In the Lost Lands

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss In the Lost Lands.

[0:03] Based on the work of my new best friend, George R.R. Martin.

[0:31] Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Flophouse.

[0:34] I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:36] I'm Stuart Willington.

[0:38] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[0:40] I say my last name really high-pitched now.

[0:42] That's the way it's pronounced, yeah.

[0:44] Okay. Are you going to be really insistent about that?

[0:47] I'll probably forget in a couple seconds.

[0:49] Okay, great.

[0:50] Hey, this is a podcast where we watch a movie that has been rejected

[0:54] either commercially or critically and talk about it.

[0:59] Yeah, and because I said that...

[1:01] Dan, did you surprise yourself with how professionally you did that?

[1:03] That's literally what I was about to say.

[1:04] I've never said that so succinctly, and now I don't know what to do.

[1:08] Dan had the look on his face of a toddler who has taken three steps

[1:12] on their own for the first time and is baffled by what they just did,

[1:16] and they don't know how they accomplished it.

[1:17] Yeah, like, I don't know where to go from here.

[1:19] Well, you take a sip of whatever you're drinking,

[1:21] even though you're the one introducing the show.

[1:23] Well, but is there more?

[1:25] We watched In the Lost Land, a film based on, I guess,

[1:31] sort of three shorter works by George R.R. Martin.

[1:35] It's adapted from a couple of different short stories

[1:37] by George Ronald Reagan Martin, creator of Game of Thrones.

[1:40] Yeah, and, you know, it's got all the same level of, you know,

[1:46] compelling characters and just, like, wanting to...

[1:50] Stuart, had you read the stories?

[1:52] And we should say this is a Paul W.S. Anderson film.

[1:54] We've done other...

[1:55] But we've done at least one other Paul W.S. Anderson film.

[1:57] Which one?

[1:58] Pompeii?

[1:59] The three... We did at least two.

[2:00] Three Musketeers we did.

[2:02] Oh, I forgot we did that.

[2:03] And also Pompeii we did.

[2:04] Wow.

[2:05] Yeah, so he, like, dug his way out of direct-to-video hell

[2:08] and then dug his way back in?

[2:10] He's done...

[2:11] There's actually something kind of sweet about it

[2:12] because he and his wife Mila Jovovich just kind of make movies together.

[2:15] They just make kind of cruddy action science fiction movies together.

[2:18] Of my directorial wife guys, he's one of my favorites.

[2:22] I have to...

[2:23] Yeah, I have to admit I have a certain fondness for him.

[2:26] Like, he's done a lot of crap, but, like, he's also done stuff that is pretty fun.

[2:31] You know, he did Adventure Horizon.

[2:34] I liked the first Resident Evil pretty well,

[2:37] even though it went into, like, a crazy, you know, continuity that I didn't care about.

[2:42] I think he...

[2:43] Of all the people who make kind of not-great movies,

[2:48] I do have more of a fondness for him than I do for...

[2:51] Or for his not-great movies.

[2:52] He, of course, he did the first Mortal Kombat movie,

[2:55] which, as a kid, it was just exciting to see a video game on screen for the first time.

[2:59] Now, of course, all the movies are based on video games,

[3:02] so that's less exciting than it once was.

[3:04] And some of them are on screens.

[3:05] And I went into those screens, big screens.

[3:08] I went into this with...

[3:09] Lift up a kid's T-shirt.

[3:10] On their belly, you'll see a little screen playing a video game movie.

[3:13] That's Videodrome for you.

[3:14] Yeah, Videodrome.

[3:15] All the kids are Videodroming these days, Dan.

[3:17] They're all like, six, seven, put a VHS tape in my belly.

[3:20] It's all Videodrome.

[3:21] Wow.

[3:22] I didn't know that.

[3:23] No, I went into this movie with kind of a certain amount of mild hope, I guess.

[3:30] And at the beginning of the movie, I was still feeling it because I'm like,

[3:33] well, you know, this is...

[3:35] At least it's giving me nostalgia for the crap of yesteryear

[3:39] because this really feels like late 90s through the 2010 maybe sort of vibe

[3:47] of a B-movie that we used to get.

[3:49] Yes.

[3:50] And we don't really anymore, but...

[3:52] I would say it's hurt a little bit by the fact

[3:55] that the visuals are consistently muddy and ugly.

[3:58] Everything is kind of a grim melange of browns and oranges and...

[4:04] But that's the way it was back then.

[4:06] There's a certain charm.

[4:07] Back in the future, Dan.

[4:09] There is a certain charm from like an early 2000s, like,

[4:14] euro-cheapo sci-fi adventure.

[4:17] It does feel like that.

[4:18] Where, like, everything is so soundstage-y.

[4:21] Like, it just looks, like, kind of trashy.

[4:24] It has the color palette of late Scooby-Doo.

[4:27] So, Stuart, I was curious.

[4:29] So this is based on three George R. R. Martin...

[4:32] I said his name is George Ronald Reagan Martin.

[4:34] That, of course, is a joke.

[4:35] His name is George Ronald Rick Donald Martin.

[4:37] The three stories it's based on are

[4:41] In the Lost Lands and Bitter Blooms.

[4:43] Have you read any of those stories?

[4:44] I don't think I've read any of them,

[4:46] although they're probably in a story collection I have somewhere

[4:49] on one of my shelves.

[4:50] It looks like one of them is in the story collection

[4:52] Songs of Stars and Shadows.

[4:54] Another is in the collection Sand Kings.

[4:56] And one of them is in a book called Amazons 2,

[4:58] which is an anthology of stories about Amazons.

[5:00] I cannot stress enough how awesome the short story Sand Kings is,

[5:04] which was adapted to what a Amazing Stories episode.

[5:10] But that is an all-timer great short story.

[5:13] But I don't remember reading any of the stories this is based on.

[5:18] Okay. I'll have to read Sand Kings sometime.

[5:20] Yeah, it's awesome.

[5:21] Anyway, so let's talk about this movie, In the Lost Lands.

[5:25] So I was hoping Stuart could give us some expert understanding

[5:29] of how it might be the same or different from the stories

[5:31] that we'll be lacking this episode.

[5:33] We're going into it blind.

[5:35] So I hope you took notes and you didn't just plan on asking me,

[5:39] did this happen?

[5:41] That was my main – my notes are mostly me saying,

[5:44] it just says, ask Stu.

[5:46] Like the stories, ask Stu.

[5:49] Ray faithful, relevant.

[5:51] So we're going to be going into this blind much like people

[5:54] of the far future entering the lost lands.

[5:56] Now let's talk about what happens.

[5:58] We start, as all great movies start, with a blurry Dave Bautista

[6:01] walking into frame all scarred up on his face.

[6:03] And he says he's got a story to it for us about witches

[6:06] and magic and monsters.

[6:08] But this is no fairy tale and there are no happy endings.

[6:10] Title, In the Lost Lands.

[6:12] He says, thank you for coming and seeing In the Lost Lands in the theater.

[6:16] Guys, it got me a little chubbed up.

[6:19] What you're about to see is a story called In the Lost Lands.

[6:21] Now I'll warn you, it may be too terrifying for you.

[6:24] Don't worry, nurses have been stationed outside your house

[6:28] because you're watching it on streaming in case you have any problems.

[6:31] Stuart, sorry, what were you saying?

[6:32] Yeah, I was just saying Davey B walking into frame

[6:34] and threatening me with a story of witches and adventure.

[6:38] Yeah.

[6:39] Hell yeah, baby.

[6:40] You love it.

[6:41] Yeah.

[6:42] Stuart was the focus group.

[6:43] It was just him.

[6:44] And he just kept turning the dial to extra positive.

[6:46] More scars.

[6:47] It was me and Steve Kostansky who I was texting the whole time.

[6:51] Had Steve seen the movie?

[6:54] No, but he loves Paul W.S. Anderson.

[6:56] Or at least likes him because he's one of those guys who operates in that world.

[7:00] Yes.

[7:01] That like kind of cheapo direct-to-video adventures

[7:06] that are shot primarily in Eastern Europe.

[7:08] This is a world that I someday hope Steve gets to enter.

[7:12] That would be wonderful.

[7:13] And have some kind of creature shop that is, you know, like a mile tall

[7:17] so he can make his own or think.

[7:19] All he has to do is marry me a Jovovich and he can do it.

[7:22] So Steve, that's the goal.

[7:24] So in voiceover narration after the opening titles, Dave Bautista tells us

[7:29] that a great war left behind the lost lands, which is most of the lands.

[7:33] They're all – there's monsters and creepy stuff and whatever.

[7:36] And it's a future of magic and mystery and radiation or whatever.

[7:40] It's a post-apocalyptic fantasy basically.

[7:43] Yes.

[7:44] All of humanity.

[7:45] This is your classic – like you're saying about like kind of cheapo shot in Eastern Europe

[7:48] kind of usually direct-to-DVD or direct-to-video stuff.

[7:51] It's like your classic post-apocalyptic.

[7:53] It's kind of a Western.

[7:55] It's kind of a magical fantasy.

[7:57] There's a lot of like ruined – they walk by ruined buildings and things like that.

[8:01] And it wears it on its sleeve a little more openly than say like Star Wars,

[8:06] which is basically more of a fantasy than a science fiction story.

[8:09] Yes.

[8:10] This is an argument I've been having with my younger son who's suddenly into Star Wars.

[8:13] One of his friends told him Star Wars isn't science fiction.

[8:15] And I was like, well, it's kind of not.

[8:17] Like it's not really science.

[8:18] It's like fantasy dressed up with robots and spaceships.

[8:21] And then an hour after your son stopped crying, you were able to talk about serious stuff.

[8:25] An hour later I was in the hospital getting my wounds bound up after the argument went too far.

[8:31] Came at you like a Tasmanian devil.

[8:33] Yeah, he was all spinning around going blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[8:36] And he went right through a tree.

[8:38] Like the guy from the Marauders that – Riptide?

[8:41] Or maybe it's Riptide.

[8:43] Yeah, Riptide.

[8:44] That's right.

[8:46] Whose head just stays still and his body turns to the fucking rules.

[8:51] Yeah, he seems to have a rotating neck that can go 180 degrees.

[8:54] Dan, you know this character, right?

[8:55] Riptide from the Marauders who works for Mr. Sinister?

[8:57] The Morlock Massacre.

[8:58] Hello, Dan.

[8:59] The Morlock Massacre was pretty intense.

[9:02] It's the only good thing the Marauders ever did.

[9:03] I mean that was – I'm just going to go out on a limb.

[9:06] The Marauders are the best of the – Chris Claremont suddenly introduces a whole team of bad guys,

[9:11] and they all have different names and powers.

[9:13] They would do that a lot.

[9:14] These people would be taken over by the Brood and they'd be like, my name is Blockbuster.

[9:17] Bam!

[9:18] You're going to have to deal with me, X-Men.

[9:19] But the Marauders are the best of those, but still they don't do much.

[9:21] There's that one guy who just wears like a skinny tie and a suit and does something with your mind.

[9:26] I can't remember his name.

[9:27] Yeah, and one of them is going to just get annihilated by Havoc early on.

[9:31] And then Havoc is like, oh, shit.

[9:33] I didn't think I'd kill you totally.

[9:35] But it's okay because they're all clones.

[9:37] They keep coming back.

[9:38] There's Arclight is another one, right?

[9:40] That's a dope name, yeah.

[9:41] Yeah, that's a great name.

[9:42] Okay, and there was a theater named after it once.

[9:45] Named after the mutant?

[9:46] Yeah.

[9:47] Yeah, and then the Riptide Theater is what I'm talking about.

[9:50] Oh, man.

[9:51] Can I stop disassociating now?

[9:53] Yeah, you can.

[9:54] So all of humanity lives in one city, which I find to be kind of silly.

[9:58] It's like, how'd they get there?

[10:00] there it's a city that has just like a giant skull as there's a giant skull there's a giant

[10:05] cross building it's under we'll find out it's under the control of the overlord uh who is in a

[10:11] kind of tenuous power alliance with the church uh and the church's patriarch now and yes i want to

[10:17] say something like maybe this is um maybe this is more of a overview thing that i should say

[10:22] to the end but i've started talking now like one of my big problems with this uh movie is it relies

[10:30] so much on sort of uh palace intrigue of a bunch of factions that we are not really ever properly

[10:38] introduced to or given a reason to care about and they're they're so totally unrelated to the main

[10:43] story of our main two characters yes in a way and so every time i went to the palace intrigue i agree

[10:48] i was like i don't care i don't care about any of this i don't know why i'm supposed to care about

[10:52] any of this you guys you guys said you guys mentioned overlord it sounds like you were over

[10:57] bored accurate uh oh god yeah oh oh you've hurt his kidneys

[11:08] you gotta don't do that again stew because it's too much too much

[11:12] yeah but oh too funny that is too funny

[11:20] well as for as dull as this movie is it's one of the few times when i would argue like

[11:25] this would work better as like a tv show or something where we can explore

[11:32] no you're like i you are the joke from annie hall oh the food is bad in such small portions

[11:37] i don't want more of this dan but like if you're gonna do a story of this nature you need more

[11:44] space to explore like what all these different factions mean and it doesn't exist here is what

[11:50] i'm saying or you can just present them as being as having some kind of personality or identifying

[11:55] characteristics that is yeah more than just this person is the queen okay they have a personality

[12:01] not really here's the patriarch head of the church why is he doing it who cares doesn't matter he's

[12:06] just yeah he's a bad guy i mean and this all ties into my secondary major problem which i think you're

[12:10] about to get to so i'll hold off but i don't know we'll see i'm not enough werewolves

[12:15] yeah just one it's just the one werewolf so i'm gonna i'm gonna introduce our main character that's

[12:20] right one of our two main characters this is when we hear about gray alice the legend of gray alice

[12:24] that a witch emerged lost lands one day it's mia jovovich and she's about to be hanged for

[12:29] divining the church there's a character called the enforcer who's like a tough lady church

[12:33] enforcer she's kind of like an evil Joan of Arc if you're british Joan of Arc is evil but i don't

[12:38] consider her that way yeah kind of a shaggy mullet that made her look kind of like parker posey to me

[12:43] you're talking about uh you're talking about gray alice gray alice yeah gray alice does yes she does

[12:47] have a cool gray mullet and she's got some face tattoos and and she's got face and like uh and

[12:53] like uh chest bone tattoos you know like like over her uh clavicle sternum sternum thank you uh

[12:59] her sterno that she uses to cook at her hobo campfire so gray alice yeah she's she's a she's

[13:06] got tattoos on her face uh we uh she's going to be hanged for defying the church and selling wishes

[13:12] to the people as we'll learn gray alice can grant wishes and she cannot deny a request she must

[13:18] fulfill any request that someone makes of her why that's an intriguing mystery we will never find

[13:23] out it doesn't matter uh and so when they make much hay of that either it's just sort of the

[13:28] inciting like like oh you have to do what i told you like it couldn't it just because she's the

[13:33] queen i don't know no no it's kind of useless because the smart the smartest thing about the

[13:38] movie is that they're setting her up in a situation where she has to fulfill two conflicting wishes

[13:42] that's her drive in the stories and by the end of it you realize there's something she wants

[13:46] that conflicts with the wishes she has to fulfill so if this was a if the movie was a little bit

[13:52] these are the glimmers that make me realize it's based on a short story written by somebody who

[13:55] knows how to write short stories exactly i feel the same way about stuart where it's like oh this

[13:59] is intriguing premise but i i have to do these two things but they conflict how do i resolve them both

[14:05] it's the kind of thing that isaac asimov's robot stories would do so well where it's like here's

[14:09] the rules robot has to follow now how am i going to make it so the robot screws up regardless of

[14:13] those rules you know sure and then chi mcbride has to go blast him with shotguns the problem

[14:18] with the way it's not usually that's not usually how the isaac asimov stories go not usually

[14:22] just some of them the problem with the way that's how robot dreams ends with chi mcbride

[14:26] showing them just blasting that robot because he dared to have a dream jumping on a cigar doing it

[14:32] but the problem with the way it's handled here is we don't sort of learn any of that until the end

[14:38] of the movie so like we don't really get like the full sort of picture of like the conflicting like

[14:44] what what everyone's motivations are well i think it's i think we don't really know exactly but also

[14:49] that we don't she doesn't seem to care that much throughout it isn't until the very end that she

[14:54] cares that these are conflicting things right and i think it would be much more effective if we had

[14:59] a sense of that up top and saw it play out through the movie instead of instead of having it as a

[15:04] reveal that is not satisfying you would have it as the beginning like we would know this information

[15:11] rather than finding it out the end of being like okay sure fine so anyway might make us care about

[15:16] something so when we left gray alice who's about to be hanged to death for defying the church she

[15:21] uses a little bit of witch magic to escape and uh get out of there oh uh the gray alice magic okay

[15:28] thank you or if she looks at somebody she like kind of makes them see something that is not

[15:33] really there she can create illusions uh she's a lord of illusions if you will uh starring scott

[15:37] bacula who does not appear in the film there's things about that movie that rock guys it's a

[15:43] movie that i was like i had it on my watch list and i started watching it and i was like oh yeah i

[15:49] forgot i watched this movie like three years ago and then you proceeded to watch the rest of it i

[15:55] feel like there's no there's nothing there's no clive barker movie where there isn't one interesting

[15:59] thing in it right there's always one interesting the movie's not may not work that well but

[16:03] there's nothing i've never watched a clive barker thing i'd be like well i'm taking nothing away

[16:06] from this even if it's just one moment that i like um he so this is clive barker's in the lost

[16:12] no it's not uh so uh the she gets free um the church soldiers are hunting her but she does the

[16:17] old strike from the shadows routine she's turning the tables on them one by one and the poor start

[16:22] chanting the witch that will not hang the witch that will not hang oh they can't let her be a

[16:26] flash point for rebellion meanwhile we're gonna lead our we're gonna meet our other hero his name

[16:30] is boice and i kept thinking his name was royce until i turned on the caption so it's boice he's

[16:36] a western style gunslinger played by one david batista that's right he's also a lot of tattoos

[16:42] but it's just his normal day batista tattoos they didn't put falsies on him yeah and uh he

[16:47] rides he's not wearing falsies a bunch of guys try to ambush him for some reason he shoots a

[16:51] bunch of them uh the only thing that's interesting about him is he has a non-working shotgun that he

[16:56] uses as bait that's guarded by a two-headed snake um yeah i i saw a uh a review of this that points

[17:04] out like this movie introduces a two-headed snake and then that two-headed snake gets killed almost

[17:09] immediately and it's so disappointing it's like yeah why do you have something so awesome in this

[17:13] movie and just get it chopped up not since jonah hex has a snake based character been introduced

[17:18] and then discarded so quickly uh when it's the most interesting thing in the movie gray alice

[17:22] she gets she visits a blind old lady and they do things the old lady's like i visited you when i

[17:28] was a child but you sound the same you must be very old alice is like older than you realize

[17:32] and she goes and sits on a throne she's visited by gerace of the overwatch those are the king's

[17:37] commanders and some other people and also the queen of the city and she wants to buy a wish

[17:43] she wants to buy the ability to change into a wolf and alice is like i can't refuse anybody

[17:48] yeah she'll i'll go get a hunter i'll steal a shapeshifters power in the lost lands i've got

[17:53] six days until the next full moon an incredibly arbitrary expiration date or deadline i mean if

[17:59] it didn't work within six days just wait till the next full moon that's exactly it's just gonna be

[18:04] like hey guess what sorry you gotta wait a month you know how contractors are it's gonna happen

[18:07] anyway oh this has been a little bit oh the the part you ordered the shapeshifter skin

[18:12] it's on back order sorry it's gonna take another month really yeah yeah but we'll get it to you

[18:16] yeah she's gotta go grind some levels so she can kill the ship and the queen wants to be a

[18:22] shapeshifter because she's having this affair and we don't know that yet yeah i'm just i'm just

[18:28] yeah that's not important to my point i'm just saying that like this isn't my other major

[18:34] difficulty with this movie i mean like there's a lot of things wrong but like this really bothered

[18:39] me which is the whole impetus to this quest is essentially like okay the queen wants to have an

[18:46] affair and she asks a favor of the switch that the switch can't refuse and she wants like a

[18:52] shapeshifter pelt and it's like that's not something that i care about that's an audience

[18:58] member like what is my investment that's like like like the main the lead uh gray alice like

[19:04] she doesn't even have a reason to care about what the queen has asked other than she has to do it

[19:10] it feels like it feels like what you're talking about dan we're like information that would show

[19:13] in a real movie you don't have to care the same way the characters do but you have to know the

[19:17] characters care about it like you know it's like in a heist movie i'm not going to see any of that

[19:22] money if they pull off that heist it doesn't help me but i know the characters want to pull off the

[19:26] height yeah get them out of some situation that they're in that's important you know it would

[19:29] have been relatively easy early on to introduce one of two possible things either a stress that

[19:36] like with if she doesn't do this for the queen she will have no protection from the church who

[19:41] are trying to kill her or b that her specific curse where she has to fulfill everybody's wishes

[19:49] that if she tries to resist that it will cause her damage her powers will be lost or something

[19:55] that's one of the things that hurts the movie is that the there's no we don't know what

[20:00] any consequences if the characters don't do this thing.

[20:03] And it's not a fun enough quest.

[20:04] Like, there's a way to do it where it's just,

[20:07] you serve me, I want you to do this thing.

[20:09] Okay, I'll do it.

[20:10] Like, a lot of samurai movies, it's just like,

[20:12] this is the thing my boss told me, so I gotta go do it.

[20:14] And you just know that it's important for that reason.

[20:16] But they kinda don't even do that.

[20:17] It's just like, everyone's really lackadaisical

[20:20] about this quest.

[20:21] And you don't really,

[20:24] because they wanna make it a reveal,

[20:26] they don't tell you why the queen wants

[20:28] to be a shapeshifter until the very end of the movie.

[20:30] And so you're like, I don't know, who cares?

[20:32] It's pretty cool.

[20:32] I mean, yeah, who wouldn't wanna be a werewolf, I guess.

[20:35] She's like, I've been playing a lot of Werewolf,

[20:36] the Apocalypse with my friends, and I wanna be able to larp.

[20:39] I wanna take my game up a notch.

[20:41] I'm tired of larping.

[20:43] I wanna just luh, just live action.

[20:45] Did you mention that the captain of the Overwatch

[20:48] also requests that?

[20:50] Well, no, I haven't gotten there yet, thank you.

[20:52] So, she wants to be that, and then when the queen leaves,

[20:55] Jerase, the captain of the Overwatch,

[20:57] he says, I have a, I want a wish.

[21:00] Here's my heirloom watch.

[21:01] I'm gonna give it to you in exchange

[21:03] for not getting the queen werewolf powers.

[21:05] And Alice is like, I can't refuse anybody.

[21:07] I'll do it.

[21:08] How is she gonna square these two conflicting wishes

[21:11] to make the queen a werewolf

[21:13] and to not make the queen a werewolf?

[21:14] Therein lies a tale.

[21:17] And she does some floaty magic,

[21:19] and she has a vision of a werewolf fighting people

[21:21] from the werewolf's point of view.

[21:24] The queen, she hates him.

[21:26] Is this super cool?

[21:27] No.

[21:28] Okay.

[21:28] It is not super cool.

[21:29] It's kind of blurry and muddy.

[21:30] Is it kind of cool?

[21:32] Well, what did you guys think?

[21:33] It's kind of cool?

[21:34] It seems to be like a failed hunt

[21:35] taking place on what the River of Skulls.

[21:38] The River of Skulls.

[21:39] Which is pretty cool.

[21:40] It looks kind of like how I picture the land of the dead

[21:44] in the island near Ulthuan in the old world of Warhammer.

[21:50] Oh, I didn't know what world you were talking about

[21:52] until you ended with Warhammer.

[21:53] I was like, what property is this?

[21:55] It's just like in the Lost Lands,

[21:56] Stuart kept the key information to the end.

[21:59] That's true, the very end.

[22:00] What's weird is that in the Lost-

[22:00] I teased Ulthuan, which of course,

[22:03] eagle-eared listeners would know.

[22:05] Yeah, that's true.

[22:06] It's part of the high elven realm.

[22:07] If you know, you know, as the internet.

[22:09] 90s kids would know that this is Warhammer.

[22:11] If the movie waits until the very end

[22:14] to tell you what the motivations of the characters are,

[22:16] but whenever the characters are traveling to the Lost Lands,

[22:19] there's a big map graphic that you travel along with,

[22:21] so where they're going to go and what they can-

[22:23] What they're not mad about.

[22:24] But it means that whatever they're encountering

[22:26] is not a surprise.

[22:27] Like, you know, you've seen all these other references.

[22:29] You've seen kind of like,

[22:30] oh, and they're going to go here and they're going to go here.

[22:32] It seems like we're going to give you all this information

[22:35] you don't really need to know,

[22:36] but we're not going to give you the information

[22:37] that you need to know.

[22:38] And if that was a deliberate choice

[22:40] that was carried through in an interesting way,

[22:43] I've seen movies like that, where it's like,

[22:45] I'm going to give you lots of information

[22:47] that is not necessarily relevant,

[22:49] but I'm going to give you just hints of the information

[22:51] that, I mean, to a certain extent,

[22:53] Stuart, you've mentioned Gene Wolfe's books

[22:55] on the podcast before.

[22:56] Like, that's the kind of thing Gene Wolfe will do,

[22:58] where it's like, in his novels, where it's like,

[22:59] I'm going to give you a lot of information about this world,

[23:01] but I'm not going to tell you necessarily

[23:03] why a character is doing a thing,

[23:04] and you're going to have to puzzle it out.

[23:06] When it's done well,

[23:07] it can be really stimulating and challenging and fun,

[23:09] but here it just feels like

[23:11] they didn't know what to tell you and not to tell you.

[23:12] If you're going to do a thing

[23:13] where you show a map with place names,

[23:16] you should at least once or twice

[23:18] try to subvert expectations based on what that name

[23:21] or image might seem to be, right?

[23:23] If they're going to go to Candy Country,

[23:25] oh, this will be fine.

[23:26] Oh no, it turns out that's the worst of them, you know?

[23:30] It's called that

[23:30] because that's where the radioactive John Candy zombie is,

[23:33] and it just devours people.

[23:34] Oh no, he had such a sad life already,

[23:38] from what I understand, based on that documentary.

[23:41] And did you watch the documentary?

[23:42] Yeah.

[23:43] Oh, okay.

[23:44] I thought you were going to say,

[23:45] based on what I heard about from that documentary,

[23:48] from people watching the documentary.

[23:50] At that gas station I went to.

[23:52] I got a lot of stories for some reason, I don't know.

[23:55] You drove up, you're like,

[23:56] I think he lives in the woods.

[23:58] Just fill it up with regular,

[23:59] yeah, yeah, you heard about John Candy?

[24:01] Did something happen with him?

[24:02] Oh, he died years ago, but his life was pretty sad.

[24:05] He was an empathetic guy,

[24:06] but always felt pretty sad about his life.

[24:09] He couldn't come to terms with his body image.

[24:12] You get to where you're going,

[24:13] like the guy at the gas station

[24:14] really wanted to tell me about John Candy.

[24:15] Guy at the gas station?

[24:16] There hasn't been a gas station there in 30 years.

[24:20] Ever since John Candy burned it down.

[24:22] Yeah.

[24:23] Yeah, they called it the candy crime of the century.

[24:32] So the queen, she hates him.

[24:33] That's the sign of the old Camp Candy.

[24:35] Wait, John Candy, the inventor of Candy Crush?

[24:39] Don't go to Camp Candy.

[24:41] You know how many children died there?

[24:43] So let's talk for a second.

[24:44] This is the thing that's bedeviled me

[24:45] ever since I was a kid.

[24:46] Here's the Camp Candy cartoon.

[24:47] I watched it regularly when I was a kid.

[24:49] There was a Christmas episode of the Camp Candy cartoon,

[24:52] and it always confused me,

[24:53] because I'm like,

[24:54] but this show takes place during the summer.

[24:55] Like I know it's airing around Christmas,

[24:58] but it takes place during the summer,

[24:59] because it's a summer camp.

[25:00] Why would they have a Christmas episode at a summer camp?

[25:03] Dan, the floor is yours.

[25:05] Tell me what I'm wrong.

[25:05] Well, I need to know a little bit more about this episode.

[25:07] Were there children at the camp at the time?

[25:09] Yeah, it's called Camp Candy, Dan.

[25:11] It's about kids going to the camp that John Candy runs.

[25:13] No, it's a show about a camp

[25:14] where John Candy is the caretaker,

[25:16] and it's during the off season when it's closed,

[25:18] and it's just him trimming trees and stuff like that.

[25:21] Christmas episode. That sounds pretty good.

[25:22] That sounds like the holdovers.

[25:23] It's possible that there's an episode where it's like,

[25:26] it's snowing, only the caretakers are there.

[25:29] You know, this is what I'm asking you.

[25:31] I don't like it, actually.

[25:32] The kids are there.

[25:32] There's a part where a kid like-

[25:33] Is it snowing with the kids there?

[25:35] No, no, he has like a pillowcase full of cotton

[25:37] that he like shakes out to make it feel like snow.

[25:39] And it's just like, why?

[25:40] They'll have Christmas in December.

[25:42] Why you gotta do Christmas at a summer camp?

[25:44] Is it like salute your shorts or whatever?

[25:49] It was like a cartoon version of salute your shorts, yeah.

[25:50] I think it predated salute your shorts.

[25:52] So salute your shorts was really an adaptation

[25:54] of Camp Candy.

[25:55] Okay.

[25:55] Which was itself-

[25:56] What about Hey Dude?

[25:57] Where does Hey Dude fall into the cosmology?

[25:59] Hey Dude is a dude ranch.

[26:00] So that's Hey Dude, I have to assume Hey Dude

[26:01] and salute your shorts happen in the same universe,

[26:03] but probably in different parts of the country

[26:05] and with different characters.

[26:06] Like California Dreams and Saved by the Bell, right?

[26:08] Yeah, but they would meet each other at least once, right?

[26:11] Yeah, yeah.

[26:12] At least once.

[26:13] And I think it would go a little like this.

[26:15] In the crossover event Crisis on Infinite California.

[26:18] That was a time when it was just enough

[26:20] that something was set in California,

[26:22] that it was exciting enough to put it on television

[26:24] as part of the TNBC Saturday morning lineup.

[26:26] What a time, what a time.

[26:28] California had yet to lose its gloss.

[26:31] Anyway, the queen, she hates having to deal

[26:33] with the overlord who's an incontinent old man.

[26:35] She has a lover.

[26:36] Her lover is Boyce, Dave Bautista,

[26:38] and the Watch tries to arrest him, the Overwatch,

[26:40] but he-

[26:41] How do you think they met?

[26:44] That's a good question.

[26:45] How did the-

[26:45] He's like a rough and tumble cowpoke guy.

[26:47] How do you meet the queen?

[26:49] I mean, either she was slumming at the one tavern

[26:53] that we see him at, or-

[26:53] Yeah, so for a Roman holiday situation.

[26:56] Yeah, exactly, yeah.

[26:57] That Roman holiday, Christmas.

[26:59] Why you gotta have Christmas in the middle of the summer?

[27:01] I don't understand.

[27:02] It's weird that the Romans would invent a holiday

[27:05] based on a dude they smoked.

[27:07] I mean, Rome's relationship with Christianity.

[27:10] I think the thing is, Rome's relationship with Christmas

[27:14] has changed quite a bit since they smoked him.

[27:18] There's a little guy named Constantine.

[27:19] I think he needs to learn about Stuart.

[27:21] Not John Constantine, the Hellblazer.

[27:23] No, no, no.

[27:24] Okay, because I know a lot about that guy.

[27:26] He's a wily one.

[27:27] He is.

[27:29] I wouldn't trust him to watch my house, yeah.

[27:32] So Alice, she goes to find a hunter

[27:35] who can take her to find a werewolf.

[27:36] She finds Dave Bautista at a bar.

[27:38] She beats him at cards.

[27:40] And she wants to hide-

[27:41] She uses magic, right?

[27:42] That's gotta be the-

[27:43] She doesn't even look at her hand.

[27:45] No, she doesn't even look at the cards.

[27:47] She wants to hire him, and he's like,

[27:48] I don't know, I think you're too soft for the Lost Lands.

[27:51] I'm like, didn't we just have a whole intro

[27:52] about how she came out of the Lost Lands?

[27:54] Why are we bothering with this?

[27:56] They're setting up a Lady and the Tramp type situation

[27:59] or a Roman Holiday situation, I think,

[28:01] where there's the rugged, tough guy,

[28:04] and then there's the magic woman

[28:06] who isn't ready for the world that she has to go into.

[28:09] But she's clearly been there a bunch of times before.

[28:11] Like, it doesn't make any sense.

[28:13] She's really good at battling, guys.

[28:15] No question.

[28:15] She has these two sickle blades.

[28:17] She's got her silver talon finger covers

[28:19] that she puts on, her claws.

[28:22] I don't understand why they're going with the-

[28:23] Well, he's like, you're too soft for the Lost Lands.

[28:26] And she plays into that, for some reason,

[28:28] through most of the movie.

[28:29] And there was the point where I felt like

[28:31] the movie kept restarting and re-explaining itself,

[28:33] where she's like, I gotta go in the Lost Lands

[28:35] and find a werewolf.

[28:36] I need a hunter to do it.

[28:37] I'm like, yeah, I just saw you say all this

[28:39] to another character.

[28:40] Like, I got it.

[28:41] He tells her he knows of a werewolf named Sardor,

[28:44] the Great Wolf, a shapeshifter who lives at Skull River.

[28:47] Look, Sardor, great name for a band.

[28:49] Skull River, great name for a blues brand.

[28:52] You know?

[28:55] Great Wolf is a great name for like a 70s kind of,

[28:57] not quite metal, like heavy rock band.

[28:59] You know?

[29:00] I was thinking earlier, silver talon fingers

[29:03] is a pretty good name for a fancy character.

[29:06] Yeah.

[29:07] Boyce agrees to join Grey Alice,

[29:09] but then the church soldiers come in.

[29:11] They kill Boyce's snake.

[29:12] Oh no, now he's got a motivation to hate the church.

[29:15] And he and Alice, Grey Alice, escape.

[29:17] Meanwhile, the patriarch, the church leader-

[29:19] I do kind of like that later on,

[29:20] he's looking at other snakes,

[29:22] trying to find a snake that's as good as his others.

[29:24] That's true.

[29:25] I did like that.

[29:26] Shopping for snakes.

[29:27] And that's another,

[29:28] they kind of forget it partway through,

[29:29] but I wish that he, the whole time,

[29:30] he was just mourning that snake

[29:31] and talking about what a great snake it was.

[29:33] Like, that's a fun character thing

[29:35] that they just kind of forget about.

[29:36] If they would, later on, he'd like see a snake

[29:38] and he'd like be staring off wistfully,

[29:40] like, they're just not the same.

[29:43] Or if he gets in a fight and he's at a disadvantage,

[29:45] he's like, wish I had my snake right about now.

[29:47] All good stuff.

[29:48] Yeah, exactly.

[29:50] The church leader, the patriarch,

[29:51] he gives a speech about how important the church is.

[29:53] Yeah, he reaches for his snake holster and it's empty.

[29:55] And he's like, oh man.

[29:59] Exactly.

[30:00] The church tells people they have to hunt the church's enemies, Royallis needs to die.

[30:05] This is one of those things where the church is so incredibly obviously evil that you wonder why anyone listens to it.

[30:13] But again we live in a world where a mad king is sending his masked soldiers to beat the shit out of and kill normal people for no reason.

[30:20] So I guess that's – and the Democrats just throw up their hands and go, this is concerning.

[30:25] So I guess maybe this church is more realistic than I thought it was.

[30:29] I was going to say, I used to salute my shorts, but these days my shorts have been doing some stuff I don't agree with.

[30:34] These days my shorts are saluting me.

[30:41] It's like when Rodney Dangerfield fucking hosted the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.

[30:47] I don't know if it's a Yakov Smirnoff joke or if it's a really ineffective way to say that you have a boner.

[30:53] I don't know what it would mean.

[30:56] Actually, Rodney Dangerfield should have hosted the Kids' Choice Awards because then they'd slime him and he'd say, I get no respect.

[31:05] I got to get my Dr. Vinny Boobots. Get the slime out of my ears.

[31:09] Get the slime off of me, yeah.

[31:11] And now the star of Rover Dangerfield, Rodney Dangerfield.

[31:15] Oh, I'll tell you, Kids' Choice Awards, I used to get to choose things when I was a kid.

[31:21] What else would he say? Oh, what a great – okay, that's a good routine for us to do.

[31:25] I asked for shredded wheat.

[31:27] My dad got me some wheat and told me to go nuts myself.

[31:31] Shredded my – I don't know.

[31:33] This is why I wasn't Rodney Dangerfield's writer.

[31:35] No, it's one of a few reasons why you weren't Rodney Dangerfield's writer.

[31:39] Also, you were a child.

[31:42] I applied, though, you know.

[31:44] Yeah, you got to – if you don't try, you miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take, you know.

[31:48] I applied and I met with him. He's like, what am I, back at the Kids' Choice Awards?

[31:52] Let me tell you, this joke you wrote about me and my wife having sex, it seems to imply that I think that if you kiss, a baby comes out of the woman's mouth.

[32:00] Yeah, that's what happens, right, Mr. Dangerfield?

[32:02] Oh, get out of here, kid.

[32:04] You seem to think that sex is just touching butts together.

[32:08] Dan, is that your origin story? Is that where it all began?

[32:12] And then you saw that movie You and Me and Everyone We Know and you were like, finally a movie gets me.

[32:17] Back and forth forever.

[32:18] Back and forth forever.

[32:19] Anyway, so the church is like – Gray Alice needs to die.

[32:22] They torture that old lady from earlier, and she says, I saw the queen go to the witch.

[32:27] The church wants to use Gray Alice to take down the queen.

[32:30] If they can have Gray Alice testify that she was working with the queen, that would mean the queen is a heretic and they can overthrow her.

[32:36] Outside the city, our heroes camp out.

[32:38] Boyce is looking for a replacement for his snake.

[32:40] Alice fixes his gun, and for a moment, Alice thinks he's attacking her, but he's actually saving her from a scorpion.

[32:46] They go to a trading post.

[32:47] They see these characters, Ross and Mara, who are friends of Boyce.

[32:50] Boyce sleeps with Mara, and he kind of tells his backstory but then kind of jokes that it isn't his backstory.

[32:55] So a couple things here.

[32:56] One, I love a universe where Dave Bautista is like a number one ladies' man.

[33:00] Two thumbs up to that idea.

[33:03] Like Stuber.

[33:04] In Stuber, that's what he's like.

[33:05] I haven't seen Stuber.

[33:06] Is Stuber your favorite movie, Dan?

[33:08] Or your second favorite movie?

[33:11] It's certainly my favorite title to reference.

[33:15] So what do you guys think of the chemistry between Kumail and Dave Bautista?

[33:20] That's the movie where the guy is named Stu and he's a tuber, right?

[33:23] Like he grows out of the dirt.

[33:25] Now is that the movie—

[33:26] He's a human, Mr. Potato Head.

[33:27] Was Kumail huge at that point or was it a movie that was like, hey, it's time for you to get huge?

[33:34] That's the joke is that he's like a little guy and Dave Bautista is like a big guy who's what, like a spy or something?

[33:39] And so it's like, I'm a regular person.

[33:43] Spy hijinks, yeah.

[33:44] But then for Eternals, he had to get ripped, yeah.

[33:47] Yeah, OK.

[33:48] And the great thing is he doesn't have to maintain that physique because I don't think they're making Eternals 2.

[33:53] I hate to break it to you, Stu.

[33:54] But he loves it.

[33:56] He loves being a big guy, and you know what?

[33:58] I get it, homie.

[33:59] It made for a very interesting performance of Abraham Lincoln in O Mary, which was, from what I understand, a very historically accurate production.

[34:09] The thing is, Lincoln, when he was young, was known for his great strength.

[34:12] That was one of the things that impressed people.

[34:14] Split rails.

[34:15] I mean, he was gangly, but he was a much taller, stronger human being than most of the people around him.

[34:21] And so there was an aspect of physical strength and physical power to him that I think we forget about because we think of him as like a stooped old president who's like, oh, four scored seven years ago, when in fact, when he was younger, he was a very virile, powerful man.

[34:33] Yeah, which spawned a franchise of vampire hunting stories, right?

[34:38] Vampire hunting histories.

[34:40] Is that my mistake?

[34:42] So I was going to ask, what do you guys think of the chemistry between longtime Paul W.S. Anderson collaborator Mia Jovovich and Dave Bautista?

[34:52] I actually think that I actually kind of like them together, to be honest.

[34:56] I don't see romantic chemistry.

[34:58] No, which I guess they do kind of lead to that.

[35:01] Yeah, that's exactly where it leads to.

[35:03] But I think I don't see that.

[35:05] But I do like the idea there is something about he does a good gruff kind of like no nonsense guy who has vulnerability underneath him, who's a softer version of what you would think he would be.

[35:15] And she does a good like person from another dimension who kind of doesn't doesn't seem like she belongs on Earth in some ways.

[35:25] And that's I like I like that as a mismatched contract.

[35:28] If they were a I could see them as part of a Dungeons and Dragons quest party, you know, where like he's the he's the fighter and she's the kind of like Earth Mother Goddess witch or something like that.

[35:41] And they shouldn't they need like one or two more people.

[35:44] They need like one or two more characters to support.

[35:48] I found these are actors that I have liked a lot in other things.

[35:54] Like I these are people that I'm like happy to see in movies, but not to interrupt, but David is like what you are.

[36:02] But David is like one of Charlene's favorite actors.

[36:05] And she's constantly like begging for Hollywood.

[36:08] She's like screaming at the heavens, begging for Hollywood to put him in.

[36:11] I feel like I feel like Dave Bautista and I could be wrong.

[36:14] Maybe he's a terrible guy.

[36:15] What he feels like to me is he is the thing that that everyone thought Vin Diesel was.

[36:19] But is I don't think Vin Diesel really is, which is like a big, tough guy who's also kind of like a nice guy.

[36:25] Yeah, I could be wrong about that.

[36:26] Dan, you were saying?

[36:27] Uh, no, I just.

[36:29] Anyway, not to interrupt, but Stu, I think what Charlene is looking for.

[36:31] Yeah, Dan, Dan.

[36:33] I think I think Batista is sort of like a low, low key actor.

[36:39] He's not playing low key.

[36:40] That's he's a good actor.

[36:43] But I think he is like his energy is not like flamboyant or whatever.

[36:49] And I think that for this part, maybe someone with like sort of a bigger energy would have been better.

[36:54] And Mia Jovovich, I'm almost done.

[36:56] You can interrupt me again in a second.

[36:58] But I think that Mia Jovovich like is actually kind of like good at being goofy.

[37:04] And she is just kind of there's nothing in this character for that.

[37:10] Like so she feels kind of restrained in a way.

[37:12] Yeah, I think that's I think you you hit the nail on the head about what kind of the issue is.

[37:16] Both of them are playing it kind of serious where like one of them should be a little bit goofy.

[37:21] They just didn't decide which one.

[37:23] Oh, see, I see.

[37:24] I think they could have been.

[37:25] Or they could have a little kid introduced.

[37:27] I feel like a little kid or like a talking animal, possibly a talking two headed snake.

[37:31] Yeah, possibly.

[37:32] Yeah.

[37:33] And the heads are always arguing with each other.

[37:34] They don't get along.

[37:35] And I think I I don't know because maybe I was grading it on a curve.

[37:39] I felt like Dave Bautista was being a goofier version of this character than he might have been.

[37:43] I feel like that character could be so grim and so like you don't understand.

[37:48] I'm a character from the Lost Lands and I'm not doing it that way.

[37:50] And I felt and I like that he seems like a Dave Bautista is at least playing him like a human being as opposed to a like a flat character.

[37:59] I think that that's true.

[38:00] I just think that his natural energy is kind of more restrained.

[38:05] And so like even though he's playing it a little silly, like I would have liked to see someone with a lot a little more like, you know, big energy in it.

[38:12] But but that's just me.

[38:13] I think that's just a I think it comes down to a taste thing.

[38:15] I do think that they are given very little to do.

[38:17] It's the kind of thing where it's like I think that if these two actors in better material, I think could be fun to see together.

[38:24] Yeah.

[38:25] Yeah.

[38:26] Whereas here they don't they don't really have much to do.

[38:29] And they're and I think Dave Bautista is a little bit better at making use of not much to do than Mijovic is.

[38:36] But I don't know.

[38:37] I think she's trying to be mysterious, which turns into flat a lot of the time.

[38:41] Yeah, that's true.

[38:42] But when she pulls off mysterious like I want what I really wanted from this.

[38:45] But this feels like more the writing than the characters.

[38:48] I wanted the actors.

[38:49] I wanted a scene where she says some kind of strange, otherworldly magic thing.

[38:54] And he doesn't really understand what she's saying.

[38:56] But he's like, OK, like just kind of has to roll with it or something like that, you know.

[39:00] But more contrast between the characters is what you're saying is what you guys want.

[39:04] Please.

[39:05] I'm begging for it.

[39:06] All right.

[39:07] Let's turn up the contrast knob.

[39:08] Oh, no, it's too much.

[39:10] No, no, no, no.

[39:11] She's the chef.

[39:12] Oh, we're on my territory now.

[39:15] Motion smoothing all over the thing.

[39:17] Oh, no.

[39:18] Hey, guys, I got to ask you something.

[39:20] No, you said that movie.

[39:21] That's what you said.

[39:23] I recently saw a clip from the new Avatar movie.

[39:26] Yeah.

[39:27] I didn't realize that they changed the frame rate.

[39:29] Yes.

[39:30] In the movie.

[39:31] Why did they do that?

[39:32] In the middle of the movie, the frame rate changes.

[39:35] Yes.

[39:36] Back and forth.

[39:37] It keeps going back and forth between 48 frames and 24 frames.

[39:39] Big sort of actiony or spectacular sequence.

[39:42] They will shift to the 48 frame.

[39:45] And it's because, you know, like these very like technology minded directors like him

[39:51] or Peter Jackson are are convinced that this is like the world of the future.

[39:56] I like with with.

[40:00] Cameron's like really good 3D.

[40:03] It is something interesting to see,

[40:05] but it gave me a fucking headache.

[40:07] Like the longer it went on, I'm just like,

[40:09] oh God, it's less like I'm watching a movie

[40:12] and more like I'm looking through like a movie-shaped portal

[40:16] to like a weird computer world.

[40:19] And I don't like it.

[40:22] It sounds like they finally made a movie out of Reboot.

[40:26] Not Reboot, that recent TV show, Reboot,

[40:28] the old TV show that was set in the computer world.

[40:30] But I found it very confusing.

[40:31] Wouldn't it have been crazy if Reboot

[40:33] was a reboot of the cartoon Reboot?

[40:35] If Reboot was about a writing staff

[40:39] that is trying to reboot the cartoon Reboot, yeah.

[40:42] And voice cast.

[40:44] Yeah, and it's about, but it's about,

[40:46] and the voice cast, but it's about pirates,

[40:47] so now it's called Freeboot.

[40:50] It's called Dasboot.

[40:51] Okay, so Dasboot was a remake of Reboot

[40:54] or was it the other way around?

[40:55] Yeah.

[40:57] Yeah.

[40:58] I mean, I asked a question with choices

[41:00] and you said yeah, that was the response.

[41:03] Anyway, they're at the trading post.

[41:05] They leave there.

[41:06] The next day, our heroes ride off.

[41:08] This is one of the funniest parts to me.

[41:09] His voice says to Alice,

[41:10] don't expect any more friendly faces from this point on.

[41:13] And literally their next stop is to find a place

[41:14] where it's like, where's the guy I know?

[41:16] Where is he?

[41:16] I like that guy.

[41:18] But they're chased by the church folk

[41:21] in the orange train.

[41:23] Yeah, that's cool, with a big tank.

[41:25] With a big tank turret on it.

[41:27] The Queen and the Patriarch have a face off, who cares?

[41:31] The church soldiers show up at the trading post

[41:33] and they're like, where'd boys go to?

[41:35] And they kill the people there

[41:37] or they kill the man and burn the trading post.

[41:39] And it's only three days to the full moon.

[41:42] I should mention that.

[41:42] There are literally parts of this

[41:43] where it shows them leaving a place

[41:45] and it'll say like five days to the full moon.

[41:47] And then you just see them riding horses

[41:48] and it'll just say four days to the full moon.

[41:50] I'm like, man.

[41:51] I kind of like this graphic though of the-

[41:53] It's a cool graphic, but it means nothing.

[41:55] It's a time piece graphic, yeah.

[41:57] But it means completely nothing.

[41:59] Like where they're going or when they're going there.

[42:01] So our heroes ride through a destroyed city called the Rift.

[42:04] They're gonna use a cable car,

[42:05] which is an old school bus on a cable across a chasm

[42:08] run by a guy named Cyrus.

[42:09] But Cyrus, this is the part where he's like,

[42:11] don't expect a friendly face from this point on.

[42:13] Then they show up here and he's like,

[42:14] where's my friend Cyrus?

[42:15] What happened to him?

[42:17] We don't actually see his face.

[42:18] It might've been fucked up.

[42:19] It might've been a very grumpy face.

[42:22] I had angry eyebrows tattooed on me.

[42:27] I meant it literally.

[42:28] He has an angry face all the time,

[42:29] but he's actually a sweet guy.

[42:31] I was just talking about his face.

[42:33] The church soldiers are there and they've tortured Mara,

[42:38] the lady from the trading post.

[42:40] And then the church lady kills her.

[42:41] And then there's a big fight and they're shooting, shooting.

[42:44] They get on the school bus cable car.

[42:46] They're going across the Rift.

[42:47] And I wanted to ask you guys,

[42:48] in this scene, they're on a school bus

[42:51] that is suspended across a chasm.

[42:55] Soldiers keep showing up on the school bus

[42:57] and they have to keep fighting them.

[42:58] Where are these guys coming from?

[43:00] They just pop up out of nowhere.

[43:01] A lot of them like jumped and grabbed on

[43:04] as it was taken off.

[43:07] And I think they were like hanging on the bottom

[43:09] and climbed up, but you're right.

[43:10] Yeah, it seems like a lot more started showing up.

[43:12] It's like four guys jumped onto the bus with them,

[43:14] but they fight 30 guys on the bus.

[43:16] And I was like, where were they?

[43:18] Were they crawling under the engine?

[43:19] Where's the spawn point for all these enemies?

[43:22] Exactly.

[43:24] The baddies cut the cable.

[43:25] Which, I gotta tell you, that would be very hard to do.

[43:29] If this is a cable that is strong enough

[43:31] to hold a fucking thing.

[43:32] A school bus?

[43:33] Yeah, hold a school bus aloft.

[43:35] Hitting it with an axe is not gonna do shit.

[43:38] This is real?

[43:39] Or shooting it with a bullet,

[43:40] like a pistol bullet will not do shit.

[43:42] This is when Stu, his real inner dungeon master comes out.

[43:45] Because it's like everything else he buys

[43:48] is completely totally.

[43:49] And he's like, that's gonna be a pretty hard roll

[43:52] for you to do any damage to that cable with an axe.

[43:55] Yeah, and someone gets in that 20s like,

[43:57] okay, I guess you found like the one weak spot.

[44:01] I guess there was a little part

[44:03] where it already worn away, yeah.

[44:04] Yeah, I guess you're, what's his name?

[44:11] You're long shot and you have your luck powers again.

[44:15] When are they gonna do a long shot movie, Stu?

[44:18] They're still waiting for an actor

[44:19] to be born with only three fingers.

[44:22] That's the hard part.

[44:23] They did that one with Charlize Theron.

[44:27] Yeah, you're right.

[44:28] She plays Spiral, right?

[44:31] She would have been a fucking sick Spiral.

[44:33] Charlize Theron would still be an amazing Spiral.

[44:36] Kevin Feige, I know you listen to this show.

[44:38] If you're doing a movie with Spiral in it,

[44:39] you gotta have Charlize Theron play Spiral.

[44:41] Make a Spiral movie, I don't care.

[44:42] She's a great character.

[44:43] She's got a helmet with horns, boots with the fur.

[44:46] Everyone's looking at her.

[44:48] She's got six arms, swords, she dances.

[44:50] She's got everything.

[44:53] I bet Mojo can give her some Applebottom jeans.

[44:56] I have to assume so.

[45:00] I'm always giving them Mojo of the Mojoverse.

[45:02] His last name is Nixon and they've never addressed it.

[45:07] Yeah, it's only on the trading card.

[45:09] When you look on the trading card,

[45:10] it says, true identity, Mojo Nixon.

[45:12] Yeah, exactly.

[45:14] So the Allison boys, they escape.

[45:16] They climb to safety on the other side.

[45:17] The bus falls down and the church lady

[45:19] snipes Boyce in the shoulder.

[45:21] Oh no, but Alice uses her witch powers

[45:24] to stop her from making the killing shot.

[45:26] That night, Boyce takes the bullet

[45:27] out of his shoulder himself and he talks to Alice

[45:29] and Boyce is like, I like the city,

[45:31] but I feel more at home in the lost lands.

[45:33] And he's like, really, you don't seem to.

[45:34] It seems terrible there.

[45:37] Two days to the full moon.

[45:38] Can I jump in here?

[45:39] Because he did miss something.

[45:41] He kind of passes out and he needs Alice

[45:44] to stitch up his wound, which he uses as an opportunity

[45:47] that we'll later find out he used it to poison him.

[45:50] That's true.

[45:52] It seems like nothing at the time,

[45:53] which is why I didn't write it down in my notes,

[45:55] but it is important later.

[45:57] The queen is pregnant.

[45:58] She taunts the overlord, who's a comatose old man.

[46:01] It's like, you're not the father, Boyce is the father.

[46:04] Then classic Roman empress style,

[46:06] she smothers him to death.

[46:08] And it's like, oh, the overlord died.

[46:10] I guess my unborn child is now overlord

[46:12] and I'll be the regent.

[46:13] And our heroes, they finally get to Shadowsbane,

[46:16] an old nuclear reactor.

[46:18] Uh-oh, the bad guy train is after them

[46:20] because for some reason the train tracks

[46:21] go through the old nuclear area.

[46:24] I don't know.

[46:24] I'm also having trouble with the name Shadowsbane.

[46:28] So it's the bane of shadows?

[46:31] Yeah.

[46:32] Like what is the bane of shadows?

[46:34] Light.

[46:35] Light is, Dan.

[46:36] Okay.

[46:37] Also the creator of shadows.

[46:38] It's kind of an interesting thing.

[46:39] So is it a really light place then?

[46:41] Well, nuclear energy can be pretty bright.

[46:45] I think this is a good name

[46:46] because the Shadowsbane would be light

[46:48] that is so powerful that it can kill.

[46:50] Right?

[46:51] And that's essentially what radiation is

[46:53] into someone who is not a scientist.

[46:55] So do you think this post-apocalyptic super train,

[46:59] do you think the tracks already laid down

[47:01] or do you think it's like something like that

[47:03] China Mieville novel where-

[47:05] Dan, don't pretend you're not totally impressed

[47:07] by the phrase post-apocalyptic super train.

[47:09] No, that's what I'm saying.

[47:10] But do you think it's like

[47:12] in that China Mieville novel, Iron Council,

[47:14] where they have the people that live on this train

[47:17] and they have people who ride far ahead

[47:19] and lay new track down

[47:20] and then people who ride far behind

[47:22] and pick up the old track.

[47:23] So it's constantly like-

[47:25] No, I don't think it's like that.

[47:26] Okay.

[47:27] But that'd be pretty cool.

[47:28] That would be cool.

[47:29] That's a pretty cool book.

[47:30] He's got some good ideas, that guy.

[47:31] He's got some good stuff, yeah.

[47:32] Nothing in the movie makes it seem like

[47:34] this is a well-maintained track

[47:36] that is constantly being recreated.

[47:38] Yeah.

[47:39] Slow way to travel.

[47:41] But it's one way to just be free

[47:43] and not be stuck in new Cro-Boozon city.

[47:47] The worst.

[47:48] Old Cro-Boozon is even worse.

[47:50] That's the thing.

[47:51] You should see how bad the old one was.

[47:53] There's a reason there's a new one.

[47:55] So they're being chased by this train.

[47:58] They've got to take a dangerous route

[48:00] that forces them to fight off

[48:01] a horde of demon skeleton people

[48:04] inside a wing of fire.

[48:05] I feel like Dave Batiste has got to look

[48:07] to Mia Jovovich for expertise on this

[48:09] because she fights CGI garbage all the time, right?

[48:12] It's true.

[48:13] I mean, and also she knows these guys.

[48:15] She does.

[48:16] She does.

[48:17] It's most of her career now is fighting CGI garbage.

[48:20] But she also knows these guys personally

[48:23] and she's using her sickle blades to fight them.

[48:26] And they're pretty cool because they look like sickles

[48:27] or she can flip them around

[48:28] and they're like punch dagger things,

[48:30] almost like K-tars.

[48:31] But it's another weird thing where

[48:34] I think it's Boyce who's like,

[48:36] fire is the only thing that scares anything over here.

[48:39] It doesn't do shit.

[48:39] And it doesn't do that much.

[48:40] But then she kills the demons.

[48:42] She's like, oh yeah, I know those guys.

[48:44] Those are the guys that had me leave them here

[48:46] and then they turned into demons.

[48:47] It's like, so why do we bother having Boyce

[48:50] giving advice about how to fight these guys

[48:52] if she not only knows how to fight these guys,

[48:54] but knows these guys.

[48:55] They know her.

[48:56] Or if there's, part of the point is that

[48:58] she is pretending to be naive

[49:01] and he is like giving advice and she's like,

[49:03] actually, I don't need your advice.

[49:04] I mean, and if that's what they're doing,

[49:06] which maybe that's what they're doing,

[49:07] then I feel like they've got to do more with it.

[49:09] They've got to play it out.

[49:10] Yeah, it is unclear.

[49:11] Because she seems at all times

[49:14] to be the most powerful person on screen

[49:16] and the most knowledgeable person on screen.

[49:18] Like, I don't buy that she needs this guide

[49:21] and we'll find out later on.

[49:23] It turns out at the end that she didn't.

[49:24] But it was a, but until,

[49:26] it's another one of those things that like

[49:27] would have been more fun to know ahead of time

[49:30] that she is faking because this guy,

[49:32] but it's also one of those things where it's like,

[49:34] I guess it's because they have to get back to the lair.

[49:35] Right?

[49:36] Well, at any point she could just do the thing

[49:39] that she needs to do.

[49:40] Or again, it's gotta be during the full moon.

[49:42] Ooh, I don't know.

[49:43] There's, it's one of those movies where you're like,

[49:45] afterwards you're like,

[49:46] yeah, I guess that stuff all kind of ties together.

[49:48] But while you're watching it,

[49:49] it feels like they're just making it up as they go along,

[49:51] you know, and not in a fun way.

[49:52] Yeah.

[49:53] And like, at any point,

[49:56] Mia Jovovich's character can just bust out a sick flip.

[49:59] Yes.

[50:00] You don't, now Dave Bautista isn't putting this,

[50:03] you know, he's not asked to or required to,

[50:06] but I don't know if he could do a sick flip

[50:07] as quick as he can.

[50:08] I want to ask you something.

[50:09] If you could bust out a sick flip,

[50:11] how often would you do that?

[50:13] At least once a year on my birthday.

[50:15] Oh, I feel like that's all you would do.

[50:17] That's a lot of conservation of sick flips.

[50:19] I feel like your Instagram would just become

[50:21] sick flip after sick flip.

[50:23] That's true, yeah, it would be called Stu Sick Flips.

[50:25] Yeah.

[50:26] I'll have to quickly change my handle.

[50:28] You'd flip and then a graphic would come up

[50:30] that would say, sick.

[50:31] Yeah.

[50:34] My social media manager is Elliot now.

[50:36] Yeah.

[50:38] Make sure I'm hitting all my SEOs.

[50:41] You got, yeah, what keywords would we put in there?

[50:44] So it would be like, sick, feet, ASMR.

[50:47] Feet, you gotta say flips.

[50:49] You gotta put flips like number one in that shit.

[50:51] So it would be sick flips, feet, ASMR,

[50:54] how much worth, wife, like all the stuff

[50:57] that would get you on the search engines, yeah.

[51:00] So she's like, oh yeah, I helped those people

[51:03] get to this place and they turned into demons.

[51:05] I've got guilt for all the wishes that I have to fulfill.

[51:07] It's only one day until the full moon.

[51:09] The church guys are still pursuing.

[51:11] The patriarch demands they find the witch

[51:12] so that they can depose the king.

[51:14] Our heroes finally get to the firefields.

[51:16] They're almost at Skull River

[51:18] and Alice plans to face Sardor alone.

[51:21] And she's like, go boys, leave me here.

[51:23] And he's like, no, I'm not gonna go.

[51:25] I don't want you to go through with it.

[51:26] You shouldn't have to risk yourself.

[51:27] She throws rocks at him until he goes away.

[51:29] Because I never liked you, yeah.

[51:31] She goes, I don't have a choice.

[51:33] I'm cursed and I've gotta fulfill all the wishes.

[51:35] And he's like, I don't care.

[51:36] Meanwhile, the queen and Jerase, they're totally kissing.

[51:39] Jerase, the head of the Overwatch, they're totally kissing.

[51:42] Back to our heroes, they're riding their horses

[51:45] along the train tracks.

[51:46] The bad guy train arrives.

[51:48] Instead of just-

[51:49] Sorry, I'm just imagining now like,

[51:52] sort of like a completely G-rated porn called Totally Kissing.

[51:57] Totally Kissing.

[51:59] Because if there's anything kids love,

[52:01] from my experience, is watching people kiss.

[52:04] It's certainly not something that they react to

[52:05] with disgust.

[52:06] Visceral.

[52:07] Visceral, verbal disgust when it happens.

[52:09] So you're saying it doesn't fall

[52:10] under the category of general audience?

[52:12] No.

[52:13] No, I got a question here, guys.

[52:14] This is the tactical decision here.

[52:17] If you know-

[52:18] If you're being chased by a train-

[52:19] A post-apocalyptic super train.

[52:21] Do you-

[52:22] Keep following the tracks?

[52:23] Keep following the train tracks.

[52:24] Yeah, that was gonna be my question.

[52:25] No, I would think-

[52:26] You anticipated it.

[52:27] Yes, exactly.

[52:27] Do you have gray Alice's powers of foresight?

[52:30] Yeah, something like that.

[52:31] It's kind of like they're in a,

[52:34] if you were in like a Disney ride that went evil

[52:37] and was starting to kill people,

[52:38] it's kind of like they're just staying in the car

[52:40] of the Disney ride going,

[52:41] faster, faster, instead of getting out

[52:43] and just leaving the ride.

[52:46] Yeah, it's an interesting choice

[52:47] to stay on the same route

[52:49] that is the only one the bad guys can choose.

[52:51] The bad guys, though, have an interesting choice

[52:53] because what happens is gray Alice waits for the train,

[52:56] runs a little bit,

[52:57] and then the train goes right off a broken track

[52:59] into a chasm.

[53:01] So it's like-

[53:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[53:03] So there's a lot of dumbness going on here,

[53:05] that the heroes are sticking to the same road,

[53:07] that's the only road the bad guys can use,

[53:09] and that the bad guys just don't seem to know

[53:12] that the road stops at a certain point

[53:14] and they just keep going until they're dead.

[53:16] They're like, they don't realize

[53:18] that she can just leave the train tracks,

[53:20] that they're like, hey, let's just gun it,

[53:22] we're gonna run her over, she has no options.

[53:24] There's literally no way

[53:25] that she can do a sick flip in this moment.

[53:27] No.

[53:28] No, it's impossible, it's impossible.

[53:30] She used them all up.

[53:30] She used up her sick flips

[53:31] and she has to do a short rest to get back one

[53:33] or a long rest to get back her full three.

[53:35] Oh, hell yeah.

[53:37] Now, there's a thing in improv

[53:40] where they talk about your character

[53:42] acting at the top of your intelligence,

[53:45] not having a character just be dumb

[53:46] or make dumb decisions or doing stupid things

[53:49] because you think it'll be funny,

[53:50] but still being at the top of your intelligence

[53:52] so that you can get to more interesting or funnier stuff.

[53:54] I feel like all these characters

[53:55] are at the very bottom of their intelligence.

[53:57] At a certain point, it's like,

[53:58] I'm amazed that they can still communicate verbally.

[54:00] They're all acting so stupid.

[54:02] Yeah.

[54:03] So the train follows.

[54:06] Her plan to stop them is just to lead them

[54:09] to where the train was going to go anyway

[54:11] because that's the only place the track can go

[54:13] and it falls off a cliff,

[54:15] which means that there's a version of this story

[54:16] where she and Boyce take another way

[54:18] to get where they're going.

[54:20] The train just keeps going.

[54:21] It just rolls off a cliff and they never even see it.

[54:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah, the whole Raiders of the Lost Ark argument.

[54:27] Yeah, that Indy is useless in that movie.

[54:29] He doesn't need to be there.

[54:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[54:32] He needs to be there to call the government

[54:33] to be like, here's where to pick up that crate

[54:35] because otherwise that crate

[54:36] would just be sitting in the desert somewhere.

[54:38] Until some kid walks over.

[54:39] He's like, oh, sick crate, whoa.

[54:42] The coolest thing, a crate.

[54:46] I can fill this with hay so that things don't get broken

[54:49] when they're shipped in it.

[54:50] This is gonna be awesome.

[54:53] Dan, what would you do with a cool crate if you were a kid?

[54:55] Oh boy.

[54:56] Wait, let's set the scene.

[54:57] It's 1990, let's say.

[55:00] No, maybe 1989, still the 80s, 1989.

[55:02] Young Dan, how old would you have been in 1989?

[55:05] 11, 10?

[55:07] Wait, 10.

[55:10] Wait, no, 11.

[55:12] Okay, I didn't mean to challenge you.

[55:14] You know what, Dan?

[55:15] I didn't know this was gonna be as big a challenge

[55:16] as it was.

[55:16] So you're 11 years old.

[55:18] You're walking through Earlham, Illinois.

[55:20] You don't expect something exciting to happen.

[55:21] Earlham, Illinois?

[55:22] No, that's his college.

[55:23] That's Earlham, Indiana.

[55:25] That's right, you're walking around in, was it Eureka?

[55:27] Eureka, yeah.

[55:27] Sorry, Eureka, Illinois.

[55:29] I apologize.

[55:30] Eureka is what gold miners say.

[55:33] Earlham is what Quakers say.

[55:35] Eureka is what Archimedes says

[55:37] when he realizes he's displaced water.

[55:40] That's actually an urban legend.

[55:41] He actually said Earlham.

[55:43] Wow.

[55:44] He jumped out of the tub and said Earlham

[55:45] and ran through the town naked.

[55:46] And they said, we should found a college.

[55:48] And that's why Earlham's mascot, as you know,

[55:50] is the fighting naked Archimedes.

[55:53] So you're walking around Eureka, Illinois.

[55:54] You don't expect much to happen.

[55:56] Suddenly, you see a crate just sitting there for the taking.

[55:59] What are you gonna do with it?

[56:00] Well, first I'm gonna make sure that Fluffy

[56:02] from Creepshow is not living in that crate

[56:04] because that's a dangerous- Smart, very smart.

[56:07] That's the largest cause of crate-related injuries.

[56:11] I don't know.

[56:12] Maybe I'll just set up,

[56:12] like, you know, I can't put it in a tree.

[56:16] Like, I don't have the strength.

[56:17] So I wanna have a tree house,

[56:18] but maybe I just have an adjunct hang in my backyard.

[56:22] Like, I just have my own little house of my own.

[56:25] I'm a homeowner.

[56:26] I'm the American dream.

[56:30] Even at 11, I have achieved it.

[56:33] I mean, that was that,

[56:34] I mean, times were so different back then.

[56:35] Even an 11-year-old could have been a homeowner.

[56:37] Now it's beyond the reach of so many adults.

[56:40] So like Diogenes living in a big wine cask,

[56:42] you would just live in a crate on your parents' property

[56:44] or would you put it somewhere else?

[56:47] I think I would have to be on my parents' property.

[56:49] If I put it somewhere else,

[56:50] there'd always be the chance I'd be in there,

[56:52] like, reading comics or whatever.

[56:53] And, you know, like a forklift comes, takes me away.

[56:56] Someone's clearing a crate off their lawn.

[56:59] Yeah, possible.

[57:00] You wouldn't write, like,

[57:01] Dan's Crate Keep Out on the outside?

[57:03] I don't think that's gonna stop someone

[57:07] who's angry about me, you know,

[57:09] like building a house in their place.

[57:10] Yeah, and you're gonna be so wrapped up

[57:11] in the adventures of Snuffy Smith.

[57:12] Right, I'm reading one of those

[57:13] Snuffy Smith comic books that they put out.

[57:17] Times were so different back then.

[57:18] In 1989, everybody was reading Snuffy Smith comic books.

[57:22] And they were all original adventures, too.

[57:24] It wasn't just three packages of the old comic strip.

[57:26] Well, and those, of course, had kinetic powers as well

[57:29] as being in a hillbilly.

[57:31] Yeah, Fantagraphics was dipping their toe

[57:33] into superhero books, and this is their first one.

[57:35] Yeah, I think, but Dan would have,

[57:36] he would have read the next iteration of Snuffy Smith,

[57:38] which was a Penthouse Comics release.

[57:40] Right, Dan?

[57:41] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[57:41] Yeah, yeah.

[57:42] Yeah, well, there were just three packages of Yama,

[57:44] old Tijuana Bibles.

[57:48] That's, is that the religion you found, Dan?

[57:50] Now I'm gonna do a story where Dan is in a hotel,

[57:52] and he's had a rough day.

[57:54] He opens up the drawer,

[57:54] and there's a Tijuana Bible inside,

[57:56] and that's what sets him on his path

[57:57] of being a cartoon-based perv.

[58:00] I saw the light that day,

[58:01] the light that Blondie from the Blondie comic strip

[58:04] could take on two guys at once.

[58:06] Yeah, I'm left there by a perverse missionary

[58:10] trying to spread the word.

[58:12] I mean, that's, yeah,

[58:13] the hobos leaving corn by railroad stations

[58:17] was kind of a, yeah, makes sense.

[58:20] Well, that was a public service they were providing

[58:21] for the federal government.

[58:23] Yeah.

[58:24] In exchange for immunity for all their pie theft.

[58:26] That was the deal that the hobo union

[58:29] made with the government.

[58:30] Now we're slowly encroaching onto John Hodgman territory,

[58:34] if it's hobos making a deal with the government.

[58:35] So let's move back to In the Lost Lands.

[58:38] So they have defeated the church soldiers.

[58:42] The Overwatch kills all the church people and the patriarchs.

[58:45] The Queen is moving against the church.

[58:47] Our heroes get to Skull River, finally.

[58:49] Skull River, wider than a mile.

[58:51] My Huckleberry friends, Skull River.

[58:54] End me, or is it end you?

[58:56] I don't remember the words to the song.

[58:58] Boyce is still trying to get Alice to turn back.

[59:00] The Queen is waiting for the witch.

[59:02] Dreyse is like, hey, do you really have to be a werewolf?

[59:04] And the Queen's like, yeah, I do want to be a werewolf.

[59:06] Alice puts on her silver kind of talon claw rings.

[59:10] Those are super cool.

[59:11] And Boyce is like, silver is useless against Sardor.

[59:14] And Alice is like-

[59:15] He's basically saying, the trick is,

[59:17] after you put on all your jewelry,

[59:18] you need to take one off so you don't accessorize.

[59:21] Take off one of those silver claw talons, yeah.

[59:23] Boyce is like, you know what Sardor really loves?

[59:25] If you smear yourself with meat.

[59:27] That's what really helps to beat him.

[59:29] You know what really hurts Sardor

[59:31] is if you just left sausages around and went home.

[59:35] He would hate that.

[59:36] If you buried that silver deep below the ground.

[59:41] Sardor actually loves silver.

[59:42] He loves it.

[59:43] So if you want to attack him,

[59:44] you want to attack him with like,

[59:46] I don't know, like a small child.

[59:47] Like a small child that you've already

[59:49] put barbecue sauce on.

[59:50] Yeah, why don't you-

[59:52] He would hate it if you just pickle brined yourself

[59:55] and then took a really long nap.

[1:00:00] But Sardor hates it when his opponents are full of Nyquil.

[1:00:03] He just hates it.

[1:00:04] It's his weakness.

[1:00:06] Yeah.

[1:00:07] So it's raining, there's a full moon,

[1:00:09] and Alice declares that Boyce lied.

[1:00:11] She knows there is no Sardor.

[1:00:13] He's the real werewolf.

[1:00:14] And she unleashes her silver claw talons,

[1:00:17] and Boyce is like, I tried to warn you,

[1:00:18] which he didn't really.

[1:00:19] And he turns into a wolfman, and they fight for a little while.

[1:00:22] Okay, real quick.

[1:00:23] What do you guys think of these werewolf effects?

[1:00:26] They could be worse, but they could be better.

[1:00:27] Interesting.

[1:00:28] Can you give me an example of worse werewolf effects?

[1:00:31] An American werewolf in Paris?

[1:00:33] Okay.

[1:00:34] Yeah.

[1:00:34] That's fair.

[1:00:36] This is kind of a Van Helsing-esque werewolf, I would say.

[1:00:41] Yeah.

[1:00:42] It's less wolf and more a furry man with kind of like a snubby

[1:00:46] wolf face, you know.

[1:00:47] But like big, muscular, like, torso wolf.

[1:00:51] Yeah, but when Steve Bautista is turning into a wolfman,

[1:00:53] like, where's the mask gonna go, Dan?

[1:00:55] Let's talk about, this is a movie that is-

[1:00:58] This is a movie that is so based on real science.

[1:01:00] That's the thing I like about it.

[1:01:01] That if he turned into a skinny werewolf, you'd be like, what

[1:01:04] happened to all that mass?

[1:01:05] He's a big guy.

[1:01:05] He can't do that.

[1:01:06] Well, maybe he's just being more compact.

[1:01:08] He's got compact wolf muscles now.

[1:01:12] Oh, I see.

[1:01:13] Like a runner or a swimmer, you know.

[1:01:15] Powerful.

[1:01:16] But again, he's a big bodybuilder.

[1:01:18] If I turn into werewolf, yeah, stringy, kind of not in great

[1:01:21] shape werewolf.

[1:01:22] But if Dave Bautista turns into a werewolf, that werewolf's

[1:01:24] gonna be stacked, you know.

[1:01:25] Yeah, that's true.

[1:01:26] Totally juiced.

[1:01:27] It totally juiced.

[1:01:28] And that juice, werewolf blood, she uses her witch powers to

[1:01:32] make herself look into a big raven, and she fights him, and

[1:01:35] he falls down.

[1:01:36] And- He falls down?

[1:01:39] I mean, that's a good summary.

[1:01:41] Does he or does he not fall down?

[1:01:43] I guess he does fall down.

[1:01:44] Does he float up in the air?

[1:01:45] No.

[1:01:46] Is he swimming away?

[1:01:47] No.

[1:01:47] He turns back into a human, and she's tending to his wounds.

[1:01:51] Because, like, the moon is covered, right?

[1:01:54] He's very moon-dependent.

[1:01:55] The cloud goes over the moon, so he changes back, and she's

[1:01:58] like- And they agree that they are two of a kind.

[1:02:00] This is one of those moments where I'm like, no, you didn't

[1:02:02] earn this. The idea that, like, they're kindred spirits.

[1:02:04] That's the opposite of what this movie has been telling us.

[1:02:06] Boyce wakes up to find Alice has chained him up.

[1:02:09] She's been- She used her magic or whatever, but also we find

[1:02:14] out, as Stuart mentioned, when she was sewing up his wound,

[1:02:16] she put, like, a silver coin in his body.

[1:02:19] And so the silver in his blood now, and that is poisoning

[1:02:22] him. And he's like, I'm making a wish.

[1:02:25] I wish that we could be together.

[1:02:26] Don't you have to fulfill every wish? And she's like, I can

[1:02:29] refuse no one. And the moon comes out, and he turns into

[1:02:31] werewolf, and she skins him alive as he roars, which is pretty-

[1:02:35] That's pretty dope.

[1:02:36] That's pretty gruesome.

[1:02:38] It's like the movie The Black Cat, when- when Bela Lugosi is

[1:02:42] ostensibly the hero of the movie, until he's like, well, I've

[1:02:44] got you, Boris Karloff, and I'm going to skin you alive.

[1:02:46] And you're like, well, that's not the kind of thing a hero

[1:02:48] does. Although the funny thing in that movie is, you see him

[1:02:50] doing it in silhouette, and his knife movements are so small

[1:02:53] that it's like he's really taking his time with it. He's just

[1:02:55] chipping away at his skin. Great movie, though, Black Cat.

[1:02:59] Doesn't make any sense, but it's a great movie. The next day,

[1:03:01] she has buried him.

[1:03:02] She rides back with his pelvis- He has like a little cairn, right?

[1:03:05] He's got a cool little cairn. Yeah, she's got a little rock cairn for him.

[1:03:07] Because she didn't want to dig super deep.

[1:03:09] She didn't have all the tools for that. No, no. She doesn't have a

[1:03:11] shovel. What's she going to dig with those little talons?

[1:03:13] Silver claws, yeah. She's going to get them all messed up.

[1:03:16] Silver claws. It's Christmas time in the Lost Lands. Hear them ring.

[1:03:25] Kill Sardor. But it was really Boyce all the time. Silver Claws,

[1:03:33] of course, not based on Silver Claw, the former member of the

[1:03:35] Avengers from the Marvel Comics. Do you think it would have been

[1:03:38] better if Sardor had instead been like a mix-em-up for Boyce?

[1:03:44] Like if his name had been like- His name was like Ekiob.

[1:03:48] Oh, Boyce backwards is Ekiob, of course.

[1:03:51] Yeah, what happened is he like wrote his name down.

[1:03:56] It was like Boyce plus, you know, Milbug.

[1:04:00] And then she saw it in a mirror.

[1:04:02] She saw it in a mirror, yeah.

[1:04:03] Oh, no. And the person, Syla, is really me.

[1:04:08] So she goes back.

[1:04:12] As she's running back, the workers see her in the city and they're like,

[1:04:15] the witch who would not hang, the witch.

[1:04:17] And just the sight of her leads them to rebel against the overlord

[1:04:21] and do an amazing job of it.

[1:04:24] It turns out that if the workers had ever bothered to rebel,

[1:04:26] they would overthrow the government almost instantly.

[1:04:29] I think it's a pretty important message these days.

[1:04:31] Actually, that's true. It is.

[1:04:32] Well, it's a message that, to be honest, for all that turmoil,

[1:04:35] I feel like we are beginning to live through, which is really exciting,

[1:04:38] that people are in as terrifying as it must be to live in Minnesota right now,

[1:04:43] that the people there are like, no, we're not going to back down.

[1:04:46] And what it takes is us just kind of like making it known how this is not okay

[1:04:51] and it hasn't stopped it yet, but it does make it more difficult

[1:04:55] and will eventually lead to it stopping it.

[1:04:57] So that's really exciting.

[1:04:58] Anyway, I don't mean to get political with you guys.

[1:05:01] Sorry.

[1:05:02] It's the movie. The movie is infecting us.

[1:05:06] And the lost lands is what will radicalize us all.

[1:05:09] And this is normally – longtime Flophouse listeners will know –

[1:05:12] this is normally when Dan and Stu would start projecting on –

[1:05:16] sorry, Stu and me would start projecting on Dan hard right-wing support

[1:05:21] for what the government is doing.

[1:05:22] But we're not doing that anymore. That joke is dead.

[1:05:24] We're not doing that joke anymore.

[1:05:25] Thank you.

[1:05:26] Dan, it is too much.

[1:05:27] It would have been pretty hilarious.

[1:05:29] It would have been so funny.

[1:05:31] And Dan would have gotten so mad and his anger at it would have been so funny.

[1:05:34] He would have gotten so upset.

[1:05:35] No, it's true.

[1:05:36] And we would have laughed and laughed and the audience would laugh and laugh.

[1:05:38] Bob Odenkirk of podcasting.

[1:05:40] Exactly.

[1:05:41] But we have crossed the Rubicon on that.

[1:05:42] It is no longer funny to project hard right ideals on Dan that he doesn't have.

[1:05:46] I'll get mad at other stuff.

[1:05:47] Don't worry.

[1:05:48] We'll find – just earlier in this episode when we kept interrupting him,

[1:05:50] you should have seen his face.

[1:05:51] He was getting pissed, and it was hilarious.

[1:05:53] Yeah, he looked like a real tomato over here.

[1:05:56] Yeah, I was like, attack of the killer damn tomatoes?

[1:05:58] What's going on here?

[1:06:00] Are tomatoes the most angry thing?

[1:06:02] Yeah, because they're all red.

[1:06:03] Oh, I got it.

[1:06:04] He was talking about Toe Mater, the character Mater from the Cars universe.

[1:06:07] Yeah.

[1:06:08] Dan was turning into a hillbilly pick-up tow truck.

[1:06:10] He'd be so mad.

[1:06:11] He's so mad.

[1:06:12] It's like, it's my job.

[1:06:14] And where did they attach the fucking tow hook?

[1:06:17] Between his teeth?

[1:06:18] Oh, boy.

[1:06:19] Yeah.

[1:06:20] It's already got a big gap there.

[1:06:21] Yeah.

[1:06:22] No, I mean the tow hook is in the back because it's a tow truck.

[1:06:25] Oh, no.

[1:06:26] His is.

[1:06:27] Oh, yeah.

[1:06:28] It's the equivalent of if you took a knife and just stabbed it in someone's throat.

[1:06:32] That's what he's doing with the tow hook.

[1:06:34] Yeah.

[1:06:35] Okay.

[1:06:36] Disgusting.

[1:06:37] So anyway, so Alice gives Boyce's pelt to Jiriah, and she's like, I killed Boyce, so I fulfilled your wish.

[1:06:44] I knew what you really wanted was that the queen would not be in love with Boyce but with you.

[1:06:48] So I fulfilled the queen's wish.

[1:06:50] Here's the pelt.

[1:06:51] I fulfilled your wish by killing what you really wanted by killing Boyce, and now you can have the queen.

[1:06:56] But the queen is so distraught at Boyce's death, which Jiriah really shouldn't have told her about, that she goes, you did this and kills him.

[1:07:02] So the workers storm the castle.

[1:07:05] Sunlight hits the pelt, and it burns away into sparks, which fly back to Boyce's grave, which starts shaking.

[1:07:12] Oh, what is this?

[1:07:13] The end of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie?

[1:07:15] Yeah.

[1:07:16] Now Alice wakes up in her throne room, and Boyce is returning with his gun, and now we're –

[1:07:23] And a tale.

[1:07:24] Did he have a tale?

[1:07:25] Well, like a story, yeah.

[1:07:28] I thought you meant a tale like at the end of Teen Wolf 2 when the teacher walks away and she's got a wolf tail.

[1:07:33] Yeah.

[1:07:34] That's a lot like that, yeah.

[1:07:36] That's what happens at the end of Teen Wolf 2?

[1:07:38] Yeah, I'm trying to remember.

[1:07:39] I've never seen it.

[1:07:40] Teen Wolf 2, there's that one teacher who's like back off from that student or whatever, and when she walks away, she's got a wolf tail, and it's like, oh, she's a wolf also.

[1:07:46] Maybe I'm misremembering it.

[1:07:47] Never.

[1:07:48] I saw it once I think when I was like seven, so.

[1:07:50] Teen Wolf 2, a wolf teacher.

[1:07:52] I didn't want to sully the immaculate memory of Teen Wolf by watching an inferior sequel, so I didn't.

[1:07:58] I mean it's one of those things where you watch Teen Wolf and you're like, this is a dumb movie, and you watch Teen Wolf 2 and you're like, oh, this is a shitty movie.

[1:08:05] They somehow took a movie that was stupid and made it even dumber, so.

[1:08:09] They couldn't even spell the number two.

[1:08:12] They spelled it T-O-O.

[1:08:14] Well, because it's not the same Teen Wolf.

[1:08:16] It's Teen Wolf as well.

[1:08:18] That's true.

[1:08:19] Teen Wolf comma also.

[1:08:21] Boxes.

[1:08:22] That's what he does in that one instead of basketball.

[1:08:24] He has a boxing match, and there's a big musical number where he's lip syncing to Do You Love Me, I think, which I feel like was in the 1980s.

[1:08:33] Maybe I'm misremembering this.

[1:08:34] I feel like it was just the age of our parents, I guess, that Do You Love Me was this one song or Land of a Thousand Dances or whatever it's called, whatever that song is called.

[1:08:43] That was the song that would show up.

[1:08:45] Now That I Can Dance.

[1:08:46] Yeah, Now That I Can Dance.

[1:08:47] That was the song that would show up in movies to show that someone was like a cool rocking dude.

[1:08:52] Even as a kid, I was like, what is this old person music doing?

[1:08:56] That's supposed to be a college student.

[1:08:57] Why is he dancing to this song?

[1:08:59] That's true.

[1:09:01] It's an oldie, but I like that one a lot, that one Do You Love Me.

[1:09:04] I think it's just called Do You Love Me.

[1:09:05] I'm thinking of a different song.

[1:09:06] Yeah, Land of a Thousand Dances is the one that's like na, na, na, na, na.

[1:09:10] Oh, you're right.

[1:09:11] You're right.

[1:09:12] I got them mixed up because they're both talking about different dances, right?

[1:09:14] Yeah, that's one.

[1:09:15] Mashed potato.

[1:09:16] They both mention the mashed potato.

[1:09:18] It's like another twist.

[1:09:19] That's Do You Love Me.

[1:09:20] Like, can you do the twist?

[1:09:21] Yeah, yeah.

[1:09:22] Love me, baby.

[1:09:23] That's Do You Love Me.

[1:09:24] But it is a fun song, but it's like, you'd be dancing to like a Queensryche song probably, right?

[1:09:28] Yeah, yeah, some fucking prog metal.

[1:09:31] Yeah.

[1:09:32] It's like I'm rocking out to Silent Lucidity.

[1:09:36] That's the song that I'm.

[1:09:38] Dad, do you think Silent Lucidity is the song you'd be rocking out to or something off of Operation Mindcrime?

[1:09:42] Silent Lucidity.

[1:09:44] No, it would be off of Operation Mindcrime.

[1:09:46] So your like facial expressions are really lucid.

[1:09:51] Is that what that's.

[1:09:52] Silent Lucidity.

[1:09:53] I think the idea.

[1:09:54] Trying to figure out what that means.

[1:09:56] Yeah, I think it's about lucid dreaming, but I'm not sure.

[1:09:59] Okay.

[1:10:00] Check the lyric sheet.

[1:10:01] Yeah, we'll have to check the record, the archives for that one.

[1:10:03] I'll go back to the Cortez transcripts.

[1:10:05] I'll text Jeff Tate real quick.

[1:10:07] Okay.

[1:10:08] Anyway, we've got 45 seconds left in the movie, I think, and I'm the one who's wasting time.

[1:10:12] Boyce is there.

[1:10:12] He's got a tail T-A-L-E in that he is like, so we find out this whole movie is what he's

[1:10:19] been telling to Gray Alice before he kills her for skinning him alive.

[1:10:23] And she reveals, I knew what was going to happen.

[1:10:25] I planned all this so that it would cause a revolution.

[1:10:28] And you would live because I knew that you would live magic.

[1:10:32] You would survive this.

[1:10:33] Maybe she used her magic to save him.

[1:10:34] I don't know.

[1:10:35] And now they can be there.

[1:10:36] It looks like they're about to fight each other, but they actually kind of love each

[1:10:40] other.

[1:10:40] So they ride off into the sunset on their horses to have more adventures as the legendary

[1:10:45] heroes, Boyce and Gray Alice.

[1:10:48] Stay tuned for In the Lost Land 2, In the Lost Lands T-O-O.

[1:10:52] Yeah.

[1:10:53] And then there's more Lost Lands.

[1:10:55] It's a bunch of bloops where Dave Bautista hits Medjugorjevich with his hat.

[1:11:00] And no, there were no bloops.

[1:11:02] I wish there were no bloops.

[1:11:04] You know, actually, the giggling, dancing, dancing together.

[1:11:09] That this ended with, like, the whole cast dancing together to now that I can dance or

[1:11:14] something like forget it in Lost Lands.

[1:11:17] And the sequel should be called In the Lost Lands colon Lost Lands found.

[1:11:20] That should be the name of the sequel.

[1:11:22] But there will be no sequel.

[1:11:24] Guys, so final judgment, final judgments, good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie or a movie

[1:11:30] kind of light.

[1:11:30] Yeah, this is a bad, bad movie for me.

[1:11:34] I went into it with a certain amount of like, oh, maybe this will be fun.

[1:11:39] Maybe this will be fun.

[1:11:40] Trash.

[1:11:40] I like these people.

[1:11:42] You know, it'll be silly or whatever.

[1:11:44] And I just got so bored by like, I just wasn't able to follow a lot of the sort of like ins

[1:11:54] and outs of of it because I didn't not because I didn't have the brainpower, but because

[1:12:00] the movie didn't.

[1:12:00] Well, we don't know that.

[1:12:01] Well, maybe it's but but because the movie didn't give me like reason enough to care

[1:12:07] to like really work at it, you know, like there was I texted you guys.

[1:12:12] I think that like it's rare that I care less about why a movie is happening.

[1:12:18] And that was the big problem.

[1:12:19] So I bad, bad for me.

[1:12:21] Yeah, I'll probably I'll throw this kind of it's this is a bad, bad movie that like occasionally

[1:12:26] has moments that I feel like are good, bad.

[1:12:29] But yeah, it's like it's it's a mess.

[1:12:31] It it doesn't quite scratch the itch of the like direct to video adventures that I I have

[1:12:38] affection for.

[1:12:39] I feel like there's too much emphasis put on action sequences that aren't particularly

[1:12:46] interesting.

[1:12:49] And yeah, it's just just not a lot of fun, not enough, not enough juice here.

[1:12:53] Yeah, I would call this I would also call it bad, bad.

[1:12:55] I feel like it is I find it inoffensive in certain ways because it's just kind of like

[1:13:01] junk, but it feels very half assed to me like there's a there's a half assedness about like

[1:13:05] this is good enough.

[1:13:06] This is fine.

[1:13:07] Like this is enough story, whatever.

[1:13:08] Like this is enough character development, whatever.

[1:13:11] This is enough like this fight.

[1:13:13] It's fine.

[1:13:14] Like there's no it doesn't feel like anyone was too excited by what they were doing.

[1:13:18] And as a result, it all kind of feels very generic to me.

[1:13:21] Like if you told me, oh, yeah, this is a bunch of cut scenes from a video game, I'd be like,

[1:13:25] yeah, I guess so.

[1:13:26] That makes sense.

[1:13:26] It's half assed in such a weird way where they're like constantly throwing a bunch of

[1:13:30] shit at the wall.

[1:13:30] And even though the visuals are like gray in that digital way, like they'll be like

[1:13:36] cool looking stuff like there's all this stuff, but they don't.

[1:13:41] I mean, it's what happens when it's what I mean.

[1:13:42] The people making the movie clearly have it in them to make a better movie than this.

[1:13:47] I think that's it.

[1:13:48] So like and that comes through.

[1:13:49] And I think that's the disappointing thing about if you were watching something where

[1:13:52] you're like they try their best and they came up with junk, but you know that everyone in

[1:13:56] this from from the director on down is capable of capable of better.

[1:14:00] So I guess this is a real see me after class.

[1:14:03] Two things I want to bring up before we go from the IMDb trivia section, please.

[1:14:07] The Lost Lands.

[1:14:08] It mentions that George R.R.

[1:14:09] Martin intended there to be a series of stories sent around Gray Alice, which he would release

[1:14:14] in a single volume.

[1:14:15] It says for various reasons, he never came around to finish any more stories.

[1:14:18] Seems very out of the ordinary for George R.R.

[1:14:20] Martin to have a big plan and then not complete it.

[1:14:22] Watch yourself, counselor.

[1:14:24] And the other is apparently this movie was stuck in development for so long.

[1:14:27] At one point, you know who was offered the role of Boyce?

[1:14:30] Nicholas Cage.

[1:14:33] Would that have changed your feelings about the movie?

[1:14:36] Yeah.

[1:14:37] Can you imagine Nicholas Cage in this movie would make it much more fun?

[1:14:40] He would do some he'd make some out of the ordinary, like you'd never think of a character

[1:14:44] choice, and it would change things around because he would have telegraphed that he's

[1:14:48] a werewolf from scene one.

[1:14:50] Yes, that's true.

[1:14:51] And then instead of a digital Nicholas Cage werewolf, he would have been like, I insist

[1:14:55] on being the werewolf.

[1:14:57] He'd be like, I need you to put fur on me.

[1:14:59] I'm going to do it.

[1:15:00] I want to do it the same way they would have done it in the 30s.

[1:15:02] Make me a Lon Chaney Jr.

[1:15:04] Wolfman.

[1:15:04] Yeah, great.

[1:15:10] Sleep is important, but it's difficult sometimes.

[1:15:14] I'm John Moe.

[1:15:15] I'm sleeping with celebrities.

[1:15:17] Famous people help conk you out by talking in soothing voices about unimportant things.

[1:15:23] Maria Bamford on parking.

[1:15:26] I parked in a bus stop.

[1:15:28] That's just not right.

[1:15:29] I am not a bus.

[1:15:31] Roxanne Gay on airports.

[1:15:33] My favorite airport is Indianapolis.

[1:15:36] It has a really smart layout.

[1:15:38] Alan Tudyk on yardsticks.

[1:15:41] You hand somebody a yardstick, yardsticks become part of the family.

[1:15:45] Granted, it's a weird idea, but it's lots of fun and it works.

[1:15:50] Listen wherever you get podcasts.

[1:15:54] Hey, it's Sue the Subway Train.

[1:15:57] Hey, guess what, Sue?

[1:15:58] I just inherited a game show and I have to continue it because there are people out there

[1:16:03] who like to curl up into a ball and listen to it.

[1:16:06] Yeah, it's a podcast where listeners submit game show ideas for others to play on air.

[1:16:13] Well, it is.

[1:16:14] In fact, the dumber, the better.

[1:16:16] Right, right.

[1:16:17] It's called Dr. Game Show.

[1:16:18] Some curled up balls consider it a tradition.

[1:16:21] Consider it a tradition while others call it a train wreck.

[1:16:25] No, not you, Sue.

[1:16:27] It's Dr. Game Show.

[1:16:28] If you're the sort that likes to listen to people competing for refrigerator magnets,

[1:16:32] then curl up into a ball and listen to Dr. Game Show every other Wednesday, maximumfun.org.

[1:16:40] Hello, all you beautiful people.

[1:16:43] We have a couple of sponsors for the show.

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[1:19:27] of a website or domain.

[1:19:30] You should do it.

[1:19:31] That sounds great.

[1:19:32] Something that you should have done was come to see us at San Francisco Sketch Fest at

[1:19:37] Cobb's Comedy Club, but that happened already.

[1:19:39] We missed you.

[1:19:40] If you were there, thank you so much for being there.

[1:19:42] We had a great time.

[1:19:43] It was super fun.

[1:19:44] If you weren't there, then we missed you.

[1:19:46] You should have come.

[1:19:47] Maybe next time.

[1:19:48] It'll be great.

[1:19:49] But there's still a chance.

[1:19:50] You've still got one last chance to see our sweet little faces giving you comedy, talking

[1:19:57] about them, or a big face in my case.

[1:20:00] But, I mean, it's smaller than, like, a pumpkin.

[1:20:04] What size pumpkin?

[1:20:05] That's actually a good question.

[1:20:07] That's a very good question.

[1:20:08] We'll get our pumpkin guy on it.

[1:20:10] There's still one last chance for you to see our variously-sized faces talking about a

[1:20:14] movie, and that is the last episode of Flop TV for Season 3 of Flop TV.

[1:20:19] It is the first Saturday in February, February 7th, coming up soon, I think about a week

[1:20:24] away as of the release of this episode.

[1:20:27] So go to theflophouse.simpletics.com, and you can get a ticket to see us talk about

[1:20:33] Plan 9 from Outer Space.

[1:20:34] We had a lot of fun on Flop TV this season, as we did Flopsterpiece Theater, going back

[1:20:38] through the decades to do bad movies from each decade from the thousands, now going

[1:20:43] back to the 1950s.

[1:20:45] And if you didn't get to see the episodes, you can still buy tickets.

[1:20:49] Just go to theflophouse.simpletics.com, buy a season pass bundle.

[1:20:52] Why not?

[1:20:54] And you'll have access to the recordings of those episodes until the end of February,

[1:20:59] when they will all go back to the Flophouse vault.

[1:21:02] Are you guys excited about this Plan 9 from Outer Space show?

[1:21:05] I can't wait.

[1:21:06] I am very excited.

[1:21:07] It's actually been quite some time since I've seen Plan 9, so I look forward to revisiting.

[1:21:13] Real quick, guys, I was watching RuPaul's Drag Race last night, and they had a bit called

[1:21:17] Master Queef Theater.

[1:21:19] Is it too late for us to change Flopsterpiece Theater to Flopster Queef Theater?

[1:21:22] I think it is, unfortunately, too late.

[1:21:24] All the graphics are already baked in.

[1:21:28] Keep it in mind for next season.

[1:21:29] Get you to us next season.

[1:21:30] Yeah.

[1:21:31] Plan 9 from Outer Space, I'm super excited about it.

[1:21:33] It is the granddaddy of the bad movies as a fun thing to watch, hobby slash business

[1:21:40] slash genre.

[1:21:41] And we've never talked about it on the show.

[1:21:43] I'm super excited about it.

[1:21:44] It is the rare case of a bad movie that led to the creation of a very good movie, in the

[1:21:50] case of it eventually inspiring Ed Wood.

[1:21:53] And so I'm excited to talk about it.

[1:21:55] So that is the first Saturday in February, February 7th, 2026.

[1:22:01] This year, season finale, Flop TV, season three.

[1:22:05] Don't miss it.

[1:22:06] Go to theflophouse.simpletics.com for tickets.

[1:22:11] And now let's move on to the thing that I thought we were doing next before.

[1:22:16] And that's why it took so long to start doing our sponsor stuff.

[1:22:23] Is it supper time?

[1:22:24] No, no.

[1:22:25] Grampy Dan, it's not supper time.

[1:22:26] We're still recording.

[1:22:27] It's not supper time.

[1:22:28] It's time for letters from listeners.

[1:22:29] Is it supper?

[1:22:30] Supper, supper, supper, supper?

[1:22:32] No, it's not time to put on your good man, Charlie Brown, Grampy Dan.

[1:22:36] It's just not time for that.

[1:22:37] Hey, these are letters from listeners.

[1:22:39] This is the first one.

[1:22:40] It's from Lee, last name withheld.

[1:22:43] Who writes?

[1:22:44] Lee Remick.

[1:22:46] Elliot's story about his son watching Detective Pikachu and being shocked that a good guy

[1:22:51] turned out to be a bad guy reminded me of being a kid watching The Music Man.

[1:22:56] In the beginning, when all the salesmen on the train are talking shit about Harold Hill,

[1:23:00] and then he takes down his suitcase and it's got his name on it, and he's Harold Hill.

[1:23:04] Yeah, what a great moment.

[1:23:05] There's never been a bigger twist in a movie for me, and it's not really even a twist.

[1:23:09] I thought it was a bit much for him to say, see ya, fuckface, and then jump off the train.

[1:23:14] I'm glad they got away with it back then.

[1:23:15] Yeah, it's crazy.

[1:23:16] Do you have any similar stories of seeing a plot beat for the first time and having

[1:23:21] it hit you in a way it only can if you've never seen it before?

[1:23:26] Thanks for the laughs.

[1:23:27] Lee, last name withheld.

[1:23:29] This is a tough one.

[1:23:31] I don't know that there's a good thought, but I just love that story of being like,

[1:23:37] holy shit, Professor Harold Hill?

[1:23:40] He's been there the whole time?

[1:23:43] Like the guy in Saw?

[1:23:46] I feel like Usual Suspects, the end of Usual Suspects, was such a very specific, unreliable

[1:23:57] narrator moment in a film that I don't feel like I'd experienced on that level before.

[1:24:04] It was one of those huge twist moments where you're like, you could do this in a movie?

[1:24:09] Even as a kid, I mean, I wasn't a kid, I was younger, even when I saw Usual Suspects.

[1:24:15] Younger than a kid with like a baby?

[1:24:18] Younger than I am now.

[1:24:19] Even when I saw Usual Suspects at the time, I was mad at that because I'm like, well yeah,

[1:24:24] you can make anything a twist if it's just the guy's been lying to you the whole time

[1:24:27] and the movie that you saw was a big lie.

[1:24:29] I hate to break it to you, Dan, that movie was already a big lie.

[1:24:33] It never happened.

[1:24:34] I know, but you're like, there are rules that you play within the context of fiction,

[1:24:40] I feel like, and my mind wasn't blown by the idea of like, oh, so he just told a story

[1:24:47] to this guy.

[1:24:48] Yeah, I mean, I'm not making necessarily a quality judgment.

[1:24:51] I'm saying that a movie had the audacity to be like, okay, well, this was a whole lie.

[1:24:57] I'm litigating the Usual Suspects because to me, that was a one that was popular, but

[1:25:02] I'm like, yeah, it's essentially like, oh, it's all a dream, which we all hate, so why

[1:25:06] are you okay with this?

[1:25:07] Except the first time that I, to be honest, the first time I saw the, oh, it was all a

[1:25:11] dream, it was like, oh, that's really, I'd never seen that before.

[1:25:14] That's really cool.

[1:25:15] Like, I think the exciting thing about it was that for so many of us, it was the first

[1:25:19] time that the movie was telling us, don't trust what you see in the movie.

[1:25:22] Just because you're seeing it doesn't mean that it actually happened the way that this

[1:25:26] character is saying, which I think is cool.

[1:25:27] I'm trying to think, I think the first, I can't remember, but I'm trying to remember

[1:25:30] the first time that I saw a movie where it became clear that one, that two characters

[1:25:35] were the same character and were played by the same actor, but, but were, but didn't

[1:25:39] make up.

[1:25:40] And I'm trying to remember which of the, like when that first hit me, because that's, that's

[1:25:44] something that, I mean, the biggest thing, Lucas Watagino, Suspiria, yeah, that was the

[1:25:50] first one.

[1:25:51] But this is not a, I guess not a plot beat thing.

[1:25:56] I've talked before about seeing Gremlins 2 and similarly, like when they break the movie

[1:26:01] and the Gremlins are doing shadow puppets, it's not a plot beat necessarily, but it's

[1:26:05] like just a thing of like, I didn't know you could do that in a movie that like you could

[1:26:08] just, you could just break the movie that the characters are in, but we're still in

[1:26:11] the movie kind of.

[1:26:12] And so, and that hit me so hard.

[1:26:14] It was such a, it was such a, um, and you went on to write Deadpool.

[1:26:18] Yep.

[1:26:19] Exactly.

[1:26:20] Um, but I, I, it's funny that the thing, I don't, can't remember when that hits me as

[1:26:25] hard as, as my son watching Detective Pikachu and being like him, he was the bad guy, but

[1:26:29] he's been helping them all this time.

[1:26:31] Yeah.

[1:26:32] You know, it was like one day when you were watching Minority Report and you found out

[1:26:34] Max on Sidehow was the bad guy.

[1:26:36] Yeah.

[1:26:37] That guy.

[1:26:38] Yeah.

[1:26:39] He's a good guy.

[1:26:40] When you're watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and you were like, really?

[1:26:42] The one big name in the cast is the, it's going to turn out to be the bad guy.

[1:26:46] They're all big names.

[1:26:47] Timothy Spall, Toby Jones was, I remember seeing it and I'm like, well, you have one

[1:26:55] huge star.

[1:26:56] You have Toby Jones, who's well known, but not like a, he couldn't open a movie.

[1:26:59] And then you've got a bunch of actors that I've seen in other things, but like, it's

[1:27:02] clearly going to be Colin Firth.

[1:27:03] He's the big name.

[1:27:04] You know, I think I might've confused Toby Jones and Timothy Spall.

[1:27:07] I mean, but it's the, but I will say it's the thing that I saw, uh, Wake Me Dead Man

[1:27:14] or whatever it is.

[1:27:15] Wake Up Dead Man.

[1:27:16] The, the new Knives Out.

[1:27:17] Yeah.

[1:27:18] Wake Me Dead Man.

[1:27:19] Wake Me Dead Man.

[1:27:20] And, uh, and I will say that, Ellie, stop using a dead man as your alarm clock.

[1:27:23] It's not reliable.

[1:27:24] He rigged it so that at 6 a.m. he falls on top of me.

[1:27:27] You better believe it wakes me up.

[1:27:28] I feel like Hellboy has one of those, right?

[1:27:31] Probably.

[1:27:32] Yeah.

[1:27:33] It's just, he's a zombie that wakes him up.

[1:27:34] But, uh, the, uh, watching that, there were times when I was like, there's a few too many

[1:27:39] famous people in this movie, but at the same time, it removes that.

[1:27:43] I mean, it's all of them.

[1:27:44] It removes that element of, well, you know who it's going to be.

[1:27:46] Cause if they're all famous, then you don't, you can't say, oh, this clearly, this is the

[1:27:50] person they're paying the most money.

[1:27:51] So they're going to turn out to be important to the plot.

[1:27:53] Also, a few too many famous people, like to me, that's one of the best things about

[1:27:57] those movies is bringing back the idea of like, here's a star studded mystery, you know?

[1:28:01] I think the issue I have is less that it's too many famous people and more that with

[1:28:05] the second and third movies, I have a lot of trouble believing that those characters

[1:28:09] actually have relationships with each other.

[1:28:11] Like in the second one, I'm like, there's no way these characters were ever friends

[1:28:14] with each other.

[1:28:15] And now like that they, they get before they became rich or whatever.

[1:28:18] And then the third one, I had trouble believing that those characters were all like members

[1:28:21] of this church.

[1:28:22] So once I get over that fun movies, they're really well done, you know, anyway, I really

[1:28:27] actually really liked that new one a lot.

[1:28:29] Yeah.

[1:28:30] Recommended on the show.

[1:28:31] Uh, that's why I watch it because you recommended it anyway, for me, I guess it was, uh, I don't

[1:28:35] know.

[1:28:36] The first time I saw above in a movie, I was like, we can do that when your parents showed

[1:28:41] you cheeky.

[1:28:42] I think, I think, I think honestly it probably would have been like, I don't even think Dan's

[1:28:46] parents know that cheeky exists.

[1:28:48] Yeah, yes.

[1:28:50] So you watched Splash before they added that extra CGI hair, the extra hair to protect

[1:28:55] us from buttocks.

[1:28:56] Yeah.

[1:28:57] Yeah.

[1:28:58] It would be like if you gave like one of the, you know, the Pilgrim, if you gave a Pilgrim

[1:29:01] a taste of Sri Racha, their head would explode is what would happen if Dan's parents learned

[1:29:05] cheeky's existence.

[1:29:06] Yeah.

[1:29:07] I like to believe that when they added that extra CGI hair in Splash, it was a case of

[1:29:11] like George Lucas being like, yeah, well, I had always intended for the mermaid to have

[1:29:15] a furry butt, but we didn't have the right makeup effects at the time.

[1:29:19] So now using computers, I can finally bring my dreams to life.

[1:29:22] Yeah.

[1:29:23] He broke into our Ron Howard's.

[1:29:24] Ron Howard was like, well, we always, yeah, we always intended for mermaids to have hairy

[1:29:27] butts.

[1:29:28] Here's a second letter, it's from Jonathan, last name withheld, who writes, Taylor Thomas,

[1:29:37] as a long time Daniel in Pinkwater fan, I was extremely happy to hear Elliot mention

[1:29:42] his fondness for lizard music in the Smurfs episode.

[1:29:46] Meanwhile, having recently tried and failed to describe the book of Pinkwater's Alan Mendelsohn,

[1:29:54] the boy from Mars to my wife, I'm compelled to wonder, do any or all of you have

[1:30:00] Something that you love and have been completely unable

[1:30:03] to convince anyone else is great.

[1:30:05] I think that's Stuart's life story.

[1:30:07] Yeah, I mean, a big part of my life

[1:30:09] is being enthusiastic about things

[1:30:11] that I try and get the people closest to me

[1:30:14] to give a shit about.

[1:30:15] And you know what?

[1:30:17] Doesn't work.

[1:30:18] I mean, I-

[1:30:19] Well, that's what I was gonna say,

[1:30:19] like, I think I've learned the lesson

[1:30:21] that one cannot do that.

[1:30:23] One cannot lead the horse to water,

[1:30:25] let alone make the horse drink, is what I'm-

[1:30:28] The horse is not interested in water.

[1:30:29] Let me just tell you that.

[1:30:30] It doesn't wanna go there.

[1:30:31] No, no, there's some soda over here

[1:30:32] that I'd rather be drinking

[1:30:34] because I have a taste for soda.

[1:30:35] Like, I, you know, so many things,

[1:30:38] like, I know that Audrey would like these movies

[1:30:41] and she says that she would like these movies,

[1:30:43] but when it comes time to watch these movies,

[1:30:44] she's like, but what about this mystery

[1:30:48] on Amazon Prime that we both know

[1:30:51] is not gonna be very good?

[1:30:52] I'm like, I guess, we can watch that

[1:30:54] if that's what you wanna watch.

[1:30:56] I will tell you two versions of this,

[1:30:59] a success and a failure.

[1:31:00] The failure first.

[1:31:01] I tried for a long time to get my friends

[1:31:04] who live in Brooklyn interested in hearing

[1:31:06] about the Battle of Brooklyn,

[1:31:07] a Revolutionary War battle,

[1:31:08] an important Revolutionary War battle

[1:31:10] that took place literally in the neighborhoods

[1:31:12] of Park Slope and where Greenwood Cemetery is

[1:31:15] and stuff like that, and I could not do it.

[1:31:17] And I would get so mad that I'd be like,

[1:31:19] they all know all the details about fake battles

[1:31:21] in fictional universes that never happened,

[1:31:24] but I'm trying to, I wanna get them interested

[1:31:26] in something that actually happened,

[1:31:27] that changed in the place they live,

[1:31:29] and they have no interest.

[1:31:30] I could never do it.

[1:31:31] On the other hand, there's a certain book

[1:31:33] I've been trying to get people to read for years.

[1:31:35] I finally figured out how to do it.

[1:31:36] It's called the Bible.

[1:31:37] Dianetics.

[1:31:38] It's called Dianetics.

[1:31:39] Well, I call Dianetics the Bible, of course.

[1:31:41] It's the same, but you can't go up to somebody

[1:31:43] and say, hey, you should read The Power Broker,

[1:31:44] but if you make a 30-hour podcast about The Power Broker,

[1:31:49] that's how you get people to read it.

[1:31:50] So that was my real success was being like,

[1:31:53] okay, I'm finally, this book I've been telling people

[1:31:55] about for decades now, I'm finally able

[1:31:57] to get people to read it in some way.

[1:31:59] I was very excited about that.

[1:31:59] I will say, this podcast has been a huge way

[1:32:02] to make me feel better about you guys

[1:32:04] not giving a shit about my recommendations,

[1:32:06] because I will tell you that I've had multiple listeners

[1:32:09] reach out to tell me that they've started Elden Ring

[1:32:11] since our episode.

[1:32:12] Ooh, exciting.

[1:32:13] I will not be.

[1:32:14] They have traveled to the lands between,

[1:32:16] unlike you two dorks.

[1:32:18] Well, I mean.

[1:32:18] I'm only interested in going into the lost lands.

[1:32:20] Thank you.

[1:32:22] To the degree that there's been any actual hurt feelings,

[1:32:26] I apologize, Stuart, but I always assumed

[1:32:29] that part of the bit was that you were imposing a thing

[1:32:31] on us that you knew we were not gonna be interested in.

[1:32:34] Yeah, that is the bit.

[1:32:34] How can I make it more complicated,

[1:32:36] and how can I push all the buttons

[1:32:39] that will yield a bad response?

[1:32:41] Yeah, I think what we're finding is that

[1:32:45] you cannot force someone to be interested

[1:32:48] in the thing that you're interested in,

[1:32:50] but if you broadcast it to the world,

[1:32:52] you're more likely to find a person

[1:32:54] who is interested in that thing.

[1:32:55] Don't narrow cast, broadcast.

[1:32:57] Broadcast.

[1:32:58] You know who should broadcast?

[1:32:59] The media.

[1:33:00] It's more profitable.

[1:33:04] It's weird how they've stopped.

[1:33:07] So we're doing recommendations now.

[1:33:09] Now that we're on the subject of recommendations,

[1:33:11] let's give recommendations.

[1:33:12] I'm looking over Dan's shoulders at his letterbox,

[1:33:14] and I see you saw some good ones this time.

[1:33:16] You got no other choices on there?

[1:33:20] You recommended it, I believe, in the previous episode,

[1:33:23] so it's not gonna officially recommend No Other Choice

[1:33:25] because it's already been.

[1:33:26] What a banger, right?

[1:33:27] But yeah, I really loved it.

[1:33:29] There are like four movies.

[1:33:31] There's a bunch of movies, obviously,

[1:33:32] that I haven't seen that potentially-

[1:33:34] There's thousands of movies you haven't seen.

[1:33:36] That potentially could make it on here,

[1:33:38] but for me, the masterpieces I saw of 2025,

[1:33:43] the ones I really loved were

[1:33:45] Sinners, One Battle After Another,

[1:33:48] Marty Supreme, and No Other Choice, all-

[1:33:51] Going out on a limb.

[1:33:52] I mean, there's a reason why there are widely-

[1:33:55] I know.

[1:33:57] Says the guy who recommends old good movies.

[1:34:00] Yeah, that's true.

[1:34:00] That's a good point.

[1:34:02] But I was gonna recommend something

[1:34:03] a little more off the beaten path.

[1:34:05] I went to a-

[1:34:08] He's like,

[1:34:09] have you heard of these Mission Impossible movies?

[1:34:11] I went to a deuce screening at the Nighthawk recently.

[1:34:16] Now, this is a screening-

[1:34:17] Don't say Bigelow, Elliot.

[1:34:18] This is a screening that is movies

[1:34:21] that were shown on 42nd Street,

[1:34:24] the deuce between, I believe,

[1:34:25] specifically between 7th and 8th Avenues,

[1:34:29] but I could be getting that wrong at-

[1:34:31] Seems a little far west to me.

[1:34:33] The movie theaters there, and pardon me.

[1:34:37] No.

[1:34:38] And it's just a great screening series.

[1:34:40] And the thing about, to court anger from Elliot

[1:34:45] when I talk about anything that involves free time,

[1:34:48] the great thing about repertory screening series

[1:34:50] is once you start sort of trusting the series,

[1:34:53] you're willing to take a flyer on a thing.

[1:34:56] That's very true.

[1:34:57] Yeah, you're like, maybe I don't know what this is,

[1:34:59] but I'm gonna go see it.

[1:35:01] Maybe I don't think I'm gonna like it,

[1:35:02] but I'm gonna go see it,

[1:35:03] because I like this series.

[1:35:05] And I saw, from 1970, the film Elvis.

[1:35:09] That's the way it is.

[1:35:10] A movie that actually exists in two cuts.

[1:35:12] There's one sort of original-

[1:35:15] 1970s cut that has a lot more footage of fans

[1:35:20] and more kind of extraneous stuff.

[1:35:23] And then it was re-edited in, I think, 2021

[1:35:27] to include a lot more musical performances.

[1:35:29] And that, I saw the later edit.

[1:35:32] But I'm not a particular Elvis fan.

[1:35:36] Like, I'm like, oh yeah, there's some good songs.

[1:35:39] Whatever, Elvis.

[1:35:40] I know he was a big, he was meaningful to a generation,

[1:35:43] a couple of generations before mine,

[1:35:45] but I never-

[1:35:46] He was a hound dog, I get it.

[1:35:48] But seeing this concert film,

[1:35:49] seeing the first half of it, which is him-

[1:35:51] He made shoes out of blue suede,

[1:35:53] which is crazy.

[1:35:53] It's like a crazy material to make your shoes out of.

[1:35:57] I mean, you can't wear it in the rain, for sure.

[1:35:59] I have suede shoes and I enjoy them

[1:36:02] when I feel like there's no danger

[1:36:05] of any liquid being anywhere near me.

[1:36:06] But otherwise-

[1:36:07] I mean, they're gonna get stepped on.

[1:36:08] That's the problem.

[1:36:09] They're gonna get stepped on.

[1:36:10] But no, the first half of it pretty much

[1:36:13] is like him in rehearsal,

[1:36:15] like fucking around with his band, having fun.

[1:36:18] There's a great scene where he like mashes up one of,

[1:36:21] he sings partly Little Sister

[1:36:22] and then mashes it up with Get Back,

[1:36:25] which is kind of fun,

[1:36:26] because it's like, oh, you know,

[1:36:28] you think of Elvis as being kind of the old guard of rock

[1:36:30] and like the Beatles were sort of looking forward.

[1:36:33] But to think about it,

[1:36:35] but they really were like contemporaries

[1:36:36] who admired one another.

[1:36:37] And he's like having fun singing the Beatles tune.

[1:36:39] But then the second half is him in Vegas

[1:36:43] when he hadn't been performing live for like seven years

[1:36:46] and came back.

[1:36:47] And it just really,

[1:36:50] I was there with three other friends

[1:36:51] who also had kind of like middling at best feelings

[1:36:54] about Elvis.

[1:36:55] And we all came out being like,

[1:36:56] man, that was a great fucking concert movie.

[1:36:58] Like we get it.

[1:36:59] We get why he was important to people.

[1:37:01] So I had a lot of fun.

[1:37:05] Elvis, that's the way it is.

[1:37:06] I'm gonna recommend a movie from last year

[1:37:09] called Sorry, Baby.

[1:37:14] This is the first film from writer, director

[1:37:18] and star Ava Victor,

[1:37:20] I think is the right pronunciation.

[1:37:23] It is a movie about a young woman

[1:37:26] who undergoes a traumatic experience while in grad school.

[1:37:32] And it kind of covers a few years after.

[1:37:37] And how that experience has affected her life

[1:37:40] and her relationships

[1:37:42] and her inability to kind of move on with life

[1:37:44] despite the fact that the rest of the people in her life

[1:37:47] have kind of moved on as if nothing has happened.

[1:37:51] And I think it's a really beautifully told story.

[1:37:54] It's shot really well.

[1:37:55] It's a very striking first feature

[1:37:58] in that it is,

[1:38:00] I feel like it's controlled in a way

[1:38:02] and confident in a way that you don't often see.

[1:38:05] I thought it was really charming

[1:38:06] and it has my favorite cat performance of the year

[1:38:11] from a cat actor.

[1:38:12] A lot of competition this year?

[1:38:14] Oh yeah, it was filled to the brim.

[1:38:17] This year was filled to the brim with delicious cats.

[1:38:21] Are you Alf?

[1:38:21] No.

[1:38:25] They must have done some joke on Alf

[1:38:27] about him going to see cats

[1:38:29] and being like, oh, it's like a buffet.

[1:38:30] I don't know where to start.

[1:38:31] Yeah.

[1:38:34] He's been kicked out of that theater so many times.

[1:38:37] Yeah, they must have done that.

[1:38:38] Fans, write in if you remember a joke on Alf

[1:38:40] about him being kicked out of a performance of cats.

[1:38:42] The Winter Garden has his picture up on the wall.

[1:38:44] Do not serve this man.

[1:38:47] Do not admit this puppet slash alien.

[1:38:51] Known aliases, Gordon Shumway.

[1:38:55] I'm gonna recommend,

[1:38:56] my recommendation,

[1:38:57] I think it's gonna be a qualified recommendation.

[1:38:59] I'm recommending a movie that I'm not sure that I like.

[1:39:04] Well, if it's qualified, we'll give it the job.

[1:39:06] Yeah.

[1:39:06] Okay, I mean, it's slightly qualified.

[1:39:10] But I think I'm gonna recommend more

[1:39:12] because I think maybe it'll bring attention

[1:39:14] to the movie it's a remake of.

[1:39:16] But Yorgos Lanthimos' most recent movie, Bagonia,

[1:39:19] which is a remake of a movie

[1:39:21] that I always really liked a lot.

[1:39:23] It's called Save the Green Planet,

[1:39:24] which is a Korean movie that came out in 2003.

[1:39:27] And I saw it when it first came out.

[1:39:28] I did not realize it was a remake of Save the Green Planet.

[1:39:31] Yes, and Save the Green Planet

[1:39:32] is such a bonkers movie in a way that I really love.

[1:39:36] That's one of those movies where when I first saw it,

[1:39:38] it was one of the first kind of like modern Korean movies

[1:39:41] that I'd seen.

[1:39:41] It was like, I saw that around the same time

[1:39:42] that I saw like Oldboy, I wanna say.

[1:39:44] And it was like, what's going on in Korea?

[1:39:46] They're making amazing stuff.

[1:39:47] Yeah.

[1:39:48] And then they kept doing it.

[1:39:50] Yes, and they just keep on doing it.

[1:39:51] They won't stop.

[1:39:52] And Yorgos Lanthimos is a filmmaker

[1:39:54] who about half his movies I love

[1:39:56] and half of them I don't particularly like at all.

[1:39:58] I'm not quite sure where Bagonia is.

[1:40:00] falls on that scale.

[1:40:01] But it's the story of these two guys,

[1:40:04] they are convinced that the CEO of a pharmaceutical company

[1:40:07] is an alien from outer space.

[1:40:08] And so they kidnap her to try to get through her

[1:40:11] to the other aliens in order to save the earth

[1:40:14] because they think the earth is in danger from them.

[1:40:16] And you don't know, they seem like crazy people.

[1:40:19] But in this version of it, Emma Stone plays the CEO

[1:40:23] and she is like so encased in corporate speak

[1:40:27] and kind of like how a corporation talks to people

[1:40:29] that there are scenes that are really interesting

[1:40:32] because it is people who are enmeshed

[1:40:33] in conspiratorial thinking,

[1:40:35] trying to communicate with someone

[1:40:36] who's enmeshed in corporate thinking and talking.

[1:40:39] And they really cannot communicate with each other.

[1:40:41] And it's a super grim movie,

[1:40:43] it gets much grimmer and sadder than I really wanted it to.

[1:40:47] And much grimmer and sadder than the original,

[1:40:49] which has a kind of cartoony kind of like manicness to it.

[1:40:53] But I will say, I think the ending of the movie

[1:40:56] is really powerful.

[1:40:58] I think the ending of Begonia has actually pulled off

[1:41:00] better than the ending of Save the Green Planet.

[1:41:02] And so I'm kind of, I guess I'll recommend both.

[1:41:05] I'm gonna recommend Save the Green Planet and Begonia

[1:41:07] to see like two different filmmakers

[1:41:09] handling the same basic story in two very different ways

[1:41:13] and what the strengths and weaknesses of that are.

[1:41:15] But I walked away from it being like,

[1:41:17] I did not enjoy watching this movie,

[1:41:19] but I think there's certain things

[1:41:20] that it handled really well

[1:41:21] and certain things that handled not as well.

[1:41:24] And so it's more of a,

[1:41:26] if this is the type of movie you like

[1:41:28] and you're on the fence,

[1:41:29] you might as well go and watch it.

[1:41:30] If it's not the type of movie,

[1:41:31] you don't like Yorgos Lanthimos's movie,

[1:41:32] then don't watch it.

[1:41:33] It's not gonna change your mind about it.

[1:41:35] Stewart shouldn't watch it.

[1:41:36] Thanks for qualifying that one for me.

[1:41:38] But like, there are certain of his movies

[1:41:40] that I really like, I really adore.

[1:41:43] And others that I think are, they just don't do it for me.

[1:41:46] And this one, I'm not sure where it fits.

[1:41:48] So I'm recommending it out of discomfort.

[1:41:51] And maybe that discomfort is what shows

[1:41:53] that there's something going on with it.

[1:41:55] I don't know.

[1:41:56] Yeah, I mean, it's not uncommon for me to watch something

[1:41:57] and not enjoy the experience.

[1:41:59] But then, after a little while, be like,

[1:42:01] you know what?

[1:42:02] I'll give that movie credit.

[1:42:05] Just because I didn't enjoy the experience at the time

[1:42:07] doesn't mean it didn't have a lasting effect on me.

[1:42:09] I feel like, what was that?

[1:42:11] Last year was Smile 2.

[1:42:14] I remember watching and being like,

[1:42:15] I do not care for this.

[1:42:16] But then over time, I'm like,

[1:42:17] actually, that was probably the best horror movie of the year.

[1:42:20] I really liked Smile 2.

[1:42:21] I was not much for Smile,

[1:42:24] so I didn't have a lot of expectations for Smile 2.

[1:42:26] I haven't seen either of them.

[1:42:27] How do they spell two?

[1:42:29] Just with the numeral.

[1:42:30] With the numeral, yeah.

[1:42:31] Oof, oof.

[1:42:32] Now, okay, well, I'll try it.

[1:42:33] But I don't know, I'm really on board with T-O-O.

[1:42:36] T-O-O, because it's focusing on a different lady

[1:42:39] and different smiles, so.

[1:42:41] There are different smiles.

[1:42:43] We all have different smiles, you know?

[1:42:46] Think about it.

[1:42:47] Just like that Billy Joel song.

[1:42:49] Unless you're in the cover of an Apex to win a record.

[1:42:51] No, you all get the same smile.

[1:42:54] Same smile, same smile, yeah.

[1:42:55] Same creepy smile.

[1:42:56] If you're in the Black Hole Sun video, same smile.

[1:42:59] Yeah, basically.

[1:43:01] Well, guys, this has been the Flophouse.

[1:43:04] We are on the Maximum Fun Network.

[1:43:08] Go and check out other shows on the network

[1:43:10] at maximumfun.org.

[1:43:12] Go, do it, I dare you.

[1:43:13] A lot of great ones.

[1:43:14] Also, we would like to take this moment

[1:43:16] to thank our producer, Alex Smith,

[1:43:19] who does a lot of great work for us,

[1:43:21] making this show listenable every week.

[1:43:24] And he also does great work for himself

[1:43:28] under the name HowlDotty.

[1:43:30] You can listen to his music, see his Twitch streams,

[1:43:33] listen to his own podcast.

[1:43:34] Check him out.

[1:43:37] But for us, for the Flophouse, I've been Dan McCloy.

[1:43:40] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:43:42] I'm Elliot Kaelin, now.

[1:43:46] Part two.

[1:43:55] Okay, what are we doing?

[1:43:57] A podcast called the Flophouse.

[1:43:59] Okay, well, we haven't started it yet.

[1:44:01] Let me do it in the traditional manner,

[1:44:03] which is to say,

[1:44:05] take off my pants.

[1:44:07] I'm sorry, Scott Bakula just quantum leaped into me.

[1:44:10] No, what?

[1:44:12] Maximum Fun.

[1:44:14] A worker-owned network.

[1:44:16] A network of artists-owned shows.

[1:44:18] Supported directly by you.

In the Lost Lands

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