The Flop House Movie Minute #14 - McShane-McCain

Dan McCoy

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

[0:10] So, Elliot, you did a...

[0:14] Hold on.

Elliott Kalan

[0:16] No, that was perfect.

[0:17] Well, fuck it up. We gotta do it again.

[0:18] Stop fucking it up, Darren.

[0:20] Take two.

Dan McCoy

[0:21] So, Elliot, you did the John McCain video

[0:24] for the Daily Show's convention coverage.

Elliott Kalan

[0:27] It's called the John McCain biofilm.

Dan McCoy

[0:29] Yeah.

[0:30] That was narrated by a big Hollywood star, was it not?

Elliott Kalan

[0:34] It was.

[0:35] A transatlantic Hollywood star, Mr. Ian McShane.

Dan McCoy

[0:38] What was it like wearing with him?

Elliott Kalan

[0:40] Let me tell you.

[0:40] Well, for anyone who's not familiar with the name,

[0:42] Ian McShane is best known in England for his character Lovejoy,

[0:46] the roguish antiques dealer who solves crimes.

[0:50] But here in the United States,

[0:51] he's best known as Al Swearingen on Deadwood,

[0:54] the best character on that show,

[0:55] one of the best characters on television in the past couple years.

Dan McCoy

[0:58] He was also in the Death Race movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00] He's in Death Race.

[1:01] He was in Scoop.

[1:02] He was the voice of the evil polar bear in Golden Compass.

[1:06] And he's a voice in something else coming up, too.

Dan McCoy

[1:09] He was in Hot Rod, the Andy Samberg film Hot Rod.

[1:12] Yeah.

[1:13] He was?

[1:13] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14] Oh, I didn't know.

[1:14] That's disappointing.

[1:15] Well, he's really good.

[1:16] And I regret completely that I missed the recent run of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming that he was in on Broadway.

[1:23] But I was doing this McCain biofilm, and it was all about how McCain's a tough guy and a maverick,

[1:28] and there was a lot of cowboy imagery in it.

[1:30] And I said, the guy I'd really want to work with is Ian McShane.

[1:33] So I went to our guest booker, and I said, let me know if this is realistic.

[1:38] I'd like to get Ian McShane.

[1:39] And she said, yeah, we can do that.

[1:41] And then told me that it's a common request for her to get Leonardo DiCaprio to work on pieces and things like that.

[1:47] So she said, Ian McShane is a big name, but I think he is more doable than Leonardo DiCaprio.

[1:52] So that's a little look behind the scenes at how The Daily Show works.

[1:56] We put off recording his voice track as long as possible so that we could get the script in shape.

[2:01] So it was about a month almost between when I suggested him and when we actually recorded,

[2:05] and we had to reschedule with him a couple times because it was just not ready for him.

[2:10] But he was very nice and very politely kept rescheduling.

[2:14] He recorded in Los Angeles, and I was in St. Paul, Minnesota at the time.

[2:18] So it was all over the phone, and then here's another look behind the curtain.

[2:22] The way they do this, they record it in L.A.

[2:24] Then they upload it to the Internet on an FTP site, and we download it.

[2:28] Very exciting.

[2:29] With, like, satellites and stuff?

[2:31] No, more like just the Internet.

Dan McCoy

[2:33] Fiber optics?

[2:34] Is there some sort of thing?

Elliott Kalan

[2:34] Those might be involved.

[2:35] It depends on their connection.

[2:37] Maybe there's DSL lines.

[2:38] I don't know.

Dan McCoy

[2:38] Is it radioactive in some way?

Elliott Kalan

[2:40] Nope, not at all.

[2:41] Did we get it from the Egyptians?

[2:43] Nope, they didn't know about this.

[2:44] Stargates?

[2:45] No.

[2:45] Stargates were not from the Egyptians.

[2:47] They were from the ancient alien civilization that inspired the Egyptians.

[2:51] Oh.

[2:52] I gotta watch that movie again, I guess.

[2:53] One of the things that bugs me about Stargate is you'll read descriptions where it's like,

[2:56] aliens who imitated ancient Egypt and are now, and it's like, no.

[3:01] You're supposed to get that the Egyptians imitated the aliens.

[3:04] They built the pyramids because they wanted to have things that looked like spaceships.

[3:07] Is that what it says on the Netflix sleeve?

[3:10] That's what it, I don't know what it says.

[3:13] Hey, they have a TV show based on Stargate now.

[3:15] That's really weird.

[3:15] Anyway, I'll finish this story about Ian McShane.

[3:18] It was one of the coolest experiences I've had working at The Daily Show, aside from fist-pounding

[3:23] Barack Obama when my hands had Dorito crumbs all over them and I couldn't shake his hand.

[3:28] But that's another name-dropping story unrelated to movies at all.

[3:32] He was very polite.

[3:33] He was ready to go through the script any number of times as much as he needed to.

[3:37] And he has, he's English, so he has an English accent and then he like turns on the Al Swearengin

[3:43] in American accent and it's really cool.

[3:45] And I would do an impression of it, but I can't do it justice.

[3:48] We had been working with a scratch track that I was recording, so we had my voice reading

[3:53] this stuff in my approximation of what it would sound like.

[3:56] So the first line was, he was a maverick.

[3:58] So it'd be like, he was a maverick.

[4:01] Exactly sounding like that.

[4:02] And then we would replace it with Ian McShane's voice and suddenly the whole thing would come

[4:06] alive and not sound shitty because I was completely wrong for that part.

Dan McCoy

[4:10] You're not wrong for any part.

Elliott Kalan

[4:12] Thank you for that.

[4:14] I think he's coming on to you.

[4:15] This is awkward.

[4:17] We're being recorded right now.

[4:18] Ian McShane, it was just amazing and exciting to work with him.

[4:21] Someone I'd seen on TV a lot and was a huge fan of and he was very, it was the kind

[4:25] of thing where you are involved with someone you're a fan of and you find out that they're

[4:29] very nice and are a pleasure to work with.

[4:32] And so it's exciting.

[4:34] And, you know, the only time that I was ever happy to learn that someone I was a fan of

[4:38] was not the nicest guy was when I met Kurt Vonnegut.

[4:41] And we had been told ahead of time we could go down and talk to Kurt Vonnegut and he would

[4:45] sign a book for us.

[4:46] And we go down and he sees us walk in the room and he goes, ah, do we have to?

[4:51] And it was like, oh, Kurt Vonnegut, that was perfect.

[4:54] That's exactly what I would imagine you were like, a crusty old man.

[4:58] So, but this was the exact opposite of that.

[5:00] He was really nice to work with and did it, I think, just as a favor for us.

[5:04] Very exciting.

Dan McCoy

[5:05] So that has been the first episode of name dropping with the Flophouse.

Elliott Kalan

[5:11] Next time I'll tell you the exciting story of how I went to high school with a famous movie star.

[5:17] Who was it?

Dan McCoy

[5:19] And you won't watch her topless.

[5:21] Andy Rooney?

The Flop House Movie Minute #14 - McShane-McCain

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