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The Flop House: Episode #116 - Rock of Ages

main Episode #156 Dec 15, 2012 01:04:59
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Transcript

[0:00] Are you ready to the Broadway equivalent of rock? In this episode we discuss Rock of Ages.
[0:31] Hey everyone and welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.
[0:35] Over here is Elliot Kalin. And why am I saying my name second when usually I say my name third?
[0:40] Because I'm Hallie Haglund and I'm here.
[0:45] I guess the logic flows there.
[0:50] Fan favorite, special guest, Hallie Haglund is back.
[0:55] Fiction favorite. We got your great stories guys.
[1:00] Stuart had to work. There's no exciting story behind why he's not here.
[1:05] We can tell a glamorous tale about Stuart being out on some adventure seducing women,
[1:10] rescuing the house cat from kidnappers, who knows. Globetrotting.
[1:15] Globetrotting and globing. But no, he's just working tonight.
[1:20] We got our old buddy Hallie back. You may remember her from the Zookeeper episode.
[1:25] I'm not getting any younger. Let's be honest. None of us are except Benjamin Button.
[1:30] Yeah, but he's gross. He is gross.
[1:35] Since he is an old man trapped in a baby's body.
[1:40] But it's reset for new listeners or old listeners who like to hear the same thing every time.
[1:45] This is the part of the show that reminds me of the opening to every Encyclopedia Brown book
[1:50] where they have the same two pages that explain the premise of Encyclopedia Brown.
[1:55] Encyclopedia Brown was so smart that people called him Encyclopedia.
[2:00] His dad wished he could explain who was helping him solve all these crimes,
[2:05] but he knew he'd be laughed out of the police academy because he'd say it was his own young son.
[2:10] That's what they put up with in the police academy, and they don't laugh people out of it.
[2:15] Him, they'd laugh him out. He doesn't even do sound effects.
[2:20] This is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we discuss it.
[2:25] Tonight we watched a little movie. Actually, a very big movie.
[2:30] A long movie full of a lot of star power. Oh, yeah. Superstars.
[2:35] What a horrifying idea. The stars have disappeared. These are the end times.
[2:40] Rock of Ages. Oh, no, they're just in Rock of Ages. Oh, thank goodness.
[2:43] All the stars are in it. Beetlejuice. Sirius, the dog star.
[2:48] Sol, our own son. Not Beetlejuice, the ghost character. Beetlejuice, the star.
[2:53] It predated the ghost, you know. Star 552764.
[2:58] He was there. Terry's Altair.
[3:02] It's over. I'm sorry. It's OK.
[3:05] The Belt of Orion. All three of them.
[3:08] Ursa Major and Minor. The North Star, the Pole Star.
[3:13] Venus, which was known in the past as the Morning Star.
[3:17] Poor Pole Star, reduced to stripping.
[3:21] So Rock of Ages was the movie we watched.
[3:24] It's a movie based on the famous jukebox musical of the same name.
[3:28] Now, Dan, what is a jukebox musical?
[3:30] I'm glad you asked, Elliot, for the purposes of this podcast.
[3:33] It's a movie or a musical, rather, made up of songs that were not original to that musical, but compiled together.
[3:42] So you mean like Singing in the Rain?
[3:44] Yes, like Singing in the Rain with the Freed and something songbook.
[3:49] Jersey Boys?
[3:50] Yeah. Frankie Valli.
[3:52] Jersey Boys.
[3:53] People may remember the musical.
[3:54] We Will Rock You.
[3:55] Tony and Tina's Wedding, I'm assuming.
[3:57] No.
[3:58] Well, Mama Mia is a jukebox musical with ABBA.
[4:01] There was a musical called Crazy for You that was all Gershwin songs.
[4:05] There was Good Vibrations, which was all Beach Boys songs.
[4:08] You get the idea.
[4:09] You're not dumb.
[4:10] There was Leper Messiah, which was a Metallica jukebox musical.
[4:13] Les Miserables.
[4:14] And who can forget Assface, the Gigi Allen jukebox musical.
[4:17] Fuck the Pain in the Way, the Peaches musical.
[4:20] But this was a jukebox musical of hair metal.
[4:25] Well, loosely termed.
[4:29] Loosely termed.
[4:30] Let's call it 80s rock.
[4:31] Yeah.
[4:32] Because metal, despite the presence throughout the movie of a Motorhead billboard, metal is not to be seen in this movie.
[4:40] You were very disappointed that Motorhead never showed up.
[4:43] They are a promising Motorhead.
[4:45] You turned to me wistfully in the middle of the movie and said, Dan, is Motorhead ever going to show up?
[4:50] And I had to say, no, Elliot, I don't think they are.
[4:52] All they needed to make me like this movie was to have a character sing Ace of Spades.
[4:56] It didn't happen.
[4:57] It just didn't happen.
[4:58] That's why I said hair metal though because I don't think that your more hardcore metal genres were represented.
[5:05] They were not.
[5:06] Let's call it hair rock.
[5:07] How about that?
[5:08] Hair rock.
[5:09] Ballads.
[5:10] A lot of power ballads.
[5:12] Let's just call it 80s hits.
[5:13] Yeah.
[5:14] The first song is.
[5:15] Hair rock compilation of favorites.
[5:17] Yeah, exactly.
[5:18] A lot of the songs in this movie where a song would start and I would say to Dan and Halle, what song is this?
[5:23] And then the chorus would start and I'd go, oh, I recognize this from commercials for compilations of 80s songs.
[5:29] There were a lot of times when Elliot said, hey, what song is this?
[5:32] And I would pretend like I didn't hear him because I didn't know until the chorus came up.
[5:36] I'm glad to hear I wasn't alone then.
[5:39] Because I know Dan has an encyclopedic knowledge of crap.
[5:41] I had a surprising knowledge from the opening chords of songs what song was being played.
[5:47] Yeah, and then Dan would say, isn't it this song?
[5:50] And I would say, yeah, I think so.
[5:54] It's not my purview necessarily, but somehow over the years.
[5:57] It's not your purview.
[5:59] Thanks.
[6:00] Yeah, we know all about your purview.
[6:02] Yeah, it's the holes that you carve into the walls outside that all girls nursing school.
[6:08] Is that where they learn to be nurses and they learn to nurse?
[6:12] A little bit of both.
[6:14] Dan's a perv.
[6:17] Thanks, guys.
[6:18] Now, should we talk about what happens in this movie?
[6:20] Well, I think you could probably imagine what happens in this movie.
[6:24] I don't think so.
[6:25] All we've said is a jukebox musical with 80s power battles.
[6:28] I didn't imagine what happened in that.
[6:31] Imagine someone's trying to construct a musical comedy around preexisting songs
[6:36] and then just imagine the generic plot that that would be.
[6:39] Okay, so let me try to guess it.
[6:41] A caveman and an astronaut fall in love at a discotheque.
[6:46] Suddenly, a volcano erupts.
[6:48] It turns out that the Babylonian god Belmarduk is angry.
[6:52] They're going to have to find five magic gemstones,
[6:55] each of which is buried inside of a different famous singer's brain.
[6:59] Much like Frankenstein's monster, you may have an abnormal brain.
[7:03] May have.
[7:05] I was going to say it's your typical girl from a small town comes to the big city
[7:10] seeking fame and fortune, meets a boy.
[7:13] Yeah, a girl named Sherry comes from Los Angeles.
[7:17] No, she comes to Los Angeles from Oklahoma.
[7:20] From Tulsa.
[7:21] We first meet her on a bus.
[7:23] She is flipping through her record albums and touching them longingly,
[7:26] which establishes that she likes music.
[7:28] Or she has a fetish for album sleeves.
[7:32] That's possible.
[7:33] She and the bus passengers sing Sister Christian,
[7:36] and then she shows up in L.A., and everything seems great.
[7:39] No, you forgot when she looks at the picture of her grandma.
[7:42] I'm not going to say every detail of the movie.
[7:45] Well, I thought that was an important detail.
[7:48] She's coming to L.A. with big dreams of being a singer, and she gets mugged,
[7:51] but luckily it's right outside of the famous, I guess, legendary L.A. music spot,
[7:56] the Bourbon Room.
[7:57] Yeah, the Bourbon Room is what it's called.
[7:59] Is that a real place?
[8:00] I don't think so.
[8:01] Okay.
[8:02] It's just a placeholder for the Viper Room.
[8:04] Oh, that makes sense.
[8:05] I don't know if that's true.
[8:07] Well, you fooled me.
[8:09] The Bourbon Room, which is run by Shaggy's Rock and Roll Bomb.
[8:14] By Shaggy 2 Dope?
[8:15] By Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, the insane clown posse.
[8:19] So ICP, you're looking for a brand new sound.
[8:23] No, it's run by Alec Baldwin at his shaggiest and, let's just say it,
[8:26] slobby fattest, and his Man Friday, Russell Brand.
[8:30] But as I said, there's no point in this movie, though,
[8:34] when I was able to look at Alec Baldwin and not think,
[8:37] that's just Jack Donaghy in a wig.
[8:39] Like Tracy Morgan is having a dream sequence where he's a rock and roll club owner,
[8:45] and that's what it looks like.
[8:47] No, I was just going to say that you did really remind me of
[8:50] Ian McShane from Deadwood, but I guess I was the only one.
[8:53] I think you were in the minority there.
[8:55] I am just watching Deadwood for the first time,
[8:57] so that's pretty much my only frame of reference.
[9:00] I remember when we were at the conventions and you were watching The Wire
[9:03] and everything was a comparison to The Wire.
[9:06] Well, then, fine.
[9:09] So the girl gets mugged.
[9:12] She meets Drew, who's a waiter at, or no, he's a barback at the Bourbon Room,
[9:16] but he wants to be a rock and roll singer, guitarist, songwriter, etc.
[9:19] He's got big dreams.
[9:21] He's got big dreams, and they start falling in love,
[9:24] and they do at the same time that fading rock and roll legend,
[9:29] although I guess he's at the height of his fame, but he's going mad with power,
[9:33] Stacey Jacks, two X's, played by Thomas Cruise.
[9:37] He's not going mad.
[9:38] It's lonely at the top.
[9:40] He's isolated in his own thing.
[9:41] But he has gone insane.
[9:42] Nobody loves him.
[9:43] He has a monkey that follows him around.
[9:45] He has a monkey that follows him, a baboon really,
[9:46] who follows him around in different costumes.
[9:48] He says things that make no sense.
[9:50] He seems to be in this constant daze or like haze of alcohol,
[9:54] and his manager, Paul Giamatti, in the best part in the whole movie,
[9:59] likes it that way because it makes sense.
[10:00] more docile and easy to control.
[10:01] Stacey Jax is about to leave his band Arsenal, although it seems more like he's being kicked
[10:05] out because he's so hard to work with, or so says the Rolling Stone reporter played
[10:10] by Malin Ackerman, who interviews him at the back of the Bourbon Room where Arsenal is
[10:17] going to play its final show before Stacey Jax begins his solo career.
[10:29] This turns him on in such a way that they have this weird grindy not-sex scene where
[10:34] they strip down to their underwear and then kind of grind on each other a couple of times.
[10:38] And then say, that was amazing.
[10:39] And when they're singing, I want to know what love is, right?
[10:43] During it?
[10:44] Yeah.
[10:45] By this point, also, I should mention, we've heard about 1,500 songs.
[10:46] By this point, I should mention that Halle and I are singing along lustily while Elliot
[10:51] is sitting in stone silence.
[10:52] I don't like them.
[10:53] This is not my type of music, you know?
[10:55] Sure.
[10:56] Hey, forget about it.
[10:57] Whoa.
[10:58] Look.
[10:59] You dislike it so much, you turned into an Italian mobster.
[11:00] I turned into a mobster.
[11:01] Hey, oh, get it away, Johnny Donuts.
[11:02] Look, if they had been singing any of Loretta Lynn's big hits, I would have been singing
[11:11] right along.
[11:12] If they were singing any songs from Jesus Christ Superstar, I would have been singing
[11:15] right along.
[11:16] I would have loved it.
[11:17] And if they were singing anything from Metallica's first four albums, I would have been singing
[11:19] right along.
[11:20] But I don't like any of this music.
[11:21] Singing right along.
[11:22] If anything from the Muppet movie, yeah, I would have been singing right along.
[11:27] If this had been an Enter Sandman jukebox musical, it would have been great.
[11:33] So where was I?
[11:34] Oh, yes.
[11:35] They have their grindy weird scene and then the heroine of the movie who we haven't seen
[11:39] for like 25 minutes it feels like at this point.
[11:42] The scene between Tom Cruise and this Rolling Stone reporter played by Malin Ackerman goes
[11:46] on for a long time and it's just a two-person scene and every other character is just off
[11:51] screen for this whole long sequence.
[11:53] And due to possibly the dumbest misunderstanding I've ever seen in a movie, our heroine walks
[12:01] in, hands him a bottle of liquor and then drops it and they walk out again and she adjusts
[12:06] her shirt and he adjusts his pants and the hero, the love interest hero, who's on stage
[12:12] opening for, who's about to open for Arsenal, big break, with Wolfgang Von Kolt, which is
[12:17] his performing name.
[12:18] He sees this and is like, oh, they must have just slept together.
[12:22] That's the only explanation for why someone would adjust their shirt and the other person
[12:25] would adjust their pants.
[12:26] Well, I mean, to be in fairness to him, it really did look like something had gone on,
[12:30] okay?
[12:31] I guess so.
[12:32] It's also Tom Cruise's character in this, and we can talk about this more later if you
[12:35] want to, he's supposed to be exuding this like raw animal sexuality that every woman
[12:40] is falling for.
[12:42] Women faint when they see him, but instead to me he just comes off as like this gross
[12:45] monster man.
[12:46] Well, you see, but I mean...
[12:47] He just seemed like how you'd actually expect Tom Cruise to actually be if you talked to
[12:51] him, you know?
[12:52] Like a big weirdo where you're like, I am worried he's going to snap my neck at any
[12:55] moment.
[12:56] Like Tom Cruise can be really good and stuff, but he can also like have that sense like,
[13:00] I am Tom Cruise and I'm super intense and I have really studied for this, and like this
[13:05] role felt like I have studied how to be a rock star.
[13:08] That's maybe that's it.
[13:09] He didn't have a looseness that you expect to see in a rock star where they're like living
[13:12] for the moment and just doing whatever they want, and that's the fantasy charisma of it
[13:17] is here's a person who gets to live out our fantasies of not worrying about responsibility
[13:22] and doing whatever, like being an uncontrolled id, but instead he feels so controlled that
[13:27] it seems like he's this coiled, like scary thing.
[13:31] Like it basically when he enters a room, it's not that different from when like Freddy enters
[13:35] a room in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies where he's more of a threat than he is an
[13:41] enticement, or at least that's the way I saw him.
[13:43] Like the other thing is that he looks like Glenn Danzig, and Glenn Danzig is super scary.
[13:47] There's nothing attractive about him at all.
[13:50] Dan's cat's playing with a straw.
[13:52] Hallie, let's try to be professional.
[13:55] For those of you who are listening and can't see it, Dan's cat was playing with a straw.
[14:00] But look, we invited Hallie on the program for her ineffable Hallieness, and this is
[14:07] a double shot of that.
[14:09] Super shot.
[14:10] Hopefully Hallie will be able to kind of half pay attention to us while watching Lulu play
[14:14] with a straw.
[14:15] Okay, so the hero and the heroine breakup.
[14:17] The hero has just had an amazing performance according to the crowd of I Want to Rock.
[14:22] So Paul Giamatti signs him up as a new hot singer, and they go their separate ways, him
[14:28] rising to the top and her sinking to the bottom.
[14:32] She quits her job.
[14:33] Soon she's working as a waitress at a strip club run by Mary J. Blige, and then stripping.
[14:39] And he, because rock is going out.
[14:41] Mother Mary, if you will, sort of plays that role in the movie.
[14:45] I guess so, yeah.
[14:47] And she's always dressed as a nun, right?
[14:51] The nun who runs the strip club, yeah.
[14:52] Yeah, she's very conflicted.
[14:54] Another interesting character.
[14:56] Well, she's really unhappy the whole movie, but nobody ever seems to know why.
[15:00] She really has no character.
[15:02] She plays the part of the brassy black woman who guides the white woman back to her heart's
[15:09] desire.
[15:10] It was kind of like a brief shot of the help right in the middle of this or whatever.
[15:15] I'd like to take a moment to address, by the way, two subplots that have not been mentioned
[15:21] because they're largely unrelated.
[15:25] You got Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand are closeted gay men coming to terms with their
[15:32] feelings for each other.
[15:33] First, they're worried they're going to lose the club because they don't have enough money
[15:38] to pay their taxes.
[15:40] But also, they fall in love and they sing a duet and kiss each other in, I'm just going
[15:44] to go ahead and say the best part of the movie.
[15:45] Yeah.
[15:46] By far the best.
[15:47] The weirdest part of the movie.
[15:48] If you ever wanted to see Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand sing a song to each other and
[15:53] then kiss.
[15:54] And dance.
[15:55] And there's a brief shot of them on a carousel together.
[15:57] Yeah.
[15:58] So that was going on.
[15:59] The weirdest was when they were walking down the stairs and they were doing this simultaneous
[16:05] like hip pump.
[16:06] Yeah.
[16:07] You know, that was supposed to be synchronized.
[16:10] I've got to be honest.
[16:12] I didn't find the romance that believable.
[16:14] No, it wasn't very believable.
[16:15] But even after the scene in the beginning where they were pretending to sing into a
[16:18] hairbrush together.
[16:19] They weren't singing into a hairbrush.
[16:21] They were singing into a beer bottle.
[16:23] Oh, I thought they had a hairbrush also.
[16:25] The raw sexual charisma of Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand put together didn't just ignite
[16:32] within you, Hal?
[16:33] Maybe if Alec Baldwin didn't look like the dude Lebowski and Russell Brand didn't look
[16:38] like Russell Brand.
[16:40] Yeah, let's just say it.
[16:41] But it's almost like they're because they're two people who in most movies do play like
[16:46] highly sexual characters.
[16:48] And it's like when combined, they canceled each other out.
[16:52] Maybe that's I mean, there's also this because they both seem so frumpy and unsexual.
[16:56] This movie was directed with a total lack of sexiness, which is weird considering it's
[17:00] all about like the unbridled sexual power of rock and roll and rock and roll forever.
[17:05] And these two young lovers are doing it and they're falling in love.
[17:08] And Tom Cruise is this sex god.
[17:10] But at the same time, it's so chaste and tame.
[17:12] I was saying earlier in the movie before that scene came up, I'm like, OK, well, this is
[17:16] a movie about hair metal, which is like like straight men not realizing how campy they
[17:22] are and somehow harnessing like raw sexuality, even though they're goofy.
[17:26] But there's none of that.
[17:27] There's none of that.
[17:28] And I was theorizing it's because it was directed by a gay man, Adam Shakman.
[17:31] But then there's no like sexiness in the gay scene either.
[17:34] I think it's just a there's a it's a very like cleaned up kind of polished, glossy
[17:39] type of pop sensibility.
[17:41] Like you see whenever like on American Idol and I assume The Voice or other singing shows,
[17:46] the times I've seen it where they sing like a hard rock song, they make it very glossy
[17:50] and poppy.
[17:51] And even here in a movie that's supposed to be about like rock rock forever.
[17:55] Oh, this is the best.
[17:56] It still comes off as very pop and like bubblegum.
[17:59] It's like they've kind of a musical.
[18:01] I feel like that's what I mean.
[18:03] Jesus Christ Superstar is a musical.
[18:04] And there's way more edge to that than there is to this.
[18:07] They don't write them like Jesus Christ Superstar.
[18:09] That's true.
[18:10] It is the best of rock musicals.
[18:11] You guys thank for Jesus Christ.
[18:13] It's got amazing songs in it.
[18:15] All right.
[18:16] It's the greatest story ever told in the greatest songs ever told.
[18:18] OK, well, anyway, I was going to get to the other unaddressed side.
[18:22] Oh, that's right.
[18:24] Why is Alec Baldwin worried about losing The Bourbon Room?
[18:27] Because the mayor of L.A. played by Bryan Cranston.
[18:31] Yeah, TV's Bryan Cranston is a movie.
[18:33] Let's just say Bryan Cranston.
[18:35] He's in a lot of films in Argo.
[18:36] Malcolm in the Middle's Bryan Cranston.
[18:38] I'm not.
[18:39] I'm not.
[18:40] Beavis and Butthead do America's Bryan Cranston.
[18:42] People know him from Breaking Bad.
[18:43] That's that's all I'm saying.
[18:45] Drive's Bryan Cranston.
[18:48] So he.
[18:50] Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice is Bryan Cranston.
[18:55] He he's married to a Tipper Gore esque character.
[18:58] Played by Catherine Zeta Jones.
[19:00] Yeah.
[19:01] The only woman so scientific and Greek that Zeta is in her name like Zeta Beams.
[19:05] And she's made it her her mission to clean up L.A. from the scourge of rock and roll.
[19:11] Which is so weird because L.A. is such a gross city.
[19:14] Rock and roll is like a minor threat.
[19:17] And there's like a character works in a strip club in this.
[19:20] And she doesn't want to clean up the strip club.
[19:21] She wants to clean up the rock and roll club.
[19:23] This makes sense in a movie like Footloose where it's a tiny town, tiny rural town.
[19:27] Or in the Terror of Tiny Town if rock and roll had been in that.
[19:30] And it's making all the midgets go astray.
[19:32] It's kind of like, well, you know, why is Catherine Zeta Jones in this city in the first place?
[19:37] It seems like there are places for her.
[19:39] All the school districts probably.
[19:40] OK, sure.
[19:41] But here's the thing.
[19:42] It comes out later that she wants to shut down rock and roll to get at Stacey Jaxx.
[19:47] Because she was a Stacey Jaxx groupie and he abandoned her.
[19:50] And now she wants revenge just like the hit ABC show of the same name.
[19:53] Just like Tipper Gore.
[19:55] Just like Tipper.
[19:57] Yeah, Tipper Gore was a.
[20:00] The Fleetwood Mac groupie?
[20:01] Yeah.
[20:04] Oh no, it was Gwar.
[20:04] I'm sorry.
[20:05] She was a Gwar groupie.
[20:06] Gwar band.
[20:07] She was a Gwarpie.
[20:09] But yeah, you know.
[20:11] So she wants to shut down the bourbon room
[20:13] and she leads a coalition of, you know,
[20:16] like your 80s moral majority Christian women,
[20:19] the kind of women who are always on sitcoms
[20:22] as like the prissy one that nobody,
[20:24] that was trying to take away the fun for everybody else.
[20:27] Blair, like Blair.
[20:29] Blair Underwood?
[20:30] No, for the Facts of Life.
[20:33] Oh, that Blair.
[20:34] But not really like Blair.
[20:36] I was just, that was the first person.
[20:38] No, she's like Blair, sure.
[20:39] I'll take that.
[20:40] But it's, she's not fun like Jo.
[20:42] Everyone's favorite.
[20:43] Right.
[20:44] All right guys, Jo.
[20:46] Of course, she's got a motorcycle.
[20:47] Yeah.
[20:48] She doesn't know where she fits.
[20:49] She can fix it.
[20:50] Her motorcycle.
[20:52] Judy is everyone's second favorite
[20:54] because of her name.
[20:55] Sure.
[20:56] So this has been the Facts of Life podcast.
[21:00] Apparently, according to Wikipedia,
[21:02] this is a subplot that was introduced just for the movie.
[21:05] And it makes sense because like this,
[21:07] like in the 80s and the early 90s, I guess,
[21:10] this kind of stuff was happening
[21:11] where Christian morality groups
[21:14] and conservative politicians were trying to
[21:17] police rock and roll and music in general.
[21:20] But it feels totally shoehorned in
[21:21] and it's another subplot that disappears
[21:23] for long stretches of the movie.
[21:25] And then suddenly you'll get a lot of it.
[21:27] Like, it feels like they were writing this movie
[21:29] as they went along, as they shot it.
[21:31] And they were like,
[21:31] oh, we haven't done anything
[21:32] with Catherine Zeta-Jones in a while.
[21:33] So let's do a bunch of stuff with her.
[21:35] But it did beget that awesome medley that was
[21:40] we're not gonna take it.
[21:41] And we built this city on rock and roll,
[21:44] which I thought was one of the best musical numbers.
[21:48] Of the 4,000 musical numbers in the movie.
[21:51] Yeah.
[21:52] It was in the top 3,000.
[21:54] But I think I can tie this up really fast
[21:58] so we can sort of double back and get it.
[21:59] Okay.
[22:00] But you never talked about how the guy
[22:02] became part of a New Kids on the Block.
[22:04] Yeah, so Drew sells himself out to become famous
[22:07] and joins a New Kids on the Block type group
[22:09] called Z-Boys, which leads to my favorite part of the movie,
[22:13] which is the video shoot for his music video.
[22:16] And they totally capture the style of that music video.
[22:19] And it's one of those moments,
[22:21] there are a lot of moments in this movie
[22:22] where there's a flash of a better, funnier movie.
[22:25] And that moment, it's like,
[22:26] oh, if you had any sense of the style of the times,
[22:29] like you do in this one 30-second moment,
[22:32] this would be a way better movie.
[22:33] Like if it was more of a pastiche and less of a like,
[22:38] just like a commercial, I don't know.
[22:39] Yeah.
[22:40] But anyway, you're saying wrap it up.
[22:41] Play us out.
[22:42] Tom Cruise realizes what Paul Giamatti has been doing,
[22:45] and so he-
[22:46] Well, the negative Rolling Stone article comes out.
[22:48] Yeah, he sort of breaks with him
[22:51] and gives Alec Baldwin the money from his gig
[22:54] that he'd previously not given him.
[22:56] He also drinks 150-year-old wine
[22:59] and then pees on Paul Giamatti's foot at the same time.
[23:04] Our two young lovers reconcile after realizing,
[23:08] hey, this was a fucking stupid misunderstanding
[23:10] that was just generated for the plot.
[23:12] It basically goes like this.
[23:13] I saw you coming out of Stacey Jax's room.
[23:16] He was adjusting his pants.
[23:18] You thought I slept with Stacey Jax?
[23:21] You mean you didn't?
[23:22] I'm so sorry.
[23:23] I was in love with you.
[23:24] We could have this conversation months earlier.
[23:28] I didn't have to be a stripper.
[23:30] What's also weird is it's one of those strip clubs
[23:32] that we've talked about on the podcast before
[23:34] where all the strippers wear lots of clothes
[23:36] and don't take them off.
[23:37] And when she comes out to do her strip dance,
[23:39] she's actually wearing more than she's worn
[23:41] at any other point in the movie.
[23:41] She's wearing like a one-piece leotard with long sleeves.
[23:45] Yeah, with long sleeves.
[23:46] It's like the rest of the movie,
[23:47] she's wearing these like low-cut shirts
[23:49] that ride up on her belly in super short skirts.
[23:53] And then now it's like,
[23:54] it's time for me to get down and dirty as a stripper.
[23:56] I guess I'll put on this robe.
[23:57] I guess I'll put on this body suit.
[24:00] Because the most exciting thing is what you imagine.
[24:05] It's like the strip scenes in Flashdance
[24:06] where they're more like
[24:07] Twyla Thorpe-style avant-garde dance numbers.
[24:10] Yeah, but Tom Cruise is reunited with Malin Ackerman,
[24:13] the only woman who's ever told him the truth about himself.
[24:16] And they fall in love after he kisses another woman
[24:18] for like a minute and a half.
[24:20] Yeah, that's funny about that.
[24:21] I think we should get back to it.
[24:23] But then the guy and the girl sing
[24:27] Don't Stop Believin' on stage.
[24:29] Elliot's favorite song.
[24:30] Tom Cruise is like,
[24:31] that's that new sound I was looking for.
[24:33] And then cut to a big arena show
[24:35] where Tom Cruise is singing the song
[24:37] and it brings on the special guests, our lovebirds.
[24:40] And rock and roll has triumphed
[24:42] and Catherine Zeta-Jones is in the audience
[24:43] in some sort of like weird Knight Porter Nazi garb
[24:47] as a fan.
[24:48] Cause she's now, I guess,
[24:49] just like an S&M rock and roll groupie.
[24:51] And Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand are in the audience.
[24:53] Oh, I thought she was supposed to become Annie Lennox.
[24:59] Yeah, this whole movie was in order.
[25:01] It's so weird.
[25:02] Call me by my new name, Annie Lennox.
[25:06] And then it just turns to Paul Harvey and goes,
[25:07] and now you know the rest of the story.
[25:11] Iris in and we're out.
[25:14] Yeah, well.
[25:15] Wink at cameras, sweet dreams, plays over the credits.
[25:18] Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.
[25:21] Yeah, no, there was some funny stuff.
[25:22] And then they play
[25:23] Rock You Like a Hurricane over the credits.
[25:25] Yeah.
[25:26] But as you were alluding to,
[25:28] there's some funnier movies peeking out.
[25:30] And one of the things you were saying was that,
[25:32] that kiss scene, like right when like Maitland Ackerman
[25:35] and Tom Cruise are gonna be reunited.
[25:38] He's walking towards her through a crowded room.
[25:41] And then a woman just jumps out
[25:42] and starts kissing Tom Cruise.
[25:44] And he's like, because he's a rock god,
[25:46] he has to keep kissing this woman.
[25:48] And keeps giving gestures to Maitland Ackerman like.
[25:51] Apologetic looks.
[25:51] Like, well, just a minute, sorry about that.
[25:53] But it goes on for a really long time.
[25:56] Like Maitland Ackerman's always like,
[25:57] also like her face is like, yeah, I understand.
[25:59] What are you gonna do?
[26:00] Like, no, I get it, I'm sorry too.
[26:02] Oh, and at the end, we see that Maitland Ackerman
[26:04] is pregnant with a new generation of Stacey Jax's.
[26:06] Yeah.
[26:07] Of Jax babies.
[26:08] That's so cute.
[26:09] Because girls, apparently you can get pregnant
[26:12] having sex with your underwear on.
[26:16] And there's another like weird line where like.
[26:18] Oh, well there's a part where.
[26:19] Tom Cruise like touches every woman in the thing,
[26:22] in the movie's breasts.
[26:23] And like at the end, he touches Catherine Zeta-Jones.
[26:25] And it's like, what is it like?
[26:26] Your tits have held up nice.
[26:29] And then he walks away.
[26:31] And she swoons.
[26:32] The weirdest line that kind of works,
[26:34] but kind of doesn't is when the,
[26:38] what are they called, the boys?
[26:40] The one, that group that he's in?
[26:42] Yeah.
[26:43] The Z-Boys are on stage at the Bourbon Room
[26:46] getting booed, because they suck.
[26:48] And Alec Baldwin goes, wait, that's true?
[26:52] I just threw up.
[26:53] And Russell Brand goes, where?
[26:55] And he goes, in my pants, out of my ass.
[26:59] And then walks away.
[27:01] And it's like this bizarre moment of like,
[27:04] you think he's gonna say like, I just threw up in my mouth
[27:06] or something like that.
[27:07] Or, no, he is so disgusted by this act
[27:12] that he shit himself in the pants.
[27:14] Like, it's so weird.
[27:16] Funnier than the joke itself was watching Elliot's
[27:20] like disbelief and inability to understand.
[27:24] He was like, wait, what does that mean?
[27:26] What, wait, if he threw up in his pants, out of his ass?
[27:30] And you're like, it's pretty much all there, Elliot.
[27:32] I don't know.
[27:33] No, it just seems so bizarre to me.
[27:34] Come on, put the pieces together, Encyclopedia Brown.
[27:37] For a movie that feels so programmed and so rote,
[27:39] like, here's where we have to do this.
[27:41] Here's where we have to do this.
[27:42] Here's where we play this song.
[27:43] To have a character just basically say like,
[27:45] I just shit myself, feels like it comes out of nowhere.
[27:49] And it's so bizarre.
[27:50] Like if it was a John Waters movie,
[27:52] that line, I'd be like, all right, whatever, yeah.
[27:53] But it's just like, it's almost like a line
[27:56] from a different movie fell into this movie by accident.
[28:00] I mean, we've alluded to this movie's like,
[28:02] weird tone issues.
[28:04] The movie starts off exactly
[28:05] as you would expect Rock of Ages to,
[28:07] with just like a medley of cheesy rock songs.
[28:10] And very big and over the top.
[28:11] Yeah, and everything's happening.
[28:12] And every plot development.
[28:14] And it's very cheesy.
[28:15] And then it slows way down for a long two-person scene
[28:18] between Maitland Ackerman and Tom Cruise
[28:20] that feels like a two-man play.
[28:23] It's like a news story or something.
[28:27] Tracy Letts bug, you know?
[28:29] But it's a very weird back and forth
[28:32] because then you'll get scenes.
[28:34] The tone thing that got me was you get scenes
[28:35] that are very cartoony and cheesy,
[28:37] like winking at the audience.
[28:39] Like, we know this is silly.
[28:40] And then you get other scenes where it's like,
[28:42] this is a rockin' song and these are rockin' people.
[28:46] Or don't you think this is awesome?
[28:47] It's like, well, I mean, last scene,
[28:49] you were kind of winking at me
[28:51] and telling me how cheesy and ridiculous this is.
[28:53] It's kind of hard for me to treat it
[28:54] like they're super cool now.
[28:55] I don't know.
[28:57] They couldn't, it's like they couldn't pick one tone
[28:59] and stick with it.
[29:00] It's kind of like Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter
[29:02] that we watched last episode,
[29:04] where they, it's a ridiculous, goofy concept,
[29:08] but they wanted you to take it really seriously,
[29:11] but they didn't want to put the work into it
[29:13] to make it worth taking seriously.
[29:15] And at times, this movie had that problem.
[29:17] And other times, it was just a silly, ridiculous movie
[29:19] that were full of songs that I don't care for particularly.
[29:21] So take my criticism for what it's worth.
[29:23] But it was also over two hours long
[29:26] and it seems like that's a big mistake
[29:28] to have it an over two hour jukebox musical
[29:31] where there's almost no plot, I guess.
[29:33] How is that so long?
[29:35] I feel like I was a different age
[29:37] when I started watching them.
[29:38] Well, there's, you know, there were songs in it,
[29:40] like song take up space.
[29:42] That's why musical plots are so simple, I guess,
[29:44] because like-
[29:45] You need room for the songs, yeah.
[29:47] But this one, like, they, by the,
[29:50] Stacey Jacks gets to the bourbon room at the end
[29:53] to play the night that the Z-Boys are also going to play.
[29:58] And there should be like.
[30:00] Ten minutes left in the movie. I guess something like that and Dan had to pause it for some reason
[30:05] I think he for an interruption or something and
[30:07] It showed that it was like he had just thrown up in his pants
[30:14] But and there was like a half hour left in the movie it was like how is this possible
[30:18] This is like the Hobbit part one an unexpected journey of
[30:23] Jukebox musicals like just extend it. We got to keep filling this thing and make it super long
[30:27] Like the weird that's the weird thing. They took some stuff from the Cimmerillion and they put it in Rock of Ages
[30:32] It was so weird in to have Rock of Ages suddenly stopped for the origin of Tom Bombadil
[30:38] Like what does this have to do with anything Tom Bombadil loves to sing? He does. That's true
[30:43] Now it's being loved to sing. I feel like you and I appreciated this on a different level as karaoke fans
[30:49] Yeah, exactly
[30:50] Like I feel like this movie would be great to stand up in front of and pull a Rocky Horror Picture Show with
[30:57] That would be the way to watch this. Yeah, not with Elliot
[31:03] I'd like to sing along with lots of stuff. Just not any of these songs
[31:06] Well, Hallie, we sing all the time in our office. That's true. Yeah, mostly Jesus Christ Superstar. Yes saying all the time
[31:13] What happened guys? I happened between you two. Well, I'll be so happy
[31:18] Hallie got a little too big and
[31:20] It's hard to work with now in her cocoon
[31:23] In fact
[31:25] Elliot's had to move into the hall
[31:29] She's just in this cocoon of alcohol and girls and her pet monkey that she puts different uniforms on
[31:35] And Paul Giamatti her agent. That's why this story touched me so much. It was my biopic
[31:42] They call her Hallie Jax. I knew I'd always be played by Tom Cruise
[31:48] How was the singing did you guys think by the actors
[31:50] I actually was I thought it was surprisingly good. I thought the only person who definitely I mean
[31:56] obviously they
[31:58] Fussed around they you know, they messed with it made voices sound sweet in the voices, you know
[32:03] But I thought the only person who didn't sound like an actual singer was Alec Baldwin. Yeah. Yeah
[32:09] It just sounded like he was Paul Giamatti a little bit
[32:11] He barely said he barely said Alec Baldwin sounded like he was kind of like Rex Harrison talk singing. Yeah, you know
[32:17] Which he's not a singer so it comes down to Tom Cruise did better than I would have expected
[32:21] Yeah, I thought he sounded great in the journey song at the end. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I thought he did a fine job
[32:27] I wish that his acting had been up to the level of his singing because he just he's
[32:34] Or I guess it's not even bad acting so much as like it feels like he's playing the wrong character, you know
[32:39] I mean we were talking about this how you were like
[32:42] Like how do you know these people to be in this stupid movie?
[32:44] I'm like, I think they probably just want to be in a musical like, you know
[32:47] I believe it's Hallie who has that question and I said chit-ching money. That's how oh, but but it in Wikipedia
[32:53] It says that Tom Cruise had always wanted to be in a musical
[32:59] Yeah, they were locked in a building and the only way out was to make the movie Rock of Ages
[33:03] It was part of an elaborate prank
[33:07] Would you like to play game you can either make a movie with you Fox musical
[33:11] Bombs gonna go off in your head
[33:17] We call them saw for short, it's apostrophe saw
[33:21] These guys like to make a little jukebox musical
[33:24] You can either saw your own leg off or sing pour some sugar on me. I
[33:29] Guess I'll sing this song. I mean, could you give me the lyrics cuz I don't know all of them
[33:33] No, but for reals
[33:34] I thought that they got locked like I remember Alec Baldwin trying to get out of his contract or something and they were somehow locked
[33:42] To pull a Theodore Rex. I see once you found out he had to kiss Russell Brand
[33:48] Yeah, he tries to leave 30 rock every season and now he's finally got his wish
[33:53] But I heard that like did you read all those reports about how like once it was the last season?
[33:57] He's like, hey guys, let's do it much more and he did a tweet
[33:59] They she tweeted from the last read through there's like last 30 rock read-through Wow
[34:03] And it's like you've been trying to leave this show for like four years
[34:07] You are an emotional roller coaster Alec Baldwin. Yeah. Yeah. Did you see that?
[34:12] News Center for that Rock Center piece that they did all about him during Hurricane Sandy and just how he liked I
[34:20] Think I was about how he like helped people walk their dogs or something. It's very strange
[34:25] I was on the treadmill and a lot of endorphins running through my brain
[34:33] About how we hung out downtown
[34:36] And
[34:40] There was a dog involved
[34:43] So if anyone wants to try to put those pieces together
[34:46] Figure out where Alec Baldwin was during the hurricane
[34:49] Imagine like a fan with like a basement room. There's a picture of Alec Baldwin and a picture of a dog and yarn going between the two of them
[34:57] There's got to be a connection. What don't they want me to find out?
[35:03] We'll unlock your secrets
[35:06] Yeah, so rock of a I think you guys enjoyed this movie more than I did probably well
[35:10] I mean, that's a good segue into our final judgments section where we talked about
[35:14] Whether we thought this was a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie. We kind of liked Hallie
[35:19] What do you think? Oh, I think I said it before that. I think the movie started
[35:24] I was like, oh man, this movie really isn't very good. And then I was like
[35:28] And then I was like, oh this isn't very good at all and then it was like, oh no, it's kind of good
[35:35] So, uh, I took you on an unexpected journey. Yeah, I mean I like the Hobbit part one
[35:43] December I think it had music it had a monkey
[35:49] It has the two M's
[35:53] More please
[35:55] No, I think I didn't think it was as bad as I expected it to be
[35:59] I mean, it was a really bad movie, but I enjoyed it more than I expected to enjoy it
[36:02] Yeah for me this hovered between a bad bad movie and a movie. I kind of liked like I think it was
[36:10] Stupid enough that it was like a big Hollywood fiasco in a way that you don't normally see
[36:17] So I definitely looked like a lot of people who usually know what they're doing
[36:21] Yeah, they had no idea what they were doing. I think like oh, maybe they never know what they're doing
[36:26] They just have really good people telling them what yeah, that's possible
[36:29] William Goldman said his old saying about movie business, which is that nobody knows anything in the movie business. It's all kind of chance
[36:35] but also then I enjoyed like the few moments that something kind of like genuinely funny peek through or just
[36:42] You know people singing songs. I like seeing people sing songs
[36:45] What do you think Elliot? I?
[36:48] I mean, it wasn't as bad a movie as I thought it was gonna be but I'm still gonna give it a bad bad rating because
[36:54] It just didn't hold. I mean like
[36:57] Even if this wasn't my particular favorite type of music I do like musicals
[37:00] I don't have an issue with movies where people burst into song all of a sudden
[37:03] But it just didn't hold together and there just had so many
[37:07] Spacing and story problems. Yeah, and there was not a sense of like
[37:12] Fun, like they were riding too much on the fumes of the music like you guys love these songs
[37:17] You'll come see it for the song so we don't have to try that hard and it's an issue
[37:20] I have with jukebox music musicals in general
[37:23] You're not the musical itself often is not that good
[37:26] But it's like yeah, you're just working off of the residual feelings people have for this music
[37:31] Well, I will definitely say that the singing was not really that good and the dancing was terrible
[37:37] Yeah, so if you're looking for musical stuff, like it's not a good musical. It's a better music
[37:43] It's a rock-and-roll musical where the musical elements are mostly awful
[37:46] But if you're like if you're not gonna have the equivalent of the karaoke
[37:50] Why would you say the singing wasn't good?
[37:52] I mean the sing of the actual like the actual quality of the singing was like, okay, these are actors you can sing
[37:57] Okay, I guess I just mean what Elliot was saying early marriage a obliged was really good
[38:02] But she's a real much better. Well, the Mary J. Blige is the only person I felt like we're when she was singing
[38:07] She was trying to put any emotion into the song. There's no edge in the way that it's song
[38:11] Yeah, everyone else there was no edge or like feeling it was a lot of like
[38:15] This is how I do a perfect version of the song, but they weren't feeling it
[38:21] You know, there was then like you had a lot of these songs like are pretty
[38:25] You know bubblegum II rock-and-roll songs, but they do have some
[38:28] Growl to them and they just didn't do any of that
[38:31] You know
[38:32] It was it just felt it felt like you know when kids sing rock-and-roll songs and like the most the filthiest or like scariest song
[38:38] Becomes adorable. There's a kid is saying it and in a weird way. It's kind of funny that that's true
[38:44] Because a lot of these
[38:46] people are not
[38:48] you know like real singers and it's easier to sing like rock-and-roll music where the
[38:55] Perfection of the singing is not as important as the feeling well
[38:58] Cuz there are a lot of great rock-and-roll singers who don't have very good voice
[39:00] Yeah, but they like this this movie like went for the perfection more than I went for the feeling because that's this
[39:06] That's the singing style right now
[39:07] I feel like a lot of a lot of song styles right now are for ultra gloss and a lot of polish and went instead of
[39:14] Edge or you know roughness or and or energy or anything? It did feel like watching the voice or something. I agree
[39:20] Yeah, but hey, you know if they were songs that I was more into maybe I would feel differently
[39:25] but now guys
[39:27] Now that part of the podcast is over and the next part of the podcast is just beginning
[39:32] Our nightmare continues perfect segue perfect. Yeah, what a great what a seamless segue that parts over
[39:40] Let's go to the next part. What is the next part?
[39:42] The next part is the flop house movie mailbag movie mailbag letters about movies letters from the fans
[39:49] About the movies we watch and the podcast that we do
[39:53] It's called the flop house with the movie mailbag at the flop house. You won't sing. I can't fight this feeling anymore
[40:00] I don't sing made-up songs about letters.
[40:01] Time for letters from the movie mailbag.
[40:05] A mailbag full of movies?
[40:06] No, it's got mail in it.
[40:08] Otherwise, it'd be a movie bag.
[40:10] That doesn't exist.
[40:12] You can't carry movies in a bag unless they're on tape.
[40:17] Or DVD.
[40:18] OK, that's the end.
[40:19] So anyway.
[40:20] Reading the letters from the movie bag.
[40:23] We're going to go through the first one
[40:25] and then the second one.
[40:27] Plots of letters.
[40:28] We've got to read letters.
[40:30] They're coming from the mailbag.
[40:33] But first, they came from you.
[40:35] You sent them to the mailbag at that address.
[40:38] Mailbag, courtesy of the Flophouse,
[40:40] 123 Main Street, Mailbag Town in Film City.
[40:45] No postage necessary.
[40:47] Thank you very much.
[40:49] Guys, I told you already.
[40:51] I'm not coming to your improvised musical.
[40:53] That's why we've got to bring it to you.
[40:55] Hallie, what time of the show is it?
[40:58] It's time for letters reading from the mailbag.
[41:02] There are going to be lots of letters,
[41:04] not handwritten, mostly typed.
[41:07] There are 26 letters in the alphabet,
[41:10] but not that many letters in the mailbag.
[41:12] It's a tiny bag, a little bag, with just a few letters in it.
[41:17] So let's read them and make more room for more letters.
[41:20] Keep writing.
[41:22] This letter is from Listen Our Last Name Withheld.
[41:28] I think that's his pseudonym.
[41:29] Very clever.
[41:32] It's titled, Something Stupid I May Well End Up Doing Again.
[41:36] Something Stupid I May Well End Up Doing Again.
[41:39] I think that's a David Foster Wallace play.
[41:41] Yeah, it's a reference to his play, Rock of Ages.
[41:45] You didn't know he wrote that?
[41:47] That's why it's the only stage musical full of footnotes.
[41:49] I made a play on, of course.
[41:52] Wasn't that close to the name of Chris Gethardt's memoir?
[41:57] Wasn't it like, A Really Dumb Thing I'm About to Do Again?
[41:59] Oh, yeah, it was something like that.
[42:02] I thought it was a reference to it.
[42:03] That porn star, Chris Gethardt?
[42:04] I'll Never Do Again.
[42:06] But that's what Chris Gethardt's thing was a play on, I think.
[42:11] Well, I hope that answers your question.
[42:14] Mailbag, close.
[42:15] Close up the mailbag.
[42:17] Throw it in the fire.
[42:20] Throw it in the yule log.
[42:22] It just bounces against the TV.
[42:27] It's elaborate.
[42:28] All right, read the letter.
[42:32] It goes like this.
[42:33] So, I just finished listening to every single episode
[42:36] and movie minute you guys ever made.
[42:38] My God, you must have gone insane.
[42:39] In reverse order, starting with Journey to the Mysterious Island
[42:43] and ending with Stealth, with a brief trip back
[42:45] to the present, her battleship.
[42:48] That's about four and a half full days of free-ranging conversation
[42:51] about bad movies with a comedy focus.
[42:53] Listened to in less than a month.
[42:54] It was interesting.
[42:57] Dot, dot, dot, interesting.
[42:59] Yeah. I must say.
[43:01] Did you not like it?
[43:02] If nothing else, it made me better understand T.H. White's Merlin.
[43:05] Every now and then, an element of the show that stopped showing
[43:08] up in later episodes appeared and seemed new and baffling to me,
[43:12] but natural and even trite to you.
[43:14] Then, as I worked my way through your back catalog,
[43:16] I, too, became used to it, learned to love it until the dreaded moment
[43:20] where you originally introduced it.
[43:22] Oh, it sounds like Time's Arrow.
[43:24] Yeah. Meaning that it wouldn't be the last time I would encounter it.
[43:29] Wow, wow. What was that?
[43:30] It sounded like some kind of cat.
[43:33] Perhaps a house cat.
[43:35] I want to recommend this movie.
[43:36] That sounded like a guitar sting, actually.
[43:38] Yeah, well, Dan's not the usual house cat guy.
[43:41] I want to recommend this movie.
[43:43] It's about a freak who lives in a castle and rips off his own ding-dong.
[43:47] Does he think we haven't heard this stuff?
[43:50] No offense, listener, our name withheld.
[43:53] Meet our new guest host.
[43:54] He works for the Daily Show or something.
[43:56] So, I just bought these new microphones.
[43:58] I'm a girl.
[43:59] No, this is when I came in.
[44:02] I just bought these new microphones.
[44:03] I guess the show will not sound as shitty as it has up until now.
[44:07] Those were fucking heartbreaking, you guys.
[44:09] I thought you might like to know.
[44:11] See, I made this reference to you, Elliot,
[44:14] about Merlin living backwards in time.
[44:16] That was the first time you'd heard of it.
[44:18] Yeah, but he's been with it, too.
[44:20] Independent confirmation from a listener.
[44:23] Well, thank you for doing it.
[44:24] It's like my whole life was flashing before my eyes except for most of it
[44:29] since the Flophouse takes up a relatively small part of my life.
[44:32] But it's interesting.
[44:34] Maybe I'll do it that way now.
[44:35] About eight hours a month, maybe.
[44:37] I'll think that Simon has replaced me.
[44:39] Then I'll call you up and I'll be like,
[44:40] Dan, am I still on the Flophouse?
[44:43] Yeah, I'll be like, what the fuck's wrong with you?
[44:46] We're recording tonight.
[44:47] Oh, OK.
[44:49] Get over here.
[44:49] And then I will, well, never mind, I'm not going to say that.
[44:52] I was about to.
[44:53] What do you think about that letter?
[44:55] I think I can't believe someone spent so much time listening to you guys.
[44:58] Hey, we're very listenable.
[44:59] I guess so.
[45:00] We have a lot of diehard fans and we love them.
[45:02] Way to go, Floppers.
[45:03] Keep it up.
[45:04] Except maybe tone it down on the AV Club comment boards
[45:07] because you guys can be thugs sometimes.
[45:09] Allie, all that time that you've been tuning Elliot and me out
[45:13] in your office.
[45:14] We were carrying you.
[45:15] I know.
[45:17] All that time.
[45:18] There was only one set of ear prints.
[45:21] That was us.
[45:22] Oh.
[45:24] So this next letter is titled.
[45:28] Second letter.
[45:30] Same as the first.
[45:33] No, that would be terrible.
[45:36] Second letter is titled Alcohol and Movies.
[45:39] And it's from Robert, last name with hell.
[45:41] Something Dan enjoys both of.
[45:44] Alcohol and movies.
[45:45] Floppers, what are your thoughts on drinking and watching movies?
[45:49] Specifically, drinking and watching a good movie.
[45:51] I recently saw The Master and enjoyed a high ABV IPA during the movie.
[45:58] I felt like the slight buzz combined with the dark theater
[46:02] actually made the alienating nature of the film more pronounced.
[46:05] I know that drinking in action movies and bad movies go together,
[46:08] but I wondered what you thought about drinking with serious films.
[46:11] Does it benefit or detract?
[46:13] I had a similar experience with Drive.
[46:16] I wrote a while ago about Private Lessons star Patrick Picaninny.
[46:21] Pic, pic, picaninny.
[46:24] Dan's had a little too much to drink.
[46:26] Just spell it out, Dan.
[46:27] It's P-I-C-C.
[46:28] Sound it out.
[46:29] OK, pic, pic, pic.
[46:30] P-I-C-C-I-N-I-N-N-I.
[46:35] Picaninny, maybe?
[46:36] All right.
[46:37] I wrote a while ago about Private Lessons star Patrick Picaninny.
[46:41] Why would you try to say the name again?
[46:44] Just skip it.
[46:45] Running for a judge here in Columbus, Ohio, he did not win.
[46:49] Oh, that's terrible.
[46:50] He needed more lessons.
[46:51] I feel that his lack of Private Lessons based advertising
[46:55] cost him the election.
[46:56] As a reminder, he played chubby child Sherman.
[47:00] Wait, so he wasn't even the star?
[47:02] But as a reminder to us, the original question was about drinking.
[47:05] I hope the character's name was Chubby Child Sherman.
[47:10] I would think, I mean, I don't know.
[47:11] I don't really drink that much usually.
[47:13] You're a nearly teetotal gentleman.
[47:15] Not as much as I once was.
[47:16] I gave you a Guinness tonight in celebration of your birthday,
[47:19] but that's a rare.
[47:22] He poured it down the toilet while you were away, Dan.
[47:25] Yeah.
[47:26] Well, the intermediate step was putting it in my body
[47:29] and turning it into urine.
[47:30] And then I poured that in the toilet out of me.
[47:33] All out.
[47:35] I would think maybe for something like Drive,
[47:37] I can make sense because Drive is about visual sensation for the most part.
[47:41] And The Master was in a big way, too.
[47:42] And The Master is, too, yeah.
[47:44] And frankly, drinking before The Master may help to smooth over
[47:48] the story problems that that movie has.
[47:50] But in general, I feel like when you really want to enjoy a movie,
[47:54] it helps to be able to give it total attention.
[47:56] And I don't know, it depends on the person, maybe,
[47:57] if drinking helps you or hurts you with that.
[48:00] I mean, I probably wouldn't recommend it if it's something
[48:03] that you're seeing for the first time that you really
[48:06] want to pay a lot of attention to.
[48:07] Yeah.
[48:08] Or you're taking a test on it or something.
[48:11] You're taking a driving test afterwards.
[48:13] Or during.
[48:14] Before that.
[48:14] And you shouldn't be watching a movie while you're
[48:16] taking a driving test anyway.
[48:17] So don't, and definitely not drinking.
[48:19] Unless you can put the iPod in your field of vision
[48:22] and still see the road, then that's probably OK.
[48:25] Maybe like the movie Drive might help you.
[48:27] Yeah.
[48:28] A lot of driving in that movie.
[48:30] But if it's a movie that you've seen before that's
[48:32] like a personal favorite of yours, I feel like I've watched
[48:36] a couple of Coen Brothers movies recently while slowly sipping
[48:39] on some whiskey, and that just enhances
[48:41] the pleasure of watching it.
[48:43] Dan's definition of slow.
[48:46] Glug, glug, glug.
[48:47] Yeah, just tossing it back.
[48:48] Yeah.
[48:49] Thanks, guys.
[48:50] Anything short of pouring the bottle into his mouth.
[48:54] He does that drink a bottle while you're
[48:57] peeing on the floor trick all the time.
[48:59] Because that's just how fast he goes through.
[49:02] Halle, what do you have to say about this subject?
[49:05] I think that, yeah, I agree with Elliot.
[49:10] If it's a certain type of movie, I
[49:11] can see why you would enjoy The Master or Drive
[49:15] while drinking a bit.
[49:17] But honestly, I find that I get too tired if I'm drinking
[49:23] and watching a movie.
[49:25] And I either fall asleep or miss things
[49:28] that I wish I hadn't missed.
[49:30] So I'm not a big drinker.
[49:32] That's what I would worry about, because I
[49:34] reached apparently the age where the combination of a dark room
[49:38] and anything over, I guess, freezing temperature
[49:41] puts me to sleep.
[49:43] So when I'm in a movie theater, even when
[49:45] I'm really loving the movie I'm watching,
[49:46] I'm already at risk of falling asleep.
[49:48] So to add alcohol, that would be a bad idea, I think.
[49:52] Yeah, it's such a strange calculation,
[49:54] because I feel like if I start drinking at night, I'm fine.
[49:58] I can stay awake.
[50:00] all through the whole thing. But what if you start drinking in the morning?
[50:02] But no, but if I had like- You've been drinking all day!
[50:04] If I went to like a barbecue or something, like I'm drinking in like the middle of the afternoon
[50:08] and then I come home- Or you're at work.
[50:10] I'm asleep on the couch. Drinking in the middle of the afternoon.
[50:14] I'm asleep on the couch by six or seven.
[50:17] And that's just, that's just aging. Yeah.
[50:20] That has nothing to do with movies, that just has more to do with me, guys.
[50:22] We're all getting older, all of us except Merlin.
[50:25] Guys, tell me I still look handsome, come on.
[50:27] I will not. Come on.
[50:28] Still? I've got a lot of youthful vigor still in me, come on.
[50:33] Hey, why don't you go on to the next letter, which I believe is-
[50:36] Letter number three. Letter number three.
[50:39] If there's another letter from me from you,
[50:44] the viewer or listener would be more accurate, I guess.
[50:49] Letter number three.
[50:51] It's the best letter to be.
[50:55] If you're letter number three.
[51:06] Letter number three is taped before a live studio audience.
[51:10] Your cat got so freaked out for holding that note.
[51:16] Make it the letter, Dan.
[51:17] So, this last letter of the evening is titled, Dan is ignorant.
[51:23] I like this one.
[51:24] Sounds about right.
[51:25] Possession is weird.
[51:27] Dan, how ignorant you are.
[51:30] I can't speak for mainline Protestants.
[51:33] They're too boring to pay much attention to,
[51:35] what with their reasonableness and stateness.
[51:38] But fundamentalist Protestants totally believe in demons pretty much all the time.
[51:43] They denounce psychics and witches as having-
[51:47] Is this off of the devil inside?
[51:49] This is off the devil inside, sorry.
[51:50] They denounce psychics and witches as having demonic spirits
[51:54] supplying their eerie powers,
[51:56] claim that certain monuments and places are territory for specific demons,
[52:00] maintain that all contact with space aliens
[52:03] is actually demons trying to trick people into doubting the Bible,
[52:06] and believe that visions of the Virgin Mary are actually a plot, a demonic plot.
[52:12] Also, some of the more adventurous fundamentalists believe in Nephilim.
[52:16] That's a deep Torah cut for you.
[52:18] Oh yeah, I'm familiar with that one.
[52:20] And claim that NASA is currently plotting to create more
[52:24] as a part of an alien breeding program,
[52:26] which suggests that at some point, one of them saw a species.
[52:30] Also-
[52:31] Or the astronaut's wife.
[52:32] Also, he writes, Elliot, on your recommendation, I rewatched Possession.
[52:36] Although your description was basically correct,
[52:38] I don't think it did justice to just how bonkers that movie is.
[52:41] It's super bonkers.
[52:42] You didn't talk about the sultry spy thriller subplot,
[52:46] or the lackadaisical gunfight,
[52:48] or the way that all the characters seem to have some kind of neurological disorder
[52:51] that makes them twitch uncontrollably and shout most of their dialogue,
[52:55] which is all repetitive and doesn't seem to bear any resemblance
[52:57] to how people actually talk.
[52:59] You didn't mention the film's weird-
[53:00] The movie involves a woman having sex with a tentacle monster,
[53:03] and you're like, these characters don't talk like normal people.
[53:05] He's getting to it.
[53:06] You didn't mention the film's weird half-baked philosophizing with Jim's like,
[53:10] I believe God is under the porch with a dead dog,
[53:13] or Heinrich's claim that nobody should ever force their will on anyone else,
[53:17] but that it's cool for him to rape Isabella Adjani because he,
[53:20] quote, asks for nothing and may therefore demand everything.
[53:25] There's also a pretty good, very brief karate fight, too.
[53:28] You failed to bring up the tentacle monster's curious evolution,
[53:31] or the way that Sam Neill appears to gradually turn into a rat man
[53:34] over the course of the film.
[53:36] In short, that shit is the weirdest movie I've ever seen,
[53:38] and I've seen the wedding trough kissed and invasion from in-earth.
[53:42] And if you can think of anything stranger, please let me know.
[53:45] I want to be able to win any who's-watched-the-weirdest-movie-arguments-that-might-arise.
[53:49] Yours in Crom, Lawrence, last name with O.
[53:52] Oh, it's too bad Stuart's not here to worship Crom with him.
[53:55] But to the first point, demonic possession.
[54:00] Yes, I am discounting your evangelical Christians, your fundie Christians.
[54:07] I did grow up in a more mainstream Protestant tradition.
[54:12] So you grew up near a particular Christian sect, right?
[54:16] I did.
[54:17] I grew up near the apostolic Christians, who were, I would say, sort of Mennonite-y.
[54:23] Oh, that's not so crazy, I guess.
[54:25] Yeah, I don't know that they were big on the idea of demonic possession.
[54:29] They were big on the idea of the devil.
[54:31] I would say that the devil is certainly a large component of fundamentalist Protestantism,
[54:38] but I don't know that possession specifically.
[54:41] Well, they do exorcisms, not them, but you see those videos online of evangelical exorcisms
[54:46] and stuff like that.
[54:48] Usually the demons want to make people gay, and that's what they exorcise out, and it's
[54:52] like, demons, is that really the biggest, like that's the most damage you can think
[54:56] of?
[54:57] Usually they exorcise it by inserting the penis into a butthole.
[54:58] Yeah, demons, you've got to get with the times.
[55:01] Wow, Dan.
[55:02] I'm just saying.
[55:03] Dan, this is a family podcast.
[55:05] Is it?
[55:06] Well, I consider us like family.
[55:09] When you're here, you're family.
[55:11] Yeah, because you live in an olive garden.
[55:13] Don't tell anyone I'm squatting here.
[55:16] Don't tell anyone I'm under the table.
[55:19] I'm under your table right now, presuming you're listening to this in an olive garden.
[55:24] Which I assume you are.
[55:25] You should probably take your headphones out and pay attention to your friends.
[55:28] It's rude.
[55:29] Pay attention to your family.
[55:31] Which you are treated like when you're here.
[55:33] But before you do that, please stick a breadstick or two under the table for me.
[55:37] If you're there alone, then keep listening to the podcast because it's sad enough that
[55:41] you're at an olive garden alone.
[55:43] Hoping, I guess, to flag down a family.
[55:45] Pass a few pepperoncini down to me.
[55:48] And get a bottomless salad bowl.
[55:51] What's bottomless over there?
[55:53] The salad bowl, the soup bowl, the waitresses.
[55:55] Everything except for the customers.
[55:58] They've got plenty of bottom.
[56:00] Oh.
[56:02] Clever.
[56:05] And the movie Possession.
[56:07] We've said it.
[56:08] It's super bonkers.
[56:09] I don't know anything about this.
[56:11] I have nothing to say.
[56:12] Great.
[56:13] Let's move on then.
[56:14] It's fine.
[56:15] We had a lot of good olive garden material.
[56:17] A lot of good olive garden material.
[56:20] Well, it's not like a type 5 or anything.
[56:22] No.
[56:23] Let's not take it.
[56:24] Let's not do any open mics just yet.
[56:25] We've still got to develop this.
[56:26] So anyway, this is the last segment of the evening.
[56:30] Again, applause.
[56:32] So cute.
[56:34] This is falling apart.
[56:36] Dan, I think Hallie, next time we have her do the show,
[56:38] we've got to put the cat in the other room.
[56:41] She won't pay attention to me.
[56:45] Sorry.
[56:46] Just because you didn't raise her like I did.
[56:50] I'm sure that if I went over to your house,
[56:51] Henry would ignore me.
[56:53] That's not true.
[56:54] Henry's not like that.
[56:55] He's very friendly.
[56:56] Henry is a cat for the listeners.
[56:58] So this is the last segment where we recommend films.
[57:02] That we've seen and we liked.
[57:04] Not like Rocket Mages, which we saw and some of us kind of liked.
[57:08] Elliot, what film would you like to recommend to our listeners?
[57:12] Shall I go first?
[57:13] All right, I shall.
[57:14] I'd like to recommend a movie I saw recently.
[57:17] It's a 1950s kind of military suspense thriller starring Richard Widmark
[57:22] and a very young Rip Torn, who's very good in it.
[57:26] It's the only movie ever directed by Carl Malden, which is too bad because it's not a bad movie
[57:31] and he does some interesting things with it.
[57:33] It's kind of directed.
[57:34] It's a little stagey, but otherwise I like it.
[57:36] It's a movie called Time Limit.
[57:38] It's right after the Korean War, and a bunch of American POWs are trying to figure out –
[57:47] or rather Richard Widmark, who's an investigator.
[57:49] I guess he's like whatever the army version of a jag is, I suppose.
[57:54] He is trying to figure out why this one soldier basically turned and collaborated with the enemy
[58:00] and recorded radio broadcasts and things like that, saying America was at fault for this war.
[58:05] And the soldier is kind of giving up too easily.
[58:10] He refuses to defend himself, and so Richard Widmark thinks there's more to this story than meets the eye,
[58:15] and he has to kind of dig deeper to find out what actually happened in this POW camp
[58:20] and why nobody who was there wants to tell the truth about what happened
[58:25] and is eager to cover it up and send this other guy to sacrifice himself basically
[58:30] and just go to jail for collaborating.
[58:33] And it's a tight-level suspense thriller of the kind of liberal humanist message mode that Hollywood did in the 40s and 50s,
[58:42] but it doesn't have a kind of pat ending, and it refuses to –
[58:49] it raises questions about kind of when you should follow military law and when not,
[58:53] but doesn't answer those questions, which I kind of appreciate.
[58:58] Everyone gets their chance to say – to make a case for themself, but it's also suspenseful, so time limit.
[59:04] I'd recommend that.
[59:06] ALFRED BOLLINGERGIST Ali Haglund, would you like to recommend something to our listeners?
[59:09] ALI HAGLUND I was going to steal the movie you told me you were going to say, but now I can't remember what it is.
[59:15] Which makes it – just think, if I can't remember what movie you like,
[59:19] think how hard it is for me to think of a movie that I've ever liked.
[59:23] ALFRED BOLLINGERGIST That doesn't make sense.
[59:24] ALFRED BOLLINGERGIST It'd be easier to remember the one that you like.
[59:26] ALFRED BOLLINGERGIST Why don't you recommend like The Last Unicorn or something?
[59:28] ALI HAGLUND I think I did that last time.
[59:30] ALFRED BOLLINGERGIST With music by America.
[59:33] ALI HAGLUND For those who haven't seen it, which I'm sure as the movie buffs that you are, you probably have,
[59:40] but I just saw the original Red Dawn for the first time,
[59:43] and with the new one in the theaters, I'd say revisit that old classic.
[59:48] ALFRED BOLLINGERGIST That old chestnut.
[59:49] ALI HAGLUND I did not realize that everyone, who was anyone, was in that movie,
[59:55] and I didn't even know that Jennifer Grey was in a movie besides.
[1:00:00] And then that movie she did about sailing after she got her nose job and nobody recognized her
[1:00:06] Turns out all her charm was in her nose. I know just like Karl Malden
[1:00:11] director of time limit see it today
[1:00:16] Karl Malden is that MST 3k thing that ends in Karl Malden's nose. Yeah, but
[1:00:22] It's Godzilla's history. I think yeah
[1:00:25] No, you don't suppose oh, yes
[1:00:28] Yes, horror of horrors Karl Malden's nose and Karl Malden was still alive at the time. Yeah
[1:00:34] So what movie was it? Red Dawn? Yeah
[1:00:38] Our DOG I
[1:00:40] Would like to recommend a film called tabloid
[1:00:46] famed
[1:00:48] documentarian Errol Morris who may know for
[1:00:51] films such as the thin blue line
[1:00:54] Gates of heaven the fog of war fast and cheap and out of control
[1:01:00] Mr. Death. Mm-hmm. That's a good one, too
[1:01:04] some other ones Vernon, Florida
[1:01:07] Yeah, that one too. I don't know why I'm blanking on some on his more recent movies
[1:01:12] famously first person series one of the few people to be so frustrating that Werner Herzog had trouble dealing with him
[1:01:20] I'll tell you some stories just he
[1:01:23] he were he was one of Werner Herzog students and
[1:01:26] There's and he was just very difficult to deal with and there's a story that he would I think it was gates of heaven
[1:01:31] He was working on but I'm not sure and he didn't have the money to finish it and Werner Herzog
[1:01:35] He was mad about it for some reason Werner Herzog went to see him and literally gave him the cash to finish it and our
[1:01:41] Morris got so mad that he threw the money out the window of his
[1:01:44] Apartment and Werner Herzog went outside and got it and brought it back up to him and said don't do that again
[1:01:50] Hopefully I'm remembering the story correctly and he has a book out now
[1:01:54] but
[1:01:55] No, arrow Morris
[1:01:56] He has a book refuting the McGinnis book fatal vision about the the murders that led to the very very excellent book
[1:02:03] the murderer the journalist and the murderer
[1:02:07] Jay and Jacobs. No, Jay. I know something Jan
[1:02:10] No, Janet Malcolm. Sorry, Janet Malcolm
[1:02:13] but tabloid is about a
[1:02:16] woman who depending on
[1:02:18] Who you ask either?
[1:02:21] she kidnapped a
[1:02:23] young Mormon gentleman
[1:02:25] Chained him to her bed and raped him or that young Mormon gentleman
[1:02:31] claimed that she kidnapped him and raped him because
[1:02:36] his religion
[1:02:38] Made it so shameful
[1:02:41] for him to have
[1:02:42] Had these sexual desires for this woman that rather than be excommunicated
[1:02:46] He made this up and this was a tabloid sensation in the British press and it's a and I won't go too much further
[1:02:54] They're like more revelations in the movie, but it's fun to like a book of revelations yourself
[1:02:59] Yes, exactly like the book of revelations like the seven-headed beast and stuff like that
[1:03:03] but it's a movie about
[1:03:06] It's a movie about you know, like the nature of truth and constructing
[1:03:11] Truth but it's also
[1:03:13] just a very entertaining movie about
[1:03:16] tabloid journalism and it's an interesting character study of this lady who is
[1:03:20] Obviously crazy, but the level to which she's crazy is
[1:03:25] maybe not so obvious and
[1:03:28] It's just done very entertainingly, you know, Errol Morris is always good for an entertaining documentary. So that's my recommendation
[1:03:35] What do you say guys? What do you think I say?
[1:03:39] Sure
[1:03:42] Thank you for stepping in thank you so much for being our guest stupid job kept him from being here
[1:03:48] Yeah, well, we can only pay you in being close to a cat. Yeah
[1:03:57] Lying there not doing much of anything just like a cat
[1:04:01] Adorable, but thank you for being here to our listeners. Thank you for listening and to Dan
[1:04:06] Thank you for being
[1:04:08] Allie
[1:04:10] Well, no, actually, you know what that's better than what I was gonna say. Yeah, go fuck yourself Dan. Thanks guys for the flop house
[1:04:16] I've been Dan McCoy
[1:04:18] I'm
[1:04:19] Elliot hold on
[1:04:22] Kalen Elliot Kalen and I am and always will be
[1:04:26] Hallie wait, that's the kind of thing. I usually say
[1:04:33] You're staring off into space
[1:04:36] Like that dog in that video
[1:04:46] Versus a bath since he loved it
[1:04:52] It wasn't versus it was meats bath falls in love

Description

0:00 - 0:31 - Introduction and theme.0:32 - 35:10 - Fan favorite Hallie Haglund subs in for Stu in our discussion of the jukebox gloss-fest, Rock of Ages.35:11 - 39:28 - Final judgments39:29 - 56:58 - Flop House Movie Mailbag, with the very first letters DUET.56:59  - 1:03:36 - The sad bastards recommend. 1:03:37- 1:04:59 - Goodbyes, theme, and outtakes.

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