Ep.#443 - Harold and the Purple Crayon

Elliott Kalan

[0:00] Hi, Floppers. Before we start this episode, I just wanted to remind you we are in the middle of FlopTV Season 2.

[0:06] That's right. The one-hour internet televised Flophouse TV show is here for you the first Saturday of every month through February.

[0:14] Just go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com and get your tickets or season pass for this all-new Flophouse TV stuff.

[0:22] We're covering movies we've never covered before. We've got video segments. It's amazing.

[0:27] Just go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com for FlopTV Season 2. This time, it's personal.

Dan McCoy

[0:34] On this episode, we discuss Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Stuart Wellington

[0:38] Now, I haven't watched Harold and the Yellow Crayon. Am I going to be able to understand the sequel?

[0:54] Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

[1:08] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:10] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:12] We're getting goofier and goofier.

[1:13] I feel like we should leave him to the whole YouTube crazy face algorithm booster thing and just be as silly as possible.

[1:21] Just like, go?

[1:23] Be?

[1:23] Yep.

[1:24] Go?

[1:25] I do like, I don't know, I got to point out for all the listeners watching at home, Dan McCoy's wearing a purple shirt.

[1:30] That's true.

[1:31] I didn't even realize it was themed.

[1:33] Hell yeah, I love it.

[1:34] It's like when I don't watch the fucking ending.

[1:36] You just love this movie so much.

Dan McCoy

[1:39] Well, I wonder if you missed something this time around.

[1:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:41] We'll see pretty soon.

Stuart Wellington

[1:43] Spoiler alert, probably.

[1:45] Zachary Levy was here is what the back of his shirt says.

Dan McCoy

[1:49] Did I pronounce his last name right?

[1:51] He is Levi.

Stuart Wellington

[1:51] I'm not sure.

[1:52] I'm going to talk mad shit about this dude.

[1:54] I should learn his last name pronunciation.

Elliott Kalan

[1:57] Yeah, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, actually, I don't know if it's Levi or Levi.

[2:03] It's his middle name and not his, not his original last name, but his middle name.

[2:07] But, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[2:08] Well, this is a lot of great trivia right up to the top of the cast.

[2:13] We watched a movie called Harold and the Purple Crayon.

[2:16] Let me say, let me, let me back up a little bit.

[2:19] In this podcast, first principles, we watch a bad movie and we talk about it.

[2:24] How do we say what's a bad movie?

[2:25] It's generally we get like a critical or, you know, what the commercial critical consensus,

[2:31] people saying, people talking, word on the street, you know.

Elliott Kalan

[2:33] A flop in some ways you might say.

[2:34] There's a shoe shine boy that gives me some tips.

[2:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2:40] Reggie Shiny, do you hear about any bad movies lately?

[2:44] Yeah, I don't know.

Dan McCoy

[2:46] Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't.

Elliott Kalan

[2:48] How about this, how about $10?

[2:50] Yeah, yeah, I did hear about a bad movie.

[2:52] Harold was in it.

[2:53] There's something on Netflix.

[2:54] Something with Harold on Netflix.

[2:56] Harold and Maude.

[2:57] Harold and something, but I'm going to need another five.

[3:00] How much is it worth you to find out the rest of the title?

[3:03] Here's $5.

[3:04] Harold and the Puyple.

[3:06] Oh, Puyple, what?

[3:07] You know, my pockets, they seem to be empty.

[3:09] Wow, I don't know.

[3:10] I think I've got enough for the-

Dan McCoy

[3:11] Wow, didn't even get to the end of the sentence.

[3:12] I think I've got enough for the search function to complete it for me.

[3:14] I think Google will autofill this.

[3:16] Oh, rats.

Elliott Kalan

[3:17] Well, thanks for supporting me a little bit anyway.

[3:20] You know, with AI search functions, people are going to their local shoeshine boy to find information.

Dan McCoy

[3:27] Yeah, so, you know, but most of the time-

[3:29] Harold and the Purple Tumescent.

[3:30] Uh-oh.

[3:31] This is the wrong autofill.

[3:32] Oh, yeah.

[3:32] Delete, delete.

[3:33] Oh, no.

[3:34] We should have listened.

[3:35] Tumescent.

Stuart Wellington

[3:36] Yeah, even Elliot's Google is annoying.

[3:39] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[3:40] Is Tumescent ever used outside of erotica?

[3:43] No, I don't think so.

[3:44] I don't think so.

Elliott Kalan

[3:45] But if you're like, I'll just check it.

[3:46] Harold and the Purple Feet.

[3:48] Harold and the Purple Married.

[3:49] Harold and the Purple Net Worth.

[3:51] Net Worth, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[3:52] Height.

[3:53] Yeah, but 90% of the time we go in blind, so sometimes we're surprised by like new movie.

[3:58] You mean 99% it's invisible?

[4:01] But this was one that got a lot, a lot of bad work around it.

[4:06] I did.

[4:07] It's based, of course, on the book of the same name.

Stuart Wellington

[4:11] 64-page book, huh?

[4:13] Hmm.

[4:13] Stretching it out.

[4:14] What is this?

[4:14] Did Peter Jackson make this?

[4:16] Oh, oh, oh.

[4:17] Just kidding.

[4:17] I would never make fun of Peter Jackson.

[4:19] You never would.

[4:20] Never.

Elliott Kalan

[4:20] Or his brother, Michael Jackson.

[4:22] Now, let me just talk about, or their father, Andrew Jackson.

[4:28] You love them all.

[4:28] Let me just talk about my history with Harold and the Purple Crown.

[4:32] I'm curious about your history with it.

[4:33] I am married to a children's librarian.

[4:36] I have two children.

[4:37] We read a lot of books.

[4:38] This is a particularly special book.

[4:39] There's a few books.

[4:41] This, Extra Yarn, Where the Wild Things Are.

[4:44] A few children's books that are particularly-

[4:45] Ulysses.

[4:46] Ulysses, the James Joyce one, and also The Odyssey.

[4:49] Some children's books that are particularly special to us.

[4:53] And I, so when I heard they were making a movie of this, I was like, oh, it's such a simple,

[4:57] straightforward story.

[4:59] There's not a lot of plot.

[5:00] There's not a lot of characters.

[5:00] It's literally just about what you can do with visually, imaginatively with drawing on

[5:06] a two-dimensional surface.

[5:07] Like, they better not make a movie where like, it's like, we've got to get the purple crayon

[5:11] out of the bad guy's clutches.

[5:13] And then that's exactly what they did.

[5:15] So even going into this, I was not going to give this movie the benefit of the doubt.

[5:18] So that's on me.

[5:19] That's on me as the critical eye.

[5:21] You know, I came in with baggage.

Dan McCoy

[5:23] Worse with it than like, just that.

[5:25] Like, if it was like, I don't like that idea, but if it was just that and it sort of still

[5:30] stayed within the world of Harold, but it was like, even more cookie cutter, like, we got

[5:36] to just turn this into every sort of other movie where it's like, yeah, let's make him a real

[5:42] human in the real world, but with his crayon things.

[5:44] And he grew up.

[5:45] That's what you want to see, right?

[5:46] In this book about a child's imagination and discovering the power of imagination and art.

[5:51] And I'm like, what?

Elliott Kalan

[5:53] What if he's old enough that he could conceivably have a romantic subplot with a single mom?

[5:58] You know what?

[5:58] That's too much.

[5:59] Let's pull back on that.

[6:00] But yeah, let's say, yeah, that they decided to big it, you know, that's unnecessary.

Stuart Wellington

[6:05] What if there was like a scene where like, she has to teach him how to use his wiener?

[6:10] Here's a different kind of crayon.

[6:12] You can draw things with this too.

Dan McCoy

[6:14] You know, forthcoming.

[6:16] You know, this is like the male version of Born Sexy Yesterday, Born Unsexy Yesterday,

[6:22] kind of a man-child goofball.

[6:25] It's kind of like the Jason Bourne stories, right?

[6:28] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[6:29] Yeah, exactly like that.

[6:30] So I will apologize going in.

[6:32] I was going in ready to dislike this movie.

[6:34] High bar for the movie to clear.

[6:36] But you know what, guys?

[6:37] Mm-hmm.

[6:37] They did it.

[6:38] What a wonderful masterpiece.

[6:41] What a magical work of cinema.

[6:42] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[6:43] I mean, I got to say, I also had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder.

[6:47] Yeah.

[6:48] Because the lead is an actor I don't particularly care for, nor do I care for his personal views

[6:54] on the world.

Elliott Kalan

[6:55] But he does a great job in this.

[6:56] It's not at all like it's a one-note performance of annoying, forced positivity, right?

[7:01] Yes.

Stuart Wellington

[7:01] Like somebody who is in a theater camp performance of Elf, the musical.

[7:07] Well, that's the thing.

Dan McCoy

[7:08] People have pointed out, they are both playing into their previous strengths.

[7:13] Like Shazam, you know, Boy Man for Zachary and like for Zoe, the double Zs, they call them.

[7:21] ZZ Tops on set.

[7:23] Top of the call sheet.

[7:25] She was the Elf love interest.

Stuart Wellington

[7:27] So she's had to deal with this shit before.

[7:30] So weird.

[7:31] She's in the movie Elf.

[7:32] I feel like I've only seen it once.

[7:34] No, she's the...

[7:35] She's on the shelf.

[7:36] The romantic interest of Will Ferrell.

[7:37] That makes a lot of sense.

[7:38] Here at least she doesn't have to...

[7:39] He keeps her on the shelf just to keep his options open.

[7:41] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[7:41] Doesn't have to pretend to be into...

[7:42] Something I don't want to harp on too much because I feel like it's unfair.

[7:46] I don't know what the budget was apparently, according to Wikipedia, is $40 million, which seems like a lot for this movie.

[7:53] But there are special effects in it.

[7:55] But I will say that overall it looks very...

[7:58] It looks and sounds very cheap.

[8:00] There's like a feeling you get sometimes when you're watching a low-budget movie where the camera moves look like real movie camera moves.

[8:07] There's real movie actors in it.

[8:08] But everything feels kind of like TV movie.

[8:10] And I don't know if you guys felt that way while you were watching it.

Dan McCoy

[8:15] I can see...

[8:17] Where the cheapness came out for me was that he's got this magical purple crayon.

[8:22] But mostly he...

[8:24] You know, until the end, he just makes like kind of like, oh, a skateboard or a bicycle or, you know, like stuff like very basic stuff.

[8:33] I'm like, well...

[8:33] I've seen all that shit before.

[8:36] You get a 3D printer.

[8:37] It's basically the same thing.

[8:38] I just...

[8:39] I...

[8:39] Like that was the stuff where it's like you can make anything, but you're not in that field.

[8:43] Like the actual look of the movie, like it just seemed like bright family movie style.

[8:48] I guess so.

[8:48] And this guy came out of animation.

[8:50] The director, I looked him up, did like Ice Age and stuff.

[8:52] So I think there are occasional places where he has a way with a sight guy.

[8:55] I say, he's got some bona fides.

Stuart Wellington

[8:58] Yeah, yeah.

[8:59] But I...

[8:59] Do you really...

[9:01] Somebody should really market a 3D printer called the purple crayon.

Elliott Kalan

[9:05] They should, but everything that comes out is purple.

[9:07] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[9:08] Yeah, that's fine.

[9:09] Maybe that's the color of resin they use or whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[9:11] It's the 3D printer that Prince would have used.

[9:13] Yeah.

[9:14] Yeah.

[9:14] I did get the feeling, like you're saying, Dan, it's like this thing can draw anything.

[9:19] They do draw a couple creatures, but it is mostly like here's a car.

[9:23] Here's a hot air balloon.

[9:24] Here's a plane.

[9:25] I did get the feeling kind of like with the...

[9:27] Way years ago, we watched Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, where they were like, enter my magical

[9:32] world of whimsy.

[9:33] We're going to jump on the mattresses at the mattress store.

[9:36] And it was like, really?

[9:36] This is the biggest joy and delight gets?

Dan McCoy

[9:39] That's how whimsical you can be.

[9:40] Jumping on mattresses.

[9:42] That's the top whimsical thing.

[9:44] So...

[9:44] Is to ruin the mattress.

Elliott Kalan

[9:46] So I'm going to do the summary for today.

[9:47] So let me talk you through what happens in Harold and the Purple Crayon.

[9:51] We start with an animated opening.

[9:53] It really feels like they're adapting...

[9:55] I'm going to stop you right there.

Stuart Wellington

[9:58] Is this what the art in the...

[10:00] Because I haven't read the book.

[10:01] Not exactly.

[10:02] Because I'm not like a little kid.

[10:03] I'm a grown man.

Elliott Kalan

[10:03] It's like a slicker, more movie animation version of the art in the book.

Dan McCoy

[10:08] It evokes it, but it's 20% less charming than the actual book.

[10:11] Got it.

[10:11] Yes.

[10:12] But I also wanted to stop you here though, Ellie, to ask you, did you treasure these early moments with Childe Harold animated knowing that it was the closest to actual magic this movie was going to provide you?

Elliott Kalan

[10:24] You know, you would think so.

[10:25] Similar to Joker 2.

[10:27] No, because it just reminded me like, oh, this book is genuinely magical.

[10:31] Yeah.

[10:31] And they've already kind of slicked it up.

[10:32] The moment when they...

[10:33] In my notes, they really depoeticize it.

[10:36] Like the book is very spare.

[10:37] It's very straightforward.

[10:39] But it's like, he made some friends, a moose and a porcupine.

[10:42] And they went everywhere together.

[10:43] And it's like, in the book, the moose and the porcupine appear on one page.

[10:47] He made a bunch of pie.

[10:48] He didn't want to feed...

[10:49] He couldn't eat it all.

[10:50] So he makes a hungry moose and a deserving porcupine, which I always thought was such a funny...

[10:56] And just in doing that, the characters have more personality than they really get written in this movie.

[11:02] But I started thinking about like, yeah, you're adapting a book that's really thin when it comes to story and characters.

[11:10] So everything that happens in it, they've got to make into a bigger deal.

[11:15] Like this moose and porcupine that appear on one page, they're now his best friends.

[11:19] They do everything with him.

[11:20] And they have their wires cracking personalities.

[11:23] The movie kind of pretends to end.

[11:27] Like he goes to bed, the movie pretends to end.

[11:28] And then it reveals, no, no, that's not the end of the story.

[11:31] Because Harold kept growing up, which implies an eventual future where Harold is a decrepit old man with dementia.

[11:38] Who is making horrifying things with his crayon.

[11:41] Or like he can't draw well anymore.

[11:43] And so just half living crippled things that are like, oh, destroy me, erase me.

Dan McCoy

[11:47] Fingers are twisted from arthritis.

[11:49] Yeah, exactly.

[11:49] What if he's desperately trying to draw new body parts for himself as he ages?

[11:55] I think that he's created the horrible movie that's going to be made once this goes to the public.

[11:59] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[12:01] Horror in the purple crayon.

[12:03] Yeah.

[12:03] I'm more crayon than man now.

Stuart Wellington

[12:06] We get a little bit of gravitas because there's a narrator.

[12:09] And that narrator, none other than Sir Alfred Molina.

[12:13] Yeah.

[12:14] I don't think he's technically Sir Alfred Molina.

[12:16] He played Dr. Octopus.

[12:17] He's a sir to me, dude.

Elliott Kalan

[12:19] You could just say Dr. Alfred Molina, which he's also not.

[12:22] But the thing is, okay, so we see that Harold grew up.

[12:28] Now he does extreme stuff like skydive and make roller coasters or whatever.

[12:32] But –

[12:33] Different animation style.

[12:34] Yes.

Dan McCoy

[12:35] And I would say worse.

[12:36] Far, far uglier.

[12:38] Even before we enter the real world, you get a taste of how the whimsy of the book will be drained entirely.

Elliott Kalan

[12:45] The purity of Crockett Johnson's work is being, you know, yeah, drained and stripped.

Stuart Wellington

[12:49] They're like, Crockett Johnson, what if that moose had like a little beard?

[12:54] Can we give him a little beard?

Elliott Kalan

[12:56] The thing is, this moose needs some more ratitude.

[12:59] He doesn't have enough ratitude and this porcupine doesn't have enough attitude.

Stuart Wellington

[13:02] How long do porcupines live?

[13:03] Because wouldn't that porcupine – the original porcupine be long dead if he grew up?

Elliott Kalan

[13:06] Oh, he's always replacing the porcupines.

[13:08] Yeah.

[13:08] Oh, okay.

[13:09] So there's a narrator talking about how he grew up and he drew the world around him and the narrator can talk to Harold and Harold is like – the narrator is like, well, I'm in the real world.

[13:19] I created you.

[13:20] So Harold wants to see the real world.

[13:22] The narrator is like, that's impossible.

[13:23] But then there's some gravitas.

[13:24] Like you said, the next morning, the narrator is silent.

[13:28] What happened to him?

[13:29] He's gone.

[13:30] Harold's search for the narrator.

[13:31] Man's search for God in a meaningless world.

[13:34] This is where we are right now.

[13:35] So Harold, he says, I'm going to have to draw a door to the real world.

[13:38] And he does.

[13:38] He says his own God.

[13:40] Yes.

[13:40] He says, no gods, no masters.

Stuart Wellington

[13:42] I have the power with this plan.

[13:44] Like Prometheus, he holds the fire of creation in his hand.

Dan McCoy

[13:47] Now, the movie glosses over the actual details.

[13:50] But I believe Crockett Johnson died in the 70s.

[13:53] So does time, I assume, move differently in Harold world?

[13:59] Have you ever seen Inception?

[14:00] It's like that.

Elliott Kalan

[14:02] Yeah.

[14:02] Considering we go to like the Crockett Johnson house.

[14:07] Yeah.

[14:08] The only thing it's about is Harold and the Purple Crayon.

[14:10] And like he did other stuff.

[14:11] Like this is, I don't believe this is the real historic homestead.

[14:14] Is that him too?

[14:16] Barnaby the Scrivener?

[14:17] Yeah, he did Barnaby the Scrivener.

[14:21] He did the carrot seed.

[14:23] He did, yeah, he did a lot.

[14:24] I mean, he did Barnaby.

[14:25] He did a lot of different types of artwork, you know.

[14:28] Yeah.

[14:28] But he, but anyway, but the idea that he was a one hit wonder with Harold and the Purple Crayon.

[14:32] No way, dude.

[14:33] No way.

[14:34] But anyway.

[14:34] Well, that museum knows what pays his bills.

[14:36] Yeah.

[14:37] But yes, that's true.

[14:38] But yeah, perhaps, yeah.

[14:39] The Peanuts Museum doesn't have a lot of stuff from Charles Schultz's non-Peanuts work.

Stuart Wellington

[14:44] You know that fucking gift shop is always running out of Purple Crayons and they have to keep buying the fucking multi-packs.

Dan McCoy

[14:50] They're like, here's the, here's the, the Schultz Museum is like, here's the big spike wing.

[14:54] It's all about, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[14:56] It's all about the girl in the red truck.

[14:58] So you're saying, Stuart, that they sell, they buy a full pack of crayons, throw the rest away, and then resell the Purple Crayons.

Stuart Wellington

[15:04] I mean, they try to resell, they try to sell them at a deep discount, but nobody, nobody wants that shit.

Elliott Kalan

[15:09] They're there for the Purple Crayons.

[15:10] Come on.

[15:10] But you're right.

[15:11] Time works differently because he, the narrator disappears.

[15:14] Maybe he spends 50 years looking for the narrator until he finally comes to our world.

[15:19] Who knows?

[15:20] Anyway.

[15:20] Yeah.

[15:20] Testing the limits of his universe.

[15:22] He draws a door to the real world.

[15:24] Now he's live action.

[15:25] The moose accidentally follows.

[15:27] And when he shows up, he's a human being.

[15:30] And boy, are they.

Dan McCoy

[15:30] For reasons unexplained, other than, I assume, again, budget.

Elliott Kalan

[15:34] Yes.

[15:34] And they appear in a, in a public park.

[15:36] And boy, are they confused by the real world.

[15:39] Instant fish out of water comedy.

[15:40] They don't understand anything.

[15:42] Yes, Daniel?

Dan McCoy

[15:42] Well, this is what I wanted to ask.

[15:44] This is the problem that I often have in these movies.

[15:46] I think you've talked about it too, Elliot, where it's like, okay, what do you understand?

[15:50] What don't you understand?

[15:52] Yes.

[15:52] Yeah.

[15:52] Because it seems like he's a total naif.

[15:56] When he shows up, he doesn't know anything.

[15:58] And then, like, he does seem to understand how various things in the world work later on, including using, like, modern slang.

[16:05] And I don't know.

[16:06] It's always confusing to me where the line is drawn.

Elliott Kalan

[16:10] Yeah.

[16:11] And this, and very, the line being drawn is a big aspect of this movie.

[16:14] Yes.

[16:15] Because his purple crayon still works in the real world.

[16:18] Perfect.

[16:18] He can still draw things and they come to life.

[16:20] Also, Porcupine comes through and she's kind of like a British punk lady for some reason.

Dan McCoy

[16:24] Yeah, because she's, well, because she's a porcupine who's drawn purple.

[16:27] She has spiky purple hair now, which leads me to ask, is it okay that I have a crush on a porcupine?

[16:34] Guys, is that fine?

[16:35] Yeah, no, that's totally fine.

[16:36] You do, Dan.

Elliott Kalan

[16:36] As long as you don't act on it, that's fine.

[16:38] Sure.

[16:38] But this, it shows, I feel like it shows, again, the lack of imagination in the movie that it's like, this white guy needs some sidekicks.

[16:45] He's going to have a wisecracking black guy and a British lady.

[16:47] Those are the two kinds of funny characters that appear in mainstream American comedies, you know, and it's.

Stuart Wellington

[16:52] And that's Lil Ray, Rel Howley.

[16:55] Yes.

[16:55] Howry.

[16:56] Lil Rel Howley.

[16:57] Who I like a lot.

[16:58] Always fun.

Elliott Kalan

[16:59] Yeah.

[16:59] He's not someone I, I'm not unhappy to see him in a movie.

Dan McCoy

[17:02] He gets out of this movie as unscathed as anyone can, especially considering the dumb stuff he has to work with.

Elliott Kalan

[17:07] I feel like, I feel like Lil Rel Howley and Jermaine Clement get out of this movie pretty well.

[17:12] Yes, yeah.

[17:13] I think they both get out, and everybody else, with varying degrees.

[17:16] The kid performer is fine, you know.

[17:19] You're not going to, you're not going to roast a kid.

[17:21] I'm not going to roast a kid, not at all.

[17:22] And eat him.

[17:23] Surely not.

[17:24] Elliot.

[17:24] Elliot, you monster.

[17:25] What are you doing?

[17:26] Not unless my family crashed on a deserted island that we had to.

[17:29] We drew straws.

[17:30] My son lost.

[17:31] We're eating him.

[17:32] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[17:32] You can draw straws.

[17:33] Why didn't you just draw some food to eat, Elliot?

[17:36] That's a good point.

[17:37] I saw the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[17:38] Why didn't I use my purple crayon to just draw some straws so we could pick who we were going to eat?

[17:42] I drew them.

[17:43] I knew which one was the shortest.

[17:44] I didn't take it.

[17:45] Yeah.

[17:45] So.

[17:49] I abandoned my boy.

[17:52] Give me the blood.

[17:54] That's called, that's called There Will Be Purple Crayon.

[17:57] Yeah.

[17:58] So, we also meet.

[18:00] Hey, guys.

[18:00] What kind of character have we not seen in one of these movies before?

[18:03] Perhaps a put-upon widowed single mother.

[18:06] Have we ever seen one of those in a kid's movie like this before?

[18:09] Whose life is going to be turned upside down by this innocent?

[18:13] I don't think we've seen it.

[18:14] So, we meet Zooey Deschanel.

[18:15] She's a put-upon widow.

[18:17] Her name is Terry.

[18:18] She has a son named Mel, which I thought was just a funny name for them to give to a kid.

[18:21] Yeah.

[18:22] Mel, yeah.

[18:23] Short for Melbert.

[18:25] And he has-

[18:25] Melbert.

[18:26] He is seated next to his-

[18:28] He's actually short for Melina because he's named after Alfred Melina.

[18:31] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[18:31] Yeah, yeah.

[18:32] Yeah.

[18:33] Melina, his favorite character in Mortal Kombat.

[18:37] I think, wait.

[18:39] Is she the purple one?

[18:39] I think she's the purple one.

[18:41] Yeah.

[18:41] Has to be.

[18:42] Okay.

[18:42] Wheels within wheels.

[18:43] What a rich tax history.

[18:44] I also had to point out that he has, this young lad has an IF.

[18:48] Yes.

[18:48] That stands for imaginary friend.

[18:50] Oh, yeah.

[18:50] Which IF is probably a movie that Zachary Levi is jealous of and wishes he was in.

Elliott Kalan

[18:58] Yeah, or had made.

[18:59] Yeah.

[18:59] He does have an imaginary friend named Carl, an IF as you say.

[19:03] And they almost hit Harold and Moose with their car and their tire pops.

[19:08] And Mel, the son, sees Harold draw a spare tire into reality with his purple crayon.

[19:14] The imagination to draw a tire?

[19:16] Yeah, to draw a tire, yeah.

[19:18] The son guilts the mom into letting Harold and Moose stay in their garage storage room.

[19:22] As far as she knows, they are two madmen that they have picked up in the park that her son has suddenly taken a liking to.

Stuart Wellington

[19:29] Two grown men can stay in me, a single defenseless widow.

Elliott Kalan

[19:33] The idea that you and Dan are walking down the street and a car almost hits you and the kid goes, hey, they should stay at our house.

[19:41] And so are they Chanel?

Stuart Wellington

[19:42] But we're dressed in like fun outfits, right?

[19:44] Yeah, but you're also dressed.

Elliott Kalan

[19:45] Dan is in a big purple jumpsuit and, Stuart, you're in a sweater with moose things on it.

[19:49] And you keep saying, I'm a moose.

[19:51] I'm a moose.

[19:52] And I'm unnervingly childlike.

[19:54] Well, how is that different, Dan, from real life?

Dan McCoy

[19:57] I hope I'm nervingly childlike most of the time.

[20:00] The one thing I wanted to say about this.

[20:01] Sorry, my note.

Elliott Kalan

[20:02] Just to say, my note is Harold and Moose seem either high or crazy.

[20:05] That's what they say.

[20:05] But, Dan, what were you going to say?

Dan McCoy

[20:07] Well, since you bring it up, like this is the thing about this movie.

[20:10] All the characters who are painted as if like, oh, you know, like the world is too cynical.

[20:16] Like they can't handle this, the sweetness, these dreamers.

[20:20] What happened to their imagination?

[20:21] Yeah.

[20:22] They need to get their imagination back.

[20:23] All through the movie, I'm like, these supposedly cynical characters are treating these characters with a level of patience and forbearance that I could only hope to achieve.

[20:36] Like they are so nice.

[20:38] I'm like, these are totally reasonable reactions to these characters at all times.

Elliott Kalan

[20:42] Here's something I will say, considering this is a movie that the Harold and the Purple Crayon adaptation that ends in a fight between a dragon and a wizard shooting blasts a force out of his hands,

[20:51] is that it is a pretty gentle movie.

[20:53] I feel like for a movie that like grows up the character and tries to make it more cool, they do not have a scene where like Harold is thrown in – or they do have a scene where he's thrown in jail.

[21:03] He is thrown in jail.

[21:04] He is thrown in jail.

[21:04] But it's like not a – I could see a different movie where he gets thrown in jail and the other people in jail are threatening him or something like that.

[21:10] Like the characters are always in a pretty low level of danger, which I think is okay.

Stuart Wellington

[21:15] It's not like when he's in jail and he gets the Purple Crayon back to break out, he uses the Purple Crayon to like draw a gun or something.

[21:23] Yes.

[21:23] It just changes the stakes and the path of their lives forever.

Elliott Kalan

[21:27] And even the bad guy who gets a hold of the Purple Crayon, like he's kind of silly bad.

[21:33] So I will say the movie gets points for me for being gentle, not being too intense.

[21:38] I don't think it's doing a great job, but it's a gentle job.

Dan McCoy

[21:41] And on that specific note, no one draws like a weapon that is anything but silly.

[21:47] Like there's like a big like fantasy thing that you can't take seriously in the context of Jermaine Glen and McHadden.

Stuart Wellington

[21:54] He does like a dwarf and axe.

[21:57] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[21:57] That's probably the most menacing anything ever gets.

Stuart Wellington

[22:00] Yeah.

[22:00] So there is a lack of – I think at the very least –

[22:03] What's the most menacing they could have done?

[22:05] Like a chainsaw or a morning star?

Dan McCoy

[22:07] I mean the one thing that does disturb me and we're about to get there, so maybe I'm jumping ahead.

[22:11] But when he like – the kid creates this like spider fly that is apparently poisonous and is just unloosed upon the world.

[22:18] Yeah, and they just – and it doesn't matter.

Elliott Kalan

[22:19] It's a little bit.

[22:20] A little bit.

[22:21] But I think the – at least this movie feels like a kid's movie, which I do appreciate.

[22:25] I don't think it's – I don't think it's very good, but it's not trying to like –

[22:29] Harold and the Purple Crayon is finally like extreme for adults.

[22:31] Finally for adults.

[22:33] Yeah.

[22:34] I want to see Darth Vader chop dude's heads off.

[22:36] And there's no joke about like – I would have gotten so mad if –

[22:41] Later on, the crayon gets broken and the good guy and the bad guy both have halves.

[22:44] If there was a joke about like my piece is bigger than yours or something like that.

[22:47] There wasn't.

[22:48] There was literally a joke like that.

[22:50] Oh, I missed it then.

[22:51] I missed it.

[22:51] Domain said it.

[22:52] Oh, the movie, you lost me.

[22:54] Forget it.

[22:55] I was – I did – I must have missed that while I was not paying attention too closely.

[22:59] So anyway, we learned that Terry, the mom, she used to be a musician.

[23:01] But she put those dreams aside.

[23:03] She works in a store now.

[23:04] That night, Harold bonds with Mel.

[23:07] Mel introduces the concept of dead dads to Harold.

[23:11] Yeah.

[23:11] And Harold shows him the purple crayon and Mel makes this poisonous spider fly creature,

[23:16] which is the most dangerous thing in the movie but is considered just a comic relief joke.

[23:21] You know.

[23:21] Yeah.

[23:22] Porcupine trying to follow Harold's trail.

[23:25] She walks into a house and steals a jacket.

[23:27] Now, I guess the police are after her.

[23:29] But there's this subplot of like detectives that are on the case and that doesn't really amount to much.

Dan McCoy

[23:34] It doesn't really – even though one of them is Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's boss.

[23:39] So that was fun.

[23:39] But I mean the – yeah.

[23:41] Her plot seems to be how she slowly assembles a cute punk outfit.

[23:47] Honestly.

[23:48] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[23:48] I mean that's a plot we can get behind.

[23:50] Sure.

Stuart Wellington

[23:50] Yeah.

[23:50] What's – where does this take place?

[23:52] What's the town?

Elliott Kalan

[23:53] United States of America.

[23:55] Oh, okay.

[23:55] Any town.

[23:56] Interesting.

[23:56] I think it's called.

[23:56] Any town in the USA.

[23:58] Okay.

[23:58] Cool, cool, cool.

[23:59] Let me see it.

[24:00] I mean within short driving distance of wherever Crockett Johnson's house was I guess.

[24:06] So let's see.

[24:07] Looking at this.

[24:07] Which makes sense that they would appear there.

[24:09] He seems to have – Westport, Connecticut seems to be where he lived with his wife Ruth Krauss who wrote The Carrot Seed which he illustrated.

Dan McCoy

[24:15] Well, that blows my theory that any town stands for a New York town.

Elliott Kalan

[24:21] No, it seems to be a Connecticut town.

[24:23] So it really should be Acta Town.

[24:25] Yeah.

[24:26] So the next morning Harold has made a ton of pies because he does that in the book.

[24:30] He does a lot of pies.

[24:31] He's repainted the house purple.

[24:33] Terry does not like this.

[24:34] I understand that.

[24:35] And although I will say when I lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, you guys may remember this house.

[24:39] There was one brownstone that was painted sloppily a kind of pepto-bismal shade of pink.

[24:45] And everyone was like what an eyesore.

[24:48] Can you believe they did this?

[24:49] And they did such a sloppy job of it.

[24:51] But eventually new owners bought that house and they just – they stripped that paint and it just was brown again.

[24:56] And it was like a little – it was like a little bit of magic had died that day.

[25:00] You know, a little bit of the old New York was gone.

[25:02] So maybe Purple House is great.

[25:04] I don't know.

[25:05] Who knows?

[25:05] It's well painted.

[25:07] Yeah.

[25:07] In uniform.

[25:08] Yeah.

[25:09] Harold gives Mel half his crayon setting up the joke later that I missed that makes me mad.

[25:15] And Mel skips school to help Harold find his dad who he just knows as the old man.

[25:19] And this is – this I thought was going to be more of a runner-to-out of the movie but they just do it like once – a couple times.

[25:24] It's him just harassing any old man he sees assuming that that's the old man.

[25:28] And he's like, old man, look at my life.

[25:30] I'm a lot like you were.

[25:31] Yeah.

[25:31] And they're like, I never lived in a crayon world.

[25:33] But anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[25:33] And I would imagine most of these old men are on one hand annoyed to be bothered but also on the other hand they're excited to talk to somebody.

[25:41] Something's happened.

[25:42] Somebody's paying attention then.

Elliott Kalan

[25:43] Yeah.

[25:43] Oh, I'm an old man.

[25:45] Oh, you want to talk about World War II?

[25:48] Let me tell you about the 25 years I spent as a dress salesman.

[25:53] Oh, okay.

Stuart Wellington

[25:53] This is how Napoleon could have won.

Elliott Kalan

[25:57] Let me say some things to you that sound sweet but the more you listen, the more intolerant they become.

[26:03] All right?

[26:03] Do I have to stay for the whole thing?

[26:05] Yes.

[26:06] So they say, hey, let's go to the library.

[26:09] How are we going to get there?

[26:10] Harold draws up.

[26:11] You guessed it.

[26:12] Something really amazing.

[26:14] Roller skates and skateboards.

[26:15] And they just skate on over.

[26:18] At the library.

Dan McCoy

[26:19] Yes?

[26:19] I wanted to ask you, now that we're hitting the library, you mentioned how you're talking.

[26:23] Dan, don't hit the library.

[26:24] It's an important public space.

[26:25] Were you just talking to Danielle about this movie or did she see any of it?

[26:29] Because I was curious if she had thoughts on the library content of this film.

Elliott Kalan

[26:32] She did not.

[26:33] She did not see the movie.

[26:34] I only talked to her about it.

[26:35] So I didn't get her full take as a children's librarian about this.

Stuart Wellington

[26:39] I was just tired of watching the clips of the library stuff on YouTube or something.

[26:42] I mean, it's also probably the best stuff in the movies.

[26:44] It's all Jemaine Clement.

[26:45] It's all Jemaine Clement.

Elliott Kalan

[26:45] I mean, Jemaine Clement, like, the material is not amazing, but he's still funny.

[26:50] Like, he's just such a funny performer.

[26:52] And I'm sure there are jokes that are his jokes.

Stuart Wellington

[26:54] He's funny and he adds, like, a little extra level.

[26:56] Like, there's a moment when he sees them playing around with the purple crayon outside.

[27:01] And he, like, smashes his face into the window and his glasses all get fucked up.

[27:04] I thought that was pretty funny.

Elliott Kalan

[27:07] He is, I mean, he's playing, in some ways, a more innocent version of his character.

[27:13] It's him in Gentleman Broncos, right?

[27:14] Who's the, like, science fiction fantasy author, right?

[27:17] I didn't ever see that one.

[27:18] Me neither.

[27:19] Wow.

[27:19] Because here he is a librarian who also dreams of being a fantasy author.

[27:23] He's written a fantasy novel called, like, what, The Legend of Gagari or something like Gagarok?

[27:28] Yeah.

[27:28] Which is clearly his fantasy version of himself where he's in love with a fantasy version of

[27:32] Zooey Deschanel's character.

[27:33] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[27:34] I feel like I've played D&D with this guy before.

Dan McCoy

[27:36] Well, this guy is, like, he's, like, the not as frightening as he could be in real life, like, children's movie version of an incel.

[27:45] Like, that's his.

[27:45] Yeah, I guess so.

[27:46] I think he's kind of, like, you know, got this, like, power fantasy obsession that he's put into this world.

[27:54] And it's all about, like, you know, dreaming of Zooey Deschanel, who, you know, is constantly politely but firmly telling him to buzz off.

[28:02] I guess so.

Stuart Wellington

[28:03] But he's, like, a good-looking dude, and he's got an accent.

[28:04] I feel like he'd clean up in any town in Connecticut.

Elliott Kalan

[28:07] To be honest, if he was a little less, if he was a little less intense, he probably could get a date with Zooey Deschanel.

[28:12] Yeah.

[28:12] He's not a bad-looking guy.

[28:13] He's got a great accent.

[28:14] He's got, he's kind of fun to talk to.

[28:16] He's got a job.

[28:17] He's a little kooky.

[28:18] He's got a good job, a good job that shows that he knows how to handle children, you know.

[28:22] Yeah.

[28:22] And children need to be handled.

Dan McCoy

[28:23] I mean, he does have a bad habit of getting power mad as soon as he gets his hands on a purple crayon.

Elliott Kalan

[28:29] That's true.

[28:30] But how often are you going to find yourself in that situation, Dan?

[28:32] One time out of one, you know.

[28:34] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[28:35] Yeah, yeah.

[28:35] Dan's like, uh, I would be like Faramir in the books and just turn down the purple crayon.

[28:39] Whereas me, I'd be like, give me that shit.

[28:41] Oh, no, I'm in Mount Doom.

[28:43] I'm dead.

Elliott Kalan

[28:43] Oh, no.

[28:44] I must be gone.

[28:46] Gary, I think, yeah, Gary is the gentle children's movie villain, which is fine.

[28:51] Gary has a crush on Mel's mom.

[28:52] He agrees to help them look for Harold's dad.

[28:55] And Gary sees eventually Harold draw a plane to sky write a message to his dad that says, old man, call me.

[29:03] And then has Mel's mom's phone number underneath it.

[29:06] And he realizes, oh, that's Harold from the book, Harold and the Purple Crayon.

[29:10] With that crayon, he can make his fictional fantasy world real, which is kind of funny.

[29:15] It's like, well, why wouldn't you just draw copies of the book you want published?

[29:19] Like, you don't really want to be a fantasy barbarian.

[29:21] Like, you want – we see him on a Zoom call with a publisher, an editor who's rejected his book, which is crazy.

[29:26] They are going to send you a letter.

[29:27] Crazy to get that far.

[29:28] Yeah.

[29:28] They're not going to set up a meeting with you to tell you that they don't want to read the book.

[29:31] But the –

Stuart Wellington

[29:32] That shit doesn't play well in a movie, though.

[29:34] You want to –

Elliott Kalan

[29:36] But as someone who has written a novel, which I don't think will ever get published, I don't want to live the novel.

[29:41] I just want to get the story to other people.

[29:43] So it's just kind of funny that he's –

Stuart Wellington

[29:44] Maybe if you wanted to live the novel, it would get published, Elliot.

[29:47] Oh, that's a good point.

Elliott Kalan

[29:48] That's a good point.

[29:49] Live the novel.

[29:50] Be the novel.

[29:52] Be the novel.

[29:52] So I've got to slice myself into hundreds of pages.

[29:54] You got it, Dan.

[29:56] That's –

[29:56] Slice myself into pages.

[29:58] Slice.

[30:00] And so he sees – he goes, oh, I can make my fantasy world real with that.

[30:04] Our heroes, they fly around screaming for a while.

[30:07] They skylight the phone number.

[30:09] Go on, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[30:10] Well, I just – one other thing that said, you know, cheap movie to me was, you know, of course there's a payoff where Zooey Deschanel is getting like all the phone calls from old men.

[30:20] Old men, yeah.

[30:20] And there's like three of them.

Stuart Wellington

[30:22] Yes.

[30:23] A bigger movie would have like –

[30:24] She's like getting hundreds of these calls and you just see three.

[30:26] Yeah.

[30:27] Like we can't afford –

[30:28] Can we get AI to mimic old men?

[30:30] Nope.

[30:31] Can't do it.

[30:31] The old man budget was very low on this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[30:34] They're like –

[30:35] Yeah.

[30:35] Look, we needed to – if we were going to – if we were going to get these big name stars, we had to pull the money from somewhere and it's from the old man budget.

[30:41] Every movie has an old man fund to cover all the old men they'll need.

[30:45] Sometimes a movie.

[30:45] Sometimes a movie never digs into that fund and they can use it for a big party.

[30:48] Yeah.

[30:48] Like singles, swingers, they never really had to dig into the old man fund.

[30:53] Okay.

[30:53] A lot of movies with S and then NG in it somewhere, they don't have to dig into the old man fund.

[30:59] But sometimes a movie like – what's a movie set in an old folks home?

[31:04] Grumpy Old Men.

[31:05] Space Cowboys.

[31:06] Thank you.

[31:06] Space Cowboys.

[31:08] Those movies, they ran out of the old man fund and they just start pulling from other aspects.

[31:13] And Rap Party, not at all.

[31:15] They're not going to have fun.

[31:16] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[31:16] Because they don't like – all those old men don't like rap.

Elliott Kalan

[31:21] Once you get enough old men in there.

[31:22] I mean the fact is the OGs are getting pretty old.

[31:25] Yeah, that's true.

[31:25] The original generation of rappers.

[31:28] Considering my kids think of Snoop Dogg as an old man who sells fast food on television.

[31:32] Yeah.

[31:33] He's pretty good at it.

[31:34] He's very good at it.

[31:35] He's America's beloved, cute, violent rapper.

[31:38] Anyway, and we learn that when Moose feels like he's in danger, he briefly turns into a moose again.

[31:43] But then back to a human being.

Stuart Wellington

[31:45] Does that get talked about at all or just happens like two or three times and then forgotten?

[31:49] It sort of happens.

[31:50] It doesn't really pay off.

Elliott Kalan

[31:51] It pays off at the very end.

[31:52] It happens about two times and it pays off in helping to defeat the villain at the end.

[31:57] When he like blasts the villain across.

[32:00] He like headbutts him with his antlers and knocks him.

Dan McCoy

[32:02] He could have just pushed him as a human.

Elliott Kalan

[32:05] Yeah, but Moose is able to push someone much harder.

Stuart Wellington

[32:07] They need to make it a little more exciting.

[32:10] Extra push.

Elliott Kalan

[32:11] I mean that's what moose stands for.

Stuart Wellington

[32:14] Men only oscillate strongly every time this thing hits them with their antlers.

Elliott Kalan

[32:22] Yeah.

[32:23] That makes sense actually.

[32:24] The E stands for a lot of stuff.

[32:25] Yeah.

[32:26] Whereas human stands for humans unlike moose.

[32:31] Yeah, that makes sense.

[32:32] Ain't nudging.

[32:33] Yeah, yeah.

[32:34] That's good.

[32:34] You can't push someone as hard when you're a human.

[32:36] I'm like a moose.

[32:37] Yeah, you do it.

Dan McCoy

[32:39] Yeah, but this sudden mooseification causes problems with the plane.

[32:43] Like you burst through the plane and they have to parachute out.

[32:46] Which left me wondering, did this plane crash on people?

[32:49] Yes, it did.

[32:49] It crashed.

[32:50] It hurt somebody.

[32:51] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[32:52] And then it disappeared later when all the stuff disappeared momentarily and there was just dead bodies.

[32:56] And they were like, it's a mystery.

Stuart Wellington

[32:57] What crashed into this house?

[32:59] Killed all these people.

[33:00] And then the next year Mark Wahlberg makes a movie about how he would have piloted that plane safely.

[33:05] Yeah, I mean he didn't make a movie about that, right?

[33:07] It's just the thing he said.

[33:08] He's making a movie right now.

Elliott Kalan

[33:10] Like he and fucking Mel Gibson made a movie about that shit.

[33:12] Oh, I guess they're kind of like that.

[33:13] They're making a movie where they stop 9-11 because they're on the plane?

[33:16] Something like that, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[33:18] No, it's like there's a prisoner transport and the prisoner gets released, escapes or whatever.

[33:24] And I don't know.

[33:26] It's a danger plane situation.

[33:27] Isn't that what that changed?

Elliott Kalan

[33:28] It's a danger plane.

[33:29] Okay, danger plane.

[33:30] So is that kind of like the Jason Bateman movie that everyone in the world has seen 15 times?

[33:35] Yeah, carry on.

Stuart Wellington

[33:36] Kind of.

[33:37] Probably not.

[33:37] I haven't seen the other one because I'm not allowed to watch Mel Gibson movies in my house.

[33:43] Yeah.

[33:43] Because I get too worked up.

Elliott Kalan

[33:44] Someone's not getting dragged across concrete in his house.

Stuart Wellington

[33:47] Yeah, I had to watch that in a dumpster on my phone.

[33:54] So anyway.

[33:55] When they want to throw more garbage there, I'm like, I'm in here.

Elliott Kalan

[33:59] Occupied.

[34:00] Meanwhile at school, Mel is getting bullied and some kind of invisible force hits one of the bullies.

[34:06] We know it's his if.

[34:07] But he gets in trouble for it.

[34:10] I got to say, someone being bullied and then getting in trouble for being bullied, I relate to this.

[34:13] This movie saw my experience as a kid for sure.

[34:16] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[34:16] I thought it was funny that the bully's strategy was to bully him for being tardy.

Elliott Kalan

[34:20] Which is apparently, I think bullies care about things are different now.

[34:24] Well, as we're seeing in politics today, the way to harness the aggression of toxic men is to give them authority and put them in places of enforcement rather than to teach them or redeem them in some way.

[34:38] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[34:38] So Harold and the Purple Cran really captures this concept.

[34:41] Oh, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[34:41] They might as well call it Harold and the Maga Cran.

[34:43] Yeah, for sure.

[34:45] So Harold and Moose, they show up at the store Terry works at.

[34:48] She's like, I have to get Mel from school.

[34:51] I have to move all the stuff in the stock room.

[34:54] You do it for me and I'll go get my son, which is a bonkers plan.

[34:58] You don't know these guys.

[34:59] They don't work there.

[35:01] All you know about them is they seem strange.

[35:03] Of course, they cause havoc in the store.

[35:06] Someone goes up to Harold and is like, hey, do you sell pumas here?

[35:09] And he's like, I think so.

[35:10] So he draws a live puma, which is not purple.

[35:12] They didn't go all the way and dye a real-life puma purple for this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[35:16] Yeah, but I'm sure that was a possibility and they had to ask if you have budget.

Elliott Kalan

[35:19] But again, but the old man budget, they're like, there's nothing in the purple puma budget.

[35:22] Again, most movies never dip into the purple puma budget, so they can use it for other things.

[35:26] A Pink Panther budget, sometimes movies dip into that, but very rarely into a purple puma budget.

[35:31] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[35:32] So anyway.

[35:33] There's nothing more to say about it.

[35:34] No.

[35:35] It's just a true thing you said.

[35:36] Yeah, so there's hijinks.

[35:37] A true fact about Hollywood.

Elliott Kalan

[35:38] They cause havoc and she loses her job, which it seems funny to me that the manager was like,

[35:43] yeah, a puma got loose in the store because of these two people I've never seen before.

[35:47] You're fired, Zooey Deschanel.

[35:49] Like, they don't have to say, we know this.

[35:51] I don't know why they have to connect to her.

Stuart Wellington

[35:53] I think, I mean, this is one of many situations where their hijinks negatively affect the lives of other people.

[35:59] Yes.

[35:59] I'm assuming most of the staff.

[36:00] Like in the movie The Lives of Others, which is about a purple crayon that causes trouble in East Berlin.

Elliott Kalan

[36:03] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[36:04] Because the store, like, burns down or something, right?

[36:06] Like, the level of havoc is on pretty intense.

[36:09] I mean, it catches on fire.

[36:09] It doesn't burn down.

Elliott Kalan

[36:10] The lights fall down and, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[36:12] And then later on, there's a moment where the porcupine goes into a diner.

[36:18] And then despite the staff being firm but patient with her.

[36:23] Yeah.

[36:23] She causes all kinds of havoc and, like, destruction.

[36:27] And I'm like, these employees didn't deserve this shit.

Elliott Kalan

[36:31] No.

[36:31] We're definitely, it definitely feels like the movie in these moments is punching down.

[36:36] In the same way that, and I don't, again, we don't have to get into this.

[36:40] We don't need to be the kind of woke podcast that is no longer popular and will only get us in trouble.

[36:44] But the people working in service positions.

Dan McCoy

[36:46] That's not the reason we're not doing it.

[36:48] Oh, okay.

Elliott Kalan

[36:49] Yeah, I mean, there's now.

[36:51] Dan, we got to follow the money.

[36:52] It's all about being mean.

Stuart Wellington

[36:53] I think there was an executive order dissolving the rule that we have to allow wokeness in our podcast.

Elliott Kalan

[37:00] Yeah, the Biden ever rule.

[37:02] Oh, we, it was very sweet.

[37:04] This morning, we finally got, near the end of Biden's term, my younger son, who loves Joe Biden, he sent him a letter.

[37:12] And we were like, oh, okay.

[37:13] They never wrote back, and this morning we received finally his return letter, which they must have like sent out a ton of letter responses at the very, in January.

Dan McCoy

[37:20] I'm not answering this anymore.

[37:22] Peace and love.

[37:23] Peace and love.

[37:23] Yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[37:24] Just like Ringo.

[37:25] But he was so excited about it.

[37:27] It was really sweet.

Stuart Wellington

[37:28] Did it have like ice cream stains or something just to know for sure it was Joe?

[37:32] Oh, I wish.

Elliott Kalan

[37:33] I wish, yeah.

[37:34] No, it was pretty much a form letter for kids, but then signed at the bottom.

[37:37] So, the, but anyway, was it?

[37:41] Oh, yeah.

[37:41] So, anyway, I was just going to say, the people working in service positions at these stores and restaurants are all people of color.

[37:47] And it reminded me of an episode of Seinfeld where the job of a person of color is to be a security guard or a manager or a desk clerk who rolls their eyes at these crazy white people who are causing them trouble.

Stuart Wellington

[37:56] Well, there's, I was, I was watching, I was watching a show where a character gets rejected from going into a country club.

[38:04] And they're like giving the maitre d' so much shit.

[38:07] And I'm like, the maitre d' is not rich.

[38:10] Like, you're treating them like they're like a rich person, but they just work there.

[38:14] That's their job or else they lose their job.

Elliott Kalan

[38:16] Yeah, what are you, are you Michael Moore going in and bothering security guards for doing what they've been paid to do?

Stuart Wellington

[38:20] I'm like, like, what, it's a, it's charming when Axel Foley does it.

[38:23] He's allowed to.

[38:25] Everybody else, no way.

Elliott Kalan

[38:27] And I think, and I also don't want to say, I'm not saying don't aim for diversity in your movies because characters are going to get annoyed or anything like that.

[38:35] And I'm just saying that I am agreeing with Stewart's case that the people who live in this world are being very patient with these crazy, with these, with these, I shouldn't say crazy.

[38:44] They're being very patient with these difficult characters.

[38:48] And the difficult characters only escalate the situation.

[38:50] It's not a matter of they're doing something innocent and someone misunderstands.

Dan McCoy

[38:54] There's a swath of chaos in the city behind them.

Elliott Kalan

[38:57] Yes, which can be fun, which is not a, not a bad thing.

[38:59] But when they, when you're presenting them as like, oh, these are the innocents of the world and all, it's just chaos behind them.

[39:05] Anyway, but Zoe takes losing her job pretty well.

[39:08] They're walking around the city.

[39:10] They want her to play piano like she always dreamed of doing.

[39:12] So they draw a piano for her.

[39:13] She plays some classical music in public.

[39:16] Meanwhile, these, these two cops are looking for Porcupine and the other heroes.

[39:20] And this, well, this will kind of pay off later, but they're not big characters.

Dan McCoy

[39:23] I just wanted to say that they, there was someone on Letterboxd who pointed out that Zoe Deschanel can play piano,

[39:28] but the movie shoots it as if she can.

[39:31] It's just kind of funny.

Elliott Kalan

[39:32] They're playing a different song than she's playing.

[39:34] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[39:34] Will she play like the intro to that Linkin Park song?

[39:37] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[39:37] Well, eventually, I know, I don't remember the first song that she plays,

[39:40] but then eventually she's playing Hungarian Rhapsody number two,

[39:43] the Friends List song that's in a lot of cartoons.

[39:44] Get someone in there for that.

[39:45] Which is a hard song, but like, it was very funny because I was like, oh yeah,

[39:52] I don't know what song she's playing.

[39:53] Like the hand motions don't really seem to match, but, and as you said,

[39:56] Porcupine for no reason at all terrorizes a restaurant.

[40:00] Gary finds Harold and Moose and he goes, hey, I found your old man.

[40:04] And he explains to them about the book they came out of and that the crayon is made of pure imagination.

[40:08] They're reunited with Porcupine and the police arrest them,

[40:11] throw them in jail, but they escape using the magic crayon.

[40:15] Again, it's fine.

[40:16] It would have been pretty crazy if he made a gun and they accidentally shot someone.

Stuart Wellington

[40:19] And they're like, I can't believe we did this.

[40:21] Oh my God.

[40:22] But we've raised the stakes.

[40:23] If we don't, if we give someone else the gun, they'll use it on us.

[40:26] Just draw a dead perpetrator.

[40:29] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[40:29] Draw a gun in his hand.

[40:31] Draw a dead bad guy with a gun.

[40:34] Then the cops are like, we know all about this.

[40:37] We'll help you with it.

[40:37] Now you're on our side.

[40:40] So the next day, Mel is at school and he scares his bullies by drawing his imaginary friend who is a dragon.

[40:46] This dragon is pretty cool.

[40:48] Look, dragons are cool.

[40:50] There's nothing wrong.

[40:51] He's got his own little Lockheed that is his best friend.

[40:54] Later on, the dragon burps for no reason.

Stuart Wellington

[40:56] Does he learn a valuable lesson not to deal with his bullies by creating something that's dangerous and deadly?

[41:04] No.

[41:05] Okay.

[41:06] No, he said he meets force with force.

Elliott Kalan

[41:08] No, he said that if met with violence, he responds with violence.

[41:13] Yeah.

[41:13] Or at least with fear.

[41:14] When met with fear, he responds with fear.

[41:16] He believes in fight fire with fire and then he starts singing the song fight fire with fire by Metallica.

[41:21] That's pretty cool.

[41:22] It's pretty rocking.

[41:23] It's pretty awesome.

[41:24] Yeah, it's pretty cool.

[41:25] That moment when he goes, we all shall die.

[41:26] It's a scary moment in a song.

[41:28] I'm not used to being scared by a song.

[41:31] Porcupine very unsafely drives them in a four-person motorcycle to Crockett Johnson's house.

[41:38] And Gary sees them along the way and follows, I guess.

[41:43] And Terry is tracking them on her phone.

[41:44] They end up at the Crockett Johnson house.

[41:46] It's a little museum now where Harold, they open the door.

[41:49] This lady docent is like, oh, are you here for the tour?

[41:53] He's like, well, we're here to see Crockett Johnson.

[41:55] He goes, oh, he died.

[41:56] And Harold immediately turns around and walks away.

Dan McCoy

[41:59] Yes, yeah.

[42:00] They do remedy this at the end of the movie, but I had the same reaction where I'm like, well, I mean, if you think of this man as your dad, you don't want to see anything about him?

[42:09] He's like, oh, no.

[42:10] He's not here.

[42:11] He's not interested.

[42:11] Peace.

[42:12] I'm out.

Elliott Kalan

[42:13] Harold out.

[42:13] You see him?

[42:14] No, thanks.

[42:15] I didn't know I was going to have to read information plaques.

[42:18] Too bad.

[42:19] Send it to me as a reel, please.

[42:22] Terry shows up.

[42:23] She gets mad.

[42:24] She thinks Harold is just making their lives more difficult.

[42:26] Objectively, he is.

[42:28] And she goes, stay away from my son.

[42:30] Harold is shattered and he loses his faith in his ability to create things.

[42:34] All of his creations disappear in a puff of purple smoke, including porcupine and moose.

[42:39] Including the wreckage of that plane.

[42:41] Yeah.

[42:42] Now he's all on his own, leaving a mystery that will never be solved.

[42:44] And now he is distraught.

[42:46] Even the purple tire on the car disappears.

Dan McCoy

[42:49] I have two things about – well, number one is my questions about the metaphysics of this where he loses the – they disappear.

Elliott Kalan

[42:55] Well, I think that can be answered with the fact that it's a magic crayon.

Dan McCoy

[42:58] Okay.

[42:59] Well, they disappear once he loses faith.

[43:02] But then he still uses the crayon later on to make stuff and it works.

[43:06] There's no moment where he gets faith back.

[43:09] But then they come back only when needed at the very end of the climax.

[43:14] And also, what matter of faith are we talking about here?

[43:18] Because if it's just faith in the fact that the magic crayon works, he knows it does.

[43:22] There's proof of that.

[43:24] I think it's more easy to lose it.

Elliott Kalan

[43:25] I think he's more losing faith in his own imagination to solve problems.

Dan McCoy

[43:29] Yeah.

[43:30] Or to –

[43:30] But again, that doesn't destroy everything.

Stuart Wellington

[43:33] So, Dan, have you ever seen – we've been talking about Alfred Molina a lot today.

[43:37] Yeah.

[43:37] Have you ever seen the movie Spider-Man 2?

[43:39] I am familiar with –

[43:40] See, Quincy Quincy and Spider-Man 2 where Spidey loses powers and he could not be happy.

[43:44] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[43:45] He's wandering around.

[43:46] He doesn't break up a mugging.

[43:48] He ignores the mugging.

[43:48] That is possibly my favorite thing I've ever seen in the movie.

[43:52] He's just bopping to raindrops.

[43:54] Keep falling on my head.

[43:55] Yeah.

[43:56] This movie takes one of those moments.

[44:00] What's that – I'm not a professional screenwriter, guys.

[44:02] Spider-Man no more.

[44:03] What's the – yeah, what's the name of that kind of a bit?

[44:06] Is that a Spider-Man bit?

[44:07] Yeah, Spider-Man bit.

Elliott Kalan

[44:08] A hero just loses his powers for a little while because –

[44:10] What would you call it in like Joseph Campbell or like –

[44:13] Crisis of Faith.

[44:13] Yeah, Crisis of Faith, Rock Bottom.

[44:16] This is your end of Act 2.

[44:17] Oh, no.

[44:17] Actually, it's not your end of Act 2, Rock Bottom.

[44:19] It's your middle of Act 2, Crisis of Faith that leads to the end of Act 2.

[44:22] Oh, no, the hero is trapped and can't get out of it.

[44:24] That's the Rock Bottom.

[44:26] But yeah, it's the Crisis of Faith.

Stuart Wellington

[44:27] I mean he's trapped in this fleshy prison that we call the real world.

Elliott Kalan

[44:30] We all are and that we call our bodies.

[44:32] Someday we'll be free of them and one with that electron field that makes up the universe.

[44:36] I was trying to explain this to my kids.

[44:38] My younger one, he said, he said,

[44:39] I think heaven is you get to play video games all the time and you only eat ice cream.

[44:42] And I was like, hmm, that's a pretty limited idea of what a transcendent heaven would be.

[44:47] Dante's depiction of paradise involves more of a oneness of the soul with God, a closeness to God,

[44:53] a proximity that fills your soul and fills you with the joy of being just one with creation.

[44:59] And this did not mean much to him, a six-year-old.

[45:01] So I guess he's not ready for –

Dan McCoy

[45:03] What if he told him he'd be one with ice cream?

Elliott Kalan

[45:06] Then he would love it, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[45:08] Imagine having all possible information immediately shoved into your head and having your consciousness shattered immediately.

Dan McCoy

[45:14] Well, that doesn't sound great.

[45:16] Oh, okay.

[45:16] The other thing I wanted to say about this moment though, very quickly, was I just – while watching it, I suddenly found it very funny.

[45:21] If the movie just became about, yeah, real life will crush you.

[45:26] Like, you know, he doesn't get –

[45:28] Yeah, he never regains his faith.

[45:29] He never regains his faith.

Elliott Kalan

[45:30] He gets a job.

[45:32] He becomes a man in a gray flannel suit.

[45:33] He starts a family.

[45:34] He's never happy.

[45:35] He does not talk about his past.

[45:36] He's Don Draper essentially.

[45:38] Exactly.

[45:39] Don Draper.

[45:39] Yeah, a road not taken for Harold.

[45:42] Oh, well, maybe next time.

[45:43] So – because instead what happens is Gary picks up Harold.

Stuart Wellington

[45:48] Man, if Don Draper had that fucking purple crayon, he would have destroyed.

[45:52] Oh, man.

[45:53] Oh, wow.

[45:53] He would have crushed it.

[45:54] The things he would have made.

Elliott Kalan

[45:54] Yeah.

[45:55] What an imagination.

[45:56] And then eventually he'd steal the idea of another guy.

[45:58] He'd have to hire him to make up for the fact that he stole that idea.

[46:00] Yeah.

[46:00] Oh, man.

[46:02] Harold – Mel sees Harold and Gary drive by and he goes, Harold's in trouble.

[46:06] And mom is like, that's it.

[46:08] Give me your whistle that you used to summon your imaginary friend, Carol.

[46:10] Like we're not dealing with this anymore.

Dan McCoy

[46:11] Well, she also says, I should have believed you earlier.

[46:14] I'm like, no.

[46:15] No, you shouldn't have believed your kid when you said all this magic crayon garbage.

Elliott Kalan

[46:20] I thought she said that later.

Dan McCoy

[46:22] No, when she hands him the whistle, I'm pretty sure.

[46:24] Later when she hands him – oh, yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[46:25] She says I should have – well, she should have believed him because it was true.

[46:27] But you're right.

[46:27] If your kid comes up and goes, my imaginary whistle calls a dragon and my friend has a magic crayon that can make things real.

Stuart Wellington

[46:33] The thing about imaginary friends is I'm fucking sick of this shit.

[46:36] Like as soon as this kid tells you he has an imaginary friend, you're like, oh, yeah, let me give him a little pet.

[46:42] And he's like, you're touching his butt.

[46:43] I'm like, come on, kid.

[46:44] Meet me fucking halfway.

[46:45] Feels like a trap.

Elliott Kalan

[46:47] I'm thinking more about eventually he's going to go to college.

[46:49] He's not going to bring a dragon with him.

[46:50] Now she's stuck taking care of a dragon.

[46:52] Yes, thank you.

[46:53] It's not his imaginary friend anymore.

[46:54] It's hers.

[46:54] She didn't want that responsibility.

[46:56] When he's in college, she wants to be out and about, living and loving.

[47:00] You can't take a man home for a one-night stand and have a dragon in your house.

[47:03] I'm sorry.

Stuart Wellington

[47:03] If movie trends have taught me anything, mommy horny.

[47:06] Right, guys?

[47:07] That's what I've heard.

Elliott Kalan

[47:09] Yep.

[47:09] Hashtag.

[47:09] Yeah, hashtag it.

[47:10] So Harold gives Gary the crayon because Gary is like, I can use this power for real.

[47:15] Gary seemingly needlessly traps Harold in a dungeon from his fantasy novel and declares revenge on the world.

[47:22] Mel shows up and Gary shackles him too.

[47:24] And again, this all seems unnecessary, really.

[47:27] All he really wants is to be a novelist.

[47:29] After trapping him, Gary – and he traps him at the edge of a pit.

[47:32] He dreams too big.

[47:33] Yeah.

[47:33] Gary – he flew too close to the imaginary sun.

[47:36] Gary draws a chariot and rides off.

[47:38] And Mel tells Harold –

Stuart Wellington

[47:39] Daedalus would have drawn some fucking badass wings if he had that purple crayon, right?

[47:42] Oh, you know it.

[47:43] You better believe it.

[47:43] Icarus would have been fine.

[47:45] Probably still would have gotten all roasted up, but that's okay.

Elliott Kalan

[47:47] Oh, Icarus would have found some dumb thing to get hurt doing.

[47:50] Man, what a moron.

[47:51] He had a limited time.

[47:51] He's an idiot.

[47:52] He was an idiot, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[47:54] Look, Dad, I could fly a million miles up.

[47:56] Like, calm down, kid.

Elliott Kalan

[47:57] Although, to be fair, you're a teen or a young adult.

[48:00] Your dad tells you don't do that.

[48:01] You're going to do it, you know?

[48:03] Daedalus should have said, hey, be sure to fly super close to the sun.

[48:06] Daedalus would have been like, oh, I'm hovering just over the water, dude.

[48:10] You can't tell me what to do.

Stuart Wellington

[48:11] Oh, yeah.

[48:12] I mean, he's a great inventor.

[48:14] Probably a bad dad, right?

[48:15] Is that the long and short thing?

Elliott Kalan

[48:17] I can't imagine he's got the time to give his son a real moral upbringing

[48:20] when he's busy building a labyrinth to trap a bull man who eats virgins.

Dan McCoy

[48:24] But also starting with, like, hey, why not try these untested wings with me?

Elliott Kalan

[48:30] Dan, it was a prison break scenario.

[48:31] It wasn't like they were just at his lab.

[48:33] They're trying to get out of the labyrinth, you know?

[48:35] Not everybody has a Jennifer Garner to help them out of a labyrinth, you know?

Stuart Wellington

[48:38] I think he also built a bunch of shit that Kratos used in the God of War games.

[48:43] I got to double check it.

Elliott Kalan

[48:44] Or is that Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth?

[48:45] Am I getting my Jennifer?

[48:46] Jennifer Connelly.

[48:47] Jennifer Connelly.

[48:47] Yeah.

[48:48] Not everyone has a Jennifer Connelly to get them out of a labyrinth.

[48:50] Sometimes you got to slap a bunch of wings together.

Stuart Wellington

[48:51] Maybe Jennifer Connelly is Jennifer Garner's alias.

[48:55] Oh.

Dan McCoy

[48:57] The listeners at home, Stuart just tipped his glasses down as looking over them.

Elliott Kalan

[49:02] Give this man a Pulitzer.

[49:03] Anyway, Mel tells Harold, he's like, no, you made my life better.

[49:06] You need to believe in yourself.

[49:07] And Harold's like, I don't even have my crayon anymore.

[49:09] But Mel has his half of the crayon.

[49:11] And they escape in a hot air balloon just as they do in the much better Paddington 2.

[49:16] Terry sees Harold's magic is returning all over.

[49:19] And Harold and Gary, they meet up in the public park.

[49:21] They have a crayon object battle.

[49:22] They're drawing stuff that they fight with.

Dan McCoy

[49:24] Gary's dressed up like a wizard with long hair.

[49:26] Yeah, I was wondering if you liked this part, Stuart, because it's basically a wizard's battle.

Stuart Wellington

[49:31] I do like a wizard's duel, but I feel like, I mean, the bar is sword in the stone wizard's battle.

Elliott Kalan

[49:37] Yes, that's the best wizard's battle.

[49:39] Unfortunately, this doesn't measure up.

[49:42] No, no.

[49:43] That's too bad.

[49:43] That is a great wizard's battle, though.

[49:45] That's the best one.

Dan McCoy

[49:45] But Mad Madam M is also purple.

Elliott Kalan

[49:49] Maybe that's where her power comes from, Dan, from the magic crayon.

[49:52] That's Dan's unified theory of sword in the stone and Harold and the purple crayon.

[49:56] It's the same universe, everybody.

[49:57] Dan loves that shit.

[49:59] He loves it when you combine a bunch of movies together.

Dan McCoy

[50:02] It's probably referring to my San Francisco presentation where I made fun of fan theories, possibly too angrily for the audience.

Elliott Kalan

[50:10] It was a little aggressive.

[50:12] I think the audience was a little.

[50:13] My presentation was also not my best.

[50:15] And so I feel like I didn't set you up super properly.

[50:17] But your presentation was a little hostile.

Dan McCoy

[50:19] But, you know, Stuart cleaned up.

[50:23] It was like when, you know, the opening comic at The Daily Show was mean to everyone.

[50:29] So when John came out, everyone loved him.

[50:31] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[50:32] Dan got everybody riled up and then I calmed them down.

[50:36] Talking about the greatest city in the world.

[50:39] But let's go on.

[50:40] Let's move on.

Elliott Kalan

[50:40] At some point during the battle, Gary swallows the crayon.

[50:44] And I couldn't remember if that was accidental or on purpose.

[50:46] On purpose, yeah.

[50:47] It was on purpose.

[50:48] And he gains the power to become his fantasy character, good guy, Roar.

[50:51] So now he's like a full, you know, long-haired wizard.

[50:54] Terry shows up and she rejects Gary.

[50:56] He gets mad and turns the park into a lava field.

[50:58] And that's when Terry says to Mel, I should have believed you back when you told me that your friend had a magic crayon that makes objects out of nothing.

[51:06] She gives him back the whistle.

[51:07] He calls back his dragon friend, Carl, who fights Gary.

[51:09] This is the moment where I turned to my wife because she walked in the room and I said, did you think the Harold and Purple Crayon movie was going to end in a battle between a dragon and a man shooting power bolts out of his hands?

[51:19] And she said no.

[51:21] Gary wins the battle against the dragon.

[51:23] Harold says, I believe in myself and I believe in my friends.

[51:26] And Moose and Porcupine show up to help him.

[51:28] Porcupine finds Harold's crayon half, which is in a crag of a rock that is, you know, thrust up through the earth.

[51:35] Harold draws the spider fly from earlier, which flies into Gary's throat.

[51:39] And then Moose turns into a moose and headbutts him.

[51:42] And the crayon comes flying out, the spider fly, and all the damage that Gary caused goes away.

[51:46] All the stuff he created leaves.

[51:48] And Gary is sad.

[51:49] And Harold draws a door to Gary's fantasy world so he can live there forever.

[51:53] And Gary steps through and then the dragon just destroys the door.

[51:56] So he can never come back.

Stuart Wellington

[51:57] He can never return.

[51:58] And it's like, I mean, I'm assuming the rest of it is like that.

[52:02] The Steve Kostansky short, W is for Wish from, what is that?

[52:07] ABC's of Death.

[52:08] Yeah, ABC's of Death.

[52:09] Yeah, that's great.

Elliott Kalan

[52:10] And we'll see.

[52:11] There's a mid-credits scene, Stuart, that I think you didn't watch.

[52:16] Our heroes, they go back to the Crockett Johnson house.

Stuart Wellington

[52:19] Elliot, you say that as a joke.

[52:20] But you know there's no fucking way I watched anything as soon as the credits started.

[52:26] Oh, I know.

[52:26] But also now I think that you just are just like, well.

Dan McCoy

[52:29] This is my thing.

[52:30] It's my thing.

[52:31] Roulette.

[52:32] I don't have to do it because it's funnier if I don't.

Stuart Wellington

[52:34] Kick up my fucking heels.

[52:36] Start scrolling.

Elliott Kalan

[52:38] So the heroes go back to the Crockett Johnson house.

[52:41] They now deign to take the tour and look around inside.

[52:45] And Terry tells Harold that the old man would have been proud of him.

[52:47] And it's so weird.

[52:49] He says to the lady, he's like, oh, yeah, I'm Harold.

[52:52] And she just hands him an envelope with a letter to Harold.

[52:55] Like that Crockett Johnson.

[52:56] She's got a fucking million of them.

Dan McCoy

[52:58] Joe Clarity in Back to the Future Part 2.

[53:00] He's like, oh, it was foretold.

Elliott Kalan

[53:02] Well, we've been holding on to this letter for 50 years or 30 years or whatever.

[53:06] But the idea that the character – Crockett Johnson is like someday the character I invented may come to this world and try to find me.

[53:14] So I better leave him a letter.

[53:16] And the letter, we hear it in voiceover.

[53:17] It explains that Harold is meant to inspire others to live with more imagination or something.

[53:22] It's such empty kind of boilerplate nothingness.

[53:26] And Harold and Moose and Porcupine, they draw a new door.

[53:29] They go back to his crayon world.

[53:30] And they start drawing again.

[53:32] And meanwhile, in the real world, Mel still has a pet dragon that lives in their house.

[53:36] Daniel, you want to say something before the post-credits sequence?

Dan McCoy

[53:38] Yeah, before the post-credits.

[53:39] You mentioned in passing – I wrote it down, the actual line because –

[53:45] Sure, go for it.

[53:45] You mentioned the response but not the line.

[53:48] There's a point where Harold says, I wonder what the old man would say if he could see me now.

[53:54] And I'm like, you don't want to ask this question, movie version of Harold and the Purple Crayon.

[53:59] No, because he would say, what did you do to my book?

Stuart Wellington

[54:01] Exactly.

[54:01] Why?

[54:02] Why?

[54:03] What?

[54:03] What is this bullshit that you added?

[54:05] Well, that's the reason.

[54:06] Like the reason why the original book sucks is because he didn't have the imagination to create a world like we see in the movies.

[54:14] With dragons and stuff, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[54:15] He does say, if he could see me now, that old man of mine.

[54:19] I'm eating fancy food and drinking fancy wine.

[54:22] And then he just bursts into the whole song and then it's the best – you got a guy's got a legend.

[54:27] It's one of the best renditions of that song from Sweet Charity that I've ever seen on film.

[54:32] And so he goes back to his world.

[54:34] They're going to have – now they – and Mel has given him a box of crayons.

[54:37] So now he can draw with many colors.

[54:39] Oh, boy.

[54:40] Ooh, finally.

[54:41] What amazing stuff is he going to do.

Stuart Wellington

[54:42] Another reason why the original book sucks is because it only has one color.

[54:45] Only one crayon.

Elliott Kalan

[54:46] Yeah.

[54:47] And so the post-credits sequence we then see, Gary is in the fantasy world.

[54:53] Thank you.

[54:53] And he finds the fantasy version of Terry and she reveals that she is in a relationship already.

[54:58] And the wizard she's in a relationship with takes her away.

[55:01] And Gary goes, oh, yeah, well, I was pretty busy already too.

[55:04] So even the bonkers reward that this character has been given of he can finally live out his fantasy world is undercut and this character is punished.

[55:17] It felt like –

[55:17] Yeah, yeah.

[55:17] He's like, there's time now and his glasses are all broken up.

[55:21] It just felt unnecessary, you know.

Dan McCoy

[55:23] I think the movie didn't want to give him the win of like – yeah, like this – he gets the girl in a way of, you know, like that – I don't know.

[55:34] The realization of that power fantasy was a little too much for the movie, I think, without that happening.

Elliott Kalan

[55:42] I guess the movie fainted towards the idea of the redemptive power of love and happiness and then said, nope.

[55:48] And then there's a second – there's a second – you guys missed this.

Stuart Wellington

[55:53] There's a second post-credits scene where he is in his therapist's office.

[55:58] His therapist is like an orc or some shit.

[56:00] And he's talking about how, oh, he like needs to learn that like just because he's projected this fantasy on someone doesn't mean that he is owed anything.

[56:09] He really needs to just work on himself.

[56:11] Yeah.

[56:11] And then – wait.

Elliott Kalan

[56:12] And you missed the post-post-post-credits sequence.

[56:14] Oh, okay.

[56:15] Yeah, that makes sense.

[56:15] Where he is then – he's come to peace with himself and he's realized I'll just – my fantasies have to stay fantasies.

[56:21] They can't be real.

[56:22] He's masturbating.

[56:23] And even in his erotic fantasy in his masturbating, she dumps him and walks away.

[56:28] And he looks towards the camera and he goes, I just can't win.

[56:31] And then Iris is out.

Dan McCoy

[56:32] Then there's another scene after that where he learns to eroticize the rejection.

[56:36] Yeah.

[56:36] And so that's what actually gets him off is being rejected by –

Elliott Kalan

[56:40] Oh, and that's how leading to the sequel Harold and the Purple Cuck.

[56:42] Yeah, of course.

Dan McCoy

[56:42] I got to admit the thing that confused me about this post-credits scene is like she's like, I'm dating this guy.

[56:52] And I'm like, is this guy someone that we saw in a non-fantasy version earlier in the movie?

[56:57] Like it just seemed to be like a guy.

[56:59] No, that's true.

Elliott Kalan

[56:59] It just comes out of nowhere.

Dan McCoy

[57:00] Yeah.

[57:01] Yeah.

[57:01] And they don't even list who the actor is in the credits because I looked at – because I was trying to figure out whether it was a callback of some kind.

[57:08] Yeah, you were trying to find his app.

Elliott Kalan

[57:09] Maybe it's a friend of Jemaine Clements or a friend of the director's or I don't know.

[57:12] Yeah.

[57:12] But yeah, it's not – I don't think it is like a version of someone we've seen.

[57:16] It's just a random –

[57:17] It's not like an Easter egg or something.

[57:18] Yeah.

[57:18] It's just a character from his book, I guess.

[57:19] So that's the story of Harold and the Purple Crayon.

[57:22] It taught us all to embrace our imagination and our inner crayon.

[57:25] Now it's time for a little thing we call Final Judgment.

[57:28] Our inner crayon.

Dan McCoy

[57:29] Are we going to use the crayon to say this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like?

Elliott Kalan

[57:37] So the crayon segment, it didn't really that different.

[57:40] It's just the barest –

Dan McCoy

[57:41] No, it's basically the same segment but with like a crayon skin on it, I would say.

Stuart Wellington

[57:47] Crayon skin.

[57:47] Ooh, skin to crayon.

[57:48] Horrible.

[57:50] Did I ever tell you about when I was a little kid?

[57:52] No.

Elliott Kalan

[57:54] Well, you have told us about when you were a little kid, but I don't know if it's this story.

Stuart Wellington

[57:56] So when I was a little kid, my little brother and I would stay with my grandma.

[58:01] And my grandma, or Boucha as we called her because she's an old Polish lady,

[58:06] she would – when our crayons would get small or run low,

[58:11] she would take the shavings of it like the wrapper

[58:14] and she would have us bury them in the garden.

[58:19] And then when we would wake up the next day, there would be new crayons sticking up out of the dirt.

[58:23] It was really cool.

[58:24] That's cool.

[58:24] That's really fun.

[58:25] That's cool.

Dan McCoy

[58:25] Sweet memory.

[58:27] Sweeter than anything in this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[58:28] Before we go to final judgments, how long do you think this movie was in development for?

[58:33] How long?

[58:33] Since the 70s.

[58:35] Not that far back.

[58:36] Whoa.

[58:36] Only since 1994.

[58:39] Okay.

[58:39] So what we saw was only the product of 30 years of multiple people trying to make this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[58:43] Who would have been – who would have been – what is it?

[58:47] Larry in the Purple – what's the name of the movie?

[58:50] Harold.

[58:52] Larry Fine in the Purple Correa.

[58:54] Who would have played – so it's the 90s.

[58:56] Who?

[58:56] Seinfeld?

[58:57] Who was going to play Harold?

[58:58] That's a good question.

Elliott Kalan

[58:59] So they didn't have casting.

[59:00] So looking at Wikipedia, in 1994, Michael Tolkien, the writer of The Player, was supposed to write it.

[59:05] And Henry Selleck was going to direct it.

[59:07] Maybe it would have been a stop motion movie.

[59:08] Maybe live action.

[59:09] But then eventually that changed and Spike Jones was brought in at a certain point.

[59:13] That makes sense.

[59:14] Yeah, he's got some whimsy.

[59:15] Then eventually David O. Russell was brought in to help rewrite it.

[59:17] That seems like a mistake.

[59:19] Eventually Spike Jones abandons the project.

[59:21] 2010, the project was picked up again.

[59:24] And that was going to be written by Josh Klausner who wrote Date Night and Shrek Forever After.

[59:29] Yeah.

[59:30] And eventually another writer was brought in.

[59:33] Then in the 2020s –

[59:34] Cormac McCarthy.

[59:35] We get to the current version of it as the new screeners were brought on.

[59:39] And Carlos Saldanha – Saldanha was – I don't know how to pronounce his name.

[59:44] Saldanha?

[59:45] Is that a tilde or something?

[59:46] It doesn't have a tilde.

[59:47] No, but it's a – he's from Brazil, so I think it's a Portuguese name as opposed to a Spanish name.

[59:51] But – and eventually it was that.

[59:53] But it just – it seems like such a – to spend – for this movie to have been in development in many ways for 30 years and to have ended up with probably the most straightforward kind of obvious version.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:01] The least interesting version that any of those people would have like made, I think, at least a more interesting version.

[1:00:08] Not necessarily.

[1:00:08] Maybe not the best.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:09] I mean I didn't love Spike Jones' Where the Wild Things Are movie.

[1:00:13] But it's more interesting, certainly.

[1:00:15] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:16] Yeah.

[1:00:16] Okay.

[1:00:17] Well, returning to Final Judgments.

[1:00:18] Final Judgments.

[1:00:20] Here's the thing.

[1:00:21] I didn't like this movie.

[1:00:22] I'm not going to say that.

[1:00:23] I think it's a bad, bad movie.

Stuart Wellington

[1:00:24] You loved it.

[1:00:25] You didn't like it.

[1:00:26] You loved it.

[1:00:26] Oh, wow.

[1:00:27] He's a reality screen judge.

[1:00:28] I think it's a bad, bad movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:29] But I do think that had this not been a Herald on the Purple Crayon movie, had it been the same movie based on nothing, like –

[1:00:39] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:40] Gerald and the Red Marker.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:41] Yeah.

[1:00:42] On the scale of like things we watch for the show.

[1:00:44] Yeah.

[1:00:45] The Spirit Halloween version.

[1:00:46] On the scale of things we watch for the show.

[1:00:48] As Elliot says, it's kind of gentle and sweet, essentially.

[1:00:51] It's 90 minutes.

[1:00:53] Like, I hated it less than I thought I would.

[1:00:57] Like, the hatred mostly comes from like that this was a much more beautiful thing that has turned into a dumb generic thing.

[1:01:05] What do you have to say?

[1:01:06] What do you have to say?

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:07] Yeah.

[1:01:07] I mean, I think the movie has chosen an uphill battle and it does not make up enough for the ill will that it causes by taking something that is clearly a nice, small little story and extrapolated into something completely unnecessary.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01:27] Yeah.

[1:01:27] I mean, I feel the same way.

[1:01:29] I think you guys have described it well that I think if I wasn't bringing my emotional baggage of loving this book and finding it to be so special, it wouldn't bother me as much.

[1:01:38] But it is still a – it's just a forgettable kind of movie.

[1:01:43] And that would be okay – like, if my kids – of all the kids' movies that we've watched for this podcast, if my kids were like, we want to watch Howl and Procran, I'd be like, fine, all right, I guess.

[1:01:53] But it's – yeah, it doesn't feel like it really needs to exist.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:56] You're like, daddy, daddy, I want to start following the lead actor's X account to see what his political views are.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:02] And I'd be like, oh, hold on a second.

[1:02:05] Maybe not.

[1:02:06] We still call it Twitter in this house, young man.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:10] And what were you doing looking at it?

[1:02:13] Hey, everybody.

S4

[1:02:19] I'm Jeremy.

[1:02:19] I'm Oscar.

[1:02:20] I'm Dimitri.

[1:02:21] And we are the Eurovangelists.

[1:02:23] For a weekly podcast spreading the word of the Eurovision Song Contest, the most important music competition in the world.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:29] Maybe you already heard Glenn Weldon of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour talk up our coverage of this year's contest.

[1:02:34] But what do we talk about in the offseason?

[1:02:36] The rest of Eurovision, duh.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:37] There are nearly seven decades of pop music history to cover.

S4

[1:02:40] Mm-hmm.

[1:02:41] And we've got thousands of amazing songs, inspiring competitors, and so much drama to discuss.

[1:02:47] And let me tell you, the drama is juicy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:49] Plus, all the gorillas and bread-baking grandmas that make Eurovision so special.

[1:02:53] Check out Eurovangelists, available everywhere you get podcasts.

[1:02:56] And you could be a Eurovangelist, too.

[1:02:58] Ooh, I want to be one.

[1:02:59] You already are.

[1:03:00] It's that easy.

[1:03:00] Oh, okay.

[1:03:01] Cool.

S5

[1:03:03] The Greatest Generation has been going on for more than eight years.

S6

[1:03:07] And if you've been Greatest Gen Curious but have never taken the leap, we recommend exploring your Greatest Gen Curiosity in a safe, fun environment with partners you can trust.

[1:03:18] And right now is one of the best times ever to become a new listener.

S5

[1:03:22] That's because we just started covering a new Star Trek series, Star Trek Enterprise.

[1:03:27] One of the horniest and weirdest editions of Star Trek ever released.

S6

[1:03:32] This is your chance to ease in to the Greatest Generation lifestyle.

S5

[1:03:36] The Greatest Generation, now covering Star Trek Enterprise.

[1:03:40] The one with Scott Bakula.

[1:03:41] Every Monday on MaximumFun.org or in your podcast app.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:46] Hey, let's take a moment to thank our sponsors this week.

[1:03:52] Herald week, we call it.

[1:03:53] It's a flop house.

[1:03:55] I don't know what it is.

[1:03:56] I just decided.

[1:03:58] We're sponsored in part by Squarespace.

[1:04:01] The all-in-what?

[1:04:02] All-in-what?

[1:04:03] I'll tell you.

[1:04:03] All-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.

[1:04:10] Squarespace is a way to make it easy for you to build a beautiful, more personalized website.

[1:04:16] One that is tailored to your unique needs and craft a bespoke digital identity that you, the one who is designing this, can use across your entire online presence.

[1:04:29] I'm just going to slow down.

[1:04:32] Hey, why don't you connect major social and multimedia accounts to your website in a few clicks?

[1:04:38] As icons, direct links, or embedded feeds.

[1:04:43] Build visitor trust while updating it.

[1:04:47] Updating your content only where you need it.

[1:04:49] So, why not go to squarespace.com for a free trial?

[1:04:53] And when you are ready to launch, you go to squarespace.com slash flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:04] Well, Dan, we've also got some of our own stuff to promote.

[1:05:07] Our own stuff?

[1:05:08] To promote.

[1:05:09] Oh, yeah, that's right.

[1:05:10] Look, there's one more episode of Flop TV.

[1:05:12] That's right.

[1:05:13] Flop TV, our live online video broadcast version of the Flophouse.

[1:05:17] It's like the Flophouse, but you can see it, and it's shorter, and there's more in it.

[1:05:20] So, really, Flop TV is the stake, and Flophouse, the podcast, is kind of the ground chuck.

[1:05:26] Anyway, the—

[1:05:27] Wow.

[1:05:28] It's our live Flop TV.

[1:05:31] I believe, Dan, this episode, I believe, is going out on the day of our final episode, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:05:35] Yes.

[1:05:36] If you want to watch live, tonight is your chance.

[1:05:40] Tonight is your chance.

[1:05:41] Presumably you downloaded this in time.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:43] You get to hear Dan's reaction to watching hit movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, Secret of the Ooze, a movie Dan has never seen at this point.

[1:05:53] Yes.

[1:05:54] I want to know what's up with that ooze.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:56] If you're listening to this on February 1st, the first Saturday in February, then yes, tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, you can listen and watch.

[1:06:04] As we talk about Ninja Turtles 2, The Secret of the Ooze, big movie for me when I was a kid, did not factor into Dan's life at all, and it's time we're introducing it to him.

[1:06:11] These are Flop TV shows.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:13] I think that explains a lot, actually.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:15] Yeah, I think so.

[1:06:16] Flop, that's why I have a family and he doesn't and so forth.

[1:06:19] Flop TV is – no, there's all different types of families, Dan.

[1:06:22] Married with two cats is a family.

[1:06:24] So Flop TV, for those who haven't joined us yet, and I don't know why you haven't, it's really fun.

[1:06:28] One of us does a visual presentation.

[1:06:30] We talk about the movie.

[1:06:31] There's a video segment in the middle that one of us puts together.

[1:06:33] And the fun thing about it for us is that we do not see each other's segments until the show.

[1:06:38] So you get to experience them live as we do.

[1:06:40] It's super fun.

[1:06:41] We have a great time, and I think the audience loves it too.

[1:06:44] If you can't be there tonight, February 1st at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, then you can still watch the show afterwards because the recording will stay up online until the end of February.

[1:06:56] If you go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com, you will be able to buy tickets for each episode or a season pass.

[1:07:04] That's six shows for the price of five, and it gets you access to the recorded video of those shows.

[1:07:08] So if you missed all of Flop TV the whole season, until the end of February, you can buy a season pass, watch it all at your leisure, and just enjoy it.

[1:07:16] Binge it.

[1:07:16] Binge the whole thing, all six episodes.

[1:07:18] Why not?

[1:07:18] That's the new streaming model, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:07:19] Make yourself sick on Flophouse.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:22] Oh, you like the Flophouse.

[1:07:23] Well, why don't you watch a fuckload of it?

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:26] Yeah.

[1:07:26] Oh, I caught you watching the Flop TV?

[1:07:28] Well, you have to watch the whole season, young man.

[1:07:30] That'll teach you.

[1:07:31] And so at the end of February, though, those videos will go away for quite some time.

[1:07:36] So your last chance is February 28th, right?

[1:07:39] This isn't a leap year that we're in.

[1:07:41] February 28th.

[1:07:42] But until then, go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com, and you can get a season pass to watch those episodes.

[1:07:47] I'm so excited to talk Ninja Trolls too with you guys because, again, I haven't seen it in years, but when it was a new movie, I saw it many times.

[1:07:55] Really?

[1:07:55] Okay.

[1:07:56] Every time with his grandma.

[1:07:58] Just one time with my grandma.

[1:07:59] Just one time.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:00] She wasn't like, Elliot, Elliot, take me to see these Ninja Trolls.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:05] I hear the ninjas and turtles.

[1:08:09] I also wanted to mention, before we go into the next section, I want to just do a private plug, a personal private plug.

[1:08:14] I'm still writing the Harley Quinn comic book for DC Comics.

[1:08:16] It's in comic stores now.

[1:08:19] I've been having a lot of fun writing it.

[1:08:20] It's a real fun series.

[1:08:21] If you are looking for a Harley Quinn book that has an intricate, overarching story that will test who Harley Quinn is.

[1:08:30] Your patience.

[1:08:30] Bring her to the limits.

[1:08:32] Bring her to the limits of her powers, her personality, and her patience.

[1:08:36] This is not the series for you.

[1:08:37] It is a lot of fun stories.

[1:08:39] I'm trying to do one-off issues as much as possible.

[1:08:41] Oh, nice.

[1:08:42] There's a theme to it, and there's recurring characters.

[1:08:46] There's at least one two-parter in there.

[1:08:48] But the emphasis is on fun stories and just having a good time.

[1:08:52] So if you were looking for a book that was going to really change the way you think about Harley Quinn, make you question everything you thought you knew, this is not your book.

[1:09:00] But if you want to find out that Harley Quinn that you know, then read it.

[1:09:03] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:09:03] That Harley Quinn isn't a Harley Quinn that thinks it's a plant, but rather a plant that thinks it's a Harley Quinn.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:11] No, it's that she died and her mind went into a Harlequin doll and now she thinks she's Harley Quinn.

[1:09:16] Yeah, we're not doing that.

[1:09:16] That makes sense.

[1:09:17] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:18] Where's the TikTok man figure in?

[1:09:20] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:21] Where's the TikTok man?

[1:09:22] That's a great question, Dan.

[1:09:23] That's a great question.

[1:09:24] When the Harlan Ellison verse merges with the DC universe, and I think we'll finally get to see each other.

[1:09:31] Actually, it would be very funny if I did a story where she fights the TikTok man and then Harlan Ellison runs in and threatens to sue the whole company.

[1:09:39] That would be very funny.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:41] See, he's passed, right?

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:43] Yes, he's no longer alive.

[1:09:44] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:45] All right.

[1:09:46] Well, now that that's cleared up, it's the perfect time to move on to letters.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:50] Now that we have the happiness of knowing Harlan Ellison is not with us anymore.

[1:09:54] Wow.

[1:09:56] Just kidding.

Dan McCoy

[1:09:57] This is a letter from Justin, last name withheld, who writes.

[1:10:01] McElroy.

[1:10:02] He addresses, or they address to me, they say, hi, Dan.

[1:10:08] Oh, okay.

[1:10:09] All right.

[1:10:09] We'll just step aside.

[1:10:10] I blame you.

[1:10:11] I was critiquing a friend's work, a nonfiction piece on the movie The Women,

[1:10:15] and was trying to remember the name of one of the actresses.

[1:10:18] I came up with Rhonda Shearer.

[1:10:21] My friend's face scratched up a bit.

[1:10:23] He reminded me it was Norma Shearer.

[1:10:26] If you were offered the chance.

[1:10:28] Very similar.

[1:10:29] If you were offered the chance to produce the 21st century version of USA's Up All Night,

[1:10:34] what would it be?

[1:10:36] Who would be the host, and what types of movies would you screen?

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:40] Dan isn't super vocal about celebrities he hates, so I can't really make a joke yet.

[1:10:48] Yeah, I would have to think about my host a little bit.

Dan McCoy

[1:10:53] Maybe you can come back to that part of it, but I was trying to think of like, what's a sort of subtype of dumb movie that I have a real fondness for?

[1:11:03] And maybe I would just, it would have to be, you know, like a one or two season thing.

[1:11:09] You would run out of stuff a lot faster than I think the Up All Night purview.

[1:11:15] Purview?

[1:11:16] Mm-hmm.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:17] Well, I think the question, it's a hard question to think about, or to answer it partly because, yeah,

[1:11:21] what USA Up All Night was doing is something that you don't necessarily need done anymore.

[1:11:27] Right.

[1:11:27] It also is not as acceptable in some ways.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:29] You could just dial up Tubi for it, but I was going to say the genre.

[1:11:33] Or not Tubi.

[1:11:36] Would be like dumb techno thrillers or horror movies.

[1:11:41] Oh, yeah, that's good.

[1:11:42] I just have such a fondness for anything.

[1:11:44] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:44] With like, you should have like a, what, a Garth Marenghi style opening where you're like logging on to a scary computer.

[1:11:50] Oh, that's good.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:53] And I wonder who would be good for that kind of role.

[1:11:56] That's Matt Barry always.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:57] I mean, Jermaine Clement or Matt Barry.

[1:11:59] Oh, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:00] I think you cast it for me.

[1:12:02] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:03] But I feel like I was starting to put an answer to this in my head, and then I realized it was just Monster Vision with Joe Bob Briggs, which is the thing that exists already.

[1:12:11] Already exists, yeah.

[1:12:12] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:13] Do you have any ideas, Stuart, or should we move on?

[1:12:16] Let's move on.

[1:12:17] Let us move on to letter number two from Zach Withheld.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:23] Zachary Levy.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:25] Hey, did you guys see my Harold and the Purple Crayon movie?

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:27] Did you like it?

Dan McCoy

[1:12:28] Maybe a recommendation.

[1:12:30] Dear Peaches, what was the knight in the last crusade up to for all those years in that case?

[1:12:34] Clearly not dusting.

[1:12:36] Much love, Zach Withheld.

[1:12:38] So was that a real question?

[1:12:40] I mean, it's a real question.

[1:12:42] Yeah, it has a question mark at the end of it.

[1:12:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:44] To defend the knight in the last crusade, what was he supposed to dust with?

[1:12:48] He was not equipped with cleaning supplies.

[1:12:50] You know, his own tunic.

[1:12:51] I mean, dust super well.

[1:12:52] No, not at all.

[1:12:53] He's not going to scratch those artifacts.

[1:12:54] Come on.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:55] Also.

[1:12:55] And that fucking tunic would turn to dust as soon as he started moving it.

[1:12:58] It's a cave.

[1:12:59] You know, it's nothing but dust.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:02] Yeah, if dust is going to live anywhere.

[1:13:03] Is there a definition of a cave?

[1:13:05] Let me just look it up on Webster's.

[1:13:08] Hold on.

[1:13:09] Webster's Dan Shannery.

[1:13:10] Oh, yeah.

[1:13:11] Cave.

[1:13:11] Noun.

[1:13:12] Nothing but dust.

[1:13:13] Yeah.

[1:13:15] Dust in the wind.

[1:13:15] See nothing but trouble.

[1:13:17] Okay, let me flip to nothing but trouble.

[1:13:20] Says noun, not a cave.

[1:13:22] Okay.

[1:13:22] I'm glad they made that clear.

Dan McCoy

[1:13:25] He's a religious man.

[1:13:27] I mean, clearly, you know, from the Christian tradition, if he's guarding the Holy Grail.

[1:13:37] So, maybe not meditation in the traditional sense, but I would assume sort of quiet religious reflection is what he's doing most of his time.

[1:13:43] Yeah, reflection and prayer.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:45] And you know that dude has got to be so annoying because he hasn't talked to anybody and he's like, he's craving that human contact at this point.

[1:13:52] So, he's like, anybody who walks in there is like, okay, man, just take it down a little bit.

[1:13:57] I know you're thirsty for this shit, but like, here, let me give you my phone and you can just play around on that for a bit.

[1:14:04] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:05] Let's move on to recommendations movies that we've seen that we would say.

[1:14:10] Maybe you should spend your time on something like this rather than Harold and the Purple Crayon.

[1:14:15] I want to very quickly do a dual recommendation because they're linked.

[1:14:20] The Nighthawk Cinema here in Brooklyn has been doing a Robert Altman retrospective and I got to see two of his films on the big screen that I'd never seen before, despite Altman being one of my go-to, like, if someone asks, you know, favorite American director.

[1:14:36] But I saw Brewster McCloud and I saw Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

[1:14:43] The play turned into a movie where they're like, eh, this title's not long enough already.

[1:14:51] Let's repeat that Jimmy Dean at the end.

[1:14:53] But very different types of movies.

[1:14:55] Brewster McCloud, you know, gets kind of serious at the end, but mostly is just kind of Altman's gag a minute movie.

[1:15:02] It gave me this feeling like I was watching sort of the doodles in the corner of Mad Magazine, but in movie form.

[1:15:10] And I found a lot of it extremely funny.

[1:15:13] And it's a very strange movie about, you know, a boy who is building some wings and maybe they'll fly.

[1:15:21] But mostly it's just about a bunch of weird stuff happening.

[1:15:25] And Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, it was a Broadway play that I believe was also directed by Robert Altman.

[1:15:35] He filmed this version of it, but it's still, it's very cinematic.

[1:15:40] This is a big, like, plot spoiler.

[1:15:43] So skip ahead a little bit if you don't care.

[1:15:45] Like, it involves a character who we learn is trans.

[1:15:51] And, you know, while I think probably from today's eyes, I'm not the best person to speak on this, but probably from today's eyes, there are certain things that may be ways of talking about this that would be frowned upon.

[1:16:04] But certainly for the time, it is one of the most, like, empathetic, like, portrayals.

[1:16:09] Like, obviously the movie's heart is with this character.

[1:16:11] And that was kind of neat to see in a movie of that period.

[1:16:16] But also, like, sad to see, like, the backsliding.

[1:16:21] But it was a very moving picture.

[1:16:23] And it's got your, it's got Cher in it, Stuart.

[1:16:26] I love Cher.

[1:16:27] You like that.

[1:16:29] Both really good.

Stuart Wellington

[1:16:30] Stuart?

[1:16:31] Oh, cool.

[1:16:31] Okay.

[1:16:32] I'm going to recommend the movie.

[1:16:34] I'm going to recommend the movie that is, I think, nominated for at least two Academy Awards, including Best International Feature and I'm guessing Animated Feature.

[1:16:43] And that is a movie called Flow.

[1:16:46] Flow is a movie.

[1:16:47] It's like an adventure movie about mainly following a cat character and a series of other animals who are inhabiting a kind of abandoned human civilization.

[1:17:00] And then they have to contend with a sudden, like, disaster level flood.

[1:17:06] And they have to kind of rely on their own abilities as well as a slowly developing kind of friendship between them.

[1:17:15] Now, these animals are not particularly anthropomorphized.

[1:17:18] And they don't, there's no dialogue in the movie.

[1:17:22] I will say the amount of, like, scared cat sounds was pretty distressing.

[1:17:27] And I guess those are all cat sounds recorded.

[1:17:30] The director's own cat made all those sounds.

[1:17:33] But I found it to be a really touching and just a really well-told story.

[1:17:38] It's, like, it's directed very beautifully.

[1:17:41] And the action is very, like, the action moves really well.

[1:17:45] And it's just a really exciting movie to watch.

Elliott Kalan

[1:17:48] I'm going to recommend another kind of fun, action-y, exciting movie.

[1:17:52] One that I had been mean to watch for a long time and I had not gotten around to it.

[1:17:56] And I have not seen the second movie, which comes after it yet, which is the continuation of the story.

[1:18:01] But I finally got around seeing the Richard Lester version of The Three Musketeers from 1973.

[1:18:06] And it is a, you know, it's just telling the story of The Three Musketeers and it's adaptation of the book.

[1:18:12] But I think it's really funny.

[1:18:14] And the action in it is really fun.

[1:18:16] There's really good sword fighting in it.

[1:18:17] And it's funny that I was looking at some of the contemporary reviews and they were like,

[1:18:21] ugh, the sword fighting is too precise and choreographed.

[1:18:24] And you watch it and you're like, I guess a little bit.

[1:18:26] Like, compared to the stuff that we see now where everything is so intensely choreographed,

[1:18:30] it looks more natural than that.

[1:18:32] But it's, you know, it's your classic Three Musketeers story.

[1:18:35] Guy shows up, wants to be a musketeer, falls in with these musketeers.

[1:18:39] They got to help the Queen of France not get caught by her husband

[1:18:43] because somehow that's going to help Cardinal Richelieu when she's having an affair with a British guy.

[1:18:46] And there's a lot of just jokes and stunts.

[1:18:49] And there's a very light tone to it.

[1:18:51] We just talked about Cuthbert Island in San Francisco.

[1:18:55] And I think the light kind of breezy tone that they were going for in Cuthbert Island,

[1:18:59] but didn't quite get, Richard Lester does a really much better job of capturing in The Three Musketeers.

[1:19:04] So I enjoyed it.

[1:19:05] And I'm looking forward to the second movie, The Four Musketeers, which I haven't seen yet.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:09] Yeah.

[1:19:09] Those Musketeers movies from Lester.

[1:19:11] Yeah.

[1:19:12] I really love them too.

[1:19:14] Great pick.

[1:19:15] Before we move on and say goodbye, I just want to do a quick shout-out.

[1:19:20] This story ends happily.

[1:19:22] Spoiler alert.

[1:19:23] So no one stresses out over it.

[1:19:25] But I wanted to shout-out to Vince, the guy who runs the Flophouse Discord.

[1:19:31] He had mentioned an injury a while back and then disappeared from the Discord for quite some time.

[1:19:38] And no one had heard from him.

[1:19:39] And a lot of people were worried.

[1:19:42] And I'm not telling tales out of school because he posted this on Reddit himself to update everyone.

[1:19:48] He resurfaced recently confirming, yes, he had been in the hospital and it had come close to being really bad.

[1:19:55] But he is alive and well.

[1:19:59] And he's just like a really enthusiastic listener who set up the Discord.

[1:20:05] And I was personally, genuinely very scared that something had happened to him because no one knew.

[1:20:11] And so at a time when I feel like there's a lot of bad news, I was really happy to hear that he's well.

[1:20:18] So I send wishes for continued health to Vince.

[1:20:22] That's really good to hear.

[1:20:23] Yeah.

[1:20:25] And I would like to take this moment to thank our network, the Maximum Fun Network.

[1:20:32] Go to MaximumFun.org.

[1:20:34] Check out all the other great shows on the network.

[1:20:37] They keep adding new ones.

[1:20:39] There's a lot of funny stuff, a lot of informative stuff.

[1:20:42] I'd like to thank Alex Smith, our producer.

[1:20:45] He goes by the name Howell Dottie all over the internet.

[1:20:49] You can listen to his music, watch his Twitch streams.

[1:20:52] Check out his stuff as well.

[1:20:54] But for The Flap House, I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:20:56] I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:58] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:20:59] Bye.

[1:21:00] Bye.

[1:21:01] Goodbye.

[1:21:10] I think some people, they don't have a lot of control over things in their life, so they decide to get mad about the things they feel like they can control, such as the opinions of others about movies.

[1:21:19] Other times, someone has tons of control in their life, and yet they feel like they get mad about stuff.

[1:21:23] And they get into politics and they ruin the country.

[1:21:25] What are you going to do?

[1:21:26] People get mad about stuff.

[1:21:27] It's weird.

[1:21:27] Yeah.

[1:21:28] It's a silly time.

[1:21:29] It is weird, baby Stewie.

[1:21:30] It's weird, yeah.

[1:21:33] Maximum Fun.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:34] A worker-owned network.

[1:21:35] Of artist-owned shows.

[1:21:37] Supported.

[1:21:38] Directly.

[1:21:39] By you.

Ep.#443 - Harold and the Purple Crayon

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