The Flop House: Episode Thirteen - The Invasion

Dan McCoy

[0:00] On this episode of the Flophouse, we discuss Invasion, the only film to tackle the body-snatching menace.

[0:06] Other than, you know, all those other ones.

Elliott Kalan

[0:30] So, you start with the tinkle of ice cubes in a glass, as if Dean Martin is hosting this episode of the Flophouse.

Dan McCoy

[0:43] This is the Flophouse celebrity roast.

[0:48] So, this is the first daytime recording of the Flophouse.

[0:52] Sure.

[0:52] I don't know whether that's going to affect the attitude.

[0:56] Maybe.

[0:56] The sound quality, the general...

[1:00] Possibly.

[1:00] Atmospherics.

[1:01] Atmospherics.

[1:02] Also, I will probably be doing minimal editing on this.

[1:06] So, I warned the listener ahead of time that you might be hearing a lot more ums and...

[1:11] General nonsense?

[1:12] Yeah, because the reason we're...

Stuart Wellington

[1:15] Uncontrolled cursing.

Dan McCoy

[1:16] The reason we're doing a daytime recording is because Stuart has been in Baltimore recently running a wiretap, I assume.

[1:23] I can't talk about it.

[1:24] And next week, I'm going to be out of town on my first vacation in years.

[1:29] So, this was the best...

[1:29] Where are you going, Dan?

[1:30] I'm going to San Francisco.

[1:32] Very nice.

[1:33] Or, as I would say if I was Sulu in Star Trek IV, San Francisco.

[1:38] Which he did.

Stuart Wellington

[1:40] That's the one with the whales, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:41] Yeah.

[1:41] The whale one.

[1:43] The one where the message is, killing whales is bad.

Stuart Wellington

[1:46] I didn't know that before the movie when I was a kid.

[1:51] I actually had posters of whalers on my walls.

[1:55] You've liked the whaler trading cards.

[1:57] Whaler teen beat.

[1:59] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[2:00] Bjorn Svensson is up to 70 whales this season.

Stuart Wellington

[2:04] He's got a good cast to his harpoon.

[2:07] Sorry, my knowledge of whaling is based exclusively on one cursory reading of the...

[2:12] Moby Dick?

[2:13] Yeah, of the illustrated Moby Dick.

[2:15] I think that whaling is...

[2:17] Classics Illustrated, I believe.

Dan McCoy

[2:17] Pretty much the same now as it was at the time that Melville wrote...

[2:21] Probably.

[2:21] ...the Classics Illustrated version of Moby Dick.

Elliott Kalan

[2:25] Melville, we like your book.

[2:27] But we need you to condense it for this Classics Illustrated.

[2:30] Alright, I am working as an anonymous civil servant.

[2:32] I will do it for you.

[2:33] Yeah.

[2:34] That's a little bit of information about Melville's life.

[2:36] Hmm.

Dan McCoy

[2:37] For the listener.

[2:37] I think that probably sunk into that one story of his that I can't remember.

[2:44] Bartleby the Swimmer.

[2:44] Bartleby the...

[2:45] Let's talk about the movie we actually watched.

Elliott Kalan

[2:48] I'll save this for my American Literature History podcast.

Dan McCoy

[2:51] So we watched the movie Awake, which I would say...

[2:54] No, wait, wait, wait.

[2:54] That's not what we watched today.

[2:55] No, we didn't watch it at all.

[2:57] Jesus fucking Christ.

Elliott Kalan

[2:58] That shows how well the movie we did watch today sunk into your mind.

Dan McCoy

[3:01] I'm glad that this is the one I chose to do a little editing on.

Stuart Wellington

[3:06] The Invasion, Daniel.

Dan McCoy

[3:07] The Invasion.

[3:09] Which is...

[3:11] Probably the highest star power of any film that we've watched.

[3:18] It starred Virginia Woolf and James Bond.

[3:20] Yes.

[3:21] And they were playing the characters Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig in the movie.

Elliott Kalan

[3:27] Hello, hello.

[3:28] In the roles of American woman and English doctor.

Dan McCoy

[3:31] Yeah.

[3:32] American woman with an inexplicable penchant for running into a bit of an Australian accent

[3:37] at moments of high stress.

[3:40] Give us some background on The Invasion.

[3:43] Well, it's the fourth cinematic remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

[3:49] The fourth official one, even though you would argue that that concept has been stolen by a lot more movies.

[3:56] After there was the Don Siegel version.

[4:00] There was the Philip Kaufman, the second one.

[4:03] The 70s one.

[4:03] And the Abel Ferrara one in the 90s.

Elliott Kalan

[4:07] The directors are getting less and less famous as the movies go on.

[4:10] Yeah.

[4:11] To the point that I don't know the director of this one.

Dan McCoy

[4:13] Well, the thing about this movie is it was directed by...

[4:16] It was a German director.

[4:18] It started out with a German director.

[4:19] I think it was the guy who did the movie Control.

[4:22] I'm not sure about that.

[4:23] So I could be giving false information over the medium of podcasts.

[4:27] It was either him.

[4:28] Which I believe is an FCC findable violation.

[4:31] It was either him or Fritz Lang.

[4:32] Yeah.

[4:33] But his version apparently was too slow.

[4:38] And I can't imagine...

[4:40] Because this movie was incredibly slow.

[4:42] But they brought in...

[4:43] The Wachowski brothers brought in the person who did V for Vendetta to do reshoots.

Elliott Kalan

[4:48] Oh, that makes sense.

[4:48] Because V for Vendetta was also very boring.

Dan McCoy

[4:51] Yeah.

[4:51] This film was, as they say, plagued by reshoots.

Elliott Kalan

[4:56] This movie was plagued by the idea that exposition is inherently interesting.

[5:00] We were talking about this during it.

[5:03] That much of the movie is people explaining how other people are being invaded and body snatched

[5:09] in the driest way possible.

[5:11] And it's like, normal viruses are this size.

[5:14] But this virus is this size.

[5:16] And it doesn't die when it's heated up to 700 degrees.

[5:19] Okay.

[5:20] Fine.

[5:20] Can we get to some body snatching?

[5:22] Like, this is...

Stuart Wellington

[5:23] Yeah.

[5:23] Because the idea of heating up something to 700 degrees is really scary to me.

Dan McCoy

[5:27] I'm like, oh shit.

Stuart Wellington

[5:28] If I heated up an alien to 700 degrees, it would still be an alien.

[5:31] Right.

Dan McCoy

[5:32] Well, what they're saying is, like, you could not not be snatched by, say, walking into a fire.

[5:39] Like, which is...

[5:39] That wouldn't save you.

[5:40] Yeah.

[5:41] So...

Stuart Wellington

[5:42] Nice.

[5:43] Because I like to think that her thought process...

[5:45] Nicole Kidman's thought process...

[5:46] Her first idea is like, oh shit, somebody vomited alien shit all over me.

[5:51] I'm going to jump into a fire.

Elliott Kalan

[5:53] That'll kill it.

[5:54] But the joke we made during the film was that this movie was rated PG-13 MD.

[6:00] Yeah.

[6:00] It meant a lot more to someone with an advanced medical degree or...

Stuart Wellington

[6:03] It was a really funny joke when...

[6:05] I think Elliot said it first.

[6:07] It was better when we told it, but...

[6:08] Yeah.

[6:08] You know.

[6:09] Yeah, we laughed.

Dan McCoy

[6:10] The...

[6:10] Now, like in previous versions of the story, usually there's a pod of some kind...

[6:16] Yes.

[6:17] Sure.

[6:17] ...that creates a duplicate.

Elliott Kalan

[6:18] And that's where the phrase pod people comes from.

[6:21] Oh.

[6:21] I didn't know that.

[6:21] Thank you.

Dan McCoy

[6:22] Yeah.

[6:23] Well, this has been Science Fiction Facts.

Elliott Kalan

[6:26] I'm Dan McCoy.

[6:27] If any other questions about the work of Finney or other science fiction greats, just let me

[6:31] know.

[6:32] Email me at elliakaylin at sciencefictiongrandmasters.blogspot.edu.

[6:39] That gov.

[6:40] Subject line, query, and then the name of the author you'd like to ask me about.

Dan McCoy

[6:45] Yeah, but the thing is about...

Elliott Kalan

[6:47] Everyone from Algis Budras to Roger Zelazny.

[6:53] Just right on in.

[6:56] I have a question about Stanislaw Lem.

Dan McCoy

[6:58] Sure.

[7:00] I've been wondering why our numbers have been going down, and I think I've discovered what

[7:04] it is.

[7:04] Aye.

[7:05] Ooh.

[7:06] But, yeah, usually there's a vegetative pod sort of thing that actually creates a duplicate,

[7:12] and...

[7:14] What are you laughing about, Stuart?

Stuart Wellington

[7:17] Roger Zelazny's name is really funny.

[7:21] For other funny names of science fiction authors...

Elliott Kalan

[7:24] I'm surprised that Algis Budras is not the name that you laughed at, but Roger Zelazny.

Stuart Wellington

[7:27] Well, because I don't even know that person.

[7:29] I think you made it up.

[7:30] No.

[7:30] You wrote a book called Who?

Elliott Kalan

[7:31] Which is very good, actually.

[7:33] Nice.

[7:33] It was made into a movie, actually, that we could watch sometime with Elliot Gould in

[7:37] it that I picked up a long time ago because it looks terrible.

[7:39] I think it's called Robo Man.

[7:41] Nice.

[7:41] It sounds really good.

Dan McCoy

[7:43] But in this version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or shortened to The Invasion...

[7:48] The Invasion, because people don't like long titles.

[7:49] Yeah, modern people can't, after two words.

Elliott Kalan

[7:52] Frankly, I'm surprised they called it The Invasion and didn't just call it Invasion.

[7:56] Yeah.

[7:56] Or I.

[7:58] Yeah, or just I.

[7:59] I think it was originally.

[8:01] Because movies tend not to have the word the in the title anymore, when they used to be

[8:06] very commonplace.

Dan McCoy

[8:07] It was originally Invasion, but then when the Wachowskis came in and replaced the director,

[8:12] they were like, there's got to be a the in here.

[8:14] Invasion.

[8:15] That could be anything.

[8:16] That could be any Invasion.

[8:17] This is a particular Invasion.

[8:19] Not just the idea of Invasion.

[8:22] But, yeah, here it was a virus.

[8:25] Yeah.

[8:25] A virus that was spread by people puking on people.

Elliott Kalan

[8:28] It's almost as if...

[8:29] Unlike normal viruses.

[8:30] It's almost as if they wanted to make a zombie movie, but had already paid for the invasion

[8:35] of the Body Snatchers' rights.

Stuart Wellington

[8:38] Yeah.

[8:39] I think Elliot brought this up, is that this movie does not fuck around.

[8:43] It goes right to the, hey, these people are aliens premise, like, right away.

[8:49] Within five minutes, the presidential aide is approached by a girl carrying a chunk of space

[8:55] debris.

[8:55] Yes.

[8:56] Which he touches, because she's like, hair, look at this.

[8:59] And he's like, of course, little girl.

[9:01] Ow, I'm bleeding.

[9:03] And then he drops it.

Dan McCoy

[9:05] She hands it to him.

[9:06] It infects him.

[9:07] He's like, ow.

[9:08] He drops it.

[9:09] He turns around, walks away from the little girl without saying anything, without taking

[9:13] the space degree.

Elliott Kalan

[9:14] This is all taking place, by the way, at a...

[9:16] In case he didn't know it was space debris, is what the listener might be thinking.

[9:20] No.

[9:20] This is at a locked down site where a spaceship has crashed, and there are guys in hazmat

[9:25] suits everywhere, and he just came out of that.

[9:27] So, really, he should have known that she was carrying a piece of a spaceship.

Stuart Wellington

[9:30] And I think I'd much rather watch a movie based around the adventures of this, like, really

[9:35] sassy little kid who sneaks into fucking a space shuttle crash site and is like, hey,

Elliott Kalan

[9:40] let me pick up this chunk of space debris.

[9:43] Let me show it to this smart guy.

[9:45] Wait, wait, wait.

[9:46] You were saying about the...

[9:47] Like, the movie doesn't set up the characters before they get involved in this, the body snatcher

[9:52] stuff.

[9:52] It's like, body snatchers.

[9:54] Okay.

[9:55] Oh, we need some characters to get their bodies snatched.

[9:57] Throw them in.

[9:57] And then after about 20 minutes of dicking around, it's like, uh, clock's ticking.

[10:02] Let's get some fucking body snatching going on here.

[10:04] Let's get some vomiting out of this.

[10:06] Yeah.

[10:06] But by the time...

Dan McCoy

[10:06] Body snatching, a lot of seeing Nicole Kidman at work.

[10:11] Yes.

[10:12] Seeing her fix breakfast for her child in...

Elliott Kalan

[10:15] In surprisingly revealing pajamas.

[10:17] Yeah.

[10:18] But it's one of those movies where, like, there's no progression at all.

[10:21] Instead of her slowly realizing that there are aliens around, it's almost as if it's

[10:26] suddenly everybody in the world is an alien.

[10:29] And it didn't...

[10:29] Who...

[10:29] What?

[10:30] It just happened overnight.

[10:31] And then later on when the problem is solved, it's like, oh, good.

[10:35] Everyone's not an alien anymore.

[10:36] Like, there's no logic to that.

Dan McCoy

[10:37] Right.

[10:38] And that's such a bad choice, too, because I think that in horror movies, really, like,

[10:42] the setup is the best part.

[10:44] Yeah.

[10:44] Like, seeing the world slowly fall apart is the creepy thing.

[10:49] Not the actual, like, release of the chaos.

Elliott Kalan

[10:51] But also the fact that once she discovers there are aliens around, she runs into maybe a dozen

[10:58] people at different places who are all like, whoa, don't show any emotion.

[11:02] That's what they notice.

[11:03] Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[11:04] Walk slower.

[11:04] And these are just innocent bystanders.

[11:06] And it's like, why are we following the last person on Earth to learn about this?

[11:10] It really seems like everyone else had that moment of discovery before the main character

[11:14] of the film did.

Dan McCoy

[11:15] Yeah, and as I said at the time, I think that they pitched this movie by saying there'll

[11:19] be a lot of thrilling scenes of Nicole Kidman walking very slowly and trying not to show

[11:25] emotion as she walks by aliens and furtively looking around, which is thrilling.

Stuart Wellington

[11:31] But the thing is, is like, they could have actually tried to make an effort to make it

[11:36] seem like she's actually going through some effort to not show emotion.

[11:39] But instead, they're just like, let's just do this normal scene of her walking from one

[11:43] place to another place.

[11:44] She'll just be walking slower and her eyes will be moving more.

Elliott Kalan

[11:47] Yeah, it was, it's very lazy stuff.

Stuart Wellington

[11:49] Like, I think, I think the scene in Shaun of the Dead where they're trying to pretend to

[11:53] be zombies is more thrilling than any scene in this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[11:57] Well, it's almost like they felt like the movie would get by on the gimmick of like,

[12:01] shit, everyone she knows is turning into an alien.

[12:03] She's got to pretend to be one.

[12:04] But there are three other versions of this story.

[12:06] It's like if Peter Jackson then remade King Kong and made it like an hour and a half long

[12:10] and was like, don't worry, people are going to get blown away by the idea of a giant

[12:13] ape climbing a building.

[12:14] Like, no, Peter Jackson, this is the, you know, the third official King Kong that with not

[12:19] having the sequels in the Japanese movies.

[12:21] Like it's, you know, thinking of King Kong versus Godzilla, King Kong escapes, where he

[12:25] fights Mecha-Kong.

[12:26] The best, maybe the best scene involved in any King Kong movie.

Dan McCoy

[12:30] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[12:30] Well, I think a robot monkey sounds pretty good.

[12:33] Yeah.

[12:34] Well, technically it's a robot gorilla.

[12:35] All right.

[12:36] All right, Elliot.

Stuart Wellington

[12:38] It's a different type of animal completely.

Dan McCoy

[12:41] A great ape.

[12:42] Yeah, a great ape.

[12:43] Yeah.

[12:43] All right.

[12:44] Well, this movie had a lot to teach us about society.

[12:47] That's for sure.

[12:48] Oh, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[12:49] Yes.

[12:50] Nice segue.

Dan McCoy

[12:50] Yeah.

[12:51] Well, there was a guy.

[12:52] A Russian guy.

[12:53] There's a Russian guy.

[12:54] And we know this because he was at a party where everyone had an accent.

[12:57] His accent was a Russian accent.

Elliott Kalan

[12:59] That party was taking place at a diplomat's house.

[13:01] Okay.

[13:01] Fair enough.

[13:02] This whole movie takes place in Washington, D.C.

[13:05] And here's another – before we get into that, here's another flaw with the film is the movie is about a force of conformity coming in and turning people into basically robots.

[13:13] And one, it's hilarious because they all talk like robots, which is something we didn't mention before.

[13:17] Right.

[13:17] Like two seconds in.

[13:19] Like, yeah, the first character we see who gets turned into an alien who's the guy who holds the space debris.

[13:24] The next scene we see of him, he calls his ex-wife, Nicole Kidman, and he says, hello, I'm in the old house we used to live in.

[13:30] I like humans.

Dan McCoy

[13:32] And she was like –

[13:33] Not aliens.

[13:34] And she's talked to Daniel Craig later on and she's like, there was something different about him.

[13:38] It's strange.

[13:39] He never – and then she's like, he never calls me.

[13:42] Like that was what tipped it.

[13:45] That was what was strange about it.

Elliott Kalan

[13:45] This is a man she's been married to and had a child with and that's the most strange thing she can find about it.

[13:50] But like it's a movie about conformity coming in and smoothing out all the differences between people.

[13:55] So they choose Washington, D.C., a city that, yes, has its difference and its like racial troubles and things like that.

[14:01] But visually it's a very boring-looking city in terms of it has these beautiful monuments but they don't look particularly – it's not like, uh-oh, this is a city with a crazy social life.

[14:12] Like the second version of the movie is set in San Francisco which is a city that has this very specific vibe of like anything goes in San Francisco.

[14:21] That's where you can be yourself.

[14:22] But Washington, D.C. it's like, well, guess I'll go lobby the government.

[14:26] You know, there's no –

Stuart Wellington

[14:26] We just lost a bunch of listeners by the way.

Elliott Kalan

[14:28] Wow.

[14:29] Oh, because of my pro San Francisco.

Stuart Wellington

[14:30] And you're anti Washington, D.C.

Elliott Kalan

[14:33] I'm not saying I don't like Washington, D.C.

[14:35] But they could have picked a more – a city that was – that conformity maybe is less around.

Dan McCoy

[14:40] We are hosted on the Pentagon website.

[14:43] Oh, no.

[14:43] That's where all our files are kept.

[14:44] I didn't realize that.

[14:46] But you were talking about –

[14:47] Well, no.

[14:48] Actually, you made a good point.

[14:49] We should go back and say that, you know, in the original – the first version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is still my favorite even though I really like the 70s version.

[14:58] The thing about the people who are snatched is they're exactly the same.

[15:03] It's just that because we are human, we can recognize what is human in another person and we – like the people are like, there's nothing different about these people but I know they're different.

[15:12] And that was what was creepy about it.

[15:13] Like the idea that like nothing rational could be explained but what's different.

[15:19] But these guys basically they could be wearing signs that say like alien across their chest and they march in.

[15:24] And there's a scene early on.

[15:26] Nicole Kidman is a psychologist and she's with one of her patients and the woman's like, my husband isn't my husband.

[15:35] And one of the examples she gives is the husband comes home and the dog runs up to him barking and the husband breaks the dog's neck.

[15:43] And Nicole Kidman's response is to up the dosage on the woman's medication rather than, you know, as you pointed out, maybe giving the medication to her husband.

[15:54] I think it was Stuart.

[15:54] Yeah, that was mine.

[15:56] Well, the podcast listeners can't – don't know who I'm looking at when I say these things anyway.

Elliott Kalan

[16:00] It's like that's – you can't like in the original – I think it's in the original story and maybe it's in the first movie that it mentions that this person's uncle I think is different.

[16:09] She can't pinpoint how and she checked to see if the uncle's birthmark on his neck or something like that was there.

[16:14] And the person she's talking to who is a doctor says, and it wasn't there?

[16:17] And she goes, no, it was.

[16:18] It was.

[16:19] It's like she's scared that he's an exact duplicate in every way so she can't convince anybody.

[16:24] Whereas as you're saying in this, you know, the man came home and snapped his pet dog's neck.

[16:28] Like this is – it's at the very least a criminal offense.

[16:31] That's cruelty to the man.

[16:31] Yeah, it's not a very sly invasion.

[16:33] No.

[16:34] But that's the other thing is this is maybe the worst hidden invasion in the world to the point that they might as well have just sent in dreadnought spaceships and started blasting the White House.

[16:43] Like it was almost like the aliens from Independence Day decided to invade but they were like, we're not very good at being secretive.

[16:49] Like let's just take everything over and like do this thing, you know.

[16:52] And they broadcast their motives to anybody who will listen.

Stuart Wellington

[16:55] They don't –

Dan McCoy

[16:56] You don't have to wear special sunglasses to see them.

[16:58] No.

[16:59] And they're not –

[16:59] Exactly.

[17:00] And also –

[17:00] You have to get in on a really awesome seven-minute fight to put on those sunglasses.

Elliott Kalan

[17:04] And the way to – and the way they change a lot of people is that they projectile vomit into their mouths so that this virus gets in.

[17:11] And it's like really that's not a very sly way of –

[17:14] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[17:14] And I mean they use the projectile vomit attack in the movie Slither which I think it actually worked in that movie because that movie was really gross.

[17:23] And it wasn't trying to be sneaky in any way.

[17:26] Yeah, this movie had like this classy sheen over it.

[17:29] They have big-name actors and actresses.

[17:32] They have James Bond.

Elliott Kalan

[17:33] It was shot like it was Michael Clayton in terms of visual style.

[17:36] Like it looked like –

[17:37] With vomiting.

[17:38] Michael Clayton where there's a scene where –

Dan McCoy

[17:39] Which by the way, that would be a better version of Michael Clayton.

[17:41] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[17:41] Michael Clayton where there's a scene where a train of four people are vomiting all over each other.

[17:45] And he came up to George Clooney.

[17:47] He's like –

[17:47] But also like the fact – they made it – they changed it so that these are – this is a virus instead of pod people to go back to what you were talking about before.

[17:54] And what was scary about the other ones is that in this one you change.

[17:58] You become a different person.

[17:59] But in the original ones you get murdered by your double and your double takes your life.

[18:03] They hide pods in your basement.

[18:05] The pods duplicate you.

[18:07] And while you're sleeping, the pod people come and kill you and take over.

[18:09] So there's a great scene where Kevin McCarthy takes – goes down and finds his double being formed.

[18:15] And it's almost finished.

[18:16] And he has to stab it to death with a pitchfork.

[18:18] And he's stabbing his own body basically.

[18:20] Not himself but he's stabbing a duplicate of his body.

[18:22] Whereas in this it's like, oh, well, I still have all my memories and I'm just –

[18:27] I'm just sick.

Dan McCoy

[18:29] I've got a flu.

[18:29] I've got an alien flu.

Elliott Kalan

[18:31] I'm just not as emotive as I once was.

[18:33] But there's no danger of you being replaced.

[18:35] It's more a danger of you just – you know, you're going to be a little different.

Dan McCoy

[18:37] Yeah, well, and there's a scene in this movie where Nicole Kidman has a dream where her double is going to kill her.

[18:43] And that was actually shown in the trailer.

[18:45] And I remember seeing that in the trailer.

[18:47] I was like, oh, that's a great shot of Nicole Kidman's double sneaking up behind her and swinging – I forget what it was.

[18:53] It was either a pipe or a crowbar.

[18:55] Yeah.

[18:55] A wrench.

[18:56] Might have been a wrench.

Stuart Wellington

[18:56] And no, that's just like part of her little dream scene.

[19:00] It's part of a dream.

[19:01] Yeah.

[19:01] It's like a curveball they throw you.

Dan McCoy

[19:03] So if you wanted a catfight between two Nicole Kidmans, you're at a lot of stuff.

Elliott Kalan

[19:08] It's almost like they tried so hard – and this happens a lot with what I like to call classy horror or classy science fiction,

[19:14] where they tried to tone down the more melodramatic aspects like that, like a catfight between two versions of the same person.

[19:22] And it's like, no, this would make your movie immeasurably better.

[19:25] I don't know if it had more excitement in it.

[19:27] The same way – this was almost like the road to perdition of science fiction horror movies where it's like, we want to make a movie that makes a point about how conformity – about how we're sacrificing peace for our individual –

[19:38] Yeah, well, let's get back to that.

[19:39] Except we want to make it as unexciting as possible.

Dan McCoy

[19:42] Because the Russian diplomat at this party goes off on a, like, I would say a three-minute at least monologue at Nicole Kidman.

[19:52] Like, they're apparently having a conversation, but Nicole Kidman doesn't say anything until the end.

[19:59] She has a little – you know, she refutes what he says, and everyone around the table is like, oh, bravo.

[20:04] Life of the party.

Stuart Wellington

[20:06] Well done.

[20:07] Smashing.

[20:08] You certainly –

[20:09] Yes, yes.

[20:10] Daniel Craig's character.

[20:11] You should marry her.

[20:13] But, I mean –

[20:14] No, that's all right.

Elliott Kalan

[20:15] We're just friends right now.

[20:16] We're not going to get into that.

[20:17] All right, all right, all right.

[20:19] Well, Bob's your uncle.

[20:20] What's all this then?

[20:21] Hey, what?

Dan McCoy

[20:22] But this Russian guy's like, the humans are a warlike creature who always will fight.

[20:32] There's no way to have peace in my time.

[20:34] But in your country, what a humanity.

[20:37] And Nicole Kidman was like, oh, yeah?

Elliott Kalan

[20:40] I've got a shrimp on the barbie.

Dan McCoy

[20:43] You're listening to funny voices.

Elliott Kalan

[20:47] Stereotypical accents, the podcast.

[20:50] Good day, mate.

Dan McCoy

[20:52] But no, she –

Elliott Kalan

[20:54] I was in Far and Away.

[20:57] Which was Far and Away, the best film.

Dan McCoy

[21:01] Now she's a cockney.

Stuart Wellington

[21:04] But so what you were saying is that basically –

[21:08] He states the theme of the movie at length.

Elliott Kalan

[21:10] Almost as if – it's one of those things where he's almost looking at the viewer when he says it.

[21:14] And it would be better if he just literally turned to the camera and said, audience, I am telling you this.

Stuart Wellington

[21:19] What do you think?

[21:20] It's like the end of the Return of the King animated movie where Gandalf looks to the audience and is like, maybe you have a little hobbit in you.

[21:29] And you're like, gross.

[21:32] Are you implied?

[21:33] Gross and weird.

Elliott Kalan

[21:34] I'm fucking a hobbit?

[21:35] That reminds me of my favorite line in Godzilla 2000, which I'm sure you guys remember well.

[21:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[21:41] Which is at the end –

[21:41] I do.

[21:42] Godzilla destroys the alien that basically tried to take over Godzilla's territory.

[21:47] And Godzilla is walking away from the battle and destroying much of Tokyo while doing so.

[21:51] He's literally smashing buildings with his feet and shooting fire at them.

[21:53] And the little kid says to the G-Force scientist, says, why does Godzilla save us time after time?

[22:01] And he says, perhaps there's a little bit of Godzilla in all of us.

[22:04] And it makes no sense.

[22:05] Also, Godzilla is basically just defending his turf.

[22:08] And then they literally do the the end question mark.

[22:14] It's my favorite ending maybe of all time.

[22:17] It is set it up for Godzilla Final Wars in which Godzilla and Minya basically forgive America for atom bombing Japan in a complicated way.

Dan McCoy

[22:26] Well, that's only right.

[22:27] I mean, he was created by the atom bomb.

Elliott Kalan

[22:30] That movie – I don't know if you guys have seen Godzilla Final Wars.

[22:32] No, I haven't.

[22:33] It's the movie that involves monsters fighting, but if they cut to a scene, Rodan attacks New York, and it's like a stereotypical New York in the 80s.

[22:41] There's like –

[22:41] Is it shot in Toronto?

[22:43] It looks like it was, but there's also like a cop arguing with a pimp wearing a hat with a feather in it.

[22:48] But with around an 80s car.

[22:50] Like it feels like a scene from like, you know, trading places or something like that.

[22:54] But then Rodan flaps his wings and the pimp's hat flies off.

[22:58] And you hear this sound effect.

[23:00] Zoom!

[23:01] When the hat flies off.

[23:03] And there are like all these Matrix-style fights in the movie.

[23:06] And like there's this very big message about forgiveness at the end and the atomic, you know, destruction to Japan.

[23:12] But you do hear a hat fly off with a zoom sound effect.

Stuart Wellington

[23:15] Oh, it's so good.

[23:16] It sounds really good.

[23:17] Now, the invasion – the invasion almost feels like the science fiction movie that would have been made if everybody involved in making it was actually a pod person.

[23:28] That's a very good point.

[23:28] Like that's about how exciting it was.

Dan McCoy

[23:31] Yeah.

[23:32] Well, they – I really think that they directed the actors to not emote even before the pod people started taking over.

[23:39] The director was like, oh, no, it'll be a really subtle, deep message about how we're already pod people.

[23:47] But it just made it really dull.

Elliott Kalan

[23:49] But also like – but that also – one goes against the theme of the movie.

[23:52] But to get back to what you were saying about the Russian guy stating that, states we're all monsters – we're all animals underneath.

[23:58] The pod people take over and world peace happens instantly.

[24:01] We find this out on CNN.

Dan McCoy

[24:02] Yeah, but let's not gloss over.

[24:04] Basically, there's like 20 minutes or so or half an hour of just like running around, running around.

[24:10] And then like in the background of a scene, we see CNN on and we see that world peace has happened now that the pod people have taken over.

[24:18] And then another like long chase scene.

[24:21] And then at the end, we discover that, oh, once the pod people are defeated, everything goes back to normal.

[24:26] But in between, there's no – there's nothing reinforcing the theme at all.

Elliott Kalan

[24:29] But also, Nicole Kidman looks at the – looks almost at the camera and remembers the Russian guy saying those lines about we're all animals inside.

[24:39] And it's literally like here's the moral in case you didn't hear it the first time.

[24:43] No, no.

[24:43] If you went to go to the bathroom during that scene, this is what –

[24:46] At the end of the film, yes.

Dan McCoy

[24:48] CNN is on again.

Elliott Kalan

[24:49] Smash cut.

[24:50] Credits.

Stuart Wellington

[24:51] I don't think CNN is on.

[24:52] I think Daniel Craig, who's been healed, is reading a newspaper.

[24:55] That's the other thing.

[24:56] He probably has a cane sitting right next to him.

[24:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[24:58] Daniel Craig, the first time we see him, Nicole Kidman, I guess, gets in his car and he says,

[25:03] Did you see this?

[25:04] 83 more people killed in Iraq.

[25:06] When will it end?

[25:07] Then – okay, so that's his hobby is that he's a pessimist.

[25:10] He never says anything like that again until the very end of the movie when it's like, again, when will it end?

[25:16] 75 more people killed in Iraq.

Dan McCoy

[25:18] Cut to a quiet shot of Nicole Kidman looking off into space thoughtfully and Russian being,

[25:26] the Russian words coming back to her.

[25:29] And then, as you say, completely just like, cut to black.

[25:32] And it is the most abrupt, strange ending.

[25:36] I literally said what about eight times afterwards.

Stuart Wellington

[25:39] I believe instead of cutting to black, it actually cut to some excellent computer graphics of cells and stuff.

Dan McCoy

[25:44] And let's talk about these computer graphics.

Stuart Wellington

[25:46] There's a lot like –

[25:47] Unnecessary.

[25:48] Throughout the entire movie, I mean, it was like anytime there's anything that wouldn't just be a person standing around,

[25:53] they're like, hey, why don't we – wouldn't that be better if we used a computer?

[25:56] Like, if somebody's like sick and covered in alien goo, instead of doing it with practical effects, it's all fucking computer shit.

[26:03] It's really weird.

Elliott Kalan

[26:04] It looks really fake, but also it doesn't look gross.

[26:06] It actually looks really – like really clean alien goo.

Dan McCoy

[26:09] Well, you have to understand, like, as you said, this is basically like a medical horror film.

[26:13] So they got the team from House to do it.

[26:16] They're just like, you know, the way we do it over in House is we CGI every disease.

[26:20] And they're like, oh, that sounds good.

[26:21] That makes sense.

Elliott Kalan

[26:22] I was thinking about – I remember a long time ago I was here watching the 80s version of The Blob.

[26:27] Right.

[26:27] And one of the things that's so great about it is there are a lot of – there are composite effects and things,

[26:32] but it's basically like real goo and real puppets.

[26:35] They don't have computer effects because it was like 1980, what, five or six?

Stuart Wellington

[26:38] Right, yeah.

[26:38] And computers are only green and black.

Elliott Kalan

[26:42] Back when everything was wireframe, yeah.

[26:44] But, like, it was so much – it would have been – it's so much grosser than if it was like a computer animated blob

[26:50] where it would be like, oh, okay, that looks really smooth.

[26:53] Like, it does – like, if you're going to have alien goo all over people, it should be, like, chunky and messy and, like, sticky.

[26:58] But this looked really – this looked literally like you could peel it off, and people do that at times in the movie.

[27:03] Like, Nicole Kidman literally, like, peels off spit that's on her face.

Dan McCoy

[27:07] Yeah. Oh, no, no, hold on.

[27:08] The first – like, she takes this piece of goo to Jeffrey Wright, who is a –

Elliott Kalan

[27:16] Reunited with his Casino Royale co-star, Daniel Craig.

Dan McCoy

[27:18] Yeah, who is a scientist who eventually solves the alien problem.

[27:22] But she's literally handed the first piece of evidence.

[27:27] Like, she's like, what is this little piece – it looks like wax paper, except for there's, like, veins in it and shit.

[27:35] And she's like, huh.

[27:36] Well, even though I found this at a Halloween party, and this could be, like, a Halloween thing,

[27:40] I'm going to take it to Jeffrey Wright, and he's going to put it under the microscope and solve everything.

Elliott Kalan

[27:44] She did find it on a creepy kid who had just survived a dog attack.

[27:47] That's true.

Dan McCoy

[27:47] Mm-hmm.

[27:48] Yeah.

[27:49] Dogs don't like aliens.

Elliott Kalan

[27:52] Yes, who is – that's how you know – that's the first time you know that he is an alien,

[27:55] because dogs hate him, and because he was carefully organizing his candy.

[27:59] Or he has OCD.

[28:00] At that point, yeah, the aliens are more obsessive-compulsive than –

[28:02] Earth candy is delicious.

Stuart Wellington

[28:04] Yay, humans.

Elliott Kalan

[28:05] These sugary comestibles are quite enjoyable to myself.

Dan McCoy

[28:09] They would love these back on my home planet.

[28:11] I mean –

[28:12] Alien land.

Elliott Kalan

[28:13] Which is Earth.

[28:14] Right.

[28:14] Yeah.

[28:15] The place that you live also.

[28:17] Our home planet.

[28:18] Gotta go.

[28:21] Calmly walks away.

[28:22] They're robots.

Stuart Wellington

[28:23] Milky Way, that's the name of the place you live in.

Elliott Kalan

[28:25] There was this – there was also this theme of if you become an alien, you dress very – like, for business.

[28:30] Yeah.

[28:30] Everyone was an alien wore –

[28:31] They're very Natalie dressed.

[28:32] Yeah, wore very good – very expensive suits or pants suits if you're a woman.

[28:36] And when the kid comes back as almost one of the leaders of the alien, this obsessive-compulsive candy kid,

[28:41] he comes back looking like Leonard Nimoy from In Search Of, with like a blazer over a turtleneck.

[28:47] Or like a mini Bond villain.

[28:48] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[28:49] By the way –

[28:50] Have we ever done a Bond movie where the villain was a kid?

Elliott Kalan

[28:52] No, that's a great idea.

[28:53] That would be really awesome.

[28:54] Dude, we – oh, man.

[28:56] Let's – do not send this podcast out.

[28:58] Okay.

[28:58] I don't want anyone stealing this great idea.

[28:59] A million-dollar idea.

[29:00] Oh, and maybe we'll drop our other million-dollar idea at some point.

[29:03] Nice.

Dan McCoy

[29:04] But the thing that I wanted to say, though, about that kid was perhaps the best thing about the movie,

[29:09] other than Nicole Kidman's sweater, was the scene where Nicole Kidman threw a child across the room into a bed.

[29:17] And almost broke his neck like he was an evil alien child.

[29:20] But still, to see an Oscar-winning actress, Nicole Kidman, throw a small child around is pretty entertaining.

Stuart Wellington

[29:26] It's like Nicolas Cage in Wicker Man where he keeps punching women.

[29:29] Exactly.

[29:30] It's exactly like that.

Elliott Kalan

[29:33] There's a scene – let's talk about this.

[29:35] There were so many scenes in the movie that could have been just much better if they had been set up.

[29:39] Yeah, that's right.

[29:39] Like the right way – that was a scene.

[29:40] Nicole Kidman is taken into – it looked like a very nice business hotel.

[29:45] Like I'm not quite sure what it was.

[29:46] Or like a very fancy apartment building.

[29:49] But – and she's – and her – by the alien leaders who are a kid, her ex-husband, and some woman that I don't remember if we'd met before.

[29:57] And she's brought into a room and her son is there.

[29:59] She's been looking for her little boy son.

[30:02] And the two of them are staring at each other.

[30:04] And both of them, it seems, have been pretending to be aliens.

[30:08] And neither one wants to tip themselves off if the other one is an alien.

[30:11] There's this moment that could have been great tension of like neither of them trust the other even though the thing they want most in the world is to be with that person, the boy with his mother and the mother with her son.

[30:22] And – but neither of them wants to make the first move because if the other one is an alien, then they're screwed.

[30:27] But instead it just – it kind of happens for a moment and then the mother refers to an in-joke about pickles that came up earlier in the film and it's over.

[30:35] But like we also didn't know what was going on with the kids.

[30:37] So it should have been – like I guess they're going for suspense with the audience.

[30:40] But it might have been stronger if we knew the kid was pretending.

Dan McCoy

[30:43] You're going for like the Hitchcock thing where it's better if you know that there's a bomb under the siege.

Elliott Kalan

[30:48] Yeah, exactly.

[30:49] Also the fact that – that's one of those things that – someone read Screenwriting 101 or I guess like Sid Mead's book or something and then didn't do much more than that because it was like –

[30:57] they did the screenwriting trick of, oh, they used that in-joke from earlier to find out if they were still human or not.

[31:03] But that in-joke appeared just once and it appeared so obviously that we knew it must have been a clue.

[31:09] Is it like – or the same way that Daniel Craig's pessimism about the news showed up once at the beginning and once – like there are these matched pairs of moments.

Stuart Wellington

[31:16] Much like every time Nicole Kidman remembers her son that she loves, all the memories happen to be times that we've seen them in the movie.

[31:24] Earlier in the film, yeah.

[31:25] Like, oh, it's the little kid lying next to his train and smiling.

Dan McCoy

[31:28] Well, it was weird.

[31:28] They did have a weird moment too early on when Nicole Kidman figured out what was going on where she like flashed back to things that happened earlier and was like, huh, there must be an alien invasion.

[31:39] However, it wasn't like – it wasn't like, you know, a real puzzle film where, oh, all these flashbacks.

[31:47] Finally, the picture comes into sharp relief.

[31:50] Instead, it was just like, oh, remember all those moments of foreshadowing earlier?

[31:53] They were foreshadowing something.

[31:55] Remember that?

Stuart Wellington

[31:55] It wasn't the usual suspects is what you were saying.

[31:57] Exactly.

[31:59] Like, oh my god, there were fucking aliens?

[32:01] I thought they were just weird.

Elliott Kalan

[32:03] When those people were ominous –

[32:04] When those people were ominous and trying to vomit on me, it turned out that they were aliens.

[32:08] Also, when they sounded like aliens.

[32:10] When those people I knew started talking like robots, it turns out there's something wrong with them.

Dan McCoy

[32:15] But they weren't robots.

[32:17] They were aliens.

Elliott Kalan

[32:18] But they talked, you know, like that.

[32:19] They talked in robot caves.

Dan McCoy

[32:21] If there were robots, I would love it if, like, aliens came from outer space and they replaced us all with robots.

Elliott Kalan

[32:27] Well, that seems like such a waste of resources.

[32:29] Yeah.

[32:30] I didn't know what the point would be then.

[32:32] Fuck with us.

[32:33] Aliens.

[32:34] You could use these.

[32:34] Aliens are practical jokers.

[32:36] Why are you wasting all this steel and, like, circuitry on the planet?

Stuart Wellington

[32:39] Why do you assume they're made out of steel, dude?

[32:40] They could have been plastic.

Elliott Kalan

[32:42] Well, why are they wasting all that plastic?

[32:43] That's not going to buy a dick, right?

[32:44] Like data.

Stuart Wellington

[32:45] Yeah.

[32:46] Data's plastic, right?

[32:46] Is he?

[32:47] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[32:49] He had a, at heart, he was as human as you or I.

[32:53] Oh, right.

[32:54] Speaking of which, Brent Spiner.

Dan McCoy

[32:56] Data as Brent Spiner.

[32:57] That's one of these few.

[32:58] Speaking of which, out to sea star Brent Spiner.

[33:00] That's one of the few celebrities people have told me I look like.

[33:03] I'm like, thank you.

[33:04] Thank you for saying that I look like Brent Spiner.

Elliott Kalan

[33:06] I kind of see it a little bit in the nose.

[33:08] I see a lot now that you mention it.

[33:09] Now that you mention it, I never would have thought that.

Dan McCoy

[33:11] Well, you know, it's weird.

[33:12] You know, you always get, like, you always get the spectrum.

[33:14] You know, like, if people, I don't know if you've had this experience,

[33:16] but I've had the experience that, like, you know, people will be like,

[33:19] oh, you look like this person.

[33:19] You look like this person.

[33:20] And then there are people that you're, like, really, like, happy to be told that you look like.

[33:24] And then people are like, fuck you.

[33:26] You know, like, on my, like, good side, people will be like,

[33:28] oh, you kind of remind me of John Cusack.

[33:30] Or, oh, you got a bit of a, like, a David Duchovny thing.

[33:32] And then, like, it's like, Brent Spiner.

[33:34] Or Kevin Spacey.

[33:36] That's why I understand that.

Elliott Kalan

[33:37] People tell me that they're like, oh, you look like Casey Affleck.

[33:39] And then other times they'll be like, you know who you look like?

[33:42] You know the guy from the Goonies?

[33:43] Like, the retarded guy?

[33:44] That's who you look like.

[33:46] But that's more like little kids say that.

[33:47] Little kids used to say that around the time Goonies came out.

[33:50] I think they're just making fun of me.

[33:51] Nice.

[33:52] No, I think it's because your eyes are really weirdly, like,

Stuart Wellington

[33:55] you've got that weird, like, ear that sticks out.

[33:57] You're also strangely muscular.

Elliott Kalan

[33:59] You know Pinhead from that new movie Hellraiser?

[34:01] You look like him.

[34:02] What?

[34:03] I did have pins in my head at the time.

[34:04] Yeah.

[34:06] Well, logically.

[34:07] Pretty true.

[34:07] Sure.

[34:08] That's the only thing.

[34:09] Oh, that's one thing that we said.

[34:10] You look kind of like that.

Dan McCoy

[34:11] They couldn't go to sleep.

[34:12] As you said, this was like a weird holdover from the original version

[34:15] because, like, it doesn't make sense.

Elliott Kalan

[34:17] It was almost like the same way that humans have a vestigial tail

[34:20] inside their asses.

[34:22] This movie had little elements from the original story

[34:24] that were kind of like appendixes.

[34:26] Like appendices.

[34:27] They were there, but they didn't serve any discernible function anymore.

[34:30] Like, you can't go to sleep.

[34:32] Well, why?

[34:32] Because the virus won't attack you if you're not sleeping?

[34:34] Like, it doesn't make sense.

[34:35] It's good science, dude.

[34:36] Well, yeah.

[34:37] Actually, sleep is better for you when you have a virus.

Dan McCoy

[34:39] White blood cells go to sleep.

Elliott Kalan

[34:41] But, like, when you have sickness, you're supposed to sleep

[34:44] because your body is resting.

[34:45] That's why you're sick all the time.

[34:46] Well, when you go to sleep.

[34:48] I guess I should be out running 10Ks when I'm sick.

Stuart Wellington

[34:51] Yeah, when you go to sleep, dude, that's when the virus sees you're sleeping

[34:55] and then pounces.

Elliott Kalan

[34:56] That's when the virus tiptoes out from behind your blood cells.

[35:00] Yep.

Dan McCoy

[35:00] And I was saying that I would like it if the virus looked like little Freddy Krueger's

[35:04] going through the guy's system.

Stuart Wellington

[35:05] Like, oh, we've come up with an animation mock-up here

[35:08] to show you exactly how the alien virus works.

[35:12] I put a little hat on him.

Dan McCoy

[35:14] He's got this really, really fashionable striped sweater.

Stuart Wellington

[35:18] No, we don't have any research.

[35:19] He says strangely homoerotic jokes when attacking you.

Elliott Kalan

[35:22] We don't have any research to prove that the virus says one-liners afterwards.

[35:26] But we think it's pretty likely.

[35:28] Yeah.

[35:28] Oh, man.

Dan McCoy

[35:30] The research jumps really fast in this movie, too.

Elliott Kalan

[35:32] But there was also...

[35:33] Yeah, well, that's the thing.

[35:34] It's taken...

[35:35] They should get Jeffrey Wright on the AIDS problem.

[35:38] Because he found a cure for alien virus in roughly 48 hours.

Dan McCoy

[35:43] Yeah.

[35:44] Including he...

[35:45] And then it took...

[35:45] And while he was saddled with sassy Eddie Murphy, too.

[35:48] Yeah, I was just going to say, it took another 48 hours to cure the virus, globally.

[35:52] Nice.

Stuart Wellington

[35:54] The thing about it is that he not only, like, figured out a way to solve the problem

[35:57] and also show people the problem, he also set up some kind of an animation so that you

Dan McCoy

[36:02] could see, like, it's that fucking whole, like, movie computer thing where they're like,

Stuart Wellington

[36:06] most people have never seen a computer, right?

[36:08] Okay.

[36:08] Let's just show this really cool, like, CGI animation thing.

[36:11] Let's just say that computers do that.

[36:12] Yeah.

[36:13] And it's like, what, like, swordfish and, like, every other...

Elliott Kalan

[36:15] I had the guys at DreamWorks mock this up for me.

[36:18] This is the show.

Dan McCoy

[36:19] Or hackers where they're, like, actually, like, flying through, like, CGI blocks.

[36:23] They're like, oh, this is what the internet looks like.

[36:25] It's a bunch of colored blocks.

Stuart Wellington

[36:26] Fisher Stevens is trying to stop us.

[36:28] I think he's an Indian.

[36:30] We shouldn't mention anything about Fisher Stevens.

[36:31] He's skateboarding.

Elliott Kalan

[36:32] It takes Stuart off into his own Fisher Stevens world.

[36:35] He looks like a turtle.

[36:37] Thank you.

[36:38] That was my point.

[36:39] Thank you for proving my point.

Dan McCoy

[36:40] But, Stuart, you mentioned before Daniel Craig in a cane.

[36:45] And I think that the audience has been spending this whole time being like...

[36:48] Understandably, yeah.

[36:48] What?

[36:49] What was that about a cane?

[36:50] And there wasn't even a fucking cane.

[36:52] But we'll get to that.

Elliott Kalan

[36:53] Yeah, there was something that we called that didn't happen.

Dan McCoy

[36:56] So, you know, there's the moment in all of these movies where the love interest gets turned.

[37:03] Yes.

[37:03] And that's the shocking, like, sad moment.

[37:06] And in this film...

[37:07] She has no one to turn to.

[37:09] Yeah.

[37:09] Nicole Kidman is protecting her kid, and Daniel Craig shows up, and he's turned.

[37:12] He was her rock.

Elliott Kalan

[37:13] In the first one, in the first Invasion of the Biosnatchers movie, that's one of the scenes I like a lot.

[37:17] Although, when I saw it with an audience, people laughed uproariously at it.

[37:20] Where he kisses his girlfriend and then realizes that she does not kiss him back.

[37:25] And that's when he notices that she's turned, and it horrifies him.

[37:28] Right.

[37:29] And that he's had this contact with it also.

[37:31] And audiences nowadays find that hilarious.

[37:34] But it's, like, a really good way of doing a scene.

Dan McCoy

[37:36] I find the idea of kissing hilarious.

[37:38] That's something.

[37:39] With their hats?

[37:39] That just happened back in the 50s.

Elliott Kalan

[37:41] It was an audience of 11-year-olds also, but...

Dan McCoy

[37:44] But Daniel Craig shows up, and he's, like, threatening Nicole Kidman, and...

[37:49] But very calmly.

[37:49] Yeah, Nicole Kidman shoots everyone around Daniel Craig, with perfect aim, by the way.

[37:54] She is a hell of a marksman with that handgun.

Stuart Wellington

[37:56] Yeah, it was a lot of, like, point of, like, view of the gun.

[38:00] Yeah, it was, like, doing or something.

[38:01] Yeah, it was, like, video games.

Elliott Kalan

[38:02] I was surprised they didn't have a scene earlier in the movie where she was trying to hit a target,

[38:06] and she was just off.

[38:08] And they were, like, gonna need more practice than that one, Dr. Bunnell.

[38:11] You know, that's...

[38:12] Cutting room floor.

[38:13] Someday I'll be able to shoot well.

[38:14] And then they get to that scene.

[38:15] It's, like, is she gonna be able to shoot these people?

[38:18] Right.

[38:18] Her aim's not that good.

Dan McCoy

[38:20] But her solution with Daniel Craig, who she still loves, even though he's an alien,

[38:23] and she hopes that he can be cured, is to shoot him in the knee, Terminator 2 style.

[38:27] Yeah.

[38:27] And then leaves him.

[38:28] And we don't see him again until the ending.

[38:30] And I was always thinking, like, okay, you know, like, she's, like, writing a note to herself on her hand.

[38:35] She's like, all right, remember, after cure is found, go back to pharmacy, get Daniel Craig,

[38:41] who I left bleeding to death on the floor.

[38:44] And we do, sure enough...

Elliott Kalan

[38:45] That's a painful wound.

[38:46] To be wounded in the knee is extremely painful.

Dan McCoy

[38:48] Yeah.

[38:48] And I thought that they were gonna deal with it by showing Daniel Craig with a cane later on in the movie.

[38:53] So the audience is like, oh, yeah.

[38:55] Oh, yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[38:56] The knee, that's right.

Dan McCoy

[38:57] I hope they're in the room.

[38:58] I remember.

[38:58] That was something that happened earlier in the film.

[39:02] They would have beautiful babies.

[39:03] But they dealt with it by not dealing with it at all.

[39:06] They showed Daniel Craig sitting down at the table with a newspaper, and then they cut to that abrupt ending.

Elliott Kalan

[39:11] But also, here's the thing.

[39:13] Is they cured...

[39:14] Here's the difference again between the...

[39:15] Well, Jeffrey Wright found a cure for a shot kneecap, by the way.

[39:19] Jeffrey Wright...

[39:19] That's that Simpsons joke.

[39:20] We'll revive you as soon as we have a cure for 17 stab wounds in the back.

[39:23] Well, how are you guys doing?

[39:24] We're up to 15.

[39:26] Like, the...

[39:27] The...

[39:28] It was a virus.

[39:29] And Jeffrey Wright cures it.

[39:31] Which means Nicole Kidman is a murderer.

[39:33] She's a mass murderer who's killed somewhere in the realm of 20 people in this movie.

[39:36] Either shooting them, hitting them with their car, and then sending them through the window...

[39:40] Right.

[39:40] The display window of what was the name of that store?

[39:42] Lucy?

[39:42] Lucy, yeah.

[39:43] And that...

[39:44] Or, like, at one point, I think...

[39:46] I don't remember.

[39:47] Like, her car's on fire, and she's driving into people, and you're like...

[39:51] So, I wonder if she has this on her conscience that she's...

[39:53] Well, that's what...

[39:54] Yeah, that's what she's thinking about at the end.

Stuart Wellington

[39:56] The final monologue, like, I can't believe I killed all those people.

[39:59] She's thinking about her arraignment later on that day.

Elliott Kalan

[40:02] By the way, I need you to pick me up from court later.

[40:04] Unless they're taking me to jail, in which case, I don't need you to pick me up.

[40:07] Mm-hmm.

[40:07] Yeah.

[40:08] So...

Dan McCoy

[40:08] Everyone else managed to make it through the alien invasion without killing anyone, Nicole Kidman.

[40:13] She was bloodthirsty.

Elliott Kalan

[40:14] And also, and speaking of...

[40:16] I don't know, I remember this because it was around the same time.

[40:17] Speaking of bad CGI, Jeffrey Wright is flying around in a helicopter with some soldiers,

[40:22] relaying to Nicole Kidman where she needs to go.

[40:25] Much like a character in a video game would talk to you when you're on the way to...

[40:29] You know, on the way to where you're supposed to drop the hookers off at Grand Theft Auto.

[40:32] But, uh...

[40:32] Yep.

[40:33] Turn right here.

[40:34] The guys are getting nervous, you know.

[40:36] And, uh...

[40:37] It's one of the worst CGI helicopters I've seen in a long time.

Dan McCoy

[40:41] Yeah, it was really awesome.

[40:42] Okay, we've talked...

[40:43] Way too long, by the way.

[40:44] So I gotta...

[40:44] I'm sorry.

[40:45] I gotta cut us off because, uh...

Elliott Kalan

[40:47] We didn't even talk about Snatched.

Stuart Wellington

[40:48] No, we'll save that.

[40:49] I'll save that for your own blog.

[40:51] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[40:51] Maybe we'll put that in a movie minute or something.

[40:53] Sure.

[40:54] But, um...

[40:55] So, uh...

[40:55] Final Judgments, quickly.

[40:57] Uh...

[40:58] Is this a movie that you would, uh...

[41:00] Not recommend at all?

[41:01] A movie that you'd recommend as a good, bad movie?

[41:03] Or a movie that you kinda liked a little bit?

Elliott Kalan

[41:06] Uh...

[41:06] Who's going first?

[41:07] Uh...

[41:08] Okay.

[41:08] Uh...

[41:09] I would say I, uh...

[41:10] Would not recommend it at all.

[41:11] Because this is kinda similar to Awaken.

[41:13] That was so passionless that there was not a lot to latch onto.

[41:19] It was very...

[41:20] And also like Michael Clayton in that way.

[41:21] It was like...

[41:22] This took place in a world where there were pod people, but everyone had no emotions.

[41:26] So it was very hard to...

[41:27] Although that you do see, uh...

[41:28] I don't know if Stuart was gonna mention this.

[41:30] You do see Nicole Kidman wearing basically a see-through shirt at one point.

[41:33] So, you know, that's...

Stuart Wellington

[41:34] Yeah, but you can see that elsewhere.

[41:37] Yeah.

[41:37] I'm gonna keep this short and sweet.

[41:39] Uh...

[41:39] This movie was a piece of shit.

[41:41] Don't watch it.

[41:42] P.U.

Dan McCoy

[41:43] Yeah, I was gonna...

[41:44] Like, there was a point early on when I was like...

[41:47] You know what?

[41:47] I would watch this on like a late night.

[41:49] Like, it's glossy.

[41:50] It's, you know...

[41:51] But then as it progressed, it just got more and more just straight up dull.

[41:56] Yeah, very dull.

[41:57] And then the absurdly truncated ending came.

[42:01] So...

Elliott Kalan

[42:01] I think the editor might have fallen asleep.

[42:03] Surprise, surprise.

[42:04] And his head fell on the delete rest of movie button.

[42:08] And so that was all that was.

[42:10] Man, they really...

Dan McCoy

[42:11] They should really not put those on those Avid machines.

[42:13] I don't know why they do.

[42:14] Delete rest of movie.

[42:15] So many lost films.

[42:16] It's very easy to hit.

[42:18] So many of Orson Welles' classics.

[42:21] Because he was editing them on Avid.

Elliott Kalan

[42:24] Where's the internal consistency in your joke, Dan?

[42:27] Fair enough.

[42:28] That's how they lost Eric von Stroheim's greed.

[42:31] In the Avid.

[42:32] They digitized all the footage.

Dan McCoy

[42:34] You're a dick.

[42:36] You're just a dick to me.

Elliott Kalan

[42:37] Just when it comes to editing jokes.

Dan McCoy

[42:39] All right.

[42:39] Well, let's move on to movies that we have seen recently and we would recommend.

[42:43] Or at least have something to say about, if nothing else.

[42:46] So...

[42:47] I went first last night.

[42:48] Okay, I'll go.

[42:49] Let's go to Stuart.

Stuart Wellington

[42:50] I went and saw Paranoid Park the other night.

[42:53] The Gus Van Zandt skateboarder movie.

[42:56] Sure.

[42:57] And unlike previous skateboard movies I've seen, like The Skateboard Kid with the Talking Skateboard.

[43:04] This movie did not have a talking skateboard.

Elliott Kalan

[43:06] Surprising choice for Gus Van Zandt.

[43:08] Yeah.

[43:08] No talking skateboard.

Stuart Wellington

[43:10] I was expecting a talking skateboard, possibly with like a wisecracking Brooklyn accent.

[43:14] But instead I got, I don't know, like a phantasmagorical dreamlike film.

[43:23] And however, it was pretty good.

[43:25] And about halfway through it, there's a scene where a dude is cut in half and is crawling around with his guts hanging out.

[43:31] Which was awesome.

[43:33] So, thumbs up.

Dan McCoy

[43:35] Yeah, that seems like, seems like that's made just for you.

Stuart Wellington

[43:38] Yeah.

[43:39] I mean, they could have used a talking skateboard.

Elliott Kalan

[43:43] Then it would have been made for you.

[43:45] A sassy skateboard.

[43:46] At that point, the guy gets cut in half and the skateboard goes, whoa, that looks like it.

[43:50] Wait a minute.

[43:51] You can talk?

[43:52] You got that right?

[43:53] You know, something like that.

[43:55] You and me, buddy.

Stuart Wellington

[43:56] Hey, let's get out of here.

Elliott Kalan

[43:59] Wheels don't fail me now.

[44:01] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[44:02] You know, drives away.

[44:04] It basically turned into Jabberjaw at that point.

[44:06] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[44:07] Then they're in a band.

[44:08] The skateboard's playing drums.

[44:10] It's awesome.

Elliott Kalan

[44:12] There's a guy with a snidely whiplash mustache.

[44:14] I have to get my hands on that skateboard.

[44:16] Yep.

Stuart Wellington

[44:17] The guy who's cut in half is playing keyboard.

[44:20] We just wrote my favorite movie.

[44:21] The top half is playing keyboard.

Elliott Kalan

[44:22] His bottom half is playing, like, tambourine or something like that.

Dan McCoy

[44:25] I want to see this movie so bad.

Elliott Kalan

[44:27] And we'll call it Talking Skateboard.

[44:30] Talking Skateboard 2.

[44:31] And Friends.

Dan McCoy

[44:34] Oh, my God.

[44:36] I saw a lot of good movies recently.

[44:39] I recommend one and then I'll just say, like, I have two short things to say about two other

[44:44] movies that are just, like, parts of those movies.

[44:46] But I watched Ms. 45.

[44:49] Speaking of Abel Ferrara, who made the 90s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

[44:56] You know, I guess, was that early 80s or was it late 70s?

[45:01] It's an exploitation movie about a woman who basically gets raped twice in one day.

[45:07] Although it's the most, for a movie where there's two rape scenes, it's the most sensitive and quick version of those scenes.

[45:17] Like, it's not, you know, like, it's not like...

[45:19] It's not irreversible.

[45:20] Yeah.

[45:20] It's not like...

[45:21] There's not even any nudity.

[45:23] It happens very fast.

[45:24] The whole point is just the impact on her.

[45:26] It's not like, hey, check out this rape scene.

[45:28] You know, like, which would be terrible, obviously.

[45:30] But the point is...

Elliott Kalan

[45:32] It is what it said on the poster for the film, though.

[45:35] So it's poor advertising.

[45:37] But they were quoting Roger Ebert.

[45:38] That's the thing.

[45:39] That was directly from his review.

Dan McCoy

[45:41] The point of the thing is, like, that just sets up the idea that this is a damaged woman who goes out and then basically avenges herself upon, like...

[45:51] At first, any men who are clearly, like, a threat.

[45:55] And then just men in general.

[45:57] But the interesting thing about it is, for an exploitation movie of this kind, it is so clearly on the woman's side.

[46:04] Even when she goes crazy.

[46:05] Even, like, when she goes crazy and just, like, shooting random guys.

[46:08] It's, like, on the woman's side.

[46:10] But it's...

[46:11] It's like a Hitchcock exploitation film.

[46:13] Because it's beautifully shot.

[46:14] It's beautifully put together.

[46:16] And there's some really funny stuff in it, too.

[46:19] Like, the woman is a mute.

[46:22] And, like, she's, like, seducing all these men into, like, coming to get shot.

[46:26] And none of the men notice that she's mute.

[46:29] Like, all the men are just happy to talk about themselves for the whole time.

[46:33] And don't make any reference to the fact that she hasn't said anything.

[46:37] And so, it's sort of, like...

[46:39] And that joke isn't called attention to.

[46:41] But it's clear that they're making fun of the guys.

[46:44] But to summarize, how's the nude scenes?

[46:47] There are no nude scenes.

[46:48] Oh, right.

[46:49] That's another reason...

[46:50] Is that a shower scene?

[46:50] That's another reason why I think it's, you know, clearly on the woman's side.

[46:55] There's a part where you think that there's going to be a nude scene.

[46:59] And in a normal, like, exploitation film, there would be.

[47:01] But it's subverted.

[47:04] And it's well done.

[47:07] What were the other 50 movies you wanted to talk about?

[47:09] No, there are two other movies.

[47:11] Brief things that I wanted to say about them.

[47:14] Number one, I saw The Most Dangerous Game.

[47:17] Sure.

[47:18] Just recently.

[47:19] The old one?

[47:19] Yeah, yeah.

[47:20] The old one with Ice Cube.

Elliott Kalan

[47:20] No, the new...

[47:22] No, the old one.

[47:23] Surviving the game.

[47:24] And it's iced tea.

[47:25] I get my ices mixed up.

[47:27] Sure.

Dan McCoy

[47:28] I saw The Most Dangerous Game because, you know, it's a lot of the same people who did the original King Kong, which is one of my favorite movies.

Elliott Kalan

[47:34] That's what...

[47:34] They shot it on the same set.

Dan McCoy

[47:35] Yeah, yeah.

[47:37] But the one thing I wanted to say about that, and, you know, everyone has probably read the short story of the most dangerous game in school at some point.

[47:43] The most read short story.

[47:44] Right after Incident in Owl Creek Bridge.

[47:46] Exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[47:47] Yeah, and Gift of the Magi.

Dan McCoy

[47:49] Yeah, exactly.

[47:50] So, and The Necklace.

[47:52] That's another one.

[47:53] Yeah, that's true.

Elliott Kalan

[47:54] And Penthouse Forum, January 85.

[47:57] Did you guys not read that in school?

[47:59] Just the letters.

[48:00] Just the letters.

[48:00] Oh, okay.

[48:01] Sure, yeah.

[48:02] It's a good story.

Dan McCoy

[48:02] So everyone knows that The Most Dangerous Game is Man.

[48:04] That teacher was later fired.

[48:05] But I think it's hilarious.

[48:07] There's one point early in The Most Dangerous Game where they're talking about, like,

[48:10] So, what do you think the animal feels like when it's hunted?

[48:14] And the guy goes, he literally says something along the lines of, well, they're hunters and they're the hunted.

[48:21] And luckily, I will never be the hunted.

Elliott Kalan

[48:24] The irony was less subtle back then.

Dan McCoy

[48:26] It was the most hilarious foreshadowing I've ever seen in any movie.

[48:31] And the other film I saw that I wanted to say something briefly about was, I saw the Lucio Fulci movie, Zombie.

[48:38] And I hate Italian horror.

[48:41] And I've said it before.

[48:42] And Italian people.

Elliott Kalan

[48:42] Yeah.

[48:43] You say that a lot outside of the podcast.

[48:45] Shh.

Dan McCoy

[48:46] Don't.

[48:46] Please.

[48:47] We have a big Italian.

[48:48] Mama mia, I hate the Italians.

[48:52] Again, funny voice hour.

[48:55] But I watched it mainly because this is a movie that's famous because it has a fight between a zombie and a shark.

[49:02] Yes.

[49:02] Sure.

[49:03] And I knew this going in.

[49:04] That was the reason that I wanted to see it, even though it was an Italian horror movie.

[49:07] I'm like, zombie and shark fight, eh?

[49:10] But what no one told me was, prior to the zombie and shark fight, there's like a minute of nude scuba diving.

[49:18] Like this woman is like...

[49:19] This is an Italian horror movie.

[49:20] Basically almost entirely nude.

[49:23] Has like the tiniest of thongs.

[49:24] And she straps on like an oxygen tank.

[49:27] And she goes scuba diving.

[49:29] So the order of events is nude scuba diving, woman is threatened by shark, woman is threatened by zombie, zombie and shark fight.

[49:40] Which makes it like the best seven minutes ever committed to film.

[49:43] The rest of the movie you can ignore, but that sequence is great.

Stuart Wellington

[49:46] There's that really great splinter in the eye scene.

[49:49] Yeah, that's the other good part of that movie.

Elliott Kalan

[49:51] There's a terrible Italian horror movie called Zombie Lake, which is all women taking their clothes off and then zombies attacking them.

[49:58] And the opening is like a bad version of that.

[50:00] Where a woman takes off her clothes, swims for the entirety of the opening credits, and then a zombie kills her.

[50:06] And then later on, it gets really ludicrous.

[50:08] Like a woman literally hikes up her skirt to fix her garter.

[50:11] And a zombie attacks her.

[50:12] And it's like, come on, really?

[50:13] Seriously?

Stuart Wellington

[50:14] So, zombie lake, you say.

[50:17] That's like Nazi zombies or something, right?

[50:19] Blood sucking Nazi zombies.

Elliott Kalan

[50:21] No, no, that's a different one.

[50:22] They are Nazi zombies in Zombie Lake.

Stuart Wellington

[50:23] Wait, there are two Nazi zombie films?

[50:25] There are multiple Nazi zombie movies.

Elliott Kalan

[50:26] That's the kind of idea like Nazi vampires where you're like, why hasn't anyone ever done this?

[50:31] And it turns out like 75 people have done it.

[50:33] I do have a Nazi vampire story idea.

Stuart Wellington

[50:35] Sure.

[50:37] So, I think Dan's finally done.

[50:38] I think you were just waiting for him to talk about another movie.

[50:41] I was just watching him and his mouth stopped moving.

Elliott Kalan

[50:46] Unfortunately, I have seen a lot of not very good movies lately.

[50:50] A lot of stuff that I had.

[50:52] What was the worst?

[50:52] The worst was the film version of the play Equus.

[50:59] Which has these moments of very brilliant.

Dan McCoy

[51:01] It means like horse or something, right?

[51:02] Yeah.

[51:03] Well, it's, I don't know.

[51:03] It's Ginny Agutter.

Elliott Kalan

[51:04] If you're not familiar.

[51:06] I don't remember.

[51:07] Was she the little girl in it?

[51:08] Yeah.

[51:08] I mean, I was watching it.

Dan McCoy

[51:09] You may know her from American Werewolf in London, Walkabout.

Elliott Kalan

[51:12] Oh, yeah.

[51:12] I was watching it really to see how Richard Burton, who plays the psychologist in it, deals

[51:17] with his part and how Sidney Lumet directed it.

[51:19] And Sidney Lumet directed it by making the monologue scenes brilliant and making every

[51:24] other scene terrible.

[51:25] And they opened up the movie as you do, oh, they opened up the play as you do by making

[51:29] it more of like a mystery thriller.

[51:31] Like, in the play, there's a certain amount of mystery.

[51:33] Why did this young boy blind all these horses?

[51:37] And it turns out that he has a fixation, partly sexual, partly religious, on horses.

[51:41] And he's just very screwed up.

[51:43] But in this, they open it up by showing like, oh, his parents argue a lot.

[51:47] Oh, and also, you know, this is his job interview when he got the job at the stables.

[51:53] It got increasingly silly at times until they had a flashback to the first time that the

[51:57] young boy had ever seen a horse.

[51:59] And the guy, he's on the beach and a man rides up on a horse clad all in black, knee

[52:04] high, almost like high half-calf leather boots, like this beautiful granite man.

[52:10] And, you know, Siren goes, whoa there.

[52:12] Hello, little boy.

[52:13] This is my horse, Trojan.

[52:15] Trojan?

[52:16] Whoa, Trojan.

[52:17] Whoa.

[52:17] And he's so ridiculously over the top.

[52:20] And the boy's parents are like, get away.

[52:22] Don't put him on that horse.

[52:23] What are you doing?

[52:23] He'd get hurt.

[52:24] What are you talking about?

[52:25] You're scaring the horse.

[52:26] Stop it.

[52:27] Whoa.

[52:28] And his voice is ridiculous.

[52:30] It sounds like it's a joke on itself.

[52:31] So that was a bad one.

[52:32] And I saw, this is totally unrelated.

[52:35] I had on my TV at the same time Equus and Zoo, which is another movie about a man who has

[52:39] sex with a horse.

[52:39] Why did you?

Dan McCoy

[52:40] I saw Zoo happen to be on TV.

[52:43] I'm like, it's supposed to be good.

[52:45] I might tape.

[52:46] No, I don't want to see a documentary about a man having sex with a horse.

[52:49] That's the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[52:49] It was a documentary that was afraid to be tasteless.

[52:53] So it was more a meditation on the idea of loneliness and being an outsider to the point

[52:57] that the facts of the case, that this is a man who died having sex with a horse, don't

[53:01] come in until halfway through the movie.

[53:02] And you're like, these guys keep calling themselves zoos.

[53:05] And they kind of get together and hang out at this one guy's house.

[53:08] This is why I haven't seen a lot of good stuff lately.

[53:10] But last night, I saw for the first time, this is a movie that I should have seen earlier,

[53:14] I guess, but Modern Romance, one of Albert Brooks' early movies, which was very good.

[53:21] It was back when Albert Brooks looked like he was about to take Woody Allen's crown, I

[53:25] guess, as the man who made kind of serious comedies.

[53:30] And there's a lot of funny stuff in it.

[53:32] And Albert Brooks is very good.

[53:33] And it's a really creepy movie.

[53:34] Dan and I were talking about this earlier because it's about a man who is so jealous of his

[53:38] girlfriend that he basically torments her and keeps breaking up and getting back together

[53:42] with her.

[53:42] And it's this doomed relationship that he can't seem to let get, lose hold of.

[53:47] Partly, I guess, because she's super pretty.

[53:48] And he just doesn't want to let go of a super pretty girl.

[53:51] But it's really funny.

[53:52] But he is, it's a movie that in a different tone could have been a thriller because he's

[53:56] basically stalking her.

[53:57] But there are also moments where, as the movie was released in 1981, and it's like Albert

[54:01] Brooks said to himself, this movie is being made in 1981, but people are going to watch

[54:05] it 27 years from now.

[54:07] And the way people did things in 1981 is going to seem hilarious.

[54:11] So let's play that up as much as possible.

[54:13] I'm going to wear a jogging suit that looks ridiculous.

[54:15] I'm going to have an old-fashioned, it's new now, but an old-fashioned alarm clock, old-fashioned

[54:19] record player.

[54:20] I'm going to listen to nothing but songs, pop songs on the radio that are around at the

[54:24] time.

[54:24] And it just, there are these moments that are very silly.

[54:26] And you almost get the idea that he knows this movie will be funnier in the future because

[54:31] of how ridiculous the present is at the moment.

[54:33] He strangely has his shirt off through much of the movie, which is bizarre to me because

[54:37] he was in pretty good shape, I guess.

[54:39] No, the thing is, he's like, in the 80s there were different standards for men and women.

[54:44] Women in movies had to be pretty sexy, but men could be just normal looking.

[54:48] I used the movie Bachelor Party recently for something at work.

[54:51] And the women in it are pretty hot, but the women go to a male strip club and the men are

[54:55] not even particularly muscular.

[54:57] They're just kind of not ugly guys.

[54:59] And it's just funny the way the standards were different.

[55:01] So like, Albert Brooks' girlfriend is very pretty, but he is, Albert Brooks, he's not

[55:05] out of shape, but his body is covered in brillo pad-like hair, you know, so.

Stuart Wellington

[55:10] Every time I think of that scene in Bachelor Party, I always imagine, like, for some reason

[55:14] my brain is fucked up.

[55:15] And I always imagine all of them having the face of the guy who runs the Cobra Kai dojo in

[55:20] Karate Kid.

[55:21] Like, they all have that guy's, like, weirdly, like, simian features.

[55:26] I don't think they do, but that's, you know.

[55:28] It's my imagination.

[55:29] That's how I like to remember Bachelor Party.

Dan McCoy

[55:32] Yeah.

[55:33] Not the guy in charge.

[55:35] Not William Zabka.

Stuart Wellington

[55:36] No, no, no.

[55:37] Like, yeah, yeah.

[55:39] William Zabka's great.

Dan McCoy

[55:40] The one who's, like, uh...

[55:42] Mercy for the wings!

[55:43] The one who punches out the window at the beginning of, uh...

[55:46] Karate Kid Part 2.

[55:47] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[55:48] To say one more thing about Modern Romance, in case anyone's not sold on it, it is a movie

[55:51] that has George Kennedy and Meadowlark Lemon of the Harlem Globetrotters playing themselves

[55:56] in one scene, which I did not expect to bring into it.

[55:59] And also, and a pretty good joke about the Incredible Hulk at one point.

[56:02] Like, it's all over the place, the movie, but it's very good.

Dan McCoy

[56:04] That's a tremendous recommendation.

[56:06] Well, um...

[56:08] We should, uh...

[56:10] Get out of here.

[56:11] But, um...

[56:12] I wanted to...

Elliott Kalan

[56:12] You should get the Saturday Night Live end of show music to start playing at this point.

Dan McCoy

[56:16] I should hire, um...

[56:18] What's his face?

[56:18] G.E. Smith.

[56:19] G.E. Smith.

[56:20] I'm sure he's not doing anything.

Elliott Kalan

[56:21] Well, he might be going to...

[56:22] He might be backing up Bowie again.

[56:24] Before he was on Saturday Night Live, he was part of Bowie's backup man.

Dan McCoy

[56:26] Oh, my God.

[56:27] This has been Music Facts.

[56:29] With, uh...

[56:30] That's what's...

[56:30] Oh, sir.

[56:31] That's what's called a callback, ladies and gentlemen.

Elliott Kalan

[56:33] If you have any questions about musicians from the 80s through the 1880s, any John Philip Sousa questions, just write Elliot Kalin at musicfacts.blogspot.edu.

Dan McCoy

[56:43] So, um...

[56:44] But I want to...

[56:44] Speaking of which, I want to thank people for...

[56:46] A lot of people actually did go and vote at Podcast Alley.

[56:50] Yeah.

[56:50] And we got bumped up to number 48.

[56:53] Nice.

[56:54] Number 48 in Comedy for March.

[56:56] That's awesome.

[56:56] Holy shit.

[56:56] Not overall podcast, but in Comedy for March.

[56:59] And what were we at before?

[57:00] We were at 101.

[57:01] That's a huge jump.

[57:02] That's a huge leap.

[57:03] That's a big jump.

[57:03] So, I want to tell people that you can make a difference.

[57:06] I wouldn't let anyone too much this week.

[57:08] Unlike in your, uh...

[57:10] Unlike in American politics...

[57:12] Sure.

[57:12] Your vote can make a difference.

[57:14] You're so jaded.

[57:14] In the Flophouse.

Elliott Kalan

[57:15] You're so jaded.

[57:16] Dan, all you have to do is vote for change.

[57:18] Yeah.

[57:19] For instance, changing Flophouse from number 48 to number 1.

Dan McCoy

[57:23] Why don't you do that?

[57:24] Remember, you can vote every month.

[57:26] So, after March has ended, if you voted before, you can vote again.

[57:31] It's totally legal.

[57:32] Nice.

[57:34] So, um...

[57:35] But also, if you want to see show notes or anything else, you can go to theflophousepodcast.blogspot.com.

[57:42] Or you can send us an email at theflophousepodcast at gmail.com.

[57:46] I bet you can Google it, too.

[57:48] You can totally Google that shit up.

[57:50] That's the brilliance of Google.

Elliott Kalan

[57:52] And that was one of the things that The Invasion got right, is when Nicole Kidman suspects things, she Googles, my husband is not my husband.

Stuart Wellington

[57:59] Yeah.

[57:59] There's a lot of text messaging in this movie.

[58:01] Yeah.

[58:02] And video text messaging.

Dan McCoy

[58:04] All right.

[58:04] Well, while they continue to talk about The Invasion, I'll just sign off saying that I'm Dan McCoy.

[58:09] I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[58:10] I am Elliot Kalin.

[58:10] Or am I...

[58:12] Good night.

Stuart Wellington

[58:16] It's not even night, really, yet.

Elliott Kalan

[58:29] I used up all my jokes.

[58:30] Well, you better believe I'm using snatched in this podcast.

[58:35] No!

[58:37] I call that.

[58:38] All right.

[58:38] I think that's fine.

Stuart Wellington

[58:39] I was going to use your snatched joke.

Elliott Kalan

[58:43] Who's snatched now, dog?

[58:45] I don't know why, but Sean found reason in that movie.

[58:47] You're the man now.

[58:48] You're the man now, dog.

Dan McCoy

[58:51] So should we start, or what?

[58:52] You're the boss.

[58:53] Am I?

[58:54] Yeah.

The Flop House: Episode Thirteen - The Invasion

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