The Flop House Movie Minute #21 - Who Watches the Watchmen's Penises

Dan McCoy

[0:00] And now, the Flophouse Movie Minute.

[0:09] So, Elliot, you got to go to a special screening of Watchmen recently, is that correct?

Elliott Kalan

[0:15] That is indeed correct. I got to go to a special industry screening set up for industry people in the entertainment industry, particularly the television industry.

[0:25] They have these screenings all over New York for reviewers or people who are booking guests for television shows.

[0:33] And I luckily got to go to this one for Watchmen at the Warner Brothers screening room the Sunday before the Friday that it opened.

[0:39] So I got like a five-day jump on everybody, and I was all like, ah, this is what they cut out of the movie.

[0:44] And no one wanted to hear what I had to say about it.

[0:46] But since it was an industry screening, it's a fairly small theater.

[0:49] It was just me and a couple other people from work and Jimmy Fallon and Whoopi Goldberg.

[0:54] And so it was maybe the strangest audience I've ever been in for anything.

[0:58] Mostly, it was like seeing it at any movie theater where there's almost no one in the theater.

[1:01] You're just sitting back and enjoying the experience of a three-hour superhero movie with, you know, extra gore and stuff like that.

[1:08] But as everyone knows, the character of Dr. Manhattan, played by Billy Crudup, is nude through most of the story.

[1:15] And whereas in the comic book, this is kind of tastefully portrayed, his genitals are not emphasized, oftentimes they're out of the frame.

[1:21] In the movie, it's almost like they're going out of their way to make sure you see his penis as much as possible.

[1:26] It's pretty big.

[1:28] And unless they had motion sensors on Billy Crudup's actual penis, I don't know why there's so much movement of the penis.

[1:35] Kind of every time he steps, his penis waggles around or flops around.

[1:39] And the scene where there's three of him at once, there's three penises at once on screen, and they're all equally floppy.

[1:45] But the best thing about seeing that in this particular screening was that the first time it came on,

[1:49] Whoopi Goldberg, who I imagine was not familiar with the source material, probably not a big Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons fan,

[1:55] wasn't following Promethea, you know, from first issue to last, or the originals or anything like that.

[2:00] First time Dr. Manhattan's penis was on screen, she said very loudly,

[2:04] That's a big blue penis!

[2:06] And then every single time the penis appeared on screen from that point on, she would laugh very loudly,

[2:11] and just couldn't get enough of the novelty of this giant blue penis that was on screen for much of the movie.

[2:17] The penis should get fairly high billing.

[2:19] It has more screen time than Hollis Mason, the first night owl, or the two cops who are investigating the comedian's murder,

[2:27] or the news vendor.

[2:28] Many of the characters we love from Watchmen have less screen time than this penis,

[2:32] but every time, she just couldn't get enough of it.

[2:34] She would just laugh every time.

[2:36] And at the end of it, we were walking out at the same time she was,

[2:39] and she was getting into a van, which I thought, it looked like she was being kidnapped or something.

[2:43] But she said to us,

[2:45] Tell them they have to cut it a little bit.

[2:47] Make it a little shorter.

[2:48] And everyone had the same thought at the same time.

[2:50] Did she mean the movie or the penis?

[2:52] And to this day we'll never know.

[2:54] Whoopi will take that information to her grave with her.

The Flop House Movie Minute #21 - Who Watches the Watchmen's Penises

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