Ep.#437 - Megalopolis, with Roman Mars

[0:00] Hi, floppers, before we start this episode,

[0:02] I just wanted to remind you,

[0:03] we are in the middle of Flop TV season two.

[0:06] That's right, the one hour internet televised

[0:08] Flophouse TV show is here for you

[0:11] the first Saturday of every month through February.

[0:14] Just go to theflophouse.simpletics.com

[0:17] and get your tickets or season pass

[0:19] for this all new Flophouse TV stuff.

[0:22] We're covering movies we've never covered before.

[0:24] We've got video segments.

[0:25] It's amazing.

[0:27] Just go to theflophouse.simpletics.com

[0:29] for Flop TV season two.

[0:31] This time, it's personal.

[0:34] On this episode, we discuss Megalopolis.

[0:37] I got a feeling this is gonna be a mega love fest.

[0:41] That's a good one.

[0:44] Yum, yum, give me that.

[0:46] Delish.

[0:59] Hey, everyone, welcome to the Flophouse.

[1:12] I'm Dan McCoy.

[1:13] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:14] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:16] And I'm Roman Mars.

[1:17] Wait, hold on a second.

[1:18] What, oh my God.

[1:19] How did you get here?

[1:20] How did you get here?

[1:21] Dan, I told you, you gotta have your apartment fumigated.

[1:26] You gotta get the Roman Mars infestation.

[1:28] Someone much more respectable got in here somehow.

[1:31] I got on my lit up moving sidewalk

[1:34] and I landed right here.

[1:36] Wow, in the city of the future, aka the Flophouse.

[1:40] Yeah, well, we, you know, this is a special movie,

[1:43] a very special movie.

[1:45] So we have a very special guest.

[1:47] Elliot, why don't you talk a little bit

[1:48] about Roman being on the show?

[1:50] Because you have been doing some work with,

[1:52] you've been moonlighting.

[1:53] You've been cheating on us with another podcast.

[1:56] That's right.

[1:57] It's been so exciting to be discovering new things

[1:59] with another host, discovering new things about myself,

[2:02] showing them things about me

[2:03] that you guys have gotten bored with.

[2:05] But it's made you a better co-host of the Flophouse,

[2:08] honestly.

[2:09] In some ways, yeah, because I'm more excited.

[2:10] I come in and I kiss you guys and I give you flowers

[2:13] and you're like, what's this?

[2:14] You haven't done this in years.

[2:15] And I've got a spring in my step and a song in my heart.

[2:17] So Megalopolis is a special movie

[2:20] in that it feels like it is so indebted

[2:24] to the ideas of city building

[2:26] that come from having read The Power Broker

[2:28] and then forgotten most of what was in the book.

[2:30] And so what better person have come talk to us

[2:32] than Roman Mars, with whom I have been co-hosting

[2:35] the 99% Invisible Breakdown, The Power Broker.

[2:37] All throughout this year, we have been taking on

[2:40] one of the greatest works of nonfiction writing,

[2:43] or I would say writing, period, in American literature.

[2:46] The Power Broker by Robert Caro.

[2:48] Every month, we break down 100 pages of it.

[2:50] We just recorded our penultimate summary episode.

[2:54] We actually made our way through

[2:55] most of the book at this point.

[2:57] And so The Power Broker is always on our minds.

[3:00] And this movie, Megalopolis, there's so much about it

[3:03] that is so clearly indebted to a certain idea

[3:06] of Robert Moses, the subject of The Power Broker.

[3:08] And indebted in a way that is totally weird

[3:12] and doesn't really work and is messed up.

[3:14] And so we wanted to bring Roman on

[3:16] to talk about that aspect of it.

[3:18] And also have a little bit of synergistic cross-promotion

[3:23] between these two endeavors.

[3:25] But I thought because we're talking about a movie

[3:28] that's all about New Rome,

[3:30] we would bring in the best Roman we know.

[3:32] Name-based pun scenario.

[3:34] An actual Roman, yeah.

[3:36] Yeah, that's right, that's right.

[3:37] No, I'm very happy to be here.

[3:38] Thank you so much for having me.

[3:39] And I don't think, I kind of needed

[3:43] a sort of a work excuse to see this movie

[3:45] because it looked a little bit, I don't know,

[3:49] like something I wouldn't necessarily see on my own.

[3:52] You would make this, as I did,

[3:54] the only movie I've seen in the theater

[3:56] for the past couple months.

[3:57] That's amazing.

[3:59] As soon as we decided that I would see it for the show,

[4:03] I was very excited to take it in.

[4:06] But anyway, we'll get to that.

[4:08] No, I mean, I'm on the show all the time

[4:12] and I had a similar experience where I'm like,

[4:14] well, I mean, maybe it's partly because I'm like,

[4:16] well, we'll probably have to watch that eventually.

[4:18] So I don't need to run out to the theater to do it.

[4:20] But then when we all decided to do this together,

[4:22] I'm like, oh, great.

[4:23] I can see it on a big screen.

[4:25] I can see all the nutty vision of Francis Ford Coppola,

[4:28] all of the ideas that he's been saving up for decades

[4:31] and put them all in one script,

[4:33] whether they all belong in the same script or not.

[4:35] Yeah.

[4:35] What was the last one we did in,

[4:38] last flop house in the aisles we did?

[4:40] Last Exorcist, I think, the one with Russell Crowe.

[4:43] Was Madame Webb since then?

[4:45] Oh, Madame Webb was, oh, no, you know what?

[4:48] It was in the theaters when we saw it.

[4:50] That was the theater movie, yeah.

[4:52] Guys, we can talk about Madame Webb some more.

[4:55] I mean, another time, maybe.

[4:56] You know, her web connects us all.

[4:57] Kind of like how Megalon connects all these houses.

[5:00] Yeah, yeah, sure.

[5:02] So the other thing about this movie is that

[5:05] I wanted to see it in the theaters

[5:06] because unlike every other movie we've seen

[5:09] where there's a reasonable expectation

[5:10] it will be available for home viewing

[5:11] and they're like, gotta see this new Marvel

[5:14] or Star Wars movie or whatever in the theaters.

[5:15] I'm like, I don't have to,

[5:16] because I'll be able to see it

[5:18] on my nicely sized DCV at home.

[5:20] This movie, conceivably, could disappear.

[5:23] It is a Francis Ford Coppola-owned thing.

[5:25] It's amazing to me that it was a national release movie

[5:28] and it's very possible that it may disappear after this.

[5:32] I don't think it will.

[5:33] I think it will be home viewing somewhere,

[5:34] but this is such an indie film in so many ways

[5:39] that it's potentially unavailable at a certain point.

[5:42] You know, so we had to see it when we could see it.

[5:43] I guess I see what you're saying

[5:45] in the sense that the response to this was so,

[5:49] I mean, there are people who are like,

[5:51] wow, big swing, love you, Francis,

[5:53] but for the most part, very negative

[5:55] that there could be a part of them that's like,

[5:57] well, I'm taking my ball and going back to my vineyard,

[5:59] you know, but like-

[6:00] Oh, I mean, he doesn't have a vineyard anymore.

[6:03] Oh, yeah.

[6:03] No, no, he only sold part of it.

[6:05] He only sold part of the vineyard.

[6:07] But he wants to recoup anything.

[6:08] Like, it has to go to streaming.

[6:10] It has to be available somewhere.

[6:12] So it was distributed theatrically by Lionsgate,

[6:14] but it's more like I can see a world

[6:16] where a large distributor is like,

[6:17] we don't want to handle this.

[6:19] And so he has to scramble to find some way.

[6:21] And maybe it's up on,

[6:22] maybe it's Francis Ford Coppola's YouTube channel

[6:24] that he uploads all of Megalopolis to

[6:26] in 10 chapters or something like that.

[6:28] But-

[6:28] Yeah, his TikTok channel, he just splits it all up.

[6:31] But you know-

[6:31] Wait a minute, didn't Lionsgate

[6:33] also distribute Borderlands this year?

[6:36] Man, they're having a tough one.

[6:38] It's been a great year for Lionsgate.

[6:40] But in a world where even movies

[6:42] that are owned by corporations are not readily available

[6:45] the way that they maybe once were,

[6:47] or that we assume they were,

[6:48] to have a movie that is one,

[6:50] literally one guy paid for it himself,

[6:52] it is, anyway, I just,

[6:54] all along the way I was saying like,

[6:55] I had to see it in the theater

[6:56] because it was the first time in years

[6:58] that a movie has come out where I'd be like,

[6:59] this might be my only chance to see this movie.

[7:01] And of course, maybe it'll be on HBO Max next week.

[7:04] I don't know.

[7:04] But I was like, this would be my only shot, you know?

[7:06] Yeah.

[7:08] There was only one theater showing it

[7:09] when I was looking for the bear.

[7:11] Well, it was, there was maybe a couple,

[7:13] but it was like showing at 3 p.m. or something

[7:16] at Emory Bay.

[7:17] Makes sense in the Bay Area,

[7:18] tech companies hate this guy.

[7:20] Well, he's in a coca country.

[7:21] That's coca country, that's the Bay Area.

[7:23] You know, his offices were in San Francisco.

[7:25] He lives up over in the Napa area, like.

[7:27] And then we ended up seeing it at the Kabuki,

[7:29] my wife and I saw the Kabuki theater

[7:31] in Japantown in San Francisco,

[7:32] which was, we went to dinner ahead of time.

[7:34] Pretty on the nose name for a theater in Japantown.

[7:38] But it was, it was, it was a weird experience.

[7:41] That was a weird vibe.

[7:43] I want to ask, what does,

[7:44] how does your wife feel about our podcast now?

[7:46] That you, you host this.

[7:49] There was about midway through the,

[7:51] through the movie where she looked at me

[7:52] and she said, why is Francis Ford Coppola doing this to us?

[7:59] But it started, it started from the very beginning.

[8:00] We sat down at Empty Theater.

[8:03] It didn't stay empty, but it started empty.

[8:05] We were there early, like just, you know,

[8:07] we just got there after dinner

[8:08] and the place is completely empty.

[8:10] And then this older white woman comes

[8:13] and sits right next to my wife.

[8:16] Like the theater's empty.

[8:18] There's two of us.

[8:19] Your wife is a very friendly person.

[8:20] There's something very welcoming about her.

[8:22] So I get it, yeah.

[8:23] I was like, and it already started.

[8:24] It was like, oh, this is,

[8:25] there's a weird vibe here that you would want to sit

[8:27] right next to us in this little pack.

[8:30] And then it just kept on getting weird

[8:31] because more and more people sat like glommed on

[8:34] right around us.

[8:35] Maybe they just wanted to sort of like sit mostly

[8:37] in the middle because it's a spectacle and whatever.

[8:40] But it started out weird.

[8:42] It just got weirder.

[8:44] Yeah, well, speaking of how weird it gets,

[8:46] Stuart, you took notes.

[8:49] We all saw this, as we said, in the theater

[8:51] because that's the way we could do it.

[8:54] I respect you for-

[8:54] I took the notes in the dark of the Alamo.

[8:57] Yeah, being able to do that.

[8:59] Well, I mean, we're gonna see how good these notes are

[9:02] since I transcribed them onto note cards

[9:04] and I'm like, what the fuck does this say?

[9:07] To be fair, this is-

[9:08] Like, truly, I couldn't say that about Claudio.

[9:10] This is an intricate puzzle box of a movie.

[9:13] Every link indelibly forged to the next

[9:16] so that it just like, it's airtight.

[9:18] The thing is airtight, so.

[9:19] So I'm gonna need some help here, guys.

[9:21] So, Megalopolis, movie opens with what?

[9:24] Uh, like, but like a title card, right?

[9:28] That says, Megalopolis, a fable.

[9:31] Yeah, and it like, right off the bat is like,

[9:35] hey, modern society's kind of like Rome,

[9:39] if you think about it.

[9:40] Mm-hmm, that's true.

[9:41] I mean, it's a movie that is,

[9:43] it is a movie that one,

[9:44] anytime a filmmaker puts a fable at the end of their title,

[9:47] you go, this movie's not gonna make sense.

[9:49] Like, this is a, that's calling it a fable, really.

[9:54] It's like when we did North a while back,

[9:57] I was thinking about these interviews I've heard with.

[10:00] Allen Zweibel, who wrote North, and he just kept saying,

[10:02] it's a fable, like it's a fairytale.

[10:05] Why do people dislike it?

[10:06] It's like, you can't just, you can't bandage over a movie

[10:09] that doesn't make sense by calling it a fable.

[10:09] It is the equivalent of being like,

[10:11] I washed my hands of this at the beginning of the movie.

[10:14] It's like when a political candidate says something racist

[10:18] and they're like, it was a joke, come on, everybody.

[10:20] Like, well, if people have liked it,

[10:21] you wouldn't say it was a joke.

[10:22] But anyway, that never happens, so don't worry about it.

[10:25] But you're right, Stuart, at the very beginning,

[10:26] they start with their thesis statement.

[10:27] Hey, America's kind of like Rome.

[10:29] Is America gonna fall like Rome does?

[10:31] And we have title cards that look like

[10:33] they're chiseled into marble.

[10:34] So you're like, oh, that's like classic Roman shit.

[10:37] Okay, so let's just talk about some of the characters

[10:41] and then we'll get into the plot.

[10:42] I think that's easy.

[10:43] So our hero-

[10:44] Easier than trying to walk us through the actual sequence,

[10:48] which is baffling, yeah.

[10:50] Our protagonist is Caesar Catalina, played by Adam Driver.

[10:55] It's impossible to say this name and not smile.

[10:57] I mean, come on.

[10:58] He's eating a Catalina Island.

[10:59] Uh-huh, and it's a Caesar salad, I love it.

[11:01] The ultimate fantasy of eating a Caesar salad

[11:05] on Catalina Island.

[11:07] Or with Catalina dressing on it.

[11:08] Oh, stop it, stop it, guys.

[11:11] Turn the cameras off.

[11:12] It's two types of salads in one.

[11:16] So he is the head-

[11:17] They prophesied a sandwich like this, the ultra salad.

[11:20] He is the genius head of the design authority of New Rome,

[11:26] whose task is to design things like buildings

[11:30] and plan out the city, right?

[11:32] City planning type stuff.

[11:33] He is the master builder of New Rome.

[11:36] He is also the inventor or discoverer of Megalon,

[11:41] a magic super substance.

[11:44] Yes.

[11:44] And he also-

[11:45] The metal of the future, yeah.

[11:46] He also has the ability to stop time.

[11:49] Oh, yes.

[11:50] And I do not object to this film

[11:52] having a magical, realist component.

[11:58] I don't even particularly object to it

[12:00] not being explained why he can do this,

[12:02] because what explanation would be appropriate?

[12:05] Would be necessary.

[12:06] I mean, it's, I would, the problem with the-

[12:07] But-

[12:08] Oh, you'll let me finish, yeah.

[12:09] But this is a very large, bizarre element

[12:13] to be added to the film with no appearance, like,

[12:17] I mean, I wouldn't say no apparent,

[12:18] but it seems like it should have more thematic heft

[12:21] or something if you're going to put this thing in there.

[12:24] I mean, I might be just too dumb

[12:26] to realize what's going on, but-

[12:27] I think you're right that it's,

[12:28] it does not work on a plot level.

[12:31] I mean, I would say that when you say magical realist,

[12:33] the issue is that there is no realist aspect to this.

[12:35] It's just all magic.

[12:36] And Adam Driver's character is so clearly a stand-in

[12:41] for the artist, and in this case, the filmmaker.

[12:44] And I think his ability to stop time

[12:46] is supposed to be the artist's ability

[12:48] to reshape the world around them,

[12:51] even more explicitly than him

[12:52] just building buildings and stuff like that.

[12:54] True.

[12:54] But you're right, he doesn't do anything with it.

[12:56] Like, he never uses it for anything.

[12:57] As a plot device, it is like an anti-Chekhov's gun.

[13:00] Like, it never pays off in any meaningful way

[13:02] of how the story goes.

[13:04] And especially when you're talking about someone

[13:05] who is struggling in a power play,

[13:07] you would, you think,

[13:08] why don't you use some of your time-stopping powers

[13:10] to, like, yeah, achieve your ends or something.

[13:14] Stop time and pull the mayor's pants down

[13:15] so he looks ridiculous when you start timing him.

[13:18] If Megalopolis was released as a series of episodes,

[13:20] the nerds in the Megalopolis subreddit would be like,

[13:23] why isn't Caesar using his powers?

[13:26] They'd be like, I know, in the last episode,

[13:28] he's gonna use his powers to do X, X, and Y,

[13:31] and then when the show doesn't do

[13:32] what they thought it was going to do,

[13:33] they'll be like, this show sucks.

[13:34] This show sucks.

[13:35] I think also, to me, an element of this time-stop power

[13:39] is like it plays into the fantasy of a guy

[13:42] who is trying to achieve something amazing,

[13:45] but he is beset by all this other stuff,

[13:48] all this background noise,

[13:49] so many things distracting him from what he's trying to do,

[13:52] and the fantasy of being able to just stop everything

[13:55] and focus on the one thing he wants to work on.

[13:57] Does that, like, to me,

[13:58] especially for a filmmaker like Coppola,

[14:00] I'm sure that that's part of it for him.

[14:02] Well, it reminds me of the story I've heard

[14:06] about Stanley Kubrick and Jerry Lewis talking,

[14:08] that they were both editing movies at the same facility

[14:11] and both took a break at the same time,

[14:12] and Jerry Lewis was like,

[14:14] well, you can't polish a turd,

[14:16] and Kubrick says, you can if you freeze it.

[14:18] And it's this idea that if you can just stop time,

[14:22] then you can do the work that otherwise would be impossible.

[14:24] You know, if you could just freeze something in place.

[14:27] Sorry, I got a leg cramp,

[14:28] so I'm dancing around my chair.

[14:31] Okay, so that's Cesar Catalina.

[14:33] We know who he is.

[14:34] He's super cool.

[14:35] Now, the mayor of New Rome is in a bit of a pickle.

[14:37] That's Mayor Frank Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito,

[14:41] who plays it a little hammy.

[14:44] I feel like Adam Driver is pretty straight in this one.

[14:47] I don't know about that.

[14:49] I mean, he's, like, Driver is big.

[14:54] Like, you can't not be in this movie.

[14:55] I mean, like, the one, I mean,

[14:56] there are some performances that aren't big

[14:58] and they suffer for it.

[14:59] I think that, I admire-

[15:00] And the best performances in the movie

[15:02] are the biggest performances, I feel like.

[15:04] Well, here's what I'd say.

[15:06] There are very hammy performances in this movie

[15:09] that are fun to watch because what else are you gonna do

[15:11] in a movie called Megalopolis with all the stuff in it

[15:14] than chew the scenery?

[15:15] And then there's Adam Driver who magically seems

[15:18] to create a grounded and consistent character

[15:21] despite the movie around him being gibberish.

[15:23] Like, he's amazing.

[15:25] And then there's, we'll get to her,

[15:27] but, like, the female lead is sort of lost in this movie

[15:30] because she is giving a small performance

[15:31] and the movie is not-

[15:32] Is it Nathalie Emmanuelle?

[15:33] Yeah.

[15:34] Who is the daughter?

[15:35] Who I think is good in other things

[15:37] but is sort of not served by this film at all.

[15:39] Did you see her in that John Woo killer remake

[15:42] where she does the very realistic jump

[15:44] and then latch her legs around a guy's neck

[15:46] and spin around shooting every other dude in the room?

[15:49] It's amazing.

[15:50] It's a solid move.

[15:51] It's cool.

[15:52] I mean, if you're gonna use a move-

[15:53] That's why people do it all the time.

[15:53] That's why it's such a common move, yeah.

[15:55] It's a great move, but you can only do it once.

[15:57] Okay.

[15:58] Now, Adam Driver is set up,

[15:59] it feels like it's set up at first.

[16:00] This is the movie I was expecting, at least,

[16:01] was it is a battle between the mayor and the designer

[16:05] over the future of this portion of the city

[16:08] and they each have competing goals

[16:10] and we're gonna see the pros and cons of each

[16:12] and it quickly becomes,

[16:14] even though Adam Driver's kind of a Robert Moseley character

[16:16] it quickly becomes, no, he's a genius

[16:17] and everyone needs to just like SDFU

[16:20] and let him do whatever he wants to do, you know?

[16:22] Yeah, and this kind of comes to a head in the first scene

[16:25] where we're also introduced to the mayor's daughter,

[16:29] Julia Cicero, who seems to be a vapid club girl,

[16:33] but it turns out that she's much more than that.

[16:38] If anything, because she is able to witness Caesar

[16:42] when he stops time, it stops for her as well

[16:45] and she can see what's going on.

[16:47] She can witness the stopping of time

[16:50] and it doesn't affect her,

[16:51] which seems to be an indicator, yeah,

[16:53] that she has the hidden artistic ability

[16:56] or at least intellectual skill that Caesar has.

[16:59] And then the last big faction, I guess, in this

[17:01] is Crassus, who is the owner of the largest bank.

[17:06] He's a very rich old man played by John Voight,

[17:09] who, guys, I think he knew what he was doing here.

[17:12] He brings a lot of juice.

[17:14] Well, as we'll see, he does deliver the best line

[17:16] in the entire movie later towards the end of the film.

[17:19] Yeah, I mean, he's had a lot of practice,

[17:22] like both playing and being ritualed asshole, so.

[17:26] And daughtering.

[17:27] Yeah, it's his thing.

[17:28] Now, we should mention also,

[17:30] there's a lot of little side minor characters

[17:32] that pop up around here.

[17:33] They're all played by, for the most part,

[17:35] but like Dustin Hoffman shows up,

[17:36] James Riemar shows up, like D.B. Sweeney shows up.

[17:39] It's all these well-known faces.

[17:40] D.B. Sweeney?

[17:43] From the Cut Again?

[17:44] I know.

[17:45] And like Jason Schwartzman has a very good scene

[17:47] later on where he plays drums.

[17:49] Yes, and like Talia Shire,

[17:51] family member of Francis Ford Coppola shows up.

[17:53] Like there's a, but it's a, it's one of these,

[17:55] it feels like one of these movies

[17:56] that is overstuffed with people

[17:58] and you have to imagine there is.

[18:00] Hours and hours of footage.

[18:01] We didn't even talk about.

[18:02] Did you mention Lawrence Fishburne?

[18:03] Who is the.

[18:04] Yeah, Lawrence Fishburne,

[18:05] who's the narrator slash chauffeur.

[18:06] Yeah.

[18:07] Yeah.

[18:08] And we also haven't even touched on

[18:09] the other two important characters.

[18:12] We have the son of Crassus, Claudio,

[18:15] played by Shia LaBeouf.

[18:17] And wow, platinum, journalist extraordinaire,

[18:23] played by.

[18:24] She's very clearly a take on Maria Bartiromo.

[18:27] Maria Bartiromo, the money bunny,

[18:30] because she calls herself the money honey in this, right?

[18:32] It's the other way around.

[18:33] Maria Bartiromo, she's now,

[18:34] she's just a straightforward Trump, Trump all the time.

[18:37] Yeah.

[18:38] Her whole thing was she was the CNBC

[18:39] kind of like lady reporter.

[18:41] And they used to call her,

[18:42] whatever one wow platinum is in this,

[18:45] she's the other one of either the money bunny

[18:47] or the money honey.

[18:47] And I don't remember which one is which.

[18:49] Listeners write in.

[18:51] Okay.

[18:52] Or don't.

[18:53] I mean.

[18:54] But these are, I mean, we'll get like much as a,

[18:56] is it Jared Leto in House of Gucci?

[18:58] Right.

[18:59] Much as his performance is at the level

[19:00] the movie wants to be at.

[19:02] I feel like these two are at the level

[19:03] the movie wants to be at, which is cartoonish.

[19:05] You know?

[19:06] Yeah.

[19:07] I mean, it feels very much like Aubrey Plaza's

[19:09] doing a performance of her character,

[19:12] April Ludgate doing a performance of this character almost.

[19:14] Yeah.

[19:16] So we're kind of introduced to this drama

[19:18] and these different personalities at a press conference

[19:22] that is held over a scale model

[19:24] of what the city is supposed to look like, I guess.

[19:28] Where they're like walking around on like, what,

[19:29] gantries and like.

[19:30] Now, Roman, you know, you know, urban studies stuff.

[19:32] Is this usually how like a new city development

[19:35] is unveiled by everyone walking on a catwalk over it?

[19:38] And it's very dimly lit and people are arguing

[19:41] with each other in the catwalk.

[19:42] Yeah, it's similar to all the ones I've been to for sure.

[19:45] But is it the dramatic lighting, all this sort of thing?

[19:48] It just, this is where the beginning of the nonsense,

[19:51] especially the big talk with nothing inside of the big talk.

[19:55] Apparently Adam Driver had a speech

[19:57] that he was supposed to deliver in this scene

[19:59] and Coppola to loosen.

[20:00] Why don't you just go out there and do the to be or not to be soliloquy from Hamlet and he did it and couple

[20:04] I was like, I like that more. I'll put that in the movie

[20:06] That's why I'm driver goes out and does to be or not to me and it's a it's not a bad performance of that soliloquy

[20:10] But it's the whole of the whole time

[20:12] I was reaching to be like why is he doing this in this moment because I wasn't yet far enough into the movie to realize

[20:17] There's not really a logical reason for a lot of the things that happen in the movie, right?

[20:22] So we get a little bit of further backstory we get turns out that Caesar Catalina has a tragic backstory

[20:28] his wife was

[20:30] Potentially what like killed by him is there that's the belief is that he may or may not have been involved in her death

[20:36] We're a car accident that she was found

[20:39] She was found it drowned in a car at the bottom of the lake or about of the river in us in a shot

[20:44] That is an explicit call to the night of the hunter to Shelly Winters in the in the drowned car night

[20:49] I'm sure and so we already know that before he was mayor

[20:53] Giancarlo Esposito was the DA and he brought Adam driver up on charges and took him to court

[20:58] Accusing him of that murder and he was acquitted of that murder. And so yeah, there's there's bad blood and he's a bad boy

[21:03] It's bad blood over a bad boy

[21:06] Now speaking of that driver ironically, they said that he drove her to death

[21:13] Thanks for explaining irony to me

[21:16] So he's a bad boy because he's also kind of secretly dating Wow Platinum

[21:22] And they have this scene where they are kind of hooking up in a very messy hotel room or apartment

[21:28] He kind of spurs or spurns her affections

[21:30] There is the lovely line where she is down on her knees and says Caesar your anals hell

[21:36] Luckily, I'm oral as hell and I was like hooting and hollering in the theater

[21:49] Should we set up here one one thing when there are

[21:52] In this press conference talking about the different visions for the city

[21:55] I think the mayor wants to do this sort of garish, you know Biff style casino in this. Yes, and

[22:04] and then Adam drivers like talking and he quotes Hamlet and stuff, but there's no presentation of what

[22:12] His ideas are really or did I just miss them?

[22:15] No

[22:15] It's kind of I think it's kind of taken for granted on his part and made the moves part that everyone already kind of has

[22:20] A sense of megalopolis his his dream city. Yeah wants to build but yeah

[22:24] He does not present. I think that was probably the speech. He was gonna give

[22:29] Let's think like I also, you know, look

[22:32] Casinos are basically never the answer

[22:35] But the way it's at least in the answer to where can I get a cheap steak at 3 in the morning?

[22:40] The way is it is at least presented here is the mayor's like hey, you've got all these, you know behind the sky ideas

[22:47] but like there are people who need things right now and I'm going to give them to them and in the absence of

[22:54] Adam drivers character having any argument. I'm like, I don't know. It sounds like he's making some sense. Like what? Why am I supposed to?

[23:02] Sympathize immediately with Adam driver because he can stop time great

[23:07] He says something to the effect of like let's just give the people what they want

[23:10] We need to serve the people and this is the way we serve the people's casino

[23:13] And then and then Adam driver does offers right no counter argument whatsoever

[23:19] So I was trying to get like this is my my this is the beginning of my frustration with this movie is like

[23:25] Till now you were totally on board. Yeah

[23:28] Yeah, you showed up wearing a Caesar Catalina teacher

[23:33] Foam finger and everything

[23:35] But but it's if you're going to be broad stroke fables, then you have to present ideas

[23:42] you know, I mean like if the characters are not gonna make sense and they're gonna be completely arched and not have natural dialogue if

[23:48] if this the

[23:50] Sets are are all fantastical and stuff. That usually means that you're clearing the way of all this nuance so you can tell

[23:57] You know count, you know

[23:59] Like an eye a war of ideas of good and evil or whatever and this is where I begin to like what is the premise of?

[24:08] Megalopolis, you know, like what is he doing? What is this utopia mean other than the word utopia?

[24:12] What is the casino like is it really about serving the people? Is it about corruption? Is it about both?

[24:18] there none of these things are clear here and I'm like

[24:22] I'm just at sea with this idea of like and and and so much of it is like is

[24:27] that the the deflation of this moment of like oh, I'm it isn't that

[24:34] Caesar is a

[24:36] Moses like figure

[24:38] It's oh, he is just a genius. Like he's just great. That's yeah

[24:41] I mean that's the thing that kind of Elliot pointed out like it'd be one thing if the idea was that Caesar is this guy

[24:46] who he believes that people don't understand what they actually want or need right and that he's at odds with the mayor and

[24:53] There's an actual question as to which one who's right, but the movie is like nope Caesars, right?

[24:58] Yeah, listen to this

[25:00] I really think the one of the the way that it makes sense to me is just if I look at it as a metaphor

[25:04] For Francis Ford Coppola the genius and the mayor is a studio executive and he's saying make me a superhero movie

[25:11] we got to serve the people and that's what they want they want to flash a casino and

[25:15] Fran and Francois Coppola's like no

[25:16] I want to build them the movies of the future that will create new ways to think and feel and I have this new element

[25:23] Coppola, I mean Megalovania

[25:28] And I don't know if it's that

[25:30] Explicit in his head or if that was in such a best

[25:32] That's the way I can read as a metaphor where it starts to make sense

[25:35] Yes, but that's the only thing that make that's the only that's the only way it makes sense

[25:38] but because he also but he also seems to think that it makes sense on a political level of like this is a story about

[25:43] Politics and

[25:44] populism versus I

[25:46] Don't it's one of the things where it's like obviously populism is bad. We need a genius who can cut through things

[25:51] It's like well, that's fascism

[25:55] Like the thing you present is like the mob gone unruly your only solution is that we all just trust Adam drivers magic metal

[26:01] You know

[26:01] but that's the thing of a good like as you're doing the synopsis that the main thing that is like to be conveyed about this

[26:08] moment is that

[26:10] The ideas are almost there as if there's some kind of thing to be said or some point

[26:17] But they don't connect and instead. Yeah, it just moves on, you know, like and it's it's very very weird

[26:24] I that's what I was like. I was like, what is it?

[26:26] What does it mean to serve the people with the casino?

[26:28] But who I just like these ideas like none of them stick none of more consistent and and and I think

[26:35] I think John Carlos Veceto or mayor Cicero my sick his plan

[26:40] Actually, there is something he's saying we need to build a casino because it'll like the people want it at least that's a concrete thing

[26:48] Explanation like yeah, I can at least understand that

[26:50] I mean we learn more about what

[26:52] Megalopolis will be like later and you'll get to it Stuart the plant buildings and then the glowing moving sidewalk plant buildings a home for

[26:58] Everyone with apparently tons of space now. I don't know

[27:02] I'm like did half the population died everybody get I mean, well, there was it you'll see there's a disaster that opens up quite a bit

[27:08] of a space for 15 minutes

[27:14] So this scene happens you realize his relationship with Wow, I kind of enjoy that name that was one where I was like

[27:21] I'm into that

[27:23] Everything about Aubrey Plaza's performance and character is on the level of a political editorial cartoon

[27:28] Which is kind of weird this movie wants to exist, you know, and she knows how to play these characters, you know

[27:33] meanwhile, Julia Cicero

[27:35] Bluffs her way into the office of Caesar Catalina and we have a little bit of a verbal sparring between the two of them

[27:42] She wants to get in on this Caesar Catalina Department of this design Authority stuff

[27:51] Go on well, she like sent him and like a letter to insult him, right?

[27:55] Yeah, she wants it back because she doesn't want to embarrass her dad

[27:57] Mm-hmm, and she also like but she's also like I think she's interested in him. She's on stop time for God's sakes

[28:03] This is like Adam driver. He looks like Adam driver

[28:07] Everyone's taste but you know most people yeah at this where he tells her to go back to the club

[28:12] Moment that in context it does not seem as bonkers as it does when it's when it's like

[28:19] He's trying to make fun of the idea of the cool club

[28:22] He also this is also where he says like like what why do you deserve to be exposed to the riches of my?

[28:29] Emersonian mind or whatever, which is also a very funny line. Yeah, it's great

[28:34] And then he's everyone on Twitter. Yeah, he then takes her he then takes her to a

[28:41] escape a not probably not perfectly to scale

[28:44] Cardboard model of the city and has her walk through it with her eyes closed and she pictures the megalopolis that could be

[28:53] You know with again like floating

[28:55] Walkways and streets and everything's glowing and looks like it's made out of plants. It's super

[29:00] It looks like every CGI

[29:02] rendering proposal of a skyscraper in in New York when they're when they're like

[29:07] Here's what we're gonna do with this space that opened up and it's always a CGI rendering where everything's super glossy and there's trees all

[29:12] Over and yeah, it looks like like the cover of a super super melodic tech death album cover, you know

[29:18] I also hate to slow us down. But in terms of like the look of this film, I hate to slow us down, but

[29:26] I'd like to do the Bob and Ray slowtalkers of America sketch

[29:31] Great sketch the the look of this movie is is all over the place partly

[29:37] I assume because you know some of it was filmed years ago and then some of it was filmed more recently and was all sort

[29:43] of jammed together and

[29:45] You know he it's what affects I mean, you know, this is a hundred and twenty million dollars of his own money

[29:51] It wasn't enough and like it's what he could afford in certain scenes

[29:55] Like but I think that there's some scenes that are genuinely like beautiful and visually

[30:00] striking, and some of them look like, you know, maybe a C-tier CGI FX company's reel,

[30:09] and some of it looks like they got it off of Storyblocks or something, you know, which

[30:14] is, you know, there's some beautiful stuff on there, a former, a former sponsor of ours.

[30:18] Storyblocks has a lot of great footage, but it's not what you would expect from a major

[30:22] motion picture.

[30:23] Yeah, it's odd to see what seems to be stock footage just sort of interspersed in this

[30:27] thing.

[30:28] This is definitely, there's a, so they were making a documentary about them making this

[30:31] movie at the same time they're making the movie, and it hasn't come out yet, and I'm

[30:34] so curious to watch it, because I have to imagine there were huge swaths of the film

[30:38] that were changed at the last minute because of budget reasons and things like that.

[30:43] So the mayor finds out that his daughter's been spending some time with Caesar, and he's

[30:48] not a big fan of this, at some, right around now he goes, he has a parade, and everybody's

[30:54] like mean to him and don't like him.

[30:56] They're all booing him, yeah.

[30:57] I think also this is where a random guy gets recruited off the street to be one of Claudio's

[31:01] henchmen.

[31:02] I think that's the same guy.

[31:03] The tuba player in the marching band, he gets recruited to go off of Claudio, and I'm like,

[31:08] I guess this is going to be an important character, but it's not really.

[31:10] Like they spend a surprising amount of time with the marching band wondering where this

[31:13] guy went to, considering we barely ever see any of them ever again.

[31:18] Okay, fast forward a little bit, it is night time, Caesar jumps in his car and goes driving

[31:24] through the rainy streets of New Rome.

[31:27] He is pursued by Claudio and Julia in separate cars.

[31:30] We have like a little rainy street chase, I guess?

[31:34] And this is where we have one of the, there are a couple moments in this movie that I

[31:37] do think are brilliant and beautiful, and this is where he's going driving through the

[31:40] city and he's seeing the statues of the city, these huge kind of Greco-Roman type statues,

[31:45] are literally sagging out of fatigue and dropping the things they're holding and leaning against

[31:49] buildings, and it's like, I think it's such a, it's a beautiful way of getting across

[31:53] the idea of a society that has exhausted itself, that is losing the energy that made

[31:58] it great once.

[31:59] And I'm like, ugh, this is the kind of beautiful, straightforward metaphor that he's not achieving

[32:04] through most of the movie, in my view.

[32:06] Right, well it's a sort of directly expressionist look that I think part of the problem is it

[32:11] doesn't settle on one thing.

[32:13] If it was all sort of poetic in the same way, it would feel better, but there's a lot of

[32:19] disjointed different ways of doing it.

[32:23] I had the same feeling when I saw this, this scene was the most, where I was like, oh,

[32:27] this is what this kind of fantastical imagery, this is where it's achieving what I think

[32:34] it's supposed to be achieving the whole time, this is where it hit me, and I was like, I

[32:38] can deal with this artifice, I can deal with the fact that this all feels like green screen,

[32:42] but not, you know, like purposeful, you know, kind of green screen, and it just felt, that

[32:48] was my favorite visual moment in the whole movie, was the statues and the sort of dilapidated

[32:54] parts of New Rome.

[32:56] That worked on me totally.

[32:57] And it's a bit of a sledgehammer, but I feel like it is very clear what it's trying to

[33:02] say.

[33:03] Yeah.

[33:04] It's not as messy as some of the other stuff.

[33:05] That's where it delivers being a fable, is the thing, that's like, I want it to, yeah,

[33:08] I want it to be a fable.

[33:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah, when you saw those statues, you're like, we have title finally.

[33:14] Roman, I have a movie for you called The Fablemans, that you might enjoy more.

[33:19] Yeah, it's a real fable, yeah.

[33:21] Fable-oriented.

[33:22] It's about a little mouse.

[33:25] Oh, that's right, that's Fable Goes West, I apologize.

[33:28] It's an American tale, Fable Goes West.

[33:30] Caesar's car stops in front of a mysterious glowing flower stall that appears in the middle

[33:37] of the street.

[33:38] Yeah.

[33:39] Julia sees this and says, that doesn't make sense, and I'm like, it doesn't make sense,

[33:43] and then he takes the flowers he buys and goes up into a dilapidated apartment building.

[33:48] She pursues him.

[33:49] In his mind, he sees that he's walking into a well-appointed room with attendants, and

[33:55] his wife is in the bed, but in reality, he's just sitting on a bed, right?

[34:01] There's no wife there at all.

[34:03] He's hallucinating that his wife is still alive and is being cared for, and he's visiting

[34:07] her, and Julia seems to see both reality and the hallucination.

[34:10] Julia sees reality but seems to understand, oh, he thinks his wife is there.

[34:13] And Claudio is also spying on this as well, but he doesn't see the hallucination, I don't

[34:19] believe.

[34:20] It's also, I never could quite figure out why, I know why Claudio gets mad later.

[34:23] I could never quite figure out why Claudio cares about Caesar right now.

[34:27] He has a burn book of all the people he doesn't like, and Caesar can't leave his ring down.

[34:32] Yeah, maybe that's it.

[34:33] This character doesn't need a motivation.

[34:35] Shia LaBeouf, I think he's harnessing his natural unlikeability for this character in

[34:40] a really strong way.

[34:41] No, that's true.

[34:42] You don't need a backstory.

[34:43] You're like, oh, this guy's just, you know, he's just a jerk who doesn't like this guy.

[34:47] Yeah.

[34:48] I just assume that Caesar Catalina, like, I don't know, accidentally threw some logs

[34:53] in the fire when they were sitting around the fire, and it burned off Shia LaBeouf's

[34:56] eyebrows, so that's why he hates him.

[34:58] Because he has painted on eyebrows or something, right?

[35:03] Just like Superman and Lex Luthor, yeah.

[35:05] Okay, so shortly after this, I guess it's like the next day or something, Caesar takes

[35:11] Julia up in his private elevator to the top of the design authority where he has his like,

[35:17] I don't know, like thinking area, which is like a clock on its side and a bunch of ledges

[35:22] and girders that looks kind of like the, to me it looked like a set for like a play, right?

[35:31] And where they can like gaze down upon all of New Rome and kind of see as everything

[35:36] moves.

[35:37] Maybe it's sort of like they're hanging out on top of like a mobile, like you put over

[35:42] either a baby or you'd have an art gallery on either side of the sort of spectrum of

[35:48] mobiles.

[35:51] I think around now he kind of explains what he's doing or what he's thinking, but I don't

[35:57] really remember this scene outside of them just hanging out on clocks.

[36:00] Yeah.

[36:01] Meanwhile, I think there's a, there's, yeah, there's nothing in my notes.

[36:05] There's nothing particular.

[36:06] It just says clocks.

[36:07] Yeah.

[36:08] Meanwhile, we get a wedding between Wow Platinum and Crassus, the banker guy.

[36:16] Is that, I don't remember his last name.

[36:18] Is it, is that his last name?

[36:19] I think Crassus is his last name.

[36:21] John Voigt.

[36:22] Yeah.

[36:23] John Voigt.

[36:24] Okay.

[36:25] Wow Platinum is, this is a power play for her.

[36:28] She wants access to his money.

[36:29] He's Hamilton Crassus III.

[36:30] Thank you.

[36:31] Hamilton Crassus III.

[36:32] Thank you.

[36:33] Um, and so we have a big fancy wedding.

[36:36] Uh, it has a, it's a wedding that has everything.

[36:39] It has gladiators.

[36:40] It has guys riding chariots around on the inside of a Coliseum.

[36:45] Uh, Caesar shows up and a pop star shows up wearing a dress made out of, yeah.

[36:50] Honestly, guys, I was just like, Oh, they all went to the circus.

[36:56] And I was like, fine with that as an explanation.

[36:59] I'm just like, I don't know if they're at the circus now.

[37:02] It's a celebration of their, of their betrothal though.

[37:06] Right.

[37:07] I mean, it's a reception.

[37:08] Who knows?

[37:09] Yeah.

[37:10] But that's why they're doing it.

[37:11] Yeah.

[37:12] And there's a pop star wearing, I can't remember if this is the same pop star from later Vesta

[37:15] Sweetwater, uh, who shows up wearing a dress made out of Megalon.

[37:18] Yes, this is Vesta Sweetwater.

[37:21] This Megalon dress is perfect.

[37:23] Camouflage does not matter for later.

[37:26] There's no moment where you're like, Oh, you can use a Megalon if you cover yourself like

[37:30] the predator can't see you or something.

[37:32] That doesn't matter.

[37:33] Nope.

[37:34] It's just a one-off idea that it's a dress made out of Megalon where there's cameras

[37:37] in the back that project what's behind you on front.

[37:40] So you turn invisible and that's it.

[37:42] It's just an effect.

[37:43] There's a ton of Roman stuff.

[37:45] We haven't really even talked about the outfits and stuff like everybody has like vaguely futuristic

[37:50] Roman outfits, you know, it's futuristic because like men's suits have slightly different collar

[37:56] cuts.

[37:57] Yeah, that's right.

[37:58] Yeah.

[37:59] Sometimes they don't have, it's like a severe suit cut, but they also have little, they

[38:01] have like little, uh, laurel wreaths behind their ears, you know, leaves behind their

[38:04] ears.

[38:05] So it's like kind of epaulets to make them like their shoulders very broad, lots of capes

[38:09] and stuff like that.

[38:10] It's the kind of stuff that has been done on stage in productions of Julius Caesar since

[38:13] at least the 1930s where it's like, Hmm, we'll, we'll pull out how it's like modern political

[38:18] times by having everyone wear suits, but they still have like Roman haircuts, you know,

[38:23] that kind of thing.

[38:24] You know, Roman talked earlier about when the movie started to sort of lose him.

[38:29] Uh, and, uh, I want to present when he lost himself in the film, he lost himself in the

[38:34] moment.

[38:35] Uh, no, I, I want to talk about the inverse where the movie, which up until this point

[38:40] had, uh, only baffled and dismayed me, uh, started to, to get me a little bit.

[38:45] And that like during this whole circus sequence, I'm like, Oh, like it, it started to engage

[38:51] me in spite of myself, partly because I was like, Oh, I don't need to care what any of

[38:56] it means.

[38:57] Like, at least the movie at this point was throwing a bunch of stuff at me.

[39:01] And I appreciated that.

[39:02] Like, this is one of the sequences maybe, you know, before they started running out

[39:07] of money, it felt very like, uh, full of splendor and ideas.

[39:12] Uh, and, uh, none of it necessarily hung together in any thematic way that made any sense to

[39:18] me.

[39:19] But I'm like, Oh, okay.

[39:20] Movie.

[39:21] It's kind of delivering the bread and circuses that to placate, you know, people in the audience,

[39:25] you know, this one of the idiot rabble.

[39:28] You're like, you're like, finally, I can relate to someone in the movie, the people screaming

[39:33] It is throwing a lot.

[39:34] It's it's, but it's like it, the, I think the point, which is easy to get into is the

[39:37] sneering at the, at the, at the wealthy and, you know, steering at their excess and stuff

[39:41] like that.

[39:42] And it just, it's, it's totally, I mean, it works, that works.

[39:45] And, and Caesar seems to be doing his best to play along, but he is clearly kind of disguised

[39:51] as a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

[40:00] by this whole situation, he ends up getting very drunk

[40:04] and getting himself into trouble.

[40:05] Meanwhile, scheming little Claudio,

[40:08] who is, I think he's in drag at this point,

[40:13] he sneaks into like the control booth

[40:16] and he puts a, he frames Caesar and Vesta Sweetwater

[40:22] who has been, who is like a Taylor Swift style pop star

[40:26] and the idea is that she is supposed to be

[40:29] like a young virgin, right?

[40:31] Yes, she's both made a big deal out of like,

[40:35] I'm going to keep myself a virgin

[40:36] and she's presenting herself as being younger than she is.

[40:41] So this is- Which we learn later, yeah.

[40:42] Yeah, this is like statutory rape, it seems,

[40:45] but it's not actually.

[40:46] Yeah, he- But isn't the premise

[40:48] of all this like that these old men,

[40:50] the old rich oligarchy is betting on her virginity,

[40:55] like betting, is that happening?

[40:57] I believe that's true, yes.

[40:58] They're like betting that she's going to keep her promise,

[41:01] right, like they're not auctioning off her virginity, right?

[41:03] I thought that's what was happening there,

[41:05] like that, but you guys took notes, I didn't.

[41:08] Somehow the economy of the city is balanced

[41:10] on her promise of staying a virgin until marriage, yeah.

[41:14] Yeah, I thought they were sort of like bidding

[41:15] to keep her a virgin somehow,

[41:18] but I don't know what the mechanics of that would be.

[41:20] I mean, it's ancient Rome stuff though,

[41:22] because it's like, right, like the Vestal Virgins,

[41:25] their virginity was one of the things underpinning

[41:27] the spiritual safety of Rome.

[41:31] That's part of the issue with trying to compare,

[41:34] do a metaphor where you're like,

[41:35] ancient Rome is like nowadays,

[41:36] is that the basic foundational underpinnings of society

[41:39] are so different compared to ancient Rome.

[41:42] Rome, yeah, they had a Senate, yeah, that's true,

[41:44] but also religion and politics were the same thing,

[41:47] and it was just taken for granted

[41:49] that if the city was having trouble,

[41:50] you'd make some sacrifices to the gods,

[41:53] and hopefully that'll keep things right

[41:55] In a way, don't we do that these days?

[41:58] Well, you're right, Stu, I'm always being naive, yeah.

[42:02] But I did interpret this as way more sinister

[42:04] than maybe it was.

[42:06] Yeah, my notes say, fundraiser, question mark,

[42:09] pledging for purity, question mark.

[42:11] Yeah, I think it's like a marathon fundraiser,

[42:16] where you're pledging someone to run a marathon.

[42:18] I think they're pledging for her to just stay a virgin,

[42:21] and so when they see her on tape,

[42:23] supposedly in bed with Caesar Catalina.

[42:27] Yeah, they're like, I wasted all that money.

[42:29] Yeah, and everybody, they're like,

[42:30] oh, the underpinning of our city is all wrong, yeah.

[42:32] Yeah, everyone is incensed by this,

[42:34] like the crowd is baying for blood.

[42:37] This is after her big musical number, though, right?

[42:38] Yeah, after her big musical number.

[42:40] I didn't talk about it,

[42:41] but do you wanna talk about it, Elliot?

[42:42] Do you have opinions?

[42:43] She does this big musical number

[42:44] where there's suddenly like six of her

[42:45] singing all at the same time,

[42:47] and again, doesn't make sense,

[42:49] doesn't really work thematically, never explained,

[42:52] but it's a cool thing.

[42:53] Not bad.

[42:54] It's a cool-looking scene,

[42:55] and I have to say, actually, the Vesta stuff is,

[42:59] the last we see of her character

[43:00] is one of my favorite moments in the movie, also,

[43:02] but we'll get to that, yeah.

[43:04] Please get to it,

[43:05] because I don't have it written down in my notes.

[43:07] That's where, okay, well, when it's,

[43:09] I don't remember what happens here,

[43:10] but like the scandal comes out

[43:11] that this video has been shown by every,

[43:16] Shia LaBeouf arranged for this video

[43:18] to be shown on the Jumbotron

[43:19] of her in bed with Adam Driver,

[43:21] and then suddenly the screen fills with fire,

[43:24] and there are headlines that are like,

[43:26] Vesta reimagines herself,

[43:27] and suddenly she is singing a bad girl song.

[43:30] Now she's reimagining herself as a sinful bad girl,

[43:32] and she's a superstar again,

[43:34] and it's so, it feels so much like

[43:36] Francis Ford Coppola's like,

[43:36] who are the scenes into?

[43:38] Taylor Swift?

[43:39] What does she do?

[43:39] Okay, I'll do something.

[43:40] This is my understanding of what that is,

[43:42] and it happens so,

[43:44] it's like the movie suddenly turns into

[43:46] an advertisement for something else,

[43:47] for some other movie.

[43:49] Yeah, I think that's a little sequence

[43:50] that happens a little bit later,

[43:52] and it's done like,

[43:53] totally like classic MTV news style,

[43:55] like explosion bit,

[43:56] and then like scenes of societal collapse.

[43:59] Okay, Adam Driver,

[44:00] Cesar Catalina gets too drunk,

[44:02] gets beaten up by some guys.

[44:04] He gets whisked away.

[44:06] The cops arrest him for statutory rape

[44:09] because of the video,

[44:11] but then Julia goes into the archives

[44:14] and finds out,

[44:15] actually Vesta Sweetwater is older

[44:17] than she's been telling everybody,

[44:18] so she exonerates him.

[44:20] Problem almost immediately solved.

[44:23] But also isn't it like-

[44:23] And don't we find out that the video is fake?

[44:25] The video is fake too.

[44:26] They like double up the explanations

[44:28] of like why this is fine.

[44:30] It feels like the movie is fainting towards,

[44:33] fainting F-E-I-N-T,

[44:35] not fainting like,

[44:35] oh, Stars and Garters.

[44:36] No, Vipers.

[44:38] The Vipers, yeah.

[44:39] It's taking a faint towards,

[44:41] this guy might be a genius,

[44:42] but he's not a good guy,

[44:43] but instead the movie is very quickly be like,

[44:45] no, no, no,

[44:46] he's a good guy pretending to be a bad guy,

[44:48] and he tells Julia,

[44:49] you gotta pretend to be bad

[44:50] or people lose interest in you

[44:51] or something like that.

[44:52] And they're like,

[44:53] not only was she not a minor,

[44:56] he also didn't have sex with her anyway.

[44:57] So it's fine.

[44:58] He's double good.

[44:59] He's nothing to it.

[44:59] He's a startling saint.

[45:01] So around now we have Caesar and Julia

[45:04] meeting on top of his girder watch ledge,

[45:08] and they have a conversation,

[45:09] and with her help,

[45:10] he's able to stop time again.

[45:11] He had kind of lost his powers for a little bit.

[45:14] Like Spider-Man,

[45:15] sometimes he loses his powers

[45:16] when he's in a bad mood or depressed.

[45:18] Then they have a kind of sloppy make-out session.

[45:20] I thought that was pretty great.

[45:22] And then we get,

[45:24] and they like decide to work together,

[45:25] and we get a montage of them

[45:27] like kind of falling in love

[45:28] and doing some work at the design authority.

[45:34] Which by the way has really boring design.

[45:36] Like I really wanted those jackets

[45:38] to pop a little bit more.

[45:40] I was really bummed about that

[45:42] because I was like,

[45:43] design authority, all right,

[45:44] let's spend some time in the design authority.

[45:46] Nothing.

[45:47] Nothing.

[45:47] Yeah.

[45:48] Yeah.

[45:49] Mugler would be upset.

[45:50] Robert Moses would be upset.

[45:51] He was all about,

[45:53] say what you will about him

[45:54] in his early work.

[45:55] At least he's got a real design eye,

[45:56] you know?

[45:57] Yeah.

[45:58] Claudio, meanwhile,

[46:00] one scheme foiled.

[46:01] He's got more schemes to be had.

[46:02] He starts trumping it up.

[46:04] He sees what's going on,

[46:05] and he's like,

[46:06] starts getting the masses all angry.

[46:09] They start backing him.

[46:11] Later on there's a scene

[46:12] where he's giving a stump speech,

[46:14] and the stump is literally

[46:16] carved into the shape of a swastika.

[46:18] Is that right?

[46:20] It's pretty messed up.

[46:21] Okay.

[46:22] I think that movie's pretty subtle.

[46:23] I don't know if something like that

[46:24] would happen in this movie.

[46:26] We find out that Julia is pregnant.

[46:28] Uh-oh.

[46:29] There's a baby on the way.

[46:32] Master builder has built a baby.

[46:35] Mayor Cicero doesn't like this idea.

[46:37] He doesn't like the idea

[46:38] that they're gonna have a kid.

[46:39] So he tries to,

[46:40] basically tries to buy off

[46:43] Caesar.

[46:44] He's like,

[46:45] hey, you can do whatever you want.

[46:46] Just don't leave my daughter out of this.

[46:49] Get out of this.

[46:50] Stuart, you're doing a great job

[46:51] of condensing this movie.

[46:52] Did you skip over the part

[46:53] where the mayor has a dream

[46:54] where a cloud with a hand grabs the moon,

[46:57] and his wife accurately says that's an omen?

[47:00] Yeah, okay.

[47:01] Probably.

[47:02] I just want to make sure

[47:03] that we get the full.

[47:05] Oh, I'm sorry.

[47:06] I don't want people to listen to this

[47:07] and be like,

[47:08] this movie doesn't sound that crazy.

[47:09] Then it's like,

[47:10] oh yeah, what about the scene

[47:11] where the mayor has his dream

[47:11] about a cloud grabbing the moon?

[47:13] Yeah, it doesn't really figure it into much,

[47:16] but it looks cool.

[47:17] I don't know when it happens in the movie,

[47:19] so I just want to say

[47:21] the visual that has stuck with me,

[47:23] there's like,

[47:24] they're under the water,

[47:26] and there's some people who are rocks.

[47:28] They're painted as rocks,

[47:30] and then they sort of move,

[47:31] and you see that they're people,

[47:32] and it is just half a second.

[47:36] But I was like,

[47:37] that's a really gorgeous image

[47:38] right in the middle of this thing

[47:39] that I'm not sure what it's saying.

[47:42] Yeah, and there's tons of stuff in here.

[47:44] There's moments where Caesar

[47:45] has a floating mirror

[47:48] that shows his memories

[47:50] made out of Megalon.

[47:52] Yes.

[47:53] And then he-

[47:55] Megalon is like Herbie the robot

[47:57] from the Fantastic Four cartoon,

[47:59] or like,

[48:00] who's the little alien

[48:00] that hung out with the Flintstones?

[48:02] What was that guy's name?

[48:02] The Great Gazoo?

[48:03] The Great Gazoo.

[48:04] The Megalon is just kind of a lump

[48:05] that kind of floats in the air

[48:06] around Caesar's apartment

[48:09] and does stuff sometimes,

[48:10] but he'll just be working

[48:11] and the Megalon will kind of float too close to him

[48:12] and he'll have to push it out of the way

[48:13] because it's getting too close to his face.

[48:15] And it's like,

[48:15] it's such a strange,

[48:17] like, goofy thing to have.

[48:19] It's like, oh yeah,

[48:20] this is the Miracle Medal of the Future.

[48:21] Anyway, I got a lump of it

[48:22] and it just floats around my apartment.

[48:23] It's kind of irritating.

[48:25] And they have like a family dinner

[48:26] at one point

[48:27] where they invite the mayor and his wife,

[48:29] and they're like playing cards

[48:31] in this like weird magical Megalon house, right?

[48:34] Yeah.

[48:35] And they're discussing string theory and shit.

[48:37] It's like a Megalopolis exhibit.

[48:39] It's like an exhibit of what Megalops would be like

[48:42] or something like that.

[48:43] Yeah.

[48:44] Does that come after the destruction of the city?

[48:47] That's before the destruction of the city,

[48:49] but after you learn that a Soviet satellite

[48:51] is falling to earth

[48:52] and will crash into the city.

[48:53] Okay.

[48:53] Why?

[48:54] I forgot about that satellite.

[48:55] Yeah.

[48:56] There's a Soviet satellite that,

[49:00] yeah,

[49:00] they're like,

[49:01] anyway, its orbit has decayed.

[49:02] It's going to hit the city.

[49:03] And they're like,

[49:04] whoa,

[49:05] and then they don't do anything about it for a while.

[49:08] I'm starting to realize that

[49:09] taking these notes in the dark,

[49:10] it was a lot easier to take notes on Madame Webb.

[49:15] A more straightforward film that,

[49:17] you know,

[49:18] follows a screenplay formula

[49:20] that has been entrenched in Hollywood.

[49:22] So yeah.

[49:23] By this point,

[49:24] I think we've also,

[49:25] Adam Driver has also kind of shown us

[49:26] his,

[49:27] some of the visual visions

[49:28] of what Megalops would look like.

[49:29] And the buildings all look like plants.

[49:31] And the idea is like the buildings grow

[49:33] as people need them.

[49:34] Like,

[49:35] there's homes for everybody

[49:36] because the buildings can grow and change

[49:38] with the needs of the people,

[49:40] which is a beautiful idea.

[49:41] Roman,

[49:42] how close are we to that?

[49:43] Yeah, I mean.

[49:45] Has anyone tried that yet?

[49:46] Growing buildings?

[49:47] Is it,

[49:48] I mean,

[49:49] in a way,

[49:50] like,

[49:50] Hunter Vosser was like,

[49:51] really into like mold

[49:53] and letting things grow

[49:54] because it was like true organic space.

[49:56] And the straight line is the godless line.

[49:59] And you're gonna.

[50:00] Jeff Vandermeer. Of course, he died from the mold in his lungs, I assume.

[50:05] Totally. There have been big lofty ideals about a kind of like organic architecture

[50:12] in a literal way. And then there's the term organic architecture like

[50:17] Frank Lloyd Wright style. That just means it's reactive and changes

[50:22] to people's needs. So that's all kind of, those ideas are out there.

[50:26] That is the closest thing this sort of dunder-headed movie gets to an idea.

[50:31] And it's the first time you sort of get to this, yeah, like what does this utopia mean?

[50:40] That it's like organic and reactive and serves people is actually, that's an actual idea.

[50:47] Everything else has just been like glowing walkways and nonsense.

[50:52] Where I'm like, what is this for? You have to have, utopias have to have a concept or something.

[50:59] What is the you part of the utopia? What does it do?

[51:03] It really is, it's really weird. But that's one idea, that'd be great.

[51:07] Like having a magical substance that requires no thought or care or design or whatever.

[51:15] Creates no waste, requires no energy, it just does it all.

[51:21] And this is like a huge problem, that you're going to use some technology that's going to save us

[51:26] rather than people coming together and actually coming with solutions and working stuff out.

[51:31] It's just a nonsense idea that you're exploring for a couple of hours.

[51:37] You say that until Megalon works its magic, yeah.

[51:40] Speaking of Megalon working its magic, at this point, Caesar Catalina,

[51:44] probably right on the verge of explaining everything about his utopia,

[51:47] meets with a young 12-year-old fan who actually turns out to be a hired assassin and shoots Caesar in the face.

[51:54] Yeah, okay, so this is after, this is then after the city is destroyed by a satellite falling to earth, right?

[52:03] Yeah, maybe.

[52:04] This is an amazingly large thing to happen and then not really be addressed that much.

[52:11] We get some like scenes of catastrophe, like shadows being cast on the wall.

[52:16] The reason I bring it up is just because that card game, I was wondering about,

[52:22] one of the things that strikes me about this movie is, as we said,

[52:26] this is a movie that Coppola has been writing for decades and decades.

[52:31] I can only assume that the screenplay grew and grew and grew.

[52:36] At certain points, it feels like they just shot every other 20 pages of it

[52:41] because people's relationships to each other will change wildly between scenes without explanation.

[52:47] Juan Carlos Esposito was just saying, trying to pay off Adam Driver to get away from his daughter.

[52:55] Then in the next scene, they're all sort of like, they don't love each other,

[52:59] but they're having a genial card game together.

[53:02] I'm like, okay, well, what happened here?

[53:04] The only thing I can think of is like, oh, the city was destroyed, so they all came together.

[53:08] But it's not said or anything.

[53:10] I'm looking at my – because I wasn't sure if I was going to have to do the summary today or not.

[53:14] So I took some notes also.

[53:15] Please, please, yeah.

[53:16] There's also – but you're right, Dan, because like Dustin Hoffman's character,

[53:19] who's an assistant to the mayor, he dies off camera.

[53:21] We hear about it.

[53:22] Oh, yeah, he's dead now.

[53:23] We get one scene of like a thing toppling and falling on him, and I'm like,

[53:26] that had to have been a whole sequence.

[53:28] And Shia LaBeouf runs for his position of alderman, and his guy –

[53:33] and then it's after that that the mayor goes to Caesar and says, if you leave my daughter,

[53:38] I'll give you the evidence that I lied when I was prosecuting you,

[53:42] and you'll be able to destroy me, and I'll put my support behind your projects.

[53:46] And at the same time, wow, Platinum approaches Catalina.

[53:49] It's like, hey, look, why don't you come back and be with me again,

[53:53] and you can have all of Crassus's money?

[53:54] Everyone wants to be in the Caesar-Catalina business.

[53:57] And he's like, no, no, no.

[53:58] And that's when –

[53:59] Real Catalina caper.

[54:01] And she seems to hypnotize Crassus into giving her control over the bank,

[54:05] and then Caesar is shot in the head by this child who –

[54:10] he should have been suspicious when a kid asked him to sign his book for him.

[54:13] Like there's no way this kid is reading Caesar-Catalina's book.

[54:16] I don't know, man.

[54:17] Everybody loves Caesar-Catalina.

[54:18] I think that's pretty clear.

[54:19] Okay.

[54:20] But how do they heal him?

[54:22] How do they heal him?

[54:23] At this point, I don't know about you guys.

[54:25] I'm like, wow, they killed him.

[54:26] That's crazy.

[54:27] I guess it's like weird death dream.

[54:29] But then they end up healing him by fusing his head with some Megalon.

[54:33] They just stick Megalon on his head on the open skull that's there,

[54:37] and this truly is an amazing building material.

[54:39] So we – at this point, Caesar then goes –

[54:43] Oh, but then having the Megalon in his face gives him lots of like new powers and –

[54:46] Oh, yeah.

[54:47] Like the Marvel man.

[54:48] Yeah, he shows up at Crassus, Hamilton Crassus's apartment.

[54:53] Claudio tries to harass him.

[54:55] Wow Platinum tries to make a move on him.

[54:58] But he reveals his Megalon, half human, half Megalon face,

[55:03] and it causes multiple images, and everybody is wowed by the majesty of his face.

[55:08] Especially Wow herself.

[55:09] Exactly.

[55:10] So he's going there because she's frozen all of his bank accounts using her power at the bank

[55:14] in order to force him to something.

[55:16] Force his hand, yeah.

[55:17] And then, yeah, she offers herself again, and Crassus kind of interrupts it.

[55:22] But now who does Wow set her sights on?

[55:24] If she can't control Caesar, Catalina.

[55:26] Of course, she's going to pick, I guess, the next best thing, and that's Claudio Crassus.

[55:30] That's right.

[55:32] And so she – we have a little sex scene.

[55:35] You were probably into this, right, Dan?

[55:36] It was like a Game of Thrones-style sex musician scene.

[55:40] It was kind of like a Game of Thrones-style sex scene where it's all about power,

[55:43] and you're like, ugh, is this what they think sex is like?

[55:47] Or she's like, stick your face in my butt.

[55:49] Okay, now go over there.

[55:51] I mean it can be like that.

[55:52] Yeah, yeah, you're doing it right.

[55:53] It can be like that.

[55:54] That's true.

[55:55] By the way, I just really love being on the Zoom call and watching Roman's face as he relives the plot.

[56:01] Like he's like, oh, yeah, that did – that is a thing.

[56:04] Like what?

[56:06] I have been going through that where I was just like the satellite.

[56:09] Yeah.

[56:10] Oh, my God.

[56:11] Yeah, I'd forgotten about the satellite.

[56:12] That really is – oh, my God.

[56:14] This is a bunch of nonsense.

[56:16] Like I had streamlined it into like a much tighter movie in my memory than all this.

[56:23] You missed all the good parts.

[56:24] You forgot all the good parts.

[56:25] It's a long, winding road.

[56:27] Here's my note for that.

[56:28] I wrote, the mayor learns the Soviet satellite may crash into the city, dash, and then it does, question mark.

[56:33] So it did happen, and I think the upshot of that is the idea that it now has opened up even more land for building on.

[56:39] In real life, the real Robert Moses had to evict people.

[56:42] He didn't have Soviet satellites doing the job for him.

[56:45] Just a stew of really, truly problematic and nasty great man like tropes that like he's canceled for like 20 seconds, but he's such a genius.

[56:56] Like obviously all that stuff that they say about him is fake and should be forgiven in the first place because he's so great or is all made up and a bunch of these Me Too made up nonsense is coming after him and trying to take him down.

[57:11] And there's no notion that Adam Driver is just wrong, you know what I mean?

[57:18] And also the idea of like how necessary destruction is to build something, and then there's this God particle that fixes everything so that no one has to have like actually hard thought and compromise.

[57:33] It's just bad stuff.

[57:37] I mean this is real like 13, 14-year-old.

[57:40] Like I can't believe an old man wrote this.

[57:43] You know what I mean?

[57:44] Like this is what –

[57:45] Yeah, it feels like something made by somebody very young or very old.

[57:48] I feel like I believe in either a very young man or a very old man.

[57:52] Yeah, I guess that's right.

[57:53] Or a very stoned man, which apparently he was.

[57:55] Or a Gary old man.

[57:56] A Gary old man?

[57:59] It feels a lot like somebody like –

[58:02] Gary old banana, Gary old banana, Gary old banana.

[58:05] Gary old bananas?

[58:06] It feels like somebody was like –

[58:08] I know what you're saying.

[58:09] Somebody was like – Coppola was like, I want to make a movie about city planning.

[58:13] And then he got high and read like one Jodorowsky meta-barons book and he's like, I'm going to do it like this.

[58:20] Yeah, it kind of feels – yeah, he's like, should I read The Power Broker or The Ink Hall?

[58:25] I'll read them both.

[58:26] I'll just alternate pages.

[58:28] Exactly.

[58:29] Okay.

[58:30] So wait.

[58:31] I wanted to ask you guys – so this next part.

[58:32] So Stuart, summarize it, and then I've got a question for everybody, okay?

[58:35] Because I just want to let you know I have a question about –

[58:36] Well, I was just talking about Wow Platinum and Claudio scheming to take over the bank.

[58:40] They do it over sex, and then Crassus collapses.

[58:44] A sex meeting.

[58:45] Yeah.

[58:46] I'd like two eggs over sex, please.

[58:49] Yeah.

[58:50] Yeah, yeah.

[58:51] My Google calendar says sex meeting at the clock.

[58:55] Okay.

[58:56] So yeah, so then Crassus collapses.

[58:59] He seems to have what, like a stroke or –

[59:01] He has a heart attack or a stroke.

[59:03] Yeah.

[59:04] He collapses, leaving Wow and Claudio in charge.

[59:07] Now, then it seems like spring comes.

[59:10] You see flowers blooming, and Catalina and Julia get married in their car.

[59:14] Lawrence Fishburne sits in the driver's seat, and they sit in the back.

[59:16] Not Adam driver's seat, but the driver's seat in the car.

[59:18] Thank you, yeah.

[59:19] And marries them, and then there is a montage of December holidays.

[59:23] Yep.

[59:24] In this kind of Abel Gance's Napoleon triple screen thing, and suddenly it's winter again.

[59:30] And I was like, did I hallucinate that it was spring and now it's winter again?

[59:33] I don't know what – and it can't be the next year because the baby is just – is the same age as when they got married.

[59:39] But this – let's explain.

[59:40] Did you guys have any sense of why there's suddenly a montage of winter holidays?

[59:44] Well, I would have to remember.

[59:47] I also have to ask, Elliot, my notes – I just wrote down Elvis.

[59:51] What does that mean?

[59:52] Yes.

[59:53] So an Elvis impersonator is out on the street singing America the Beautiful.

[59:55] Oh, okay.

[59:56] Thank you.

[59:57] I think it's part of Claudio's like – Claudio's like –

[1:00:00] like pandering to the masses.

[1:00:01] I'm not sure, maybe it's a buster

[1:00:03] and it's a statement about the plastic artificiality

[1:00:06] of American values.

[1:00:09] Yeah, that happens.

[1:00:09] I don't, I'm not quite sure.

[1:00:10] I love this new bit,

[1:00:11] Stuart DeCypher's notes, by the way.

[1:00:13] Oh, Jesus Christ, what did I write?

[1:00:16] Yeah, I don't know what's going on with that.

[1:00:18] I mean, I did write winter holiday montage in my notes.

[1:00:22] Yeah, that happens.

[1:00:23] So around that-

[1:00:24] And it goes on for a while.

[1:00:25] It goes on for a while

[1:00:26] that we're watching people opening presents,

[1:00:28] people spinning dreidels,

[1:00:29] people celebrating Ramadan, you know, it's like a-

[1:00:32] Yeah, everybody's representing, I love it.

[1:00:34] Well, everybody, I mean, three religions.

[1:00:36] Now, the city is inflamed with riots.

[1:00:39] The masses are rioting against the mayor,

[1:00:41] inflamed by Claudio, of course.

[1:00:44] The mayor's family has to escape

[1:00:45] through a secret train car tunnel.

[1:00:50] Yep, they go through the antique subway car tunnels

[1:00:52] that have been closed off for years in the city.

[1:00:54] You know, there's that, it looked like,

[1:00:56] I think it was the subway station

[1:00:57] that is beneath City Hall

[1:00:59] that has been closed ever since September 11th.

[1:01:01] I mean, it's not been in use for a long time,

[1:01:03] but it was closed to tours and things after September 11th.

[1:01:05] I think that it looked like that place.

[1:01:07] I wonder if they shot it there.

[1:01:08] It's possible.

[1:01:09] This is around when, while Platinum and Claudio

[1:01:12] are celebrating their good fortune,

[1:01:14] they have successfully taken out their rivals.

[1:01:17] Nothing bad could ever happen to them.

[1:01:19] And they wander into the bedroom of Hamilton Crassus III.

[1:01:23] They, pride goeth before more success.

[1:01:25] The old aphorism, yeah.

[1:01:27] So they go into Hamilton Crassus's bedroom

[1:01:30] and something's, it seems like he's pitching a little tent.

[1:01:34] This is, so this is,

[1:01:36] so I want to get Roman's take on this.

[1:01:39] By far the best, I saw this movie in a theater.

[1:01:41] It was just me and four other people,

[1:01:43] not strangers, not people I knew.

[1:01:44] They were watching the movie stone-faced, very serious.

[1:01:47] And when this line came out, I laughed so loud

[1:01:50] and nobody else in the audience reacted

[1:01:52] and I did not regret it at all.

[1:01:54] And so does anyone want to say what?

[1:01:56] Well, Elliot had been like,

[1:01:58] John Boyd has the best line of the movie.

[1:02:00] And the whole time I'm like, did I miss it?

[1:02:02] Was it one of those?

[1:02:03] Like, was it just a line that is silly

[1:02:05] because Elliot's smarter than me?

[1:02:06] Well, I haven't told the show about that,

[1:02:08] but let's get Roman's.

[1:02:09] Well, I don't, I have to be refreshed to the exact line.

[1:02:12] I remember the moment.

[1:02:14] It's roughly, I'm not quoting a direct,

[1:02:15] I mean, I'm trying to quote it.

[1:02:16] I can quote a direct.

[1:02:17] Oh yeah, so say, so this you wrote down in your notes.

[1:02:19] So turning to his son and wife,

[1:02:22] he says, what do you think of this boner I got?

[1:02:26] But then he reveals what the boner is.

[1:02:30] It's a crossbow.

[1:02:32] Yeah, it's so funny.

[1:02:33] He whips the blanket over and he's got a crossbow

[1:02:36] and it's like, it's so, this is,

[1:02:38] this whole, if the whole movie had been at this level,

[1:02:40] I would have been like, yes, a thousand percent.

[1:02:42] You know, the last thing I expected was him to say,

[1:02:45] hey, what do you think of this boner I got?

[1:02:47] Seemingly, totally sincere.

[1:02:48] You don't know it's a trap at that moment.

[1:02:50] And I was like, this movie, I can't, I can't guess it.

[1:02:53] And they're so shocked.

[1:02:54] He shoots Wow and kills her.

[1:02:56] And then he shoots Claudio and hits him in the ass.

[1:03:00] And he, Claudio manages to escape

[1:03:02] only to eventually be beaten up by his own mom.

[1:03:05] Well, we'll get back to, of course,

[1:03:07] the most important thing, Roman's reaction again,

[1:03:09] in a moment.

[1:03:10] To John Boyd's boner, yeah.

[1:03:12] Or alleged boner.

[1:03:13] He, interesting thing to me is like,

[1:03:15] this is a world where guns exist.

[1:03:17] Because we saw Adam Driver get shot in the head.

[1:03:20] So he made a real choice.

[1:03:22] I'm going to kill these people with a crossbow

[1:03:24] so I can do this boner bit.

[1:03:26] You know, like.

[1:03:27] You think a gun wouldn't have been able

[1:03:29] to make enough of a tent in the streets?

[1:03:31] I mean, he's a prideful man.

[1:03:33] No, that's true.

[1:03:34] So.

[1:03:35] I think there is a, my guess is.

[1:03:37] The theatricality of it though is.

[1:03:38] I think it's the theatricality.

[1:03:39] I think my guess is he needed a way

[1:03:41] for Claudio to survive and escape.

[1:03:43] And an arrow to the butt is a classic slapstick way

[1:03:46] to get somebody to leave a room.

[1:03:48] But also, as we're recording this

[1:03:51] before our Caddyshack 2 flop TV episode.

[1:03:53] A movie which also includes somebody

[1:03:55] getting hit in the butt with an arrow.

[1:03:56] But.

[1:03:57] Somebody, find out on Saturday.

[1:04:00] I mean, find out on Saturday before.

[1:04:02] Before this episode comes out.

[1:04:04] But there's also a, I assume.

[1:04:06] I wonder if there's something he's playing off of.

[1:04:08] Some either ancient thing or some story he knows

[1:04:10] that involves an arrow that he's referencing.

[1:04:14] Since there's so many references in this movie

[1:04:16] to other things that are floating around

[1:04:17] in Francis Ford Coppola's head.

[1:04:19] Yeah, that's the problem with this movie for me.

[1:04:21] Well, one of the many problems.

[1:04:22] But I'm apparently an atypical man

[1:04:26] in that I think of the Roman Empire almost never.

[1:04:29] So I don't have the background in history

[1:04:33] that I would need to understand all of the.

[1:04:35] What about their like turtle formation

[1:04:37] where they lock all their shields together?

[1:04:38] You don't ever think about that?

[1:04:41] I'm thinking about it now.

[1:04:42] It's pretty cool.

[1:04:43] They look like a turtle, but with spheres.

[1:04:45] Dan, how often do you think about the Civil War?

[1:04:46] Because that's the other thing I feel

[1:04:47] like American men think about a lot.

[1:04:50] Rarely.

[1:04:51] I think about.

[1:04:53] Do you think about ghoulies going to college a lot?

[1:04:56] Oh, ghoulies going to college.

[1:04:57] So that's your Roman Empire.

[1:05:00] Movies about small monsters.

[1:05:02] Ghoulies and gremlins and munchies.

[1:05:05] Yeah, Frankie Frico.

[1:05:06] Available on VOD right now.

[1:05:08] Some stealth marketing for Frankie Frico right there.

[1:05:11] Featuring the voices of the blockbusters.

[1:05:12] It's pretty open.

[1:05:14] To answer your question, Elliot,

[1:05:15] when this happened in the movie theater,

[1:05:17] it was when Audrey Plaza got shot, actually,

[1:05:21] where I was like, oh!

[1:05:23] I was like, all right!

[1:05:24] Something's happening.

[1:05:26] I was kind of delighted,

[1:05:27] but it was the real classic,

[1:05:30] just this was so different and shocking.

[1:05:32] I mean, when Caesar got shot in the face,

[1:05:35] that was a little shocking

[1:05:36] because it had a real pop sound,

[1:05:38] like a Godfather movie pop.

[1:05:40] Like a real, I was like, oh, I remember that guy.

[1:05:45] I like that guy's movies.

[1:05:45] Yeah, I mean, the guy who directed

[1:05:47] maybe the greatest person being shot in the head scene

[1:05:49] in any movie ever made, that whole sequence.

[1:05:52] Totally, but the-

[1:05:53] And then the second greatest guy

[1:05:55] being shot in the head moment

[1:05:56] when Mo Green gets killed.

[1:05:58] The best.

[1:05:59] At the end of the same movie.

[1:05:59] He's really good at shooting people in faces.

[1:06:02] And he was, in 1972.

[1:06:03] It's kind of wasted in this movie, to tell you the truth.

[1:06:06] But that was a moment of delight

[1:06:09] just because of the shocking violence.

[1:06:11] I had no idea that that was what was about to happen.

[1:06:14] So it was kind of like, oh, right, this thing's a lie.

[1:06:15] But Tim talking about his boner just left you cold.

[1:06:18] Well, no, I mean, I think the boner part was like comet.

[1:06:22] It really happens kind of all at once.

[1:06:24] There's not a lot of time in between,

[1:06:26] so I didn't have processing time.

[1:06:27] Yeah, I was taking a big slurp of my soda

[1:06:29] and just spit it all over everyone.

[1:06:31] Speaking of fearing missing this,

[1:06:33] I knew that there was this line.

[1:06:35] All I'd heard about was this line,

[1:06:37] about how John Foy had this great line.

[1:06:39] And the movie is very long.

[1:06:41] Yeah.

[1:06:42] Well, it's not that long, but it feels long.

[1:06:44] It's like about two hours, a little less than 2.20.

[1:06:47] Yeah, okay, it's longer than, to my mind,

[1:06:52] the ideal length of a movie,

[1:06:53] which is less than two hours.

[1:06:56] It's longer than the first movies.

[1:06:58] It's longer, the important thing is,

[1:07:00] it's longer than my bladder can stand.

[1:07:02] So all through this movie, I was like,

[1:07:05] I gotta wait out for this John Voight line.

[1:07:07] And then I finally, I'm in physical pain.

[1:07:11] I have to leave the theater.

[1:07:13] Were you pinching it with your?

[1:07:14] It's not, no.

[1:07:16] You were literally pinching your urethra shut

[1:07:18] with your fingers?

[1:07:19] Yeah, I was pinching my urethra shut.

[1:07:20] Like you're trying to control a fire hose?

[1:07:22] I had to pee so badly.

[1:07:23] I was hurting.

[1:07:25] Roman is really rethinking dropping this into 99 CFV.

[1:07:29] I thought to myself, surely, surely,

[1:07:32] it will not happen at this exact moment.

[1:07:35] If I run to the restroom, I will not miss this iconic line.

[1:07:38] And of course, it's exactly when this happens.

[1:07:41] Oh no.

[1:07:42] And then you came back

[1:07:42] and the audience was rolling on the floor laughing.

[1:07:44] Well, I mean, fortunately.

[1:07:46] They were cheering, firing guns into the air,

[1:07:48] singing all that.

[1:07:49] So I looked up the line and fortunately,

[1:07:51] someone had put most of the scene on TikTok,

[1:07:54] not the Boner line.

[1:07:58] I saw the rest of the scenes that I had missed.

[1:08:00] Leaving a lot of gold on the table.

[1:08:02] Well, then in the description, it was like,

[1:08:04] like, dude, right before this,

[1:08:06] the guy said this line about his Boner.

[1:08:08] Because apparently, like, they whipped out their phone.

[1:08:13] They're like, oh man, I missed the key point,

[1:08:14] but something else crazy has gotta happen with this setup.

[1:08:18] Because the other thing is,

[1:08:19] it's not like it's an,

[1:08:20] it's not a funny line in and of itself.

[1:08:22] What is funny is that it is appearing

[1:08:23] in this otherwise serious-minded allegorical movie

[1:08:27] set by Jon Voight in a scene

[1:08:30] near what you have to assume is the climax of the film.

[1:08:32] It is such a, it's such a,

[1:08:34] there's something about how

[1:08:36] it is the least eloquent thing

[1:08:38] I think a character has said

[1:08:40] in any movie I've seen in years.

[1:08:43] Yeah.

[1:08:44] Yeah, what a performance.

[1:08:45] Okay, so as we said,

[1:08:48] Crassus gets his revenge.

[1:08:51] The riots are running wild around New Rome.

[1:08:55] Caesar appears as like a hologram or something,

[1:08:58] and he gives this speech

[1:09:00] talking about time and things like that,

[1:09:04] and calms everybody down,

[1:09:06] and shows visions of his utopia.

[1:09:09] Is that correct?

[1:09:10] Is that what happened?

[1:09:11] Yes, this scene, so this is the classic.

[1:09:13] The man of genius comes out,

[1:09:15] and he gives a speech that enthralls the crowd

[1:09:17] and calms their passions and wins them to side,

[1:09:19] and the speech he gives is so,

[1:09:22] it's just such vaporware.

[1:09:23] It's such empty, conceptual nonsense,

[1:09:26] and it does not speak to any of the actual needs

[1:09:30] that these people have shown up to this point,

[1:09:32] and why they're reacting.

[1:09:33] It's like, say what you will about Donald Trump,

[1:09:36] the terrible, terrible person,

[1:09:37] just an evil, bad man,

[1:09:39] but when he speaks,

[1:09:40] he is directly reacting to the needs he feels

[1:09:43] in the audience members that he is talking to,

[1:09:45] the ones he wants to appeal to,

[1:09:47] whereas Adam Driver, when he's giving the speech,

[1:09:49] I'm like, I don't even know.

[1:09:51] I don't know who you're,

[1:09:52] I don't know who you're winning over with what with this,

[1:09:54] and so to see the audience kind of,

[1:09:56] the crowd be like, you're right, you're right,

[1:09:58] what a true leader.

[1:09:59] Thank you, guys.

[1:10:00] Yeah.

[1:10:01] As an audience member in the theater, I was like, I don't understand what he's saying.

[1:10:03] Like, this doesn't mean anything to me.

[1:10:05] And this is another part where I'm just like, so I'm so out with this movie where it's like,

[1:10:10] where it's like, it really tries to have it both ways.

[1:10:14] Like it, it's has great contempt for almost all the rich people, which is fine.

[1:10:19] Like you can hate all the rich people all you want.

[1:10:22] The job creators from it.

[1:10:23] Crassus totally sucks and all the Crassus family sucks.

[1:10:27] Obviously it has this exception for Caesar because it was sort of genius.

[1:10:32] And what it rests on is this idea that you have to serve the people, give the people

[1:10:36] what they need, but it has complete contempt for the people.

[1:10:40] They're just this dumb mass of people that follow Claudio or they're this dumb mass of

[1:10:45] people that are just like wooed by nonsense language.

[1:10:49] I mean, there's no actual common people represented at all in the movie.

[1:10:54] There's no, the only characters we see who come close to being actual on the ground people

[1:10:58] are that one guy who plays the tuba in the marching band in that one scene.

[1:11:02] And the kid who shoots Caesar in the face, I guess, but you're right.

[1:11:07] There's no like, there's no ordinary citizen point of view ever presented in this a movie

[1:11:13] where you have to assume hundreds, if not thousands of people are killed by a falling

[1:11:18] satellite that devastates the city.

[1:11:20] And that is, and that's like, I just, I just watched life force recently and that's a movie

[1:11:24] that about a, about a space vampire, but a nude space vampire that sucks the life out

[1:11:29] of people.

[1:11:30] And that showed more, more feeling for the ordinary everyday English person than this

[1:11:34] movie shows for the people of new Rome, you know, it's ostensible ideas are about like

[1:11:38] serving people in the public and how to make a society and, and society is completely unrepresented

[1:11:43] in any realistic or meaningful way.

[1:11:45] They're all just, um, they're all really just pawns who are like dumb asses who follow

[1:11:49] Claudio or sort of dumb asses that are wooed by nonsense language.

[1:11:54] It's just like, it's, it's weird.

[1:11:56] Like I, I totally get that.

[1:11:57] You can have Shakespeare plays that are all about Kings and shit.

[1:11:59] I, you know, that's fine.

[1:12:01] Like you don't, the commoner has to be represented in every tragedies and there was Kings and

[1:12:06] shit.

[1:12:07] I'm so desperately trying to think of what Shakespeare title I can turn into a pun about

[1:12:12] another word for shit, but, but it's just, it's no, that doesn't work, but Kings, Kings

[1:12:19] smears.

[1:12:20] Oh God.

[1:12:21] Pretty well.

[1:12:22] Yeah.

[1:12:23] Yeah.

[1:12:24] Toilets and Cressida.

[1:12:25] Does that work?

[1:12:26] Yeah.

[1:12:27] Why did we go down this road?

[1:12:28] All the roads.

[1:12:29] Okay.

[1:12:30] Speaking of roads.

[1:12:31] Uh, so Caesar promises these magical floating, glowing robes that are all like the rainbow

[1:12:35] road and super Mario, um, Claudio's mob turns on him.

[1:12:39] Uh, Crassus, uh, is overcome by the glory of, uh, of Caesar's vision.

[1:12:46] So he leaves all of his riches to Caesar Catalina.

[1:12:50] Uh, so that's going to allow him to, to build this utopia mayor Cicero and the fan and his

[1:12:57] family join, uh, join Caesar on this voyage.

[1:13:01] Uh, they stand upon this glowing bridge.

[1:13:04] Uh, people are all very excited.

[1:13:06] They're celebrating.

[1:13:07] Uh, and he manages to stop time for everyone except for little baby Caesar and Julian Caesar's

[1:13:15] baby.

[1:13:16] And let's say that this is a very strange looking shot to this is shot from below.

[1:13:19] They're all like standing on glass or something like shooting through it.

[1:13:23] And, and, uh, there's like green screen behind them.

[1:13:27] This is also, this is such an upsetting moment.

[1:13:29] I think it's supposed to be a moment of like, it's hope for the future, like this, this,

[1:13:33] this ability to exist outside of time and be a creative genius is now in their child

[1:13:38] as well.

[1:13:39] But it's like, time is stopped except for this baby.

[1:13:41] Who's going to feed this baby?

[1:13:42] Like who's going to unstop time?

[1:13:45] Not since under the skin.

[1:13:46] Have I been more worried about an onscreen child who's being abandoned in front of me,

[1:13:50] but the baby is the one stopping time, right?

[1:13:53] Maybe it must be because she's the ones moving and everyone.

[1:13:57] But I thought she, but I thought doesn't Julia say to tell Caesar to stop time.

[1:14:01] Maybe I'm, maybe I'm misremembering it.

[1:14:02] I don't know.

[1:14:03] But then they're frozen.

[1:14:04] Like, I mean, I think she does, but it doesn't, it's the baby that doesn't know what she's

[1:14:07] doing.

[1:14:08] It's very, it's very upsetting to me.

[1:14:09] It's a very upsetting in the movie.

[1:14:11] The feeling I get is that they're leaving the future for the next generation for the

[1:14:15] sequel.

[1:14:16] Megalopolis to babyopolis.

[1:14:17] My notes then say pledge allegiance.

[1:14:19] Did something happen after this?

[1:14:21] Was there like a speech or something?

[1:14:23] There's a title card and I think it's the narration, the narration read by a children.

[1:14:28] Yeah.

[1:14:29] Oh yeah.

[1:14:30] And it's like, we pledge allegiance like to the human race or something like that.

[1:14:34] I pulled this up in front of me because I wanted to make sure we had it meant so much

[1:14:37] that you, you printed it out and laminated it up on the wall.

[1:14:41] I pledge allegiance to our human family and to all the species that we protect one earth

[1:14:46] indivisible with long life education and justice for all is what the kids say.

[1:14:52] So stick that on a placard in front of your house, uh, for the next election values in

[1:14:57] this house.

[1:14:58] Yeah.

[1:15:00] Look, I, I, I, the problem with that is that it comes to the end of Megalopolis.

[1:15:05] I do like the idea of a pledge that is not a nationalistic sort of just like we can all

[1:15:13] stand behind the, the values of the human race and everybody getting justice and it's,

[1:15:19] it doesn't fit with this movie, which isn't really, it's a real, it's a real Robert Moses

[1:15:24] viewpoint movie where it's like the people don't know what they want.

[1:15:26] The people are sheep.

[1:15:27] They have to be shown by a genius what is best for them and someone needs to make the

[1:15:32] decision.

[1:15:33] It is a movie that I think is the person making it thinks they're making a pro democracy,

[1:15:39] pro equality, justice movie, but they are making a essentially in many ways a fascist

[1:15:43] movie about because there is one man who understands and he needs to take control and you should

[1:15:48] not question him and eat no matter what he does.

[1:15:51] And I'm just, and maybe I'm just mad because I realized I should have said toilets and

[1:15:54] Andronicus because it is a poem, right?

[1:15:57] Like it's not a play.

[1:15:58] It's a play.

[1:15:59] What am I thinking?

[1:16:00] What's that?

[1:16:01] What's his epic poem?

[1:16:02] Then?

[1:16:03] Um, I don't know.

[1:16:04] I, I, I'm less familiar with viewers, right?

[1:16:05] Shakespeare.

[1:16:06] If you're listening right in and tell us totally, you want to have English majors.

[1:16:07] Um, yeah.

[1:16:08] I mean, we're getting into the final judgment sort of area, but like that's, that's, there's

[1:16:09] much that is striking about this movie.

[1:16:10] There are parts of it that sort of took me sort of in spite of myself, but you're right.

[1:16:29] I was thinking of the poem by Chaucer and then Shakespeare playing it.

[1:16:32] That's right.

[1:16:33] Yeah.

[1:16:34] Yeah.

[1:16:35] But, uh, so toilets and Cressida work.

[1:16:36] Thank you.

[1:16:37] Okay.

[1:16:38] Let me just amend the score.

[1:16:40] Um, on further review, the call against toilets and Cressida has been overturned, uh, the,

[1:16:48] you've crystallized something for me, Elliot, like the only thing that makes sense to me

[1:16:52] about this movie as a statement, the only way I could read this is Francis Ford Coppola

[1:16:58] being like, geniuses are good and above everyone.

[1:17:02] And they shouldn't be questioned.

[1:17:04] And maybe I'm one, uh, because maybe from the record when he's talking, yeah, politically

[1:17:11] it's all over the place.

[1:17:13] It doesn't make any sense.

[1:17:14] It's not staking out any particular, uh, understandable, uh, philosophy.

[1:17:19] It's just a bunch of stuff that happened.

[1:17:23] So instead of a fable, it should say a bunch of megalopolis, a bunch of stuff that happened,

[1:17:27] which is literally like the fifth chapter in every dog man book is called chapter five.

[1:17:31] A bunch of stuff that happened or a bunch of stuff that happened next.

[1:17:34] So maybe Francis Ford Coppola should have made that dog man movie.

[1:17:36] Um, Stuart, what do you think?

[1:17:37] Uh, dog man.

[1:17:38] Yeah.

[1:17:39] I think he should have made that movie.

[1:17:40] Is that, is that where, are those, are those the guys, the player character race you can

[1:17:45] play in riffs that have the body of a human, but like the head and some of the traits of

[1:17:49] a dog, is that, I mean, that's kind of like a, what, like a, uh, sinusophilic or kinesophilic.

[1:17:54] That's the kind of thing you see sometimes in old tales of the saints.

[1:17:57] Some of them have dog heads, but no, that's not what dog man is about.

[1:18:01] He's a police officer with a dog's head.

[1:18:02] So we should get into a book of a series of books for children if you get into our final

[1:18:08] judgments.

[1:18:09] But before we do, I just want to get started already.

[1:18:11] I want to give Stuart some plot it for, uh, how he handled that.

[1:18:15] That's cool.

[1:18:16] Anyone else want to give me a plot?

[1:18:17] It's earlier.

[1:18:18] I got all the products.

[1:18:19] No, I just, you know, I was keeping an eye on time and early on, I'm like, Oh man, we're

[1:18:25] never, this is going to be a four hour episode.

[1:18:27] But Stuart, you, uh, you got us through.

[1:18:29] You have to pass the trick.

[1:18:31] The trick is forgetting things like satellites falling on.

[1:18:35] Yeah.

[1:18:36] Um, but of course, this is where we give our final judgments.

[1:18:40] Whether we thought that Michelopolis was a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie or a movie

[1:18:45] we kind of liked.

[1:18:46] Is it a, is a movie where you get some joy out of its badness?

[1:18:50] No joy to be found in Mudville or, uh, did we actually like it a bit?

[1:18:56] I am going to say good, bad in the sense that you so rarely get something this personal

[1:19:05] and big, like I kind of, in a weird way, didn't know whether we should do this at first.

[1:19:12] Like until, you know, like we got so many people, you got to do Michelopolis.

[1:19:14] I want to hear what you say about Michelopolis.

[1:19:17] But part of me was like, well, I don't want to like take someone down for like the masses

[1:19:22] what they want.

[1:19:23] I'm a genius.

[1:19:24] I know better than they do.

[1:19:25] Well, I feel bad about like taking like a passion project down, like even if it's misbegotten,

[1:19:31] like I do appreciate the swing.

[1:19:36] Um, I don't think that this movie is successful and there's large chunks of it that are boring.

[1:19:46] But I say good, bad in the sense that like, I would not discourage anyone with any curiosity

[1:19:51] about this movie from seeing this movie, because it is quite an experience.

[1:19:55] You know, if you're interested, if you're willing to commit the time, yeah, sure.

[1:19:59] Watch it.

[1:20:00] there's going to be some stuff in it that's going to have you grasping your

[1:20:03] head and shaking your fist to the heavens.

[1:20:06] So that's what I say.

[1:20:07] So what do you think?

[1:20:10] Yeah, I mean, I feel I have less of an issue with like targeting passion

[1:20:15] projects because I feel like passion projects often suffer from a certain

[1:20:18] amount of like great man syndrome and delusion of genius.

[1:20:24] But I don't know.

[1:20:25] I feel like this movie would fall somewhere in the like between a good

[1:20:29] bad movie and almost like there's parts of it that are a movie.

[1:20:33] I kind of like I mean, it's I feel like time is going to be kinder to

[1:20:38] this than at least current critics are.

[1:20:40] I feel like it reminds me in a lot of ways of either a Neil Breen movie

[1:20:45] or if Neil Breen had directed the Star Wars prequels because it feels

[1:20:50] a lot like those movies like they're they're like it at least it doesn't

[1:20:55] feel like mass-produced garbage, but it is still kind of like garbage.

[1:20:59] So I guess that's not a direct answer, but like I'm glad I'm glad this

[1:21:06] movie exists and I feel like if you're interested in it, you should check

[1:21:09] it out.

[1:21:10] It's got it's a mess.

[1:21:10] I feel similar to Stewart.

[1:21:13] It's a I think it's good bad with it.

[1:21:15] There's some things about it that I like that are enough to make it a

[1:21:18] movie.

[1:21:19] I am glad to have seen, you know, even if I'm I'm never going to watch

[1:21:23] it again probably and I feel I think you're right.

[1:21:25] That was your kid.

[1:21:25] Well, eventually eventually dad.

[1:21:28] Can we watch Megalopolis?

[1:21:29] You're not ready yet.

[1:21:30] You wouldn't understand me while I'm trying to get them to watch

[1:21:32] Metropolis another kind of politically mushy movie set in the city of

[1:21:36] the future and they have no interest even though it's that's a great

[1:21:39] movie, but they there's I think the future film critics will look back

[1:21:43] on it knowing what it is and being able to pick out the few kind of

[1:21:47] pearls that are in the morass of sludge rather than us looking at it

[1:21:52] now expecting something different than it is, which is a what we're

[1:21:56] thinking is a coherent story with interesting characters and instead

[1:22:00] future generations will be like well, that was a fascinating capstone

[1:22:05] to Francis Ford Coppola's career.

[1:22:07] And now we can look the same way that I just finished reading Patrick

[1:22:11] McGilligan's biography of Alfred Hitchcock and in that he's able to

[1:22:14] treat Hitchcock's later movies, which at the time were considered

[1:22:17] abysmal and which are certainly not among his best but now you can

[1:22:22] look at them and be like, here's the good things in them.

[1:22:23] Here's the not so good things in them.

[1:22:25] I think it'll be kind of like that.

[1:22:26] But at the moment, it's kind of nice to watch this movie now in a

[1:22:28] moment when you're it's rare that I see a movie that has this level

[1:22:31] of production behind it and this level of artistic vision behind it

[1:22:35] where I'm like what like what is he doing?

[1:22:38] Like what why is he doing that like and there's that's something I

[1:22:41] like you're saying Stuart in an era of mass-produced, you know casinos

[1:22:45] made for the people by the mayor, you know, that's something to be at

[1:22:49] least glad that someone's willing to put their the the shares they

[1:22:54] sold in their winery where their mouth is, you know, Roman.

[1:22:56] What do you think?

[1:22:57] You loved it, right?

[1:22:59] I think that you know, what is it like 15 years of watching bad movie

[1:23:03] says rotted y'all's brain because this is a bad bad movie.

[1:23:12] Roman, I've seen things you couldn't imagine, crap movies glittering

[1:23:15] off the shoulder of here's the thing.

[1:23:19] I think this is a bad bad movie and and I think that if you compare

[1:23:22] it to other this is a this is like a false premise of like it is

[1:23:28] interesting.

[1:23:28] Whereas all like superhero movies are boring at least this thing

[1:23:31] exists and it has some kind of vision whatever but that is not what

[1:23:35] you are what this thing is occupying space of it is occupying the

[1:23:38] space of like take time to stare at a loved one's face for two hours

[1:23:43] or something like that.

[1:23:44] That's the way you think you're never going to be able to do that.

[1:23:49] That's like literally do anything and learn a language.

[1:23:52] I mean, there are better ways to use you that the limited time you

[1:23:58] have on Earth for sure.

[1:23:59] Yeah.

[1:24:00] I mean, it's just if it if it had this vision and was messy and was

[1:24:05] chaotic and and and whatever but it's just like as you dig into the

[1:24:09] ideas of the of the movie.

[1:24:11] I think those ideas are bad and dangerous ideas like I think they

[1:24:15] actually are pernicious like like that make the world a worse place.

[1:24:20] That's why I like I kind of I was I was almost wooed by this idea of

[1:24:23] like the passion project that you don't want to take on and criticize

[1:24:26] except for that the passion project is kind of this weird like

[1:24:31] defensive great man genius that the that this this idea of this this

[1:24:36] fake populism of like caring about the people and that that even the

[1:24:39] movie cares about people and serving people but then ignores them

[1:24:43] ignores their needs like that.

[1:24:45] There's this this is like phony credit like kind of me to crisis in

[1:24:50] the middle of this thing.

[1:24:51] That's completely dashed by like facts that made that exonerate this

[1:24:55] man and all that sort of stuff like if it was if if the underlying

[1:25:00] core of this was was sort of more benign or innocuous.

[1:25:04] I would have more charity towards its big swings, but I think that

[1:25:09] it actually has terrible ideas that it's core like I feel like that

[1:25:14] almost makes it more interesting.

[1:25:17] I got that.

[1:25:18] Yeah, and so like if you're like again, you're worried that this

[1:25:20] movie is going to sway people.

[1:25:21] Yeah, I mean, I don't think it is either but I just feel like I feel

[1:25:24] like it could it should be held accountable for for its dumbness,

[1:25:29] you know, like I would argue it does because he like spent so much

[1:25:33] of his money for a huge flop that is being publicly pillory.

[1:25:37] He owned himself, but you know, but you know, and I know this too

[1:25:41] because because we went we're all like I'm a little older than you

[1:25:44] guys are but like you've watched right but thank you but like you've

[1:25:51] watched like really misguided Millennials and Gen Z resurrect the

[1:25:57] the Star Wars prequel trilogy and talk about its secret genius and

[1:26:02] you're like, no, you don't understand.

[1:26:03] We were there is fucking awful.

[1:26:05] Like you have to trust this on this.

[1:26:07] The book is closed on that matter and you're right.

[1:26:12] This is going to be resurrected and people are going to find things

[1:26:15] in it and and it's just going to be just that's going to be such an

[1:26:20] irritating process to witness.

[1:26:21] Yeah in 20 years because because it truly is like of the moment just

[1:26:26] to take it in the moment.

[1:26:28] It is dealing with these ideas of you know, populism and politics

[1:26:32] and you know, like and greatness and being sort of, you know, great

[1:26:39] men being sort of like somehow thwarted in their in their great,

[1:26:42] you know, like what's so crazy about the movie is like with all

[1:26:45] this crazy stuff that happens like, you know, everything is just

[1:26:49] given to Caesar like he you know, he has this magic particle that

[1:26:54] Heals his face like the richest man in the world gives him all the

[1:26:58] money needs to do his thing a satellite clears the land for him

[1:27:02] to build his thing.

[1:27:04] It's just like it is it is full like this moment of like billionaires

[1:27:10] and so-called geniuses and bad populism and and pretending to

[1:27:14] serve people like this.

[1:27:15] These are bad ideas to play with poorly right now.

[1:27:19] And then that's that's that's what I think that's the part that

[1:27:22] really like incenses me about it as a movie.

[1:27:25] So you've given the passionate swaying the masses speech that the

[1:27:30] movie fails.

[1:27:30] Yeah, that's fair.

[1:27:32] I'm one of the dumb masses.

[1:27:33] I want to follow this guy tell me about your utopia Roman, but I

[1:27:39] want it to be so much better like I can deal with all the nonsense

[1:27:43] of it.

[1:27:43] In fact, one of the things I think it's the most of the miracle

[1:27:46] of this movie is that I think Adam driver at the center of this

[1:27:50] comes out pretty unscathed.

[1:27:52] Yeah, he is.

[1:27:53] He commits to this nonsense in this way.

[1:27:57] That is almost it.

[1:27:59] I just don't even know how he does it like, you know, he he sounds

[1:28:03] like he just leans into it, but he's not hammy.

[1:28:06] It's like that's the part where I'm like, I liked him more coming

[1:28:10] out of this movie than then not not than I ever have but like it

[1:28:13] just added to my esteem of him.

[1:28:15] Well, it's something that we see a lot in the movies on the podcast

[1:28:18] is that when you are an actor who's in a movie that doesn't make

[1:28:20] sense or is not good, you never win points by being openly disdainful

[1:28:26] of the movie or by acting like, you know, it is like I think one

[1:28:30] of things that helps with them drivers performance is when he's

[1:28:31] saying nonsense or he's doing this doesn't make sense.

[1:28:34] He is still acting as if the things that he's doing make sense and

[1:28:38] are rational and coherent and I think you're right.

[1:28:41] He comes out of it.

[1:28:42] I mean, I feel like there's there's most of the main performance

[1:28:45] is coming out pretty well, you know, they're goofy and stuff, but

[1:28:48] I'm just surprised like how he comes out like he there's a lesson

[1:28:51] in here with like watching him and maybe that's worth watching

[1:28:53] which is like even in life or in a movie or as a piece of art or

[1:28:57] whatever just lean in and do the thing you will be cooler if you

[1:29:01] just do it rather than try to resist.

[1:29:03] Yeah.

[1:29:03] Well, that's also like from what I understand from hearing people

[1:29:06] talk about it.

[1:29:07] Like he had a much better sort of experience on the movie because

[1:29:11] he leaned into the the working process of the movie and I understand

[1:29:14] like, you know, if you don't want to lean into that, that's fine

[1:29:18] because it sounds like this was not a good working experience for

[1:29:22] a lot of people.

[1:29:23] If you don't want to be like told to do something different every

[1:29:26] single moment in the movie plus suddenly kiss you or harass.

[1:29:28] Yeah.

[1:29:29] Yeah, so I'm not I'm not necessarily making an argument to ignore

[1:29:32] that but I am saying that he seemed to embrace like, okay, like

[1:29:38] as an artistic thing, I'm going to roll with this and be like

[1:29:41] collaborative and like really like commit to it.

[1:29:44] And that's probably part of why he does come out feeling like he

[1:29:49] I mean, we also I don't think we need to get into it, but I'm sure

[1:29:51] there's also an element of Francis Ford Coppola probably treating

[1:29:53] him better than he treated.

[1:29:54] Yeah other people, you know, because he's the star that he identifies

[1:29:57] with in the movie, you know, sure.

[1:30:00] He loved 65, so he saw that and he was like,

[1:30:03] you were shooting dinosaurs.

[1:30:05] No, no, Francis, those weren't real dinosaurs.

[1:30:07] He's like, I saw that movie you made

[1:30:08] where you got away from that comet

[1:30:10] that hit the earth with the dinosaurs.

[1:30:11] So I'm having a satellite hit the city.

[1:30:13] Let's see if he can get away from that one.

[1:30:14] And then Francis Krupa was watching his own movie

[1:30:16] and he's like, son of a bitch did it again.

[1:30:17] He got away from another thing falling out of the sky.

[1:30:19] And Adam Driver's like, Francis, you made this movie.

[1:30:24] Like, you knew it was gonna happen.

[1:30:25] I don't think so.

[1:30:27] I don't think so.

[1:30:27] I don't know how you did it.

[1:30:29] It doesn't seem like my movie.

[1:30:32] Yeah, I mean, my movies are good.

[1:30:34] This one, I don't know.

[1:30:35] I mean, what if it was like Severance

[1:30:36] where when he went to set,

[1:30:37] he had a different personality than when he left set?

[1:30:39] Probably, it would be.

[1:30:41] I have one more thought about Francis Ford Coppola here.

[1:30:44] And that is, I think this blank slate that he's given here

[1:30:48] is his real downfall.

[1:30:49] It's like one of the great things about Francis Ford Coppola

[1:30:52] I think when he hits is he's more of a documentarian

[1:30:56] than a ground up filmmaker.

[1:30:58] Like the Conversation is a movie I love.

[1:31:00] And it's a movie that kind of doesn't have an ending,

[1:31:02] but it's just sort of like it's assembled in a way

[1:31:05] by different performances

[1:31:07] and having him like surface meaning through this.

[1:31:10] And I think that he...

[1:31:13] And the reason why I like, you know, kind of like,

[1:31:15] like even Apocalypse Now,

[1:31:16] one of the reason why it works

[1:31:17] is like he's just there documenting, documenting,

[1:31:20] and then he turns it into a thing.

[1:31:21] But if he has a green screen capability

[1:31:23] and he's writing from the ground up,

[1:31:26] he's like, he's a good writer of other of...

[1:31:29] He's a good writer of taking things that he's filmed

[1:31:32] and assembling into things that matter

[1:31:35] and have meaning and are great.

[1:31:37] But if he's starting from a tabula rasa,

[1:31:40] he just doesn't have...

[1:31:42] There are no foundational good ideas here.

[1:31:46] Even like Bram Stoker's Dracula,

[1:31:48] he's operating with a book, an existing book.

[1:31:50] Yeah, he's that he's all of it.

[1:31:53] I mean, his greatest movies, aside from the Conversation,

[1:31:55] they're all adaptations of something, you know?

[1:31:57] Right.

[1:31:58] And I think you're right that his,

[1:31:59] one of his great strengths,

[1:32:00] like that opening sequence in The Godfather,

[1:32:02] the thing that, the power of it

[1:32:03] is you feel like you're there.

[1:32:05] Like you feel like you...

[1:32:05] And it feels like he just had a...

[1:32:07] He hosted an Italian wedding in the 40s

[1:32:10] and you were there, you know?

[1:32:11] I would love to see his late stage documentary.

[1:32:14] Like there's something about his mind.

[1:32:16] It's about adaptation and filming

[1:32:19] and putting stuff together and creating meaning.

[1:32:21] But the idea of him starting from zero,

[1:32:24] the reason why he's,

[1:32:25] I think he's written something that is extremely juvenile

[1:32:29] is it feels like he's writing something for the first time,

[1:32:32] but he has the ideas and calcification

[1:32:35] of his brain of an older man.

[1:32:37] And yeah, that's why it really doesn't work

[1:32:40] and why he can be great in this one area,

[1:32:43] which is this kind of like interesting narrative filmmaker

[1:32:46] of pastiche rather than this whole thing

[1:32:49] that he creates this whole cloth in white.

[1:32:50] It's a big green screen nonsense, you know?

[1:32:52] And it's clearly been through like so many drafts

[1:32:55] that I imagine that he's like,

[1:32:58] all the stuff that should be explained

[1:32:59] that we don't understand in it,

[1:33:01] like he's lived with it so long.

[1:33:03] He's like, oh, the audience knows.

[1:33:04] Like he doesn't, he no longer has respect to-

[1:33:06] They know what Megalon is.

[1:33:07] Yeah, to realize what hasn't been told to them.

[1:33:10] But anyway, this thing's a mess.

[1:33:16] That's what our opening should have been,

[1:33:17] more like Messalopolis.

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[1:35:21] To help you manage calories, maximize protein intake,

[1:35:25] avoid meat or simply eat well-balanced.

[1:35:28] Yeah, if you like that, Factor, you can have it.

[1:35:30] That's from the Flop House to you.

[1:35:32] Find comfort foods.

[1:35:34] Well, maybe pay me.

[1:35:35] I don't know, you can do that too.

[1:35:36] Comfort foods.

[1:35:37] You are paying us, Dan, for you to read this ad.

[1:35:39] Fine, yeah, I should do it.

[1:35:41] Find comfort foods like homestyle chicken and gravy

[1:35:44] and loaded mashed potato pork chops,

[1:35:46] vegan options like sweet potato and chickpea curry,

[1:35:49] and globally inspired flavors like Peruvian shrimp

[1:35:53] and red pepper cauli grits.

[1:35:55] Use your time more efficiently.

[1:35:58] It's so important during these dark months.

[1:36:00] Let Factor take shopping, prepping, cooking,

[1:36:03] and cleaning off your daily list of things to do.

[1:36:07] I've had some of these meals.

[1:36:08] They were delicious.

[1:36:09] They were convenient.

[1:36:11] I love to cook, but sometimes I love

[1:36:13] to just have a meal there ready for me,

[1:36:15] and Factor was a great way to do that.

[1:36:17] And speaking for myself, I hate to cook,

[1:36:19] and I love that Factor does the work for me.

[1:36:21] Yeah.

[1:36:22] Stay energized with America's number one

[1:36:24] ready-to-eat meal delivery service.

[1:36:26] Head to factormeals.com slash flop50

[1:36:29] and use code flop50 to get 50% off your first box

[1:36:33] and 20% off your next month.

[1:36:35] That's code flop50 at factormeals.com slash flop50

[1:36:39] to get 50% off your first box,

[1:36:41] plus 20% off your next month.

[1:36:44] While your subscription is active,

[1:36:45] Stuart, please save me with another advertisement.

[1:36:49] Yeah, we're also sponsored by Squarespace.

[1:36:53] Now, this is a particularly important one for me right now.

[1:36:56] I think I've mentioned before,

[1:36:57] but my wife and I are in the process

[1:36:58] of starting up a new business called Jiggle Studio.

[1:37:01] It's a studio gym, and part of opening up

[1:37:04] this new business involves having a web presence.

[1:37:07] If you have a small business,

[1:37:08] you know that web presence is super important.

[1:37:11] And we, and she started this process using a platform,

[1:37:16] using a product that was not Squarespace,

[1:37:18] and she had a ton of trouble.

[1:37:21] And I gotta tell ya, I was really glad

[1:37:23] that we had Squarespace there to jump onto,

[1:37:26] and it was much more easy to use.

[1:37:28] Now, one of the great things about Squarespace

[1:37:30] is that if you have a small business

[1:37:33] or you need a website for any reason,

[1:37:36] it's a lot easier to use than its competitors.

[1:37:38] And also, specifically, that it has a lot of tools

[1:37:41] out there for use on setting up a web store,

[1:37:46] taking payments, processing all that stuff.

[1:37:49] It makes it a lot easier for you than you would think,

[1:37:53] especially for someone like us,

[1:37:54] who are, let's say, not computer-savvy folks.

[1:37:58] Squarespace includes things like seamless checkout

[1:38:02] for things like credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay,

[1:38:06] and it also provides all the tools

[1:38:08] that you would need to make your website easily accessible

[1:38:12] on either the desktop or on the mobile.

[1:38:14] Everybody's on mobile these days.

[1:38:16] Ain't that the truth.

[1:38:17] So, if you're in the market for a new website,

[1:38:20] and I think you just might be, kinda like us,

[1:38:22] you wanna head over to squarespace.com for a free trial,

[1:38:26] and when you're ready to launch,

[1:38:27] go to squarespace.com slash flop to save 10%

[1:38:33] off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[1:38:36] Once again, that's squarespace.com slash flop

[1:38:41] to get 10% off your first purchase.

[1:38:44] And in addition, we also have a j-j-j-jumbotron.

[1:38:48] Jumbotron.

[1:38:50] Rad History is a history podcast,

[1:38:52] but just for things from the 80s and 90s.

[1:38:55] Search Rad History in your podcast app right now

[1:38:57] to hear Colbert writer Daniel Kibblesmith

[1:39:00] talk about Calvin and Hobbes,

[1:39:02] tech blogger John Gruber talk about the game

[1:39:05] GoldenEye 64.

[1:39:07] New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo

[1:39:10] talk about the Challenger disaster and more.

[1:39:14] The Golden Girls, Blockbuster Video,

[1:39:17] the history of the answering machine.

[1:39:19] Every week, historian Brian McCullough

[1:39:22] has another deep dive into the 80s and 90s.

[1:39:26] So search Rad History in your podcast app now.

[1:39:31] And we've got another jumbotron,

[1:39:33] this one of a little bit more personal nature

[1:39:35] than the last one.

[1:39:36] This is a message for Bryce

[1:39:38] and the message comes from Josh.

[1:39:40] And the message reads as follows.

[1:39:42] Hello, Bryce.

[1:39:43] Yes, you Bryce.

[1:39:44] Your brother Josh bought a jumbotron for your birthday.

[1:39:47] And now one of the floppers is talking directly to you.

[1:39:50] Is it blowing your mind?

[1:39:52] I bet it is.

[1:39:53] I bet you're super distracted now

[1:39:54] and you messed up that piece of steel

[1:39:56] you were cutting with a laser, whatever it is you do.

[1:39:58] Anyhoo, happy birthday.

[1:40:00] Hey, bra.

[1:40:02] What a sweet and also taunting Jumbotron.

[1:40:07] I thought it was funny when I was handing these out.

[1:40:09] I gave this to you

[1:40:10] because you could roll into the next thing,

[1:40:12] but I was like, I want to hear Elliot say bra, too.

[1:40:14] That's also part of my personal joy.

[1:40:17] Yeah, it's what I call my own brother, Nott.

[1:40:20] That's not what I really call him.

[1:40:21] You're like, hey, brosario Dawson.

[1:40:24] That's what I call him, yeah, yeah.

[1:40:25] I call him broseph of Arimathea, yeah.

[1:40:28] But hey, we got one more thing to mention.

[1:40:30] This is a Flophouse thing.

[1:40:32] You heard about it at the very top of the show

[1:40:33] and you're going to hear it about it again now.

[1:40:35] That's Flop TV.

[1:40:36] That's right.

[1:40:37] Flop TV is back.

[1:40:38] The one hour televised,

[1:40:40] by which I mean video on your computer,

[1:40:42] version of the Flophouse.

[1:40:43] It's like getting a whole TV show of the Flophouse.

[1:40:45] Every first Saturday of the month,

[1:40:47] we've been doing it from September through February.

[1:40:50] And the next one is coming up the day after we record this.

[1:40:53] So it will have happened a week ago

[1:40:55] when you hear this episode.

[1:40:58] Did you miss it?

[1:40:58] That's okay.

[1:40:59] The video for the episode is still getting up online.

[1:41:01] And if you buy a season pass or a ticket,

[1:41:03] you'll be able to watch it.

[1:41:04] So this season is all about sequels

[1:41:06] because it's our second season.

[1:41:08] Flop TV season two, the sequels.

[1:41:10] We talked about RoboCop 2.

[1:41:11] We talked about Breakin' 2.

[1:41:12] And as of the time this episode comes out,

[1:41:14] we'll have just talked about Caddyshack 2.

[1:41:16] We're doing it the first Saturday of every month

[1:41:19] at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

[1:41:21] And you can either buy tickets for individual shows.

[1:41:23] There's a favorite movie that you just love

[1:41:24] and you do not want to hear the others.

[1:41:26] Or here's my recommendation.

[1:41:28] Get a season pass.

[1:41:29] It's six episodes for the price of five.

[1:41:32] That's a little tip from Elliot.

[1:41:34] You know, you just don't tell anybody I told you that.

[1:41:36] Go to theflophouse.simpletics.com.

[1:41:39] Again, that's theflophouse.simpletics.com.

[1:41:41] And get your tickets.

[1:41:42] We got a lot of great movies coming up.

[1:41:44] We've got Highlander 2, Ski School 2,

[1:41:46] and then of course we round out the season

[1:41:48] with Ninja Turtles 2, The Secret of the Ooze.

[1:41:50] It's gonna be too wonderful.

[1:41:54] Right, guys?

[1:41:55] Too wonderful.

[1:41:58] That was like a ghost was repeating me, yeah.

[1:42:01] Let's answer a couple of questions from listeners.

[1:42:04] This one is from Nilo, last name withheld.

[1:42:07] This is from FF Coppola, uh-oh.

[1:42:10] Or perhaps Nilo, I don't know.

[1:42:11] But they write, intergalactic greetings, floppers.

[1:42:16] I have a gigantic projector built in space

[1:42:19] capable of projecting a movie onto the moon.

[1:42:21] What should I show on it?

[1:42:23] And of course, you know, the first thing

[1:42:26] that comes to mind is From the Earth to the Moon.

[1:42:29] You wanna see that moon man get a rocket in his eye.

[1:42:33] Yep.

[1:42:35] Yeah, everybody's gagging for it.

[1:42:37] Everyone wants that.

[1:42:38] Look up and be like, oh.

[1:42:39] You wanna see the biggest,

[1:42:40] finally the real moon's gonna get

[1:42:41] the just-desserts-at-the-fill moon.

[1:42:43] Finally the stand-up-and-cheering moment of the year.

[1:42:45] Well, what else?

[1:42:46] A moonfall, maybe?

[1:42:47] I don't know.

[1:42:48] I was gonna say Akira for that scene

[1:42:51] when Tetsuo blows up part of the moon.

[1:42:54] I'm gonna think about this a little more practically.

[1:42:55] We don't have sound, right?

[1:42:56] Because it's just being projected.

[1:42:57] Yeah, Akira works perfect.

[1:42:59] You have to tune your radio to a certain frequency.

[1:43:02] Oh, maybe, yeah.

[1:43:04] I'm trying to think of something

[1:43:05] that would be kind of like,

[1:43:05] that the visuals would pull all of humanity together

[1:43:08] as one shared family once it's projected on the moon.

[1:43:12] One Week by Buster Keaton.

[1:43:14] I don't know.

[1:43:15] Yeah, sure.

[1:43:16] I mean, you're basically talking about

[1:43:18] the biggest movie in the park

[1:43:19] that you can imagine for the summer time.

[1:43:21] And so it's gonna be like Toy Story.

[1:43:23] Yeah.

[1:43:24] I don't think it's gonna work.

[1:43:25] Worst things you can go with than Toy Story, yeah.

[1:43:27] No, it's gonna be some Pixar movie

[1:43:28] that you can bring all the kids to, and that's it.

[1:43:31] Well, listen, I want it to be family-friendly,

[1:43:33] because if my kids are out looking at the moon,

[1:43:34] I don't want them seeing something

[1:43:35] that they shouldn't see, yeah.

[1:43:38] Different kind of moon.

[1:43:40] What shouldn't they see?

[1:43:41] It's on the list.

[1:43:42] I mean, I don't think it's ready for Akira.

[1:43:44] Ghost goblins.

[1:43:46] Well, when are your kids gonna be ready for Akira?

[1:43:49] Daddy, daddy, why is Tetsuo expanding

[1:43:52] into a techno-organic mass?

[1:43:56] I mean, why is he crushing Kaori

[1:43:58] when he's trying to love her?

[1:44:00] One of these crimes of the future.

[1:44:03] I saw a Paris-

[1:44:04] So, Dan, that's your vote is crimes of the future.

[1:44:07] What were you saying, Roman?

[1:44:08] Sorry.

[1:44:09] I said, I saw Paris is burning in Lincoln Center outside,

[1:44:12] and that was a lovely experience.

[1:44:14] So, you know, that could be one that you could do.

[1:44:16] That'd be great at the movie, yeah.

[1:44:18] I like it.

[1:44:19] This second and final letter is from Anne-Marie,

[1:44:24] who writes, hey, y'all, and this is clearly in response

[1:44:27] to our recent break-in to Flop TV episode we had.

[1:44:35] Tickets and season tickets available now

[1:44:36] for Flop TV season two.

[1:44:38] I wanted to add an additional theory

[1:44:39] about how someone could dance on the ceiling.

[1:44:42] A few years ago, I played dancing on the ceiling

[1:44:45] for my then four-year-old niece,

[1:44:47] and she said it was her favorite song.

[1:44:49] I showed her the music video,

[1:44:50] and she kept asking, how did he do that?

[1:44:53] And then posited that he had sticky stuff on the ceiling

[1:44:56] so he could stick to it like a bug.

[1:44:59] So, there's another-

[1:45:00] Yeah, that's how bugs stick to things.

[1:45:02] Alternative-

[1:45:03] That's a good theory.

[1:45:03] Well, it's not really-

[1:45:04] Ceiling dancing.

[1:45:05] I don't think it's really how they stick to stuff.

[1:45:06] That's how it works in Inception, too, right?

[1:45:08] Is Chrissy Nolan just smeared sticky stuff

[1:45:12] all over the ceiling,

[1:45:13] and Joseph Gordon-Levitt bounced off of it?

[1:45:17] Yep.

[1:45:19] So-

[1:45:19] So, was there a question there, Dan?

[1:45:20] No.

[1:45:21] No, it was just sharing an idea?

[1:45:22] This is a charming tale of a child's imagination.

[1:45:25] Sort of like, you know, I don't know, E.T.?

[1:45:29] I guess it's not imagination,

[1:45:30] but it sparks imagination.

[1:45:32] Anyway-

[1:45:33] I mean, I love, old special effects are great.

[1:45:35] The greatest special effect of all time

[1:45:36] is Kermit riding a bike.

[1:45:37] It'll never be beaten.

[1:45:39] It'll be the greatest.

[1:45:40] Like, that's the thing that's wowed me the most

[1:45:43] for all of my life.

[1:45:44] There's also a scene,

[1:45:44] where a woman goes from nice looking

[1:45:46] to evil looking in camera

[1:45:48] in a movie called Sh, the Octopus,

[1:45:50] in a way that uses makeup

[1:45:52] that only shows up in certain colors of light,

[1:45:54] and they had to gel their makeup.

[1:45:55] Oh, yeah, oh, that's cool.

[1:45:56] And that effect, it's from a movie from the 30s,

[1:45:58] and the effect looks amazing.

[1:45:59] Yeah, I still think the best special effect

[1:46:02] is that scene where the guy falls over

[1:46:04] in the movie The Gate,

[1:46:05] and he turns into a bunch of little guys.

[1:46:07] Yeah, that's pretty good.

[1:46:08] Yeah, that's pretty good.

[1:46:09] That's pretty amazing.

[1:46:10] And also, there's the moment in Throne of Blood

[1:46:12] when he gets an arrow through the neck,

[1:46:14] and I'm always like, did they really kill him?

[1:46:16] No.

[1:46:21] On that note of credulity, let's move on.

[1:46:23] Actually, Elliot, I just checked.

[1:46:25] Tashir Mifune's dead.

[1:46:27] Oh, no.

[1:46:28] No, they did it.

[1:46:28] Officer, arrest Akira Kurosawa.

[1:46:31] We've resolved the cold case.

[1:46:33] Let us move on to our final segment,

[1:46:36] our final regular segment of the show,

[1:46:38] which is Red Moon Day.

[1:46:39] Dan, I'm looking as you scan through your letterbox.

[1:46:40] I see Dick's the musical on there.

[1:46:42] That scene with Nathan Lane spitting lunch meat

[1:46:46] on those puppets, isn't that great?

[1:46:48] I appreciate the spirit of Dick's the musical.

[1:46:52] I didn't enjoy it as much as I think you did.

[1:46:55] So why are you recommending it, Dan?

[1:46:56] I'm not.

[1:46:57] This is, again, I haven't even introduced the segment,

[1:46:59] which is-

[1:47:00] I'm just looking over Dan's shoulders

[1:47:01] as he scrolls through the letterbox.

[1:47:02] We're recommending movies that we have seen of late

[1:47:06] or just like that might be a better use of your time

[1:47:11] than, say, Megalopolis, take Roman's advice,

[1:47:14] either stare at your loved one's face

[1:47:15] or watch one of these.

[1:47:16] Just stare at their face for the full runtime

[1:47:18] of Megalopolis, which is like two hours and 18 minutes.

[1:47:20] They'll be like, what are you doing?

[1:47:22] Can you stop that?

[1:47:24] Is Megalopolis showing on my face?

[1:47:29] I recently, I just rewatched Lost Highway,

[1:47:33] which I hadn't seen since around the time it was new,

[1:47:36] David Lynch's Lost Highway.

[1:47:38] And because I'd seen it when it was new,

[1:47:42] it kind of had never struck me like,

[1:47:44] oh, how much this is a dry run for Mulholland Drive,

[1:47:49] which is not to say it's not valuable in its own right,

[1:47:51] but it's like, oh, okay,

[1:47:52] like you're revisiting so many of the themes

[1:47:55] and I didn't even think about that,

[1:47:57] of sort of, Lynch's films,

[1:48:01] I think it's a bad idea to try and just decode them,

[1:48:04] but if you're gonna go down that road,

[1:48:06] there's a lot about sort of-

[1:48:07] Is that road Mulholland Drive?

[1:48:09] Yeah.

[1:48:10] Disassociation after sort of a horrible event,

[1:48:15] trying to make sense of your life

[1:48:17] through these sort of fantasies.

[1:48:19] Lost Highway was his first trip down that Lost Highway

[1:48:23] to Mulholland Drive.

[1:48:26] And you're gonna wanna go down Lost Highway,

[1:48:27] you're gonna take a turn onto Mulholland Drive.

[1:48:29] Yeah.

[1:48:30] And it's gonna get you to the Inland Empire.

[1:48:32] Yep.

[1:48:33] If you wanna see Bill Pullman

[1:48:35] just wail on a saxophone as well.

[1:48:37] Yes.

[1:48:38] That's your best chance.

[1:48:40] I don't know.

[1:48:41] Someone say your only chance.

[1:48:42] There's not much to say about it.

[1:48:44] I mean, if you like Lynch and you haven't seen it,

[1:48:46] that's strange if you haven't watched it.

[1:48:50] If you're not a Lynch person,

[1:48:51] maybe it's not even part of the show.

[1:48:53] What if you're like a huge Robert Blake fan?

[1:48:55] Yeah.

[1:48:56] But not his movies, more his personal life.

[1:48:58] Not his eyebrows.

[1:49:01] I love Robert Blake.

[1:49:02] I just hate when he has hair below his forehead.

[1:49:05] Oh, have I got a picture for you?

[1:49:06] Is there a movie for me?

[1:49:08] Anyway.

[1:49:09] That's one of those movies,

[1:49:10] I feel like Lost Highway is the opposite of Megalopolis

[1:49:13] in that it is a movie that when it came out,

[1:49:15] I remember the reviews were like, what?

[1:49:17] Scathing.

[1:49:18] They were scathing because it had a non-linear,

[1:49:22] not totally rational plot.

[1:49:23] But you watch it now and you're like,

[1:49:25] oh, now I know what Lynch does.

[1:49:27] I understand what he's doing.

[1:49:28] Honestly, the fact that film reviewers saw it at the time

[1:49:30] and weren't like, oh, it's a David Lynch movie.

[1:49:31] I have to watch it through David Lynch glasses.

[1:49:33] Yeah.

[1:49:34] I don't know if I ever told this story,

[1:49:35] but I remember seeing it at the very small

[1:49:38] independent theater in my hometown.

[1:49:40] And it was a late screening.

[1:49:42] And we got out and I was driving my friend's home.

[1:49:44] And I remember driving up to a red light.

[1:49:47] The light turned green.

[1:49:49] And then it turned red again.

[1:49:50] And I had just sat there the whole time

[1:49:52] because my brain was processing what I just watched.

[1:49:55] Yeah.

[1:49:56] A lot.

[1:49:57] Let's go in the same order we did our judgment.

[1:49:59] Sure.

[1:50:00] Okay. Uh, I'm going to recommend a movie I saw a couple of weeks back. Uh,

[1:50:04] I saw a Nora, the new Sean Baker movie. It's, uh,

[1:50:09] a, I guess a offbeat comedy love story

[1:50:14] about a, uh,

[1:50:16] young sex worker who, uh,

[1:50:18] marries the son of an oligarch in, uh, Brighton beach, uh,

[1:50:23] Brooklyn. Uh, it's a very New York movie in that way. Uh,

[1:50:26] there's a scene where they fucking go to Tatiana's and Brighton beach.

[1:50:29] And I was like, Whoa, I go there. Um, and uh, yeah, I mean,

[1:50:34] yeah, I'm like a Nora. Um, it, uh, yeah. I mean,

[1:50:38] I feel like it really captures the like rush and craziness of like love and

[1:50:43] hope. Uh, and also like hoping against, uh,

[1:50:47] the crushing power of capitalism and shittiness. Um,

[1:50:51] and then of course, uh, it's things start to, uh, you know,

[1:50:54] come back to earth and things get a little bit rough. Um, it's got, uh, you know,

[1:50:58] an incredible central performance by Mikey Madison as the title character. Um,

[1:51:03] yeah, I think I thought it was great. I love it. Yeah. Check it out. Cool.

[1:51:07] I'm also going to recommend an offbeat comedy romance, but not the same one. Uh,

[1:51:12] this is a, I'm going to, I want to recommend the movie you and me from 1938.

[1:51:16] This is a movie directed by Fritz Lang, director of Metropolis,

[1:51:19] the movie I mentioned earlier, but it's a very different movie than Metropolis.

[1:51:21] And, uh,

[1:51:22] Sylvia Sidney is a woman who works at a department store and the department

[1:51:26] store makes a point of hiring ex-convicts to give them a second chance, uh,

[1:51:30] at life. And George Raft is one of those ex-convicts and they fall in love.

[1:51:34] She doesn't want him to know she's also an ex-convict because when you're on

[1:51:37] parole,

[1:51:37] you're not allowed to fall in love and you're not allowed to get married.

[1:51:40] And so that she has to hide from him that she is also a convict and

[1:51:45] that the, uh, the repercussions of that involve him getting back involved in

[1:51:49] crime.

[1:51:49] And it's a surprisingly sweet movie for a movie about criminals directed by

[1:51:54] Fritz Lang.

[1:51:55] And it also has some musical numbers in it with some of the music written by

[1:51:59] Kurt Weill. So it's a, like, it's a, it's a real strange movie.

[1:52:03] It's this kind of somewhat anti-capitalist romance, drama, comedy,

[1:52:07] crime movie, uh, with, uh, with Sylvia Sidney and George Raft. Uh,

[1:52:11] but I really loved it. I really enjoyed it.

[1:52:13] It's the kind of movie that you could crank out in the thirties because they

[1:52:16] were making so many movies that sometimes one of these popped out where it was

[1:52:19] like, this is kind of a stranger movie than it had any right to be. Uh,

[1:52:22] it could have been a pretty down the middle movie,

[1:52:24] but there's some great scenes in it. And, uh, and, you know,

[1:52:27] Sylvia Sidney has been on my mind since there's that new Beetlejuice movie.

[1:52:30] She's not in the new one, but you know, since she was in the old one, you know,

[1:52:34] so that's you and me.

[1:52:36] Played Juno.

[1:52:37] Yeah. I, I was, I was, I have a hard time thinking of what to recommend,

[1:52:42] but I think the one I'd settle on is, um,

[1:52:44] Hearts of Darkness of Filmmakers Apocalypse,

[1:52:46] which is the documentary Eleanor Coppola made of Francis Ford Coppola making

[1:52:52] Apocalypse now. Um, the, one of the things that ends the, the,

[1:52:56] the movie, uh, uh, Megalopolis is at the very end.

[1:53:00] It says for Eleanor,

[1:53:01] which is sort of like this moment where I'm feeling like kind of seething for

[1:53:06] this thing.

[1:53:07] And then there's a sweet moment of their long term relationship and how she was

[1:53:11] such a gifted filmmaker as evidenced by, by this piece that did like make me

[1:53:16] think, okay, this, he did what he wanted to. It's all okay. I, you know,

[1:53:20] like, and, and, uh, that was a nice sort of like homage to her,

[1:53:25] but she was an extremely good documentary filmmaker. Um,

[1:53:30] it made me appreciate Apocalypse now so much more.

[1:53:32] It gave you so much insight into making a movie.

[1:53:36] It's just like has so much drama. It's so fascinating. I,

[1:53:39] I really love Hearts of Darkness. I, I saw it as a kid. We're not a kid.

[1:53:43] I guess it was pretty soon after it came out, I guess I was 15 or 16 and, um,

[1:53:48] uh, Hearts of Darkness, not Apocalypse. Now I had not seen Apocalypse. Now I caught

[1:53:52] this like on HBO or something. And then I saw it afterward.

[1:53:56] I'd kind of heard about Apocalypse now. And, um, it, it just,

[1:53:59] it gave me the blueprint for appreciating another sort of like good mess of a

[1:54:03] movie. You know, that's a, I think that's a good mess of apocalypse now in a lot

[1:54:07] of ways. Um, but I, uh, I love this.

[1:54:10] It's one of the reasons why I love documentaries. I,

[1:54:12] I think it's just expertly and beautifully made.

[1:54:15] I think I also saw it before I saw Apocalypse. Now I saw it with my like,

[1:54:19] college girlfriend. We were at her house in Cleveland and we went to like,

[1:54:23] we were just like young, like film buffs. And we're like,

[1:54:26] what arty thing can we get? We'll get this.

[1:54:27] I know it's a good documentary and it is a testament to like,

[1:54:30] even without having seen the movie, I'm like, this is,

[1:54:33] this is fascinating in its own right.

[1:54:35] And then it gets richer once you've seen the film or like most people,

[1:54:39] you probably see Apocalypse now first.

[1:54:41] I mean, it's weird. I mean,

[1:54:43] I think people take things in a lot differently now and like you never know,

[1:54:46] but, but I, I think this movie is great.

[1:54:49] I think it's actually better than Apocalypse now, but that's my own flavor of,

[1:54:54] you know, that, that, that to me is like not defensible. It's just taste.

[1:54:57] You know, that's just a personal choice. Dan,

[1:55:00] there are people who saw space balls before star Wars.

[1:55:02] People watch things in all sorts of crazy orders, you know? Yeah.

[1:55:05] These days I thought you were about to mention a documentary about the making of

[1:55:09] space balls. That'll be fascinating.

[1:55:12] People see May the Schwartz be with you. A filmmaker's journey.

[1:55:15] That's not what balls of fury was. Yeah. How'd they,

[1:55:18] how'd they rig up that bit where Rick Moranis goes flying through the

[1:55:25] documentary? Was that real?

[1:55:30] All right. Well, uh, we should wrap this up with a big thank you.

[1:55:34] I want to see that. Wait, sorry.

[1:55:35] Now I see a comedy sketch in a show where they're like, okay,

[1:55:37] they're trying to lead actor in a movie setting.

[1:55:39] They're like,

[1:55:39] we saved this last stunt to the end of the shooting because you're going to die.

[1:55:43] The only way to get the shot is to kill you while you do it. Oh, okay.

[1:55:47] That's why we shot all your scenes ahead. So, uh, I don't know if that's a good

[1:55:50] idea. No, it's okay. We shot the rest of the movie already.

[1:55:52] We shot it already. We're done. You know, we're wrapped on that.

[1:55:54] So this is your last thing you have to do. We'll be covered.

[1:55:57] Uh, before I say, before we say goodbye, uh,

[1:56:02] I want to just say thank you to Roman, uh, for being on this episode.

[1:56:06] We all know how busy you are.

[1:56:09] And so we're always charmed when you make time for our shenanigans.

[1:56:13] Long time fan and supporter. I'm so happy to be here.

[1:56:15] It makes me very, very happy.

[1:56:18] What were you going to say?

[1:56:19] If you want more, if you want more shenanigans like this,

[1:56:21] just tune into the 99% invisible breakdown, the power broker.

[1:56:25] It's exactly like this show. It's just like it. Yeah.

[1:56:28] I'm just cutting it up. Uh, before we go, uh,

[1:56:31] thank you to our producer, Alex Smith.

[1:56:34] He goes by the name Howell Dottie on the internet. He does music.

[1:56:38] He does Twitch streams. There's a lot of stuff. Look them up. Uh,

[1:56:41] thank you to our network maximum fun. If you go to maximum fun.org,

[1:56:45] there are a lot of great other podcasts you can listen to about culture,

[1:56:50] about comedy. You'll find something you like. Uh,

[1:56:53] but that's it for this episode for the flop house. I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:56:56] I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Ellie Kalen. I'm Roman Mars.

[1:57:01] I'm going to take that again. I'm Roman Mars.

[1:57:05] That's it. Professional.

[1:57:10] Professionalism. Undone.

[1:57:13] Roman's like, let me make sure I say that the right way. And then Stuart's like.

[1:57:26] On this episode, we discuss Megalopolis.

[1:57:31] Do you want me to have one? Do you want me to do one?

[1:57:34] No, I'll just start it over again.

[1:57:36] Stuart, you leaned in like you had one.

[1:57:38] I didn't say anything.

[1:57:40] We're embarrassing ourselves in front of Roman.

[1:57:42] No, no, no. Roman knows we're cool.

[1:57:44] This is the whole experience.

[1:57:46] Maximum fun. A worker-owned network.

[1:57:48] Of artist-owned shows.

[1:57:50] Supported directly by you.

Ep.#437 - Megalopolis, with Roman Mars

Transcript

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