The Flop House: Episode #23 - Wild Hogs

[0:00] On this episode of the Flophouse, we discuss wild hogs.

[0:03] It's like city slickers, with twice as much leather.

[0:31] Hey everyone, welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:35] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[0:37] I'm Rich Duncan.

[0:38] Yes, Elliot has returned from his exodus, covering the conventions with The Daily Show.

[0:46] However, Stuart now is gone. Apparently we cannot have all three of us in the same room anymore.

[0:52] The new Flophouse rule that there cannot be all three Flophousians in one place at the one time.

[0:57] What is this bitter feud that you have with Stuart, Elliot?

[0:59] Stuart's a great guy. It's not my fault if he refuses to be seen with me.

[1:04] He's just wearing his scorpion belt buckle somewhere else right now.

[1:08] He does have a very large belt buckle that has a scorpion in it.

[1:11] And when I say a scorpion, we mean one that used to be alive, like a real scorpion.

[1:15] An actual scorpion.

[1:16] In like a glass bubble.

[1:17] Imagine there was a scorpion paperweight, and then imagine that that paperweight was on a belt.

[1:24] Stuart, I'm sure, would feel like he missed nothing from this movie since there was no female nudity.

[1:29] And it was terrible. And nothing blew up.

[1:31] No, actually, that's not true. There was one explosion.

[1:33] This is my second time.

[1:34] We should briefly reintroduce Rich to the Flophouse audience.

[1:38] Rich was with us for Good Luck, Chuck.

[1:40] Oh, right. I had blocked that out.

[1:42] He was the editor of Jest magazine.

[1:44] You only get the bad comedies.

[1:46] He's a stand-up. He's currently writing a comedic book about werewolves.

[1:52] And yeah, he apparently is the guy we call when we're going to watch a comedy.

[1:56] Which is a bad thing, because as you probably know, if you're a bad movie aficionado,

[2:01] a bad horror film or a sci-fi or a thriller, often very funny.

[2:06] Bad comedy is usually painful.

[2:08] Yeah. Well, that's the thing.

[2:10] It works both ways, where a bad horror movie will change into a good comedy,

[2:17] because you have the same tension and release in horror and comedy.

[2:20] It's very similar to the way those two film genres work.

[2:23] However, when you are expecting a comedy and it goes backwards and it turns into horrible,

[2:28] then you didn't want horror and it's horrifying.

[2:31] Pardon me while I belch.

[2:34] It's a regular Algonquin round table here at the Flophouse.

[2:39] I have another witty bon mot there, Dan.

[2:42] Shut up.

[2:44] But what movie did we watch today, Mr. McCoy?

[2:46] We watched Wild Hogs, a star-studded vehicle.

[2:49] This is one of the most star-studded movies we've seen.

[2:52] Yeah.

[2:53] With, I think, one star in it that I think we can all agree we like and others that we don't.

[2:58] We may have mixed opinions on.

[3:00] Let's announce the four stars and then you, the podcast listener, in your brain, can guess who we liked.

[3:05] And then we'll reveal it.

[3:07] So this movie starred Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy.

[3:15] So take a moment to ponder.

[3:17] What are we pondering again?

[3:19] Out of the four of them, who we thought was passable in this film.

[3:23] Okay.

[3:24] Yeah.

[3:25] But there were a lot of smaller parts also played by stars.

[3:28] Yeah, there was Ray Liotta.

[3:30] Marissa Tomei.

[3:32] The Sklar brothers.

[3:33] I don't know if those are stars to us.

[3:36] Twin comedians, very funny stand-ups.

[3:39] Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day.

[3:41] Stephen Toblerowski is the actor's name.

[3:43] The dude from Scrubs.

[3:45] Oh, yeah.

[3:46] John C. McGinley.

[3:47] Yeah, KG from Tenacious D.

[3:49] A galaxy of stars.

[3:51] A galaxy of, as I was saying when we were watching it, it seemed like there was the regular director who wanted to make a shitty movie

[3:57] and then, like, an assistant director who was like, I'll just hire a lot of comedy people.

[4:01] Let's get some cult figures in here.

[4:03] Hey, KG from Tenacious D.

[4:06] Why don't you show up as a guy who just sings in shots that are completely unrelated to the rest of what's going on in the movie?

[4:12] Yeah, sort of like gay western disco.

[4:15] That would be funny.

[4:16] It's good in contrast to the other gay jokes, though.

[4:19] This was packed with gay jokes, and then there was one other gay joke that seemed to rise above the rest.

[4:24] Yeah, well, as you said, Rich, this movie was a lot of montages of motorcycling through the country.

[4:31] Motorcycling, that's the verb, right?

[4:32] Motorcycling?

[4:33] Yeah, motorcycling.

[4:34] And in between, there was a lot of gay panic humor.

[4:38] I mean, I don't know why.

[4:39] I saw that movie, Gay Panic.

[4:42] It's one of the 60s where the terrorists were going to set off a gay bomb.

[4:45] It was going to turn everybody gay.

[4:47] There was a panic, and then Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern were able to discover its location.

[4:52] Ernest Borgnine was terrifying.

[4:55] The leader of the gay terrorists.

[4:57] The taking of Gay Panic 1, 2, 3.

[4:59] Imagine Ernest Borgnine in all pink.

[5:02] Yeah, that was the sort of level of homosexual humor you could expect from Wild Hogs.

[5:06] You can understand.

[5:07] The movie is about four guys who are vaguely dissatisfied with their middle-aged life,

[5:11] who take a motorcycle trip cross-country wearing leather,

[5:14] and are caught in a series of situations that imply that they're gay.

[5:17] And then they vociferously deny their gayness.

[5:20] But the movie takes a bizarre left turn when they piss off some bikers and get punched in the face like a million times.

[5:26] I think that this movie would make a lot more sense if you read it for subtext

[5:31] and you just believed that these are actually four gay men who are coming to terms with their sexuality.

[5:37] And to that end, they take a trip across country.

[5:40] Yeah, I could see that.

[5:42] Well, similar to my theory that Jaws 2 would be a better movie if there was no shark in it.

[5:46] It was just Roy Scheider insisting that there was a shark this time,

[5:50] and it was post-traumatic stress disorder the entire time, and it turned out there was no shark.

[5:54] So like a curse of the cat people to Jaws.

[5:57] The first Jaws is cat people.

[5:59] There's no actual cat people in the second movie.

[6:01] I didn't know that.

[6:02] It's just about a little girl's overactive imagination.

[6:05] That's exactly what Jaws 2 should have been.

[6:08] Well, we're getting off topic from Wild Hogs.

[6:10] I think we'll get off topic then.

[6:12] I think that if these guys actually were gay men the entire time,

[6:18] and that they had been engaging in gay sex acts that would then be revealed in a big flashback,

[6:24] although all I'm doing is getting around to the idea of this is how Wild Hogs would be better.

[6:29] There's so many.

[6:31] If William H. Macy were to catch fire and die, that would make it, you know.

[6:35] Well, there are occasional jokes where they went very big in terms of like crazy things happening,

[6:41] like John Travolta being hit in the face by a raven while he was driving his motorcycle,

[6:45] where it was like, oh, somebody had a sense of humor who worked on this,

[6:49] whereas it was a lot of, you know,

[6:55] you know, and so forth.

[6:56] But without the funny sound effects.

[6:58] Yeah.

[6:59] I was kind of wondering before we started recording,

[7:01] do you think the screenplay of Wild Hogs was written and then these guys read it

[7:04] and were like, I've got to be in this project,

[7:06] or Disney or whoever made it said, listen, we have Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence,

[7:11] and William H. Macy under contract.

[7:13] Someone write an idea.

[7:14] Someone write a movie around this.

[7:17] I thought for a second that you'd be like Wild Hogs was floating around.

[7:20] It was like a Shane Black screenplay.

[7:23] Someone had bid like millions of dollars for this screenplay, this gold screenplay,

[7:27] and they're like, all right, give me a list of four middle-aged actors,

[7:32] three Caucasian, one black, and we're going to put them in a zany road picture comic.

[7:38] It was like the script for Unforgiven where it had been around for about 20 years,

[7:42] and then finally the right people picked it up,

[7:44] and it was a terrible script as opposed to the one for Unforgiven.

[7:47] Well, it was a radical comedy experiment where they're like, all right,

[7:50] what if there's four straight men all out on the road

[7:54] and they're all just constantly setting up a potentially humorous situation?

[7:58] I think you've reached one of the main problems of the movie,

[8:00] which is that every one of them had the same personality and no,

[8:03] except for William H. Macy who was the nerd.

[8:05] Well, let's start at the beginning.

[8:06] And Martin Lawrence who was the vaguely black guy.

[8:08] He also couldn't stand up to women,

[8:10] which would have been easier to ascertain if there were any women in the film

[8:13] that he could not stand up to.

[8:14] There was that one woman he glanced at earlier in the film,

[8:17] and then his voice-activated Mac laptop misheard him

[8:20] and started looking up very loud porn sites.

[8:22] This is Martin Lawrence I'm talking about.

[8:24] Oh, Martin Lawrence.

[8:25] Oh, yeah, well, they showed him being yelled at by his wife

[8:27] while he worked on his how-to book, which they never explained what it was about.

[8:31] His wife goes, listen, I know your how-to book will be a big hit,

[8:36] but you need to start making money.

[8:38] It was like, you can't just say a how-to book.

[8:40] Look, Ellie, you don't realize America has a real thirst to learn how-to.

[8:44] I guess you're right.

[8:46] I've always wanted to know how-to.

[8:48] That might have been the through line of truth, though, in the movie

[8:50] where the person who wrote this was actually attempting to write a how-to book.

[8:54] And somehow wrote Wild Hogs.

[8:56] Yes, while procrastinating from writing his how-to book.

[8:58] How to write a hit.

[9:00] But did you want to circle back around and do the plot again?

[9:02] No, I wanted to start from the beginning so we don't lose the audience

[9:06] because Wild Hogs has so many ins and so many outs.

[9:10] It goes Wild Hogs on the levels of complexity.

[9:14] It goes last year at Merriam-Bad, Wild Hogs, and then I guess,

[9:19] what, Woman in the Dunes or El Topo?

[9:22] In terms of complexity and hardness to penetrate.

[9:26] So this movie starts out with, there's four guys.

[9:29] Who own motorcycles.

[9:31] Played by your favorite actors.

[9:33] They do own motorcycles and leather jackets

[9:36] and are part of a motorcycle gang called Wild Hogs.

[9:38] They already have leather jackets with the logo and name on it.

[9:41] Any film viewer, someone who's seen mainstream Hollywood movies

[9:44] over the past 20 or 30 years.

[9:46] Let's say 45 years.

[9:47] Yeah, you might believe that something drives these characters

[9:50] to become a motorcycle gang.

[9:53] Called the Wild Hogs.

[9:54] No, once we join them, they're already a wimpy motorcycle gang.

[9:58] They're already a suburban motorcycle gang.

[10:00] I would have had these four guys who are friends explain how they became friends because they

[10:10] don't explain it ever and they're similar in that they have no personality but otherwise

[10:14] they're not similar, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different ethnic groups and so

[10:18] forth.

[10:19] I would have had them lament how boring their lives are and then one of them would have

[10:24] seen that four motorcycles were for sale across the street at the motorcycle warehouse and

[10:29] come on guys, let's join a motorcycle gang, we've always wanted to do this and you know

[10:33] what?

[10:34] Born to be Wild starts playing.

[10:35] And somehow they see two signs, one says Wild Animal Park and then a hogs truck backs up

[10:41] in front of the sign and it says Wild Hogs, that should be our name and then Born to be

[10:44] Wild starts playing and they drive off.

[10:47] The inciting event of the movie should be them buying motorcycles and going on a bike

[10:51] trip instead.

[10:52] You're forgetting though that I think it should be just the three friends and then William

[10:56] H. Macy who's the nerd that they all hate is just fixing their computer, he sees there's

[11:01] a motorcycle, he joins to be in the gang, nobody wants that guy.

[11:05] See, that would bring a dynamic that doesn't exist.

[11:09] Because of his many hours on the internet where all information resides, he knows everything

[11:14] about motorcycle repair so he becomes a valued member of the group.

[11:18] Instead what happens is these four friends already own motorcycles, they're already bad

[11:23] at driving them, William H. Macy falls off his all the time in ways that would kill a

[11:26] man or at least snap his neck in real life.

[11:29] Or another person.

[11:30] A motorcycle flies into the street and he's a hazard.

[11:35] He should not be riding a motorcycle but they're hanging out together and they're unhappy that

[11:39] they're not a real motorcycle gang and then someone drops by with the news that Tom Peterson

[11:43] passed away.

[11:44] Who's Tom Peterson, Elliot?

[11:45] He was our age.

[11:46] Tom Peterson, as we learned from the dialogue, was their age and is now dead.

[11:52] He was never mentioned before and he will never be mentioned again.

[11:56] It's like just a name but they've conjured up this whole human figure who existed and

[12:01] is dead now just for the purpose of pushing the plot forward slightly and there was something

[12:05] insulting to the idea of Tom Peterson in that.

[12:08] But they didn't even, I mean they still wanted to go on the trip before Tom Peterson died.

[12:11] Oh yes, they were going to go on the trip before Tom Peterson died.

[12:13] Tom Peterson pushed Tim Allen over the edge.

[12:16] Like oh, well if Tom Peterson died then.

[12:18] Oh man, Tom Peterson.

[12:19] We don't know what his relationship is to Tim Allen.

[12:22] I guess Tom Peterson was always talking about taking a trip across country.

[12:25] This is in honor of Tom Peterson.

[12:28] At the end of Wild Hogs, there should have been a memoriam of Tom Peterson.

[12:31] But they don't even tell you how he died is the other thing.

[12:34] You just know that he could have died because a safe fell on his head, you know, like or

[12:38] because.

[12:39] No, I think they would have kept that in.

[12:40] But this is also something that bothers me.

[12:42] Maybe he committed suicide.

[12:43] Like I don't know.

[12:44] I don't know what you're saying.

[12:45] City slickers set up where it's like these men have sort of like midlife honks.

[12:50] Let's call them city slickers for lack of a better term.

[12:53] These city slickers have no business being on a motorcycle.

[12:57] They're unsatisfied with their lives, but their lives don't seem that bad.

[13:01] No.

[13:02] You know, like the worst of them is John Travolta, who apparently he has like this wife who has

[13:08] abandoned him and he's broke and he's obese.

[13:12] Yeah.

[13:13] And he's gay and doesn't want to admit it.

[13:16] He's a closeted gay man who's losing his his shape and any acting ability he once had.

[13:21] I thought as as an actor, though, it was amazing the way he wove into the performance that

[13:25] he was a closeted gay man.

[13:26] The script didn't mention it.

[13:27] It never called for it.

[13:28] But clearly, he was a man who was obese and was gay and upset about it.

[13:32] And he brought that to the role, even though it didn't seem like it was mentioned in the

[13:35] script.

[13:36] That's your classic method.

[13:37] He's just, you know, using his own experiences to bring the character to life.

[13:40] What do you mean?

[13:42] No.

[13:43] No.

[13:44] And let me be clear, although Wild Hogs was a strangely anti-gay movie, this is not an

[13:51] anti-gay podcast.

[13:52] In fact, I felt bad for Travolta thinking like if if he is, in fact, a closeted gay

[13:57] man, as has been suggested by the tabloid press, say, does he feel bad appearing into

[14:03] the film that has so much humor based on the idea of just panicking whenever someone thinks

[14:09] that you might be gay?

[14:10] Do you guys remember that the candy bar commercial where the two guys are eating the candy bar

[14:14] from either end and they actually get a Super Bowl commercial?

[14:17] Yeah.

[14:18] And then they start hitting themselves with wrenches and car batteries because they're

[14:21] so they need to push this gay moment out of their bodies.

[14:25] That was this movie was kind of like that at times.

[14:27] Yeah.

[14:28] Well, the idea of being gay, the idea of being thought of as gay was so repugnant to them.

[14:32] Although, to be fair, John C. McKinley was coming on to them in a way that made it seem

[14:37] like if they didn't very actively say they weren't gay or come up with a side story,

[14:41] he would have raped them.

[14:42] Yeah.

[14:43] Well, I was alarmed.

[14:44] But don't let's not get ahead of it.

[14:45] Also, it does imply also that there are gay cops roaming the countryside looking for men

[14:50] to.

[14:51] But during the race, there would have been like a tin whistle sound, you know, it was

[14:56] it was wacky.

[14:57] I'm just saying, John Travolta, don't don't hate yourself to appear in Wild Hogs.

[15:01] Don't like don't punish yourself in a way it's not Wild Hogs to the script comes across

[15:05] your desk.

[15:06] Even wilder.

[15:07] Now, when you bring wild hogs to a wild hog, you know, he seems to have moved on.

[15:11] He was in Hairspray playing the divine role.

[15:14] So now he's going to be in bolts playing a dog.

[15:16] Yeah.

[15:17] But anyway, but but he had the worst life.

[15:20] And Martin Lawrence had sort of a bad life in that his how to book was going nowhere.

[15:24] Yes.

[15:25] How to book was going nowhere.

[15:26] And on the side, he was like a janitor who cleaned up shit filled restrooms in convenience

[15:31] stores.

[15:32] So that's that's not very good.

[15:33] And his wife was always mad at him.

[15:34] Right.

[15:36] There was so much shit in the bathroom that they had to put not one, but two strings of

[15:40] police tape.

[15:41] Yeah.

[15:42] It was a criminal amount of shit.

[15:44] I mean, it's possible someone might have shat themselves to death.

[15:47] I assume it'd be a pile.

[15:48] Maybe they died and evacuated.

[15:49] It was just like in Ed, the Happy Clown.

[15:53] The Chester Brown kind of really obscure reference to make whatever.

[15:56] But I assume he's the guy the police call in when the place is so dirty that it's breaking

[16:01] the law.

[16:02] I don't know.

[16:03] William H. Macy is clearly just sort of a clumsy dork.

[16:07] That's the worst you could say about him.

[16:08] Yeah.

[16:09] And Tim Allen with seemingly no experience with women.

[16:11] Tim Allen is a dentist, granted dentist, you know, high suicide rates, but a well-paying

[16:17] is that true?

[16:18] That's true.

[16:19] Very high suicide rate job.

[16:20] And because of that, it's like movie shorthand for depressed guy.

[16:25] Yeah.

[16:26] I guess because you got your hands in someone's mouth all the time.

[16:27] I mean, it seems like it's not.

[16:29] Yeah.

[16:30] Not a great line of work.

[16:31] I mean, but Alan Arkin was happy with it.

[16:35] In The In-Laws, Alan Arkin was very happy being a dentist.

[16:37] However, though, Tim Allen in the medical field, obviously well off, has a beautiful

[16:42] house, has a gorgeous wife, Jill Hennessey.

[16:45] You're saying they should have made him a proctologist?

[16:47] Yeah.

[16:48] It would have been that much worse.

[16:50] If they were going to go for a zany medical field, yes.

[16:53] Yeah.

[16:54] Why not?

[16:55] Well, he's unhappy because his son doesn't think he's cool.

[16:57] Right.

[16:58] Is that why?

[16:59] I mean, I'm going to turn 27 in a couple of months.

[17:00] I assume that.

[17:01] Your son doesn't think you're cool.

[17:02] So I don't have a child.

[17:03] When I have a child someday, I could be a rock star astronaut who has a dinosaur that

[17:08] he rides to work, and I assume my son will still find me uncool.

[17:12] That's just what being a dad means.

[17:14] But apparently, it creates so much distress in him that he has to drop everything.

[17:18] This is an audio podcast, but I would like to bring up the point that Elliot made that

[17:21] point while wearing a shirt of a vampire riding a dinosaur to work.

[17:24] That's true.

[17:25] That's a coincidence.

[17:26] That's just a coincidence.

[17:27] I didn't even notice that.

[17:28] There are UFOs in that shirt, too.

[17:30] And zombies?

[17:31] This is one of the best shirts that Threadless has to offer.

[17:33] It's UFOs, zombies, and dinosaurs, and a vampire.

[17:36] What sold it for me was the vampire riding the dinosaur.

[17:39] So podcast listeners.

[17:40] Threadless.com.

[17:41] Anyway.

[17:42] That's your sort of thing.

[17:43] I realized I was basically describing Buckaroo Banzai.

[17:46] But even Peter Weller's children probably think he's not cool.

[17:49] Yeah.

[17:50] Well, let me put this to the table.

[17:51] We talked a little bit about the gay panic.

[17:52] Let's put this to the panel.

[17:54] To circle around to the gay panic issue, you talk about the candy bar thing where they

[17:58] do the gay panic.

[17:59] They talk about all this gay panic.

[18:00] It feels to me like they're echoing a scene in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles that I

[18:05] think worked pretty well.

[18:06] We're talking about the...

[18:07] I don't remember that scene.

[18:08] That's not my hand between two pillows.

[18:10] Those aren't pillows.

[18:11] They go nuts.

[18:12] They run around.

[18:13] They talk about wanting to watch sports.

[18:14] Somehow that scene comes off like two men who maybe are scared of homosexuality, and

[18:19] it's funny that they are scared of it.

[18:21] Why does that scene work and nothing in this movie does?

[18:24] I would say, for one thing, that the talent involved in that scene is, you know...

[18:28] William H. Macy is a talented actor.

[18:30] Yeah, that's true.

[18:31] Let me put this out there, though, guys.

[18:32] Tim Allen has made good comedies.

[18:33] We're all pretty liberal people at this table.

[18:34] However...

[18:35] We're all voting for Obama.

[18:36] If I woke up next to either of you with my hand between your buttocks, I might be a little

[18:42] distressed.

[18:43] But, yeah.

[18:44] I might overcompensate.

[18:45] You would be mortified.

[18:46] I think that that's something that anyone can relate to.

[18:48] There's not necessarily some sort of inherent prejudice involved in that scene.

[18:53] It's more of like, this is an absurdly uncomfortable situation that we need to cover up for, rather

[18:58] than, like, at any moment in this movie, they appear to have hair triggers of people

[19:02] thinking that they're gay, and they need to overreact to that.

[19:07] I'm saying that if you guys were thinking of placing your buttocks around my hand...

[19:12] Around your hand.

[19:13] Yeah.

[19:14] You're saying that it would be...

[19:15] I would object to that.

[19:16] It'd be very easy to laugh it off as something that would happen, and that'd be awkward,

[19:18] is what you're saying.

[19:19] Right.

[19:20] Or that there's...

[19:21] It's not so much the homosexual aspects of it as that kind of intimate contact out of

[19:26] nowhere and by surprise.

[19:27] It's uncomfortable.

[19:28] Yeah, it's uncomfortable.

[19:29] Yeah.

[19:30] Especially with someone who you're not romantically involved.

[19:33] Whereas this movie has a scene in which...

[19:35] How many fingers are we talking about?

[19:36] Let's keep going.

[19:37] Let's keep going.

[19:38] Four in the stank or five in the stank?

[19:39] I don't think...

[19:40] If the thumb is involved, all right.

[19:41] Now you see we're doing it.

[19:42] But what if...

[19:43] We've become what we love.

[19:44] But what if it's two fingers from one hand and three fingers from another hand?

[19:47] Is that different?

[19:48] Better or worse?

[19:49] I think you're gay, though.

[19:50] I...

[19:51] Wild hugs.

[19:52] We...

[19:53] Oh, by the way, this is a family film.

[19:55] This was released as a family film.

[19:57] There are tons of...

[19:58] A lot of male ass, though.

[19:59] A lot of male ass and a lot of...

[20:00] Sweat like they say the word asshole probably 20 times the word shit probably 15 times like and I can only assume that the gay

[20:06] Panic is what makes it a family film

[20:09] Like the dads are like I'm gonna take my kid to that wild hogs cuz that's a movie about people who are terrified of the

[20:14] Gays, let's see that up there son. That's how you react in that situation

[20:19] Tremendous amount of classic rock in that movie too. How about yeah sort of whatever the boilerplate music you

[20:25] What are some of the titles that we heard although?

[20:27] I don't think they played born-to-be-wild did they to be fair the DVD broke at the end. That's true

[20:31] They probably ended with that. Yeah, we fuzzed out a little man

[20:34] But as we were saying we reached wild hogs his kill screen and the DVD could go no further

[20:39] No, it's ever gotten that far. There was no love there was

[20:45] Jesus God, what's the one they didn't play bad on a steel horse? I ride

[20:49] Oh, yeah on a dead or alive by Bon Jovi. They did that one pretty much any stock like rock highway to hell

[20:55] Yeah, I would Holly did any stock rock and roll rock and roll song that might have in low rod

[21:01] Yeah, anything that would involve writing or writing or driving or biking?

[21:05] There's an 85 to 90 percent chance that it was in this movie

[21:10] Basically the soundtrack producer for this movie had the easiest job in movie history

[21:14] They just gave it over to the soundtrack 3000 to the the magic

[21:19] 3,000 son

[21:21] soundtrack 3000 who does Hollywood soundtracks

[21:25] Andre can we borrow your kid for a little bit? Sure soundtrack. You got a summer job. We made reference to John C

[21:32] McGinley

[21:33] anti-gay panic and the thing was

[21:35] Early in the film. I let you said it as if Jensen. They were both people

[21:45] Opening for head of lettuce, I believe

[21:47] Excellent. Yeah. Oh, but Ed the happy clown. I can't make a reference to that. That's too obscure

[21:52] Anyway, you're saying head of lettuce was on Project Runway. That's a national show

[21:58] yeah early in their adventures, they camp out and

[22:02] William H Macy manages to wing a flaming marshmallow into their no Tim Allen does that right Tim Allen?

[22:11] He has a bag of shit. Yeah

[22:14] Well, we made a wood if you're wondering whether William H Macy shits in the forest the answer is yes

[22:19] Tim Allen pulls a marshmallow out of the fire and it's on fire and he goes, whoa

[22:24] Well, this one's done or something like that and flings it over his shoulder and it luckily it just hits their tent and burns that

[22:31] To the ground, but he could have destroyed a forest as I made the point

[22:34] I went right through the tent. Yeah, I think it was so the marshmallow was so hot

[22:39] The tent could have been made out of spun sugar and maybe it just you know

[22:43] I went camping literally last weekend and I made s'mores and when a marshmallows on fire

[22:49] You just blow that fucker out and you eat it. It has a delicious charred exterior and the inside is melty

[22:54] You're not like oh, well, this is ruined

[22:58] Like a golden brown marshmallow that was a problem with him flinging, you know, you're out on your own with you

[23:02] You're with the wild hogs. You got something on fire. You're gonna throw it

[23:05] All right

[23:05] But here's what my problem is if you're gonna throw a marshmallows on fire at least you throw it you can see yes

[23:10] We had a trajectory. That's all you're doing. It's like a mini comet. Mm-hmm. Well, the point is anyway

[23:15] Yeah

[23:16] but that was a funny moment because he is sitting there talking about a fire and then suddenly

[23:20] Pulls the flaming marshmallow out of a marshmallow out of nowhere into camera range

[23:24] so that was kind of funny that something on fire popped up out of nowhere, but

[23:30] Very few

[23:32] Listen for wild hogs. It was wild hogs. Funny. It wasn't you know, it was it was wild hogs funny. Yeah, that's a good point

[23:38] Yeah, that's so Raven. Like anyways, it was when you're in a desert and there's like a puddle of water that someone peed in and you're

[23:44] Like, oh, this is great

[23:46] I'm dying. The point is like after burning the tent down. They all of course sleep together on

[23:52] On the ground on the ground together and it implies that Emily shows up

[23:56] But the tent would was smaller than where they were sleeping

[23:59] I mean what they would have lost together anyway in the tent wouldn't I have I mean

[24:03] I guess maybe there was a second tent that they forgot to put up and that scene was cut maybe and it's on the DVD

[24:09] The point is I really

[24:12] Shows up as a cop and you think he's gonna be this like the gay hating cop. Mm-hmm. There's there's a series of wacky

[24:20] Things that they say very three's company sort of

[24:23] My jaw hurts from all the blowing. Yes

[24:25] He was because he was blowing on the fire and it hurt his jaw and also the I'd like no

[24:29] No one was meant to have something that big between their legs, you know

[24:33] About the motorcycle John McGinley after threatening them with

[24:39] With crime yeah charges criminal charge

[24:42] It turns out that he which as far as he knew they were guilty of yeah

[24:46] Turns out he's out and proud and wants to join in the orgy

[24:49] So it was a similar turn to that one episode of studio 60 where?

[24:53] Nate Corddry was pulled over by John Goodman as the Hick sheriff and John Goodman's like now

[24:59] I'm gonna throw you New York boy in jail. No, that's what you think. I'm gonna say

[25:05] Actually, it was that same exact turn but pulled off justice poorly. Hmm except in 360. It was done to make a point

[25:12] I guess about society small-town prejudice

[25:15] So the point is even though John C McGinley was really nice and not charging them with crimes

[25:21] They all tore away on their motorcycles terrified that the gay man might attack them

[25:27] He is a big guy. They ran away

[25:30] Actually, I think told him they implied that they were two gay couples and that there was no room for him, right?

[25:36] And then they got the hell out of there. I think they implied it though through

[25:40] William H Macy's total misunderstanding of it. Like he's just like an innocent his character. He's the heartbone marks

[25:46] Yeah, the group John McGinley says five is a crowd and then

[25:50] Travolta says no, it's an odd number if you know what I mean

[25:54] So, I mean does that mean that I mean they guys are gonna pair off and and and be having anal sex with each other or

[26:01] You know 69 anything 69

[26:06] Come on

[26:09] It could just know that's exactly my point

[26:11] I mean, you know, we could do I don't see why one more and a reach-around is gonna hurt anybody

[26:16] By the way, I didn't want to go there. You pressed me

[26:20] That's not the scene with the male nudity is

[26:22] There's also a scene where they go skinny-dipping in a lake where you see far more of them than you want to yeah

[26:28] If there are any ladies out there who are real do you see any fans real William H Macy's William H Macy's?

[26:33] Yeah, you see his ass and you're tired of watching the cooler over and over again

[26:38] This is your other choice. I don't know when that day will come

[26:43] Yeah, so there's another scene of

[26:45] panic where they they all start skinny-dipping together and a family comes up and

[26:49] Rescinds their offer of potato salad once they realize that they're all nude. Mm-hmm, and then John C

[26:55] McGinley shows up again also nude

[26:58] And what it implies is that he was watching them from I guess a rock somewhere

[27:03] I assume he was just masturbating while watching them and then he's like, oh I need I actually need to get in there

[27:08] Get on the sweet action

[27:09] Check out William H and then of course rule of three is in comedy

[27:13] The third time something happens is the funny time John C

[27:16] McGinley never shows up again throughout the film to appearances then he's done

[27:20] Oh, and now we forgot in the beginning. They all choose to throw away their cell phones

[27:25] Yes, that's in a very contrived bit of business. Yeah, so if you were wondering hey, this is a modern film

[27:31] They seem like they're getting into a lot of shenanigans. Why don't they just call someone but then even then there's no moments

[27:35] Where it's like, uh-oh. We had a no we had a cell phone. Everything would be okay

[27:39] There are scenes that it would have been better off if they had had a cell phone

[27:43] Like there's a part where they get past they leave a gas station because they're John Travolta's being afraid

[27:48] They're being chased by the bikers whose bar he blew up by accident

[27:51] They see it they drive they leave this gas station and then you see the sign last gas station for 200 miles

[27:57] Cut to them walking their bikes through the desert complaining about how thirsty they are

[28:01] Then all of a sudden they look up with a vulture with a vulture following standing by then they look to the side and there's a whole

[28:08] Town there and that with and like there's a diner right there

[28:12] Like they've they've managed to walk 200 miles with their bikes in the same day

[28:16] That you know that introduces the third act of the film

[28:19] But before we get to that, I'm just amazed at this Herculean feat of these four middle-aged men

[28:25] Walking their bikes 200 miles in one day. You're saying that song should be sung with the wild

[28:30] This is an epic feat

[28:31] Yeah, like that like that's but the Israelites had about the same distance to travel and took them 40 years. That's

[28:38] Well, the Israelites, unfortunately, they didn't have the wild

[28:41] I was trying to think of a Semitic wild hogs pun

[28:45] Well, they couldn't call themselves wild hogs because it wouldn't be kosher. Yeah, I was hoping it wasn't gonna be that one

[28:52] So earlier in the film before they reached this town though, they managed to run afoul of Ray Liotta and his cronies

[29:00] I was leaving right in the middle of the podcast everyone. He's offended. You're talking about Jews

[29:06] Really on his cronies

[29:08] What happens is they get into they go to a real biker bar and Ray Liotta?

[29:14] Dresses them down for being suburban posers and and we need Elliot to describe the the Ray Liotta laugh

[29:21] I mean and I guess we all knew this already

[29:23] It's tough to do in in radio, but it's hard to it's hard because you've got to see it

[29:28] really, but Ray Liotta has a special laugh where he opens his mouth and doesn't move it moves no muscles on his face and just

[29:35] It's just a frightening laugh because it's literally like he's just opening his mouth and then

[29:41] Shooting cannon fire of laughs out of his face. There's no it's not like ha ha ha like it's just like

[29:48] Propelling laughs and he looks so jealous. Yes what it is. Yeah, the jaw locks

[29:53] Like a snake shooting venom, yes, exactly. He's like a build ventriloquist dummy in the

[30:00] open position. But also and his face gets so intense while he's doing it, even though it's

[30:03] not moving, that you think he's having a heart attack. You think it's Wallace Shawn and the

[30:07] Princess Bride laughing as he's being poisoned to death and then falls over. Like, that's what

[30:12] you expect. Oh, and I can say one more thing about this biker bar. It's a real biker bar,

[30:15] real tough, full of bikers strewn with Christmas lights around because biker bars look basically

[30:21] like girls college dorm rooms. Yeah, but they run afoul of these guys. Ray Liotta dresses them down

[30:27] for being not real bikers, which, to be honest, they are not enough. They are not real. Fair

[30:32] enough, Ray Liotta. Guilty as charged. And so he tricks them into a trade for a like shitty bike,

[30:38] like a disassembled bike. And so like they go off, the wild hogs go off cowed. And then

[30:45] John Travolta turns back. He's like, No, this will not stand. William H. Macy, by the way,

[30:50] is in a sidecar. Yeah. And I think it's possible that there are jokes that must have been cut out

[30:56] with Macy in the sidecar. Why would you put Macy in the sidecar? Yeah, I think that's like a

[31:00] Hollywood saying, like, never put Macy in the sidecar unless you got a gag. But yeah, they've

[31:06] been saying that for 80 years. Travolta goes back to the place. I think it was Buster Keaton who

[31:11] said that first. And he clips all of their fuel line and Liotta runs out. Oh, I'm going to get

[31:17] those wild hogs, confound them. I wouldn't have gotten away with it, you two, if it weren't for

[31:23] wild hogs. They try and give chase. The only time it's OK to laugh like that is when Joe

[31:33] Pesci has just said something. That's the only OK time when it's right. They try and give chase,

[31:39] but Liotta manages to set the gas aflame and all of their bicycles blow up. And ends the bar and

[31:47] the bar blows up. Yeah, the bar, as I said at the time, that's someone's business. Dan was Dan

[31:53] being a really a champion of the small business owner really took it to heart that that this

[31:59] roadhouse owner's livelihood had just gone up in flames. So John Travolta feels very guilty,

[32:04] possibly thinking that he's murdering all of these bikers. Well, the us, the audience,

[32:09] we're not sure whether he's murdered them or not. Like a lot of times you'll get in a funny

[32:13] commercial that has violence in it. They will something horribly violent will happen to someone.

[32:17] They will show the name of the product and then immediately afterwards you will see them get up

[32:20] and dust themselves off. And yeah, it's OK that I just did something horribly violent. You can buy

[32:25] my products. Don't worry. I'm OK. This film had John Travolta put gas all over the place.

[32:32] He drives off. You see them drop a cigarette, huge explosion, gasoline, entire bar blows up.

[32:38] Travolta sees it in the rearview mirror, as do we, the audience, and it keeps following the

[32:42] wild hogs like the end of Mad Max. Basically, they've he's he's just committed multiple murder.

[32:48] At the very least, he's blown up a building, which is a crime. Say say what you will,

[32:52] but then getting put up on these on these bogus sodomy charges. He did just destroy

[32:56] private property in a really dangerous way. Yeah. So but he keeps this from them. And then

[33:01] eventually they wind up with this town. This is where they meet called Madrid. Yeah. I mean,

[33:05] Stephen Toblerowski is the sheriff. I mean, the Sklar brothers are the deputies.

[33:09] There's a Tomei, a local diner owner. Yeah. Who makes Macy finally has sex with one man,

[33:14] as you imagine, for the first time in his life after an impromptu dance lesson that lasts 30

[33:20] seconds and he's ready. Yeah. Then he's an expert dancer and he's ready to romance her at the chili

[33:25] cook off. By the way, there's there's a one good line in this for Steve. It wasn't actually at

[33:32] Toblerowski. There's a name where he he's talking about they have to go to the chili cook off.

[33:36] Last year, a guy his a chili was too hot and his throat started bleeding,

[33:41] changed his life. And that's his only explanation. Changed his life. Yeah, that's pretty good.

[33:47] That's wild hogs for me. That's wild hogs. I just like any of the lines that don't kind of

[33:51] don't make sense, you know, or they hinted a bigger story. Do you think it's possible that

[33:56] they shot a lot of these the montages of them riding bikes and then they put them together

[34:02] in scenes and kind of said, let's let these guys improv and maybe they'll come up with some

[34:06] entertaining comedy based on their characters. And then they came up with nothing. And then so

[34:10] they were like, I guess, just do the gay sketch. Yeah. And John Travolta came up with a character

[34:14] that was completely different from scene to scene. Like as boring as all the characters were,

[34:19] John Travolta's character had no arc. He had no arc, but he was also somewhat insane.

[34:23] Like he would he would get really angry for no reason. He berated a child in the beginning.

[34:28] Berated a child. Yeah. It was a joke because he was talking on a cell phone. You assumed it was a

[34:33] professional business entanglement. No. And it was a child that was raking his overlarge lawn.

[34:39] That's the comic twist. That was where the funny comes in. The audience,

[34:43] the audience grabs their belly and goes, oh, you got me.

[34:47] Wild hogs. I didn't see that coming right in the breadbasket.

[34:51] The movie suddenly turns into like a sub three amigos, a.k.a. seven samurai style or walking

[34:59] tall. Yeah. Or the wild one. But they come in like in that there's a town and all of those

[35:07] terrorized by a gang and then some out of town. This time, the town really wasn't being terrorized

[35:12] by the gang until the out of towners came in. No, there was some discussion. It was

[35:16] initially terrorized by the wild hogs, as you will remember. Yes. The first stop off for 200

[35:21] miles without gas. Excuse me. They were only terrorized because they thought that there

[35:25] were the Delphi Legos, which was Ray Liotta's gang. No, they came in. They came in drinking

[35:30] beer and stealing people's beers. The only reason they were harassing the family is they thought

[35:34] that was the Delphi Legos. And then they realized, oh, these are people who will pay for that beer.

[35:38] Oh, yeah. So I didn't get that. So they thought it was the Delphi Legos. Yes. First.

[35:43] And then they realized, oh, wait, these guys are just fucking assholes. So it's better. These guys

[35:47] are dicks who are affiliated assholes. Right. Yeah. But the Delphi Legos come by looking for

[35:53] to bruise some people and the wild hogs definitively defeat them by getting punched.

[35:58] Well, they make the diner their target. They say, we're going to destroy your diners. You

[36:02] destroyed our clubhouse. And the wild hogs stand up for the diner and get punched a lot. And they

[36:08] keep getting back up and keep getting punched. And this goes on for what, like four hours.

[36:12] Well, they also stand up for the larger concept of wild hogs. They're standing up for. Yeah,

[36:17] hog on the back of the jacket is more important than the name on the front. It's like a it's like

[36:21] an old Marvel comic where, like Thor and Hercules would be punching each other, but they'd be talking

[36:25] about their life philosophies at the same time. So I say the nay, a man's freedom must be decided

[36:31] by his wits, not his fists. Punches Hercules. Hercules. No, it is Brown that shall win this day.

[36:37] You know, punches. It was kind of like that, except the wild hogs were doing all the talking

[36:40] and Ray Liotta was doing all the punching. Well, there was an epiphany at one point where

[36:44] they decided that that it was, in fact, the biker gang that was that were the posers because they

[36:50] didn't have jobs and espoused the very lifestyles that they had wanted. This is where we get a

[36:56] little fuzzy on the plot since the DVD was breaking down, starts breaking down. But we

[37:01] were clear up to that point because they decided, no, wait, the way we should settle this because

[37:05] we're not posers is through violence. That's what we should do. We should we should fight.

[37:09] Yeah, we'll fight for real. And then they realized it's stupid to fight because we these

[37:13] guys are losers, even though they're beating us up. The DVD just sort of started like pixelating.

[37:17] It was like a psychedelic freak out in the middle of the end of Wild Hogs, which is sort of pleasant.

[37:23] It sort of gave it a little sort of like when that cat walks by in the Matrix and then walks

[37:27] by again and you realize there's a serious problem. Of course, I realized early on when

[37:32] like your family's having to get together and you've got to take the train to get there.

[37:35] And it turns out the trains aren't running that day. And you're like, yeah, I can stay home.

[37:40] That's what it felt like to me.

[37:41] The end of Wild Hogs. You're going to have to really watch it.

[37:44] But they are saved by it.

[37:45] And they get saved by Peter Fonda.

[37:46] They're saved by a ghost of biker movies past Peter Fonda, whose triumphant speech at the end

[37:51] we lost most of because the disc was pixelating. It turns out he's really owed his dad. He found

[37:56] the Del Fuego's and then he left it because he would decide to be a loner.

[38:00] Didn't they mention him? Wasn't there a foreshadowing earlier?

[38:02] Yeah, they mentioned this epic Slade something or other. Yeah.

[38:06] Dirk Thunder Boots.

[38:08] The funny thing is, if people haven't seen Easy Rider, I like to imagine that people who haven't

[38:15] seen Easy Rider watch it.

[38:17] By which you would mean the audience of this film because it was for children.

[38:21] But I like to imagine those people are like, oh, it's the guy from Ghost Rider.

[38:24] That's what they're making reference to.

[38:27] That other biker film, Ghost Rider.

[38:29] Oh, Peter Fonda from the famous biker movie Ghost Rider.

[38:32] Well, that's an interesting question. Is it for kids or is it for middle aged men?

[38:36] You feel like there's a lot of jokes in the beginning of the film where they're

[38:39] trying to appeal to the middle aged man of the baby boomer that maybe is now

[38:42] taking his kids to the film.

[38:43] I don't think it's for...

[38:45] It's for retarded people.

[38:47] Really stupid people who don't like jokes.

[38:51] And then at the end, their wives...

[38:53] What this movie is really for is for overseas sales and airplane showings.

[38:58] This is a really great airplane movie.

[39:01] This movie will live on on TBS and TNT for years to come,

[39:05] alternating with the Green Mile and the Shawshank Redemption.

[39:07] And I have to say, at the very end, all the wives show up in a minivan to be like,

[39:12] what have you been doing?

[39:13] But I have no idea how they found this because they threw away their cell phones

[39:17] and they've been driving on a cross country, like coast to coast road trip.

[39:21] So I have no idea.

[39:24] They've gone to every town in the U.S.

[39:26] They could just be big fans of the Del Fuegos.

[39:28] And they saw on the website that they were after the Wild Hogs.

[39:31] Oh, the Del Fuegos are fighting the Wild Hogs in Madrid.

[39:34] We were on delfuegos.org.

[39:36] It's supposed to be delfuegos.edu.

[39:41] Dot gov.

[39:43] Maybe CNN was covering the story.

[39:45] I don't know.

[39:46] Ira Glass did a piece about it on This American Life.

[39:48] But anyway, we should wrap this up because you...

[39:51] I've got to go.

[39:52] I have to get up early in the morning for my 7 a.m. flight to Santa Barbara, California.

[39:56] Yeah, you have no such good excuse.

[39:58] I lead a glamorous life.

[40:00] You've been out of town as we said covering the conventions maybe later on you'll favor us with

[40:04] some stories I won't make them you tell me oh sure we could do we could do a flap house non-movie

[40:08] minute sometime um or I can talk about working with Ian McShane that's right from Deadwood

[40:13] Ian McShane you may know him as you may know him as ghost in scoop the ghost in scoop or the evil

[40:19] polar bear in the golden compass well we'll get to that later actually let's go to final

[40:23] judgments on this film was this a good bad movie a bad bad movie or a movie that you

[40:29] actually genuinely liked in some way Elliot I'm gonna say this was a bad bad movie not only

[40:34] because it wasn't funny because it like failed at the very rudimentary tasks of giving its

[40:39] characters personalities and then giving them things to do like it would be so easy just to

[40:44] have made one guy the sports nut and like one guy is the rock and roll fan and like this other guy

[40:50] you know he loves I don't know surfing but instead they kind of vague drab middle-aged men felt like

[40:57] a Raymond Carver story in that way yeah I'm gonna say um but in a bad way if you have friends that

[41:03] enjoy like watching shitty movies this might be a marginal good bad movie just because I feel like

[41:10] it is such a compendium of bad comedy cliches like every bad comedy cliche you could imagine

[41:17] might be in a movie most of them show up here not not all like like it's not the perfect storm of

[41:24] like bad comedies but it could have been written by yeah I don't think there are any playwriting

[41:29] computer I don't think there are any fart jokes in it are there yeah but especially since they

[41:32] go to a fucking chili festival that is what the fuck they go to a chili festival and there aren't

[41:37] any farting jokes are you convinced me I I've changed the bad bad movie I don't know I feel

[41:42] like it's uh like well let's take the the when he gets hit in the face with a raven okay I'm watching

[41:48] the film and it was one guy gets hit with a bug then another guy gets hit with and always a lot

[41:52] you got hit with a bug I think I'd sit with a lot of bugs I said in jest in making fun of the funny

[41:58] bad movie hey wouldn't it be funny if he got hit in the face with a goose all right now he's hitting

[42:02] the face of the raven but they he doesn't fall off his bike the raven the raven is still alive

[42:09] there's a shot of the race like it takes four shots and four cuts to get this piece of physical

[42:14] comedy across all you need is a white blur and a poof of feathers and he's down and you've got

[42:20] a half decent so I feel like there are some jokes in here but it's like the when you go to the

[42:25] optician and they put the thing over your eyes and they just go better or better better or better

[42:31] but and I think this is two clicks away from funny but the funny is there like you just I

[42:35] don't know I don't know what that means but take it take well for what it is I'll sum it up this

[42:40] way I think that for me it was a good bad movie and that it's fun to participate in the flophouse

[42:46] right and you know it's like uh getting a chance to meet bruce springsteen like if you got a chance

[42:51] to meet bruce springsteen they said hey you want to come meet bruce springsteen I'd say yes that'd

[42:54] be a good time let's say just come on over and he's gonna slam your hand in a desk drawer five

[42:59] or six times I'd be like I don't know whether I would like that thanks for coming over it's nice

[43:03] to meet you and he's explaining that you're doing this I just like it bang bang and it's he's the

[43:08] boss he's explaining to you the moment you know and you're like this is uncomfortable and I don't

[43:13] enjoy it but this is still somehow a pleasurable experience in the usa for some reason every time

[43:21] he slams your your hand he yells thunder road it's uh you know I I would hate it it would really

[43:28] hurt my hand a lot but at the end of the day I would walk away saying you know what I just met

[43:32] fucking bruce springsteen I met the boss they're like why is your hand in the cast I'll tell you

[43:36] later that's the flop house that's pretty good all right I'll take that it was no brats movie

[43:42] tell you that it was not any brats movie you guys watch the brats movie on a way that was

[43:46] that ended up being so it was a terrible movie but ended up being so much a documentary from

[43:50] wisconsin about sausage preparation the brats movie uh this ranks uh 6.5 and yet it was much

[43:58] easier to watch than 10 000 bc oh so much more don't america if it comes down to a choice between

[44:05] 10 000 bc and wild hogs I never thought I would ever say this but choose wild hogs over the movie

[44:11] where they fight mammoths and giant birds so if you're in a public library in a small town in

[44:16] indiana and there's four videotapes on the shelf you're gonna want to pick wild hogs probably

[44:21] videotapes actually yeah so you can either watch bride's head revisited the pbs series again or I

[44:27] guess it was bbc or you can watch wild hogs or 10 000 bc let's move briefly to business uh before

[44:33] we do our recommendations gentlemen dividends are down this quarter no no I want first of all

[44:39] we talked about your day job briefly elliot I want to extend congratulations to you elliot has

[44:45] been hired on as a writer uh for the daily show huzzah he had been producing there uh and now um

[44:52] it's basically your it's your basic ratio algor story started as an intern worked up to being a

[44:57] writer it really is someday I'll be president president of television you know um very fun time

[45:02] to be writing on that show I would imagine I'm uh no but I gotta I gotta say it is a testament

[45:07] to uh the work ethic because uh no because I'm I'm because I could have given up I'm bitter that I

[45:13] I'm bitter that I don't have like a good comedy writing job but what the fuck have I ever done

[45:17] well you on the other hand like started off as like what like a like a PA on the show I was an

[45:22] intern at the show and they hired me as a PA and then way all the way up to a writer PA to AP to

[45:27] segment producer that's genuinely admirable well thank you so this is Dan's way of asking you if

[45:32] you can get an intern gig yes I I'll see if I can get you an internship you need to get school

[45:37] credit for that's the point where that would be uh tenable but you'd be surprised anyway well we'll

[45:42] get we'll get interns in and it's like hey nice to meet you yeah well I'm I went back to school

[45:46] to get my degree I'm 35 oh okay what are you studying not something tv production related

[45:53] well that's very strange yeah and anyway what you were saying I was pretty much done I was

[45:58] congratulating you thanks on your take that Stuart Wellington yeah manager he's off doing

[46:05] business somewhere and look at Ellioth I just heard he has a cool little uh it's like a role

[46:10] playing store right yes he's a strategy gamer speaking of guys like here's here's how here's

[46:15] how pathetic I am I think that's awesome no it's pretty awesome I think it's kind of cool yeah he's

[46:19] a he's a he's a good man and uh he's a great guy I think he's a huge dick I just think he has a

[46:24] cool job okay all right he's a terrible human being don't get me wrong we were just looking for

[46:29] a reason to um to work this piece of information into the the podcast though and that's and that's

[46:35] that we look at you know you look at stats for how people come to the flop house website you can

[46:40] like look at the stats and like what keywords get that gets you there and um the keywords

[46:47] Stuart Wellington gay that was me and gay Stuart Wellington have brought first one was me I can't

[46:54] say for the someone to the site so whoever Stuart Wellington's gay admirer is out there we want you

[46:59] to contact he's gotten he's gotten straight admirer letters before yeah he has gotten he's

[47:05] some some girl is uh totally in love with him so now by the way that gay joke I just made that was

[47:10] a gay panic it was a little bit of gay panic right there on my part it backfired yeah tonight at

[47:15] gay panic opener Murray Hill anyway um Murray hell so let's go on to uh what was the other

[47:24] thing I wanted to say what was the other business the the uva bowl contest it's pronounced uva yeah

[47:30] it's pronounced uva I didn't know this is the video game director guy yeah really I always

[47:34] said I mean it is it is German so it makes sense that I know this because I he actually was on a

[47:41] screenwriting podcast I listened to I don't know why one would want to take advice from movable

[47:47] but he was on there so the I now own wild hogs because our local DVD store is going out of

[47:55] business and screenwriting podcast wow and I tried to rent this movie interior podcast recording

[48:01] studio two men sit at microphones talking about screenwriting I tried to rent the film wild hogs

[48:07] for the purposes of making fun of it on this podcast and I was not allowed to rent it I could

[48:12] only purchase it um so for three dollars I now own wild hogs I don't want to keep wild hogs but

[48:18] the winner of the uva bowl contest um in addition to getting the first season of Rocky and Bullwinkle

[48:24] on DVD you will now get a signed by the flop house copy of wild hogs the very copy that we used to

[48:32] do this pod you could have sent that to the Smithsonian to Planet Hollywood you could have

[48:36] shot into space as an artifact you could have buried it for in a time capsule for future

[48:40] generations to discover you could have I mean he's on the open market auction house it

[48:46] oh easily would have fetched millions you know you couldn't have done watched it again because

[48:50] it's defective it's a defective DVD that DVD is not going to where you can't watch the end of the

[48:55] film you would have thought the only defect was that wild hogs was the movie that was recorded

[49:00] on it but it has more than one defect defects yeah yeah but if you just want a memento then

[49:05] enter the contest and that will be added on to your prize so with no extra charge let's rapidly

[49:11] because um Elliot uh gotta go gotta get out of here let's talk about recommendations movies that

[49:16] we've seen recently that have actually enjoyed Elliot go um I haven't gotten to see too many

[49:20] movies recently I was out of town for a couple weeks and I didn't get to really watch much

[49:25] but a movie I watched before I went out of town that enjoy I enjoyed a lot was uh the honeymoon

[49:29] killers which uh listeners to this podcast may have seen before but I had not in some ways it's

[49:35] kind of like if John Waters had made a really creepy dramatic film instead of a campy comedy

[49:42] uh and not just because well a lot of it's because the lead female in it is very overweight

[49:46] but uh this overweight nurse and uh her accented boyfriend basically the boyfriend meets lonely

[49:54] hearts women via personal ads then they go to the women's houses murder them and steal their money

[50:00] and it's done in this very low-budget style that helps it a lot

[50:04] but also there's a lot of really great shots in it. It's beautifully shot

[50:07] and the acting in it is very, like it reaches that really nice

[50:10] edge between extreme and realistic.

[50:14] But it was very good. I'd read a lot about it but I'd never seen it before

[50:19] but I enjoyed it greatly. I have a lot of movies that I could recommend but in the

[50:23] interest of keeping it short, I'll quickly say that

[50:26] The Bank Job is a good like sort of like B-thriller if you want to see that

[50:31] of recent years and also I watched The Naked Jungle

[50:34] which was based on one of my favorite short stories as a kid, Lineage and

[50:38] Versus the Ants about a plantation owner who

[50:42] you know fights back against a horde of ravening ants that are threatening his

[50:46] plantation. I always thought it was Lonegan. Yeah well in the movie they pronounce it

[50:50] Lineagen. I always thought it was Studs Lonegan.

[50:53] I thought it was Longitude. But the movie is sort of weird because it

[50:58] largely dispenses with the ants and is a sort of a melodramatic romance

[51:03] for I would say a good 75 minutes of its 90 minute run time.

[51:09] But then the ants come in. Yeah for the last 15 minutes oh my god they're ants.

[51:13] It's like a picnic. But it's funny because like it's

[51:16] terrifying. It's like the movie picnic but with ants at the end.

[51:20] But the other stuff is good too because it's got Charlton Heston

[51:23] acting like a dick. Like it's not one of these movies where like

[51:27] the guy's like a gruff guy but you can see underneath that he's really good

[51:31] and you can understand why the woman is falling for him. Honestly

[51:34] Charlton Heston acts like a complete tool through most of this film

[51:38] and it's kind of amusing. But also the woman that he's

[51:42] called down to his plantation in South America to be his mail order bride

[51:46] when she arrives she sort of lets this young native boy carry her parasol

[51:52] and the head of the plantation like Charlton Heston's number two guy is

[51:57] like oh do you want this boy? Would you like

[51:59] this boy for your own? And she's like oh

[52:03] won't his parents be upset if I take him? Like

[52:07] no they'll think it's a blessing. They'll just make more.

[52:10] And then she takes the kid. She takes the kid with her. I don't know

[52:15] whether that kid's her slave now or what

[52:19] but it just seems like a very strange

[52:23] indication of the time the movie was made. Did they ever tell you about the movie Unborrowed Time?

[52:27] No. It sounds kind of like that. Lionel Barrymore is this guy who is very close

[52:31] with his grandson and death comes and says it's your time you got to come now

[52:34] and Lionel Barrymore's like forget it I'm not gonna die. Whatever.

[52:38] And then his grandson. Like Seventh Seal school death shows up.

[52:42] The character playing death okay. Exactly and then the grandson falls out of it

[52:45] like death tricks him into falling out of a tree

[52:48] and he's on death's door and Lionel Barrymore's like no

[52:51] no take me take me I'll go and the movie ends with Lionel Barrymore

[52:57] and his grandson walking off to heaven together

[52:59] and you're like no you're supposed to give your life to save the boy

[53:03] like it's supposed to be an exchange you're not supposed to die in addition

[53:07] to him this is terrible. It's like a shoddy deal. Yeah not a great

[53:11] movie. Anyway my turn for recommendations? Sure. I think I'll uh this is one that uh

[53:15] again film buffs who are listening to this podcast may know it

[53:19] but I'm bringing it up with the uh recent launch of the True Blood show

[53:23] on uh HBO there's sort of a resurgence in the vampire genre

[53:27] and uh it made me think uh I have not seen it yet but someone who I respect a

[53:31] great deal has watched the premiere and said that it was

[53:34] schlocky and a little bit too look how sensual and

[53:38] sexy our vampires are and funny the schlock was what I really enjoyed about

[53:42] it oh have you I haven't seen it so to be

[53:44] fair it very well may be okay but the the aggressive marketing

[53:48] campaign that's been barraging me for the past nine months has

[53:52] led me to it's definitely schlocky yeah it's led me to

[53:56] it will have to be much much better than I expect for it to impress me at this

[54:00] point uh but anyway I just thought for looking

[54:02] back for actual really good creative vampire movies one of the first

[54:06] movies that uh put uh Guillermo del Toro on the map is a movie called Cronos

[54:10] which is a spanish movie and this is of course

[54:13] uh director of pan's labyrinth and um hellboy devil's backbone well hellboy

[54:18] sure of course hellboy hellboy 2 hellboy 2 blade 2 I like blade 2

[54:23] yeah actually it's certainly the best of the blade it is it's the best of the

[54:26] blade movies mimic they took that movie away from him I

[54:30] will say that okay uh that's another one of those movies

[54:34] that's based on a five page short story that how many times have I told you

[54:37] people I don't want this show to be a referendum on me defending the film

[54:40] mimic that's a fair point you mentioned that

[54:43] before we started seven or eight times at least and someone

[54:46] that Elliot you and I have met uh directed

[54:49] mimic 3 so there's that he directed mimic 3 jt

[54:52] petty oh I forgot jt directed that that's right

[54:54] newlywed jt petty regardless anyway sorry Cronos interesting film

[54:59] based on uh ancient medieval technology and the

[55:03] vampire comes through this artifact that this

[55:06] grandfather finds and not to spoil the film

[55:08] but it's a very very interesting take in which

[55:11] the the grandfather finds himself embroiled in this

[55:15] situation and having to uh raise a very small child at the same time and a lot

[55:19] of the same themes that you see in pan's labyrinth

[55:21] uh in terms of childhood and innocence um and also on a very

[55:25] low budget uh very very worth uh on netflix

[55:28] all right if you if you ever saw monster squad and you were like there must be a

[55:31] better way to make this movie wait a minute better than monsters go

[55:35] on if you saw monster squad and said i want to see a grandfather licking blood

[55:40] off a bathroom floor monster squad is on the shelf behind you

[55:42] ellie that's so i don't know what that proves

[55:47] to sum up got nards werewolf does have nards

[55:50] was it wolfman wolfman wolfman's got nards i'm the werewolf author

[55:54] scary german guy anyway uh let's just you know who's got you know

[56:01] a psychedelic recap of what we've talked about who's gotten short shrift in this

[56:04] podcast the director of mimic 2 who's that guy i

[56:07] don't even know listen if charles has gotten not in it

[56:10] i'm calling to the show it's not it's not a call but call in call into the

[56:14] show that has no phone number tell us who directed mimic 2 but in the

[56:19] meantime we just want to say uh again congratulations to elliott uh

[56:23] again uh we miss uh you stewart i hope you're

[56:26] having a good time on your business trip yeah wherever you are thank you to rich

[56:30] for coming down and watching a movie that you

[56:33] you would not have enjoyed otherwise i had a great time

[56:37] so uh for the flop house i'm dan mccoy i'm elliott caylan

[56:41] good night that was rich duncan

[56:47] i noticed that sarah schafer sang the song last time she did it wrong

[56:52] so wild hogs wild hogs can't be broken that's what i

[57:00] always say they came pre-broken wild hearts can't be broken the story of

[57:05] a woman who did something useless and then kept doing it

[57:10] even when people told her to stop if you like films about diving horses

[57:15] then this is this is the one and only film for you

[57:19] are we on yeah we're always on sweet

The Flop House: Episode #23 - Wild Hogs

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