Ep.#444 - Here

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[0:27] flophouse.simpletics.com for flop TV season 2 this time it's personal on this

[0:34] episode we discuss here where here where here okay I wonder what I was about that

[0:45] third one that really that's it Stewart and I did finally

[1:09] hey everyone and welcome to the Flophouse I'm Dan McCoy

[1:12] hey Dan McCoy it's me Stewart Wellington your pal

[1:15] hey me Stewart Wellington your pal it's me your guys's other friend and the

[1:19] third co-host of this show Elliot Kalin well we've all established who we are

[1:24] and what our deal is we know what Stewart's deal is he's Dan's friend we

[1:29] know that what my deal is I'm your both your friends but Dan we don't know what

[1:32] your deal is oh I'm both of your friends no okay I am both of your friends I'm

[1:39] that's my thing being two people's friends so you gotta find a new one

[1:45] maybe maybe you're like a drifter on the run yeah we're like a salty old sea

[1:50] captain who's also got a heroin addiction oh interesting it's I mean I

[1:54] guess he would have ready access to heroin since he's riding the high seat

[1:59] so what do we do on this podcast well apparently we add flavor to my life but

[2:03] also it's a podcast where we watch a bad movie then we talk about it a movie that

[2:08] either critics or audience rejected or both audiences rather and or I could say

[2:14] audience critics or audience I could be very snooty about it this sounds like

[2:19] the best way to use the time and we're already late with our recording we had

[2:23] some technical difficulties before this show started and so this show I'm

[2:27] telling I'm pulling an Elliot and the less time there is the more I want to

[2:32] stretch yeah we talked about bad movies and this one is by Robert Zemeckis a man

[2:42] you might know him that's Bobby Z Bobby Z yep he's been cranking out hits

[2:49] banger after banger Beowulf Polar Express no no what was that not crash

[2:54] flight sorry boy you're you're uh you are for humorous effects of course

[2:59] focusing on his more recent efforts mm-hmm this is a direction that I

[3:04] genuinely loved during the first half of his career and then sure like what in a

[3:08] series of disappointments well he became more machine than man at a certain point

[3:13] romancing the stone awesome back to the future who framed Roger Rabbit

[3:18] wonderful I mean like I'm I think death becomes her is very funny there was a

[3:25] story in one of the New York Papers about how there's a big push to get

[3:30] Forrest Gump declared as the number one best movie American movie of all time by

[3:35] who thoughts by the movie board I don't fucking know whoever's reading the

[3:40] newspaper bump it's probably some dumbass fucking Instagram account and

[3:44] I'm not even one of those people who outright hates Forrest Gump but it is

[3:48] yeah but it's a solid you hate him dude he's just like a nice guy that's true he

[3:52] doesn't mean any harm it's really a real solid middle movie you know solid

[3:57] middle but so Robert Zemeckis yeah he's he's done it he's had a few really like

[4:03] who framed Roger Rabbit we just watched again not too long ago my house that's

[4:06] an amazing movie that's an amazing incredible but he's also yeah lately

[4:10] he's gotten really into technology and making movies that are more around what

[4:16] can I do with this tech than necessarily with that about you know well wrong

[4:21] storytelling we you know I I feel like in some ways we're getting ahead of

[4:27] ourselves but on another way you mean we're telling this out of order much

[4:30] like the movie here you've given me the opening to say that one of the things I

[4:34] think is a big problem this movie which is we can we'll say up front the conceit

[4:38] of the movie is it's all sort of from it's a stationary camera from the same

[4:42] angle you know over decades and centuries the people who live in this

[4:48] area here and let me live here and Dan even freaking further I just want to say

[4:53] I was when I saw the trailer for this movie I was genuinely really intrigued

[4:57] by this movie this movie is based on a comic story by Richard McGuire that I

[5:00] love I've loved it for years I think I saw it in a it was in a collection

[5:04] anthology of either things from the from the magazine raw or just like best of

[5:09] comics I remember and it was originally like an eight page story all was the

[5:13] inspiration for the the movie the French film right yeah well the French

[5:17] film and also for the WWE show yeah yeah yeah yeah Art Spiegelman in France

[5:23] really they were like how we got it we got to impact the wrestling world some

[5:27] way and they it's a great short comic that he then many years later expanded

[5:33] into a full-length book I love that book I love that comic with the conceit being

[5:37] you are always looking at the same geographical physical space but there

[5:42] are different panels within panels that show you what was happening in that

[5:45] space at different periods in time and it starts out saying like here's what

[5:49] was like in 1957 here's what was like 1982 here's was like in 1973 it with

[5:53] panels kind of is there like a little Scott McLeod narrator telling you all

[5:57] this no there is not the panels are labeled with the year but that's the

[6:00] extent of the narration and otherwise and it's really it's not even really

[6:03] telling full stories so you can kind of glimpse stories between the panels it's

[6:07] just this space a lot of eventually there's a dinosaur walking through you

[6:11] know Ben Franklin's house is nearby or whatever but like there's no there's no

[6:15] there's not really narrative it's more an exploration of space and I love the

[6:18] book of it so when I saw they're making a movie I was like there's gonna be a

[6:20] hard movie to make but I'm intrigued by what they're gonna do but I'm loving

[6:24] this book so before let's return to the yeah yeah that digression setting up

[6:32] what the movie was based no no no it just looked like Stuart maybe was gonna

[6:35] then delay further and I'm I could see why that would make a great comic but I

[6:45] think what you're gonna make comic because like it it plays to the you

[6:50] know existing like you know I mean I guess there's you know obviously there's

[6:55] a frame to a screen as well but like it plays the existing nature of comics

[6:59] which is a frame that is stationary you know you see these glimpses whereas you

[7:04] know what I like about a movie camera is it moves around it's right there in

[7:07] the name but what I wanted to say it was like it stands for can automate huh go

[7:16] on my hmm extra interesting that I'm gonna stand for moving recording yeah

[7:23] apparatus apparatus I forgot what it stood for at the end there and of course

[7:28] you jumped in but no but but you say that about the technical stuff like the

[7:34] thing is like so Mecca seems to be approaching this as a technical

[7:37] challenge and this strikes me is exactly the wrong thing to do with this story

[7:41] like it should be a dramatic challenge like how do we make this compelling

[7:47] without a moving camera like what do we do like and he is doing the most glossy

[7:54] goofy ass way of doing this I feel like he has he essentially made a movie that

[8:00] feels like a cross between a play the characters in it talk like they're in a

[8:03] play well here's the room you know Harry just came back from the war took a

[8:09] bullet yeah my husband lost in the Pacific a lot of a lot of women losing

[8:14] their men these days they sure are everyone has to talk louder and it

[8:17] echoes because they're in this one room far from the camera and it feels like a

[8:20] play it's a cross between that and a movie you would see at a museum that's

[8:23] kind of trying to get across here's how people lived back in olden times but the

[8:27] thing is like the more if it was more like a play I think I would like it

[8:30] better though like if it really played to the artificiality of the conceit I

[8:34] think that would be better than having like I don't know it's like now we're

[8:39] gonna see the whole history we're gonna put some life like CGI indigenous

[8:44] people's like running around well and now we're gonna you know I have all

[8:49] these like fancy like CGI backgrounds like just get a green screen for God's

[8:54] sake for this thing that's not what he does a room you know we should also

[8:58] mention we've said that the the de-aging technology in this is AI based agent

[9:03] de-aging technology so it could be done in real time don't love that not a big

[9:08] not a big AI guy myself my love talkers this

[9:19] wait and before Stuart talks I'm gonna try again to say that Dan also it's this

[9:25] big glossy boring story but it also is Robert Zemeckis falling back on the

[9:28] thing that I think he loves to do which is here's another baby boomer life

[9:32] story great oh they saw the Beatles on TV Oh

[9:36] someone fought in Vietnam I've heard I've seen this story Robert Zemeckis it

[9:40] was called Forrest Gump Stuart you're so Dan you don't have a

[9:44] then okay oh it is a huge bummer too yeah yeah I mean we are talking about

[9:49] how obviously a story like this with that's experimental or it tries to

[9:54] explain itself or try to tries to be told in an experimental way obviously

[9:58] would work better in comics for some reason

[10:00] in this like fixed perspective made me think of Alan Moore's Providence,

[10:04] which would use that fixed perspective to horror effect.

[10:08] Whereas in many ways, this movie does make me feel elements of horror.

[10:12] Like I do feel trapped in the movie,

[10:16] especially because you watched it twice.

[10:18] But it's less that you're trapped with a sexually ravenous elder being or deep one.

[10:22] Yes. Yeah. Yes.

[10:23] More like I am Rudolph van Richten trapped in the bleak house in Ravenloft.

[10:28] Sure. Okay. So are we? Yeah. I mean, I feel like my general notes,

[10:33] we've touched on a bunch of the things that we've already touched on a lot of

[10:36] them. The, I didn't realize the, the de-aging technology was AI driven.

[10:42] Well, I guess that's another example of AI looking like dog shit and being the

[10:47] antithesis of art.

[10:48] Well, let me,

[10:49] let me clarify something about that because I do think it's interesting how,

[10:52] like the first time I saw AI Tom Hanks, I didn't know it was AI,

[10:56] but like the first time I saw de-age.

[10:58] And it's not AI, uh, fully CGI characters. It's just, they apparently,

[11:02] from what I read,

[11:02] they used a program that could in real time de-age their image.

[11:07] So they're acting on the state on the soundstage and the,

[11:09] with the image coming into the cameras is an AI smoothed out young version.

[11:13] Look, I mean, I, apologies.

[11:16] I don't know the way that this works,

[11:18] like whether this is like putting a lot of people out of work or in some cases

[11:23] it's a case where like the artists who do these things are,

[11:26] are glad to have a new technology.

[11:28] It could be, it's possible.

[11:29] This, this sort of like technological innovation offends me less than like

[11:33] being like, Hey, you know,

[11:35] what you want to do is like read stuff that is just like cold from other stuff

[11:39] that we've reconfigured together. And it's like, well,

[11:41] no that we want new human stories that speak to human desires,

[11:46] uh, unlike here. But to get back to the de-age Tom Hanks,

[11:50] the first time I saw him, I'm like, Oh, that's a pretty good effect.

[11:54] And then the problem was throughout the rest of the movie,

[11:57] unless he was literally then like old man, Tom Hanks,

[12:00] I was unclear about how old Tom Hanks was supposed to be at any time because it

[12:05] was not good at like distinguishing, you know,

[12:08] between like even like 17 and 30.

[12:12] From the age of 17 to the age of about 50, he looks kind of the same.

[12:16] I will say, I'll say this for one,

[12:18] it looks better than young man, Robert De Niro in the Irishman,

[12:21] a better movie where he does seem like an old man with dark hair.

[12:25] It's sick. He's had, he loves it.

[12:26] No, no, no. I love that shit.

[12:27] When he's fucking curbstomping that guy in the oldest way possible.

[12:31] You can tell he doesn't have a full range of motion in his hips.

[12:35] But also, but also,

[12:36] I'm actually going to kill him the next day.

[12:38] I think this is a, honey, what are you? You can't even get off the couch.

[12:43] Nah, I was curbstomping a guy yesterday. I'm paying for it now.

[12:46] You know what the doctor said about curbstomping?

[12:48] You can't do that anymore. I got to do my work. I got to do my work.

[12:52] So curbstomping is part of painting houses, guys. It's essential.

[12:55] True. The other thing is that I feel like this, the AI work

[12:58] was really served well by the way I watched this movie,

[13:00] which was on an iPad while I was doing the dishes.

[13:02] So my eyes weren't always on the screen and I would be like,

[13:06] oh, this looks pretty good.

[13:07] And there'd be times when Tom Hanks or another character

[13:09] would get really close to the camera, mainly Tom Hanks' character,

[13:12] when he gets close to the camera and it would suddenly be like, oh, that's not.

[13:16] Yeah, that's not a fully real face that I'm looking at there.

[13:20] Couple other notes.

[13:21] There is in addition to that, there is a pretty good

[13:25] CGI baby getting knocked off a couch.

[13:27] So that was a good laugh.

[13:29] That was pretty funny.

[13:30] That was a fun laugh and farther than I thought they were going to go.

[13:33] That baby just falling face first off the couch.

[13:36] OK, and as you said, this is a fixed perspective.

[13:39] We are the majority of the story is going to take place in a house,

[13:43] a single house.

[13:44] And within the cup.

[13:45] Yep. Within the confines of this house, we see just like to give you an overview.

[13:50] We see a wedding, a funeral, a birth, a death

[13:53] and basically one of every major invention of a lazy boy chair.

[13:57] Mm hmm. Yeah, that's true.

[13:58] Can we I just want to say, you know, there's various stories

[14:01] that we see we glimpse throughout.

[14:03] Oh, yeah. We're going to touch on all of them.

[14:05] And, you know, some of them we come back to more than others.

[14:07] Exhaustively.

[14:08] But I think the clear winner is the lazy boy couple.

[14:11] Yes. Are the only people who have any verbs and like

[14:14] the only ones with a happy ending, but also the ones that are so totally

[14:17] disconnected from almost every other story.

[14:19] They were the only ones they would show up and just dancing to 20s music.

[14:22] And I'd be about 30s music.

[14:23] And I'd be like, what?

[14:24] I'm not quite sure why I'm watching this.

[14:26] I don't know. But they seem cool.

[14:27] Yeah. The lead from the minks gets to be on the other side of the camera.

[14:31] I like the inventor guy.

[14:33] I think his outfits go fucking hard as hell.

[14:36] Oh, sure. Well, love that shit.

[14:37] OK, very sexual couple in a way that the other couples are not

[14:40] that we see. Yeah.

[14:42] So, yep, as we said, it's a fixed perspective

[14:47] focusing on an area that is, I guess, Philadelphia, Philadelphia.

[14:53] I mean, Ben Franklin's house will be technically Ben Franklin's son's

[14:58] house, which I think was in which I think he lived in New York state.

[15:02] So I think it might be somewhere in in New York.

[15:04] But I could also I saw a note that said potentially Perth Amboy.

[15:09] Yeah, could be. It could be.

[15:10] Yeah, it could be in New Jersey.

[15:11] Actually, it makes sense. Yeah.

[15:12] So there's also the movie opens with a little bit of a montage

[15:17] and then it goes all the way back to the dawn of time.

[15:20] We have dawn of time.

[15:22] We have dinosaurs.

[15:22] And then we get to see the meteor striking the earth that kills the dinosaurs.

[15:26] Didn't realize that happened in New Jersey.

[15:28] Yeah, that's the thing.

[15:29] That was a lot about New Jersey, if you ask me.

[15:31] That was one of those moments where I was like, I know it's like, again,

[15:34] that the comic book does things a little differently.

[15:37] It kind of increases the amount of time as it goes on.

[15:41] So to kind of surprise you with how just how far the conceit is going to go.

[15:44] This does the opposite.

[15:45] We're kind of shows you some rooms and then it goes back to the dawn of time,

[15:49] which is I feel like takes a little bit of the thrill out of it.

[15:51] But also like it's one of the things that's like.

[15:54] Part of the fun of it

[15:55] is also seeing like a dinosaur moment that is not a historic moment

[15:58] that this may be because the story made out of the everyday moments.

[16:01] So to have that meteor strike is a bit of an overkill.

[16:04] I know it looks cool, but also like I'm immediately I was like, Bobby Z.

[16:07] That took place in Mexico.

[16:09] Like unless this story takes place in Mexico, you cannot rewrite

[16:13] where the asteroid hit that killed the dinosaurs.

[16:15] Like, come on, guys, what are you doing?

[16:17] Maybe it was like a like a friend of the original asteroid.

[16:20] OK, so also, I mean, it is possible the asteroid

[16:23] maybe broke up in the atmosphere, the main chunk hit in the Yucatan

[16:27] and then some smaller part particle decided to go to Perth Amboy

[16:31] to see if they had opened the movie theater there that I used to go to.

[16:34] And yeah, it's probably trying to try to make its way

[16:36] to Rutt's Hut, unfortunately, didn't make it all the way there.

[16:39] No, Rutt's Hut known for their hot dogs.

[16:41] Yes. Millions of years too early. Yeah.

[16:44] So this meteor, of course, ushers in an ice age.

[16:47] Everything is going super duper fast.

[16:48] It's super sped up.

[16:49] You're like, everything's going super well.

[16:52] It's going super well in the world and on this podcast.

[16:56] OK, we see like a forest primeval and then we see some indigenous people

[17:02] hunting and then and of course, around now we see a hummingbird

[17:06] that will show up at the very end of the movie, this eternal hummingbird

[17:09] character, the prisoner of London or whatever that guy.

[17:12] What's that? What's that guy known?

[17:14] He's traveling in London, right?

[17:15] Yeah, he can travel through time, but he can't leave London. Yeah.

[17:18] Yeah. If I'm right, everybody write in, tell Dan that Stewart's right again.

[17:22] Chuck another one.

[17:23] And I'll be like, I don't know what this is in reference to.

[17:26] OK, so then we get we go to colonial times.

[17:30] We see a big man, like a big manor house being built.

[17:33] And then we see the building of the house

[17:35] that we will then spend the rest of our time at,

[17:37] the place we are trapped at for the next hour and a half here.

[17:42] OK, so so there are basically so there's a there's a bunch of stuff

[17:46] cut off your own leg and you got to watch this Robert Zemeckis movie.

[17:48] Oh, I don't want to play a little game.

[17:53] So there is one main story.

[17:54] There is one story of one family that seems to take

[17:58] the majority of the movie.

[18:00] But there's a number of side stories that intersect.

[18:02] And while the movie isn't told linearly,

[18:05] they're each side story seems to follow a relatively

[18:09] all the stories seem to follow a linear path, even though they are,

[18:12] you know, they're for the most part, jumping back and forth, I think.

[18:17] But it's not so radical that you're like that you it's

[18:19] it's clearly told the way where it's jumping a little bit.

[18:21] But it is a mostly a forward momentum through time.

[18:25] Yes. Yeah.

[18:25] And trying to show connections

[18:28] between the different experiences in this space.

[18:31] So just to touch on these side stories, there's a young indigenous couple.

[18:35] At one point, they exchange jewelry.

[18:38] They get married.

[18:38] They have a they have a baby.

[18:40] She dies. We have a funeral.

[18:42] And then he mourns her again.

[18:45] Very funny aging situation.

[18:47] It looks very funny.

[18:48] This this elderly native guy who just looks like a normal guy

[18:52] with a wrinkly face, elderly, like he's like he's one of the kids from Akira.

[18:57] He he right right before the shot, they gave him like a real strong prune

[19:00] or like a real strong lemon to spunkered up.

[19:03] Oh, I thought you meant they had him soaking up for a long time.

[19:06] That's what they were going.

[19:08] Of course, we're going through these side stories chronologically,

[19:11] although, again, in the movie, they're all sprinkled throughout.

[19:13] We have William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Ben Franklin,

[19:16] who's complaining about his father and his politics.

[19:18] He is a British sympathizer.

[19:20] There's a sequence where a kid throws an apple basically at the camera

[19:24] and it explodes all over him. It's pretty funny.

[19:27] Um, that I mean, that storyline just basically shows

[19:30] little bits of the Revolutionary War.

[19:33] We have a there's a part at the end.

[19:35] I have to mention this, though, where the the a soldier rides up

[19:39] and there's a bunch of continental soldiers there.

[19:40] And it goes, it goes news from general dispatch from General Washington.

[19:44] The British have surrendered.

[19:46] The war is over.

[19:47] And the other soldiers could not give less of a shit.

[19:50] And what they do have no reaction to it.

[19:52] And one of them just goes, what now?

[19:55] And then it cuts to, you know, America 200 years later or something.

[19:57] But that was so funny.

[19:58] I was like, I got to.

[20:00] that the soldiers had more of a reaction to learning the war was over and they had won

[20:03] than just the sense of like well okay another damn thing. I'm out of a job now.

[20:09] Let me just change a battle in my schedule for next week to no battle.

[20:16] I get so depressed when I don't have anything to do. I just like having something to look forward

[20:20] to even if it's a battle. Yeah. Okay so just I have limited experience with winning wars but I

[20:26] seem to remember that when we won World War II it seemed like people were excited.

[20:31] There's confetti. There was a kiss. Yeah at least one. Yeah. Yeah at least one. We have a

[20:40] one of the side stories is a budding pilot an enthusiastic airplane pilot and his nagging wife

[20:46] whose trait is that she has a child and doesn't want him to be flying. He of course does not die

[20:52] from flying his plane disconnected. No he dies of influenza. This was so funny to me the way this

[21:00] is handled. He is lying in his casket with a pilot's cap on it with goggles on it. All the

[21:06] flowers are in the shapes of planes and propellers and there's two people with their backs to the

[21:11] camera and he's like oh she was really mad about it. And she says what's weird is that you see his

[21:16] wife his widow before the funeral saying how could you let this happen or something like that which

[21:20] implies again it's a flying accident. She's been attacking his flying hobby the whole time and you

[21:24] see the two then he goes oh I'm surprised they had an open funeral. Usually there's an open casket.

[21:28] Usually there's not much of the body after a plane crash. It wasn't a plane crash that killed him

[21:32] and then he turns. You see they're both wearing masks. It was influenza.

[21:38] You're just learning this at the funeral. Do you not know them well but also the sudden reveal of

[21:43] the masks I thought was so funny. The whole thing is so funny. This plot like you know not to make a

[21:48] bad plane pun but it sputters out because it's just like okay it's like all just build to this

[21:54] punchline that is obviously meant to be like you know it's like it's like COVID you know.

[22:00] Because there's some COVID stuff in this movie too. It's not saying anything like it's not saying anything about anything.

[22:05] No I mean not to maybe I'm just talking tough because I'm with my boys. But the whole movie isn't

[22:11] saying anything. What I would say is if my wife was so against me flying a plane around that she would be

[22:16] constantly complaining about it. If that's my favorite thing to do in the world I'd get a new

[22:21] wife dog. Go fly up and find a mushroom wife or something. Wow. Yeah okay so we we we. What if your wife's Michelle Dockery though?

[22:30] I get let me yeah let me change my story. Okay run the numbers on that one yeah. Okay so the next one

[22:37] of course is as we said the the bohemian couple where she is kind of a flapper and he's an

[22:42] inventor and he invents the lazy boy. Of course check check the history books. He did this guy did

[22:48] not invent the lazy boy. Recliners that existed for a long time. Yes and her her entire job seems

[22:54] to be to hang around the house in her underwear and a robe and dance to the radio. And his job

[22:58] is to invent things in an undershirt and and slacks as suit pants. Love it. And I just I was like there

[23:03] is nothing about these people's lives that does not involve dancing to the radio, taking dirty

[23:08] pictures of each other, or inventing the lazy boy. It is they have no connection with any other

[23:12] storyline otherwise. It's just so funny to me that they're like there's a breath of fresh air

[23:17] and otherwise we gotta get across the breadth of the American experience over millions of years.

[23:23] We gotta get the invention of the lazy boy in there. They're sort of like a slob Nick and Nora Charles

[23:28] like without even the detecting. I can see that. Without the detecting one of the two main things about Nick and Nora.

[23:35] Okay and then we flash forward there is a couple with a teenage son

[23:42] and they have a housekeeper and they deal with COVID and their housekeeper of course dies of

[23:46] COVID and then they move out. Those are the sides. This is the couple that like is clearly like

[23:52] well oh god we don't have any black people in this movie. We should have one family be

[23:57] black and give them nothing. It doesn't help when the plot line is nothing.

[24:04] There's the one scene where they are explaining to their teenage son here's how you handle being

[24:09] being stopped at a traffic stop by a police officer and it feels like a very ham-handed exactly way of

[24:13] being like oh yeah the black experience oh boy you better believe that's part of the American story.

[24:19] Gotta put some of that in there and I will say in a better movie I would have been like

[24:23] this is an interesting scene because it this is something none of the other families have to deal

[24:27] with and I wish that that I would just wish it was a stronger movie so that that moment would

[24:31] have hit a little harder. Yeah the problem is like like it's clear that that whole family is

[24:36] in there just for that moment. They don't give them anything else of significance. They have

[24:40] otherwise no personality whatsoever. And bury their housekeeper. And for the housekeeper to have a moment

[24:45] where she can no longer smell and then the next time we see her she's dead. And then they both

[24:50] turn to the camera wearing masks. That's great. Okay but the bulk of the story. But not masks like in the

[24:55] Twilight Zone episode masks where they're like the mask to form their faces or anything.

[25:00] Or like masks from the cartoon show Mask where they have like robot masks. Okay. And their vehicles change

[25:05] into other vehicles. Yeah exactly. So the bulk of the story focuses on bulk of the movie focuses

[25:11] on the story of the young family. We are introduced. Who are very old by the end of it. That's true.

[25:16] It seems almost ironic. The the the first couple we meet is Al and Rose. Al is recently back from

[25:26] World War II played by Paul Bettany. He begins by yelling a lot which doesn't help the feel of

[25:31] watching a bad play a bad stage. Yeah yeah. Although I will I mean it it is it is heightened.

[25:38] A lot of the stuff he's doing especially when he's like in rooms by himself essentially like

[25:43] monologuing. But for me and this is a credit to how much I like Paul Bettany I think like

[25:49] as much as I liked anything in the movie I'm like well you know like this this is like this feels

[25:55] like a guy and I have feelings about what's happening when I don't have feelings about

[26:00] other characters you know. Certainly he's the one I feel like it's partly the story they give him

[26:06] which has a lot more depth to it than some of the other ones in that as he's a veteran he spends

[26:11] decades of his life dealing with the the frustration and trauma of that and he doesn't

[26:16] kind of get over it until after his wife dies essentially you know. And he has an alcohol

[26:22] problem and he deals with like he has so much more going on in his story. I mean there's literally a

[26:26] scene where he he realizes that he has to stop and he takes all the bottles out. He does pull

[26:31] himself together before his wife dies but it's because she's like she has a stroke. But he but

[26:37] there is a lot of like talking really loud for a person who's in a movie rather than in a play.

[26:42] But I agree I did feel by the end of it that I thought Paul Bettany had come out

[26:45] kind of on the strong. Okay so they they buy the house despite it being a little more expensive

[26:51] than they expected because Rose is pregnant. Al takes a sales job but he is continually

[26:58] dissatisfied. He's passed over for promotion. He ends up getting laid off and has to find a

[27:02] different sales job and he develops a pretty severe drinking problem. He is almost never not

[27:08] drinking in this movie. Like he's always like every single scene with him for a long

[27:13] section of it he has a drink in his hand. He is also a stand-in for like you know like I'm

[27:20] gonna jump ahead to sort of a more general critique of the movie like part of the problem of this movie

[27:24] is the characters are meant to be such sort of like broad stand-ins for like swaths of

[27:31] American life and they don't generate you know any like personality of their own and he is very

[27:37] much like the stand-in of like you know this greatest generation like the dad of our boomer

[27:43] hero who you know had war trauma, had a drinking problem, was not able to be nice to his family.

[27:50] Yeah and he's always yelling god damn it at his kids. Yeah yeah especially when his CGI kid gets

[27:57] knocked off the couch. Yeah but I think that that's a major issue with the movie Dan you're

[28:01] right is that like these characters are supposed to be so universal in a certain type that they

[28:05] fail to really register as individual people and like it'd be more interesting as individual in

[28:10] the way that that lazy boy couple like I'm not quite sure what type they're supposed to be except

[28:15] like free living 20s 30s I mean it's like 1940 by the time they leave that house but like there is

[28:21] something so like they don't have much character either but it's so specific like they're always

[28:26] in their underwear he's inventing the lazy boy chair as ridiculous as I find it it's so specific

[28:31] that it's better. They feel like characters from an episode of uh Ghosts either the British

[28:39] I could see that. Okay uh so they have they end up having three children together uh their eldest

[28:44] is Richard who has an artistic bent that will eventually be played by Tom Hanks there is a

[28:51] will eventually be played by Tom Hanks yeah uh yeah yeah it's like a in Stuart's face fell

[28:57] what was that movie we watched where people were it was like Helen Mirren and stuff were

[29:00] representing like symbolic aspects of life called Herman's Head that's right that's right so uh I

[29:07] remembered it mostly by it by its Spanish name like a base of the hormone uh so there's a really

[29:15] funny moment where uh teenage Tom Hanks or Richard in this case yeah is uh is played by

[29:22] a actor but is voiced by Tom Hanks and it is very disorienting that's where Paul Bettany explains

[29:30] that you know he he's been places he's traveled all over Pennsylvania and eaten in places you

[29:34] couldn't even imagine one night he took somebody home to his room yeah yeah I love that he's like

[29:41] why are you telling me this I'm like yes why are you telling us this this is the kind of thing

[29:45] dads tell their kids when they reach a certain age just have there's there's also a great line

[29:49] there where Tom Hanks is sitting there drawing pictures of the room the room that we will spend

[29:54] an hour and a half looking at and he's like who would want to look at pictures of this room I'm

[29:58] like no shit dude

[30:00] The movie has become self-aware.

[30:01] Say the quiet part loud.

[30:03] Something that I think is very funny is that we seem to have a generation of filmmakers

[30:08] who cannot imagine that the audience will be able to buy two different performers playing

[30:13] the same character at different ages.

[30:15] And this is the same generation, pretty much, that made The Godfather Part II, in which

[30:19] Robert De Niro plays the character Marlon Brando played in the previous movie.

[30:24] And it's not like everyone was like, wait, that's not what Marlon Brando looked like

[30:27] when he was young.

[30:29] Hold on a second.

[30:30] The idea that you would have to dub Tom Hanks' voice in for a teenage character is so silly

[30:35] to me.

[30:36] Or that you would de-age, or the de-aging Indiana Jones' face in Crystal Dial of Time

[30:41] or whatever it is.

[30:42] It's just, I couldn't remember the name of it for a second.

[30:47] I find it very funny.

[30:48] They're like, audiences are idiots.

[30:49] They can't imagine two people would be the same person.

[30:53] That ties in.

[30:55] Again, I think that if you'd done this more like a play and concentrated more on, okay,

[31:01] how via the blocking of characters within the scene are we going to make this interesting

[31:07] rather than futz it up with a bunch of digital garbage.

[31:10] But, anyway.

[31:11] But, Stuart, you were just about to get to the exciting part of the story.

[31:14] Yeah.

[31:15] Yeah.

[31:16] Richard starts dating Margaret.

[31:18] So Tom Hanks plays Richard.

[31:20] Margaret is played by Rebecca, Rebecca, Robin Wright.

[31:23] Oof.

[31:25] Who are you thinking of?

[31:26] Rebecca Wright, obviously.

[31:27] Rebecca Hall.

[31:28] I wish.

[31:29] And, of course, this is their long-awaited reunion of Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, and Robert

[31:34] Zemeckis who brought us the aforementioned Forrest Gump, a best picture winning classic

[31:40] back in Gumptown, USA.

[31:42] Not to be confused with Forrest Gump 2, Gump Again, the fake movie that they are making

[31:46] in the movie Cecil B. Demented with Kevin Nealon as Forrest Gump, which I thought, Kevin

[31:51] Nealon playing himself as Forrest Gump and the Forrest Gump stuff in that movie is so

[31:56] funny.

[31:57] Yeah.

[31:58] I haven't seen it in years.

[31:59] I'm sure it's tasteful.

[32:00] Yeah.

[32:01] Yeah.

[32:02] Okay.

[32:03] So, despite being young, they get pregnant.

[32:08] And they-

[32:09] Or just one of them.

[32:10] Yeah.

[32:11] Just one of them.

[32:12] Not both.

[32:13] Yeah.

[32:14] You said despite being young.

[32:15] Young is when it happens, Stuart.

[32:16] I don't fucking know, man.

[32:17] Your body is keyed to do it when you're young.

[32:18] Yeah.

[32:19] Yeah.

[32:20] So they get pregnant.

[32:21] They have two parents, Alan Rose.

[32:23] They have their daughter, Vanessa, who comes into this world in that room, which we're

[32:30] all very excited about.

[32:32] Congratulations.

[32:33] Yeah.

[32:34] Richard gives up his art to get a sales job so he can support his family, but he can never

[32:40] seem to get ahead.

[32:42] And he also is very risk averse.

[32:45] He doesn't want to ever put his family into a position where they might be hurt or disappointed.

[32:51] Margaret longs for a life.

[32:54] She longs for doing things.

[32:56] And she cannot seem to find that with Richard.

[32:58] And a house of their own.

[33:00] She does not want to be-

[33:01] Yeah, and a house of their own.

[33:02] She spends her entire life basically almost living in her in-law's house.

[33:06] And Richard, here's the thing about him.

[33:07] He wanted to be an artist.

[33:08] He was going to go to art school, but now he can't because he has a family to support.

[33:11] He is so risk averse.

[33:12] I don't think he'd make a great career as an artist.

[33:16] Because when you're an artist, when you're trying to make a living, it is all risk all

[33:19] the time.

[33:21] Nothing is ever certain.

[33:22] And you've got to be ready to just roll with the punches.

[33:24] And he's not great at that.

[33:25] So I wonder if the movie is really saying, this guy's the talent, but he doesn't have

[33:29] what it takes to survive in the dog eat dog world of the art market.

[33:33] Cue Velvet Buzzsaw.

[33:34] Yeah, doggie dog.

[33:35] Yeah, why not?

[33:36] Okay.

[33:37] In the doggie dog world of the art market.

[33:42] Okay, so Alan Rose, obviously age, Rose has a stroke.

[33:49] And they, Alan Rose then having to move down to Florida so she can get better care.

[33:56] Vanessa grows up, goes to college.

[33:58] I think at one point she's played by Zsa Zsa Zemeckis, daughter or granddaughter?

[34:04] Daughter I think.

[34:05] I don't remember.

[34:06] I think daughter.

[34:07] Let's check the tape, Dan.

[34:09] I don't have tape of Zsa Zsa Zemeckis.

[34:13] You shouldn't have that.

[34:14] Oh, so you do have tape of her.

[34:17] Disgusting, Dan.

[34:18] My story keeps changing.

[34:19] I'm sorry.

[34:20] Vanessa goes to college, then she goes to law school.

[34:23] She's the first in her family to go to college.

[34:25] She listens to a lot of music on her headphones too.

[34:27] That's a way that she can get some needle drops on the sound.

[34:29] She does.

[34:30] Yeah, that's true.

[34:31] In case you're wondering if Robert Zemeckis was going to go to his grave without ever

[34:35] including the song Cherry Bomb in one of his movies, don't worry.

[34:38] He does it in here.

[34:39] I mean, there is a moment where they're listening to Fooled Around and Fell in Love and I'm

[34:45] like, oh man, this song rules.

[34:49] So there's a brief moment of Stuart being excited.

[34:53] Rose passes away and then Al hurts himself.

[34:56] So he needs some in-home care.

[34:58] So he has to move back to wherever we're at.

[35:02] Because maybe the secret is that they're all already dead and this is the purgatory they're

[35:06] in.

[35:07] They can never leave the house for long.

[35:08] That's what I was fucking waiting for.

[35:09] There's some kind of fucking curse.

[35:11] It's just like the Twilight Zone.

[35:12] They're all dolls that live in a doll house and it turns out they just think they're alive.

[35:19] So Al needs in-home care.

[35:20] His presence, of course, is kind of overwhelming to them.

[35:24] Margaret tries to make the best of it.

[35:26] She tries a variety of different things to get over her dissatisfaction with her husband

[35:31] and her life.

[35:33] She even brings in her marriage counselor or whatever, who is, of course, who is presented

[35:40] as being a quack.

[35:42] I would argue.

[35:43] I don't know.

[35:44] It's hard to tell because he's given the accoutrement of a quack.

[35:48] He's very precise about his title and the initials that go after his name and he has

[35:52] an English accent.

[35:53] But what he's saying is basically like, you guys shouldn't drag each other down if you're

[35:58] unhappy in this relationship, which is good advice.

[36:00] I mean, you're right.

[36:03] So Margaret ends up leaving shortly after Al dies.

[36:09] I want to say, just because this movie is so, in a way, plot light that I feel like

[36:17] I should sprinkle some more larger thoughts throughout, I found some of these parts moving,

[36:29] but in a way that made me angry at the movie.

[36:30] It's not like I wanted to find them moving.

[36:32] It's just that the raw materials are sort of impossible not to feel something of like

[36:38] But the raw material is the disappointments of life and how you can't help yourself from

[36:44] getting older.

[36:45] And that's all.

[36:46] That's the real human experience.

[36:47] So it makes sense.

[36:48] I was feeling the same thing.

[36:49] I was like, these are real things that that everyone has to deal with in their life and

[36:51] that's moving.

[36:52] And this is not the most moving way to present it.

[36:53] Well, yeah, but I would get kind of mad at the movie because I'm like, OK, you're doing

[36:59] this to me because you're playing with such raw elements, but you're not particularly saying

[37:07] anything.

[37:09] So it was like coming into my brain, rearranging my emotions and then like being like, well,

[37:13] I've got to go, you know, without like giving me any sort of like lesson or catharsis that

[37:18] would help me.

[37:19] The lesson is that life is all disappointment and eventually you lose your memory and die.

[37:22] Yeah, we'll get there.

[37:24] But to me, it was sort of like the experience of watching, I don't know, like a long like

[37:29] Christmas like advertisement for Google or film cameras or like something where it's

[37:36] like they're just trying to associate their product with the idea of like a life lived.

[37:41] And so they have like a bunch of generalized, like emotional moments.

[37:45] Yeah.

[37:46] So you're saying it's like there was a there was like a Disney ad like that.

[37:49] It was either Disney or Star Wars not too long ago, where it's just like shots of like

[37:53] kids at different birthdays and parents bonding with their children over Star Wars or whatever.

[37:58] And I remember watching it and finding it very emotional.

[38:00] It's like but not because of the product, like they're just associating the product

[38:03] with with being having love and other human beings in your life.

[38:07] Exactly.

[38:08] Yeah.

[38:09] That's what I'm getting at.

[38:10] Don Draper.

[38:11] So, Dan, I think you're going to elicit tears from a commercial, but I don't feel good about

[38:15] those tears.

[38:16] Yeah, I think unless it's that commercial about the brother and sister who are definitely

[38:19] having sex in the coffee commercial of joy that no tears out of my wiener.

[38:24] Yeah.

[38:25] I think it's a Maxwell House commercial.

[38:27] Tears from my wiener feels like it should be like Stu's like memoir title or like or

[38:32] his or his his album.

[38:34] Yeah.

[38:35] Yeah.

[38:36] Well, my fucking wedding.

[38:37] So Al dies.

[38:40] He has one final moment where he sees the ghost of his wife walking through the living

[38:44] room.

[38:45] And then, of course, he disappears.

[38:46] Richard and Margaret kind of reconnect.

[38:48] It just disappears like it's like he's a force ghost.

[38:51] Like basically, I know you weren't paying attention to the movie.

[38:54] There's a lot of moments where people just fade in and out of reality.

[38:57] I think that was the scenes transitioning and not them literally leaving the plane.

[39:03] There's nothing in the movie that says that.

[39:05] That's true.

[39:06] I can't add explanations that are not part of the in-camera text.

[39:09] That's what Roger Ebert says.

[39:10] Yeah.

[39:11] OK, so Richard starts painting again.

[39:12] He and he he tries to make a play to get Margaret back in his life, but she is not interested.

[39:18] However, the she also develops what I'm assuming is Alzheimer's.

[39:22] Yes.

[39:23] Yeah.

[39:25] It's very heavily bookmarked because she'll be like, oh, I went to this thing and I forgot

[39:30] why I was there.

[39:31] Isn't that strange?

[39:32] And once that happens more than once in a movie, you know, this character.

[39:35] That's like when any time a female character barfs in a TV show, I'm like, damn it, she's

[39:41] pregnant.

[39:42] And any time they cough into an into a handkerchief and there's a spot of red, you know, they're

[39:46] going to die.

[39:47] Yeah.

[39:48] This is also heavily foreshadowed by some of the clunkiest writing in the movie, where

[39:51] earlier on a thing that's going to get paid off early, early in the film, the daughter

[39:58] had lost her ribbon.

[40:00] her first place blue ribbon, yeah, and she found it and when they find it and the daughter's

[40:07] excited, they say something like, well, that's a moment we're never going to forget.

[40:12] And I'm like, I don't know that. I mean, it's nice. It's nice that you found it.

[40:17] But I don't think that in real life I'd be like, now that's that's a keeper for the ages.

[40:21] I mean, you wouldn't say it. No. Yeah. Well, yeah, I might. Yeah, I might think it to myself.

[40:26] And of course, this is set up later on for this. Yeah, this loss of memory.

[40:32] You might say that a better movie would have had them say like,

[40:34] huh, that was funny. Do you think she'll worry about losing that ribbon? Nah,

[40:38] she's not even going to remember. This isn't the kind of thing you remember.

[40:40] And then later they remember. Instead, they're like, well, yeah, they're like,

[40:43] put it in. Well, take that ribbon and haul it up into the rafters because this is a moment

[40:48] moment for the record. Yes. Memory. Yeah. You're going to need this in case your

[40:53] brain ever dissolves. Yeah, I would say my my favorite earlier moment is when

[40:58] Tom Hanks comes into the living room with a big thing of McDonald's and he's like,

[41:03] I brought our favorite breakfast. Oh, man. Now I'm extra sad.

[41:08] OK, so he brings he they're selling the house. He's decided to move. He's finally decided to

[41:16] sell the house. He brings Margaret for one last visit. She has lost most of her memory

[41:22] and he is kind of carefully kind of guiding her through this process of showing her the

[41:27] house that they used to live in. And she starts to remember things. And then as she begins to

[41:34] remember things, the camera begins to move. It zooms in and then swirls around. We get to see

[41:39] the rest of the room they're in, which is what I always wished for. It would be amazing if you saw

[41:45] the other side of the room and there's like a dungeon wall or a laboratory, like something

[41:49] you'd be like, wow. Yeah, but the thing that does trigger her remembering is then the ribbon story.

[41:56] Yeah, the ribbon story. Yeah, exactly. When they were in this room and the camera turned,

[41:59] was that a CGI room? It looked like it didn't look like a real room to me, and I was like,

[42:05] at least at least show me. I would have shown you a real physical space. I'm assuming it's

[42:09] nothing in this movie looked real to me. And then it like zooms out the window and we see the rest

[42:18] of Philadelphia, I guess, or wherever. Perth Amboy, yep. And then the camera kind of alights atop

[42:26] the manor house that is across the street. And then we see that hummingbird flying to camera

[42:31] and we're like, that thing's still alive. I was like, this is this is kind of a nice shot,

[42:36] a nice way to end it until that damn digital hummingbird. If it wasn't a digital hummingbird,

[42:43] because that was one of the few times where I was like, this movie has now inadvertently

[42:46] stumbled into a thought I have a lot, which is about the continuity of kind of like animal

[42:52] species and how the natural world and the human world, even though one affects the other,

[42:56] they're kind of on different time tracks. The natural world is on such a longer timeline than

[43:00] ours is. And the life of a tree encompasses so much time compared to a human life and that kind

[43:06] of stuff. So like it was like Zemeckis, you almost got into an idea that I can relate to. But it is

[43:13] so CGI and it's like the it feels like the rat at the end of The Departed where it's like, get it,

[43:18] wink, you know, continuity, history, eternal. Also at that ending, we didn't get into it, but I

[43:24] found it, I don't know, perturbing. It's it's kind of a desire to like, well, this this this movie

[43:31] about how a bunch of people had unfulfilled lives is kind of a bummer, even though we slathered it

[43:36] in sentimentality, like we'll have her remember this thing at the end and then she'll be like,

[43:42] yes, like, yes, I remember this place. I love this place. And I'm like, no, you didn't love

[43:47] this place. The whole movie was how much you hated this house. You wanted to get out.

[43:51] But maybe she realized how much she did love it underneath the thick dollops of hate that she

[43:56] felt. I guess so. I mean, we haven't seen her the apartment that she that she moved to that she can

[44:02] walk to work from. Maybe that apartment sucks. It may be terrible. Yeah, it might be. And the

[44:06] only thing about is that Richie and Al are not there. Yeah. Yeah. This is not not the message

[44:11] the movie is trying to give at all. But it just made me feel like Tom Hanks's character was trying

[44:15] to like trick her into being like, see, we had great times here by like bringing up like one

[44:20] we're still married. You still love me. So, Dan, I'm curious as to think because I you say it's

[44:25] not the message the movie is trying to get across. Is the movie trying to get across,

[44:29] as you said earlier, any message other than just life, huh? Well, that kind of that's kind of what

[44:36] bothered me. Again, I can see how this might work as a comic. It works so well as a comic.

[44:44] It's not trying to it's not trying it's not hitting you over the head the same. The comic

[44:48] is works through hints and small glimpses, whereas this movie is very much like I'm

[44:54] certain that, you know, he's literally like buy a house now. Johnson just put through the biggest

[44:58] tax increase since World War Two. And it's like, oh, nobody talks like that. Like nobody explains

[45:03] like what time they're living in all the time, you know. But as a movie, Benjamin Button is

[45:08] only three years old at this point. Like as a movie, like, forgive me for sounding like

[45:15] kind of like a like a crank. But I know you're going to ask that this many years in

[45:21] I've been meaning to get to it. My apologies. Is it because if you don't keep your heart rate up

[45:29] to a certain level, you'll die? Is that why you have a Hong Kong cocktail? Is that what

[45:33] happens? You have one. I had a couple. You can't have just one man. OK, I guess Dan's going to

[45:39] have sex on a racetrack. Like my like I saw the trailer and my reaction to it was having not read

[45:49] the book. I'm like, this does not blow my mind. The idea of like, wow, a lot of stuff happened in

[45:56] one place, one like on like unassuming place. Yeah. Like that's the way time works. Like a

[46:02] bunch of stuff happens over time in one place. Basically, the movie's message is is communicated

[46:07] pretty well by any historical plaque. Yeah. You see when you're walking down the street,

[46:11] even, you know, even me standing at a place where something I really care about happens like that's

[46:19] you know, this is where I'm going to lose Elliott, Mr. History. But like,

[46:23] even if I like, I loved it when Abraham Lincoln got shot in the head, I love going there.

[46:27] I'm like, damn, what? How can you say that? No, you didn't lose me.

[46:30] Elliott's Batman. Oh, I wish I'm Mr. History. It's all history related crimes. Yeah.

[46:35] You have a place that is, you know, something meaningful to me happens that I cared about

[46:42] in the world. I'm like, that's only neat for like a little while. And then I'm like, well,

[46:47] I'm it's not happening now. I don't get to see it. So I mean, like, you know, about six,

[46:54] seven months ago, my parents sold the house that I grew up in, that I spent the vast majority of

[47:00] my own life in. And they, you know, they lived there for 40 years. And walking through it,

[47:06] I found to be really affecting and moving. But in like, I don't know, like a weird way that

[47:13] this movie does not capture. Yeah, I mean, like, if it was a if it was a matter of personal history,

[47:20] certainly. But like, I don't have that connection to any of the stuff that's going on in the movie.

[47:24] And the movie makes it so generic. I think that's the issue.

[47:28] Partly the genericness of it and also part and I'm going to again, this is my personal axe to

[47:32] grind. I think it's partly the boomer of it that I feel like there are very few generations that

[47:36] are as obsessed with their own personal histories and growing up as at the very least the baby

[47:41] boomers that are involved in the media and tell those stories. And so the idea that like, all

[47:47] right, here's another movie about like emotionally closed off dad from World War Two and his kid has

[47:55] to make a lot of sacrifices to raise a family. And we get to see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

[48:01] And like, I'm surprised there wasn't a scene where they're watching the moon landing or

[48:04] something like that. Or and the it just feels very the movie feels like it takes for granted

[48:12] how interested you are in that particular slice of history, even with these other ones

[48:17] are arranged around it. This baby boomer experience is very much set up as the central

[48:22] experience of the movie. And I think at this point you could get away with that when Forrest

[48:26] Gump came out. But I think you don't too much time has passed. Like you can't get away with

[48:29] that quite the same way now. And so it's what leaves me cold. I will say, though, at the very

[48:33] end, like I was genuinely in some ways moved by seeing them very old and having them talk about

[48:39] the past. But it was more in a sense of like, yeah, well, now that I've sat through this whole

[48:43] movie, like I feel like I lived it, too. You know, I saw those things and now you're talking about

[48:47] them. But it wasn't a it was but it felt so unearned. Or it makes you think of like in a

[48:54] generic way, like I was saying, like a commercial knife, like, oh, yeah, someday I will be doing

[48:59] something like this and then you're allowed to project yourself on it. But like I like I have

[49:04] a genuine question, which is, do you think this movie gains anything by like jumping around in

[49:12] time and sometimes going backwards? Because to me, honestly, other than I can understand the

[49:18] appeal of like, oh, you know, we can have all these stories and we can tell them in court more

[49:22] of an impressionistic way rather than having like a full story. But I feel like any head of emotional

[49:28] steam that could work up is undercut for me by like there's never any like. The parallels between

[49:37] the timelines are never like exciting or interesting in such a way. I think that's the thing. I think

[49:42] it's not totally a problem with the format, but the format requires much more precise and powerful

[49:49] content and actual plot and narrative within that format to do what they want to do. And like you

[49:55] look at a movie like Intolerance, the W. Griffith movie, and that is bound.

[50:00] around in time between a bunch of different timelines in history but the

[50:04] narratives all kind of crest at different moments together they all like

[50:07] reach a climax together and so you get this feeling of these cycles repeating

[50:12] through time I don't mean to praise DW Griffith but you know but that but that

[50:16] movie it works that way whereas this one because it feels time it's like how so

[50:21] randomly bouncing around you don't I agree that you don't get that feeling of

[50:25] like oh there's real connection between these things or we're seeing except for

[50:29] the fact that everybody dies at the end you know in different timelines you know

[50:33] that you did which you walk away from it being like okay so the story of life is

[50:37] the story of disappointment and death like okay well I mean I feel like you

[50:40] something like something like Oppenheimer bounces around in time quite

[50:45] a bit and I feel like it manages to work it all together pretty satisfyingly yeah

[50:51] I think I think it's more you just have to be so careful that's that's one story

[50:55] that you're following around in time whereas like some of the stuff I'm like

[50:59] yeah Dan's like why didn't he do something else other than just invent

[51:02] that stupid I mean like some of the characters in here just feel like

[51:07] padding because like there's nothing to their storylines it's like well what are

[51:10] you doing here why are you in this trying to fly a fucking plane or even

[51:15] the scenes with the scenes with their daughter we're like there's one where

[51:17] she's just like listening on the Walkman and can't won't can't hear that the

[51:20] phone is ringing and another where she and her friend are doing aerobics and

[51:24] the power goes out and it's just one of those things where it's like yeah I

[51:27] don't like if this was a movie made up of small kind of the forgotten moments

[51:31] that you wouldn't think about otherwise that would make sense to me or if it's

[51:35] a movie about the big moments in life that would make sense to me but instead

[51:37] it's just kind of this mishmash and there's a you're on that in that set

[51:42] locked off frame for so long then I feel like that that turnaround for the camera

[51:47] finally moves should hit you really hard but it's yeah but it just doesn't that

[51:51] way that I was thinking of the there's that short that 12 monkeys was based on

[51:55] with la jeté or however it's pronounced the shot I don't know and where it's all

[51:59] still images and then there's the one moment where the guy is looking at the

[52:03] woman that he's fallen in love with in the past and she blinks and you were

[52:06] like oh like the sudden shock of movement of motion and it's handled so

[52:11] beautifully there and I was like that was the first thing came to my was

[52:13] watching I was like oh I wish it was more like that what was more of like a

[52:16] shock of sudden change that that really affects you but I think it but I think

[52:20] it all comes down to like you can have a fancy frame but the picture inside the

[52:24] frames gotta be where the beauty comes from yeah I mean that's it's like it's

[52:28] not like I would necessarily need it to be more conventional storytelling but it

[52:32] does not seem to be does not have an idea in its head other than Roberts

[52:38] Maccas was like I'd like to try and do a movie where we don't move the camera you

[52:42] know I feel like I feel like as a if I didn't count of this movie when I was

[52:47] like maybe a teenager or maybe early 20s where the like form of it I would

[52:53] find really interesting I think I might like it more but as an adult I'm like

[52:58] this isn't enough this is like there's just not enough meat to this sandwich

[53:04] it's all it's all bread and sauces I think I think that I think they're not

[53:08] like circuses I think the most complimentary way you can say is that I

[53:11] think it isn't it's an interesting experiment that does not quite come yeah

[53:14] doesn't well it doesn't function you know we're already there but let's do

[53:18] final judgments whether this is a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie you

[53:23] kind of like I'm going to say it's a bad bad movie it kind of like in some ways

[53:28] greatly put me off because it felt like it was like you know not done with any

[53:36] particular insight but it was also like breaking into my like heart and trying

[53:41] to punch it but I do think that I mean if you if you're the sort of person

[53:51] who's like really into movies to the degree that you're gonna spend time on

[53:57] something that you may not like just because it's kind of interesting I don't

[54:01] know you might want to check it out because it is interesting that he tried

[54:04] it I just don't think it works at all yeah I mean there's a moment there's a

[54:10] moment about an hour in that I picked up on in my second watch of this movie

[54:15] where they keep repeating the phrase time sure flies they're talking about

[54:20] how time moves so fast and I was like yeah and I can't like why are you

[54:26] reminding me that I'm spending my precious fucking moments on this thing

[54:30] like I'm I'm about to I'm about to turn 45 guys at the end of the month so like

[54:35] maybe this stuff's weighing heavier on my mind but it feels like I felt this

[54:40] movie felt very like I felt trapped in it in not a good way like and yeah I

[54:46] just it's not for me I don't recommend it this is a bad bad movie this is a

[54:52] miss for olds do no thanks it's interesting they're saying time sure

[54:55] boost my clearly because a professor Madonna would argue that time moves by

[54:59] so slowly but anyway saying that aside this is a movie that I I have to say

[55:04] that this is not a movie that I kind of liked but it's a movie that I wanted to

[55:07] kind of like and I do admire making a movie that is a formal experiment and

[55:14] trying something different I wish it had worked better maybe that's also some

[55:18] residual love for the original book which I again I really recommend but it

[55:23] feels mostly kind of wrongheaded and to the point also we're like the whole

[55:27] movie I'm like I don't think Tom Hanks is the right guy to play this part to be

[55:31] honest like he's he's such an innately likable figure that I kept waiting that

[55:37] really it was like only halfway through the movie that I was like oh so he's

[55:41] just gonna be like a disappointed sad sack who is mean to people or having

[55:47] trouble things most of the movie I think he's I think there's stuff like it was

[55:50] it was fighting like his his innate charisma was kind of fighting that a

[55:53] little bit in a way that made it difficult for me but uh but I yeah it's

[55:57] a movie that I can't I can't really recommend but it's worth you know look

[56:02] at a couple minutes of it and see or if there's a supercut online of just a

[56:06] lazy boy storyline then you know just watch a happy story a couple that loves

[56:10] each other that invented a chair for relaxation and make their millions yeah

[56:14] let's take a moment to thank our sponsors because the Flophouse is

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[57:16] ready to launch go to squarespace.com slash flop to save 10% off your first

[57:22] purchase of a website or domain we are also sponsored by a rocket money I

[57:30] apologize guys we've done so many months of me only doing the ads where I talk

[57:34] about our stuff that it took me a moment to remember that I had a an ad of my own

[57:38] it's still kind of the beginning of the year 2025 which means that it is still

[57:42] time for you to organize your life we have not yet gotten so far into the year

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[58:52] slash flop today that's rocket money dot-com slash flop again that is rocket

[58:57] money dot-com slash flop we also have a jumbo tron and it goes like this listen

[59:08] up flop lovers one of your compatriots has made their very own game coming to

[59:14] kickstarter pizza rolls that's r-o-l-e-s is a 10-minute hidden rolls

[59:21] style game about awkwardly ordering pizza players simulate a conversation

[59:27] with each player subtly trying to get their preferred toppings on the pie

[59:31] simple yet engaging it's pocket-sized family-friendly fun that can really

[59:37] connect people whether they're young and old or casual and long-term gamers that's

[59:44] pizza rolls r-o-l-e-s so pizza rolls is coming to Kickstarter February 2025

[59:53] search pizza rolls that's r-o-l-e-s on Kickstarter now sounds

[1:00:00] Perfect for a, uh, a game night, Dan, although I usually like super

[1:00:04] complicated games that make Dan mad, but you, but you love pizza.

[1:00:08] So maybe this would be a good one to, uh, to cycle in.

[1:00:11] Uh, you know, I, uh, I like a casual friendly game.

[1:00:16] Super intense for me, but I could be seduced by pizza.

[1:00:24] Couple of Ninja Turtles over here.

[1:00:31] Biggie is a former WWE champion.

[1:00:33] He spent 10 years at the top, sharing the ring with John Cena and Roman Reigns.

[1:00:38] So what's next?

[1:00:40] When I retire, I'm going to move to the desert.

[1:00:42] I'm going to delete all my socials.

[1:00:45] I'm going to disappear.

[1:00:46] Y'all will never hear from me again.

[1:00:47] I'm going to sit on the couch, chill and live my life.

[1:00:50] From the legendary tag team, The New Day.

[1:00:52] It's Biggie on Tights and Fights.

[1:00:54] I feel like I need to listen to a few episodes that you guys have,

[1:00:57] because this was really enjoyable.

[1:00:59] Thank you so much for your time.

[1:01:00] Oh, yes.

[1:01:01] Oh, yes.

[1:01:02] Available on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1:01:08] The following are real reenactments of pretend emergency calls.

[1:01:13] 911?

[1:01:15] My husband!

[1:01:15] It's my husband!

[1:01:16] Calm down, please.

[1:01:17] What about your husband?

[1:01:19] He loves the dishwasher wrong.

[1:01:21] Please help!

[1:01:22] Please help me!

[1:01:24] Where are you now, ma'am?

[1:01:25] At the kitchen table.

[1:01:26] I was with my dad.

[1:01:27] He mispronounced those words intentionally.

[1:01:30] There are plenty of podcasts on the hunt for justice, but only one

[1:01:35] podcast has the courage to take on the silly crimes.

[1:01:39] Judge John Hodgman, the only true crime podcast that won't leave you

[1:01:42] feeling sad and bad and scared for once.

[1:01:45] Only on MaximumFun.org.

[1:01:49] Shall we move on to some letters from listeners?

[1:01:52] Yeah, why not?

[1:01:52] Yes.

[1:01:53] Why not?

[1:01:53] Why not, Dan?

[1:01:54] I thank you for asking my permission for that.

[1:01:56] We treat ourselves.

[1:01:57] This one's from Jean Lasting Withheld.

[1:02:00] Wolf?

[1:02:01] Who writes?

[1:02:02] Who writes a whole bunch of antique words that we're going to have to look up.

[1:02:07] This is a J-E-A-N.

[1:02:11] My husband and I are, uh, my husband and I recently went on a cross-country

[1:02:16] road trip and spent the majority of our driving time listening to the Flophouse.

[1:02:20] Thanks for the laughs as we traversed from Chicago to Portland, LA to Roswell,

[1:02:26] Dallas, Nashville, and more.

[1:02:28] Sounds great.

[1:02:29] During our trip, we randomly parked across the street from the Toretto

[1:02:32] family, home of the Fast and the Furious fame, understandably causing us.

[1:02:38] The Toretto family home from the, the way Dan, you read that confused me a little.

[1:02:43] The Toretto family home.

[1:02:44] Yes, you're correct.

[1:02:46] I was like, were they also at the rest stop that you were at?

[1:02:48] The Toretto family?

[1:02:49] Well, let me take that again.

[1:02:50] During our trip, we randomly parked across the street from the Toretto

[1:02:53] family home of the Fast and the Furious fame, understandably,

[1:02:58] understandably causing us to repeat family at each other for the next few

[1:03:02] minutes in varying Vin Diesel delivery style and coherence.

[1:03:08] Here's my question.

[1:03:08] Have you ever randomly found yourself in a famous slash infamous filming

[1:03:13] location, or is there a location you would love to stumble upon while traveling?

[1:03:18] Thank you for all the fun.

[1:03:20] You guys are the best.

[1:03:21] Gene, last name withheld.

[1:03:23] I remember being in, uh, I think it's, uh, it's a story, uh, Washington.

[1:03:29] Is it, uh, where, uh, the Goonies, much of the Goonies, this is the seaside.

[1:03:34] Oh, cool.

[1:03:36] And, uh, being like, oh, damn, we are in the town from the Goonies.

[1:03:40] And it was all the, uh, pirate money, right?

[1:03:45] Got to hide from and Ramsey or she might, I don't know.

[1:03:49] Never she can kill me.

[1:03:52] If she wants, you might want to hide from and Ramsey or iron rant, either one,

[1:03:56] you know?

[1:03:56] Yeah, probably.

[1:03:57] Yeah.

[1:03:58] Uh, I don't know that I've, I'm trying to, I've ever stumbled on, I think mine

[1:04:01] has been more the opposite where if I'm watching a movie set in New York, I will

[1:04:04] suddenly recognize a corner or a building from my real life, but I've done lots of

[1:04:08] trips where I have gone to shooting locations.

[1:04:11] Uh, my wife is from the Bay area.

[1:04:14] And that means there's a lot of Hitchcock locations around there.

[1:04:16] He did a lot of shooting in the Bay area.

[1:04:18] And so for many years, each time we would go to visit her family, I would be like,

[1:04:21] which, which location from vertigo are we going to today?

[1:04:24] Which location from the birds are we going to?

[1:04:26] And it's all really fun.

[1:04:27] And I hope someday to go to Vienna and take the tour there to see the locations

[1:04:33] for the third man, which is not a Hitchcock film, but it's very Hitchcockian.

[1:04:36] You know?

[1:04:36] Yeah.

[1:04:37] Yeah.

[1:04:38] I, uh, you know, I spent some time in Vienna, but that was pre Stewart

[1:04:42] having watched the third man.

[1:04:43] So, so you did, you had no idea.

[1:04:45] I had no idea.

[1:04:46] I didn't know where to, where to hear good Zither music.

[1:04:50] I just assumed it was just, you just, just Zither was coming out.

[1:04:54] Yeah.

[1:04:55] Yeah.

[1:04:56] I feel like that's the thing about being in New York is that you're like, you're

[1:05:00] just constantly running into, you know, things he saw on, uh, law and order and

[1:05:04] whatnot, movies like law and order.

[1:05:08] Corpses.

[1:05:08] Uh, this is, uh, from Brendan last name with hell who writes.

[1:05:14] I'm a big sports guy.

[1:05:16] Like I know the three of you are as well.

[1:05:19] I was in the hospital, a leather heads over here.

[1:05:23] I was in the hospital with my first kidney stone when we were blessed with

[1:05:27] the 84 Brady episode, which featured some a plus acting from former new England

[1:05:32] Patriots stars, Rob Gronkowski and Tom Brady and Lily Tomlin, former New England

[1:05:38] Patriots star.

[1:05:39] This episode paired incredibly well with the morphine that was being

[1:05:42] pumped into me most of the day.

[1:05:44] I feel like our podcast usually goes a lot down better when you got some

[1:05:49] morphine in your system.

[1:05:51] Uh, like most things, everyone always wants to know what the worst

[1:05:55] performances were from athletes, but as true movie experts, I know you

[1:06:00] need a more difficult question.

[1:06:02] What was the best performance you've seen from an athlete or

[1:06:05] other non actor in a film?

[1:06:07] Thanks for years of last laughs.

[1:06:10] Brendan, last thing withheld.

[1:06:12] Um, I thought Marshawn Lynch was very funny in bottoms.

[1:06:17] Well, it's very funny, but I love to, I have to say I'm withholding judgment

[1:06:20] a little bit because every time an ad for love hurts is on my older son points

[1:06:24] out, he goes, Marshawn Lynch is in that.

[1:06:26] You got to go see that.

[1:06:27] Cause Marshawn Lynch is like, all right, I guess I'll find out how

[1:06:30] good the early reviews.

[1:06:33] We're going to be watching.

[1:06:34] You may watch it for the podcast.

[1:06:37] Too bad.

[1:06:37] Like, uh, what's his face?

[1:06:38] Yeah.

[1:06:39] Deserves better.

[1:06:40] Yeah.

[1:06:41] But maybe Ariana, it's Ariana DeBose.

[1:06:44] DeBose.

[1:06:44] Yeah.

[1:06:45] Yeah.

[1:06:45] DeBose.

[1:06:46] Like, like, like, uh, DeBose wave radio.

[1:06:49] Popular mechanics.

[1:06:49] Best of what's new.

[1:06:50] 1985.

[1:06:51] Yeah.

[1:06:51] I have a, I mean, it's not like amazing acting, but as far as like

[1:06:56] the naked gun movies,

[1:07:00] let me tell you some bad news.

[1:07:03] Why?

[1:07:03] I was going to go actually a related direction, but not there.

[1:07:07] Uh, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, I think it's funny in airplane.

[1:07:10] You know, he's not, he's not asked to do a lot of, I mean, lifting acting wise,

[1:07:14] but he, he does what he does very well.

[1:07:16] Um, but then, you know, uh, known as a singer, this is her only movie.

[1:07:22] I liked Alana Heim a lot in licorice pizza movie that I know that people

[1:07:26] have mixed feelings about, but I think that her performance was,

[1:07:29] I think she is certainly the highlight of that movie.

[1:07:31] It's not a movie I like, but I like her performance in it quite a bit.

[1:07:33] Yeah.

[1:07:34] And then I was thinking about there are people like, um, it's, it's a,

[1:07:39] it's sort of an open question.

[1:07:40] Like, is this person not an actor?

[1:07:43] If like, I feel like there's a lot of people out there who didn't intend

[1:07:48] necessarily to become actors and then had long careers, uh, like they weren't

[1:07:54] an actor when they started out, like, like, uh, uh, I was thinking specifically

[1:07:59] of like Barkha Dabji from Captain Phillips, who was a driver when he was

[1:08:04] cast in that and sort of steals the movie.

[1:08:06] But then he went on to have a career or, I mean, that's the thing about

[1:08:10] acting is until you have your first professional role, no one's an actor.

[1:08:14] And everyone's an actor.

[1:08:15] I mean, there are lots of great movies with non-professional actors in them.

[1:08:19] Um, one of my favorite movies is the fall where the girl in that, you know,

[1:08:23] it was very much, she was not a, no, she wasn't.

[1:08:27] She thought Lee Pace was paralyzed.

[1:08:30] Um, but with, uh, I was thinking about other athletes.

[1:08:32] I'm like, I, the question for me then is when does someone stop being an

[1:08:35] athlete who's in movies and become an actor?

[1:08:37] Like is Carl Weathers or Jim Brown?

[1:08:39] Like they're in tons of movies and they're really good at them.

[1:08:41] Like, but they, are they athletes or are they actors or are they both?

[1:08:45] Like Arnold Schwarzenegger is technically an athlete who became an actor and became

[1:08:48] one of the biggest movie stars in the world, you know?

[1:08:50] Um, but also there's, I was just looking online and I had forgotten about, uh,

[1:08:55] Kevin Garnett in Uncut Gems where I, he, his performance, I find it is at a like

[1:09:01] Nicholas Cage, Christopher Walken at times level of like, this character is so

[1:09:05] intensely involved in what's going on.

[1:09:07] And so like, I really buy his, his passionate obsession with, with this

[1:09:11] gem that he has no reason to become so obsessed with.

[1:09:14] I mean, I feel like there's a handful of people in that movie that are not actors.

[1:09:18] Yeah.

[1:09:18] That's true.

[1:09:18] Just the heavies.

[1:09:19] Yeah.

[1:09:20] And the, and the, the romantic interest, right?

[1:09:21] She was a, I don't think she was a.

[1:09:23] I think that's her first role, right?

[1:09:25] Julia Fox.

[1:09:26] Yeah.

[1:09:26] Right.

[1:09:26] Yeah.

[1:09:27] I think, I think it might've been her first role, but she's obviously been

[1:09:29] another, she was just a Soderbergh movie, dude.

[1:09:32] Oh, that's true.

[1:09:32] Yeah.

[1:09:32] She was in that Soda Bread movie.

[1:09:34] Um, so, so it's, it's a good question.

[1:09:36] I mean, like that's the thing that's like, it feels like some shitty bully

[1:09:40] picking on Steven Soderbergh, a Soda Bread, uh, Ireland wants you back.

[1:09:46] What?

[1:09:48] Just, just admit that you editing all of your own movies.

[1:09:53] It reminds me of the worst tackling I ever saw, which was, um, at a, uh, at

[1:09:57] a Yankees, Red Sox game at Fenway.

[1:09:59] Uh,

[1:10:00] Mariana Rivera, one of the greatest closing pitchers of all time, was pitching.

[1:10:03] What did David say to him?

[1:10:04] David wasn't there, but these guys who were Boston guys were sitting in front of us, and

[1:10:08] they were going, hey, Mariano, Playgirl called.

[1:10:11] They want you to edit their next issue.

[1:10:13] And I was like, I've got to decode what this heckle means.

[1:10:16] And they were calling him like marinara sauce.

[1:10:19] And I'm like, that doesn't really work, like an insulting name.

[1:10:24] Let's move on to recommendations of movies that might be a better use of your dwindling

[1:10:29] time on this earth.

[1:10:30] If it's possible.

[1:10:31] Than here.

[1:10:32] I'm going to very quickly do sort of a dual linked recommendation.

[1:10:37] You're going to do a dual with Stewart?

[1:10:38] Cool.

[1:10:39] Yeah.

[1:10:40] No offense to my monies on Stewart.

[1:10:41] Okay.

[1:10:42] Well, I mean, if it's a dual, like, you know, there's weapons involved anyway.

[1:10:46] Yeah.

[1:10:47] You're not helping your case, Dan.

[1:10:48] That'll even things up.

[1:10:49] Yeah.

[1:10:50] I think Dan's going to be much better with a Claymore.

[1:10:54] Sure.

[1:10:55] I'm going to recommend two movies that are like aren't connected, but are kind of linked

[1:11:00] to my mind in that they are two movies that don't necessarily make a whole lot of sense

[1:11:08] or need to make sense on a plot level, but are sort of like genre dreams you might have.

[1:11:15] And I enjoyed both of them.

[1:11:18] One is Mutant Hunt from 1987, which is like this very low budget sci-fi action kind of

[1:11:29] horror element.

[1:11:30] I mean, you have Mutant Hunt.

[1:11:31] Yeah.

[1:11:32] I mean, you don't have to do too much hard selling when the song is called Mutant Hunt.

[1:11:35] For the budget this thing clearly had, they have some pretty delightful effects at certain

[1:11:41] points.

[1:11:42] There's a sort of corpse robot at the end that's like a puppet animatronic that looks

[1:11:48] kind of great.

[1:11:49] It just feels like...

[1:11:50] Say less, Dan.

[1:11:51] Dan, stop selling past the close.

[1:11:56] It feels like a dream of like an 80s VHS, you know, cover.

[1:12:02] And then also I'd like to recommend from 1966, a Japanese movie in America called Black Tite

[1:12:09] Killers, which is kind of a pop art feelings, but it feels sort of like almost like Danger

[1:12:15] Diabolic or like the Batman TV show in a way.

[1:12:19] It has like, you know, crime going on in Japan, but it has this gang of like go-go dancing

[1:12:26] girl, black titular black tight killers who are actually pretty nice when you get to know

[1:12:32] them.

[1:12:33] But it's also sort of just a beautiful thing to watch that sort of like pop art genre feel

[1:12:39] where it's like it doesn't need to make sense as long as something exciting is being thrown

[1:12:43] in front of your face every few minutes.

[1:12:46] So those are my recommendations.

[1:12:47] I'm going to recommend a beautiful little movie that I had to pause so I could watch

[1:12:53] here.

[1:12:54] I am recommending La Chimera, a movie that also deals with how people deal with the past,

[1:13:01] but it does it in a much more beautiful and interesting way.

[1:13:05] This is set in the 80s.

[1:13:06] It's directed by Alice Rohrwacher and it Josh O'Connor from Challengers and other things

[1:13:16] plays a kind of a baby girl architect, archaeologist type guy who falls in from England, who falls

[1:13:23] in with a group of grave robbers like tomb robbers to to pilfer like treasures from the

[1:13:31] past.

[1:13:33] And he has this like kind of almost supernatural ability to sense when he's above a gravesite

[1:13:41] or a tomb, almost like he's well, literally he's dowsing for these graves.

[1:13:46] And then it turns into it also.

[1:13:49] There's also some story Isabella Rossellini's and it's I don't know, it's beautiful.

[1:13:53] It's great.

[1:13:54] I highly recommend it.

[1:13:55] It's got that kind of like it's both like it feels very real and lived in and but also

[1:14:01] kind of light and breezy and but everything kind of makes sense.

[1:14:05] And I don't know.

[1:14:06] It's great.

[1:14:07] Bacchimera.

[1:14:08] Watch that shit.

[1:14:09] Son Hulu.

[1:14:10] I'm going to recommend a movie that is kind of the exact opposite of what Dan was recommending.

[1:14:14] This is a recent studio almost release that is very not Coyote versus Acme.

[1:14:22] I'd love to see that.

[1:14:26] But almost.

[1:14:28] This is juror number two, the Clint Eastwood movie that came out recently, which is very

[1:14:31] visually spare, visually plain.

[1:14:34] The storytelling is very traditional, unlike all Clint's other movies.

[1:14:37] No, but even like a movie like Unforgiven has a few kind of visual stylistic touches.

[1:14:41] And the older Clint Eastwood gets and he's very old now, the more I think he's focused

[1:14:45] on just super straightforward storytelling.

[1:14:48] And this is a movie that at first watch, I was like, OK, this is like an interesting

[1:14:53] kind of like crime, quite not quite thriller, ethical drama, I guess.

[1:14:58] But the more I thought about it, the more it really sat with me and the more it really

[1:15:01] got into my head about this is a movie about people who are not bad people who are stuck

[1:15:07] in an untenable situation and are trying to do their best to do the right thing, but finds

[1:15:12] that there are either elements of their own personality or elements of the world around

[1:15:16] them that are making it difficult for them to do the right thing.

[1:15:19] And the idea that justice is something that is not necessarily a happy or even a fair

[1:15:25] thing or a nice thing, but a thing that in an almost kind of Greek tragedy way, justice

[1:15:31] is something that takes its victims, you know, and I thought it was I just it really sat

[1:15:36] with me for a long time.

[1:15:37] And the closest thing I can think to it is that like this is Clint Eastwood kind of like

[1:15:40] his first reforms in a way, which is making it sound more intense or extreme than it is.

[1:15:45] First reforms are really intense movie because it's a Paul Schrader movie and Paul Schrader

[1:15:48] is a madman, whereas Clint Eastwood is more generally kind of like a slow going guy in

[1:15:53] his later movies.

[1:15:54] But but I found it to be a movie that had a deceptively still surface, but a lot of

[1:15:59] depth underneath it, kind of the opposite of here, which felt like it had a lot going

[1:16:03] on on the surface and not a lot underneath.

[1:16:05] And so I really would recommend Jura number two and then taking some time to think about

[1:16:09] it afterwards.

[1:16:10] You know, you know, that's a movie that I did like.

[1:16:12] And I think ultimately by the end, like the end really landed for me.

[1:16:16] And I had a lot of the feelings that you're talking about, but it would be that effective

[1:16:22] ending was almost undone for me personally.

[1:16:25] I know that I'm not trying to convince you by like the whole first half of the movie.

[1:16:29] Like this is the dumbest court case.

[1:16:31] Like this is not like the law on this is like laughable to me.

[1:16:34] I mean, yes and no.

[1:16:36] I feel like the I feel like the movie had it's a it's a case.

[1:16:40] It's one of these things where like the court case is not clever or particularly hard to

[1:16:45] parse.

[1:16:46] Like it shouldn't be a hard case to win in some ways, you know, for the for the defense

[1:16:50] because there's like, no, it's all circumstantial evidence and stuff.

[1:16:53] But I feel like the the movie is not really about that.

[1:16:55] I didn't buy a lot of it is what I'm saying, like the point at which like there could be

[1:17:00] a mistrial.

[1:17:01] I'm like, yeah, absolutely.

[1:17:02] There should be a mistrial at this point.

[1:17:04] For one thing, there's a lot of like just obvious ways that this person would be defended

[1:17:09] that aren't even touched.

[1:17:10] But like that's not what Clint cares about.

[1:17:12] It's not.

[1:17:13] It's not what the movie is.

[1:17:14] It's not.

[1:17:15] The movie at times plays like it's starting to become 12 angry men, but it is not.

[1:17:18] That's not what it has on its mind.

[1:17:19] And it's more interested in these characters kind of dealing with their choices rather

[1:17:24] than with the actual strengths or not of the case, which is fine with me because I don't

[1:17:28] really care that much about the case in the middle.

[1:17:30] You know.

[1:17:31] Now, I haven't seen this movie.

[1:17:32] Right.

[1:17:33] Just imagine.

[1:17:34] I'm sure.

[1:17:35] Number one.

[1:17:36] The first one.

[1:17:37] Yeah.

[1:17:38] I'm just imagine I'm someone listening to the flop house.

[1:17:39] Yeah.

[1:17:40] And you're selling this movie to me now.

[1:17:41] I know that Nicholas Holt is in this movie.

[1:17:43] He does.

[1:17:44] Yes.

[1:17:45] A weird little creep.

[1:17:46] He does not play a weird little creep in this one.

[1:17:47] No.

[1:17:48] He is the all American.

[1:17:49] He's the all American guy who has who has kind of a dark secret.

[1:17:52] He has his darker side.

[1:17:53] But he is a little creep.

[1:17:54] No, it's not.

[1:17:55] There's a little creep.

[1:17:56] Unfortunately, this is a movie fairly, fairly devoid of weird little creeps.

[1:18:00] But like, for instance, so there's scenes in here where you kind of want you're like,

[1:18:04] I don't understand why I'm seeing this moment.

[1:18:05] Why am I seeing this moment in a person's life?

[1:18:07] There's a scene in this movie where the Nicholas Holt and his wife are giving out candy to

[1:18:12] kids for their trick or treaters, and they're dressed as the couple from American Gothic,

[1:18:16] which is kind of on the nose type symbolism in a way.

[1:18:19] But they don't talk about the case.

[1:18:21] They don't talk about the plot.

[1:18:22] It's just them kind of having this moment of living their life and interacting with

[1:18:25] the kids who come for trick or treating.

[1:18:27] And it was like, it's a little it's not fully realistic.

[1:18:30] It's not a naturalistic scene.

[1:18:32] It feels like a movie scene.

[1:18:33] But I was like, I like that this plays thematically with some of this stuff that's going on in

[1:18:37] it.

[1:18:38] But it is not.

[1:18:39] Every scene is hitting the plot super hard.

[1:18:40] And I liked getting this glimpse of another side of their life, you know, although there

[1:18:43] was the first time he showed up in that costume, I didn't realize it's Halloween.

[1:18:46] And I was like, what the hell is he wearing?

[1:18:48] Like old farmer overalls like what's going on?

[1:18:51] And then I realized it's a it's a it's an American Gothic costume.

[1:18:54] OK, yeah.

[1:18:55] But anyway, I'm sorry that this one didn't hit the spot.

[1:18:57] But for Dan, but I still recommend it.

[1:19:00] I'm still glad I saw it.

[1:19:01] I'm not trying to undo your recommendation.

[1:19:03] I know, but I thought this is one where it did.

[1:19:05] I didn't really feel the power of it until the very end of the movie.

[1:19:08] As it was going on, I was like, this movie is fine.

[1:19:10] It's OK.

[1:19:11] And then once the movie ended, I was like, OK, that wasn't the movie I thought it was

[1:19:13] going to be.

[1:19:14] You know.

[1:19:15] Well, I guess I'll have to watch it and break the tie.

[1:19:17] Yeah, that's right.

[1:19:18] That's the important thing.

[1:19:19] Tune back in to see who wins the Battle of Jern number two.

[1:19:23] And tune back in.

[1:19:24] Whether it's enthusiastic Elliot Kalin or denying Dan McCoy.

[1:19:28] Mm hmm.

[1:19:29] And tune back in next time for another episode of The Flop House, because this one sadly

[1:19:33] is drawing to a close.

[1:19:34] Oh, man.

[1:19:36] But I loved it here.

[1:19:37] No, no, no, no, you didn't.

[1:19:38] I loved it here.

[1:19:39] Don't you remember, Stuart?

[1:19:40] This is where you started the episode.

[1:19:41] And this is where you tried to summarize it.

[1:19:42] We kept interrupting you.

[1:19:43] And this is where Dan shot down my recommendation.

[1:19:44] Don't you remember all these moments in our lives?

[1:19:45] You're right.

[1:19:46] I hate it here.

[1:19:47] Why won't you let me die?

[1:19:48] Well, let's let's do it.

[1:19:49] Let's.

[1:19:50] Let's.

[1:19:51] Let's.

[1:19:52] Let's.

[1:19:53] Let's.

[1:19:54] Let's.

[1:19:55] Let's.

[1:19:56] Let's.

[1:19:57] Let's.

[1:19:58] Let's.

[1:19:59] Let's.

[1:20:00] Let's.

[1:20:01] Let's.

[1:20:02] Let's.

[1:20:03] Let's.

[1:20:04] Let's.

[1:20:00] It would be so funny if at the end of the movie he's like and you gave birth there and that's where we got married and

[1:20:05] She goes just let me go. Why won't you let me go?

[1:20:10] Before we go though, I would like to thank our network maximum fun

[1:20:16] Yeah, go to maximum fun org to check out other great shows

[1:20:20] We're gearing up for the drive soon. We've got some good things planned for that. We hope you will join us

[1:20:27] And we would like to thank Alex Smith our producer he goes by the name

[1:20:32] How old Dottie when he's doing such things as making music or doing twitch streams?

[1:20:39] Why don't you look him up on the internet?

[1:20:42] But for the flop house, I have been Dan McCoy

[1:20:45] I've been Stuart Wellington, and you know, I'm Elliot Kalin

[1:20:49] Okay, see you later suckers

[1:20:56] A

[1:21:04] Million tabs, how many tabs you have open a million do not man. There's like one two, three, four five

[1:21:10] I've six tabs open. That's a lot of soda six. I'll search for big naturals

[1:21:17] That doesn't seem like dance Google search. No, it's not. No. Yeah, you're you're projecting

[1:21:23] Projecting that's what mine is. Okay, because I had to use Google for that. I can't find it

[1:21:32] Okay

[1:21:34] Maximum fun a worker owned network of artists owned shows supported directly by you

Ep.#444 - Here

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