The Flop House: Episode #102 - Cowboys & Aliens

Dan McCoy

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss one of the mash-em-ups, cowboys and aliens.

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

[0:34] Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:35] And hello, I'm Elliot Kalin.

Dan McCoy

[0:37] Hey, we're all back. We're all back.

[0:38] We're all back again. Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[0:39] See, you've returned from the slammer.

[0:41] Where to Rico?

[0:42] That's what they call Puerto Rico.

[0:44] Yeah, they call it Puerto Rico Jail.

[0:46] Yeah, I'm back. I'm not on vacation anymore.

Elliott Kalan

[0:48] And you rested your place in the Flophouse back from Mr. Alec Madrigal.

[0:54] Would you?

[0:55] Wait, what?

[0:56] Al was going to...

Stuart Wellington

[0:57] Oh, did you guys get another celebrity to replace me?

Elliott Kalan

[0:59] Yeah, and he wanted to stay, but apparently you were too much for him.

Dan McCoy

[1:02] Yeah.

[1:02] I mean, only a celebrity can plug the Stuart-sized hole in America's hearts.

[1:08] Okay, well, Al Madrigal's from that show you guys work on, right?

Stuart Wellington

[1:11] Madrigal, yeah.

[1:12] Madrigal?

Dan McCoy

[1:14] It's true. He is from that show we work on.

[1:17] And he's in those commercials, right?

[1:18] Which is what? Bewitched?

[1:19] What shows that F Troop?

[1:22] So, Stuart, you're back.

[1:23] Would you say you're better than ever?

Stuart Wellington

[1:27] I think the audience can answer that.

[1:30] Yeah.

[1:30] So, I'm going to wait for them to call.

[1:33] It's not a phone-in show.

[1:34] This is actually recorded.

[1:35] I mean, they can still call me.

[1:36] It's pre-recorded.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37] They don't have your number.

[1:38] Are you going to release your number on the air?

[1:40] Five, five, five.

[1:41] Uh-huh.

[1:41] Two, two, four, four, four.

[1:42] That's made up.

[1:43] And you live in any town USA.

[1:44] One, two, three, Main Street.

[1:46] Yep.

[1:46] One, two, three, fake street.

[1:48] It runs parallel to Main Street.

[1:51] Now, they say that once you go black, you never go back.

[1:54] You're back, so you obviously didn't go black, right?

[1:57] Well, yeah, I guess.

[1:58] Okay.

[1:59] Logically.

[1:59] I can't argue with that logic.

[2:01] Okay.

[2:01] I just wanted to test Snipes' theorem.

[2:04] I'm going to call it.

[2:05] So, we thought...

[2:08] Theorem 57, is that?

[2:09] Theorem 57, yeah.

[2:10] Well, this is the codicil to Theorem 57, which is always bet on black.

Dan McCoy

[2:15] We thought that to honor our big return with all of us, the first show with all of us, post our 100th episode, we should do a...

Elliott Kalan

[2:25] This is what, a 102nd episode?

[2:27] Yeah.

[2:27] There was a one-episode gap.

[2:29] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[2:30] You're making it like this is this Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis reunion.

[2:33] A big Hollywood film.

[2:36] A film that everyone went out and didn't see.

[2:39] A movie that was a huge lack of success.

Elliott Kalan

[2:43] That took Hollywood by drizzle.

[2:46] And swept the no-ies, the awards that don't exist.

Stuart Wellington

[2:52] Cowboys and aliens.

[2:53] Cowboys and aliens.

[2:55] So, to celebrate me coming back, we watched a really fun, big explosive movie, right?

[3:00] With tons of energy and aliens and cowboys.

Elliott Kalan

[3:04] If you were judging a movie by the title, yes.

[3:07] Okay.

[3:07] It's got everything you like.

[3:09] Cowboys, you love them.

[3:10] Wild Olivia's.

[3:11] Aliens.

[3:12] You love them.

[3:13] Ampersands.

Stuart Wellington

[3:14] You love them.

Elliott Kalan

[3:16] Oh, man.

[3:16] And also...

Stuart Wellington

[3:16] Is this the thing you guys were fucking working on when I was gone?

[3:19] Nope.

Elliott Kalan

[3:19] Nope.

[3:19] Dan and I have just become one.

[3:21] You're just simpatico.

[3:22] We've become one.

[3:23] Sure.

[3:24] In the void.

[3:25] Like a cowboy and an alien merged.

[3:27] Which would have been an interesting thing to have happen in this movie.

[3:29] It didn't.

Stuart Wellington

[3:31] Yeah.

[3:31] I would have liked to see something where one of the...

[3:33] An alien cowboy?

[3:34] That would have been amazing.

[3:34] Yeah.

[3:35] Well, there kind of was.

[3:35] That joins the team of the cowboys and he wears a hat and a six gun.

[3:40] And they call him like space techs.

Elliott Kalan

[3:42] Yeah, exactly.

[3:43] Well...

[3:43] They're teaching him earth expressions.

Dan McCoy

[3:44] I think that this is getting ahead of ourselves a little bit, but I think that the largest...

[3:48] Basically, he'd be like Rango or something, right?

Elliott Kalan

[3:50] Yeah, exactly.

[3:50] He'd be like Rango, a lizard.

Dan McCoy

[3:52] Who's a cowboy.

[3:53] I think we can all agree.

[3:54] Like, this is getting ahead of ourselves, but...

[3:56] He'd be like, draw a sucker, beep boop.

Elliott Kalan

[3:58] He's a robot, I guess, too.

[4:00] Sorry, I should have said...

[4:01] It's a little Westworld-y.

[4:01] I should have said, draw a sucker, bleep glorp.

[4:04] That's how aliens talk.

Stuart Wellington

[4:06] And if he said, beep glorp, he'd be a robot alien.

[4:09] You know what?

[4:09] Alien.

Dan McCoy

[4:10] That's a bridge too far, Stuart.

[4:12] A robot alien cowboy.

[4:13] You can't combine all of those things.

[4:15] Stretching too.

[4:15] Says who?

[4:16] That's like a Neapolitan ice cream.

[4:17] You don't want that.

Elliott Kalan

[4:19] Wow.

[4:19] Anti-Italian slur from Dan McCoy.

Dan McCoy

[4:22] They don't make good ice cream.

[4:23] They're lazy.

[4:24] All those flavors don't go together.

[4:26] That's what I say.

Elliott Kalan

[4:26] Wow.

[4:27] Anti-multiculturalism and anti-melting pot, Dan McCoy.

Dan McCoy

[4:30] So, it's a movie that you would think would have a sense of zazz, a sense of verve.

[4:37] And what I was about to say was, for a movie called Cowboys and Aliens, it was very drab.

[4:42] Yes.

[4:42] There's not a lot of sense of fun to it.

Elliott Kalan

[4:43] And when you read about it, they make a point over and over again of talking about the people

[4:47] who made the movie about talking about how they went really far to not have it be a movie

[4:51] people would laugh at.

[4:53] They didn't want it to be too goofy.

[4:54] They didn't want people to get the wrong idea that this was a silly movie.

[4:57] And it's like, any movie where cowboys fight aliens, if you're going to do it in a way

[5:04] that's not silly, you have to work so much harder than they did when making this movie.

Dan McCoy

[5:09] Well, also, I mean, I understand the impulse.

[5:12] Like, I would have hated this movie probably as much if it was campy.

[5:16] Yeah.

[5:16] But there's a way of doing this with a spirit of fun, like tongue-in-cheek, paying homage

[5:23] to old westerns and old sci-fi movies at the same time.

[5:27] Or just not even paying homage.

Elliott Kalan

[5:28] Just doing it in a way that's fun as opposed to, like, overly serious.

Stuart Wellington

[5:34] Well, and I hate to point out the obvious, but if you're trying to make a serious movie,

[5:39] don't just name it Cowboys and aliens.

[5:42] Don't just name two things that are in the movie.

[5:44] Yeah.

[5:45] It seems very...

Elliott Kalan

[5:46] No, that's the way most serious movies are named.

[5:48] Oh, okay.

[5:48] Schindler's List, two things.

[5:49] There's a guy, he's got a list.

[5:51] Saving Private Ryan, Private Ryan.

[5:53] I mean, that's what they're...

[5:54] Okay.

[5:54] And great savings.

Stuart Wellington

[5:57] Name it.

[5:58] Lots of savings.

[5:58] There's a great value in that movie.

Elliott Kalan

[6:00] Huge.

[6:01] You get tons of berry pepper.

[6:02] It's a Memorial Day sale.

Dan McCoy

[6:03] So, wait, are you getting savings on Private Ryan?

Elliott Kalan

[6:06] Yes.

[6:06] And, in addition, savings on other merchandise in the department.

Dan McCoy

[6:10] So, Private Ryan is sort of like a loss leader.

Elliott Kalan

[6:12] It gets you in the door.

[6:13] Well, you're saving on products that are equal or lesser value than Private Ryan.

[6:17] Mm-hmm.

Dan McCoy

[6:18] Mm-hmm.

[6:19] Mm-hmm.

[6:20] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[6:21] Stu, you worked in retail.

[6:23] You couldn't get anything about this.

[6:25] Well, so, wait.

[6:26] Could I get a Colonel Ryan or would Colonel Ryan be worth more?

[6:28] I mean, he'd be more, right?

[6:29] Greater value.

Elliott Kalan

[6:30] So, no.

[6:31] For this sales offer, it would not work.

[6:33] Okay.

[6:34] For this event.

[6:35] But the Private Ryan-a-thon is going on throughout the month of June.

[6:38] Hilarious.

[6:38] See anything you like on the shelves?

[6:40] Don't stop.

[6:41] Keep it up.

[6:41] Feel free to come in.

[6:42] He's a new character.

[6:43] Here's my card.

[6:44] Come in anytime.

[6:45] I like the sales, but okay.

[6:46] We've got a lot of great privates on here, Ryan and otherwise.

[6:49] Do you get a commission on this or?

[6:51] Technically, yes.

[6:51] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[6:51] I do work on commission, so I'd appreciate if you.

Elliott Kalan

[6:53] I would love to make a sale.

[6:55] But, again, this is about getting you and the right Private Ryan in the room together.

[6:59] That's fine.

Dan McCoy

[6:59] I'm just not buying the extended warranty on one of these Private Ryans.

[7:02] Are you?

Elliott Kalan

[7:03] Because it is a great machine.

[7:04] Yes, you won't experience a lot of problems, but safety is never expensive.

[7:07] This is expensive.

[7:08] His manager makes him ask that.

[7:10] I know.

[7:10] He makes him ask that every time.

[7:11] I just did the upsell.

Elliott Kalan

[7:11] The upsell bothers me.

[7:12] Oh, the computer's showing me that that's already been included.

[7:15] I'm so sorry.

[7:16] I can talk to my manager, but usually he's not so crazy about special offers.

[7:21] This is my ass on the line, I know, but I'm willing to do it for you.

[7:25] So Saving Private Ryan was going to be watching tonight.

Stuart Wellington

[7:28] Dan, the manager's looking at you now.

[7:29] I know.

[7:30] Oh, God.

[7:31] I think he's coming over.

Dan McCoy

[7:33] So, I heard you.

[7:35] The man of two voices.

[7:37] The L.A.

[7:38] Kalen.

Elliott Kalan

[7:38] You don't want this warranties?

Dan McCoy

[7:41] It's called a Wellington setup.

Elliott Kalan

[7:44] So Cowboys and Aliens, big cast, big stars.

[7:47] Daniel Craig, who I believe sounds like?

Stuart Wellington

[7:50] Hello, hello, it's me, Daniel Craig.

Elliott Kalan

[7:53] Beautiful.

[7:53] Harrison Ford, who sounds like?

[7:56] It's me, Han Solo.

[7:58] That's pretty good.

[8:00] Olivia Wilde, who sounds like?

[8:03] Yeah, that's good.

Stuart Wellington

[8:04] Hello, it's me, Olivia Wilde.

Elliott Kalan

[8:07] Let's not forget also Sam Rockwell, Paul Dato, Keith Carradine.

[8:10] It's weird how everyone says their name.

Stuart Wellington

[8:13] Well, Harrison Ford listed a character he's best known for.

[8:16] Okay.

[8:17] That's a good point.

Elliott Kalan

[8:18] That's a good point.

[8:19] They didn't all say their name.

[8:20] Let's think Harrison Ford's real name is Han Solo.

[8:22] He's got a short attention span.

[8:24] So big cast, big, a lot of big people.

[8:27] Steven Spielberg was a producer of this movie.

[8:29] Jon Favreau.

[8:30] Jon Favreau.

[8:31] Hot off of the Iron Man.

[8:32] Hot off of the Iron Man.

[8:33] Iron Man success, yeah.

[8:35] It took seven people at least to write the screenplay.

[8:38] You'd think this movie would be just jam-packed with great jokes, dialogue, character moments, exciting thrills, scary chills.

[8:46] They were working on it for like 18 years, right?

[8:49] Maybe some spills.

[8:49] Maybe a couple guys named Will.

Stuart Wellington

[8:51] Why not?

[8:52] And they were working on it for 14 years.

[8:54] So that's like a slow-roasted piece of meat.

Elliott Kalan

[8:57] It's true.

[8:58] This movie should have been dripping off the bone.

[9:00] Just self-pulled.

[9:01] Yeah, a lot of flavor.

[9:03] But yeah, this movie was in development for roughly 14 years.

[9:06] Two words.

Elliott Kalan

[9:06] Juicy.

[9:09] But yet, what comes to get...

[9:10] It really is the blandest, most boring way this movie could be.

[9:14] So not juicy at all.

[9:15] Should we bother going through the plot of it?

[9:17] If you could do it as fast as possible.

[9:20] So Daniel Craig wakes up in the middle...

[9:22] But not furious.

[9:23] We're not allowed to do the future.

[9:24] I'll try to calm down.

[9:25] I'll find my zen space before I recap the synopses.

[9:29] So Daniel Craig is a stranger.

[9:31] He wakes up in the middle of the desert, no memory.

[9:33] And he's got a gaudy metal bracelet on his wrist.

[9:37] Three drifters come along and try to attack him.

[9:40] He kills all of them.

[9:41] He's a tough guy.

[9:42] He knows how to fight.

[9:43] Walks into a town.

[9:44] A town's being run by this cattle baron, played by Harrison Ford.

[9:49] Yep.

[9:49] The cattle baron's son, Paul Dano, is a big asshole who walks in and shoots up the

[9:53] town.

Dan McCoy

[9:53] Sort of a dissolute drunk character who's just like a petulant teen.

Elliott Kalan

[9:58] I mean, these are all your classic Western tropes.

[10:01] You have the mysterious drifter.

[10:03] You have the kind of bad guy, Cattle Baron, who is good at heart.

[10:07] You have his ne'er-do-well spoiled son.

[10:10] You have the noble sheriff.

[10:12] You have the mysterious lady who you think might be a prostitute.

[10:18] Who might be wearing pajamas the whole time.

[10:20] Might be wearing her pajamas the whole time.

Dan McCoy

[10:21] You have the pacifist barkeep who learns to be a man.

Elliott Kalan

[10:24] Pacifist barkeep.

[10:25] You've got the tough-as-nails preacher who's also kind of a doctor.

[10:28] The pacifist barkeep's Mexican wife.

[10:31] The little kid.

[10:32] The little kid who's the grandson of the sheriff.

[10:34] And he has to get over his fear of the outside world.

[10:38] And that's most of the characters from the first third of the movie.

Dan McCoy

[10:42] We never get to know them any more than those two-line descriptions would suggest.

Elliott Kalan

[10:47] Well, occasionally we get little details.

[10:49] But they're basically very boilerplate characters.

[10:51] They don't have a lot of soul.

[10:52] They don't have a lot of heart.

[10:54] Eventually they run into a gang of outlaws that the mysterious stranger, it turns out, used to ride with.

[10:58] Turns out he was a wanted outlaw.

[11:00] Jake Lonergan.

[11:03] Sounds like a made-up name.

[11:04] Yes.

[11:05] And when they're going to take him.

[11:06] Well, they're all made-up names.

[11:07] It's a fictional story.

[11:08] None of these people are real.

[11:09] When they're going to take him to see a judge.

[11:12] Because there's a price on his head.

[11:14] He's a criminal.

[11:15] When they're attacked by aliens.

[11:19] Wait.

[11:20] Demons?

[11:20] They call them demons.

Stuart Wellington

[11:22] But they're aliens in spaceships.

[11:23] I mean, they call them demons for like a minute.

[11:25] And then they just get over.

[11:25] And then again, later in the movie, they bring that back.

Dan McCoy

[11:27] So these are like super smart aliens that come down with their tractor beams.

[11:31] And they, you know, they've got a clever plan.

Elliott Kalan

[11:33] They're kind of big, brutish aliens that don't seem to have a spoken language of any type.

[11:37] Okay.

[11:38] And run around like gorillas and bite people.

[11:39] But they also have these kind of fluttering planes that shoot grappling hooks out at people.

[11:43] And pull them up into the sky and kidnap them.

[11:46] So the aliens are going around kidnapping people.

Stuart Wellington

[11:48] What's their MO?

[11:49] What's going on?

Elliott Kalan

[11:50] What are they trying to do?

[11:51] Oh, we don't know.

[11:51] It's a mystery.

[11:52] But we'll find out.

[11:52] Okay.

[11:53] So basically the characters band together to find the missing townspeople who are taken

[11:57] during the alien attack.

[11:58] They run into Jake's old outlaw band.

[12:01] They get attacked by aliens a couple more times.

[12:03] They run into an Indian tribe.

[12:06] Basically, every time you have lost interest in the movie, they dump 20 more characters into your lap.

[12:11] And those characters fail to bring any interest to the movie.

[12:14] It turns out you learn more and more that Jake was going to leave the gang.

[12:18] And he wanted to take up with this prostitute he'd fallen in love with when aliens attacked them and stole their gold.

[12:26] Kidnapped.

[12:27] Wait.

Stuart Wellington

[12:28] Wait.

[12:28] What?

[12:29] We'll get to that.

[12:30] The aliens are here to get gold.

[12:32] Okay.

[12:33] So didn't they like melt the gold and vacuum it up into the sky?

[12:37] Yes.

[12:37] That's exactly what they did.

[12:38] Okay.

[12:38] Then they kidnapped.

Dan McCoy

[12:39] Because that's easier than just like taking some coins up into the sky.

Elliott Kalan

[12:42] Well, they had a...

[12:44] Melted first.

[12:45] Their tractor beams only work on liquid.

[12:46] Suck it up.

[12:47] I guess.

[12:47] Yeah, like a big straw.

[12:49] Jake has been framed for the murder of his woman he fell in love with.

[12:54] It's kind of complicated how they'd even know she existed.

Stuart Wellington

[12:56] And he's running around with his bracelet that turns into a laser blaster.

Elliott Kalan

[12:59] Well, it's because he escaped from the aliens.

Stuart Wellington

[13:01] He's kind of a master blaster, you might say.

Elliott Kalan

[13:04] I'd describe him as a master blaster.

[13:06] I think that's the only way you can describe him.

[13:07] Or perhaps a blaster master.

[13:09] Sure.

[13:10] But he saw for his very eyes the woman he loved turn into ash by an alien.

[13:15] On a operating table.

[13:16] Then that same alien attacked him.

[13:18] And he took the alien's laser wrist blaster.

[13:21] And attacked him and escaped.

Dan McCoy

[13:23] It's almost like he actually just like accidentally flailed his arm out.

[13:26] And the blaster leaped onto it.

[13:29] Yeah, well the blaster seems to like him and do what it wants.

Elliott Kalan

[13:32] Like it's a weapon on his wrist that seems to function like a magical object in a fantasy story.

[13:38] I'm listening.

[13:39] It leads him along his way.

[13:41] It acts when he doesn't know he needs to act at that moment.

[13:44] Like the wrist blaster knows what he wants to do before he knows it.

[13:48] It doesn't really.

[13:49] They never really explain how they work.

Dan McCoy

[13:50] So you're saying that the blaster is a more active protagonist than Daniel Craig.

Elliott Kalan

[13:53] I would say the blaster is the most charismatic character in the entire movie.

[13:56] I mean it accomplishes more than he does.

[13:58] Yes.

[13:58] He is basically just a mounting for the wrist blaster.

[14:02] This movie should have been told from the point of view of the wrist blaster.

[14:04] It should have been called wrist blasters in Aliens.

[14:06] It should have been called laser wrist.

[14:08] How great would that poster have been?

[14:10] Daniel Craig is laser wrist this summer.

[14:13] Get wristed.

Stuart Wellington

[14:15] Wristy business this summer.

[14:18] No, it took it too far, dude.

[14:19] Yeah, come on.

[14:19] What?

[14:20] What?

[14:20] He was talking about a serious movie.

[14:23] Yeah, come on.

[14:23] This is not a goofy movie.

[14:25] A serious movie about a wrist blaster.

Elliott Kalan

[14:26] A serious movie called Laser Wrist about a laser wrist.

[14:29] Okay.

[14:30] So all these characters team up in the end to destroy the aliens and save the people who have been kidnapped.

[14:37] It turns out that Olivia Wilde, she reveals way later than she really should have.

[14:42] She's actually an alien who's taken human form to get revenge on these other aliens.

[14:47] She explains that these aliens go from planet to planet stealing gold and kidnapping the inhabitants of planets to learn their vulnerabilities.

Dan McCoy

[14:55] So basically, they're just like Daniel Craig.

[14:58] Kind of.

Elliott Kalan

[14:59] In a way, in a way.

[15:01] No, that's good.

[15:01] Parallel.

[15:02] What we did to the Native Americans, these aliens want to do to us.

[15:06] What?

[15:06] Which is a parallel that is really never made super clear in the movie, but it's kind of jumping out at you the whole time.

[15:12] But what I didn't get was the aliens are trying to learn our vulnerabilities.

[15:16] They learn pretty quickly that humans are vulnerable to lasers, fire, electricity, getting stabbed, blowing up, having things fall on us.

[15:25] Yep.

[15:25] How much do they need to study us?

[15:27] They've got lasers.

Dan McCoy

[15:28] But basically normal stuff.

[15:29] I mean, the funny thing is that's all stuff that the aliens appear to be vulnerable to themselves.

[15:33] So they're like, oh, okay.

[15:35] Yeah.

[15:35] Like destroying their bodies will kill them.

Stuart Wellington

[15:38] I would have liked to see a couple scenes of them like testing out things that don't work at all.

[15:43] Like tickling a human.

[15:45] Just splashing them with water.

[15:48] Maybe like some simple like mime play to see if they can make us laugh.

[15:52] Yeah.

[15:52] Et cetera, et cetera.

[15:53] Splitting a pie in our face.

Elliott Kalan

[15:54] Yep.

[15:55] At the end of the movie, though, they're fighting the aliens.

[15:56] Yeah.

[15:57] Most of the aliens get killed by having their heads blown off with guns or being speared with spears.

[16:02] Yeah.

[16:03] It's not like you need a spears.

[16:04] This is not.

Stuart Wellington

[16:04] You're talking about aliens that are covered in almost like an armored shell.

[16:08] Yeah.

[16:09] Except in the middle of their chest, they can open up their armor to release these two weird little arms and expose their heart.

[16:16] By the way, that's a bad idea.

[16:18] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[16:19] I don't know why evolution selected for people exposing their internal organs like that.

Elliott Kalan

[16:23] It's like a party trick.

Stuart Wellington

[16:25] It's probably part of their intercourse, too.

[16:28] Yeah.

[16:28] You think so?

[16:28] I mean, those hands.

[16:29] Evolution is all about.

[16:30] If I got two little hands, I'm using them to jack off another alien.

[16:34] Okay.

[16:35] Wait.

[16:35] That's not intercourse.

[16:37] I mean.

Elliott Kalan

[16:37] Wait.

[16:38] What?

[16:39] I mean, there's no reproduction.

[16:41] Third base.

[16:41] There's intercourse.

[16:42] There's no reproduction value to jerking them off.

[16:44] Third base, right?

Dan McCoy

[16:44] Jerking them off into your eggs.

[16:47] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[16:47] Wait.

[16:48] What?

[16:49] Like scrambled eggs?

[16:49] Yeah.

[16:50] Come on.

[16:50] Like an omelet?

[16:51] Dan, that's not a seasoning.

[16:54] Come on.

[16:55] All right.

[16:56] I tried it.

[16:57] That's all I'm saying.

[16:57] It's not what hollandaise sauce is.

[16:59] Well, when we released the Flap House cookbook, I do not want to see Dan McCoy's famous sperm eggs in that book.

[17:08] All right.

[17:08] So we're talking about a movie.

[17:10] So Cowboys and Aliens, in the end, Olivia Wilde gives her life to blow up the wrist blaster inside the alien spaceship and destroy it.

[17:18] And everyone's happy, and they got the gold that the aliens stole, which revitalizes their little town.

[17:24] And every character that had a kind of shortcoming, they've kind of gotten over that.

[17:31] Harrison Ford stops being a crusty curmudgeon and becomes kind of an open-hearted person.

[17:35] Sam Rockwell's not so much of a pussy anymore because he totally blasts it off an alien's face.

[17:40] He's the classic character of the, like, wimpy guy who's a pacifist who learns he has to use a gun and shoot an alien in the head.

[17:46] He's basically Darlene's boyfriend from Saving Private Ryan.

[17:49] Yeah.

[17:50] To bring us back to some great savings that I really think you should take a look at again.

[17:53] Look, I don't think I need a new Private Ryan right now.

[17:56] Let's get back to the grass.

[17:57] What do I need to do to see you walk out of here with a Private Ryan?

[18:00] I've got to talk to my wife before I'm making any Private Ryan decisions.

[18:03] Look, hey, what better surprises there?

[18:05] You go home, you go, honey, look what the dog left in the driveway.

[18:09] She's going to think it's poop.

[18:10] She's going to have to clean it up.

[18:11] She's mad at you.

[18:12] You made some good points here.

[18:12] She walks out.

[18:13] She sees a private...

[18:14] I'm your friend here in the store, remember?

[18:17] Thank you, sir.

[18:18] I feel like you're splitting commission.

[18:19] She walks out.

[18:20] She sees a Private Ryan with a bow on it in the driveway.

[18:23] Oh, my God.

[18:24] You remembered our anniversary or your birthday or whatever.

[18:26] Wait, like a giant novelty-sized bow?

[18:27] Yeah, of course.

[18:27] Those are great.

[18:28] Of course.

Stuart Wellington

[18:30] Thank you, sir.

[18:30] Ladies love those.

[18:33] And Mother's Day is right around the corner.

Elliott Kalan

[18:35] Oh, mothers love Private Ryan.

[18:37] We don't have a child.

[18:37] Okay.

[18:38] No, you have a mother, though, don't you, sir?

[18:40] Yes.

[18:40] Or are you so heartless?

[18:42] Did you spontaneously generate from some seeds?

Stuart Wellington

[18:45] I got a lot to think about.

[18:48] Look, I gave it like two seconds before I brought up midichlorians.

[18:51] All right.

[18:51] I'm growing, guys.

[18:53] So...

Elliott Kalan

[18:53] So all the characters have their arcs.

[18:55] The little kid kills an alien and proves himself that way.

[18:59] Indians and Americans and settlers learn they can get along.

[19:03] You know, it's the aliens...

[19:04] Fighting these aliens has really brought everyone together.

[19:06] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[19:06] The end.

[19:07] Fighting guerrilla aliens with wrist blasters.

Elliott Kalan

[19:09] And Daniel Craig rides off into the sunset, sunrise.

[19:14] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[19:14] Having had both his love interests.

[19:17] His lady loves killed.

[19:18] Had a total of two babes at one point and now has no babes.

Elliott Kalan

[19:21] He has lost 200% of babes.

Dan McCoy

[19:27] Yeah.

[19:27] One's reduced to ash.

[19:29] One is blown up all over the West.

Elliott Kalan

[19:30] One of them, according to Stuart, was merely hamburger.

Stuart Wellington

[19:35] Another world.

[19:35] That was before I knew she was an alien who gets brought back to life

[19:39] by being set on fire.

Dan McCoy

[19:40] That was before Stu knew that she was a mom.

Elliott Kalan

[19:42] Now he's turned on.

[19:43] I wish we could put an asterisk next to that reference.

[19:47] Go, see the end time episode, flop fans.

[19:50] Smile and stand.

[19:52] But, yeah.

[19:53] So you feel differently about Olivia Wilde now that she can be revived

[19:57] from death by fire.

Stuart Wellington

[19:58] Yeah.

[19:58] There's that really great scene where Daniel Craig saves Olivia Wilde

[20:02] from being grappling hooked.

[20:03] They climb out of the river that they were just sunk in.

[20:06] And they're sitting on the riverbank.

[20:08] And a giant alien pops up.

[20:10] And he sees a guy with a wrist blaster and a small woman.

[20:15] And the alien decides to just punch the shit out of the woman.

[20:18] Like he hits her out of the frame.

Dan McCoy

[20:20] And then, of course, he gets wrist blasted to death.

[20:23] Well, maybe that might be a clue that she's an alien.

[20:25] Because we don't know at that point.

[20:27] Maybe.

[20:27] I mean, sure.

[20:29] He's doing his risk analysis.

[20:31] And he's like, this is the real danger here.

[20:32] That one's an alien.

Elliott Kalan

[20:33] But she never seems to have any special abilities other than fire revival.

[20:37] Yeah.

[20:37] Rising like a phoenix.

[20:38] And she can speak Churikawa.

[20:41] Yeah.

[20:42] Churikawa she can speak.

[20:43] Because she speaks to the Indians.

[20:45] We also, I didn't mention the part where Daniel Craig gains his memory back

[20:48] by having a spirit walk with a spirit animal, which is a hummingbird.

[20:53] This happens after Olivia Wilde is brought back to life by the magic of fire.

[20:57] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[20:58] And then we see that hummingbird later.

[20:59] So it wasn't, I mean, at that point, do we know it's in his head?

[21:03] That's your, it was all a dream, or was it?

Dan McCoy

[21:06] Oh, okay.

[21:06] Moment.

[21:07] I was just checking on Wikipedia to make sure that there wasn't any sort of post-credits scene.

[21:12] Because we did stop as soon as the credits rolled.

[21:15] Because it seems like Olivia Wilde should come back.

[21:17] If she got burned up earlier in the movie and regenerates.

Elliott Kalan

[21:19] No, but I mean this time.

[21:20] She explodes.

[21:20] She was exploded in midair.

[21:23] She's in tiny vaporized pieces.

[21:25] I don't think she, what do you think?

[21:26] The last part's going to be just, the camera's going to sweep over the alien wreckage,

[21:29] and then she's going to be there and her eyes are going to open,

[21:31] and then she's going to wink and go, Cowboys and Aliens 2, 2014.

[21:35] Guitar squeal.

Stuart Wellington

[21:36] Whee!

[21:38] Cowboys!

[21:39] And of course.

Elliott Kalan

[21:40] Okay, so that's an original song, I like it.

[21:42] The original title song for the movie.

[21:46] Performed by ACDC, I assume.

[21:47] Oh, okay, nice.

Dan McCoy

[21:48] Your song seems to be.

[21:49] Got some cowboys!

[21:50] Your song seems to be kind of like Stewart's impressions of people.

[21:54] It's just saying the thing that it is.

[21:57] I mean, many songs.

Elliott Kalan

[21:58] That's probably why I was drawn to it, Elliot.

[21:59] Yeah.

[22:00] It was really good.

[22:00] It really spoke to him.

[22:01] Yeah.

[22:02] So this was an exciting movie, right?

[22:04] No, it was not.

[22:05] It was, uh...

[22:06] Full of thrills, chills, spills, mills, and bills.

Stuart Wellington

[22:09] A lot of talking.

[22:10] Elliot brought up that Daniel Craig's body double got a lot of screen time riding a horse around.

Elliott Kalan

[22:17] Yeah, there are a lot of scenes padded out by just shots of a Daniel Craig-like figure in the distance riding a horse.

Dan McCoy

[22:23] I mean, I really feel like there should have been more clever ways to mash up the genres if they're going to do that.

[22:30] There's one scene where Daniel Craig leaps from his horse onto a spaceship, like one of the tiny little drone things.

[22:37] And there's one scene where an alien gets lassoed.

[22:41] But I feel like there should be more of...

[22:43] You know, like there should be Native Americans shooting more arrows.

[22:48] I mean, they did shoot arrows at me.

[22:49] Yeah, but I think I know what you're talking about.

Stuart Wellington

[22:50] Like, I...

[22:52] I don't know if I'm going to say campier, but like, if they had made more of an effort to play up conventions of both of the two separate genres.

[23:00] I mean, part of it...

[23:01] I think one of the big problems with the movie is that the aliens are basically gorillas.

[23:06] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[23:07] They're...

[23:08] This would have been a better movie.

[23:09] It was called Cowboys and Gorillas.

[23:10] And it was about gorillas kidnapping people.

[23:13] Like a circus train.

Dan McCoy

[23:15] Yeah.

[23:16] A circus train overturns in the Old West.

[23:19] It kills everyone but the gorillas.

[23:20] There's a bunch of rabid gorillas running loose.

[23:22] This is a great movie.

Elliott Kalan

[23:24] Yeah.

[23:25] It's the...

[23:26] Well, it felt like the movie would do a scene in the Cowboy movie, then a scene in the Alien movie, then a scene in the Cowboy movie.

[23:33] It's never integrated.

Stuart Wellington

[23:33] Especially if you're playing on the idea that, like, the aliens are to the humans what the humans are to the Native Americans.

[23:40] Well, Native Americans are also humans.

[23:41] Well, okay.

[23:42] My mistake.

[23:43] So if the aliens are to the white man what the white man is to the Native Americans.

[23:48] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[23:48] Yeah.

[23:48] Like, if you play up this, like, distance, more aloof, I don't know, like, less, I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[23:55] Well, also the idea that...

[23:56] Do you know what I mean?

[23:56] Yeah, no, I know exactly.

[23:57] Like, they had an interesting theme there that they didn't do anything with.

[24:02] And that would have at least, given the movie some kind of, like, made you think.

[24:05] It would have had a concept behind it beyond, well, we got some cowboys and then we throw some aliens in there.

Dan McCoy

[24:10] Well, we talked about all this while we were watching the movie, like...

[24:13] About how boring it is?

[24:14] The idea that the aliens are here specifically to steal gold is hilarious.

[24:19] Like...

[24:19] And if this was a sillier movie, that would be a really fun idea.

[24:22] Like, okay.

Stuart Wellington

[24:23] I really wish there had been a shot of, like, an alien just grabbing a handful of gold coins out of somebody.

[24:27] Like, pouring gold.

Dan McCoy

[24:28] Gold, I told you.

[24:29] Hee, hee, hee.

Stuart Wellington

[24:30] Leaf, gorg.

[24:31] An alien pouring gold from one hand to the other, you know.

[24:33] Or, like, a shot of a miner in a mine and he's like, I struck gold!

[24:37] And then you see a silhouette behind him in an alien shape.

[24:39] Yeah.

[24:40] And then, like, dun, dun, dun.

[24:42] That would have been great.

[24:43] The alien gang's in town.

[24:45] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[24:46] Intergalactic gold rush.

[24:47] I mean, I think we could have...

[24:48] That would have been a way better title.

[24:51] Intergalactic gold rush.

[24:52] It would have been great.

[24:53] And I can already see Daniel Craig, baggy gold in his hand, just running for his life while he's being chased by aliens, maybe some pretty girls, the sheriff.

[25:02] Space prospectors.

[25:03] Yeah, basically one of those...

[25:04] Like a Jack Davis poster.

[25:06] Basically a Jack Davis poster with caricatures of every one of the actors.

[25:10] And it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world type thing.

Stuart Wellington

[25:13] And with, like, a glittery trail of gold dust behind them all.

[25:16] Oh, of course.

[25:17] And stars.

Elliott Kalan

[25:17] Yeah.

[25:18] I think we could have overlooked these conceptual flaws if the movie had been exciting.

[25:23] But it was, in fact, very boring.

[25:25] The action scenes were incredibly, like, kind of dully paced and shot.

[25:30] Everything was just boring.

[25:31] And this is something I mentioned to the other floppers while we were watching it.

[25:35] I'm a big Western fan.

[25:36] I love Westerns from your silent Westerns, like the Iron Horse, your 30s, 40s Westerns, your John Fords, your psychological Westerns, the gunfighter and what have you, your spaghetti Westerns, you know, whatever, your 70s later Westerns, like the Culpeper Cattle Company.

[25:49] I've established my Western bona fides.

[25:51] But there's nothing...

[25:52] Silverado.

[25:53] Yeah.

[25:53] Your Silverados, your Young Guns 2s.

[25:56] There's nothing more...

[25:57] Having said that, that I love Westerns, there's nothing more boring than a boring Western.

[26:02] A boring drama, a boring science fiction movie, a boring thriller, all way more exciting than a boring Western.

[26:08] And this is a boring Western.

Dan McCoy

[26:11] True.

[26:11] Yeah.

[26:11] But there was that scene in the overturned boat where they sat around and talked a long time.

Elliott Kalan

[26:17] Yeah.

[26:17] And there was also the scene where they were in the saloon and they were talking for a while.

[26:21] Uh-huh.

[26:21] Don't forget that scene.

Stuart Wellington

[26:22] That not tense scene where a bunch of people surround Daniel Craig and then they get in a fight.

Elliott Kalan

[26:26] Yeah.

[26:27] Or that scene where they are with the Indians and there's a lot of, like, tension and could erupt at any moment.

[26:34] And Harrison Ford just kind of squabbles like an old man with one of them.

Stuart Wellington

[26:37] I do like that Harrison Ford gets to play the reformed racist character in the movie as he begins by hating Indians.

[26:45] And then by the end, you know, he kind of respects them.

[26:48] Similar to Donald Logue in The Patriot.

Dan McCoy

[26:51] When this movie started, I was enjoying it more than you guys a little bit.

Elliott Kalan

[26:56] You were ready to like it a lot.

Dan McCoy

[26:58] I was ready to like it.

[26:59] And then actually, I liked it the most when it was just a straight-up Western at the beginning.

[27:06] It's a rare movie that, like, gets worse as soon as the aliens show up.

Elliott Kalan

[27:10] Yeah.

[27:10] It certainly was better earlier when there were no aliens.

Stuart Wellington

[27:16] It's like the opposite of Earth Girls Are Easy.

[27:18] Right.

[27:19] Yeah.

[27:19] Which gets better as soon as you see aliens.

[27:22] Yeah.

[27:22] The opposite of most.

[27:23] Which is in the first frame, I think.

Elliott Kalan

[27:27] Most movies with aliens.

Dan McCoy

[27:28] I was saying it just like it starts off at 10.

[27:30] Yeah.

[27:31] And it just goes.

[27:31] It never lets up.

[27:32] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[27:33] It actually gets to 30 somehow.

[27:37] Around the time that Julie Brown does a song about being blonde.

[27:41] Yeah.

[27:44] What's great about Earth Girls Are Easy is that those aliens are super into Earth Girls right from the beginning.

[27:50] Yeah.

[27:50] They're Earth Babes.

[27:51] They have no problem with the fact that these Earth Babes aren't covered in cat hair.

[27:56] Like they are.

Dan McCoy

[27:57] Well, I mean, you're an advanced alien race.

[27:58] I mean, to bring it back to cowboys and aliens, Daniel Craig doesn't seem to be that concerned that Olivia Wilde is an alien.

[28:04] Because she looks like Olivia Wilde.

Stuart Wellington

[28:05] If she has three eyes, maybe it would be different.

[28:07] I mean, she's a hamburger, but who cares?

[28:09] So the...

[28:09] But then...

[28:10] But Earth Girls are...

[28:11] Terrible things to say.

[28:13] Terrible things to say.

[28:14] And to be honest, in the Old West, she's steak.

Dan McCoy

[28:17] She's not...

[28:18] I mean, she's...

[28:19] Wow.

[28:20] Horrible.

[28:20] Earth Girls are easy, though, on the other hand.

[28:22] A movie that makes a virtue out of the fact that its aliens are stupid.

[28:25] Exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[28:26] Yeah, sure.

[28:26] And here, if it was like...

[28:28] It would have been...

[28:29] Like, if it was one of those things where it's like, these are the...

[28:32] Maybe these are the early ground troops of a sophisticated alien race.

[28:36] They're pretty...

[28:37] They're not great thinkers.

[28:39] They're kind of dumb.

[28:40] They're like drones.

[28:41] Like, we never really learn a lot about the aliens.

[28:43] And when you read...

[28:44] I was reading the Wikipedia entry afterwards.

[28:46] They put a lot of thought into the design of these aliens and into, like, how they interact

[28:50] with the environment.

[28:51] But we don't really see any of that in the movie.

[28:53] Like, they put a lot of thought into things that never factor into the plot or the characters

[28:58] or anything.

[28:59] And I wonder if they got too caught up in, like...

[29:01] Hard sci-fi.

[29:02] When the aliens get wounded, they're not used to this environment.

[29:05] So there's a yellow fungus that grows on them.

[29:07] It's like, all right.

[29:08] Well, like...

[29:09] I guess I kind of saw that for one frame when one of them got shot.

[29:12] But, like, I don't know anything about these aliens except they love gold.

[29:15] And they're kind of stupid.

[29:16] They seem to have no language.

[29:17] And they just run around like gorillas biting people.

[29:19] They grow, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[29:20] They put a lot of thought into details that do not play into the thing.

[29:22] I think they really drop the ball when Olivia Wilde dies and then is reborn in flames and we

[29:30] realize that she's an alien by not making her look more like an alien.

[29:33] Yeah.

[29:34] She just comes back as Olivia Wilde.

[29:36] I would have been more interested to see, you know, have an alien woman with a cowboy hat

[29:40] running around.

[29:41] You wanted her to have three boobs.

[29:43] Okay, three boobs.

[29:45] But don't look at me like that.

[29:47] Both of you, if she had three boobs all of a sudden, would have given me a high five.

[29:51] Well, I mean, it certainly would have improved the movie.

[29:54] Why would he give you a high five?

[29:56] Well, because, I mean, maybe you missed me.

[29:59] I mean, great.

Dan McCoy

[30:00] He would be the closest, geographically the closest party dude to either of us.

[30:05] Yeah, that's true.

[30:06] And I sit in between you during the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[30:08] That's true.

[30:08] You've got to give somebody a high five.

[30:09] You're not going to, like, run into the other room and give Dan's wife a high five while

[30:14] she scowls at us.

Dan McCoy

[30:16] She'd be like, you're mischaracterizing my wife.

[30:19] Okay, fine.

[30:19] She would not scowl.

[30:20] She would be confused by why she was getting this high five all of a sudden.

Elliott Kalan

[30:23] Well, I would run in and I would yell.

Dan McCoy

[30:25] Sarah Scowlington Wellington.

[30:25] I would run in and I'd yell, three boobs.

Elliott Kalan

[30:28] High five.

Dan McCoy

[30:29] And then I'd leave.

[30:30] Yeah, and she would give you that high five.

[30:32] Oh, yeah, of course.

[30:33] She would be a little mystified.

[30:35] Scowling all the while.

Elliott Kalan

[30:36] No, no scowling.

[30:38] No scowling.

[30:40] So, it's hard to say.

[30:42] Like, this is a very boring movie.

Stuart Wellington

[30:45] There's not a lot to dig into.

Elliott Kalan

[30:47] I mean, we could try to.

Stuart Wellington

[30:49] They try to tap into the craze of cowboys that America was obsessed with for a while there.

Elliott Kalan

[30:54] The thing is, Western movies are not, haven't had, like, this huge comeback.

[30:58] But you have seen, like, a steady number of Western movies each year.

[31:01] Like, and some of them, like, 310 to Yuma did well.

[31:04] And some of them don't do so well.

[31:05] True Grit.

[31:06] True Grit did well.

Dan McCoy

[31:07] I mean, this is tapping into America's sudden craze for mashups.

[31:11] Yeah, that's true.

[31:11] I mean, with fucking, like, Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter coming up.

[31:16] You must love that.

[31:17] You love history.

[31:18] Oh, God.

Stuart Wellington

[31:18] Yeah, you're a big Lincoln fan.

[31:20] So, you must be leaning forward to this.

[31:21] I may have talked about this on the podcast already.

Elliott Kalan

[31:23] And it's probably based on a comic, and you love comic books.

[31:25] Well, it's based on a novel.

[31:27] But I'll just, I may have touched on this on previous podcast entries.

[31:30] But I like Abraham Lincoln a lot.

[31:31] I'm actually tomorrow leaving on a trip to Springfield, Illinois, to visit his house, tomb, law offices,

[31:37] and where he announced his candidacy for the presidency and all that.

[31:41] Or he just ate lunch.

[31:43] I love vampires.

[31:45] They're great.

[31:46] Neither of those two things.

[31:47] Like all vampires?

[31:48] I don't mean not all vampires.

[31:49] I like the concept of vampires.

[31:51] And some of them, like Dracula, hold a special place in my heart.

[31:54] Or, you know, Count Yorga or whatever.

[31:56] But neither of those two things gains anything by being combined.

[32:01] Abraham Lincoln is this singular historical figure of great nobility and character who accomplished amazing things and was also an amazing speaker and writer.

[32:12] I don't see what he gains by becoming like an ass-kicking martial arts vampire fighter when what he accomplished was so much more interesting than fighting vampires.

[32:21] And the vampires, I don't see what they gain by being shoehorned into the history of the Civil War, you know.

Dan McCoy

[32:27] But the Raven, though.

[32:28] The Raven right around Poe is solving crimes.

[32:31] Solves crimes.

[32:32] There's this...

[32:32] Based on his...

[32:33] Nicholas Cage is on there, right?

[32:34] I mean, that's pretty awesome, right?

[32:35] I mean, like, you gotta like that.

[32:36] It's John Cusack.

[32:37] Doing a Nicholas Cage impression, I guess?

[32:39] It's the laziest type...

[32:40] I mean, doing a Nicholas Cage impression in that he's taking a job for money.

[32:45] Yeah.

[32:46] It's more of a meta impression.

Elliott Kalan

[32:48] What would Nicholas Cage do?

[32:49] He'd take this role because he needs the money.

[32:52] It's the laziest type of storytelling, which is let's take a thing that exists and have it solve crimes.

[32:58] And they do it in television all the time where it's like, Grim is like a fairy tale guy who solves crimes.

[33:05] Or like, you know, Forever Night or Moonlight or any of those where it's like, it's a vampire who solves crimes.

[33:11] Oh, yeah.

[33:11] Forever Night.

[33:12] That existed.

[33:13] But like, to do the Raven where it's like, well, Edgar Allan Poe was this bizarre character, great poet, strange man.

[33:18] There's any number of stories we could tell with him.

[33:21] Let's have him stop a serial killer.

[33:23] All right.

[33:24] Like, why would you do...

[33:25] I'm sure at some point there's going to be another attempt at a movie where like Harry Houdini stops a serial killer.

[33:32] Or like another...

[33:32] I'm sure it's already in development.

[33:34] Yeah.

[33:34] I mean, it was announced a while back.

[33:35] Or like, there are two, I think, two competing movies where Arthur Conan Doyle is up against a serial killer.

[33:41] Like, come on with something different.

Dan McCoy

[33:42] I mean, that actually makes a little more sense because Arthur Conan Doyle did help solve a few crimes when he was...

Elliott Kalan

[33:47] Well, Edgar Allan Poe invented the detective story.

[33:49] Yeah.

[33:49] No, I know.

[33:50] I know.

[33:50] But it's just a lazy thing to do to be like, we'll take this historical figure...

[33:54] If they're going to do that...

Dan McCoy

[33:55] Like, why not do like a movie about how Conan Doyle actually solved some real life crimes and just like do those actual historical crimes.

Elliott Kalan

[34:02] Because they've got to come up with like the gimmick that the serial killer has.

Stuart Wellington

[34:07] And vampires and stuff, right?

[34:09] Sure.

Elliott Kalan

[34:09] So my point is, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, you're taking two great things, mashing them up in a way that doesn't work.

[34:15] And it's former Flophouse guest co-host Hallie Hagelin once said to me, I like spanakopita and I like chocolate.

[34:22] I don't need them combined in one dish.

[34:24] That wouldn't work.

[34:25] Yeah.

[34:25] That's how I feel about Abraham Lincoln and Vampire Hunters.

[34:27] That's not how I feel about Cowboys and Aliens.

[34:29] It could still be done.

Stuart Wellington

[34:30] Okay.

[34:31] So...

[34:32] In fact, I'm working on...

[34:34] Your attempt to prevent people in general from seeing Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

[34:39] I don't care if people go see it.

[34:41] You're working on the smear campaign, right?

Elliott Kalan

[34:43] Yeah.

[34:43] I'm going to put a lot of negative heads.

[34:45] Abraham Lincoln says he's a vampire hunter.

[34:50] Like, if it was Abraham Lincoln alien something, that would be more interesting to me.

[34:56] Because it's like, what would a guy...

[34:58] Alien negotiator.

[35:00] Well, how would someone like Abraham Lincoln interact with an alien intelligence, you know?

[35:04] Rather than Abraham Lincoln knows kung fu somehow and is like a badass fighter or something like that.

Dan McCoy

[35:11] So we're...

Stuart Wellington

[35:13] That was a long tangent about Abraham Lincoln.

[35:14] He learned in the Orient.

Elliott Kalan

[35:16] He was never in the Orient.

[35:17] He never left the United States.

[35:19] Like, come on.

Stuart Wellington

[35:21] And I think...

[35:22] I mean, I think Chicago has a pretty large Chinatown, didn't he?

[35:25] Well, he didn't really spend a lot of time in Chicago.

[35:27] Well, just a little bit.

[35:28] So I'm in the Chinatown part.

[35:30] He really was more...

[35:31] In the wushu part.

[35:31] In Springfield.

Dan McCoy

[35:32] I don't really think it has much of a Chinatown either.

Elliott Kalan

[35:35] Well, I mean, every large city has a Chinatown.

Stuart Wellington

[35:38] Yeah.

[35:39] I get it, Dan.

[35:40] It's a Chinatown.

[35:40] The bustling fish markets of Springfield.

Dan McCoy

[35:44] That's where he learned his wushu.

[35:46] The dusty plains of Springfield.

[35:49] Speaking of someone who's been to Springfield.

[35:50] I'm also...

[35:51] There's something bustling about that town.

[35:52] Well, I'm going to go there.

Elliott Kalan

[35:53] I'm excited.

[35:53] Yeah.

[35:54] There's also...

[35:55] I'm not a big...

[35:55] This is a different subject, but I'm not a big fan of the, like, bad-assing of everything.

[36:01] That every character has to be a badass.

[36:03] And, like, Cowboys and Aliens, it makes sense.

[36:04] The main character is going to be a badass because he has to fight aliens later.

[36:07] Mysterious Stranger.

[36:08] But he's also such a good fighter that no one ever seems to be much of a threat to him.

[36:13] Yeah.

[36:14] Including the aliens.

Stuart Wellington

[36:15] Yeah.

[36:15] As soon as he gets that fucking wrist blaster...

[36:17] He's also got a wrist laser.

[36:18] Yeah.

[36:18] They're done.

[36:19] Like, they just keep popping up and he keeps slaying them.

[36:22] Yeah.

[36:22] He never seems to have to try very hard.

Dan McCoy

[36:25] I think it's time to move along and give our final judgments on Cowboys and Aliens.

[36:30] This is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, a movie you kind of like.

[36:33] Stuart, go.

Stuart Wellington

[36:34] I'm going to surprise both of you by saying it's a bad, bad movie.

Elliott Kalan

[36:38] All got my heart.

[36:40] I thought you were going to say good, great movie.

Stuart Wellington

[36:42] Yeah.

[36:43] It's just so slow and long and filled with scenes that don't matter or really advance anything.

[36:53] Yeah.

[36:53] No.

[36:54] And the fact that I made a joke about a reformed racist and they actually had one.

[37:00] Yeah.

[37:00] And, oh man, this is terrible.

Dan McCoy

[37:03] No thanks.

[37:04] I said during the film they managed to make a movie where Indians are spearing an alien boring.

[37:11] And also, I mean, this movie has people I like in it.

[37:14] I mean, like, I like Daniel Craig, despite him being in other Flop House films in the past.

[37:19] I like Harrison Ford.

[37:20] How could you not like Harrison Ford?

[37:21] Walton Goggins is in this.

[37:24] Sam Rockwell.

[37:25] Always entertaining.

[37:26] Clancy Brown.

Dan McCoy

[37:26] Come on.

[37:26] Clancy Brown.

Stuart Wellington

[37:28] Not entertaining.

[37:28] He's only in serious non-B movies, right?

[37:32] Sure.

[37:34] So, yeah.

[37:35] Bad, bad movie.

Elliott Kalan

[37:35] Yeah.

[37:36] And I'm also going to agree, bad, bad movie.

[37:38] Just a wasted potential and just boring.

[37:41] They never found what was exciting about this concept.

[37:44] Instead, they just kind of went through the motions and went by the numbers and it was dull.

Stuart Wellington

[37:49] So, Dan, did you pull out your iPad so you can play like...

Dan McCoy

[37:52] Are you going to play Sonic again?

[37:54] Sorry.

[37:55] If you hear the noise that's from my iPad, because I'm at home, I did not print out letters.

[38:05] I'm going to be reading them off of the iPad.

Elliott Kalan

[38:06] Dan's gone paperless, everybody.

[38:08] He's entered the 21st century.

Dan McCoy

[38:09] But before we move on to letters, I want to thank...

[38:15] For donations, I want to thank John K.

[38:18] I want to thank Evan M.

[38:23] And lastly, I want to thank...

[38:26] One second.

[38:28] Dimitri T.

[38:30] Then you said four donations.

[38:32] No, I said I want to thank people for donations.

[38:34] Oh.

[38:34] That makes sense.

Elliott Kalan

[38:36] Yeah.

[38:36] Yeah, that's...

[38:38] So...

[38:39] Well, thanks, everybody.

[38:40] Thanks, guys.

[38:40] We really appreciate it.

[38:41] Yeah.

[38:42] Thanks for helping keep the Flophouse going.

[38:44] You know, it's pledge time.

[38:45] If you enjoy the Flophouse and want to receive more Flophouse-like things like this, why not

[38:50] stop into your local Private Ryan store?

[38:52] Pick up one of the great savings on sale right now.

[38:55] We're running our Private Ryan sales event all through June.

[38:58] I did not authorize this.

[39:00] Well, it's just side business I'm working on.

[39:03] I just got to drum up some publicity for the...

[39:07] No, but thank you very much for your donations.

[39:09] Appreciate it.

[39:09] Every donation, you get a lock of Stuart's hair.

[39:12] Yep.

[39:12] Not his hair on his head, though.

Dan McCoy

[39:14] No.

[39:15] So, uh...

[39:15] Definitely not.

[39:16] You can opt out of receiving that.

[39:18] Everyone has.

[39:19] I have a message here from, uh...

[39:22] Kenny, last name withheld.

[39:24] Loggins.

Elliott Kalan

[39:25] Something about a danger zone, but he's all right.

[39:28] Nobody worry about him.

[39:30] The title...

Dan McCoy

[39:31] It's played with the boys.

[39:32] Is he footloose?

[39:33] Uh, the title is...

[39:35] Explaining that my mama don't dance.

[39:36] Good movies ruined by shitty endings.

[39:39] He says, hello there, fellow Shelbyvillians.

[39:42] Been listening for a couple of years, and I'm a huge fan of the Flophouse Housecast.

[39:46] I'm a huge flan.

[39:47] Oh my god, a sentient bowl of flan.

Elliott Kalan

[39:50] Send it in an email.

Dan McCoy

[39:52] Uh...

[39:52] Huge flan.

[39:54] Anywho, I'm curious about what you think are really good or even great movies that are ruined by awful slash stupid endings.

[40:02] For me, it's The Wages of Fear.

[40:04] Hmm.

[40:05] An incredibly tense French flick about truckers smuggling nitroglycerin through the rugged South American jungle that's all but unraveled by its cheap bullshit final scene.

[40:14] What say you floppers?

Elliott Kalan

[40:16] I actually have an answer for this already queued up in my brain, coincidentally enough, which is the movie Hell in the Pacific with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifuni, which is directed by John Borman, I think.

[40:26] Which is a really great movie about an American soldier and a Japanese soldier who are trapped on a deserted island together during World War II and go through a series of ambushing each other and taking each other prisoner until they realize they have to work together.

[40:40] And the movie literally has... is great up until maybe the final 35 seconds, 50 seconds, when it has one of the cheapest, most slapped-on, crappy endings.

[40:51] And it's a really disappointing way for an otherwise really good movie to end.

[40:54] So Hell in the Pacific, I'd say watch it and then don't watch the last, you know, minute.

Stuart Wellington

[41:02] Yeah, I mean, I think the closest thing that immediately comes to mind is Unbreakable, which, you know, M. Night Shyamalan movie, which I like a lot of the stuff leading up to the very end.

[41:14] And then they have, you know, the twist and then they explain a bunch of shit in just text on the screen.

[41:21] Via text, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[41:21] Like, we could show it, but we're kind of bored of this.

[41:25] Let's get out of here.

[41:25] Well, it seems like they set it up in case they wanted to have a sequel or just to have an ironic ending.

[41:30] And then it was almost like they were like, audiences want to know that the bad guy was brought to justice.

[41:35] So they just threw text up on the screen that says, like, you know, Mr. Glass was brought to justice.

[41:39] Yeah, it's weird.

Dan McCoy

[41:40] Like, when that movie came out, I was much more.

[41:43] Unbreakable went to college and graduated.

[41:46] Unbreakable made a fortune in dry goods.

[41:48] When that movie came out, I was much more apt to give M. Night Shyamalan the benefit of the doubt because he hadn't screwed us over yet.

[41:55] Yeah.

[41:55] So at the time, I was like, oh, that's kind of a funny ending.

[41:57] Like, it's like this guy has set himself up as this mastermind criminal, but it is a complete anticlimax.

[42:06] Like, no, this is just a regular fucking guy who then the police came and arrested him.

[42:09] And I thought that was kind of cool in a way.

[42:12] But now that M. Night Shyamalan has proven...

[42:16] Has revealed his true self to be not very good.

[42:18] Yeah, I'm more inclined to take Stewart's...

Stuart Wellington

[42:21] I mean, on some level, Signs is equally bad, but I mean...

Elliott Kalan

[42:26] Signs has a couple of good moments in it, but it's uneven throughout.

[42:30] And the ending is just dumb because it implies that millions of people have been afflicted with asthma throughout centuries

[42:36] because Mel Gibson's son needed to survive getting gassed in the face by an alien's wrist.

[42:42] You know?

Stuart Wellington

[42:43] Yeah.

[42:43] There's so many problems with a movie based on aliens that are allergic, like violently allergic to water coming to a planet that's pretty much all water.

Elliott Kalan

[42:52] Yeah.

[42:53] And also that his wife's dying words in a car crash were planted there by God so that years later,

[43:00] he could tell his brother-in-law to hit an alien in the head with a baseball bat.

Stuart Wellington

[43:04] Like, as if he's just staring at the alien and staring at the baseball bat, and he's like,

Elliott Kalan

[43:08] I don't know what to do with these two things.

[43:11] No, this is why my wife years ago said this.

[43:13] She had to die.

[43:14] She had to die.

[43:15] So you would know that a good way to hit an alien is with a baseball bat.

Dan McCoy

[43:19] Yeah, I don't have anything cute up in my brain, although I do agree that...

[43:23] You have a lot of cute things up in your brain.

[43:25] Thanks.

[43:26] I do love Wages of Fear, and I think that the ending is like sort of French nihilist bullshit.

[43:33] But I think it's easiest to see this kind of thing in movies with twists.

[43:39] Like, I think that the movie Identity isn't necessarily that good a movie, but like up until the twist, like it's kind of a solid fun...

[43:45] It's the one with all the killers in John Cusack's brain, right?

[43:48] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[43:48] Well, John Cusack's also in another guy's brain.

Dan McCoy

[43:50] Oh, okay.

[43:51] Up until the twist, it's kind of like a solid fun, like, beam movie.

[43:54] Like, oh, we got a bunch of great character actors.

[43:56] We're going to put them in a motor lodge.

[43:58] They're all going to get killed off.

[43:59] This is fun enough.

[44:00] And then it's just like, wait, they're all personalities in this other guy's brain, and this kid is running around killing them off to be the only personality.

[44:09] Like, brains don't work that way.

[44:11] That's not the way, like, a psychological...

Elliott Kalan

[44:12] My favorite thing about that shitty ending is that it's revealed this is all happening inside the head of a crazy person, and that the personality who's killing the other personality is this little kid.

[44:22] Then it flashes back to the kid manually killing each of these people.

[44:26] And it's like, well, if it's all happening in someone's brain, he doesn't actually have to be doing anything.

[44:30] Like, oh, wait, he couldn't have been here because he was over there at the time killing that person.

[44:35] No, it's all imagined anyway.

[44:37] Like, he can do whatever he wants.

[44:39] He's in a world of pure imagination, just like in Willy Wonka.

[44:43] That movie identity would have been better if he had picked a flower off the ground and eaten it, like in Willy Wonka.

Stuart Wellington

[44:47] The audience needs to know how a child could kill grown people.

[44:52] But it's not...

[44:53] None of them are real.

[44:54] That's how the brain works.

Dan McCoy

[44:56] Yeah.

[44:56] I don't think so.

[44:57] Science.

[44:59] This is from Scott, last name withheld, and it's titled, Uh-oh.

[45:06] So it's about Stuart, I'm guessing.

[45:08] And it says, hi, floppers.

[45:09] Congrats on making it to 100 episodes.

[45:11] May you reach 100 more.

[45:13] Thank you.

[45:13] I was re-listening to the Jonah Hex podcast, better known as the secret origin of the Flophouse house cat, when Stuart broke out one of his trademark Flophouse soundbites, a drawn-out, uh-oh, whenever any of the Flophouse soundbites.

[45:26] Anyone, parentheses Dan, made a mistake.

[45:31] Given that Dan mispronounces basic words on a near constant basis.

[45:35] Yeah, he can't talk.

[45:36] Lindsay Lohan, anyone?

[45:37] I was looking forward to many more uh-ohs in the Flophouse cast of the future.

[45:43] But though the house cat managed to claw his way out of Jonah Hex into both future podcasts and Flopper Hearts, the uh-ohs have been nowhere to be found.

[45:52] Stuart, embrace your role as the Michael Winslow of the Flophouse and bring back the uh-ohs.

[45:56] Maybe you could even add a few more soundbites as a 100th Flophiversary present.

[46:02] Maybe a hubba hubba when Elliot makes a lewd reference to former flame Anne Hathaway.

Elliott Kalan

[46:07] For a flan?

[46:08] Again, Dan, can you not tell the difference between people and Mexican desserts?

Dan McCoy

[46:14] And Hathaway.

[46:15] I said some Spanish dessert.

[46:16] Or a foghorn every time you or Elliot interrupts Dan.

[46:19] Thanks for the laughs, Scott.

Elliott Kalan

[46:21] Wait, so we'd interrupt you and then Stuart would interrupt himself or me with a foghorn?

[46:24] Yeah.

[46:25] We've got to workshop some of these ideas.

[46:27] Thank you, Scott, for the suggestions, but I don't know.

Stuart Wellington

[46:31] Yeah, well, okay.

[46:32] So I small contest.

[46:35] The prize will be TBA.

[46:39] And it's, I don't know, I can't think of a new thing for me to shout.

[46:44] What should Stuart's new shouty catchphrase be?

[46:47] Or should uh-oh just come back into the regular rotation?

Elliott Kalan

[46:50] I mean, I like uh-oh coming back because it sounds like a little kid.

[46:55] Uh, who cares?

[46:56] Let's go on.

[46:57] But the Flophouse house cat is, of course, you know, a fan favorite.

[47:01] Or as Dan would say, a flan favorite.

Stuart Wellington

[47:04] When would he say that?

[47:05] Like when we're recording all the time?

[47:07] Yeah, constantly.

[47:08] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[47:09] You may not know that Dan's-

[47:10] Had a nice dinner with friends.

[47:12] Dan actually has-

[47:13] Or flans as he calls them.

[47:14] Dan actually doesn't have a tongue and hires somebody else's tongue.

[47:17] So he can't, it's a quality control problem.

[47:20] Happens when you hire somebody else to do your tongue's job.

Dan McCoy

[47:23] I've got a very rare kind of lisp where instead of adding like an extra S sound, I just add

[47:27] an L where it does not belong.

[47:29] Or mispronounce things in other ways.

[47:31] Hector Alessandro, that kind of thing.

[47:35] All right.

[47:36] Well, this one is from Andrew, last name withheld.

[47:38] It's titled Ghost Hunters.

[47:40] Okay.

[47:40] Now we're talking.

[47:42] Dear Flophouse, I write this as I finish listening to the 100th episode.

[47:45] As usual, the podcast was hilarious.

[47:47] However, that's not why I'm writing in.

[47:49] Yeah.

[47:49] After hearing you mention a series of YouTube videos that you starred in, I had to investigate.

[47:54] The first one I laid my eyes upon was this, and then there's a YouTube link, in which you

[47:59] pursue the Jersey Devil inside a house.

[48:01] Oh, that's technically the third in that series, but-

[48:03] Two things.

[48:04] Dan looks like a more handsome version of Brendan Fraser, and Elliot looks and sounds like

[48:09] an annoying child.

[48:10] Wow.

[48:11] Especially when lying belly down on the floor playing Mario Kart 64.

Elliott Kalan

[48:15] And wearing a big Mets cap.

[48:17] It's too big for me.

Dan McCoy

[48:18] I imagine slash hope that as you read this out loud, your fellow floppers will at this point

[48:22] accuse you of having written yet another self-aggrandizing letter.

Elliott Kalan

[48:25] Well, that was my first thought, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[48:27] Nothing can be further from the truth.

Stuart Wellington

[48:28] More handsome Brendan Fraser.

[48:30] And Drew, Dan, and Dan, Dan.

[48:35] What does that mean to work?

Elliott Kalan

[48:37] You puzzled out another one, Puzzle Master.

Dan McCoy

[48:40] They just high-fived.

[48:42] The letter goes, nothing can be further from the truth.

[48:45] Wink.

[48:46] Dan, you should also wink at this point.

[48:48] Anyway, keep up with the good work.

[48:49] I'll review your other Ghost Hunter parody videos when I have more spare time.

Stuart Wellington

[48:55] I'm glad that he was so, like, the first one got him so worked up that he wrote the letter.

[49:00] But they were, what, like two minutes long?

Dan McCoy

[49:02] Yeah, well, they're about four minutes long, and there's three of them.

[49:05] I do appreciate being called the more handsome Brendan Fraser.

[49:07] That's one of the nicer things.

[49:08] Yeah, oh, you really?

[49:08] You appreciate being called that?

[49:10] No, it's one of the nicer things anyone said.

[49:12] Yeah, I mean.

[49:12] You know what?

[49:13] I like this compliment.

[49:14] Well, look, Stuart gets so much time being the dreamboat of the Flophouse.

[49:18] Yeah, true.

[49:19] It's nice to spread that around a little.

[49:20] How long ago did we make those videos?

Elliott Kalan

[49:22] About four or five years ago?

[49:23] It's got to be a little.

[49:24] Maybe five or six.

[49:26] Five or six years ago.

[49:27] So, yeah, you've aged terribly since then.

[49:29] Yeah.

[49:29] Now you're kind of like a...

[49:30] I'm a wreck of a man.

[49:31] Peter Cushing.

Stuart Wellington

[49:33] More handsome Peter Cushing.

Elliott Kalan

[49:35] You're like a less handsome Peter Cushing.

Dan McCoy

[49:39] And we're not talking young Peter Cushing.

[49:41] This is Star Wars Peter Cushing.

[49:43] Wow.

[49:44] I mean, he's got a certain dignity.

[49:45] Like, he's got a commanding presence.

[49:47] I mean, that's the only thing that's...

[49:49] I mean, that's a real difference there between...

Stuart Wellington

[49:51] No, you don't have the presence.

Dan McCoy

[49:54] But the skeleton face.

[49:56] Okay.

[49:57] You do have the skeleton face.

[49:58] Okay.

[50:00] Yeah, but that was another series that we did for your live show.

Elliott Kalan

[50:03] When I used to...

[50:04] Yeah, I used to have the new Kalen show.

[50:05] That's one of the...

[50:06] Was that the primetime Kalen?

Dan McCoy

[50:08] But along with the Superman series, that's the other series of videos that we did.

[50:13] The Ghost Hunters series, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[50:15] That one...

[50:15] And by the way, Flop fans and...

[50:17] Was named Drew who wrote in.

[50:19] That house is my mom's actual house that I grew up in.

[50:22] So you can just imagine me as an actual kid living in that house.

[50:25] Playing Mario Kart 64?

[50:27] You better believe it, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[50:29] Okay.

[50:29] Well, the last email for this episode is from Chris' last name withheld.

[50:34] It's titled Movie Novelizations.

[50:37] Greetings Flopmaster Flex the Floppy Bunch.

[50:40] I will let you three decide who gets to be Flopmaster Flex.

[50:43] Probably Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[50:43] Yeah.

[50:44] I was inspired by Stuart Wellington...

[50:47] He's like a more handsome...

[50:48] More handsome George Frazier.

[50:51] I was inspired by Stuart...

[50:52] Like a more handsome Frazier crane.

Dan McCoy

[50:56] Mentioning he once wrote a paper about the novelization of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie

[51:00] to share a brief factoid with you.

[51:02] In ninth grade...

Stuart Wellington

[51:03] That book rules.

[51:04] The end.

Dan McCoy

[51:06] In ninth grade, I was required to bring a book...

Stuart Wellington

[51:08] That was your report?

[51:08] That was my factoid.

Dan McCoy

[51:11] In ninth grade, I was required to bring a book to my English class once a week for silent reading.

[51:18] I brought the same book each and every week.

[51:20] The story tome, the novelization of D2, The Mighty Ducks Are Back.

[51:24] Awesome.

[51:25] I also have a couple of quick questions for Stuart regarding the Turtles book.

[51:29] Was it the novelization of the first movie or Secret of the Ooze or Turtles in Time?

[51:34] Second, first movie, of course.

Elliott Kalan

[51:37] If Stuart was doing book reports around the time that Turtles in Time came out, I'd be worried about his education.

Dan McCoy

[51:43] Second, was there any original material in the book?

[51:45] The novelization of D2 had a handful of stuff in it that wasn't in the movie.

[51:48] Therefore, I suppose I need to read the book to get the full canon.

[51:52] You are the wind beneath my wings.

Stuart Wellington

[51:54] That's nice of you saying.

[51:55] And the answer is yes.

[51:56] There's a ton of extra shit in there.

Elliott Kalan

[51:57] Well, there's that whole sex scene between Raphael and April O'Neil, right?

Stuart Wellington

[52:00] I didn't want to bring that up.

[52:02] Wait, that's the part...

[52:03] Well, that's where Casey Jones watches on.

Elliott Kalan

[52:06] Yes.

[52:07] Ugh.

[52:08] With his hockey mask.

[52:08] I don't like where we went.

[52:09] Sorry.

[52:10] I apologize to everyone.

Stuart Wellington

[52:11] I apologize to Earth for that.

Elliott Kalan

[52:14] Oh, so.

[52:16] Ooze.

[52:17] Secret of the ooze.

[52:18] That's the secret of the ooze, all right.

[52:20] Ooze.

[52:21] But a lot of times those novelizations are based on early drafts of the script, and that's why they have different material.

Stuart Wellington

[52:26] I didn't know that.

[52:27] Mm-hmm.

[52:28] And then they get like R.A. Salvatore or somebody to write it.

[52:30] Or Alan Dean Foster.

Dan McCoy

[52:32] I see, trademarked Elliot Kalin, Hollywood factoid.

[52:36] Mm-hmm.

[52:36] The end.

[52:37] That's how you end factoids.

Stuart Wellington

[52:38] Yeah, this is the most times we've used the word factoid in podcasts.

[52:42] Factoid.

[52:42] Pod fans can catalog this under factoid episode.

[52:45] Yeah, in the Fact House.

[52:46] Wait, what?

[52:47] Our podcast about facts.

[52:49] Wait, we...

[52:49] I've never done that.

[52:53] You get really drunk for every episode.

Dan McCoy

[52:56] We've been sneaking into your apartment and doing it while you're asleep.

[52:58] Yeah.

[53:00] It's a very broad-based podcast, though, just about facts in general.

[53:05] Yep, we just say things we think are true.

[53:07] Not a lot of research goes into it.

[53:10] So now we move on to our final segment of the show.

[53:14] Final segment.

[53:14] Which is recommendations, movies that we think...

[53:17] Those are explosions.

[53:18] ...listeners might enjoy.

[53:20] Or banging on a big door.

[53:21] To actually watch movies not like Cowboys and Aliens, movies that are good.

[53:25] Which you would not enjoy.

[53:27] Ellie, do you have a recommendation you want to favor us with?

[53:29] I do.

Elliott Kalan

[53:29] I don't think this is the movie I recommended last time, right?

[53:33] Well, you haven't said it yet, so I can't tell you.

[53:35] Do you remember what movie I recommended last time?

[53:37] I wasn't here.

[53:37] I do not.

[53:38] I kind of don't either.

[53:39] But I'd recommend a movie, a kind of more serious-ish comedy from Norway that I saw recently

[53:47] called A Somewhat Gentleman with Stellan Skarsgård.

[53:51] You may know him as the scientist from Thor.

[53:52] I love that guy.

[53:53] He's very good in it.

Stuart Wellington

[53:54] He's the older brother of Peter Skarsgård, right?

[53:58] No.

[53:58] Peter Skarsgård.

Elliott Kalan

[53:59] They have different names and families and nationalities.

[54:02] Okay.

[54:02] But it's about a guy who has just gotten out of jail.

Dan McCoy

[54:05] Also, Peter Stormare is a different man.

Elliott Kalan

[54:08] Yeah.

[54:08] Sorry, go on.

[54:09] And, yeah.

[54:10] Uh-oh.

[54:11] It's about a guy who has been in jail for 12 years for killing someone.

[54:15] He was kind of a low-level soldier for a local crime boss.

[54:18] Now he's just gotten out of jail, and he kind of needs to get his life back together.

[54:23] He has a grown-up son who wants nothing to do with him.

[54:26] The crime boss has arranged for him to live in the crime boss's sister's spare kind of basement room.

[54:34] And he gets a job at a local mechanics.

[54:36] And it's just kind of this series of him, incidents of him trying to get his life back on track,

[54:42] confused by how people are treating him,

[54:46] and eventually having to make a decision about whether he's going to go back into crime or not.

[54:49] And it's a very low-key movie, but there are a lot of funny moments in it.

[54:54] I liked Stellan Skarsgård's performance a lot.

[54:56] And there are some very funny sex scenes that I don't want to say too much about.

[55:01] But his relationship with his landlady becomes based mainly around her demanding sex from him

[55:08] and him giving it to her and then her acting as if he demanded it from her.

[55:14] But in a way that starts out really kind of gross and funny but becomes kind of touching as it goes on.

[55:21] And I just enjoyed the movie a lot.

[55:24] What was that again?

[55:25] It's called A Somewhat Gentleman.

[55:26] It's a Norwegian release from about two years ago.

Dan McCoy

[55:30] Well, recently I watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which I...

[55:36] That's a mouthful, huh?

[55:37] I greatly enjoyed.

[55:40] It was, as advertised, difficult to understand.

[55:45] Like, I don't believe that I fully could parse the plot.

[55:50] And I doubt that anyone who hasn't read the book, which I haven't, could understand everything that goes on in it.

[55:57] But it doesn't matter.

[55:58] It's a movie that's based mostly on atmosphere.

[56:03] And that atmosphere is how I imagine spying really is.

Elliott Kalan

[56:08] Well, the atmosphere is a mix of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and other gases.

Dan McCoy

[56:11] Well, there's that.

[56:12] But there's also a lot of sitting around in drab rooms, just sort of waiting for things to happen.

[56:20] A lot of ugly paint and wallpaper.

[56:23] I'll say this.

Elliott Kalan

[56:24] I liked that movie a lot.

[56:25] And considering Cowboys and Aliens is a movie about cowboys fighting aliens.

[56:29] And Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is about unhappy people sitting in grim rooms lying to each other.

[56:35] Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is way more exciting and thrilling than Cowboys and Aliens.

Dan McCoy

[56:40] But it's got a real rundown of great British actors.

[56:44] You got your Gary Oldman.

[56:46] You got your John Hurt.

[56:47] Yeah.

[56:48] Colin Firth.

[56:49] Toby Jones.

[56:50] TV's Sherlock.

[56:51] Bender Dick Cumberbatch is in it.

[56:54] Kieran Hines.

[56:56] Tom Hardy.

[56:57] Toby Jones.

[56:58] Yeah.

[56:59] And Toby Jones.

[57:00] I think I said Toby Jones.

[57:01] Tom Hardy.

Elliott Kalan

[57:02] Yeah, I said Tom Hardy.

[57:03] Did you mention what's his name from Bridget Jones' thing?

[57:06] And Toby Jones, I think, is in there, too.

[57:08] Thanks.

[57:09] Thanks, pal.

Dan McCoy

[57:10] Yeah.

[57:11] TV's Sherlock.

[57:12] Benedict Cumberbatch.

[57:14] Toby Jones.

[57:15] A movie that sort of operates on that.

[57:17] Gary Oldman's in it.

[57:18] I think he's the main one.

[57:19] Yeah, and Toby Jones.

[57:20] It operates on the same principle as TV's The Wire in that you may not understand everything,

[57:27] but the storytelling is so confident and well done that you will understand enough.

[57:33] By the end of it, you'll get it.

Stuart Wellington

[57:34] Yeah.

[57:35] And they use a lot of real spies.

[57:37] I don't think so.

[57:38] Like in The Wire.

Elliott Kalan

[57:40] Wow.

[57:41] Yeah, it's a movie where you will have moments where you're like, I'm not sure what this character is referring to, but I will eventually.

[57:48] Yeah.

[57:49] I'm supposed to not be sure at this point in the movie.

Stuart Wellington

[57:52] Mr. Wellington.

[57:53] Oh, it's my turn.

[57:53] Okay.

[57:55] I'm going to recommend a gritty revenge movie called Lies and Illusions.

[58:01] It stars Christian Slater and Cuba Gooding Jr.

[58:06] And I believe Al Madrigal.

[58:08] Well, okay.

[58:09] The two of them are radio hosts.

[58:12] They're disc jockeys.

[58:14] And they bring in a substitute disc jockey played by Al Madrigal.

[58:19] He's a struggling comedian and he's replacing like a really awesome disc jockey played by, I don't know, like somebody cool like Powers Booth, I guess.

[58:31] And it's pretty great.

[58:33] The Powers Booth character is like a stud.

Elliott Kalan

[58:38] He's like really awesome.

Stuart Wellington

[58:40] What kind of things does the Powers Booth character do?

[58:43] Well, I think his name is what?

[58:44] Woolworth Stellington?

[58:45] Well, that's not a name.

[58:49] So it's not a name like Powers Booth.

[58:51] So he like, you know, he's picking up chicks, going to parties, being hilarious.

[58:57] But, you know, so Al Madrigal's guy ends up taking his job.

[59:01] So, yeah, the Powers Booth has to get revenge and he totally beats him up.

[59:06] And, yeah, it's pretty awesome.

[59:08] Was that a confession or a recommendation?

[59:11] No, it's a recommendation.

[59:12] It's a great movie.

[59:12] Go see Lies and Illusions.

[59:14] I think you can find it at gas stations.

[59:17] Okay.

[59:18] And rest stops.

[59:20] All right.

Dan McCoy

[59:21] Well, unless anyone has anything else to say, I think that it's time to sign off.

[59:30] Yeah, time to put this cowboy to bed with an alien.

Stuart Wellington

[59:34] Let's see if they breathe.

[59:37] Will they get the extra arms or, you know, because the aliens have extra arms in their chest?

[59:43] Those little arms in their chest?

Elliott Kalan

[59:44] Yeah, the little quadro arms.

[59:46] Yep.

[59:47] Quadro arms that they grip their hearts with all the time.

[59:49] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[59:49] All right.

[59:50] Well, for the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCoy.

[59:53] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[59:55] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[59:57] Good night, everyone.

[59:58] Boom.

[1:00:01] Glamo.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:02] In three.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:10] Two.

[1:00:11] Three.

[1:00:12] One.

[1:00:13] Zero.

[1:00:16] You ruined the whole reason of the very countdown.

[1:00:19] Oh, sorry.

[1:00:20] In three.

[1:00:21] Two.

[1:00:22] Hey, everyone.

[1:00:23] And welcome.

[1:00:24] Jesus fucking Christ.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:27] Say it again.

[1:00:28] In three.

[1:00:28] No, wait.

[1:00:29] In two.

[1:00:29] In three.

[1:00:30] Thank you.

The Flop House: Episode #102 - Cowboys & Aliens

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