Ep.#438 - Trap, with Linda Holmes

Elliott Kalan

[0:00] Hi, Floppers. Before we start this episode, I just wanted to remind you we are in the middle of FlopTV Season 2.

[0:06] That's right, the one-hour internet televised Flophouse TV show is here for you the first Saturday of every month through February.

[0:14] Just go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com and get your tickets or season pass for this all-new Flophouse TV stuff.

[0:22] We're covering movies we've never covered before. We've got video segments. It's amazing.

[0:27] Just go to theflophouse.simpleticks.com for FlopTV Season 2. This time, it's personal.

Dan McCoy

[0:33] On this episode, we discuss trap!

Stuart Wellington

[0:37] Okay, guys, I'm not supposed to say anything, but you know that guy, the Ripper?

[0:42] Well, this entire podcast is an elaborate trap because we heard he's going to be on this podcast.

[0:50] This whole thing is a trap for the Ripper.

[0:53] Is he called the Ripper?

[0:54] It's a different guy.

[0:56] Oh, it's a different guy.

[0:57] There's multiple guys, didn't there?

Dan McCoy

[1:20] Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

[1:23] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:24] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:26] And with us, we have...

[1:28] Introduce yourself.

[1:29] Identify yourself.

Linda Holmes

[1:31] No one hosts like Dan McCoy.

[1:33] No one welcomes a guest.

[1:33] I absolutely shall.

[1:34] I am Linda Holmes, and I am proud to say that I asked the Flophouse to cover this movie while

[1:42] still sitting in my seat at the theater.

[1:45] I composed an email, please cover this movie, and here I am.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49] I'm sorry you had to wait so long between your initial screening and this magic moment of culmination.

[1:55] It's only gotten better with time.

Dan McCoy

[1:56] I'm glad you bring that up, though, because...

[1:59] So, we always say, this is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

[2:05] Now, usually...

[2:06] Wait, Dan, I hate to interrupt.

Elliott Kalan

[2:08] That was the smoothest, most professional segue you have ever done on the show,

[2:11] and I just want to recognize how beautifully done it was.

[2:13] So, you wanted to trip it up.

Dan McCoy

[2:14] Yes, I did.

[2:15] Yes, I did.

[2:16] You wanted to smear gunk all over it.

[2:17] I didn't like that you're getting too good, Dan.

[2:18] Threatens me.

[2:19] Mm-hmm.

[2:20] But the thing is about this movie is that it was neither a commercial flop,

[2:27] nor was it particularly a critical one.

[2:29] People were sort of all over the place, but it does inspire strong reactions.

[2:35] So, we thought that it would be fun to talk about, even though maybe, like, you know,

[2:40] the pedants out there would be like, well, is this, does this fall under your purview?

[2:44] Mm-hmm.

[2:45] And I say I don't care.

[2:46] Is this in your mission statement?

[2:46] And we're, yeah, we're like...

Linda Holmes

[2:47] Also, like, you guys, you guys kind of do the Shyamalan thing.

[2:51] We do.

[2:51] With movies that aren't necessarily entirely bad.

Elliott Kalan

[2:54] That's, that's one of my favorite 60s kind of go-go hippie movies, the Shyamalan thing.

[2:58] Yeah.

[2:59] But yeah, Dan is always very nervous that someone somewhere is getting mad about the movies we're choosing.

[3:04] There's something called...

[3:05] I want to tell that listener, you can go fuck yourself.

[3:08] No, you can tell...

Linda Holmes

[3:09] It's my fault.

[3:10] I mean, I was very eager.

[3:12] As I said, I was...

[3:13] The lights came up in the theater.

[3:15] I said to my friend who I was with, I said, I can't leave yet.

[3:18] I have to do one thing.

Stuart Wellington

[3:19] I have to write this email.

[3:21] And your friend's like, it's okay.

[3:22] I am still getting over the experience.

[3:25] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[3:25] Yes.

[3:26] And I just want to say, when Linda talks, we listen.

[3:29] If you had watched, if you watched Citizen Kane and you're like, I got to talk to the Flophouse

[3:32] boys about this, we'll do it.

[3:34] We'll cut that on the show.

[3:35] Oh, great.

[3:35] That's good to know.

[3:36] What a stinker.

[3:37] I mean, it was a box office flop, so we could technically cover it.

[3:40] True.

Linda Holmes

[3:40] Good to know for the future.

Dan McCoy

[3:43] Yeah.

[3:44] Well, this is...

[3:45] Yeah.

[3:45] As you mentioned, we've covered a lot of Shyamalan films.

[3:49] Even ones that are sort of part of his new, like, I don't know, half the internet loves it, half

[3:55] the internet hates it, rather than we have decided to hate him post, you know, his early successes

[4:01] period that we were in there for a while.

[4:04] Who's doing that?

[4:05] Is it you?

[4:06] Elliot's going to be doing the summary.

[4:07] I'm doing the summary.

Elliott Kalan

[4:08] But Elliot's like, I need this.

[4:10] I need this in my life right now.

[4:12] I need to win.

[4:12] I said to Stuart, I don't have enough work to do right now.

[4:15] I'm not busy enough as it is.

[4:17] So to put a peek behind the curtain...

[4:19] I apologize for not jumping on that one.

[4:21] No, no, it's fine.

[4:22] In retrospect.

[4:23] No, this was a fine one to do, because it is not the most complicated plot.

[4:26] It was actually one of the easier ones to take notes while doing the dishes at midnight

[4:29] after I finished my night work, which comes after putting my kids to bed after my day

[4:34] work.

[4:34] So...

Stuart Wellington

[4:35] Night work for Elliot is where he takes people to a home that I guess he's rented, and he

[4:39] murders them.

Elliott Kalan

[4:39] I murder them, and I cut them up to little pieces and scatter them artfully.

[4:43] It's mainly implied, not seen.

Stuart Wellington

[4:44] Yeah.

[4:45] And I say, this is my design.

Linda Holmes

[4:46] If you miss anything, I really considered, I didn't do it, but I really considered bringing

[4:50] like a little bell, so that when you get to one of the many things that make no fucking

[4:54] sense in this movie, I would just go, ding!

[4:57] I got a question.

Stuart Wellington

[4:58] Oh, I wish I'd done that.

[4:59] Linda saw this in the theater.

[5:01] Elliot saw this washing dishes.

[5:03] Yep.

[5:03] Dan, did you see this one in the theater?

Dan McCoy

[5:04] I saw this in the theater as well.

[5:07] I saw it with Audrey and a couple of our friends, and we all sort of...

[5:11] Oh, yeah, name them.

[5:14] John and Mary.

[5:15] Hi, John and Mary.

Elliott Kalan

[5:16] Story checks out.

Stuart Wellington

[5:17] And I watched it...

[5:18] Sounds made up.

[5:19] I watched it in a king-size bed on a laptop at a resort that my wife and I were staying

[5:25] at for a recent wedding anniversary.

[5:27] Was it?

[5:28] 13-year wedding anniversary.

[5:29] Congratulations.

Dan McCoy

[5:29] Was it a waterbed?

[5:30] Was it heart-shaped?

Stuart Wellington

[5:32] It got pretty wet.

[5:35] Okay.

[5:36] All right.

[5:37] Let's move on.

[5:38] You walked into it, dude.

Elliott Kalan

[5:39] Yeah, you called for it, Dan.

[5:41] Dan, you can't say Beetlejuice two and a half times and then get mad when you ask for

[5:44] orange juice and Beetlejuice shows up.

Dan McCoy

[5:46] That's true.

[5:47] Like the old saying says.

Elliott Kalan

[5:50] That's the old saying, yeah.

[5:51] So let's talk about Trap Show.

[5:52] It definitely falls in the line of M. Night Shyamalan's recent movies, which are, I can't

[5:57] tell if I don't, if I think they would be better as episodes of a TV show, like an M. Night Shyamalan

[6:03] anthology TV series.

[6:04] Or if I like that he's making these kind of like quick, almost disposable kind of thrillers that

[6:11] harken back to what thriller movies used to be, where it was like, watch this for 85, 95 minutes, have an

[6:17] okay, silly time, and then go do something else.

[6:19] You know, I can't tell whether I like it or not.

[6:21] How do you guys feel about it?

[6:22] About that format that he's been kind of doing?

Dan McCoy

[6:24] I hadn't thought about it, but now that you say it, I do think that part of my enjoyment, like I, you

[6:28] know, I cackled my way through this.

[6:30] I had my problems with some of the details, but I had fun.

[6:35] And I think it probably is partly because you don't get movies like this that much anymore

[6:40] at this sort of particular level or pitch.

[6:43] At this sort of budget and theater level, yeah.

[6:44] Yeah.

Linda Holmes

[6:45] I think that's kind of what made me angry about it a little bit.

[6:48] But if I paid for a ticket to see this movie, I'd be like, where's my movie?

[6:53] But I mean, and I don't want to spoil my final judgments.

[6:57] I don't want to say too much.

[6:58] But I think that like the, I think the, I think he is definitely one of the few people who

[7:04] has the talent, the juice and the pull to get this, to get like thrillers for grownups

[7:11] made right now.

[7:13] And I kind of want him to make them good.

[7:16] Yeah.

[7:16] And that's, that's where I ran into trouble with this one.

[7:20] You know?

Stuart Wellington

[7:21] That's the thing, Elliot.

[7:21] If I had paid for a ticket for this, I would also have been mad.

[7:24] I would have walked up to the usher and I would have said, sir, I paid for an entire

[7:27] seat to this movie, but I only use the edge.

[7:30] Can I return some of this ticket?

[7:31] Can I get the unused portion refunded to me?

Linda Holmes

[7:34] You wouldn't have gone up to the usher and said, excuse me, usher, can you tell me where

[7:38] you keep all the money and where the key to the safe is?

[7:41] Yeah.

[7:42] Because he would tell you.

[7:43] And as we've established on the podcast, the usher would have said, yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[7:47] I can't believe Elliot knows an usher song.

[7:49] Just the one.

Elliott Kalan

[7:50] Okay.

[7:50] It just doesn't make sense to me.

[7:51] Let's talk about, let's talk about, that me, a guy who now fuels his night work by just

[7:56] listening to Oingo Boingo's discography from the first album to as far down as I get in

[8:01] it.

[8:01] Yeah, sure.

Dan McCoy

[8:01] And listening to dad rock night moves while you're doing your night work.

Elliott Kalan

[8:06] Yeah.

[8:07] Not exactly, but sure.

[8:08] So, okay.

[8:10] Trap.

[8:10] What happens in this movie?

[8:11] Well, we're introduced to two main characters who are going to be the main stars until a third

[8:16] character abruptly becomes the hero of the movie, like two thirds the way in.

[8:21] Riley, she's a teenage girl.

[8:23] She loves this singer, Lady Raven, who's kind of like Taylor Swift with like a little touch

[8:28] of, a little touch of some, I don't know, some kind of Lady Gaga costume or something.

[8:31] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[8:31] She's got a little more like juice than Taylor Swift.

[8:34] I guess so.

[8:35] What do you mean juice?

[8:36] Like, I think she's less popular than Taylor Swift.

[8:38] But I mean, she, yeah, arguably, although I don't see the butcher going to Taylor Swift.

[8:43] Yeah.

[8:44] I mean, she's like, you know, there's a little more R&B to it, a little less country.

Elliott Kalan

[8:48] Oh, I don't mean, I don't mean, that's true.

[8:50] I don't necessarily mean the music style.

[8:51] I mean more in like the showcase, the way the concert is put together.

[8:53] She's a pop star.

[8:54] Yeah.

[8:54] She's a pop star.

[8:55] So Riley loves this pop star, Lady Raven, who is played by M. Night Shyamalan's daughter,

[8:58] Salika.

[8:59] And she's being taken by her dad, Cooper, played by Josh Hartnett, to a concert.

[9:04] They're going to see Lady Raven.

[9:05] It's going to be amazing.

[9:06] This is a daddy-daughter bonding experience.

[9:08] Riley's been depressed because her old friends are excluding her.

[9:12] And so now he's trying to make it up for her.

[9:14] And I will say this.

[9:15] This movie started winning me over right away because a few weeks ago, I took my older son,

[9:19] Sammy, to see Judas Priest over at the YouTube theater in LA.

[9:22] And the experience we had going to that concert was so similar to how this starts in a way

[9:28] that I could really relate to.

[9:29] Until the part with Josh Hartnett's murderous secret, you know, until the trap aspect of it.

Dan McCoy

[9:35] Good job keeping your own murderous secret, Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[9:38] Your dark passenger.

[9:39] There were so many moments of like a parent trying to connect with their kid and looking for the seats

[9:44] and trying to, and what's our safety plan, you know, if we get separate.

[9:46] Like that, I was like, and being excited that your kid is getting into this music, you know.

[9:50] It's a, so I really related to that, but I didn't relate to anything else.

[9:53] I had words.

[9:54] During the opening act.

Linda Holmes

[9:55] I think the thing that's the most fun to me about the very beginning of the movie is that

[9:59] the thing that makes, the first thing that makes no sense happens like 30 seconds into the movie

[10:04] when they park in a surface lot down the street from the arena with no difficulty whatsoever

[10:12] and go strolling in there.

[10:14] Maybe like classic Philly.

[10:16] And you get the apparently ADR line from the daughter about,

[10:20] I'm so glad she added an afternoon show after she sold out.

[10:24] Because you know how arena artists add a matinee.

[10:26] They add a matinee.

Elliott Kalan

[10:27] They'll do two massive concerts.

[10:29] Or they're elderly fans.

[10:31] Exactly.

[10:32] Anyway.

[10:33] There's a lot of, the question, as we'll find out later, this whole concert is a trap.

[10:36] Well, there's a lot of questions I have about, like, at what stage did this become a trap

[10:41] and how much of it is a trap?

[10:43] Because somehow it was organized to trap someone, but also they set it up as a trap

[10:46] because they knew he was attending the concert already.

[10:48] No, no, no.

Dan McCoy

[10:49] No, no, no, no, no, my friend.

[10:51] It was, yeah, it was not organized to be a trap.

[10:53] It was like, they knew he was going to be there.

[10:56] No, no.

[10:57] From the evidence.

[10:57] That's their explanation.

Elliott Kalan

[10:58] But then there are other details that make it seem as if this whole thing has been set

[11:02] up as a trap.

[11:03] The way that, because the idea for it came from that story years ago about they wanted

[11:07] to catch a bunch of people with outstanding warrants.

[11:09] So they mailed letters to their houses being like, hey, you want a boat?

[11:12] Right.

[11:12] Or something like that.

[11:12] Yeah, we talked about that.

[11:14] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[11:14] And that was my problem with the trailer.

[11:16] Because when I saw the trailer for this, I'm like, okay, wait.

[11:19] The police have set up a concert just for the purposes of being a trap where they're like, let's

[11:27] get this guy in a place where there's the most people possible that he could either disappear

[11:33] into or we could accidentally shoot or whatever.

[11:37] And it's not, it is not that, I know it is unclear, but I think that the movie is trying

[11:42] to indicate later on.

Stuart Wellington

[11:43] I sincerely hope that Eric Adams did not watch this movie because I feel like it would give

[11:46] him good ideas.

[11:47] It would give him ideas.

[11:48] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[11:48] Not good ideas.

[11:49] Billy Joel, you got to come back to the garden.

[11:51] There's a turnstile jumper we need to catch.

Linda Holmes

[11:54] Got a lot of tax cheats.

Elliott Kalan

[11:56] Yeah.

[11:56] And if it was Eric Adams' New York, then yeah, the police would have shot 70 to 50, 70 to

[12:01] 100 people at least.

[12:02] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[12:03] A trash can robot would have shot 100 people.

Dan McCoy

[12:07] It is sad though that Riley, you know, after going through all those inside out emotions,

[12:11] troubles is going to have to deal with so much now learning what she does about her.

Elliott Kalan

[12:16] Swish, swish, Dan.

[12:17] Perfect.

[12:18] Nothing but net on that cross reference.

[12:21] So during the opening act, which this was also a realistic thing based on my experiences

[12:26] that during the opening act, the theater is still half full and nobody's paying attention

[12:30] at all.

[12:31] During the opening act, your dad notices there's a lot of police officers in the venue and they

[12:35] seem to be seemingly leading seemingly random men out of the main room.

[12:39] And there's a brief conversation between Cooper and Riley about whether the word crispy

[12:42] can be used to mean good and how do you do that.

[12:45] I don't, I'm not up on teenager slang.

[12:46] My kids are not old enough.

[12:47] Have you guys heard crispy or is that a, is that a Shyamalan coining?

Stuart Wellington

[12:51] Dan's going to his bookmarks, pulling up urban dictionaries.

[12:54] Is that a real slange or is it from the Shama lexicon?

Dan McCoy

[12:59] I don't know whether, let's see whether it was put in after trap swept the nation.

Elliott Kalan

[13:03] I'll let you do your detective work.

[13:04] Anyway, Cooper, he leaves, he's the bathroom.

[13:06] And while he's in the bathroom stall, he uses his phone to check a live video feed of a

[13:10] man imprisoned in a basement.

Dan McCoy

[13:11] This is our, this should be our first tip off that.

Elliott Kalan

[13:14] So relatable.

[13:14] Not as long as it seems to be.

[13:15] Cooper.

[13:16] Again, this is, this is where my experience at the, at the concert and his experience begin

[13:20] to diverge.

[13:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[13:22] Now, okay.

[13:24] So this, this says that.

[13:25] Here's Dan McCoy with a crispy update.

Dan McCoy

[13:28] This gives a definition that I would have assumed was the definition for crispy rather than what

[13:33] they say in the movie, which is essentially just cool.

[13:36] Here it says neat, clean, trim, fashionable with it, you know, good looking, crispy.

[13:42] Yeah.

[13:42] That makes more sense to me than.

[13:44] It's more like crisp.

[13:45] What we get.

[13:45] Yeah.

[13:46] Yeah.

[13:46] Like crisp.

[13:46] That does make sense.

Linda Holmes

[13:48] Yeah.

[13:49] Yeah.

[13:49] I mean, it's true.

[13:51] You, one of the things that I think is amazing about this movie is they put it right in

[13:54] the trailer that he's the murderer, which I thought was somewhat odd.

[13:59] Like maybe you could have let that be a thing that we discover after we get there, but they

[14:03] put it in the trailer.

[14:03] So you're just kind of waiting.

[14:05] If you have seen the trailer, you're just kind of waiting for him to reveal that he's the,

[14:08] that he's the murderer.

[14:09] So yeah, that's when he goes in there, he looks on his phone.

[14:13] You know, they say women take a long time in the back.

[14:16] He's in the bathroom.

[14:17] He's in there.

[14:18] Hostage.

[14:19] You know.

[14:19] This is what leads to long lines at arenas.

Dan McCoy

[14:22] Normally I'm with you that trailers give away too much, but this is the, this is the essential

[14:26] premise.

[14:26] I don't know what you would sell this on.

Elliott Kalan

[14:28] I think you have to sell it as there's a dad and a daughter at a stadium and something's

[14:32] going, or at a concert and something's going wrong and he's trying to get out and they don't

[14:36] know what it is and you would leave it as a twist.

[14:37] But I don't know if that's enough to people get people.

[14:39] I think this whole thing.

Stuart Wellington

[14:40] Yeah.

[14:40] I think this whole thing works for me.

[14:41] Like going in, I knew what the premise was and I was still on board.

[14:46] Like I was hooting and hollering the whole time.

Elliott Kalan

[14:47] Not having seen the trailer, I did not know what the premise was.

[14:50] And so I will say when he looked at it, I was like, is this guy a murderer?

[14:54] What's going on here?

Dan McCoy

[14:56] Or does he just have weird taste in YouTube videos?

[14:59] Is he just like a red rumor or something?

Elliott Kalan

[15:01] Well, we watched it years and years ago.

[15:02] We watched that movie Untraceable.

[15:04] I think it was where the guy was live streaming his murders of people.

[15:06] So there was part of me that's like, wait, is that, so did he do that?

[15:09] Or is he watching some other thing that someone else is doing?

[15:11] But it's answered pretty quickly.

[15:12] Anyway, while washing his hands in the sink, he has a vision of an older woman standing

[15:15] there kind of glaring at him.

[15:17] That'll happen a couple more times.

[15:18] It turns out it's his mom.

[15:20] Cooper runs into another mom, the mom of one of Riley's old friends.

[15:23] They have an awkward conversation about getting these kids back together.

Dan McCoy

[15:26] I think that this performance from this lady, this is like, to me, I'm not, you know, I

[15:31] have no children, but this plays as.

[15:33] Not that you know of.

[15:35] Realistically, you know, like a lady who maybe you wouldn't want to encounter or hang out

[15:40] with other than the fact that, you know, your kids are friends.

[15:45] You know, she's got like this weird energy.

Linda Holmes

[15:47] She has very good weird energy.

[15:49] I don't know if they did anything with this part of the story, but I, but she definitely

[15:53] is.

[15:54] Yeah.

[15:54] Weird energy.

Stuart Wellington

[15:55] I like how this is shot too.

[15:57] Like it's a lot of like straight on close ups.

[16:00] Looking right at the camera.

[16:01] Like an Errol Morris movie.

[16:02] Yeah.

[16:02] And I will say, I got to give, I got to, you know, I've, I've been mean to Josh Hartnett

[16:06] in the past.

[16:07] He is the star of one of the worst movies I've ever seen, 40 Days and 40 Nights.

[16:11] But I got to say, he brings it and he's hot.

[16:13] Like he's a hot dad.

[16:14] I agree.

Dan McCoy

[16:14] I've liked him a lot more in recent years.

[16:17] I think he has aged into a, an interesting actor.

Elliott Kalan

[16:21] I think if you are, if you are like a young hunk actor and you stick it out in the business

[16:26] long enough, you will acquire the layers that make you into a more interesting actor.

Stuart Wellington

[16:30] Like the, I feel like it's.

[16:32] The Colin Farrells of this world.

Elliott Kalan

[16:34] Yeah.

[16:35] In a way.

[16:35] Yeah.

[16:35] And I feel like what people, he's not exactly the same kind of young hunk, but like with

[16:40] Arnold Schwarzenegger where people are like, you know, 30 years later, like he's aged into

[16:43] like a, like a pretty good actor.

[16:45] And I would be like, I hope so.

[16:46] He's been doing it for a long time.

Linda Holmes

[16:48] But like.

[16:49] Yeah.

[16:50] I liked Josh Hartnett even as a young guy though.

[16:53] Like Josh Hartnett is one of the, is one of the, the people who I associate with the

[16:57] faculty.

[16:58] Yeah.

[16:59] Okay.

[16:59] I think is like a super fun, weird, really stylish movie that I super like.

[17:05] Yeah.

[17:07] And, and, you know, was just, people were just reminiscing not long ago with Bebe Newworth

[17:12] on social media somewhere about her being in that movie.

[17:15] And, and that's one that I really like.

[17:18] And I think he's always been like an interesting kind of like weird sleazeball.

[17:21] And yeah, I like, I think he's good in this.

[17:24] I think he's good in this.

Elliott Kalan

[17:24] The other thing is there's a, there's a certain sleaziness to a lot, underlying a lot of those

[17:28] kind of young hunk guys.

[17:29] And when they get older, they can play it up in a way that is, that stops being a weird

[17:33] subtext that you, that is creepy and becomes like, oh, this is a flavor of this character.

[17:38] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[17:38] Yeah.

[17:38] I'm glad you brought up the faculty because that is the outlier for me.

[17:42] That is the early Hartnett performance I really enjoy.

[17:45] And he brings a lot of juice to that.

[17:47] And it's a fun movie.

[17:48] I remember.

[17:49] And he's got that hair.

[17:49] When, you know, like John, when we were at the Daily Show,

[17:54] John Stewart.

[17:55] Yeah.

[17:55] He'd be like down on the faculty.

[17:57] He'd like bring it up to like, you know, piss on it.

[17:59] I'd be like, what are you talking about, John?

Elliott Kalan

[18:01] That's a pretty good movie.

Dan McCoy

[18:02] Certainly of your filmography.

[18:04] It's one of the stronger ones.

Elliott Kalan

[18:05] I think that's why he brought it up is because it's one of the ones,

[18:08] so that it's not as bad as some of the other ones.

[18:10] So he can like dump on it without people being like, yeah, that sucked.

[18:14] You know, dancing about architecture or playing by Hart, whatever.

[18:16] Yeah, that sucked.

Linda Holmes

[18:17] You know, and I think like, I think Hartnett is one of the people,

[18:20] and this happens a lot to women, but it also happens to young guys who are

[18:25] actors, is that they sort of get trapped when they're very good looking and

[18:29] they're young.

[18:30] They get trapped.

[18:32] At a concert by the police.

[18:33] Yeah.

[18:33] They get trapped in a kind of like a pretty normal person thing.

[18:39] And if their talent is that they're odd, which is just kind of what his thing is,

[18:44] it can take a while for that to sort of open up.

[18:48] And as they get older, they sort of, you know, grow into interesting, you know,

[18:55] there are just some people who are like character actors with leading man face.

[18:58] And that's, that can be something that, you know, it takes a while to get over.

[19:02] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[19:04] It's true.

[19:04] Well, and I like him in this movie.

[19:06] I feel like he does do a good job of balancing.

[19:09] He's the dad with a secret and the killer with a dad inside.

Dan McCoy

[19:12] What I will say is like, I, I, I find him very compelling in it.

[19:16] I enjoy the performance, but he is absolutely acting like a maniac from early in this movie.

[19:22] Like the idea that he.

Elliott Kalan

[19:23] It is obvious from moment one that there's something off about him.

[19:25] But that's the thing.

[19:27] But that's the thing.

[19:27] But Dan, think about the dads you've known.

[19:30] They all feel like there's something weird about them.

[19:32] Dads are weird.

[19:33] Like there's something weird about them.

[19:34] They don't know how to relate to other human beings.

Stuart Wellington

[19:35] I mean, he's a dad, like, like he's had a dad at a concert.

[19:39] Like, I, I feel like most of the dads I know are like, I got two hours alone.

[19:44] I'm going to pound seven beers.

Elliott Kalan

[19:47] Because dads, there's the thing about dads are all faking it.

[19:51] They're all making it up as they go along.

[19:52] They're all faking it.

[19:53] And as the generations continue, they get worse and worse at faking it because it's harder to just yell at people and hit them when they don't listen to you.

[20:01] And so I, so I buy him as, as, that if you.

[20:03] But not impossible, Elliot claims.

[20:05] I guess.

[20:07] I guess that's true.

[20:09] Like, you'd be like, Riley's dad's kind of weird.

[20:10] But you wouldn't be like, this guy is a murderer.

[20:12] This is the butcher.

Dan McCoy

[20:13] I thought dads were like weird when, you know, I was a kid.

[20:18] Now, even though I'm not technically one, I'm of dad age and I look around at the dads.

[20:23] I'm like, yeah, this checks out.

[20:25] Like, and Hartnett still like seems like, when he's like later on suggesting like, hey, let's go underneath the stage.

[20:31] That is the best shit.

[20:34] He's the weirdest dad stuff.

[20:35] Oh, I love it so much.

[20:36] Anyway, we'll get to it.

Elliott Kalan

[20:37] He's like, hey, why don't we go get waffles in that waffle stand?

[20:39] And it's like, you took me to the concert, my favorite musician.

[20:41] Why are you telling me to leave now?

[20:42] Yeah.

Linda Holmes

[20:43] Yeah, but everyone is like milling around.

[20:44] There's like eight intermissions in this thing and everybody seems to just be like hanging out.

[20:49] That is the weirdest thing.

Elliott Kalan

[20:50] That is one of the things that kept striking me as I'm like, Riley's leaving her seat a lot during the concert.

[20:54] Like, are they taking breaks?

[20:56] Like, what's, because I, because I'll tell you again, my last concert experience was going to see Judas Priest.

[20:59] The minute our butts were in the seat, we didn't get up again for two, three hours.

[21:03] Not even to stand up and cheer?

[21:04] That's fucked up, Elliot.

[21:05] No, that's true.

[21:06] We did stand up and cheer.

[21:07] That's true.

[21:07] They're putting on a show for you, Elliot.

[21:08] Because Flash entered the speed zone.

[21:10] You were a liar, you too.

[21:12] So we did stand up and cheer, that's true.

[21:15] And Sammy would be like, sit down.

[21:17] Stop singing along.

Stuart Wellington

[21:19] Stop dancing really cool.

[21:21] And you're like, I can't help it.

Elliott Kalan

[21:22] I got the rhythm in me.

[21:24] Yeah, that's true.

[21:25] Yeah.

[21:25] On stage, Lady Raven gives a speech about the importance of forgiving people.

[21:29] And meanwhile, there's a SWAT and FBI convoy that arrives outside the venue with an older lady FBI profiler who I was very excited to learn when the credits came up was Hayley Mills.

[21:38] I was like, from parent trap to M. Night Shyamalan's trap, Hayley Mills can do it all.

Dan McCoy

[21:43] Yeah.

[21:44] No, this is, I mean, I enjoy his casting of her both for the fact that she's still great, but also-

[21:53] And she's a master trapper.

[21:54] Obviously, a dumb joke on this part.

Linda Holmes

[21:59] This is what I asked when we covered this on our show.

[22:02] I was like, the thing I don't know about M. Night Shyamalan is he the kind of funny who cast her as a pun, right?

[22:10] Yeah.

[22:10] And I guess maybe-

Elliott Kalan

[22:11] This movie is a parent trap.

[22:13] It is a trap.

[22:13] Yeah, exactly.

Linda Holmes

[22:14] I said to my friend I was at this movie with, I said at the end of it, I said if she had at the end of the movie looked at the camera, winked, and said, now that's a parent trap, I would have personally campaigned this movie for best picture.

[22:29] Yeah, that would have been your stand up and cheer moment.

[22:31] I would have gone to the little MPA office in D.C., and I would have walked around with a little picket sign from now until Oscar nominations, trap for best picture.

[22:41] Jack Valenti, give me a meeting.

[22:42] Get trapped for best picture.

Dan McCoy

[22:44] I love Hayley Mills, but there's no way that anyone's thinking of casting her if not for the pun.

[22:49] You never know.

Elliott Kalan

[22:50] You never know.

[22:51] So probably not.

[22:52] But I'll harken back to an experience, something I witnessed in person.

[22:55] There was a screening of Frost Nixon once where Ron Howard and the writer and whoever were talking afterwards, and John Waters was in the audience.

[23:04] And John Waters – there's a question and answer section, and John Waters gets up, and he goes, I thought it was so amazing that you cast the little girl from The Bad Seed as Pat Nixon.

[23:12] Like, what a great touch.

[23:13] And Ron Howard was like, oh, oh, was she a child actress?

[23:17] He had no idea.

[23:18] He didn't have any – he had no idea about it.

[23:19] And I was like, I love that John Waters picked up on that instantly.

[23:23] That's a different sort of situation, though.

[23:25] Or similarly, there's the story that Bob Odenkirk tells about being in the paper with – or no, The Post, whatever that movie is, with David Cross.

[23:32] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[23:32] Where Steven Spielberg did not know that these two guys had starred in a TV show together for years.

[23:36] And when he found out, he was worried that it was going to throw the movie off.

[23:40] I guess one of the other people working on it was like, this is amazing, a Mr. Show reunion.

[23:44] And Steven Spielberg was like, what?

[23:45] What are you talking about?

[23:46] So something to bubble up to the director.

[23:49] Mr. Show?

[23:50] Bring me this Mr. Show.

[23:52] And they bring in Michael Showalter because it was a mistake.

Dan McCoy

[23:56] This character, though, is very funny to me because she doesn't do any particularly good serial killer finding during the course of the movie.

[24:05] She exists only so that once he steals a walkie-talkie, she can provide him with useful information immediately.

[24:14] Every time he turns it on, it's like when – in TV shows where, like, there's always a news thing related to the story on TV.

[24:20] Yeah.

Linda Holmes

[24:20] The minute you turn it on, they're like, tonight in relevant news to our plot.

Stuart Wellington

[24:26] I loved it.

[24:26] Like, this is the closest I think a movie will ever get to capturing the feeling of playing one of the Hitman games because there's specifically a Hitman level where you, like, get a walkie-talkie and you're just hearing the guys be like, where is this guy?

[24:39] He's a ghost.

[24:40] And you're like, yeah, I am a fucking ghost.

Elliott Kalan

[24:42] Except here it's more like – my favorite moment of those is when he's about to pull the fire alarm to have a diversion.

[24:46] And she's like, he will most likely now try for diversion, perhaps pulling a fire alarm, and then he pulls his hand away from the door.

Dan McCoy

[24:53] But again, I do think that, like – I think that these are jokes.

[24:57] I think these are jokes.

Elliott Kalan

[24:59] Do you think the butcher – here's the backstory of inventing is that the butcher killed her identical sister.

[25:02] And that's why she wants revenge.

[25:04] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[25:06] As much as, like, there are things in here that I think are just sort of, like, clumsy in a way that I think maybe should have been addressed,

[25:14] I think a lot of this is, like, devilish, like, hee-hee-hee-hee-hee on the screenwriting part.

Elliott Kalan

[25:20] I think perhaps.

[25:21] I'll give you the pun.

[25:22] Yeah.

[25:22] So Cooper's getting suspicious.

[25:24] He sees the police taking away more guys.

[25:25] He goes, Riley, we're going to get you that shirt you wanted.

[25:28] And he uses that opportunity to befriend a merchandise vendor who is very talkative.

[25:33] Yeah.

[25:33] Within moments, this guy has revealed to him that the whole concert is being used as a trap to catch a notorious serial killer called The Butcher.

[25:41] The only way out past the police is to go backstage, and the people who work there have a code word.

[25:46] And Cooper is so clearly the butcher.

[25:48] Like, it's so – I mean, the audience, I don't think it's supposed to be a, oh, is he really?

[25:51] But even to this merch vendor, it should be clear that Cooper is the guy that they want.

Dan McCoy

[25:54] There are two things that, like, boggle my mind in this scene.

[25:58] Number one, how quickly they become the best of friends based on Josh Hartnett being like,

[26:03] why don't we let this other girl have this T-shirt, honey?

[26:06] We have – it's fun.

[26:07] She was waiting longer.

[26:08] And he's like, you're a great man.

[26:10] I'm going to tell you everything.

[26:11] Perhaps the greatest man in history.

[26:12] And then also, like, just, like, seconds later, Hartnett's like, psst, come over here.

[26:16] It's like, to get information.

[26:18] And this busy vendor in the middle of this busy, like –

[26:21] There's a crowd of customers there, yeah.

[26:23] Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I will come over and chat with you about the police plans, Mr. Hartnett.

Linda Holmes

[26:29] We wouldn't be here at all.

[26:30] If you knew they were looking for a serial killer and some guy was like, so tell me who they're looking for and what's the code word.

[26:37] No way you'd be tipped off by that.

Elliott Kalan

[26:40] To defend the character, Dan just portrayed him as saying Mr. Hartnett, which he does not do.

[26:44] That would be a total goof.

Dan McCoy

[26:45] That would be a – we'd put that in the IMDb goof section right away.

Elliott Kalan

[26:49] Unless the guy's the same as Cooper Hartnett, which they don't say that it's not, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[26:51] I wish that, like, that Cooper, like, stole, like, a Dragon Ball Z or, like, a Spider-Man hoodie off somebody.

[26:58] And then the guy's like, oh, I love Dragon Ball Z.

Elliott Kalan

[27:00] Oh, we're best friends now.

[27:02] Yeah.

[27:02] Yeah, that'd be great.

[27:03] That's just the kid version of Trap.

[27:05] So he walks Riley around.

[27:07] He's looking at different parts of the venue to try to get an exit.

[27:09] He can't find his way out even after he pushes a woman down the stairs as a distraction.

[27:13] Totally unnecessary.

[27:14] Love it.

Linda Holmes

[27:15] Totally unnecessary.

[27:17] It's nothing to do with anything.

[27:19] It also –

Stuart Wellington

[27:19] Him scrambling and trying to find a way out is so funny.

[27:23] It's so good.

Dan McCoy

[27:24] It doesn't work so spectacularly that, like, I had to talk to my friends afterwards.

[27:31] I'm like, what was the plan there?

[27:32] And, like, oh, they thought that the police would, like, leave the door and help the woman.

[27:35] Yeah, and he could slip through it.

[27:37] But it's so casual that he just, like, wanders by, like, whoop.

[27:40] And then, like, a lady tumbles down.

[27:41] He's done it out of frustration, just like, ugh.

[27:43] Uh-huh.

Elliott Kalan

[27:44] But so the movie is – one problem I have with this movie is that it does lean into the stereotype that serial killers are masterminds, who are master planners and great at scoping out situations.

[27:55] When in reality, serial killers are losers.

[27:57] They're losers.

[27:58] They can't exist in normal society.

[28:00] And they act out their obsessions and things in ways that they are ashamed of.

[28:05] You know, there's no serial killer who's really, like, a super – who's Hannibal Lecter.

Stuart Wellington

[28:08] And if there's a serial killer listening to this, don't use this as fuel to go hunt down Elliot.

[28:14] No, no.

Elliott Kalan

[28:14] Just use it as fuel to look at yourself and be like, is this who I really want to be?

[28:18] But he's not so good that he doesn't keep kind of doing things for no reason or getting stuck, which I do kind of like.

[28:24] He's the Ethan Hunt of serial killers where he's like – he'll get out, but he's going to, like, hit his head a bunch of times while doing it.

Dan McCoy

[28:31] Yeah.

[28:31] If they're good at something, it is masking.

[28:34] It is pretending to be normal and using their, like, nondescript quality to evade capture simply because, like, you know, like most detectives aren't equipped to –

[28:48] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[28:48] Josh Hartnett just blends in.

[28:51] Yeah.

[28:51] That's just part of being a dad, though, is the mask of normality that hides the weirdness underneath, that peeks out.

[28:57] But so he's looking around.

[28:59] Uh-oh, he has another plan that comes up.

[29:01] They go back to their seats.

[29:01] Lady Raven reveals her first surprise guest, Parker Lewis, who's played by – it's a musician.

[29:07] I can't remember which one it is.

[29:08] And he rises up through a trap door near Cooper's seats.

[29:11] And that trap door stays open for a while.

[29:13] Trap.

[29:13] And Cooper just goes like, hey, Riley, let's go down that trap door.

[29:17] Don't you want to see underneath the stage where all the machines are?

[29:19] And she's like, that's crazy.

Stuart Wellington

[29:21] He is staring at that trap door like it turned into, like, a fucking turkey leg or some shit.

Dan McCoy

[29:27] And he's trying to sell this to her, like, with such, like, mania.

[29:30] Like, wouldn't that be fun?

Elliott Kalan

[29:32] Yeah.

[29:33] If I get really crazy, wouldn't this crazy idea seem less crazy by comparison?

[29:38] And she says, no, understandably, the trap door closes up.

[29:40] That is the kind of thing I could see saying to my son being like, hey, should we go in there?

[29:43] And him going, no, and then that's not doing it.

[29:45] Cooper goes back to the merchandise guy.

[29:47] And the guy's like, oh, I got to get some more sizes of shirt.

[29:50] And he goes, I'll help you.

[29:51] So he just walks with him into the stock room to get more shirts.

[29:54] And the merchandise guy, it turns out, is obsessed with the butcher.

[29:57] He's been following this guy's career.

[29:59] He loves him.

[30:00] He gives Cooper the secret password employees use to get past the cops, which is, what, Hamilton?

[30:04] Right.

Stuart Wellington

[30:05] He's going to flip when he sees the news later, by the way.

[30:08] Did you see the mid-credit scene, Stuart?

Elliott Kalan

[30:11] No!

[30:13] Oh, Stuart!

[30:15] Stuart, the mid-credit scene is literally him flipping when he sees the news.

[30:19] This is amazing.

[30:20] Here's where it bit you in the ass, buddy.

[30:23] Oh, wow.

[30:24] What a Shyamalan-style twist.

[30:26] I should have held off until then.

[30:29] And Cooper steals the vendor's key card.

[30:31] He used to get into a private area.

[30:33] Uh-oh.

[30:33] That's where the cops are being debriefed.

[30:36] He manages to kind of talk his way through it like he's an employee.

[30:38] Oh, I love it.

[30:39] And he snags the aforementioned police radio so he can monitor their movements.

Linda Holmes

[30:43] I want to know, is it typically, do you think, the case that the t-shirt vendor's ID will get you into the secret FBI briefing area, given that I'm pretty sure that when I have participated in live events at the Bell House, security is tighter than that.

[31:01] As far as getting around to different parts of the arena.

[31:05] Now.

[31:05] I think the arena would have some areas where you could do an FBI briefing where every vendor, everybody with an ID because they sell French fries could not walk into the FBI briefing.

[31:20] That's the thing.

Elliott Kalan

[31:20] I would imagine you would have coded badges because you don't want the merch vendors going back to Lady Raven's green room.

Linda Holmes

[31:26] Well, also there's no photo on the badge, which I think is highly unlikely.

Elliott Kalan

[31:31] It's one of those – I mean like you get – and actually that's not true.

[31:33] I was just going to say my key card to the offices I'm working in now, but that does have my photo on it.

[31:37] Yeah, that's true.

Dan McCoy

[31:38] I will say like this appears to be some kind of break room.

[31:41] I buy sort of like the general idea that he could get into this room.

[31:45] Do I buy the idea that in the middle of a briefing they would be letting people do that?

[31:52] Not necessarily.

[31:52] Because he walks through the crowd of places.

[31:53] He's going to get to the coffee station.

Elliott Kalan

[31:56] And a cop's like, hey, where's the sugar?

[31:59] And he's like, I'll give you my sugar from the coffee maker.

[32:01] And he just knows where – he finds it by chance.

Stuart Wellington

[32:03] I mean there's a chance that all the vendors are union and they're like, I do not want to mess with that union.

[32:10] Those guys do not give a shit.

Elliott Kalan

[32:12] Yeah, that's very possible.

[32:14] But he manages to get – I actually miss the moment where he gets the police radio.

[32:18] Do they show him taking it or does he just walk out of the room and then he's like –

[32:20] Yeah, they show him taking it.

[32:20] It's very quick.

Linda Holmes

[32:21] He walks by and kind of picks it up without –

[32:23] That's great.

Elliott Kalan

[32:24] And just goes –

[32:24] You've got to understand, Elliot.

Linda Holmes

[32:26] I've seen this movie several times now.

Elliott Kalan

[32:28] Okay.

[32:29] I'm going to keep relying on you then.

[32:31] On the way back, Riley gets – I'm sorry.

[32:33] Cooper gets stopped again by Riley's old friend's mom who is very agitated.

[32:37] And she's like, I've got a dark side, Buster.

[32:39] Don't mess with me.

[32:40] Our kids have to get back together.

[32:42] That's great.

[32:42] And he – I have to say he does a great job of calming her down in order to deescalate the situation.

[32:48] And he listens to the police radio and he starts hearing Haley Mills, the FBI profiler, describing a suspect who looks like him.

[32:54] She predicts his actions, which again, as we said, dissuades him from setting off a fire alarm.

[32:57] He's about to do it and she's like, look for the guy who's about to set off the fire alarm.

[33:01] And he's like, uh, and pulls his hand away.

Stuart Wellington

[33:03] Well, she describes him as a man that has like a tattoo and he looks down and he has a tattoo.

[33:07] And I'm like, nothing else about this guy would make me believe he would have a tattoo.

[33:11] No.

[33:11] Like he's so like –

[33:13] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[33:14] Particular.

[33:14] It shows how clever he is because he takes someone else's Lady Raven snap bracelet and just puts it around his wrist, you know.

Linda Holmes

[33:19] Well, and the tattoo is very important because it is the only – the main question.

[33:25] This is another ding I got a question.

[33:28] Yeah.

[33:28] Is – so there's all these cops standing around.

[33:33] Nobody's allowed out.

[33:34] If you try to leave, they're going to stop you.

[33:37] They will shoot you.

[33:38] And then what?

[33:40] When they stop you, what are they going to do?

[33:43] Say, are you the butcher?

[33:45] Because their description – typically in a movie like this, I got you, Dan.

[33:49] I have to finish my mini rant.

[33:52] Dan, you're a good host.

[33:53] No, no, no, no.

[33:54] What?

[33:54] Who, huh?

[33:55] No, no, no.

[33:56] We're going to – we're just – we're just, you know, sparring nicely.

[34:00] It's fine.

Elliott Kalan

[34:01] We are being held hostage by Linda the Butcher Holmes.

[34:04] No.

[34:05] Please send help.

[34:05] That's right.

Linda Holmes

[34:06] Nobody's leaving.

[34:07] So they want to stop everybody.

[34:12] But you see all the time, you know, things where, like, you know, in a traditional thriller, they'd be like, we're looking for a guy.

[34:18] He's about this tall.

[34:20] He's got this color hair.

[34:21] He's wearing this.

[34:22] Here, they cut all of that after we're looking for a guy.

[34:26] Basically, the description is guy.

[34:28] And so if he went – just went through the security on the way out and he just said – and they said, are you the butcher?

[34:36] And he said, no, I'm not the butcher.

[34:39] What on earth are they going to say next other than –

Elliott Kalan

[34:42] The butcher says what is what they're going to say next.

[34:46] That's legally binding.

[34:47] Can we look at your phone, sir, and see if you have an app that allows you to remotely release carbon monoxide to kill your victim?

[34:53] I should have deleted it.

Linda Holmes

[34:55] Because he has this postage stamp-sized tattoo on his wrist.

[34:59] Yes.

[35:00] The thinking is supposed to be if they were to stop him, they would see the postage stamp-sized tattoo on his wrist despite the fact that what they say is surveillance footage of people in the general area of where the bodies were found.

[35:15] Not good evidence of anything.

[35:17] No, very circumstantial.

[35:18] He showed a variety of different guys, one of whom has some sort of tattoo on his arm of an animal of some sort.

[35:28] And I would like to know what kind of surveillance footage tells you nothing about any of these guys except, like, white guy in his 30s and yet can identify a postage stamp-sized tattoo on their wrist that is later going to be covered up by a snap bracelet.

Stuart Wellington

[35:48] I feel like those cops just have to have the best goth hacker on their team to enhance the shit out of that footage.

Elliott Kalan

[35:56] I was going to say, I don't want to mansplain to you, Linda, but two words, computer enhance.

Dan McCoy

[36:01] Look, I was not going to spar.

[36:05] I was not going to disagree.

[36:06] I just was over-eager in my desire to agree because, like, the thing is, like, maybe if they had one suspect, maybe if they had one suspect and they were like, this guy has a wrist tattoo, you could be like, okay, we have two points of data now.

[36:23] He's going to be at this concert.

[36:24] He has a wrist tattoo.

[36:26] We will, like, clock everyone who has those two things and then, you know, do further surveillance, do whatever.

[36:34] Like, that's a starting point.

[36:35] But the fact is, we learn later on, they have, like, multiple descriptions of multiple people who could be the butcher.

Linda Holmes

[36:42] It's either an old man or a young man.

[36:44] It's either a black guy or a white guy.

[36:46] It's either a guy with red hair or a guy with dark hair.

[36:49] It's one of those.

Dan McCoy

[36:51] So you're right.

[36:51] Like, this whole movie should just be like Josh Hartnett being like, ha, ha, ha, they've got nothing on me.

[36:55] We're going to watch the concert and then we're just going to walk the fuck out of the concert.

Elliott Kalan

[36:59] I mean, what they should have had is they say, we have a witness and he doesn't know that, you know, or something like that.

[37:05] Like, he learns that or something.

[37:06] Like, some, yeah, exactly.

[37:07] Some reason that he has that they could catch him.

Linda Holmes

[37:08] See how you came up with something in 30 seconds, Elliot, that made this make somewhat more sense?

[37:14] Yeah.

[37:14] You see how that minimal amount of effort paid off?

Stuart Wellington

[37:17] Yeah, that's fair.

Elliott Kalan

[37:18] That's why they call me second draft Kalen because I take the time.

Stuart Wellington

[37:21] Because if they said that they had a witness, then he would also be like, I've got to find that witness to murder him.

[37:26] Yeah, that would be a second quest.

[37:28] Yeah, that's a side quest.

Elliott Kalan

[37:30] But then the movie might be more than 87 minutes or whatever it is.

[37:33] That's true though.

[37:35] I don't know.

[37:36] Let's see.

[37:36] It is – sorry, it's 105 minutes.

[37:38] That can't be right.

[37:39] Anyway, then the movie would be longer.

[37:40] But it's pretty trim right now.

[37:42] But that would – actually, I kind of would have loved that.

[37:44] If they had a witness there and he doesn't have to just escape, he has to get to the witness and kill him without any seeing.

Stuart Wellington

[37:49] See, we're making a hitman level right now.

Elliott Kalan

[37:51] I guess this is – yeah, this is a hitman level.

[37:54] So even though – so Riley's like, you're acting weird, Dad.

[37:58] And Cooper's like, let me be weird some more and go look for more exits.

[38:01] He manages – he sees an exit.

[38:03] He manages to distract everyone by creating an explosion in a deep fat fryer.

[38:07] He throws like cans of something in a deep fat fryer.

[38:09] Oil.

[38:10] Bottles of oil.

[38:12] Bottles of oil into the deep fat fryer.

[38:13] It explodes and horribly burns a woman working there.

[38:16] And he like snags an apron, snags a hat.

[38:19] And he goes out the door.

[38:20] Uh-oh, he's on the roof.

[38:21] This is not any way he's going to be able to escape unless he's – what's the hitman's name?

[38:24] Agent 42?

[38:25] Agent 47, yeah.

[38:26] 47.

[38:27] And the – but then some SWAT cops show up.

[38:29] He convinces them he's a snack bar employee.

[38:31] Love it.

[38:31] And he has another vision of the old woman from earlier.

[38:34] What could that possibly mean?

[38:36] Riley, again, is like, Dad, you're acting weird.

[38:38] But she can't wait to tell him.

[38:40] Every concert, Lady Raven picks one lucky girl from the audience.

[38:43] And that's her dreamer girl.

[38:45] And she gets invited on stage to dance with Lady Raven.

[38:49] And she gets to go backstage.

[38:50] And here's the word backstage.

[38:52] He goes, oh, that's what I have to do.

[38:54] So he goes –

[38:54] I love it.

Stuart Wellington

[38:55] I was so excited when the misinformation is revealed.

Elliott Kalan

[38:58] He finds a Lady Raven employee, which – who is played by?

[39:02] M. Night himself.

[39:03] M. Night himself.

[39:04] It's not an employee.

Dan McCoy

[39:05] It's a –

Elliott Kalan

[39:06] Well, he says – he goes, you work for Lady Raven?

[39:08] He goes, actually, I'm her uncle, her mother's brother.

[39:11] And I think it's so funny that he says her mother's brother.

[39:13] It's so unnecessary.

[39:14] Who cares?

[39:15] It's just like in signs when John Legosama goes, it looks like it's going to the town of Princeton.

[39:20] And it's like, you could just say Princeton.

[39:21] Like, it's very important.

Linda Holmes

[39:22] That's in the happening, isn't it?

[39:23] That's in the happening.

[39:24] Oh, in the happening.

[39:24] Not signs.

Elliott Kalan

[39:25] It's in the happening.

Linda Holmes

[39:25] I actually think – and maybe I'll come back to this, but I think Trap is his most The

[39:30] Happening movie since The Happening.

[39:32] That is my feeling.

[39:33] I don't know.

[39:34] There's a little movie called Old.

[39:36] But I do – but I will say I think it's interesting that this movie to me begins getting dramatically

[39:41] worse around the time you actually see him, you know?

[39:45] Yes.

[39:45] And it becomes much worse.

Elliott Kalan

[39:47] I also think it's funny that he is – in real life, he is the actress who's playing Lady

[39:52] Raven's dad.

[39:53] But in the movie, he is her uncle.

[39:55] If I was her, I'd be like, so would you rather be my uncle than my dad?

[39:58] Like, I don't understand what he's saying.

[40:00] So he's like – and Cooper's like, hey, that's my daughter Riley.

[40:04] She just recovered from leukemia.

[40:06] That's why we're coming to the concert.

[40:07] Lady Raven's music is what got her through it.

[40:09] So I just want to say thank you.

[40:10] Please tell Lady Raven I said thank you.

[40:12] And M. Night wanted to be – this uncle wanted to be a good guy.

[40:15] He goes, how would you like to be the dreamer girl?

[40:18] Oh, man.

[40:19] That uncle –

[40:20] Me?

[40:20] Cooper?

Stuart Wellington

[40:20] That uncle's going to get fucking dragged at Thanksgiving.

[40:23] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[40:24] And the leukemia never comes up in conversation.

[40:26] So there's never a moment where Riley has to be like, what?

[40:28] But anyway, she goes on stage.

[40:29] She dances with Lady Raven to the dismay of her ex-friends in the audience who are so pissed.

[40:34] The friend's mom is also pissed.

[40:36] I love it.

[40:36] And she's like, you're horrible.

[40:37] You're a horrible girl.

[40:38] I love it.

[40:38] It's so awesome.

[40:39] It's such a Disney Channel revenge.

[40:42] But at this point, Cooper is both the butcher and also the best dad in the world.

[40:46] So you got to give him points.

Dan McCoy

[40:47] Well, and he has – I do think, you know, there are a lot of things I like in this movie.

[40:53] He gives this look offstage of like very mixed emotions where he is a dad and a serial killer at the same time.

[41:01] Where he's like excited to see his daughter so happy but also he's like, oh, God, man, I'm a bad man who's in a trap.

Linda Holmes

[41:09] I do love the fact that apparently nobody has ever tried the my kid has a terrible disease angle on this guy before.

[41:18] Which means I guess he's never seen the Joe Namath episode of the Brady Bunch.

Elliott Kalan

[41:22] Or it happens every show and Lady Raven is like, uncle, can you please stop falling for this?

[41:28] And he's like, one time I'm going to tell someone they're lying and they won't be lying and I will feel terrible.

[41:33] So I will continue to believe them.

Linda Holmes

[41:33] Secretly every dream girl is somebody whose father said she had cancer.

[41:37] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[41:38] The profiler is only feet away from him backstage but he gets past her by helping a girl who collapsed get into the infirmary.

[41:46] And he's a firefighter so he has like first aid training.

[41:48] And they're like, what a wonderful man you are to help this stranger.

[41:51] I wasn't sure why this part happened at all.

[41:53] No.

[41:53] This is, I think just for the irony of people thinking he's a great guy when really he's a monster.

Dan McCoy

[41:58] And, you know, look, there's been a lot of talk about M. Night's dialogue, like the style of his dialogue.

[42:06] I think sometimes it's overstated.

[42:08] His dialogue?

[42:09] I am not.

[42:09] I am not one of those who's like, it's to create discomfort.

[42:14] You know, like, so like it's stilted.

[42:16] Like it's like, yeah, okay, well that could be true if it's like certain characters.

[42:19] But all of the characters, I have a problem.

[42:22] But like to me this is like the most stilted where it's just like, this is a good man.

[42:26] Look at how good he is.

[42:28] You know.

Elliott Kalan

[42:28] Not a lot of people would do what you do, mister.

[42:30] Yeah.

[42:31] Like with the merch vendor.

[42:32] You don't see family values like that anymore or whatever he says, you know.

[42:36] I think at a certain point when someone does.

Linda Holmes

[42:38] Everything about this movie delights Stuart so much.

[42:40] I love it.

[42:41] I love it so much.

[42:41] I wish you guys could see all the video.

[42:43] It's just every single thing that happens is just delight.

[42:47] Constance smiles and applause.

Stuart Wellington

[42:49] I feel like if he had just been wearing a sweatshirt with like Goku's symbol on it, it would explain why everyone loves him.

[42:57] Because Goku's super cool.

[42:58] People love Dragon Ball that much?

[43:00] That's what it is?

[43:01] Elliot, they do love Dragon Ball that much.

Elliott Kalan

[43:03] I mean, I worked at the Suncoast Motion Picture Company in the year 2000, 1999.

[43:08] I can tell you, people love Dragon Ball.

[43:09] We had a whole wall of Dragon Ball tapes.

[43:11] Yeah.

[43:12] I would be indifferent.

[43:12] Dragon Ball was keeping that store afloat.

Dan McCoy

[43:14] If he had a Dragon Ball thing on, I would be indifferent to it.

[43:17] Well, you're a monster.

Elliott Kalan

[43:18] You're the monster.

Dan McCoy

[43:19] I have no context for any of this.

[43:21] Yeah, that's too bad.

Elliott Kalan

[43:22] Well.

[43:22] It would be like the famous moment when I was walking through Times Square and I saw a shirt that said Bazinga on it.

[43:27] And I didn't really get the reference.

[43:29] It made me so mad.

[43:30] I was like, just seeing Jim Parsons' face and it said Bazinga.

[43:33] And I was like, what the hell is this?

Stuart Wellington

[43:34] They put his face on it?

[43:36] That's even weirder.

[43:37] So, Dan, you know what's actually great about this is that means that you have no frame of reference.

[43:42] You can just start watching Dragon Ball now and experience it all for the first time.

[43:46] What a dream.

[43:47] Learn about Frieza, Bazinga.

[43:49] You know what?

Dan McCoy

[43:50] Factually, that's correct.

[43:51] I could do that.

[43:52] I could start watching it.

Elliott Kalan

[43:55] Nothing is stopping you, Dan.

[43:55] Nothing is stopping you.

Dan McCoy

[43:56] You know what?

[43:57] You're right, Stuart.

[43:58] Yeah, cool.

Elliott Kalan

[44:00] So, anyway, backstage, Cooper, there's two moments in this movie that I genuinely love.

[44:06] One is, not in an ironic way, Cooper is backstage and Lady Raven goes backstage for costume change and uses an inhaler for a moment.

[44:13] And I was like, oh, so this will be like a plot point later.

[44:17] It is not.

[44:18] Or maybe it was at one point and it's left in his artifact, but I love it.

[44:20] I love the idea.

[44:21] Just this glimpse of this superstar being a vulnerable person for a moment.

[44:26] I love it.

[44:26] And similarly, she introduces her other guest star, Thinker, who is played by, what's his name?

[44:33] Kid Cudi?

[44:34] And this is my favorite.

Stuart Wellington

[44:35] I think he's really a wig wearing Kid Cudi.

Elliott Kalan

[44:39] He's wearing a very fake long wig.

[44:41] He is my favorite character in the movie by far.

[44:43] He is a very catty performer.

[44:46] The first time we meet him, he is saying, you brought me this milk and it has lactose in it.

[44:50] What do you want me to poop myself on stage?

[44:53] And it's one of those things where I'm like, I think he's supposed to be presented as like he's being a prima donna.

[45:00] But you know what?

[45:00] If you're lactose intolerant, you should – and you're one of the stars of the show, you should get lactose-free milk.

[45:05] Like that is on them.

[45:06] That's on production.

Linda Holmes

[45:07] That's good in The Rider.

[45:08] That should be in The Rider.

[45:09] That should be in The Rider, yeah.

[45:10] That's a medical thing.

[45:11] That's good stuff in The Rider.

Elliott Kalan

[45:12] There's only one song left.

[45:13] Coop and Riley go backstage after – and they perform it.

[45:15] They go backstage after the show.

[45:17] There's a moment, again, one of my favorite moments in the movie.

[45:19] Thinker walks by, is very polite to Riley, cruises Cooper so hard.

[45:23] Yeah.

[45:24] Just like is so – is coming on to him silently so hard.

[45:27] I love it.

[45:28] I was like this is the kind of thing that makes a character a person.

Stuart Wellington

[45:30] And this is the kind of moment that really brings to light.

[45:33] In these troubled times when People Fucking Magazine lists John Krasinski is the sexiest man alive.

[45:41] Oh, my God.

[45:42] I can't believe I'm here for this.

[45:44] Can you fucking stop fucking with me?

[45:47] Josh Hartnett's right there.

[45:48] Give it to him.

[45:49] What the fuck?

[45:50] Dan?

[45:51] Okay.

[45:52] And the picture of Krasinski is so arm forward, but his arms don't even look good in the picture.

[45:59] What's going on?

Elliott Kalan

[46:00] Let's not get into nitpicking about a man's body.

[46:04] It's fine.

[46:05] John Krasinski is pretty sexy, Stuart.

[46:07] God fucking damn.

[46:09] Turn off the podcast.

[46:10] This is a trap for me.

[46:12] Stuart, there's more than one kind of sexy.

[46:14] There's more than one kind out there.

[46:15] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[46:16] Listeners, write in and tell me why I shouldn't jump on the cliff.

Dan McCoy

[46:19] Stuart, it will give you air, life to know that over on Blue Sky where everyone should migrate.

[46:30] Away from the terrible place.

[46:32] Yep.

[46:32] There was a lot of, what the fuck, when that was announced.

[46:36] A lot of things.

[46:37] He's pretty sexy.

Stuart Wellington

[46:38] He looks like a Muppet with a beard on it.

Elliott Kalan

[46:41] I mean, sexy, yeah.

[46:43] Up to this point, it has been objectively the sexiest man alive every single time.

[46:48] Harry Hamlin?

[46:49] I think Nick Nolte was the first of them that they had.

[46:54] Wow, really?

[46:54] Yeah.

[46:55] But not like modern Nick Nolte.

[46:56] I mean, younger Nick Nolte.

[46:57] Young Nick Nolte looked pretty good.

[47:00] He had not turned into a grizzly bear yet.

[47:03] In a world where Paul Newman exists, Nick Nolte is not the sexiest man alive.

[47:06] This is the first time Stuart's been unhappy in this entire taping.

[47:09] He was loving trap.

[47:10] And he brought it up.

[47:12] None of us brought this up.

[47:13] It's not like, you know, we didn't ambush.

[47:15] It wasn't a trap to get him to talk about John Krasinski, you know.

[47:18] So anyway, I think her cruise is Cooper.

[47:20] Cooper hears over the police radio that every single man in the building, including employees,

[47:25] is going to be stopped by the police on the way out.

[47:27] Only Lady Raven's car will be able to leave.

[47:30] But it's a Lady Raven concert, so there's a limited number of men.

[47:32] They're mostly dads bringing their daughters.

[47:35] Only Lady Raven's car will be able to leave uninspected.

[47:39] So Cooper, he plays his ace.

[47:41] He gets alone in a room with Lady Raven and he goes, hey, I'm the butcher.

[47:44] And here on my phone is my victim and I'm going to kill him if you don't help us leave in your limo.

[47:50] And at that point I'm like, well, you got no cards left to play, butcher.

[47:53] Like you were holding him close to the vest for a long time and you just threw him on the table.

[47:56] Let's see what happens.

[47:57] How do you guys feel about it?

Dan McCoy

[47:58] I loved this.

[47:59] I know that a lot of people think that this movie takes a disaster.

[48:02] This is my John Krasinski.

[48:05] Including Linda, I think, think that the third act of this movie takes a disastrous turn for the worse.

[48:12] Other than the fact that, God bless her, I think she's a convincing pop star, less convincing as an actress.

[48:19] Centering Lady Raven at this part is a problem with the movie because I don't think she's up to the task as a performer.

Elliott Kalan

[48:29] Understatement again.

Dan McCoy

[48:31] I'm trying to be kind to someone who is new to acting.

Elliott Kalan

[48:36] Yeah, and she's really had to prove herself.

[48:37] It's not like her dad is a famous director who put her in his movie.

[48:40] It's her fault, okay?

[48:41] She fought her way of the part, man.

Stuart Wellington

[48:43] I will say.

Elliott Kalan

[48:44] She auditioned under a fake name.

Stuart Wellington

[48:46] And she isn't the daughter who directed Watchers, right?

[48:50] No, that's another.

[48:51] Oh, man, that was not a good movie.

Dan McCoy

[48:53] I do like that this movie is like, you know what?

[48:58] Fuck it.

[48:59] That the butcher is like, okay, well, this cat and mouse game has played out on a large scale.

[49:06] As far as it's going to go, we've got to just make it a smaller cat and mouse game now between the two of us.

[49:12] And this is the, you know, like I have to blow up my life, I guess, if I'm going to get out of here.

[49:17] Like, it's a turn that I genuinely didn't expect in the theater.

[49:20] And I like that it went someplace new in the last part of this movie.

Stuart Wellington

[49:26] And leading us to a second act that's basically just the two of them kind of yes-anding each other.

[49:30] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[49:32] Well, what do you think?

[49:34] Linda does not believe in it.

Linda Holmes

[49:36] I think, well, first of all, the fact that she's not an actor is a big problem.

[49:43] The fact that they haven't developed her as a character at all is a big problem.

Elliott Kalan

[49:46] I think that's part of the issue for me, yeah, is that like she, for the whole movie, she has been not a really character in the story.

[49:53] And now she becomes the central character.

[49:54] And I think he's going for kind of like a psycho type thing.

Linda Holmes

[49:57] Where she becomes kind of the protagonist all of a sudden, as you said, which did not work for me.

[50:02] And I think, like, listen, and I said this when we covered it the first time on our show.

[50:09] I hope that if I ever had as much pull as M. Night Shyamalan, if I had ever gotten as good at making a lot of money for myself and other people with modest budgets,

[50:20] if I had ever gotten as efficient with moviemaking and therefore found myself in that position, you know, it's like, you know what I would compare to?

[50:30] When Mike Schur was coming off of Parks and Rec, he's talked about how they basically said, make whatever you want.

[50:35] So he made a show about moral philosophy.

[50:38] Because it's like, I'm never going to have this much juice again in my whole life.

[50:41] So I'm going to make the show I want to make about moral philosophy.

[50:45] Yeah.

[50:45] And I think if I were M. Night Shyamalan in the position that he got himself into, I hope that I would undertake incredibly misbegotten projects to the benefit of my family members.

[50:58] I think that is a good thing to do.

[51:01] As a human being, I really believe in it.

[51:05] But I think it hurts the project, right?

[51:08] Like, it's so, the movie is so obsessed.

[51:12] And, you know, they've talked about this, that the movie was really conceived as a way to showcase her music.

[51:17] Yeah.

[51:18] And I think, you know, I was saying to somebody the other day, like, let's imagine that they do this movie without her music, right?

Stuart Wellington

[51:27] How's the soundtrack album, by the way, Dan?

[51:31] Yeah, it's in regular rotation now.

Linda Holmes

[51:34] Yeah, that's your workout mix, right?

Stuart Wellington

[51:35] Yeah, it's taken over instead of, what, the Judgment Night soundtrack?

[51:40] Yep.

Linda Holmes

[51:40] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

[51:42] He's never going to kind of go negotiate with somebody else for music, so it's going to be public domain songs.

[51:48] That's my theory.

[51:49] Make a version of this movie with public domain songs so that when she gets there and they're boogieing at the concert, it's like—

[51:56] Come on along, come on along, they're the greatest in the land.

[51:58] It's like you're a grand old flag and all that kind of stuff.

[52:01] That's the pure version of this movie, right?

[52:03] Because it all becomes marketing for her music, and I think it does hurt the movie.

[52:08] And I think the problem is, and we haven't quite gotten to this part yet, but go ahead.

[52:13] I'll ding when we get there.

Stuart Wellington

[52:14] But I also—I kind of like that it is—I feel like this is a pretty good capturing of, like, a pop concert.

[52:23] I'm not necessarily saying that the music is, like, the same tier, but in a way, it's also like—

[52:29] Especially, like, when they get out to sing the finale, you know, the big whatever, the encore, and I'm like, wow, that's the song they're closing with?

[52:38] There's, like, no hook, dude.

Elliott Kalan

[52:41] It does—I think it does capture that feeling a lot, and the—I'm torn because I don't think the music is amazing, and I think her performance is not what it needs to be to sell that she is now the star of the show.

[52:53] But the movie around it is better than it needs to be, I think, if it is a—if it's a movie meant to showcase a soundtrack album.

[53:01] And there have been so many movies that were made around a band or around a singer that are terrible because they're just excuses for getting that person to sing in front of a camera.

[53:10] So, I don't know.

[53:11] I'm torn.

Stuart Wellington

[53:12] I—

[53:13] Yeah, that's what I'm torn.

[53:15] I'm torn, yeah.

[53:16] I was waiting for it.

[53:17] Since I clearly turned the movie off the moment the credits started, is there, like, a trap theme song played over the credits that she sings where she, like, raps the story of the movie?

[53:28] I'm sure there is.

Elliott Kalan

[53:28] Not raps the story of the movie.

[53:29] So, the butcher's in the stands, and they're pulling all the mans.

Dan McCoy

[53:32] Why did you set him up for that?

Elliott Kalan

[53:34] There's blood on his hands.

[53:35] He is a dad.

[53:36] That's awesome.

[53:38] Oh, man, I want to hear this one.

[53:40] I'll work on it later.

[53:41] So, anyway, but we'll get to the future.

[53:43] So, because this is where the movie—like I was saying, I think they're trying to—for, like, a psycho type thing where it's like, you thought it was following these people, but really it's following this person now.

[53:51] But that's—it's not—doesn't work as well.

[53:54] I think maybe because in Psycho, they're going from a less interesting character to a more interesting character.

[53:58] They're going from Janet Leigh to Anthony Perkins, whereas here they're going from the butcher to a pop star, you know?

[54:05] Yeah.

[54:06] So, Cooper, he wants Lady Raven's limo to take them to their car so they can escape.

[54:10] They get waved right out.

[54:11] Lady Raven is untouchable.

[54:13] Anyone in her orbit is immune to inspection.

Stuart Wellington

[54:16] And they're parked, like, super close right on the street.

[54:18] They're parked, like, half a block away.

[54:19] It's not even that big of a hassle for her.

Elliott Kalan

[54:22] I will say, I will say, perhaps he did what I did at the Judas Priest concert and pre-booked a parking space and just paid a little extra.

[54:29] It's worth it, everybody.

[54:30] You save yourself so much hassle.

[54:32] You know, just go ahead and do it.

[54:33] Maybe you're right.

[54:34] Maybe you're right.

[54:34] So, Raven takes—he's like, just drop us off on our cards right next to the stadium.

[54:39] And she's like, no, I want to see your house.

[54:41] And Riley is like, really?

Linda Holmes

[54:44] When, if I'm in the car with a serial killer who has explained to me that he is someone who has dismembered, I don't know, 14, 12, 14 people.

[54:54] If we're in the car and he says, I'm going to get out up here at the corner, I'm going to say, okay, bye.

[55:01] As opposed to, no, let's go to your house.

Elliott Kalan

[55:05] This is what separates you from a true hero.

Stuart Wellington

[55:09] I think it was around this point where it's revealed that he has a wife at home.

[55:13] And I'm like, what?

[55:15] I mean, he had such like single dad energy at this point.

Dan McCoy

[55:20] Yeah, you know what?

[55:22] This is a plot hole of the many that I did not think about.

[55:29] But even if she wants to save this guy, you're right.

[55:31] Like, let him get out.

[55:33] You know who this man is now.

[55:35] Call the cops.

Elliott Kalan

[55:37] You have his name and his face.

[55:39] Let him out.

[55:40] Call the police and say, hey, he just got out of my car.

[55:42] She's got a phone on her.

Linda Holmes

[55:43] What are you going to do when you get to his house that you can't do now?

[55:47] That's my question.

[55:48] Well, I think, I wonder if it's that.

Elliott Kalan

[55:50] I mean, my assumption is she wants to go to his house so that she can tell the police where he lives.

[55:54] Like, they can go right there.

[55:56] You know, as opposed to him disappearing into the crowd potentially.

[55:59] But if you say he's the dad of a girl named Riley who's this age, you know, and looks like this,

[56:04] then they could probably track him down.

Linda Holmes

[56:06] Riley was just on stage in front of a lot of people.

Elliott Kalan

[56:09] Yeah, but the other answer is, because the movie can't end right there,

[56:12] and you got to keep the movie going.

[56:14] So, when they get to their home, Cooper's family is so excited to have Lady Raven there,

[56:18] and his wife and his son.

[56:20] He has a younger son.

[56:21] His wife is Alison Pill.

[56:22] Alison Pill.

[56:22] I was very excited to see that.

[56:24] It was nice to see Alison Pill there.

[56:25] Poor Alison Pill.

[56:26] Yeah, and she gets her scene later on, you know.

[56:29] So, the, and she's like, hey, you know the funny thing.

Stuart Wellington

[56:32] Weirdly enough, it's kind of a pill-based scene later on.

[56:35] Oh.

[56:36] You think that's why they cast her?

[56:38] Probably.

Elliott Kalan

[56:39] Another pun.

[56:40] This is all pun.

[56:42] It's all pun-based.

[56:44] So, Josh Hartnett.

[56:45] Josh Hartnett.

[56:46] He's calling it a net.

[56:46] Well, they are casting a net to catch his heart.

[56:49] Mm.

[56:51] Interesting.

[56:51] This is a good theory.

[56:52] I like it.

[56:53] This is great.

[56:54] This is great.

[56:55] So, she's like, hey, Cooper's family.

[56:58] You know what's interesting?

[56:59] The whole concert, we were using as a trap to catch the butcher because he was going to come to the show.

[57:04] And Cooper's like.

Stuart Wellington

[57:05] She explains why.

[57:06] She does give a little bit of background here.

[57:09] She explains why they were there.

Elliott Kalan

[57:10] They found one of his old crime spots.

[57:14] Because up to this.

[57:15] And they found a torn ticket there.

[57:16] Up to the end, you have no idea why they would know that the butcher loves this music.

Dan McCoy

[57:20] And Allison Pitt, like the wife, you know, her reaction is restrained.

[57:24] But enough that you're like, okay, well, she knows something, you know, at this point.

Linda Holmes

[57:28] Why did he?

[57:30] Because what they say is that a part of a receipt.

[57:34] Yeah.

[57:35] Was found in his safe house.

[57:37] Yes.

[57:38] What in 2024, how did he obtain a concert ticket and wind up having a receipt he was carrying around in his wallet?

[57:47] Did he buy it at the bodega?

[57:49] Yeah, he got it from CVS.

Elliott Kalan

[57:52] He said, I don't want to pay that $3, $10 ticket master charge.

[57:57] I'm going to the box office.

[57:58] And I know it's good.

[57:59] I know that the gas I'm using to drive to the box office in the heart of Philly, I live out in the suburbs.

[58:05] I know that's more than the money that I'm spending on the ticket master charge.

[58:09] But you know what?

[58:10] Gosh darn it.

[58:11] I just don't want to pay that.

[58:12] I don't think they deserve that money.

[58:13] So I'm going to go and I'm going to buy it at the box office.

[58:15] I bet that's what he did.

[58:16] And they gave him like the little receipt.

[58:18] And they gave him like a little receipt.

[58:19] Yeah, exactly.

[58:19] Yeah.

[58:20] And he said, I'm going to keep this in my wallet.

[58:21] To remember this special day with Riley.

Stuart Wellington

[58:23] I mean, I feel like this is in Philly.

[58:25] So he could probably buy a concert ticket at like a Wawa or something, right?

[58:29] Yeah, that's right.

[58:30] Yeah, probably.

Elliott Kalan

[58:30] Probably, yeah.

[58:31] Put that on top of my sub.

[58:33] And then I got to go run up the steps to the Museum of Art.

[58:36] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[58:36] If you said sub in Philly, Dan, they would beat you to death.

[58:39] They would beat you up.

[58:39] I'm sorry.

Dan McCoy

[58:40] You know, I'm from the Midwest.

[58:43] We call things what we call them.

[58:45] A hoagie?

[58:46] Is that what the correct?

[58:47] Yeah.

[58:48] I didn't pronounce it correctly, but.

Linda Holmes

[58:49] You certainly did not.

[58:50] Wawa is the good shit.

[58:52] I will say that.

[58:53] Yeah.

[58:53] I grew up going to Wawa.

Elliott Kalan

[58:54] So she's like, hey, anyway, it's my concert's all about trapping the butcher.

[58:59] Hey, can I play a song for you?

[59:00] And she plays a song.

[59:02] I love this.

[59:02] She's recording it.

[59:03] And then she's like, how about a selfie?

[59:05] And she just takes the camera and then runs into the bathroom.

Dan McCoy

[59:08] I don't want to skip over.

[59:09] Takes the phone and then runs to the bathroom.

[59:10] A great camera move, like a legitimately funny camera move where she's like, hey, you

Stuart Wellington

[59:16] want me to play a song?

[59:17] She points over.

[59:18] The camera just pans over to the piano.

[59:20] It goes, smoosh.

[59:21] There's a piano there.

[59:21] It smooshes back.

Dan McCoy

[59:22] I loved it.

[59:23] I'm like, yes, you made the right choice here.

[59:25] This is very funny.

Stuart Wellington

[59:25] And I love that while she's playing this song, Josh Hartnett stands right next to them filming

[59:30] it and they keep cutting to him filming.

[59:33] And it's such a weird angle and shot.

[59:35] Obviously, it's a setup that she's like clocking where his phone is so she can steal it.

[59:40] But it's just a really funny.

[59:41] It's very funny.

Elliott Kalan

[59:42] This whole thing is funny.

[59:43] This whole part scene right here is very funny.

[59:46] And I think it's supposed to seem suspenseful.

[59:47] Like she's stalling for time.

[59:49] She's doing the only thing she knows how to do to do it, which is perform music.

[59:52] And Riley doesn't know what this is all about.

[59:54] So she just thinks this is the greatest day in her life.

[59:56] But it comes off as a little silly.

[59:58] Anyway, she grabs Cooper's phone, goes into the bathroom, locks herself in, uses his serial

[1:00:02] killer app to get in touch with the victim.

[1:00:04] And it's like, tell me anything you remember about where he took you.

[1:00:06] And he's like, oh, there was a broken statue of a stone lion and a blue door.

[1:00:10] And she goes on to Instagram and she's like, hey, all my fans.

[1:00:13] Hey, I love you so much.

[1:00:14] Peace and love.

[1:00:14] Peace all over.

[1:00:15] You know, freedom in the Middle East or whatever.

[1:00:18] And hey, I have this guy.

[1:00:20] I need you to help him.

[1:00:21] Does anyone live near a broken stone lion?

[1:00:23] And there's a house with a blue door.

[1:00:24] And she manages to crowdsource where the house is.

[1:00:27] And she's like, go to that house, which is bad advice to tell her fans.

[1:00:30] Don't go to the house that the serial killer has a guy at.

[1:00:33] Call the police.

[1:00:34] Tell them to go to the house.

[1:00:34] She could have called the police.

Linda Holmes

[1:00:36] Maybe she could have called 911 when she got into the bathroom with the phone.

[1:00:39] True, true.

[1:00:39] And said, I'm at the butcher's house.

[1:00:40] Yeah, that's a good point.

[1:00:40] I'm at the butcher's house.

[1:00:42] Here's his address.

[1:00:43] This is what Trini lives on.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:44] It's like this is the clever thing for her to do, but it's not the smart thing.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:47] Yeah, I do like this as a device.

[1:00:50] There would have been a better way.

[1:00:52] Like there are a lot of things in here where it's like there would have been a better way

[1:00:55] to implement it, you know, even though the basic device is fun.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:59] If you had built this up with Lady Raven as more of a character than you could have, I

[1:01:02] think you could have had her, you could have made a little bit more about this, you know,

[1:01:06] but, and the way she relates to her fans and all that.

[1:01:08] But anyway, Cooper is getting increasingly loud and angry on the other side of the door.

[1:01:12] And I do like, it reminds me of my favorite scene in the movie phone booth, no phone booth,

[1:01:17] where he's talking on the phone with a sniper and these other people want to use the phone

[1:01:20] and they're banging on the door.

[1:01:22] And he's like, there's just too much stuff going on at once.

[1:01:24] It's very stressful.

[1:01:25] I'm like, it is, I know this stress to be on the phone with somebody and someone else is yelling

[1:01:29] is usually a child in my case is yelling at you on the other side.

[1:01:32] Usually, not always.

[1:01:34] No, sometimes it's the butcher.

[1:01:36] And she yells to the door, your husband is the butcher.

[1:01:40] And that's, you know, that's, he, she thinks that's checkmate.

[1:01:43] And then I will say this, this is the scariest moment of the movie to me.

[1:01:48] And I think the movie does not earn it, but I think they have it is the noise stops outside

[1:01:53] the bathroom door.

[1:01:54] And then when Cooper gets that door open, his family is gone and we don't know at first where

[1:01:58] they are.

[1:01:59] And that one moment where I'm like, did he murder his whole family?

[1:02:02] And that, like, that's the scariest moment in the whole movie for me.

[1:02:05] And it turns out he locks them in a very easy to escape room.

[1:02:07] So it's not.

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:08] I feel like, I feel like if, if they're, if they had like paused for a moment with that

[1:02:13] and like maybe even done like a closeup on like a single bit of blood, like.

[1:02:17] Yes.

[1:02:17] Like something while she's like searching for trying to figure out what exactly happened.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:22] Yeah.

[1:02:23] Or even like if he, or if it, if it did happen and she's, and he's there and there's just

[1:02:27] like a little blood on his shirt or something like that.

[1:02:29] Then I would be like, this movie just jumped up a whole, like a whole level, you know?

[1:02:34] Um, but it didn't, it didn't do that.

[1:02:36] So he's like, Hey, anyway, let me check my phone.

[1:02:39] He goes, give me, give me my phone.

[1:02:40] He checks it.

[1:02:41] His victim is gone.

[1:02:42] Oh, he's been rescued already.

[1:02:44] And he's like, you're going to be my hostage to escape.

[1:02:46] Let's get in my wife's car.

[1:02:48] Cause they're going to be looking for my car.

[1:02:49] And Raven, they get in the car and Raven starts, I guess, using what the profiler taught her

[1:02:54] before the movie started.

[1:02:55] And she starts talking to him as if she's her mother, as if she's his mother.

[1:03:00] And you know, you're a, why are you being a bad boy?

[1:03:02] Or I don't remember what she says.

[1:03:03] Did this scene work for you guys at all?

[1:03:05] Cause it did not work for me at all.

[1:03:06] It seems so ridiculous.

[1:03:07] This, this whole section, you know?

Dan McCoy

[1:03:09] Yeah.

[1:03:09] I, they tried to make something of this mom thing, but it feels so extraneous to the movie.

[1:03:16] Like it doesn't actually have an effect.

[1:03:17] And she's like doing it so obviously and clumsily.

[1:03:21] Yeah.

[1:03:22] That I don't, I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:24] In terms of serial killers with relationships with their moms, this is not the best movie.

[1:03:28] No.

[1:03:29] To have that.

Dan McCoy

[1:03:30] I can think of four of them.

Linda Holmes

[1:03:34] Yeah.

[1:03:34] I mean, I think you could do something with this theoretically.

[1:03:38] I mean, it's a, it's a direction to go down, but I think, you know, for me in a movie like this, I think any effort you make to explain why he's a serial killer is completely unnecessary.

[1:03:48] Yeah.

[1:03:49] It's not that kind of movie.

[1:03:51] Right.

[1:03:51] And so it's one thing like, yes.

[1:03:53] I mean, first of all, as I think Dan's alluding to, it's been done a lot.

[1:03:57] The whole, like, it's the mom's fault.

[1:03:59] But also, I don't care.

[1:04:01] Like, it's not like they're going to get to some place where you're going to be like, you know what?

[1:04:04] Now I totally understand why he decided to start cutting up people's bodies and leaving them in piles around various places.

[1:04:10] Like, now that really makes sense to me.

[1:04:13] Like, now I get it.

[1:04:14] So I just don't care why he's a serial killer.

[1:04:17] It's, I just want the, I just want the thriller part.

[1:04:19] I don't care why.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:20] I don't even think they're saying it's the mom's fault, though.

[1:04:23] Because, like, later on, you know, Hayley Mills says, you know, probably early on, you know, no one could have noticed that, like, they're very good at disguising it.

[1:04:33] The only person he probably noticed was his mom.

[1:04:35] So the idea, I guess, is just that, like, he had this relationship with his mom where she's, like, trying to keep him in line.

[1:04:44] Like, I know that you have this serial killer urge within you, but don't kill people, please.

[1:04:50] You know, but.

[1:04:51] Maybe.

[1:04:52] It's not enough.

[1:04:53] Like, I don't, like, I agree in the larger sense where it's just, like, I don't need the psychology of it.

[1:04:59] Like, this is such a silly movie that it's, nothing's going to be worth it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:03] I think it's meant to be, like, a deepening of the character, but it feels like padding.

[1:05:07] It feels kind of like filler, you know.

[1:05:09] Because you're right, this is not the kind of movie where we're going to get inside the head of a dark soul and see what makes it tick.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:16] Yeah, I mean, I think this is time that would have been better spent doing more, like,

[1:05:19] more, like, tense thrill ride crap.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:22] Yes.

[1:05:22] But that's not what happens.

[1:05:24] And then this stalls him just for a little bit.

[1:05:26] He opens up the garage.

[1:05:27] His family is standing there blocking the car, and that unmans him.

[1:05:31] He can't move against his family anymore.

[1:05:33] He loves them too much, I guess.

[1:05:34] And she takes the family away in her limo as the SWAT cops descend on the house.

[1:05:39] Have they caught the butcher?

[1:05:41] Did they finally catch the notorious Philly butcher?

[1:05:44] No, there's at least two more twists.

[1:05:46] No, there's an escape tunnel.

[1:05:49] He escaped.

[1:05:49] What I think is really funny is they're like, we found a tunnel.

[1:05:51] It leads to the neighbor's yard.

[1:05:52] And I'm like, then he can't be that far away.

[1:05:54] Like, just hit that asshole.

[1:05:56] What the fuck?

[1:05:57] He just gave up?

[1:05:58] Well, he can also teleport.

[1:05:59] We didn't talk about that part.

[1:06:00] Oh, yeah, there's that too.

[1:06:01] Oh, boy.

[1:06:02] It's like, we thought he was here, but he's actually 100 feet away.

[1:06:05] Sorry.

[1:06:06] He's out of our jurisdiction when he's in that yard.

Linda Holmes

[1:06:08] Yeah, maybe if Lady Raven had called 911 instead of gotten on Instagram, they would have been there sooner.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:14] To get the social points.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:16] I was hoping that we were going to have like a serial killer home alone situation, kind of like in the recent season of Fargo.

[1:06:22] But we didn't get that.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:23] We can't chase them across property lines.

[1:06:26] No.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:27] We have no jurisdiction.

[1:06:29] No, we can't go there.

[1:06:30] And so Cooper has an escape tunnel and he gets the drop on Lady Raven again.

[1:06:36] She's in her limo.

[1:06:36] He handcuffs her to like a railing inside the limo, which is that a thing that limos usually have?

[1:06:41] It's like a handicapped railing or something?

Dan McCoy

[1:06:43] A rail.

[1:06:44] I mean, they have that thing that you like hang stuff on, right?

[1:06:48] Like a towel rack?

[1:06:49] No.

[1:06:50] Like an oh shit bar?

Linda Holmes

[1:06:52] Yeah.

[1:06:52] Like the suit.

[1:06:53] The suit.

[1:06:54] The suit thing.

[1:06:55] Like the thing where you hang up clothes and stuff like that.

[1:06:57] But it's so low down.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:58] That's not where you would hang.

[1:06:59] Yeah, no.

Linda Holmes

[1:06:59] I don't think there's anything.

[1:07:00] It would pool on the ground.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:02] Okay.

[1:07:02] No.

Linda Holmes

[1:07:02] I don't think there's anything that makes this make sense.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:05] And so he handcuffs her to this rail.

[1:07:07] And he's driving around.

[1:07:08] He's driving through Philly with her in the back.

[1:07:10] He's like – he's in the front as the chauffeur.

[1:07:14] And he's like, you know, I don't like that.

[1:07:16] When I saw you on stage, you seemed like you were whole.

[1:07:18] I don't like people who are whole.

[1:07:20] You know, he likes people who are half, you know, incomplete.

[1:07:22] Yeah.

[1:07:23] It's more trying to create a philosophy for him, which does not need to be there.

[1:07:26] He's a cypher, you know.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:27] When he should have just been talking about all the sights and sounds of South Street in Philly.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:31] Well, and here's the thing.

[1:07:32] I don't know why he decides to take her through apparently the busiest part of Philly because it's crowded with people.

[1:07:37] And she rolls down her window and she's like, hey, I'm Lady Raven.

[1:07:40] And they all crowd around her car.

[1:07:42] And once again, she has weaponized her fame to stymie this brilliant serial killing monster.

[1:07:47] And the fans run the car and it buys time for her to finally rip out the railing and escape.

[1:07:51] She manages to remove it.

[1:07:52] I would sue her limo manufacturer or something or at least ask for a refund.

[1:07:56] It shouldn't break that easily.

[1:07:58] The police show up.

[1:07:59] They shoot out the tires.

[1:08:01] Sorry.

[1:08:01] But now, finally, finally, they caught the butcher, right?

[1:08:04] I mean he's in a car.

[1:08:05] They're surrounding his car with guns.

[1:08:07] Yeah.

[1:08:07] Like he is finally, after two traps, he is finally trapped.

[1:08:11] Right, guys?

Dan McCoy

[1:08:12] You can't trap the trap master.

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:15] Well, I just –

[1:08:15] You think of the trapster, a.k.a.

[1:08:17] Pacepot Pete.

[1:08:18] But yeah.

Linda Holmes

[1:08:18] Okay.

[1:08:19] Let's envision the car surrounded by fans of her who want nothing more than to get into the car and see her,

[1:08:26] who now sort of understand that she was in trouble because she indicated she was.

[1:08:30] There's a swarm of people around the car.

[1:08:34] He does what exactly?

[1:08:37] In slipping away, he –

Elliott Kalan

[1:08:39] So we can't – we have to assume he does not open the door or else people would – he'd have to move people out of the way.

[1:08:44] They would see that happening.

[1:08:45] So I guess he has an escape tunnel in the limo that didn't belong to him.

[1:08:50] But he goes out the bottom into a manhole.

[1:08:52] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:52] What happens is he starts running around in circles and then the bottom half of his body turns into a drill and he drills through the bottom of the car.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:00] Oh, he did the old drill spin.

Linda Holmes

[1:09:01] Yeah.

[1:09:02] Yeah.

[1:09:02] It happens.

[1:09:03] He got a hole in the bottom of the car.

[1:09:05] Have you ever seen the documentary about the Toynbee tiles, which are the – those things – there are these tiles that are in the street, in the pavement in Philadelphia.

[1:09:14] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1:09:14] Yeah, yeah.

[1:09:15] And some other places that have a little weird secret message and nobody knew like how they were getting embedded.

[1:09:20] There are some in New York too.

[1:09:22] Yeah, there are some in New York, yeah.

[1:09:22] And you can still occasionally see them.

[1:09:24] They have a weird – they're like a mosaic.

[1:09:25] They're like mosaics.

Elliott Kalan

[1:09:26] They're like made out of like – yeah.

[1:09:27] Yeah.

[1:09:27] Yeah, piece of glass and stuff.

Linda Holmes

[1:09:28] And there's a whole documentary about these guys who went out to try to figure out where in the hell these things came from and who was doing it.

[1:09:35] And it turns out that the person who was doing it was dropping them out of the bottom of a hole in a car, like driving over the pavement and dropping the tile out the bottom of a hole in the car.

[1:09:47] It is a great documentary and it has – it's called Resurrect Dead and it has the best Philadelphia accents you will ever hear in your life.

[1:09:58] So that's just a little note about that.

[1:10:00] And so I figure he has that kind of little hole in the bottom of the car.

[1:10:03] Drop it out.

[1:10:04] Drop himself out.

[1:10:06] Crawl away.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:07] That's possible.

[1:10:07] I mean I just thought maybe he took his one last ghost pill, which allows him to turn invisible and intangible and he could walk through everybody.

[1:10:12] But the point is –

[1:10:13] Your way is better.

[1:10:14] He's loose.

[1:10:15] He does what every good criminal does, goes back home.

[1:10:19] Lady Raven being a saint goes and comforts the freed victim of the butcher.

[1:10:23] He goes back home to his wife who has deliberately stayed at home.

[1:10:27] The profiler was like, you can come with us to safety.

[1:10:29] And she's like, nah, I'll stay at home.

[1:10:30] And Cooper shows up because she has to be there to reveal that she suspected he was the butcher and set him up by going to his kill house and leaving the receipt torn so it looked like it was a mistake.

[1:10:43] And so the police would know he would be at the Lady Raven concert.

[1:10:46] And he threatens her with a knife and she's like, wait, before you kill me, can you at least have some of this pie that I made?

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:50] I think you are ignoring my favorite thing, which is he goes inside and immediately starts taking his shirt off.

[1:10:56] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:57] There was a moment where I was like – so it's another thing.

[1:10:59] I missed the moment where he took his shirt off.

[1:11:00] So I was like – suddenly he was shirtless.

[1:11:02] And I was like, well, I don't understand.

[1:11:03] Why isn't he wearing a shirt?

Linda Holmes

[1:11:04] It goes with this part of the explanation.

[1:11:07] The explanation that they give is she – he was being like distant and strange and she thought maybe he was having an affair.

[1:11:15] But then she smelled cleaning products on his clothes.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:20] Like hospital-grade cleaning products, yeah.

Linda Holmes

[1:11:22] And so when she smells the hospital-grade cleaning products, her first thought is he must be that serious.

[1:11:29] Well, and she also says she does a little sleuthing.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:32] It's an intrusive thought that gets in her head.

[1:11:35] And so she does this test for him, I guess.

Linda Holmes

[1:11:37] So she starts talking about I smelled it on your clothes and that's when he starts taking his shirt off.

[1:11:44] Oh, I see.

[1:11:45] That's why.

[1:11:45] That I think there's supposed to be a connection between she starts talking about your clothes were incriminating.

[1:11:52] But yeah, and the best part about the torn receipt when she says, oh, I tore it so that it would seem like a mistake.

[1:11:58] No, you tore it because a real receipt for a ticket would probably have some kind of identifying information that would mean that they would not have to go about it in this way.

[1:12:07] That's true.

[1:12:08] They would be able to have like a credit card number or something.

[1:12:10] And there's not really any reason why a torn receipt would look more like a mistake than a whole receipt it left behind in your hidey hole.

[1:12:19] Yeah.

[1:12:20] This is where I think it just starts getting real goofy.

[1:12:24] I mean, that doesn't make sense.

Dan McCoy

[1:12:27] I mean, I do think that like, look, I'm not saying that this is good.

[1:12:33] I'm saying that the idea that the movie is putting forth is like, I didn't want to believe it.

[1:12:38] So I'm doing this like circuitous thing and like, maybe it'll prove me, maybe it'll disprove me.

[1:12:45] And I enjoyed watching the scene because, you know, again, God bless her.

[1:12:49] Lady Raven, not the actress that Alison Pill is.

[1:12:52] Like, you've got like two people really like tearing into the scene here, which helps it paper over the fact that this doesn't make any sense.

[1:13:01] Like if she suspected her husband might be this killer, like again, call the police, they can look into it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:07] Maybe like do something about your kids living there.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:09] Maybe she's just like, I want to see what kind of crazy trap they come up with.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:14] Maybe this is their sex game, their cat and mouse play where it's like, I'm going to set up a trap and see if he can get out of it.

[1:13:19] It's going to be so hot.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:20] There was a brief moment when they were going to the house and I was like, is his wife in on it?

[1:13:26] Yes.

[1:13:27] Because that would have been awesome.

Elliott Kalan

[1:13:28] I was worried that was what it was going to be.

[1:13:29] That was going to be like, you almost got caught.

[1:13:31] You've got to get better, you know.

[1:13:32] But the silly part for me was when she goes, wait, before you kill me, can we have some of this pie that I made?

[1:13:37] I went all into trouble making it.

[1:13:38] He eats a whole piece of pie before he realizes that he's drugged.

[1:13:41] She drugged the pie.

[1:13:42] He hallucinates his mother being like.

[1:13:44] That's the pill that I mentioned earlier.

[1:13:46] Yes.

[1:13:46] And he hallucinates his mother being like, I love you.

[1:13:49] And the cops come in and tase the shit out of him.

[1:13:51] They just keep tasing him.

[1:13:52] And they arrest him.

[1:13:54] They bring him outside.

[1:13:55] They let him pick up Riley's knocked over bicycle, which was lying on its side.

[1:13:58] He's a good dad, you know.

[1:13:59] Riley comes out, gets to hug him one last time.

[1:14:02] And then just to speed through the end, he's in the back of the police van and he pulls out from his sleeve.

[1:14:06] He's handcuffed, but he pulls out of his sleeve.

[1:14:07] He palmed one of the spokes from Riley's bike.

[1:14:10] How you could pull the spoke out of a bike wheel and slip it in your sleeve without anybody noticing.

[1:14:14] Also, I love that the police always give you a quiet moment to yourself off in the corner.

Linda Holmes

[1:14:18] Yes.

[1:14:18] A piece of equipment before they take you into the police van.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:21] Yeah.

[1:14:22] This guy who is probably, let's say probably a suicide risk.

[1:14:26] Like, yeah, let's just leave him alone in the back of the van.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:29] And so he takes out that spoke and it takes more time than I thought it would.

[1:14:33] He unlocks his handcuff as he's laughing as if he's going to get away.

[1:14:37] And it's like, it's not like when they open the doors, is he going to run for it?

[1:14:41] Like, we're supposed to be like, this guy is about to escape.

[1:14:44] As soon as he leaves, we're just going to shoot him.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:46] Elliot, you're wrong.

[1:14:47] He's a master.

[1:14:48] He's going to escape.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:49] You know he's, like, he escaped out of that other car.

[1:14:51] I know he's going to escape because it's a movie.

[1:14:53] But I'm saying there's nothing, other than his supernatural escaping abilities as a serial killer, there's nothing that would lead us to believe he is that much closer to escaping than otherwise.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:02] If there was one more shot, maybe in the middle of the credits, it would be a shot of them opening up the back doors.

[1:15:08] And he's not there.

[1:15:09] He would be gone.

[1:15:10] His clothes would be there.

[1:15:12] And they'd be like, what the fuck?

[1:15:13] Yeah, that's true.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:15] Maybe be out on a naked guy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:18] Hole in the bottom of the truck.

[1:15:20] Now, it's possible that would have been the more, the mid-credit scene that would have made more sense instead of a sequel.

[1:15:25] Instead, as we mentioned, we get the mid-credit scene of the merch vendors just watching TV.

[1:15:28] And they say, this guy, Cooper, did this thing.

[1:15:31] And he goes, he has the biggest comedy reaction to it.

[1:15:34] He flips out.

[1:15:35] He goes, I'm never talking to anybody at work again.

[1:15:37] He's going, whoa, whoa.

[1:15:39] I helped him.

[1:15:40] I helped him.

[1:15:41] It is the live-action equivalent of someone just flipping backwards at the end of a Bazooka Joe comic.

[1:15:47] I love it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:15:48] Now I've got to watch it again.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:50] I was going to say, Stuart cannot believe that he missed it.

[1:15:53] I can't believe it.

[1:15:54] You guys could be making this up.

[1:15:55] No, that's the moment where I'm like, oh, they knew they were making a silly movie.

[1:15:58] Because this is not a creepy thing.

[1:16:00] This is just a big joke.

[1:16:01] And it's so silly.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:04] Yeah, well, let's get into our judgments.

[1:16:06] Whether this is a good, bad movie.

[1:16:07] Our final judgments, in fact.

[1:16:09] A good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

[1:16:12] And I have to say, look, it's a movie I kind of like.

[1:16:16] And I will say after that that there's a sucks or rocks mentality that I think the internet has only made worse.

[1:16:24] Where it has to be bad, terrible, or it has to be amazing.

[1:16:29] Every choice was right.

[1:16:30] And I don't think every choice was right.

[1:16:32] I think that there's stuff in here that is like silly thriller mechanics that I like.

[1:16:38] Because I like the manipulation.

[1:16:40] I think he's having fun specifically being like goofy and manipulating things.

[1:16:45] And it might be outlandish, but it doesn't matter.

[1:16:49] And then there's stuff in there where it's like, no, this legitimately makes no sense.

[1:16:55] And maybe if you gave it a little more thought, you could make a better movie with the same elements.

[1:17:02] Likewise, some of the dialogue.

[1:17:05] Like, I don't have the problem that some people have with the dialogue.

[1:17:08] But I am also not going to be out there defending it as like, no, this is exactly the dialogue you wanted to do.

[1:17:13] Like, you could have made some dialogue that sounded a little more like human beings.

[1:17:18] That being said, like, it is a movie that I think is having fun being a silly, trashy thriller.

[1:17:26] And I enjoyed it.

[1:17:27] Stuart.

Stuart Wellington

[1:17:28] Yeah.

[1:17:29] I mean, to touch on, like, I feel like I've been critical of Shyamalan in the past of being, of like, being not really an actor's director.

[1:17:40] And I think a big part of it is that he writes dialogue that, you know, you have to be a good actor to sell.

[1:17:49] And I mean, at least that's kind of how I feel with it.

[1:17:52] I would say this is a movie that I kind of liked.

[1:17:55] I mean, it is very silly.

[1:17:57] Large chunks of it don't make sense.

[1:17:58] Particularly the final third doesn't make much sense.

[1:18:01] But I had a lot of fun.

[1:18:03] And I really just love, like, I just love that first act of him just, like, desperately trying to sneak his way out of there and, like, being very funny about it.

[1:18:12] Like, it's just, and then, like, just, like, upping the ante to the point where he's like, oh, I guess I gotta go backstage.

[1:18:19] Like, I loved it.

[1:18:20] Love that stuff.

[1:18:21] But yeah, yeah.

[1:18:22] The final third's a mess.

[1:18:24] And I feel like, yeah, they're trying to clean up for homework.

[1:18:28] Like, it's like they're trying to finish their homework on the bus on the way to school.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:32] Yeah, it does feel like.

[1:18:33] I kind of feel similarly, I think, that, like, this is, I don't think it's a good, bad movie.

[1:18:37] And I don't think it's so bad, bad.

[1:18:38] But I don't, it's not quite a movie I kind of like.

[1:18:40] But I feel like it is a, there are things I like in it.

[1:18:43] You know, but I think I'm grading it on a curve, to be honest.

[1:18:45] Because this is the kind of movie you don't see that much of in wide release anymore.

[1:18:50] The same way that, like, when I watched The Net in 1995, I was like, this movie is bad.

[1:18:55] And now when I watch it, I'm like, this is a fun movie.

[1:18:57] I kind of like this movie.

[1:18:59] So I think that's the curve I'm grading it on.

[1:19:01] Because there's a lot in the movie that doesn't quite make sense and is very silly and is not as, it never reaches, I think what it gets me is, it's never, it never reaches the moments of thrill or suspense that it is going for.

[1:19:12] I don't think.

[1:19:13] What about spills?

[1:19:15] Spills it gets.

[1:19:16] You know, and that woman falls down the stairs.

[1:19:18] I mean, she's pushed down the stairs.

[1:19:19] That's a spill.

[1:19:20] But Linda, what do you think?

[1:19:20] You loved it, right?

Linda Holmes

[1:19:23] This is not just a good, bad movie.

[1:19:25] This is like my exact idea of a good, bad movie.

[1:19:29] And I had a great time at this movie.

[1:19:33] I saw it with my best friend in the world.

[1:19:35] And we were at the theater.

[1:19:37] And it was a great time.

[1:19:38] Because as I said, at the end of this movie, I turned to him and I said, you know, if they

[1:19:42] said something about the parent trap, this would be the best movie I've seen all year,

[1:19:46] right?

[1:19:47] However, the reason why it kind of irks me is that I fucking love thrillers.

[1:19:52] Like, I love, like, what I tend to refer to as trench coat thrillers.

[1:19:57] Like, you know, the whole, in the 90s in particular, you had both like really high-end ones like

[1:20:03] The Fugitive.

[1:20:04] And then you also had like these really goofy ones like Double Jeopardy and stuff like that.

[1:20:10] I love thrillers.

[1:20:11] I love thrillers.

[1:20:11] And I love silly thrillers.

[1:20:13] However, it is possible to spend 30 seconds making it make more sense than this.

[1:20:23] And when it is so in your face that like there's no indication of like why his wife would, if

[1:20:31] she really thought he was a serial killer, go about this like, I think you might be a serial

[1:20:36] killer.

[1:20:36] So I'm going to give the police a very unhelpful clue that will set you up to be confronted while

[1:20:42] you're with my daughter at a concert.

Elliott Kalan

[1:20:44] Well, that's the other thing.

[1:20:45] I'm going to set it up so that you are potentially picked up by the police or killed by the police

[1:20:50] in front of our daughter.

[1:20:51] In front of our daughter.

Linda Holmes

[1:20:52] There's not really any kind of effort to explain what this police operation even is, what they're

[1:20:59] going to do if they, like what they're doing to all these people.

[1:21:03] There's no effort to get around like this would immediately be something that everyone in

[1:21:07] Philadelphia knew about as opposed to the fact that the concert's kind of going along and

[1:21:11] everybody seems to not be paying that much attention to it inside the concert, even though

[1:21:15] everyone is being held by the police.

[1:21:18] No, there's like not, and it irritates me because I sort of agree with something that Dan was

[1:21:24] saying about the sucks or rocks thing.

[1:21:27] But my version of that is that I think there is a pedantry about unimportant details that has

[1:21:34] resulted in a backlash where anytime you say, this doesn't make a fucking bit of sense,

[1:21:40] people are like, you don't get it.

[1:21:41] You don't get it.

[1:21:42] It's supposed to be fun.

[1:21:44] It can still be fun.

[1:21:46] In fact, I would argue, and this makes me sound so much like the person where like, if you're

[1:21:51] responsible at the party, it's more fun.

[1:21:52] But it can actually be, I think, more fun when it is put together in a way that everything kind

[1:21:59] of fits and clicks.

[1:22:00] And that's what I love in thrillers.

[1:22:01] That's why I maintain that if they had given Die Hard an Oscar for screenplay, I think that

[1:22:06] would have been absolutely appropriate.

[1:22:08] Everything in that movie, everything in that movie is either set up or pay off of a specific

[1:22:13] thing.

[1:22:14] The thing with the bare feet, it is so, it is all so tight.

[1:22:19] The same thing is true of Speed.

[1:22:22] The same thing is true of The Fugitive.

[1:22:23] And I'm not saying you have to be as good as like my favorite thrillers, but like, he

[1:22:27] is good enough to make good thrillers.

[1:22:31] And this feels a little bit like, who gives a shit?

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:33] He is good enough to make like the Philly thriller movie.

Linda Holmes

[1:22:38] Right.

[1:22:39] And it just, it irritates me.

[1:22:41] Yeah.

[1:22:42] It irritates me that we have wound up in this situation where if you ask for anything,

[1:22:47] there's this kind of like, you just don't get it.

[1:22:50] I promise you, I get trap.

[1:22:52] Like, I don't not get trap.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:55] Now, we might be jumping into recommendations, but you're talking about, you're talking about

[1:23:00] thrillers from the past.

[1:23:02] I feel like the, if I'm looking for like an adult thriller movie, what I'm hoping for

[1:23:08] like Fincher to make another one of his paperback thrillers, like what?

[1:23:11] Mm-hmm, yeah.

[1:23:13] Where else should I look for this, Linda?

[1:23:15] I need direction for thrills.

Linda Holmes

[1:23:17] Well, this is the thing is that there aren't that many.

[1:23:20] And that's what irritates me is he's sort of the guy who should be making them.

[1:23:24] And when they happen, they're sometimes on streaming now, like smaller ones.

[1:23:29] There's one that Julianne Moore was in called Sharper that was on, I think, Apple.

[1:23:35] Oh, okay.

[1:23:36] And it's not great, but I thought it was fun.

[1:23:39] Mm-hmm.

[1:23:40] And a lot of them are kind of getting into that space.

[1:23:44] I think also there's a lot of horror thriller kind of blurring of that line where you don't

[1:23:52] get as many non-horror political trench coat thrillers like the Grisham stuff and all that

[1:23:57] kind of stuff.

[1:23:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:58] It feels like that's what a big part of what's happened, yeah, is that horror has eaten up

[1:24:03] the oxygen that used to go to thrillers.

[1:24:05] And the kind of movies that, of the kinds of movies that Alfred Hitchcock used to make,

[1:24:08] there's a lot of psychos now, but there's not a lot of like notoriouses.

[1:24:12] Right.

[1:24:12] No, that's a good point.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:14] Right.

[1:24:14] Exactly.

[1:24:14] Yeah, I'm thinking of like, I don't know, like Fresh, did you see that one on Hulu with

[1:24:18] Sebastian Stan, the cannibal one?

[1:24:22] I did, but I heard pretty good things about it.

[1:24:23] Oh, wait, I did see that.

Linda Holmes

[1:24:24] Yeah, I heard pretty good things about it.

Stuart Wellington

[1:24:25] There was a lot of like You in Danger Girl movies that all came out where it's like women

[1:24:31] going off into the woods with strange men.

[1:24:32] You're like, I don't know why you're doing this.

Linda Holmes

[1:24:34] And every once in a while, there's one that I really like that I don't expect to like that's

[1:24:39] more on the horror side, but pull some of those same strings.

[1:24:42] The one that Caitlin Deaver was in that has no dialogue almost.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:46] Yeah, with the aliens one?

Linda Holmes

[1:24:47] Yeah.

[1:24:48] Yeah.

[1:24:48] I thought that was fun and scary as hell.

[1:24:51] Yeah, that was good.

[1:24:52] And bleak as fuck, which I kind of enjoyed about it in the end.

[1:24:58] So anyway, I think I get mad about this movie.

[1:25:00] It's a happy ending, Linda.

[1:25:01] It's, yeah.

[1:25:02] For one character.

[1:25:03] It's opportunity.

[1:25:04] I think opportunity costs kind of got me with this movie because I think Hartnett is like,

[1:25:08] look, the more I've watched Trapped, the more I've watched Trapped, the more I do really

[1:25:15] like the Hartnett performance.

[1:25:16] And at the end when he's like explaining his weird sadism to his wife, I think it's like

[1:25:21] quite effectively creepy.

[1:25:23] I'd watch that movie, but got to make it make just a little bit of sense.

[1:25:28] A little.

[1:25:29] Sorry.

[1:25:29] I know that's a long rant, but those are my Trapped feelings.

Elliott Kalan

[1:25:32] It feels like the frustrating thing about this movie.

[1:25:34] Yeah.

[1:25:34] I think what you're saying is there's a better version of this movie that they could have

[1:25:38] made and they just didn't.

[1:25:39] They didn't get to that.

[1:25:40] They were kind of more focused on the concert, it feels like, and less on everything else.

[1:25:44] Yeah.

S5

[1:26:14] Stupid universe.

[1:26:15] You can't see any of these shows, but you can listen to them on Dead Pilot Society,

[1:26:21] the podcast that brings you hilarious comedy pilots that the networks and streamers bought

[1:26:26] but never made.

[1:26:28] Journey to the alternate television universe of Dead Pilot Society on MaximumFun.org.

Elliott Kalan

[1:26:37] Oh, darling.

[1:26:38] Why won't you accept my love?

[1:26:41] My dear, even though you are a duke, I could never love you.

[1:26:45] You, you borrowed a book from me and never returned it.

Linda Holmes

[1:26:52] Save yourself from this terrible fate by listening to Reading Glasses.

[1:26:55] We'll help you get those borrowed books back and solve all your other reader problems.

[1:27:00] Reading Glasses, every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Dan McCoy

[1:27:04] Of course, every week, the Flophouse is sponsored by listeners just like you who have become members

[1:27:10] at MaximumFun.org.

[1:27:12] But this week, the Flophouse is also sponsored in part by Aura Frames.

[1:27:17] The best gifts feel like they're picked out just for you.

[1:27:20] And with Aura Frames, you can do that by giving your mother, your grandfather, your grandma,

[1:27:26] your dad the same gift and completely personalize them with all your favorite pictures.

[1:27:34] I have one of these Aura Frames, Audrey and I.

[1:27:38] They're great because we put all of our wedding photos on there, for one thing,

[1:27:43] along with other photos that we update regularly.

[1:27:46] And it's a way to be able to glance over and see memories of a happy day without having to dig out a,

[1:27:55] you know, an old-fashioned album.

[1:27:59] You know, like you pay all this money to get nice photos, to remember a wonderful day,

[1:28:05] and then you squirrel them away.

[1:28:08] No, no.

[1:28:09] Put them on your Aura Frames.

[1:28:10] See them all the time.

[1:28:11] And the great thing about giving an Aura Frames as a gift is you can load on new pictures from a distance.

[1:28:19] So, say you have, like, a new baby or that you want to keep feeding the insatiable ma,

[1:28:27] the need that grandma and grandpa have for more baby pictures.

[1:28:30] You can load them right on there.

[1:28:32] They'll be delivered to their home.

[1:28:35] Wirecutter called it the best digital photo frame.

[1:28:38] It's easy to see why.

[1:28:39] It takes no time to set up, get connected,

[1:28:42] and then you can add the perfect photos and videos yourself from the Aura app.

[1:28:47] It just connects to your photo library.

[1:28:49] You click the ones you want, not the ones you don't want, and it can be easier.

[1:28:54] So, for a limited time, visit AuraFrames.com and get $45 off Aura's best-selling Carver Matte Frames

[1:29:02] by using promo code FLOP at checkout.

[1:29:04] That is A-U-R-A frames.com, promo code FLOP.

[1:29:09] This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year.

[1:29:15] So, take advantage of it now.

[1:29:17] Don't miss out.

[1:29:18] Terms and conditions apply.

[1:29:20] And in more Flophouse-specific news, we are still in the middle of our Flop TV season,

[1:29:28] our series of six one-hour live streaming shows.

[1:29:32] You can get tickets at theflophouse.simpletix.com.

[1:29:35] This is our second Flop TV season.

[1:29:38] So, we made this season all about sequels on our most recent episode.

[1:29:42] We talked about Caddyshack 2, and along with that movie discussion, there was also my ode

[1:29:48] to mediocre films that used to play on HBO in the 80s.

[1:29:52] And Stuart interviewed the most iconic star of Caddyshack 2.

[1:29:56] So, that's the sort of thing you can get.

[1:29:58] What delights are in store for our next episode when we discuss Highlander 2 The Quickening?

[1:30:03] Well, you'll have to watch to find out.

[1:30:04] That one debuts on December 7th.

[1:30:08] And I say debuts because that's when you can watch it live and chat along with other viewers

[1:30:12] if you like to do so.

[1:30:14] But it will also be available to ticket holders until the end of our season,

[1:30:17] which comes at the end of February 2025.

[1:30:21] Tickets, again, can be gotten at theflophouse.simpletix.com for $7 per individual show.

[1:30:28] Or you can get a season pass for $35, which is the equivalent of getting one show for free.

[1:30:34] And also, new news.

[1:30:37] That's what makes it news.

[1:30:38] It's new.

[1:30:39] If you prefer seeing us, the Flophouse, truly live in meat space,

[1:30:44] where you can smell Stuart's various cardigans and tracksuits, good news.

[1:30:48] The Flophouse is coming back to San Francisco Sketchfest in 2025.

[1:30:54] January 2025.

[1:30:55] We were thrilled to be asked back.

[1:30:58] And honestly, with how busy Elliot is these days,

[1:31:00] this might be one of the only in-person live shows we can squeeze in for the next several months.

[1:31:04] So, if you are interested, do not sleep on it.

[1:31:07] We will be back at Cobb's Comedy Club on Sunday, January 19, 2025 at 7 p.m.

[1:31:15] And if you want tickets for that, go to sfsketchfest.com,

[1:31:20] and you can sort yourself out from there.

[1:31:23] Back to the show.

[1:31:25] Let's move on to letters from listeners.

[1:31:30] We got a couple of them.

[1:31:31] This one is from Matt Last Name Withheld, who writes,

[1:31:35] I was recently perusing a record tent at a local flea market

[1:31:39] when I stumbled upon an incredible gem, a pristine promotional copy of the Cobra soundtrack.

[1:31:45] Oh, wow.

[1:31:46] I don't recall if you mentioned it at your live show,

[1:31:48] but the soundtrack is back-to-back bangers, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner impersonations,

[1:31:54] Jean Beauvoir, and Gary Wright deep cuts, sorry,

[1:31:58] and some fantastically emotive work by prolific 80s soundtrack composer Sylvester LeVay.

[1:32:06] As this album both rules and is not available on Spotify or presumably physically anywhere else on Earth,

[1:32:12] I plan to cherish it forever, or at least until I finally watch the actual movie.

[1:32:17] This leads me to ask, are there any movie soundtracks that you currently own

[1:32:22] or have owned in the past, ROCK in the USA?

[1:32:24] Matt, I mean, that's a wide open question.

[1:32:26] I don't know about you guys.

[1:32:27] As a movie person, I own a lot of soundtracks.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:31] Yeah, your apartment's lousy with them.

Dan McCoy

[1:32:33] Lousy?

[1:32:33] You can't walk anywhere without...

[1:32:35] Please don't step on my soundtracks.

Stuart Wellington

[1:32:37] But I feel like you've also gotten, like, even recently,

[1:32:41] I feel like you've gotten soundtracks before you saw the movie, right?

Dan McCoy

[1:32:45] In a couple of cases.

[1:32:47] I got the...

[1:32:48] We did.

[1:32:49] I got the I Saw the TV Glow soundtrack before I saw the movie

[1:32:53] because I'm like, I am pretty sure I'm going to like this,

[1:32:57] and it is, you know, like, there are a lot of limited pressings of these things these days

[1:33:02] in terms of, like, getting it on...

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:04] Yeah, it's got a new Drab Majesty song.

[1:33:07] It rules.

Dan McCoy

[1:33:09] I was going to highlight a couple things.

[1:33:11] I mean, that's a good one.

[1:33:12] I was going to say I have...

[1:33:14] I love the guest soundtrack specifically.

[1:33:16] Oh, yeah.

[1:33:17] A lot of, like, a lot of sort of synthwavy sounds and alt pop and rock from a certain period.

[1:33:25] And I have the Hausu soundtrack, which is a great melange of, like, you know,

[1:33:33] what you might expect out of a horror movie, but also, like, this Japanese idea of what, like,

[1:33:39] a blues song sound is on the soundtrack.

[1:33:43] And then there's, like, a lot of really, like, peppy, jazzy sounds on there, too.

[1:33:46] It's just a fun one to put on.

Stuart Wellington

[1:33:47] Yeah, it's your go-to doing it mix.

[1:33:49] Elliot, do you have any soundtracks you like?

Elliott Kalan

[1:33:52] Yeah, there's a...

[1:33:54] I mean, there were two soundtrack compilations that I got when I was a teenager that I listened

[1:33:59] to over and over again and have stuck with me all the time.

[1:34:01] One was a compilation of Ennio Morricone songs that I got it because it had...

[1:34:05] I already had the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly soundtrack.

[1:34:07] And I had the music for the first two Man With No Name movies.

[1:34:09] And then just random songs from other movies.

[1:34:12] And then also the Once Upon a Time in the West soundtrack was in there.

[1:34:15] It was a lot of tracks.

[1:34:17] And I loved, like, just hearing a title song or a random song from one of his movies.

[1:34:22] And just be, like, trying to think about what the movie was that went with this.

[1:34:25] I think they were all Westerns, but what this was about.

[1:34:28] And then similar to that House Who soundtrack, there was a disc I had that was Godzilla movie

[1:34:33] music from the first movie until, I think, the early 70s.

[1:34:37] And it was great to hear in each movie it's kind of like,

[1:34:41] okay, now here's the kind of jazzy number.

[1:34:43] Now here's the torch song number that's about King Caesar, the monster.

[1:34:47] Like, here's that, like, there's all the...

[1:34:49] Having all these different styles in Japanese applied to songs about monsters.

[1:34:54] And they're just very...

[1:34:56] It just was like, oh, there's so much you could do with this stuff.

[1:34:58] It doesn't all have to sound like the same thing over and over again.

[1:35:00] So those are two albums I listen to a lot.

[1:35:02] And just kind of would make up my own kind of movie stories to go with them.

[1:35:05] What about you, Stuart?

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:07] Oh, I mean, you know, I was a teenager in the 90s, which I think was like the heyday of, like, soundtrack CDs.

[1:35:14] You know, your Tank Girls, your Menace 2 Society, your aforementioned Judgment Night, The Crow.

[1:35:21] Oh, wow.

Elliott Kalan

[1:35:22] Empire Records?

[1:35:23] You were a big fan of the Empire Records soundtrack, right?

Stuart Wellington

[1:35:24] Front to Back.

[1:35:26] Let's see.

[1:35:27] But yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think of, like, obviously, one that I listen to regularly now is To Live and Die in L.A., All Wang Chung, Baby.

[1:35:40] Let me see.

[1:35:41] I mean, I've listened to a fair amount of, like, the various, like, Johnny Greenwood and the Trent Reznor scores.

[1:35:50] Though I guess that's a little different than soundtracks.

[1:35:54] Linda?

[1:35:54] Linda, what about you?

Linda Holmes

[1:35:55] I will just say we did an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour where we talked about best soundtrack albums ever.

[1:36:01] And it was fascinating to even try to figure out what we thought that meant.

[1:36:06] And I will just say the four that we picked, I picked Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

[1:36:12] Aisha picked Waiting to Exhale.

[1:36:14] That's a great album.

[1:36:15] Steven picked Purple Rain and Glenn Weldon, my beloved friend, chose Superman the movie.

[1:36:23] So we talked a lot about kind of all the different things that go into them.

[1:36:28] But I also, like Stuart, just owned a lot of, like, random-ass soundtracks, especially in the 90s.

[1:36:34] Because I would hear something and I would like the music and I would get the CD.

[1:36:37] I listened a lot to the League of Their Own soundtrack, which has a lot of, like, classics, like, takes on classics.

[1:36:46] Yeah.

[1:36:47] Like, kind of up to, some of which are really garbagey.

[1:36:49] But I listened to it a lot.

[1:36:51] I listened a ton to the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack, stuff like that.

[1:36:56] A lot of rock-down soundtracks.

Stuart Wellington

[1:36:57] The, like, Tales from the Crypt Demon Knight soundtrack, Dan.

[1:37:00] Oh, man.

[1:37:01] That's some hard rock and roll on there, boy.

[1:37:02] You got it.

[1:37:03] You got it, buddy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:37:04] One that was played a lot in my house growing up, not by me, was the Forrest Gump double CD soundtrack.

[1:37:10] It was as if they took, they, like, reached their hands into my dad's head and just pulled out two CDs.

[1:37:15] Like, and so I think for him, it's like, how did they do it?

Linda Holmes

[1:37:17] They put my memories on disc.

[1:37:19] There are a lot of those compilation ones, like the, I also talked about the American Graffiti one.

[1:37:24] That's exactly what I was about to say.

[1:37:25] The American Graffiti one is just, like, just endless hits and bangers and all hits, no skips, pretty much, if you like that era and that type of music.

Dan McCoy

[1:37:34] I mean, I feel like the Big Chill is mostly remembered today as, like, oh, all your Motown favorites, you know?

[1:37:40] Yeah.

[1:37:42] Okay, well, this next question is from Tom, last name was held, who writes,

[1:37:46] As a longtime listener, some of the Flophouse's unique phrases have made their way into my everyday lexicon.

[1:37:53] Sorry.

[1:37:54] This came to a head when one of my young children, in a fit of anger, called me a bad dad soccer dad.

Stuart Wellington

[1:38:02] Oh, got him.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:04] I was taken aback by this because I don't listen to episodes with my kids.

[1:38:07] That's something a bad dad soccer dad would do.

[1:38:10] And I don't recall ever using the phrase around them.

[1:38:13] Since then, the phrase has continued to evolve within my family.

[1:38:16] My wife has been accused of being a bad mom soccer mom.

[1:38:19] And I was eventually redeemed and earned the title of good dad soccer dad.

Elliott Kalan

[1:38:24] Oh, thank goodness.

Dan McCoy

[1:38:25] Yeah.

[1:38:25] Are there any odd or obscure phrases from a movie or other forms of media that have made their way into your households?

[1:38:33] Keep on flopping in the free world, Tom.

[1:38:36] Can I do mine?

[1:38:38] Yeah.

[1:38:38] Sure.

Linda Holmes

[1:38:39] Okay.

[1:38:39] I was one of a very tiny number of people who actually watched the Fox show Married by America in the early aughts.

[1:38:46] In which a bunch of people were thrown together and supposed to get married.

[1:38:51] Nobody got married.

[1:38:53] It's a whole dark chapter in the history of reality dating shows.

[1:38:56] But there was an amazing moment in this show.

[1:38:59] And I wrote recaps of it, which is why I watched the whole thing.

[1:39:01] And there's an amazing moment in this show where this woman, this guy comes out to this woman he's supposed to marry.

[1:39:07] He comes outside and she's sitting in the garden.

[1:39:09] And he says to her, what you doing?

[1:39:13] And she says, eating an apple.

[1:39:15] Because she's eating an apple.

[1:39:17] And there are at least two people in my life I can think of where if I today said to them, what you doing?

[1:39:23] They would say, eating an apple.

[1:39:26] And it's not funny outside of the context of Married by America.

[1:39:31] But in the context of Married by America, absolutely amazing.

Dan McCoy

[1:39:36] This is a tough one because I feel like, honestly, most of the way I communicate is through esoteric references.

[1:39:43] So then it's hard to then think of a specific one whenever asked.

[1:39:48] But to harken back to—

Stuart Wellington

[1:39:50] Yeah, you're like, just say skip to Maloo McNuggets all the time.

[1:39:55] A percentage or a Simpsons.

Dan McCoy

[1:39:57] A large percentage.

[1:40:00] This is not actually so much a specific line reference or anything.

[1:40:05] Just like a reference to a movie title.

[1:40:09] But Audrey and I have taken to calling—

[1:40:11] If one of us is going to go out and do something on our own during the day, like have a day—

[1:40:18] We call it a baby's day out.

Stuart Wellington

[1:40:20] You're like, oh, you're going to take a baby's day out.

[1:40:23] Okay.

[1:40:24] Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's a million of these that my wife and I share lately.

[1:40:28] So I won't try and remember all of them.

[1:40:31] But lately, a lot of it is me just randomly doing—you know, anytime we're watching the news and hear a particularly good New York accent, it makes me have to do my best the penguin impression.

[1:40:45] Just being like, you're a good kid, Vic.

[1:40:47] You're a good kid.

[1:40:49] I love it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:40:50] I think we have a lot of them in our house, too, but I think the one that comes to mind most is something that Laser Wolf says in Fiddler on the Roof where he's talking about how he doesn't have any bad blood between him and Tevye after Tevye broke his agreement to marry Tevye's daughter.

[1:41:05] And he goes, what's done?

[1:41:06] And he mimes a butcher's knife chopping off his fingers.

[1:41:09] It's done.

[1:41:10] So sometimes we'll talk about something that can't be changed.

[1:41:12] I go, what's done?

[1:41:13] It's done.

[1:41:14] And I'll mime a butcher's knife chopping my fingers off.

[1:41:16] Love it.

[1:41:17] It's so funny because he's a butcher.

[1:41:19] Everything he knows is butcher stuff.

[1:41:20] Yeah.

[1:41:21] And it ties into today's movie.

[1:41:23] It does.

Stuart Wellington

[1:41:23] It does.

[1:41:25] Because he was trapped in the shtetl.

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:28] Yes, exactly.

[1:41:29] Yeah.

[1:41:29] Although then they were trapped by being kicked out of the shtetl.

[1:41:32] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:41:33] Let us do our final segment of the show, which is recommendations.

[1:41:38] Would you say tradition is a trap, Elliot?

Elliott Kalan

[1:41:40] Well, it's interesting you say that.

[1:41:42] Get into it.

[1:41:43] Let's get into it.

[1:41:43] Because tradition, in some ways, it's the boundaries you can't pass beyond.

[1:41:47] In some ways, it's the structure that holds you up.

[1:41:49] Tevye, in the beginning, he's saying tradition is what helps them keep their balance.

[1:41:52] But what happens when the world takes the roof away?

[1:41:55] How do you keep your balance then?

[1:41:57] You have to build new traditions.

[1:41:58] I think that's what's going to happen in my sequel, Tevye in America.

Stuart Wellington

[1:42:02] Tevye goes west.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:04] I mean, it's basically an American tale.

[1:42:05] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:42:08] He's got his little six guns.

[1:42:10] Oh, man.

[1:42:10] It's great.

[1:42:11] Go, Dan.

[1:42:12] Even though.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:12] This is literally something I would.

[1:42:14] I mean.

[1:42:14] And the Frisco kid is a different version of this.

[1:42:17] I have literally wanted to do something for years.

[1:42:19] Where a Jew goes from the Paleo Settlement to the Old West.

[1:42:24] But it's Herschel.

[1:42:25] Like the legendary, you know, clever Jew.

[1:42:28] Who can outsmart demons and things.

[1:42:30] And I'm like.

[1:42:31] I want to see that guy dealing with cowboys and stuff.

[1:42:33] But someday I'll have to write it.

[1:42:34] Someday.

[1:42:35] You know.

Dan McCoy

[1:42:37] Even though we, you know, may not give you a hard side eye.

[1:42:41] If you decide to spend some time watching Trap.

[1:42:44] This is the part.

Elliott Kalan

[1:42:45] We might give you a hard cider and say enjoy yourself.

Dan McCoy

[1:42:47] Yeah.

[1:42:48] Good kickback.

[1:42:49] This is the part where we recommend movies that, you know.

[1:42:52] Also, maybe check these ones out.

[1:42:54] I actually have a quick double recommendation.

[1:42:57] Two movies I saw lately that struck me as.

[1:43:00] One's maybe good to watch right now.

[1:43:02] Not going to get deep into like the political landscape.

[1:43:06] But there are reasons why I was like.

[1:43:07] Oh, you know what?

[1:43:08] These make me feel a little bit better right now.

[1:43:13] One was.

[1:43:14] I'm going to take a page from Elliot's book.

[1:43:17] Recommend Daisies.

[1:43:18] Check New Wave film.

[1:43:20] What a movie.

[1:43:21] Which, you know.

[1:43:22] There's a lot of other stuff going on there.

[1:43:24] Including like political levels that I'm not smart enough to tease out.

[1:43:29] But on its very pleasant surface level.

[1:43:32] A lot of it is just two women being goofy and having fun.

Elliott Kalan

[1:43:37] I think it is so funny that you say on its very pleasant surface level.

[1:43:41] Because that is an assaultive movie.

[1:43:42] Like that movie is assaulting the viewer often.

Dan McCoy

[1:43:44] It is.

[1:43:45] But in like, you know.

[1:43:46] I would say that the thing that.

[1:43:48] You know.

[1:43:49] It's very much its own thing.

[1:43:50] But the thing it reminds me of most is say like a Richard Lester movie.

[1:43:54] Like Hard Day's Night.

[1:43:55] That sort of style.

[1:43:57] Like it's anarchy.

[1:43:58] But it's a lot of fun anarchy.

[1:44:00] And a lot of beautiful anarchy.

[1:44:02] It looks lovely.

[1:44:04] A lot of tinted film experiments.

[1:44:08] And doing different things with stock.

[1:44:10] But it's nice to see a movie that has a lot of sort of like joyful silliness.

[1:44:17] With a couple of women at the center.

[1:44:18] Also, last night I saw at the New York Documentary Film Festival.

[1:44:26] Our old friend and co-worker Trayvon Free from The Daily Show was in town.

[1:44:32] Because he executive produced a documentary called All God's Children.

[1:44:39] Directed by.

[1:44:40] And I apologize if I get the name pronunciation a little wrong.

[1:44:44] Andi Timiner who did Dig was what I'd seen her do before.

[1:44:49] And this documentary is about a rabbi and a minister from a black church working together to sort of bridge racial divides within the two communities in Brooklyn.

[1:45:04] And just sort of inviting one another to like their respective worships.

[1:45:09] And it's a movie that is all the more sort of powerful because it doesn't make bridging those divides look easy.

[1:45:17] There are parts in the movie where people get very mad at each other and hurt each other's feelings.

[1:45:22] And say things that they don't see why it's hurtful.

[1:45:28] But the other person is hurt.

[1:45:29] But it is ultimately joyful and affirming.

[1:45:33] Because it shows that these are people who are committed to understanding each other.

[1:45:38] Committed to learning to love one another.

[1:45:41] And to overcome sort of external racism and anti-cinematism.

[1:45:47] And so it made me feel good at a time that I needed to.

[1:45:52] So those are the two.

[1:45:54] Daisies and All God's Children.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45:57] I'm going to recommend a horror movie called Asriel.

[1:46:02] It is set in a post-apocalyptic, post-rapture future.

[1:46:09] And the characters all basically all belong to a religious cult who have taken a vow of silence.

[1:46:16] So there is no dialogue in this movie.

[1:46:18] And yeah, it's about a couple that try to leave this community but then get pulled back in.

[1:46:27] And there's like monster zombie things running around that get drawn by blood or noise or something.

[1:46:34] I don't really remember.

[1:46:36] It's fun and exciting.

[1:46:38] The lead is played by Samara Weaving who is always great.

[1:46:42] She's always great.

[1:46:43] Very captivating performer.

[1:46:44] And it goes to some pretty nutty places.

[1:46:47] So if that kind of a thing sounds up your alley, check out Asriel.

Elliott Kalan

[1:46:53] I'll go next.

[1:46:54] I'll go next.

[1:46:55] I'm going to recommend – I'm going to – because Dan mentioned Daisies and seeing two ladies having fun, being goofy.

[1:47:01] I'm going to re-recommend very quickly Selene and Julie Goboding, which I recommended, I don't know, like a month or two ago.

[1:47:07] And which I think of all the movies I've seen this year, that's probably the one that sticks in my – sticks on my ribs the most and has kept meaning the most to me.

[1:47:16] But I'm also going to recommend a very dumb movie that I enjoyed recently, which I think I mentioned on a mini I had been watching.

[1:47:22] I can't remember, which is Toby Hooper's Life Force from 1985, which is – it's based on a novel called The Space Vampires, and it should have been called The Space Vampires.

[1:47:31] It is a very – at times lavishly made, at times somewhat cheaply made science fiction horror movie in which astronauts find a spaceship full of vampires in a comet, and the lead vampire is a naked lady.

[1:47:48] And she forms a sort of sexual psychic mind meld with astronaut Steve Railsback, which leads to essentially a remake of Quatermass and the Pit as London falls under a brainwashing spell.

[1:47:58] And it is a movie that part of the fun of it is watching it spin off the rails and really like get too big for its britches.

[1:48:05] There's a certain point where they're just like, oh, by the way, London is under martial law and we're blowing things up in it.

[1:48:09] And you're like, this movie got escalated fast.

[1:48:12] But there's some very – there's very fun moments in it.

[1:48:16] There's a lot of great kind of gross special effects in it.

[1:48:19] It feels like what it is, which is Toby Hooper being given more money than he should probably be playing with at that moment without a full story.

[1:48:27] And for those of you who, like me, are heterosexual men, there's a naked lady in it who's naked for a lot of the movies.

[1:48:33] So that's Life Force.

[1:48:35] That's Life Force for you.

[1:48:37] Yeah.

Linda Holmes

[1:48:38] All right, Christmas decision time.

[1:48:40] Would you rather have one minute on Red One where The Rock and Chris Evans save Christmas after Santa is kidnapped?

[1:48:46] Or would you rather have one minute on Hot Frosty on Netflix where a woman might fuck Frosty the Snowman?

[1:48:51] Now –

[1:48:51] Frosty.

Dan McCoy

[1:48:52] Hold on.

[1:48:52] Yeah, it's got to be the second one.

[1:48:54] I just need clarity, though.

[1:48:56] Are you recommending Red One?

[1:48:58] That seems out of –

[1:48:59] For real.

[1:49:00] Okay.

Linda Holmes

[1:49:01] Oh, for real.

[1:49:02] Yeah.

[1:49:02] We talked about it.

[1:49:03] Yeah, we are – yeah.

[1:49:04] It's very, very silly, but I had a great time.

[1:49:08] Okay.

[1:49:09] The Rock acts like he doesn't know it's a comedy.

[1:49:10] That's how it works.

Dan McCoy

[1:49:11] I feel like it's going to end up on our roster eventually, but –

[1:49:14] Oh, it very well might.

[1:49:15] It very well might.

Elliott Kalan

[1:49:16] It would go on.

[1:49:17] It's fine.

[1:49:17] My kids, when I took them to see The Wild Robot, which they thought was so-so, all they could talk about was the Red One trailer for weeks afterwards.

[1:49:26] Oh, man.

[1:49:27] They brought it up the other day.

[1:49:28] They're like, can we see Red One?

[1:49:29] And I was like, the big Red One?

[1:49:31] Like the Samuel Fuller movie?

[1:49:32] No.

[1:49:33] No, the one with Santa.

[1:49:34] And I'm like –

[1:49:35] I don't know.

Linda Holmes

[1:49:35] Take them to see it in 4DX.

[1:49:37] They'll get thrown around and breeze-blown in their face.

[1:49:40] It was one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever had, but I had a great time.

[1:49:44] Anyway.

[1:49:44] Anyway, Hot Frosty.

[1:49:45] Hot Frosty.

[1:49:46] On Netflix, Lacey Chabert, late of Party of Five, but also Mean Girls, plays a woman who puts a scarf around the neck of a hot snowman, played by Dustin Milligan, who played Ted on Shit's Creek.

[1:49:58] A hot snowman?

[1:49:58] Wait, a hot snowman?

[1:50:00] Yeah.

[1:50:00] He's been sculpted like a Greek god.

[1:50:02] Oh, I see.

[1:50:03] He comes to life.

[1:50:04] He is an innocent because he has never been in the world before.

[1:50:10] And she's very embarrassed by him because he doesn't know anything and she has a snowman following her around.

[1:50:16] He is also on the radar of the local police for when he was first brought to life running around with no clothes on except his scarf.

[1:50:24] So he is being pursued by local law enforcement, Craig Robinson and Joe Latrulio as the local police.

[1:50:31] It is exactly what it should be.

[1:50:34] They made it exactly correctly.

[1:50:37] They cared about all the right things and none of the wrong things.

[1:50:41] And it has a great and warm hearted Lindsay Lohan joke, which I appreciate it.

[1:50:47] Hot Frosty on Netflix.

[1:50:49] Absolutely recommend.

Stuart Wellington

[1:50:51] Okay.

[1:50:52] Well, Linda, thank you for catching.

[1:50:55] Weirdly enough, also my Wendy's order.

[1:50:57] Okay.

Linda Holmes

[1:50:59] Well, I was saying the other day, it kind of sounds like what they call it when somebody kisses you with a slushie in their mouth.

[1:51:04] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:51:06] Stuart is slowly turning into Johnny Carson, very slowly.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:10] Linda, thank you for catching us in your trap of telling us to do trap and then saying yes when we ask you to be on the guest for trap.

[1:51:20] We will be caught in such a trap anytime.

[1:51:22] We're delighted.

[1:51:24] Wow.

[1:51:24] Dan, are they paying you by the use of the word trap?

[1:51:26] What's going on?

[1:51:27] Dan's getting host points.

[1:51:28] Literally for anything.

Linda Holmes

[1:51:30] Happy to come back to be the defender of red wine.

Dan McCoy

[1:51:34] Oh.

[1:51:35] Well, that's a good idea.

[1:51:36] All right.

[1:51:38] So, yeah, thank you very much for being here.

[1:51:40] Thank you also to Alex Smith, our producer.

[1:51:43] You can find him by the name Howell Dottie on Blue Sky, for instance, a place that's more pleasant to be than other places.

[1:51:53] And thank you to our network, Maximum Fun.

[1:51:56] Go to MaximumFun.org for a lot of other great podcasts on the network.

[1:52:01] A lot of funny ones.

[1:52:02] A lot of informative ones.

[1:52:03] Check them out.

[1:52:05] But for the Flophouse, I have been Dan McCoy.

[1:52:07] I've been Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[1:52:09] I've been Elliot Kalin.

[1:52:10] And we've been joined by...

[1:52:11] Oh, Linda Holmes.

Stuart Wellington

[1:52:13] Okay, bye.

[1:52:15] Don't get trapped.

Dan McCoy

[1:52:18] That's good advice.

[1:52:19] That's good advice.

[1:52:20] Every time someone leaves from now.

Linda Holmes

[1:52:21] If you do, shred your receipts.

[1:52:31] You're going to hear a good story?

[1:52:32] Yes.

[1:52:33] Yesterday was my birthday.

[1:52:35] All right.

[1:52:35] My parents...

[1:52:36] That's not the good story.

[1:52:37] My parents are both not in a position to remember my birthday anymore and do not call me.

[1:52:43] But yesterday, for the first time ever, my 26-year-old nephew spontaneously called me on my birthday.

Stuart Wellington

[1:52:50] Wow.

[1:52:50] Gross.

Linda Holmes

[1:52:51] He's just like a young dude who recently ran a triathlon.

[1:52:56] Wow.

[1:52:57] Yeah.

[1:52:58] Upsetting.

Dan McCoy

[1:52:59] Mm-hmm.

[1:52:59] Well, you know.

[1:53:01] Let the youth have their triathlons.

Linda Holmes

[1:53:04] I got to get birthday wishes and discuss hydration.

Stuart Wellington

[1:53:09] How to keep enough salt in your system.

[1:53:12] That's one thing I've heard about long hikes and shit is that if you don't have enough salt in your body, your body all collapses.

Linda Holmes

[1:53:19] Apparently, Iron Man...

[1:53:22] This is an actual Iron Man triathlon.

[1:53:24] Apparently, Iron Man made a controversial change to the energy drink that they hand out on the course.

[1:53:29] It used to be Gatorade, and now it's some bullshit.

Stuart Wellington

[1:53:33] He said it made him sick.

[1:53:34] Prime.

[1:53:35] What I'm telling you is this was super fun, this phone call.

[1:53:39] I just ate half a focaccia panini with mortadella, burrata, and pesto on it.

[1:53:45] And I'm like, this is all the salt I'll ever need to eat.

Dan McCoy

[1:53:49] Okay, guys.

[1:53:50] Elliot has a heart out.

[1:53:51] She told me right beforehand.

[1:53:52] This is all good stuff for Alex.

Elliott Kalan

[1:53:53] No, I know, but it's not part of the show, per se.

[1:53:55] Elliot just started recording on my side.

[1:53:57] Let's do a count all.

[1:54:01] Maximum Fun.

[1:54:02] A worker-owned network.

Dan McCoy

[1:54:03] Of artists-owned shows.

[1:54:05] Supported.

[1:54:06] Directly.

[1:54:07] By you.

Ep.#438 - Trap, with Linda Holmes

Chapters

Transcript

In this episode

Description