The Flop House: Episode #36 - The Spirit

[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] Welcome to the Flop House, everyone! I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:37] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:39] And I'm Elliot Kalin.

[0:41] It's the podcast where we watch a bad movie and then talk about it.

[0:45] And boy did we ever and will we ever.

[0:48] But first off, glad to see you guys.

[0:51] Yeah, it's been a little while, right?

[0:52] Glad to see you too.

[0:53] So I went to Costa Rica and before that Elliot went to Uruguay.

[0:57] When are you going to have your adventure south of the border, Stuart?

[1:00] I don't know. They don't like me down there.

[1:02] What did you do?

[1:03] I don't want to go into it. It has something to do with marsupials.

[1:07] Okay. Usually those are found in Australia.

[1:10] I'm not allowed back to Australia.

[1:13] Did you import an animal into a country where the ecosystem couldn't handle it, like the end of The Simpsons?

[1:19] Or did you just have sex with a koala?

[1:21] I'm not at liberty to discuss my situation with marsupials.

[1:25] But for that reason, I'm not allowed to go south of the border anymore.

[1:29] By south of the border means he doesn't go down on women, ladies.

[1:34] I don't know.

[1:35] Wow, we already are swimming in the gutter.

[1:38] I don't even do it.

[1:39] We are face first.

[1:41] I'm looking at you to say, can you believe this?

[1:44] Not to blame you.

[1:46] It's like the movie The Spirit. It starts out in the sewer.

[1:51] Who does it? I don't remember.

[1:53] It sort of began in a desert.

[1:55] That was the production logo for Odd Lot Pictures.

[1:59] The first scene of note is the fight between The Spirit.

[2:03] But that's not in the sewer. That's in a mud flat somewhere.

[2:06] But it's clearly meant to be...

[2:09] Yeah, they're hitting each other with toilets.

[2:11] It's not subterranean, though. There's buildings behind them.

[2:14] It's hard to tell, though, because it's clearly shot on a sound stage.

[2:18] Yeah, well, it's shot in front of a green screen almost the entire film.

[2:21] Gabriel Macht was fighting in raw sewage.

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

[2:30] So what movie did we watch?

[2:31] We watched The Spirit.

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

[2:35] It's kind of like the possessive on the title is like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

[2:41] or Bram Stoker's Dracula, where they meant it to say...

[2:46] Did they call this movie Will Eisner's The Spirit or is it just The Spirit?

[2:50] They called it The Spirit.

[2:52] Because I remember seeing Will Eisner's The Spirit in earlier press releases about it.

[2:56] And it was the same way that...

[2:57] It's supposed to mean this is the closest adaptation you've ever seen of the story.

[3:02] But what it really means is like,

[3:04] listen, we're going to play all sorts of fast and loose and crazy with this story.

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

[3:10] Yeah, to me it sounds like...

[3:12] That was one of the best things in that movie.

[3:14] That's true.

[3:15] To me it's like Frank Miller is playing keep away with the movie.

[3:18] And he's like, yep, yep, it's Will Eisner's movie.

[3:21] It's his fault.

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

[3:23] It's maybe the worst adaptation of Will Eisner's vision that I can imagine.

[3:29] Since it's nothing like his style or tone or characters.

[3:33] You're forgetting the short-lived A Contract with God 1970s cartoon show.

[3:38] Yeah, the Saturday morning cartoon in which Jewish characters living in a tenement had adventures.

[3:45] That joke was for approximately two people in the audience, I'm pretty sure.

[3:49] Anyway.

[3:50] Yeah.

[3:51] Yeah, no.

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

[3:55] Nice.

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

[4:00] It had a dude who, you know, the spirit who was like a crime-fighting superhero type

[4:07] who is mirrored by his bad guy, the octopus, who...

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

[4:18] Yep.

[4:19] And he's exactly like him, only slightly different.

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

[4:25] Yeah, he had really good costumes.

[4:27] No.

[4:28] Unless you want to exchange costumes.

[4:30] Should we bother going over the plot of this movie?

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

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

[4:39] Okay.

[4:41] A city made out of CGI, which is supposed to be kind of film noir-ish, except it's...

[4:46] And styrofoam blocks.

[4:47] I think there's a lot of styrofoam blocks.

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

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

[4:53] And we're introduced to the spirit, a man in a suit and a fedora and a mask

[4:57] who works with the police department and solves crimes

[5:00] and seems to be Wolverine-ish in that he can take any amount of damage

[5:04] and then he comes back from it.

[5:06] And his character was adapted from the popular American spirit, cigarettes.

[5:09] Is that right?

[5:10] Yes, exactly.

[5:11] He was originally a Native American.

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

[5:15] It depends on the...

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

[5:19] Sometimes he shrugs it off and other times he's like...

[5:22] Like when he gets hit in the crotch by a novelty oversized wrench?

[5:26] Yes.

[5:27] Or when a sword goes through his chest.

[5:28] Oh, yeah.

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

[5:30] No.

[5:31] But anyway, he's got a mat on, as the kids would say, for...

[5:34] You'd have to be really strong to shove that giant sword,

[5:36] because that was like a machete.

[5:37] Yeah.

[5:38] It wasn't like a fucking fencing...

[5:40] No, no.

[5:41] It was enormous.

[5:42] It was like a chopping sword and she shoved it all the way through a human body.

[5:46] Yeah.

[5:47] She's not a large woman.

[5:48] No.

[5:49] Nor did she get any...

[5:50] She had no leverage.

[5:51] ...momentum or anything.

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

[5:54] She's like fucking Vicky from A Small Wonder.

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

[5:58] I don't know.

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

[6:02] She'd be standing there and pick up a couch with no visible leverage

[6:06] and it just looked so ridiculous.

[6:08] She would tip over, even if she's a robot.

[6:10] Her feet are really wide or something.

[6:12] 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.

[6:19] Yeah.

[6:20] She's made out of steel and also fat.

[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,

[6:31] which involves running around on rooftops and occasionally beating up criminals.

[6:37] 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.

[6:55] The reason they had to shoot it in a CGI soundstage is so that he could not chew the scenery, literally.

[7:05] There was no scenery for him to eat.

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

[7:08] You want to perform in a show for the first time.

[7:10] But he pops up – here's the thing.

[7:12] The spirit is based on a comic book by Will Eisner,

[7:14] who is one of the founding fathers of American comic books,

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

[7:23] He's called the spirit.

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

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

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

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

[7:35] I mean, most of the stories –

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

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

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

[7:44] Will Eisner was more interested in testing out his theories about what comics could be,

[7:50] and layout than telling a story that centered around the spirit specifically.

[7:56] That's the thing.

[7:57] It started out as like a crime comic

[8:00] and then became just Will Eisner experimenting with comics as much as he could.

[8:05] Which was great.

[8:06] Which was great.

[8:07] They were always entertaining.

[8:08] But 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, and also the octopus, his villain, was a shadowy crime boss.

[8:18] 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

[8:26] very loudly and openly 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 feels like Frank Miller was waiting for Will Eisner to die

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

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

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

[8:51] At times it makes me feel like Frank Miller was, like, over the years

[8:55] he'd gotten really tired of people being like,

[8:57] 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] He doesn't deserve all this credit.

[9:06] And then finally when he gets the chance he's like,

[9:08] I'm going to make this fucking movie.

[9:10] And he makes it as shitty as possible so that everybody's like,

[9:12] The Spirit, oh yeah, that's that shitty movie that nobody likes.

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

[9:18] And let's not forget also there's the character Sand Seraph,

[9:20] the femme fatale played by Eva Mendes,

[9:23] who was The Spirit's childhood girlfriend.

[9:26] And then there was some misfortune.

[9:29] She left Central City and became the world's 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.

[9:39] She's like a Girl Friday to the octopus.

[9:43] Who is the head of an international drug organization,

[9:45] yet has no henchman aside from Scarlett Johansson

[9:48] and an army of cloned buffoons.

[9:50] Yeah.

[9:51] And you see a bunch of lisping clones.

[9:53] Yeah.

[9:54] It's weird because it's the same way that Lex Luthor in the Superman movies

[9:57] is a criminal genius but he surrounds himself with a bunch of

[10:00] with bumbling idiots you know it doesn't make sense

[10:03] but anyway

[10:03] uh... this movie is this is a cracker jack film

[10:07] uh... deftly told in that you might find it in a box a cracker jack

[10:13] the movie is is it almost incoherent mess

[10:16] uh...

[10:18] it the pacing is terrible

[10:19] you kind of the

[10:21] by the time when the movie was over saying to dan and stewart

[10:24] it felt like

[10:25] we had just seen the ten minute mini movie at the beginning of life the

[10:28] spirit the movie

[10:30] and then the real movie was going to start like this was

[10:33] the the adventure that bond would go on

[10:35] though it didn't really make a lot of sense it was just a lot of stance

[10:38] before the title sequence before the real movie

[10:41] but now is the whole movie

[10:43] there was there was a really bad

[10:45] and uh...

[10:46] and frank miller has this kind of obsession with even mendez's butt

[10:49] well he has an obsession with women i mean like like he this it's not

[10:53] surprising that the spirit character would fall in love with every woman he

[10:56] sees as the film is

[10:58] full of like obviously like a hollywood movies and i have pretty women and the

[11:02] like

[11:03] literally seems to go out of his way to make as many women in his little close

[11:07] as possible throughout the entire movie yeah

[11:10] uh...

[11:12] but it's it's like the movie is trying to have the tongue-in-cheek and never

[11:15] gets there

[11:18] will

[11:19] speed time cheek you have to have some sort of

[11:22] like rational logical basis uh... and then you know like

[11:26] skew off to the side where is this

[11:29] movie like

[11:30] the the visual style

[11:32] match the content in that

[11:34] the fact that it was all shot on a soundstage

[11:36] meant that individual

[11:38] uh... pictures were very pretty but nothing had any relation

[11:41] uh... to anything else uh... spatially

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

[11:48] now

[11:49] speaking of plot and stuff was it ok the octopus guy now you can correct me if i'm

[11:53] wrong he's in addition being a super villain and like a master drug lord

[11:57] well when also he he had a super scientist right apparently in the in

[12:01] this and also like the spirit the octopus can be injured

[12:04] a hundred a dozen times over and it can't be explained as a limited

[12:08] yeah uh... and he

[12:10] but he's like a super genius scientist would like

[12:13] genetic serums and shit yeah

[12:16] and he injects the spirit with some kind of a serum

[12:20] and then himself that makes them you know pretty invulnerable that's the

[12:23] backstory then later on he finds out

[12:25] hey wait a minute

[12:26] if one of us drinks the blood of hercules heracles heracles sure if one

[12:31] of us drinks the blood of the greek hero uh... who apparently in this world is

[12:36] but that's the other thing 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 to go

[12:43] we want to be a mortal 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

[12:53] suddenly the movie is taking this left turn to a universe where zeus is real

[12:57] and the greek pantheon actually exists

[12:59] and you want you want the spirit to be like

[13:01] wait a minute hold on stop right there okay you're a criminal i get it let's

[13:04] hold on

[13:05] so you're saying that all this time people have been worshiping jesus or

[13:09] you know the or the muslim god or the jewish god or

[13:13] the hindu gods but really it was the greek pantheon that was real and exists

[13:17] and we should be worshiping but or even like okay if these guys existed

[13:22] what does that mean about other gods

[13:24] is it possible that other gods like could thor be flying around like is the

[13:28] twilight of the gods upon us is ragnarok here who knows he doesn't ask these

[13:32] questions instead he just goes along and he's like hey look at this dude

[13:37] uh... tiamat where where are they yeah where are they like hidden in the bowels of the earth

[13:42] yeah absolutely

[13:44] so uh... that that's really weird

[13:46] and they don't really address uh... you know

[13:50] how he figured out that

[13:51] you know what uh... the only thing that my serum needs to be one hundred percent

[13:56] complete

[13:57] is for me to drink some hercules blood and then i'll be a mortal and if anyone

[14:01] else drinks hercules blood they'll fucking explode or something or melt

[14:04] yeah somehow he knows what the drug interaction is like if his serum had

[14:09] like a little warning label

[14:11] uh... at uh... if you add this to hercules blood maybe you could become a

[14:15] mortal

[14:16] yeah it's it's totally it's totally batshit it doesn't make any sense at all

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

[14:23] this does not

[14:25] and then in addition to that not only

[14:27] not only is there this hercules blood floating around but the thing that ends

[14:30] up saving the spirit in the end

[14:32] is the golden fleece uh... that jason and his argonauts were seeking

[14:38] kind of weird

[14:39] weird weird weird choices

[14:42] i wish i could have been working with frank as frank miller's

[14:46] assistant to all this just to see his thought process

[14:50] okay i read all the spirit stories

[14:53] this is what i'm thinking

[14:54] hercules blood golden fleece yes okay

[14:57] uh... giant gun battle where he's shooting at helicopters

[15:01] yes uh... okay the spirit of death is constantly trying to convince the

[15:06] to come with her

[15:07] perfect

[15:08] okay you know like an underwater make out scene

[15:12] yeah with like a laser show i'm thinking the spirit climbs out of the ocean

[15:16] and there's a close-up of a toy dinosaur and we hear a roar and then we never go

[15:19] back to that ever again

[15:21] yeah that was strange i'm thinking that the octopus is vain so he's always gonna want to

[15:25] put on different outfits a lot of costumes right? a lot of costumes in the sewers

[15:29] like i would also love that he has a sewer headquarters which has

[15:32] a dojo room and a nazi room like it's it's like a themed

[15:36] like one of those themed hotels that couples go to when they're trying to

[15:40] reignite their marriage yeah 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 and that kind of goofiness could

[15:49] work if the movie

[15:50] was telling a halfway coherent story or was fun in any way and i would have liked the nazi scene

[15:55] if they had cut to shots of them like

[15:56] preparing 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 we'll reel out the kitty that we're going to be on

[16:03] because it was very elaborately choreographed yeah

[16:05] yeah like i would have much preferred that like that would have been awesome

[16:08] and i also like

[16:09] the listener at home is is hearing the convoluted uh... you know mcguffin to the

[16:14] story and thinking

[16:15] do it what a vase full of hercules's blood you're saying? yeah that remains fluid

[16:19] it's remained fluid for what three thousand years? when was heracles around?

[16:24] there's no real date i mean

[16:26] i guess i could call a

[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 so it's like

[16:34] you're telling me the blood didn't just slosh right out of that vase like

[16:37] i hope there was a stopper in the top of it yeah like made out of fucking beeswax

[16:41] and human hair or something like that

[16:44] what did they use back in ye olden days? before ye olden days

[16:48] yeah like way before the golden age of greece absolutely the age of heroes before

[16:53] ancient greece yeah it's like pre-troid

[16:56] did you think that all this like uh... information would be like sort of parceled out by the movie

[17:00] and uh... over the length of its running time instead there was a scene in which i

[17:04] was like

[17:05] i turned to elliot and i was saying

[17:07] has this scene been going on for eighteen minutes

[17:10] it really feels like this scene has been going on for eighteen minutes and it was

[17:13] 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

[17:20] happening

[17:22] yeah scarlett johansson looked really bored in that scene she looked bored throughout

[17:26] most of the movie

[17:28] this is if you want to see it's the same way that star wars episode one is like

[17:31] a collection of actors worst performances this is that

[17:35] for the actors in the film

[17:37] i don't know i thought uh... boss nass gave a really good performance as the leader of the gungans

[17:43] no i don't think so ok well he's been a good actor

[17:46] you're implying that he's a real actor

[17:49] playing himself

[17:50] as the leader of the gungans

[17:52] i haven't played him like brian denny

[17:55] i understand boss nass hasn't made a lot of movies since then

[17:58] so i thought boss nass got the oscar for marty

[18:01] no you know you're thinking of ernest borgnine

[18:05] boss nass won the oscar for

[18:08] rachel getting married yeah nobody won an oscar for rachel getting married

[18:13] so yeah now the spirit

[18:15] what were you going to say

[18:16] i don't know like it was crazy there was a

[18:19] uh... obviously it goes back to frank miller's love of japanese shit

[18:24] well that's the thing you can see each of his obsessions

[18:26] smashing into each other in a terrible way

[18:29] japanese stuff

[18:30] film noir

[18:31] women's boobs and asses

[18:34] uh...

[18:35] like splatters of things in images

[18:38] uh... venetian blinds monochrome well that falls under noir

[18:42] monochromatic stuff

[18:44] converse all stars

[18:45] uh... which are some reason are like highlighted white

[18:49] on the soles the entire movie if he was wrong the only thing that's not in it

[18:53] is like

[18:54] uh...

[18:55] i guess like cyborg

[18:58] uh... technology weirdness

[18:59] like stuff where people have a lot of wires coming out of some kind well or

[19:03] you know what we're going to let me know jackson was bald

[19:06] there were bald clones

[19:09] they were totally a frank miller-ism but i i can't imagine people walking into

[19:13] this movie off the street not being familiar with frank miller like maybe

[19:16] they know sin city the movie

[19:18] and walk into it me like

[19:20] and just what they would what they believed was going on in this film

[19:23] why they thought it was happening

[19:25] yeah like i would have gotten mad

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

[19:30] yeah i would have crunched up my box of goobers or whatever i had purchased

[19:35] or my nachos and uh... stormed out of the picture

[19:37] your box of nachos

[19:38] yeah i think that's what they sell right like a box of nachos

[19:42] oh here okay

[19:43] nachos with like liquid cheese

[19:44] 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

[19:49] they're not ultimately or maybe they are

[19:52] there's a lot of talk where he's like

[19:54] the oxford's like don't you want to find out who you are what you are to the

[19:58] spirit

[19:59] and the story

[20:00] and spirits backstory is that he's a cop who's been killed

[20:02] and accident and chemicals brought him back to life and now he just he's a

[20:06] spirit need fights crime you know and in the comment like

[20:09] there seems to be no

[20:11] no question less relevant to the character of the spirit them like

[20:15] who are you please not fucking over a year before it should be just this guy

[20:18] who are the president said fights crime like you

[20:21] the least self-reflective is not like a hero in the rain in the polls arms out

[20:25] and be shot from above saying

[20:27] no probably not

[20:29] and the other thing was something that's doing to bring up which is that

[20:32] he talks a lot about like my city needs me

[20:35] my city is my lover we never get an idea of what kind of city the city is

[20:39] except it's a vaguely rundown

[20:41] new york

[20:43] and in the fifties in the forties in the thirties type city chicago ish person

[20:47] maybe there's a little bit of newark in it like i don't

[20:50] the city the city is incredibly bland and generic we talked about it as if

[20:53] like we know she had a river so it's not like a manhattan

[20:58] i mean i i i i don't like i hate to use it like a person who like dark night or

[21:02] something

[21:02] or are or even that man begins but those are both movies where

[21:06] there's like the the storyteller director like clearly makes an effort

[21:10] to show you the city like including like well you know i don't remember in the

[21:14] senate and to uh... you know that's where joel schumacher's batman robin

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

[21:23] that's not my favorite thing in the movies there's an observatory there's a

[21:26] a huge probably three hundred foot tall statue of a human being reaching towards

[21:30] the stars

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

[21:34] like how do you get into the building i don't understand

[21:37] uh... you know that is completely solid

[21:40] you have to call him in the bobby ogis chicken leg house

[21:44] in her mortar and pestle yeah

[21:47] but they like

[21:48] we gotta take the elevator up to a cranium of the statue

[21:51] then we walk along the army at the observatory of his nose and then walk up to the

[21:56] observatory

[21:57] come on where else are you going to build an observatory

[21:59] yeah but anyway yeah like those movies they create a sense of place

[22:03] yeah and this movie did none of that

[22:05] now uh...

[22:06] it created a sense of place and that place is a soundstage somewhere in hollywood

[22:10] somewhere in robert regas' basement but it's like and the movie opens with him

[22:14] talking about how like important his city is 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

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

[22:24] this guy is going to go defeat the emperor in a couple years because he's

[22:28] prophesied to be 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 him anymore

[22:35] you want it to be proven to you it's the same way that like

[22:39] we we saw the trailer for crank 2 was on the dvd before this and it shows

[22:44] a character tells a joke and it cuts to a shot from a different scene of a

[22:47] different character laughing

[22:48] and my reaction to that is always like

[22:50] fuck you i don't need to know to laugh at your shitty joke like i get it it was

[22:54] supposed to be a joke you don't need to cut to a character laughing to tell me

[22:57] it was like i'm supposed to laugh along with this guy yeah exactly it's the same way

[23:00] like if a character in the beginning of the movie is telling you like oh this city

[23:04] means everything to me it's like

[23:07] if you don't show me it does then i don't care or anytime in any kind of a

[23:12] work of fiction they try and show like a character who's like a painter and they're

[23:15] like this guy's such an amazing painter and you're like yeah he's not that great

[23:20] or like uh that movie lady in the water where m. night shyamalan plays a writer who

[23:24] writes the most important book in the universe plays the greatest writer in the world yeah that type of

[23:28] bullshit but it's it's just like the uh... we never see the spirit like i

[23:32] wish that i wanted there to be a scene where like the spirit like

[23:34] picks up a piece of litter

[23:35] and throws it in the garbage can and is like not in my city or like

[23:39] caresses a building and be like it was built in nineteen twenty three

[23:42] by such-and-such brothers like that he just shows some interaction with the

[23:46] city he lives in or like some interest in one scene i think where there is

[23:49] interaction with the public like one scene where he like saw like a kid on the

[23:52] street and i think there's two he talks to a kid on the street and there's one where he's hanging by his coat

[23:56] off of a gargoyle

[23:58] and the people on the street are like

[23:59] that guy looks like a jerk what an idiot jump jump jump it's like

[24:04] i thought you were the hero of the city like you can either be the hero of the

[24:07] city that everyone loves or you can be the pathetic like

[24:10] spider-man type hero that everyone hates even though he saves their lives like

[24:13] can't be both of them yeah i'd like it

[24:16] uh... everybody's attitude doesn't change until his pants fall down around

[24:20] his ankles and then these women immediately start like fucking creaming

[24:24] their jeans over it like i don't know but like a dude in his boxers i don't think that's

[24:29] gonna get him hot especially when he's hanging for his like almost died that

[24:32] 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

[24:40] must be fifty feet long it's ridiculous that it's like he has spawns cape on his

[24:45] back you know people

[24:46] ridiculous

[24:48] you mean the hell spawned the character created by todd mcfarlane yes of course

[24:52] i can't remember the character's real name

[24:54] in that series i don't remember

[24:56] he's now he's talking about spawn jones

[25:00] i remember that was one of the few the few comics where

[25:04] i read it as a kid

[25:06] and spawn

[25:07] comes back to life after being dead

[25:09] and he turns into human form and he's a white guy in human form and he's going

[25:13] i'm black

[25:14] i'm a black guy i'm not a white guy and as a kid being like this i just remember being like

[25:17] this is a strange thing to have the character have to go through

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

[25:24] 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

[25:31] the only way you can really understand race relations is through the

[25:35] vision of a white comic book artist did you ever see uh... like

[25:40] for the short period that like hbo had that cartoon version of spawn

[25:45] uh... like the intros with todd mcfarlane

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

[25:51] do you know fia? he was the greasiest douchiest guy you could imagine

[25:56] i mean pretty much how you might imagine my character spawn

[26:00] is a dark vision

[26:01] uh... it reminds me of the old rob leifeldt levi's jeans commercial

[26:05] what? you never saw that? look it up on youtube, look up leifeldt and leifeldt

[26:09] it's him when he was doing x-force

[26:11] and he said a thing about how i draw comics in my 501 jeans and

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

[26:19] and it's a guy with a camera on his head

[26:21] and huge shoulder pads with enormous spikes coming out of them and it's like

[26:25] well that's a rob leifeldt character

[26:28] and a bunch of really small unnecessary lines all over everything

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

[26:35] rob leifeldt had this amazing ability when drawing male figures

[26:40] 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, that's where everything emanates from

[26:48] but he was basically just trying to fill the space between the enormous thighs

[26:52] of whatever character he was drawing, which would dwindle down to their tiny calves and

[26:56] non-existent feet

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

[27:01] so many skills and abilities

[27:02] so it was sad to see, it was weird to see a movie like this where

[27:07] it was written and directed by a man who has been in comic books since the 80s

[27:11] and seemed to have been

[27:13] it was as generic and hacky a piece of work as

[27:16] could have come out of any

[27:18] movie producer who had never seen a comic book, except that it was

[27:21] except that it was in frank miller's style and had his particular interest

[27:25] but also it's simultaneously with that and the most idiosyncratic film you can imagine

[27:30] it's the thing like, in terms of plot

[27:32] it is the hackiest, most generic thing

[27:34] but in terms of visuals

[27:36] it could only have been

[27:37] frank miller, you know, with no supervision whatsoever

[27:41] there are two shots in particular of just total weirdness that i enjoyed

[27:45] one of a tiny head atop a foot

[27:48] just hopping around

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

[27:55] 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

[28:03] you know i'm glad i've seen now that i saw the spirit

[28:06] yeah i mean

[28:08] i think you're right, he's created a movie that only somebody who

[28:12] has this complete like no holds barred love of frank miller, like somebody who

[28:16] 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] or possibly an insane person

[28:25] could like this movie

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

[28:29] yeah they're a lot like crazy shit

[28:30] i like, but that's the thing, i like crazy movies that don't always make sense but

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

[28:36] it was always a chore to like

[28:38] just try to decipher it

[28:39] i mean if it was sold to you as an art film rather than a narrative film

[28:43] maybe it wouldn't be so frustrating

[28:45] well in the same way as i said if i know who killed me had been in italian

[28:48] instead of english people have been like oh what a haunting film

[28:52] i know the plot doesn't really make a lot of sense but the way he splashes

[28:55] color in the frame and

[28:57] and the glass knives

[28:59] glass knives and robot hands

[29:02] you just don't see that in american cinema nowadays

[29:05] and crab man playing a doctor

[29:08] but uh... yeah it's uh...

[29:10] this is, if it was sold to me as

[29:13] a non-film fantasia on the images of frank miller then like maybe

[29:19] yeah but you still wouldn't want to watch it, you might want to you know you would go to a

[29:23] gallery where it was being projected on a wall and watch five minutes of it

[29:26] well i feel like when they used to do

[29:29] music videos of songs in movies and they'd show like lots of little clips of

[29:33] the movie

[29:34] and it always felt like they were doing the movie a disservice by just showing like

[29:37] little pieces of footage

[29:38] this, that would be the best way to see this movie is like

[29:41] a music video for like

[29:43] uh... hopefully with a rock song that has the words of the spirit in it

[29:46] like a smashing pumpkins song

[29:48] yeah exactly like the smashing pumpkins are playing a song

[29:51] that's called like spirit of the time or something like that and it's

[29:54] and like they're rocking out on top of a building or something and then there's

[29:58] just clips of from the

[30:00] movie you'd be like oh i wonder who directed this music video on the wall of the building at times

[30:04] yeah or sometimes like that sometimes projected in the sky where you over here i'm saying my city

[30:09] bleeds yeah exactly or if it was like evanescence it would be like projected on the lead singer of

[30:14] evanescence yeah like on our bare midriff i don't really know evanescence that well

[30:19] it's got a female singer just imagine like or if it was uh blues uh you know uh blues traveler

[30:25] just very similar imagine any generic um uh rock band with a female singer that you

[30:33] that might be on the soundtrack to say daredevil okay oh and the music the music and the song

[30:41] has some part that goes like like that's the intro no and then there's probably a spoken

[30:48] word that's when it goes my city you know bleeds i've got to save it you know i'll only ever love

[30:54] my city yeah it was uh yeah it was a really bad movie yeah yeah no i feel like uh since we're uh

[31:04] sort of back from vacation in a way sure we should ease into it and not force ourselves

[31:09] okay we can move along and more stuff about something but we got to do the ratings right

[31:13] yeah we got to rate this film we got to say is this a good bad movie big twist i think a bad

[31:18] bad movie or a movie that you kind of like stewart i didn't like this movie at all although

[31:26] there were a lot of pretty girls in it and a decent shot of ava mendez's ass

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

[31:38] yeah you know what like the the movie frustrated me because i kept wanting it to make sense and i

[31:44] wanted like one shot to relate to the shot that followed it and uh stuff like that you know little

[31:51] stuff but um in terms of just moving along at a good clip it was okay and there were some visuals

[31:58] but overall like i just don't i don't find anything about it like laughable enough or

[32:04] compelling enough to give it more than a bad bad movie yeah i feel kind of the same way i like and

[32:09] like they were there were a lot of shots in it that were very pretty or like neat like kind of

[32:14] neat effects but yeah it's it was not fun to watch and it was not fun to it was hard to make fun of it

[32:20] because there was just not a lot there a lot of the time like as crazy as whatever was had like

[32:26] as crazy as scenes where samuel jackson is dressed up like a nazi and he is talking to a guy strapped

[32:33] in a dentist chair and then a belly dancer comes out with a huge sword like it just wasn't it was

[32:39] just done in a way that made it all very stale yeah and like and on that on that note the one of

[32:46] my problems with the movie is that at no point do you ever genuinely feel there's like that anybody's

[32:51] in trouble like nobody's ever in trouble yeah well because it's all it's all cartoons and the

[32:56] characters are all whispering their lines and it's shot you know like i don't know there's no

[33:04] shot or done in a suspenseful way yeah there's no suspense at all none

[33:10] and things that and things that would seem fun or quirky in another movie

[33:14] come off as like irritating almost in this one so so we'll leave it in the toilet that

[33:21] the octopus smashed the spirit with and move on to movies that we actually like

[33:27] yay

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

[33:38] no enough of that oh sorry

[33:42] i you know i think that our listeners um like mouth music less than you might imagine

[33:47] i don't know only one way to find out

[33:57] uh yeah bobby mcfarren writes in i love it finally the flop house is getting good

[34:04] b mcfarren bobby m at acapella.net uh he probably is not involved with acapella.net

[34:14] no he's too big for that yeah he actually probably snapped up acapella.com yeah so

[34:20] yeah what movies do you recommend wait am i recommending first

[34:24] you go first oh cheese and tomatoes uh i uh it's very italic i wasn't gonna

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

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

[34:42] sure and i'll recommend a documentary that i saw recently uh called confessions of a

[34:49] superhero which i think is available through netflix only possibly um and is about uh it

[34:55] was lent to me by my co-worker wyatt snack the daily show with john stewart who has a

[34:59] loop who has a luke cage story out in a marvel comic out now wow uh he lent me this movie about

[35:05] and it's a it follows three of the people who dress up like superheroes on hollywood

[35:10] boulevard outside of man's chinese theater oh yeah and take pictures i guess four people

[35:15] yeah it takes pictures with tourists in exchange for tip money and it's one of

[35:18] these movies that like it starts off and it's like isn't these characters aren't these people

[35:22] nuts but then it wants you to see kind of the inner nobility about them that they're just trying

[35:28] to make their dreams come true uh but it's still dancing around the fact that these people are

[35:34] much crazier than the movie kind of wants to admit uh but it was the people in it are pretty

[35:41] interesting and it was well done and you know it was entertaining the only thing that's bad about

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

[35:49] five minute like bit when it starts of morgan spurlock in a superman costume like or superhero

[35:55] costume walking out of a phone booth and being like we all want to be superheroes here's what

[35:59] i like a lot about this movie i'm morgan spurlock of super size yeah and i fast-forwarded through

[36:05] that because i don't really care what he has to say about the film is the movie narrated by

[36:08] verner hatzog no there's actually no narration that'd be awesome where they see heroes and

[36:14] fantasy i see nothing but death and despair oh man uh my runner herzog was more of an all

[36:20] schwarzenegger impression just then a very cerebral but uh but i i actually enjoyed it a lot

[36:27] and i thought it was very good um and i'll never think about weirdos dressed up in costumes the

[36:33] same way again speaking of terminator i watched uh terminator again you know i mean schwarzenegger

[36:39] i watched terminator again um i didn't remember that it had so many lasers in it

[36:45] like the future in the flashbacks yeah or the flash forwards in that movie

[36:49] yep it's crazy okay that's that's a movie that always i thought i was gonna seg into a

[36:55] recommendation well no there's just a ton of lasers in it that's a movie that always surprises

[36:59] me with the fact that there's a nude scene in it yeah i remember i kind of never remember until

[37:04] i'm watching the movie when uh well because you only also because you only remember the later

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

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

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

[37:22] mad at us and made us turn off the movie and it wasn't because we were watching how dare you laugh

[37:27] at the beautiful act of love making that's the thing it wasn't that we were watching a new women

[37:31] we were laughing or that we were laughing at like you know like the act of sex but she like

[37:36] tried to justify it like you know they love each other they're like they're making a better future

[37:42] and after like at the time i was like yeah mom's not being mad at me but like

[37:46] no that's a pretty hilarious way to justify her being mad at us yeah their love saved the future

[37:52] that's true i'd have sex with michael bean to save the future sure so if you're listening

[37:57] michael and you have a rational reason to just have you just have to show up and basically tell

[38:04] stewart that it's to save the future yeah i'd come with you if oh man i'm trying i can't make

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

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

[38:25] reanimator stuck uh castle freak from beyond yeah from beyond absolutely and it's a movie called

[38:33] king of the ants uh it's a movie um it's a little different than some of his other movies because

[38:39] there's uh no monsters in it um wait there's no like ant king no there's no ant king in it uh

[38:45] what about like words in it though and she's in a lot of monster movies well like a mutant ant

[38:49] and she's naked in it kari wars naked okay but um basically kari were film basically the uh

[38:56] basically the primate it's a thriller where you have uh kind of a down on his luck guy who's

[39:02] you know barely making ends meet and he ends up um taking a job to kill somebody um and the person

[39:08] just happens to be uh ron livingston from office space so that's funny um and he ends up you know

[39:15] accepting this job and going through with it and having to kind of like live with the guilt and

[39:21] having to live with the fact that the guys who hired hired him to kill this guy kind of want him

[39:25] out of the picture at the same time so uh yeah it's it's it's interesting it doesn't end 100

[39:31] great but uh i think there's definitely some really good stuff in there so king of the ants

[39:36] okay well i haven't seen a lot because uh i was in costa rica um and then we get it all right

[39:44] but i do on a tropical vacation i did uh watch the movie appaloosa actually in costa rica on my ipod

[39:53] and the way it was meant to be seen exactly the sweeping western vista i met the hbo first look

[40:00] The director tried something new with Appaloosa, to film a movie for iPod screens in other countries.

[40:07] With Appaloosa, I'm really trying to take the western and bring it to a new place.

[40:12] That's not what Ed Harris sounds like.

[40:14] Well, that's what he sounds like when he's off screen.

[40:16] I see.

[40:17] Sorry, my Ed Harris impression.

[40:20] When I was making Appaloosa, all I decided was...

[40:24] Apples and pears.

[40:27] I watched half of it literally in a hammock.

[40:30] The way it was meant to be seen.

[40:33] I recommend that for anyone who wants a good way of watching a movie in general or Appaloosa in particular.

[40:39] So your recommendation is hammocks.

[40:42] Go on down to the hammock district and get yourself a hammock.

[40:45] I want to do that sometimes. You guys both recommend movies and I'm like,

[40:48] well, Coca-Cola is a great soda.

[40:51] I just really enjoy their product.

[40:53] Now you're ruining the joke when you later on try and do that.

[40:56] When I forget to do it later on.

[40:57] So what about Appaloosa do you like or not like?

[40:59] Well, at the time when it was being reviewed, when it was in theaters,

[41:06] everyone was sort of like, well, this movie is fine, but it doesn't break any new ground.

[41:11] Then I watched the movie and I'm like, oh, this is great.

[41:14] This movie doesn't break any new ground.

[41:16] It just seems like a classic western.

[41:19] Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen are both great western style actors.

[41:26] It's good that they're getting a chance to do a movie like that.

[41:30] Jeremy Irons is good in it too.

[41:32] Yeah, Jeremy Irons is in it.

[41:34] Timothy Spall is in it.

[41:35] Renee Zellweger.

[41:37] Yeah, she's the one weak link, but Lance Henriksen is in it.

[41:41] That guy who was the coach in Major League is in it.

[41:47] The guy with that really weird voice.

[41:50] Let's just say Dennis Farina.

[41:52] Okay, let's play him.

[41:54] It's not him, but sure.

[41:56] The guy with the really weird voice, Peter Lorre.

[41:58] Exactly.

[41:59] It was Peter Lorre.

[42:01] Peter Lorre's corpse.

[42:03] So I just liked it because it was a nice basic western.

[42:07] Sounds very nice.

[42:08] Yeah, there was a time when you could make –

[42:11] Comics.

[42:13] There was about a 30-year period when you could just make westerns.

[42:17] Actually, more than that, I guess, if you count silent movies.

[42:19] You could just make westerns that didn't have anything special about them,

[42:22] but now it's too bad that every time they make a western,

[42:24] they feel like there has to be a gimmick in it.

[42:28] Been there, done that.

[42:29] Yeah.

[42:30] Honk shoe.

[42:32] Oh, no, we got the dreaded honk shoe.

[42:34] Yeah.

[42:35] It's not like it's –

[42:37] Romantic comedies, I think, are the same way probably.

[42:40] Yeah, they don't make too many romantic comedies

[42:43] that are just like funny movies about two people falling in love.

[42:45] They have to have like a gimmick or a thing or a pull.

[42:49] Like Matthew McConaughey is visited by ghosts that tell him about what's wrong with him.

[42:54] That's something that I've only seen the posters

[42:56] and a little bit of the commercials for that movie,

[42:58] Ghosts of Girlfriends Classic, and every time I see it and I go,

[43:00] in this movie does Matthew McConaughey play a serial killer?

[43:04] Like he's being haunted by the girlfriends he murdered?

[43:07] Because I don't know how you would get ghosts.

[43:09] I don't know who old Matthew McConaughey is.

[43:11] I don't think he could act his way out of that predicament.

[43:14] I also think it's funny that it's basically –

[43:16] It's like a romantic comedy version of Kiss the Girls.

[43:20] But I imagine it's the same story as this one episode of the softcore porn show Erotic Confessions

[43:27] in which a man is visited on Christmas by the spirits of girlfriends he has broken up with

[43:33] so that they can help him prepare his relationship with his wife,

[43:36] and it involves him having sex with all of them.

[43:38] Sounds like a good movie.

[43:40] Well, it's a TV show, and it was terrible.

[43:42] So wait, that's what this movie is about?

[43:44] I assume this movie is about his past girlfriends coming back to help him become a better boyfriend.

[43:49] So he doesn't have sex with them?

[43:50] That I don't know.

[43:51] How would he have sex with a ghost?

[43:53] It's like the dream sequence in Ghostbusters, you know?

[43:55] The ghost does all the work.

[43:56] It's funny that –

[43:57] Yeah, I guess.

[43:58] It's funny that –

[43:59] I never quite bought that scene.

[44:00] Well, it's a dream sequence.

[44:02] Also, it's a deleted scene from a cut segment where they go to the Museum of Natural History

[44:08] and a ghost from the Museum of Natural History is involved in it.

[44:12] But they're like, we're cutting this, but we've got to use this footage somewhere.

[44:16] I didn't know that.

[44:17] Sorry about the ghost blowjob in Ghostbusters.

[44:19] Let me tell you.

[44:20] Was the Museum of Natural History portrayed realistically in that?

[44:24] Or is it like Night in the Museum where it's like they've never even been to the Museum of Natural History?

[44:29] You're going to grind this axe again?

[44:30] I'm just very mad about it.

[44:32] I'm not looking forward to Night in the Museum 2.

[44:34] I assume Night in the Museum 2 will be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[44:37] It'll be like the Mona Lisa being there and stuff.

[44:40] A go job?

[44:42] Yeah, well, a GBJ.

[44:44] It's almost as good as a forced job.

[44:46] That's when your girlfriend's a Jedi.

[44:47] She could be doing it from across the room, like if you're at a party or something.

[44:50] And no one knows.

[44:51] Like Mara Jade?

[44:52] Exactly.

[44:53] If you're dating Mara Jade, then you are in luck.

[44:55] Yeah, that'd be kind of weird.

[44:56] I didn't know they had that much control.

[44:59] Depends on how much training they've had.

[45:01] I mean Yoda, like a youngling couldn't do that.

[45:04] I just really wouldn't want that to happen.

[45:06] That would be disgusting if he was a youngling, yeah.

[45:08] Is that illegal in Imperial or Republic society?

[45:13] Like if you're a Jedi to use your abilities to jack somebody off?

[45:18] I don't know. That's a good question.

[45:19] So that's what we thought about the spirit.

[45:21] For the Flophouse, I'm Dan McCullough.

[45:24] We barely cracked the surface of the Star Wars sex pantheon.

[45:28] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[45:30] I'm Elliot Kaelin, I guess.

[45:32] Good night.

[45:34] Yeah, like, is that illegal?

[45:36] Can you be like, hey, this dude used the force on my wiener, and you're like...

[45:40] And you're like...

[45:47] My city screams after watching the spirit.

[45:52] Hey!

[45:57] My city's made out of CGI.

[46:00] My city has a first name.

[46:01] Just a small town girl living in a lonely world.

[46:04] I just downloaded that on Rock Band. It's totally fun to sing.

The Flop House: Episode #36 - The Spirit

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