any game where the game reads your memory card until, like, when it's reading your mind

[57:32] and is like, you really like to play Castlevania.

[57:35] Like, how does the game know that?

[57:37] But no, I was a big fan of the DuckTales game for Ness.

[57:41] Yeah, Nestle Chocolate.

[57:43] Yeah.

[57:43] But I would say probably my favorite was...

[57:45] Like, no one's ever said that before.

Dan McCoy

[57:46] No one ever has.

[57:48] I was talking about Elliot Ness.

Elliott Kalan

[57:49] I really enjoyed the...

Dan McCoy

[57:50] You know who said that is parents.

[57:51] There's two consonants with a vowel in the middle.

[57:53] Why wouldn't you turn that into a word?

[57:55] Because it's not.

[57:56] It's an initials.

Stuart Wellington

[57:58] I was a big fan of the...

[57:59] I think my favorite was the Gremlins 2 game for the Nintendo.

[58:03] That was a pretty good game.

[58:04] I think that was the first game I beat.

[58:06] And I remember taking a picture and mailing it to Nintendo Power.

[58:10] Because they had something where they...

[58:12] And they said, good job, Stuart.

Dan McCoy

[58:13] They're like, good job, you fucking nerd.

Stuart Wellington

[58:16] Go tell it to the Marines.

[58:17] Thanks, kid.

[58:17] You think you're the first one who's ever done this?

[58:20] No.

[58:20] Throw it in the poop pile.

[58:21] I remember those games and I kind of remember this when I was researching that Jaws thing

[58:26] I did.

[58:26] The Jaws Nintendo game thing I did was how great those old 8-bit soundtracks were.

[58:32] Just hearing that music from the Jaws game immediately brought it back.

[58:36] It's stored somewhere in my retarded brain.

Elliott Kalan

[58:39] Not my normal brain.

[58:40] No, but yeah.

[58:41] The old Mario Brothers music, the Mega Man 2 music, the DuckTales music.

[58:44] There's a lot of good music in those 8-bit games.

[58:47] Just made out of boops and beeps.

[58:50] Back then you had two notes, boop and beep.

Dan McCoy

[58:53] So I hope that you enjoyed that and didn't think to yourself, what about you fucking old people?

[58:58] Pause.

[58:58] What a waste of time.

[58:59] Skip.

Elliott Kalan

[59:00] My favorite video game was Hoop Stick.

[59:03] It's where you hit a stick with a hoop with a stick.

Stuart Wellington

[59:06] You could hit a stick with a hoop, I guess, but it's not much of a game.

[59:08] It's unconventional.

Elliott Kalan

[59:10] My favorite game was called...

Stuart Wellington

[59:13] Throw a rock in another rock.

[59:15] It's called Pyramid Builder.

Elliott Kalan

[59:17] It's where you build real pyramids.

Stuart Wellington

[59:19] This is a bit called Stuart Talks to Two Old Prospectors.

[59:21] Yep.

[59:22] Yep.

[59:23] In my day.

[59:24] It's called The 2,000 Year Old Prospector.

Elliott Kalan

[59:28] I remember when I was digging for gold with King Arthur.

[59:31] What are you?

[59:33] I'm not me.

Stuart Wellington

[59:35] The 2,000 Year Old Prospector.

[59:37] Are you from the Holy Grail or something?

Elliott Kalan

[59:39] I remember I said Dag Navit Cortez.

Dan McCoy

[59:42] In 40 years, HBO is going to be doing like 12 specials about us.

[59:48] Yep.

[59:49] Based on this bit.

Elliott Kalan

[59:50] Two,000 Year Old Prospector.

Dan McCoy

[59:53] So, this is the last segment.

Elliott Kalan

[59:55] I was like, Hammurabi, what are you doing?

Dan McCoy

[59:58] I think that's more than 2,000 years.

[59:59] Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:00] I struck gold.

[1:00:02] Gold, I tells you.

[1:00:03] I says to Marcus Aurelius.

[1:00:08] He's happy about that gold.

[1:00:10] But he's like, I love the idea of a character from such a specific time.

[1:00:15] But he's old.

[1:00:16] He's much older than that.

[1:00:19] Why am I talking to this guy?

[1:00:20] It's like, it's like when you see movies with vampires, the vampires keep dressing the way

[1:00:25] they did when they were alive.

[1:00:26] Yeah, they're an agronistic.

[1:00:27] 300 years ago?

[1:00:29] Sure.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:30] All right.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:31] Except, anyway, you're saying.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:33] Let's speedily go through our last segment of the show, which is recommendations.

[1:00:37] Movie that we saw that we actually liked, unlike The Scarlet Letter, which we did not.

[1:00:42] I liked The Scarlet Letter.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:43] So, I will recommend 2,000 Year Old Prospector.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:47] Starring Elliot Kalin.

[1:00:49] As 2,000 Year Old.

[1:00:51] And Dan McCoy as Prospector.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:54] Well, I'm an old man and I'm a brush pen.

[1:00:56] It's Girl Friday.

[1:00:58] I'm going to continue with the theme of family-friendly period pieces.

[1:01:03] And I will recommend Wild Zero, starring the Japanese band Guitar Wolf.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:09] Family-friendly period pieces.

[1:01:11] And I recommend Your Period and You.

[1:01:13] It's an instructional film for young girls about their first menses.

[1:01:18] Rated R.

[1:01:19] Rated R.

[1:01:19] Strong language and menstrual blood.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:20] So, I am recommending Wild Zero, starring the Japanese rock band Guitar Wolf.

[1:01:26] There's zombies in it.

[1:01:27] Lasers.

[1:01:28] All kinds of weird shit.

[1:01:29] And a love that could not be between a man and, I think, a transgender character.

[1:01:33] I don't remember.

[1:01:34] There's zombies in it.

[1:01:36] Watch it with your mom and dad.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:38] I'm going to recommend.

[1:01:40] I'm going to continue the theme.

[1:01:41] That's in order.

[1:01:43] I'm going to continue the theme of movies based on works of classic literature.

[1:01:47] And recommend the latest adaptation of Much Do About Nothing.

[1:01:52] The Joss Whedon directed film.

[1:01:54] Which I enjoyed.

[1:01:56] I still don't think it's as good as the Kenneth Branagh film.

[1:02:00] That's a good one.

[1:02:01] But.

[1:02:02] You mean Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:04] Yes.

[1:02:05] The Kenneth Branagh film.

[1:02:07] Or did you mean Thor?

Dan McCoy

[1:02:08] But it's a fun adaptation of Much Do About Nothing if you enjoy the play.

[1:02:14] I think that, honestly, for the first third of it, it's a little slow.

[1:02:20] The dialogue that's supposed to kind of be sparkling and fast-paced and almost screwball in the delivery.

[1:02:29] Before screwball existed, screwball is a little draggy.

[1:02:35] Screwballs by Shakespeare.

[1:02:36] Yeah.

[1:02:37] And Joss Whedon directs it a little too much like.

[1:02:40] Depressed or not depressed.

[1:02:42] That is the question.

[1:02:44] He directs it a little too much in traditional TV style with a lot of close-ups.

[1:02:49] And a studio audience.

[1:02:50] Which is weird because Serenity and The Avengers were not like that.

[1:02:55] But once it hits the first kind of big comedy scene, the first eavesdropping scene,

[1:03:01] everything from that then on really hits well and I found myself very engaged by it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:06] I wonder, I think I might have a one-word explanation for why it's shot that way early on.

[1:03:11] It starts with a B.

[1:03:12] It's budget.

[1:03:13] Yeah.

[1:03:13] But I could be wrong about that.

[1:03:14] Now, did it help that you're a...

Dan McCoy

[1:03:15] It was shot in like 12 days in his house, so...

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:17] Well, you're a fan of like...

[1:03:18] Wait, so like Playmate of the Apes, basically?

[1:03:20] Yeah, basically.

[1:03:21] So that was shot in, I think, two days.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:23] Less press.

[1:03:24] You're a fan of like the Whedonverse and those actors, so did that help your enjoyment or...

Dan McCoy

[1:03:29] It helped it in a certain sense, but it also like...

[1:03:32] For the first part of it, I'm like, ooh, am I just enjoying it as much as I am

[1:03:38] because I have seen these actors in other things that I've enjoyed.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:42] That's not necessarily a knock against it, though.

[1:03:44] That's part of big movie Hollywood acting is being able to inform an actor's performance

[1:03:50] with knowledge of their past performances.

[1:03:53] Thanks, professor.

[1:03:54] It does definitely stand on its own eventually.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:56] Your homework is...

[1:03:57] Watch a movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:59] I still recommend it.

[1:04:01] It just starts a little slow.

[1:04:04] That's what I recommend.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:05] Elliot?

[1:04:05] And I'm going to continue the theme of Women in Trouble.

[1:04:08] Okay.

[1:04:08] And I'm going to recommend a movie by Vittorio De Sica called Two Women, starring Sophia Loren

[1:04:14] and John Paul Belmondo.

[1:04:16] He is not one of the women.

[1:04:17] About a mother and her daughter who are kind of early adolescent teenage daughter who in

[1:04:25] the waning days of World War II in Italy where the cities are still being bombed.

[1:04:30] They have to leave and go out into the countryside.

[1:04:32] And these two women are kind of trying to find a safe place while being caught between Italian

[1:04:37] soldiers, German soldiers, American soldiers, Russian soldiers, and having trouble finding

[1:04:43] a safe space and finally encountering some kind of horrific tragedy that befalls them and

[1:04:50] having to emotionally push through that.

[1:04:52] It's a really strong movie.

[1:04:54] It's the one Sophia Loren won her Academy Award for Best Actress for.

[1:04:58] I would recommend finding it not dubbed for that reason.

[1:05:02] I know Netflix had it on Netflix Instant for a while and it was a dubbed version.

[1:05:06] Don't watch that.

[1:05:07] Watch it with subtitles.

[1:05:08] Get the full performance.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:09] I don't like reading when I watch a movie, dude.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:11] Well, you like comic books and that's like reading while looking at a painting.

[1:05:14] Oh!

[1:05:15] So the...

[1:05:17] And you like audiobooks, but you're like a movie for your mind.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:21] I do like that when I'm doing the long cross-country drive.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:25] And it's...

[1:05:26] I just found it to be a real...

[1:05:27] And I need a movie for my mind.

[1:05:29] A really solid movie about war that isn't about battle scenes, although there's a little

[1:05:34] bit of that, but it's very much about the people who get caught among a war who are not necessarily

[1:05:39] even fighting it, but their lives are impacted by it nonetheless and in a way destroyed by it.

[1:05:44] I thought it was very good.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:45] Similar to Scarlet Letter.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:47] Just kind of like...

[1:05:47] Well, if you're talking about Indian Wars...

[1:05:50] Yeah.

[1:05:50] Yeah, sure.

[1:05:51] So Two Women with Sophie Loren.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:54] Well, guys, this has been fun, except for the fact that we watched Scarlet Letter.

[1:05:58] That was not fun.

[1:05:59] Please, fans, if we have another contest...

[1:06:02] Pick the funnest.

[1:06:03] Think about something that we will enjoy.

[1:06:05] I would say just don't.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:06] If we have another contest, you should write in, pick a movie yourselves, and then we can

[1:06:09] watch Robot Jocks, and we'll have a good time.

[1:06:14] The movie, so fun, it doesn't even care if it's spelling the word jocks wrong.

[1:06:20] I can't tell you how long I misspelled the word jocks, thanks to that movie.

[1:06:25] I want to make a product now that's a computerized underpants for athletes called Robot Jock Strap.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:32] Wait, would the strap be spelled with an S, or would you just blend that X into it?

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:36] It's spelled Z-T-R-P-A-P-P-P-P-P-P-P.

[1:06:40] Zdrap?

[1:06:40] It's called...

[1:06:40] Yeah, like Robert Zdarr.

[1:06:42] Robot Jocks Zdrap.

[1:06:43] P-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:45] Yeah.

[1:06:45] Robert Zelazny?

[1:06:46] All right.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:47] You guys don't know, but before we started taping the podcast, Stuart referred to Robert

[1:06:52] Zelazny, I think, a dozen times.

[1:06:55] Someone is trapped in amber.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:57] You're not going to say the name Roger in a movie.

[1:06:59] Roger, not Robert.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:59] Yeah, Roger, sorry.

[1:07:01] So, uh...

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:02] Roger Zelazny.

[1:07:03] With that mention...

Dan McCoy

[1:07:03] Robert Silverberg.

[1:07:04] The first mention that anyone has made of that name in God knows how long.

[1:07:09] People talk about Roger Zelazny all the time.

[1:07:11] We should sign off.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:13] Look, you're going to write a science fiction encyclopedia.

[1:07:15] It's going to be from Asimov to Zelazny.

[1:07:16] Yeah.

[1:07:17] For the Flophouse.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:19] I've been Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:22] I'm...

[1:07:22] Oh, sorry.

[1:07:24] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:07:24] And I'm the professional Elliot Kalin, who always knows when it's time to say his name

[1:07:29] and says it correctly.

[1:07:30] Elliot Kalin.

[1:07:31] It trips off the tongue.

[1:07:33] Oh, God.

[1:07:33] Millifluous.

[1:07:34] Every syllable a delight.

[1:07:35] Oh, Jesus.

[1:07:36] A treasure of letters.

[1:07:37] Elliot Kalin.

[1:07:39] Say it, won't you?

[1:07:39] Oh, wow.

[1:07:40] The end.

[1:07:41] Another masterpiece.

[1:07:42] Anybody?

[1:08:00] Yeah, I am Mark Maron now.

[1:08:02] Hey, everybody.

[1:08:03] Stamps.com.

[1:08:04] I have a bunch of cats.

[1:08:05] No good relationships, though.

[1:08:06] Let me talk about it for 18 minutes.

[1:08:08] Wow.

The Flop House: Episode #130 - The Scarlet Letter

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