The Flop House: Episode #36 - The Spirit

Dan McCoy

[0:00] In this episode, we discuss The Spirit, exactly the film Will Eisner would have made if Will Eisner was Frank Miller.

[0:30] Hey everyone, welcome to The Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. And I'm Elliot Kalin. Yeah. Woo! It's the podcast where we watch a bad movie and then talk about it. And boy, did we ever and will we ever. But first off, I'm glad to see you guys. Yeah, it's been a little while, right? Glad to see you too. Yeah. So I went to Costa Rica and before that, Elliot went to Uruguay. When are you going to have your adventure south of the border, Stuart?

[0:59] I don't know. They don't like me down there. What did you do? I don't want to go and do it. It has something to do with marsupials. Hmm. Okay. Usually those are found in Australia. I know. I'm not allowed back to Australia. Did you import an animal into a country where the ecosystem couldn't handle it? Like the end of The Simpsons? Or did you just have sex with a koala? I'm not at liberty to discuss my situation with marsupials. But for that reason, I'm not allowed to go south of the border anymore.

Elliott Kalan

[1:28] By south of the border means he doesn't go down on women, ladies. I don't know. Wow. We already are swimming in the gutter. Yeah. I don't even do it. We are face first. I know. I'm looking at you as if to say, can you believe this? Not to blame you. It's like the movie The Spirit. It starts out in the sewer.

Dan McCoy

[1:50] And then... Does it? I don't remember. Yeah, sure. I thought it began in a desert.

Stuart Wellington

[1:55] No, that was the production logo for Odd Lot Pictures.

Dan McCoy

[1:58] The first scene of note is the fight between the spirit.

Elliott Kalan

[2:02] But that's not in the sewer. That's in like a mud flat somewhere.

[2:06] But it's clearly meant to be like... They hit each other with toilets.

Dan McCoy

[2:08] Yeah, they're hitting each other with toilets.

Elliott Kalan

[2:10] It's not subterranean, though. There's buildings behind them.

[2:13] I'm saying that I think that that's raw sewage that they're fighting in.

[2:13] It's hard to tell, though, because it's clearly shot on like a soundstage.

[2:17] Yeah, well, it's shot in front of a green screen, like almost the entire film.

Dan McCoy

[2:20] I think that Gabriel Macht was fighting in raw sewage.

[2:23] Okay.

[2:24] He personally requested it for verisimilitude.

[2:28] So, yeah.

[2:29] So what movie did we watch?

[2:30] We watched The Spirit.

[2:32] Frank Miller's Will Eisner's The Spirit.

Elliott Kalan

[2:35] It's kind of like...

[2:36] The possessive on the title is like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Bram Stoker's Dracula,

[2:42] where they meant it to say...

[2:45] Did they call this movie Will Eisner's The Spirit or is it just The Spirit?

Dan McCoy

[2:50] They called it The Spirit, but...

Elliott Kalan

[2:51] Because I remember seeing Will Eisner's The Spirit in earlier press releases about it,

[2:56] and it was the same way that it's supposed to mean this is the closest adaptation you've ever seen of this story.

[3:02] But what it really means is like, listen, we're going to play all sorts of fast and loose and crazy with this story.

[3:08] Yeah.

[3:08] Tom Waits is going to be Renfield.

Stuart Wellington

[3:10] Yeah.

[3:10] To me, it sounds like...

[3:11] That was one of the best things in that movie.

[3:13] That's true.

[3:14] To me, it's like Frank Miller is playing Keep Away with the movie, and he's like, yep, yep, it's Will Eisner's

[3:20] movie.

[3:20] It's his fault.

Elliott Kalan

[3:22] There's like...

[3:23] It's maybe the worst adaptation of Will Eisner's vision that I can imagine, since it's nothing like his style or tone or characters.

Dan McCoy

[3:32] You're forgetting the short-lived A Contract with God 1970s cartoon show.

Elliott Kalan

[3:37] Yeah, the Saturday morning cartoon in which Jewish characters living in a tenement had adventures.

Dan McCoy

[3:44] That joke was for approximately two people in the audience, I'm pretty sure.

[3:47] But anyway.

[3:49] Yeah.

[3:50] Yeah, no.

Elliott Kalan

[3:51] So this movie was really good.

[3:52] Or the Broadway musical version of Life on Another Planet.

[3:55] Nice.

Stuart Wellington

[3:56] Yeah, this movie was really good.

[3:59] It had a dude who, you know, the spirit, who was like a crime-fighting superhero type, who

[4:06] is mirrored by his bad guy, the octopus, who...

Dan McCoy

[4:13] Because the enemy of any fedora-bedecked crime-fighter is an octopus.

[4:18] Yep.

[4:18] And he's exactly like him, only slightly different.

Elliott Kalan

[4:22] Only completely different in every way.

Stuart Wellington

[4:24] Yeah, he had really good costumes.

Elliott Kalan

[4:26] No.

[4:28] Well, should we bother going over the plot of this movie, or...

Dan McCoy

[4:32] Well, I would appreciate it, Elliot, just so I could see how you might summarize it, because

[4:37] I didn't understand most of it.

Elliott Kalan

[4:38] Okay.

[4:39] Well, we're in Central City, a city made out of CGI, which is supposed to be kind of film

[4:44] noir-ish, except it's...

Stuart Wellington

[4:46] And styrofoam blocks, I think.

[4:47] There's a lot of styrofoam blocks.

Elliott Kalan

[4:49] Yeah, it looks...

[4:50] Every inch of it is super fake and artificial.

[4:52] And we're introduced to The Spirit, a man in a suit and a fedora and a mask, who works

[4:57] with the police department and solves crimes, and seems to be Wolverine-ish, in that he

[5:03] can take any amount of damage, and then he comes back from it.

Dan McCoy

[5:05] And his character was adapted from the popular American spirit, Cigarettes.

[5:09] Is that right?

[5:10] Yes, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[5:10] Yeah, he was originally a Native American.

Stuart Wellington

[5:12] He doesn't actually seem to feel any pain, either, or am I...

Elliott Kalan

[5:14] It depends on the...

[5:16] Some parts of the movie he does, and some he doesn't.

[5:18] Like, sometimes he shrugs it off, and other times he's like...

Stuart Wellington

[5:21] Like when he gets hit in the crotch by a novelty, oversized wrench?

Elliott Kalan

[5:25] Yes.

[5:26] Or when a sword goes through his chest.

Stuart Wellington

[5:28] Oh, yeah.

[5:29] He didn't like that.

Elliott Kalan

[5:29] No.

[5:30] But anyway, he's got a mat on, as the kids would say, for...

[5:32] That's really...

Stuart Wellington

[5:33] You'd have to be really strong to shove that giant sword, because that was like a machete.

[5:37] Yeah.

[5:37] Like, it wasn't like a fucking, like, a fencing...

[5:40] Yeah, there was no...

[5:41] No, no.

[5:41] It was enormous.

[5:42] Well, but I mean...

[5:43] It was like a chopping sword, and she shoved it all the way through a human body.

[5:46] Yeah.

[5:47] Like, she's not a large woman.

[5:48] No.

[5:49] And nor did she get any, like...

[5:50] She had no leverage.

[5:51] No momentum or anything.

[5:52] She just, like, pushed it up there.

[5:54] She's like fucking Vicky from A Small Wonder, you know?

[5:57] Vicky was the robot, right?

[5:59] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[5:59] Did Vicky and Small Wonder often shove swords through men's chests?

Stuart Wellington

[6:02] No, but she'd be, like, standing there and, like, pick up a couch with no visible leverage,

[6:05] and it just looks so ridiculous.

[6:07] Like, she would tip over, even if she's a robot.

[6:09] It's not like her feet are really wide or something.

Elliott Kalan

[6:11] I think you need to write a letter about this and send it through a time portal.

[6:15] You need to take into account that she's very heavy as a robot.

[6:18] Oh, okay.

[6:18] Yeah.

[6:19] Well, she's made out of steel and also fat, so, you know.

[6:23] She's not, actually.

[6:25] She was the normal size for a little girl.

[6:28] Anyway, so the spirit is the protector of Central City, which involves running around on rooftops

[6:32] and occasionally beating up criminals.

[6:35] He seems to, he has a somewhat romantic relationship with the daughter of the police chief,

[6:43] but also falls in love with every other woman that he meets,

[6:47] and he's on the trail of a crime boss called the Octopus,

[6:50] played by Samuel L. Jackson in the widest possible way.

[6:54] Like, the reason they had to shoot it in a CGI soundstage is so that he could not chew the scenery, literally.

[7:04] There was no scenery for him to eat.

[7:07] That's why they had to do it that way.

[7:07] He wore a summer, but it's the first time.

[7:09] But he pops up.

[7:10] Here's the thing.

[7:11] The Spirit is based on a comic book by Will Eisner,

[7:13] who is one of the founding fathers of American comic books,

[7:17] which was about this, like, very, this police detective who gets beat up a lot.

[7:22] He's called The Spirit.

[7:24] He gets beat up a lot.

[7:25] He solves mysteries, but he's kind of a, he's like a smart guy who also bumbles.

[7:29] And it's more fun than anything else.

Dan McCoy

[7:32] Well, and it's not really big on, like, continuity.

[7:35] I mean, most of the stories.

Elliott Kalan

[7:36] Well, there's a certain amount.

[7:37] There's a lot of standalone stories, but.

Dan McCoy

[7:39] Yeah, well, I, certainly I feel like towards the later adventures,

[7:44] like, Will Eisner was more interested in testing out his theories about, like,

[7:49] what comics could be and layout than telling, like,

[7:53] like a story that centered around the Spirit specifically.

Elliott Kalan

[7:56] That's the thing.

[7:56] He, they, his, it started out as, like, a crime comic and then became just Will Eisner experimenting

[8:02] with comics as much as he could.

[8:05] But.

[8:06] Which was great.

[8:07] They were always entertaining.

[8:08] But, like, the tone of them was always fairly light for the most part.

[8:12] Not a lot of angst.

[8:13] Not a lot of angst.

[8:13] And also, the octopus, his villain, was a shadowy crime boss.

[8:17] All you ever saw of him was his gloves.

[8:20] You never saw his face.

[8:21] So, of course, Frank Miller recognizes this by having Samuel L. Jackson very loudly and openly

[8:27] play the character.

[8:28] First with a sombrero on his head.

[8:30] Later on, he's dressed like a samurai.

[8:32] Later, he's dressed like a Nazi for no reason.

[8:35] Then he's got a huge fur coat and, like, a fur hat on.

[8:38] It's, it's, it feels like Frank Miller was waiting for Will Eisner to die so that he could

[8:43] just do whatever he wanted with this movie.

Dan McCoy

[8:45] Yeah.

[8:46] I'd like the octopus if he was more of a clothes horse.

[8:49] That's what he said.

Stuart Wellington

[8:51] Yeah, at times it makes me feel like Frank Miller was, like, over the years he'd gotten

[8:55] really tired of people being, like, Dark Knight's okay, but the spirit, now that's good comics.

[9:01] And he's, like, secretly stewing, like, fuck that Will Eisner guy.

[9:04] Yeah.

[9:04] He doesn't deserve all this credit.

[9:06] And then finally, when he gets the chance, he's like, I'm gonna make this fucking movie.

[9:09] And he makes it as shitty as possible so that everybody's like, the spirit?

[9:13] Oh, yeah, that's that shitty movie that nobody likes.

[9:15] Rather than the, the comic that Will Eisner made.

Elliott Kalan

[9:17] Yeah.

[9:17] Well, and, and let's not forget, also, there's the character Sans Serif, the femme fatale played

[9:22] by Eva Mendez, who was the spirit's childhood girlfriend.

[9:26] And then, uh, through, there was some misfortune, she left Central City and became the world's

[9:30] greatest jewel thief.

[9:32] And she's somehow mixed up in shenanigans with the octopus.

[9:35] Oh, yeah.

[9:36] And Scarlett Johansson as some sort of scientist slash henchman.

Dan McCoy

[9:39] She's like a girl Friday to, uh, the octopus.

[9:42] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[9:42] Who is the head of an international drug organization, yet has no henchmen aside from Scarlett Johansson

[9:47] and an army of cloned buffoons.

[9:50] Yeah.

[9:50] And you see very little drug empire.

[9:51] A bunch of, uh, lisping clones.

[9:53] It's really, it's weird because it's like, it's the same way that Lex Luthor in the Superman

[9:56] movies is like, is a criminal genius, but he surrounds himself with bumbling idiots.

[10:01] Yeah.

[10:01] You know, it doesn't really make sense.

[10:03] But anyway, uh, this movie is, this is a Cracker Jack film.

[10:07] Uh, deftly told.

[10:09] In that you might find it in a box of Cracker Jacks.

[10:12] No!

[10:13] The movie, the movie is, is almost incoherent mess.

[10:16] Uh, like it, the pacing is terrible.

[10:19] You kind of, the, it, by the time when the movie was over, I was saying to Dan and Stuart,

[10:24] it felt like we had just seen the 10 minute mini movie at the beginning of like the spirit,

[10:29] the movie.

[10:30] And then the real movie was going to start.

[10:32] Like this was the, the adventure that Bond would go on that didn't really make a lot

[10:36] of sense and was just a lot of stunts before the title sequence, before the real movie.

[10:41] But no, it was the whole movie.

[10:43] Yeah, it was, it was really bad.

[10:45] And, uh, and Frank Miller has this kind of obsession with Eva Mendes' butt.

Stuart Wellington

[10:49] Well, he has an obsession with women.

[10:51] I mean, like, like he, this, it's not surprising that the spirit character would fall in love

[10:56] with every woman he sees is the film is full of, like, I obviously like a Hollywood movie

[11:01] is going to have pretty women in it, but like, literally he seems to go out of his way to

[11:05] make as many women in as little clothes as possible throughout the entire movie.

[11:08] Yeah.

[11:11] Um.

Elliott Kalan

[11:11] But it's, it's like the movie is trying to be tongue in cheek and never gets there.

[11:17] You know.

Dan McCoy

[11:18] Well, to be tongue in cheek, you have to have some sort of, like, rational, logical basis,

[11:24] uh, and then, you know, like, skew off to the side.

[11:28] Whereas this movie, like, the, the visual style matched the content in that the fact that it

[11:34] was all shot on a soundstage meant that individual, uh, pictures were very pretty, but nothing had

[11:40] any relation, uh, to anything else, uh, spatially.

[11:44] And likewise, nothing in the plot felt like it had any relation to anything else.

Stuart Wellington

[11:48] Now, speaking of plot and stuff, was it, okay, the octopus guy, now you can correct me if

[11:53] I'm wrong, he's, in addition to being a supervillain and, like, a master drug lord.

[11:57] Oh, and also he, he, uh.

[11:58] He's like a super scientist, right?

Elliott Kalan

[12:00] Apparently.

[12:01] In, in this.

[12:01] And also, like the spirit, the octopus can be injured a hundred, a dozen times over and

[12:06] it can't be killed.

Stuart Wellington

[12:06] Yeah, he's a Looney Tunes character, basically.

[12:08] Yeah.

[12:09] Um, and he, but he's like a super genius scientist with, like, genetic serums and shit.

[12:15] Yeah.

[12:16] And he injects the spirit with some kind of a serum and then himself that makes them, you

[12:21] know, pretty invulnerable.

[12:22] That's the backstory.

[12:23] But then later on he finds out, hey, wait a minute, if one of us drinks the blood of Hercules.

[12:29] Heracles.

[12:30] Heracles, sure.

[12:30] If one of us drinks the blood of the Greek hero, uh, who apparently in this world is an

[12:35] actual.

[12:36] That's the other thing.

Elliott Kalan

[12:37] That's the other thing is there's, is the movie is going along in its way and then it

[12:40] suddenly becomes, they're talking to the spirit about their plan.

[12:42] They go, we want to be immortal like the gods.

[12:45] Luckily, the gods had sex with human women and created half-breed heroes.

[12:50] We found the blood of Heracles and it's like, suddenly the movie has taken this left turn

[12:55] to a universe where Zeus is real and the Greek pantheon actually exists.

[12:59] And you want, you want the spirit to be like, wait a minute, hold on, stop right there.

[13:03] Okay, you're a criminal.

[13:04] I get it.

[13:04] Let's hold on.

[13:05] So you're saying that all this time people have been worshiping Jesus or, you know, the,

[13:10] or the Muslim God or the Jewish God or the Hindu gods.

[13:13] But really it was the Greek pantheon that was real and exists and we should be worshiping.

Stuart Wellington

[13:19] But, or even like, okay, if these guys existed, what does that mean about other gods?

[13:24] Is it possible that other gods are like, could Thor be flying around?

[13:27] That's possible too.

[13:28] Like, is the twilight of the gods upon us?

[13:29] Is Ragnarok here?

[13:30] Who knows?

[13:31] He doesn't ask these questions.

[13:33] Instead, he just goes along and he's like, hey, look at this kid.

[13:34] What about Marduk?

Elliott Kalan

[13:35] What about, you know, Tiamat?

[13:38] Where are they?

Stuart Wellington

[13:39] Yeah, where are they?

[13:40] Like, hidden in the bowels of the earth?

[13:41] Where's Baal?

[13:42] Yeah, absolutely.

[13:44] So, that's really weird.

[13:46] And they don't really address, you know, how he figured out that, you know what, the only

[13:53] thing that my serum needs to be 100% complete is for me to drink some Hercules blood and

[13:59] then I'll be immortal.

[14:00] And if anyone else drinks Hercules blood, they'll fucking explode or something or melt.

Dan McCoy

[14:04] Yeah, something like that.

[14:05] Like, somehow he knows what the drug interaction is.

[14:07] Like, if his serum had like a little warning label, it'd be like, add to, if you're

[14:12] you add this to Hercules blood, maybe you're going to become immortal.

Stuart Wellington

[14:16] Yeah, it's totally, it's totally batshit.

[14:18] It doesn't make any sense at all.

Elliott Kalan

[14:19] But it, but like a certain kind of movie can pull off that kind of craziness and this does

[14:23] not.

Stuart Wellington

[14:24] And then, and then in addition to that, not only, not only is there this Hercules blood

[14:29] floating around, but the thing that ends up saving the spirit in the end is the golden

[14:33] fleece that Jason and his Argonauts were seeking.

[14:38] Kind of weird.

[14:39] Weird, weird, weird choices.

Elliott Kalan

[14:41] It's, it's, it's, but I, it's, I just, I wish I could have been working with Frank, as

[14:45] Frank Miller's assistant through all of this, just to see his thought process.

[14:49] Yeah.

[14:49] Where it's like, okay, I read all the spirit stories.

[14:53] This is what I'm thinking.

[14:54] Hercules blood, golden fleece.

[14:56] Yes.

[14:57] Okay.

[14:58] Uh, giant gun battle where he's shooting at helicopters.

[15:01] Yes.

[15:02] Uh, okay.

[15:03] The spirit of death is constantly trying to convince the spirit to come with her.

[15:07] Perfect.

[15:08] Okay.

[15:09] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[15:09] You know, like an underwater makeout scene.

[15:11] Yeah.

[15:12] Yeah.

[15:12] With like a laser show.

Elliott Kalan

[15:13] I'm thinking the spirit climbs out of the ocean and there's a closeup of a toy dinosaur and

[15:18] we hear a roar and then we never go back to that ever again.

[15:21] Yeah.

[15:21] That was strange.

[15:22] I'm thinking that the octopus is vain.

[15:24] So he's always going to want to put on different outfits.

[15:26] A lot of costumes, right?

[15:27] A lot of costumes in the sewers.

[15:29] Like, but also love that he has his sewer headquarters, which has a dojo room and a Nazi

[15:34] room.

[15:35] Like, it's, it's like a themed, like one of those themed hotels that couples go to when

[15:39] they're trying to reignite their marriage.

[15:42] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[15:42] They're like, I didn't decide, I didn't know what kind of super villain I wanted to be.

[15:45] So I just got, I just had the architects put in one of everything.

Elliott Kalan

[15:47] And that kind of goofiness could work if the movie was telling a halfway coherent story

[15:52] or was fun in any way.

Stuart Wellington

[15:53] I would have liked the Nazi scene if they had cut to shots of them, like preparing,

[15:57] like putting on their little Nazi costumes.

[15:59] Like, okay, I'm going to say this and then you do this, okay?

[16:02] And then wheel out the kitty that we're going to be.

[16:03] Because it was very elaborately choreographed, yeah.

[16:05] Yeah, like I would have much preferred that.

[16:07] Like, that would have been awesome.

Dan McCoy

[16:08] I also like, the listener at home is hearing the convoluted, you know, MacGuffin to the

[16:14] story and thinking.

Elliott Kalan

[16:15] What, a vase full of Hercules' blood, you're saying?

Stuart Wellington

[16:18] Yeah.

[16:18] Yeah, that remains fluid.

Elliott Kalan

[16:20] It's remained fluid for, what, 3,000 years?

[16:22] There was Heracles around.

Stuart Wellington

[16:24] There's no real date.

[16:25] I mean, I guess I could call a Zeus as well.

Elliott Kalan

[16:27] What I love is that it's a vase that was inside of a crate.

[16:31] And I have to assume, and the crate was always on its side.

[16:33] So it's like, you're telling me the blood didn't just slosh right out of that vase?

[16:37] Like, I hope there was a stopper in the top of it or something like that.

Stuart Wellington

[16:40] Like, they're made out of fucking beeswax and human hair or something?

[16:42] Like, what?

[16:43] What did they use back in ye olden days?

Elliott Kalan

[16:46] Before ye olden days.

Stuart Wellington

[16:48] Yeah, like way before.

Elliott Kalan

[16:49] It's the golden age of Greece.

[16:50] Absolutely.

[16:51] It's the age of heroes before ancient Greece.

Dan McCoy

[16:53] Yeah, it's like pre-Troy.

[16:55] Yeah.

[16:56] But you'd think that all this, like, information would be, like, sort of parceled out by the movie.

[17:00] Over the length of its running time.

[17:02] Instead, there was a scene in which I was like, I turned to Elliot and I was saying, has this scene been going on for 18 minutes?

[17:09] It really feels like this scene's been going on for 18 minutes and it was just Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson explaining precisely this.

[17:18] And at the end of it, I still couldn't understand what was supposed to be happening.

[17:22] Yeah.

[17:22] Scarlett Johansson looked really bored in that scene.

[17:24] She looked bored throughout most of the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[17:27] This is, if you want to see, it's the same way that Star Wars Episode I is like a collection of actors' worst performances.

[17:34] This is that for the actors in the film.

Stuart Wellington

[17:36] I don't know, I thought Boss Nass gave a really good performance as the leader of the Gungans.

[17:43] No, I don't think so.

[17:44] Okay, well, he's been a good actor.

Elliott Kalan

[17:45] But I love this, you're implying that he's a real actor playing himself as the leader of the Gungans.

[17:52] What, you played him like Brian Denny or something?

[17:54] What the fuck?

[17:55] I understand, Boss Nass hasn't made a lot of movies since then.

Dan McCoy

[17:58] I thought Boss Nass got the Oscar for Marty.

Elliott Kalan

[18:01] No, you know, you're thinking of Ernest Borgdine.

[18:03] Oh, right.

[18:04] Boss Nass won the Oscar for, I don't know.

[18:08] Rachel getting married.

[18:09] Yeah, nobody won an Oscar for Rachel getting married.

Stuart Wellington

[18:11] Oh, I'm mistaken.

[18:13] So, yeah, now the spirit.

Elliott Kalan

[18:14] Oh, what were you going to say?

Stuart Wellington

[18:16] I don't know, like, it was crazy.

[18:18] There was a, obviously it goes back to Frank Miller's love of Japanese shit.

Elliott Kalan

[18:24] Well, that's the thing, you can see each of his obsessions smashing into each other in a terrible way.

[18:29] Japanese stuff, film noir, women's boobs and asses.

[18:33] Yep.

[18:34] Check.

[18:35] Like splatters of things in images.

[18:39] Venetian blinds.

[18:40] Well, that falls under noir.

[18:42] Monochromatic stuff.

[18:43] Did you say Converse All-Stars?

[18:44] Converse All-Stars.

[18:46] Which, for some reason, are, like, highlighted white on the souls the entire movie.

[18:50] It's like if he was drawing.

[18:51] The only thing that's not in it is, like, I guess, like, cyborg technology weirdness.

[18:59] Like, stuff where people have a lot of wires coming out of them.

[19:01] Or, yeah, or Samuel L. Jackson was bald.

[19:06] No, there were bald.

[19:06] Oh, no, there were bald clones.

[19:08] Yeah.

[19:08] Absolutely.

Stuart Wellington

[19:09] They were totally a Frank Miller-ism.

Elliott Kalan

[19:11] But I can't imagine people walking into this movie off the street not being familiar with Frank Miller.

[19:16] Like, maybe they know Sin City the movie.

[19:18] And walking into it and being like, and just what they believed was going on in this film.

[19:23] Why they thought it was happening, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[19:24] Yeah, like, I would have gotten mad.

Dan McCoy

[19:27] Why they thought it was happening in the sense of, why is this happening to me?

[19:30] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[19:31] I would have crunched up my box of goobers or whatever I had purchased.

[19:34] Or my nachos and stormed out.

[19:37] Your box of nachos.

[19:38] Yeah, that's what they sell, right?

[19:40] Like a box of nachos.

[19:41] Oh, here.

[19:42] Okay.

[19:43] Nachos with, like, liquid cheese.

Elliott Kalan

[19:45] Here's two points I'd like to make.

[19:46] One is that they're both things that are set up as if they're important, but they're not, ultimately.

[19:50] Or maybe they are.

[19:51] There's a lot of talk where he's like, the octopus is like, don't you want to find out who you are or what you are?

[19:58] To the spirit.

[19:59] And the spirit's backstory is that he's a cop who's been killed and chemicals brought him back to life and now he just, he's the spirit and he fights crime.

[20:07] Yeah, he's invulnerable.

[20:08] And in the comic, like, there seems to be no question less relevant to the character of the spirit than, like, who are you?

[20:16] Like, he's not fucking Wolverine.

[20:17] Self-reflection.

[20:18] He's just this guy who goes around and fights crime.

[20:20] Like, he's the least self-reflective hero.

Stuart Wellington

[20:23] He's going to stay in the rain and hold his arms out and be shot from above saying, no!

Elliott Kalan

[20:28] Probably not.

[20:29] And the other thing was, something that Stewart kept bringing up, which is that he talks a lot about, like, my city needs me.

[20:35] My city is my lover.

[20:36] We never get an idea of what kind of city the city is, except it's a vaguely run-down New York in the 50s, in the 40s, in the 30s type city.

[20:46] Chicago-ish.

[20:47] There's three percent in it.

[20:47] Maybe there's a little bit of New York in it.

[20:49] Like, I don't...

[20:50] The city is incredibly bland and generic, but he talks about it as if, like...

Dan McCoy

[20:54] It's between an ocean and a river, so it sounds like it's Manhattan.

Stuart Wellington

[20:58] I mean, I hate to, like, I hate to use, like, compared to, say, like, Dark Knight or something.

[21:02] Or even Batman Begins, but those are both movies where, like, the storyteller directly, like, clearly makes an effort to show you the city.

[21:12] Including, like, the geography of the city.

Dan McCoy

[21:14] Like, Tim Burton's Batman, too.

[21:15] Like, even that.

Elliott Kalan

[21:16] Or Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin.

[21:18] Yeah, absolutely.

[21:18] Where the city is made up of sculptures with buildings on top of their fingers.

[21:23] My favorite thing in that movie is there's an observatory...

[21:25] There's a huge, probably 300-foot-tall statue of a human being reaching towards the stars.

[21:31] And there's an observatory building placed on his hands.

[21:34] Like, how do you get into the building?

[21:36] I don't understand.

Dan McCoy

[21:36] Yeah, I realize that statue's completely solid.

Stuart Wellington

[21:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[21:40] You have to climb into the Baba Yaga's Chicken Lighthouse and she flies you up there.

[21:45] In her mortar and pestle, yeah.

[21:46] Yeah.

[21:47] But they, like...

Elliott Kalan

[21:48] We gotta take the elevator up to the cranium of the statue.

[21:51] Then we walk along the arms to get to the observatory.

Stuart Wellington

[21:54] We climb out of his nose and then walk up the arms.

[21:56] Duh.

Elliott Kalan

[21:57] Come on.

[21:57] Where else are you gonna build an observatory?

[21:59] Yeah.

[21:59] But anyway.

[22:00] Yeah, like, those movies, they create a sense of place.

Stuart Wellington

[22:03] Yeah, and this movie did none of that.

Dan McCoy

[22:05] No.

[22:06] It created a sense of place and that place is a soundstage somewhere in Hollywood.

Elliott Kalan

[22:10] Somewhere in Robert Rodriguez's basement.

Stuart Wellington

[22:12] But it's like, and the movie opens with him talking about how, like, important his city is

[22:16] and, like, how much he loves it.

[22:18] And that's kind of like any time a movie begins or any kind of story begins and they're like,

[22:22] this person is the most important person in the world.

[22:24] This guy is gonna go defeat the Emperor in a couple years because he's prophesied to be

[22:28] an awesome Jedi.

[22:30] Like, that type of bullshit where as soon as somebody tells you somebody's important,

[22:33] you don't care about them anymore.

Elliott Kalan

[22:35] Yeah.

[22:35] You cease to give a shit.

[22:36] Well, because you want it to be proven to you.

[22:37] It's the same way that, like, we saw the trailer for Crank 2 was on the DVD before this.

[22:42] Okay.

[22:43] And it shows a character tells a joke and then it cuts to a shot from a different scene

[22:47] of a different character laughing.

[22:48] And my reaction to that is always like, fuck you, I don't need to know to laugh at your

[22:52] shitty joke.

[22:52] Like, I get it.

[22:54] It was supposed to be a joke.

[22:55] You don't need to cut to a character laughing to tell me it was.

Dan McCoy

[22:58] Like, I'm supposed to laugh along with this guy?

Elliott Kalan

[22:59] Yeah, exactly.

[23:00] It's the same way, like, if a character in the beginning of the movie is telling you,

[23:03] like, oh, this city means everything to me.

[23:05] It's like, well, you know, if you don't show me it does, then I don't care.

Stuart Wellington

[23:10] Or any time in any kind of a work of fiction, they try and show, like, a character who's

[23:14] like a painter and they're like, this guy's such an amazing painter.

[23:18] And you're like, eh, he's not that great.

[23:20] Or like that movie Lady in the Water where M. Night Shyamalan plays a writer who writes

[23:24] the most important book in the universe.

Elliott Kalan

[23:26] Plays the greatest writer in the world.

[23:28] Yeah, that type of bullshit.

[23:29] But it's just like the, we never see the spirit.

[23:31] Like, I wish, I wanted there to be a scene where, like, the spirit, like, picks up a piece

[23:35] of litter and throws it in an garbage can and is like, not in my city.

[23:38] Or like, caresses a building and be like, it was built in 1923 by such and such brothers.

[23:43] Like, then he just shows some interaction with the city he lives in or, like, some interest

[23:47] in it.

Dan McCoy

[23:48] Well, there's only one scene, I think, where there was interaction with the public.

[23:50] Like, one scene where he, like, saw, like, a kid on the street.

[23:53] There's two.

Elliott Kalan

[23:53] He talks to a kid on the street and there's one where he's hanging by his coat off of a

[23:57] gargoyle.

[23:58] And the people on the street are like, that guy looks like a jerk.

[24:01] What an idiot.

[24:02] Jump, jump, jump.

[24:03] It's like, I thought you were the hero of the city.

[24:05] Like, you can either be the hero of the city that everyone loves or you can be the pathetic,

[24:10] like, Spider-Man type hero that everyone hates even though he saves their lives.

[24:13] Like, you can't be both of them.

Stuart Wellington

[24:14] Yeah, and, like, everybody's attitude doesn't change until his pants fall down around his

[24:20] ankles and then these women immediately start, like, fucking creaming their jeans over it.

[24:25] Like, I don't know, but, like, a dude in his boxers, I don't think that's going to get

[24:29] him hot.

[24:29] Especially when he's hanging for his, like, almost dying.

Elliott Kalan

[24:32] That might not be the most accurate reading of that scene.

[24:36] But it's also, that was a great scene because he's hanging from this, his overcoat, and his

[24:40] overcoat must be 50 feet long.

[24:41] Oh, yeah, it's huge.

[24:42] It's ridiculously, it's like he has Spawn's cape on his back, you know?

[24:46] Yeah.

[24:46] It's ridiculous.

Stuart Wellington

[24:48] You mean the Hellspawn, the character created by Todd McFarlane, right?

[24:51] Yes, of course, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[24:52] I can't remember the character's real name in that series.

Dan McCoy

[24:55] I don't remember.

[24:56] No, he's talking about Spawn Jones.

Elliott Kalan

[25:00] I remember, that was one of the few comics where I read it as a kid and Spawn comes back

[25:08] to life after being dead and he turns into human form and he's a white guy in human form

[25:12] and he's going, I'm black!

[25:13] I'm a black guy!

[25:14] I'm not a white guy!

[25:15] And as a kid being like, this is, I just remember being like, this is a strange thing to have

[25:19] the character have to go through.

[25:21] That he was black in his previous life and now he's a white guy.

Stuart Wellington

[25:23] And to me it felt like something that could only be written by a white guy.

[25:28] Yeah, probably.

[25:29] Something that like, the only way you can really understand race relations is through the vision

[25:36] of a white comic book artist.

Dan McCoy

[25:38] Did you ever see, like, for the short period that HBO had that cartoon version of Spawn?

[25:45] Yeah.

[25:46] Like, the intros with Todd McFarlane.

[25:48] He was sitting in like a dark room.

[25:50] Yeah.

[25:51] Do you know Fia?

[25:52] Like, he was the greasiest, like, douchiest guy you could imagine.

Elliott Kalan

[25:56] I mean, pretty much how you might imagine.

[25:57] My character, Spawn, is a dark vision.

[26:02] It reminds me of the old Rob Liefeld Levi's Jeans commercial.

[26:05] What?

[26:06] You never saw that?

[26:07] Look it up on YouTube.

[26:08] Look up Liefeld and Levi's.

[26:08] Nothing's made me more mad.

[26:09] It's him when he was doing X-Force.

[26:11] And he's thinking about how, I draw comics in my 501 jeans.

[26:15] And he draws a superhero version of the cameraman interviewing him.

[26:19] And it's a guy with a camera on his head and huge shoulder pads with enormous spikes coming out of them.

[26:24] And it's like, well, that's a Rob Liefeld character.

Dan McCoy

[26:28] Where's his metal arm?

[26:29] Add a bunch of really small, unnecessary lines all over everything.

Elliott Kalan

[26:32] And put some pouches on a belt around his thigh.

Stuart Wellington

[26:35] Yep.

[26:35] Rob Liefeld had this amazing ability when drawing male figures to always make their crotches look like it's just a bunch of lines radiating from them.

[26:44] Like that is like the horizon point.

[26:46] That's where everything emanates from.

Elliott Kalan

[26:48] But he was basically just trying to fill the space between the enormous thighs of whatever character he was drawing.

[26:53] Which would dwindle down to their tiny calves and non-existent feet.

[26:57] Because his was a world where mist, foot-level mist, existed everywhere.

Stuart Wellington

[27:01] So many skills and abilities.

Elliott Kalan

[27:03] So it was sad to see.

[27:04] This was like, it was weird to see a movie like this where it was written and directed by a man who has been in comic books since the 80s.

[27:11] Sure.

[27:11] And seemed to have been, it was as generic and hacky a piece of work as could have come out of any movie produced who had never seen a comic book.

[27:19] Well, wait, wait, wait.

[27:20] Except that it was in Frank Miller's style and had his particular interests.

Dan McCoy

[27:24] It's also, it's simultaneously with that and like the most idiocycratic film you can imagine.

Elliott Kalan

[27:29] It's the thing like, in terms of plot, it is the hackiest, most generic thing.

[27:34] But in terms of visuals, it could only have been Frank Miller, you know, with no supervision whatsoever.

Dan McCoy

[27:41] I mean, there are two shots in particular of just total weirdness that I enjoyed.

[27:45] One of a tiny head atop a foot just hopping around.

[27:50] And another one, a shot of a porcelain sink where a kitten had just been dissolved.

[27:55] And for some reason, the eyes didn't dissolve.

[27:58] And so two eyeballs are just slowly sliding down the side.

[28:01] Those are two things that, you know, I'm glad I've seen now that I saw the spirit.

Stuart Wellington

[28:06] Yeah, I mean, I think you're right.

[28:09] Like, he's created a movie that only somebody who has this complete, like, no holds barred love of Frank Miller.

[28:15] Like, somebody who will love Frank Miller no matter what and his works.

[28:19] This is a movie that only somebody like that could really enjoy.

[28:22] Yeah.

[28:22] Or possibly an insane person could like this movie.

[28:27] It just didn't make any sense.

[28:29] Yeah, they were...

[28:29] And I like crazy shit.

Elliott Kalan

[28:30] But that's the thing.

[28:31] I like crazy movies that don't always make sense.

[28:33] But this just, it was never fun.

[28:35] It was always a chore to, like, just try to decipher it.

Dan McCoy

[28:39] I mean, if it was sold to you as an art film rather than a narrative film, maybe it wouldn't be so frustrating.

Elliott Kalan

[28:45] Well, in the same way, as I said, if I Know Who Killed Me had been in Italian instead of English, people would have been like, oh, what a haunting film.

[28:51] Use of colors.

[28:52] I know the plot doesn't really make a lot of sense, but the way he splashes color in the frame and...

Stuart Wellington

[28:57] And the glass knives.

[28:59] Glass knives.

[29:00] The robot hands.

[29:01] The robot hands.

[29:02] You just don't see that in American cinema nowadays.

Elliott Kalan

[29:04] And Crab Man playing a doctor.

[29:07] So good.

[29:08] But, yeah, it's...

[29:09] This is...

[29:10] If it was sold to me as, like, a non-film Fantasia on the images of Frank Miller, then, like, maybe.

Dan McCoy

[29:19] Yeah, but you still wouldn't want to watch it.

[29:21] You might want to...

[29:22] You know, you would go to a gallery where it was being projected on a wall...

[29:25] Yeah, yeah.

[29:25] And watch five minutes of it and walk on.

Elliott Kalan

[29:27] Well, I feel like when they used to do music videos of songs in movies and they'd show, like, lots of little clips of the movie, and it always felt like they were doing the movie a disservice by just showing, like, little pieces of footage.

[29:38] This...

[29:39] That would be the best way to see this movie.

[29:41] Yeah.

[29:41] It's like a music video for, like, uh...

[29:44] Hopefully with a rock song that has the words of the spirit in it.

[29:46] Like a...

[29:47] Like a Smashing Pumpkins song.

[29:49] Like, the Smashing Pumpkins are playing a song that's called, like, Spirit of the Time or something like that.

[29:53] Sure, that sounds good.

[29:54] And it's...

[29:54] And, like, they're rocking out on top of a building or something.

[29:57] And then there's just...

[29:58] Sounds good.

[29:58] Clips of...

[29:59] From this movie, you'd be like, oh, I wonder who directed this music video.

[30:02] Like, projected on the wall of the building at times.

[30:04] Yeah, or sometimes like that.

Stuart Wellington

[30:06] Sometimes projected in the sky.

[30:07] And there would be, like, a bit where you overhear them saying, my city bleeds.

Dan McCoy

[30:11] Or if it was, like, Evanescence, it would be, like, projected on the lead singer of Evanescence.

Stuart Wellington

[30:15] Yeah, like on our bare midriffed.

Elliott Kalan

[30:18] I don't really know Evanescence that well.

Dan McCoy

[30:19] It's got a female singer.

[30:21] Just imagine, like...

Elliott Kalan

[30:22] Or if it was, you know, Blues Traveler.

[30:25] Sure.

Dan McCoy

[30:26] Very similar.

[30:27] Just imagine any generic rock band with a female singer that might be on the soundtrack to say Daredevil.

[30:37] Okay.

[30:38] Sure.

[30:39] Oh, and the music...

Elliott Kalan

[30:40] The music has...

[30:40] And the song has some part that goes, like...

[30:42] Like, that's the intro.

[30:47] No, that sounds good.

[30:47] And then there's probably a spoken word in it.

[30:48] That's when it goes, my city, you know, bleeds.

[30:51] I've got to save it, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[30:53] I'll only ever love my city.

[30:56] Yeah, it was a...

[30:57] Yeah, it was a really bad movie.

Dan McCoy

[31:00] Yeah.

[31:00] And then I'll say...

[31:01] Yeah.

[31:01] No, I feel like, since we're sort of back from vacation in a way...

[31:06] Sure.

[31:06] We should ease into it and not force ourselves...

[31:09] Okay, we can move along.

[31:10] Say more stuff about something.

[31:11] But we've got to do the ratings, right?

[31:13] Yeah, we've got to rate this film.

[31:14] We've got to say, is this a good, bad movie?

[31:16] It's going to be a big twist, I think.

[31:18] A bad, bad movie.

[31:19] A twist ending to the podcast.

[31:20] Or a movie that you kind of like.

[31:22] Stuart?

Stuart Wellington

[31:23] I didn't like this movie at all.

[31:25] Although, there were a lot of pretty girls in it.

[31:29] And a decent shot of Ava Mendez's ass.

[31:33] But not worth the price of admission or the time spent.

Dan McCoy

[31:37] Yeah, you know what?

[31:39] Like, the movie frustrated me because I kept wanting it to make sense.

[31:43] And I wanted, like, one shot to relate to the shot that followed it.

[31:48] And stuff like that.

[31:50] You know, little stuff.

[31:52] But in terms of just moving along at a good clip.

[31:57] It was okay.

[31:57] And there were some visuals.

[31:59] But overall, like, I just don't find anything about it, like, laughable enough or compelling enough to give it more than a bad, bad movie.

Elliott Kalan

[32:08] Yeah, I feel kind of the same way.

[32:09] And, like, there were a lot of shots in it that were very pretty.

[32:13] Or, like, kind of neat effects.

[32:14] But, yeah, it was not fun to watch.

[32:17] And it was not fun to...

[32:18] It was hard to make fun of it.

[32:20] Because there was just not a lot there a lot of the time.

[32:24] Like, as crazy as whatever was...

[32:25] Like, as crazy as scenes where Samuel L. Jackson is dressed up like a Nazi.

[32:30] And he is talking to a guy strapped in a dentist chair.

[32:34] And then a belly dancer comes out with a huge sword.

[32:37] Like, it just wasn't...

[32:39] It was just done in a way that made it all very stale.

Stuart Wellington

[32:41] Yeah.

[32:42] And, like, on that note, one of my problems with the movie is that at no point do you ever genuinely feel there's, like, that anybody's in trouble.

[32:52] Like, nobody's ever in trouble in this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[32:54] Yeah, well, because it's all cartoons.

[32:56] And the characters are all whispering their lines.

[32:58] And it's shot, you know, like...

[33:02] It's not shot or done in a suspenseful way.

Stuart Wellington

[33:06] Yeah, there's no suspense at all.

[33:08] None.

Elliott Kalan

[33:10] And things that would seem fun or quirky in another movie come off as, like, irritating almost in this one.

Dan McCoy

[33:18] So, we'll leave it in the toilet that the octopus smashed the spirit with.

[33:24] Mm-hmm.

[33:24] And move on to movies that we actually like.

[33:27] Yay!

[33:28] The segment that we stuck in...

Elliott Kalan

[33:30] Da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

[33:31] Da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

[33:32] For the sole purpose of proving that we're not just jerks.

Dan McCoy

[33:35] enough of that oh sorry i you know i think that our listeners um like mouth music less than you

Elliott Kalan

[33:46] might imagine i don't know only one way to find out

Stuart Wellington

[33:49] bobby mcferrin writes in and he's like i love it finally the flop house is getting good

[34:04] bobby m at acapella.net uh he probably's not involved with acapella.net no he's too big for

[34:15] that yeah he actually probably snapped up acapella.com yeah so yeah what movies do you

Elliott Kalan

[34:22] wait am i recommending first oh cheese and tomatoes uh i uh it's very italian i wasn't gonna

[34:32] i'm uh i was originally gonna uh recommend a different movie than recommending now but i

[34:38] figured because it's a comic book movie we were watching i'll stick with the theme sure and i'll

[34:43] recommend a documentary that i saw recently uh called confessions of a superhero which i think

[34:50] is available through netflix only possibly um and is about uh it was lent to me by my co-worker

[34:56] wyatt snack of the daily show with john stewart who has a luke who has a luke cage story out in a

[35:01] marvel comic out now wow uh he lent me this movie about and it's a it follows three of the people who

[35:07] dress up like superheroes at on hollywood boulevard outside of man's chinese theater oh yeah and take

[35:12] pictures i guess four people i read about this yeah it takes pictures with tourists in exchange for tip

[35:17] money and it's one of these movies that like it starts off and it's like isn't these characters

[35:21] aren't these people nuts but then it wants you to see kind of the inner nobility about them that

[35:27] they're just trying to make their dreams come true uh but it's still dancing around to the fact that

[35:33] these people are much crazier than the movie kind of wants to admit uh but it was the people in it are

[35:40] pretty interesting and it was well done and you know it was entertaining the only thing that's bad about it is

[35:45] that it's like morgan spurlock presents confessions of a superhero so there's like a five minute like

[35:50] bit when it starts of morgan spurlock in a superman costume like or superhero costume walking out of a

[35:56] phone booth and being like we all want to be superheroes here's what i like a lot about this movie i'm

Dan McCoy

[36:01] morgan spurlock of supersize yeah and i fast forwarded through that because i don't really care what he has

Elliott Kalan

[36:06] to say about the film is the movie narrated by verner hatzog no there's actually no narration that'd have

[36:11] been awesome where they see heroes and fantasy i see nothing but

[36:15] death and despair oh man uh my werner herzog was more of a normal schwarzenegger impression just then

[36:21] a very cerebral schwarzenegger but uh but i i actually enjoyed it a lot and i thought it was very

[36:27] good um and i'll never think about weirdos dressed up in costumes the same way again speaking of

Stuart Wellington

[36:35] terminator i watched uh terminator again you know schwarzenegger the term i watched terminator again um

[36:40] i didn't remember that it had so many lasers in it uh like the future in the flashbacks yeah or the

[36:47] flash forwards in that movie yep it's crazy okay that's that's a movie that always i thought i was

Dan McCoy

[36:53] gonna seg into a recommendation no no there's just a ton of lasers in it that's a movie that always

Elliott Kalan

[36:58] surprises me with the fact that there's a nude scene in it yeah i remember i kind of never remember

Dan McCoy

[37:03] until the i'm watching the movie when i well because you only also because you only remember the later

Stuart Wellington

[37:09] more angular linda linda hamilton the best thing about that nude scene is that when i was a kid and

[37:14] watching it i remember watching that nude scene with like a friend of mine and we were like sitting

[37:18] around giggling because we thought it was hilarious and uh my mom got really mad mad at us and made us

[37:23] turn off the movie and it wasn't because we were watching how dare you laugh at the beautiful act of

[37:28] love making that's the thing it wasn't that we were watching a nude or that we were laughing or that

[37:32] we were laughing at like you know like the act of sex but she like tried to justify it like you know

[37:38] they love each other they're like they're making a better future and after like at the time i was

[37:43] like yeah mom's not being mad at me but like that was a pretty hilarious way to justify her being mad

[37:49] their love saved the future but it's true that it did i'd have sex with michael bean to save the future

[37:55] sure so if you're listening michael bean and you have a rational reason you just have to show up and

Dan McCoy

[38:03] basically tell stewart that it's to save the future yeah i'd come with you if oh man i'm trying i can't

Stuart Wellington

[38:11] make a joke okay so um my recommendation um i think i'm gonna recommend a movie that i don't think i've

[38:18] recommended before uh but i might have mentioned it's a stewart gordon movie uh director reanimator

[38:26] stuck uh castle freak um from beyond yeah from beyond absolutely and it's a movie called king of the

[38:34] ants uh it's a movie um it's a little different than some of his other movies because there's uh no

[38:40] monsters in it um wait there's no like ant king no there's no ant king in it uh carly was in it

[38:46] though and she's in a lot of monster movies well like a mutant ant and she's naked in it carly wears

[38:51] naked okay but um that's every carly war film basically the uh basically the premise it's a

[38:57] thriller where you have uh kind of a down on his luck guy who's you know barely making ends meet and he

[39:03] ends up um taking a job to kill somebody um and the person just happens to be uh ron livingston from

[39:11] office space so that's funny um and he ends up you know accepting this job and going through with it

[39:17] and having to kind of like live with the guilt and having to live with the fact that the guys who

[39:23] hired hired him to kill this guy kind of want him out of the picture at the same time so uh yeah it's

[39:28] it's it's interesting it doesn't end 100 great but uh i think there's definitely some really good

Dan McCoy

[39:34] stuff in there so king of the ants okay well i haven't seen a lot because uh i was in costa rica

[39:41] um and then we get it all right but i do on a tropical vacation i did uh watch the movie appaloosa

[39:50] actually in costa rica on my ipod and the way it was meant to be seen exactly the sweeping western

Elliott Kalan

[39:57] vistas i met the hbo first look making of the director tried something new with appaloosa to

[40:03] film a movie for ipod screens in other countries uh no i watched with appaloosa i'm really trying to

[40:09] take the western and bring it to a new place that's not what ed harris sounds like well that's what he

[40:15] does what sounds like when he's off screen i see actually i i i sorry my ed harris impression

[40:20] uh when i was making appaloosa all decided but apples and pears i uh i watched half of it literally

Dan McCoy

[40:28] in a hammock so the way it was meant to be seen i recommend that for anyone who wants a good way of

[40:36] watching a movie your recommendation in general or apple is so your recommendation is hammocks

[40:40] go on down to the hammock district and get yourself a hammock i get that's i want to i want to do that

Elliott Kalan

[40:46] sometimes you guys both recommend movies and i'm like well coca-cola is a great soda

Stuart Wellington

[40:50] i just really enjoy their product now you're ruining the joke when you later on try and do that

[40:55] yeah oh man when i forget to do it so what about appaloosa did you like or not like well you know

Dan McCoy

[41:00] at the time when it was uh when it was being uh reviewed when it was in theaters like everyone was

[41:06] sort of like well this movie is fine but it doesn't break any new ground and then i i watched the

[41:12] movie i'm like oh this is great this movie doesn't break any new ground like it just seems like a

[41:17] classic western you know and ed harris and vigo uh mortensen are are both great like western uh style

[41:25] actors like the like it's good that they're getting a chance to do a movie like that and it's got a lot

[41:29] of uh jeremy irons is good in it too yeah jeremy irons is in it timothy spall is in it renee zellweger

[41:35] yeah she's the one weak link but uh lance henrickson is in it oh yeah uh that guy who was the the coach in

Elliott Kalan

[41:44] major league is in it you know the guy with like that like really like weird voice let's just say

Dan McCoy

[41:50] dennis farina okay let's claim it's not him but sure but uh guy with a really weird voice peter lorry

[41:57] it was peter lorry uh peter lorry's corpse so i just liked it because it was a nice basic uh western

[42:06] sounds very nice yeah there's kind of there was a time when you could make comics you couldn't

Elliott Kalan

[42:11] when you could there was about a like a 30 year period when you could just make westerns actually

[42:17] more than that i guess if you count silent silent movies like you could just make westerns that didn't

[42:20] have anything special about them but now it's too bad that every time they make a western they feel

Stuart Wellington

[42:24] like there has to be like a gimmick in it you know been there done that yeah honk shoe

[42:30] oh no we got the dreaded honk shoe yep it's not like it's uh like romantic comedies i think are the

Elliott Kalan

[42:38] same way probably like yeah they don't make too many romantic comedies that are just like funny

[42:44] movies about two people falling in love they have to have like a gimmick or a or a thing or a pull

Stuart Wellington

[42:49] that's something that i've only seen the posters and a little bit of the commercials for that movie

Elliott Kalan

[42:57] ghosts of girlfriends cast and it's like every time i see it and i go in this movie does matthew

[43:01] mcconaughey play a serial killer like he's being haunted by the girlfriends he murdered

[43:06] because i don't know how you know how likable matthew mcconaughey is i don't think he could uh

Stuart Wellington

[43:11] act his way out of that uh that predicament i also think it's funny that it's basically it's

Dan McCoy

[43:15] like a romantic comedy version of kiss the girls but i imagine it's the same it's the same story as

Elliott Kalan

[43:22] uh this one episode of the uh softcore porn show erotic confessions in which a man is visited by

[43:29] this on christmas by the spirits of girlfriends he is broken up with so that they can help him for

[43:34] repairs relationship with his wife and that involves him having sex with all of them

[43:37] sounds like a good movie well it's a tv show and it was terrible so wait that's what this that's

[43:43] what this movie i assume this movie is about his past girlfriends coming back to help him become a

Stuart Wellington

[43:48] better boyfriend so he doesn't have sex with him that i don't know it's weird sex with a ghost it's

Elliott Kalan

[43:52] like the dream sequence in ghostbusters you know the ghost does all the work it's funny that yeah i

Stuart Wellington

[43:57] guess it's funny that by her quite bought that scene well it's a dream sequence also it's it's a deleted

Dan McCoy

[44:03] scene from a cut uh segment where they go to the museum of natural history and uh a ghost from the

[44:09] museum of natural history is involved in it um but they're like we're cutting this but we got to use

[44:14] this footage somewhere i didn't know that that's the story about the ghost blow job and ghostbusters

Elliott Kalan

[44:19] let me tell you was the ghost it was the museum of natural history portrayed realistically in that

[44:23] or is it like night in the museum where it's they don't even it's like they never even been to the

[44:27] museum of natural history i'm just very mad about it i i'm not looking forward to night of the

[44:33] museum too i assume night of the museum too will be at the metropolitan museum of art and it'll be like

[44:38] the mona lisa being there and stuff a go job yeah well uh a gbj it's almost as good as a force job

[44:45] that's when your girlfriend's a jedi she could be doing from across the room like if you're at a

[44:49] party or something and no one knows jade exactly if you're dating mara jade then you are in luck

Stuart Wellington

[44:54] yeah that'd be kind of weird i didn't know they had that much control

Elliott Kalan

[44:57] depends on how much how much training they've had i mean yoda like if they're not like a youngling

Stuart Wellington

[45:03] couldn't do that i mean you probably wouldn't want that to happen that would be disgusting if it was

[45:07] youngling yeah that was and that's like is that is that illegal in imperial or republic society for

[45:13] like for if you're a jedi to use your abilities to jack somebody off i don't know that's a good

Dan McCoy

[45:18] question so that's what we thought about the spirit for the flop house i'm dan we haven't even we

Elliott Kalan

[45:25] barely cracked the surface of the star wars sex pantheon i'm steward wellington i'm elliot kalen i

Stuart Wellington

[45:32] guess good night yeah like is that illegal can you be like hey this dude used the force on my wiener

[45:40] my city screams after watching the spirit

Elliott Kalan

[45:50] my city's made out of cgi my city has a first name just a small town girl living their lonely

Stuart Wellington

[46:03] i just downloaded that on rock band it's totally fun to sing

The Flop House: Episode #36 - The Spirit

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